carpal tunnel can't stop me

Madd - They/Them - 24 I've got a Creative License and I'm not afraid to use it EXCLUSIONISTS/TRANSPHOBES NOT WELCOME ❤️

[maddstermind]

Hey there, howdy, hello! Welcome to my writeblr that I am going to try real hard to be active on!

I'm Madd, they/them, and while I might not post it all here, I am a very active writer hoping for publication in the near future! I'm hoping to become part of the community, so feel free to tag me in things/shoot me asks/anything of the sort!! I'd love more writer friends :>

Want to know more details? Keep reading!

What do you write? I write all kinds of things! I have ideas in honestly too many genres and whatnot at this point, and I hope to someday write them all!

Right now, however, I have two main focuses: spooky short stories, and a novel series! (Though I do have a couple other novel things.)

Tell me about the short stories. My short stories tend to be 3k to 5k on average, and most wind up being horror or horror-adjacent. I tend to describe them as being "Twilight Zone-esque," but most would fit as being called gothic horror.

I have previously published some short stories, but my full legal name is on them so I hesitate to link them here. Regardless, I hope to publish a collection sometime soon!

Tell me about the novel series. Auberon Academy is a four-novel series told through a rotating POV of four main characters. It is a fantasy setting (though a bit more modern fantasy; more or less 1950s tech-wise), but the plot is more of a mystery/thriller.

I'm redrafting the first novel (its also my Masters thesis!), and have the first drafts of the second and third ones finished, and am now (slowly) starting to draft the fourth! You can learn more about the first book, Manifestations and the Missing, here in this funny slideshow I made.

What do you do besides writing? Not much. Just kidding.

I'm bad at video games, but I love to play them. A favorite hobby of mine is tabletop role-playing games, my favorites being Call of Cthulhu, Blackbirds, Dungeons & Dragons, and Vampire: The Masquerade! I also love to draw, and several of my story ideas are actually comics!

But lets be honest. Torturing my characters (canonically or otherwise) is my favorite thing to do. What kind of writer would I be if I said anything different?

How do you tag things?

General writing: #madd writing

Prompts: #prompt response

Tag games: #tag game

Ask games: #ask game

Asks: #questions

Resources: #holding

Auberon Academy-specifc: #boberon

Soulbearer-specific: #sogbog

Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow-specific: #ttt

My art: #madd doodles

Other writeblr-related things: #writeblr stuff

Also, this post has the list of character tags for Auberon!

I'll also try to tag anything that feels like it should warrant a trigger warning!

Anything else to note? I'm very nervous about posting my work to Tumblr (fear of theft really gets to you), but I'm trying to overcome it. That being said, you might not see too terribly much of it here - if you're really interested, please reach out to me! I'd most likely be happy to share more on a more private level.

Also, I have ADHD! I tend to hyperfixate on my own work (which is a nightmare but also useful), but if you're ever confused by something. That's probably why.

Thanks for being here, y'all!

[dushenyu]

favorite passages from my short story "pianos that play themselves" - a story I wrote in 2020 or 2021 or so, while struggling to save my creative practice from the demands of my shitty job. It has taken on a new register in the current era of genAI. Or at least, I think so. You tell me what you think.

originally published in salvage issue #12: a ceaseless storm

available here to read for free!

transcriptions under the cut

first excerpt:

You started to become incorporeal in high school. You noticed it in your extremities first; you would hold your hands to the sun and watch as the light turned your palms into a vibrant red display of blood vessels, like candling an egg with a flashlight. Nobody believed you when you told them, except for the classmates who had also begun to notice their voices diminishing, their fingers vanishing at the tips.

second excerpt:

You start to shake your head and open your mouth to correct him, but the words won’t come out. Even as you fade, you can interact with the physical--your car, your phone, the dough mixer at work--but there are parts of your body that aren’t working like they used to. Your voice is the product of folds of muscle vibrating in your throat, a correspondence of your own flesh; maybe you are not physical enough anymore to speak.

third excerpt:

You spend the night turning the lights on and off, trying on different clothes, trying to look through the camera lens on your phone instead of the mirror--anything to convince yourself that it’s not as bad as it looks. Eventually, you curl up on the floor and try to cry a little bit, but you can’t even do that, because you’re not surprised. This is a steady progression. This is where you always knew you would be. 

fourth excerpt:

You’re a vessel now, like the cells you traced through your own capillaries. Nobody pays attention to the things that keep their bodies or their cities alive, unseen systems of nerves and ghosts holding that framework together. You think you might understand it now, as you flow through the city in silence. People would rather not know what keeps the blood moving, and would rather not think about how fragile it all is, how easily these mechanisms can fall apart. A quiet aneurysm, rust on the girders of an aging bridge, a blocked artery, a downed power line--

Or a less dramatic decline. When blood cells are destroyed faster than they can regenerate, broken down through malnutrition, the heart will slowly fail.

[writeouswriter]

[robinavitchgf]

I didn’t mean to offend you I just genuinely think you’d like what the ai did with the story, it’s really great and maybe even better than the first chapter! I also asked it to make fan art based on some of your shorter works and they’re gorgeous, some of the best art I’ve ever seen. Ai isn’t as bad as people think so if you ever realize that and change your mind I can still send it all to you!!! <3

i wasn’t going to respond to this bc of how much it fucking pissed me off but i feel like this needs to be said.

don’t ever come into a writers’ inbox and openly admit you used ai to, let’s face it, plagiarise their work. i don’t CARE if you want it to be on my blog, you still fed it into an ai bot for your own gain. it’s fucking ridiculous that you blatantly ignored the rules on my page that state NOT to do this to my work.

also saying it’s “better than the first chapter” sorry but fuck you?? first you steal my work and put it into ai and then basically say my works shit and ur ai slop is better???

i work full time, i dont tend to write all that often, hence why longer one-shots/fics are barely posted. sometimes all i can get out is a little drabble/blurb. and then sometimes i lose motivation for fics/series’ that i’ve previously posted about. this doesn’t give you an excuse to take my work and use ai to create your own. sometimes fics just don’t get finished and you have to fucking deal with it. if i ever find the motivation again, i might post about it again, but if i don’t, then don’t use ai on my work. and especially don’t use it to create fucking fanart on my other pieces.

tl;dr don’t fucking steal my work and plagiarise it through fucking ai. i don’t want your ugly nasty disgusting ai slop anywhere NEAR my blog and my content and my works.

[alphacrone]

i don't really want to weight in on the "using big words in your writing is ableist" discourse happening on tiktok because i'm like 90% certain it's an anti-intellectual psyop to stir up drama in online circles to promote the use of ai to summarize literally everything and thus feeding the LLMs and lowering the populace's mistrust of such tools but i also have to say: dictionaries and thesauruses are the most accessible they've ever been. if you use an e-reader of any kind you can look up a word without leaving the page. there's a plethora of online dictionaries and if you just type a word + "meaning" into google it'll usually give you a definition. we used to have pocket dictionaries we used when reading in class. i have two on my shelf right now that i used in high school. stop letting the fascists purposefully misuse anti-ableism rhetoric to trick you into never thinking again.

[medievaljournalist]

idgaf about palace intrigue just let me chill

[yudrilsthira]

can you at least not eat poisoned food when you have been told in advance its poisoned

[medievaljournalist]

juat let mw chj

[orcboxer]

I'm not threatened by llms as a writer because it's not actually artificial intelligence, it's not sapient, like, it has never experienced anything, which is why its writing is always dogshit.

like, how do I explain this.

I recently wrote a scene that takes place in a barn. I took the descriptive sentences and carefully chose the words that, when pronounced, sound the most like crunching or rustling hay. When I wrote a description of rain I used words that had rounder letters. My most recent edit was replacing the word "exasperated" with "frayed" because it made me feel more frustrated. Chatgpt doesn't think like that.

It doesn't get creative with form or structure or symbolism, it doesn't play, it just mimics. If it uses a weird word choice, you can't discuss what the intention was behind it, because there was no intention, it doesn't think that deep. There's nothing it wants to say and nothing it wants to evoke. That's why its prose is always vapid as fuck

[edyn-incubytch]

Here, take these

[tsunflowers]

reading a historical romance novel and reflecting on the way these stories often present woke nobility for the contemporary reader. a big thing is servants. you can’t not have servants in those times but many modern readers think “but I would never have servants. it would be so weird to have servants” and in order to make the protagonists of the story more relatable they are actually friends with the servants. but flip your perspective and think of it from the side of the servants. wouldn’t it be so awful if your boss was always trying to be friends with you. a really common thing you’ll see is the woke baronet having tea in the kitchen with the servants bc he’s not like other baronets. but what if your boss wanted to hang out and talk during your lunch break every day. not so charming when you think about it that way

[ariaste]

#okay but now what is the optimal way to be a good boss in this situation i genuinely wanna know#its easy to guess what makes a bad boss or a mid boss. but what is a good boss#specifically in such a highly structured hierarchal situation (via @rainbowroach)

HELLO you are asking questions that literature and poetry THROUGHOUT the middle ages has asked, and it is from this questioning that we derive things like the Codes of Chivalry (which is not "how to treat a noble lady really nice" but is actually "how to be an ethical person when you're rich and you own a horse" and includes such things as "don't run people over with your horse")

In fact I daresay you already know instinctively just from cultural osmosis what a good boss -- a good liege lord -- is and does based on the tropes that have survived to the current day and the kinds of things that get Hugely Praised in things like legends of King Arthur.

A good boss (liege lord) is:

Merciful. He is not having his peasants killed for things like poaching rabbits during a famine. In fact, he is working to mitigate famine. During times of individual hardship, he might negotiate with a peasant for a payment plan on their annual rent.

Patient. He is not impulsive, he does not lose his temper.

Prudent. He makes choices that are thoughtful, considered, conservative (in the sense of not needlessly risky--he's not investing his entire fortune in having everyone plant an unproven crop). He is making sure local infrastructure like roads and public buildings are maintained and kept in good nick.

Gentle. He doesn't haul off and slap a servant or a tenant for breaking a dish or making a mistake. He doesn't abuse animals, his wife or children, or his employees. He doesn't rape the servants.

Generous (both in money and in spirit). He is not extorting the peasants for an amount of rent that is beyond their means, he is not raising taxes every year to cover his own lavish lifestyle. He is paying his servants a living wage (or, if wages are low, he's giving them room/board/clothing to make up the difference). If someone in a tenant's family dies, the lord is sending a gift of condolence, or helping to pay for the funeral, or possibly even ATTENDING the funeral and speaking a few kind words about the deceased, ESPECIALLY if they were a really upstanding and important member of the community. If one of his tenants is gravely sick, the lord is sending a basket of food or paying for a doctor. He is giving charitably (generally this will be, like, a bequest to the church so that they can run a hospital or an orphanage or a school for the local village children).

Pious. This classically means "goes to church, submits with humility to God" but to me this quality is subtextually standing in for "maintaining an ongoing sense of Perspective that HE'S not god, that there are higher powers he is Accountable to, that he too can be Judged, etc, so that he doesn't end up going on a weird fucked up power trip"

Humble. One of the most admiring things you hear about a lord doing in literature and epic poetry is, "He ate off of wooden plates while his followers ate off of gold and silver." Humility isn't about being meek, it's just about not thinking so much of yourself that you turn your nose up and sneer at what "lesser" people do. In other words: Don't be a fucking diva. If your carriage gets stuck in the mud, climb out and help everybody else push, you're not gonna die from getting mud on your shoes.

Condescending. This word has changed wildly in meaning/tone over the last couple centuries -- it's now a rude thing to do (because we've done away with legal social hierarchies, so someone acting like they're lowering themselves to your level IS insulting), but in older times, a high-ranking person "condescending" to a servant was worthy of praise and admiration: it means they were setting aside rank and privilege to speak to them with the easygoing, friendly respect and compassion they'd give a peer. This is things like... Treats those beneath him with courtesy and respect (ie: listens soberly and attentively when one of his servants or tenants comes to complain about a problem). Having a sense of humor and kindness about it when the lord and a servant both come around a corner at the same time and run into each other and the servant gets knocked to the ground and starts babbling apologies--the condescending (positive) lord helps them to their feet with his own hands and cracks a joke to show them that it's ok (as opposed to just walking off without a word or insulting/scolding them). This is also things like trusting a farmer, woodcutter, or artisan to speak with expertise about their own livelihood and taking their advice into consideration if they tell the lord that one of his ideas won't work.

Good boundaries. The ethical liege lord knows that it's normal for the staff to probably be softly bitching about him in private (even with a really good boss, we all grumble from time to time). He's not eavesdropping on them, he's not going into the staff areas where they should reasonably expect to have a degree of privacy, etc.

Righteous and protective of "the weak". The "weak" here doesn't necessarily mean physically weak, this is often used in the sense of someone politically or socially weak, aka The Marginalized -- the poor, the disabled, women, children, the elderly, etc. If a lord sees someone like this being mistreated or abused, he's supposed to step in and put a stop to that.

Committed to reciprocity. In a highly hierarchical system like feudalism, every person (from the lowest peasant all the way up to the crown prince) legally OWES their liege lord certain things (taxes, labor, service, loyalty, etc). A good liege remembers and takes very seriously the idea that this should be a balanced and reciprocal relationship -- in other words, he owes something BACK. Feudalism is modeled very strongly on the family system: If children owe their parents obedience and service, then parents owe their children care and protection. This still applies when the "child" is a farmer and the "parent" is a local baron. Or when the "child" is a duke and the "parent" is the king.

Basically, we get so caught up in the aesthetics of nobility that we forget that it literally is a managerial position that comes with responsibilities that were... very similar back in the day to the same ones we have now. Humans have not changed all that much. At the end of the day, a really good boss in the 1400s versus in one from the 2020s displays most of the same qualities of personality, even if the details of execution are different.

The next question is, of course, "well, but this theoretical liege lord is HIGHLY idealized -- how often did that actually HAPPEN? Wasn't it more likely that everyone was exploited all the time?" and to that I say: Well, maybe. But again, I don't think humans have changed all that much. Just like the bosses of today, there's a SPECTRUM: A really really good boss is rare and precious and one that you tell stories about for years after you've left that job, but a truly, genuinely, homicidally nightmarish boss is also pretty rare. Most bosses are sort of meh -- they have their good moments, they have their shitty moments, but they're tolerable and you can get along with them well enough to do your job, and then you roll your eyes at them behind their back. Generally, humans don't take outright exploitation lying down. Being a bad boss in the historical period is how you get peasant uprisings and revolts, and you know that to be true because your parents raised you with that knowledge, so unless you are very stupid or inbred or an egomaniac, there is literal personal incentive to at minimum be a Tolerable liege lord. And that means hitting at least SOME of the above bullet points.

TL;DR: In the words of Honore de Balzac, "Everything I have just told you can be summarized by an old word: noblesse oblige!"

(for more discussions of the ethics of fealty and what it means to be a good boss when you are an exquisitely beautiful twink of a prince with a hot beefy bodyguard.... [fingerguns] read A Taste of Gold and Iron)

[theprofessional-amateur]

A very specific resource

How Fast Was The Mail?

How long did it take, on average, for a letter to get from Chicago to San Fransisco in 1902?

With a fun bonus of information about when train lines were up and running in various parts of the country by hovering over the lines

(my cursor is invisible in the screenshot but not the case when I play with the map)

How Fast Was the Mail?

Explore mail transit times via railway between major U.S. cities, 1882–1908.

[tartts]

unique writing asks🖋️

What themes would you like to write about that you feel don’t get explored very often?

What are some common elements of stories you are tired of seeing? What would you avoid writing about?

What loves do you tend to write about? Agape (unconditional, spiritual love), Eros (romantic, passionate love), Philia (affectionate, platonic love), Philautia (self-love), Storge (familial love), Pragma (enduring love like between long-married couples), Ludus (playful love, infatuation you feel during the “honeymoon period”), and Mania (obsessive love that leads to madness and jealousy)

In your works, is blood thicker than water or is the blood of the covenant thicker than the water of the womb? (Are familial ties or friendship ties more important?)

Would you rather write a happy ending that soothes the soul or a tragic ending that hurts the heart?

What point of view do you tend to write in? Do all of your pieces use the same POV? Do you have strong opinions on the POV used in novels?

Favorite description in your wip? (If asked more than once, respond with a new piece each time)

Favorite dialogue in your wip? (If asked more than once, respond with a new piece each time)

What scene was the hardest to write for you and why?

What scene was the most fun to write for you and why?

Set the scene for us. What are your settings like and do you have any pictures saved that represent them? Do your characters travel and see more than one? What are their names?

What is the fashion like in your wip? Do you have any pictures saved of outfits your characters would wear?

What traits do you share with your original characters or what traits do you wish you shared with them?

If you’ve written more than one story, what traits do your protagonists tend to share?

Why physical quirks do your characters tend to have? Eyebrow raising, picking nails, biting lips, pacing, crossing arms, etc.

What motives do you give your original characters? What drives them? How much tragedy did you subject them to?

Are your protagonists always the “good guys” and your antagonists always the “bad guys” or do you like to do anti-heroes and grey morality?

What writers have inspired you with their use of language? What are some of your favorite quotes?

“For fans of ______!” What works would you say are similar to yours?

If you were published and had complete control over your covers, what would it look like? Do you have any specific artists that you’d like to illustrate it? Do you like when characters are pictured on covers or do you prefer inanimate objects?

How do you come up with titles? Do you use placeholders or tend to change your titles while writing the first draft?

How do you come up with character names? Do the names have a special meaning? If so, what are they?

Do your prefer reading series or standalone novels and does that reflect on how you write?

Do you let your story evolve as you write or do you meticulously plan everything prior to writing the first draft?

Do you start your novels with dialogue or description? Do you end your novels with dialogue or description?

What do you feel like you need to work on as a growing writer? How can you improve?

Do you have playlists for your wip? What are some of the songs in it?

Do you need background noise to write? If so, what do you listen to?

How do you share your writing? Do you use any writing websites and, if so, share your profiles!

What is some of the best writing advice you’ve read or received? Why does it work for you?

[luna-azzurra]

Real thing that changed how i write: I started asking "what does this character think is wrong with them" and separately "what is actually wrong with them." Those two things are almost never the same. She thinks she's too much. She's actually terrified of being too little. He thinks he's bad at commitment. He's actually just never met someone he trusted enough. The gap between their diagnosis of themselves and the real thing, that's your character arc right there. you don't have to explain it. just write both.

[cripplecharacters]

Writing a Schizophrenic Character: Everything But Hallucinations

Plain text: Writing a Schizophrenic character: Everything But Hallucinations

Hey! Mod Bert here. 

So: you’ve decided to write a character with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder (there are other disorders on the schizophrenia spectrum but I will be focusing on these for today)

You’ve done it, you have their hallucinations and maybe even delusions picked out. Maybe they are one of many who experience auditory hallucinations or maybe they also have visual hallucinations or a combination. Maybe they have olfactory hallucinations as well. They may have persecutory delusions or delusions of reference or something like Cotard’s delusion or clinical lycanthropy. Awesome, you’ve done it!

What, I hear you say? What do you mean that’s only 2 of the 5 components needed to be diagnosed with schizophrenia? What do you mean, you don’t need to hallucinate at all to be schizophrenic?

What Goes Into a Diagnosis of Schizophrenia

Plain Text: What goes into a diagnosis of schizophrenia

Not a lot of people realize there’s more to schizophrenia and schizoaffective than just hallucinations or delusions. There are 5 diagnostic criterias that are needed for schizophrenia, and only 2 of the 5 are needed for a month, with larger symptoms happening for six months or more. Let’s get into it.

Delusions

Hallucinations

Disorganized speech or thinking*

Disorganized or unusual motor behavior (catatonia)*

Negative symptoms (avolition, anhedonia, flat affect)*

I’m going to focus on disorganized speech/thinking, catatonia, and negative symptoms.

Disorganized Speech/Thinking

Plain Text: Disorganized Speech/Thinking

Schizophrenia and related disorders are often called “thought disorders” for a reason. Speech and thinking can be extremely affected, and for people like me this can be one of the first and most striking examples of an episode coming. Some people will always have disorganized symptoms that will flare during episodes. A myth is that schizophrenia can be indistinguishable with medicine: most people will have some level of symptoms even during moments of peace or “remission”. More on remission later. 

So, disorganized speech. Some examples are: word salad (schizoaphasia), thought blocking, poverty of speech (alogia), pressurized speech, clanging, and echolalia.

Word salad: a combination of words that do not make sense together. Often called schizoaphasia for its similarity to jargon in Wernicke’s aphasia, this is instead a disconnection with the brain and not due to damage to the language part of the brain.

(Example: the salad would be yellow in the fat cow).

Thought blocking: A severe loss of thought, often paired with connecting two trains of thought that are not connected

(Example: I went to the………Do you like grapes?)

Poverty of speech: A lack of organic responses to speech or organically speaking, it can be severe enough that a person only responds to questions or in one word responses. Can also happen in severe depression.

(Example: Person A: Did you do anything fun today?

Person B: Yes.

Person A: Oh, what did you do?

Person B: Store

Person A: How was it?

Person B: Fun)

Pressurized speech: A sort of frenzied way of speaking associated with psychosis or mania.

Clanging: Connecting phrases together because of what they sound like instead of meaning

(Example: I went bent tent rent).

Echolalia: Repeating word’s and phrases. Commonly also associated with Autism Spectrum Disorder. 

(Example: Person A: I went to the store.

Person B: To the store.)

These are not the only examples but they are some ones I thought I'd highlight, either because they’re well known or I have experience with them, or because they’re famously thought of with other disorders as well and I wanted to point out how things overlap.

Personal experience: I had severe alogia for the duration of my last and worst episode. People thought I was mad at them because of the clipped way I spoke and the lack of really speaking. It got me in a lot of trouble. I didn’t realize what I was saying was different or weird (I have the least insight when it comes to my speaking patterns affected by my schizoaffective, meaning I can’t hear any difference and all of this is from repeated conversations with my mom, who was my caretaker for a bit and knows the most about my speech and what it means). The best solution was talking with people and being honest and educating myself and others. I don’t know about others, but I couldn’t have used AAC at that time.

Catatonia

Plain text: Catatonia

Fun fact: catatonia means unusual motor behaviors! Any unusual motor behaviors mean catatonia. This includes what we think of when we think of catatonia in schizophrenia (inability to move) as well as the opposite (being unable to stop moving) as well as strange movements and ways of holding and moving the body! Catatonia in the DSM-5 includes 3 or more of these 12 behaviors:

-Agitation unrelated to external stimuli

-Catalepsy

-Echolalia

-Echopraxia

-Grimacing

-Mannerism

-Mutism

-Negativism

-Posturing

-Stereotypy

-Stupor

-waxy flexibility

I have some experiences with catatonia-like symptoms but since they were never identified as such I’ll skip those for now. I will say that catatonia is a symptom that can happen in many disorders besides schizophrenia as well.

Negative Symptoms! Yay!

Plain text: negative symptoms! Yay!

So a positive symptom (Hallucinations or delusions) are symptoms that add something to reality or a person. Negative symptoms are symptoms that take away. There are 5 A’s:

-Alogia (Again, poverty of speech, our favorite)

-Avolition (Lack of energy and motivation)

-Affect (Blunted affect, or a flat way of speaking)

-Anhedonia (Lack of pleasure in things that used to bring you pleasure, often thought of with depression)

-Asociality (Lack of interest in social events and relationships)

There are also often cognitive changes including thinking and memory, information recall, understanding, and acquisition, and so forth. 

Schizophrenia and schizoaffective often (but not always) happen with what’s called a prodromal period. This period can be months to years (mine was a little less than a year) and mainly consists of negative symptoms. Slowly, positive symptoms are added. There are thought to be stages to schizophrenia including prodrome, active phases, and remission.

I’ll talk about that a little for a second because I’m currently in remission and no one knows what that means. I was diagnosed with schizoaffective depressive type in January 2021. As of February 2024, I no longer qualified to be rediagnosed because my symptoms were strongly under control and no longer severe enough to qualify for a diagnosis. They also didn’t distress me or impact my daily life severely. Day to day now I still have mild symptoms and take my antipsychotics (trying to go off them have made it clear that I still have some symptoms I choose to keep medicating) but I haven’t had a delusion in 2 years and been hospitalized in 3. There’s always a possibility of another episode but I work with my team to keep myself one step ahead if that happens.

What I want from a character with schizophrenia

Plain Text: What I want from a character with schizophrenia

Alright the writing advice part. What do I want from a character with schizophrenia or schizoaffective (which is schizophrenia plus either depression or bipolar). 

-Characters with caregivers.

-Characters using coping strategies (recording hallucinations to tell if theyre hallucinations, taking medication, having service animals that greet people so they know if they’re a hallucination, using aids for the cognitive symptoms like sticky notes and organizational tools)

-Characters who know other characters with their disorder, either online or in support group or through running in similar circles

-Characters having autonomy

-Characters who aren’t the killer or horror victim. I know it’s cool to have the schizophrenic protagonist in horror, and I love horror, but I don’t want to read about the horror being symptoms the whole time

-Characters who are in magical scenarios, who are in fantasy and sci-fi. The schizophrenic princess and the schizoaffective robot technician aboard the spaceship.

-Medication and hospitalization treated casually. Sometimes we need higher care. That’s morally neutral

-Characters with negative symptoms and speech symptoms.

-Characters with catatonia! 

-Characters with other disorders as well

-characters with side effects from medicine treated casually

-Characters with cognitive symptoms

Thank you for reading this incredibly long thing! Happy writing!

[cripplecharacters]

Writing Schizophrenia and Psychosis: Hallucinations and Delusions

[Plain text: Writing Schizophrenia and Psychosis: Hallucinations and Delusions]

So you've read our lovely guide on parts of schizophrenia and psychosis unrelated to hallucinations and delusions, you've skimmed our tag, but it's finally time to tackle the most commonly known part of schizophrenia: hallucinations and delusions.

So, hearing voices or seeing shadow people and thinking everyone is after you, right? I'm done?

Nope!

This is a guide to the many many kinds of hallucinations and delusions that exist, written with experience by people with psychosis.

A note obviously that psychosis is highly personal and your mileage may vary. This is not meant to be an all-encompassing post.

Conditions that can cause psychosis (not exhaustive):

Schizophrenia,

Schizoaffective Disorder,

Schizophreniform Disorder,

Delusional Disorder,

Brief Psychotic Disorder,

Major Depressive Disorder with Psychotic Features,

Bipolar Disorder,

Psychotic Disorder Due to Another Medical Condition (yes that's the real name and the Another Medical Condition usually refers to things like Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, brain tumors, etc.),

Substance/Medication-Induced Psychotic Disorder.

The first three are also known as the "schizo-spec" (schizophrenia spectrum) disorders, with delusional disorder and brief psychotic disorder sometimes also being included in that definition.

Hallucinations

[Plain text: Hallucinations]

There are many kinds of hallucinations, the most commonly discussed being auditory and visual. However, they are not the only ones! There are also tactile, olfactory, gustatory, and somatic ones (the latter are often categorized under tactile or vice-versa).

The most frequent kind of hallucination experienced changes depending on the exact disorder. Overall, the most common ones are either auditory or visual (e.g. auditory are the most common in schizophrenia, and visual in neurological disorders), then the other one of the aforementioned two, then tactile/somatic, then olfactory, and then gustatory.

A person can experience any number of those, and multimodality (involving multiple senses) is more common than unimodality (involving just one sense) in people who have a primarily-psychiatric condition. In other words, having hallucinations that involve multiple senses is common for those on the schizo-spec, but very rare for those with ocular conditions, for example.

Types of hallucinations:

[Plain text: Types of hallucinations:]

Auditory hallucinations: There are many things a person can hear, the most common and most discussed being voices. However, other common auditory hallucinations are whispering, hearing your name being called, music, and hearing people walking around.

Command hallucinations: a subset of auditory hallucinations. My absolute enemy. A hallucination, usually external voice but sometimes an "implanted voice" that commands the listener to do things, from something simple like standing up to hurting themselves or others. The listener can resist, but I personally find the longer I have command hallucinations the harder they become to resist or ignore. Often the thing that gets me sent to inpatient. The most important distinction for command hallucinations are that they are not intrusive thoughts - the person is insistent they are external from them.

Visual hallucinations: Less common than auditory hallucinations but still incredibly common. Not always shadow people or recognizable people - I see strangers and have never had the same visual hallucination twice, although some people do see returning "characters". I do see shadow people occasionally, but they aren't the only thing people see and can be a somewhat exaggerated depiction. I know a lot of people who see cats, for some reason. If you can think it, someone can see it!

Obviously hallucinations can but don't have to be scary, it simply depends on the person and experience.

A person can see almost anything as a hallucination. Some people experience what are known as "simple" visual hallucinations (as opposed to "complex" ones)—basic patterns, spots, geometric shapes, lights, lines. They are not lifelike or clear, and are visibly out of place. Simple hallucinations are less common on the schizo-spec, but anyone can have them.

Tactile hallucinations: my absolute enemy (hey, different mod here). Tactile hallucinations are less common than visual or auditory ones, and often come with other kinds of hallucinations as a bonus—especially somatic ones, since there's no clear distinction between those two a lot of the time. They encompass touch, feeling, and spatial sense in the broadest sense you can possibly imagine. They can be annoying in their own manner as there is often no way to check their validity; you usually can't just record or take a picture of them to verify them.

Tactile hallucinations can be, as most hallucinations, basically anything. One of the most common types is the feeling of parasites, bugs, or other animals, like snakes, moving across or under the person's skin.

Parasitic/formication hallucination is the main example of tactile hallucinations to the point that there are sometimes used as synonyms. It's also very often associated with delusional parasitosis, where the person actually believes that they are in fact infested, which will be mentioned in the "delusions" section.

For many people tactile and somatic hallucinations will be one and the same, or otherwise inseparable, like the feeling of blood or urine dripping down their body, being burned, feeling their organs or bones "move around", or having their skin stretched.

In my personal experience—YMMV—tactile hallucinations are the most difficult to acknowledge as fake (for me, this is in comparison to visual and olfactory ones). Even if you are aware of the possibility of being in psychosis, since they can't be reliably verified for the most part, are often at least theoretically possible, and frequently co-appear with delusions of the same theme.

Olfactory hallucinations: smelling things that aren't there. Those can be pleasant, gross, or completely neutral, as most hallucinations in general. Smell hallucinations can be (unofficially; this is just a distinction I've used myself) categorized into external (smells "outside" the person having the hallucination, like a fire) and internal ("in/on" the person having the hallucination, i.e. a smell that's coming from their own body). In my anecdotal experience, people tend to have more of only one of these types rather than both.

One of the most common ones is the perception of having extremely offensive body odor or bad breath, but it can also do with urine, blood, even decomposition, etc. The hallucinations generally revolve around mundane things (there's nothing "OMG I must be in psychosis!" about thinking you smell bad), which might make them difficult to spot as fake, even if someone is aware that they are overall psychotic.

Many kinds of olfactory hallucinations might make the person feel insecure (body related smells), paranoid (chemical related smells; e.g. I had a recurrent hallucination of smelling spilled gasoline), or cause problems with things like eating (smelling non-edible things in food; rot, mold...).

Gustatory hallucinations [disclaimer: none of the mods have first-hand experience with this one; this is entirely based on external sources]: tasting things that aren't there. The rarest kind of hallucinations statistically, though it shows up in some non-shizo-spec conditions more often (e.g. epilepsy).

Gustatory hallucinations are mostly realistically plausible (for example, feeling a bitter or sour taste) or realistic but unusual (e.g. metallic taste). They often coexist with other kinds of hallucinations and delusions, often exacerbating the problem (e.g. a person with delusions of being poisoned might experience a hallucination of dangerous chemicals in their food, solidifying the delusion).

Hallucinations FAQ

[Plain text: Hallucinations FAQ]

Q: How to describe hallucinations in a sensitive manner?

A: Sensitivity and hallucinations is less about being sensitive about the hallucinations and more about the person having them. Hallucinations can be anything, and I mean it. For every "stereotypical" hallucination, there's a thousand real people who will have it. Unless you're considering doing something extremely out there, I wouldn't worry about the content of hallucinations being sensitive or not; anything that's common enough to be listed as an example of a hallucination is more than safe. Some hallucinations are scary, a lot are deeply unpleasant. That's okay to show.

So, how do you describe the person having the hallucinations?

First of all, don't make them violent towards others. This is a very harmful stereotype that writers love to use. Psychotic people can be violent since they are people, but they're much more likely to be victims of violence as well as committing violence towards themselves (both in the self-harm context, as well as in attempts of dealing with psychosis that ultimately result in unintentional self-injuries). Don't make someone into a murderer because they are hearing voices or smelling blood in their food.

Second, show them as a full person and that psychosis is part of them as that person. Why* are they psychotic? How do they experience it? When did it start, and how often do they have episodes? Do they go to therapy? Do they take medication? How do they feel about it? Make them seem human while integrating psychosis into their character, not just a "normal" person with a "scary gimmick" slapped on top without considering what it actually means for them.

*—not as in "there needs to be a reason for a character to be disabled", but as in "what condition is causing them to hallucinate".

Third, don't push people with low insight under the bus. Someone who can't tell their hallucinations apart from reality isn't stupid or "worse" than someone who has higher awareness. It also doesn't translate to morals; someone who fully can't tell what's real isn't more likely to be evil. It also doesn't make them blissfully unaware angels that should be treated like children. Don't moralize a mental illness in either direction.

To go back to the actual hallucinations—treat them as what they are: hallucinations. They aren't future-telling, prophecies, visions from an alternate dimension, sources of magic, whatever else, they aren't those things. A delusional person (or character) might believe that what they're experiencing is something "greater", but that'd be a part of a delusion; it's not something you should put as part of your objective worldbuilding. Even just implying that psychosis has some "deeper meaning" can mess some people up.

This is my least favorite form of psychosis representation in media. Honestly, personally, I'd rather be portrayed as violent than like I have some secret gift, but don't do either.

Q: How to integrate hallucinations into a story without the story becoming about them?

A: Depends greatly on whose POV you're writing from, how much insight the character has, and what emotions do they experience while hallucinating.

If it's a non-POV character who is aware they are in psychosis and are relatively unbothered by it, you can just describe them glancing around, or otherwise checking where the hallucination is. In most cases someone with high insight won't be interacting with a hallucination (an exception could be a pleasurable hallucination that the person enjoys).

They might ask another character if they also see/hear/feel the hallucination—even if someone is fully aware they are currently in psychosis, it might be difficult to verify which things are fake and which aren't. Maybe the character is sure that the person they're "seeing" is fake, but aren't sure about the dog that's with them.

You can describe the character being clearly distracted by something; looking into a specific place, moving weirdly, or not being able to stay on topic.

If you're trying to write about the character experiencing hallucinations and having low insight, it might be much more difficult to not make the story (or the scene) about it—if you don't go out of your way to acknowledge them as hallucinations then it will look like there is no hallucinations present, since the character will just consider them to be real. It'd just be another part of the setting—you can obviously throw in something that would be clearly out of place for the reader, but it will raise questions that you should probably address, thus making the scene about the hallucinations.

A similar thing can happen if your character is experiencing an unpleasant hallucination: you kinda have to make the scene about it. if the character is scared, it'd be weird to ignore that. You can of course go "they saw a peculiar creature in the yard, one so weird that they knew right away it wasn't really there, so they decided to ignore it," since you can be aware of a hallucination being fake while still being disturbed. In that situation you can have the character purposefully trying to distract themself, show them being under stress, or having another kind of reaction (e.g., using some sort of grounding technique, having a panic attack, etc).

Q: What are some common ways to tell what is and isn't a hallucination?

A: Visual: taking pictures/videos, taking off your glasses (hallucinations will sometimes stay in-focus when the real world blurs accordingly), asking another person if they also see it.

Auditory: recording the sound, asking another person.

Blind people having visual hallucinations and deaf people having auditory ones usually just assume that the hallucination is fake, especially if it's the only thing they are able to see/hear.

Olfactory: asking another person.

Tactile/somatic: no consistent way as far as I'm aware. In some circumstances you can tell by just looking (e.g. you feel like you're having a nosebleed, you can just look in the mirror to check) or asking another person (e.g. you feel like you're levitating), but for most hallucinations there is no way of telling (e.g. how would you check if there's something happening to your internal organs? Get a body scan of some sort maybe?).

Gustatory: if it's about a real food you can ask another person if they also feel the same taste, otherwise no way of telling as far as I'm aware.

Q: Does being able to logically differentiate between reality/hallucinations stop emotional responses?

A: It can, but it's not a guarantee by any means. Imagine you're on a rollercoaster or watching a horror movie: logically speaking, you know that you are safe—but still, you get scared, it's a natural response. If the insight helps someone emotionally, it's usually partial.

That said, being able to recognize something as a hallucination might (key word here) help someone stop having a psychotic episode, which could end the emotional response. But just because you know that something is fake doesn't mean you'll stop believing it. In fact knowing that you're believing something that is fake can be even more distressing than not knowing it's fake.

For some people, a hallucination could be traumatic or plain upsetting and continue to disturb them even after it's gone and they are no longer having an episode.

Not everyone will be particularly emotional though. Some people hallucinate 24/7 and just treat their hallucinations as another part of their day, even if they're fully conscious of them being fake.

Q: Can blind people have visual hallucinations/deaf people have auditory hallucinations?

A: Yes. For those where the two are connected, the former is called Charles Bonnet syndrome, the latter Musical Ear syndrome. The major distinction is that in both of those, the person experiencing the hallucinations usually has high insight (i.e., is aware that they are hallucinations) and they don't generally co-occur with delusions.

Blind and deaf people with residual vision/hearing can also experience "regular" visual/auditory hallucinations as well (and obviously other kinds too—nothing is stopping a deaf person from having olfactory hallucinations).

The one important caveat is that people with congenital (!) cortical (!) blindness do not, for unknown reasons, ever develop schizophrenia.

Delusions

[Plain text: Delusions]

Delusion is a fixed belief in something that is considered false, even after seeing evidence for the thing being untrue. The delusional belief isn't a part of the person's culture or religion, and isn't accepted as true among other members of their community. The belief is generally disturbing to the person and causes them distress.

The delusions that one can have are basically endless in terms of options, but they can be broadly put into two categories:

Bizarre: delusions that are impossible to occur in real life.

Examples:

being abducted by aliens,

having your thoughts broadcast over the radio,

being a supernatural entity.

Non-bizarre: delusions that are possible to occur, even if highly unlikely.

Examples:

being poisoned,

having a partner cheat on you,

being watched by the government.

Of course, in terms of fiction, what's considered "possible to occur in real life" might differ from these examples.

Delusions can also be categorized in "themes", such as:

Persecutory: the theme surrounds believing that one is being harassed, attacked, stalked, or conspired against, often by powerful entities. Frequently reported as the most common type of delusion, especially in schizo-spec disorders.

Grandiose: surrounds believing that one has special powers, status, knowledge, skills, has relationships with famous, powerful, and otherwise important people, or is such a person themself.

Jealousy: surrounds believing that one's partner is unfaithful.

Erotomanic: surrounds believing that another person—often of higher status, such as a celebrity—is in love with them.

Somatic: surrounds believing that there is something wrong with one's physical body, such as being infested with parasites, having blood replaced with a different liquid, or missing internal organs.

Religious: surrounds believing that one is a god or another religious figure, like a prophet or a saint, and/or is receiving directions/commands from those. A person doesn't have to actually be religious to experience religious delusions, nor has to be of the same religion that the delusion is about.

Thought manipulation: surrounds believing that one's thoughts are being manipulated in some way. Common examples include believing that one's thoughts are being broadcast, or that foreign thoughts are being purposefully inserted into their brain.

Mixed: delusions that match multiple of the aforementioned types. E.g. a character who thinks the government wants to kidnap them for their magical powers (persecutory+grandiose); a character who thinks that they are married to a famous pop star and that she's cheating on them (erotomanic+jealousy), etc.

Unspecified: literally everything else.

There are also specific delusions which are often referred to as their own syndromes/disorders. They are generally considered very rare but they are frequently referenced in media. Some of them are:

Clinical lycanthropy: a delusion that one is turning into a werewolf. Often clinical lycanthropy is a catch all term now for clinical zooanthropy, which is the belief you are transforming into any sort of animal. It's very rare and can be part of a disorder such as schizophrenia or exist as a delusion on its own. Often people with it will start to behave alongside the disorder, such as eating raw meat or feeling somatic transformation, or hiding so as not to hurt others in their beastly state.

Delusional parasitosis/Ekbom's syndrome: a somatic delusion where you believe there are bugs/bacteria/parasites inside your body, generally under the skin. Commonly co-occurs with tactile/somatic hallucinations, adding realism to the delusion.

It very frequently results in self-harming behaviors in an attempt to "get them [parasites] out". That can be anything from skin scratching to auto-amputation or disembowelment. The less extreme ways can result in infections and painful skin conditions, sometimes solidifying the person in the delusion that their body is in fact infested. The more extreme ways can and probably will result in death for obvious reasons.

A common phenomenon associated with it is the "matchbox sign" where the person finds "evidence" of the "parasites" (usually dead skin, fabric, small pieces of food, etc.) and shows it to someone, often a doctor, as proof of the infestation (matchbox coming from it being the go-to container for the "specimen", but honestly it can be anything. Who even has matchboxes anymore). A person with this disorder can also obsess over parasites/other animals that can in fact infest humans, potentially forcing them to avoid certain activities as much as possible (not eating meat, not going into forests, obsessively washing themself, etc).

To my knowledge this is the most common syndromic delusion, though it could be related to the fact that people with delusional parasitosis are also the most likely to see a doctor about it (though the doctor of choice would practically always be a dermatologist, not a psychiatrist) and thus get counted in statistics.

[Disclaimer: the next three are entirely based on external sources since no mods have first-hand experience with them.]

Capgras syndrome: a delusional misidentification syndrome where the person believes that someone else has been replaced by a clone/double/impostor. Most commonly the person who was "replaced" is a close family member or a spouse. Rarely, a person can also think that multiple people or a group were "replaced". Very rarely, the person with the delusion might think that they themself have been "replaced".

The delusion might be persecutory in nature, where the person believes the "clone" is there to spy on them or hurt them. This can sometimes lead to attempts of "unmasking" or confronting the "impostor" in an attempt to get their loved one "back".

Fregoli syndrome: a delusional misidentification syndrome where the person believes that strangers or acquaintances are someone they know in disguise. While generally it centers around people, it can also happen with animals or objects. It usually has a persecutory aspect to it, where the person thinks the "disguised" person is trying to follow or harm them in some way.

Cotard syndrome: also sometimes known as "walking corpse syndrome". It's a wide-spectrum delusion where the person believes that they already are dead, are currently dying, are immortal (and thus unable to die), have died but were reborn in some way, or just don't exist. People who have it might also believe that their organs are gone, rotting, or dying. Some can also abandon their basic human needs (such as eating) since they think it's no longer necessary.

Cotard syndrome is very rare in real life, especially in young people.

This is not an exhaustive list, just some examples.

Delusions FAQ

[Plain text: Delusions FAQ]

Q: What do delusions feel like?

A: So, it primarily depends on "insight"—whether the person has no, low, or high insight into their own delusion. The vast majority of people who experience delusions will have very little to no insight during their psychotic episodes.

Delusions feel like every other thing that's real, except they aren't, well, real. During a psychotic episode, delusions are facts as much as everything else around you. You don't question them since they feel obvious.

In delusions, there's lack of proof—which can be filled in by hallucinations (person believes they have a lethal disease, and starts hallucinating symptoms), explained by the delusion itself (person believes that someone else is in love with them, and interprets regular behaviors as "signs"), or simply ignored (the average person also doesn't know how [random everyday technology] actually works, but knows that it's a real thing that exists—people don't tend to question things they simply consider to be true, even if they don't really understand them).

Q: How to describe delusions in a sensitive manner?

A: To quote myself from earlier: sensitivity and delusions is less about being sensitive about the delusions, and more about the person having them. Delusions can be of anything, about anything, they can sound stupid and seem absurd to outsiders. I'm not saying "write the most ridiculous delusion you can think of for fun", more so "yes, some people do have unusual beliefs due to having the Unusual Belief Disorder".

Delusions are frustrating for everyone involved almost by definition. They aren't true and they directly affect what you believe, so they make you believe nonsense. And you can't "just explain lol" to the person that what they're saying/thinking is untrue because, well, it's a delusion. By definition, the belief being verifiably false really doesn't matter.

What's important to remember is that the delusional person isn't doing it on purpose. It's not a case of someone Purposefully Spreading Misinformation or rejecting factual data to further their agenda, it's a mental illness. Portraying it as a choice or some moral failure is simply incorrect. You can't just "opt-out" and magically stop being delusional.

So, what to actually do?

Recognize that delusions generally aren't fun. Obviously, everyone's experience is different, but delusions tend to be distressing. Persecutory ones will almost always be very negative, while a religious or grandiose one could even feel positive for someone if they think they are an angel or have some amazing talent.

Try to show the character's feelings in a sympathetic way, not a mocking one. What they believe isn't true, but their feelings are as real as anyone else's.

It's also important to remember that a delusion is something you genuinely believe. Try to put yourself in that position: you simply know some things. What your name is, how your pet looks like, where you live, whatever. If someone tried to convince you that you are wrong about these things, you'd think they're crazy. Imagine your coworker talking to you like they know your home life better than you do. Depending on the exact circumstances, you would probably have some sort of reaction—whether that be anger, being baffled, or just kinda weirded out.

It's the same when someone is delusional, and the "things you simply know" just happen to not actually be true.

This kinda leads to considering the ways in which a delusional character interacts with others. Some delusions are ignorable—the other character can kinda just nod and change the topic and move on. Others are a bit more in your face (e.g. the character thinks they are some higher being, or they think the character they're directly talking to wants to hurt them). Again, just telling someone "that's not true lol" doesn't really do much, if anything it can make the delusion worse (again: imagine you confront someone who you think is poisoning you, and they just say "um but I'm not?? what are you talking about lol you sound crazyy"). Try to consider what the relationship between the characters is, and what their personalities are—are they considerate, are they impatient, do they understand how the delusions affect the other character? Does the other character realize/know that the psychotic character is in psychosis at all?

Q: How do I incorporate delusions into a character's voice realistically?

A: TLDR: It's can be hard to make dialogue that sounds realistic for a character who has the disconnect-with-reality disorder.

First, try to consider how your character experiences their delusions in general. Are they extremely disturbed and can't stop thinking about their delusion when they're having an episode, or is it more of a background noise?

If it's disturbing them, then it probably won't sound realistic. When the delusion is all-consuming, the person having it might talk about it in circles and relate everything to it. Depending on how the psychotic character actually behaves, other characters might feel like they're being pranked because it just seems like "too much". It might be "like in the movies". The character can be going in circles trying to figure out how to stop NASA from broadcasting their thoughts around the globe; this happens.

At the same time, sometimes the delusion is much more covert. Sometimes on purpose (e.g. character with persecutory delusions believes that they are being observed, and doesn't want the observer to realize that they are aware of the observing, so they actively choose not mention anything about it), sometimes as a by-product of the way the delusion affects them (e.g. character with an erotomanic delusion isn't distressed by it, and they just vaguely mention their 'partner' in a way that doesn't really even tip anyone off).

If it's the first, you might be dealing with a character who is simply nervous/hiding something (because, well, they are). They might avoid certain topics or visibly get more stressed if the conversation goes into uncomfortable territory.

If it's the second, it will probably be more subtle. Perhaps you-wouldn't-be-able-to-tell-it's-a-delusion subtle. It depends on the character's exact delusion. Some would just be considered non-events (they say they have a partner who's famous, or that they are accomplished in some way), relatively normal/common events (partner is cheating on them, they have some serious illness), and some would be clearly bizarre (they say that their parents have been replaced by robotic clones, or that they are some mythical creature). If it's the first or the second, there might be no "tell", or maybe there will be some logical errors that other characters can catch on to, maybe there will be some inconsistencies when the character asks about it further, or maybe there will be nonsensical changes that happen between different retellings of the story that let others know something is off.

If it's the third clearly-bizarre option, then the "delusion reveal" might feel like it's coming out of nowhere, or create a sudden tone shift. It will be explained further in the post more, but psychosis isn't always obvious. Sometimes you learn that someone is psychotic because they say one thing that makes absolutely no sense. Again: it might feel abrupt, unexpected, other characters might think that they are being pranked at first. Just don't make the narrative make fun or mock the delusional character.

As to what you shouldn't do: no matter how delusional someone is, people still have other traits. Delusions aren't a replacement for backstory, relationships, preferences, or personality. They can and do affect them (and vice-versa), but if all the character talks about is their delusions, it will come off as either boring and flat, or a parody.

Psychosis FAQ

[Plain text: Psychosis FAQ]

Q: Can psychosis go undetected by the people around the person experiencing it, or is it very obvious?

A: Depends (sorry). But yes, sometimes it can absolutely go undetected, especially in case of a person experiencing mundane non-bizarre delusions and/or hallucinations.

It can also depend on the actual cause of the psychosis—for example, schizophrenia often comes with disorganized speech (among other things) which is definitely noticeable.

On the other hand, delusional disorder is often referred to as a "high functioning" disorder where it can be very hard for others to notice anything is wrong. It's generally characterized by non-bizarre delusions, unremarkable behavior ("not odd"), relatively non-impaired functioning, and any hallucinations that come with it are relatively minor and most importantly, fit the theme of the (probable) delusion.

My own absolutely worst psychotic episode went undetected by everyone I was living with at the time (in a tiny apartment at that). For someone else, a stranger could notice that they are experiencing psychosis from the other side of the road. It's a very wide spectrum, and a person can be on different ends of it at different times of their life.

It's basically: could you tell that your coworker who is ranting about their wife cheating on them is having a psychotic episode? Because they could be, and you probably wouldn't even consider it as an option since it's a very mundane delusion. On the other hand, if the coworker told you that their wife has been replaced by an identical evil clone overnight, you will know there's something going on because that's not a thing that happens.

Q: What impacts what hallucinations and delusions come up? Are they random?

A: As far as I'm aware, there's no actual research on this. We know that certain types of hallucinations and delusions are more common in specific disorders (e.g. in schizophrenia, auditory hallucinations and persecutory delusions are more common than other types), but that's about it. We don't know why certain people hallucinate cats meowing, and other ones hear demonic screaming.

Anecdotally speaking, people tend to stick to their delusions rather than have a completely new kind every time they have a new psychotic episode. It could be literally the same delusion following them ("the government is watching me"), it could branch out over time ("the government is spying on me and stealing my thoughts"), or incorporate other delusions that still somewhat connect, either in theme (in this case persecutory) or in subject (in this case government-related). In my experience, it would be very unusual for a person to have a psychotic episode where their delusions center around one thing with a specific theme, go into remission, and then have their next episode center something completely different with a fully unrelated theme (excluding "major event happening between the two episodes" type stuff).

Having unrelated hallucinations is more frequent since multimodality is very common.

The content of delusions or hallucinations is essentially "anything". It can be related to trauma, but doesn't have to. It can be related to the person's daily life, but doesn't have to. It can make sense from the outside, but doesn't have to.

Q: What do antipsychotics do from a more first-person perspective? How do they affect the symptoms of psychosis?

A: Make you sleepy... no, the biggest thing my antipsychotics have done when dosed correctly and on the right mix is they have helped give me a tool to more easily establish what is real or true and not. Even "in remission", a person with psychosis may experience hallucinations or mild delusions. It's less the symptoms that stop and more that they stop being as disturbing and disruptive, in my (mod bert again!) experience. They do not affect speech or negative symptoms for me, however.

Other mod here! When on the wrong antipsychotic, my delusions and hallucinations got meaner. They were more persecutory and I also experienced "old" hallucinations that I had not seen in a while returning. However, on my best dosage, my antipsychotics made my hallucinations nicer and quieter. Not as in like literally less loud, but they became easier to ignore. Like above, I have never seen an improvement in my speech or cognitive symptoms from medication.

Q: What kind of things can trigger a psychotic episode?

A: Technically speaking, anything can. It depends a lot on the actual disorder causing the psychosis (no points for guessing what triggers an episode in someone who has Medication-Induced Psychotic Disorder), but the most common triggers would be:

high stress,

recent traumatic event,

substance use,

sleep deprivation,

and social isolation.

My symptoms can be triggered by talking about them or seeing content similar to my hallucinations and delusions. For example, hearing a bible story triggered a religious hallucination, etc.

Sometimes the trigger is also "nothing" as far as the person experiencing the episode knows.

Things to Avoid

[Plain text: Things to Avoid]

Violent psychotic characters, especially ones that kill others because of "the voices"/"the visions". Psychotic people are much more likely to be violent towards themselves than anyone else.

Magical psychotic characters where the psychiatric disorder is some sort of magic system mechanic. A mentally ill character can have powers or whatever, but don't make symptoms into something they aren't.

Delusions/hallucinations that predict the future or have some other kind of omniscient quality to them. Again, this is a real medical condition, not a writing prompt.

Rule of thumb: would you still make the character psychotic even if their symptoms served no purpose in terms of worldbuilding and/or establishing something supernatural? Because if the answer is no, you have to rethink some things.

Psychotic characters who always have to be one of the like, four possible character archetypes (evil cannibalistic serial killer/mad scientist/Victorian era child in a horror movie/side character whose delusions are played for a joke and/or to show how 'dumb' they are).

Things We Want to See

[Plain text: Things We Want to See]

Regular people who just happen to be psychotic because of a mental health condition.

Psychotic characters who also experience other symptoms of their condition. Schizophrenia, the most commonly portrayed psychotic disorder, has many more symptoms than just that.

Psychotic characters who aren't young. Elderly people are actually the most likely to develop psychosis, childhood onset is extremely rare in comparison.

Psychotic characters who aren't white, physically abled men. Your character can be of literally any background, anyone can develop psychosis. In media it's almost exclusively either white men with poorly "researched" schizophrenia to portray them as crazy and dangerous, or sometimes women with delusions (usually erotomanic/jealousy type for obvious reasons) to portray them as crazy and unbearable to be around.

Characters who experience other kinds of hallucinations than just auditory and visual ones.

Characters who experience cognitive and speech symptoms.

Characters with other disabilities.

Characters who need a lot of support as a direct result from their psychosis. This should be portrayed as a neutral thing.

Psychotic characters who still have a social life! And hobbies!

Characters with MDD [major depressive disorder] that experience hallucinations/psychosis as a result. This was something I experienced during one of my worse periods and I have quite literally never seen anyone talk about MDD with psychosis outside of a medical context.

Happy writing!

mod Sasza, mod Bert, & mod Patch

[penny-anna]

like many people have said this better than me but no it IS odd that we've come to think of potatoes as so quintessentially european that their presence in historical fantasy where they're anachronistic doesn't jar. and yes people are trying to have the trappings of post-colonial europe without engaging w the icky colonialism part and yes people are neglecting to imagine what a european cuisine without potatoes would be like.

[penny-anna]

im fully in favour of 'let people have fun w their fantasy world' but is considering how the potatoes got there in the absence of colonialism not a fun exercise? maybe every year the dragon riders go on a great transatlantic potato pilgrimage

[penny-anna]

perhaps a good way to sum up the issue here is:

if you put potatoes in your medieval european style fantasy world people will by and large not find it jarring and accept it as a normal fantasy trope

if you put, say, black people in your medieval european style fantasy world a whole demographic of people will get very angry and accuse you of breaking their immersion

this is in spite of the fact that black people were a lot more common in medieval europe than potatoes.

[headspace-hotel]

useful/fun character development questions for couples

there are a lot of “otp questions” lists out there but I just wanted to make a list that was specifically helpful for writers, especially for working out the technical stuff of conveying Romantic Love. so, here ya go, stuff to answer for each character

What, specifically, was the catalyst for their physical attraction (if applicable) to the other character? In other words, what in particular had them like “Oh, they’re...hot...”

Does this change over time? What things do they find “hot” about their partner after they’ve been together for some time, and have had more time to, well, notice and appreciate?

By contrast, what was the moment that first made their ~heart~ Soft for the other person? Not necessarily a conscious realization of “I love this person,” but a moment that had them like “Oh...I adore them...”

Does this change over time? What will always reliably make them melt with how much they adore the other character?

How do they consciously realize that they like the other character? Does it take them a while?

How do they react to the realization that they like the other character? Is it an “oh my god I’m never going to think about this again” thing, or are they pretty comfortable with it?

Do they (or would they) pursue the other character’s affection, and if so, how? Do they tell the other character how they feel? Try to earn their admiration? Woo them with romantic gestures? Flirt with them, skillfully or otherwise?

What do they think about romantic love? Do they have baggage surrounding it? Do they idealize it? Is it an object of longing and wanting, or were they really not thinking about it until they started falling for the other character? What are their expectations like?

What do they think about commitment? Is a long-term partnership the goal? Are they thinking about building a life with their partner, or are they focused on the present?

What scares them about entering a relationship?

What fears, past traumas, etc. would be hardest for them to talk about with their partner?

How much independence do they prefer in a relationship—do they want to share their lives as much as possible with their partner, or do they prefer to mostly do their own thing and let their partner do their own thing?

What is their go-to for making a partner feel loved?

What makes them feel loved? Would they build up the courage to ask for it?

What, for them, constitutes a level of intimacy that they would only rarely share with someone? This can be physical, emotional, etc.

If they had the ability to just spend free time with their partner, what would they do? Would they go out or stay inside?

Under what circumstances would they want to be left alone by their partner?

They’re going through something incredibly difficult—perhaps they’re very sick, have lost a loved one, or have gone through a traumatic event. Do they ask for or accept support and care from their partner, or try to isolate themselves?

Are they okay with public displays of affection? Do they like them?

When would they say “I love you?” Do they say it first? Do they say it often, or is it reserved for special moments?

If sex is something that would be part of a relationship for them, do both or either of them have prior experiences? If not, how do they feel about it?

What does sex mean for them? Socially, religiously, what attitudes are they bringing with them? Is “virginity” something they care about? Do they want sexual experiences to occur within a certain “level” of relationship, or does that not really matter so much to them?

How comfortable are they talking about, and openly communicating during, sex?

What would their partner do that would really turn them on, perhaps unintentionally?

They accidentally hurt or upset their partner. What happened? How do they respond? What do they do to make their partner feel better?

They have an argument with their partner—what is it about? Do things stay respectful, or is there some shouting and accusing going on?

They have to apologize to their partner. Is this difficult for them? How do they approach it?

How do they feel about the prospect of parenthood? Do they plan on it? How would they react if they suddenly found out they were going to be a parent?

What compromises are they making in their relationship?

What completely petty topic (music taste, favorite food) do they find themselves completely at odds with their partner about?

What little thing do they find incredibly (though harmlessly) annoying about their partner?

How do their friends react to finding out they’re a couple? Do they have lots of mutual friends? Did their friends know, perhaps before they themselves did?

Under what circumstances would they feel jealous?

Under what circumstances would they feel protective?

Would they get a pet? What kind? Who brings up the idea, and who takes a little longer to convince?

[luna-azzurra]

The most interesting question you can ask about any character is not what do they want. it's what do they believe they deserve. because those two things are almost never the same and the gap between them is where your entire story lives. a person can want love completely and believe they don't deserve it and that belief will destroy every good thing that comes toward them in ways they won't even notice they're doing. write the gap. the gap is the character.