āEveryone thinks heās mentally ill but he actually just has superpowers.ā
Okay, but like, what if both? Can we get a superhero with a mental illness depicted in a nominally positive way? Thatās not just a cheap plot twist? Is that really too much to ask?
And not the whole āIām psychotic and I could lose control of my powers at any momentā shit. Iām sick of that.
How about āIām psychotic, but my telepathy helps a lot. If I think Iām hallucinating, my friends can let me see what they see and hear what they hear to keep me grounded in reality.ā
Or you know, maybe someone whose mental illness and superpowers are unrelated. A speedster with depression who knows they /could/ clean their apartment in under four seconds, but would rather just watch Netflix and eat chocolate. A super strong hero who also has ocd and keeps rearranging their furniture, and sure itās physically easy, but itās still a pain.
Like, literally just in the few minutes it took me to write this post, I probably already came up with a good 30 character concepts. Itās not that hard, as long as you like, you know, think of mentally ill people as people and not plot devices.
āthink of mentally ill people as people and not plot devicesā Yes please!
Read Bleeding Violets by Dia Reeves. The main character has hallucinations and delusions, but she also lives in a town with portals that let monsters into the world. She doesnāt notice at first that anything is wrong with the town because she assumes itās all her regular hallucinations. The townspeople assume sheās just cold hearted when she doesnāt react to people dying around her.
