Okay so the lore surrounding Joel’s “condition” has always been pretty vague because I couldn’t seem to commit to anything about it, but in summary it used to be that she turned into a wolf-like creature whenever she was too anxious. It had a direct correlation to her OCD (idk if I’ve ever specified on here that that was her diagnosis… so uhh, surprise? lol), where the louder her intrusive thoughts were, the more monster-like she appeared. But she never actually did anything destructive in that form, she just like looked like that? Lmao
But now I think I might wanna go more Jekyll/Hyde with it, where if her anxiety levels are too high she blacks out and turns into this goblin-like monster that tries its best to act upon all of her worst intrusive thoughts. MonsterJoel has no sense of responsibility and wreaks havoc on everything around her, and when human Joel wakes up she just has to hope that nothing too irreversibly damaging has happened. She would try to dispel the evil the only way she knows how: compulsive rituals (note: this obviously does not actually solve the problem). MonsterJoel probably has some sort of weakness that allows the rest of the crew to keep it at bay, otherwise it would be too powerful, but I haven’t thought that up yet lol
Basically I always played it too safe with Joel’s curse because I didn’t want to misrepresent or demonize OCD, but as someone with the disorder I think it’s a lot more horrifying to think that your own intrusive thoughts could manifest into a real creature that could do real damage. If I do decide to go this route, they would find a way to reverse the curse, as MonsterJoel is not her OCD, but a physical manifestation of her worst nightmare. (In the original version, Joel stays cursed because in that version the curse *is* her OCD and she learns how to more or less keep it under control)