CW: Seizure symptoms, convulsions, hallucinations, cognitive decline, physical deterioration. Too many to list here. Readers beware.
🧠💥 Seizures
Seizures are SUCH A FUN mechanic to write. A well-written seizure event lends itself beautifully to whump, angst, hurt/comfort and sickfics. SO MANY lovely causes and symptoms to make your poor whumpee suffer.
Some fascinating things I've learnt:
Seizure threshold
Things like sleep deprivation, stimulant overuse, dehydration, stress, fever, low blood sugar can push the brain over the seizure threshold. Stack the effects of these stressors, make them compound, and your whumpee can go from "I'm ok! I'm just tired!" to having a head full of pop rocks.
Imagine an overworked whumpee, having to extend their physical and mental resources, either because they are under duress by Whumper, or because the situation demands it. The effects of their exhaustion, physical stress and maybe even performance-enhancing drugs push them ever closer to the seizure threshold, until they finally cross it.
Maybe it happens after the high intensity event. So everybody has survived, or Whumper has finally let up, and they're fine, just a bit out of it, and then BOOM. They're down for the count.
Or worse, does it happen in the middle of a crisis? They're in a shootout, or a high stakes heist, or a situation where stealth is required...
BONUS, if the thing they're doing is what causes them to tip over the seizure threshold, like a mage trying to heal someone with their over-extended mage resources, and their brain starts to stutter and blink out.
Aftereffects
The seizure is not always the worst part. Even after a short seizure, the nervous system can remain wrecked for a long time: muscle soreness, emotional instability, slowed cognition, headaches, sensory sensitivity, exhaustion, sleeping a whole lot afterward..
They can even temporarily lose memory, language, memory, motor coordination, and awareness. Sometimes they come back terrified and confused, because they wake up but a lot of their mental faculties is still offline and everything is overwhelming and doesn't make sense. Caretaker: "Look I can deal with Whumpee bleeding and their bones bent out of shape, but when he woke up and he looked at me so scared and confused... that was the worst."
Or whumpee waking up with memory gaps. Or with aphasia; struggling to find the right words, speaking in fragmented sentences, or mixing up words. "The hyperdrive is funch-- fshunc--"
If your whumpee goes through a tonic-clonic seizure (the kind where they convulse), they can bite their tongue (usually the side, not the tip) when their teeth clench.
If it's particularly violent, they can fracture bones, tear muscle or dislocate joints.
A whumpee can start feeling the onset of warning sensations, and think, "oh I think I'm in trouble--" and then wake up on the floor. Maybe in the middle of a room that has been pushed clear of furniture, with team members trying to hold them down.
Oooh, opportunities for caretakers or team members to feel guilt for not catching the symptoms earlier. Or for having outrightly dismissed them. Which brings me nicely into--
Seizures don't always look dramatic
The dramatic kind are the ones we usually see on tv/movies. With good reason. They are deliciously cinematic and immediately signal breakdown.
These usually involve: collapse, full body convulsions, rigid muscles, loss of consciousness, choking sounds, tongue biting and cyanosis (lips, tongue and fingertips visibly turn blue from lack of oxygen). Observers immediate KNOW something is wrong.
But there are also the kind of seizures that are devastatingly quiet and easy to overlook: staring into space, brief confusion, repetitive movements, emotional surges, speech anomalies, “zoning out”, losing a few seconds of time.
Whumpee may not remember part of the conversation. They might try to piece together what was just said, or quietly ask what happened, trying not to draw attention to their "lapse".
They could start slurring. Or maybe they suddenly can’t perform a familiar task. Even become uncharacteristically emotional.
These signs can be easily mistaken as distraction, panic attacks, intoxication, exhaustion, dissociation, PMS(!), sulking, crankiness, or just "being weird". (Perfect opportunity for team or caretaker angst!)
Feeling a rising sense of dread, like something terrible is going to happen, is also a possible effect.
Hallucinations
Visual hallucinations can include: flashes of light, geometric patterns, shadows, colour distortions, tunnel vision, warped faces, movement in peripheral vision
Auditory hallucinations: buzzing, ringing, distorted voices, music, muffled speech, sounds becoming strangely loud or distant. "Can someone PLEASE turn down the comm link? What do you mean it's not on. I hear it and Chloe is singing."
Olfactory hallucinations (hahah I love this): burning, metal, chemicals, rotting smells
Time distortions: feeling like time slowed down, events are looping, losing chunks of time entirely, feeling trapped in a moment, feeling like several minutes passed when only seconds did, sudden certainty that something has already happened. "Will you stop saying that, I heard you the first time."
Spatial hallucinations (Alice in Wonderland syndrome): Rooms feeling tilted, objects seeming too large or too small, too close or too far away. "Whoa, are we in the right ship? The cockpit is... so much bigger." Movements may seem delayed or jerky. They might feel disconnected from their own body position.
Something to note: hallucinations caused by seizures are brief. So you're not going to have your whumpee hallucinating their dead mother for hours on end. It usually lasts seconds or minutes. "Wha-- sorry. I just... I thought I saw my mom walk by the door. Hahaha, she's been dead 10 years... I'm just... I'm just being stupid."
Worse, they might KNOW what they're hallucinating isn't real, but it FEELS real. "I know it's not burning, I'm looking right at it, but it SMELLS like it's on fire. Can you PLEASE just check again?"
Another FASCINATING hallucination is one that involves the feeling of familiarity. Intense feelings of familiarity for they have never experienced before (déjà vu) or feelings of UNfamiliarity of something they supposed to know (jamais vu)
Imagine a whumpee staring at someone they've never met and trying deperately to remember their name. Or holding a tool that they have always wielded like an extension of their body and they suddenly have no idea what to do with it or what it's for. AAAGGH.
OK, this is way longer than I intended it to be ahhahahha, but it usually ends up this way. Oops!
Seizures are unlike many other medical whump mechanics because the effects can be disorienting and impactful before, during AND after.
I included a whole lot of these symptoms in this fic: Purgatory.
Please note, I am NOT medically trained at all, these are entirely for fictional writing purposes.
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