#i have the brain of an especially adhd goldfish but i try my best

[stinkrascal]

wait i have one more thought about the gale discourse from a few days ago okay

OKAY so we all agree that calling gale an abuser is wrong because he was in a relationship with a literal goddess who obviously had way more power than him and who took advantage of him as a teenager/young adult and now has put a BOMB IN HIS CHEST and expects him to kill himself to destroy the absolute yeah okay anyways. the game literally punishes you for following mystra's orders and allowing gale to "redeem" himself by killing everyone during the final battle in act 2... the worst ending imaginable happens! ur whole party dies, the game immediately ends, mind flayers take over the city! everyone becomes infected or enslaved! the whole game ends miserably!! the narrative in the game tells you explicitly that, by gale following mystra's orders, it becomes the worst thing he could've possibly done not just for himself, but for humanity!! the story is explicitly telling us that gale's story is not strictly about redemption, but about freeing himself from the burden of mystra's manipulation. and freeing himself from her, freeing himself from this idea that he must prove his worthiness to her, is the best thing he can do for himself!! like literally this is the narration telling u that mystra isnt SHIT!!! and yet there are still sillies in this fandom trying to say otherwise. u guys are SILLY! play the game again! read this time! pls! im begging you!

#im sorry im very bad at media analysis i hope this made sense #i have the brain of an especially adhd goldfish but i try my best #YOU GET WHAT IM SAYING THOUGH RIGHT?? LIKE IT MAKES SENSE RIGHT?? the game literally punishes u for doing what mystra wants! #like idk to me that is really important to how gale's story is supposed to be viewed. he thinks doing mystra's work is redemption #but the consequences of his 'redemption' explicitly prove otherwise. if anything it reinforces the idea that #his redemption is nothing more than mystra being petty af. YOU KNOW!?!?!?! UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGH #oh also i havent finished the game yet so take everything i say w a grain of salt. i just thought this was interesting

[purplespaceace]

very few characters actually have adhd in media, and when they do, what people mean by that is just that they fidget a lot, not that they have adhd. the only character with adhd I can think of where I’ve watched/read it and I’ve gone, “oh, this character actually has adhd” is Jake peralta from Brooklyn 99. so, here’s my take on how to write adhd, with examples from Brooklyn 99.

I’ll do the best I can to separate them into three categories; the three things people look for in adults with ADHD, which are rejection sensitivity dysphoria, an interest-based nervous system, and emotional hyperarousal.

I’ll also randomly bold and italicize bits so people with ADHD can actually read it.

Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, or RSD

Rejection sensitivity dysphoria makes people with ADHD overly sensitive to criticism, even if they perceive a rejection and there actually isn’t one. Their emotions are also very strong generally. Because of RSD, people with ADHD become people-pleasers and can develop anxiety because they’re so eager to please.

For me, RSD makes me cry an embarrassing amount for any little reason. in your writing, make your characters overdramatic, criers, and/or people-pleasers. They’ll have trouble saying no. They may also be over competitive, as their perceived rejection may include losing.

how does Jake show this in b99? When Jake comes up with a catchphrase and Rosa says it’s terrible, jake is far more hurt than he should be. He hates losing, and he gets overly upset whenever someone says they don’t like him or don’t trust him, etc. he’s also a people pleaser who has trouble saying no.

An interest-based nervous system

An interest-based nervous system includes hyperfocuses and an inability to pay attention. It stems from the fact that we can’t make as much dopamine as neurotypicals. This means that while neurotypicals get dopamine after completing a task, people with ADHD don’t. That means that people with ADHD don’t have any reason to do tasks, especially those they don’t like. This leads to executive dysfunction—people with ADHD will know they have to or want to do something, but they can’t seem to do it. people with ADHD hyperfocus on things that bring them dopamine. I was obsessed with warrior cats for three years. But hyperfocuses can also last a short amount of time—I’ll have a drawing idea in the middle of class and won’t be able to concentrate on anything else before I finish it. this is where our impulsiveness comes from. we can leap into things we think will give us dopamine without thinking, which can lead to injury. We also tend to tell people personal things they don’t want to hear because of this, and don’t have very good boundaries. We sometimes say whatever comes into our head, which can also result in us being rude on accident. Our voices can also get very loud or we can interrupt people frequently because we’re so impulsive. When people with ADHD hyperfocus, they can forget about anything else. I’ll forget to eat if I’m busy reading a Wikipedia article about feminism in the 1850s, and won’t go to the bathroom or drink water either. It’s also important to note that taking away distractions doesn’t help, because we can do things like pick at our skin and daydream—something that people with ADHD do a lot of. Because of executive dysfunction, people can call people with ADHD lazy or irresponsible.

people with ADHD can also be extremely indecisive because ADHD affects our executive functioning, and making decisions requires planning and prioritizing, and task initiation, which are both executive functions!

people with ADHD also have poor memory for important things, but tend to remember random bits of trivia. Poor memory leads to object permanence problems, which means people with ADHD can forget to call a friend back for weeks, forget that they need to read library books in a closed cabinet, or forget that the vegetables they got will go bad. People can sometimes say that people with ADHD don’t care about anything because of this.

people with ADHD can also be prone to depression because of under or overstimulation. Boredom feels painful for people with ADHD. If we’re overstimulated, we can experience sensory overload—if things are too bright or too loud, if too many things are touching us at once—often it’s not because the thing is too intense, but because too many things are happening at once.

We also have something some people call dolphin brain, where we jump from one thing to another. From the outside, it looks really random, but I find that when I’m talking to another neurodivergent communication is generally easier. For instance, someone with ADHD might see a bee at a baseball field and tell their team about the time they saw whales at seaworld because their little brother was also stung by a wasp there. people will see no connection on the outside, but it makes perfect sense to the person with ADHD.

people with ADHD can also be overachievers, either because they hyperfocus on schoolwork or their RSD makes it so that failing at something isn’t an option. people with ADHD can also be very controlling and stubborn, probably because we hyperfocus on something and cant handle it being any different, and any change to our plans can be seen as rejection.

we can also have a hard time ordering our thoughts or doing stuff like math in our head. a lot of the time I number my thoughts like, 1. this reason, 2. this reason, etc. even if theres only two or sometimes I just need the 1. as a transition for my brain. when I don’t write it down or organize it like that it feels like I’m trying to grasp ropes that have been covered in oil (it’s not going to happen) and then my brain gets all jumbled and I have to restart at the beginning. this is probably just me, but it feels the same way when I’m reading long paragraphs of something uninteresting, or even short bits of historical documents because the way they phrase things is really pompous and hard to process.

also, stuff like caffeine calms us down and helps us focus. people who don’t take medication (me) often drink coffee or caffeinated sodas to focus.

another random tip, but if your character with ADHD also is genderfluid or genderflux, they might have a hard time figuring out their gender sometimes, because we can be known to have a hard time putting our feelings into words or our brains will just go, “nope, not thinking about that right now” and move on, which can be pretty frustrating.

people with adhd also have a trait called time blindness, where we have no idea how long something takes and therefore can’t manage our time very well. this often results in us being late or just sitting around the house because we got ready way too early.

we also have something called consequence blindness—we do things and are completely unaware of the consequences. if I don’t brush my teeth, I get cavities. but I don’t think about that when I’m deciding I’m too tired to brush my teeth.

in b99, jake regularly stays up all night solving cases and watches documentaries on random topics. He’s also very distractible—when they’re trying to find the person who sent Captain Holt death threats in the train yard, Jake says he and captain holt should take a train trip together sometime. Jake says that he’ll forget Amy if they don't work together because he’s like a goldfish.

Emotional hyperarousal

This is the only thing people tend to include when writing characters: the fidgeting. People with ADHD tend to need more stimulation than others, so we’ll do things like draw during class and chew on pens.

people with ADHD can also have apd, or auditory processing disorder. we tend to watch shows with subtitles on and may take a second to process what you’re saying, or hear it wrong. The subtitles thing may be partially do to creating just the right amount of stimulation, but if I don’t have subtitles, me and my other friends with ADHD will watch tv with the volume turned up very high. People with ADHD also can have a hard time interpreting other people‘s tone and have a hard time controlling their own. They can be bad at social cues and have poor manners because we don’t pick up on that stuff.

people with ADHD also tend to observe everything or nothing at any given time, mostly based on the amount of stimulation they have—if they dont have a lot in their main task, they’ll need to take in something else at the same time. Likewise, if I’m hyperfocusing on something I often don’t notice anything else, like if someone asks me a question.

in b99, Jake fidgets with things a lot. In the intro, he’s picking up and examining a figurine on his desk, likely because he was bored with paperwork or some other task.

#adhd #writing #writing adhd #brooklyn nine nine #b99 #brooklyn99 #Jake peralta #Adhd Jake #neurodivergent #writing tips #adhd problems #adhd misconceptions #nd #neurodivergence

[lunamanar]

Mea Culpa

Alright...I know that this blog is typically very positive, very focused on FFVIII or FF in general or at least video games and sundry cool stuff. I don’t air grievances here, and I usually don’t opine on any heavy subjects. But, I need to make a serious post. It does touch a tiny bit on FFVIII, because it references something I said a little while ago, but this post is not about FFVIII. However, if you can stand to read it, I’d appreciate it. I promise the end point is still positive! I just need to get a little heavy for a bit. I’m not gonna hide any of this post behind a cut, either, just because I do think it’s important.

So, a couple days ago, I responded to an ask about my views on Seifer with a very long half-essay, half-editorial about the possible reasons for his behavior patterns, as displayed in the game. I knew that at least the first half of the post--which was from early last year and written while I was, uh, feeling a lot of things and probably shouldn’t have been answering questions about my FFVIII views--might be unpopular, but I thought that the opinion itself would be the problem, if anything, and if I stepped on any toes with it, I could clarify that, hey, my views have expanded since then. And I’ll never tell anyone else what they can and cannot think about a character, even if it stands in direct conflict with what I think about that same character. We all experience art and media in our own way, and I really, honestly believe that what we each get out of it is our own experience, and what good we find in that matters way, way more than whether or not our interpretation is “correct.” So while I’ll go down the rabbit hole trying to get to the bottom of what’s canon, what’s not, what differs between versions and translations and localizations...I still have my own feelings about the game, which I know are not provable, and I’m more than happy to let others have theirs, too. 

However...that, as it turns out, was not the problem with that post. People were really kind to me about my views on Seifer, actually. The most dissenting view I got was “uh I don’t think so but whatever.” And honestly, given...you know, the Internet...that’s pretty mild. 

The problem with that post, and something I’ve been thinking about ever since, wasn’t anything anyone got mad at me for. It was pointed out by a friend or two and I’ve been chewing on it trying to think about how to approach addressing it. It’s been really bothering me--as it should--considering my own history, and those of several loved ones, with mental illness. And honestly, I know better, should have known better than to couch Seifer’s violent behavior under the terms “sociopath” and “psychopathy.” While I do think my interpretation of him qualifies... ....Enngh. There’s a fine line between using the correct wording to describe a thing (which is what I’d done, in my mind) and representing that thing with your words. 

Well, maybe not such a fine line. Really, I fucking stepped in it, haha. And you know what the worst part is? Almost no one noticed, or if they did, they were either too jaded or too afraid to confront me about it. 

So, I want to take a moment, first of all, to sincerely apologize. Because...if just two of my friends tapped me to say ‘hey uh, maybe that wasn’t the best idea, man,’ the likelihood that there were other people who were made uncomfortable/injured by that post is right up there at 300% or so. And the fact no one else said anything is just further proof that...especially concerning those two scary awful terrible demon words--psychopath. sociopath.--there’s a stigma surrounding mental illness and the very discussion of it that allows bumbleducks like me to seemingly write off complicated characters like Seifer as a psychopath, signed sealed and delivered (no, I didn’t mean to write him off, but that’s not the point). Everyone else just nodded their heads, said “oh yeah that sounds right” and if they didn’t, it was either too intimidating or too exhausting to well-actually me about it. 

So, here’s some clarification that I should have explicitly provided in that original post. 

Mental illness in any form is a tangled mess. It gets messier the scarier the words being used. Most often, when you hear something like--for example--’ADHD,’ you get the mental image of someone with the attention span of a goldfish who can’t manage their vocal volume and is just generally hyper and all over the place. But...well...

I’m gonna use myself in this example. I have ADHD. And I’m not like that, at all. I’m focused, I have a pretty good long-term memory, and if anything, I am a very low-energy person. If you were to meet me face to face, I’d seem like a pretty normal introverted soul, maybe a bit more distant than average. But even something as “simple” as ADHD is not simple at all, the same “brownouts” that cause a lot of people to be hyper, loud and flighty cause me to be very quiet, highly anxious, and obsessive. Someone asked me, just about an hour ago, how I write all this content, and “think so hard” about FFVIII. Firstly, I’m far from the only one. But the answer is that--that, that’s just how my brain works. I can focus and pick over a subject for literally decades, if it means enough to me. It doesn’t mean I’m smarter, I’m simply devoting more time and effort to this than I otherwise would be. I almost have no choice. 

But, surprise, I don’t have OCD, despite the fact that “obsessive” is part of my behavior map. That’s a different set of brain things, and it’s been pretty solidly concluded that they aren’t part of my personal headsoup. Behaviors in and of themselves do not make a diagnosis; we might once have only had those to go on, but in this brand new age of fMRI and robot-facilitated chemistry testing, we have no such excuses. An absolutely huge tapestry of genetics, learning, body chemistry, past experiences, and simple dumb luck go into determining how a person behaves and what the particular cause of that behavior is. It’s not enough to say “oh, that person’s a psychopath.” That means...basically nothing. And the sad fact of the matter is, there are any number of diagnosed psychopaths who may have read that post, and as a result, pulled themselves even further into the shadows. Because they do have feelings, and they aren’t violent, or otherwise dangerous. But the moment they tell somebody they have this diagnosis, people are going to make assumptions about them, just because holy shit is that a scary terrible word. Or maybe not believe them at all. “You don’t seem like.....” People used to tilt their heads funny at me when I told them I had ADD. I eventually quit saying it, because it was annoying having to re-explain it all the time. But ADD isn’t a scary diagnosis. It’s a common one. Yeah, uh, so and so presidents/geniuses/inventors had ADD...if anything, it puts you on a pedestal with the greats, whether or not you deserve it. 

But the “scary” stuff? How would you like to be dumped into the same socially valueless pit as BTK? Or Hitler? In our society, association is everything, and while diagnoses of psychopathy or antisocial personality disorder are actually not that uncommon--especially “borderline” cases--when we hear about them, our immediate reaction to them is a fight-or-flight response. Danger. 

That’s...really not the way we should be looking at these things, though. 

To some extent the very doctors diagnosing the patients are to blame for their own demonization of these words and diagnoses, especially in the past. Media, which tends to only talk about mental illness when they find a terrifying fringe case involving it...serial killers, mass murderers, violent abusers...doesn’t really help at all. And then there’s the everyday klutzery of people like Yours Truly.

That exact kind of pigeonholing is exactly what I engaged in. Even though I was talking about Seifer as a textbook case, even though I said I didn’t mean he was a “stabbity” psychopath, what I left out of that post spoke a lot louder than what I put in. I didn’t stop to clarify that I was talking about the impact/influence of his mental state on his behavior, rather than as a direct cause to an effect. I didn’t slow down to say that I wasn’t calling all or even most people with similar illnesses violent. Hell, I didn’t even stop to call it a mental illness. I skipped straight to the “scary words,” without any preamble, any explanation, and I missed a huge opportunity to talk about mental illness in fiction, games and FFVIII in particular, and how we can collectively do better at discussing it, when we do cross that boundary between Talking About The Thing and Representing The Thing. 

I was nervous about being judged for my interpretation of Seifer, and in my haste to just get the answer out and then go hide in a hole for a week, I put forth a two-dimensional image of people living with powerful mental illnesses, and did those people--and Seifer himself--an injustice. I’m sorry for that, and I do intend to re-write the answer and correct that slight. I can’t say when I will have the energy or time to do it right...but, it will be done. In the mean time...I wanted to at least put this out there, and I hope, if you are someone who was hurt by that post, and for some reason, are still around listening to me yak, I can undo the damage.

...That’s all I got. 

#psa #mental illness #personal #seifer almasy #apology