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Heroic Journey or Psychotic Break?

Who went mad & sat in a corner for 5 years drooling, imagining their heroic Journey?

  • Luke Skywalker.

    Votes: 1 12.5%
  • Indiana Jones.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Harry Potter.

    Votes: 1 12.5%
  • Simba.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Katniss Everdeen

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Neo.

    Votes: 5 62.5%
  • Bruce Wayne.

    Votes: 2 25.0%
  • Frodo Baggins.

    Votes: 1 12.5%
  • The Dude.

    Votes: 1 12.5%
  • Percy Jackson.

    Votes: 1 12.5%
  • Buffy Summers.

    Votes: 2 25.0%
  • Dorothy Gale.

    Votes: 4 50.0%
  • Sarah Connor

    Votes: 1 12.5%
  • Ben Sisko.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Marty McFly.

    Votes: 1 12.5%
  • Scott Calvin.

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Percy Jackson.

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    8

Guy Gardener

Fleet Admiral
Admiral
I'm watching Harry Potter 2 in the Theatre babysitting younglings, decades ago, looking at this dipshit kip under the stairs and get ground down by his prick cousin, so I'm thinking, "Screw you Harry, it's all made up, this is either empowerment story telling so you don't kill yourself, or a fuse blew in your tiny little brain because you don't want to be Cinderella."

Oh.

That's probably true of most heroes on a heroic journey/epic quest... I mean, loser weirdos retreating into a make believe fantasy where they are strong, sexy and loved.

Isn't it?

Vote as many times as you like.
 
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I'm tempted to start talking about Buffy here, but first I want to point out that the title and question are phrased in an ignorant and inflammatory way.

Let's start with "A fuse blew in your tiny little brain because you don't want to be Cinderella."

Sounds like you're trying to describe a psychotic break. People experiencing psychosis aren't "imagining" anything. They are experiencing a world different from the one you or I are experiencing, but it's not "made up". It is completely real to them. They are seeing, hearing, and remembering things as palpable and real to them as anything in your world is to you.

To say that it's made up is to suggest that they are willful participants in the experience when the truth is the total opposite.

The "tiny little brain" part insinuates that it is a failure or weakness. The fact is that some people are more prone to psychosis than others, but it can be induced in anybody one way or another (e.g. through sleep deprivation, torture, drugs, illness, and more). It is never due to weakness of mind or character.

"Sitting in a corner drooling" implies either a dissociative state or catatonic depression. Both completely involuntary. Both can potentially be induced as a trauma response. Such a person would be incapable of imagination. Some forms of depression, like the type severe enough to cause catatonia, can also induce psychosis on their own. Which, again, would mean they are not "imagining" anything at all.

As for calling a child a "dipshit" for "empowerment storytelling so [he doesn't] kill [himself]," well do I even need to address the heinousness of that statement? Children in dire situations commonly escape into fantasy as it's one of the few innate coping mechanisms a young brain is equipped with. In this scenario you concocted, you are mocking an abused child's attempt to suppress suicidal urges. Deplorable.

Sorry if I'm sounding combative or like too much of a downer, but the stigma against mental illness is pervasive and needs to be called out.

I've both worked and volunteered in inpatient mental healthcare, and my life was subsequently saved by outpatient mental healthcare. I'm sorry if I'm sounding harsh, but you need to understand the sheer number of destructive and inaccurate stereotypes you crammed into a single short post, because people who hear these types of statements end up repeating them, and some people who read and hear them end up suffering alone because they're afraid of facing cruel judgement by coming forward.

With all that out of the way, Buffy is a character out of your list that could be debated on legitimate grounds. There was an excellent (and quite sensitive, especially for its era) episode based on such a premise - that her entire time in Sunnydale had been a combination of hallucination and delusion. It depicted the struggle that someone undergoing treatment would experience as they try to separate what is real and what is not. Few TV shows have done as good a job portraying that empathetically.
 
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I'm tempted to start talking about Buffy here, but first I want to point out that the title and question are phrased in an ignorant and inflammatory way.

Let's start with "A fuse blew in your tiny little brain because you don't want to be Cinderella."

Sounds like you're trying to describe a psychotic break. People experiencing psychosis aren't "imagining" anything. They are experiencing a world different from the one you or I are experiencing, but it's not "made up". It is completely real to them. They are seeing, hearing, and remembering things as palpable and real to them as anything in your world is to you.

To say that it's made up is to suggest that they are willful participants in the experience when the truth is the total opposite.

The "tiny little brain" part insinuates that it is a failure or weakness. The fact is that some people are more prone to psychosis than others, but it can be induced in anybody one way or another (e.g. through sleep deprivation, torture, drugs, illness, and more). It is never due to weakness of mind or character.

"Sitting in a corner drooling" implies either a dissociative state or catatonic depression. Both completely involuntary. Both can potentially be induced as a trauma response. Such a person would be incapable of imagination. Some forms of depression, like the type severe enough to cause catatonia, can also induce psychosis on their own. Which, again, would mean they are not "imagining" anything at all.

As for calling a child a "dipshit" for "empowerment storytelling so [he doesn't] kill [himself]," well do I even need to address the heinousness of that statement? Children in dire situations commonly escape into fantasy as it's one of the few innate coping mechanisms a young brain is equipped with. In this scenario you concocted, you are mocking an abused child's attempt to suppress suicidal urges. Deplorable.

Sorry if I'm sounding combative or like too much of a downer, but the stigma against mental illness is pervasive and needs to be called out.

I've both worked and volunteered in inpatient mental healthcare, and my life was subsequently saved by outpatient mental healthcare. I'm sorry if I'm sounding harsh, but you need to understand the sheer number of destructive and inaccurate stereotypes you crammed into a single short post, because people who hear these types of statements end up repeating them, and some people who read and hear them end up suffering alone because they're afraid of facing cruel judgement by coming forward.

With all that out of the way, Buffy is a character out of your list that could be debated on legitimate grounds. There was an excellent (and quite sensitive, especially for its era) episode based on such a premise - that her entire time in Sunnydale had been a combination of hallucination and delusion. It depicted the struggle that someone undergoing treatment would experience as they try to separate what is real and what is not. Few TV shows have done as good a job portraying that empathetically.

Roseanne in the final season of Roseanne, after Dan died, did not go crazy, she was in the basement writing fantastic empowerment stories about winning the lottery and fighting ninja on the roof of a train, where her husband was not dead, and she got to live with him happily ever after.

I don't think Harry went insane, I think we saw his creative writing as a movie, like Roseanne, instead of the drudge of his real life, being abused by his family, because he didn't witness his traumatic genesis.

Luke saw Sandpeople kill Owen and Beru, and then his imaginary friend Ben made up a story about Storm Troopers establishing that Luke is the most important boy in the galaxy.
 
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The only ones that realistically work for me would be Neo and Dorothy Gale.
With Neo the whole waking up and finding yourself in the real world feels like the kind of thing that would happen to a person who had a psychotic break.
As for Dorothy, it all happened after she got trapped in the tornado, so she obviously got hit in the head and dreamed the whole thing.
 
Dorothy for sure
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I watched Return to Oz for the first time recently, and I swear that has got to be one of the creepiest, most disturbing kids movies I've ever seen.
I just noticed something interesting, the sound of the wheels on the stretcher is the same sound they used for the wheelers.
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Welcome to the 21st century where you have to watch every, word. you. say. all the time, lest you trigger a lengthy lecture about the possibility of maybe offending someone, somewhere, some time.
 
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