ad astra per aspera

in aotearoa, june isn’t our pride, it’s theirs. marsha p johnson and sylvia rivera are their historical figures, not ours. the phrase that “you owe your rights to Black trans women” is true there, but here we owe our rights to (mostly) Māori historical figures. i have the freedoms i do because of the legacy of an entirely different set of people operating in an entirely different context at entirely different times.

But because of american cultural imperialism, most queer people in Aotearoa don’t even know our own queer history. Carmen Rupe, Ngahuia Te Awekotuku, the Dorian Society, Gillian Laundon, Georgina Beyer, and the Wolfenden Association are some of our queer history. We should know their names! we should know what they did for us! but because of the power of the american imperial machine, we don’t.

our national pride month should be july, the month that the Homosexual Law Reform Act passed in 1986. our two largest cities hold their pride festivals in february and march, respectively. american queer history has very little (or nothing, depending on who you ask) to do with our queer history. anecdotally, from my own queries, queer youth in aotearoa know more about american queer history than our own.

Okay actually I've been meaning to like. Make a diagram of this situation to word it better. My only disclaimer is the third example could also literally not even be a delusion and just... Be Tenna getting tricked, but either way it still can count!

narcissistic does not mean Evil Bad Abusive Person. delusional does not mean Crazy Stupid Person With Bad Opinions. dealing with things such as narcissism or psychosis can and will absolutely ruin your life. and i mean, DECIMATE it. that's not to say other people won't be affected either, but the sufferer is the one who has it the worst. do not use words unless you actually know the meaning behind them, and who is impacted.

i should note that there are various different types of delusions, and the way to handle them depends on which specific type they are. persecutory delusions, characterized by believing someone is out to get the person in some way, may require you to be even gentler than normal in your approach due to that extreme paranoia (very common in BPD). but something such as somatic delusions characterized by thinking something is physically wrong with oneself can require a different approach.

generally speaking, the way to handle delusions is to validate the feelings caused by the delusion, without feeding into the delusion itself. this can show up as you saying "it sounds like this is really upsetting you, can you tell me about it?" this helps the person feel seen without having their delusions worsen. obviously this is not an end-all-be-all statement, but you should keep this general sentiment in mind when interacting with someone experiencing a delusion.

dealing with things such as narcissism, psychosis, psychopathy, and more is actual hell on earth which i would never wish upon my worst enemy. please be mindful of the language you use to describe people/characters because there ARE real people out there who are affected by these things. i am one of those people, as are many others.

Sorry that I'm adding another addition four months later- but this also has really been bothering me. I'd say it's incredibly annoying at best to see people referring to a canonically true thing as a "delusion". It's not! Spamton is meant to LOOK delusional to other people in game, but he isn't!

I think content where he has psychosis in some way is interesting, but it often hinges on the idea that something canonically true is what he's "psychotic" about. When it isn't. It can for sure trigger some other type of psychosis, don't get me wrong! Like him acting religious about it for sure could be something else, but it also could just be the fact that he's praying to an eldritch being. We don't know!