graveyardfish

I really, really love how Sanakht is portrayed in John French’s Ahriman series because he really makes a point to emphasize that the damage done to Sanakht’s psychic abilities is a disability, and one that has a profound effect on how he relates to other psykers and his self image. It’s really cool to see invisible disability rep in 40k.

I also think that the way psykers and psychic abilities are portrayed in 40k in general is incredibly comparable to neurological and neurodevelopmental disabilities.

Obviously, some characters benefit a LOT from the genetic difference that allows them to use sorcery, but there’s still very clear drawbacks and the ever-looming danger of the warp — parallel in some ways to some symptoms of ADHD, for example.

And for others, being a psyker is purely detrimental (and I’m not even talking about what the Imperium does with psykers). The Tithes shows a child psyker suffering debilitatingly painful headaches due to, effectively, psychic feedback. Darktide’s seer psyker (which I will talk about more at some point. smiles) struggles to discern dreams and psychic whisperings from reality. Hallucination, derealization, delirium, and vertigo are just some of the symptoms of neurological disorders that psykers are commonly depicted dealing with.