#πa rambles

Owynn's parents, mom is a tityus scorpion and dad is an emperor scorpion

Loons' parents, mom is a large leaf eating ladybird and dad is a seven-spotted ladybug

Fox's mom is a red fox, Abbys mom is a lyrebird

I am a bit hesitant to share it mostly because this fandom has a bad track record regarding what im gonna talk about, so I'm going to say the actual headcanon at the end after all my reasoning :) mostly so my explanation is first and forefront

It's about abby :D which is probably the character I least expected to get hoplessly attached to but it happened

Abby is a pretty one note character, she is pretty stuck in her box of being a fujoshi (unfortunate), and I've already discussed that I like extrapolating her "fandom stand-in" nature to make her someone a lot more creatively involved, having her own little oc and being someone really imaginative, and that's how I fill in the "animal spirits" part of the plot. She's a girl at camp playing around, I too remember running around the woods and pretending to make "potions" and stuff, she is full of whimsy.

Something that does make this more plausible in my brain is that she has the cool (tm) extra detailed, non-animal guide and all the other people get boring recolored animals, which to me is really charming to read as her putting extra care and love into her own little plaything and sort of just filling in blanks for the rest

But there is one part I didn't want to fully write out as her just playing, and that is her song. Mostly because it's her only solo song and its not even about her!!!!

Her song has always been odd to me, mostly because all the supernatural elements have nothing to do with this girl who was barely introduced a few minutes ago! The real answer is that eddo just wanted to use her brand new voices and it fit for the story route she clearly wanted to take. But i don't want to take author's shortcomings into canon account! so what is up with that?

First, the lyrics seem to be very run of the mill "misteries are around us!!" at least at the start it seems like she's gonna talk about the little spirits that had been popping up in that episode, since it fits the "misterious forest spirits" things that have been happening so far.

"Much more than you can see. Who knows what is real? Much more than you can see. It's time to solve mysteries Things that are not what you think. Who knows what is real"

But it suddenly gets VERY fixated on highlighting Mai and Puppet.

"There's no rival that can stop these two. They say goodbye to falsehoods What's all that they hide? Secrets in the night Do you even understand them? You think you know them"

And that makes all the other supernatural stuff take a backseat, because this song is really Abby talking about how Mai and Puppet are some sort of unstopable forces. And mind you, she does NOT know those two, we know she barely met puppet while in the team as she only really relates them to getting in the middle of bxb (lmao) instead of something really grand like in the song. And sure Puppet was the one to show the enchanted forest but she seemed pretty nonchalant about it!

Puppet literally never mentioned Mai, Abby has no real reason to know Mai, but she's also included, she probably only knows her as Puppets twin, because those two are eyecatching and you could defenitelly pin point them without necesarely knowing stuff about them.

So mental note: -She starts believing Mai and Puppet are really unstoppable and powerful without knowing anything about them, all of their supernatural stuff that we know they can do as viewers is not plausible for Abby to know, because what would this girl that has existed for 1 minute know about shadows?? the answer is nothing at all.

-She should be completely oblivious to all the genuinly supernatural stuff that exists in universe, and just be a kid who went into one of those forests that have folklore about them (something puppet would know and talk about), and play there.

My idea of her playing around is also strengthened by the fact that Fede does not take her seriously in the slightest, when they meet she says "my spiritual guide took me here!" and he goes "cool :D" so he's probably used to her being inmersed in her fantasies and playing pretend a lot, and doesn't mind it because she's his friend.

the rest we get out of the funtimes is mostly flashbacks, in "the bully and the hero" we see that they got bullied (wow), and that a lot of abby's bullying was specifically for her weight, and nothing else of much note, she has her little friendgroup, she has her little fairy that speaks in little robot noises that she can interpret "magically". I like thinking about this as both gender stuff (girl presenting weird robot thing but not really a girl, just sort of adjacent) and also as a bit of a reflection of her idealized self: She has trouble emoting and getting the infliction in her voice correctly (supported by how often she tends to go high pitch and scream) so her idalized self is a little being without the necesity (or capacity) to emote, and who speaks in only very pleasant synth-like noises. Also with her moments with her little robot, which i support to be imaginary, she talks outloud a lot and rambles, which makes me think that her speech is very disorganized and that too could be reflected in her little robot by not making it say actual words, it makes noises that get straight to the point via magic.

That whole tangent aside, next time we see important info about her is in lily's song sra cara de papa. Which is a communal song ig??? let Lily have her own thing, but i digress. In that song, visuals only we can see that she is WAY more messed up than the others (her pigtales are completely uneven), and that her main problem is being insecure, which along with the lyrics and the context we have abt bullying is clearly specifically about her weight. But then they show the group with their newfound confidence, and the solution to her "insecurity" text is? Happiness. With her smiling really wide, not really security or confidence just happiness, (security went to fede instead), and we are shown Fede eating (also tied to his weight, and him gaining security in it), but Abby is not doing the same. Her pose is very unnatural looking too, sort of fabricated looking, and it looks like she's putting on a performance more than anything.

I like pairing up her insecurities around weight with an insecurity on her face. She's naturally very stone faced, like i already mentioned it's hard for her to emote properly, so her solution to that specific insecurity is learning to over emote, hence the very performance-ish pose she takes.

And that is!! all we get from her really!!! And how little relevance she actually has makes me more and more attached to the whole magic stuff in camp not being real at all. All the magic-related characters are tied to shadows and prominent in the plot at least in spirit, after camp abby is just a silly background character living her life without any futher indication that her seemingly strong connection to "spirits" meant anything.

So why did I tell you all of this? what is the point i want to make?

I like to think Abby is schizophrenic :)

I’m NOT saying that all the magical aspects of the forests were simply a hallucination as a cheap "gotcha!!! it was all fake!" I think that because of camp, her harmless daydreaming blended a bit with her reality, which is something completely plausible given how deeply invested she is in her hobbies (creating), and the fact that she’s unaware of what’s happening in her head.

She hasn’t ever actually experienced delusions; camp is the first time that happens because her whole life has been manageable, with only mild symptoms, thanks to being medicated and understood. Her mom is schizophrenic too, so they were always alert to the possibility that she could inherit it, and they really have made her life pretty comfortable, so she has never experienced psychosis specifically. That’s not to say that she doesn’t hallucinate ever, it’s more that she has very mild, pretty ignorable stuff, like seeing a scratch on her phone screen that isn’t there, or hearing whispered narration of what she’s doing.

To be clear, I do not think her imaginative tendencies are inherently hallucinations. I think she genuinely enjoys play-pretend, and most of the time she’s fully aware of the line between her imagination and reality. The fantastical animals and the magical forests aren’t the basis for my perception of her; it’s mostly her song and how quickly and intensely she places Mai and Puppet on a pedestal seemingly out of nowhere. It always seemed out of place to me, and I think it's a moment where Abby’s brain interprets the world through a lens of heightened importance and hidden meaning; which matches a lot with delusions of reference, where neutral events and people seem to hold secret significance aimed directly at her.

I think the sudden fixation on Mai and Puppet during camp is her first time actually dealing with delusions, which makes perfect sense since camp is the ideal environment for those to flare up. Caught up in activities (which she was shown to be very into), she could have easily missed taking her antipsychotics, and without really realizing it, that leads to a spiral, mixing her daydreaming with a really intense, sudden fixation on the two most out-of-the-ordinary people there. Having an irregular sleep cycle worsens symptoms too (which would also be very plausible since it’s hard to sleep in a place that isn’t your own bed), and the overstimulation of camp (the noise, constant group activities, unpredictable schedules) would also contribute heavily, as sensory sensitivity and difficulty filtering background noise are lesser-known but very real aspects of schizophrenia. The constant chatter and lack of personal space could cause her usual low-level hallucinations to become more invasive, making it harder for her to distinguish daydreaming from psychosis.

The line between what’s real and what isn’t slightly blurs, but the most important thing isn’t the magical aspects “surrounding her”, it’s the twins. She gets fixated on them. This specific fixation reflects how schizophrenia can involve delusions regarding specific people or concepts, usually tied to personal insecurity or a subconscious need to project structure onto chaos. Her brain, used to processing life through stories and symbols, grabs onto the most striking people around her and constructs a narrative, not maliciously, but because it feels real and comforting in the moment.

Also, many antipsychotics, especially second-generation (atypical) antipsychotics like olanzapine, risperidone, quetiapine, and clozapine, are notorious for causing significant weight gain!!! In Sra Cara de Papa, we see Fede eating a chocolate bar as if to say he’s confident in his weight and not afraid to eat, but this is something that doesn’t happen with Abby. I think it could be mainly because her weight gain isn’t directly tied to any particular eating habits, but rather to the side effects from her antipsychotics!

A struggle to emote and control tone is also found in schizophrenia, alongside disorganized speech, which most of the time just reads as her being a rambly kid with a bad attention span. She’s a wildly imaginative kid who is very rambly and disorganized, so a lot of people assume she has ADHD or something along those lines. She doesn’t outright state she has schizophrenia because it’s a very demonized and misunderstood disorder. She deals with minor negative symptoms too, like flat affect, occasional emotional numbness, and difficulty initiating tasks, which can be mistaken for laziness or detachment. She also experiences thought blocking, moments where she blanks out mid-sentence or loses track of what she was saying, which makes her feel awkward and further fuels her insecurity around communication.

So, when she’s in the middle of a psychotic episode, it’s hard for her friends or anyone her age to really interpret what’s happening beyond thinking she’s being weird. Eventually, adults notice, and when she gets home, she can get back to her routine, be more grounded, recognize what happened, and try to apologize to the twins for acting the way she did (which they don’t really mind, being the way they are). I think it would be nice for her to have to admit out loud that it was psychosis, and that it was her disorder, around her friends, as a final step toward gaining the “security” she didn’t get in Sra Cara de Papa; to be accepted and understood. Because it really would be hard to deal with all of that and have the perception that your friends wouldn’t get it, since the disorder is so, so stigmatized.

And thats it :) I've grown really attached to her lately lol, and I did want to give someone hallucinations or stuff related to them since i struggle with those heavy. So hopefully it makes sense :3

my final message: