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Not annoying at all!

I think schizophrenic characters are written poorly because everyone thinks they know what schizophrenia is, but no one actually does.

What you typically get in fiction is someone hallucinating without knowing they're hallucinating- in a fight with someone who isn't there, curled in a ball rocking with their hands pressed over their ears. And if you're just briefly meeting a side character, that's probably the fastest way to establish their issues.

But if you have a main (or fleshed-out supporting) character with schizophrenia, you have to know there is a lot more to the disorder to write it well.

Schizophrenia has three types of symptoms: Positive, Negative, and Cognitive.

Positive symptoms include things that aren't there in a healthy brain, but are in schizophrenia. These are things like hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia.

Negative symptoms include things that are present in a healthy brain, but not present in schizophrenia. These are things like a lack of motivation, decreased ability to feel pleasure, social withdrawal, and poverty of speech.

Cognitive symptoms are changes in thinking. These are things like problems with executive function, impaired working memory, struggling to concentrate, delayed processing, and trouble reading social and emotional cues from others.

Writing Positive Symptoms:

Most people with schizophrenia have auditory hallucinations, meaning they hear voices that aren't there. These can be voices narrating their life, telling them (usually mean) things about themselves, or commanding them to do something. Some people have other types of hallucinations, like visual hallucinations (seeing something that isn't there) or tactile (feeling something that isn't there).

The person may or may not know that a hallucination is not real. Knowing a hallucination isn't real doesn't make it go away.

You know when you're in a dream and everything makes sense, but then you wake up and realize the dream was really bizarre? That's kind of what delusions are like. You're so sure a thing you're thinking makes total sense, but everyone you're trying to talk about the thing with thinks you're crazy. And its frustrating because it makes so much sense to you. And no one else seems to get it.

Common delusions are things like thinking someone is out to get you, thinking others can read your mind or can put thoughts in your mind, thinking you're special, or thinking you have something medically devastatingly wrong with you.

Medications are really good at treating hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia.

Writing Negative Symptoms:

Nothing feels good, or you spend a lot of time trying to feel good and failing (a lot of comorbid substance use disorders in people with schizophrenia)

You just can't think of anything to say that makes sense, or it takes so long to come up with something to say that the moment has passed. So you just... don't say things.

"Flat affect" means your face is kind of blank and doesn't emote normally. Resting schizophrenia face.

You don't know how to make friends unless you have been specifically trained in the art and technique

Catatonia is where you're conscious but can't move (or move really weirdly) or communicate. But you're in there. And it's terrifying.

Sometimes if negative symptoms are primary this can get misdiagnosed as depression or autism

There are no medications that treat negative symptoms, but sometimes antidepressants can help.

Writing Cognitive Symptoms:

These are honestly some of the hardest symptoms to live with

The degree of cognitive symptoms a person has pretty much determines how disabled they are by schizophrenia.

Problems with following conversations with more than one person

Problems dialing a phone number because you can't hold the numbers in your head long enough

Trouble following verbal directions

Confusion. Just not understanding what is going on.

Having a "loading" period between a piece of information entering your brain and understanding what was said or read.

Difficulty starting tasks and staying on tasks

These are some of the first symptoms to present (usually in young teens) and are sometimes misdiagnosed as ADHD, because of the concentration problems

There are no medications that can treat cognitive symptoms

Medications and therapy (usually something called CBT-P, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Psychosis), are mostly effective for positive symptoms. Because of this, negative and cognitive symptoms are often the more disabling part of the condition. You can modulate your character's level of disability by expressing more or less of their negative and cognitive symptoms.

Additionally, while medication does often help, anti-psychotics commonly can cause some very serious side effects. Common ones include rapid weight gain or loss, severe appetite changes, worsening depression, anxiety or psychosis symptoms (as mentioned above). Looking into some of these medications and their side effects will also help characters with schizophrenia feel realistic (or characters with any other condition that can be treated with medication for that matter).

Intersex Deer

and just some variations. Obviously not a comprehensive list, only a few examples of how it can present in deer across species. Some of these sources contain images of dead animals (labeled DA) or outdated language for intersex conditions (OL)! Please keep that in mind before clicking the links.

First up, antlered does:

White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

So put incredibly simply, all cervids (except for water deer) are capable of antler growth, as the stem cells that generate them are present even in females. However, in those cervids (except reindeer/caribou), those cells only activate with heightened testosterone. Usually only males can produce enough, but rarely, so can a female. Their antlers tend to be spindly and narrow, if they grow larger than spikes, and remain covered in velvet year-round. They rarely, if ever drop them, unlike their male counterparts, which regrow their antlers annually.

White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus)

29. LUCIFER - Vivid Shadows 2023

“Look upon me, your shining morning star. See me, and see what my Father’s love is worth.”

This piece is from Vivid Shadows, an art series I do with my partner Jill. You can get the art book here!

To recover, you literally need to manually learn skills that most people learn as a toddler

You need to learn what makes your body uncomfortable, and what to do to fix it

If you are high-masking, that usually means that you have learned to ignore every distress signal your body sends unless it is a distress signal that a neurotypical person would recognize. People have likely been unintentionally gaslighting you about your lived experience your entire life

If you feel bad or panicked for no reason, stop and try to pay attention to your body. Are you tense? You are likely feeling physical pain somewhere. If you've been gaslit about your pain your entire life, you might not be able to identify it.

Go through a sensory checklist.

SIGHT: Try closing and covering your eyes. If this gives you relief, the lights are probably too bright. You may also need differently-colored lights

SOUND: Cover your ears. Does this give you relief? If so, you may need earplugs or noise canceling headphones. You may also benefit from a neutral or pleasant background noise, like soft music or brown noise.

TOUCH: Are your clothes uncomfortable? Your chair? Your body? Do you feel greasy, like you need a shower? Do you need softer, sensory-friendly clothing?

TASTE: Do you need to brush your teeth or tongue? Would chewing on something help?

SMELL: Is there a strong or unpleasant smell in the room? Do you need to clean or empty a trash can? Would an air purifier help? Would a pleasant smell like a candle help?

INTEROCEPTION: Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? How is your posture? Are any of your muscles tight or sore? Scan your body slowly from head to feet, tensing and loosening each group of muscles. Going for a walk or doing a series of quick stretches may help a lot.

Learning how to do this stuff is not intuitive, if you've had an entire lifetime of gaslighting telling you that everything hurting you isn't a big deal and you're being dramatic over nothing.

This takes time, it takes work, it's not intuitive, and it's hard. Most people forget how hard it is, because they learned this as toddlers.

Focusing my answer on antiblackness:

No one wants to take off the rose colored glasses and realize just what their "normal" is built on!

And to an extent, it's understandable. This shit will drive you insane, it's like a daily dying by a thousand cuts. It's HARD, to a point where you might choose to numb yourself against it when you're Black. But we can't fight what we don't acknowledge. We can't excise a cancer that we refuse to admit is there. And so, I might not be able to excise the cancer by myself, but I feel like it's my responsibility to speak on its existence. As painful as it is, maybe if we all spoke on it more, if we addressed it, the pain could stop.

or, to quote Malcolm X:

"I will never say that progress is being made.

If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. The progress is healing the wound that's below, that the blow made. And they haven't even begun to pull the knife out, much less pull, heal the wound...