#(i self insert myself into the story (persona-ish); have them reference my life; talk about real people; like imaginary friends)

[artsycloudysleepy]

aaaaaa tysm!!!! this helps so much, you have no idea! have a great rest of your day and thanks again :D

(warning that the tags are long and lengthy!)

hiya nye!! hope you're doing good :3

looking for some OC advice if that's okay: i have an OC who has MDD, but afaik i don't have it myself and i really want to avoid harmful stereotyping or unrealistic portrayals!

was wondering if you have any tips on writing it, if there's anything specific i should know (if there's treatment, side-effects, etc.) or just anything to avoid in terms of stereotypes?

obviously don't answer this if you don't want to, it's probably very personal, and take your time if you do! i want to avoid screwing up, and while i am also going to check out articles and do my research, i also want to make sure i'm not accidentally being a prick or looking at misinformation and ask you if you have any advice :)

thank you so much! have a nice day nye, stay hydrated :D

Heeyyyy Artsy :3

I'd be happy to help in whatever way I can, but heads up I'm not professionally diagnosed or anything and am definitely not an expert on the topic, so this will just be from my personal experience

So of course maladaptive daydreaming is different for everyone, I think the most common interpretation of it is someone who might use their persona to self insert themselves into media they might like, or a personally written story. Sometimes they might be pre-written and played out (I personally believe this is what "shifters" do). A second common one might be writing a story by thinking about it as a show, where you yourself may not be involved. Many people wrote brilliant stories using this method.

My personal experience is that I can count multiple times where my maladaptive daydreaming was more prominent throughout my life, but I can't really pick it out if childhood experiences as it was kind of like the hit thing to be good at imagining when you were 5.

My standout experience with MDD is ongoing. It started five years ago and it involves myself and other people consistently. There is no change in plot or reboots, I consider these people consistent as any other person I might know. Plainly, I consider the maladaptive daydreaming characters that I have created (ocs) AND have not created to exist as people in some way, so I treat them as such.

Part of my MDD is that these people I know through my head interact with people from the real world, having casual conversations and such.

My level of focus on my MDD varies on my mental health and environment, it usually ranges from maybe 1 interaction a day to things I have planned for the day being cancelled because I'm busy daydreaming. My daydreaming friends will often grow distressed if I don't speak to them for long periods of time. Some of them (my ocs) fear that they'd cease to exist, while others may fear their friends could disappear, including me.

Something well known for MDD is repetitive motions, personally I find my stims outside of MDD are larger and more noticable, while I'm daydreaming sometimes my repetitive motions will be spinning a pen or something as miniscule as timed blinking or eye movement. It's like keeping pace to me, like they tell you to associate a smell with sleeping if you have a hard time sleeping. The motions help keep me focused on my daydreams.

I don't like closing my eyes when I daydream, but I do like dark rooms. I also prefer background noise. It's also well known people like to listen to music while they daydream, and I do, but the noise doesn't have to be music. It just has to be constant and have some kind of pattern that I can tune out to. The noise helps distract me from what I see visually!

I haven't researched treatment because recently I've been quite good at regulating my daydreams, and in the past it's been a fear of mine. I think the only treatment there would be for MDD is finding other coping mechanisms.

As for side effects, I'm not sure what would qualify. I can get angry at daydreams the same way I would anything else, same goes for every emotion. Sometimes it just makes my mood seem out of place, I think. I also think it's obvious when I'm daydreaming, because people usually poke me or wave a hand in front of my face (THIS IS SO ANNOYING DON'T DO THIS I'M DAYDREAMING FOR A REASON). MDD sometimes restricts my real life experiences, socializing, sometimes makes me forget meals, it also makes my memory of everything worse, instead replaced by memories of daydreams. MDD is something that I deal with, while I know it's a negative thing it's something that I don't have any desire to detach myself from. That's a scary idea to me, so I suppose that's a side effect in itself.

As far as writing a character with MDD goes, you'd have to know what they were daydreaming about first. A lot of the rest of the traits, such as what noise or actions they use, would be down to their other characteristics. If I was going to avoid something, it would be to not make everything they daydream about separate to reality. Almost everyone I've known with MDD has integrated their realities in some way, whether it be having their persona personality shine through, their daydreams interact with people around them, writing about it, drawing or infodumping. Of course this might not be everyone, but I think it also depends how private of a person they are. People who have MDD tend to know they're creating something complex.

Thanks for asking me Artsy, again, this is just from personal experiences. Hope this helped! :3

[opinated-user]

1. valithria is supposed to be a self insert and she’s darker than her usual avatar. this is not a defense of brownfacing, this is a deflection by saying “i could have done myself darker than that, as shown on my self insert here, but i didn’t so that makes my changing my skin tone okay.” once again, rachel dolazel pretended to be a “light skinned black woman.” it was racist then and it’s racist of LO to do this now. multiple indigenous people have point this out, some of them directly to her and still will pretend like it’s not happening. 2. what does this character being “lighter” than any other has to do with anything? even though valithria is a self insert, she’s also just a fictional character for a fictional story so one can always argue that, even though LO projects into her, the design is not meant to portray her real life persona. her avatar does. her avatar is her face online, it’s what everyone associates with her brand. unlike other people who also use drawings to represents themselves, LO has clearly stated multiple times that the avatar is supposed to be her in real life. this is what “true to life” is meant to be for her.

we’re supposed to see these pictures and think this is LO irl. if you don’t see it or point out that it’s lighter LO will fold herself twenty times trying to come out with a valid excuse.  no, it’s totally her right skin tone, no variation (ignore the fact the picture she’s using as reference is really bad and there’s a lot of shadows) no, actually there’s a variation but it’s just colder (ignore the fact that nothing else on the environment around her explains why it has to be “colder” or why it affects only the skin). no, actually it can’t be brownface because she’s not darker than my other characters (ignore the fact that they’re supposed to be ficticious and not representations of her, or that brownface is about making a mockery out of a group and not any specific skin tone). stop pestering her about this, Indigenous people who suffer actual racial discrimination and can’t escape from it as easily as deleting one word from a tumblr bio. she’s tired of it. if she just said that this avatar is just a design that she likes nobody would have ever even think of pointing this out to her, because so many other people use avatars that have nothing to do with how they look in real life. nobody cares if the person who uses a talking dog is not actually a dog person making the videos. but LO is so attached to this idea that this avatar is her she won’t admit there’s nothing wrong with it. notice that during all of this, she never once explained why she has a feathered earring. not once. it’s because she knows she only wants it to look exotic and “native-ish” but knows admitting that is bad, that it’s borderline fetishistic and racist, so she hyperfocuses on the skin tone argument and forgets anything else. continueing, i also want to adress really quick the following responses to this post.

there’s only two things that made LO go viral during all her time on the internet. one was her SU video, a miracle she has tried and fail to capture so many times since then. the other one was her writing thread... which was archived here and so ruthlessly mocked on so many platforms that i can’t put all the screenshots without oversaturing this post. i’ll just leave this: