#doug rattmann headcanon aesthetics

[the-evil-twin]

Headcanon Doug Aesthetic: His Diagnosis / College Years Trauma 

Okay, this headcanoned post is centered solely around him coming down with his disease, namely: paranoid schizophrenia. In the second image is after it went from only one voice, to an entire crowd of voices in his head, questioning things and screaming and warning him about things -- all day, as he’s trying to study and attend classes and seminars as a normal functioning student; and all night long, when he is trying to sleep. 

In the fourth image, he is absolutely terrified with paranoia that he keeps calling her at 3am because his delusions keep telling him that an intruder is entering her room -- and she has no idea why this keeps happening; and so he finally has to tell confess his disease, to her absolute horror, resulting in the immediate end of their relationship. 

In the fifth image, he is desperately trying to will away his illness as much as he possibly can; but it is simply not working. He finally sees a psychiatrist, which results in the first of many of hospitalizations, and in the sixth image, we see that he has gotten his first antipsychotic prescription.  In the seventh image, we see that he has begun to form a nicotine dependency through cigarettes because of how the nicotine actually affects the dopamine levels, which can relieve symptoms of schizophrenia (you can read about it in detail here) -- and it’s actually why he avoids marijuana, because it actually has the direct opposite effect on him, and actually makes his schizophrenia and paranoia worse. I also headcanon that this was only for a few years, while he was still inconsistent with his medication because he disliked at first how numb it made him feel, and how it resulted in sexual dysfunction -- but later on, he decided that he didn’t much care for those things anymore at all, and that they were small prices to pay for his clarity of mind; and by the time he entered the corporate world, he had quit smoking, and had taken his medication seriously. (The more I research what real schizophrenic people have to go through, I come across thing of this nature, and so I do my best to make him seem like a real person going through this disease; and also, I wrote about all of this is another aesthetic post, so I apologize for the redundancy, lol)  The eighth image is a reference to something I mentioned in my story; that when he had a psychotic break on campus, word about his illness spread rapidly and he became the target of both verbal and physical assault.  By the ninth image, he is learning that best safety, for him, is in being alone; which quickly leads to learning to be self-reliant -- and is essentially doing the same by the tenth image. 

FULL DISCLAIMER: None of these photos are mine. I am providing full credit to all of the photographers; but if you see your photo here and you would like it taken down regardless, then please message me and I will remove your image for you. That all being said – below are all of the photo sources:  Image 1: Click here (via GifMage)   Image 2: Click here (via Gifer) -- EPILEPSY/SEIZURE WARNING  Image 3: Click here  (via Giphy)  Image 4: Click here (via Gfycat)   Image 5: Click here (via Favim)   Image 6: Click here (via Synthetic Picturehaus) -- These are the people that did the Lab Ratt, Shadows, and A Triumph of Science film shorts! -- in addition to a cute few others with Susan Tiemann -- but oh man, I love them so much for all of their Portal fandom contributions (most of all for their Doug-centric ones, because very obviously, I’m very in love him) :D ♥  Image 7: Click here (via Giphy)  Image 8: Click here (via Pinterest / Teen Wolf)  Image 9: Click here (via Rebloggy / Perks of Being A Wallflower)  Image 10: Click here (via Rebloggy / The Art of Getting By)

[the-evil-twin]

B:\Doug_Rattmann_HeadCanon_Aesthetic.exe: ⤷  Doug’s house 

So here be my headcanon for the house that Doug had at the time of the Aperture massacre: he got a great deal on a modest one-bedroom Craftsman, built in the early 20th century, back when the salt mine was still in business - where he converted his dingy basement into a home office / art studio (this is also why the basement looks ‘newer’ than the rest of the house). It was simple, private, and perfect.

And I really want to emphasize the privacy appeal; I headcanon that Doug did not care for the shared walls of an apartment building, and he takes much pride in being self-sustaining, so he is the sort of person that would prefer to own his home. As a matter of “fact” (lol what do you mean I’m falling too deep into my own headcanon), a big selling point for Doug was the fact that the bushes in the front yard concealed most of the street view of his house -- this is pretty much all that you would see, lol: