#like i have no idea what happened when I was hyperfixated on psychonauts

[rubysparx]

Listen I KNOW dungeon meshi ended. I’m scared ok I don’t wanna finish it just. Gimme a sec

[ask-agent-rapzutin-vodello]

Author, buddy, home skillet biscuit

Lets get to know you! What was one of the things that inspired you to make this au? Do you have any scrapped plans or outcomes that would have been you'd like to share?

Also, Pepsi or Coke? There can be only one.

I'm a Cola Zero man, so ...that.

As some background info, I'd like to mention that I got introduced in the Psychonauts fandom with the second game, which I bought in September of that year.

So, as I usually do when hyperfixating on a new fandom, I was reading a lot of fanfiction and looking at a lot of fanart. I really liked art where Milla was acting motherly to Raz, like one where she makes him a packed lunch, and he accidentally call her mom(? Something like that.)

But I also noticed some fics and art where it almost was where Raz was adopted by Milla and Sasha. Or art where Raz plainly runs away from the Aquatos, which I didn't find realistic - as realistic as you can get with this game - because Raz loves his family, and I don't see him getting away from them.

One day I came across this art piece from @pokemon22551, which kinda sparked the idea. Even though it had been years - barring some fics I wrote after really getting into Animaniacs with the reboot - since I've written fanfics, I decided to give it a try, thinking I could just leave it if it didn't catch on. I made this blog, started writing the first chapter ...and the rest is history.

As for scrapped ideas ...

The whole Frazie/Norma standalone story is pretty much shelved, with most of what happened revealed through asks.(I might write some one-shots containing some scenes, or a chronological list of events that would happen)

The chapters with going into the minds of Helmut Fullbear, Bob Zanotto Compton Boole and Cassie O'P weren't gonna be in the story. I didn't want to do a 'Psychonauts 2, but it's an AU' like I've read a few times before. So I had no plans of writing those things out. They were gonna be three sentence mentions. Raz pops in, Raz pops out. Done. Kinda glad I did, though.

The Razgado event was gonna happen a few chapters earlier, right after Raz had met with the Aquato parents, but I wanted to give the others some 'screentime' as well, plus planting the seeds for the whole Frazie and Norma budding romance.

There was an alternate plan for the Aquatos finding out Raz was still alive. I had plans for Frazie to bump into Raz, Milla, Sasha and the others during a shopping trip.

Norma and Raz didn't have the close sister-brother relationship at first, which you can kinda see in the first chapters. Normally he would only refer to Lizzie as his sister, because in the game it felt like Lizzie was acting kinda sisterly towards Raz after the Casino missions.

The whole Delugionist thing at the end came after I got the idea for the sequel while I was still writing "The Lives and Times".

I've let out an entire part where a Delugionist spy - a drowned, as they call themselves - would have taken pictures of the Razgado event, and gotten into contact with the criminal group I'm using in the sequel to contact the Delugionist leadership. decided to leave it out, because it messed up the flow of the epilogue.

One chapter got rewritten partially, at the request from readers, who felt I rushed a certain picnic scene.

Nona was going to appear in chapter 15, together with Ford in Raz's mind. I decided to leave it out, because the explanation was kinda farfetched, even for Psychonauts.

Norma and Frazie could have become a couple in the chapter where they fought, but I decided I'd write a story about that instead.

There are probably more, but I don't really recall them at the moment.

[feel-mobile]

Psychonauts 2 just has a way to grip your brainthing so hard to make you want to do crossovers. Elaborate away, friend, tell us what's on your mind.

HAHA im home and can finally answer this!!! yeah i could cross over any of my hyperfixations, past or present. even if they dont fit together.

anyway!! i got two asks regarding this so im gonna keep this one focused on a hat in time stuff! next one will be for hollow knight. underneath the cut is spoilers for a hat in time and also a lot of text so be warned

So Hat Kid was the first one I picked when I was planning a funny little drawing of characters from other games as Psychonauts interns. I had been playing hatty time and kept spamming the canon Raz sticker that you get if you own both games, so it was on my mind.

Hat Kid, aka Hattie, is a psychic whose skill is enhancing her hats with psitanium in order to heighten her levitation, pyrokinesis, cryokinesis, clairvoyance, and chronokinesis. she's especially good at chronokinesis. The same goes for Bow Kid. They're siblings.

The Conductor and DJ Grooves are both Motherlobe agents who are forced to share an office. The Conductor specializes in pyrokinesis, and DJ Grooves specializes in lumakineses and figment projection. I made lumakinesis up technically, but it's the manipulation of light. I think DJ Grooves and Milla get along. Combining him, Milla, and Helmut's mental worlds creates the ultimate party of music. As for the Conductor? If you go into his mental world something will probably explode! Most likely his Train of Thought. Haha, get it?

But going into more detail about these two, they're still rivals and have been rivals for years. They still make movies, they're just also secret agents. I think that if the kids had to go into their mental worlds it would be because of psilerium poisoning or too much psitanium. But that would only be for the dangerous parts, before that I think their mental worlds would be like training. Think like the first half of Psychonauts 1. Their mental worlds are nearly exactly as they are in A Hat in Time. I mean, what is there to change? They would work as lessons for young agents in training.

One day, the three kids (Hattie, Ghost, and Kirby) sneak into another agent's office, and find a brain in a jar locked and hidden away. Being kids who make bad decisions, they steal it. While Raz isn't involved in these kid's adventures, Hattie does know about how he went into a brain that was in a jar, so Hattie decides they should try it too! This proves to be a bad idea when they all get caught in a net and then their smelling salts stolen by Snatcher. He's the owner of the brain, and has forgotten who he used to be. Possibly on purpose. Unlike Helmut, he's been keeping his brain active, and that's how Subcon Forest came to be. And now the kids have to do this guys work in order to get their smelling salts back and leave! Moonjumper is an archetype I think. Because his sprite never made it past 2d. But he's trapped in the Horizon because Snatcher doesn't want to think about him. The Horizon is filled with enablers, and Subcon is filled with Bad Moods. There's also a lot of regrets, but they're hidden away.

It turns out what happened to this brain was that years ago, Vanessa thought that her fiance had been cheating on her. So she stole his brain and froze the body. She's been keeping this brain locked away for about 10-15 years now, but the kids were able to just stumble upon it and steal it. Getting Snatcher to remember who he used to be and be willing to go back to that won't be easy though.

I also haven't talked about the manor yet. Because that's totally in Subcon too. It's kept very much hidden away, but in order to save this brain, Hattie, Kirby, and Ghost need to find it. And a mental version of Vanessa is in there, just as terrifying as she was in A Hat in Time.

Moving onto Alpine Skylines! I don't actually know about this one yet. It sure is someone's mental world. But who?

As for the finale of Hattie's arc? That's about Mustache Girl, aka Mu. Two eleven year olds get in a really bad psychic battle. Mafia Town is entirely in the real world btw before going to the Motherlobe Hattie and Mu did kill a man for real and stuff him into a jar.

[luque-moreau]

y'know i think its about time ive refurbished my psychonauts headcanons/theories

what??? me??? rewriting my psychonauts headcanons in a more comprehensible and informed way???

ye

alright, i think everyone knows what im talking about, by headcanons i mean headcanon as in singular, and as singular, i mean my "raz is somewhere on the spectrum of adhd".

so lets just get into it:

what is adhd actually?

adhd by definition stands for attention deficit hyperactive/hyperfocus disorder (yes, let me get into the details in just a sec). it is a nerodevelopmental disorder that is almost completely reliant on genetic factors, however conditions during pregnancy can sometimes contribute to certain aspects of how adhd manifests itself.

long story short, people with adhd have a smaller frontal lobe, and therefore less dopamine in general (even though yes, it is more complicated than that).

theres also a little bit of "chicken or the egg first" goin on here, certain behaviors or personality tendencies can also affect how adhd is presented in one individual to the next, however its still not clear if that is because it is an accommodating for a certain thought process or if someones experiences and personality shape their symptoms of adhd entirely. its a very blurry line, and the answer is different for everybody.

hyperactive type

hyperactive type is probably the closest to most stereotypical depictions of adhd, think the 5 year old whos parents brush off their child’s hyperactivity as something that will “go with age”. however, this isn’t only present in children, adults with adhd have to deal with a constant need for stimuli to make up for the lack of dopamine their current activity is providing them. this results in someone fidgeting frequently in repetitive or predictable motions, unable to hold attention to a specific task for long periods of time, or many other of the symptoms associated with adhd.(i sadly cannot provide more information in this area, i am not knowledgeable enough to...)

hyperfocus type

hyperfocus type is a tricky one, it can look like the complete opposite of adhd in theory. hyperfocus can look similar to special interests or hyperfixation, a great deal of time and knowledge dedicated to a very particular thing (although it is important to note that even though hyperfixations and special interests are incredibly similar, special interests is a term more typically used within autistic-circles, and isnt really the best word to use if you happen to be neurotypical). Think of maybe that kid who knows all the cool animal facts and won’t shut up about them. Its because certain trains of thought or activities might release more dopamine then others, so to get more of that dopamine, someone of hyperfocus type will be mentally unable to stop thinking or doing a very specific task or topic. this results in someone seemingly always spacing out, unable to change subjects or changing subjects too fast or with little to no correlation, or being completely unable to have enough motivation to do simple things.

personally i tend to fall under the category of hyperfocus myself rather than hyperactive, however the two are not mutually exclusive, its more common to find people with both types rather than just one. even myself, i might exhibit more tendencies to place me under the label of hyperfocus, but that doesn’t mean i don’t have any symptoms of the hyperactive type. its my personality that affects my mannerisms, which then makes certain aspects of my symptoms more or less apparent. Thats because im an INTP-T, i just tend to be more to myself and constantly in a state of thinking abstractly. I have trouble communicating and even sometimes recognizing my needs, and get to a point where im unable to do the simplest of things without feeling emotionally drained. Thats just my experience though, everybodys different. 

so what the fuck does this have to do with raz then?

well lets think about it, rather than have it just be me projecting myself onto a comfort character:

raz finds issue with connecting to kids his age

lets be honest. none of the campers really like raz that much. or at least some do the bare minimum to be try and be polite. it doesn’t seem like any of the other campers besides dogen, whos also socially outcasted, are really fond of raz. lili might like him, but that can definitely be interpreted as curiosity in someone new and different from the norm. It might not be that the kids despise him, but nobodys opinionated enough to care whether he is around or not.

social isolation is one of the most damning things i had to experience from an early age and still feel even today. there is a sense of feeling that you are different among your peers, whether that is a good thing or bad thing. it feels difficult to interact with other people you are not familiar with, and can really stunt you emotionally and socially. from a really early age, theres somethin in you that knows something is very different between the experiences of your peers compared to your own, and it can feel incredibly isolating.

raz and his borderline stupidity

time to get real again. raz is a fucking idiot. at least in the sense that sometimes his decisions seem incredibly spontaneous and not really thought through. he runs from home to attend a summer camp, not really thinking about the logistics of how he will get there, how the staff will react, how long its gonna take for his parent to find him, and so on. it doesn’t seem like he over or underestimates his abilities, he just goes for it without considering. that doesnt seem like the smartest thing to do, even though we know hes incredibly intelligent when it comes to larger, abstract situations. its the little details that he misses, small minuet things that seem unimportant that he overlooks, which can sometimes make things harder for him in the end.

i think its obvious that impulsivity is one symptom of adhd. however i cannot stress how difficult it is to think at supersonic speed and still feel incredibly stupid. i mean, thinking faster doesn’t inherently mean you will have better ideas, you can always be stupider faster, but being able to realize stupid mistakes or inconsistencies in your own thought process is annoying as hell. it feels like every time you try to recognize the issue, fix it, and move forward, you only end up not paying attention to another issue that gets bigger and more annoying than the first. Its always two steps forward, one step back, constantly making the same mistakes even though you try everything in your power to avoid them or grow as a person. The simplest of facts, ideas, or just things to remember end up being forgotten, and once youre reminded of them you remember them and feel like an idiot. however, arbitrary things and complex issues are much easier to digest and remember for me, things like history and the whole blame game charade of it all, biology and how every minuet thing has a greater impact on others and intertwines with every single factor of its environment, philosophy and theorizing why we think the way we do and what can be changed. but oh shit, im a dumbass i forgot to do my laundry. shit. god fuckin dammit.

empathy over sympathy

one of the basic themes of psychonauts is empathy. simple as that. raz goes around into other peoples brains, and tries to help them as much as he can, even if his efforts are not always successful in the way he intended. he never demonizes anyone to the point of unredeemability, and can empathize and understand other peoples perspectives. hes open to new ideas and

although some studies out there theorize that empathy is impaired due to adhd, from my perspective i feel like that is simply not true. if anything, i would say the sensitivity that comes with adhd (hypersensitivity) only enhances that empathy. i could definitely see social disconnection being one of the reasons it might appear that someone with adhd is less empathetic, however i would doubt that adhd would impair a persons empathy. adhd tends to also entail heightened emotions, this doesn’t necessarily mean a more outwardly emotional person, however it definitely shifts a persons perspective of their own emotions as well as others. the concept of hypersensitivity also completely contradicts the idea of people with adhd be less empathetic.

miscommunication and disconnect

sigh, the dad thing. yup. raz has that very iffy relationship with his dad at the beginning of the game which is eventually resolved. very abruptly, might i add. but thats not what this is about, thats a topic for another day. miscommunication seemed to be the root of the issue, however we only get razs side of the story. not to mention the severity of his claims and willingness to seemingly drop everything afterwards. kinda sus, ngl.

alright this ones a doosey. this, i feel, cements my theory pretty well. like i mentioned before, social disconnect and hypersensitivity are side effects of the symptoms of adhd.  this means people with adhd are highly more likely to either misinterpret someones words or actions if those in question are not completely transparent, its because they tend to overthink and interpenetrate responses with too much thinkin n such. the social disconnect makes a whole lot of it worse, it can just pile on top of already established feelings of inadequacy and isolation. and oversharing as a poor coping mechanism isnt an exclusively adhd related thing, it tends to be shared within similar neruodevelopmental disorders such as autism or even ptsd. i find it incredibly easy to disconnect myself from my own emotions at times and think critically at what i feel and how it affects me. which is a bad thing. if i dont acknowledge my emotions like they are my own for too long, everything falls apart. its not fun. but, that disconnect can make talking about certain more traumatic experiences or instances that had deep personal effects on my life and development as a person much easier to just share. and not always in an appropriate manner, comedic opportunity can be   v  e  r  y   enticing. this also explains why raz might have been able to drop everything about his dad after he apologized. he didn’t really, he probably still suffers just as much afterwards as he did before. but he probably wont realize that for awhile, since logically, the issue has been resolved. long story short, he has not had the time to cope, and to put that off he detaches himself from those feelings. w a c k

of course i have other reasons why i feel like raz could potentially have adhd, or at least be accurately represented in headcanon with adhd, some minor mentions being:

he uses his camp map as a journal to track his in-game progress, list of goals, and notes/snip-its of information. writing down information on some form of notepad or book is a common tool used by kids and even adults with adhd to help them keep track of minuet, individual tasks. its just using a planner, but with a bit more information. 

just from my personal perspective, the lengths raz goes to pursue his dream of being a psychonaut feel more like a special interest/hyper fixation sort of thing. he can jump between having genuine conversations with his fellow campers and just exploring the campground, to investing himself entirely in obtaining his goal, even when it seems almost impossible. thats some serious dedication to one very specific thing, y’know?

this one isnt as solid as the other but: m̶̖̰̯̫̍͝o̵̦͖̟͈̹̤̥̝͐̿̄̀̀̎̓ņ̶̛̭̠̐̊̆̍͝ķ̸̝͈̺̙̰̊e̶͉͚̼̅̔͗̂͐̍̕͝͝y̶̦̖̼͖̪͎̝̖̠̐̑͋̾̔̑́͐͘ ̵̢̲̘͎͉̔̀͒̄͌͊̀͌̀m̴̲̫̮̪̖̍̐͆̕͜͝ͅả̶͙͚͗n̶̗̳̩̙̘̼̦̦͇͝ ̷̡̨̡͔̗͕̘͍̥̑͒̎̐̃g̴͔̔̈̅̐̏́̌̔̈́́o̶̥̱̽̆̂͌̀͗ ̶̝̩͙͕͛́s̴̛͓̥̲̜͓͚̣̠̆̓̌͌p̶̜̹̯̦̫̯̣̎͐̽̉̾ḙ̴͇̬͑̈́̐̈́͘͠ͅȅ̶̡̗̞̩͔̫̪͈͑̓͗d̵̠͇͎̜͔͇͒̈́́̀̅̈́̒͘y̸̡̦̠̻̖̥̿ͅ. yeah, its the most generalizing reason but look, hes moving nonstop the entire game, climbing and running around the entire goddamn place wrecking havoc. a bit of imp can be found in most people with adhd if you look hard enough.

so thanks for reading this far i guess? im oversharing even right now with this, like an i d i o t but yknow what i dont want to read the great gatsby rn, so ive got nothin better to do. who knows, maybe the second game will give us more info to either support/discredit this theory? gotta wait for pn2 i guess

:^)