#psychic powers as allegory for neurodivergence go brrrr

[2hoothoots]

Hiii Riley, I have a few questions 👀 Does Dogen still like hats? 🤔 Also it seems like he’s gotten control over his blastokinesis just fine (so proud of him) but are there still things that will set him off and cause him to, yknow, explode if he doesn’t keep his emotions in check? I’m also wondering how other’s perceive him if that’s the case.

Lmao I just think Dogen is neat I wanna know more about him in regards to your au 👁👁

oh my guy LOVES his hats. number one hat fan. he wears his beanie with like casual wear and his fedora is for work or special occasions when he's in his suit, but i imagine he has like a whole wardrobe of them.

moooore rambling under the cut

i think the hats are also partly a sensory thing, and partly serve to dampen his powers. i think in the au, he's got enough of a handle on his blastokinesis that he wears them mainly for the former reason than the latter? he shaves his head for sensory reasons, and he just feels more comfortable with something against his scalp.

(i have this whole semi-related headcanon about psychic pressure points/leylines on the scalp, which is why the hand-to-the-temple pose or the forehead-touch vibe check are a thing. anyway i imagine because of that a lot of psychics are very picky about like sensory input around the head/scalp, so hats can help with that as well as being a fashion thing. like i hc raz is very picky about it and that's why he wears his helmet, but also he can't stand light pressure, it has to either be like a firm squeeze or nothing at all so normal hats don't do it for him. if you see him pressing his palms against his scalp it's a big tell that he's really stressed lol)

uh but also, like I allude to in Face Thy Doom, i think a lot of his hats have a little tin foil liner. he doesn't need the full foil hat like he did as a kid, but sometimes his powers can get a little leaky, especially on a bad day. and that can make it hard for other people to be around him (well, except for raz, whose skull is thick enough that he doesn't notice lol). so he wears that to help dampen it, and i also imagine he works in like a small private, psychoinsulated office in hq, both to reduce outside stimulus and to stop him from messing up anyone else's day.

i think he doesn't accidentally blow up people's heads any more lol, but i imagine that getting his powers under control is kind of a lifelong thing. like we see in a memory vault, even in adulthood Compton struggled with his blasto when he was feeling overwhelmed. i think Dogen has enough help (psychotherapy, good support structures, etc) that he doesn't have those kinds of accidents, but it's still something he struggles with.

i kinda think that's one of the reasons he does fieldwork, actually. once he learns to weaponise it, he finds it's actually really helpful to have an outlet like that for his energy. blowing stuff up in his work life means he's less likely to blow stuff up in his personal life, haha. (plus, i think he was definitely... not cajoled, but certainly encouraged to become an agent. he's a real asset to the Psychonauts, and a complete powerhouse – out of the au trio he's by far the one with the most raw power. he can get some really impressive stuff done, as long as he has someone with him to help point him in the right direction.)

anyway for the other stuff (like how other people treat him and what can cause him to blow up), i wrote like a whole fic about this haha. the tl;dr is it's a blessing and a curse! he's learned to harness his powers enough to do some amazing things with them, but also it's a big strain on him, and something that he's probably going to be learning to deal with his whole life. it means that the ways he moves through life are markedly different to how a "normal" psychic would, but it's something he's learned to deal with by using coping strategies and having a supportive network around him and being aware of his limits/triggers. (also, if it wasn't obvious, this is all extremely allegorical hahahaha)