#this also is part of my complicated web of headcanons that I have for Ford specifically

[papercutslut]

Ford + oral fixation

[thefandomcassandra]

i am hereby asking for some of your tastiest Otto headcanons because i also love that morally grey science peepaw to bits

[deep inhale; deep exhale] OH BOY

Okay so some of this (most of this) is going to be me projecting hardcore on my favorite character type (morally grey scientist) and some of this (the small percentage that isn't projection) is going to be actual headcanon and not me just rubbing my little adhd autistic hands all over this man.

Otto is emotionally repressed BUT ALSO he doesn't express his emotions in ways that are immediately obvious to outside observers. So while he does make things (inventions, though he calls them dreams) to express his own internal feelings, he also doesn't express them all the time. This is partially because of the cut Bottled Emotion Mechanics (insert John Mulaney "I'll keep all my emotions right here [pats chest] and then one day, I'll die" gif) and partially because of how I think he experiences strong emotions. As someone who has emotional disregulation and alexithymia, a lot of the time when I'm overwhelmed, I just disassociate. So while everyone else is having a real rip-roaring good breakdown, I'm simply calm and blank. I'm functioning on the outside while I spend all my processing to keep the bad shit pushed down until it's safe to have a breakdown. Then I have a complete meltdown and express the emotions and move on when I'm able.

I also think Otto went to therapy. Therapy doesn't fix everything but as one of the chief developers of the technology that allows the Psychonauts to traverse the mental realm, he has to know how important it is to keep shit ordered and taken care of. How sorting your Emotional Baggage, while oftentimes a temporary respite, is part of maintaining a healthy mind. Even so, he probably has a lot of underlying issues he doesn't talk about (guilt about Lucrecia, guilt about Helmut, guilt about not being a good enough friend to keep Cassie around or Compton from being overwhelmed or Bob from succumbing to his alcoholic tendencies, guilt about Ford and how that's his best friend and now he doesn't even remember him...) and those are the structurally unsound support pillars to a mind seconds away from crumbling.

Otto's love language is crafting. I was in @goosterbold and @friendlytroll 's latest Psychonauts 2 Stream (which if you want The World's Longest Let's Play of Psychonauts 2, this is the one to go watch, the VODs are here and they're so good because Frankie and Bugs love going into fine detail about EVERYTHING) and they both posited that Otto made Compton's hat. Adding in that Bob (or one of the Bulb Bobs) in the wedding cake segment of Bob's Bottles comments that Otto made them a sword for a wedding gift for them, it's not hard to think that this man, while not necessarily good at speaking about his feelings, does listen to his friends and their wants and needs and makes them items to express what his words can handle. Like...there's a psychoisolation chamber in Green Needle Gulch. Otto made that for Compton when things got too loud. That's love.

Another hard projection: this man is sex and romance-averse aroace. While Lucy and Ford are making out and Bob and Helmut are making googoo eyes at each other, he's just sitting there with a burger like "okay but I'm eating..." Him and Compton and Cassie are sitting in the corner like "I mean, good for them" but while I feel like Compton and Cassie are open to sexual relations and romantic relations respectively, Otto is right out. (But also I have the world's most complicated shipping web for the Psychic Seven because of how I think that psychic hippie commune was in a huge poly relationship with intertwining romantic, sexual, and platonic threads. That is for another time, however.)

Otto might have little to no morals but he would resort to self-experimentation before taking unwilling subjects. Case in point: the whole "we explored parts of the human mind never seen before" thing and the mini-astrolathe thing. So while he has unhinged scientist energy, it's less "I'm going to kidnap people to scramble their brains" and more "if I die in a mind, will it kill me irl?" Very Floofty Fizzlebeans of him (which if you haven't seen anything about Bugsnax, please watch a Let's Play of it. I recommend Holly Hollowtones's playlist coz she has a real riproaring time and the plot is great but TLDR: Floofty is an unethical nonbinary scientist and they're the most for me personally). You can see my type lol.

And finally (because my brain is soup once more, thanks ADHD /s) Otto Mentalis is actually not a terribly powerful psychic and he creates psychoreactive technology and trades in psitanium because he uses them as aids and boosts for his own (in comparison to most other Psychonauts) low-level psychic powers. Still, his specialty is electrokinesis and his own subpar skills means that most of his psychoreactive technology is meant to help other folks like him. Which is why he is mentoring Gisu--who I also HC as being someone who specializes in psychoreactive tech, because I think her board isn't actually levitation, but that's a completely different infodump session lmao--because she managed to make tech like that at home with little to no budget, yanno? It's impressive.

Anyway genuinely thank you for asking me about himb, my most favorite peepaw, Otto Mentalis. I have so much to say about everything all the time and, as I said before, my stuff doesn't show up in the tags so I'm constantly just fighting to get noticed. Feels good to get asks like this /gen