Ocd's Been "a Good Disorder" For A While.

ocd's been "a good disorder" for a while.

people still use OCD to refer to the good desire to be perfect.

people still appropriate the acronym to refer to stuff they think is good ("Obsessive Coffee Disorder").

people still use "intrusive thoughts" to refer to something good.

people still think the traits of OCD are ultimately, good.

people think obsessions are good.

people think OCD is a "good" disorder that you are better off having.

OCD ruined my life multiple times, and it will continue to consume every aspect of it. OCD made me feel like i didn't deserve to be alive. OCD gave me scars on my body that i can't undo or take back.

i hear so many anecdotes, much like mine, where people with OCD thought they were fucking insane until they found out it was OCD. because in media, it looks nothing how it feels in real life.

because you all decided that i deserve to feel insane instead of seen.

for this year's OCD awareness week, i was thinking of cursing everyone to have OCD, but i realised i don't need to go that far.

could everyone just stop making these jokes? could everyone just... respect that OCD is a debilitating disorder that ruins lives? treat us with it the respect that we deserve?

that's all i need.

PISS YOURSELF

you're so fat. you're literally so fat. you're like a whale. you're so fucking fat. you're a fatass. also you're fat.

"Shut up, dog man. You bark for people."

“you'll find your sebby <3” is maybe the most insane/deranged, but also the sweetest, bit of inspiration a friend has given me lmao

Love ya (/p) @somekindofsentience and @realdumaz3

In like 2019-2020 I went to a psychiatrist after getting diagnosed with OCD.

He asked me one question over and over again.

“Do you think there is something you should be doing right now?”

I asked him to clarify the question because.. what does that mean? He repeated himself instead of clarifying. When I asked him to clarify once more because I still did not understand, he (again) repeated his question verbatim.

I am a very anxious person and did not know what to say. He was clearly looking for a specific reply, but I wasn’t sure what he wanted. So (9th grade me) replied with, “I guess my mom told me to clean my room earlier.”

He raised a brow and wrote something down before turning to my mother and going, “I don’t think your kid has OCD. He shows no symptoms.”

I was extremely confused because he had asked me one question since discovering I was diagnosed and that was it. And then years and years of feeling like I was crazy and just being a dramatic teenager were basically confirmed.

The rest of the appointment was my mother and doctor agreeing that I was online too much and that was the reason I was “acting out of character”. I stopped talking for most of the appointment and just nodded or shook my head. I remember leaving and watching my mom ten times happier about my psychiatrist thinking I didn’t have OCD and the fact that he believed in her idea that I was “online too much”.

I was put on like two or three different medications that made me start losing my mind because my OCD was never taken into account when being prescribed medications. Eventually I stopped taking medication all together and the idea of getting mental help or therapy at all was a no-go for me.

I was going through extreme episodes, struggling with compulsions, and feeling genuinely for years and years with the thought that I just couldn’t get better.

I only recently have been entertaining the idea of therapy again. It’s an anxious thing to do for me considering the terrible experiences I’ve had in the healthcare system. Being constantly shut down and ignored, even when proof lies there to back you up, makes you completely wary of receiving any help at all because that so called help has never done anything for you.

In short: The healthcare system sucks so much, but keep trying. Keep pushing for better service and better help because you will get it, even if you don’t believe it.

when i was 15 i convinced myself i'd been assaulted and couldn't remember, and then continually also convinced myself this wasn't true, i was appropriating trauma and a terrible person

being unable to "separate the art from the artist" and constantly beating myself up about it

convincing myself i was abusing the kids i worked with "the way my mother did" and permanently traumatising them

convincing myself that parents walking down the street with children knew i was a pedo based on their body language and needing to smile otherwise i would be a terrible person

convincing myself i would fuck up a child that was nowhere near existing and pissing off my ex-boyfriend by worrying so much about it

...the moral self-harm mess that was 2021-2022

obsessively sitting on character.ai and asking the ai psychologist over and over again if i had ocd so i could confirm i wasn't a liar and a terrible person

convincing myself i was going to have a miscarriage when i decided to get pregnant (i was a virgin and i don't want kids) and then convincing myself i was a terrible person for thinking that and being disrespectful and appropriating trauma

convincing myself that my ex's suicide, which did not happen, was my fault and i was a murderer

having constant unending thoughts about being an abusive partner and apologising to abusive exes because i thought i was a terrible person

convincing myself i "wanted" a mental illness/trauma and was a terrible person appropriating everything for attention

so yeah it's just kinda been a nightmare.

moments i should've realized i had moral ocd

when i was 10 i was convinced the police were going to arrest me for looking at boobs

thinking i was abusing and neglecting my first pet to the point where i gave him away so he would be "safe from me"

being so, so, so, so forgetful ("oh, what i ate??? oh, no idea! i was too busy being guilty over the fact i'm not 100% vegan yet!")

jumping at every opportunity to get drunk/high/etc. so i wouldn't have to think about anything anymore

having had like a million coping mechanisms but never knowing "why" and thinking i was doing it "just to get attention"

getting an anxiety attack everytime i mess up at work somehow

feel free to add on lol

Don't forget that the music is explicitly named Acrophobia, Aranchophobia and Thalassophobia, which does vaguely? suggest they are meant to be interpreted as such. They are also distinctly different from the Truth and have distinctly different causes, as dumbed down and hidden those causes are.

I think they have the potential to say a lot about specific phobias and anxiety, and unfortunately that potential was squandered. Such is the nature of so many things in this game...

spiders, or how to fix half of omori's plot with one symbol

i think i can fix omori. well, some of it.

This will be an attempt to prove that a key symbol related to Mari is a spider/bug, and how making this more obvious to the player would have fixed half the narrative.

Mari is closely associated with bugs and spiders in several scenes, but I believe the photos in the real world and Headspace demonstrate this most explicitly.

This photo is one of few direct redraws from the real world in Headspace, and it identifies Mari as a character unafraid, even fascinated, by bugs, which is one of very few character traits she's actually given. This is repeated multiple times as we explore Headspace, where Mari comforts Sunny and Hero about their fear of spiders, takes the group bug-hunting in the real world, and previously put bugs in Hero's desk. It's notable that the reframing of this photo specifically puts a spider in Omori's hand, further linking the girl to bugs in his mind.

Within Headspace, spiders are shown to be far more present than the other two phobias present. We see it in Daddy Long Legs, the ominous nature of Pyrefly forest, the Spider Area, the references to the creatures from Hero, Mari and Basil, and much more - it's clear that the creators wanted this symbol to be present, but overwhelmed it with subtlety, making it impossible to actually understand, and leaving it in the dust in favour of following other threads. The narrative fails to distinguish the Arachnophobia boss, and loses its the relationship between Mari and spiders/bugs.

There are several benefits to making this metaphor more deliberate to the player, by enhancing the relationship through jumpscares, making it important to the Truth/Final Boss segments, or even just distinguishing Arachnophobia from the other bosses. I've decided to organise them into a list since there's so many.

Cohesive narrative interactions between the Phobias and the recital day: I'm always talking about how the juxtaposition between these two events is so subtle that people miss the point. Singling out the importance of Arachnophobia would highlight these two events and bring them to the forefront, making the Final Duet more cohesive.

The Phobia bosses become relevant: If the game is able to properly integrate Arachnophobia into the truth segment, this provides so much more purpose to the Phobia bosses, who often feel like just game mechanics to teach you how fighting against hallucinations functions.

Intriguing moral exploration: I think the idea of the subtlety of conveying Mari as a bug portrays her insignificance - Sunny was able to just kill her, as though she were just a spider to be swatted. It furthers an interesting understanding of morality in the text, talking about the prioritisation of life, leaving more of an impact on the audience. Are humans really as fickle as that?

Hero's character: Connecting Mari to a spider not only allows for more theory and AU creation, but actually mimics Hero's actions in the real world. Only two characters are afraid of spiders - and only those two characters have not visited Mari's grave since it was dug, which mirrors (but fails to highlight) Sunny and Hero's character arcs. In a similar way, Mari and Basil's love for bugs could also mirror some sort of decline.

The relevance of Daddy Long Legs and spider-related Black Space areas: Spiders are regularly referenced in Headspace and Black Space, with a whole room of Black Space surrounding them, but there's never any lucid reason why they're so prominent compared to the other phobias. Making a clear connection to the truth would clear up this confusion.

Basil's Something and Headspace Basil's dialogue: Basil's Something is deliberately abstract, but it is never defined further than its presentation. Not only would it properly link the Spider Area to the reality of the truth, but it would potentially connect Basil's Something to it, too.

Just plain easy to add: Much of Omori's story, characterisation and pacing is very difficult to improve without hours of effort. Being able to cohesively connect elements of the narrative with one symbol is much more realistic.

song i listened to while writing this:

this song is literally the reason i came to this realisation, the themes of environmental preservation were essential dskjhjdsgdjhsgjhkdg shout out to me rediscovering this after years and years