Writing MC With Mental Illness as a Power

[Macha]

Is it possible to make something like this interesting? How do I proceed from here? Example:

Anxiety & Depression
Makes other people feel what you are feeling. It's more fun with friends. You just appear and suddenly the enemy is feeling hopeless.

Multiple Personality Disorder
Manifests the different personality as clones that can act independently from the user.

Schizophrenia
Turns selected hallucination and delusion into reality.

Any thoughts? This isn't a cry for help.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

Observe Ben.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

Chinese - Joker's game

name: Joker's game/小丑游戏 nu link: none (there is one called joker game but it's different) raw link why pick it up? tbh, I haven't read far, but its...

forum.novelupdates.com

but it's hard to make a story like this without being disrespectful to the mentally ill/making light of their condition especially since they of all people do deserve to act like snowflakes

 

[Corty]

Isn't this true for most murder hobo/edgy/'anti-hero' MCs? That they are mentally ill?

 

[Macha]

Isn't this true for most murder hobo/edgy/'anti-hero' MCs? That they are mentally ill?

Does their mental illness give them power?

 

[JayDirex]

Is it possible to make something like this interesting? How do I proceed from here? Example:

Anxiety & Depression
Makes other people feel what you are feeling. It's more fun with friends. You just appear and suddenly the enemy is feeling hopeless.

Multiple Personality Disorder
Manifests the different personality as clones that can act independently from the user.

Schizophrenia
Turns selected hallucination and delusion into reality.

Any thoughts? This isn't a cry for help.

Forget Anxiety and Depression. Only wrist-cutters care about that subject; so drop it. @Macha

But MPD and Schizo offer everything and anything an author could desire. (Especially if you get the symptoms correct).

Because you are basically in the POV of a person who's reality is warped! Folks with severe mental illness don't perceive the world as we do. And in this sense, you can create a whole set of paranoid delusions for your MC to go and deal with.

But here's the writing advice: DO NOT JUST STAY IN THE MC'S POV

Because the reader needs to see and read the POV of people not suffering so that a true baseline reality can be set. And once the reader sees the world is just the regular world, they can then grasp the full impact of the voices inside the MC's head.

Your Homework: go research MPD and Schizophrenia, read short articles about people suffering. Once you do, you can then create an MC who may have an INTERESTINGLY SKEWED PERSPECTIVE of reality. (the reader will eat it up if the voices in his head were dragons or some shit).

 

[Macha]

Forget Anxiety and Depression. Only wrist-cutters care about that subject; so drop it. @Macha

Oke oke.

But here's the writing advice: DO NOT JUST STAY IN THE MC'S POV

Because the reader needs to see and read the POV of people not suffering so that a true baseline reality can be set. And once the reader sees the world is just the regular world, they can then grasp the full impact of the voices inside the MC's head.

Your Homework: go research MPD and Schizophrenia, read short articles about people suffering. Once you do, you can then create an MC who may have an INTERESTINGLY SKEWED PERSPECTIVE of reality. (the reader will eat it up if the voices in his head were dragons or some shit).

So, the Unreliable Narrator tag but to the extreme?

 

[Corty]

Does their mental illness give them power?

The fact that they get away with it throughout the story (with endless harem at their backs too usually) I would say... yes.

 

[JayDirex]

Isn't this true for most murder hobo/edgy/'anti-hero' MCs? That they are mentally ill?

they just say that to excuse their repugnant behavior. Murder hobos in these stories are not mentally ill. They are just A-holes that need to be put down like dogs.

 

[Chaos_Sinner777]

I was just reading something that feels right for that. "Demon Core: Volume 1: : [A Demon-King Dungeon-Core LITRPG]" MC is a Poet who falls to despair and becomes a Demon King/Dungeon Core. Also he can make monsters and stuff via poetry. He can turn angst into power!

 

[Macha]

What about paranoia? Writing a paranoid protagonist shouldn't be disrespectful. Especially if they are not wrong and all those security measures paid off. Other people think the protagonist is like Aizen who planned everything. They are right but for the wrong reason.

Like, the protagonist think the king want to betray and kill them instead of marrying them to the king's children and treating them as a hero after defeating the demon lord. Every of their paranoid thoughts become real and it saves them. Now people think the protagonist can see the future or something.

 

[JayDirex]

What about paranoia? Writing a paranoid protagonist shouldn't be disrespectful. Especially if they are not wrong and all those security measures paid off. Other people think the protagonist is like Aizen who planned everything. They are right but for the wrong reason.

That's up to you. in an old Mel Gibson movie, "Conspiracy Theory" that was the case. The MC, Mel Gibson, was a total paranoid weirdo.....but the viewer finds out that even tho he is nuts, his conspiracy is correct, and (some folks in the gov) were truly looking for him.

^

And that was the point of conflict for the viewer, trying to determine if Mel was nuts or..not?

 

[TheEldritchGod]

Malkavian

 

[Nym]

Slithering through dreams (Snake Isekai ?)

We all have dreams. Some dream of mountains of gold. Others dream of fame and glory. If you read this, you most likely dream of being isekaid and catgirls. If you look closely however, on the edges of your dreams, you might see a creature, slithering along, maybe taking a...

www.scribblehub.com

This close is to that

 

[RepresentingCaution]

Multiple Personality Disorder

They call it DID these days.

 

[Twin]

There was a similar story like to this concept on nu. The one who robs the heroines (i think,)

 

[APieceOfRock]

Anxiety & Depression
Makes other people feel what you are feeling. It's more fun with friends. You just appear and suddenly the enemy is feeling hopeless.

The first one isn't a power. I make everyone in real life sad just by existing.

 

[kophzi]

make his hallucinations manifest due to his magic/mana fulfilling his imaginations, thus sending him into a journey/quest where he needs to learn to control his stages of issues one by one, and weakening the chaotic spells and calming them.
Whilst everyone else thinks its the end of days, natural calamities, he is trying to fight his own hallucinations/imagination/inner-demons and creations that are running rampant, so people think he's a hero.

 

[CarburetorThompson]

How does this sound.

In the setting mental illness and being neurodivergent don’t give you abilities, but psychic abilities do exist. Instead of being controlled by the spirit or mana, the abilities are controlled entirely by the brain. Meaning people who’s brain functions differently than normal, or are suffering from a mental illness will manifest their abilities in a unique and maybe even unpredictable way.

That’s the best I could come up, I feel it’s A touchy subject so I tried my best to respect it in my interpretation

 

[ElijahRyne]

Is it possible to make something like this interesting? How do I proceed from here? Example:

Anxiety & Depression
Makes other people feel what you are feeling. It's more fun with friends. You just appear and suddenly the enemy is feeling hopeless.

Multiple Personality Disorder
Manifests the different personality as clones that can act independently from the user.

Schizophrenia
Turns selected hallucination and delusion into reality.

Any thoughts? This isn't a cry for help.

I don’t know how good of an idea this is, but here are a couple of powers based on what you wrote:

Anxiety/Paranoia= Future Sight/Danger detection
Depression/Schizoid Personality Disorder= Creates a hidden world or base/good at hiding
DID/Bipolar= Cloning/Damage sharing
Schizophrenia/Psychosis= Good at illusion magic/confusion aura