We're All Mad Here: Exploitation and Saneism from a Fictionkin* Perspective
"We're all mad here..."
A phrase that the famous Alice in Wonderland stories, and their many reimaginings, has popularized. A phrase I can't help but see on t-shirts at Hot Topic and other such edgy places. That phrase is the equivalent of "welcome to my twisted mind" or "cute but psycho" to me. Or worse things, like "I'm not crazy, my reality is just different from yours" which, as an Actually Crazy person who does experience a different reality, I wouldn’t be called so cute for saying.
And then there's McGee.
American McGee (who I pray never finds me, though I prepare in the event he eventually does) is someone who until more recent years I had only the vague conception of as a mysterious man who's name was tacked onto one of the most meaningful and impactful games I've ever played, American McGee's Alice. It was so impactful, in fact, that I realized it was familiar. I belonged there, or it belonged with me. It would be a long long time before I came to the Awakening as Alice (times three), but it didn't take very long for that game to latch onto me.
And really, there's a question for me of how long I've had these feelings. How deep does the rabbit hole of this identity go? Because in recently questioning and working through the realization that I'm likely schizotypal, the earliest signs of it I could remember were at age 7**, where I remember my first hallucination being the Tweedles. Of all things, the Tweedles. A lot of my neurodivergent experiences overlap with themes in the original stories, or generally involve my identity as Alice, like having a literally changing self*** as well as a lack of self-concept, feeling like I’m physically bigger or smaller as a sensory illusion, or very genuinely feeling like I will return to Wonderland bodily someday in this lifetime. Sometimes I’ll even be triggered by things that I would be triggered by as-Alice, but that have no basis in my current life, such as having a post-traumatic flashback of escaping a house fire after being told lightly that someone’s house had burned down.
I could point to a lot of little things that intertwine my Madness with my Aliceness, but the point is that my Madness and my identification with Wonderland go very literally as far back as I can clearly remember. And that makes sense. Alice in Wonderland is so connected intrinsically to mental illness as a concept that there are entire reinterpretations focusing on the idea of Wonderland being a manifestation of mental illness.
Which brings me back to McGee, who has recently been kickstarting a third Alice game, titled Alice: Asylum. In the previous two titles, Alice and Alice: Madness Returns, I personally felt that McGee, an admitted survivor of child abuse, had treated the themes of mental illness, abuse, forced institutionalization, and post-traumatic stress with care. Especially being a man telling this through a female protagonist when women are often subject to even further psychiatric abuse and trauma due to misogyny. The second game, dealing directly with child abuse as a topic, became especially therapeutic to me to play through. I'm unsure how much of it actually rings as memory to me, some does and some doesn’t and it’s murky, but it resonates enough to be a really cathartic experience to play it.
But Asylum I’m worried about. From the moment I heard the proposed title, I was afraid. I was afraid because the history of asylums as a horror trope is a bad one, and I didn't know how well this would be handled. Afraid because I know I'd have to play it, and I was worried what it might dig up for me as someone who experiences large parts of these games as memories. Afraid because I started to see people talking about it, the concept art, the themes, ideas behind the 'adventure' this Alice was going on as a character in a prequel game with new symbolism behind things -- but what I felt was people picking my trauma and delusions and inner world apart in a disgustingly invasive way. I can’t get mad at the fans, nor McGee, for their interpretations of what is to them just a game.
This, however, will never stop it from feeling like someone has invaded my space, my mind, and made a game and a profit off it. Because Wonderland is real to me. I know what it feels like to step through those janky red-and-green portals in the first game. I have the ghost of feeling and fear of having holes drilled in my head. The Cheshire is someone I still constantly seek out in the back of my mind, waiting for him to appear someday out of nowhere. These are gamified versions of a reality I experience and have for a long time, and I can never interact with the fandom or its creator in the same way because of that.
My anxiety about Asylum and the way it’s being treated make it impossible for me to keep up with updates on the game, but also outside of my personal feelings as Alice, it shows the very real fear I have of neurotypicals (not McGee, but a presumed neurotypical portion of his fanbase) interpreting these experiences in a romanticised way that will further the "crazy is scary" trope, romanticise struggles like mine (as Alice or as the ‘me’ I am now) in a harmful way, or give them a false idea of how mental illness and recovery actually work. Which isn't unfounded, sadly.
The biggest and first problem I had with all this was the marketing and merchandise. McGee is calling his patrons "inmates" and selling Cheshire t-shirts that have that word "INMATE" printed on them, and his newsletter is called the Straitjacket. That ... really absolutely hurts and disgusts me as a survivor of psychiatric abuse. Having been hospitalized three times and bounced between 10 therapists since age 12, no one wants to be an "inmate," and anyone who hasn't been through a hospitalization will have absolutely no idea what it's like. I personally feel they have no right wearing something declaring themselves an "inmate" of any asylum, Rutledge or otherwise, and McGee pushing his saneist merchandise in every livestream I’ve tried tuning into has made me sick. I don't feel any sense of solidarity or support from McGee like I did in the past -- I feel exploited. I feel like my experiences -- not only personally as Alice but as a person who is on the schizo-spectrum, traumatized, has been hospitalized multiple times, and has been abused by mental health professionals -- are being exploited for capital gain. Are being exploited to promote a product. And I feel like there's nothing I can say to stop it.
In the past, I've generally been an advocate for the "it's polite for fictionkin/fictives/fableings to leave their creators alone" route with regards to engaging with source creators. On Tumblr, you'll hear people yelling about how we're “cringey” and shouldn’t take ourselves seriously and likewise not be taken seriously by others. Or else about how we’re evil and going after poor indie artists with our fake memories, telling them they wrote their stories wrong, or that we’re stealing their works or being disrespectful. We’re called ‘thieves’ while other interpretations of original works such as fanfiction, self-insertion, and headcanons are never met with the same scrutiny from fans and creators.
But now, I honestly think that we deserve as much space to engage as any other fan and consumer and I think we actually have a lot to contribute to the way people interact with and interpret media. I have valid criticisms of this series alongside the feelings I experience as someone who feels like I’m the protagonist of it, and that's just it. This is the way I interpret this media -- very personally -- and I don't think that should be overlooked, either. I think that speaking out on experiences like mine could encourage more people to think about their characters and the way they portray and talk about sensitive issues those characters go through. To treat them with more empathy. There's something to be said for being an Alice who's repulsed by this marketing -- how would McGee's own Alice feel about what he's done with this? I think that's a fair perspective worth keeping in mind when approaching the topic of mental illness and psychiatric abuse through a character whose experiences you don’t share
There’s always been the writer’s conflict of what were to happen if they ever met their characters and had to own up to how they wrote them, and this is one way that could manifest, honestly. I don’t think that just because we experience ourselves as part of these works that we should be shunned out of fandom or away from creators, especially when there is a reason to criticise a creator’s actions like this.
.
Sadly, though, for now I have "INMATE" to add to my list of graphic t-shirt slogans I hate, along with "I'm not crazy, my reality is just different from yours" and the infamous "We're All Mad Here."
No, no you're honestly not.
__________________
* Technically I call myself an Alice fableing, now, as being a median facet gives me a unique experience from both fictionkin and fictives, but 'fictionkin' isn't practically wrong, and the word "fableing" is hardly known and might not have appealed to as many.
** Where my memories of life honestly begin, anyway, and that likely has to do with my plurality and dissociation.
*** Due to being median and the nature of how that works for me.
A phrase that the famous Alice in Wonderland stories, and their many reimaginings, has popularized. A phrase I can't help but see on t-shirts at Hot Topic and other such edgy places. That phrase is the equivalent of "welcome to my twisted mind" or "cute but psycho" to me. Or worse things, like "I'm not crazy, my reality is just different from yours" which, as an Actually Crazy person who does experience a different reality, I wouldn’t be called so cute for saying.
And then there's McGee.
American McGee (who I pray never finds me, though I prepare in the event he eventually does) is someone who until more recent years I had only the vague conception of as a mysterious man who's name was tacked onto one of the most meaningful and impactful games I've ever played, American McGee's Alice. It was so impactful, in fact, that I realized it was familiar. I belonged there, or it belonged with me. It would be a long long time before I came to the Awakening as Alice (times three), but it didn't take very long for that game to latch onto me.
And really, there's a question for me of how long I've had these feelings. How deep does the rabbit hole of this identity go? Because in recently questioning and working through the realization that I'm likely schizotypal, the earliest signs of it I could remember were at age 7**, where I remember my first hallucination being the Tweedles. Of all things, the Tweedles. A lot of my neurodivergent experiences overlap with themes in the original stories, or generally involve my identity as Alice, like having a literally changing self*** as well as a lack of self-concept, feeling like I’m physically bigger or smaller as a sensory illusion, or very genuinely feeling like I will return to Wonderland bodily someday in this lifetime. Sometimes I’ll even be triggered by things that I would be triggered by as-Alice, but that have no basis in my current life, such as having a post-traumatic flashback of escaping a house fire after being told lightly that someone’s house had burned down.
I could point to a lot of little things that intertwine my Madness with my Aliceness, but the point is that my Madness and my identification with Wonderland go very literally as far back as I can clearly remember. And that makes sense. Alice in Wonderland is so connected intrinsically to mental illness as a concept that there are entire reinterpretations focusing on the idea of Wonderland being a manifestation of mental illness.
Which brings me back to McGee, who has recently been kickstarting a third Alice game, titled Alice: Asylum. In the previous two titles, Alice and Alice: Madness Returns, I personally felt that McGee, an admitted survivor of child abuse, had treated the themes of mental illness, abuse, forced institutionalization, and post-traumatic stress with care. Especially being a man telling this through a female protagonist when women are often subject to even further psychiatric abuse and trauma due to misogyny. The second game, dealing directly with child abuse as a topic, became especially therapeutic to me to play through. I'm unsure how much of it actually rings as memory to me, some does and some doesn’t and it’s murky, but it resonates enough to be a really cathartic experience to play it.
But Asylum I’m worried about. From the moment I heard the proposed title, I was afraid. I was afraid because the history of asylums as a horror trope is a bad one, and I didn't know how well this would be handled. Afraid because I know I'd have to play it, and I was worried what it might dig up for me as someone who experiences large parts of these games as memories. Afraid because I started to see people talking about it, the concept art, the themes, ideas behind the 'adventure' this Alice was going on as a character in a prequel game with new symbolism behind things -- but what I felt was people picking my trauma and delusions and inner world apart in a disgustingly invasive way. I can’t get mad at the fans, nor McGee, for their interpretations of what is to them just a game.
This, however, will never stop it from feeling like someone has invaded my space, my mind, and made a game and a profit off it. Because Wonderland is real to me. I know what it feels like to step through those janky red-and-green portals in the first game. I have the ghost of feeling and fear of having holes drilled in my head. The Cheshire is someone I still constantly seek out in the back of my mind, waiting for him to appear someday out of nowhere. These are gamified versions of a reality I experience and have for a long time, and I can never interact with the fandom or its creator in the same way because of that.
My anxiety about Asylum and the way it’s being treated make it impossible for me to keep up with updates on the game, but also outside of my personal feelings as Alice, it shows the very real fear I have of neurotypicals (not McGee, but a presumed neurotypical portion of his fanbase) interpreting these experiences in a romanticised way that will further the "crazy is scary" trope, romanticise struggles like mine (as Alice or as the ‘me’ I am now) in a harmful way, or give them a false idea of how mental illness and recovery actually work. Which isn't unfounded, sadly.
The biggest and first problem I had with all this was the marketing and merchandise. McGee is calling his patrons "inmates" and selling Cheshire t-shirts that have that word "INMATE" printed on them, and his newsletter is called the Straitjacket. That ... really absolutely hurts and disgusts me as a survivor of psychiatric abuse. Having been hospitalized three times and bounced between 10 therapists since age 12, no one wants to be an "inmate," and anyone who hasn't been through a hospitalization will have absolutely no idea what it's like. I personally feel they have no right wearing something declaring themselves an "inmate" of any asylum, Rutledge or otherwise, and McGee pushing his saneist merchandise in every livestream I’ve tried tuning into has made me sick. I don't feel any sense of solidarity or support from McGee like I did in the past -- I feel exploited. I feel like my experiences -- not only personally as Alice but as a person who is on the schizo-spectrum, traumatized, has been hospitalized multiple times, and has been abused by mental health professionals -- are being exploited for capital gain. Are being exploited to promote a product. And I feel like there's nothing I can say to stop it.
In the past, I've generally been an advocate for the "it's polite for fictionkin/fictives/fableings to leave their creators alone" route with regards to engaging with source creators. On Tumblr, you'll hear people yelling about how we're “cringey” and shouldn’t take ourselves seriously and likewise not be taken seriously by others. Or else about how we’re evil and going after poor indie artists with our fake memories, telling them they wrote their stories wrong, or that we’re stealing their works or being disrespectful. We’re called ‘thieves’ while other interpretations of original works such as fanfiction, self-insertion, and headcanons are never met with the same scrutiny from fans and creators.
But now, I honestly think that we deserve as much space to engage as any other fan and consumer and I think we actually have a lot to contribute to the way people interact with and interpret media. I have valid criticisms of this series alongside the feelings I experience as someone who feels like I’m the protagonist of it, and that's just it. This is the way I interpret this media -- very personally -- and I don't think that should be overlooked, either. I think that speaking out on experiences like mine could encourage more people to think about their characters and the way they portray and talk about sensitive issues those characters go through. To treat them with more empathy. There's something to be said for being an Alice who's repulsed by this marketing -- how would McGee's own Alice feel about what he's done with this? I think that's a fair perspective worth keeping in mind when approaching the topic of mental illness and psychiatric abuse through a character whose experiences you don’t share
There’s always been the writer’s conflict of what were to happen if they ever met their characters and had to own up to how they wrote them, and this is one way that could manifest, honestly. I don’t think that just because we experience ourselves as part of these works that we should be shunned out of fandom or away from creators, especially when there is a reason to criticise a creator’s actions like this.
.
Sadly, though, for now I have "INMATE" to add to my list of graphic t-shirt slogans I hate, along with "I'm not crazy, my reality is just different from yours" and the infamous "We're All Mad Here."
No, no you're honestly not.
__________________
* Technically I call myself an Alice fableing, now, as being a median facet gives me a unique experience from both fictionkin and fictives, but 'fictionkin' isn't practically wrong, and the word "fableing" is hardly known and might not have appealed to as many.
** Where my memories of life honestly begin, anyway, and that likely has to do with my plurality and dissociation.
*** Due to being median and the nature of how that works for me.