i think it’s interesting that your head is so far up tumblr’s collective ass that you’ve forgotten what words mean. this seems to be a common affliction, too. i don’t know why this is so hard for people to understand.
“pengo is paranoid” does not mean he is lying. (who ever said he was lying? that seems to have been invented by his supporters as a convenient strawman.)
“pengo is paranoid” also does not mean he is imagining everything.
however.
a neurotypical person would probably not sit down and honestly write 70+ pages about someone else’s abuse, when that abuse never happened.
if someone were to do that, well, gosh, they might be diagnosed with something. like paranoia.
pengo is paranoid. this is a fact, established by pengo himself.
let’s ask wikipedia, everyone’s favorite resource, exactly what that means.
A popular symptom of paranoia is the attribution bias. These individuals typically have a biased perception of the world often exhibiting more hostile beliefs. A paranoid person may view someone else’s accidental behavior as though it is with intent or threatening.
oh! how interesting. so we know that at least sometimes, pengo views incidental events as deliberate attempts to sabotage him.
we know this because if pengo never incorrectly perceived others’ actions as hostile, he would not be paranoid.
reminding you that pengo is paranoid does not imply that he is automatically imagining everything. but it establishes the possibility, which would not otherwise exist. neurotypical people do not, by and large, imagine bogeymen.
this is not ableist stereotyping. this is by definition. this is what “paranoia” means.
the question is not whether pengo is imagining this alleged abuse. the question is whether this alleged abuse is one of the fears we already know pengo is imagining.
i know it’s hip with tumblr to never be or do or act negatively towards anyone with any mental illness for any reason, but mental illnesses mean something. they aren’t cutesy labels. they are names of problems, and those problems are only given names in the first place when they can significantly affect daily life.
i didn’t say pengo’s paranoia automatically means he’s imagining things. but the replies i’ve gotten seem to suggest that pengo’s paranoia means he can’t possibly be imagining things. not only is that incredibly foolish, it’s dangerous: you’re encouraging someone with paranoia to never question his own fears, because questioning him would be ableist!
if anything you are making his mental illness worse, by pretending it doesn’t exist. good job.