#then Frank goes on to talk about talking to someone who shares the trauma and can understand exactly what you’ve been through - and I guess | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

harrowharkwife · 2 years

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so, um.

i've been thinking about "pilgrimage" for a while now. and about how we still haven't reached much of a consensus on what we're expecting from that episode.

pilgrimage. definition: a journey, especially a long and difficult one, made to some sacred or important place, typically as an act of devotion, or in search of deeper meaning, healing, or understanding.

the way this show works, i'm expecting to see all the characters on their own personal pilgrimages. some of them are easier to imagine than others.

maddie and chim taking jee-yun on her first beach trip, maybe. maddie, reconciling and processing both her harrowing, terrifying time in the ocean and her fear of jee near water. chimney, there to support her. both of them anchoring and grounding themselves in each other's presence, in the security of their family, and in the comfort that comes from teaching jee-yun to swim. watching her safely doggy paddle and splash and play in the shallow water, a lifejacket on her shoulders and a smile on her face, with the knowledge that she's safe and happy with both of her parents.

hen, finishing med school. becoming a doctor, finally, after her long journey of stress and studying and sleepless nights. she worked so, so hard to get here, and it was worth it. she doesn't necessarily have to leave her job and her home at the 118- she could be captain there someday, after all! but she's armed with so much more knowledge now, knowledge and training that will help her save even more lives, whether that's in a hospital or out in the field. and that medical license? it will help her advocate for every patient she treats, especially the ones overlooked by the medical system- her mom comes to mind. it forces everyone to take her seriously, to give her the respect she deserves, from the moment she introduces herself to them. and above all else, she will have proven to herself that she can do it. that she can chase each and every one of her dreams, at her pace and on her terms. just like she quit her pharma job, just like she became a firefighter despite eva's lack of support- only now, she has the support and encouragement from all her family and friends.

bobby, taking a trip to minnesota. maybe athena's with him, maybe may and harry. or maybe not. the fire at dispatch brought back a lot of old pain for him, even as saving may helped heal some of his oldest wounds. a karmic balancing of the scales, in a way- we know bobby tends to see things that way. but may isn't brooke. bobby buried a wife, a son, a daughter. and visiting their resting place to pay his respects, to tell them about his sobriety, about his new family, about how he creates families everywhere he goes now, about how much he misses them every day but despite it all he hasn't stopped living- that's a pilgrimage. and one i think he sorely needs to take, in order to heal.

for a while, i thought buck might take a trip back to hershey in this episode. but now i'm not so sure. eddie's already been back to el paso, and aside from that, i wasn't sure what a pilgrimage might look like, for him.

but then it hit me.

buck and eddie, going back to the site of the shooting. together. talking about it, processing it- as frank put it, "maybe you should talk about your pain with someone who shares it. think about your trauma. and then talk to someone who can understand exactly what you've been through."

that would be a pilgrimage, wouldn't it?

there's this scene in survivors, that i don't think we talk about enough- understandably, considering everything else going on in that episode. it's a quiet, blink-and-you'll-miss-it little moment between bobby and athena, that takes place only a handful of scenes after buck hauls eddie into the fire engine and desperately tries to keep him from bleeding out. and it goes like this:

athena: you know, after i was attacked, we never really talked about it.

bobby: well, i always got the sense you didn't want to.

athena: no, i mean... we never talked about what it was like for you.

bobby: there's that thing people say... 'i don't know what i'd do without you'. because losing someone you love is such an alien concept. you don't want to imagine what it's like. and i was sitting in that engine thinking i was listening to you dying. and i didn't need to imagine anything. i knew what my life would feel like without you in it. and it scared me.

👀

so, yeah. pilgrimage. i'm a firm believer in buck and eddie having their first kiss in the kitchen- i'm ready to tell you that i'm in love with you, so i'm telling you now, because i need you to know how loved you are, but i also know you need more time, and i will wait right here until you're ready for me too.

but when it comes time for a mutual display of commitment, that we're really doing this, i'm all in if you're all in, for better or for worse moment? i can't think of a better spot than the intersection where everything changed. episode one gave us a call where a man was shot by what looked to be a (large caliber) bullet, but was revealed to be a symbol of gay love and commitment- life saving for one man yet simultaneously life threatening for another. the thing that hurts is sometimes the thing that heals.

remember the funny little thing eddie said to buck in survivors, right before it all went south?

should have gotten here sooner.

pilgrimage: that street corner, no blood in sight. foreheads pressed together, leaning close, shaky hands on each other's faces, teary eyes. a kiss, maybe, or maybe not- the meaning's still the same.

buck, to eddie: nah. we're right on time.

#officially my most unhinged prediction yet but i stand by it! im convinced! if i were a betting woman! etc etc #911 #buddie #evan buckley #eddie diaz #911 spec #911 meta #pilgrimage #i worked so hard on this post if it flops I'll be so sad lol

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antigonewinchester · 2 years

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part 2 of my analysis of the commentary track for 9x16 “Blade Runners.” not under the cut this time since it’s somewhat shorter & isn’t quite as intense as part 1 (linked here).

again, here’s a transcript of the section of the commentary I’m talking about:

BUCKNER: Now a new wrinkle appears, because we’re seeing for the first time a connection between Dean and the First Blade, and it’s really weird for him, he had no idea.  ROSS-LEMMING: I mean it taps into his— It clarifies for him, or it gives him an indication that, he is— his DNA is that of a killer on some level, he’s fundamentally— I mean who knows, even existentially, if he’s that guy before he got the Mark.  BUCKNER: And we’ve played with those scenes before, that Dean has sort of a warrior mentality, and this sort of cements the deal.   SHEPARD: And then we have the parallel between Crowley’s blood addiction and then the possibility of the affect that the Mark, and the blade, are having on Dean.  BUCKNER: Absolutely, it sets all this up.  ROSS-LEMMING: I mean, Dean is always at war with himself in this series. To some degree maybe other people have experienced that, obviously Crowley’s going through an episode of that, but I think through the whole series— Sam had the period where he was soulless, and then he had the drinking blood period, but— I always think Dean is fundamentally not comfortable with who he is, he feels guilty or a shame or responsibility, but he’s always at war with his own nature.  SHEPARD: He always seems to introvert on that as well, he always seems to self reflect rather than put it out there. Sam seems to put it out there a lot more than [Dean]. ROSS-LEMMING: Or Dean goes into these weird— he just goes into denial, he just pushes it to the back burner, [as in] OK, that’s true, but I don’t care. SHEPARD: Which gives Crowley the opportunity to capitalize on that. Of course. ROSS-LEMMING: Because it never goes away, it’s just— lurking somewhere in [Dean’s] psyche, and Crowley can ignite it.

[33:59 - 35:55]

the second big thing is how the writers talk about Dean’s expression of his feelings similarly to the ‘Dean is emotionally repressed’ idea that floats around fandom a lot. I suppose I don’t completely disagree with this characterization, in that Dean can push his feelings down, often because there’s something bigger on the horizon he has to deal with first, but I see that as something different than from being in denial. was Dean really in denial about his grief in s2, his fear in s3, his guilt in s4, his depression in s5 or s7, or did he just not want to talk about it? there’s maybe something to Dean being in denial in s8 (see his thinking Cas must have gotten jumped by a monster instead of having run away in Purgatory, his later false Purgatory memories, & how Dean dealt with Sam and Amelia) but that was from a specific context & trauma and less a part of a larger pattern for him. not that Dean always understands what he’s feeling, but in general, I’d say he has a grasp of what going on, and I see Jensen as playing Dean as emotionally self aware, broadly. also, there’s a difference between denying feelings and not sharing them with others. again, Dean isn’t a perfect communicator, but there are plenty of examples of Dean opening up & articulating pretty well what he’s feeling and why.

I also want to point to a recurring pattern in the show of Dean opening up & sharing his feelings and then being told his feelings are wrong or bad, in one form of another. which is understandable in that being empathetic & listening to someone can be a difficult thing, but it sure does happen to Dean a lot. there’s how both Sam and Bobby react to Dean’s self-loathing in s2 & s3, there’s how early s5 handled Dean’s lack of trust in Sam, there’s the whole running thing in s7 where Dean tries to talk about how bad he feels and Bobby, Frank, etc. who shut him down, there’s Dean being upset with Cas in 8x22 and Sam then telling Dean to go easy on him. (brief detour: what does it mean to “go easy” on someone when they beat you half to death & then left without a real explanation? there’s also an interesting analysis as to why Sam wants Dean to go easy on Cas and how Sam views Dean’s feelings.)

I suppose the occam’s razor is that the show does see Sam’s “putting out his feelings” as the more emotionally mature option, versus Dean’s playing his cards close to his chest. feels quite telling to me that Ross-Lemming describes Dean not talking about what he’s feeling as “weird.” I just fundamentally disagree with that judgement, both on more general terms - you don’t have to talk out your feelings to be aware of them - and more specifically with Dean. considering the recurring pattern of him opening up and then having his feelings minimized, it makes sense he’d be cagier about his emotions after enough of that.

#dean #sam & dean #dean & cas #meta #meta personal #season 9

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makeste · 3 years

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I kinda feel like that last anon, how should i put this...? I know that endeavor is a fictional character but at the same time I can't really put my own experience aside and look at him (or any of the todoroki family actually) like I look at aizawa or even all for one because looking at him is like looking at my own family

sometimes I feel like part of the fandom treat people who really can't stand endeavor and like idiots that don't have enough brain cells to understand his character arc but is not this, is just that when you experienced something really traumatic anything could be a trigger, in my case, my family situation was so similar to the todofam that my little bro had to stop reading the manga even though he liked the world and characters because it was making he remember things that are better forgotten, I know that there's no way that someone can do a story that will not trigger anyone in any aspect but at the same time I wish that, like I can understand the readers that like endeavor and wish the best for him, more people would be more empathetic and understanding of survivors (this last part is not directed at you on any shape or form tho, please don't get the wrong idea, I really think that you're amazing and I love your metas)

see, I totally get that the Endeavor storyline is triggering to some people, and I don’t want to downplay that in any way. I know the common response here is “don’t like, don’t read”, and while I agree that people are ultimately responsible for the media that they consume, and for curating their own fandom experience, at the same time I know it can sometimes feel like getting elbowed out of a space you used to be comfortable in, and having it no longer be welcoming to you, and being told you just have to deal with it. which to be frank does suck, and I understand why people react badly to that.

but on the other hand, what also sucks and can also be triggering to people is being talked over, and having your experiences invalidated, and being told as an abuse survivor that you are in fact an abuse apologist and a bad person. and in particular, the experience of having someone guilt you (for instance by saying things like “you shouldn’t talk about that because it upsets me”) and try to make you feel bad for not agreeing with them is a very familiar one for a lot of emotional abuse survivors, and they don’t deserve to have that trauma dredged up just because they’re trying to enjoy a story. so it goes both ways. those people deserve empathy and understanding as well. they deserve respect just as much as the people on the other end of it. and they have the right to engage with the story how they want, and to post their opinions without being demonized and having people try to control what they can and can’t talk about on their own blogs.

ultimately what I think most of the conflict boils down to is that the BnHA tags are a shared public space, but people sometimes try to treat that space as if it belongs to them, which it doesn’t. it belongs to everyone, and everyone can post whatever they want in it, and they have the right to do so without being harassed. no one person’s experience is more or less valid than another’s, and no one has the right to try to silence someone else, or condescend to them, or police what they’re posting on their own blog (even if that post is also going into the shared tags). the best way to build empathy and understanding is to have actual respectful interactions with other people, even if you don’t always share the same viewpoint. but for people who don’t want to do that, there’s also the block button, and tumblr’s filter options, which are actually pretty great, especially now that they’re not just limited to tags but can filter actual content as well. so it’s possible for someone to make their own personal fandom space safer and more comfortable without necessarily being forced out of it, which is great. you can choose which parts of the community you want to interact with. it’s not a perfect solution, but it’s about as good as it’s going to get.

at the end of the day, the people who hate the Endeavor storyline have to share the fandom with the people who like it, and that’s just how it is. and the only way that works -- well, the only way that it works and doesn’t suck -- is if people are respectful to one another. you can’t force people to only post things you like, just like they can’t do the same to you. like, I’m trying so hard not to end this post with something like “just be fucking nice to each other” as if we were all in kindergarten, lol. but also... yeah. anyways thank you for the ask and for sharing your point of view, anon, because honestly, that’s basically exactly what I’m talking about. you don’t like the Endeavor arc for valid personal reasons, and I do, also for personal reasons (though honestly it doesn’t matter what reasons someone has either way, all of it is valid). and that is completely fine! look at that. I just wish it were always this easy, lol.

#bnha 300 #bnha meta #fandom meta #todoroki enji #endeavor #endeavor meta #bnha #boku no hero academia #bnha spoilers #mha spoilers #bnha manga spoilers #makeste reads bnha #asks #anon asks

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anxiously-going · 3 years

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Leonard is a Starfleet doctor, fresh from the Academy, working at a base in Atlanta when the news about Tarsus breaks. He still hasn’t fully processed the news before he gets word that he’s to be one of the doctors to go on the rescue mission at Pike’s recommendation. And it’s a good thing Pike lives across the country otherwise Len might have actually kicked in Pike’s door to demand just what Pike was thinking recommending him for something like this. He has to settle for ranting and pacing in front of a holo screen instead.

Pike waits patiently for Len to rant himself out before reminding the young doctor that he was the top of his class in all of his psych studies, and everyone he worked under during his residency gave glowing reports about his ability to work with trauma patients. There is no doubt in Pike’s mind that Len is the best doctor for this job. For these patients.

Leonard is on a ship out the next day.

He lands on Tarsus IV fully expecting to be handed a pile of files and cases of patients who had been deemed “worthy” by the former governor.

Instead he gets one.

“No one else can work with him.” He’s told when he asks about it.

So he goes to meet his one and only patient.

He goes ballistic when he finds an emaciated teen strapped down to a hospital bed in a makeshift holding cell. Demanding to know who’s idea it was to use a five point restraint on medically delicate and severely traumatized patient, and when the doctor steps forward Leonard rips them a new one before they can get two words in. (It wasn’t until much later that Len found out that this person was the CMO for the mission and could have feasible had him court martialed.)

Len gets into the room and everyone outside swears it’s nothing short of a miracle that he got the kid out of the restraints without incident.

All Len did was talk to the kid about what he was doing and treat him like he was a person. (He may have also offered to help him press charges against the [REDACTED] that put him in restraints.

Through conversation they find out that they both know Pike and Len does what he can to make sure the kid gets to call him as soon as he can.

The kid’s name is JT, as it turns out. His file says James, but Len wanted to know what the kid- what JT preferred to be called.

It’s not all smooth sailing. JT is still deeply traumatized (Len begins to suspect by more than just recent events) and deeply hurting. But he tolerates Len better than anyone else so Len takes that for a win and does his best by the kid. Taking careful note of his triggers and how to avoid them, snapping at anyone that gets to close without announcing their intentions first, by the end of it all Len has gained something of a shadow and JT a guard dog.

Pike meets them back on earth and is utterly stunned when this kid he’s met maybe half a dozen times, maybe, barrels into him, clinging to him tightly. But he just sighs and wraps his arms around the kid, telling him he’s okay now. He’s safe.

Pike and Len wait and contact JT’s family multiple times, but by the end of the week it doesn’t seem like anyone’s coming. An admiral says something about foster care and JT looks sick when Len jumps in.

“I’ll take him.” There’s no hesitation in his voice. “He can stay with me. I’ll take him.”

Long story short Len gets full custody with minimal fighting from Frank and soon Len and JT are back in Atlanta.

Jocelyn is not at all happy about this “overnight parenthood” business and up and leaves before Len even lands in Georgia. (Eventually she turns up to grab the last of her things and rubs a few snide comments about meeting someone else while he was off planet and get him to sign the official divorce papers.)

And just like that Len is a single dad to a teenaged son.

They both try so hard for each other, but Jim (he starts going by Jim back on Earth as a way of trying to adjust) is still deeply traumatized and scared to share about Tarsus and his life before that and Len…

The more he tries to help Jim the more he realizes his relationship with Jocelyn had been…unhealthy. (It was abuse and if Jim has to call what his uncle did abuse then Len has to call what he went through abuse.)

Pike keeps in touch and when he hears about the struggles Jim is having in school he cuts him a deal. If he can pass the entrance exam to Starfleet Academy he’ll get Jim into classes the next semester.

Len is terrified. Because Jim’s a freaking genius, of course he’s gonna get in! What was Pike thinking?!

Pike was thinking Jim needed something to strive for and now he’s got it.

The problem is that, despite having a good home and a safe place to grow the last few years, Jim still has a lot he’s carrying around. No one knows he’s one of the Nine, no one knows about his uncle, but they all still know who is father was. He still feels like he has a lot to prove.

So on top of getting into the Academy at seventeen, Jim is bound and determined to be out in three years.

He’s going to become the youngest captain Starfleet has ever seen.

Leonard is terrified for him, but he supports him nonetheless. There is no doubt in his mind that Jim is capable, he’s smart, and resourceful, and everything to look for in a good captain. But Jim is his kid. And He supports him, but that doesn’t keep him from worrying.

So about the time Jim is looking to graduate, Len contacts Pike about placement aboard the Enterprise. Pike has already been working on making space for Jim on his ship and it’s easy to make sure Len gets a spot too. (He might be a little smug when he tells Len “You’re my new CMO” because Len is still not a fan of flying.)

But before Jim can finish out his finally year Vulcan is attacked.

Len is set to go up with Pike and Jim is going to be left on Earth.

And he panics.

Jim breaks into one of the med areas and starts digging around for that mud flea vaccine he’s heard Len ranting about having significant side effects and wishing there was a way to get around them.

Then he gives himself a dose of that.

Jim stumbles, literally, into Len as he’s getting ready to board the shuttle and there’s no way he can leave the kid in this condition, but this is a full on all hands on deck emergency, so he does the only thing he can do and he drags the kid aboard with him.

#jim kirk #leonard mccoy #christopher pike #tarsus #star trek au #this got long but it was so much fun to write

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hyperfixatinglove · 2 years

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Kyle for the ask game! 💕💕💕

The last one was bit long already without my Kyle so here's long version for @sunshine-ships

What made me like them

Similarly to Deacon, how relatable he is. Kyle tends to say things anyone would in his situation, but not everyone would go to the lengths he goes to help others, on top of the danger to his own life.

He's also somewhat pacifistic in nature, he only ever kills in self-defense (unless you do every challenge in game, but in main story he does) which is rare in zombie genre as a whole, especially in video games.

Kyle does share this search for danger - if player chooses to do the additional night challenges - but in contrast to say Frank or mentioned Joel, Kyle gets into danger in order to help someone else, often as byproduct of him trying to help in first place.

He's just badass too, but not purely in combat, his strength lies in his agility, how good he is at parkouring and evading the enemy. This sets him apart from other protagonists who usually use just raw power to cut through anything (like Joel, Lee, Frank etc) and it's refreshing to see and as much as I love a strong man as romantic partner, there is certain allure to a man who relies on other kind of skill and talking to do the job.

His voice is so soothing, I just instantly trust guys who's voices I like, I'm sorry.

Also he's cute.

There's so many reasons I love him & what made me like him but some I've already discussed in detail many times or shown, like his interactions with children.

-My favorite thing about them

His compassion.

It's the force that drives him forward, this need to help anyone he can in any way that he can.

I know I put emphasis on the fact he's legend in Harran, but for me, the legendary thing about him is his compassion. Rarely a zombie genre protagonist is this close to outright saint, as close as you can get with this. I'd argue he is the closest to a saint you can be in the setting without dying. But even saints have limits, he's no pushover.

-Nicknames we have for each other

Kyle calls me ace. Because I like it and it validates me and he would say it. It sounds so Kyle thing to call someone he adores as such.

I call him braveheart, loverboy or Kyley if I want to tease him. The last one is rare for me to use and it's relatively new.

-A headcanon of our relationship

I think we'd have this calm and steady relationship, sort of like a haven in midst of chaos we live in, a resemblance of normalcy.

We aren't that disgustingly sappy, affectionate couple but you can tell we completely adore one another from the way we put each other first, through the looks we give and the vibe we just radiate.

Many of my ships involve some aspect of saving the other from pain or trauma or outright worship of another, putting them on pedestal. This ship of mine lacks that aspect and in my own opinion is one of the most grounded ones I have. We might start as emotional support to each other, reeling dangerously close to living emotional clutch, especially for me,but in the end I think we're one of the most stable couples my mind has conjured. We share same ideals, similar morals.

Kyle with me is just one of my favorites. Even if I don't talk about Kyle as much as say, Frankie or Blazkowicz.

-My favorite image of them

This purely because I get to see him in 3rd view glory in almost full-body shot. Whoever made this & how has my eternal thanks.

This is just chef kiss worthy of a photo also I don't think he even has this outfit but he looks so good in that orange. There he also goes being strategist.

This promo/official picture of him my beloved. I guess it's the stance he has or it's like one of only official pictures there is of him from the front this clearly, as others are usually from the back or incredibly far away to focus or has multiples of him because co-op.

Lastly this one. I love the angle this is shot from, like the viewer is looking him bit upwards. The stance and outfit are immaculate (though the outfit in game is missing the scarf around his mouth).

-Anything else!

I'll spite canon if Dying Light 2 does canonize his fate in anyway I don't like.

I tend to forget he's bitten even when the story does have some far apart reminders. In my canon he just isn't lol, it's too much hassle to guess whenever or not a kiss could turn you into a viral in Dying Light.

#hearts of gold #letters of love #sunny and jaska my mvps

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cauldronofmorning · 4 years

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Okay so.... I've encountered your tags about "the talking scene between trapper and hawk in dr pierce and dr hyde the stuttering the grabbing the not blinking how another of hawk's coping methods has bitten the dust#trapper being soft parental but annoyed and how he needs to check out while hawkeye needs to save the entire world"... if you have time, Go off! I would love that 2000 word essay and your opinions.

It’s a bit of a mess and would probably get a C- if I handed it in, but! Dr Pierce and Dr Hyde and how it shows the difference between Hawkeye’s and Trapper’s coping methods.

Context! Alan Alda wrote the episode, mental health is important to him (not to psychoanalyze an actor, but he had depression before the show and his mom was schizophrenic) and there’s a quote on how Hawkeye didn’t actually change much in the eleven years, just had his coping methods beaten down.

So throughout season one, Hawkeye and Trapper have mostly been ignoring the trauma of a war. Hawkeye naturally ended a movie with a speech about propaganda (Yankee Doodle Doctor) and Tommy tells them (Sometimes You Hear The Bullet) about a kid who should have been the blonde hero in a war movie actually dying and not hearing a bullet, forcing them to actually quietly think about it. But for the most part, they can distract themselves with booze, pranks and women, and Hawkeye can still draw a straight line between his tenuous sanity pre-war and the place he’s in.

There’s also two important episodes in season two before Dr Pierce and Dr Hyde, that make the war more personal for both of them. The first is Radar’s Report, where a scared prisoner contaminates Trapper’s patient by knocking the blood over. Trapper’s sulkier throughout the episode, obsessed with how it could have been okay if it weren’t for that incident, and less indulging of Hawkeye’s girl of the week problem. His patient doesn’t make it, and he makes a beeline to the POW’s tent, maybe would have killed him if Hawkeye hadn’t bought him back to reality. “That’s not what we’re about.”

The second is For The Good Of The Outfit. This one has a village bombed by American military and Hawkeye/Trapper run afoul of previously decent sounding generals trying to shut them up from talking about it, including passive aggressive threats to send them to the front, and specifically to Hawkeye, intercepting letters to his dad. It’s okay by the end of the episode, but he’s still livid when he finds this out.

In comes Dr Pierce and Dr Hyde. The episode starts with Hawkeye already slightly dissociated from a long shift, thinking it hasn’t ended, and Trapper having to gently take him by the arm and guiding him out of the OR, telling him he was taking the chest cases “like he was their only hope”. Hawkeye wanting to save everyone keeps popping up throughout the episode; here, when he’s stumbling into Henry and his ego filtered through deprivation making him think he’s the only one who can do chest cases, the scene I’m getting to, and the end where Trapper and Henry sum him up.

As much as Trapper is “let’s get drunk to deal, okay?” kind of comfort in comparison to BJ who can actually talk about emotions, if not necessarily knowing the best way to deal with them (Hawkeye has a type and it’s repressed blondes), he’s soft with Hawkeye – gentle touches, firmly telling him to go to sleep, indulging that chopper noise is just thunder – until he figures the best way to get his friend to rest is to sedate him behind his back.

The thing with Trapper is that while he might be a bad husband, cheating on his wife with no shame (but he keeps bringing up that Hawkeye is more perverted so that might make it easier for him to deal with, see the couple of times he glares at Hawk for flirting with Henry/a male patient, Divided We Stand, The Trial Of Henry Blake, Check Up, Life With Father, Adam’s Ribs), he’s a good father who ran into a minefield for Kim and tried to go AWOL for Cathy and Becky. That’s not to say he always treats Hawkeye like a child, that would be weird considering how much flirting they do, but when the other man is manic or badly affected, Trapper’s first instinct is to be parental.

After Hawkeye in his doubletalky way admits to Radar he’s compulsive and psychotic (sidenote: his symptoms of strong emotions, not being able to think clearly and too many spirals to name actually bear that diagnosis out, instead of just using the word when one thinks another is behaving badly), he wanders around the camp like a ghost, making notes about corpsmen with guns and nurses checking patients in post-op.

As Hawkeye often does, whenever he finds something out, or thinks he has in this instance, he has to tell his live-in boyfriend of the season immediately, and if he can’t sleep then neither can anyone else. He sits on Trapper’s bed, extremely close and not blinking, and jostles him awake. Already Trapper’s slightly panicky, as no matter what he says about being the mellow one, any time there’s shouting or loud noise in the swamp, he always wakes up with a start. Even when he sees it’s Hawkeye it takes him a few seconds to process and get back into his role.

Hawkeye’s very sad and very quiet. For the past seven minutes, even though he’s dissociated, exhausted and not doing well, he’s still trying to do his normal thing of turning his anger sideways and being snarky or being a clown bottom for the gaggle of nurses. Going back to one of Trapper’s good qualities is that he’s a decent parent, Hawkeye can regress emotionally into being like a ten year old (incidentally, the age when he had the most trauma pre-Korea, with Billy, his mom dying, guilt over not wanting dad to remarry and at some point losing his virginity), both for funny like in Picture This and for sadness.

So he’s finally noticed that he’s in a war zone and he’s too tired to make jokes about it or distract himself from it. Trapper already sounds frustrated but still listens, telling him to go bed before he drives himself crazy. There’s been a few takes that Trapper would get sick of later Hawkeye, and given how much they really can’t talk to each other that often, even just a mention of Hawkeye’s will when he has to go to the front makes Trapper shut down and Hawkeye cover with a joke, that’s probably true. They’re both messes, but for now Trapper can give Hawkeye someone to lean on.

“If I thought I could stop it just by going to sleep, don’t you think I would try?” Hawkeye does a twitch of the head, still unblinking, and that’s just really asking Trapper to understand and take him seriously. Also the wording, he’s not saying he can stop thinking about it just by going to sleep, or stop feeling anything just by closing his eyes, although both of those are implied. He makes it very clear later on (Letters, Preventive Medicine, Blood Brothers) that he feels like he’s as bad as the war – god and martyr complex combined – and if he can’t fight against/blame everything on that then it’s time for some self loathing.

Trapper does actually pay attention and gives him some advice. Definitely not great advice, but advice nonetheless, to close his eyes when things get unbearable, and to keep checking out when it keeps happening. This can’t work for Hawkeye, who’s had a guilt complex ever since he was a child, but it’s how Trapper copes. The next episode when Kim’s mother turns up for the boy, after a time of being actually open, he goes right to dismissive snark. Plus in season three’s Mad Dogs and Servicemen, another one on how differently Trapper and Hawkeye deal with things, he shrugs that he pretends he’s not there all day along.

Hawkeye’s stuttering a bit at this point. Words are important to him, it’s why you should probably leave him a note even if you’re a man who 1) wants to forget about Korea as soon as he arrives in Boston but won’t 2) wants desperately to believe he’s straight but isn’t 3) cares through physical touch and can’t think of what to say for seventy two hours. Wordplay is important to him too, and he admits to Sidney in the finale that his brain thinks too fast. Obviously exhaustion is going to put his brain and mouth out of sync, and considering how he sounds like he’s going to cry in the mess tent when he can’t even get words out to Frank Burns, it makes him all that more helpless.

“Somebody, and it wasn’t you or me, started this war.” It’s the “whoever the them, we were always us” of it all. It’ll be more important in the third season, and what happens in Welcome To Korea, but Hawkeye has taken it for granted that he and Trapper will stay co-dependent no matter what happens or who they come up against or how their time is running out. Much how he probably didn’t tell Trapper about the abandonment trauma he’s suffered before, Trapper always reassures him to come back soon, or no charge for leaning on him, or it isn’t a Christmas goodbye, and doesn’t want to share real feelings.

Beyond that scene, with Hawkeye dragging himself off to be a hero, assume that everyone who tries to take care of him really just wants to sleep with him, and cry while singing, Trapper tries to sedate him while he’s not looking. He’s tried being parental, he’s tried the repression advice, it’s time to be passive aggressive for Hawkeye’s own good. Or what he thinks is Hawkeye’s own good. It’s not especially great on Trapper’s part, but a similar thing happens reversed in Mail Call, where a drunk Trapper tries to go AWOL and as soon as he’s distracted laughing at Frank, Hawkeye locks his bag away so Trapper won’t be tempted again. Both of them are repressed messes who can’t really talk to each other.

When that sedation attempt ends up in Frank falling over, Trapper goes to Henry to be the worried macho boyfriend. Like with the only comedic dancing allowed and not the time in Officers Only when a genuine offer gets turned down, being protective over Hawkeye where he can hear can only happen when it’s for fun/likely no real danger.

At the end, Trapper and Henry sit by Hawkeye’s bed when he’s finally asleep and talk about him. Kindly, but they know he’s unstable with a hero complex. Like Mulcahy said in season eleven, the camp has a lot of experience with not dealing with reality, and even Trapper says in Iron Guts Kelly that one man’s reality is another man’s fantasy. Nobody has the capability to talk about this yet, and Sidney and Hawkeye only really become friends in O.R. Hawkeye will wake up and he and Trapper will pretend this never happened.

When Adam’s Ribs comes around, and Hawkeye has a manic episode over needing to eat something that isn’t liver or fish, Trapper and Henry are again the ones looking after him, comparing him to their kids and Trapper in the background both snarking over Hawkeye’s slippage in sanity and looking out for him. It’s not as quite high stakes as Dr Pierce and Dr Hyde, but they’re still worried about him.

To end this out, Trapper and Hawkeye and mental health is a fun thing to look at. Neither of them are particularly emotionally intelligent yet, Hawkeye just kind of a self absorbed mess and Trapper finding it easier to be a reassuring rock and keep his own struggling to himself, and they keep things from each other while also taking past each other, but they comfort each other with jokes and distractions that only they can understand. The repressed clowns are trying, even if it does all end with a borrowed kiss and only just barely missing each other.

#hawkeye pierce #trapper john mcintyre #mental health tw #dr pierce and dr hyde #mash #piercintyre #gene-ious

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dreamylyfe-x · 3 years

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what is your unpopular 11.06 opinion we want to hear more 😎

Ahhhh. I really don’t know how this one is going to go over. Part of the problem in conveying it is that I know my reaction is deeply rooted in my own childhood. Which was not standard. And the people who disagree with me might have their own non-standard childhoods which feed their opinion. So no one’s not valid, but... I haven’t seen anyone say this, so here goes.

Regarding this exchange in 11x06:

Mickey: Well, Frank wasn’t a homophobic psychopath who tortured you for years.

Ian: No, he’s just an emotionally abusive alcoholic who stole my money for drugs, broke my nose, tried to profit off my mania...

Mickey: I guess we both had shit dads. Let’s get the fuck out of here.

I’ve seen people say Ian shouldn’t have said this -- like very angry that he did -- because Frank doesn’t compare to Terry and I guess it minimizes Mickey’s experience for him to point out the ways that Frank sucks. And the pushback I’ve seen is that Ian can absolutely say that because Frank and Terry both suck.

I get that. But I also don’t think that's what Ian is doing and I don’t think that’s how Mickey hears it.

I think I need something like the Vicky Mendoza Diagonal to explain what I mean here, so for that sake and that sake only -- let’s say there are only two kinds of families. There are families where the parenting is acceptable-to-great, and then there are families where the parenting is poor-to-terrible. Basically you have your “authorities won’t get involved” families and your “authorities SHOULD get involved” families. Ian and Mickey are both in Group B.

But. Everyone who watches the show knows this. What has stuck out for me about the conversation about this particular exchange is that I haven’t seen much talk about how profoundly alienating can be to be from Group B. First you have the fun stuff that accompanies a traumatic childhood: instability, anxiety, depression, PTSD, complex PTSD, compromised coping strategies, a lack of support, a general uncertainty about what is and isn’t “normal” for most people... the list goes on.

But you ALSO have to deal with how Group A interacts with your more public trauma. And, armed with that information, the way they act can be bizarre. And I realize I’m getting personal here, but I feel like if you DON’T have a publicly known trauma you might honestly never experience having people say things to you like “You help me remember how lucky I am.”

(I have honestly heard that so many times. I truly do not know why people say this to me. It is not helpful. I am not helping them remember that they are lucky on purpose. I am just having weird/bad things happen to me within their view.)

So. Here is Mickey have a very emotional moment on the street in front of the house and three whole Gallaghers. The one with tact and a Terry-Milkovich-fathered-ex ducks behind the ambulance to give Mickey some privacy. And Ian, his husband, reaches out. He touches his shoulder and Mickey is like iron. He asks him if he’s ok and Mickey doesn’t tell him to fuck off. Instead Mickey, who never talks about this father, says it’s “weird” to see Terry like that. And then lists various acts of revenge he could visit on Terry while nearly vibrating with suppressed emotion. There’s a lot of anger, but there’s something else there, too. It could be a lot of things. I read grief. There is some kind of loss for Mickey in what’s happened to Terry. Not because of anything Terry ever gave him -- maybe because of things Terry never gave him that now definitively never will -- but whatever it is, Mickey’s feelings surrounding Terry in that moment are complicated.

And who is going to understand those feelings? Or help Mickey make sense of them? None of these other Milkoviches are Terry’s son. Mickey is the only person from that immediate family left in Southside. He is really going through this moment alone.

But. He has Ian. Who knows more than almost anyone what Terry is like. Who has witnessed some of the worst things Terry has done. Who knows Mickey doesn’t like to talk about his father and respects it. And who, in this moment, validates Mickey’s grief -- the far less comprehensible emotion to Mickey -- over his anger. And then, when Mickey pushes back with the reason he has to be angry at Terry in a way that isolates himself from Ian, Ian responds by pointing out what they have in common. Terry’s worse, but they both are from the Brotherhood of Men With Bad Dads. Ian doesn’t share Mickey’s trauma but he knows the shape of it. He knows how to interact with Mickey about it better than anyone. Ian understand insecurity and scarcity and violence in the home, and in that moment Mickey understanding what he and Ian share is more important than focusing on what no one can share with Mickey.

Not everyone is going to feel that way in Mickey’s shoes. But we have pretty heavy indications that this is how Mickey feels, because of how the rest of the episode unfolds. Mickey never loses it with Ian. Ian lets Mickey decide what they are going to do, and only intervenes -- gently -- when he thinks Mickey is going to suffer for his actions. This provides the space where Mickey gets to work through his feelings -- mostly silently -- and eventually make his choice about how he’s going to deal with it.

There is our trauma, and there is our shame about our trauma and then there is the weight of people who will judge both those things with no real context for them. Those three things together are exhausting. In that moment, I think there was real value for Mickey in having his experience normalized just that little bit. Just that whatever else he was dealing with in that moment, he was not standing next to someone who didn’t understand hating your father. I think Mickey wants this to be a thing he and Ian have in common. It’s part of why they can belong to each other so totally. Ian isn’t here to tell Mickey what makes him a freak. He’s here to give him space to feel however he needs to feel. And I truly do get why people don’t see that moment that way. I do. But I see more value for Mickey in what Ian did rather than what he didn’t do.

#asks #that was long #but thank you so much for asking #if anyone is concerned #I do not have a Frank or a Terry in my life #but my family has never been great at keeping our baggage off the front lawn #and I value the people in my life who aren't that precious about it a lot #tw: child abuse

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ziracona · 3 years

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reading the chimeric horde cosmetics descriptions, i can’t help but imagine talbot wrote julie off as ‘incapable of communication’ , when in reality she was just super pissed (and in pain. and disoriented.) and Didnt Really Feel Like Answering. do u have any headcannons on how they function (or at least try to handle being That)

Sorry I’m answering this so late. There’s not a proper term for how much last week handed me not my ass but my biological system as a whole.

This is a super interesting question though!

I think it’s possible Julie, Joey, and/or Susie can still talk, although god knows how their biological body is comprised now and where vocal chords ended up--or even if Frank, who got least mutated, still has his. It’s interesting, initially when I saw this skin, it made me think I was wrong about my interpretation of Legion (which is that all four share a ‘body’, kind of. As in they have one form, but like a shape shifter can swap between any of their four. Although their consciousness goes with their own body--kind of like the initial release picture for Darkness Among Us implies, with the reflections? With all of them being present as individuals with autonomy /internally/, and able to communicate with each other even when they don’t have the body, but like, only one at a time being able to actually visibly exist and speak in a way someone in the room with them could hear), but looking at it again now, it actually reinforces it in my heart. Because of the way they’re melded together. It’s like a scientific conservation of mass law thing--their body is roughly the size it has always been as Frank. Whereas, if, say, four autonomous bodies were meshed together, you’d get a big flesh pile much larger. There’s just no other way, without actively destroying matter, for that combination to go, speaking to laws of basic physics. So how they look makes a lot more sense for them being basically forced to lose control of how they transform/being able to do it, and into a distorted form that is agonizing where parts of them all exist at once, but only one has control, and they can no longer shift. That actually makes the description of Joey trying to cut himself free make sense more to me too, and him losing control to Frank’s arm. Totally canon might go the other way, but I like that, and it’s what makes sense to me!

For my personal headcanons, I do have them! I think Frank can talk normally, although he’s in immense pain, so like, with that added difficulty, but his throat is fine. I think the other three can make sounds, but would struggle to form actual words. Probably could if they tried really hard, especially Julie, but it would probably be a really pitiful and broken, “..P..lea..se. ..H...el..p” or whimpering sounds or, “No,” “..S..top,” or “Frank,” that kind of stuff. I think All of them including Frank hate it and are in misery. Frank definitely ended up the dominant/in control of the four, but I don’t think he did it in a ‘fuck you I’m not losing’ way to the other four at all. The Legion care about each other, whatever their many other faults, and I’ve always HC’d Frank feels responsible for his group even when they’re pissing him off, and would not try to do anything to hurt them/works to protect them.

I think what Talbot did to them fucked them up and their powers up horrifically, and that they can still talk mentally to each other okay, but that they can’t at first. That a lot of wires got crossed and damage taken, and for a while, Frank just can’t hear them at all no matter how much he pleads or looks for them or tries to listen, and he’s terrified it’s always going to be that way. And then after a few days, Julie struggles her way into connecting to him mentally again and he’s so relieved he breaks down. Joey and Susie figure it out after a little too, Susie last, and pitifully brokenly. I think they all have intense PTSD from this and are both terrified and broken, and furious with Talbot and want to kill him, and before that, to force him to fix them. They cope with being in agony and their trauma by formulating a plan and promising each other they’ll find a way to undo this. Probably they call to the Entity for help too, but I don’t think it helps them. I HC that after making him a killer, the Entity sends other killers to Talbot for punishment sometimes, and that’s probably what happens to Legion. They have the belief it won’t leave them like this forever as a kind of light at the end of the tunnel, but they’re not planning on waiting either.

All of them are in incredible pain constantly, and miserable. Frank tries to keep them calm by convincing them of ways they can make Talbot fix them. It’s kind of the only thing getting them to be able to cope. They can’t stand to look at themselves, so after looking in a mirror once to try to understand the damage, Frank completely avoids looking at any reflective surface, and if he ever does on accident, it fucks him up. I mean, pain aside, the level of horrific bodyhorror all four of them have undergone is enough to put a crack in anyone’s brain, to say the least. I think Frank works really hard to support and comfort the other three constantly outside trials, since while he’s not remotely in a good place, he’s in a better one than they are, and feels responsible. The other three need and depend on that. Joey copes by completely believing Frank’s promises and trying to help, Susie tries to just shut down and go to sleep as much as she can and not be there, and Julie copes by dissociating as much as humanly possible from what happens. Frank I guess copes with the mom-friend/fuck we’re in a crisis I literally can’t fail override. But he’s not doing very well at all.

When they’re in trials, Frank tries to play their appearance off as scary and threatening, and seem not remotely worried. This mostly works, because you know, the survivors are a bunch of traumatized and abused murder on repeat victims. But one time in a trial he’s chasing someone and knocks into them to throw them on the ground, and their medkit flies open, and he’s suddenly looking down on a reflective surface, seeing himself, grafted faces of his friends in agony trapped inside him on his chest, Julie’s hair hanging by his neck, his own eyes and mouth pouring orange puss. And he knows he has no idea how to fix it or if he ever will and just has something inside him snap and falls to his knees totally out of it for a second, finally overwhelmed by too much he’s been trying to carry alone. And it’s been long enough that Jeff’s figured out who the four of them are, and tried and failed to reach out to them before, but he sees that. Maybe he’s the person on the ground, maybe he’s coming to help them. But he sees it and instead of being smart and jumping Frank in the moment of opportunity, because he’s Jeff he tries to talk to him. And because he’s finally so broken he can’t take it and it’s the only person in the entirety of what he has left of a world that Frank trusts even the tiniest bit, he doesn’t stab him. He just breaks down.

#I feel like I could turn this into a ficlet idea hmmmmm #ask #Anonymous #dead by daylight #the legion #Frank Morrison #Joey Harmin #Susie Taylor #Julie Strand #headcanons #Jeff Johansen

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nblenasabrewing · 4 years

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Does Lena have PTSD?

This excellent post from @drummergirl231-2 goes into a detailed analysis about Della and the examples showing possible PTSD. I, being who I am, wanted to look at the same for Lena. Full credit goes to them for the idea and format!

According to the DSM-5, in order for a person to be diagnosed with PTSD, they must have a certain number of symptoms from eight categories: Criteria A through H.

For a diagnosis of PTSD, someone needs: to meet Criterion A to have at least 1 symptom from Criterion B to have at least 1 symptom from Criterion C to have at least 2 symptoms from Criterion D to have at least 2 Symptoms from Criterion E to meet Criteria F, G, and H

DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional. I do NOT have a degree in anything related to psychology and simply enjoy dissecting the layers of a fictional character. If you feel you fit any of the criteria, please see a professional for a real diagnosis. This isn’t something that can be easily self-diagnosed, and a professional diagnosis would open you to more opportunities for help.

Lena does and doesn’t fit the criteria in general for PTSD. She’s certainly suffered from traumatic events, but the event is more... her entire life. She’s a classic child abuse victim, which makes her more of a candidate for C-PTSD.

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD; also known as complex trauma disorder) is a psychological disorder that can develop in response to prolonged, repeated experience of interpersonal trauma in a context in which the individual has little or no chance of escape. Being stuck with Magica for fifteen years absolutely contributes to Lena’s current issues. C-PTSD and PTSD share similarities, there are a distinct differences - mainly that PTSD focuses on one event and the effect it has on a person long term, while C-PTSD focuses on years of repeated trauma. However, there’s no approved criterion yet for C-PTSD. So I’m using the PTSD criterion with some added explanation where C-PTSD would be applicable.

Criterion A: The traumatic event

A person must be exposed to one or more events involving threatened or actual death, threatened or actual serious injury, or threatened or actual sexual violation in one of the following ways:

Direct involvement

Witnessing the event happen to someone else

Hearing about it happen to a loved one

Repeatedly hearing details about traumatic events, such as police officers repeatedly hearing stories of abuse

The obvious example here: Lena effectively died. Twice. Following that, she was trapped in a realm where she couldn’t be seen or heard by anyone and she couldn’t touch anything for six months (give or take). Her first interaction with anything since she had been trapped there was smacking the Boggle case in Friendship Hates Magic! And even she’s surprised by that.

In addition, she spent fifteen years with Magica in her shadow, who effectively acted as an abusive parental figure. She’s proven to be an expert in gaslighting, and knows exactly how to manipulate Lena - by hanging the promise of freedom over her head and reminding her repeatedly that people will think she’s a monster if they find out the truth about her.

Criterion B: Intrusive Symptoms

Expected or unexpected reoccurring, involuntary, and intrusive upsetting memories

Repeated nightmares related to the traumatic event

Some form of dissociation, such as flashbacks, where the individual truly feels the traumatic event is happening again

Strong emotional distress when exposed to internal or external triggers associated with the traumatic event

Strong bodily reactions (such as rapid heart rate) when exposed to reminders of the traumatic event.

Nightmares: While we can’t say for absolute sure that Lena has nightmares outside of Magica’s influence via the helmet in NOKH, the fact that no one is surprised by her nightmares does seem to imply that’s she probably had more than she’s letting on. Lena’s biggest fear is turning into Magica, after all - it’s no surprise she would have dreams along that line.

Emotional distress, strong bodily reactions: These really come out in Violet’s library, when Lena gets overwhelmed and tries to hide. The fish-eye view of everyone trying to talk to her while she sees Magica over their shoulders was most likely meant to imply she was having at least the start of a panic attack.

In addition, her reaction to Webby calling her (looking like Magica) a monster was pretty extreme. Again, the dream world setting makes things a bit wobbly, but given everything we know about Lena up to this point, and the fact that she yelled at Magica for saying they’re both monsters, it feels safe to assume she’d be angry and upset and scared if anyone ever called her a monster (again, something Magica constantly used against her.)

Criterion C: Avoidance

An individual with PTSD will frequently avoid reminders of the traumatic event in one of the following ways:

Avoiding thoughts, feelings, or physical sensations that trigger memories of the traumatic event

Avoiding people, places, conversations, activities, objects, or situations that bring up memories of the traumatic event

Whether the nightmares were caused by Magica or not, their effect on Lena is real and pretty easy to see. She sets up an entire sleepover just so the kids can help keep her awake. Avoiding sleep to avoid nightmares is pretty extreme.

She also continues to keep secrets from everyone despite Webby’s constant reassurances that they all care about her and don’t think she’s anything like Magica, because the alternative is having to talk about it or worse, have her fears confirmed.

Criterion D: Negative changes in thoughts and mood

The inability to remember important details of the traumatic event

Persistent and elevated negative thoughts about oneself, others, or the world

Exaggerated self-blame or blame of others for the cause or consequence of the traumatic event

Pervasive negative emotional state (anger, fear, shame, etc.)

Loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities

Feeling isolated or detached from others

Difficulty experiencing positive emotions

Lena’s opinion of herself seems to be pretty low. We only get one episode to really see it, but her fear of turning into Magica and active attempts to avoid such an outcome definitely make it seem like she still considers herself “evil”, and is trying to make up for it. She also readily gives in and says, “I am her”, essentially giving up on herself.

The dream adventures also excellently illustrate how Lena feels “Othered” from everyone else - they get butterfly wings, she gets weird monster wings. She falls behind at Dewey High and is separated from the others. She’s the only one in Louie’s dream, aside from Louie himself, to experience any sort of physical change. Even when she tries to be happy with them, she can’t keep up the facade.

And before all of this there’s the classic example of her being jealous of Violet (under the guise of protecting Webby from being tricked again). She immediately assumes the worst of Violet and follows Webby around telling her not to trust Violet.

Criterion E: Alterations in reactivity that started or worsened after the traumatic event

Irritability or aggressive behavior

Impulsive or self-destructive behavior

Hypervigilance (feeling constantly on-guard, or like danger is lurking around every corner)

Heightened startle response

Problems with concentration

Sleep disturbances, such as difficulty falling or staying asleep, or restless sleep

Lena’s personality in season one was mostly that of the sarcastic, irritating cool teenager who can’t be bothered. Under that, she was an unwilling slave to Magica, and while she did show irritable tendencies toward her, those can be forgiven as “Magica is terrible and provokes her.”

Season two, on the other hand, shows us a much different teenager - one who snaps easily and seems constantly frustrated by her own perceived shortcomings. Those emotions, of course, come out on the other kids (i.e. snapping at Huey and Violet). And while all of that can be attributed to her inability to sleep, which is being driven by Magica, Frank’s already said this isn’t the last we’ll see of Lena’s emotoinal growth and negative feelings.

Criterion F: The above symptoms must last for more than one month.

Obviously time is relative in Ducktales. Given everything that was going on around them, we can assume she’s been home for around a month-ish. Donald left for a month-long cruise two episodes before Lena came back, and everything after that has to have taken place within that month or it would have been way too obvious something was up. And again, Frank has said this is going to come up again. But even while she was still in the Shadow Realm, she was showing signs of trauma.

Criterion G: Distress from symptoms significantly impairs the individual’s ability to function in multiple areas of life (social, occupational, etc.).

While we haven’t seen much of Lena’s daily life, we do know a few things - before returning, she was living in Webby’s shadow, presumably following her around and getting comfortable in her shadow-y life. Violet throws a complete monkey wrench into that comfortable life, and Lena reacts... poorly, to say the least. She initially refuses to take responsibility for the tulpas feeding off her own negative feelings, continuing to project all the reasons she hates herself onto Violet (”She’s a spy, she’s a second-rate me,” etc.).

In NoKH we see that the triplets aren’t quite used to the fun, happy persona Lena tries to project, which immediately gets a frustrated yell and fire flaring up. She’s so worried about trying to be Good that her anxiety bubbles over into her life. She’s also constantly keeping secrets, something that is, unfortunately, normal for her, but not normal overall.

Criterion H: The symptoms are not due to substance abuse, medication side-effects, or another condition.

So the real issue comes in here - while there’s no medication or substance abuse, there is an outside force. Most of what we see of Lena’s symptoms are due to increasing sleep deprivation via Magica’s brainwave helmet. By the time NoKH starts she’s already gone at least several days without sleep, and it’s obvious the dreams are deeply affecting to her, to a point where she arranges an entire sleepover with her friends just to keep from going to sleep. There’s no way to know what she was dreaming about (although I have a few theories), but it almost certainly involved Magica, the main cause of her trauma. And we see how understandably upset she gets when she’s finally face to face with Magica.

In conclusion:

Lena is a complicated character with a lot of different factors playing into who she is, but there’s little doubt that after fifteen years of emotional/psychological abuse, two deaths, and six months trapped in what could almost be summarized as an isolation chamber, that Lena has some serious trauma. And while Magica influenced a lot of NOKH, it should also be noted that Magica, as her abuser, most likely acts as her trigger now. She spends the entire dream sequence running away from Magica, terrified to confront her. And while she has an amazing, empowering moment at the end of the episode, I’m sure this is going to come back up again.

(***All GIFs by me)

#Ducktales #Ducktales 2017 #Lena de Spell #Lena le Strange #long post #Sam's Meta #So much went into this #including making those GIFs #I've been working on this for..... several weeks dear god #please show it some love

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crushing-on-nico-di-angelo · 3 years

Text

Would I get along with these characters in real life

I’ve seen at least 8 people do this now so ( @best-ofpjo started this I believe) I wanted to join in! I’m treating it as though we all go to the same school because I have exactly 2 friends outside of school, and both of them are online. I’m also going off just personality and not their already existing friendships

Percy: Honestly? Percy is the kind of guy I would admire from afar but also hate because he doesn’t have the best reputation ever. I would be so scared of him. However, my girlfriend and I would definitely talk about how he’s handsome/hot. He would probably beat someone up and that would make me avoid him forever until he asks me what I got on the math quiz, to which I respond a lower score than I actually got because I know he doesn’t do well (the teachers constantly call him out on it).

Annabeth: Yes and no. Annabeth reminds me of a girl that currently goes to my school, and she’s smart and strong and my main competition in school. I like her for her brain and I admire her so much, but I wouldn’t like her because she’s competition and I know that one day we’ll be competing for valedictorian. We would both be in NHS and track and field (and she would be better than me in track) but she would somehow also be in StuCo and Debate and a million other things. All in all we’d be friendly and share homework answers, but I’d resent her for doing more than me.

Grover: He would be friends with someone who my friends is friends with. We would sit at lunch together but not really talk, however I would comment on all of his instagram posts and send him memes every now and then. He would definitely have a 70s aesthetic so we’d share fashion tips even though I’m punk on account of us both having alternative senses of style. He would be super cool tbh.

Jason: Definitely yes. He and I would be great friends and while we wouldn’t exactly be best-best friends he would be invited to my birthday parties no matter how small the guest list is. Jason would be at about my level of motivation for academics and would understand when I get sad randomly or break down. He wouldn’t completely understand and sometimes try to guilt me into doing things for my mental health, but he means everything he does with love. All things said, I’d love him so much and would value our friendship

Piper: Honestly probably not. She would be in like every single sport (she just has that personality) which is fine but she’d get along with all the popular jocks and we just wouldn’t vibe together. I consider myself a friendly person, so it isn’t like I would be mean to her or anything like that, and we would talk when we had track practice together, but we wouldn’t be friends really

Leo: Yes definitely. He is just my friend type and he would be in my friendgroup for sure. He would smoke weed though, starting in like 7th grade, which is fine but would be a shock to my current friendgroup. He would be funny and we would bond over sad and happy shit, as well as memes and tik toks.

Frank: Sweetest mf in the whole school, but I wouldn’t be too close to him. One summer of highschool he’d leave looking bigger but come back all buff and I would see his tik toks suddenly get like 46k likes on average. (Also, unrelated, imagine frank doing the rasputin challenge? wow) He and I would be cool though.

Hazel: Nah, she isn’t my vibe. Huge horse girl and she would always have jewelry that I would think she’s a rich girl, even if she isn’t. She would be very very sweet though and we would be friendly, just not friends.

Nico: We would be exes. Like seriously, the two people I’ve been with in my life have been Nico di Angelo. But we would be friendly and tbh he would have probably been my first love, so he’ll always be a big part of my heart. Art kid, automatically meaning I’d get along with him. Same taste in music probably. He would be a depressed kid so he and I would get along well (I’m not depressed but for some reason the people who know me best/I know best have diagnosed depression). (Also if you think I’m bringing up trauma/mental illness too much, I’m not. All of my friends and I have them because it makes it easier to get along with people who understand you.) Anyway he’d be my love that I couldn’t love forever and we’d be very very close friends to this day

#long post #sorry for how long it is #i'm mentally ill if you couldnt tell #pjo #hoo #percy jackson #nico di angelo #frank zhang #hazel levesque #leo valdez #piper mclean #jason grace #grover underwood #percy jackson and the olympians #heroes of olympus

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alchemabotana · 3 years

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Shamanic Identity

Today I’m taking the time to write this post about something so personal and dear to my heart: Shamanic Identity.

You’ve probably seen it too: people with no right to the word Shaman using it liberally to describe the work they do. I’ve written several other posts about shamanism, its history, and my personal practice here on this blog, but that’s not exactly what I’m writing about today.

The word “appropriation” doesn’t begin to cover this topic, although it is a word that applies to the concepts I’m addressing. The concept of Shamanic Identity is actually not a complicated one at all: a Shaman is an intermediary between the Spirit World and the Physical World, between the multiverse and dimensional realities that are unseen and the seen world. These people do so by simply existing and taking up space. There are Shamanic Practices, Shamanic Techniques, Shamanic Ceremonies, and Shamanic Rituals, but that’s NOT Shamanic Identity. These things are simply words and labels we’ve developed as Shamans to describe categories of actions that we take in the world, not our Identity.

For example, if I stopped offering healings, making medicine pieces or altars, performing rituals or ceremonies... I would still be a Shaman, because that’s who I was born to be. I know Shamans who drive trucks for a living, are maids, trash collectors, incarcerated, or in a mental hospital: but they’re still Shamans. They don’t need to take a special class, tell you their genetic lineage, or practice a specific modality to be a Shaman.

So what has created the Shamanic Identity crisis that is so widespread in this current age? What it boils down to is The Cultural Iceburg.

The Cultural Iceburg is the concept that what we see when interacting with an individual is not all there is. When people think of Shamanism they associate it with our Customs, Language, and Music. But they mistakenly ignore Values, Priorities, Assumptions, Body Language, Stories, Manners, and Space/Time Concepts of our LIVED EXPERIENCE.

This is why it’s so easy for someone to put on the headdress, get a rattle or drum, and start claiming that they are a Shaman. Why do these people do this? Primarily to gain a position in some social group or setting they’d like to belong to (usually not the cultural group they are appropriating from, but others in their racial/social/socioeconomic/class structure). These individuals are also highly motivated by FINANCIAL GAIN.

I want to take some time to talk about financial gain and Shamanism. I’ll be frank, I don’t know any rich Shamans. I don’t know any Shamans who feel completely comfortable charging a fair price for their services, and I know a lot of Shamans who have gone hungry and homeless because they don’t feel right about charging money. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pay a Shaman the fair price for their work (services or goods). Just as you would pay someone a fair living wage for hours worked, you ought to pay a Shaman for their work. It’s that simple.

But there are many clear examples, unfortunately many of them in my hometown community, of people taking Shaman Schools or Shaman Certifications or Shaman Classes (usually online - not that there aren’t authentic shamanic online courses) in order to claim that they are a Shaman or to show “proof” that they are “qualified” to be a Shaman. I ran into this when a local hospital approached me about coming on board as a Shaman in their clergy. It became very obvious that their department had no real clue what a Shaman does, as they asked for proof of my schooling and accreditation as a Shaman. When I told them I wouldn’t provide those materials because it is not culturally appropriate, they asked me for the names and qualifications of my teachers. My teachers also did not have the qualifications they were looking for, and I REFUSE to play the “show me your identification card” game which is insulting to our elders.

Are you starting to get the picture?

Shamanism is a complex identity structure. It requires a person to have certain prerequisite gifts. That’s not something you can give a person or teach a person in a course or school. Some will argue that you can transfer gifts, but I will argue that you have to be a Shaman already to receive them. In my experience as a Shaman it has often been necessary to teach other Shamans how to manage their gifts so that they would not be overwhelmed by them. Shamans have to deal with a complex cultural stigma against their very identities: don’t talk to dead people, don’t listen to voices, don’t communicate with spirits, don’t you dare see one or you’ll be labeled insane. If you’re a Shaman of BIPOC origin, just go ahead and layer institutional racism on top of it, and you’re in for a flurry of misunderstanding and bigoted response to your very identity out there in the “real world.” Shamans have to learn to navigate incredible barriers to basic human rights when they take the steps to seek help for mental or physical health issues. Some of those issues have nothing to do with them, except that their care providers are too ignorant on complex cultural matters to be good advocates for their care. This is why the great majority of Shamans that I have taught, studied with, or been in the care of, have tragic stories of healthcare gone wrong & wrongful incarceration/mental institutionalism. I really don’t know a single Shaman who doesn’t struggle with a mental health diagnosis, complex PTSD, or Epigenetic Trauma.

For those of us born of family lineages, we have to navigate Epigenetic Trauma as well. We have to face a healthcare system that was built on experimentation on our ancestors, and overcome major trust issues to receive treatment for conditions that most average citizens of the US suffer from as well: anxiety, depression, PTSD, domestic violence, sexual violence, etc. Except, when a Shaman goes to receive help they have to explain why they see spirits and their whole cosmology before someone takes them seriously around conditions that have nothing to do with their Shamanic Identity. Sometimes Shamans feel they HAVE to be honest about their experiences with these providers, even if it hurts them. They have most likely been abused for their Shamanic Identity, and aren’t so much sharing their experiences to seek help for the woo-woo, but help navigating abuse.

But those without real Shamanic Identities just take off the label Shaman whenever it is convenient. They do not have to bear the burdens of Shamanic Identity, but receive the financial benefits of associating themselves with the term. These are the folks who come to me desperate to associate themselves with me as a student, so they can claim they have met the “requirements” to be a practicing Shaman for their business profile. It’s been incredibly hard for me to navigate this within myself and not respond immediately with rage. Instead, I try to educate people tactfully - some are more responsive than others. For example, I had a student once inquire about my Shamanic Mentorship - a mentorship program I offered pre-pandemic in which I explicitly stated the purpose was to receive mentorship from a Shaman. Nothing more. This particular individual had a yoga studio and wanted to “Add Shamanism” to what they offered. I tried to explain the impossibility of such a venture, especially with me as their token Shaman who would bestow this identity on them, so they could monetize my cultural and identity for their benefit. I never heard from the person again, although they do still own and operate a studio in my hometown, they have taken no actions to support our Shamanic work on any level. My hope is that they realized the futility and ignorance of their request, although I’m certain they had no intention of ever supporting us at all.

You’ve probably seen this kind of “shamanism” online on instagram posts, influencer pages, and people who are what I call “shamanic curious”. All these individuals have done nothing to truly commit to alleviating the pains and sufferings that they’re causing by appropriating someone’s actual identity. They feel like they have the best intentions: “Omg! No!! ONLY LOVE AND LIGHT SIS!” (eye roll). However, they tend to be completely ignorant to the damage and stress they cause to real Shamans through their selfish actions. “Being curious is ok right? I mean, I have the right to explore my identity through yours and see if it gets me friends, likes, follows, and MONEY, RIGHT?” No. Go home. Think about what you are doing when you try on someone’s identity and put yourself out there as the face of that identity. Would it behoove you to consider that Shamans themselves have had to strenuously defend their identities to others? Would it perhaps be a real act of love and light to give up your curiosities and turn over that experience to an actual Shaman? Have you considered that you cause real physical, spiritual, and mental harm to Shamans, and clients that you take on in your exploration of Shamanic traditions, rituals, and ceremonies?

If you don’t truly have a Shamanic Identity I encourage you to stop what you’ve been practicing right now, sit down, and ask for forgiveness from the Spirits, as well as living Shamans and their Ancestors. I would go to a real Shaman and pay them properly to remove the slew of crazy toxic attachments you’ve definitely been accumulating, and release you from the karmic debt you are certainly incurring. If you can get a job doing anything in the real world sector that doesn’t involve you crawling up into someone’s energy stream, I would suggest you take that job and step out of a sector you know nothing about. It’s amazing to me what people think they can make-up about themselves and others because deep down they also believe that Shamanism is made up. If it’s all made up, then you can do anything you want with no repercussions and still make money off someone else’s identity. And you still think you’re not harming anyone?

If you’re a Shaman you know that you can’t fake it til you make it. There’s no faking the Spirits, Guides, and Ancestors. There’s no faking a spiritual or psychic attack. There’s no faking the spirit’s communication to you, or their visible presence. And when you go out into the world, no matter what you do, people are going to find you for your Shamanic Identity.

For example, I once worked at a test grading facility one summer marking up EOG exams. While at this job at every break an elderly woman would come up to me and share her stories, always with the caveat “I don’t know why I’m telling you this but...” and then go into a story about how her deceased father was contacting her at her home. He would do so by knocking things off tables and moving things around. I asked her what he thought he was trying to tell her. She eventually concluded that he wanted her to move from her house, but she didn’t feel ready for that. I suggested that she tell him this next time he made his presence known. Next time we talked she shared that she had spoken with him and that the incidents then stopped. After that she didn’t come up to me to talk, and someone new started talking to me. My boss brought me photographs from her time in AZ as a young woman, depicting petroglyphs that matched my shamanic tattoos. She said “you know that means you’re a shaman right?” I laughed and nodded. At one point everyone in my grading group was feeling very ill, one of the proctor overlords had decided to crank up the AC and everyone was freezing cold. I brought everyone blankets and stones. One gentleman later asked me what the stone meant. I told him, “it’s a piece of quartz, it doesn’t have to mean anything, it can just be beautiful”. He said “No, I mean - they mean something. I know this sounds crazy, but some really bad stuff was going on with my family: financial and health problems. But when I brought that stone home, everything changed immediately. I need you to know that.” I acknowledge him and told him yes, this can happen - the stones heal who they want to, that’s just part of our understanding of them, but we don’t expect others to believe the same way. He said “I don’t need convincing, I experienced it myself”.

No one article can even begin to truly communicate the issues surrounding the theft, appropriation, and misrepresentation of Shamanism in our world, let alone the internet. I mean, the Q Anon guy called himself a Shaman too and the media just ate it up. Why? Because it is exotic and ignorance makes for good press, and good press makes for money.

And I don’t write this to depress or discourage anyone, especially others out there with a Shamanic Identity. Instead, I hope that this encourages you and helps you advocate for yourself in this crazy world. I hope you stand up for yourself to people trying to take advantage of you, especially people in the medical field. I don’t believe that our medical field is based on true healing practices, and I can’t really get into that rant here, but I also don’t believe our doctors mean to be “bad people” or wallow in ignorance: they’re just products of their own cultural issues as well!

However, if you’re a Shaman struggling to receive mental or physical healthcare because someone in your family or caregiver team is purposefully using your Shamanic Identity to paint you as crazy, please feel free to show them this article and demand that they use DSM-5 to evaluate you. You deserve nothing but the best treatment. You don’t need to feel ashamed for feelings of paranoia, terror, anxiety, depression, or PTSD. People who aren’t Shamans deal with it too, so don’t be afraid of those words. I don’t know many Shamans actually disturbed by their gifts. They aren’t actually suffering mentally from seeing or hearing spirits, but from the reactions of their family, friends, colleagues, and health professionals to their actual identities. These Shamans aren’t afraid of the Spirits or Ancestors, and have had to be put in the position where they rely on those spirits to provide the care and discernment of truth that should be provided by the health and wellness systems. It’s time for the gatekeepers of the medical industry to acknowledge their bias, their systemic failure of these individuals, and the exploitation of in-need Shamans. Once that has happened, real care can be provided for issues not caused by a Shamanic Identity inherently, but by external forces of society that come against a Shaman.

This article is dedicated to the sweet Shaman who visited my shop today with only $2 to exchange for altar work. She shared her story in great detail of how the medical industry was abusing her in the ways I’ve outlined before. She was discouraged by it, seeking information to provide to herself and her care team so that she could get real care. I was happy to provide her with the shamanic goods she needed and gift it to her as a birthday present. I tried my best to give her free resources to access for her healthcare and talking points to share with her medical team. Sister, this is what I promised you on my blog, and I hope you enjoy it. Also, I wish you the Safe Passage you’re so willing to offer others, as well as the brightness of your spirit back to you. I hope that things resolve quickly and you get the respect you deserve, because I honor your Shamanic Identity, and I appreciate you honoring mine.

#shaman #shamanism #mentalhealth #shamanicidentity #exploitation #culturalappropriation #appropriation #restorativejusticework #healthcarereform #mentalhealthawareness #bipoc #bipocvoices #indigenouspeople #idigenous #medicinewoman #spiritualhealing #shamanicjourney

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whetstonefires · 4 years

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Okay having gotten more than halfway through the first Witcher book, wow this is so very much a book about race.

Like, I thought the show was pretty frank about it, with i.e. Jaskier’s first appearance revolving largely around his finding out his opinion on a subject is based on racist propaganda about a persecuted people, being shown mercy by those people, and then making up a racist lie about what just happened because it’ll sell better. While meanwhile, at another point in time, Yennefer’s mixed-race background almost ruins her career before it can start.

But the book is uh. Much more about race relations.

From a really Polish perspective, too, which is interesting and largely nice--the view of waves of settlement, immigration, and empire washing over the same land again and again and leaving sedimentary layers of peoples behind, and the question of how one is justly to live and identify in the multiethnic society that results, with all the weight of wrongs and losses behind everyone--especially while the government is largely controlled by racists who want an ethnostate.

(Less nice is that the dwarves are about 600% more Jewish-coded than Tolkien ever considered. Kind of cool when it involves digging into the injustice of the no-win scenario that is being pressured to pick a side in every political drama, but never trusted to have really picked it.

Not cool when the text presents as quite literal fact that dwarves are huge sexists and certain everyone’s out to steal their women, even though they’re ugly shrews and no one would want to, which is. Such an old antisemitic canard. 😬)

The issue of collective responsibility got name-dropped fairly early on, with Tris Marigold specifically stating in her narration that she doesn’t believe in it and thus feels no awkwardness as a wizard for the extermination of the witchers by wizards before she was born, and it’s been a sort of recurring looming shadow ever since.

Geralt does believe in it, notably. Even if he doesn’t entirely identify as human, he takes his share of the guilt for being born to a brutally colonizing people seriously.

I like how Geralt is so middle-aged, with his practical concerns and his twelve-year-old and his complex, fraught relationship with his ex and his jaded attitude toward politics that is very much not cynicism, but has a fairly similar practical impact on the surface.

Also he has actually really good manners, in an unpolished way, and gets along with people really well! He keeps running into people he knows and having a casual drink and a chat, about old times and current events and ecology and so forth.

But he’s easily baited into being passive-aggressive at people who talk down to him. 😂 The latter came through on Netflix, but he’s so much less casually social. I suppose it goes with the all-black outfit.

I am also enjoying the hell out of how everyone in this fantasy novel keeps lecturing each other about science. A worldbuilding technique normally restricted to science fiction gives this setting a very distinctive flavor. (Albeit one I have seen elsewhere. I suspect the Castlevania show took inspiration here, tbh.)

Also fun is the realism of the same person in quick succession discussing tariffs, how salty his snack is, and how rumor has it there are credible foretellings of the imminent end of the world. Life goes on. It feels particularly true to life at a time like this one.

Also Yennefer’s only appearance in the book so far is, in scene 4, jumping into a room where Dandelion was being tortured, knifing one man and electrocuting another, and saving his entire ass. He didn’t even know she was in town. She insists she likes him quite a lot now, because he looked after Geralt after the breakup, which is sweet. These weirdos.

She keeps coming up tho. Geralt just received a very snippy letter where she’s absolutely going to help him but is really annoyed about being addressed as ‘dear friend.’ 😂

Also I really need to finish the Netflix show specifically to find out where it leaves Ciri, because when my sister and I were for lulz sketching out a Geraskier Princess Bride AU (which worked way better than it had any business doing considering its whole entire basis was the name Buttercup), she was baffled by the idea that Ciri could be the one to bash the Pit of Despair albino over the head and take Geralt to Yennefer to get un-mostly-dead.

“Isn’t Ciri a child?” she said, running on nothing but tumblr osmosis for Witcher content.

Sitting here with roughly half of the Netflix show under my belt but with the (sole) prior information about Ciri that she was royalty and that Geralt trained her, I was only able to say, “she...grows up eventually.”

Ciri in Blood of Elves is 12 thus far and frankly way overtrained, because all the Witchers could think to do with her was treat her like a Witcher trainee, which involves getting beaten black and blue by machines until you learn to dodge them properly. Though she’s been sent away to boarding school now so she’ll fall out of practice a bit.

She didn’t distinguish herself martially in her first engagement, which was completely correct as she was 12 and it was an awful situation and she has a lot of previous trauma to work through, but she didn’t humiliate herself either.

Even at 12 Ciri could totally bash someone over the head to rescue Geralt. She wouldn’t be able to carry him anywhere afterward, of course.

She’d need the wheelbarrow.

#hoc est meum #the witcher #book review #race #anti-semitism #i'm bad at watching tv #you wouldn't think that was a thing a person could be bad at #blood of elves #the witcher spoilers #the princess bride

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nicostolemybones · 4 years

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Please share some of your favorite head canons

This is a question I have been dying to be asked for so so long now! I don't always use every one of these headcanons in my fics, bc I like to explore different possibilities and ideas, but these are headcanons that I have anyways! Imma categorise them, this might get long:

Lgbtq+

Trans Will Clarisse and Annabeth

Bi Percy Annabeth Jason Clarisse and Will

Pansexual, genderqueer Piper

Oriented aroace lesbian Reyna

Lesbian Thalia

Oriented aroace gay Leo Valdez

Gay asexual Nico

Angst

Nico being triggered by pink triangles (like imagine him at some party and there's pink bunting and he just starts panicking and having flashbacks, or seeing them on a notebook pattern, and most people don't understand why he has such an 'obscure' trigger

Will who suffers from compassion fatigue and existential meltdowns and who believes he has blood on his hands

Leo with a lung disease from all the smoke and chemicals and dust he works with (I know a fair bit about lung issues due to family having them)

Nico's trauma actually having an impact on him in general (I refuse to believe his trauma stopped manifesting when he got a boyfriend), like the insomnia and flashbacks and fading and the whispering shadows and phobia of the dark

Will being an all year round camper because either his mom is homophobic or neglectful, or he doesn't feel safe in the area he grew up in

Jason who is constantly afraid of his own strength and of becoming a weapon, or worse, being just like his father

Reyna who worries that she's unapproachable and unloveable because she has so many barriers up

Percy who slowly becomes so scared of water and of drowning that he's afraid to use his powers in case he hurts someone, and who struggles to shower sometimes because some days he's too scared he'll drown

Piper who is so scared of losing who she is that she has to ask her friends to tell her things about herself sometimes. She writes it all down on post it notes so she doesn't forget who she is

Piper who, after her claiming, constantly feels like she's too curvy, too pretty, looks to grown up, who doesn't feel comfortable to wear certain clothes she likes in case their too tight, because she's absolutely terrified of being sexualised she's just a teen

Hazel who develops the Midas touch, perhaps a curse, who can't even hug her own brother lest he turn to gold. She's terrified that she'll wake up one day and she'll truly have a heart of gold

Frank who struggles with body dysmorphia. Frank who used to be perfectly okay with his chubbiness until his transformation, Frank who doesn't understand what was wrong with his body, Frank who sees himself as a muscled freak, Frank who, when he starts to gain weight again, is terrified that he won't be good enough for anyone else. Frank who shapeshifts because it's harder to feel bad about a body that isn't even human.

Annabeth who is so scared of losing her intelligence that she revises way past her limitations. Annabeth who gets addicted to energy drinks and studying because not only does sleep give her nightmares, but she's terrified of not waking up, or waking up and forgetting. Annabeth with superstitious rituals to stave off dementia. Annabeth who can recite the periodic table backwards and can multiply triple digit numbers in her head because she's overworking herself because she's scared that if she stops she will forget

Thaila who gets such bad nightmares she sleep floats and wakes up terrified because she's so high up so she bolts down all her windows out of the fear she'll fly away and fall to her death

Fluff and miscellany

Nico and Hazel swing dancing to records played on a gramophone

Will teaching Nico to read and sharing music with him

Nico playing clarinet or violin and drawing

Will cannot sing but he tries dammit

Percy who rescues baby seals and turtles and volunteers at the local conservation centre and adopts a tiny baby shark that turns out to be not so tiny that he puts in the lake

Annabeth who loves kids and becomes a teacher and a writer, writing dyslexia-friendly books

Will who teaches at camp but the learning style is completely individualised

There's a big box of stim toys in the infirmary

Jason who rediscovers how to have fun, who picks up so many hobbies and interests he can't count and damn it's fun to not be a soldier and just be a kid

Knitting club

Autistic Solangelo

Multilingual campers teaching each other their native languages

Workshops at camp to help campers reconnect with their culture (Piper's idea)

Reyna and Thalia being the lesbian aunts of camp, who everybody thinks are cool af. Thalia being an edgy butch punk and Reyna being a badass femme with a sword

Clarisse who goes to bars just to spot creeps and keep people safe (nobody argues with her)

Hazel and Nico playing mythomagic and being close siblings

Nico who slips into Italian when excited, who forgets words in English and just uses the Italian word, who sometimes gets the grammar wrong, and nobody makes him feel bad about it

Nico who can cook because his mama taught him, and Will who once managed to melt a plastic plate on the hob, tried to make toast and caused a fire, and once ate a tub of slime because he was hungry

Nico sewing

Will knitting

Piper running body confidence and fashion workshops, but rather than just instagram make up and branded clothes, she also encourages campers to wear whatever the hell they want. Jumper with 100 patches on it? Valid. Boys in skirts? Valid. Girls in suits? Valid. Enbies experimenting with gender presentation? Valid. Wanna look like a feral forest dwelling cryptid? Valid. Want to look like a princess at a ball? Valid.

Will and Piper and Clarisse as friends who run an adventurecore blog and go hiking and cause general chaos together

Nico and Leo being close friends who make edgy jokes and talk about their moms and talk to each other in a weird mix of Spanish and Italian from what they've taught each other.

Frank who runs self defence classes and offers to pretend to be people's boyfriend to help them escape creeps. He doesn't care if he has to pretend to be gay, or if he has to pretend to be a girl, he'll do anything to protect people from creeps.

Will has a pet chicken

Nico hisses at people

Everybody respects that Nico is touch averse

Clarisse and Drew, who used to be bullies, who have genuinely changed and genuinely do good. They help people to recognise patterns of bullying in both themselves and others, they talk to the bullies and help them to reform, they help people to realise that bullying can be traumatic and you don't have to forgive a bully. Clarisse and Drew who open a Safe Space corner

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Mare of Easttown: What If No One Killed Erin McMenamin?

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

The following contains spoilers for Mare of Easttown through episode 4.

Who killed Erin McMenamin? That’s the question at the center of HBO’s atmospheric crime drama Mare of Easttown…alongside “how does Kate Winslet pull off that Wawa-saturated accent?”

The show offers no shortage of suspects. Seemingly every single character on Mare of Easttown has both cause and some sort of backwards reasoning for killing the innocent young mother played by Cailee Spaeny. Mare’s ex-husband Frank (David Denman) is rumored to have fathered Erin’s son DJ (though that theory is disproven in this week’s episode 4 “Poor Sisyphus”). Erin’s ex-boyfriend Dylan (Jack Mulhern) and his awful new girlfriend Brianna (Mackenzie Lansing) clearly want Erin out of the way. Deacon Mark Burton (James McArdle) has a questionable history at previous Catholic parishes. Then there’s the fact that successful author from out of town Richard Ryan is played by Guy “please cast me as the bad guy” Pearce.

Even Mare’s daughter Siobhan (Angourie Rice) is pretty shifty – having technically been the last known person to see Erin alive. She’s also still recovering from the death of her brother and seems to have a strange streak of cruelty based on the bizarre events with her ex-girlfriend that leads to her grandmother sustaining a concussion in episode 4.

But what if Siobhan didn’t kill Erin – nor Richard Ryan, nor Mark Burton, nor Dylan, Brianna, John Ross, Father Dan Hastings, Chief Carter, or anyone else in Easttown? What if…no one killed Erin McMenamin? Allow me to explain.

Crime dramas, the good ones at least, are very rarely about the crime itself. Instead crime dramas are useful narrative vessels to explore the souls of characters and their homes. People’s personalities are undoubtedly at their most heightened after a traumatic communal event. Stories about a murder within a community allow for a storyteller to really examine the nature of said community.

As its title implies, Mare of Easttown is particularly interested in both the people and the place it’s depicting. The Delaware County region of eastern Pennsylvania has often gone unexamined in movies and television but Mare of Easttown creator and native Pennsylvanian Brad Inglesby uses the show as an opportunity to portray the little-seen people who live in opioid-ravaged communities southwest of Philly.

What Inglesby and the show thus far seems to be communicating is that life is much smaller, yet no less intense, in the hilly, forgotten areas of America. Easttown is a very insular place. Mare Sheehan was a basketball star at the local high school and opted never to leave, becoming a detective to serve the town she’d spent her whole life in. Mare’s life is hopelessly wrapped up in the lives of her peers. The fact that she can’t solve the missing person’s case of her friend Dawn Bailey’s daughter, Katie, is viewed as a personal slight rather than a professional failing.

When someone is breaking into homes in Easttown, Mare knows exactly who to look for because the husband of her friend just happens to have a heroin problem. Even Detective Colin Zabel (Evan Peters), of the more sophisticated county police department, solved his big career-making case by understanding the work schedule of one of his peers.

The people of Easttown know each other intimately, and that’s why when one of their own turns up dead, so many of them seem like viable suspects. Just about everyone in Easttown has history with Erin McMenamin and her family, and therefore just about everyone seems to have motive and opportunity to have killed her. That level of knowledge of one another’s lives is a distinct advantage of living in a small community, but it also means that solving a murder case is an emotionally fraught endeavor. In fact, some cases that look like murder might not be murder at all.

Why is Mare Sheehan so certain that Erin McMenamin has been murdered? Admittedly, the signs are there. Erin’s body is discovered at the bottom of rocky ledges in a trickling river. She is missing a finger, has a nasty gash on her head, and is naked save for her underwear bottoms. Mare quickly identifies the scene as a murder and the gash on Erin’s head as a gunshot wound. We never really have any reason to doubt her as this is a murder show after all, and Kate Winslet usually knows what she’s talking about. There’s also the fact that Erin’s murder comes in the wake of Katie Bailey’s disappearance. Surely, there is a serial killer in the community killing young women.

But as the ending of episode 4 reveals, that may not necessarily be the case. Katie Bailey is alive, kidnapped by a local creep and imprisoned within the walls of Bernie’s Tavern. Not only that, but her kidnapper has abducted another local sex worker named Missy Sager. There is certainly a violent criminal on the loose, but it would appear that his M.O. does not match up perfectly with Erin McMenamin’s “murder.”

At the beginning of episode 3, the Easttown coroner shares her findings with Mare and Zobel. The autopsy identifies the time of Erin’s death sometime between midnight and 2 a.m. (pretty precise for a small town coroner, but we’ll leave that aside for now). There are no tears or abrasions present on Erin’s body. They also found no evidence of sexual assault. The coroner theorizes that Erin’s finger was severed by a bullet consistent with Mare’s theory, but they did not find any gunshot residue. Most importantly: the coroner notes that the bruises on the body are consistent, meaning they all happened at the same time.

Read that last bit again: the bruises all happened at the same time. Doesn’t that sound like… a fall? Erin was found at the bottom of a cliff with consistent blunt force trauma spread evenly across her body. The only three things that suggest a murder are: Mare’s theory that the gash on Erin’s head was from a bullet, the missing finger, and the removal of Erin’s clothes. And each of those things could have an explanation beyond murder.

Mare could merely be wrong about Erin’s head wound and the small town coroner goes along with the seasoned detective’s theory. A bear or another animal could have bitten Erin’s finger off post-mortem or it could have just been wrenched away from the violence of her fall. The lack of clothing is harder to explain away but perhaps Erin did indeed plan with hooking up with someone in the woods that night.

In episode 3, Mare theorizes that Erin and her assailant disrobed elsewhere and that’s when Erin was killed by a gunshot, even though none of the area’s partying teens reported hearing gunfire. The ever-helpful county bullet-sniffing dogs do find evidence of gunshot residue and Mare then finds a bullet lodged in a tree. But do you know what that means? Someone shot a gun…in a rural area…in America. All trees in Delaware County should be presumed to have bullets lodged inside them until proven otherwise.

Mare of Easttown excels in getting the viewer wrapped up in the local drama of all its characters. The town and the citizens within it are richly realized. Each new revelation about a suspect in the Erin McMenamin case feels deeply personal, because how could it not? Ultimately, the show could be banking on viewers making the same mistakes that its detectives do.

Easttown is primed to accept a murder of one its youngest and brightest because why wouldn’t that happen in this shitty world? The murder of Erin McMenamin is tragic but it gives Mare and the people of Easttown one more opportunity to solve a mystery and make things right – to bring resolution to the Katie Bailey case.

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Sometimes, however, there isn’t a boogeyman on the other end of a dead body – just a slippery rock and some shit fucking luck.

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