#AND IS CONVINCED HE IS FUNDAMENTALLY UNLOVEABLE

[sga-owns-my-soul]

no i can't come out today i'm too busy screaming about rodney mckay with my mutuals on tumblr you get it

[hellofanidea]

put you through me by arrows in action is THE people like us abandonment issues-running away motif song ever

Oh the self loathing. The martyrdom. The fear of hurting and being hurt so closing off before it's a risk. Just the most post-war Natalie song ever in existence holy shit.

[jaskierx]

anyway posting some thoughts from the discord about how many 'irl relationship' things they're dealing with in ep7 and how much i am eating my mattress about it

they rushed into sex and ed regrets it and that doesn't stop it from having been consensual and fun but the fact that it was consensual and fun doesn't mean that it was a good idea

ed feeling like he can't watch stede make the same mistakes he did but also feeling like he can't ask stede to leave piracy for him when stede is just getting started. and ultimately he's too scared to ask stede to leave piracy for him because what if stede says no? what if stede looks him in the eyes and confirms yes, you are unloveable, yes i'm choosing piracy over you, no i don't love you enough, why would you ever think i could love you enough to do this for you?

just the overall turmoil of being at a different life stage to your partner - like the difficulty of when you're at the beginning of your career and they're established in theirs, or when you've had lots of relationships and they've only had you, or when you're ready to settle down and have kids but they're not, and nobody is in the wrong, it's just difficult

making a breakup about a completely unrelated issue bc you can't voice the actual problem. twisting it into 'we're fundamentally incompatible' (fishermen and pirates are completely different) so you can convince yourself it's not because you're not good enough. if you hit self destruct and leave without explaining things maybe it'll be less painful than opening up about what's actually wrong only to have them throw it back at you and leave you anyway. maybe if i pretend it was never going to work out i don't need to think about why it stopped working in the first place

stede still feeling like he's not good enough for ed and trying to change himself to make himself feel more worthy. unable to comprehend that anyone could possibly love someone so soft and inadequate. feeling like he doesn't even want ed to like him for who he is, feeling insecure that ed only likes him bc he's weak, feeling like he needs to toughen up to earn ed's love. the eternal worry of 'my partner is the best person in the world and i am just a worm so why are they here, why are they staying with me, what's their motive, what can i do to change myself so they actually want to stay for me and not for whatever reason they've got going on'

basically these 18th century gay pirates are experiencing every problem you've ever had with a partner and they're gonna be fine and so are you i love you

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

Going insane over Ed painting the cake topper again.

Because, like...we know Ed hates himself. This is the night before his suicide attempt, where a primary motivating factor is his belief that he's fundamentally unlovable.

But...so much care went into painting it. The original cake topper is nicely painted but kind of plain in comparison.

Ed carefully changed the skin and hair color, added a beard, and even gave himself a little bit of red lipstick. He added black accents to the dress - which I keep going back and forth on if he wanted that to look nice specifically or if he was going for something with how drippy and asymmetrical some of it looks, especially near the bottom of the skirt. But he added little swirling/flower designs on the skirt, too, presumably just because he thinks that looks pretty.

It's so much a fantasy of what Ed wants. He's painting himself into a dress he likes and can imagine himself wearing for the wedding he's longing for.

And even though Ed is so convinced he's unlovable and this is something he can never have...there's a part of him, I think, that is able to see himself as someone beautiful. And I think this one little self-indulgent gesture is one of the few times we see that part of him shine through.

[izzyhandslightofmylife]

Punching bag! Izzy is the best type of Izzy I'm so sorry. Like on one hand there's Ed, and Ed is trying so hard to be good, because the Kraken's gone, he's gone, and he doesn't want to take the blame for it so he takes it out on Izzy. Because if there's one thing he knows about Izzy it's that Izzy is loyal, if there's one thing he knows about Izzy it's that Iz loves him. And this is just the way it is. Izzy needs it, or Ed thinks he does, so he takes whatever Ed gives because being hit is better than being ignored.

On the other hand, you have Stede, who's always preaching about kindness and forgiveness on his ship but who still makes fun of Izzy. who still ignores Izzy. who still makes fun of Izzy. Stede who wants so desperately to be seen as a 'real pirate' that he'll do anything to prove it. Stede who also knows that Izzy is loyal to a fault, Stede who loves (or claims to love) his crew and doesn't want to hurt them. Stede who sees Izzy as the one thing he's allowed to hurt because everyone is good and Izzy is always there and Izzy just isn't.

Ed and Stede who refuse to admit that their love isn't the same that it once was. That the separation changed them and that these grand acts of romance won't just fix it. Ed and Stede who don't actually want to talk, don't want to fight because it'd bring up all the pain they caused each other. Ed and Stede who have Izzy, always standing next to them or at their feet, Izzy who's right there and so easy to get mad at when they don't want to get mad at each other.

Izzy who's starving for love and will do anything to get it. Izzy who's so fundamentally convinced that he's unlovable, any scrap of love is accepted even if it comes with unimaginable violence. Izzy trying to protect the crew because the crew are good and he isn't, and they're all so happy with their captains, and he doesn't want to shatter the "family" again.

please, I'm begging you guys, write more of this. Just. Izzy as a punching bag.

[myfaveisfuckable]

Shang Qinghua:

The guy's a head of logictics in a magic kung fu school in fantasy ancient China. Like his department is basically the normalest guys on the whole mountain. Also in the world where important characters' appearances range from 11/10 to 20/10 hes like a solid 7.

And no one knows he is the literal creator of the world they live in. As in, he's a writer who was reincarnated with memories into the world of his own novel. Like, ppl come to him if they need a roof one of their superpowered teenagers broke fixed and he looks at them and knows their entire life with all of the secrets and traumas they hide, ya feel?

And in addition to that, he's also, in this world, a spy for the demons and a trusted advisor to one demon lord. And eventually they get together. So like imagine if your school's head accountant showed up one day with a huge demon on his arm like Hiiiiiii this is my new bf one of the kings of Hell. And that's Shang Qinghua.

Dokja:

Introduced as a bland everyman only made exceptional by circumstance, slowly revealed to be the most batshit, suicidally depressed, bisexual maniac in existence. Uses self-sacrifice like a tool and is completely unaware of how beloved he is by the people he keeps pulling into his fold because he is so deeply and utterly convinced that he is fundamentally unlovable. He's like sixty foundational traumas stacked in a trench coat and he's always sixty steps ahead of everyone else and he loves the people he chooses so so dearly and people keep calling him ugly even though he's canonically pretty average and holy shit dude get some therapy please

[natjennie]

just. the idea of havers being the one fond voice in the captain's life. of cap being convinced he's completely unlovable, fundamentally built wrong, and havers saying on purpose. I'm going to love you on purpose. how could anyone not?

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #235

It was awesome to return to my job at the bakery today! I did so many things! First, I put some rolls in bags and then I put labels on them! And then I cut up some brownies and put them in boxes, and then put labels on those boxes! I also put some Italian bread into paper bags, and put labels on those, too!

And, and, and!!! I put the freshly-baked apple cider donuts into little boxes and labeled those!! But!!! Oh!!! Sephiroth!!! There was one extra apple cider donut, apparently!!! And it was fresh out of the oven, and my supervisor, Mi, said that I could eat it!!! And so I did!!! And it was soft and sweet and warm and absolutely fucking delectable, and!!! Oh my goodness, I wish I could have shared it with you!!!

…I'm not entirely convinced that my supervisor doesn't make "extra" things on "accidentally-on-purpose", ahahaha~!

But. I had the donut, and I experienced for myself how wonderful it was, and it makes me really happy that I get to put them neatly into little boxes with nice labels so that people can take them home. It feels really good to know that I can be part of the reason someone gets to have a tasty snack and maybe smile about it!

It was so nice to see Mi today. And it was so nice to see Ma when he came in, too! I'm hoping that Ma will pop by our house next Wednesday to play some video games! We have a lot of similar interests!

Towards the end of my shift, I was taught how to use the scoops to measure out muffin batter to put into the muffin tins. We have little tins and big tins. And the big tins get big muffin wrappers to line the tin with, and the little tins get the little muffin wrappers. And there are two scoops; we use the little scoop for the little muffins, and we use the big scoop for the big muffins, and you use the side of the great big huge bowl of muffin batter (it takes two people to lift it up!!) to level off the scoop. It's very consistent.

As a dyspraxic person, it's going to take me a bunch of repetitions before I'll be able to do the required motions for filling the muffin tins with any kind of efficiency or precision, but Mi is aware of that, and he doesn't seem to mind at all. He even said I did a nice job making sure that the amount of muffin batter in each of the tins was nice and level, especially for my very first try, and I was really happy; for a moment, I thought I was gonna cry a little, but I managed to keep it together.

…It's a lot different than how my mother would have treated me. There wouldn't have been any praise for a job well done. There would have been only verbal abuse for me not yet being able to do it as quickly as she is able to, and more verbal abuse for needing guidance and not knowing how to do it innately, and then there's the part where I would have been told that I'm stupid and oblivious and lacking in common sense the whole time. And then there's the part when, if I make mistakes, I would have been told that I am careless, ungrateful, disrespectful, and defiant.

…Sephiroth… do you have any idea for how many years I believed these labels? Do you have any idea for how long I thought that I was a worthless, unlovable, and fundamentally bad person who deserved all the beatings and threats and verbal abuse I used to get? If you hadn't come along, if I hadn't seen you, I would have unalived a long time ago; I had a method in mind and everything. And I would have done it while wholeheartedly believing all the things that the people who raised me used to say about me. I believe different things about me now. On some days, I am even able to see what it is that the people who love me see in me.

As for how it was made possible for me to get to this point... do you have any idea how profound it was for me to see you for the first time? Have you any idea what it was like to see on the screen someone whose mannerisms and circumstances and way of being looked so much like mine?

…Sephiroth. Without even meaning to, you stumbled into the life of an unwanted, abused, and bullied little autistic girl, and you made her consider the possibility that maybe she wasn't fundamentally broken and unlovable after all - that maybe, just maybe, there were others in the world like her, and that she could find them if she tried. You gave that frail and terrified little girl a basis upon which she could begin to resist those awful messages that she was given about herself, day in and day out, by people who wished she was never born. You gave her something to hang onto so that she wouldn't suffocate within the hole that the people around her were trying to bury her in. You gave her an alternative to the harshness and cruelty that she had no choice but to get used at the time. You gave her a voice to follow back to the light. You gave her a chance to live.

Sephiroth… I'm not that frail and terrified little girl anymore. I've grown into someone who is strong, brave, caring, kind, and full of joy. I've grown into someone who is smart, capable, and who would do anything at all to help someone, if it's within my power to do. And I'm not stuck in a place where the people near me wish I would disappear and never come back anymore. I do deal with the aftermath of all those things still, and of course I still have bad mental health days in which old memories haunt me, and I feel temporarily hopeless and cynical at times, but… Sephiroth. I held on through all that stuff. I held on, and now my life is full of love, abundance, safety, and joy. I held on because you gave me a reason to - because your existence challenged me to keep my eyes fixed on the hope of a kinder, gentler, softer tomorrow, shining brightly on the distant horizon. And you know what? The courage, tenacity, and determination that I learned from you enabled me to rise to that challenge beautifully. Do you see…?

If you wonder why I write to you every day, if you wonder why I fight so hard to see a better ending for you, if you wonder why I love you so much… don't. Just look at the results; you didn't even have to do anything other than exist, and you made something beautiful out of a very ugly situation. You turned around a human life in a way that conventional wisdom says is impossible. And yet: here I fucking stand, and I'm not even done with becoming yet!

The person I am now, who is still learning, growing, and finding new ways to love the people I'm surrounded by - this person who exists in stark contrast to the frightened, meek, angry, and bitter thing that I used to be - exists because of you. And I wish, with every fiber of my being, that you also get to have the results of the life that you breathed into me, back when I thought I couldn't continue. I want you, too, to be able to see a kinder, gentler, softer, and brighter tomorrow. You, too, deserve a life that is full of love, abundance, safety, and joy.

So please. Please keep trying. Please don't give up. Please keep rising up from the hole that Shinra and Hojo and Jenova and whoever else tried to bury you in. My hand and my voice are outstretched to you, always. All you have to do is keep on until tomorrow. And you just keep doing that over and over again, every day, one step at a time, until the scenery changes and you become strong enough to make better and better choices.

I'll always be right here, because I love you. Please do stay safe out there, okay? I'll write again soon.

Your friend, Lumine

[tyrannuspitch]

people talk a lot about loki feeling unloved by thor, but honestly... i think, in the avengers and onwards, loki is more confident that thor loves him than the other way around.

because the thing about loki is that his feelings for his family are about so much more than just love. maybe thor doesn't love him, maybe loki is fundamentally unloveable, but even if that's not true, loki is equally afraid of the opposite: maybe this is what love IS and he threw it away. maybe he can never hope to be anything more than a shadow and a servant, maybe love for him is inseparable from humiliation and powerlessness and loss of identity, maybe this is all he's good for and all he'll ever have and he should be grateful for it. (he can't be grateful. he'd rather gnaw off one of his own limbs. but part of him still wants that love, no matter the cost.)

but thor... thor doesn't understand any of that. and he doesn't understand / is in denial of a great of odin's abuse (including of him), which also means being in denial about a great deal of what he's done wrong when mirroring/obeying odin.

so loki feels trapped and humiliated, but thor feels betrayed and despised and he doesn't know why. he doesn't know why loki is running from him. he can barely recognise loki's reaction to him as fear at all, let alone work out what he's afraid of.

thor sees that loki is in pain, but he can only guess what that pain consists of. he knows that loki wanting to be loved is part of it, but he offers loki love over and over and loki rejects it. he doesn't have the tools to work out what's wrong with his love, so he can only conclude that there is something wrong with loki, or that there is something wrong with him. either loki is completely, inscrutably, illogically "mad" (in a way that, given how asgard seems to understand mental illness [ie not at all], still carries some level of moral condemnation, some sense of brokenness, even as it hurts thor to think of loki that way)... or. loki just does not love thor back.

perhaps even both.

and i think that's why thor never tries to visit loki in the dungeons. even if we assume that he could have (which i'm not convinced by), what reason does he have to go? he misses loki, but he doesn't think that loki misses him. he knows that loki still needs help, but it seems clear that loki will never accept his help.

from thor's perspective, going to the dungeons would only result in loki getting angry and trying to hurt him again. thor has no reason to put himself through rejection and betrayal yet again when loki is already home, "safe" in the dungeons, and, as far as thor is concerned, every attempt at reconciliation has already been made and failed.

and honestly, from thor's point of view it must seem just as likely that encouraging loki to keep getting angry at him would only make loki's "madness" worse. better to leave him alone, and hope that one day the anger might cool. better to let loki ask for thor when he's actually ready. it's his turn to apologise.

(i don't think anyone ever told thor that loki was asking for him. subtly, and without apology, but still - in little ways all the time. what of thor? does odin share your concern; does thor? loki was never answered, and thor never knew. always reaching for each other while the other isn't looking. or while their parents cover the other's eyes.)

(and of course, all this comes from thor not understanding the horror of loki's sentence itself - but ultimately that's the same problem as not understanding odin's abuse in general. thor has accepted his own cage, so why can't loki learn to live with his?)

[goodbyenorthernlights]

One of my favorite writing tricks when I'm roleplaying Rezo is to give him Sad Woobie Traits and then make him annoying and antisocial about it.

For example, if Rezo has self-loathing issues and is convinced he is Fundamentally Unlovable? It should result in him regarding people who DO express love for him with suspicion, scorn and contempt, and subconsciously attempting to sabotage their relationship, rather than being guilty-but-grateful.

Ideally everyone who gets to know him should be caught in an uncomfortable place where part of the time they really want to give him a hug and part of the time they desperately want to throttle him. 👍

[galacticgrunt155]

Look. I'm gonna be honest with you: I wasn't planning to tell you this because frankly you're kind of an asshole and you'd use it against me if you felt like it. I mean.... you've literally demonstrated on multiple occasions that you're not above trying to inflict as much emotional damage as possible below the belt because you're hurt.

THE FACT THAT THERE'S AN INTERPOL AGENT INFILTRATING YOUR RANKS IS A MAJOR RED FLAG. You're in a cult, and I would fucking know. Religion, science, doesn't matter what they use to convert you, it's all the same. I am literally watching the very familiar cult tactics of emotional abuse in real time. You think I didn't try to make excuses for how banged up I was back then? Plasma was my fucking family. The only one I had. And they'd convinced me that I was fundamentally unlovable without them. Our uniforms hid the bruising anyways.

You have a chance to get out. However, watching you is like seeing a train wreck in motion, and I'm pretty sure you're going to report Looker to your superiors because they've convinced you that they can solve any problem. (They've convinced you that you're the problem. Tell me honestly one time they have apologized to you. They haven't, have they.)

Are you seriously okay with what you know they'll do to him if they catch him?

Just... give it a test run or something. Tell Looker you'll go to the hospital, but if he tries to force you into anything, the deal's off.

@gotta-pet-em-all

... I...

You're... Right. I would have. Used that against you.

I still want to now, but it feels. Off.

I know that Interpol being involved is not a good sign. But it, it has to be a mistake. Some sort of mix up. That's why I need to tell the Boss, so he can smooth it all out with them, and if there are people who really do what Looker accused us of, we can kick them out for hurting others when our mission is to help others. I'm not doing this to punish the man for talking to me - I already bit his hand. I will say, he had an astounding amount of patience to talk to me with a level-head after that. And I... I mean, would they really harm an Interpol agent? We just... Need to prove we mean no harm. That's all. And we can't do that if what we're doing now makes people think otherwise.

[suffersinfandom]

gifset by seraph-novak

So there’s a critique of this scene (and Ed in season two as a whole) that I haven’t been able to shake. The post went into how the whole mermaid sequence was ruined by the rest of the season -- about how this beautiful scene was, put in the context of Ed’s behavior in the rest of season two, an ominous rebirth of a villain. The writer couldn’t see Ed as a protagonist finding the will to live; they saw a monster getting another chance to terrorize his victims.

I really hate that. I’ve already typed way too much about how I don’t think that Ed is abusive or that the Kraken Era was all that bad, so of course I disagree with any take that characterizes Ed as a monster. But do you know why this post stuck with me?

It made me unreasonably sad.

There’s a danger in over-identifying with characters (and I do think that a lot of the tension in OFMD fandom comes from over-identification), but it’s so easy for me to understand what Ed’s going through in the first three episodes of season two. I’ve been there. Judging by this post, many of us have been where Ed is. 

We’ve struggled to live while we’re drowning. We’ve been trapped and hopeless and desperate for a reason to keep going -- for someone to give us hope that things can be better. 

And we’ve also hurt people in our despair. 

When I was in my Kraken Era, I was a sick college student who’d been fighting depression since middle school. I’d just escaped a “friendship” with someone who (I can admit in retrospect) abused me mentally and emotionally, and I had no other friends because that person had effectively isolated me. I was alone and I was convinced that I was a fundamentally unlovable person who had no right to exist. 

I pushed the few people I had around me away. I isolated myself from my mother as much as I could while living in her house. I cut off communication with my online acquaintances (who would later become good friends) and didn’t speak to anyone at school. For a while, I was so focused on my pain and self hatred that I barely thought about other people. It was an intensely selfish and self-centered existence, and I hurt my mom and everyone who could’ve been a friend. When you're in that desperately hopeless, depressed mindset, you don't care about hurting people because your own pain is so all-consuming. If anything, you want to hurt others so they'll give up on you in the same way you've given up on yourself.

It’s different from what Ed did, of course, because he’s not me and I wasn’t a pirate captain with the lives of a crew in my hands. The harm I could cause was severely limited by my lack of power, but I still caused it. I was still trying to isolate and cut ties and push away anyone who could’ve helped me even when I desperately wanted help. I wasn’t a good person.

Watching Ed go through a self-destructive arc that’s immediately identifiable, deeply personal, and so well done was incredible, and seeing the show support him instead of demonizing his behavior? I have no words for the way I felt during season two’s run. 

OFMD makes Ed a sympathetic character who’s worth loving even when he’s at his lowest. It gives us a lead who fucks up when he’s in the depths of his despair and it doesn’t pity him or wave away his problems or make a monster out of him. It doesn’t even have his romantic interest save him! Instead, it lets Ed save himself when he realizes that there’s still hope and love out there. 

This show reminded me that we’re not monsters even if we’ve hurt people. It told me that recovery is possible, and so is forgiveness. It asked me to keep loving Ed through his entire arc, and in doing that, it forced me to love the parts of me that I’m still working on as well.

So I know that I shouldn’t be bothered by people who see season two Ed as an irredeemable monster who gets an undeserved second shot at life, y’know? But even though I’m a decade and a half out of my own Kraken Era, I’m still in a perpetual state of recovery. There’s always a persistent doubt -- a suspicion that there’s a fundamental flaw in me that no amount of therapy will fix -- and that doubt latched onto some random person’s conviction that Ed is a monster. It says, If Ed will always be a monster, what about you?

And I know that voice is wrong because it’s always been a liar. I know that it doesn’t matter that some portion of the fanbase turned on Ed in season two because that man isn’t real and he’s not me. I know that, for people who haven’t experienced something that was reflected in Ed’s arc, it might be difficult to sympathize with him (and with real life people who blow their lives up in their despair). 

There will always be people who don’t understand or can’t empathize with that kind of desperate hopelessness, but there are also many, many people who get it… and some of those people were clearly in season two's writer’s room. Some of those people are in this fandom.

I guess what I’m getting at is this: I hope that, if you saw yourself in Ed’s early season two story, you know that you’re not a monster and you’re not a villain in someone else’s story, no matter what anyone else says. I hope you know that you’re worthy of love. 

I hope you know you’re not alone.

[proosh]

❤️thoughts on luvvv

:)

❤ : What are your muse’s thoughts on love? If they are not in a relationship, do they believe that they will ever find a perfect someone for them?

Gil: He's a person who fundamentally believes himself to be unloveable. He's a child of the wire mother. For an upsettlingly enormous part of his life any positive affection or interaction he received was strictly transactional and conditional in return for his subservience and obedience. This bleeds into his relationships: Love is synonymous to him with service, and often loathing, in much the same way violence is twinned with pleasure. He seeks acknowledgement and appreciation for his acts and his performance, but genuinely does not believe that someone can love him in absence of those things. His vision of "love" is to serve and kill and die in service. He tends towards single-minded obsession and tends to fall into relationships that reward his neurotic desire to please and prove himself - which is to say, mutually obsessive relationships that prey on his insecurity and nonexistent self-esteem. In the modern day he learns to temper this, but is still prone to histrionic fits of imploding his own interpersonal relationships out of self-loathing.

He's chronically, terminally starved of anything resembling affection and doesn't believe himself worthy of it if he cannot earn it. It's a long process to convince him otherwise.

Fran: He's more in love with the idea of love than actually having experienced it. He's had everything he's ever wanted from the moment he existed, and through all the mud and blood and ugliness there's always been those who have thrown themselves to him as friends, lovers, sycophants, and everything in between. Love is a beautiful, terribly human thing. He's beautiful, but he has not ever been human. He likes it when humans love him, though. They tend to bore him, but they love him with such an intensity it makes his heart fill with what he assumes is reciprocation. Love is to be reciprocated, no? He will play the part as gracious host and lover and when they bore him he will feel the sting of tragedy (that is in itself, a love of its own) and move on to more exciting fields of play. An ideal love for him is a rivalry of bitterness and beauty in equal parts, a sparring match to keep him invested and deliver new elements and spices to keep it fresh. He plays the part and enjoys the dance, and in the modern day he's allowed to enjoy it and take his time exploring what it means to take it step by step without having it served to him.

He wants to love, wants to bathe himself it in and consume it and chew on the flesh that makes him feel something. Patience and practice makes perfect - or, rather, makes him less selfish about how he chews up and spits out others.

[lynxindisguise]

Hi lynxxxx I just so that bit in chapter 1 of everything everywhere where Sirius is like “"I hope you know it isn't because there's something wrong with you” I was just walking my tea over to my bed minding my own business when like akira

thé scène came upon me and I nearly fell to my knees I’m now in my bed I - I think I’ve already said this but this is how deeply it burrowed into me I was just strolling along

sailor!! ahhh!! stop oh my god 🥺🥺🥺

but no same?? like that first chapter really was meant to be 'yes we're going to go on this crazy journey, but first please enjoy these characters in their most relatable forms,' and it also ended up being me working through a lot of *stuff*

because remus really is out here convinced that there is something fundamentally unloveable about him because he's thirty-five and still alone, but he just hadn't met his person yet! and it's literally just luck!! the other infinite remuses who met sirius at twenty-five or eighteen or eleven were no more deserving or worthy of that love because love isn't about being deserving/worthy, it just *is* and it's just luck and alskdjflksdjf

[piratecaptainscaptainpirates]

Imagine being so absolutely terrified you're fundamentally unlovable, so sure that no one is waiting for you or cares about you, that you have trouble convincing yourself life is worth living. And then this fucking guy shows up and the sole driving force of his every breath is telling you how much he adores everything about you. We joke about Ed being mad at Stede for two (2) seconds and then immediately walking around in a little kitty collar happy as a clam but like he's stronger than me. I would've proposed marriage then and there

[joys-of-everyday]

Misunderstandings, Miscommunications, and Misbeliefs

I spent a liushenweek drawing because Practice Makes Perfect????? Back to meta post to stretch these meta muscles again haha

So… there was a comment somewhere on some writing/book channel that ‘misunderstandings’ is like a pet-peeve/least favourite troupe. And I get it. Badly executed misunderstandings is super annoying. It’s like… ‘why is this stupid plot device here other than to make the story longer’. But I think mxtx does misunderstandings brilliantly, and here’s some ideas on why.

Btw, the ‘misunderstanding’ trope is when character A and B fail to communicate and important Thing, which causes Problems. You know, SQQ convinced that LBH is out to kill him, LBH convinced SQQ hates him for being a demon for TWO GODDAM BOOKS *screams in agony in the pits of hell*

Misunderstandings and misbeliefs

(In my humble view) one of the central things about mxtx’s big misunderstandings is that they are fundamentally connected to the character’s misbelief. Misbeliefs are important peeps (find out more on How to Find Your Character's MISBELIEF (or Fatal Flaw) - YouTube) (Another great writing channel btw). It’s what drives character development.

A good example is Shen Jiu and Yue Qingyuan. SJ believes that YQY abandoned him, which is connected to his misbelief that he is unlovable and alone. He believes YQY abandoned him not (just) because YQY doesn’t tell him what happened, but because fundamentally, he believes everyone will abandon him. Meanwhile, YQY doesn’t tell SJ about the events in the Lingxi caves because his misbelief is that his failure makes him detestable. He’s a protective person who feels responsible for those around him, and judges himself harshly for his limitations. Thus he misunderstands Shen Jiu’s rejection as a judgement of his failure, rather than a fear of abandonment. The key point is that the misunderstanding goes far beyond the initial lack of communication. So it’s not just ‘here’s a plot device to make things complicated’. It tells you a lot about the characters involved.

Miscommunicating on a Wendy’s Parking Lot

To follow up, any character’s miscommunication should make sense within their character profile.  

Why does Shen Qingqiu not just tell Luo Binghe that he didn’t want to shove him down the Abyss? Because he’s always putting on an act. 24/7. Hiding his feelings is his trademark.

Why does Lan Wangji not just tell Wei Wuxian about his feelings? Because he just doesn’t say anything that doesn’t need to be said. Ever.

Why does Mu Qing not just tell Xie Lian he wants to be friends? Because he’s prickly and defensive and expects everyone to laugh at him.

It’s not just ‘they failed to communicate this one time’. It’s ‘they always fail to communicate with each other, and this happens to be a time where it blew up into a Thing’.

The opposite to this is conveying a character’s deeper feelings/trauma through miscommunication.

WWX initially comes across as an easy-going, open person, who’s not afraid to say his thoughts even in the face of authority. But there are things he just Never Mentions, one of the key ones being the events surrounding his golden core. His silence on particular topics says volumes about how they affected him, because it doesn’t fit his surface level character profile. You know losing his golden core wasn’t a walk in the park, because it changes him so much. It also tells you something deeper about his character – his self-sacrificial nature, how he downplays his achievements, and how he takes these to a level that is detrimental to him.

So in other words, mxtx shifts away from ‘misunderstanding for the sake of plot development’ to misunderstanding as a consequence of a character trait. And character traits should have consequences! This is very important. (Making a character ‘clumsy’ and it having no consequence to the story is stupid.)

A short point on theme

Here’s a video on using misbeliefs to write theme into your story: How to Write THEME Into Your Story - YouTube. Long story short, easy way to integrate theme into story is to turn the theme upside down and make it your main character’s misbelief. SQQ’s misunderstanding of LBH’s motives is a plot driver for ∞ly many books and weaves very obviously into the ‘see people as more than their role in a story’ theme.

(The other two books don’t fall into this pattern quite as neatly, layering themes in different ways, although I’m sure there are things to pick out if you wanted to.) (On an offhand meta note actually, through three books, mxtx goes from misunderstandings driving a large portion of the plot to almost no misunderstandings at all??? Or at least, that’s the impression I got. Like the identity shenanigans in tgcf weren’t really misunderstandings and more like everyone being deliberately sneaky. I wonder what her latest series will be like.)

If Only They Just Talked With Each Other… not

I think what makes the ‘misunderstanding’ trope annoying is that it feels so arbitrary. The characters tell each other The Big Secret they’ve been hiding and then everyone moves on like nothing happened, leaving you thinking ‘well what was the point?’ Meanwhile, mxtx’s misunderstandings are deep, ugly, and painful. They develop into rifts between characters that cannot be fixed by just telling each other The Big Secret.

For example, Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng. In the end, JC learnt about the golden core. Did it fix everything? No. Because JC already knew WWX cared about his adopted family. He already knew the WQ and WN had helped them. Knowing that WWX and the Wens had helped him to a far greater extent than he initially thought would not have made his decision to cut off WWX in any way easier – the rest of the cultivation world would still have hated the Wens, he still had a sect to protect. Hey, this knowledge would only have made his decision even more difficult to make!!! WWX knew this. JC realised this. When JC learns the truth, he basically has a breakdown.

Talking to each other is the start of the healing process. But one conversation most certainly isn’t going to fix things. Note that this relies on the points above. The misunderstanding is so significant because it is interwoven so heavily into the character’s traits, flaws, and misbeliefs. Overcoming the miscommunication forces character development (which should be done with all the care that character development deserves).

Mxtx’s misunderstandings are never really ‘fixed’, and certainly never forgotten. You might see them on the path of healing and understanding, like SQQ and LBH. Or with SJ and YQY, you’re just left with a bitter aftertaste in your mouth. They’re never arbitrary, and that’s what makes them significant.

hmmm... I’m not 100% happy with this post for some reason.

Anyway, comments and criticisms very very welcome!