#Give a traumatised individual enough time and they can come up with some horrible ways to flatline someone else.

[scrawnytreedemon]

Shit I’ve Been Winding Up For A Long Time Now But Am Very Aware Will Probably Hold No Relevance Should I Actually Go Into This More--

This is about Bhunivelze.

I.

You know, when I was chilling out, on my bed, that evening on that half term in early June, deciding to check up on ClementJ64′s FF retrospective because-- Hey! It’s been awhile, I wonder if he’s got around to doing the final bit of the FFXIII saga --You know, I was there, chilling, just for a laff. Just a laff.

The rest of that week was spent spiralling into a hyperfixation I absolutely did not anticipate in any way, shape, or form, because the way they introduced that character was “wwhdhfjjhHJDFJKHKJHW H A T??”

That retrospective and a good amount of wiki-scrounging is all I have as a basis for this. This is not a coherent character analysis-- Though I might tag it as that for ease of access. This is not, by any means, the thoughts of someone deeply familiar with FFXIII on the whole beyond plot synopses and overarching themes.

I don’t think I’m brave enough for that.

Reading the vast yet surface-deep lore on those wiki pages on my birthday while in a delirious state of mind was enough to make me somewhat nauseous.

Do you think I’m going to go through all of that in real time?

(Someday, someday.)

Ugh, I don’t know how to begin, but let us, I guess. I’d recommend you read this church-mime-demiurge’s FF Wiki page if you want the same level of base-knowledge I had, and maybe the aformentioned retrospective if you want the experience, because I don’t think I have the wherewithal to get into all of that from the bottom-up.

I am also, so, so fucking sorry for any remaining FFXIII fans in advance. There is like, a good chance I may be butchering the characterisation completely, so bear with me here.

With that... we begin?

Where do we even start with this guy?

How on earth to you begin to explain the absolute monolith you’ve constructed from crumbs of a Guy, some material no doubt spliced in from the Pale King, Sephiroth, y o u r  o w n  G o d  O C and other characters, and the mountains of religious trauma you carry around at all times that is probably the only reason you’ve been able to latch on as hard as you did?

I’m going to try.

What gets me, in summary, about Bhunivelze is how he’s a prime example of how love and concern can become deadly forces if in the wrong hands. His first acquainting with human emotion was by deceiving and possessing Hope, reverting his body to a teenage state, and planning to live among humanity through him. He sees human sorrow and suffering, and decides that, to End This(because it must be ended, you see) he’s going to destroy all the souls of the deceased that make up the Chaos that’s been eating this world for the past five-hundred years so they all forget and Are Happy. :).

Capital G God here hasn’t been present for the vast part of human history because he’s hidden himself away from Everything due to paranoia from killing his own mother and throwing her body into the Cosmic Basement, THEN creating the beings that would come to create humanity and OTHER beings because he didn’t have the keys to the cosmic basement. And also he believes death is a thing because she’d’ve somehow cursed all things to pass(including him) out of Spite.

Which explains why he’s so fucking averse to it and anything to do with it.

Bhunivelze, to put it lightly, is Shit at stepping into others’ shoes and Getting their experiences-- All the FalCie in FFXIII are, but him especially. It’s clear(again, in the f u c k i n g JP--) that he makes attempts to sympathise with them and does what he can to help, but it’s with such a loftiness and a complete inability to Understand why anyone would want grief, The Worst Fucking Experience In Existence, and even less why they’d be willing to Go Up Against Him And HisThe New Perfect World just for it-- And what would it matter, anyway, forgetting their loved ones. It’s not like you can grieve lost memories, right?

Right.

It reminds me of when at the end of the story of Job in the Bible, where, after putting this man through hell on earth, God rewards Job by giving him ten new children to make up for the ones that he lost. I. And that’s fucked! Nothing can replace the sheer uniqueness of each individual person you loved so dearly! But if you were a nigh-omnipotent deity high and mighty, with a cursory, almost mechanical knowledge on the functionings of the human psyche, that would seem adequete; enough.

Bhunivelze is doing that on a cosmic level.

I now want to get onto the romance: that being, his affections for Lightning. I don’t know how much I’m going to say, but it’ll probably be alot. It’s something that hits very close to home.

There is this... thing, within certain branches of Christianity, perhaps even in those of various Abrahamic faiths, where God’s love is posited to be the love-- The ultimate, most-fulfilling, all-encompassing love you could ever imagine --Because, well, he is love, so the story goes, and so often the best way to convey that is through the imagery of...

Marriage.

Giving up yourself so completely, to serve, to be the Bride; to be bound by him for all eternity; and for there to be no higher bliss than this.

This angle is pushed on young girls and women the most; from the mere parallels to the woman’s role in marriage, all the way down to downright-horrifying ultra-Evangelical purity pacts. With men, God is your dad, your best bud and confidant, your boss, your king, your this, your that, and the ‘marriage‘ as it were is relegated to a sort of half-thought; a metaphor.

For me, God was an attempt at all that, and my arranged groom.

(It was almost incestuous; was incestuous, that my own Divine Father would reach for my hand in marriage.)

Bhunivelze experiences Emotions™ for the first time through Hope, experiences Hope’s sheer overwhelming admiration for Lighting(whether there were any baby-crush feelings mixed in, I can’t say), and promptly falls into a nigh-romantic obsession with Lightning, deciding that she will be Etro(his all-but daughter)’s replacement, will be his Goddess of Death to-be-- He even calls her as such, before the final boss-battle--

...In the JP.

What happened in localisation, probably due to a number of factors, all the way back in early 2014, was that everything emotionally challenging about Bhunivelze was scraped off, like it was extra fat, and tossed aside, leaving us with the bland, clichéd shell of a foe-god we’ve seen time and time again. And I mean everything. I mean his very love for humanity; the fact his ploy was, in his eyes, to save them. Because if they’d left that all on, then it would raise the question of even if there was such a seemingly pure, all-knowing, loving being hell-bent on setting things “straight,“ would they truly be unquestionable? Would we have the right to fight for our humanity in the face of the Creator of the Universe?

To reject a love so personal?

That’s what gets me about FFXIII’s tackling of God, no matter how hackneyed and poorly-executed. It’s personal.

It’s from a feminine experience.

I know that terming is... vague, and problematic, but the way Christianity and much of the video game industry handle femininity itself is weird and problematic, so as it stands, I’ll have to simplify it. Apologies.

What sets FFXIII’s Let’s Kill God™ plot aside from most JRPG Let’s Kill God™ plots is that with our protagonist being a woman, and one who is very in touch with her femininity alongside her sheer strength; often, in these stories, God is reduced to Yet Another Foe, expected or unexpected, and you are tasked with taking him down unquestioningly for the Good of Mankind-- You will fight God, because you are right to, and you will go man-to-man-to-however-many-men you decide to bring along for the bloodbath.

And that just, doesn’t speak to me.

Even as an Extian.

Especially as an Extian. And an AFAB one with a deeply complicated experience with my gender, at that.

Leaving Christianity was painful. Questioning God was painful. Coming to terms with the fact that I had been mentally, emotionally, and spiritually traumatised under the guise of All-Encompassing Love was so, so fucking painful. I had been taught since I was five years old to devote myself to him, spent my life desperate to feel something, anything, to stay connected because I just, I never could Feel It on a deeper level, never could Give Up Myself, all I was, couldn’t Die A Spiritual Death And Be Reborn As His Eager Vessel, thus deeming myself to be worthless and a broken vessel for years and years on end... And for all that to have been... Nothing.

Lightning is hollowed out, the shards of her dead sister ripped from her in-stasis, leaving her emotionally numb for the majority of the game, Bhunivelze sweeps it under the rug, pretends he’ll perform a miracle and return Serah to life in exchange for her compliance, then sends her on her way to do his work, all the while knowing he’s going to pull said-rug from under her and elevate her such dizzying heights in the aftermath--

That he’ll deny her humanity.

Sand down all the rough edges that make her her, and polish her up afterwards, gild her as he is gilded, make her a Goddess.

And he’ll do it all because he loves her.

You can’t fight God like you can everything else. To fight It is the fight Existence Itself; FFXIII even conveys that by making Bhunivelze’s model part of the arena; it’s baked into the fabric of the game, no matter how minute.

While Lightning Returns is far from perfect in its execution of this concept, and that in itself makes me wince, not even taking into account the horribly botched excuse for a localisation Bhunivelze endured, it speaks to me more than anything else I’ve seen so far.

And it’s helped uncover some things within me. Helped me untangle them, just a little more.

So, yeah. I have alot of Thoughts on Bhunivelze, I want to share them, and I’m kinda really sad I have no one but my currently-absent friend Vee to share them with. I could get into alot more, like his very Fucked relationship with familial bonds, and how Lightning’s role as saviour so deeply parallels the overwhelming panic and never-ending guilt of Evangelical proselytisation, but I think I’ll leave those for another time.

In short, Bhunivelze is the epitome of Divine Love gone deeply wrong; on all fronts.

And if all of that isn’t enough to intrigue you, then, in Vee’s words, Lightning and Velze are literally canon endgame Sefikura lmaOOOOOOOOOOOOOO--

[sonic-me-baby]

Why I didn’t like Loki Season 1

MAJOR SPOILERS FOR ALL EPISODES

With a series titled ‘Loki’, one would assume that we would get a deep dive into the character of Loki to better understand his motivations, traumas and backstory. Look at Wandavision - despite its failings it really told the story of Wanda and how she deals with her trauma WHILE advancing the plot. Falcon and Winter Soldier wasn’t as good but at least, we see how Falcon and Bucky deal with the aftermath and there is some growth.

I thought that Loki was on the right track in episode 1 when Loki watched himself die and reflect a little more on himself and ‘glorious purpose’. In fact, the whole set up with the TVA seemed like an amazing premise to allow Loki to rediscover himself and forge a new path for himself - an interesting prospect when we consider the tension between what he desires and the lack of free will in the TVA.

Unfortunately, what we got instead was 1 episode of Loki admitting he is a narcissist and has daddy issues, another where he comes out as bisexual before immediately falling for a female (and note, female instead of non binary which I find to be an odd choice) version of himself. The writers must think that this is such a good idea, he is such a narcissist the only person he can fall for is himself. Except, that doesn’t seem right to me, how quickly Loki’s character development shifts from admitting to being lonely and traumatised to falling incredibly quickly for himself. Even if this were the writer’s choice, it was poorly executed with so many ‘romance’ heavy scenes pushed in our faces (e.g Loki talking about ruling the universe together, giving Sylvie a blanket or the sexy eyes literally every moment he sees her) Why? It was not convincing at all that he fell for her mere hours after meeting her. Sylvie’s lukewarm reactions towards Loki makes this all the more unfounded. Even as an enemy to lovers trope this failed - where are the moments of real tension and the slow burn where they discover feelings for each other? My problem is that Sylvie and Loki are so much like each other that it isn’t the fertile land for this push and pull - in fact their differences (Sylvie wanting to destroy the TVA, Loki wanting ??) seems manufactured and unconvincing. What exactly draws them together? 

Aside from this very lengthy point, what disappointed me further was how the focus on Sylvie and Loki as a couple very much derailed and distracted from the actual plot in the last 3 episodes. On that note, the pacing made absolutely no sense. As a 6 hour movie sure, but to reveal the main villain in the last episode (whom we have no emotional or character driven connection to) and to drop a bomb that this whole series was basically made to open the multiverse made me feel cheated. So this series WASN’T about Loki it was about advancing the plot. Sure, the loose ends, edgy concept is bold but narratively, Marvel is going to leave fans just wondering about all the other characters without any epilogue or even cut scene? Like the previous serieses, the finale was a total letdown. 

Cinematographically, it looked like they just ran out of money - just Kang, Loki and Sylvie in a room talking for more than 30 minutes. How? So much exposition, it’s lazy writing in my opinion. They need to explain sure, but NOT in the final episode. I mean literally telling us about Kang’s experience of the multiverse war is an example of Telling not Showing, it adds no stakes to the plot. So, I’m supposed to listen to this guy talk and just automatically understand why he created the TVA? Especially coming from such an amazing episode with all the Lokis meeting each other and creating such an interesting world we have this?? No, absolutely not. Sylvie kissing Loki in the last 10 minutes just to backstab him after setting up that Loki was so in love with her the past 3 episodes? Absolutely not. Overall, my main issue is not so much that Sylvie and Loki start to ‘fall’ for each other, but rather, how quickly all character motivations and objectives become linked to this romance. 

Instead, I would argue that Loki as a character has not been fully and adequately developed as a character to be involved in ANY romantic relationship and I wonder why they included it. The whole story would have worked without the romantic undertones. Loki himself hasn’t grown enough as an individual to warrant whatever they put him through in this series. It just puzzles me that they chose to add romance at all. Not only was the Loki character unsatisfactorily developed at the end of the series, the other characters such as renslayer, mobius and even b-15 all lack adequate character growth. What happens after the ending? Why would you leave fans just waiting for more than a year to come back to this world. It really feels like they threw us in the water to drown.  I am most disappointed in renslayer - WHY is she so compliant to the TVA? Why does she do what she does? What is her internal drive and motivation? Mobius is slightly more developed but it seemed like they just threw the TVA characters away in the last episode. 

Finally, I think that the writers did Sylvie dirty. I do not understand why she was written this way - if you think about it no growth was achieved except that she killed kang and the multiverse. My problem with this is that it seems that her main purpose was plot - she is simply there to be romanced so she can betray loki and wreak havoc into the world. We needed to see more of her. You compare classic loki, he didn't have much screen time but narratively I understood, he has reached the end of his life and the touch of him finding his glorious purpose was so simple yet effective. With such a beautiful end for old Loki, it is so sad that our Loki once again ends up alone, yet again. 

Overall, I feel disappointed in the series because

1. Loki didn’t grow as a character, what we know about him now seems added in so that disney looks more LGBT+ friendly 

2. The dominance of Sylvie and Loki subplot which became a main plot and added nothing to the story

3. Horrible pacing

4. Inadequate development of characters

There are many things I loved about this series too such as the introduction of Loki variants (hella cool), the concept and design of the TVA and also multiverses! However, as a series titled ‘Loki’, it left much to be desired. Who and why Loki does what he does still doesn't make sense to me. Worse yet, the only lesson he learnt through this series is that no matter who gets close to him, Loki will still end up alone. 

[misinformedgenic]

The last post on this god awful blog

Hello, I ask everyone who see’s this to unfollow this blog, if you are following me. I can’t look at the reblogs and posts I posted anymore, without feeling incredibly embarassed and I know that I am being aggressive to the people who gave me notes but you know what I don’t care.

(Overall trigger warning: trauma,syscourse,swearing and apologies.)

My message for those who are anti-endogenic:

(tw: abelism,mental ilness)

The truth is, whether all systems are formed by trauma or some can be born that way or it can be formed by something else, it really doesn’t matter. All endogenic systems are just trying to exist and communicate their experiences, and instead of listening and supporting those who might experience their plurality differently from you, you just villanize them and insult them and do the exact same thing that neurotypicals have been doing to us for YEARS. Calling us fake, saying we are trying to get attention, saying we should be ashamed of ourselves for “appropriaiting” from people who had a more severe form of an illness or was priveliged enough to get a diagnosis . If you are traumagenic and you haven’t had that kind of experience, I genuinely envy you. That shit was done to me and it really hurt me. People called me attention seeking for saying I was depressed,or had social anxiety or that I was transgender, or that I was traumatised or plural when all I was trying to do was be myself openly and to accept myself. Why is it that when someone who experiences some sort of plurality and they don’t feel comfortable assosciating their system with trauma, you jump straight to accusing them of something as awful as FAKING or BEING A THIEF!

And yes I know being endogenic means it’s not an illness, but being called a fake for expressing who you truly are when you’ve been forced to hide who you are is such a awful experience. How could you be so callous and careless to even risk that happening to someone else, even once more, in this cruel world. Even if every single endogenic system, who says I can’t help being a plural, was trauma genic, they still associate themselves with that word, endogenic. When you say something horrible about endogenic systems, you are doing so much damage to those people. I mean, to assume without a shadow of a doubt that every single “veritable” endogenic system is actually traumagenic with the limited amount of understanding of DID/OSDD IN ITSELF, as opposed to how this phenomenon could work outside of a disordered framework, really shows you have your head far up your ass. But even then, it doesn’t matter because whether they ended up being traumagenic or not, according to science, no one deserves that treatment.

Even then,in regards to the post on this blog that got the most notes, we need to understand that people with plurality are forced to label their pluraility as a symptom of a disorder. Many systems who needed psychiatry and systems who didn’t and just masked themselves mingled, and they shared terms. This is still happening today, more then ever.

(Just in case you want to know, fictive is not a term used in psychology or psychiatry. It literally came from the soul bonding community, and people who are anti endogenic are still using it. If you don’t believe me use a web browser, and provide some sources to prove otherwise. I didn’t know this, and I’m not going to tag the OP who told me this,because I’m not sure whether they want to be tagged, but thank you. I felt pretty humiliated but it helped to come to realize what I was doing was wrong and that my opinions were wrong, and it helped me to become a kinder and more understanding individual.)

And we need to understand that systems shouldn’t be forced to be involved in exploring their plurality through a lense of trauma, because for many it doesn’t make sense because thats not how they experience it. Even if it is repressed memories ,sometimes or always, systems need a space to be systems without talking about trauma or applying trauma to it. DID and OSDD spaces are not providing that and in those spaces trauma is going to be talked about. Systems shouldn’t have to force themselves to think about trauma and go through pain, just to be able to call themselves a plural and have people acknowledge and accept them.

My message for any endogenic systems and their supporters:

I apologize for everything that you had to go through, from me and my behaviour. My behaviour was terrible and none of you deserved it at all. You deserve so much more than what you get from the anti-endogenic crowd, and you are absolutely valid, and I hope that in the future things will be easier all of you. You deserve love, acceptance and support, and I hope that nobody will ever be able to take that reality from you. You are doing nothing wrong by just being a plural, and it’s really sad that people were and still are fighting about this. Fuck anyone who says otherwise. 

Conclusion:

(tw: s***** abuse,ableism,self hatred)

I know I was guilty of what I criticized, and that is really embarassing, but I’m glad I realize that now. I admit I was angry because I was jealous and bitter and I didn’t understand the history properly around this community or how it formed. I went through a lot of online g******g and s***al abuse and my experience with being a system was horrible, I had to deal with alters who had horrible del****ns and wanted to incite gruesome s*** h*** and wanted to k*** me. My system has introjects of my a****rs and random men I see on the streets making pe****ted comments at me pretty much all the time, and I was really jealous of systems who could experience the joys of being a system while avoiding the horrible parts. It made me feel worthless and inferior, because all the interesting and fun parts of being a system could be paraded on TikTok or whether and displayed by people who weren’t f***ed *p and dis*****ng like I was. I am not saying that’s the only basis as to why anti-endogenics hold their opinions, but I am saying this because if you ever see those anti-endogenic posts of mine somewhere and I am very passive agressive or vicious, that’s where it comes from and it isn’t objective or fair.

end of abuse trigger warning.

I decided that I am going to delete all the mean comments I made on other people’s posts that didn’t get any response, so that not another person has to see it again, and for which did get a response I am going to apologize to all those I harmed. If you want to respond to my argument, I can’t stop you from reblogging and making a comment, and that’s your freedom on this website, but I am not going to be replying because discourse on here is so nasty and I’m just done with that. I would rather help contribute to a community of people who feel isolated and who will be empowered by building a culture around plurality, whether that be around trauma or not. I’m tired of focusing on my trauma, it’s in the past and I don’t give a shit about it. It just sucks and I hate it and I am done with it. I will need therapy for it of course,yadi ya, but in terms of my limited free time on this earth I would rather contribute to making people feel happy and supported then argue and be angry about something that is kind of pointless anyway.

So bye, I would like to make a normal system blog in the future and we’ll be using the same names but for now I need to shut the fuck up and reflect. 

- Luca

Also hey, on a additional note, my name is Milo and I allowed my name to be associated with this blog and it was irresponsible and unkind for me to do promote this kind of thinking. I am really sorry for any harm I caused by being a part of this blog. Additionally Stanley understands that his post on pride flags was inaccurate and he made some very nasty comments/did some nasty stuff to, he is very sorry to all those he harmed with his previous posts. He is in a really bad situation at the moment, which has gotten worse over time, he is a trauma holder and he is in a lot of emotional turmoil,so neither me or Luca wanted him to be involved in writing this specific post, but that doesn’t mean what he did was okay and all three of us recognize this now.

Best regards,

Milo.

[taiblogcomics]

Absolutely Thera-Pissed

Hey there, visas and green cards. It's our ninth blogaversary! Wow, we've been going for quite a long time. Long enough to completely change platforms at least once. Considering we just finished our whole backlog, I think we should try something new in honour of the amazing coincidence of these two events synching up. Before we start on another backlog of terrible comics (trust me, I have something in mind), let's do something we've never done before on this blog. We've only ever really covered comics issue by issue. How would you feel, dear readers, if we instead did an entire storyline all at once?

And oh boy, do I have just the storyline in mind. Here's the cover:

Oh yeah. We're doing this. This story has kind of hung over this blog, mostly due to its connections to Red Hood and the Outlaws. It also prominitely features Harley Quinn, who also appeared in Suicide Squad (which ended before this story took place). And personally, I am a fan of Harley, Booster, and the Titans. And oh boy, does this comic shit all over them, in some of the most truly appalling ways possible. This is Heroes in Crisis. All nine issues. Let's jump right in~

I won’t be going over the covers of the individual issues, or even this one so much, but I do like that quote at the top. It is actually some good superhero artwork! It is an extremely awful story, but the artwork is fine~

So the first issue starts like this: Booster Gold's in one of those tiny middle-American diners. The host's loving it, since she says superheroes never show up and eat here. And oh look, here comes another one! Booster replies that that's no hero, as Harley Quinn walks in. Clearly he hasn't been reading her solo series. Harley orders some pie, and she and Booster eat in terse silence. Until suddenly Harley grabs a knife, and the two begin a real knock-down, drag-out fight. And lemme tell ya something, Harley keeps up with a guy who can fly and project forcefields pretty well. Eventually the pair are exhausted, and Booster says he's gotta bring Harley in, after what he saw her do. Harley protests, because she didn't kill all those people. She saw Booster do it.

All this is intercut with two different scenes. One is sort of a confession-cam style thing, a bunch of heroes (including Harley, Blue Jay, Booster, and Hotspot) all admitting they're here for therapy. And the second is Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman talking with each other as they land in a particular site. This place is called Sanctuary. It is currently full of dead heroes. Among the deceased here are Hotspot, Lagoon Boy, Wally West, and Roy Harper. And this is my first major complaint. Do you know what all these characters have in common? Hey, DC: Stop using the Titans as your cannon fodder. Stop treating them as a joke. Every iteration of the team deserves more respect than this.

So Harley and Booster are going to be our POV characters for this story. I like both of these characters a lot, so this is probably going to be pretty painful seeing them written horribly. Harley goes off to the Penguin for protection, and we actually get to see her in her old costume. It is a breath of fresh air, honestly. Booster, meanwhile, mostly just tries to rationalise his actions with Skeets, his robot buddy. Booster suffered kind of a psychotic break back in the Batman storyline "The Gift", which is why he was in Sanctuary to begin with. This story is basically a follow-up to that one, and has the same sort of tone.

Harley confronts the trinity in Gotham, revealing she set the whole thing up with Penguin just so she could get close to them on her terms. She uses the Lasso of Truth to confess she saw Booster Gold do it, then uses the Kryptonite in Batman's belt to skip town. The next time we see her, she's at the docks, giving a eulogy to Poison Ivy, another victim of Sanctuary. Booster Gold, meanwhile, has rationalised that Batman would solve the crime himself rather than turn himself in, and goes to Barry Allen to check in. Of course, the trinity are the only ones who know about the accident yet, so when Booster tells Barry that Wally's dead, he gets super pissed. Just like the readers are!

Issue 3 is a flashback issue, showing Booster's first day at Sanctuary. Sanctuary works like this: everyone gets their own private quarters, and if they want to visit the common areas, they wear a mask and cloak to preserve anonymity. Here's the first really big problem with Sanctuary: while therapy for superheroes is a good (possibly necessary) concept, Sanctuary is only one kind of therapy. It essentially assumes everyone responds the same to the same sort of therapy. The kind here is that Sanctuary gives you a private room that simulates your traumas (with a holodeck) and has you physically confront them. Lagoon Boy, for example, is shown to be facing the laser that killed him over and over again. Wally sets up superhero battles that still have his kids with him. And while this sort of therapy might help some people, it's definitely not universal.

Booster starts his first session, which ends up just being a hologram of himself, talking to him. Before he can get much further, though, alarms go off and everyone is urged to emergency evacuate. Lagoon Boy is killed--in a deliberate callback to his previous death, no less--and we see a few other victims, including Red Devil, Commander Steel, and Gunfire. Wally clutches Roy's body as he dies in his arms, and Harley smacks Wally in the face with her hammer. She greets Booster cheerfully, and he admits he's having a hell of a first day.

After a brief scene of Aqualad (Garth, in this case) drinking in a bar--and who can blame him for wanting to drink after experiencing this story?--Batman and Barry meet, thus showing they're still unsure who did it. Booster is being interrogated under the Lasso of Truth, and he relays the previous issue to us. In his mind, Harley did it. Harley, meanwhile, has tracked down Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) and surprisingly... they hug. Babs promises to help stick by Harley and prove her innocence. After all, Babs has been through trauma, too. The comic reminds us of this with another confession-cam video, showing Babs display the scars she received from “The Killing Joke".

So, about these confession cams... They've been interspersed between scenes, showing everyone from Batman down to guys like Gunfire or the Protector relaying their problems by confession. Again, this sort of therapy isn't for everyone, but it's the only one Sanctuary's got. Superman tells Batman that Lois has been receiving these videos anonymously. Batman responds that there are no videos. Sanctuary does not keep records, to preserve patient confidentiality. Supes replies that there are videos, he's seen them, and now the media has them. The issue ends with a breaking story about "What is the secret superhero Sanctuary?" exposé airing on television...

Speaking of breaking, Blue Beetle (Ted Kord, who I'm as surprised as anybody to find out is alive again post-Rebirth) breaks Booster out of the Hall of Justice where he's being held. The pair watch the breaking news report on television while they try to come up with a plan. Booster's idea is to confess to Barry again, figuring they won't expect the stupidest possible move, making it actually the smartest possible move. Booster has not really recovered from his insanity, I see. He and Beetle do exactly that, surprising Barry at work, which is apparently all the advantage they need. This is because Barry, as a forensic scientist, has access to the data on the autopsies.

While Superman makes a public statement to the press regarding Sanctuary, Batman passes Skeets into Batgirl's care, and she immediately violates that trust by in turn passing Skeets to Harley. It's implied Harley tortures the information regarding Booster's whereabouts out of Skeets, but it's okay because he's just a robot. Babs and Harley turn up at Booster's place as he's analysing the data he obtained from Barry. Here's where it all starts to fall into place: the data on Wally West says his body is five days older than the rest of them.

Issue 6 is kind of a triple piece, but one that can be summed up fairly quickly. It focuses on three specific characters who were all at Sanctuary. The parts regarding Gnaark the caveman (another Titans alumnus) are ultimately pointless, since the issue ends with his death. The parts with Harley focus on Joker's abuse of her and Posion Ivy's care towards her. This also ends badly. Wally's parts focus on the DC Rebirth story where he essentially willed himself back into the universe. And while that story is really good and it was a joy to see Wally again, it ultimately ended with the knowledge that Wally's family did not reappear with him. His kids are gone, his wife is with someone else and does not remember him, and until he forced his way back into everyone's memories, no one else recalled him either. This would traumatise anybody. But it may have really traumatised Wally.

The next issue starts really well, honestly. Booster and Harley are fighting it out--again--while Babs and Beetle just watch. Like, they aren't even stressed, they're both familiar with their respective charges, and this is really no surprise. In any other comic, this would be a great scene. Shame that it's in this one, and it's not nearly enough to save even a lick of it. Eventually Babs works out that Booster's forcefields are only currently working because of some jury-rigged tech that's powered by Blue Beetle's consciousness. So she knocks him out with one hit. Harley prepares a killing blow, but ultimately cannot go through with it, proving she's a good person. She and Booster just collapse on the floor, and bond over the fact that they both kind of suck as superheroes (from their own perspectives, at least).

With Booster, Beetle, Babs, and Harley (Barley?) all on the same side now, the group decide to get to the bottom of everything together. Meanwhile, the rose Harley dropped off the docks is picked up by Wally. See, while the body they found of Wally is five days older than the rest, this means he time-traveled and is still at present alive. Wally channels his Speed Force into the rose, causing it to grow rapidly--and Poison Ivy blooms from it, restored to life. I don't get it either, but if it means Ivy didn't die in this stupid story, I'll take it. Wally then apologises, since Ivy just returned to life and now she has to see death so soon. Those five days are up, and a second Wally appears, ready to literally kill himself.

So here's what really fucking happened.

Wally had been at Sanctuary three weeks already. He's frustrated because the therapy's not helping as fast as he thought it would. He does a jump into the Speed Force and basically exists everywhere at once. Spread across the time stream, he witnesses everybody's confession cams all at once. He sees "the trauma of a thousand heroes in crisis" (hey, we have a title, ladies and gentlemen). And... it's too much. Realising everybody's personal pain breaks him. He unleashes the burst of pent-up energy he'd stored to do the time jaunt thing and kills everyone at Sanctuary.

Lagoon Boy. Protector. Hotspot. Red Devil. Arsenal. Gnaark. Solstice. Tattooed Man. Gunfire. Blue Jay. Commander Steel. Nemesis. I want you to remember these names. These were all pre-existing characters. Half of them were members of the Titans at one point or another. Wally West, the Flash, killed them in a stupid, stupid storyline that not only assassinates his character, but also literally assassinates all these other characters.

Wally uses his super speed to set up the bodies, rig the crime scenes so it looks like Harley or Booster could be responsible for their deaths. He then travels forward in time to the present moment, where he has just confessed all this to Poison Ivy. He kills that version of himself and travels back in time with it to fake his own death. He then uses the VR tech of Sanctuary to trick Booster and Harley into believing they saw the other commit the deeds. Neither of them even knew they'd never left their respective therapy simulations. This leaves Wally with a five day window to figure out something good he can do to make up for killing everyone.

So the final issue wraps it up like this: Booster time-travels the group back to where Barry is about to kill his own paradox clone. Harley and Ivy reunite, which is nice. So here's the plan: this doesn't have to end with any more death. In the end, what Barry did was all an accident. So Booster travels into the future to make a clone of the paradox-Wally. This gives them a five-day-old body they can leave at the massacre, in order to close the timeloop. The present Wally turns himself in and is arrested, while the five-days-ago paradox Wally merges back into the Speed Force, still running to try and find his family.

And the "good" thing Wally did to make up for killing everyone? He was the one that leaked Sanctuary's existence to the media. In his mind, the idea that heroes are seen as constant paragons was too much pressure. By letting the public know that even superheroes need therapy, even superheroes suffer trauma just like everyone else, he he could let people know that heroes are just that: people. People like everyone else. And that it is okay for anyone to seek help if you need it. This seems like a nice sentiment, until you remember the reason Wally killed everyone is because he was impatient about how his therapy was going.  What an awful story.

-----

Like, legitimately, this story is just awful. The basic premise--that heroes could probably do with therapy--is not a bad one. The execution is just really completely mismanaged, though. Start with the beginning. Why are Harley Quinn and Booster Gold chosen as the focus characters? Because they're the ones you could believe would orchestrate a mass murder, right? Except no. You would never believe that. Booster is not that much of a screw-up, and Harley is not that much of a villain. Neither of them have been those things for many years. The readers know that, but it feels like the writer didn't.

And that's the worst part of it all. The superficiality of the story. In the end, why was this story written? To explore the concept of therapy for superheroes? Well, then, it went about it in the worst way possible. Not everyone experiences trauma in the same way. And therefore, not everyone responds to therapy in the same way. The way therapy is depicted in this story is just wrong. Frankly, Sanctuary looks like one of the worst places to get treatment, right alongside Arkham Asylum. Do you think anybody's really going to take away from this story "It's okay to talk about your traumas if you need to"? In or out of universe?

I didn't really talk about the confession cams, but they seemed highly unnecessary. They were always the same, a 3x3 of panels featuring a superhero talking about their traumas. Most of them didn't factor into the story, and at most they felt like a common scene transition. They tried to give them some weight by revealing that the contents of all these possibly got leaked? But then they just kinda dropped that subplot. Which was really kind of serious, because the traumas range from the Protector (a character created for drug PSAs) confessing that he has done drugs to Superman talking about the burden of keeping his identity secret. How much of these did the public actually get? And if it was none, what was even the point of it being a subplot~? Like, leak that Sanctuary existed, sure, but why did Lois Lane get sent all the videos that shouldn't have existed~?

What this story has done to Wally is awful. They have completely tarnished this likeable, amazing hero by having him kill twelve people (thirteen, if you include Poison Ivy), several of them colleagues and friends. All because he's trying to fake his way through therapy when it isn't helping him as fast as he wants. Know what would have been a good story? How about he learns to cope with his trauma? How about he actually gets his family back? It's unrealistic as hell, but it's a fictional story. It's escapism. It's okay to have a happy ending. I ''want'' my stories to end in happy endings, because it's so hard to get them in real life. I want something better than this.

DC Rebirth was a breath of fresh air. Wally's return to the DC universe felt like the clouds were lifitng. The stories following Rebirth felt like a return to form after the darkening of the New 52. It felt like the stories were getting good again, like the comics were getting fun and hopeful again. It couldn't last, though, could it? This story is only three years after the Rebirth initiative. Three years? That's all the hope we get in the universe? I sincerely hope this story ends up an abberation, and not a return to form of the darker, more dour universe we put up with in the New 52. Especially given current events, you can understand why a brighter, optimistic fictional world is appealing. I sincerely hope that when comics resume publication after the pandemic, a more positive outlook continues, and stories like this are left in the garbage where they belong.

This book is fucking awful, and I am done with it. Next week, we'll start reviewing an all-new series for the Taiblog. Let's just say I'm not done ranting about injustices against the Teen Titans~

[pynkhues]

Since you're a writer, I'm hoping you can shed some light on this. IMO the writers were chasing viewers in S2 and trying not to get canceled. Personally, I hate when writers toy with their audience, it means they don't have a clear picture of their characters and narrative. How do you feel about writers making it up as they go?

Ah, this post got really long, anon! Since you asked me as a writer, I’m answering as one (I hope you don’t mind! I also hope this doesnt come out as too Creative Writing 101 for people either. This is just lessons I’ve learned and use in my own practice, so I’m applying them here.) 

(Also I have drawn horrible diagrams on my very pink notebook paper - I am so sorry, haha)

So first thing’s first - no. I don’t think the writers were chasing viewers (at least not beyond the way any writer is wanting an audience), and I don’t think they were making it up as they go really, but I can understand why you would think that way! 

It won’t be a surprise to anyone that I love this show a lot, but coming from it as both a writer and editor - this show does have narrative problems, and the biggest ones, particularly in s2, are in execution, escalation and pacing. 

I think heading into the season they had certain character arcs they wanted to follow which married well with the story they wanted to tell. In particular, I actually think the writers have a very strong handle on the girls (I will say that I’ve had a few asks telling me Beth’s characterisation is all over the place, which I’m curious about, just because I personally find her very consistent, and when I’ve asked for clarification, I’ve never gotten any reply, so  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

I mean, look at their s2 arcs on paper, right? 

Ruby tries to negotiate Stan’s lowered opinion of her after the reveal of what she’s done, then has to negotiate him telling her to turn Beth and Annie in. She manages the situation painfully but pulls them through and they’re close again as Ruby navigates the increasingly lower depths of their crime life. When Stan acts to save Beth for Ruby and is arrested, it only escalates – the case on him driving Ruby to extremes to try and save him, including robbing a Quick Cash and using counterfeit money to bribe a lawyer. On top of that, she’s being targeted by an FBI agent who’s after her best friend who she gives up and then saves and then who tries to sacrifice herself for them. Ruby finishes the season the most morally compromised she’s ever been.

Annie gets back together with her ex only to find out that he’s gotten his not-quite-separated-wife pregnant. She splits up with him, but is heartbroken and it’s only amplified by the fact that they’ve been given a job by their Crime Boss to murder a man who tried to rape her but who’s grandmother she has a relationship with. Her sister can’t kill him, and Annie doesn’t get the chance as MP beats her to it. Upon disposing of the body though she endures a whole lot of pain as a result of both her ex’s new family and knowing she’s robbed a woman of her own. Annie goes on a guilt tour – tells her son, helps Marion, helps Nancy only to eventually find an absolver of her guilt in Noah, who builds her up and tells her she’s more than what life has given her. She lets herself have it for a while, before realising he’s FBI and there to trap her, and Annie tries to use him only to realise she can’t, and she finishes the season in a lot more hurt than she started it.

Beth struggles with guilt after getting Dean shot, gets the job to kill Boomer from Rio, can’t do it, gets support and encouragement from him (in various states of animosity), but in the end doesn’t have to find out if she can do it because MP does it instead. She’s rewarded by Rio in a way she probably never has been by anyone, her husband further subjugates her, so she has sex with Rio, starts to entertain a future with him, but he undermines her, so she seizes control from him. They work together. Dean forces her to break up with him due to jealousy, she struggles, goes back, but Rio’s stung, so unhelpful, and they play a little cat and mouse before he bails then kidnaps her and she shoots him.

With the exception of that very last sentence, I think all of those are narratively really strong pathways to have explored. Like I said above though, the issue is in execution, escalation and pacing.

But to talk about those things, I think I probably need to talk about story. 

SO!

Stories have a shape.

Kurt Vonnegut talks extensively about this, and while he’ll talk about a few different types of story shapes, they really all boil down to this bad boy here:

Look at this guy.

What a beautiful thing.

He’s a story.

It doesn’t matter if you’re reading Dr Seuss or Charles Dickens, when you read a story – when you strip away its words and its characters and its settings – this is what it looks like.

Or, well.

Not quite.

Really, it’s this guy:

But we’ll talk about him in a sec.

Right now, let’s talk about that first little inch: 

The Beginning

The fact that stories have a beginning is not a surprise to anyone. Stories need them. In some ways, they’re the most important part of your story. After all, the job of the beginning is to set up the world your protagonist is about to leave behind. That is essential in grounding a reader / viewer – orienting them to the world that they’re in, and getting them invested in the story you’re about to tell, if not the protagonist.

Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Game of Thrones are all excellent example of this (and frequently used in teaching) because in each of these cases it’s literal. Frodo leaves Bag End, Harry leave Privet Drive, Luke leaves Tatooine, the Starks leave Winterfell. There is a literal departure from the world before the crux of the story, and that departure is what signifies the start of the ‘hero journey’ aka the main part of your narrative.

Of course, it’s not always literal – in fact, it’s usually not. Usually that world is symbolic – it’s the single, uncertain world before the Bingley’s buy the house next door in Pride and Prejudice or the dry domestic sphere of Breaking Bad before Walt decides to make meth. It’s a marked shift, whether that’s internal or external.

In Good Girls, it’s internal.

The beginning is actually pretty perfect. The world it sets up that we’re about to (try to) depart is one of struggle and invisibility.

Beth’s in a loveless marriage promptly discovering that her husband is not only cheating but about to leave them destitute, Ruby’s getting ignored by the healthcare system and can’t afford to pay for her daughter’s wellbeing, and Annie is in a dead end job about to lose custody of her child.

Writing-wise – as a beginning, I honestly think 1.01 is close to perfect.

It sets up who these characters are, their personal conflicts, and the story world they share together, and the worlds they have on their own i.e. Ruby at the hospital and the diner, Annie at Fine and Frugal, Beth with Dean and Boland Motors.

Then:

BOOM

Inciting Incident.

The inciting incident is also often called The Point of No Return.

When I’m teaching, I personally like to call it the “You’re a wizard!” moment.

It’s when something happens that means everything set up in the beginning will be changed forever. It’s Romeo meeting Juliet, it’s Katniss volunteering for Prim, it’s Frodo deciding to take the ring to Mordor, it’s Jaimie pushing a child out a window, it’s Beth – deciding to take her little sister’s joke seriously and rob a grocery store.

(Again, I like to use Harry Potter because it’s literal – there is no return for Harry after hearing Hagrid tell him he’s a wizard. Everything is changed forever).

Inciting incidents are probably the most singularly important narrative moment, because they’re what everything else tumbles out of. Pretty much everything that happens in the story should be a direct or indirect result of the inciting incident. The inciting incident is ultimately the key of the story and what should unlock the overall arc.

When it comes to a series – whether that be a TV series, movie series or book series, each individual instalment (see: season of a show) should have its own inciting incident which – preferably – builds off the one established in the first instalment.

The Hunger Games does this really well. Katniss and Peeta being brought back into the games in Catching Fire is both an imitation inciting incident which allows the author to explore the story world further in an exciting way, and also an inciting incident that’s directly borne out of the first book / film – aka Katniss pissed enough people off during the first games that they’re going to try and kill her for real this time, which in turn gives us the opportunity to explore Katniss’ trauma, the ramifications of her actions in the first book on the broader story world, and to generate a new, compelling chapter based off of both.

Good Girls has a terrific inciting incident in s1 – which is Beth realising she’s about to lose everything.

That is our narrative point of no return.

And it works on a lot of levels – it establishes Beth as the driving engine of the story, fuelled by the chorus motivations of Annie and Ruby, rounding off both their collective and individual stakes, it sets us up for a strong narrative spine and solid characterisations.

Good Girls actually also has a terrific inciting incident in s2, which operates strongly on its own while also building firmly off the character arcs of s1.

The s2 inciting incident is Rio showing up on that park bench with Marcus, a gun and an order.

The story pivots here – giving Rio a lot of narrative thrust (get your minds out of the gutter kids), and making him a sort of secondary story engine. The core engine is still Beth, but her life is different now. She’s been traumatised and she’s exhausted, but Rio revealing his son to the girls (and tying their motivations up together in a neat little package) while forcing her to act, re-establishes her as the person who’s decisions are going to be the driving force of the narrative.

Ruby and Annie are, of course, story engines in their own right too, but they fall into line behind Beth usually, and their narrative push is actually usually away from the story throughline, but we’ll talk about that in a sec.

Rising Tension / The Middle

Okay, this is where things get a little tricky.

Do you remember this guy?

When we talk about stories, rising tension / the middle is the big guy. It’s the bulk of your narrative. It’s Where Things Happen. It’s where all the ugly stuff set up in your beginning and exploded by your inciting incident just - - grows a life of it’s own.

Or - -

Well.

Maybe not.

Forget about this guy.

Rising tension is this:

Rising tension is a series of ‘mini climaxes’ on the way to the main climax that raises the stakes, lets you know characters better, and pushes your characters onwards to the main climax.

Each of these little climaxes should be followed by a ‘narrative rest’. (that’s the dip after each spike)

Which - - I don’t know, might sound weird? I know when I started writing I was like ?? but it’s true! The closer you get to a big narrative climax, the more important rests are! Rests are – I personally think – one of the most important components of storytelling, because they re-ground an audience, remind them of what’s at stake, before thrusting everyone back into danger.

Again, Harry Potter is a gift in this sense because this is all really clearly paced out. Think about the first instalment – Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s / Sorcerer’s Stone.

Harry and Ron save Hermione and Ron from the troll!!!

Then they become friends and enjoy school and quidditch.

Harry loses control of his broom during a quidditch game!!!!

He’s okay and then it’s Christmas and Harry gets the invisibility cloak and feels connected to his parents for perhaps the first time in his life.

Harry, Hermione and Ron go through the trapdoor to get the philosopher’s stone!!!

And - - okay, you get the point.

Each mini climax ups the stakes, but we feel those stakes upped because of the time we spend with characters during the ‘narrative rest’. For instance, while Harry and Ron saving Hermione from the troll might have sparked an interest in her, it’s the narrative rest scenes between that and her setting Snape on fire during the quidditch game that makes us invest in her as a character. 

This is where things get a bit hairy with Good Girls. Good Girls does a tremendous job of giving us both great climaxes and wonderful moments of narrative rest. The issue, for me at least, is that it’s not always the best at balancing them. When I talk about escalation and pacing, this is a big part of what I mean.

Remember how I said this was the shape of a story?

Well, I think Good Girls s2 looked more like this:

We had a lot of solid movement in the first half of the season that sort of flattened out into a lower stakes, more meandering middle (which gave us 2.08 through 2.12). Which - -

Look.

The story changed gear, and it didn’t work.  

Think of it this way:

2.01 – mostly character-based fallout from s1 + inciting incident of Rio handing them the gun

2.02 – almost entirely rising tension culminating with the girls bribing Boomer and Beth lying to Rio

2.03 – which thrusts us straight back into rising tension with the girls trying to kill Boomer and ‘succeeding’ via Mary Pat

2.04 – which gives us a very satisfying narrative rest as we explore Rio and Beth’s relationship outside of an overall narrative thrust – he gives her a key, she shies away from him, only to fall entirely back into him culminating in sex which itself brings about a new climax (no pun intended!) in the scene with Beth, Rio and Dean at the dealership. It’s also a strong character episode in closing certain plot threads – ending Annie and Greg’s relationship + ending Ruby lying to Stan about what they’re doing – while establishing major new threads – i.e. really colliding Turner and Mary Pat.

2.05 – and after the rest, we’re back to almost entirely satisfying rising tension! Building off of the threat of finding Boomer’s body and the new tensions that Rio and Beth’s intimacy brings.

2.06 – a mix episode! Very much building to the strong climax of Beth seizing power, but also an episode that plays around with character, has a lot of strong ‘rest’ moments i.e. the girls sorting pills and talking which gives us a lot of information as to state of minds, etc.

2.07 – again, very strong mixed episode which is focused on one single, extreme climax – Jane being missing, but building a very character-centric episode around it. Also introduces Noah though? Which is a mistake. He should have been introduced - I think, in 2.05, but that feels like a whole other post.

2.08 – narratively speaking the same as 2.07 in the sense of a single climax (the girls failing to get the money back / the Beth-Ruby confrontation), but has the added bonus of flashbacks.

2.09 – we have a slight narrative thrust with the robbery of the Quick Cash but it proves very quickly to be low stakes. This is an alllll emotional stakes episode, which means narrative tension is slowing.  

2.10 – again, a character-focused, narrative rest episode devoted to Beth struggling with getting square. A few small climaxes – Annie and Ruby in Canada and Turner at the dealership being the big ones, but both quickly prove toothless. The heft / strength of the episode again is in character moments, not narrative thrust. Again - slowing it down. 

2.11 – oh, what do we have here? Another character-focused, narrative rest episode? I love this episode – it’s one of my favourites of the show, but it’s intensely character focused. Very much centred in waving away the smoke around both Noah and Rio for Annie and Beth respectively. No dramatic climaxes. Slowing the story down even further. 

2.12 – another narrative rest episode. A lot of slow exposition of Mary Pat and Jeff, which is good to know, but I’d argue placed badly in the season. This season’s already been slowing down despite the narrative timeline tightening, but this episode only further pushes on the brakes for Dean’s new job, Beth and Dean’s divorce, Beth and Rio’s break up. Two very small climaxes - the lawyer telling Ruby he knows about the money and the Boomer reveal but - in the context of the season - actually pretty low stakes. Again. Slowing down the narrative. 

2.13 – A BIG CLIMAX EPISODE WHAT IS GOING ON???

What I’m saying in this is that the pacing in the back half of the season was, to me at least, fundamentally off. They hadn’t steered a strong enough narrative spine to take us through the season, and got heavily invested in character moments and not-entirely-thought-out-fallout in the back half of the season – it didn’t understand it’s own narrative thrust well enough to get us through. It also established a certain pacing with us in the first half of the season and shifted gears halfway through.

You can’t have your first three or six episodes be high-stakes-high-action, and then make the back end of your season same-stakes-low-action and top it all off with an explosive, poorly built-up finale in the way that they did.

There wasn’t enough thrust to push us through to the scene in Rio’s loft – neither narratively or in a character sense, and as a result, those last few episodes fall apart. Even beyond that though, the season escalated quickly then - - didn’t really know what to do with those escalations? It plateaued, which is indicative of bad pacing across the season. 

I actually do think it’d be a relatively easy fix? I’d bring the Noah arc forwards and actually fiddle with the Beth and Rio break ups - get one even closer the tinale and make it more painful. Make it a climax in itself. 

But anyway, haha: 

The Resolution

All stories have a resolution too of course.

The resolution can be 30 seconds or 30 minutes – it’s a time to tie up loose ends and to reassure your audience that the journey they’ve been on is worthwhile.

(After all – you’ll notice the story diagram is not symmetrical – we never finish where we began).

I’m not going to talk too much about resolutions because at the end of the day – resolutions should fall fairly naturally out of your beginning, your inciting incident, your rising tension. It should tumble out like the double wedding at the end of Pride and Prejudice, but I will say that the s2 resolution was...err, not good. In no small part because it didn’t fall out of what we’d been told all season. They’d established a certain throughline and then taken it back, and that was nagl to be honest. 

On the plus side though - it wasn’t a finale, so I have my fingers crossed they can fix it!

But yes, back to your ask, anon. 

No, I don’t think that the writers were pandering. I think they went in with a sketched outline and that they probably got lost in the back end of the season and weren’t quite sure how to drum up the final act, which meant that final act didn’t work.

Ah, this post got so long! I hope it wasn’t boring or too self-indulgent or silly, and that you got something out of it! I am, of course, always happy to answer writing questions, and I hope you liked reading my story ramblings ;-) 

[system-of-a-feather]

I have another question. I'm sorry to bother, but I don't know where else to ask. Did you ever feel like the trauma you've experienced isn't 'bad' enough to waarant DID? I know that what I went through was very traumatising to me, but others have had it easily so much worse. I feel bad for being so easily traumatised and distressed.

Oh ho ho, all the time my friend. ALL the time. To be honest, I might go as far to say I don’t think I’ve talked to anyone with DID who hasn’t felt that way around their trauma - no matter how severe and factually horrible the experience was.

Personally, back in the day I’d often go “Well I still had food and was cared for enough to be able to excel in school so it couldn’t have been that bad if I could still do good in school” or I’d parrot what a lot of toxic parents use an proof of them being “good parents” which is arguing that you had a roof over your head and food on the table or something like that which both kinda prompted me to make that reminder way back that still is getting reblogs and likes that “Just because you function doesn’t mean your don’t deserve help” or something similar like that.

You aren’t alone in feeling like it wasn’t that bad / bad enough. It is a common technique the brain does to try to avoid the reality of having DID or lessen how real the trauma feels. It is a really really really common thing to experience and almost everyone with DID that I’ve talked to on here or in real life (I’ve meet one person irl) either currently experience it frequently or used to experience it frequently.

And here is the thing, you never should feel like you need to feel guilty or bad because you are hurting. If you are hurting, there is no reason to deny yourself the ability to feel hurt by comparing it to others. It isn’t a sin to feel bad, or to feel hurt, or to be traumatized. It isn’t a sin to be in pain. If anything, it is a tragedy, its unfortunate that you feel this way. This would apply to trauma that might be “small and silly” like getting your kite stuck in a tree (which yes, in some cases for some people depending on the individuals ability to process emotions, what that kite meant to them, and the situation they were in when it happened might actually be a traumatic memory with the full context) or something huge which I won’t state because things like those don’t need to be elaborated. 

If anything, I would sit you down and say I’m sorry you feel hurt, and I’m sorry that whatever happened to you made you feel so bad, and I am sorry you are having trouble rebounding / recovering from the event. I don’t care if it was the kite in the tree or something more, I’m sorry that you are struggling and never should you feel bad for struggling. It’s a human nature thing to struggle in life, and its a valid and fair response, especially to events that have not been properly and mentally processed.

You never have to explain your trauma to someone. No one should be allowed to invalidate your trauma as trauma is not something up for debate. Trauma is a response, an unprocessed memory and a state of being wounded from an event. If you got a large cut on your leg from an event, people can’t argue if the cut was there or not. 

Trauma can happen from really anything when you consider an individuals state of being, predisposition, emotional state, attachment, and environment at the time.

Similarly, comparing trauma is a pointless game to play. Emotions are subjective and how one experiences an event is so heavily based on predispositions and ability to handle and process emotions, one’s past experiences, the connections and attachments they had going into it, and everything bottling up. Yeah on paper sure one might SOUND worse than another, but how they actually affected an individual in practice - in reality - is not something that can be judged “off of paper”.

[tw: loss of a loved one]

Rewinding to the previous example, getting your kite stuck in a tree might sound like a “stupid and silly trauma”, but say you were already in an unstable state. Perhaps you moved, lost all your friends, and your family situation was tense. The kite might have held a big importance and was something that was very important. Say your passed grandma, or your best friend you had to leave from and you used the kite as an excuse to get out of the house to relieve tension. Your kite gets stuck in the tree - gets broken and damaged and no one is there to help you out as a kid to retrieve it. 

[tw end: loss of a loved one]

You are stuck there, the thing you hold dearest broken and forever out of reach. As a kid you realize there is no one around to help you with that kite, you are alone and isolated as a kid, distressed with no support or help. Considering the environment, this whole situation, having lost all your friends, you family not being able to care for you, give you attention, or help / protect you, and being alone outside in a world as a child - it could be pretty traumatizing as the whole situation crashes upon you.

Yes, getting your kite stuck in a tree might be stupid and silly trauma, it might seem “dramatic” to be triggered by kites carrying forward, but with the context, that moment represents a build up of a lot of stressful situations on a child that when you are that young, can be extremely distressing and hard to process. 

The experience of a child at that moment compared to someone who might have it worse does not matter in the moment as much as it does taht the child feels alone, vulnerable, abandoned, scared, and frustrated to points that the child can no longer process the emotion.

Sure worse things than “getting your kite stuck in a tree” could have happened. But really, in almost every situation “worse things” could have happened. For everything experienced, there is somethign worse that someone can come up with that could have happened. Comparing experiences is an endless cycle that leads no where. What we really need to talk about is the subjective experience that an individual has and what they walked away with from it and how much support they had.

For some less experience / rambly things, if you really want to look into the subjectivity of trauma and events and how trauma affects an individual, there is a lot of material on it like the popular ACE score which outside of the ace score discusses how environmental stress can cause long term affects and how it can be mitigated by resilience and so on.

Like here is a brief cover of resilience from the American Psychological Association [x]

How children and individuals handle stressful events and grow after it is (which does relate into how children and individuals fail to handle these events and thus form trauma) a bit of a large topic in the field of Developmental Psychology and Humanistic Psychology, so I can’t really go into a whole lecture about it, but looking into the concept of resilience and the ideas of Carl Rogers / Abraham Maslow and stuff might be something that might be of interest. 

-Riku (Host)

[astrifica]

For the last few years ive been battling with intense paranoia, mood swings, hallucinations and a few delusions. But it's gotten very bad these last two months. I haven't been diagnosed with anything, and I cant be around people to get a job.. I don't really know what to do. It seems like no one will take what's going on seriously. Did you ever have to deal with that?

Firstly, I'm really awfully sorry you're stuck in this position, it's horrible that you're not being helped properly when you're struggling as much.

Sadly it's often a reoccurring theme in the health system just about anywhere across the world, and more often than not mentally ill individuals experience some form of maltreatment and medical neglect/abuse, so yes I've been there myself as well sadly.

But please don't let this discourage you, because while there's certainly many awful people in the system, there'll also always be good people in it, even if you have to search for them some more sometimes. And once you do find them, it'll definitely be worth it in the end!

What was a big realisation in my years of dealing with the health system both mentally and physically is that a lot of people don't work in it because they're good at it, but because they knew the right people and had the right papers.

My biggest suggestion in dealing with fewer professionals in positions they shouldn't be in due to simply not treating their patients right, is to try and skip any big mental health practices for example located in hospitals and try and search for smaller more individual practices (here there's some that aren't part of the private sector) if that's an option where you live.

They often provide a lot more individual help and are often more understanding and in their positions because they're genuinely good at it or at least wish to learn still (and given the ability to by their bosses, which those in bigger practices rarely are) rather than having a major superiority complex about their position resulting in the systemic ableism you often find in large practices.

Though if that's not an option as I'm unsure if that's available in non-private sectors in other places, going to crisis services is often the quickest way to be able to access the help they're supposed to be offering you in the first place and generally getting into the system, but I'm also well aware that hospitalisations aren't always beneficial to everyone and there can be just as many shitty individuals there.

So if there's no option but to deal with shitty professionals, then here are a few tips I've gathered over the years on how to be taken more seriously:

Taking someone with you if you're able to that can back you up in how bad your struggles are by giving their point of view (though I do suggest discussing their role with them and what they should and shouldn't be saying according what you feel comfortable with).

Not speaking in medical terms genuinely ever unless you're repeating something they say or asking what it means, and instead trying to phrase them like you have absolutely zero idea of what any of it is. Sadly this is often necessary due to certain professionals immediately writing this off as faking, being a hypochondriac, munchausen, etc. When in reality, if you're struggling and not receiving the help you're supposed to with it, of course you start researching the things it can be and learning to help yourself through that!

Explain your symptoms by going off of your worst days, rather than a good or mediocre day or making your symptoms come across less bad. Shitty professionals often will already tend to interpret them as less bad for you, so that'll often result in being taken a bit more seriously as well rather than having it written off as "not bad enough". There's no such thing as not bad enough but sadly those professionals do sometimes tend to see it like that.

Make sure to do any important interactions regarding agreements and arrangements via email, and if that's not possible to always send them an email with the points they made asking for confirmation if this is indeed what you've agreed on and what they've said/arranged. If you personally can't manage to do so, having a family member or friend do it for you works as well, though you have to sign something to say they can do those things for you and that he professionals are allowed to answer to them on it. This will allow you to always be able to go "No, I have evidence that this is in fact what we've agreed on/what happened" and pull up the emails, if they decide to suddenly change things and say they got your agreement on it or anything like that.

Know your rights! It's important to know when you can say no to something and why, and what you're entitled to receive from them. If you're unable to do this, having a family member or friend do it for you works as well! This'll help when they for example try to force you into doing things they decide would benefit you (when in reality it wouldn't) like sharing info with for example abusive family/friends/partners etc. you don't want things to be shared with. But also regarding changes in your treatment, either ones they want you to make, or ones they don't mention that you want to make! Like a change regarding your medication for example.

It's often best not to personally ask "annoying" questions and pushing the professionals to give you the help you're deserving of yourself (as it can result in them writing you off as uncooperative), but if at all possible definitely have a friend or family member do so in appointments where you take them! if you can't have someone else do it for you though, make sure to subtly ask the questions without making it seem like you know they wouldn't want to answer that, just play it dumb! A lot of shitty professionals will do the absolute bare minimum and to put you in positions that aren't actually beneficial to you, so sometimes you'll have to indirectly demand them to do things right like so.

Know that you're allowed to ask to switch to a different professional if the professional you deal with doesn't help you regardless in whichever way! if you personally struggle to ask for that (or demand it if needed), having a family member or friend do it for you works just as well!

Know that it's okay to not want to continue a medication or form of therapy (and to switch to a different type if you desire doing so) if it doesn't work for you. You're allowed to try different things as many times as you need to find what works best for you! Most shitty professionals won't recognise this for you themselves regardless of how clear you make it if you don't state it directly, as they tend to not want to give out any more resources as long as they don't absolutely need to.

And lastly, remember that in the end, you know what's best for you. So no matter how many times they try to tell you a treatment should be working for you, if you feel it doesn't, then you get to decide what to do with the treatment accordingly. Additionally, remember to research your treatments some to see if they're actually good for your condition(s)! In some cases shitty professionals tend to force treatments upon their patients that don't work for them due to their ableism and that can even really badly harm, traumatise, or in the worst case, kill them.

Other than that though, I of course don't have a magical solution to making the healthcare systems across the world better, but I hope these tips I've gathered over the years can help you some and that regardless you'll eventually receive the help you're deserving of. ♡