#a show I clutch to my bosom with ferocity

[mloreley]

Please I am begging you go OFF about CxG

Do you know what you're asking?

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is one of the best representations of mental health on television I've ever seen. It doesn't shy away from difficult, or even obscenely troubled subjects, and the discussion in the show ends up in a healthier place than I think most comedies ever really go.

The show is a musical, which is an automatic plus in my book. And in fact, the context for WHY it's a musical is something that hits me right in my daydreaming baby heart; someone coping with real life stress by using daydreaming and music to work through something in their head. And it's not just a conceit for the premise, either! There's literally a plot reason for it!

This is a show that revolves around the relationships the main character has with the people around her; romantic, familial, friendship, and more. It surrounds her with so many different kinds of love, and explicitly calls it love. Whether she's able to recognize it as love is a different question, but then, it's always harder to see the love in our lives when we've been trained into believing we don't deserve it.

More (and spoilers) under the cut.

The show is about a woman with severe trauma and a long-standing mental health struggle finding and falling in love with herself. While the show does a lot of framing around the romantic relationships in her life, it's because she only considers love to be real when it's from a partner- someone who chooses to be with you, as opposed to family (for whom it should be 'the bare minimum', in her mind, even though she's still desperately seeking that, too).

She acts horribly for three seasons. If you've never fought with the demons implanted from severe neglect, abuse, and trauma, her actions make her unsympathetic; they make her "The Villain In [Her] Own Story", and she's just smart enough to be able to talk and charm her way out of consequences for a good chunk of it. Of course, those are skills she learned trying to appease her never-appeaseable mother, whose horrific treatment of her daughter forced her to overcompensate with placating, charming, ego-stroking, approval-seeking behavior.

And as someone who has struggled with my mental health my entire life, as someone whose behavior has sometimes been out of line, and as someone who has had to do a lot of self-reflection, I see every bad decision she makes and I ache for her to be better. Because while I was never as bad as her, I feel the same thought patterns, I see the lines she sees where others only see irrational, over the top awful behavior.

I could talk about the scene where she's shown all of her new friends and found family in West Covina mourning her disappearance in the first season, how it makes me cry because I've had to learn how to recognize that in the people around me. Not just in a "they'll miss me if I'm gone" sense, but just recognizing that you can touch people's lives in ways you can't see, in ways they may not always know you've affected.

Or maybe the scene where, cornered, triggered, panicked, and deeply hurt, convinced that she's already lost all of her friends and loved ones, she lashes out with the harshest things she can say to everyone in her life. I know why she does it; she's hurting, and she wants to be the one to 'cut the ties' before they do it to her. I understand that though process so clearly. But every venomous word she shoots at them, it's a wound in her heart just as much as it is the people who care for her. I know, because I've been there.

There's the scene after she hits her lowest point, where she no longer believes that anyone loves her, where she realizes she has no life either where she grew up or where she moved to and doesn't want to be in either place, where she hurts so much that the only option she sees to escape it is to take her own life. I can't even think of that scene without a sharp intake of breath and tears coming to my eyes, because it's so viscerally real. The moment she looks out the window, taking in the serenity of a blue sky with gorgeous white clouds, communicating the strange peace you feel when you've finally decided to 'go through with it', GOD it's so fucking real. It's a detail that I don't see included in most shows depicting a suicide attempt, and it tells me that the showrunners are speaking from experience.

And that immediately after setting that in motion, she finds hope at the very last second. That she seeks help because she has finally found that last grain of hope in her. It's executed so well. (Hey, I'm literally crying while writing this; it has a tremendous emotional impact for me).

The moments in therapy where she expresses terror over trying to find a relationship after the last serious one she had ended with a suicide attempt, and is scared knowing that it's a place she can go, or when she doubts going on medication because her last prescription numbed her out instead of addressing the problem, those are so. fucking. real. Real concerns born only out of having been through the process of finally seeking help and becoming afraid of 'going back'.

Or the last fucking episode of the show, where she discovers the most important relationship in her life; one with herself. Where the entire context of her imagining musical numbers to work through things comes back around; it turns out that composing music and writing songs is a skill? And one she never got the chance to explore because her mother denied her every opportunity in order to mold her into "The Perfect Daughter"?

Her relationship with Paula is the second most relationship in the show; they both change each other for the better, even as they sometimes bring out the worst in each other. The level of trust they build, and the genuine love they share for each other, is so healing for both of them. It's fitting that Paula is the one to eventually point out what Rebecca couldn't see; that she was actually really amazing, and not for what anyone else taught her to do, but just for who she always was.

The show does an excellent job of showing deeply flawed, real people who make mistakes, and learn and grow from them. It's a rare show where "everyone is happy in the end" doesn't feel contrived, because they've all earned where they end up.

I think I'm momentarily Crazy Ex-Girlfriended out at the moment, and this is still only scraping the tip of the iceberg and mostly in how much I personally relate to the main character (enough that I've actually begun looking into a similar diagnosis for the stuff I'm going through), but I hope you appreciate my going off on it a bit. XD Thank you for the invitation to do so.

[butterflies-dragons]

"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." This is the very first line of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy and GRRM is very aware of these words; so far he has mentioned it in reference of Sansa Stark and Jon Snow:

Arya was one of the first characters created. Sansa came about as a total opposite b/c too many of the Stark family members were getting along and families aren’t like that. Thus, Sansa was created; he ended by saying they have deep issues to work out. [Source]

An interesting question was “Why are there so many sons who are unloved by their fathers, like Sam, Jon, Tyrion and Theon?” I watched George’s reaction carefully (I was sitting close to him) and he did not take issue with the assumption that Jon Snow is part of the “unloved sons” (obviously the dynamic talked about is Jon/Eddard, not Rhaegar). He nodded at the question and said that he does not have the full quote with him, but the great Russian writer Tolstoy once said that happy families are boring  - this was followed by a big round of applause cause every Russian knows this quote very well (the quote by Tolstoy is: All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. [Source]

And recently I found another similarity with Tolstoy's work and Sansa.

In spite of the obvious differences, Sansa Stark, the betrothed of the Crown Prince Joffrey Baratheon, showing her evident crush and concern about Ser Loras Tyrell's safety during the Hand's Tourney, reminds me of Anna Karenina making evident her illicit affair with Count Vronsky in front of everyone, her husband Alexey Alexandrovitch Karenin included, during the races:

She flew over the ditch as though not noticing it. She flew over it like a bird; but at the same instant Vronsky, to his horror, felt that he had failed to keep up with the mare’s pace, that he had, he did not know how, made a fearful, unpardonable mistake, in recovering his seat in the saddle. All at once his position had shifted and he knew that something awful had happened. He could not yet make out what had happened, when the white legs of a chestnut horse flashed by close to him, and Mahotin passed at a swift gallop. Vronsky was touching the ground with one foot, and his mare was sinking on that foot. He just had time to free his leg when she fell on one side, gasping painfully, and, making vain efforts to rise with her delicate, soaking neck, she fluttered on the ground at his feet like a shot bird. The clumsy movement made by Vronsky had broken her back. But that he only knew much later. At that moment he knew only that Mahotin had flown swiftly by, while he stood staggering alone on the muddy, motionless ground, and Frou-Frou lay gasping before him, bending her head back and gazing at him with her exquisite eyes. Still unable to realize what had happened, Vronsky tugged at his mare’s reins. Again she struggled all over like a fish, and her shoulders setting the saddle heaving, she rose on her front legs but unable to lift her back, she quivered all over and again fell on her side. With a face hideous with passion, his lower jaw trembling, and his cheeks white, Vronsky kicked her with his heel in the stomach and again fell to tugging at the rein. She did not stir, but thrusting her nose into the ground, she simply gazed at her master with her speaking eyes.

“A—a—a!” groaned Vronsky, clutching at his head. “Ah! what have I done!” he cried. “The race lost! And my fault! shameful, unpardonable! And the poor darling, ruined mare! Ah! what have I done!”

—Anna Karenina, Part Two, Chapter 25 - Leo Tolstoy

Everyone was loudly expressing disapprobation, everyone was repeating a phrase someone had uttered—“The lions and gladiators will be the next thing,” and everyone was feeling horrified; so that when Vronsky fell to the ground, and Anna moaned aloud, there was nothing very out of the way in it. But afterwards a change came over Anna’s face which really was beyond decorum. She utterly lost her head. She began fluttering like a caged bird, at one moment would have got up and moved away, at the next turned to Betsy.

“Let us go, let us go!” she said.

But Betsy did not hear her. She was bending down, talking to a general who had come up to her.

Alexey Alexandrovitch went up to Anna and courteously offered her his arm.

“Let us go, if you like,” he said in French, but Anna was listening to the general and did not notice her husband.

“He’s broken his leg too, so they say,” the general was saying. “This is beyond everything.”

Without answering her husband, Anna lifted her opera-glass and gazed towards the place where Vronsky had fallen; but it was so far off, and there was such a crowd of people about it, that she could make out nothing. She laid down the opera-glass, and would have moved away, but at that moment an officer galloped up and made some announcement to the Tsar. Anna craned forward, listening.

“Stiva! Stiva!” she cried to her brother.

But her brother did not hear her. Again she would have moved away.

“Once more I offer you my arm if you want to be going,” said Alexey Alexandrovitch, reaching towards her hand.

She drew back from him with aversion, and without looking in his face answered:

“No, no, let me be, I’ll stay.”

She saw now that from the place of Vronsky’s accident an officer was running across the course towards the pavilion. Betsy waved her handkerchief to him. The officer brought the news that the rider was not killed, but the horse had broken its back.

On hearing this Anna sat down hurriedly, and hid her face in her fan. Alexey Alexandrovitch saw that she was weeping, and could not control her tears, nor even the sobs that were shaking her bosom. Alexey Alexandrovitch stood so as to screen her, giving her time to recover herself.

“For the third time I offer you my arm,” he said to her after a little time, turning to her. Anna gazed at him and did not know what to say. Princess Betsy came to her rescue.

“No, Alexey Alexandrovitch; I brought Anna and I promised to take her home,” put in Betsy.

“Excuse me, princess,” he said, smiling courteously but looking her very firmly in the face, “but I see that Anna’s not very well, and I wish her to come home with me.”

Anna looked about her in a frightened way, got up submissively, and laid her hand on her husband’s arm.

“I’ll send to him and find out, and let you know,” Betsy whispered to her.

—Anna Karenina, Part Two, Chapter 29 - Leo Tolstoy

* * *

When the Knight of Flowers made his entrance, a murmur ran through the crowd, and he heard Sansa’s fervent whisper, “Oh, he’s so beautiful.” Ser Loras Tyrell was slender as a reed, dressed in a suit of fabulous silver armor polished to a blinding sheen and filigreed with twining black vines and tiny blue forget-me-nots. The commons realized in the same instant as Ned that the blue of the flowers came from sapphires; a gasp went up from a thousand throats. Across the boy’s shoulders his cloak hung heavy. It was woven of forget-me-nots, real ones, hundreds of fresh blooms sewn to a heavy woolen cape.

“His courser was as slim as her rider, a beautiful grey mare, built for speed. Ser Gregor’s huge stallion trumpeted as he caught her scent. The boy from Highgarden did something with his legs, and his horse pranced sideways, nimble as a dancer. Sansa clutched at his arm. “Father, don’t let Ser Gregor hurt him,” she said. Ned saw she was wearing the rose that Ser Loras had given her yesterday. Jory had told him about that as well.

“These are tourney lances,” he told his daughter. “They make them to splinter on impact, so no one is hurt.” Yet he remembered the dead boy in the cart with his cloak of crescent moons, and the words were raw in his throat.

(...) Gregor Clegane killed the horse with a single blow of such ferocity that it half severed the animal’s neck. Cheers turned to shrieks in a heartbeat. The stallion went to its knees, screaming as it died. By then Gregor was striding down the lists toward Ser Loras Tyrell, his bloody sword clutched in his fist. “Stop him!” Ned shouted, but his words were lost in the roar. Everyone else was yelling as well, and Sansa was crying.

—A Game of Thrones - Eddard VII

This similarity could be nothing of course, but I can't help myself finding Sansa in everything I read, like it happened with Eugénie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac.

Also Count Vronsky's mare Frou-Frou, somehow reminds me of Lady.