#also it would make sense that he might have experienced a lot of trauma growing up and thats why he believes the only way to fix the world

[tyranitarkisser]

In my heart Cyrus pokemon is a short king he gives off similar grouchy short man gremlin vibes as like karkat or dan from dan vs but hes internalized it so hard he decided the only way to make things right is by starting a cult to fuel his ego

[anxious-witch]

I would like to talk about Edwin, Charles and asexuality for a moment and why I personally like hcing Charles under the ace umbrella rather than Edwin.

To preface, this is obviously just my opinion, and if you like ace Edwin, relate to him or hc him as such, totally valid! I am just basing this off some of the narrative purpose that Edwin's sexuality plays in, and how in parallel, Charles' seems to fit into the flavor of ace-spec I am more familiar with.

Splitting this into two part bc again, I cannot seem to stop talking. This part talks about why I don't see Edwin as ace, part two will talk about why I can see Charles being ace/on the ace spectrum.

Edit: here's part two

Anyway! To the actual reasoning.

Let's start with Edwin. First thing we need to remember about Edwin is that he was born and raised in 1900s, and so that some of his behavior, habits and the way he talks about sexuality can't be judged by modern standards. Plus ofc, added layer of trauma of decades of hell.

So his dislike for being touched, his inital reaction to being flirted with etc, can all be contributed to that, imo.

But let's look at why I think it's important for his character specifically to experience sexual attraction.

Given his upbringing, and growing up with what was likely lots and lots of shame and repression around being a gay man, Edwin seems to completely block out any sort of feelings or wants he might have around other men. (Which is why he didn't realize he was in Charles until he was forced into situations) With his added trauma from hell, in which we know he, at least for a time, believe he deserved it because of being gay, I think it makes perfect sense he didn't wanna acknowledge any of it.

The first hurdle in his path was, of course, the Cat King. Now, you can love him, you can hate him, but I hope we can all agree that what Edwin experiences around him is sexual attraction. I touched upon that in my analysis of their interactions and how symbolic it is for Edwin's sexuality so I will try to keep this short. The way Edwin gasps and looks at the Cat King up and down when he transforms into just a coat and underwear, the way he recalls their meeting with the focus on the wink, on the CT's abs, the way he stares at his lips at their second meeting in ep 4. I don't think Edwin has feelings for the CT, except for maybe last ep where we can see a crush forming, but before that? That looks to me like pure sexual attraction.

It doesn't translate just to the Cat King either! We see it when CT transforms into Charles. Edwin is stunned, yes, but I think him pulling away and saying "Stop it!" Very sharply when he realizes it's a game is very telling. Sure, having romantic feelings for your best friend isn't easy to accept, but to realize you want him, in a sexual way, for even a few seconds? That must have been devastating for Edwin, due to him thinking of such desires as shameful.

Which I think is supported again when Edwin is caught by Lust in Hell, falling back into his shame, and Charles pulls him out. Because experiencing lust towards another man isn't a sin, but Edwin thinking it is is what briefly gets him stuck.

I am also not very keen on making Edwin ace due to the implication of "oh, Charles could pull him out of Lust because Edwin's love for him is pure and not lustful" because well. Being gay is no more pure or no more sinful than being straight. Gay people can have sex and it's not more morally wrong than a gay-ace couple that does not. With the rise of purity culture I feel a bit...uncomfortable with the implication of Edwin only coming to terms with his sexualityis due to the fact he only likes men romantically and there is no "sinful' sexual part. I think it kind of...defeats the purpose of his arc, especially the part where he meets the Cat King in the alley and the Cat King holds no power over him due to the fact Edwin is finally at peace with wanting him. Because that's okay. He can be attracted to him, be fine with it and not let it go any further(for now at least, hence idk what they are gonna do with s2).

So yeah. Again, not faulting anyone for any hcs or fics, if you like Edwin as ace, totally do your thing, I just feel like Charles is right there, with much more interesting dynamic when we apply ace lenses to him. But more about that in part 2

[melonteee]

Hey Melon!

I was watching your video on chapter 1113 & when you were talking about Sanji & Bonney's I got so excited. I hadn't initially noticed all the childhood parallels between them (agree with u 100% tho), but I do think Sanji is becoming her favorite Strawhat & that they have a dynamic/growing bond that Oda seems to want us to pay attention to.

However, I was assuming that Bonney was sort of imprinting (might not be the best word) on Sanji. We all know Sanji is very kind to girls so I think Bonney has only seen his best side & I think his specific brand of kindness might be reminding her of her daddy. Kuma & Sanji also both have terrible martyr complexes so she might be getting the same vibes from them & naturally gravitating towards Sanji because of it.

For all we know Bonney will be a true orphan after the arc and since she's still so young it would make sense for her to be looking for a parental figure even if it was subconsciously. That coupled with the points you brought up of how Sanji would be able to understand her in a way maybe the others wouldn't makes me more confident in my gut feeling.

I personally believe Bonney is actually being set up to be the last member of the crew so Oda adding in this dynamic between her & Sanji would help her integrate better. Maybe Oda wants Sanji to parent & mentor a child the same way Zeff did since Sanji looks up to & desires to emulate the kind of man his "true" father is? He has such a strong desire to protect & it would be sweet to see him able to put all that energy towards one person.

I also just think it would be funny to give Sanji a surrogate baby sister/daughter given how outlandish he can be sometimes. We already have Bonney calling him a "good man" (ur like 10 girl what do YOU know 😂) so imagine Bonney being very confused as to why Sanji doesn't get bitches & her trying to be his lil wingman? Their dynamic has a lot of potential for humor & tear inducing moments me think. I'm also very much a girl dad Sanji truther so anything that can quench my thirst for it is great in my book. Give it to me Oda. I'm begging you!

This is so long I'm so sorry! Thanks if you bother to read all of it 😊

Well see first of all Sanji DOES get bitches, it's just that HE'S the bitch that gets GOT and he's oblivious to it, so jot that down!

Second of all, Sanji and Bonney have a very interesting relationship at the moment. Sanji clearly wants to be a positive figure in Bonney's eyes, and wants to be the one to protect and save her - and one of the reasons is because Sanji is softer towards girls. But there's also the fact that Bonney is doing everything to find her father, and we must remember how Sanji reacted to Kinemon and Momonosuke in Punk Hazard,

Sanji's heart immediately softened at Kinemon saying he was looking for his son, and while he had an odd relationship with Momonosuke, Sanji still cared for and protected the kid. Sanji has a REAL soft spot for anyone with a father/child relationship, probably because his OWN blood father sucked, and his ACTUAL father was a man who took Sanji in despite it all.

I don't think Bonney will join the crew because I really cannot imagine Nami accepting a child on their crew for the unforeseeable future, especially in such dangerous waters, but Sanji and Bonney's parallels really break my heart.

The fact the two of them have loving mothers who gave their lives for them. They both have blood fathers they'd despise and, no doubt, have complicated feelings about their blood. They both have ACTUAL fathers who adopted them and sacrificed SO MUCH for their futures.

They seem like mirrors of each other in a lot of ways, and Bonney is also using Sanji's name specifically, so she must feel a strong safety or connection with him. Sanji is trying to help Bonney, to keep her safe, and to keep KUMA safe, because HE experienced all these turmoils and traumas as a child too. Sanji watched Zeff sacrifice so much for him, his heart would BLEED for Bonney - who is watching HER father do the exact same thing.

I'd say it's much more of a big brother/little sister relationship between them, but it's also something more than that, because Sanji is saving a kid he would truly see himself in.

[swamp-spirit]

Not a doctor, but trying to use my experience as a long term Anxiety Disorder Haver to figure out what could have happened to Jason in Gotham War. Listen, I know comic book science is made up, but let me have my 'fun'.

This is also a lot about how trauma and anxiety chemically works and Jason and Trauma in general.

(Discussing my own anxiety disorder a lot here, so don't click if that might be upsetting. Also please minimize the Bruce discourse here. I wanna talk about Jason.)

EDITS because I wrote this in a fugue state and replaced all words with homonyms

So there's two main elements to anxiety. There's the emotional element, the kind you can deal with in therapy, and the physical element, the kind you can deal with via medication.

I related a lot to Jason in Gotham War, because I have very physical anxiety. Even when I can calmly reason through a situation, my nervous system is very physically reactive to the point where I'll be holding a conversation and cracking jokes while seizing. Unmedicated, like Jason, I couldn't do light exercise without triggering a panic attack.

What Jason seems to be experiencing is an issue with his nervous system. To massively oversimplify, because I'm not a doctor, let's say the sympathetic nervous system is the gas, the parasympathetic system is the brakes, and triggers are the foot that decides when to push the pedals down.

When you're in a situation where you need to be amped up, your body hits the gas. You get adrenaline, faster heart rate, fight or flight, but this state isn't sustainable. First, it's very resource intensive. Second, it's a state designed to Do Something, and is very emotionally stressful if there's nothing to Do. This is why people with anxiety disorders can often function in actual danger, because that's what those reactions are designed for.

PTSD is pretty much 'your body hits the gas because your brain has misidentified a safe situation as a dangerous one due to previous experience'. Jason pretty consistently shows signs of PTSD, which makes sense. He has pretty much never been in a safe situation. Even before he was a vigilante and brutally murdered, being homeless, especially as a kid, requires constant vigilance. Most people of any age develop a level of PTSD after living homeless. Witnessing the death of a parent, (depending on the canon) growing up in an abusive home, and being homeless again while brain damaged and vulnerable could all cause PTSD on their own.

We see Jason be triggered a number of times. We also see him trying to self sooth and manage, to 'hit the brakes'. The 'breath deep' on his door in the new Boy Wonder, his stack of books on trauma and chronic pain management in Three Jokers, ect.

So Jason's already got his foot on the mental pedal. He's already scared, and for good reason. His world has always, always been violent. His behavior in Gotham War looks a lot less like ZEA!Bruce turned up the engine and a lot more like he cut the brakes.

As somebody who's experienced the 'lightly jog, and you have a panic attack', it's pretty much a failure of the parasympathetic side of things. You want some adrenaline for a light run. You need to take in more oxygen, but, when your nervous system isn't regulating, it goes out of control. It keeps amping up until you're breathing so fast that you aren't actually processing the oxygen you're taking in. These heightened states are rough on your whole body. When your body is running danger mode, it's not supporting things like sleep, digestion, and wound-healing.

What makes this more horrifying is ZEA!Bruce seemed to feel this would be permanent, even if Jason tried to reverse it, which means it wasn't just an injection the system would flush. To me, the most logical conclusion would be that the injection would have done permanent damage to the parts of his brain that kick in the parasympathetic nervous system.

This also... wouldn't keep him from killing. Jason is usually a calm killer, not a passion killer. Physical excitement is what the body is supposed to do in violent situations. It's much more likely to cause a panic attack in a safe situation where there's no physical outlet. He can take a shot without nervous system excitement. It would keep him from, or at least interfere with things like: -Jogging -Having sex -Watching emotionally intense media -Handling triggers Like, he definitely wouldn't be able to operate as Red Hood because RH does intel work, extended battles, etc, but he could very much kill.

SSRI's probably would not be that helpful, a serotonin tends to help more with stopping anxiety at the 'thought spiral' part than dealing with the nervous system. SNRI's and beta blockers would be a better bet, though Bruce clearly didn't think those would be enough to let him operate at Red Hood.

So... how is he better? Well, the actual answer is 'comic are bullshit', but let's try and roll with it. The given reason is Joker Gas, which is odd because Joker Gas seems to function like... a neurotoxin? A stimulant? My best guess would be that dying or brain damage in general is kicking in some sort of residual Lazarus healing factor and repairing the physical structure that controls the parasympathetic system.

[uselessheretic]

When it comes to Ed and addressing his issues around things like mental health, trauma, and anger issues, I understand the kneejerk reaction to deny that he has any of those traits due to not wanting to stereotype him, but I don't think that really solves much. Ed is someone who is severely traumatized, forced into a world where he had to take care of himself from a young age, and never given a chance to learn things like healthy coping mechanisms. He's going to develop in ways that are maladaptive as he searches for a way to just survive.

A lot of the time, people will say things like "Ed doesn't have anger issues because whenever he gets mad he's valid" and I get it, I do, but it just? Doesn't work that way? When a room full of people makes fun of you, you can't just go in there and shoot everyone even if they hurt your feelings. Not just because that's a wild ass thing to argue as correct, but because it directly endangers himself and others. Even if he's fucking Blackbeard, that's still a huge risk of him being harmed. Characters like Oluwande and Frenchie would also be at risk where maybe people can't stab Blackbeard, but it's possible someone might take a chance on one of his companions if they think they're a part of this.

Denying that these problems exist doesn't do anything. It doesn't strengthen his character and it doesn't engage with him in a way that humanizes him to allow for growth. He's not gonna marry Stede and suddenly never be angry again and nobody ever makes him feel sad ever again!

I understand that the thought process here is that men of color are stereotyped to be angry and violent, and therefore, it's racist to interpret Ed as having these traits. That doesn't really solve anything though because it doesn't engage with the problem past a surface level. Moc are stereotyped as being angry... Why? Because it's a way to justify enacting state violence and control them. Sure, you can say "Ed isn't angry though so there's no need to put him through the system" but that narrows the scope down to him as an individual that relies on him never being angry to rescue him from that.

Because what happens when moc are angry? When they are violent and you're not able to just deny that and move on? Do we just abandon them?

Obviously not. When we base a person's humanity off a prerequisite that they can't embody any of the negativity the state is seeking to control, we inadvertently justify the violence imposed onto those less able to hold themselves to, frankly, impossible standards. It's another way of trying to appeal to respectability politics.

So instead of denying these parts of Ed, we can look more closely at them.

Ed's moments of anger are often prompted by him experiencing hurt. He's made fun of, he's been tricked, a snake fell on him, he feels abandoned. He has a tendency to go from zero to one hundred very quickly, and often will react to things with the same level of intensity regardless of what is actually triggering it. This makes sense though when you remember that he's a severely traumatized person who went through substantial abuse as a child! Often, people experiencing things like c-PTSD lose their ability to accurately gauge threat levels, meaning that if they want to survive, they are on constant high alert for any possible danger. Anger is a natural reaction to this, and his trigger for going off is hypersensitive as a result. Something like this helps explain why Stede leaving him, and Izzy subsequent antagonism, hit him like a fucking truck.

When Ed expresses anger, it often comes coupled with reminders of his trauma and greatest insecurities. Making fun of him for growing up in poverty, saying he can't have friends, poking at his breakup and fear of abandonment. He has direct flashbacks to his childhood with some of these, becoming forced to relieve times when he was at his most powerless. This lack of power pushes him to try and regain that control. He's not poor! He has more riches than you can shake a stick at! You can't make fun of him for how he eats, do you have any idea who he is? He's fucking Blackbeard! Choose your next works carefully, dog, and decide if you want to bring up Stede anymore.

It's instinct. As much as jerking your hand away from a burning iron. He's being hurt, he needs to make it stop.

But it doesn't work. Not only does it not work, Ed knows it too. He may have more riches, but the French captain will still view him as something vulgar. He's fucking Blackbeard, but what does it matter if the party will continue laughing at him? "There he is..." The Blackbeard who Stede abandoned, the same as always.

In a world of cartoon violence, there's little care Ed needs to afford towards the lives he takes. That's not the problem. The problem is that the harder he tries to maintain control, the more he loses it. And the less control he has, the angrier he becomes. And the angrier he is, the more desperate he becomes to keep himself safe.

Ed is playing a game rigged against him from the start. He exists in a system meant to antagonize and hurt him while surrounded by vultures waiting for him to prove them right that he does lack discipline where no matter what action he takes he loses. How could he be anything other than furious about it?

His anger is a perfectly logical reaction to his situation, and there's no point in denying that it exists like it's something shameful. Ed needs tools to help him cope with this, a support system that has his back, and an environment that nourishes him instead of constantly putting him at risk of dying.

[brjeauregard]

The reaction to FCG casting turn undead and it affecting Laudna is wild to me. They were on an island surrounded by undead, it would have been absurd for him to not cast it.

The discourse has also made me realize that a lot of people watch the show for very different reasons than me. I love interparty conflict. Some of my favorite moments from every campaign has been when an argument or fight breaks out between the characters. The cast is so good at embracing the tension and staying true to their character's stance even if they're wrong or escalating the situation and I eat it up every time. These characters can't grow without conflict and, especially in campaign 3, will walk on eggshells around each other unless everyone knows how the party feels about something.

It seems like a lot of people only watch the show for their favorite characters or for the romance (which to clear is completely fine. I'm not saying that people are enjoying the show wrong or that I'm watching it the right way). The cast have said before that they also love conflict and have made it clear that they will stay true to their character in tense moments. Some fans have a tendency to purposefully misinterpret actions and motivations or disregard any trauma that a character has experienced that might explain their behavior. Laudna is allowed to hate the gods and has every reason to, but the first decision FCG ever made for themself was to follow the Changebringer. It makes perfect sense that hearing her, and some other characters to a lesser extent, talk negatively about the Changebringer is frustrating after they've been constantly FCG that he needs to make choices for himself. That doesn't mean that FCG is right or the Laudna is wrong, but their actions and beliefs make sense.

It's also wild how no one is talking about how Fearne almost didn't heal FCG because of turn undead. There's been a lot of talk about how pettiness is her love language but putting your friend's life at risk because he made Laudna run into ocean is more than petty. She ultimately healed them so it's not a huge deal but she established that she values Laudna more than FCG.

I hope they talk about the fight next episode so everyone is on the same page about turn undead and what's going to happen next time they encounter undead.

[heliza24]

Love your blog and all your analysis!!

Many people didn't like S2 because Simon, according to them was just a tool to drive Wilhelm's story, a love interest only and didn't really have his own story. In particular, many are frustrated at the lack of narrative on the video's effect and Simon's subsequent trauma. Of course, everyone's allowed their opinions but seeing as you have experience in the world of writing and making tv magic, wanted to get your insight on this. Thanks, a S2 fan! 💜

Hi anon! Thanks for the question.

I’ve already written pretty extensively about Simon’s arc in season 2 and why I like it in this post. In short, I think he grows a lot in season 2, but his growth takes him towards emotional vulnerability and openness, which is not something we’re used to seeing in characters (especially not male ones). 

I also don’t mind how they address Simon’s trauma in season 2. I’m going to approach this momentarily not as a writer, but as someone who has been in therapy for years. There are some traumas that have happened to me (like a serious car accident when I was a kid) that are very concrete, with a set beginning and end, and that began to affect me right away. (I had ptsd symptoms pretty immediately after that accident). But there are other traumas that feel like a series of small cuts instead of one big punch. It’s harder to decide where they begin and end, and their effects are more subtle. Sometimes it takes me years to even realize that they were traumatic and that they are still affecting me. (The medical trauma I’ve experienced as an adult over several years is like this). To me this is more what Simon is dealing with with the video. Once the video goes online, it’s not coming down. There’s no set end date, and Simon spends most of season 2 not even knowing who the perpetrator was. He’s in the kind of no-man’s land between the initial blow and coming to understand how the whole process has affected him. That being said, I do think we see some changes in him that reflect what he’s gone through. He seems to care a lot less about his academic classes than he did in season 1. He’s writing music in an attempt to process what he’s been through. And you could even see his attempt to have sex with Marcus as a trauma response. The last time he hooked up with someone his agency was taken from him. So it makes sense to me that he’s eager to have sex again but fully on his own terms, to partially erase that feeling of not being in control. I don’t know for sure if this will happen, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more traditional ptsd symptoms from Simon in season 3. If there’s some sort of legal action against August that would signify a sort of “end” of the video trauma, and would also probably be re-traumatizing in a lot of ways. I also think interacting directly with the royal family might stir up some things as well.

Ok, now I’m going to totally switch gears and approach your question from a writing perspective. Let’s talk about story structure for a minute, specifically TV story structure. Most TV has an A plot and a B plot (and sometimes a C plot too). In old school cable procedurals, the A plot would be the mystery of the week, while the B plot would be about whatever was happening in the characters’ personal lives. If there was an overarching mystery or storyline that tied the whole season together, that would be the C plot. As you can guess by how they’re named, the A Plot would take up the most time and do the most to drive  the episode forward. The B plot is next most important, etc. Once shows started to become more serialized in the age of streaming, the concept of A and B plots changed a little bit. Now the plots are divided by character and theme. The A plot will be headlined by the protagonist and will explore the main themes of the show. The B plot will be headlined by a secondary protagonist, who doesn’t have as much to do as the A plot lead, but is still answering a dramatic question that relates to the central themes of the show. A lot of times the primary and secondary protagonists’ actions influence each other, but they don’t share a ton of screen time. (If they did, their stories wouldn’t be separate.) You can think of the A and B plot protagonists as two sides of the same coin. They’re intricately connected, they’re exploring the same ideas, but they rarely come face to face, and they often represent different perspectives on the same themes. Black Sails is probably my favorite example of this. (I’m not as active in the Black Sails fandom as I am in the Young Royals fandom, but Black Sails is probably my all time favorite show and I absolutely love all the ungovernable pirates over in the Black Sails tag. Shout out to them). James Flint is the main protagonist and headliner of the A story, but Max is the secondary protagonist that headlines the B story. Both are struggling with the question of how to achieve and wield power in an unjust world, and their political maneuvers consistently influence each other’s plots. They share a lot of secondary characters across both of their plots, but they themselves never interact. So that’s one example, and if you look around at your favorite shows you’ll be able to find lots that adhere to this formula, including, I would say, Young Royals.

I think a lot of people are kind of subconsciously looking for this kind of structure, and have decided that Simon is the protagonist of the B plot. I understand this, because we all love Simon. He’s really well written and acted, his personality is so compelling, and his chemistry with Wilhelm is great. I spend a lot of time writing him in fic (I’m the writer of all the Simon content in Heart and Homeland) so I understand this impulse. But if you were looking for Simon to be anchoring the B plot in season 2, you might have been disappointed. Because in reality I don’t think he’s the secondary protagonist. I think Sara is. 

Sara is set up as a foil to Wilhelm, the main protagonist, in so many ways. I always say that the driving dramatic question of Young Royals lives with Wilhelm, and it’s something along the lines of “should I conform and live the oppressive life that was designed for me, or rebel and find my own path to happiness?” Sara is wrestling with a similar question that’s kind of the inverse of this; for her settling into a prescribed role in the Hillerska class system initially seems like a relief. So maybe for her the dramatic question is something along the lines of “is the price of fitting in worth it? Will it lead to true happiness?” They feel so much like opposite sides of the same coin to me. 

So Sara and Wilhelm are both trying to define themselves in relation to their families and also the class system. This comes up in the similarities of their family structure (they both feel very connected to their class position through their families; they both have complicated relationships with their mothers and bad to negligible relationships with their fathers; they both have a deep connection to their siblings) and in the relationships they choose to embark upon. They’re both navigating a very serious and complicated first love. They’re both dating across class (in the opposite direction, a perfect example of the “different views on the same theme” aspect of primary and secondary protagonists). They both have concerns about how and when their relationships become public, and by extension are both playing in the sandbox of themes around privacy and authenticity that define so much of the show.  

Both have difficulty regulating and recognizing their emotions. Sara seems to exhibit alexithymia, a common aspect of autism that makes it hard to recognize one's own emotions. Wilhelm has been taught to repress his emotions, which he does well until he explodes (like when he got into the fight at the top of the series or when he yells at his mom on the phone). He’s also managing a lot of physical symptoms of anxiety. 

Both also struggle with questions of justice and how to make things right. In the beginning of season 2, Wilhelm is initially determined to destroy August because he thinks August will never repent, but by the end of the season he’s starting to realize that this was the wrong technique. He realizes this largely because of Simon; he only puts down the gun and walks away from August because Simon does first.  Sara makes the opposite journey: she starts by trusting that August will change and repent on his own, but then she is forced to confront the fact that this is not true, and that she needs to use the legal system to bring August to justice. She makes this realization largely because of Simon, and seeing the ways that she has hurt Simon, in the same scene with the gun. 

The other big argument in support of Sara as the secondary protagonist of the show is that she and Wilhelm never directly interact. Their actions affect each other all the time, but they don’t share a scene together. They’re living on parallel but separate story tracks. 

Simon is a crucial character in both Wilhelm and Sara’s stories, but the fact that he is close with both excludes him from being a protagonist of his own plot line. (I would say the same about August, who is a catalyst for both Wilhelm and Sara.) That doesn’t mean that Simon isn’t well written. He has a very compelling character arc, motivates much of the plot, and his relationship with Wilhelm forms the heart of the show. But I think the reason people were disappointed in his story in season 2 is that they were expecting something from him that the structure of the show doesn’t support.  

If you’re interested in reading more about A/B/C plot structures I found this website really easy to understand. Also shout out to @bluedalahorse for talking to me about Wilhelm and Sara and helping me articulate what I was trying to say here. 

Thanks again for the ask, anon and for the vote of confidence in my analysis! I really appreciate it. If anyone else has a Young Royals scene or question they want me to break down from a writing or cinematography perspective, my ask box is always open.

[findmeinthefallair]

A Look at Hunter’s Complex PTSD (Part 2)

I forgot to add in the first post last weekend that I am taking excerpts from Parts 2, 4 and 5 of the book ("What My Bones Know" by Stephanie Foo), in case anyone plans to get a copy of it.

I didn’t use anything from Parts 1 and 3, since 1 involves the author recounting her own childhood trauma while 3 is about the cultural and historical events that are tied to the generational trauma in her family and community, which she researched to find answers.

Also..with two of the Owl House specials remaining, which would definitely give us more major Hunter moments…any additions from those two episodes that relate to the book excerpts will be added as new posts, e.g. if any scenes from For The Future are relevant to this Part 2 post, I will be making a post titled A Look at Hunter’s Complex PTSD (Part 2B).

Anyhow if all this sounds confusing now, there will ultimately be one grand masterpost listing every single part. As usual, take care with the warnings of mentions of abuse and trauma ahead. Here goes, for Part 2:

Hunter’s history differs only slightly from the above. He also played a caretaker role to Belos during the latter’s rage episodes:

which shows the failure on Belos’s part, especially since he’s in the guardian/caretaker role, to own, regulate or seek his own help for his difficult emotions, but it imbued Hunter with that sense of feeling “special”. The Golden Guard role was his, and his alone. Belos could then reinforce the whole “wild magic is bad” narrative, exploit how Hunter loved to feel special and wanted, and continue abusing the boy.

But as Hunter tried harder and harder to get Belos to love him the way he wanted, he too experienced a growing vigilance and desperation that was destroying him more and more, as he was worn down further over time.

I’d say it was like this for Hunter too. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t please Belos enough. It wasn't fixing things and it felt as if he was a ship slowly sinking. As his desperation grew, you could say he ventured out further beyond established boundaries, and Hollow Mind was the culmination of the courage and support he spent the previous episodes building up.

He, just like how it’s stated in the book page above, ended up woven more into the world, sewn emotionally and professionally into a network of lives. He made trusted friends and healthier company at last. Ultimately, all those actions he took nudged him along the path meant for him, and it even ended up with him being brave enough to say this in Hollow Mind:

To ask the ultimate question, "What did you do to the other guards?". The question that got Belos to decide “Okay, time to off this Grimwalker and then make another”.

Following that heart-stopping moment, Luz saving his life, both of them escaping, and then the panic attack scene that we all remember, Hunter’s story isn’t over yet. 

With where he is now, in the middle of S3, he might be mentally and emotionally operating in a way that I can deconstruct while we wait for the next episode.

I am inclined to agree with these.

It’s just…so likely for Hunter. It was the case for me, since the first 5 years out of my 7 years of seeing therapists (2014-2020) were either just talk therapy or with ineffective therapists that I didn't trust enough. It felt more like just maintaining healthy enough functioning in my daily life, rather than having what felt like proper breakthroughs.

What Hunter needs first and foremost is to just continue experiencing the precious trust and presence of the good people he has formed good relationships with. Everyone is now in survival mode and would need the same manner of support.

Frankly, almost everyone in the show needs that too. The Isles will be going through some form of collective grief, if not already.

Processing all that has happened to him, in his young mind, will be hell of a lot of work. He can’t nicely fit all of that horror into a framework of cold logic, and I doubt the mess can be solved just by “talking things out”. After all, he has Complex PTSD: and being entangled in damaged formative relationships (Belos and the Emperor's Coven, basically) - not necessarily involving just people, or his relationship with himself, but also himself with the world - is the centerpiece of Complex PTSD.

Cold logic can't exactly help you make sense of why you lacked warmth in your formative relationships (the more technical term is "primary relationships" where your primary caregiver(s), a parent/guardian, is supposed to supply you with security and warmth in their relationship(s) with you).

The clearest analogy I can think of for how he’d need some time before talk therapy could ever benefit him, is when a computer does that thing where it shuts down outside of your control, in order to prevent further damage. When you switch it back on by pressing the power button, it usually acts as if nothing happened before that. This numbing and calmness has been essential in the short-term for Hunter to function, one example being from Hollow Mind:

because his emotions being almost completely shut down here were crucial for survival: for his legs to carry him, with Luz’s help, to escape Belos’s mind. If he didn’t have such a shutdown, he may have frozen in place due to being too overwhelmed, making it harder for Luz to shake him into being lucid to follow her, and Belos would’ve been able to apprehend and capture him all over again in the mindscape.

Survive first, fear later.

There is the possibility that with Flapjack’s death in particular, he might swing towards more dissociation than ever before. The reason why dissociation happens in the first place is because the brain, like the computer, would be overwhelmed if it stayed online any further. It’s a protective built-in mechanism to numb intense psychological pain. That computer can still work overall for some time, but boy oh boy..it would need some repair shop work at some point to even perform basic functions.

If his best friend’s death, by his hands, shocked us in the audience as much as it did, it goes without saying: he himself is carrying a massive amount of shock. The thing is..for the time being his attention is diverted to fighting back and going after Belos, making sure everyone else is safe. But we shall see how his mental state will be after the fighting is over.

This pattern of shutting down/short-circuiting and then coming back online without proper deep healing, would be detrimental long-term if it keeps happening and if it continues past the point where things start to be truly safe for him. It can sadly go on for years if e.g. a child is trapped until they move out as an adult, which would mean the road to healing is having to thaw out of several years’ worth of survival mode and hypervigilance.

To remain isolated would be the biggest obstacle in any stage of his recovery. Thankfully he is now the furthest thing from isolated, where the story left off. Check out how different the screenshots are below omg…the effects of Belos isolating him versus where he is now:

A consistent theme has been an ongoing tension between his fears and what he chooses to do anyway. It ain't just great storytelling, it also feels damn real because I'm willing to bet many of us experience the same tension in our day-to-day living.

E.g. in Labyrinth Runners, the panic attack he had:

is what made the later moment so much more powerful, when he decides to run towards fear to help Gus:

Over time, he has repeatedly made decisions where he prioritizes care for others, the desire for connection and wanting to do what is truly right, over the fear of being hurt and rejected. My personal fave example of how he worries for others’ safety is this seemingly smaller moment, but it’s honestly heartbreaking and reveals hell of a lot about who he is:

He is so terrified that Belos is back, quivering and exasperated, yet he doesn’t want Luz to call anyone else to help them: and in no way does he do this to show off or anything, he wants to protect his loved ones. But this tenacity that exists alongside his gentle spirit is what got him to rebel more and more throughout Season 2, leading him into greater danger and well..unfortunately all of that plot was also building up to what Belos did to him in Thanks to Them.

…yeah. Talk therapy is not what I think this kid needs right now, not till there is restored peace all around him. Because talk therapy requires quite a bit of usage of the brain’s prefrontal cortex - the part responsible for reasoning and logic - and it is activated when we are in conscious control of our thinking. And facts such as “My ‘uncle’ chose to lie to me my whole life” can’t be understood and analyzed in the same way as a math problem can be deciphered :’) How does one make sense of something like that?

Poor Hunter can only accept the reality that Belos chose to do all that, and a key part of this acceptance is to affirm his own strengths and believe he can accept such hard truths. To achieve such acceptance, treating his condition would most likely require subconscious work that is experiential in nature (involving deeper parts of the mind than just the prefrontal cortex) as opposed to just analyzing and taking things apart. Because I don't think simply talking about this:

on top of a childhood of being manipulated, will get this poor kid to where he'd like to be.

My former supervisor calls experiential subconscious work “heart work”, not “head work”...i.e. experiencing one’s feelings and relationships in a safe space. All of Hunter’s military training and duties are most definitely “head work”, all about strategy and withholding trust, which means “heart work” - building trust and finding authenticity in his relationships - has been a new journey for him. His network of relationships and perceptions need a major, positive reframing. And there are so many emotional wounds, oh Titan, so many from Belos.

Hunter is likely to benefit from experiential subconscious work such as the increasingly popular Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) modality for therapy, because EMDR can be an effective treatment if a client experiences discomfort in the form of physical bodily sensations whenever their trauma is triggered, though it is not necessarily for everyone who suffers from trauma. A Boiling Isles version of EMDR might involve Illusion magic...if a therapist from that Coven can draw out mental images of clients to project into the therapy room, that would be a cool simulation and cool parallel of how therapy works in our world.

EMDR was the biggest, most revelatory thing for me in my own recovery but a coursemate of mine found it to be too much and too direct: instead, she benefited from the Emotion Freedom Technique (EFT) approach which was more physical in nature and relied on tapping acupressure points on the body. Idk, maybe I matched better with EMDR because I have an innate curiosity about things, even if it has gotten me in trouble many times in life (this sounds like Hunter as well) :S Whereas EFT was the better fit for my coursemate because she wanted a sense of attachment and connection with herself via the specific sense of touch.

Disclaimer: I am not yet certified in EMDR, god it will be years before I can afford the training fees but I have been on the receiving end of it as a client in many sessions. So I am no trained expert in it at all.

We see Hunter experiencing physical distress related to his trauma, which is why the EMDR technique, that aims to reduce trauma-related distress experienced in the physical body, could be the right match for him. Since he loves the Ruler’s Reach and Cosmic Frontier, he might like how EMDR is like letting your subconscious re-tell your story as a heroic triumphant story, and the treatment feels like rewriting your painful memories while still acknowledging how they actually happened. Because the treatment helped me learn that it is possible to hold both of those in your mind.

To sum up EMDR the best I can, the client replays their difficult memories in their subconscious imagination. It relies on a phenomenon called bilateral stimulation (BLS) which is related to how making left-and-right motions (e.g. going for walks, or swimming) while holding upsetting thoughts in our heads, helps to reduce the intensity of such thoughts.

The general process involves:

Helping the client prepare an imagined safe place to go to (Hunter might choose his fave location from Cosmic Frontier, since clients can choose fictional places if they like) and if needed, a safe person (he might choose Camila) to come rescue them in their mind, in case revisiting the bad memories becomes too distressing. The therapist gets the client to experience the safe place and person, then describe to the therapist what they see, hear, touch etc with as much detail as possible. There will be several practice rounds in those safe spaces, before the client is supposed to do the same imagination thing with their scary traumatic memories in later sessions: once they are experienced with visiting their safe places.

Desensitizing the pain and distress of traumatic memories, working through only one memory at a time, where the therapist gets the client to hold the painful memory in mind while also performing left-and-right physical movements e.g. client moves their eyes left and right, following the therapist's hand motions. The therapist regularly checks in with how the client feels and also measures 1. the intensity of the client’s distress (using the Subjective Units of Disturbance or SUD scale, on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is the highest distress level imaginable to the client) and 2. The strength of the client’s positive belief about themselves (using the VOC or Validity of Cognition scale, on a scale of 1 to 7, with 7 being complete trust in the positive belief). The aim is to reduce the SUD score to 0 or 1, and increase the VoC score to 7, per memory that the client decides to process with the therapist. This would definitely take at least 3 sessions per memory, based on my experience.

The desensitizing step takes multiple sessions (estimated to be 8-12 sessions for simpler traumas, and many more sessions for complex traumas) helps to make room for new positive beliefs about oneself e.g. “I am worthy of love” to take up more space in the client’s mind, while the emotional space taken up by negative beliefs like “I am unlovable” gets smaller and smaller.

In my experience as an EMDR client, you are just supposed to let your subconscious flow and alter each memory during the desensitizing, because it isn’t about how realistic the memory was, it’s about what meanings you’d like to put into the storyline of the memory e.g. going from “I deserved that abuse” to “You know what, I’m gonna try protect myself”. This means Hunter could incorporate his fave fictional scenes and elements into his own story. I found that my brain went from accurately replaying my traumatic memories, to adding in new things or replacing original parts of each memory. And best of all, I wasn’t actively choosing all these changes - I just let my subconscious run on its own, since it is outside my conscious control anyway. E.g. in a memory where my own abusive mother was yelling at me during a car ride, I saw a tall red tree (red is my fave colour and I feel strength whenever I see it) rapidly growing out of the road directly in front of us. It could cause my mother to lose control of the steering and brake hard, and I could quickly unlock the front passenger door to exit the car and run to my own safety. The most real thing about this was that I now got a taste of how it would feel to use strong boundaries with my mother in real life, and the coolest thing was seeing how my own brain went off on its own to write an encouraging story, which is what mattered and allowed my positive beliefs about myself to start taking root. It all started in my imagination, guided by the therapist.

The best way of putting it is..I realized that when the original traumatic events happened in my life, the bad events happened which then installed negative beliefs about myself (and the world) into my brain's programming, breaking my trust in almost everything except my escape spaces like gaming and art. With EMDR, after feeling the safety of trusting my therapist and my safe place, I had to let my brain create the positive version of the above: letting improved versions of those traumatic events be written by my subconscious: which helped to usher in the positive opposites of those negative beliefs.

It would be too lengthy to go into more detail here about how EMDR could help our boi, so I will instead cover that in my future case formulation post that is separate from this series. But EMDR is not the only way to reach a point of having positive beliefs about oneself. Some people may be able to reach that stage without therapy, using resources like a strong support network and doing meaningful work and activities, which is completely valid and fine as well.

EMDR was the tool that helped the book author reach her first ever breakthrough in her mental health journey. It helped her realize that stuff from so long ago, which she thought she had gotten over, needed to be revisited in order for her to start feeling love for her inner child and younger self. Feeling love for yourself and understanding self-love is very hard work, and it’s not the same as shrugging “Yeah, I guess it’s good to love yourself” and knowing it in theory as an observer.

That section of the book is sort of like how Hunter becomes more and more able to draw strength and other positive qualities e.g. courage, trust, etc, from himself, on his own. The rest of the Hexsquad and Camila came in to help and save Hunter first, which gently reinforced a healthy narrative over time that he is in fact deserving of love, getting him to believe along the lines of “You know what, I don’t want to try being useful to Belos anymore, because what he did to me and what he does as the Emperor is wrong”. This understand was further reinforced when he was the one to extend help to Gus towards the end of Labyrinth Runners.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from this post is how Hunter’s friends helped to positively reshape the way he saw himself, when they modeled how healthy relationships should be for him. Many posts have already made in the fandom about how this was the case in every episode that Hunter was featured in (from Hunting Palismen onwards), so I’ll only show the recent examples from Thanks to Them below:

I like how during all of his screentime, it wasn’t obvious to us whether he had good beliefs about himself, right up until we see him at his happiest, in his cosplay outfit and secondly when he expresses his desires out loud to Belos while being possessed.

Learning healthy behaviours from positive influences outside of himself (sometimes, in therapy speak we call this “introducing a foreign element” outside of the client’s own familiar world, to introduce real change), because he had no reference points to draw upon from his own knowledge, is what got him to begin understanding and believing he deserves better. Such recovery work can’t happen within a vacuum, since no man is an island. Some form of connection is needed as a catalyst.

And ajhdhkjkljdfd I am so so proud of him that he could already practice these modeled behaviours himself at least a couple of times, supported by Flapjack's love, after being equipped with the love he needed:

Now, without Flapjack, I am on the edge of my seat wondering how he sees himself, and while he will never be the same again..I wonder how he will find his way back to liking who he is. I hope to see a more in-depth, layered and raw version of these where he has to face himself...and Flapjack is not going to be there this time..:

Especially since his “I like who I am right now” has been so greatly challenged by Flapjack dying by his own hands.

The author's breakthrough after meeting her younger self in her imagination, during her own EMDR sessions, was that she now understood in her heart, not just knowing in her rational head, that her parents did not provide her with healthy love. With that, it became clear what it was that she needed.

This is crazy important. Gradually, Hunter made his way from merely knowing (suspecting that the 'love' provided for him by Belos was not right) to fully understanding (feeling what love is supposed to be, through his friends and Camila). This concept references what I said very early on in this post about “heart work” vs “head work”. Head knowledge is the knowing part that looks for facts and can be reached quickly, but heart knowledge - trusting, believing, seeing the meaningful significance of something - can be tough to find without the aid of a support network, therapists and any form of meaningful inspiration.

The following life-changing truths that the author found in the challenging parts of her EMDR therapy sessions, are truths that were also revealed to Hunter in his character arc through difficult experiences:

I'm sure there will be amazing upcoming dialogue where his support network and found family help to further reaffirm the positive beliefs that he has began to trust about himself.

And that’s that for Part 2!

I wonder if any of the above was helpful, and feel free to comment and discuss in the notes.

Importantly, to put up a word of caution here: please do not try any EMDR on yourself under any circumstances, of course xD

Which stuff did you guys find the most interesting from this part? If anything above is pretty complex for you, feel free to DM me or comment to ask further questions~~

Part 3 will be posted next weekend.

[sukifoof]

hi i am once again back to talk about how flowey is an extremely good example of how to write ptsd :) but this time i am Also thinking about toriel and how similar she and flowey are... i’ve played undertale so many times and i’m Once Again nearing the end of the game, so i’ve been thinking a lot about how everything he says at the end of his fight makes me cry, but ESPECIALLY this line

everything he does is an effort to keep himself from being hurt again. he refuses to let himself get close to anyone, even his own parents, for fear of losing those he loves again. he’d rather kill over and over to have a sense of control over the loss he experienced than accept what happened. he cant let go-- he has to have control, because if he doesn’t, who knows how bad he might get hurt again. he’s an incredibly good example of what dealing with that kind of loss feels like and Oh Boy it Always gets me

its much easier for him to lie to himself and say he doesnt care at all and that he Does have complete control and that he Knows Whats Going To Happen Without A Doubt. he needs to know everything that could happen and he freaks out at any circumstance of learning something new. he says he’s bored, but he doesn’t really seem to... want?? new experiences?? he’s comfortable in this sad little life he lives because he’s scared of the future and what could change.

a lot of his alarm clock dialogue also shows how everything has affected him. of course he goes on about how it would be completely useless if he got a bike and that once you grow up you stop wanting things for the holidays. it’s pretty. depressing... he was deprived of the childhood he should have had, and now he feels it’s too late for him to be allowed to experience that. trauma can like. take a chunk out of your life that you’ll never get back, and it’s really interesting to see how that changed the way flowey views himself and his parents.

and toriel is a perfect emotional parallel to flowey. she closes herself off. she too wants to keep you there forever and pretend everything is perfectly fine, but she breaks so much easier than flowey. the human children she took care of reminded her of the children she lost, and while she doesn’t want to let them go, she does. she wants you to leave and just forget about her a never come back, just like asriel. somebody needs to take care of those flowers. flowey and toriel are extremely similar in the way they handle grief, so that makes this line extremely interesting

toriel will always open her heart to new kids that need to be taken care of, because she feels she failed her own children. toriel is willing to get hurt just to try to correct her past and prove that she can save at least one child. but, she can’t even take care of herself, and neither can flowey. he constantly neglects his emotional needs for the sake of never being hurt ever again, and the fact that toriel does the opposite probably really irks him. he just doesn’t Get it. but he still considers himself the Prince Of This World’s Future. he still tries to take care of toriel and gives her a glass of water when she passes out and puts her to bed.

he still wants to take care of everyone. i don’t know how much i’ve talked about it but i feel like a lot of his relationship with chara was him trying to take care of them as an older brother, and they both were given too much responsibility as children. so the fact that he thinks they died because he didn’t want to fight back, and that the whole kingdom fell into despair after their deaths is. oh boy. he definitely feels like a failure and he doesn’t know how to repair the damage he feels he’s caused. and now that he’s doomed to live in the underground forever, repeating over and over starting from right after everything was ruined for him? of course he thinks there’s no happy endings.

he takes on this huge task of saving everyone at his own expense but he can’t even take care of himself. similar to toriel, frisk almost feels like a redo of what happened with chara. he’s projecting the past onto them, as is common with ptsd. he’s convinced that they’ll leave and he’ll be lonely and sad forever again. so he keeps them there and goes, “okay, if you can defeat me (Which You Cant) i’ll free everyone and break the barrier.” because of COURSE that’s what felt like an impossible challenge to him. he makes himself the delta rune, a symbol of a savior; something he was never able to live up to, and something no child should Have to live up to.

his whole fight is him pretty much fighting against himself and this mindset he’s been stuck with for who knows how long. he has to accept that he can’t control/ save everything and that it’s okay to let go. he has to be saved from his own way of thinking and be shown that he’s worthy of being saved. his “i’m not ready to say goodbye to someone like you again” always makes me cry cuz he’s so clearly reliving his trauma and struggling to accept that chara is gone. it’s just such a good way to depict trauma and loss and how it feels to go through something like that.... flowey is such a well written character i love him

[bookofmirth]

i know fandom drama is always talked about to death and i'm probably not adding anything new to the discussion, but i feel like the way this fandom treats lucien and mor in comparison to elain and nesta and azriel is very representative of white feminism. i'm growing very tired of fandom discussions that center around uplifting elain and nesta because of girlboss feminism and azriel - their favorite bland man to project a personality onto - while ignoring the struggles of non-white, non-straight characters who are also victims of abuse.

sooo many people in this fandom fall back on choice feminism when discussing nesta and elain - like if you don't support their "choices" (despite being fictional characters with no agency of their own), you don't support women's choices, and thus you are a bad feminist. not only is this a logical fallacy, but it also doesn't allow female characters to be multi-dimensional, to make bad choices, to not just be morally "good" all the time. idk if this happens with feyre too or not, but most discourse i see is around nesta and elain.

whenever certain people in this fandom see sympathetic discussions of lucien and hopes for him to have a happy ending (sometimes with elain, sometimes not), they complain that you care more about a man than a woman that he "inflicted trauma on." they only see the social divide in terms of gender, never examining how race also plays a role in the struggles lucien has faced - never even considering that a male poc could also experience abuse at the hands of tamlin and his family. and so many people hate mor for not being a "girl's girl" towards nesta, because they believe feminism is only about women uplifting women, never considering the way that mor's past struggles with abuse because of her gender and sexual orientation have shaped her to be wary of people that are (in her eyes) unnecessarily cruel.

i do recognize that the feminism in sjm's books is fairly basic, so maybe that's to blame, but it's unfortunate the fandom can't take a more intersectional approach

Anon, I totally agree. Have you read @gimme-mor's posts about this? She did a great job of outlining some of the issues with the ways people talk about female characters in the fandom, and the surface-level feminism that is used in this post and in this one.

It makes sense that the fandom would engage with discussions of privilege and gender (and race and class etc.) on a rather surface level, since, as you pointed out, the flavor of feminism that is featured in the series is very focused on gender and rarely takes other identities, marginalized or otherwise, into account. It's #girlpower with no thought about individual differences that those women might be experiencing that actually have a huge impact on what "choices" each of them can make.

With Lucien, there is also the issue of his disability, but it's quite easy to dismiss him as a villain when all people are looking at is his maleness. It's not as simple as "woman = good" and "man = bad", but that's how people act.

The fact is, none of these characters have a choice because they aren't real people, as you also pointed out. There is no such thing as supporting a fictional person's rights because those rights literally don't exist. They do not have agency or autonomy or.... literal fucking existence in the real world, and so it's absolute malarkey to act like we need to be respectful of a fictional character, and to bully and shit on a real person in doing so.

I remember when I said that Elain is privileged it pissed some people off, but I think that also comes down to a misunderstanding of what privilege actually is, hand-in-hand with this Feminism Lite. There are a lot of great potential conversations to be had about these characters and the world they live in and how they interact with one another, the ways in which they are limited or have access to power, but it's kinda hard when people are more concerned about being right in the ship war.

[lamentiskiss]

I've been thinking about season 2 a lot and how certain character arcs might go/close.

First of all, I do not think we're getting a season 3. Don't get me wrong, I would love it but I think season 2 is the end of Loki's personal journey and as much as I love these characters, I'm fine with the team giving them happy, satisfying endings and shelving them for now.

The original ending of Season 1, before the team went "hey, we have some good stuff right here, let's give these characters another season to really explore them." was that Loki, now healed and changed, left the TVA behind and decided to go off on new adventures somewhere in the multiverse/different realms.

That was confirmed in the official artbook.

And Eric (the head writer for season 2) when asked about the original S1 ending once said that he didn't want to reveal too much because he might use it/some of it in the second season.

I think that season 2 will end with Loki and Sylvie going off somewhere together and Mobius taking over the new and reformed TVA. I think both of these things have already been hinted at in season 1 and it would make sense for their character progression.

Loki does not want to be alone. He made that very clear in season 1, however, he still got separated from the people he cared about - just so we could get season 2. I don't believe season 2 will be a repeat of S1's ending and force him into solitude/loneliness once again.

The show is all about breaking the cycle, can you change, can your fate be changed? And Lokis are supposed to be loners. It makes sense for our Loki to break that cycle of loneliness and finally, for once win.

Sylvie is another character who I can't see ending season 2 alone, especially knowing all the things that will happen in the upcoming season.

Sylvie has always only known loneliness, she said she never had anyone, never had anything except for the mission. That is until she met Loki and for a short while she experienced what's like to have someone in your life who cares about you. At the beginning of episode 5 it was revealed that her time with Loki was her only happy memory, which is devastating to think about. However, unlike Loki, she didn't have that same journey yet, she didn't have the opportunity yet to reflect on certain things, she didn't have the chance yet to forgive herself and grow past her trauma and grief. Which unfortunately led to the separation, but also fortunately gave us season 2.

Sylvie in season 2 is very depressed, very empty, very heartbroken. Her mission's completed but it came with a great cost - she has no goal and has lost her one chance of a happy life.

She's really, really going through it and is in a deep self loathing spiral.

I don't want to go into a spoilerish territory, but in season 2 Sylvie will have to confront her own darkness, a literal visual/external manifestation of her worst traits, of her worst future. The stubbornness, the pain, the guilt, loneliness... you name it.

Loki was able to change because of the people he surrounded himself with and because he saw his own future and realized how meaningless his life was and how much hurt he caused to the people who loved him.

Sylvie will go through a very similar journey.

In episode 5 Loki and Sylvie had a conversation about their plans about the future once this is all over. And I believe it foreshadows their eventual ending in season 2.

Loki: "What about you? What will you do when this is all over?" Sylvie: "I don't know." Loki: "I don't know either. Maybe... Maybe we could figure it out... together." Sylvie: "Maybe."

I think Loki and Sylvie will spend the majority of season 2 trying to fix what happened in episode 6 and trying to confront Sylvie's personal demons. If Sylvie continues on the path of loneliness and self loathing, nothing good will come out of it.

And Loki is aware of that.

It will be his influence that will change her life.

Tom said in 2021 that the story of Loki and Sylvie is about love, acceptance and forgiveness and also added "Love is really the only force that has any power to change things or people."

Sylvie still needs to change. She's in a rough spot right now, deep in self loathing and needs Loki's support to confront and forgive herself for everything that happened.

And once that's all behind them, once they're both healed and on the same page I think they will leave to go somewhere together. Maybe the season will be generous enough and actually tell us where they went. Maybe they found a safe place to stay on a specific timeline and they're living there now, maybe they just tells us that they're going on new adventures together, exploring the multiverse, enjoying the freedom and each other's company. Perhaps they're even travelling the multiverse to make sure everything is stable.

Regardless of what the motive is, they will stay together and 'figure things out' because now they finally have the opportunity to do that. They're reunited, they're healed, they're on the same page and open with their feelings for each other.

Mobius will go through a journey of his own as well. I reckon we will see his past life and I suspect we will be shown that he had a family which will be tough for him, because he knows he can never return to them anymore because his timeline had been erased.

I think that will be another driving force for him to put an end to the TVA that we know and with the help from other agents and friends, turn it into something better, something good.

Something that was already teased in the finale.

Mobius: "We can't take away people's free will, Ravonna. Do you not see that? Look, maybe we can build this into something better together."

I do not think the TVA will dismantle at the end of S2, especially since it's supposed to play a role in Deadpool 3. But I do believe that the TVA will be reformed and changed. They will no longer prune the timelines, they will no longer take away people's free will.

I think that from now on they will only keep making sure that the multiverse continues to thrive in harmony, that there are no people, no time travelers trying to disturb that peace or create issues in certain timelines.

And I think Mobius will become the new head of the TVA. He, like everyone else, cannot return to his timeline, and perhaps he doesn't even want to. Maybe he decided that his purpose is now to ensure the TVA remains good.

In fact, I think all agents will be given the option to either find a timeline for themselves or continue helping around at the TVA.

Maybe even Loki appoints Mobius as the new 'leader' of the TVA, because he knows and trusts him that he will do a good job.

I do think that Loki will remain on friendly terms with the TVA and perhaps it will be even implied that he will visit them from time to time and if necessary he can even come back to help them. But I do no think he's going to stay at the TVA for good.

Not just because Sylvie is probably hesitant (for a good reason) to stay there, but also because Loki doesn't seem like the person who could continue living there for the rest of his life.

So basically, I think Season 2 will end the TVA as we know it, further establish that it NEEDS to be changed, but that timelines also have to be free, find a way to (temporarily) stop the Kang issue (until it all blows up in Deadpool 3 again which then leads directly into the Kang Dynasty), Mobius will become the new head of the reformed TVA, Loki will have a straight up heroic arc in the season, helping the TVA, helping Sylvie, Sylvie will have to face her own demons and go through an epiphany, Loki and Sylvie will end the season together, going somewhere to figure out things together, and we will see the backstories of other notable variants.

[waitingforwinterwinds]

ASOS; Steel and Snow: 05 DAVOS I (pages 67-74)

After a long time surviving on a rocky spire in the ocean, Davos sees a ship head his way, he crams some PTSD and Religious Crisis into his survivors guilt-trip before they get close enough for him to call out.

-

Holy shit this chapter is short but potent. I normally make my commentary as I read, which means it takes... a while to get through each chapter, but this one grabbed me and took off running.

I don't know exactly what GRRM did, or if it's just because I adore Davos and there's been that lingering worry in the back of my mind since his last chapter, but I just didn't want to pause for observations.

Davos was a sailor; he was meant to die at sea. The gods beneath the waters have been waiting for me, he told himself. It's past time I went to them. ... Why should I live? he thought as tears blurred his vision. Gods be good, why? My sons are dead, Dale and Allard, Maric and Matthos, perhaps even Devan as well. How can a father outlive so many strong young sons? How would I go on? I am a hollow shell, the crab's died, there's nothing left inside. Don't they know that?

Davos did so amazing though, surviving on a tall spit of rock for... what, weeks? at least one week. Drinking rain water from hollows in the rock, eating smashed crabs raw, even when his mind was saying give up, he kept going.

Davos is clearly feeling a lot of guilt, for his sons dying, for not dying with them, and he's experiencing such dark and heavy headspace right now, that he keeps fighting, even if it doesn't seem like it, like he's just not dying, it's amazing.

I couldn't do it in his situation.

But now there was a sail; only a speck on the horizon, but growing larger. A ship where no ship should be. He knew where this rock lay, more or less; it was one of a series of sea monts that rose rom the floor of Blackwater Bay. The tallest of them jutted a hundred feet above the tide, and a dozen lesser monts stood thirty to sixty feet high. Sailors called them spears of the merling king, and knew that for every one that broke the surface, a dozen lurked treachorously just below it. Any captain with sense kept his course well away from them. Davos watched the sail swell through pale red-rimmed eyes, and tried to hear the sound of the wind caught in the canvas. She is coming this way.

You know, up until Davos recognized the ship as one of Salladhor Saan's, I was half expecting Melisandre to be on board and coming specifically to pick Davos up.

Just, partly because I just kind of thought she might, but also because this chapter has the reoccurring theme of the fire and what Davos has lost to it, and his part in Melisandre's "blasphemy" re: the burning of the effigies of the seven and rowing her into Storm's End for shadow baby birth.

Actually, going back to Davos's last chapter at the battle, I read a line about them intentionally leaving her behind because any victory they earned would be attributed to her and her magics and not Stannis, and my first thought was: "they're going to wish she'd come along" which was in poor taste, but also I don't know if Melisandre can actually command wildfire, never-mind that much of it.

But no, her hull was striped. She was Lysene, she was Sallador Saan's. The Mother sent her here, the Mother in her mercy. She had a task for him. Stannis lives, he knew then. I have a king still. And sons, I have other sons, and a wife loyal and loving. How could he have forgotten? The Mother was merciful indeed.

And this moment, where he remembers/realises that for all he lost he hasn't lost everything. It's like seeing the sun come out after storms and flood. Rekindled hope and a real will to live, not just the stubbornness and refusal to die.

Like, he's obviously going to have lasting trauma, my man need so much therapy, but him having things to live for, and people to support him is going to be so much of the effort.

Also:

When he opened his mouth to scream, the water came rushing in, tasting of salt, and Davos Seaworth knew that he was drowning. The next he knew the sun was up, and he lay upon a stony strand beneath a spire of naked stone, with the empty bay all around and a broken mast, a burned sail, and a swollen corpse beside him.

Davos is Azor Ahai confirmed... I should start a new game for how many people we can "realistically" confirm as Azor Ahai before the One True AA is revealed.

So here's what I'm thinking happened. Either:

A) The snag Davos felt earlier was some part of that debris pile (temporarily submerged by the currents and eddies of the river or maybe bonked down by the stuff on fire,) catching him and tugging him along and out to the spears while his was insensate, he actually managed to surface and flop onto the mast and get the water out of his lungs but he was too out of it to register it. (unlikely option, but sort of plausible)

B) The ocean and aquatic gods kicked him back out because they knew that Davos would easily become the king of all water gods if allowed to die at sea. (definitely what happened here. most likely option.)

[passionguavagreentea]

The Glamorization of Hustle Culture

This will be a ramble-filled, multi-blog-post series revolving around hustle culture and its bizarre glamorization.

The Impacts of Hustle Culture on Relationships

I am going to start this off with, I don’t think there are truly any positive impacts to partner-relationships when hustle culture is involved. There, I said it. Would you agree? Maybe some space from your partner or bringing in more income to your relationship would be the few benefits I could think of that could positively impact a relationship. But other than those two, I could not tell you any more. On the other hand, I do believe there could be positive impacts on relationships within your family. For instance, I think working and showing a good work ethic could be inspiring to your children, making you a role model to them. Getting your work done so you can take your kids to beautiful places that they will remember forever, thanks to you and your hard work. Giving your kids a household that is financially stable, and up to par for them. Though there are downsides to these 'positive impacts'; if you are gone all day, and don’t see them until bedtime or only in the morning right before school, they might feel a sense of abandonment or neglect. Could you imagine the words of your four-year-old asking you, “Why aren’t you ever home?” Yeah. Heartbreaking. This in turn could have long-term effects on the child, it could develop into something more severe down the line as they grow older, such as trauma. Being present around your children as they are in their most important developmental stages is crucial to their growth.

When I was a child, growing up my father was (and still is) a hard worker and has the biggest work ethic I’ve ever known someone to have. He runs his business and works seven days a week, all day. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him relax unless a huge blizzard outside prevents him from leaving - but even then he will try to find something to do around the house. This caused some issues, for my siblings and I, as we didn’t see my dad nearly as much as a child should when we were growing up. We would go have a family day on Sundays, but other than that he was working, and these family days that we looked forward to eventually sizzled away; part of our past. Hustle culture in a way, took my dad away during those crucial times of my life, and it really caused an impact.

Then of course, it also comes down to the Hispanic culture that he prides himself with. The Hispanic work ethic is possibly one of the strongest out there, they know that in order to make money they need to be working. They cracked the code, right? But the issue is they over work themselves. Why? Could it be due to the completely unfair wage gap that they receive, even though they bust their backs for over 12 hours a day, which in turn drives them to work more hours? Or could it be because they need the money to send to their families from their home country? Here's the other thing that not a lot of people understand from the Spanish culture (and dozens of other cultures too); young adults immigrate to the States and take any job that they can. They then start supporting their family, like their parents and grandparents, siblings, aunts, and everyone, back in the country that they grew up in (fun fact: my dad immigrated to the States when he was 16; he left without notifying his family until they started receiving letters from him months after from Los Angeles).

I have a few stands on this area, I stand by supporting your family by sending them money, but then I've experienced the negative impacts within my family. Having been negatively affected, and this is a tad bit sensitive of a subject, I will hold off on voicing more of my opinion.

It all boils down to the ability to equally split your time to be there for your kids and spouse, as well as to support your family outside of the States. It's a constant and vicious cycle to be stuck in; hustle culture that is. Finding balance, and harmony, and being able to maintain healthy relationships with your family. Hustle culture surrounds and influences us in all different ways. It is said that America is the dream place to reside in, but is working 72 hours a week really the dream?

[thisstableground]

im super invested in the fact that various extra materials have stated that bruno used to be the golden child until things started going to shit when he was a teenager, and i am very on board with the implication that i’ve seen others mention where its like, him being sort of blunt and too honest about that stuff is seen as cute and precocious when he’s a kid, and becomes less so as he gets older. and there’s also the general social change inthe encanto as they move further away from the circumstances that brought them there as generations who never experienced the outside world firsthand grow up.

but it also occurs to me that perhaps another reason why things would have been so different with his visions and his relationship to the town when he’s young is because if a five year old is having a vision, chances are, he’s not going to understand a lot of the context of what he’s seeing, but nobody would expect him to. so it was far more likely that someone, whether that’s alma or whoever he was doing visions for, would be there to help him interpret it or discuss it because frankly otherwise i don’t think you’re gonna get a lot of sense out of that at all, five year old logic can be very convoluted. i don’t know if this predates the sand ritual that allows others to literally see what he is seeing, but even them sitting with him and asking patient questions and redirecting his attention to certain things and giving him some suggestions would be something, like when you sit with a kid who is learning to read and let them sound out the letters and let them mistakes then once they’ve done that, you guide them to the right answers.

but then at some point expectations started to change and it went from being a collaborative “okay, lets sound this vision out together” effort, to it being something that they expect bruno to do by himself, because he’s older now and because it’s His Responsibility and because all of the kids’ gifts slowly become less of a collaborative effort alongside the townsfolk and more of a thing that the town relies on as a crutch.

and i can’t see alma necessarily being the most understanding if, say, 16 year old bruno asks her to help him interpret like she used to when he was ten years younger - and getting “aren’t you old enough to do that yourself by now??” as a response is like. the fastest way to discourage someone from ever asking for help again.

so he just tries his best to do it entirely by himself, and that’s so much extra pressure on him, not just to see things that might be very upsetting to witness, but to understand them and to not miss anything and to convey them clearly and accurately when we know that what he sees is pretty cryptic and out of order. and then if the bad visions are the result of him feeling bad in general then that’s a very self-perpetuating cycle

idk, i think it’s just so sad how we can see how much of a difference having someone else to help him interpret what he’s seeing makes with mirabel giving him an assist, both in terms of actually interpreting the events, seeing further than he had been able to, and in terms of his emotions (i gotta imagine it’s very, very rare that he’d get as excited about most of his visions as he was at the end of the one he did in antonio’s room). like, i’m pretty sure seeing the future is always gonna hold some level of trauma to it but i wonder how much could’ve been alleviated if he hadn’t also been trying to go it alone.

[you-usuratonkachi]

I don't know.

I mean, I've been on here long enough now that I know which theories about Mike are the most popular. I know most Bylers believe that Mike is dealing with IH from the start and that he actually always loved Will romantically, he just never knew and that he confused what he feels for El for romantic love because of all his preconceived notions of what's socially right of him and all that. I know most like to believe that he only feels platonic love for El, but... well, I never felt like that.

Rewatching ST from the start, I feel even more strongly about this. Mileven were beautiful. In a "they are children, both of them don't really know how it works, but they are still gonna try it out" because... well, because that's what children do. They feel good about something, they do it, it's as simple as that.

I think Mike genuinely liked El romantically. "Fell in love" with her, if you will, in the way 12 years old fall in love, at least. Have you ever? You cannot compare it to what you might feel in an adult relationship, but that doesn't mean it's not romantic... It's just proportioned to your understanding of the world.

El? El just knew she felt safe and liked Mike. And it's very very true, she should have experienced life before engaging in a romantic relationship with Mike, but even that is technically part of life? It's not like Mike was an adult manipulating her into it, Mike was almost as clueless as her. Yes, he had an idea of what it was supposed to be like, but he was also figuring it out. In the same way they figured out how to dance together at the Snow Ball. He knew what dancing was supposed to be like, but he didn't know how to dance. She didn't know anything. They just got on the dance floor and did whatever. That's basically their romantic relationship.

It's really quite the same for Will? He liked Mike romantically from the start, but he was a child and he didn't know what to do with all that. A lot of trauma ensued and eventually, with age, his feelings grew too.

What I believe has happened to Mike and El instead is the opposite.

Both of them have grown as people, season after season, and it feels to me like what felt like was really big and amazing between them, does not really compare anymore.

In S3 it feels already like it's less epic love and more teenage hormones, which is realistic, they are that age. But a relationship without communication is not gonna survive after childhood and you see that with them a lot. They just don't know how to talk to each other and in S4 they get to a point where the world makes a lot more sense to both and whatever dancing they are doing is uncoordinated in the worst way. They bump against each other, they trip, they feel awkward.

The excitement of discovery is gone, what's left is the more adult knowledge that perhaps they would rather not be on the dance floor together anymore.

That doesn't mean they never wanted to.

They have just grown out of it.

Their relationship has naturally come to an end, because they are different people from what they were when they got together.

Does that mean none of it has been real?

I think saying that would be invalidating their feelings and how they felt in the moment, all the first experiences they had together and what one helped the other understand about themselves, what it is to grow up.

If Will can have romantic feelings for Mike at 12, all of them might have had them.

Mike loving El back then? I believe it.

Now though? I think she is right... he doesn't love her anymore. He cares for her so much, because of course he does! She is important, she will always be, he's just... stopped dancing.

Mike loving El (in his 12/13-year-old capacity) doesn't invalidate his feelings for Will. He could have had romantic feelings for Will this whole time too, just never recognized or entertained them. It's very true that his relationship with Will was always special. The issue is, he never figured he could step on that dance floor with Will.

The issue is, now that Mike seems to be looking around himself, is he gonna ask Will for a dance?

[redorich]

to those who carried on

A fic for @petrichormeraki​ and their Hermit!Tommy AU.

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The hermits know Tommy as a quiet young man who is very sad and contemplative. The more time they spend with him (against his will, but they know he needs the company) the more they learn of the little details. His favorite block is cobblestone, he likes building towers, and apparently his favorite woman is the Queen. They don’t ask why he wears a smiley mask even though he never seems happy. They don’t ask why he hides important things in his ender chest. They don’t ask why he wears a shattered compass on a chain about his neck.

(Once, he died in lava and lost his absolute mind. He was so upset about the compass that he didn’t even mention the stack and a half of diamond ore he had on him. Xisuma ended up manually rolling back the server just so Tommy could have it back.)

As time goes on, the tremors in Tommy's hands grow lesser. His dull blond hair seems a bit brighter, his bruises fade quicker, he doesn’t look quite so skinny-- he spends his time serenely building, resource gathering instead of running and fighting. He has a sense of humor under all that trauma, which the hermits unfortunately find out after another massive-scale prank war thought to be instigated by Grian actually turns out to be Tommy's fault.

Tommy starts swearing more. Doc gets the stink eye from Stress for this, but Doc insists he’s never once sworn around the young man. (That’s an absolute lie, but it wasn’t anything Tommy hadn’t heard before. Tommy thinks Doc is remarkably unoriginal in his cursing. He does take note of the German ones, though.)

Inviting Tommy to PvP minigames can be touchy, they learn. He likes to fight, but he fights like an animal with nothing to lose. Grian once chanted, “It stays in the pit!” and everyone present had to spend the next five minutes wrangling Tommy’s soul back into his body from wherever it’d floated off to.

Tommy likes to glide with his elytra. He claims he’s never had one before, but he flies like such a natural that a few people have their doubts. On a dark desert night, with dark blue eyes watching the night sky, he confides to Cub that it reminds him of the way his dad used to fly. He hates rockets, though. He does not confide to Cub that it reminds him of what his brother did to his best friend. He says enough that Cub can guess, though.

Scar gets fed up with Tommy’s creeper holes and makes Tommy help him fix them. At first, Tommy has no clue why Scar is breaking out things like coarse dirt and birch leaves and making the ground all fancy, but he’s not afraid of a little hard work and Scar makes it fun. He learns a lot about terraforming that day, and awkwardly comes back a few days later asking if Scar needs any more help terraforming. Tommy still hasn’t built a real base, not by Hermitcraft standards, but the small hill he’s built his dirt hut near now has a very beautiful, if amateurish, waterfall. He doesn’t tell Scar about this, but Scar finds out anyway. Tommy wakes up one morning to find that someone has left a shulker box in his house. Instead of iron-gripped paranoia, he just feels wonder that someone would give him a gift-- to the hermits, a single shulker box is nothing. To Tommy, it’s everything.

The shulker box contains coarse dirt, birch leaves, and a silk touch shovel.

Tommy helps Xisuma mine a giant hole in the ground near bedrock, because he realizes that he’s never thanked the admin for getting him his compass back. Well, that and the fact that instamining with a haste two beacon and an efficiency five pickaxe is a novelty. Xisuma lets him keep the cobble, since everyone knows it’s Tommy’s favorite block, but also insists he keep some of the other blocks like andesite and diorite. He pats Tommy on the head and tells him to talk to Bdubs about building a house some time. Tommy nods. He's taken aback by how tall Xisuma is, completely contrasting his mild nature. He reminds Tommy of Wilbur, on one of his good days before... Before. Not Ghostbur, though-- the admin is much too alive.

Tommy waits too long, so eventually Bdubs comes to him. The man is silly and outrageous, playing everything for laughs and unexpectedly tender. Bdubs plays up how beautiful he thinks Tommy’s hideous dirt shack is, then offers to help him build a house that’s better. For Tommy, building a house means settling down, accepting that this is his home now. Bdubs doesn’t know this. Tommy builds cobblestone dicks while Bdubs tries to lecture him about depth and block variation. Nothing gets done and Bdubs feels like he might have failed, but come next week Bdubs is flying over the area and sees the dicks are gone; so is the dirt house. In its place is a spruce-and-cobble cottage nestled near the tiny waterfall. Off to the side, he’s made a cozy doghouse for his fox, Theo. Bdubs doesn’t know how close that fox came to being named Fundy.

He spars with False, and she very pointedly does not mention how his stances are uniquely suited to a piglin. There’s only one renowned fighter who’s a piglin, after all. It's Tommy’s story to tell, if he ever does, why he’s seen enough of the legendary Technoblade’s fights to pick up on his stances, yet he’s not experienced enough to know that they don’t suit him. Instead, False gives him different stances suited more for tall, skinny people like the two of them. She’s got blond hair and blue eyes just like him. (Not that she’d know. She’s never seen his eyes, hidden behind his mask as they are.) Every now and then, he imagines her as an older sister, and the one time he says so, she smiles. When Tommy’s at home, looking at his own distorted reflection in his waterfall (he’s improved it since he built it), he muses that their eyes aren’t the same, their hair colors are subtly off. It’s close enough, he thinks.

Stress dies from fall damage and Tommy goes out of his way to pick up her stuff, because the hermits do these things out of the kindness of their hearts. The thought never even crosses their minds to steal. It crosses his mind. He doesn’t do it. Stealing from Stress would be like stealing from Niki.

He shows up at Cleo’s base unannounced and demands to see the “cool shit”. He is appropriately enthused by the giant armor-stand-bugs. She tries teaching him her armor stand magic, but it doesn’t really sink in. It’s okay, she assures him, most people don’t have the knack for it. He does, however, learn that buttons make excellent decorations. He also learns how to braid hair, bribed by ice cream. He is terrible at it, to the point where Joe has to come by to help the two untangle her hair so Tommy can start again. Watching the two bicker over capitalism and six million armor stands and a whole host of other inside jokes he doesn’t get, he thinks he’s starting to understand what friendship is supposed to be like. Joe and Cleo don’t see him clutching his compass. He and Tubbo weren’t too far off from this, given their circumstances. Maybe...

Maybe Tubbo can be forgiven.

Tommy makes minigames of his own, ones that don’t just kill you and steal your stuff. He builds things that are pretty instead of just functional, brews potions with Stress and only calls them drugs once (again, upsetting her is like upsetting Niki. Best not done), and sets up chicken bombs above people’s bases instead of just lavacasting them. (As Grian saw the hundreds of chickens slowly raining down upon his mansion, he got such a peculiar look on his face that Tommy feared he’d fucked up. The shorter, stronger (much stronger oh god why is he so strong despite being so small) man nearly crushed Tommy’s lungs in a hug, proclaiming how proud he was of Tommy. Tommy was proud of himself for not accidentally murdering Grian out of reflex. Was this what healing was like?)

Yes. It is what healing is like. Tommy knows this because that wound gets ripped open again. Tango shows him how to build the most obnoxious redstone-powered noise machine the two can think of. Tango digs a small pit, and asks Tommy to throw down his axe. Suddenly, Tommy’s in Logstedshire again; it’s not Tango asking, it’s Dream. His hands don’t shake when he tosses his axe into the pit, followed by his sword and his armor. It isn't until he’s placed the TNT down that Tango grabs his wrist and asks him what he’s doing. Tommy’s eyes clear enough that he can see past the blond hair and freckles. Tango isn’t green, he’s red. He's shorter than Dream, and his worried eyes are unhidden. Tommy shudders, then tells Tango everything.

Tango has no pity for Tommy, just understanding and sympathy. He doesn’t push Tommy to talk about it, but when Tommy’s done telling his story, Impulse and Zedaph show up. They all pretend that Tommy’s voice isn’t hoarse, that they all didn’t conveniently happen to look away when Tommy took off his mask just long enough to wipe his eyes. The men bake a cake together, fool around with honey blocks, and don’t talk about it.

Tommy knows very little about redstone, considers himself more of a builder and a fighter than an engineer. Still, Mumbo’s living base is inspiring, and Tommy often hangs around the man’s industrial district just to watch Mumbo work. Mumbo knows that Tommy hasn’t purchased a day pass, but it’s nice having someone around to talk to while he works. It’s not like Tommy is stealing anything. (Tommy totally steals from Mumbo’s industrial district storage system. The man’s farms are so efficient that he doesn’t even notice, so Tommy assumes it’s fine. What Mumbo doesn’t know won’t hurt him.)

Lava still isn’t his favorite thing in the world. He stays far away from it, instead of imagining what it would be like to hurtle towards it. Ren doesn’t really notice this, but he does notice that Tommy doesn’t seem to like his mustafarian base. On a spur-of-the-moment whim, Ren whips up some absurd plotline in which he is a lone weary traveller seeking refuge at Tommy’s base from strange alien overlords. The two have fun together, and the young man cracks more absurd jokes about it than the hermits have ever seen him do. When Ren leaves a week later to return to his own base, Tommy keeps being absurd, if a bit more subdued without someone to play off of. He builds a shrine to the “prime log”, which grows more elaborate each day. Beef and xB pretend to be his acolytes, despite having no clue what a “twitch prime” is.

They can’t see his face, but the smile in his voice is a far cry from the despondency he once wore like a heavy cloak. He is so much more animated and alive, full of motivation. He builds an entire island in three days, and hand-delivers an invitation to each and every hermit for his beach party. Everyone shows up, even those with packed schedules (Iskall) and those with introverted tendencies (Etho). Tommy is nearly moved to tears when they show up in groups of twos and threes, as though he hadn’t expected anyone to come. There aren’t enough chairs for everyone, but there is more than enough cake to go around. Tango brings drinks, Impulse brings meat to barbecue, and Zedaph makes an elaborate jump-powered grill. Keralis brings way too much confetti and several handfuls of cheap, obnoxious party noisemakers. Stress brings Tommy a crown made out of alliums. It shines far less than his brother’s gold crown, and it’ll die in a few days, but he wears it all night and keeps it in his ender chest until it withers away.

He spends five days teaching himself to make flower crowns. Even his best attempt is awful, nowhere near as pretty as the crowns Stress makes, but when he gives it to her, she takes off the one she was wearing and wears his until it falls apart.

He dies fighting a creeper on Grian’s behalf, and doesn’t even panic, because he trusts that however many times he dies, no matter how stupid or ignominious or revolutionary or important, Xisuma will always let him respawn.

He spends a grand total of nine diamonds to buy a single plot of land in the shopping district. He builds a cute little bench facing the sunset, with warmly glowing street lights on either side and a small garden. At the end of the bench he places a jukebox, and buys every single disc that Beef’s music shop sells, including Pigstep. He sits on the bench while Mellohi plays and watches the tiny silhouettes of his friends flying in the evening sky. Tommy looks alone on that bench, even if he seems happy, so sometimes other people stop by to sit with him. Scar declares the bench area a public park, since everyone likes it so much, and refunds Tommy his nine diamonds straight from the throne.