#and like. idk if its the possible cluster b personality disorder speaking

[linkzac]

still pissed off. (warning for mention of weight loss in the tags)

[slexenskee]

Re: Does Shouto have his scar/what happened to Rei in May Death Never Stop You

TL;DR - Shouto does not have his scar but Rei is still in the hospital. Okay and now for the long version -

So we don’t know the specifics of Rei’s mental disorders in canon, but judging from her actions I imagine there’s a whole laundry list of cluster a, b, and c disorders in there to certain degrees. For this fic I’m assuming her particular cocktail is bipolar disorder (mania and depression) with psychotic features (delusions, hallucinations), avoidant/dependent disorders, PPD and generalized anxiety. 

Rei’s first born is a really weird fucking baby. He’s basically an alien. He doesn’t really cry or make much noise, and he has a terribly unnerving and unblinking stare. Sometimes it seems like he just sees right through her, judging her and finding her wanting and deciding to dismiss her from his perception of reality. Or at least that’s how she sees it - is it actually? No because Gojo’s awareness hasn’t even come in yet, but the whole ‘old soul in a new body’ is still making him a weird infant. Also the whole body/soul thing in JJK is very ??? which means its possible Gojo’s soul has always been in his body, and so has his cursed energy (even if his 6 eyes and his awareness didn’t fully manifest until he was about 4 or so), so even in utero he would have had cursed energy, and who knows how that would react in the body of a human without any cursed energy to speak of? In JJK even normal humans have trace amounts of cursed energy even if they can’t see curses, which would explain how sorcerers come from non-sorcerer families. But MHA has zero cursed energy, and the 6 eyes have evolved to see quirk energy. Idk what that would do to Rei, but nothing good, I imagine. I wouldn’t say her mental issues are entirely Gojo’s fault, since a lot of that is hereditary and environmental, but it certainly didn’t help. 

In a normal person it would probably give mood swings, more depressive episodes, and other symptoms that we’ve seen in JJK for normal people who are unknowingly cursed - anxiety, sudden nervousness, bad dreams, that kind of stuff. But because Rei already had plenty of undiagnosed mental health disorders, it sort of compounded everything. 

Rei is already under pressure just by the nature of her marriage, which I head-canon as her agreeing to by pure technicality of the legal definition of ‘consent’, but in reality was very much so caused by the pressure her parents, society and endeavor himself was exerting on her. Basically she made herself believe it was what she wanted because everyone else seemed to think it was the smart choice - marry a rich and handsome famous hero who has offered to take care of your family and you financially for the rest of your days, in a society that’s already misogynistic? I imagine her friends in school and just everyone in her everyday life even beyond her parents was putting pressure on her, maybe not intentionally, but exerting their opinions on her nonetheless. 

This is a lot of stress and environmental pressure for everyone, but again Rei already had BPD and was more susceptible to these kinds of changes, and never got the help she needed to deal with any of it. In line with cultural values, it probably never occurred to her to voice her struggles aloud or seek help for them.

She’s alone, suffering under undiagnosed PPD, can’t bond with her baby in any capacity, feels like a failure, and it’s just a huge spiral that gets worse and worse until it eventually breaks. 

I imagine she didn’t start having more violent/hysteric attributes to her psychotic features until this point in her life, and they would have scared her. I have to imagine this is canon, bc otherwise I don’t know how she ended up going from a mild woman to having a violent episode and scarring Shouto. 

She’s also not taking any medication whatsoever, and has never been diagnosed or seen a doctor for her mental health issues. Untreated BPD is basically a recipe for disaster in this instance, but instead of harming her children like in canon, the coin flipped on the other side and she acted on her depressive side and not her manic one, and she makes an attempt on her own life instead. Frankly its unrealistic that she hadn’t injured anyone else in one of her manic episodes beforehand, like a maid or one of her own kids, but that’s where the avoidant distorder comes in, as she’s always been more of a recluse and more likely to hurt herself in a manic episode than someone else. But anyway this is enough to finally get psychiatric help involved. 

Again, in canon she’s seen to be pretty cordoned off from life and has been in a psych ward for most of Shouto’s life - that wouldn’t make sense unless she had pretty uncontrollable violent tendencies and exhibited an inability to deal with stressors in regular life, so I have to imagine her particular cocktail of disorders is extreme and was probably already there and got worse due to the environmental factors of her marriage. 

 To be specific I’ve slotted her psych ward admittance into the timeline to be right around the time that Gojo confronts Endeavor in the dojo. Honestly maybe even like a week or two before it. At that point in time Gojo is spending like 80% of his time away from his own house and honestly has no idea it even happened. In his POV in ch1 he mentions how odd it is that Rei isn’t in the house when he stops by because she’s always there, then he’s distracted when he notices Endeavor and Shouto. 

[gumheel]

“hi! sorry that this is so long aaa it’s kind of a complex situation that i have mixed feelings on so i couldn’t word it very concisely… also i hope you have a good day! ty for being so nice about this

also this isn’t meant to be a “you guys are horrible and i can’t believe you wrote this!!!!” b/c i don’t think it was intentional at all, just had some bad connotations… but w/ blanche’s writing i. hm i hope this is worded well but i feel like making him mentally ill kind of didn’t mix well w/ his narrative role as someone who’s supposed to be irredeemable/bad, especially b/c he also comes off as specifically someone dealing with low empathy and difficulty recognizing others as real/tangible people who can be hurt + difficulty knowing what to do When he’s hurt others which (as someone with multiple cluster b personality disorders) is a big issue when you’re cluster b.”

i’m putting the rest of this under the cut not to minimize what was actually done but so the root and answer can be easily addressed! you don’t have to apologize for it being long you spoke very concisely and worded the issue well and i appreciate it being brought up a great deal :] i’m also happy you brought this up because this was something i was struggling with a lot being blanche’s player and i do have a lot i would like to say that will hopefully explain, but that isn’t really necessary reading and the main thing i and the other mods want to say is that we are sorry for pushing that kind of narrative. there are more reasons behind this that i’ll go on to talk about below the cut, but at the end of the day an author’s issues with oneself like... should be addressed via other means and not worked out through a medium like this, it leads to a reading that, as unintentional as it may be, is still present and we’re sorry about that.

“and kind of contributes to a narrative of mentally ill people who’ve messed up/hurt people multiple times due to their illness/don’t automatically become better people when their negative actions are pointed out, especially when the character is shown to be in a neglectful home/recieving no treatment/is 16 (which is when a lot of us can start developing our more severe symptoms/cluster b pds really start showing up), are like. irredeemable/shitty people/don’t deserve sympathy. especially b/c a lot of cluster bs end up doing shitty things/hurting others without meaning to before we’re able to recognize what we’re dealing with, idk it’s just… hurtful for the narrative seen in media to be that we can never change and become better, even if we’re shown to want to (which blanche does at multiple points- i could go more into this/different points where he’s shown to regret what he did, want to change etc but i don’t want to make this even longer than it is hh)

and of course this doesn’t mean everyone had to make nice with him or that he’s perfect or even necessarily a good person, the narratives that people Can change/heal and aren’t inherently irredeemable and bad and the fact that people hurt By those people don’t have to forgive them, associate with them, be nice to them etc don’t contradict each other (especially b/c the mods Do kill blanche physically and kind of just go. whoops, our mistake, oh well)

and i want to end this with: again i don’t think this was intentional, and i can’t speak for the mental health of any of the writers, but as a cluster b reading that, it really felt as though the message of dailyaes was that people who fuck up and hurt others who aren’t instantly sorry and doing everything to fix it don’t deserve sympathy/can’t change, even if they do eventually try to change, and it really hurt to reread it (and honestly reading it a few years ago when i was a lot less in recovery contributed to my own internalized ableism, looking back)

i’m so sorry again how long this is!! i really hope i explained this well enough hh”

thank you again for bringing this up, and there are like.. three/kind of four key points that i’d like to explain here because these are relevant to what wound up happening and it does like... it does suck, waht wound up happening, and i’m sorry that that was the ending, i hope this can like... assuage some of that and assure that that isn’t the ending people who struggle with those issues deserve

the first is that uh.. blanche was conceptualized as a... kind of self insert at a time when i was struggling a lot with what it meant to be a person and more importantly a good person. that reading of his character (mentally ill & neglected) came explicitly from things i was unsure and in denial of, and low empathy/struggling to recognize others as individuals were they not immediately tangible was a large part of that. as a result, thsi character who i cast as a sort of inverted self insert (ie. encompassing what i felt was bad about me at the time) took on a lot of aspects of what you called internalized ableism which is. a really good term for it. i’d come out of an environment where i felt as if i was not stretching myself thin to help others then i was not being a good person, and blanche turned into a sort of representation of that. this does not like, excuse what ended up happening to blanche, but i hope it comes of some comfort to learn this did not come from a place of external hatred rather than genuine issues with myself. they still should not have made their way into being that kind of a representation of a character with those issues, and i’m sorry for that.

the second ties into why one of the mods ended up being cast out of the group altogether, which was being a shitty person all around, one facet of which was like. a Lot of hatred towards blanche. it’s not my place to speculate or speak as to why, but it was definitely a big part of why they got as shitty an ending and treatment as they did -- efforts at suggesting or even joking that blanche was not like. a  Bad Person were met with immediate shutting down and vitriol. that behavior wound up being part of why we cut ties with them, but it still worked its way into the final form that dA took, and for that i’m sorry. as much as it sucked we still became complicit in that, and we should not have been; we apologize for that.

the last thing i’d like to say here, and i hope it will give some hope for the future, is that, if i’m being honest, blanche’s story is an incomplete one. the since deleted third part (due to how heavily it was tied with the mods we disassociated ourselves with) provided some minor resolution, but still an ending that felt unsatisfying and incomplete. another mod and i are also working on a true third installment with the aim of proving blanche is capable and worthy of love and happiness and with a true and satisfying conclusion for their character, because the truth was those things you picked up on of regret and desire to change were like... real. i wanted to and tried to write blanche with that note of someone who is capable of apologizing and changing for the better, and the next part that we’re working on now will hopefully really show that and provide a resolution that doesn’t feel so cruel and hopeless.

thank you again for sending this, it isn’t like. rude or out of the realm of possibility at all, they were a mentally ill character who was treated unkindly by the story we told and we’re sorry for that. i hope this can provide some bit of reassurance and hope for the future, and this was a really great chance to reflect on shortcomings in our work and take stock of the effect it had. i don’t know how much this will mean but like... being past that point of young and neglected and feeling beyond help, that isn’t like.. how it is. your symptoms don’t make you evil or undeserving of happiness, and we truly are sorry for winding up with that reading of the work. i hope the actual final installment of this story, should you choose to follow it (which, of course, you do not have to -- it’s understandable if the work as a whole is spoiled) will reflect that