#and she also pointed out something i kinda knew but hadnt really absorbed

[mental-skillness]

My last therapy session was... revealing. I've been so hung up on the idea that I can't form healthy relationships with people because I'm just fucked up somehow — I thought I must have either BPD or an avoidant attachment because I couldnt understand why I kept resenting people / pulling away after getting close.

And then my therapist made me tell her about one of my current interests and explain why I like it, and it was so uncomfortable I started crying. So the crux of the issue is definitely insecurity / self judgement

[tumblunni]

fuck, that story did so many complex things with morality, i think that’s why ultimately it was his most well remembered story like the basic premise of a unicorn looking for the other unicorns is basically nothing compared to the MILLION DEEP QUESTIONS it kindles in childrens’s brains along the way! and like, the fact that it was even aimed at children despite having so much dark imagery and psychological horror. and how the psychological horror comes from weird places?? like, it subverts and analyzes the fairytale genre and turns a lot of commonly accepted ‘happy ending’ things into absolute burning hell and eighty million other far more interesting plotlines springing from the corpse of the cliche it just killed. I love it. I LOVE IT.

Random examples of stuff that really intrigued me as a kid!

* the whole idea of how it starts off, that this unicorn just legit doesn’t know that anything happened to the rest of her people. she’s lived alone for centuries and doesn’t even know what loneliness is until she finds out that the world has changed while she wasn’t looking, and her assumption that there’s a million other forests with a million other unicorns was false. And like.. her journey is really complex because of it? her motivation is less about saving a family she personally knew, and more about the fear of being forgotten like they were, and like.. ‘do i even have any value if i’m not defined as a unicorn anymore, if people forget what unicorns mean?’ And like the idea of her first meeting other unicorns for the first time and having even mroe challenges to her perception of reality, like thats not even something she WANTS but the same somewhat rude and egotistical sense of honor she has as an immortal is gonna keep her going towards an ending that probably won’t be happy in any way.

* the many many nuanced moments where the unicorn completely fucks up and is generally allowed to be a flawed protagonist, despite existing in a narrative that’s from her perspective and paints her as perfect and her philosophy as the only thing that exists. And like.. how many of her fuckup moments are ABOUT her being this perfect godly figure to everyone else! How molly breaks down at seeing a unicorn NOW, instead of back when she was young and had hope of a happy fairytale ending. How she feels like she isn’t worthy of a unicorn even looking at her anymore, and how it manifetss into screaming anger, blaming this thing for being too late. And how the unicorn didn’t even know that this woman was waiting for her, and hinging her entire life worth on meeting her, and like.. molly isn’t prepared to look at it that way, if anything its even scarier to think that the people you idealise just DIDNT CARE. And how its complex cos i mean its not like the unicorn is bad, either?? She just didnt know what she meant to humans until she got out of her forest and started meeting them. She was so self-absorbed and proud about being immortal without even knowing the reason why magical creatures are considered godly. And its so complex cos the way she figures it out is via the actions of an asshole villain, like seriously its SO SAD that she gets to see little human kids feeling like they have a reason to live just from seeing the false image of a unicorn that the creepy slavemaster witch lady shows to them. the unicorn herself was powerless to be what they needed her to be, and all she even cared about was judging the humans as rude bastards for not being able to see her, rather than thinking about it as it really is, and realizing that its not like they don;t want to, they’re absolutely desperate to...

* and okay just seriously THE COMPLEX NATURE OF HUMANITY! cos she sees all the worst of humans and all the best of them too, and the story doesn’t even draw any conclusions as to whether we’re worth it, it’s up to you to decide

* also it was really deep and complex how becoming human wasn’t just a cliche happy ending for her! it was TERRIFYING! being forced into a new body wasnt even the worst part, it was the loss of identity factor that hit her after she was limited into a non immortal mind and soul. she goes crazy ‘feeling this body die around her’ and gets scared that she’s going to forget her old self, and also scared of going back to her old self because she doesnt know if these things like love are impossible for unicorns and she’ll become unable to feel them anymore. her opinion of herself falls so far from arrogance into outright FEAR! and its so fucked up because being human is hurting her like this yet she’s also kinda idealizing humanity and blaming it for all her positive character development and like SHE’S ANGRY AND SCARED OF POSITIVE CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT??? it fucking makes my soul weep and then the ending is so fucked up cos she does return to being a unicorn, and no she doesnt stop feeling love for the human guy she fell for, and all her human friends who helped her this far. but now she’s burdened with the knowledge that she will never die and they will, so the story just ends with her running away so she doesn’t have to feel that pain, or burden them with any more pain too. And she’s even more alone than she was at the start, because she knows that none of the other unicorns understand these emotions, they’re all like her pre character development self and she could never be part of their world again. Its complex because these positive emotions and this kinder personality is like.. a curse to her. because at least she didnt hurt when she was blissfully oblivious, and didnt care about anyone but herself. Its like.. was this newfound ability to feel love actually a blessing, if she gets the love but also the ability to have her happy ending is forever lost to her? so really all she gained was the power to be aware that she was suffering all along. and like even if she managed to get magicked into a human again, the story makes it clear that it’s intense suffering for her, its like walking on knives and her personality would just melt away and she wouldnt even remember why being able to love was so new and so important. it’d be just like someone else having a happy ending instead, and her ceasing to exist. But then the story also gives us this very clear binary where all of her personality is very much linked to being immortal, and her only choices are to live forever and be sad, or to die and not even fully be happy because she’d lose herself. and like all she accomplished was losing the option she never knew she had- to live in innocence without a concept of good and evil, and thus never regret. which isnt a happy ending either, but at least she wouldnt KNOW she was in a bad ending...

* fuck this movie is so hard to explain and so sad

* oh and!! the harpy was fuckin terrifying!! and all the morality around it was even more so! its the first time the unicorn really fucks up, cos she’s just running on the honor of all magical creatures, which is very far from concepts like good and evil. she has to free a fellow immortal, even if its clear that the harpy is evil and will only do harm. but she doesnt even fully understand evil yet, all she knows is.. like.. fear? and betrayal. she knows that for some reason she doesnt understand, she fears this other person who is like her. and subconciously she recognises the darker side of what an innocence of good and evil can turn you into. but she recklessly chooses to ignore the humans trying to explain morality t her, cos thats just a human thing she doesnt need to care about, right? and then what ultimately surprises and scares her isn’t that the harpy does what humans think are evil, but that the harpy has no loyalty to the one who freed her, and immediately tries to kill the unicorn too. And you even get the sense that the unicorn would have still freed her even if she expected this would happen, its just this sense of duty between immortals because being caged means so much more when you’ll never even have the release of death. And i mean.., that’s kind of a point, too. the story’s one moment of embracing cliches is that it says that the harpy is just inherantly evil and was born evil, rather than more directly placing it as a parallel to the unicorn’s absence of good and evil. how do we know that this thing really IS an embodiment of all hatred, and its not just a lost and deluded creature like our protagonist, whose moral neutrality got pushed down the wrong path due to the difference of life it had once it first encountered humans? i mean, the unicorn encounters plenty of shitty humans too, but she manages to at least find some good ones and like.. she had a starting point of assuming she was a proud and inherantly good creature, which was confirmed even by the humans who manipulated and hurt her. she gets to see herself worshipped by humans, even if its as a way to make a quick buck. and we don’t know how long that harpy was locked up in an even worse version of her situation, and whether the unicorn would have become just as hateful if she hadnt been resuced... Its just kinda lazy to say ‘wow its good that shitty mc fuckface locked up this inherantly evil creature, yet bad that she did the same thing to you’ But still it makes for a really scary scene cos the film really went all out in establishing what a born-evil creature would actually be like, and how fucking terrifying it would be to deal with something that just wants to kill and kill and will kill even if there’s no benefit and no logic to it. It’ll betray anyone who shows kindness to it, and you’re being stupid by treating it like a real sentient being with thoughts and a soul. And thats terrifying. But its also fucking sad. And its the one lack of complex morality in this story. but i guess maybe i wasnt supposed to be a story all about exploring complex versions of morality, but just.. different and interesting ones? so taking the ‘inherantly evil’ trope and being like ‘no, you dont get to use that lightly, this is how horrifying and child-unfriendly that would really be’ is still an intriguing idea in its own right

...anyway its a real good movie also my lunch is burning cos i couldnt take it out of the over til i finished rambling RIP salmon dinner