#anyway!!! patrick ness i am in your walls | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

nora-durst · 17 days ago

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sorry i’m not done talking about chaos walking actually. i’m just thinking about todd hewitt as a ya sci-fi protagonist like you just open the book as a 12 year old or whatever and you’re like can’t wait to read about this young hero’s thrilling adventures on this far off planet! okay he’s illiterate. oh he’s mean to his dog. ok he self harms. oh now he’s committing a hate crime. and that’s like. before we even get to book two and the whole complicit in a genocidal regime situation. todd hewitt the character that you are 🫶

#chaos walking #interesting complicated characters my beloveddddddddd #also todd’s self harm is like very much not talked abt enough in my opinion.#patrick ness does an incredible job of capturing the need to externalize your pain and the idea of depression as anger turned inward #pain and grief and rage being too much and hating yourself more than anything for all of it. like yeah #feeling like you’re not enough and punishing yourself for it.#so furious and devastated about whatever it is in your life with nowhere to put those feelings so you turn it all back on yourself #because what else can you do?#you can never be angrier at anyone more than yourself. no one can destroy you more than yourself.#oooouuughh it’s sooooooo good. it’s sooooo good. being a mentally ill teenager is really Like That #because literally of course todd is mentally ill. of course. in the circumstances in which he grew up literally who wouldn’t be #like everything abt his life was already traumatic. and then he goes through more truly unspeakable trauma #whole second half of book two he’s fully just passively suicidal.#but love and connection saves him. viola saves him!! which is why the loss of her in book 2 is so devastating.#he was shown what life could feel like. what it should feel like. and it was not only taken away but corrupted (in his mind).#she was his salvation and then not only abandoned him but put him thru the most horror he’d ever seen (spackle genocide) (he believed)#but still she comes back. still she saves him. and her love is bigger than the trauma than the rage than the pain than anything.#you need to love something so much that you can never be controlled.#anyway!!! patrick ness i am in your walls

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