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not-poignant · 7 months ago

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I'm rereading utb and while i def understand and agree with ef being held accountable for things, at the same time, it seems like everyone is constantly acting as if he's supposed to know how to have a healthy relationship and to cope with his emotions, much less his trauma, without anyone actually explaining or modeling this

Like, everyone constantly brings up the fact that he tried to kill Kadek even once they've acknowledged why and gary is starting a relationship with him while also essentially his prison warden and with how little ef has experienced in the world, especially as a psychologist, gary still not doing anything to help him get better coping skills makes it feel like he's setting him up to fail

Like, temsen is technically correct that ef domestically abused gary but he has literally never seen a non abusive partnership and is literally a prisoner in his current one

Idk, I really love this fic so, so much and thank you for writing it and i don't even need a response or anything, I just get defensive of ef when I'm reading sometimes bc he's trying so, so hard basically all the time and it seems like people acknowledge it sometimes in the moment but then don't give him the tools to make it any easier

Answering this one publicly because I know you're not the only one who feels this way or has felt this way!

Okay firstly, some of this conflict I'm evoking in the reader is intentional. I want people to feel defensive of Efnisien. I want people to think 'hey, hang on a minute.' There's a lot of reasons I want that, including the fact that in reality, most people don't recover from being abusive even after they've been in horrifically abusive situations in a vacuum (i.e. the whole world doesn't suddenly stop and become soft as cotton wool just because you've been abused! If you go and interview a whole bunch of people in jail right now, a lot of those folks (especially those who have done repeated serious crimes) will have experienced horrendous and incredibly unfair amounts of abuse, y'know? It's complicated. Yes, they have a right to heal and a right to support. Some of them probably did some pretty awful crimes as well. *coughs*serial killers*coughs*)

Obviously Efnisien is nowhere near that level, but the dissonance remains. He's certainly tried to murder more than one person. But we root for the person whose perspective we're reading. Still, people do not heal in a comfortable vacuum. In fact, most people are asked to be accountable for bad behaviour usually while suffering terribly. Because most people - unless they're certain kinds of extremely rare people - do bad behaviour because they don't know better and/or they're suffering intensely and it can momentarily feel good or satisfying to make other people hurt too.

That's an extremely hard process for the folks who are in that situation. Anyone who has had to recognise they're being a bully, or being abusive, usually goes through a period of time where they can't just immediately change, and what's expected of them seems impossible.

Now to everything else:

This world is a dystopia. There are things happening which aren't going to feel good when you're reading - systemic issues, issues around unfairness - because it's a dystopia. If those things weren't happening, and people just felt blithely comfortable with the entire world, well, that's not actually what I'm going for. There are times it should feel extremely disturbing to read.

So there are times I want readers to feel like things are unfair. There are times I want them to feel very strongly in one person's defense and only later realise the other person was hurt too. There are times I want them to feel like everyone is being unfair to a character. And times when I want folks to feel like the situation just sucks all round. Like, my intention in amongst the hurt/comfort isn't for things to feel easy or nice all the time, I am absolutely challenging the reader by introducing things that feel uncomfortable.

So when folks like yourself tell me this stuff it's like - yeah! It's a dystopia! And - yeah! Unfair things are definitely happening. This is especially true in the beginning when no one really has a concept of how bad things have been for Efnisien, or that he's an alpha. It remains true because no one is perfect. But it happens less often, that's what makes it feel more jarring as the story goes on. If you're rereading it's going to feel worse in the beginning, that's on purpose. The story is doing its job.

it seems like everyone is constantly acting as if he's supposed to know how to have a healthy relationship and to cope with his emotions

I don't really know what scenes you're specifically referring to here (like, just the first few chapters? The whole story? Temsen's single lecture?), but this is absolutely not the case. I'm going to look at the whole story:

The majority of the time that Efnisien is rude and disrespectful, especially once Efnisien and Gary are living together, Gary mostly ignores him, brushes it off, doesn't react or responds like it's normal dialogue lol. He's not constantly correcting his behaviour and he's not constantly like 'hey rephrase that to be polite' or 'I have feelings too' (maybe he should say the latter sometimes).

Gary is more aware than anyone that he shouldn't be Efnisien's guardian and that he's not a companion. He says this, out loud, to several people, several times. So we know that he knows that the situation isn't great / fair re: Efnisien's care (and frankly his own. Of the two of them, Gary's the one who keeps coming close to potentially dying from the other person's actions).

especially as a psychologist, gary still not doing anything to help him get better coping skills makes it feel like he's setting him up to fail

Gary is not Efnisien's psychologist. And psychologists are not doing their jobs on absolutely everyone, 24/7! This one is so important to remember (both in real life and sometimes in fiction). He's categorically not Efnisien's psychologist and it would be even more toxic if he attempted to be this if they were living together!

Gary being a psychologist is his job in the same way being an artist is a job, it's not specifically relevant to their relationship, except that Gary sometimes has better understanding of the root/s of some behaviours.

Ask any psychologist how they live at home and most of them do not want anything to do with their psychology jobs in their personal life, because they're mentally fatigued/tired from talking to people all day. They are not perfect people, they don't have perfect control over their emotions, they aren't teaching everyone the coping mechanisms they need to survive (this takes a lot of labour! It's exhausting! People can't do that 24 hours a day and stay sane. It gets toxic fast.)

The majority of the time Efnisien has extreme emotional responses, Gary just tends to absorb them, acknowledge them, or actively care for him. It's easy to miss these moments because I'm usually not making you feel conflicted about it.

The times Efnisien has extreme emotional responses and then chooses to repeatedly hurt Gary, there are often extreme emotional responses that follow because you know, that's what Efnisien was aiming for! He was trying to severely hurt someone!

Let's move onto Temsen and Efnisien, because this might be more of what you're thinking of, since Gary almost never holds Efnisien accountable tbh. Temsen is a doctor, and a peak alpha who is a leading educator in academic omega rights and theory. He is the first to deeply understand how young alphas left to get away with their smaller abusive behaviours are the kind of alphas who grow up into rapists, murderers and torturers like Christian in Underline the Blue.

(I just want to add, Christian's own abuse and PTSD is real, I don't think any of us are rushing to hold his hand and pat his head, because we sympathise with Nate more than Christian. But Christian has real pain, and real suffering too. He's a great example of how 'you're still accountable for your behaviour though' at its most extreme).

So, Temsen sees Efnisien's behaviour and he lectures and shuts him down like he would any young alpha who is on a really dangerous path. Even within that, he acknowledges himself - out loud - that it's a complicated situation and the time he comes down on Efnisien the hardest, he says the timing is poor. The majority of the time, he shows Efnisien compassion and care, and listens to his opinions, even when they disagree. He is the first to validate his gender both repeatedly in words, and in hormone and medical support. He's the first to change his approach to Efnisien's medical care when Efnisien calls out his lack of respecting his right to privacy, and he's the first to correct Gary about it when Gary expects Temsen to keep giving him information. He offers pragmatic, compassionate advice about many sensitive subjects in Efnisien's life, his health, his secondary gender, his nesting behaviours. And I would say this is how Temsen actually models better behaviour.

Temsen doesn't expect Efnisien to have all of these skills, but Efnisien has to be told what he's doing wrong and how that's not acceptable behaviour and how he's hurting people, to start learning those skills! Otherwise why would anyone bother? Vindictively hurting other people in moments of rage can feel satisfying for folks who aren't being held accountable.

You say no one is modelling better behaviour to Efnisien so I'm just going to pose some questions that are rhetorical:

How many alphas at HIllview are mounting or torturing Efnisien every day? Does Efnisien have choices in what he eats? Is Efnisien's opinion listened to more and more, especially in matters of his health? Do they care about his pain and offer him painkillers when he's suffering? Are the characters in the story trying to enrich his experiences and help him to become a more mature person by helping him overcome his fears of things like going outside? Are the characters deliberately trying to expand his support network by helping him see new people and lean on them for help, instead of keeping him in a box and forbidding him from seeing anyone? While also taking into account the safety of others?

Are the characters largely gender affirming once they learn more about Efnisien?

Are the characters actively teaching Efnisien social sciences to help him understand more about the world and human rights, which includes his own rights?

Do the characters acknowledge that Hillview isn't an ideal place for Efnisien, just a good place for now?

Do the characters want Efnisien to have a future where he's happier?

Do the characters allow Efnisien to have his emotional responses as long as they're not also abusive responses? For example, is Efnisien allowed to cry, nest, seek comfort, or even be angry, provided he's not being domestically violent? (The answer is yes).

Do the characters to the best of their ability explain things clearly and maintain their own boundaries around Efnisien to remind him that he can also maintain his own boundaries?

Are Efnisien's wishes largely respected where possible? (The answer here is also yes - such as refusing internal exams with Temsen, or having control over what he does most days and how he spends his time etc.)

Can Efnisien see lots of examples of people talking civilly to each other and often with great care, and not being abusive to each other? Can he see alternative forms of conflict resolution, management and repair?

Is Efnisien offered opportunities to repair rifts that he's created himself, after being cruel to someone?

This is just a start, but these people through these behaviours are already role-modelling a ton of better behaviours than anything Efnisien has been exposed to in the past. And we can see that Gary himself role models a lot of these things to Efnisien directly, including apologising frequently and quickly when he realises he's made mistakes. This is how Efnisien learned to apologise! And he literally has thoughts like 'Gary does this / so I guess I should do it too.' That's literally role modelling a behaviour :D

Gary's actually a pretty good role model, and the only reason Efnisien's behaviour starts to improve at Hillview as well as his quality of life is because Gary and Temsen are role modelling these behaviours.

Like, temsen is technically correct that ef domestically abused gary but he has literally never seen a non abusive partnership and is literally a prisoner in his current one

Efnisien isn't literally a prisoner in his current relationship!

I feel like when folks identify really strongly with a character, it's very easy to miss the times when Gary and Temsen for example brainstorm ways for Efnisien not to live with Gary. Aside from at the very beginning, these characters have actually talked about - in the story, in dialogue - options for Efnisien to not live with Gary.

Like they literally talk about making Efnisien a new room in the headquarters and possibly even building him his own building down the track so he doesn't have to be with Gary! As they trust Efnisien more, they offer many options to him. As the story goes on, they are absolutely not forcing Efnisien to stay with Gary, and nor is Gary. Efnisien himself communicates clearly that he would rather live with Gary than be on his own. This is something that gets checked in on, and more than one option is given to him.

Missing this is understandable, it's a long story, but it also means it's not true that Efnisien is a prisoner in that he's being forced to live with Gary. That's only true in the beginning when they literally think he's just a murderer/attempted murderer who's going to kill everyone at Hillview. As the story progresses, it shifts to 'well he's not a murderer, what are his other options?'

Can Efnisien live a free life wherever he wants? No. That's where the 'dystopian universe' tag comes in. He's not safe to, but Hillview staff wouldn't be concerned with educating him and teaching him independence if they didn't want him to live as independently as possible one day. It's not like Gary has to try to get Efnisien comfortable with going outside and experiencing the outside world, and it's not like he has to encourage Efnisien to meet omegas and betas etc. to hear different opinions, y'know?

But yeah the role modelling is happening: Efnisien's showing more and more tools in coping all the time! He's been growing them since the beginning of the fic. He's learned to communicate better. He's learned how to articulate what he wants and doesn't want more clearly. He's learned how to care more for others even if he often misses that he has the power to really hurt them. He's learned more (not less) confidence. He's having less (not more) trauma responses. He's learned how to trust in the people around him more, so he's starting to talk more about his experiences of gender. He's learned that what he went through was wrong, and is sharing more about the abuse he suffered.

These things would not be happening in a story where people weren't giving him the tools to cope with his life or weren't showing him ways to communicate differently.

The reason Efnisien talks more clearly and articulately now in the story, the reason he laughs more, cries more (which is more open/honest imho and healthier than repressing it), talks more, talks about his past more, expresses his opinion more is because Hillview has been equipping him with more tools to live a richer life pretty much as soon as they realised he's not going to just murder people at the drop of a hat.

In some ways they're showing more trust than our society would because like, attempted murder could land him in jail for a while in our society, y'know?

The reason they haven't paired him with an actual psychologist is that they don't have any peak alpha psychologists and Efnisien can use alpha persuasion on anyone else, and would certainly get angry enough in therapy to use it. We only need to look at how Efnisien responded to Dr Gary in Falling Falling Stars sometimes in therapy sessions to see that yes, this is a guy who - if he had the tool of alpha persuasion - would absolutely use it to get a therapist to shut the fuck up when he felt like it, lol.

But yeah, as always, if folks are feeling really uncomfortable when reading something I've written, it's often intentional. You're right, Efnisien's situation is unfair. A few of the specifics you've brought up aren't true, and have missed things in the story, but it's still not a fair experience, it's not always a pleasant experience, and it's...pretty dystopian!

When we get really deep into our emotional connection to a character, it can still help to remember that the situation often isn't exactly the same as it feels. But this story also has the tags: darkfic / disturbing themes / dystopian universe for a reason! The visceral discomfort is a feature, not a bug.

#asks and answers #underline the black #underline the rainbow #falling falling stars #efnisien ap wledig #dr gary konowalous #ohlo ohlo temsen #a very long response sdfklfjas basically yes it's unfair #it's not *as* unfair as you say #but it definitely *feels* that unfair in the moment #especially the chapter where temsen lectures efnisien #temsen himself acknowledges that the situation isn't fair #and gary chastises temsen for it #and then gary is very caring to efnisien so you know #it's literally a moment in time where even gary #isn't holding efnisien accountable in the same way sdalfkjas #he's *upset* but that's different #we could have a whole other post about how gary's emotional responses dictate his #reactions to efnisien but that's a whole other thing #if i accidentally called you anon while writing this i'm really sorry #it's a habit i get into sdaflkjsa

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