drinax2666

[necrotic-nephilim]

https://www.tumblr.com/necrotic-nephilim/764367433969664000/for-the-recent-ask-game-im-really-curious-about

Agree with all of this but especially the Parentification thing has always annoyed me! I never understood why people think mentoring Damian was parentification, Dick was a grown man way out of his teens?! Lowkey, because I see this in the anti fandom side a lot, think they want to write Dick being the other boys’ mommy so bad but can’t because that’s icky so they say “parentification” & “Eldest Daughter Syndrome”, half joking but there is at least some feminization going on.

(linked post) YEAH you get me!!! like? Dick is in his mid to late 20s, he is a *fully grown adult* who has the facilities to make the decision to be Batman and take in Damian. no one forced him to do that. it was his choice and even if he was strong-armed into it, it *still* wouldn't be parentification bc he was an adult. he was never a child taking care of other children and *that* is what parentification is. he's a grown-ass man there's no need to infantilize him or his relationships.

honestly, you're right about the feminization, i totally agree. because it's always weirded me out, this whole Eldest Daughter Syndrome thing? which is just a fancy, nicer way to say parentification. and the worst part is these concepts aren't even genderbending Dick, which i would be really interested in. they just want to assign him feminine aspects to further make him the victim that they can woobify and whump. if you feminize him, it's easier to put him in that submissive, victim role contrasted against Bruce or anyone else. and while i think gender roles can be interesting to play with in fanfic, esp in subversive ways, it has always picked me slightly that the fandom feels the need to feminize him in such a bold way where the only aspects of "feminity" he can experience are ones of subjugation. Bruce forcing him to parent and "mommy" the other Ribins like you said, Dick being isolated and only being appreciated as a caretaker, him never doing Any Wrong to other characters, and so on. when the fun of Dick is that he's nuanced and sometimes, he reflects some of Bruce's worst traits. his anger is not "female rage" it's *just* anger. (honestly, i'm not even sure what "female rage" is supposed to be anymore-) he's just someone with a complicated relationship with Bruce and yes, Bruce certainly failed him in certain aspects. but the thing is, the reason Bruce and Dick's fallout is *so* violent, is *because* they were so close. they had their golden years in Dick's youth where they ran as a well-oiled machine and everything was (relatively) perfect. Bruce definitely misstepped with Dick, but he far from victimized Dick.

it's always wild to me how the anti side of the family wants the Batfam to be Schrodinger's found family. in which is both completely wholesome and nuclear and everyone gets along and they have family meals together and they all live in Wayne Manor. but *also* it wants Dick to be a victim of parentification, Tim to be a victim of horrific abuse at the hands of his parents and then Damian and Jason, Jason to be deeply traumatized by his death and not coping well. like these don't click together? and it makes for a very jarring comparison when antis are so so clung to the idea that the Batfam is a nuclear happy family but also shoving these roles onto Dick that don't make sense. you can't have your cake and eat it too, yk.

also, not to fandom wank *too* hard but like. parentification is a *real* word. it's a real form of abuse and not something that exists in a fictional vacuum. and assigning it to characters that it outright doesn't fit can make it harder to discuss bc it dilutes the term. maybe it's bc i grew up in a home with rampant parentification so it hits close to home but like. this isn't just something you can slap onto a character to make an interesting-sounding meta anylsis. some fictional characters have been parentified and their stories explore that. Dick's does not. that is an adult. free him.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

The tragedy of Katara’s parentification

Sokka and Katara were both parentified, and it’s a profoundly life-changing thing for both of them. One of the saddest things in ATLA, though, is how Sokka sort of got to outgrow parentification, but Katara never did.

Sokka’s told to be the man. The provider, the protector. He’s not so good at the former (his hunting failures are a consistent source of comic relief), and he takes failures of the latter very, very hard. He doesn’t manage to save Yue, and that wrecks him. After Yue, he becomes extremely protective of Suki in a way that’s borderline offensive to her. He’s willing to do anything to protect his friends and his family, including something as irresponsible as breaking into the Boiling Rock. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Sokka is the only one of the Gaang who unambiguously kills. The rest of them may technically have clean hands because of cartoon logic, but Combustion Man is very dead, and Sokka is the one who killed him. We don’t know how he feels about it, because the show never goes there, but I have a pet theory that Sokka is so uncharacteristically (remember he was team “leave Zuko to freeze to death”) against Katara confronting Yon Rha in The Southern Raiders because he’s the only who knows what killing feels like and wants to protect Katara from it.

But by the end of the show, Sokka’s in a place where he can start to let go of his need to protect. Objectively, all his friends are unbelievably powerful and can take care of themselves, including his sister and his girlfriend. Suki is the one who saves him in the final battle, representing not only a reversal of his initial cartoonish misogyny, but also demonstrating that he is worthy of protection. And of course, he and his friends saved the world, so there isn’t really an enemy that he has to protect them from anymore. Sokka’s loved ones create the conditions under which his parentified behaviour is no longer necessary. Sokka would still have to take the first step to stop seeing himself as the one who has to lay his life on the line, but at least it’s possible for him.

But not Katara.

Katara had to take on the mom role after their mother was murdered, which meant she was responsible for domestic labour and emotional support. Sokka says in The Runaway that her role was to keep the family together. Unlike protection, that’s always a full time job regardless of the war. We see Katara spending more screen time than anybody cooking, getting food, mending, and generally doing women’s work. We see Katara giving everyone emotional support, including strangers and her enemy. We see Katara putting aside her own discomfort and her own hurt in The Desert because if she falls apart, they all die. Nobody ever showed her that she doesn’t need to be the only one who cooks, or that somebody else can be responsible for the emotional wellbeing of her friends, or that — god forbid — someone else can actually be responsible for her emotional wellbeing.

That’s why I never cared for the Ka/taang argument of “he teaches her to be a kid again!” Putting aside the fact that Katara ends up taking care of Aang a lot more as the series goes on, the whole tragedy of parentification is that you can never again be a child. That part of your childhood, your god-given right, is robbed from you. It is extremely precious and important to still be able to be a kid, but breaking free of parentification is not about seeing yourself as a kid. It’s about breaking free of being responsible for everyone’s feelings and behaviours.

For Katara, that responsibility is not problem of perception, but of reality. Unlike Sokka, who was told and shown that his loved ones are capable of protecting themselves, Katara has zero reason to believe that her loved ones are able to feed and clothe themselves and not fall apart emotionally. Between Toph and Sokka who emphatically don’t want to do this work, it all falls on Katara. Telling a parentified child that they just need to loosen up is akin to telling an overworked mother that she needs to just relax (“happy Mother’s Day! You get a break from chores, which you will catch up on tomorrow because nobody else is doing them”). It doesn’t accomplish anything if nobody creates the circumstances under which it’s possible to let go of responsibilities. A lot of Zutara fans, spanning all the way back to the early days of the fandom, like the “Momtara and Dadko” trope where Zuko also does chores. Why? Because even without the concept and language of parentification, many fans recognized that Katara’s performance of domestic and emotional labour is inequitable and probably very taxing.

Growing out of parentification is about more than just letting go of old expectations: it’s also about finding a new way to value yourself beyond the role you grew up with. I’ve said this before, but it’s very important to acknowledge that just because a kid is parentified doesn’t mean they’re actually good at being a parent. In fact, it’s probably a given that they’re not, because they’re kids performing roles that are developmentally inappropriate! Sokka remains a shit hunter; he becomes a decent fighter but he’s still miles behind his friends. A big part of healing from his parentification is finding another area — strategy, engineering, project management (what else do you call that schedule) — where he actually excels, to which he can dedicate his time and from which he can derive satisfaction and a sense of identity. For Katara, fighting for the oppressed and combat waterbending give her that. Crucially, however, Katara does not stop being a girl when she becomes a warrior. She’s still responsible for domestic and emotional labour. Unlike Sokka, whose protector duties were more or less relieved as the series went on and he found new ways to contribute to the group, Katara continued to perform her old role in addition to her new one (which is depressingly realistic btw, look up feminist theory around the concept of the second shift). Still, it’s important that she found these new ways to value herself and her contributions…

…which disappear in her adult life. Where’s adult Katara fighting for the oppressed? Where’s adult Katara enjoying her status as a master waterbender? Where’s Mighty Katara? Where’s the Painted Lady? Where’s the person who vanquished a whole Fire Lord?

What do we know about adult Katara? She’s no longer a rabblerouser or an ecoterrorist. She did not translate her desire to help the downtrodden into a political role, like being Chief or on the United Republic Council. She’s not known as the best waterbender in the world, only the best healer, even though her combat abilities are what she took the most pride in. Even as a healer, she established no hospitals, trained no widespread acolytes (except Korra, I guess?), and made no known contributions to the field.

What Katara is known for…is being a wife and a mother. The same role she was forced to take on at age 8. One which she performed for the next 80+ years.

[hey-hey-j]

started out doodling a post-breakup Floyd and was suddenly struck with a scenario where Spruce/Bruce ends up going with Floyd because he is not about to let his 16-year-old brother go wandering around by himself, until eventually they both wind up on Vacay Island

(★my Ko-fi)

[rainbow-sunshine-unicorn]

Sometimes I think about how Anthony wanted a marriage without love because of the way his mother loves,

Because he was terrified of someone loving him the way his mother loved his father

Then, he falls in love with Kate and it turns out that he loves in exactly the same way as his mother

[turtleblogatlast]

No but like every time I think about Splinter and what he had to go through just to keep the boys alive, my heart hurts for him so badly. Is he perfect? No not at all, but none of them are and by god does he love his sons.

The fact that all of them are alive, and grew to thrive despite the circumstances surrounding them is a testament of how much Splinter loves his boys. He raised four babies following the most traumatic time of his life, all alone with nothing but the sewers to house them (to hide them.) I feel like he’s not given the credit he deserves for all he’s done.

And I get that it’s easy to hold up his flaws and faults when it comes to parenting, I myself like looking into them because flawed characters are super interesting and said flaws make them more realistic and engaging, but he tries, and again, so many others would have given up on the boys or failed along the way but Splinter didn’t.

He’s their father, for all his faults he did his damndest to make sure they survived.

[canichangemyblogname]

@ 911 fans—

Athena is not Buck’s mom. Hen is not Buck’s mom.

Athena has two children— Harry and May. She is their mom. Hen has two children— Denny and Mara. She is their mom. Karen is also their mom.

These black women are not the mothers of a grown-ass white man. Just as you should not pigeonhole black women into sassy, emasculating, and domineering stereotypes— which I see you all do, you should also not pigeonhole them into the stereotype role of the domestic laborer: cooking for, cleaning up after, and being a mother to a white “child.”

Shut the fuck up about “Mother Hen” and “Mother Athena.” If you aren’t talking about their relationship with their own legal children, shut the fuck up. Stop calling these women sassy and stop referring to them as Buck’s mothers.

Buck has a mother, Margaret Buckley. Margaret is his only mother. I don’t care if you dislike her, but replacing a neglectful white mother with a black woman as a caretaker is not the endearing move you think it is.

[assmaster-8000]

no because what if gojo satoru had found another special grade child. a child whom the jujutsu higher-ups wanted satoru to mentor because they'd be a useful trump card to the jujutsu society so naturally they'd want this child's talent to be honed till they potentially surpass satoru and be used. but satoru had seen too much of what this world had done to the person he'd love the most and he wouldn't ever be the one to subject another person to it like a tool. like a weapon. like a machine. so of course he takes them under his wing and gives them the guidance he never had, suguru never had. a 20 year old prodigy fresh with wounds of loss and grief taking in a child with greatness sitting on their head like a heavy crown cutting into their skin underneath his cape of power and blood stains. satoru is an enigma and even he himself doesn't know if it's because he wants to mold more strong jujutsu sorcerers who will change this world (because what greater irony than the child you wanted to utilize like a cold knife being the one to bring reform right to your door?), or if he wants to give them everything everyone else didn't have (please, he can't have someone follow in suguru's footsteps.), or if being number 1 was too tiring for him (but he doesn't know if it's selfish bringing them up to this blinding spotlight.)

years pass and he vehemently denies the higher ups control over his protégé, his student, his brat. he'll give them control and the means to break out of the shackles of this damned hierarchy. and even if satoru cannot outwardly say it, they're his child. as though he was there at their birth and has been ever since. his child and his best friend and he's their father and their best friend. it's either he sees too much of himself in them or too much of suguru because they're rising to the top fast and he's proud of them and so full of dangerous hope their wings aren't made of wax. (but he'll be there to catch them if they'll ever fall, of course!) they're so strong now. if he was blessed by the heavens and the earth then perhaps they were born of it because look at them go! giving the great gojo satoru a run for his money! not everyone can do that, you know? they're such a great student and person! isn't he such a great mentor?!

so he decides to have faith in them. bring them along with him to shibuya to deal with those reports of special grade curses he was being told about. this is how your teacher deals with these curses! better watch closely because you'll probably have to do it too! he has them positioned on the sidelines to ensure the civilians aren't hurt and if anything, to aid him because they're gonna be the strongest some day too so they can't be lazing a round on their ass all the time.

and they're doing so well until kenjaku comes along. satoru's breath stops and his heart rattles against the prison bars of his ribcage but it isn't the stupor of seeing his lost love that doomed him to the box. his special grade student lurches to -- what, attack kenjaku? pull satoru away? run? it didn't matter what. it was all a blur -- wards him and his body moves on an instinct that's even stronger that the compass needle pointing to suguru's body.

no, no.. that isn't suguru. it's his body and that's not him. somethings not right. but his student is right infront of him and that's them and he can't let anything bad happen to them now. flexing infront of his student can be saved for another day. but it's this mistake that ends up setting him right into kenjaku's trap and the box. the moment his gaze snaps to them and his body is torn between suguru infront of him and them kenjaku sees an opportunity and snaps it up like it's golden.

satoru doesn't even get the mere moment of chained freedom before he's fully trapped in the box. with the special grade student there, kenjaku needs to make it quick. make it count. he does. satoru is pulled into the box and satoru can't even say anything to his student. and he worries in his infinitesimal prison. satoru never usually worries unless if it's his leftovers have gone bad in the fridge.

they'll be alright.

they'll be alright.

they'll be alright, won't they?

they're strong.

they're capable.

they're smart.

he's raised them well they'll be okay they've got friends.

they'll do the right thing.

...

and when satoru finally exits the box he's sees faces changed. they tell him a lot about what they've been through, about what has changed since he's been gone, what changed about them.

he sees yuuji has been weathered with pain and a unique sense of hope.

he sees megumi has been puppeted with the strings of despair by sukuna.

he sees maki has faced the fiery trials and tribulations of this cruel world and bears it like her trophy.

he sees...

he sees nothing of his student. his special student. where are they? injured? somewhere off in the game? will they be back soon? time's a-running out, you know.

he sees the looks his students exchange and his heart drops. he knows. he knows. he knows what must've happened.

they're dead, aren't they?

and he's brought back to the time he carried riko's dead body in his arms and he was met with the disappearing suguru in the crowd and suguru slumped against the wall.

it's happened again.

they tell him they were a hero. that in satoru's absence, they did the heavy lifting and protected shibuya from the full-on destruction it would've suffered if not for them. that if not for them, the jujutsu world would've been left in even deeper disrepair. they saved some of their fellow sorcerers from certain death and suffering! they were the one to grapple with sukuna when he let all havoc ravage the city.

they paid with their life.

all because they were too worried about getting these normal civilians back home safe. about keeping their friends and mentors safe. and satoru wonders if there was someone else worrying about keeping them safe.

... atleast he didn't have to worry about them following in suguru's footsteps and the hatred of regular civilians. they were good of heart and soul. they were strong.

they did the right thing.

and satoru has a hard time wrapping his head around the fact that the person he's raised for, what, 10 years? is dead. gone. deceased. that's just preposterous! he was there when they were a snobby little kid and he was there when they were going through that awkward phase and he was there when they were learning more and more as a teenager and where are they now?

sukuna asks him that. "where's that miniature personification of yours? hah, don't tell me they died the last i saw them. have the special grades of this era started to slack off?"

satoru has all the more reason to kill sukuna now. he has to show his students who are watching that he can do it.

even if they will no longer watch him do anything.

[revelisms]

Lil' comic of a scene from a fic I haven't gotten around to writing.

(basically Vi and Jinx have reconciled, Silco is alive, and Vi is begrudingly finding herself beginning to look up Silco as a mentor/father figure. She accompanies him on an errand run, one of which winds them up at the old cannery, and emotions bubble up biiig time 🥲)

[transsongtaewon]

Rereading the early chapters is fun, because you think there's a sort of funny scene coming up and then Kim Sunghan mentions his college days in passing and Yoojin thinks wouldn't it be nice to go to college. And then follows it up with I Need To Get Drunk.

[furiousgoldfish]

If you've found yourself in that childhood hell with a narcissistic parent, where every year you gain you get treated worse, and the older you get, the more unworthy and unlovable you are, this is why it's going on.

Narcissists are unwilling to be parents, but they're ready to take advantage of every possible benefit they think parenthood has. The perceived benefit is how the world sees them, someone feeling sympathetic or engaged with them, getting popularity based on your kid's talents, abilities and successes, people having compassion for their 'parenthood struggles', and of course, the idea of unconditional love. For them, not for the kid. They also then go on and take extra stuff, like having their personal emotional caretaker, or a target for all of their anger, someone to feel superior to, someone they can violate, insult, touch, beat, and blend with, without any kind of consequences from the outside world. There's very few scenarios that would allow them such power over another person, and parenthood happens to be one of them.

So, why do they prefer small toddlers rather than grown-up children? Because toddlers gain them attention. They can go with a toddler in public, and have people gush and admire the cuteness. They can sometimes teach toddlers to do little dances or sing for the audience. They can do pretty much anything to small children, and children won't complain or understand what is going on. They can neglect their toddlers and nobody will know. They can punish small children for crying. They can convince small children that they exist only for to make the narcissist's life easier.

Once children start developing boundaries, start saying no, and no longer gather the attention of the crowd, that is where narcissists are no longer getting as many benefits from parenthood and start emotionally abandoning the child, and shaming the child for 'growing up' and 'not being as easy to control and manipulate'. And this is not how normally things work, you don't stop loving your kid when they're growing up, you don't value them according to how much attention you can get using them. Sometimes, if a kid has a special talent and is able to get them attention via child contests or tournaments, this kid will not be obviously immediately abandoned. But it will be clear to this child that the 'love' is completely dependent on how well they do and how far they succeed. The second they stop, they know that the parental love will be withdrawn and they'll be rendered a failure.

Narcissists will ask you to go not just out of your comfort zone in order to give them what they want, they will ask the downright impossible, and when you inevitably can't give it to them, you will be discarded, and possibly punished. You will degraded from 'special' and 'important because you can do this one thing for your parent', to nothing but a target for rage, forced to feel like you deserve it because you couldn't do what no child can - make a narcissist act like a normal parent. They convince children that they would be loving and thoughtful parents, if only the child was not so x, and y, and z, and the list is endless. Endless excuses not to love their child, because withdrawing that love will make the child absolutely desperate in their attempt to please the parent, and be good enough to deserve love.

This is not what would normally happen to a child. We're meant to be celebrated for growth. Our progress into adulthood should be about us, about what we can do now, how much new experiences and excitement it brings to have a bigger body, how much more capable and safer we are, what new skills we can develop, new games we can play, better connections and understanding with others we can now achieve. It's not supposed to be about whether we are of a benefit to someone, our growth is about us becoming a happy adult! Appropriating this entire process and reducing it to 'grovel endless to deserve love, and feel guilty for growing because you're of less use now' is absolute torture to a child, who doesn't understand that it's not meant to be this way, that they were never supposed to be a tool to use.

As we mature with the narcissist continually building this narrative of us not being good enough to deserve love, we end up having no other narrative, and believe that we're fundamentally, intrinsically lacking in something, and this makes us unlovable. It has nothing to do with the truth, and everything to do with a continuous lie that someone made up about us when we were still small, that we exist as a tool and a resource, and every hint of free will and desire and personal goals and boundaries is us failing to live up to that use. We were never meant to be exist for them, there was no achievable goal, us even trying to 'deserve their love' was nothing but a waste of our time and energy. We're not unlovable. We just don't a parent. We had someone leeching off of us, taking instead of giving, convincing us we don't deserve attention, care or resources, unlike them, who deserve to take it all.

For any normal parent, everything about you would have been good enough, you would have been a source of joy and celebration without ever even trying to deserve it. Nobody has to deserve parental love, it's either given by default, or there is nobody willing to be a parent to you. Being unwilling to parent you, they have no right to expect anything from you. You did not break the parent-child bond, because there never was such a thing in the first place, they betrayed you from the start.

[tarucore]

screenshotting this one bc I can acknowledge that I’ve got shipper goggles on and op isn’t about that life which is fair but

I feel like batfam fans misunderstand the term parentification a lot and conflate it with Dick filling a parental role for his siblings, which might be part of the “oldest daughter syndrome” that’s so often pinned on him but that isn’t what parentification actually means

If I say that Dick Grayson was parentified, then that isn’t referring to him taking care of his siblings, it refers to the way Bruce treated him. As someone capable of taking care of his emotional needs and not as the child in need of care in the relationship

Parentification is a term that’s been around for decades, and while having to care for younger siblings might be a part of the definition, it focuses mostly on the role reversal of the parent-child dynamic. I’m not going to get into the psychology of it but being parentified has very little to do with if he actually acted as a parent for his siblings and everything to do with if he acted as a parent for Bruce

This is honestly why I prefer the term spouseification, which is less ambiguous than the term parentification and I feel accurately describes their “equal” relationship and the type of emotional abuse that Dick went through

Also from what I’ve read, Dick doesn’t act as a parental figure for any of his siblings except for Damian. While he might have given extra emotional support to Tim due to Bruce being Bruce, Dick still fits solidly into an older brother role. I’m not even going to touch on Dick’s relationship with Jason which is too weak to even be considered fraternal never mind parental

[sammygender]

the most inaccurate sam takes on this hellsite get like 3000 notes if they’re sandwiched between ‘dean meta’. how in any way is sam spoiled

[ecoterrorist-katara]

love love love ur parentification analysis on sokka and katara especially katara’s section! it puzzles me so when KA’s say ZK’s do not understand the show nor katara when to me it’s so obvious we do 😭

thank you so much anon! I’m so happy that my post resonated with you!

A while back I saw a Tumblr survey about favourite characters and ships. It basically showed that for people whose favourite character is Katara, Zutara is the most popular ship. Obviously the Venn diagram between Zutara shippers and Katara fans isn’t a circle, but I think the overlap contributes to why so many ZKs are passionate about Katara. Also, ZKs who are Katara fans tend to be pretty flexible with Katara ships: many people like Harutara / Jiangtara / Yuetara / Sukitara / Azutara (though most shippers of Azutara tend to be Azula stans first and Katara stans second). What’s really funny and a little sad to me is that non-ZK Katara fans who dislike her canon arc get accused of being ZKs by antis (this happens weirdly often to @sapphic-agent). It’s like some antis can’t comprehend the idea that people might just love Katara without the ship war.

I generally like reading POVs from Katara fans of all ships, but I recently discovered that I tend to disagree with POVs from Zukka shippers. They often try to defend Katara’s “childhood” by pointing out that Katara sometimes goofs off and Sokka also takes responsibility, so she’s not just the “mom friend.” To be clear I’m not disagreeing with those points, but I don’t think downplaying her parentification trauma is defending her childhood, especially since goofing off & being impulsive make her parentification more realistic, not less. It feels kind of disingenuous to accuse the fandom of being the ones to parentify her when The Runaway exists, especially since they downplay Katara’s parentification in order to play up Sokka’s parentification. There’s nothing feminist about ignoring the invisible labour performed by a woman in a cartoon, not when brave women IRL have been agitating to recognize care work for literal decades. I wrote my undergrad thesis on invisible labour performed by women, especially women of colour, in radical activist spaces…so I feel really strongly about this.

I think it’s interesting that a lot of ATLA fans claim Katara shouldn’t be with Zuko on the grounds of her colonial trauma, but refuse to entertain the notion that maybe she shouldn’t be with Aang (a kid who evades responsibility) because of her parentification trauma. The murder of her mother stems from imperialist violence, but her subsequent parentification stems from patriarchal gender norms around divisions of labour and assignations of responsibility. The patriarchy is a thing in ATLA, and it’s canonically something that Katara hates almost as much as the Fire Nation (incidentally, reason 27363729 why the fic Southern Lights is so special to me is how it deftly explores both anger at a colonial apparatus & anger at your own people for their patriarchal oppression).

[likeabxrdinflight]

...I should be editing my dissertation but now I'm thinking about how both Azula and Katara are perhaps the most "adultified" of the atla characters and...hmm. Interesting.

[nattikay]

imagine unironically saying “wow, look at this noble, selfless, responsible boy with good, even exceptional life skills who cares deeply about his family, looks out for his younger siblings, and sets a good example for them. Yup, his parents really screwed up with this poor kid! Massive fail!”

[irenespring]

Why when I'm trying to work on an "A Clearly Discernible Line" chapter do I suddenly get a Research series fic idea. Why. Why does this happen. I don't like it.

The Research fic idea is basically a Wilson version of "Data" where he has a difficult talk with his therapist and then has an important therapy assignment that ends in fluff. The fic would likely center on parentification, emotional neglect, and why Wilson compulsively shoves down his own needs and doesn't let anyone past his "everybody's favorite nice person" mask.

I'd want to dig into parallels between House and Wilson (House creates an aggressively unpleasant facade to distract from vulnerability and empathy, Wilson creates an aggressively pleasant facade to distract from the things about himself that he things are bad but which are often understandable and morally neutral [depression, queerness, basic human needs]).

Also I want to explore Wilson's childhood, including how he was parentified and made his brother's caretaker (because the situation of Wilson being solely responsible for his brother's needs even after Wilson left home did not spawn when his brother was diagnosed [which would have probably been when Wilson was already in college in another country], Wilson's parents must have expected it of him because of a pattern that existed for a long time), and then often emotionally neglected and ignored ("James isn't any trouble he just does fine on his own, he doesn't need anything") when he wasn't caring for his brother (the only way he could get real praise). Basically all this resulted in Wilson having little concept of his own needs and wants and being wired to think the only way to get people to care about you/want you around is to take care of them. Add the trauma from "Hypothesis" and now he thinks pleasing people is also the only way to be physically safe...and wow, yikes.

Anyway, it would probably be the standard Research hurt/comfort with a fluffy ending deal. I want to write House actually realizing that Wilson's "eating neediness" is actually indicative of something that could cause Wilson real pain.

No promises at all that this will be written (in the near future all energy is still on the fic that I am currently publishing), but I needed to write the idea down and really think about it so tomorrow I can get some "A Clearly Discernible Line" writing done.