#certified macrinus hate post

[grimaldiapologist]

#(other thought: do you think Cara really realized whats happening?) via @sherryholmes

Lads, we're about to find out what the text post limit for Tumblr is, because this is the longest post I've ever made here. Unfortunately it's also a post I've been procrastinating on for days, and turns out, for a good reason. Every part of this was awful. Trigger warning for literally everything but mostly for child abuse and exploration of chronic trauma.

In regards to Caracalla's mental state in this scene and forwards, there's at least three different perspectives that come into play at once, and of the main two (trauma/dissociation and the complications from his syphilis) neither is inherently more important than the next. Both of his issues affect each other as well as the way he perceives his reality, and to get to how much he's really keeping up with things at the end here evidently required half a day's worth of analysis into the whole of the timeline for this scene, but also Caracalla's past from - and I wish I was kidding - birth onwards. But to start someplace that makes sense, we'll go back just a bit from this scene: specifically, to the night before any of this takes place.

While it's obvious that Caracalla's mental state is taking a turn for the worse throughout the film, it's after the discovery of Acacius's plot that he starts looking really rough. The same can be said for Geta, who, dealing with his own issues in the aftermath, has rather suddenly stopped being a singular, solid, reliable foundation for Caracalla to ground upon. In general, Geta's attention (trust, affection) has been steadily turning for Macrinus, who is offering him everything that Caracalla can't: guidance, someone to lean on, a sort of a fatherly affection that he's been missing his whole life.

In the aftermath of Acacius's execution, each of the twins is looking for something from the other that isn't available: Caracalla for Geta's usual ability to reason them out of any trouble and come up with solutions for their safety, Geta for Caracalla to show one inkling of responsibility to help him or at the very least stop attacking him when he already knows he fucked up and it scares him, and with some of Macrinus's gentle guidance, their stressed-out bickering turns to... a very modest, but still significant, physical assault when Geta - aiming to silence Dondus with a splash of water - spills it over his brother instead. As I wrote earlier, this breaks things between them. And this right here is significantly destabilising for Caracalla in specific.

As others have already pointed out, Caracalla's reaction to his brother's outburst (it was you, Geta, not him) is primarily dissociative. He freezes first: the freeze reaction is part of the fight/flight/freeze/fawn quad of primitive reactions to a perceived threat, where when faced with danger to one's immediate physical safety, a person "freezes" in place to minimise the attention they draw to themselves. This reaction is most commonly portrayed and observed in animals, as in people, depictions tend to focus on fight/flight the most. "Deer in the headlights" is a typical metaphor used to refer to a freeze state: that shocked stillness in a person who doesn't know what to do. But a freeze response doesn't inherently express fear: it can be very quiet, and very empty.

The freeze response is inherently a dissociative state. Because the mind perceives the situation inescapable, the person becomes still and silent in the hopes of becoming invisible. On the surface this doesn't make sense in a survival state, because doing this in a situation where you're very much not going to blend into your environment will likely only expose you to more harm than in any way protect you from it - but to understand it, it's important to note that this is the primary response to immediate physical danger found in children.

In comparison to an adult, who has other means of defending themselves, a child will in most cases be incapable of direct self-defense (fight) and they will be too slow to escape danger (flight), so their best bet is to stay very still and hope somebody else intervenes (freeze). A child who is not saved but is then attacked may enter a further dissociative state, where, if they cannot save their physical self, then they can at least save their mental self - they will lock up, and "go somewhere else" in their heads. This is relevant for context, for understanding what the hell this boy is thinking in general, but for now,

what Caracalla does in this situation is just to the left of that. He leaves the room at Macrinus's suggestion, who's read his state quite accurately: he suggests, in a very paternal way, that maybe Caracalla should take Dondus and go look after him someplace else. Go calm each other down. Re-establish safety. This would be great advice coming from literally anybody but Macrinus, because the appropriate response to a freeze/dissociative state is grounding, but, alas, it is Macrinus who says that.

Macrinus, who instead of being a nice person and telling Geta next to do the same and then go fix what he broke, uses this opportunity to go fan the flames. I hate this man, have I mentioned this anywhere before? I hate him so much for what he does to these two.

(I'm keeping myself grounded by looking for illustrations here, and I need you all to know that my screenshot folders have over 4 000 pictures in them. 98% of these pictures are just of Geta and Caracalla with some left Marcus Acacius on the side for spice. I'm normal. Anyway,)

Upon leaving the room, Macrinus easily locates Caracalla again: in a logical continuum in terms of tracking his mental state, he's found here hiding under a table. In essence, after a brief burst of the flight response, he's just moved elsewhere to freeze again.

At this point, and every single point from this moment forwards at the very least, Caracalla's clearly exhibiting another trauma response: regression. While not exclusive to trauma per se, regression involves a person's mental state returning to an approximation of a younger state, a state where that person has previously experienced a similar lack of control in their circumstances, but where they may also have experienced safety and care from their caretakers.

Going by what script!Geta says to him not too long after this scene, it seems reasonable to assume that what Caracalla is doing here is what he's done before to escape his father's explosive rages and violence:

He's... a very small guy. He's likely been a very small child, too. He says to Macrinus that Geta has always had it out for him - even in the womb, Geta tried to cut/grip his umbilicus so that he couldn't breathe, presumably to be the only surviving twin. Now, there's a lot that Caracalla's saying in this scene that needs to be taken with a grain of salt, but he's almost certainly relating here a "memory" that he has about what someone else has told him, or what he's otherwise heard. He probably did have a difficult birth, he probably did experience asphyxiation, and this may have been Geta's "fault" somehow - twin births are significantly more dangerous than solo births. We won't know what exactly happened, but umbilical cords and babies throughout history have not mixed well; hell, I was born significantly after the year 180 AD surrounded by much better medical care, and still the most likely singular cause for my learning disability is that I thought hanging myself by that thing in the womb was a great concept.

Asphyxiation injury in babies can cause poor growth, along with - as indicated above - lifelong disability and difficulty with development that results from brain damage, and I think this seemingly throwaway line is here specifically to tell us why Caracalla is so small and sickly, why he is so vulnerable, and, to a degree, also why Geta is so protective of him. He's never thrived, he's always been smaller and weaker, and

their father hated that. Their father, in general, seems to have despised his sons, but by Geta's description, he went for Caracalla first. Geta got in the way, took the beatings, protected his weaker brother from the violence. The only thing a small child in that situation can do is hide, and Caracalla here, under the table, is doing that again. He remembers that danger, and he remembers that hiding under the table meant a semblance of security and shelter against the danger. He remembers that, when he was hiding, there was someone there to protect him.

There was an excellent post on this by someone in the tags that I will link here pronto if anybody can find it for me, where the poster theorises that Geta's outburst, which is so reminiscent of their father's, has essentially put Caracalla in a PTSD flashback. With the regression, this seems more than plausible: he seems to have recognised his father in his brother's actions just as much as Geta himself must have recognised them, and they are both, in this moment, dealing with what that means - or not dealing, because they're both hiding, one in a curtain and the other under a table. It's interesting to me that this mixing of their past, their father's violence, never leaves Caracalla's mind after this time. He feels haunted by the man and his own actions to some degree in his mind become determined by his father's will, his father's hatred of his brother, which he's had to witness so many times in his childhood.

Now, diverting for a second from the trauma reactions and returning to Caracalla's stories to Macrinus, we can also see the effects of his neurosyphilis here. Which is a condition that's been fun to research because any information on it now is so clouded by mandatory patient direction telling me to go to the doctor and take antibiotics, which, honey, I'm sure Caracalla would have loved to do that, sincerely, but it wasn't an option, so what we get is this:

When Caracalla tells Macrinus about his memories from the womb, Macrinus asks him, "you remember that, do you?" and Caracalla says to him, "certainly; one cannot forget."

This confirms to Macrinus as much as the audience that Caracalla's experiencing delusional thinking, and, being the utter turdbag that he is, Macrinus knows exactly the kind of an opportunity this gives him. When a person is experiencing delusions, it's recommended to neither a) play into them nor b) try to directly contest them, as both ways of confrontation tend to root the delusion deeper into a person's thinking. Macrinus takes route a) like that diverting car meme, and starts telling Caracalla more absolute nonsense that he thinks will hit up nicely with whatever he's already experiencing, and based on all of this evidence, with how he's playing Geta like a father and treating Caracalla like a mother, he knows where his vulnerabilities are. He knows how to turn him against Geta - or at least he thinks that he does, because it doesn't quite work, not all of the way, anyway. But he gives it a good old fucking attempt and I despise him for that. Alas,

now we get to the ugly climax of his manipulation of these two traumatised young men whose lives, safety and futures are breaking down all around them, and who both desperately needed guidance and reassurance from someone who cared about them. He's told Caracalla that Geta intends to betray him, so go ahead and do what you must - you've always wanted to be something on your own, but he's always stood in the way, and by the way, he hates you, too. He says that he loves you, but he doesn't, he lies. You know what to do.

Fortunately however Geta knows his brother, and unlike Macrinus would like Caracalla to think, Geta does love him. No matter how annoying he is, no matter how much he gets in the way, no matter how difficult it is to be an emperor and a carer to a sick brother - Geta loves him. And that's enough, though, before we get to that point,

... mandatory reminder that Caracalla really gets off on blood? Like really gets off on it? This is also another excellent example of his regressed state: he cuts Geta, and this excites him. So much. He's probably never felt this powerful in his life: he did that. He did that. After basking in that feeling for a moment, still smiling like a little gremlin, Caracalla goes for Geta wholesale. He seems to be treating this is as some kind of a game, shifting between two states, one of whom is deeply hurt and driven by Macrinus's lies, and the other is just... being a boy, playwrestling with his brother because for the first time ever, he feels like he's got a winning edge.

In terms of Geta's ongoing Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day however, having his hand slashed gods know how deep shows us that something like this doesn't even make him flinch. After receiving the injury he just stands there, looking at his hand, looking at Caracalla, showing the exact degree of the beatings he's been taking his whole life. This, too, is dissociative, and stems from their childhood dynamics: Caracalla knows how to hide both in his head and as a first response to overwhelming danger, and Geta knows how to block out his emotions as well as physical pain, even significant, major pain, like a deep gash in his hand. He ignores the whole thing, the injury and his own personal hurt and fear, like these factors don't exist, because he has to protect Caracalla first.

Nothing Geta does in this scene is for himself. He's afraid, yes, but he's afraid for Caracalla more. And if that doesn't break your heart then I don't know. Good for you. I can't watch this scene again. And he literally dies holding Caracalla's face with his injured hand, looking him in the eye, because he loves him, and that's it for Geta.

In this godforsaken fucking piece of cinematic history, when Macrinus takes Caracalla's hand and butchers Geta with it, Caracalla is - understandably and visibly enough - back to freeze/dissociation again.

And I think some of that might be Geta's doing, in a sense: in order to break Caracalla out of their shared PTSD flashback which he started, unintentionally, by momentarily being the worst of himself to the one person who relied on him the most, Geta's now recounted the exact abuse, the exact circumstances, of Caracalla's memories back to him. He's done this to fix the narrative: I protected you. I love you. Our father hurt us. Doing so, he's put the pieces back together for Caracalla: Geta is not their father, Geta's his brother, and he protects him and loves him. He has always protected him.

So, now that Caracalla can recognise Geta for who and what he is: who takes his hand, then, and directs the blade? Is it not Macrinus, the man who has in all senses become a father to them? Does Caracalla's father then not hold his hand to punish Geta for getting in the way, again, like he always does?

The question was, do you think Cara really realized whats happening?

And after this essay of utter pain and suffering, I hate to say it, but yes, he does absolutely realise what's happening, but he is just as incapable of incorporating any of this into his reality, into any reasonable narrative that isn't controlled by the ghosts of his past. For Geta's death specifically, though, yes. He does realise it. Very much. He looks Geta directly in the eye while he dies, and every bit of his expression screams "I'm losing you and there's nothing I can do to stop it from happening."

His body might be in a freeze state again - limp, controlled first by Geta himself, then taken over by Macrinus - but he sees what's happening. He knows what's happening. The way he goes from this:

to this:

tells you that he knows. He knows.

And to wrap this horrific fucking thing up all nice and good before I print it out just to chuck it in a fire, I'm including the bit of the scene at the Senate that evidently we didn't need to see in the film:

This is Caracalla, trying desperately to make sense of his reality, the things that were done with his body against his will, his unspeakable and indescribable loss, and the lies that Macrinus has told him all over it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go have a nice day in some other place where none of this happened and Macrinus never existed at all. As a fellow survivor of childhood abuse at the hands of a parent, fuck you, Macrinus. Fuck you for what you did to them. You're the single worst kind of a person on earth and if you were real I would eat your entrails for lunch.

This has been a post, good timezone.