#eds are still so stigmatized it's insane

[weather-phenomenon]

asldkffj tw ed and body weight mention but during the real peak of my ed ofc i envied irl super skinny ppl i saw and then i read this thing abt how some skinny ppl are terminally ill and hate how they look etc and it changed my mind and any time i had envious thoughts i berated myself lolz

[arabhusband]

Sometimes I really feel like big name movie/shows/game writers just don’t realize what kind of characters they’re handling. However good a writer you are, no one can create a “new personality”, in the end all fictional characters are based off real people the writer knows, and their own personality traits (and on existing fictional characters, who, in turn... you guessed it).

And just like you can only know so many people through and through, really often, the personality traits you’ve picked up from existing people for your writing, they’re from people who, without your knowledge, could be lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender people; could be neurodivergent, could be autistic, could be a number of things they didn’t disclose to you for their own safety. And yes, people belonging to the same group of ANY kind end up sharing some behaviour/personality traits specific to that group. Not every single time, of course, but it’s undeniable that it’s a real phenomenon. Especially with neurodivergence for the obvious reasons, where some symptoms are mixed in with traits. Don’t try to fight me on this. But you’ve picked up those “interesting” character traits for your character. And you’re outraged that someone who has those personality traits recognizes them and goes “they’re just like me!” and people chime in saying “you can’t know the character better than the creator!”. Anyways, here’s 3K words about GTAV, Trevor Philips and Michael De Santa, the Trevor end, disappointing character writing, and how mainstream narrative keeps failing me. Warning for the use of lots of ableist words (in reference to the vocabulary used in canon).

I was just gonna vent about Trevor and Michael and how painfully, obviously gay they are for each other but I realized I had so much more to say, especially about Trevor. Get ready for this wild ride.

I) Trevor

First off, what breaks my heart very often is the portrayal of Cluster A personality disorders in mainstream media but that’s not news. Quoted from Rockstar themselves, “Trevor was considered to embody insanity”. A lot of writers still believe widely that it’s okay (or even interesting) to make a “crazy” character, by stating that their actual mental illness is irrelevant. That they appreciate the ~concept of insanity~ dismissing that it is a caricature of very real mental illness.

Very often in this case clinical terms are not mentioned, creating some fantasy mental illness that just makes the character violent, scary, unpredictable. It’s very convenient when you’re a lazy writer to just stick the word crazy on your character and not have to do any actual character writing, apparently.  The fact that the terms “mentally ill” are not used is because those writers feel better about it if they distance themself as much as possible from the reality of neurodivergence and mental illness. I’m not gonna explain the whole history of demonization of mental illness in media for the sake of a narrative... I think most of my mutuals here are aware of the reality of it, and how much it hurts and stigmatizes mentally ill and neurodivergent people. In the case of Trevor, clinical terms are used messily. Trevor is said interchangeably ingame to be a sociopath or a psychopath, and even if that is technically a word associated with an antisocial personality disorder it’s obvious that the words aren’t used in reference to it, but rather as a catch all for cr*zy, ins*ne.

A) Trevor is Not Like The Other Cr*zies :)... aka We Forgot People With Cluster A Are People Too

But here’s the irony with Trevor.

Steven Ogg, the voice actor and motion capture model said himself: [while Trevor embodies the violent, psychopathic GTA anti-hero archetype] he wanted players to sympathise with Trevor's story. "To elicit other emotions was tough, and it was the biggest challenge and it's something that meant a lot to me,"

It’s just baffling to me how...somehow, a step forward in writing a mentally ill person HUMANLY, at last, was pretty much inintentional. The focus was more on having the players root for Trevor for the sake of playabilty, since Trevor was to be a playable character, rather than just thinking, hey, mentally ill people are actually human and not entirely defined by their illness, so maybe we should give the character some relatability.

But the conflict shows, glaringly: From video game journalists only, you can tell that the two concepts (A dehumanizing first concept; A want for the character to be likable) clashed so much that a lot of people didn’t understand where the character was going. Let’s take a look at a few popular reviews.

“Eurogamer's Tom Bramwell, however, felt that Trevor undermined the other characters because he was a "shallow and unconvincing" sensationalised anti-hero, and that "his antics derail[ed] the narrative" and overshadowed the character development of Michael and Franklin.”

A lot (surprisingly, and believe me, not al!l) of Trevor’s “antics” are cringeworthy caricatural “cr*zy” behavior. It’s obvious that those scenes aren’t intentionally added for comedic relief: when you take the game as a whole, you can see that they’re there to establish Trevor’s character. But the thing is, Trevor’s character is understandable enough in the main storyline through his interactions with Michael and Trevor without all the stuff that felt superfluous. It felt superfluous because Steven Ogg’s performance, meant to humanize him in the main story line, is... well it’s good!! When you pick it apart, all the parts that “derailed from the narrative” were insulting portrayals of vague Cluster A symptomes. And I find it surprising that no thinkpieces on GTAV has mentioned that. It’s almost like people have a blind spot for ableism.

Not only that, but Trevor’s past establishes so much about his personality and behaviour... I’ll talk about this in a minute.

Lucas Sullivan of GamesRadar praised Trevor for being the first character in the series that "makes sense". He stated that, upon their first playthrough of a Grand Theft Auto game, most players "carjacked some poor schlub, then started doing 90mph on the sidewalk, mowing over civilians", as opposed to playing peacefully. "Trevor's existence isn't a commentary on any group of people–he's just the first logical fit to the way people have been playing GTA games for the past decade," he said. Sullivan concluded that Trevor is one of the few protagonists in the Grand Theft Auto that would willingly execute popular player actions, such as murder and violence.

God, this review kills me. Here’s why. This review, in my opinion, says everything that is wrong with mainstream character writing. No one has ever needed a character to be a “psycho/sociopath” to feel the need for inconsequencial fictional violence. “Most players” enjoy partaking in violence in video games simply because it’s cathartic, it doesn’t (directly) hurt anyone... I’m not gonna talk about the debate on whether violence in video games makes people violent etc. But the thing is, I’m pretty sure a majority of players do this, and I’m pretty sure the majority of them aren’t psycho/sociopaths either. Moreover, previous GTA characters all willingly exectuted mindless violence, without the whole violent mental illness trope!

So what does it say about people like Lucas Sullivan, and what does it say about the game? Unfortunately, Lucas Sullivan is right about one thing, in my opinion: “ Trevor's existence isn't a commentary on any group of people”.

He could be, but he isn’t, because of that conflict I mentioned earlier. Trevor, in the end, has a major character writing flaw: he’s torn between an accurate representation of a mentally ill character, and an ableist, empty psychopath archetype that neurotypical people love to, pardon my French, jack off to. Lucas Sullivan particularly enjoys this roleplay in which he’s this weird fantasm of what a psycho/sociopath is, because that’s what’s being served up to him.

B) Writing Good???? Not at Rockstar! Not On Their Watch!

The writing in GTAV (and most mainstream media) is held back and sabotaged by their own, real fear of seeming “politically correct” or “activism driven”. Just for being accurate. And they’re very aware of it. And I mean you’ll tell me, of course, Ziyed, it’s Rockstar!!! What did you expect!! Well, I expect nothing but I’m still disappointed. I’m very aware that all big video game corporations are Terrible and Awful but hey, sue me, it makes it all the more satisfying to pick apart.

Obviously I’m sure that people who follow this blog are already aware of that, which also applies to the lack of race diversity, lgbt representation and body diversity in mainstream media. The reason I’m talking about Trevor’s mental illness in particular here is because 1. There’s a cruel lack of writing on the subject of neurodivergence and mental illness ableism even in blogging spaces 2. His “insanity” (mental illness) is, according to the writers themselves, his defining trait.

And it is disappointing particularly since the premise for Trevor is so promising when you start out, or else I wouldn’t bother criticizing it. It’s not ALL BAD, and it frustrates. His environment and past all make sense, they’re all mentioned in canon plainly, but briefly: unstable, physically and mentally abusive family that normalizes his violent impulses early on; It’s implied his family is poor (hence the dream of big heists later and getting rich), so he has no access to mental health; a failing education system that pushes him out; The detail that all of society pushes him out because of his mental illness, when it is mentioned that Trevor’s dream was crushed when he fails his mental health test to enter the military to become a pilot.

When you put it all together, Trevor is the product of a society that hates the poor and the mentally ill and drives them to a life of crime. And it kills me that all of this is thrown at you in maybe two boring long conversations that throw Trevor’s story at you, the first one in the long car ride to meet Michael for the first time, and the second one in the long first plane ride. 1.It’s lazy writing. I don’t want the game to tell me, I want the game to SHOW ME. 2. You’re really gonna cram everything that made Trevor who he is in two tutorial scenes? Really...???

I said Rockstar is aware of their fear of being viewed as politically correct, and here’s why: With all of this, you’d think Trevor would be the perfect character for social commentary, but the game skirts around it with useless antics. But when Rockstar is accused of gratuitous violence for shock value in the waterboarding scene, suddenly it’s a “political commentary on the use of torture by the United States government”. So obviously Rockstar knows to pick its topical battles.

C) Gay and Crazy, Now Made Gamer-Friendly

The same way Trevor’s mental illness is diluted down to an archetype, his gayness is played in large part for laughs and shock value, and is made part of his overall outrageous, chaotic behaviour. Trevor is (almost) everything American society views as shocking: mentally ill, addicted to drugs, a criminal, and outrageously sexual. He is so sexually offensive to a point where he’s not just a crude flirty bisexual man but the overly sexual nightmare of a cishet man. Alright, for this part, I might be missing information, because overtime I’ve heard a lot of people call Trevor a rapist, and the only scene I know people have interpreted as rape is when you spawn as Trevor in the apartment, and Floyd is laying in bed sobbing next to him, fully clothed, apologizing to his girlfriend out loud. I personally didn’t interpret it as rape (because it’s not mentioned, explained, and also because they were spooning, I honestly believed that they just had sex and Floyd was just disgusted with himself because Trevor is generally unattractive, and I thought that was the “joke”) but it’s undeniable that it was in poor taste and implied it for whomever wanted to believe that. Either way, it proves my point which is: Rockstar just couldn’t make Trevor gay without making him a sex offender with rapey undertones because... it’s Rockstar, because Gay Panic, because Rockstar is homophobic and that’s not news. In such a strongly LGBTphobic mindset that is the GTA franchise and the culture surrounding it, the kind of gamers it targets, I was surprised when I started playing to see Trevor was implied to be bisexual. I was thinking, hey, he’s violent and kills people, but so do all the characters in this game, they’re all terrible people: but Trevor was interested in men??? Then the more I played, the more I was hit with all the rape jokes... But, since I wasn’t expecting anything half decent, I would sheepishly be grateful that there was no actual rape. I mean, we obviously deserve to have higher expectations than that, but it’s GTA we’re talking about. The thing is, all the cat calling and verbal sexual harassment is mostly from Trevor, out of the three playable characters, and it was obvious that it was trying to cover up Trevor’s gayness with something that would speak to GTA’s vile average cis het gamer dude audience: rape jokes, violence and misogyny. See, Gamers? Trevor’s kinda gay, but it’s funny, because he’s just generally gross :)

So, just like Trevor is fantasy cr*zy, he is fantasy gay, where it’s a whole lgbt-phobic mess of what a cis het man imagines a gay/bi man to be. What really reinforced that feeling to me was adding up the “Trisha and Michelle” story and the spawn scene where he wakes up in the middle of nowhere wearing a dress. ((Now the dress thing in itself didn’t even have any lines or remarks: As much as it is obvious that it’s originating from a Man In A Dress transphobic joke, I’ll have to admit, there’s no actual joke happening, since he doesn’t comment on it nor does anyone else ingame. But it is still transphobic and homophobic when you take it in the context of Trevor’s terrible writing)). His identity is not discussed further, but all in all it feels as though the writers were like well, he’s Kinda Gay or whatever, (I don’t believe they’ve said the B word ingame) gay guys wear like, dresses, right?? And they’re sexual offenders??? I Mean As A Cis Het Man I Definitely Feel Offended By Gay Men Existing So This Must Be Right... So it manages to be transmisogynistic and homophobic at once

Again, this dichotomy compromises Trevor’s credibility as a character, again because Rockstar is pissing themselves at the idea of writing a well rounded character because what if people think we’re Gay

But here’s the thing!!. This very problem, GTAV’s terrible fear of seeming Gay, resonates throughout the main character arc between Trevor and Michael (I don’t think I even have to explain this to fandom: Literally everyone read Trevor and Michael as having some glaring romantic tension) and makes both characters skirt around their sexuality and personnal conflict in numerous no homo jokes. And that’s... where Rockstar’s Gay Panic backfired.

II) Michael, or how GTAV’s Gay Panic played itself and turned the video game into a metaphor for the consequences of repressed homosexuality, or The Trevor End

A little search showed me it’s widely accepted in the GTAV fandom that the Trevor End (End C) is the canon end but if you haven’t heard, here’s why quickly:

-Everyone Lives End has several plotholes and didn’t resolve all conflicts -Trevor’s death resolves most conflicts -Franklin killing Michael is widely out of character, and if you don’t do anything, Michael literally just trips and falls. It’s not a gratifying or meaningful end. -The events featuring Trevor in GTAV Online happen before the game, making it possible for Trevor to be dead. -Generally, everyone felt that the final conversation between Franklin and Michael in the Trevor end resonated most than other ends.

So, Michael and Trevor originally were written to mirror each other. And they do in many ways: Trevor does everything openly, is sincere, and he is shameless. Michael, throughout the game, is ashamed of Trevor, is ashamed of most things in his life, and tries to do things discreetly, when he isn’t overcome with rage/emotion. That is when he hates himself the most: when he’s pushed to be open about things. And it’s almost funny how caricatural it is that Michael is afraid of Trevor’s qu**rness: how he drops their partnership for the perfect nuclear family, the big house on the hills, the skinny white blonde wife, two kids and tennis on the weekends. How utterly miserable he is living that life! Until Trevor finds him again, and he’s so torn and angry about how Trevor makes him feel alive again.

God, it’s right there. It’s so obvious it’d be funny if it wasn’t frustrating and sad and making me write 3K about it.

Xav de Matos of Joystiq found [...] "though each character has a valid motivation for his journey, it's difficult to want them to succeed." He also felt that the ambivalence between Trevor and Michael was a tired device by the conclusion of the story as it became a "seemingly endless cycle" of conflict between them.

Another popular review, and evidence of another dichotomy in the writing. It’s not made truly clear what Michael’s conflict with Trevor really is, which is what should be driving the end of the story, but ends up just being blurry and confusing in the two other ends. The “seemingly endless cycle” comment is what fascinates me here. Because it’s actually something that, for me, makes the Trevor end so spectacular at how it blindly hit the mark and remarkably played itself. Yes, the Michael/Trevor narrative must be very confusing for Xav de Matos. And honestly, I’m still really confused myself as to what Rockstar thought they were writing, if not a tragic gay romance.

I’ve considered that Michael grows tired of Trevor pulling him back into crime and wants to end the conflict but it does not add up: Michael was a criminal before meeting Trevor, so he’s not the bad influence here! But there is definitely the feeling of an “endless cycle”.

I truly have no other explanation: The overall aversion to gayness starts to become a pattern, and their entire character arc strikes like one big metaphore for repressed homosexuality on Michael’s part. He says that he’s almost afraid of Trevor, but the only times he seems to be having fun is when he’s with Trevor. He pushes him away constantly, and it all culminate to the Trevor end.

The whole scene is awfully dramatic. First, it’s by chance that Michael survives crashing into Trevor at full speed like that: you clearly see and hear him speed up. It seems like a deliberate choice and adds to the drama of the scene. It’s very desperate and self destructive. As Franklin, you’re given the choice to kill Trevor. But it is out of character, since a few seconds prior, he doesn’t have the courage to shoot Trevor, he definitely has sympathy for him, lets him go and tells him they can talk it out. Eventually, Michael takes the shot (not shooting Trevor directly) and sets him on FIRE. Talk about intense. His death is very violent and dramatic. Franklin is shocked that Michael would kill his “best friend” and that starts the final conversation. Michael’s speech is erratic, he’s panting, screaming, but he says two things that struck with me.

“I’m a bad piece of work, but that guy?”

“No boundaries. No sense of... when to back off. No Nothing! 24/7 insanity ”

These two lines spoke to me. As a gay man, growing up-- and though I know my experience of it is slightly different than cis men’s- I’ve had to deal with internalized homophobia. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say pushing away behaviour that seems too “extravagant”, too “qu**er” is a frequent sign of internalized homophobia: Trying to feel like somehow you’re better than The Other Gays. Or otherwise, when completely denying one’s homosexuality, pushing away other gay people to try to feel “normal”. “No boundaries/ No sense of when to back off” is his explanation to why he kills Trevor: He was got too close to him, and Michael couldn’t deal with those feelings.  That, especially in the world of GTA, like I explained earlier... added to it how both these men grew up in an especially violent environment, how they’ve both normalized murder in their lives. It all makes sense suddenly to culminate there? Michael ends the cycle, the only way he knows how to.

And it made me sad. One, because I knew that Rockstar would laugh in my face for interpreting their terrible game as anything meaningful to a gay person, and two because of, still, how much it hit home, and how that is a reality. Growing up hearing my brother saying he would beat up his friend if he had a crush on him, growing up hearing of stories of men actually killing other men rather than face their feelings. I was upset to think about how this game, filled with so many bad intentions, a game that probably hates me, still made me feel something like this.

And it’s like, sometimes I feel like writers forget that we exist, but we’re still there in the back of their minds, unknowingly? It’s like no matter how much they don’t want us to be there, we still exist.

Every ending in GTAV has a different song. The song for the Trevor End was specifically written for the game and for this end by Yeasayer. And I feel like the band understood the game better than the writers. You can give it a listen here and read the lyrics, which I feel, if you’ve managed to read all of this to the end, you won’t have trouble understanding. It’s pretty transparent.

Thanks for reading my thoughts on this terrible game!! I probably missed things, I didn’t backread much and didn’t make sense sometimes but I guess I had a lot on my mind. Hope you appreciated and didn’t feel like you wasted 20 minutes of your day.

[poisoninthemirror]

What anorexia is really like

(BASED ON PAST EXPERIENCE)

AS A CONTRAST TO MY “PERSONAL THINSPO” bc really don’t get the wrong 💡 i regret my EDs with every fiber of my being my personal thinspo is how i try to cope with my sadness and regret and pain

feel free to add on to this list i just ran out of room

always being cold at school and shivering

wearing a jacket in the summer. below 20 degrees C and I’ll be wearing a full on coats, warm socks and boots.

brittle, chipped nails making manicures last longer than 5 minutes impossible

not being able to enjoy life

all i think about is food or my ed. what on 🌏 do other people occupy their minds with? i don’t remember anymore

obsessed with collecting recipes, cooking for others, looking at foodporn even when i don’t touch the food myself

making plans or wanting to go eat somewhere with or without other people but never ever going through with it

going out anywhere gives me anxiey

having to wear baggy things so i don’t scare people too much with how thin ive gotten so they don’t ship me off to ed rehab or something

never getting to show off/embrace my weight loss

don’t you dare touch my bones

no libido or interest. i don’t even want to flirt. leave me alone.

lying for hours just tracing my bones and wasting my life away

losing my fertility and ability to have kids one day

amonerrhea is actually really scary

gross lanugo everywhere

i don’t even have the energy to cook or eat hence i get even less energy

binging from time to time because I’m so starved

my ugw keeps changing to get lower and lower. its never enough. theres always something to criticize

not being able to appreciate my weight loss because of BDD. i still 👀 fat and feel fat where it has gone. i don’t 👀 my body for what it really is

insomnia

standing at an angle difference of 0.00001 degree and wondering which angle is lying to me and in which i look fatter. the fatter one must be the real one.

i can’t 👀 my weight loss. its like its not there.

uncomfortable when others point out my weight loss so i try to hide it. avoiding anyone who cares too much about my weight loss

also 😔 when no one says anything about it

not trying the 🆒 new foods or enjoying things because I’m so determined not to bloat

conflicted about the 🏖️ because then everyone will 👀 just how skinny i really am and they’ll get 😟 and try to intervene

realizing ive gotten dangerously close to dying of cardiac arrest or worse. wondering if I’ll wake up in the morning.

blue nails like those of corpses

my thick, beautiful, healthy, luscious hair fell out and I’m left few a few pathetic strands that I’m 😨 to touch since even though theres almost nothing left i continue to lose hair

osteoperosis for life & the bones of an 80 year old woman when I’m not even 20 yet

alienating myself from everyone, including my friends

not going out to parties etc

panic when someone cooks for me

purging is insanely addictive

bloodshot eyes

decaying yellower teeth. chewing whitening gum or whitening my teeth in some other way

sickly protective of my ed even though i hate it because now its part of me

I’m a lot weaker physically

i can’t think straight, theres always a fog bc my brain isn’t getting enough calories

short attention span

always tired and wanting to 💤 and not do anything, but insomnia kicks in so instead i lie on the 🛏️ for hours and hours and hours

stressful shopping trips. checking every label. choosing the foid with the lowest calories, even if it tastes grosser.

sometimes chewing pack after pack of gum or a pack of cough drops for my cold makes up my daily calorie intake and adds up to 300-400.

refusing to take any medication for any sickness, especially cough syrup

being 😷 with things like the common cold, cough & sore throat for four or five months instead of a week or two

idek how long it would take anything more serious to pass

stomach pains from eating and from not eating

a genuine fear of food

my body looking unproportional to my head and feet because its gotten so small

whatever hair i have left is ⚰️ despite all of the treatments i put in it, the eggs i try to wash it with to give it protein, the conditioners and the hair masks and cold 🚰 rinses and the oils

not being able to stop

despairing because when will this all end

depression. the only way i 👀 out is the way i can’t take. I’m miserable.

i hate myself for having this ED

what is my identity without my ed? my ed is part of me!! existential crises and identity confusion

i can do this forever, even if I’m miserable

no i can’t i need a way out help

but theres no one to talk to

no one understands

everyone stigmatizes or invalidates or ostracizes etc

therapy? idk her

getting mad that i finally officially “qualify for anorexia” according to the APA even though ive been anorexic for a lot longer

oh so now all of you care when I’m dying and its too late

oh so now you shut up and stop asking me if i really want that food

oh so now I’m not fat anymore as you genereously repeatedly reminded me

bitterness

kidney failure and damage

liver damage

serious nutrient and vitamin deficiency

taking supplements but who am i kidding how much can they really help when I’m this bad

“I’m not hungry” even if i havent eaten in 6 days (I’m never fasting again though i refuse to slip into fasting/binging/purging again)

needing to purge even after eating only 5 calories worth of zucchini

vomit rises up even when i don’t want to vomit bc my body is so used to it

acid reflux

have a burned a hole in my esophagus yet?

i hate myself

i hate my life

my 💛 shrinks

bloating all the time even if i don’t eat

eating/drinking 🚰 makes it even worse so i stop even doing that

when was the last time i had a bowel movement?

where on 🌏 are my bones i don’t 👀 them even though my bmi is so so low

whats this fat on an obscure part of my body i can still grab oooh I’m still fat need to keep losing

the 📸 lies

the mirror lies

everyone around mevis lying

i know I’m fat i can feel it

irritable and low tolerance for mistakes of others

moodiness

[fat-worthy-wonderfulll]

So I am currently at a “family reunion” type thing with my moms extended family. My family on this side mostly agrees on political issues by some miracle and generally I feel pretty accepted by them, but I still feel even in a famously “accepting family” I still feel a stigma talking about mental illness.

I have not told anyone about my ED here mostly because we already have heavy stuff on our mind already from a loved one’s death.

Several people in my family (including myself) are mentally ill enough that we take meds and go to therapy/have had suicidal tendencies. But I think those family members illness are mostly limited to depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation.

However we also have a member of our family who is unquestionably more mentally ill. I don’t know with what, or if she has ever been diagnosed but in my (very unprofessional opinion) seems to suffer from severe Borderline Personality Disorder.

This is obviously one of the most stigmatized and feared mental illnesses there is, and also commonly misunderstood. I would never question my families distrust, dislike, and anger toward her. There is no question that she has done things wrong including falsely accusing her son in law of stalking and threatening her. (And that’s just the tip of the iceberg)

She needs to take responsibility for hurting people for sure, but she also needs help. And when my family talks about her they say she is crazy, insane, gone over the edge, etc.

I don’t know if there is a better word for what they’re trying to express but I think there has to be. And when they say these things they are being discriminatory toward people with illnesses like hers.

Furthermore I feel othered. And because they know I’m mentally ill and other people in my family are and they use the same words to describe her I feel like they are perpetuating the stereotype that mentally ill people are bad, mean, even inherently wrong, and that’s the other reason I haven’t told them about my ED.

[cabookle]

The Truth About Happily Ever After by Karole Cozzo - Review

Grades:

Overall – D Character Development – D Character Romance – B Plot – D Cover – B

The Truth About Happily Ever After by Karole Cozzo has been in my TBR list for about a year now as I anxiously awaited its publication. It finally came out on May 16th and I excitedly bought it on my Kindle App and settled onto the couch to give it a good read.

I did not finish the book.

Well, technically I finished it because I did want to see the relationship with Miller come to fruition because I genuinely liked him (and literally no one else). But I couldn’t actually read the entire book. It was too painfully bad for that.

Let’s start with a few good things, because there were a couple: This book depicts positive female friendships which is cool, and it explores college age people rather than teens (so I guess it’s technically New Adult but it reads like YA) which I like because it’s an underexplored age group in fiction.

That’s all I can think of right now.

Now let’s get down to the bad. The first concern I had was by chapter four there was still no LGBT representation at all in the book. This isn’t normally a problem I’d bring up except for the world this book is set in: face/costume characters at a pseudo-Disney World theme park. I did the Disney College Program and trust me when I tell you that LGBT+ people are very well represented as cast members, especially in the face/costume character department. Now I get that this is only pretend Disney, but the fact that none of these characters are shown as LGBT (until the end, which turns out to be a copout so that Alyssa feels stupid) was a huge problem for me. It’s not realistic and that’s frustrating.

But of course that isn’t the only thing Karole Cozzo handled poorly. At one point, Miller calls Alyssa out on her eating habits because he’s concerned she might have an eating disorder. She basically laughs it off. The thing is, maybe Alyssa doesn’t have an ED. She may be obsessive about her wait and caloric intake, but she does so to manage her weight not to lose it. I don’t go for diagnosing characters most of the time. But what is problematic here is the way the characters react to the idea of an ED and how Alyssa makes it into a joke. After she breaks up with her boyfriend (more soon), she loses a bunch of weight in bereavement. Her narrative makes weird, off-putting comments about food and eating that would probably cause a psychologist to diagnose her with an eating disorder (though like I said, she’s a character and you can’t diagnose a character). I just felt like food could have been handled better. There’s nothing wrong with exposure to characters with food problems, whether that be a full on ED or a borderline issue, but only when it’s done well, which it is not here.

Now let’s talk about the ridiculous boyfriend plot. Alyssa has been waiting a yearish to see her boyfriend again but when he shows up, something is off. Now he spins this ridiculous story about why he’s late (seriously, no one actually believed that did they?) and they share a distant night together. Nothing between them screams relationship. It’s like a friendship where they sometimes kiss. And it’s clear that Luke is hiding something and it’s clear what that something is. I assumed we’d find out really quickly that Luke is a jerk and the rest of the book would be Alyssa getting over him and starting a life with someone new. I thought wrong which added to my annoyance. It takes forever for anything remotely interesting to happen in this book and then it’s over in a page and we’re back to hating the book and the characters once again.

I was truly looking forward to this book as a DCP alumi because I thought it would be a realistic look into what it was like working in a magical theme park. Don’t be fooled by Alyssa’s annoying fairy tale world, though, because while it is accurate at times, it missed a lot of key points that disappointed me, especially the LGBT thing. Aside from the bad world building, Alyssa was a frustratingly annoying narrator and the plot was insanely boring. Alyssa’s home life is touched upon briefly and I think if we’d gotten more of that background information she may have been slightly more likable. Alas, she has no redeeming factors that could have made this book enjoyable for me.

I wouldn’t recommend this book to my worst enemy and I strongly advise against it unless you want to be mad for a few hours. Not worth the money I spent on the ebook. Buy a good book instead.

Oh also, it’s minor, but like Alyssa is in a sorority and she says something about how her mom was in a sorority so they were never stigmatized in her house. But later, she says her mom never went to college. So how was she in a sorority? (I’m a stickler for continuity, guys.)

Suggested Reading: Rules of Summer by Joanna Philbin, if only to give you a swoony summer read to wash out the bad taste this left in your mouth. Don’t read the sequel though. It broke my heart.

[melaniemissesthemountains-blog]

Brief History of Bipolar Disorder

As with most things in life, it is important to understand the history of bipolar disorder in order to understand it’s present and its future, so lets dive into it. The idea of a relationship between melancholy and mania can be traced back to the Ancient Greeks, and particularly to Aretaeus of Cappadocia, who was a physician and philosopher. Aretaeus described a group of patients that who ‘laugh play, dance at night and day, and sometimes go openly to the market crowned, as if victors in some contest of skill’ only to be ‘torpid, dull, and sorrowful’ at other times. Although he suggested that both patterns of behavior resulted from one and the same disorder, this idea was’t really accepted until the modern era.The modern psychiatric concept of bipolar disorder has its origins in the nineteenth century. In 1854, Jules Baillarger and Jean-Pierre Falret independently presented descriptions of the disorder to the Academy of Medicine in Paris. Baillarger called the illness folie à double forme or ‘dual-form insanity’ in English whereas Falret called it folie circulaire or ‘circular insanity’. Falret observed that the disorder clustered in families, and correctly hypothesized that it had a strong genetic basis.In the early 1900s the eminent German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin studied the natural course of the untreated disorder and found it to be punctuated by relatively symptom-free intervals. On this basis he distinguished the disorder from schizophrenia and coined the term ‘manic–depressive psychosis’ to describe it. Kraepelin emphasized that, in contrast to schizophrenia, manic–depressive psychosis had an episodic course and a more benign outcome.Interestingly, Kraepelin did not distinguish between people with both manic and depressive episodes and people with only depressive episodes with psychotic symptoms. This distinction dates back only to the 1960s, and is largely responsible for the modern emphasis on the spectrum of bipolarity, and hence on mood elevation, as the defining feature of the disorder.  The terms ‘manic–depressive illness’ and ‘bipolar disorder’ are comparatively recent, and date back from the 1950s and 1980s respectively. The term ‘bipolar disorder’ is thought to be less stigmatizing than the older term ‘manic–depressive illness’, and so that is what many people refer to it as. However, some psychiatrists and some people with bipolar disorder still prefer the term ‘manic–depressive illness’ because they feel that it describes the nature of the disorder more accurately.  

cite: Goodwin, Guy., and Gary. Sachs. Bipolar Disorder. 2nd ed. Abingdon: HEALTH Press, 2010. Web. Fast Facts; Fast facts.