#filling up the sergei tag in tumblr once more! its been a while

[tateringss]

this one's definitely a treat!

Bit of a late post, but this (catboy) Sergei painting is made for @curseofsergei as a Secret Strahd Halloween gift! The art exchange itself is hosted by @crowholtz 🦇

It's been fun to draw a different rendition of Sergei. I just hope I pieced together all the references coherently :)

[where-theres-smoak-2]

Oh man I was scrambling trough tumblr tag and I saw this LB quote about Aleksander: "The Darkling is beautiful, I wanted to create a leader who was charismatic, appealing, a dictator you could imagine yourself following, an antagonist you couldn't just dismiss. [...] The Darkling is beautiful and broken and had a rough childhood, but he's also a brutal, manipulative monster with no regard for human life. He's dangerous because he's seductive, because he evokes sympathy.

…I just don’t even know when to start with this? Can she come off as anymore ignorant and offensive by trying to sound so woke. I mean “beautiful and broken”?! Are you kidding me?!

(Book Spoilers. Trigger Warning: Trauma and Mental Health)

Hmm well I'm not sure you could really sum it up as a 'rough childhood' more like a rough life filled with alot of trauma that has left him isolated and struggling to form human connections. Also I'm not sure I like the term monster for someone who is made the way they are through trauma and also the line about him having no regard for human life is just false he has lines he wont cross which is why he didn't harm the grisha children in book 3 and he was never going to because he values their lives. To be honest though I had some issues with the way LB dealt with trauma and mental health in the books. Not just with Aleks either but with Sergei too, actually I found the way she treated Sergei and his mental health in the last book rather appalling. Sergei is established as being severely traumatised by losing Marie to the point where he struggles to function properly. I think out of all the characters in the trilogy he's depicted as having the worst trauma, all the other characters have bad dreams and what not but Sergei really does find it debilitating and he struggles with day to day tasks like eating, sleeping and even just walking/travelling takes its toll on him. But Alina's attitude towards Sergei at times was troubling. To be clear though I'm not blaming the character for this as it was just the way she was written but she seems to consider Sergei weak and his mental health a hindrance. Here are some extracts from R&R the first is right after Sergei accidently revealed Genya's real name to Nikolai:

I shot to my feet. “What happened?”

“Sergei let her real name slip. He seems to be taking to heights about as well as he took to caves.” I released a growl of frustration. Genya had played a key role in the Darkling’s plot to depose the King. I’d tried to be patient with Sergei, but now he’d put her in danger and jeopardised our position with Nikolai.

Sergei was nowhere to be found. Probably a good thing, since I didn’t have time to give him the pummelling he deserved.

And like I understand that this must have been a frustrating situation but Alina knows that Sergei is struggling with his trauma and that he didn't mean to cause anyone any harm. I can understand her frustration but I really don't like the line about the 'pummelling he deserves'. I just don't like the suggestion that a person who is clearly suffering from a mental health issue deserves to be punished for making a mistake because of his trauma. Here's another instance where Alina is annoyed at Sergei:

Sergei had slowed us during our fight with the militia. He was unstable. I could apologise, offer useless words, but I didn’t know how to help him, and it didn’t change the fact that we were at war. Sergei had become a liability.

Again I get the frustration but again I have issues with the suggestion that because they are at war Sergei should just pull it together. Or even this image that's being painted that people who have mental health issues are just a burden on those around them. People in real life who suffer with similar mental health issues like depression and anxiety often worry about feeling like a burden to their loved ones so this could be really triggering for them. Then there is this from Baghra:

“We came to find you. What’s the matter with that boy?”

“He’s had a hard time of it,” I said, leading them away from the tank room.

“Who hasn’t?”

“He saw the girl he loved gutted by your son and held her while she died.”

“Suffering is cheap as clay and twice as common. What matters is what each man makes of it."

This one really troubled me because its like LB is saying that you can control your own trauma or decide how the trauma is going to effect you. It's again this suggestion that Sergei is weak because he struggled with his trauma more than others did. But the part that actually kind of disgusted me when I read it and I actually had to stop reading the book for a bit because of how much it upset me is how the characters talk about Sergei after his death. Alina had sent Sergei away because she felt he had become a liability and he then went back to the darkling and told them all the information he had on Alina and co. This move was obviously one born of his trauma and was made out of desperation. On several occasions Sergei has said he is struggling with feeling safe and no matter how hard he tries he never feels safe. Alina even tells us that Sergei had gone back to the darkling looking for reassurance and safety which really makes sense, this man grew up at the LP the one place where grisha could be safe, he grew up under the protection of the darkling. Then he chose to stand with Alina and went through the trauma and grief of losing the woman he loved horrifically in an attack against the LP which was his original safe place. He then never feels safe again so it would make sense for him to go back to what previously had made him feel safe, the LP and the Darkling. But this is what the other characters say about Sergei after he is killed by the darkling:

I sat beside him, unsure what to say. I remembered sitting like this with Sergei in the tank room, searching for words of comfort and failing. Had he been scheming then, manipulating me? His fear had certainly seemed real.

Abruptly, Zoya said, “I should have known Sergei couldn’t be trusted. He was always a weakling.”

Though that seemed unfair, I let it pass.

��Oncat never liked him,” Harshaw added.

Genya fed a branch to the fire. “Do you think he was planning it all along?”

“I’ve been wondering that,” I admitted. “I thought he’d be better once we got out of the White Cathedral and the tunnels, but he almost seemed worse, more anxious.”

Abruptly, Adrik snarled, “I’m glad Sergei’s dead. I’m just sorry I didn’t get to wring his neck myself.”

Steel is earned. Adrik had that steel, and so did Nadia. She’d proven it again in our flight from the Elbjen. A part of me had wondered what Tamar saw in her. But Nadia had been in some of the worst fighting at the Little Palace. She’d lost her best friend and the life she’d always known. Yet she hadn’t fallen apart like Sergei or chosen life underground like Maxim. Through all of it, she’d stayed steady.

And yes again I understand why they feel betrayed but they knew that Sergei was struggling and instead of understanding that Alina is accusing him of manipulating her and Zoya is saying he couldn't be trusted and that he was a weakling. To be honest it kind of reminds me of the way people talk about the darkling. Instead of recognising their trauma and trying to understand they jump straight to well they were a bad, untrustworthy person who was manipulating me.

Then there is the last part where Alina is thinking about how Adrik and Nadia are strong because although they faced trauma they were able to keep going and keep fighting but not Sergei, Sergei was crippled by his grief and his trauma and this means he was weak. Maybe its because I have struggled with crippling mental health issues myself where I couldn't even get out of bed let alone do anything else but I just found this implication that Sergei was weak really offensive to those who do struggle that way. People deal with trauma in different ways and whilst some people can fight through it and will just have a keep calm and carry on attitude others can't, others just fall apart, but that doesn't make them weak. I also don't think this 'just carry on and push through it' attitude towards mental health issues is necessarily a healthy message. If you need help then you should ask for it and be able to have access to it. LB could have used this as an opportunity to show a character who is severely traumatised getting support and help to work through his trauma and heal. But I feel like nobody really helped Sergei and any comfort or support he got seemed to be grudgingly given and there was more of an attitude of I'll try to help you because your issues are a hindrance to me than because any of the characters actually cared about him and wanted to help him.

Sergei and the Darkling were both characters that were 'beautiful and broken' but neither one of them was given the support or help they needed. Instead they were painted as either weak or as a monster. So what kind of message does this send to readers who also struggle with trauma and mental health conditions?