#give QWM and JLQ their flowers

[mlc-melons]

A third candidate

When people in the martial arts world talk about beauties, we're tied. Tell me. Between us, who is prettier?

[bbcphile]

YESSSS, thanks for the addition, @kingsandbastardz! You definitely anticipated some of the things I’m going to talk more about in later metas! And thanks for linking to our neurodivergence discussion! I definitely should have included a link to that in the original post!

So, here are some thoughts in response that are basically a preview of some of the future meta posts:

Difficulties with Relationships:

CPTSD can definitely create the “boiling the frog” problem, where someone has gotten so used to mistreatment and boundary violations that they don’t notice it happening again until the current abuse has massively escalated and everything is on fire; it can also create the opposite problem, where you’re so focused on never being taken advantage of again that you are hypervigilant to it and tend to assume the worst and either proactively cut people out of your life because you’re misreading things as warning signs or you overreact and lash out at perceived threats. Sometimes, you can do a bizarre mixture of both.

I think both LLH and DFS do both of these at different times and under different circumstances, but here, I’ll focus on the ways DFS is doing them simultaneously: he thinks he’s being hypervigilant so he won’t be taken advantage of, but he’s actually underreacting to the threat, which is the worst of both worlds.

With DFS, we obviously have no idea what sort of possessive stalker signals JLQ was giving out before the donghai battle, so we don’t know if there were red flags he was missing then. But his decision to keep her in the Jinyuan Alliance after he found out that she poisoned LXY a decade ago and then again when he finds out she just poisoned QWM definitely seems like it’s a weird variant on ignoring a red flag: he’s assuming it’s under control and not serious enough to be a real threat to him. He is very much aware that she is obsessed with him, willing to hurt others to get closer to him, and already violating his orders to do so, and yet he flirts back repeatedly to get information, first when he’s trying to confirm she’s Nanyin royalty (after she poisoned QWM), and then again, when he’s been cured of Wuxin Huai poisoning. He underestimates the danger again when he decides to try to trick and use SGD to free himself from mind control and get the wangchuan flower, which, as we know, backfires. In both cases, he seems to assume that, because he knows SGD and JLQ's goals and because he’s a good actor, everything is fine. So, he’s aware that there IS a problem or danger, and he thinks that making a plan to account for it means he’s taking it seriously and reacting appropriately and is in control of the situation and has therefore addressed the threat. He is wrong.

Yes, he does eventually act to stop JLQ: he imprisons her with people she abused and expects that to kill her, and stations a few guards outside the door, and he had thought he’d taken down her entire operation. But I feel like he is still underestimating the threat JLQ and SGD pose, even then: he assumes that, because he’s double crossed them, they won’t double cross him again, which is a wild thing to think about two people who were double agents for a decade and outmaneuvered and destroyed the two strongest martial arts sect without anyone finding out (and already almost killed him and LXY several times, both in the past and in the present). To emphasize it even more: SGD and JLQ have already proven their ability to infiltrate sects, to backstab their allies (SGD did it to LXY and JLQ, and JLQ has already done it to DFS and Zongzhen Mingzhu), so there is no reason to believe that they wouldn’t do exactly the same thing again. He has no reason to believe he could defeat them on his own (or even with assists from Wuyan and King Xunming of Yama) when it hadn’t worked before. This is when it would have been logical for him to actually tell LLH and FDB what he was doing so they could work together and stop the other two. But, because he still prefers to act on his own and only inform people once everything’s solved (another example of struggling with relationships and having trouble trusting the right people), he doesn’t. And of course, he’s betrayed again and gets captured and needs rescuing from Li Lianhua. 

Don’t get me wrong, I love DFS so very much! His reactions here are completely understandable given everything he’s been through. But it feels very in keeping with “trusting the wrong people and not trusting the right people” that he trusts JLQ and SGD to not work together behind his back to betray him (again)--even though he betrayed SGD by taking the wangchuan flower–and that he doesn’t turn to LLH and FDB for help or collaboration. 

All that to say, I think there are aspects of not noticing that there are red flags, but I think it’s more that he thinks that he sees the red flags but doesn’t fully understand the danger of them and trusts that he knows SGD and JLQ well enough to anticipate their moves (a type of missing/ignoring/discounting the red flags), which leads him to not ask truly trustworthy people for help, which basically combines both forms of relationship dysfunctions.

Emotional Regulation:

Yep! I completely agree that DFS is excellent at not letting his emotions control him. I have a lot more to say on how incredibly developed his emotional regulation skills are, or at least how tightly controlled his emotions are, even when he’s using violence (and how that contradicts what everyone thinks of him) in my meta about it next week! And I absolutely agree that some of the meditation may be dissociation (it might also be a grounding technique, but more on that in a later post), and I think that he probably uses dissociation, compartmentalization (which is related), and grounding techniques to get through everything he’s survived. 

Regarding alexithymia, it is correlated with child abuse (although it’s more associated with emotional and physical neglect and emotional abuse than physical abuse) as well as autism, so I definitely see why it’s something you associate with him. I personally think that he’s more aware of his own emotions and other people’s than that, for a number of reasons (it’s too long a discussion to get into here, I think), but I’m here for all sorts of interpretations of him!

I don’t think that having alexithymia would prevent him from having a complete breakdown post-canon, because struggling to identify emotions doesn’t prevent people from feeling them or from experiencing all the worst after effects of dissociation. But more on that in the next section!

Dissociation:

I completely agree that he’s dissociating in those Jinyuan Alliance scenes, and possibly while meditating, and yeah, dissociation can definitely manifest as that “cottony” feeling, or it can be even more dramatic (e.g. higher cognitive functions are off, brain is blank or just filled with static rather than thoughts or emotions, temporarily paralyzed/immobile). I’ll get more into what dissociation is and why in a future meta, but for now, think of a freeze response, when an animal plays dead: it’s a response to abject helplessness. It’s your consciousness yeeting itself out of your body because your body is no longer safe to inhabit and the only way to survive the experience is to not be there for it and hope the person hurting you gives up soon if you don’t react. (It’s especially common in survivors of childhood physical and sexual abuse.) 

All that to say, yes, I agree that DFS dissociates a lot (and I’ll analyze some examples more in a future post on dissociation for anyone who doesn’t take a look at his eyes or body language and say “ohhhhhh. I know that look. Yeah, he’s not in there right now.”). And although that was absolutely necessary for his survival, both as a child and as an adult with JLQ, it is going to be abjectly nightmarish if/when he feels safe enough to let down his hypervigilance, because although his mind might have blocked out the details, the body always remembers the trauma, and that almost always means the body is storing those memories and sensations until such time as the mind decides it is safe to survive feeling it. In excruciating, full sensory detail. 

But more on that in a future meta. 

Overstimulation/triggers:

I completely agree that DFS has sound sensitivity issues and that it is at least in part from hypervigilance, and I love that you pointed out the way FDB is so vibrantly present. As to whether FDB’s presence would be grounding or not, I think it would depend completely on what other trauma triggers DFS encountered on that day and how grounded or not he was already feeling. One of the tricky things about CPTSD is that, since the trauma is so relational (a.k.a. Other people were involved), other people and relationships are inherently triggers, especially if you grew up without ever knowing what physical or emotional safety felt like. Because even though noise from someone sharing a space is expected, the individual sounds, their volumes, their rhythms, and the activities producing the sounds are all constantly changing, which, to someone with hypervigilance from trauma, can be incredibly triggering because part of your brain will be constantly trying to analyze the other person’s movements to make sure they’re not a threat. So even if he 1000% trusts and loves FDB, or even LLH, for that matter, an unexpected shout or thump from him in the other room or behind him could absolutely trigger him. Potentially, years in the future, provided their space feels sufficiently safe and he’s found a way to process more of his trauma (not just compartmentalize it), the perpetual erratic sounds from FDB could be soothing and familiar and grounding. But even if it is generally grounding, that won't always be true, because one day–an anniversary of his imprisonment, or because he had a nightmare, or because earlier that day he caught a whiff of the same perfume JLQ wore or heard someone with a laugh similar to the head of Di Fortress’ laugh–he would be feeling on edge enough that it would trigger him just as much as it would have years earlier. Trauma’s obnoxious like that.

Thanks again for the response! It’s so great other people are excited to talk about MLC and trauma representations.

Mysterious Lotus Casebook and Complex PTSD Representations: Part I

One of my favorite things about Mysterious Lotus Casebook is how surprisingly nuanced and unusual its portrayal of complex PTSD is. So many shows either introduce character trauma to make the character Sad and Brooding, Angry and Violent (if they’re a villain) or Hesitant to Start a Relationship (if it’s a romance), and that’s usually as in-depth as it gets. If they address the unique after effects of child abuse that lead to complex PTSD at all, it’s usually either explain why a character is a homicidal monster (which is all sorts of problematic) or it’s limited to a single phobia, which can be overcome by the Power of Love, or it’s just something that crops up occasionally for Plot and then forgotten about the rest of the time. 

Mysterious Lotus Casebook gives us two deeply traumatized characters–Li Lianhua and Di Feisheng–who each have clear symptoms of complex PTSD, and yet, their cPTSD manifests completely differently because of the types of traumas that caused it and their relationships to the people causing the traumas. And their manifestations of cPTSD affect just about every level of their being, including their sense of self, their decision-making, and their relationships with others, and it includes some of the incredibly important manifestations of cPTSD that are almost never shown in media while avoiding the most insulting stereotypes! 

PTSD vs cPTSD

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is an anxiety disorder caused by experiencing a single (or short lived) traumatic event (an accident, assault, medical emergency, fighting in a war, etc), where the symptoms last for longer than a month. Symptoms include things like reexperiencing the event (flashbacks), avoidance (of things related to the event), changes in mood (depression, anger, fear, etc), and issues with emotional regulation (hypervigilance–being constantly on the lookout for threats–irritability/angry outbursts, etc.).

Complex PTSD happens if someone has experienced long term, chronic/repeated trauma that induces hopelessness and no chance of escape (survivors of extended child abuse, human trafficking, domestic violence, prisoners of war, slavery, etc.). It’s also often interpersonal in ways a car crash or medical emergency is not, and is particularly linked with chronic trauma during childhood: chronic stress hormones introduce literal physical changes in a growing brain, particularly the amygdala (which processes fear), hippocampus (which is responsible for learning/memory), and the prefrontal cortex (which is responsible for executive function), so it can affect every aspect of life and also affect a child’s progression through developmental stages. In addition to these physical changes to the brain, the prolonged trauma–particularly the helplessness–distorts a child’s sense of self, the perpetrator, and the world in ways that alter their decision making, their memory, and their future relationships. 

For instance, whereas a traumatic event that caused PTSD might make you depressed or not trust the person who harmed you (or to fear driving), the trauma from cPTSD might make you suicidal, blame yourself for your victimization, decide to isolate to avoid interpersonal relationships to keep from getting hurt, or become obsessed with never being harmed again.

Basically, cPTSD has the core symptoms from PTSD with some extra challenges, including issues with emotional regulation, self-concept, interruptions in consciousness, difficulties with relationships, perceptions of the perpetrator, and systems of meaning.

DFS and LLH: CPTSD Symptoms

There’s so much more to say about this than I can cover in this superficial introduction, so this will be the first of a series of metas; I’m hoping to go into more depth about some of these categories in future posts (the DFS and emotional regulation/violence one is already drafted, so stay tuned). 

Difficulties with Relationships (problems with trust, communication, missing red flags): Both DFS and LLH have a history of trusting the wrong people and not trusting the right people, both in the past and in the present of the show: in the past, LLH missed the fact that SGD hated him and DFS missed the fact that JLQ was obsessed with him, and as a result, both sects were destroyed, many people died, and the two almost destroyed each other. If they had communicated with each other instead of fighting at the donghai battle, they might have realized they were being set up and could have worked together, but their difficulties with trust after perceived betrayal made that impossible for them. They both have a history of overlooking red flags in the present–DFS in particular, keeping the red-flag-personified-JLQ around despite her history of poisoning people, including himself–and they both tend to struggle with relationships in the present: LLH runs away from and/or drugs the people who care about him, and DFS sends endless mixed messages by not telling Li Lianhua most of his plans to help him. 

Self-Concept (Self-hatred and self-fragmentation): Li Lianhua is basically the poster child for having a negative self concept: he has an overdeveloped sense of self-blame and responsibility, even believing he deserves to die for leading his men to their deaths, and once he learns he was manipulated and SGD was behind it all, he seems to think it’s his own fault that he was manipulated, lied to, and abused. His self-loathing is so extreme that he imagines his earlier self, Li Xiangyi, to have died, and tries as much as possible to be nothing like that earlier persona. His repeated insistence that Li Xiangyi and Li Lianhua are NOT the same person is reminiscent of the fragmentary sense of self that comes with more extreme trauma, like Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) or Other-Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD), where traumatic experiences are so painful that people form different alters, or differentiated self-states, that can have different names and skills and memories and identities. 

Di Feisheng doesn’t have the self-hatred or guilt that LLH does, and it seems like he tries to skip over questions of self worth, blame, or hatred by focusing exclusively on staying true to his code of ethics he’s developed for himself and focusing on gaining the strength necessary to fight for his freedom from mind control and the Di Fortress. But even though he’s kept his Di name, kept his goals the same since escaping Di Fortress, and hasn’t tried to separate himself from his trauma the way LLH did with LXY, he’s even more willing than LLH to take on different identities: it’s literally one of his martial arts skills. The Bone Constriction Skill lets him become someone else for a time, whether that’s a child or Shi Hun. It fits well with his willingness to be whoever he needs to be to accomplish his goals: he’s perfectly willing to be seen as a heartless villain if it lets him protect LLH, and he’s willing to flirt with and pretend to be jealous of JLQ to get information from her, and he’s willing to be LLH’s a-Fei, both with and without his memories.

Interruptions in Consciousness (Amnesia and nightmares for Everyone): LLH and DFS both have nightmares and flashbacks/memories of traumatic events, and as mentioned above, both have interesting hints of having fragmented/fluid senses of self. They both also dissociate, or separate themselves from the present when dealing with traumatic things:  LLH spaces out and gets stuck in his past memories about SGD when talking to FDB after burying SGD, and DFS dissociates from physical pain so as not to make noise both after he’s been stabbed and poisoned with Wuxin Huai and again when JLQ is torturing him in her water dungeon.

They both also have dissociative amnesia that takes away trauma memories, although one is from a poisonous incense plus the magic of qi macgyvering:  LLH forgot the existence of his older brother who died in front of him, and DFS as a-Fei had just about all of his memories (except a few of killing as a child) taken away. Amnesia is a huge part of cPTSD, because it’s the brain’s way of trying to protect you from truths that you might not survive. It can manifest as blocking out one single traumatic event, a bunch of thematically or temporally linked traumatic events, a skill set related to the trauma, or, in the case of something like DID or OSDD, just about everything. It’s endlessly fascinating to me that the show gives us one example of definite traumatic amnesia through LLH, and then seems to almost transform the experience of having DID and being a new part and finding yourself with a new name and very little else into an exaggerated fantasy setting (interestingly, people often report experiencing debilitating headaches when they try to regain memories behind the amnesia barrier). I doubt this is what they were actually going for, since DID is almost universally portrayed incorrectly and offensively in media (one of the alters is almost always portrayed as a serial killer, but that’s a rant for another day), but the different names and the presence of amnesia with LLH made it a fascinating enough parallel that I had to mention it.

 Problems with Emotional Regulation (Lashing in vs. lashing out): Li Xiangyi and Di Feisheng are polar opposites when it comes to struggles with emotional regulation: whereas LXY turns his anger inward, directing it all toward self-hate in what’s often called a “toxic shame spiral,” both after the donghai battle and after he finds out about SGD’s role in his shifu’s death, DFS lashes out physically at those who have harmed him, usually via choking people, although he is usually exerting an impressive amount of control over his emotions and strength. To put in perspective just how different their emotional strategies are and how much effort DFS puts into emotional regulation, compare how much more calm he is than LLH during any revelation of past betrayal or painful information, any scene where they confront the people who have abused them, or any scene where they learn they’ve been wrong about something big; LLH is most likely having an emotional flashback (re-experiencing the emotions from the earlier traumas) and DFS is probably compartmentalizing them or dissociating from them to process later/never so he can stay semi-functional and not show a potential opponent a weak spot. 

NOTE: This means that DFS is loooong overdue for a very dramatic breakdown when it eventually all catches up to him and he can’t distract himself from it anymore.

Perceptions of Perpetrators: In this way only, Di Feisheng has one advantage: he knows the head of Di Fortress is a cruel, abusive tyrant. While he clearly still fears him, even as a physically strong adult (he has nightmares, flashbacks, and dedicates his life to being free from him, which means he still to some extent feels young, small, and helpless when he thinks of him), DFS knows that he hates him and wants to be free of him. This is probably part of why he’s spared some of the self-hatred LLH experiences: he knows he didn’t deserve the abuse because seeing it happen to other children means he knows the abuse wasn’t a personal reflection on him. It does, however, motivate him to want to be stronger and invulnerable so as to never be helpless again, and that obsession is what drives him to have a single-minded focus on reaching the pinnacle of the jianghu.  

It’s so much more complicated for Li Lianhua (and for a more detailed analysis, check out this meta): the childhood perpetrators were manifold–a slew of bandits, whichever children and adults on the street would abuse him for existing and being poor–it probably felt like life itself was to blame. It’s no wonder that when his shifu and shiniang took him in, they were the ultimate rescuers whom he hero-worshipped, so when he felt he made a mistake and his life fell apart, he blamed himself: at least there would be someone to blame that way and something he could do about it (try to kill his past self and hate everything about him). It’s also very telling that LLH doesn’t blame JLQ or YBQ all that much when he learns they poisoned him, and that he’s more angry that SGD murdered their shifu than he is that SGD set him up, hated him, and was the real mastermind behind everything he had blamed himself for; he struggles to stay angry at people who harm him, and would rather blame and hate himself for being tricked than hate the person who tricked him. So, whereas DFS tries to destroy the people who abused him, LLH tries to destroy himself.

If you read this far, thanks! I’m probably going to be posting the DFS and emotional regulation/violence against perpetrator meta next, because it’s drafted, but if there are any of these you desperately want me to talk about more sooner rather than later, let me know! :D