#honestly if a hippo spoke to me I'd probably shit myself and die

[onbearfeet]

Episode 5

*internal screaming*

*external whimpering*

*werewolf being squished*

Hey, guys, guess what! It's possible to tense all your muscles with anxiety in such a way as to fuck up at least half your back!

...yeah, I'm lying down now.

So, uh, hearing the name "Randall" was a whole-ass flashback, and not in the good way. I'd forgotten Randall Spector existed, but as a kid I read the '90s run where he was introduced and hooooooo boy. Weird to be asked to sympathize with a child version of, uh, that dude. Good call not nicknaming him Randy this time; I don't think Steven would have been able to keep a straight face.

Yes. Yes, I am avoiding talking about the upsetting thing. I will talk about it now because I commit to the bit, apparently even at the cost of mild self-harm, and if that isn't the story of my life ...

So. Um. Two things about my brother that caused this episode to poke me REAL HARD in the trauma. Thing one: DID is often set off by childhood abuse, as it was with Marc et al. In my brother's case, it was his biological parents beating the shit out of him, usually with an electrical cord, but sometimes with, yes, a belt. And like with Marc/Steven, the trigger to those beatings was usually an extremely normal child behavior like crying or making a mess. I was not present for these beatings; I wasn't born yet. But I saw the results, including some marks on my brother's arms and the fact that he was the largest man in just about any room and he still flinched when someone used a sharp voice.

Thing two: receiving the shittiest mental healthcare imaginable made my brother's life indescribably worse! In the United States, the largest single source of mental healthcare is the prison system (or rather systems--federalism). After Reagan shut down most institutional mental-health facilities (not that I am defending those--nightmare for another day), the US started shoving as many mentally ill people as it could into the carceral system, including my brother. And because the pay is shit and the working conditions are appalling, it is not a preferred working environment for therapists, so there's a lot of turnover. My brother got a new therapist every six months or so, and guess what the first step in his treatment was every time? Yeah, it was a case history. Apparently nobody shared notes, ever, so he had to relive his traumas over and over again every six months. For fifteen years. Until he died. That is, no shit, a major part of how Child Me came to understand the Christian concept of hell: as being forced to re-experience the worst things that ever happened to you, over and over, forever, possibly while someone pretends to "help" you but actually hurts you worse.

This episode was distressing to me.

I hung on by my fingernails because at least Steven and Marc are finally getting to understand one another a bit, and Steven isn't treating Marc like a monster 100% of the time anymore. Good job, boys. Bonus points for Steven pointing out that Khonshu had been manipulating Marc from the beginning, and for Steven getting to kick a little ass. Here's hoping Marc has to deal with some of his self-hatred in the next episode.

This was not a great episode to watch at the end of an otherwise emotionally taxing day (ironically, therapy kicked my ass). But I'm gonna finish. I'm pretty sure the guitar music at the end was connected to Jake, and after all this, I want to hear Oscar Isaac speak Spanish.

Werewolf requests an intermission, though. He's concerned I'll pull something important if I don't take better care of myself.

Oh, and he has a name now! Russell. Thanks to @abirdie for suggesting it.

Kat watches Moon Knight

Okay, so with the encouragement of several people on here and the emotional support of my roommate, I have finally (in February 2024) started watching Moon Knight, a show whose basic concept scares the shit out of me.

Context: I had an adopted older brother with DID. Note that I said "had". That's past tense because life treated him so appallingly poorly that he died (horribly, in prison) when I was 19. Part of that abuse was enabled by pop-culture depictions of DID in the 1980s and 90s that convinced everyone who knew about his condition (including the court system) that he was a walking time bomb.

One of my earliest memories is of my brother as a young adult, playing Super Mario Bros with my toddler self. Another is of him patiently teaching me how to make friends with a large dog. I never met any of his alters, afaik; I was small and cute and safe for him to be himself with, so he probably didn't need them around me. He was a profoundly gentle man when he was allowed, and it hurt like hell to see him turned into a monster in movies and on TV. I've turned off a lot of "psychological thrillers" in sorrow and disgust.

Ironically, I loved Moon Knight comics as a kid in the 90s, BEFORE he was retconned to have DID circa the mid-2000s. Because those comics came out right after my brother died in 2002 and leaned HARD into making people with DID seem like violently unstable monsters (for reference, see the cover of Moon Knight: God and Country), I stopped reading them around 2008, when I couldn't take being poked in the trauma by a comfort character anymore.

But I do love Werewolf By Night, and there's been a lot of good fic mashing Jack up with Moon Knight without dehumanizing anyone, and several people have encouraged me to try the show. So this post will be a place for my thoughts as I try to work my way through with my Essential Editions in one hand and my memories of my brother in the other. I'll add to it as I watch.

If this entertains the Moon Knight fandom or provides useful fic reference, so be it. Just don't be jerks on my post.

Also, anyone who chooses to be shitty about my brother will be eaten by bears. I don't make the rules.

Episode 1

Okay, we open with Steven as our POV character, and he's...convinced he's a sleepwalker. All right, not terrible. Steven is now a bumbling nerd, which is probably an improvement; good luck making a billionaire playboy sympathetic in the 2020s. Jake would be the logical everyman POV from the comics, but I understand from fic that he's got a different role now. I'm confused about the accent, but it's only episode 1, and Steven clearly doesn't yet know who Khonshu is, or that Marc exists, so obviously there's a ways to go here. (Is Marc ... undercover inside Steven? Ugh, this is a trope I have seen and do not like.)

Did Marc kill Steven's fish? Did Khonshu kill Steven's fish? I'm baffled by the fish. Which is a nice break from the larger anxiety. I'm gonna try to worry more about the fish.

The bits with Steven losing time and finding himself in odd situations were distressingly close to the old tropes, but both of those happened to my brother, so I'm not going to bitch about them quite yet. I want to be as fair as I can.

Oh, hey, I recognize Harrow from the comics. What up, dude. How's the cult biz treating you?

The end of the episode, with the jackal thing chasing Steven into the bathroom, came RIGHT up to the line for me. I realized that what I was most afraid of was that the story would assign "good" and "bad" labels to the alters--make Steven the sweet, innocent one and Marc (or maybe Jake, I guess) the monstrous killer. The early flashes of Steven covered in blood didn't really help allay that anxiety. And now Marc is demanding that Steven let him have control in a pretty threatening manner. But so far, it seems like the contrast between Marc and Steven is one of competence--Marc is better at fighting and Steven is better at ... panicking? Unclear. At least Oscar Isaac is playing the protagonist, so his character(s) might remain sympathetic. Nobody has been monsterized quite yet.

I finished the episode with every muscle in my body locked up, waiting for the emotional punch in the face. But I did finish it, and I think I'm gonna try episode two.

[onbearfeet]

Episode 6

Welp. We made it.

As predicted by multiple commenters, Ep 5 was the trauma-heavy one, and Ep 6 was lighter in comparison--mostly plot and a wee bit of character development. And also a CGI fight sequence I choose to describe as "Kaiju, but also Egyptomania".

Marc's reunion with Steven was well-done. Again, my big fear is DID being monsterized, and this was the opposite of that, so well and good. I would have added a line about Marc expecting to die when he gave the heart to Steven, but ehhhh. It's fine. Probably.

I'm not sure highlighting the difference between Khonshu and Ammit as a minor theological squabble was the right move, writing-wise, especially since the whole thing boils down to an argument about free will vs. destiny while 1) that is an argument that nobody really wins in contemporary media and 2) Moon Knight might be the single worst Marvel hero to involve in that discussion. Oh, well. Still rhetorically clearer than FATWS.

Layla's turn as an avatar was fun, although it did get me and roomie arguing about whether she was too similar to Wonder Woman. (I maintain that if Marc is Marvel Batman and Layla is Marvel Wonder Woman, that just makes their relationship WonderBat, which I enjoy immensely, so SHUSH.)

Marc's decision not to kill Harrow was ... interesting? Weird? I dunno, this kind of seemed like a valid use case for Marc VERY occasionally killing someone, what with the apocalypse and all. I get the reasoning behind Marc choosing not to kill anyone at the climax, but it fell a bit flat for me that his actual proposed solution was just...leaving?

Okay, Jake. Let's talk about Jake, because on the one hand, I did get to hear Oscar Isaac speak Spanish, and on the other, eek.

So one last bit of Kat's Dead Brother Lore (and please remember that if you are shitty about him, the bears will eat you): he had at least one alter that I never met but that was, by all accounts, a fucking nightmare. Nearly took my dad out with a carpet knife once. (I am not saying Dad didn't say or do something to deserve it, mind you. But in context, he could have just loomed over my brother by accident in the wrong moment. This alter was not a discerning soul.) According to my brother's best guess, this alter, whom I'll call S because fuck if I'm saying his name when I'm not even saying my bro's, came into being to absorb abuse from his biological parents and, eventually, to protect him and his younger bio-bro from said abuse. Everything I heard about S aligned with what I later experienced with one of MY biological siblings, sometimes referred to on here as my ex-brother. My ex-bro checks all the boxes for psychopathy and is the main reason I have PTSD. So with all that context, I'm prepared to call S a scary motherfucker.

And yes, S is why my brother died in prison. He did something horrifying. I will not elaborate beyond saying that nobody died, and that's probably why no one tried to death-penalty my brother.

Anyway. Jake.

Jake reminds me of S in some ways, although he's obviously much more organized, at least with Khonshu directing him. He's also, uh, MUCH more comfortable with lethal violence than S ever seemed to be. The people S hurt were usually people he perceived, rightly or wrongly, as threats. There were an awful lot of bodies in that hallway that I doubt could have been interpreted as threats to Marc or Steven.

That leads me to an interesting place, emotionally. Maybe it's because I'm used to thinking of my brother as a victim in many ways, but if Jake originated as a protector for Marc and Steven--someone who took the worst of the abuse at first and maybe did the worst of the violence later on--then his continued willingness to work for Khonshu might be another layer of self-victimization.

Put simply, Marc was willing to destroy himself for Steven. Is Jake doing the same for Marc? Perhaps making a private deal with Khonshu to let the other two go so easily? Does Jake see himself as an acceptable loss for his brothers' freedom? Has Khonshu manipulated Jake even more profoundly than he did Marc?

I dunno. I've seen fanfics writing Jake as a mysterious, "evil" alter, but there isn't enough in one scene to say whether the story itself is monsterizing Jake. I'd be interested to know if a fanfic writer has portrayed Jake as essentially Khonshu's latest victim. (Not sure I'd have the fortitude to read that, but I'd like to know if it exists.)

Okay. Not a perfect show, and it was a near thing getting through it, but I think I'm glad I did.

Oh, and now roomie wants to watch WBN and Daredevil with me because he's enjoying the comics facts, so that's fun.

That's all for now, folks. Russell the Emotional Support Werewolf thanks you for your attention.

Kat watches Moon Knight

Okay, so with the encouragement of several people on here and the emotional support of my roommate, I have finally (in February 2024) started watching Moon Knight, a show whose basic concept scares the shit out of me.

Context: I had an adopted older brother with DID. Note that I said "had". That's past tense because life treated him so appallingly poorly that he died (horribly, in prison) when I was 19. Part of that abuse was enabled by pop-culture depictions of DID in the 1980s and 90s that convinced everyone who knew about his condition (including the court system) that he was a walking time bomb.

One of my earliest memories is of my brother as a young adult, playing Super Mario Bros with my toddler self. Another is of him patiently teaching me how to make friends with a large dog. I never met any of his alters, afaik; I was small and cute and safe for him to be himself with, so he probably didn't need them around me. He was a profoundly gentle man when he was allowed, and it hurt like hell to see him turned into a monster in movies and on TV. I've turned off a lot of "psychological thrillers" in sorrow and disgust.

Ironically, I loved Moon Knight comics as a kid in the 90s, BEFORE he was retconned to have DID circa the mid-2000s. Because those comics came out right after my brother died in 2002 and leaned HARD into making people with DID seem like violently unstable monsters (for reference, see the cover of Moon Knight: God and Country), I stopped reading them around 2008, when I couldn't take being poked in the trauma by a comfort character anymore.

But I do love Werewolf By Night, and there's been a lot of good fic mashing Jack up with Moon Knight without dehumanizing anyone, and several people have encouraged me to try the show. So this post will be a place for my thoughts as I try to work my way through with my Essential Editions in one hand and my memories of my brother in the other. I'll add to it as I watch.

If this entertains the Moon Knight fandom or provides useful fic reference, so be it. Just don't be jerks on my post.

Also, anyone who chooses to be shitty about my brother will be eaten by bears. I don't make the rules.

Episode 1

Okay, we open with Steven as our POV character, and he's...convinced he's a sleepwalker. All right, not terrible. Steven is now a bumbling nerd, which is probably an improvement; good luck making a billionaire playboy sympathetic in the 2020s. Jake would be the logical everyman POV from the comics, but I understand from fic that he's got a different role now. I'm confused about the accent, but it's only episode 1, and Steven clearly doesn't yet know who Khonshu is, or that Marc exists, so obviously there's a ways to go here. (Is Marc ... undercover inside Steven? Ugh, this is a trope I have seen and do not like.)

Did Marc kill Steven's fish? Did Khonshu kill Steven's fish? I'm baffled by the fish. Which is a nice break from the larger anxiety. I'm gonna try to worry more about the fish.

The bits with Steven losing time and finding himself in odd situations were distressingly close to the old tropes, but both of those happened to my brother, so I'm not going to bitch about them quite yet. I want to be as fair as I can.

Oh, hey, I recognize Harrow from the comics. What up, dude. How's the cult biz treating you?

The end of the episode, with the jackal thing chasing Steven into the bathroom, came RIGHT up to the line for me. I realized that what I was most afraid of was that the story would assign "good" and "bad" labels to the alters--make Steven the sweet, innocent one and Marc (or maybe Jake, I guess) the monstrous killer. The early flashes of Steven covered in blood didn't really help allay that anxiety. And now Marc is demanding that Steven let him have control in a pretty threatening manner. But so far, it seems like the contrast between Marc and Steven is one of competence--Marc is better at fighting and Steven is better at ... panicking? Unclear. At least Oscar Isaac is playing the protagonist, so his character(s) might remain sympathetic. Nobody has been monsterized quite yet.

I finished the episode with every muscle in my body locked up, waiting for the emotional punch in the face. But I did finish it, and I think I'm gonna try episode two.