#im tired but basically i dont think he meant to get the church involved

[sadieshavingsex]

wow. been a few weeks since I’ve posted here. things have rapidly gotten better for me over the past few weeks to the point where I’m honestly kind of still waiting for the upper shoe to drop. I want to take a sec to tell about the major things that have finally clicked and helped.

i left a cut because it's a handful of paragraphs. lots of stuff about my relationship dynamics and evangelicalism and how they intertwine and what I've been learning, plus a resource I've been using that has really helped me with this

first off, I totally and finally cut off all means of common contact with my ex. he actually was the one to tell me to stop getting in touch, but I also was able to ensure that I blocked him on multiple accounts and (at least for now) will also not receive messages from heavily involved mutual friends/acquaintances/etc (this was a huge issue previously even after both of us had individually tried to stay out of touch with the other. Like people from his life just kept messaging me all the time as though nothing was wrong, which I think was a huge thing holding me back from effectively moving on).

I haven’t heard from the man or his family/friends or had to unwillingly be subjected to his face on socials for 3 ish weeks now and it has already made a world of difference. with actual distance from him I can clearly see why my most popular post is my most popular post. “IM TIRED OF FEELING PATHOLOGIZED IM TIRED OF PATHOLOGIZING MYSELF!” This was probably the most massive issue in the relationship. I had valid wants, needs, and ideas about what a relationship should and could be that he just couldn’t fulfill, and instead of simply leaving it be and letting him go for my own sanity, I gaslit myself (and sometimes let him gaslight me) into thinking that when my VERY VALID and often RELATIVELY BASIC wants and needs weren’t being addressed, I was “too needy” and there was something wrong with ME that could be fixed. And I tried to fix it for two fucking years - often by going to therapy, trying to find a diagnosis, reading a ton of self-help books, etc! Until a few weeks ago, when I suddenly came to this reframe that like, there are plenty of people who can meet me where I am with the kind of care I’m looking for and achieve basic relational goals for things like HONESTY, ENTHUSIASM, EMOTIONAL SAFETY, and beyond. Some of these were already a struggle from the start of the relationship with Sam and most got significantly worse as we stayed together for almost a year and a half. And continued to get worse even afterward as I tried to salvage a friendship or relationship or whatever I could with this person who was treating me generally pretty hurtfully, whether he meant to or not.

I can see how evangelicalism would play a huge role here, because the church very much used the rhetoric of “if you aren’t happy and fulfilled with what you’re being given (often mistreatment lol), YOU are the problem and need to try harder/renew your mind/be more faithful/etc”

what a whirlwind to come out the other side of this and say, SOMETIMES YOU ARE NOT THE PROBLEM. I was trying so hard to “heal” and “fix myself” so that I could be a better, more accepting girlfriend and the reality is that MANY people would agree that the way Sam treated me was below the bar for what a healthy relationship should look like. I was trying to contort myself to feel happy and healthy within a dynamic that was simply bad for me! And a lot of the time Sam contributed heavily to it! But instead of thinking about what I want, need, and deserve in a relationship, I just thought about why I clearly was in the wrong and needed to “get help” to make it work. Here’s the lesson: I DONT NEED TO SETTLE OR BECOME SMALLER TO MAKE A RELATIONSHIP WORK!

I’m going to take a break from therapy for a little while this coming month and I think it will be good. The truth is that I was in a relationship that was super negative for me in many ways beyond the sex stuff I talked about on this blog, and I just didn’t leave and kept trying to do the majority of the lifting to make it work. I thought something was wrong with ME when the reality is that I am who I am and my needs and wants are valid and the SITUATION was just so wrong for me. The ocd therapist I’d started seeing said she thought the greatest exposure would be being myself and just doing me, and I think I agree.

For so long I was part of a religion where I had to use doublethink and make myself, my thoughts, my needs, my goals, and my wants small to make the situation make sense as a fruitful and fulfilling relationship. And that’s essentially what I just did, again, for a year and a half.

I think it’s time to validate myself big time. The things I want are really not crazy and can often easily be found if I know where to look. Yeah, I have some mental health issues, but many of them have been insanely exacerbated and blown out of regular proportion beyond belief by the relationships and situations I’ve found myself in and decided to remain in even though they were harmful, confusing, unfulfilling, etc. It’s time to take up space. It’s time to get what I want and not settle for less! Not to allow obvious red flags to even enter the picture. Just to enjoy my life for what it is and how happy I can be when I meet my needs and treat myself and invest in situations and relationships that lift me up rather than tearing me down. Thank you all for being with me through the past year and a half. I’m so excited and feel so good these recent days, it’s really almost unbelievable compared to how I felt around Sam, especially after he’d broken up with me but would still come around occasionally. I can post more soon about resources that have helped me during this time, but the biggest one currently is Erica Smith’s Sexual Values Workbook for Purity Culture Dropouts (which is actually on sale right now). It has opened my eyes to what really matters to me surrounding sex and allowed me to think really clearly about some of the dynamics in the relationship that were so off that I just couldn’t see, many of which came out through the distress around sex but were really far beyond it in terms of scope. I’m so happy to be doing this workbook while single and enjoying learning about myself without judgment. Can’t wait to keep you all updated as I go and grow❤️ all my love always

[astraeal]

i will elaborate (perhaps) on this in the morning but i don’t think cal is trying to take over all of candia bc i think he’s too smart to do that, but i think the entire plot has unraveled out of his hands and he’s now screwed. i think his entire reasoning was personal, to kill amethar bc of personal reasons, but not actually in pursuit of any actual power; but then things didn’t go according to plan, amethar didn’t die on the sucrosi road, and now cal is on plan c with no idea, really, if it’s going to actually work

edit: okay lets talk about this, under the cut bc it got super long

1. Calroy is well versed in politics. This seems very obvious because that’s kind of his whole job, on both a meta gaming level and also an in-world level, to be the kind of pop up character to explain to people who has what title, perhaps how they got it, and how important/relevant that makes them to the current situation. He would have known that it would be an incredibly messy affair to have the crown of Candia sit on his head.

Not only would it have to go from Amethar to Jet to Ruby, but if they got killed off completely (or excommunicated, *cough cough*), then the crown goes all the way to the mountains with House Jawbreaker. And I know this started as a bit but he has....so many partners and children, even within the one marriage that is “legitimate” in the eyes of the Bulbian Church. As it’s basically implied that Liam is the youngest, that is a whole bunch of children who are able to ascend to the throne of Candia, and he would have to kill or get rid of all of them, in addition to whoever else comes before a minor cake lord like himself.

2. His villainous speech was only ever digs at Amethar. Normally the entire “Ah ha, you’ve walked into my trap! Let me tell you all of my plans!” has...you know, plans to it. Now this could be him being too smart to fully explain all of what he plans to do, but honestly it only ever seemed like his goal was to get rid of Amethar. He only killed Rococoa because she found out that he was dealing arms to the Ceresians, and he only tortured Manta Ray Jack because he wanted one last Hail Mary pass, as he admits!

“You know, it hurts, to have all of your plans fail, but they say improvisation is the better part of planning, so...I was happy to take advantage of that opportunity when it presented itself, Amethar.” He didn’t plan to get the Church involved at all, so the whole idea of betting on Amethar being excommunicated in the first place is ridiculous. He didn’t even know that was an option until Manta Ray Jack mentioned the girl, and even then, it was last minute.

“What about the ambush on the Sucrosi Road?” you ask. “Amethar was the only one contractually obligated to be on that road in the first place,” i reply. The twins badgered their mother to go on the trip with him, and in response Theo and Lapin got dragged into going as well. The summons was only for Amethar, and then whoever else he chose to bring. Not only was Cal not supposed to be there in the first place, but neither were the twins.

The eldest of which, we see in Jet’s flashback in episode 7, he’s established a relationship with. He is the only adult of the court who encourages Jet’s questioning of the laws of Candia, with the actual know how to explain, perhaps, how those things should be changed. Which leads me to my next point:

3. Jet was never supposed to die, because Cal was betting on her to be the successor after Amethar’s murder. He was counting on the princesses not being in the carriages on the Sucrosi Road, but they were, and one of them almost died but like, whatever, it was the younger twin. Then he was counting on Jet being in a different melee pit than her father during the tournament, but it didn’t matter because Amethar survived that attack on his life too. So then comes the ambush, which was an attack meant entirely for Caramelinda.

Of course, this third attempt is way after Cal thought Amethar was going to die. It was well after Brennan thought Amethar was going to be alive too! So he was betting on his camaraderie with Jet to be able to groom her for the throne, to question everything and, perhaps, establish a new kind of Candia in which Calroy had more respect, but that’s still a long line of people before he could ever sit his fancy pants ass down on the throne.

4. Okay, but when he got the Bulbian Church involved, what was the plan there? What if the girls were supposed to die in that encounter? Excellent questions, but I really don’t think Cal was hoping for the entire family to die: I think he got put, pun semi-intended, between a rock and a hard place, and this was the nuclear option. If he couldn’t kill this king with careful planning and political motivations, he could just....straight up disqualify him from even being able to be king.

But, again, he would have known that the crown would have gone to Jawbreaker in that instance, so again, I don’t really think any of this was about power so much as it was about fuck Amethar.

5. We aren’t entirely certain the level of Cal’s involvement with Lord Stilton Curdeau. We know for certain that Cal “put the little cheese boy on the scent of the Duchess Coldbottle” and that he had to ferry the assassins to that part of the road to set up the ambush, but, again, those only reinforce the fact that he wanted Amethar dead. We can certainly imagine that Cal told Stilton “Hey, lend me some of your assassins to take care of the King of Candia and you’ll be next in line for the Emperor’s seat, if only by proxy” but again, there was no guarantee that Stilton was going to be released from his religious vows, if Cal even knew about that.

If we really wanted to go beyond the timeline of the campaign, we could argue that Cal perhaps had something to do with all of Stilton’s brother’s deaths, but again, I genuinely don’t think he would have seen this far ahead. Why would killing some minor lords of the Dairy Islands help to get Amethar dead?

Personally, I think Stilton did that himself but used the cover of the religious vows to be like “why would I want lordship, i can’t even take it or marry, i’m only for the church 🙏🏻😇” meanwhile he’s sinking his brother’s ships, just like he tried to do with Primsy.

6. His “final” words to Amethar: Here’s to a future you can’t ruin. I literally just think Calroy wants Amethar gone because he feels that Amethar doesn’t deserve to be king. Being fifth in line, he shouldn’t have been king, but he became so. Being clearly not good with names and titles - hence, Calroy’s entire position being necessary - means that he’s kind of....a terrible king, if he had to do it himself. As it is, he’s just there because of his family line, not because of a deep seated desire for rulership.

7. But what about all the Ceresian soldiers?? That he got into the lands of Candia, and his clearly deep connections with them, given that he was arms dealing with them during the Ravening War. Yeah, again, I think that Cal got too far into this plan and he’s capitalizing on a situation that tumbled out of his hands. Getting the church involved was a nuclear option because it entirely destroyed Candia from the inside out - instead of deposing the king, he wound up deposing the entire House of Rocks and now Candia is in open rebellion, technically.

TLDR; Calroy Cruller is just The Worst “Best Friend” Ever and wanted Amethar dead and gone.