#no one’s fault. just trauma and mental illness getting to me

[cuteniarose]

Tagged by @katkastrofa for the WIP game :)

Rules: make a new post with the names of all the files in your WIP folder, regardless of how non-descriptive or ridiculous. Let people send you an ask with the title that most intrigues them, and then post a little snippet or tell them something about it! Then, tag as many people as you have WIPs

Okay, so.. I’m very much like Kat in that I don’t sort my stuff into folders (well.. I do with my art, but only after it’s been finished and posted because if I stick a WIP somewhere I can’t immediately see it I will forget about its existence. I have the object permanence of a newborn. Also, once something is labelled a WIP it is never getting done. Either I complete it in one sitting or I might as well delete it), and the thing is, I don’t name my WIPs either. For reference, my gdocs literally looks like this:

I really don’t write that much, the docs above are all either already posted or abandoned, and my notes app is full of stuff I cannot post on here so I have close to nothing to show off, but.. I suppose I can scavenge around for some scraps here and there

Feat. improvised descriptions, because as much as I would love to play russian roulette with a bunch of “untitled document” and “new note” options, no one’s gonna care for that (no one’s gonna care anyway, but you know…):

Haya fic

How to explain self harm to a five year old

Gentle and sweet hair cutting scene (that is three weeks overdue because my life fell apart and the last thing I wanted to do was write)

Cruel and painful hair cutting scene (that I completely forgot about but actually never finished, and it could stand to be rewritten, so it counts)

Angsty UtOS bit (that I’m never gonna finish because I wrote like 100 words then had a breakdown 🫠)

And I don’t have anyone to tag, so this bloodline (read as: tag game) ends with me :P

[fionnaskyborn]

I wonder if there is like a quota for how many fuckups a man can make in life. I don't know where I was going with this. I guess I just wish every step I made wasn't one in the wrong direction, or that I could at least backpedal out of bad decisions without any fatal consequences like damaging someone else. Life sucks.

[omohole]

i loooove college (i dont i really fucking dont) hahaah im cramming as many late/missed assignments as possible before the semester ends in four days wahoo yippee ahahahahaahah

[annabelle--cane]

I guess the thing that makes me not so fond of Jon's addiction allegory is that it's only coherent to a certain extent? Like I think people sometimes forget that he's actively violating these people

anon, through no fault of your own you have accidentally hit upon my sleeper agent trigger phrase. I have layers of answers to this.

so first off, yeah, it's not a 1:1 direct metaphor, it's a soupy dream logic fantasy plot device with flavors of a lot of different things. there's quite a lot of addiction in there, there's some abuse of power, there's some cyclical nature of trauma, there's a dash of disability, there's a few notes of gendered violence, there's a good bit of just. violence violence and being kind of a motherfucker because goddammit it feels good to be an active agent about something in your life, even if it's just choosing to be a worse version of yourself than you strictly need to be. a lot of tma's worldbuilding is very allegorical, but apart from aspects of individual statements nothing really matches up quite 1:1 with a real world counterpart, and if more things did then it probably wouldn't be a fantasy show anymore.

secondly. okay to contextualize this answer a little bit I have a kind of hypothetical video essay project about vampirism and addiction that I like to spend a few hours thinking about every so often but am almost certainly never going to make because the full research burden required is a lot higher than I actually have the time to properly do. but because of that I've spent a lot of time sorting through why framing vampires as addicts really works for me in a way that it doesn't seem to for everyone, and I think a lot of my thoughts on that also apply to jon. there's going to be a bit of a detour here before we get back to talking about tma, but we'll get there, I prommy.

I've seen a lot of people take issue with various paranormal addiction allegories because, a lot of the time, the act that is meant to metaphorically represent the act of use itself is something that is directly and inherently harmful to others, e.g. drinking human blood, handing over power to your hedonistic Evil alter ego, holding the cursed amulet and going crazy going stupid, slurping trauma out of the head of some guy you ran into on a boat to norway, etc., and yeah, I do get that. substance use is not inherently harmful like that to anyone except sometimes the user themself, and addicts are not inherently fucked up and destructive people; those are dangerous stereotypes that often lead to the demonizing of a whole group of sick people.

here's the thing for me, though: those are definitely truths I want explored and represented when it comes to portrayals of non-allegorical actual addicts, but fantasy fiction isn't for showing the world as it is, it's for showing a subjective fun house mirror version of reality where certain aspects are minimized and magnified depending on how it feels to live through it. and yes, absolutely in real life drug use is not an inherently evil act and it does not make you an inherently evil person, but... doesn't it kind of feel like that? sort of? absolutely no one is living their best life nor on their best behavior while experiencing any kind of major mental illness episode, and when it comes to addiction you've got a very clear tangible symbol of when The Episode is happening that it feels like you have much more control over than when it comes to other illnesses. it's also a thing where people are a lot more likely to be openly angry and distrustful of you if they find out it's happening. so you mix together the ideas of "I know I get worse as a result of doing this one specific thing" + "I act less like myself when I'm using, it rearranges my priorities and I care less about hurting people because that's what happens when you're experiencing The Horrors" + "society at large/people directly around me are pretty quick to say that doing this is evil," and you get the subjective emotional result of "I hurt people by using and it makes me monstrous." I tend to respond to those kinds of paranormal allegories like they're just cutting out the middle man of those subjective fears. "using makes me monstrous" -> "using is monstrous."

anyway. jon archivist.

don't get me wrong, I totally understand if this aspect of metaphor doesn't gel for some people and they only like taking it exactly as far as the text explicitly makes them, but I really get a lot out of reading jon's connection to the fears as addiction precisely because he does genuinely awful things to people as a result of it. he's a person in a very bad physical and mental place with little to no support who is constantly being told by both allies and enemies that he's already a monster just by being alive, and he copes with that by secretly falling further and further into an compulsive act of consumption that skews his priorities and makes him care less about hurting people because at least sometimes getting to be the cause of pain makes him feel a little bit less powerless when he has to be the subject of pain the rest of the time. then he's found out and is made to stop, and he has to grapple not just with the physical toll of withdrawal but with knowing there is a not insignificant part of him that will excuse any act of malice if he knows he'll feel better afterwards.

the end of tma is very explicit in the fact that the rules of its world are shaped by the subjective worst fears of those who live in it, it's "an exercise in unreliably reality" as jonny sims put it once, and I think that principle extends backwards in some ways to apply to the rest of the show. I don't think the fact that there are only entities of fear and not hope or love is meant to be a full commentary on the total nature of the real world, it's a reflection of what fear and suffering can make the world feel like. eric and melanie both go to really harsh extremes to extricate themselves from the fears and live peaceful lives, and in both cases something happens that foils their plans (getting murdered + the apocalypse, respectively), but I don't think the intended message is to say that is definitively how real life works, they are metaphors for the limits of individual agency in larger systems and represent two types of worst-case-scenarios. similarly, I don't think reading jon as an addict implies that addiction inherently involves violence or that the reactions of those around him were completely unjustified, it's just a subjective exploration of the kinds of fears that can come with addiction dialed up to 100.

[rzyraffek]

Slashers with y/n that just gets along with everything

Like slasher could litteraly kill somone near y/n and she would be like alr alr whats really important is that you are happy🤠😎. Im sorry that first 2character had super long headcanons while last ones have way less :( I had no ideas Request open!

Billy Lenz

He always expects some sort of negative response when he calls people and when he heard new voice on the Phone he got even more exited cuz new person new reaction! He totally didnt expect her to just go "yeah yeah sure buddy, anyways... how is your day man? Cuz im so so tired...*starts normal converstation*

He probably tries to stay in character but he is so caught of Guard he doesnt know how to react really (hehe the table has turn)

Now he kinda hopes that she will pick up cuz shes very intresting😈 billy likey

"Ew its this creep again! He is asking for you y/n? Of please dont tell me you befriended him??" "So what? He said hes favourite fruit is strawberry he cant be that bad!" *billy saying slurs on the phone*

You need to constantly tell him that, no Billy no harrasing women isnt sexy, you arent quirky, you are mentally ill

"Y/n i killed that bitch that was gossiping about you 🧍 " "👍good for you billy im glad you found healthy way to cope with that negative emotion😇" "on god"

His whole moral compass is created around the simple question 'does it hurt y/n?' .1:no it doesnt so feel free to do it .2 do not do it, she will ban Billy from sweets (bad ending)

The man from hush

This guy. This dude. This Little gremlin. He is upset that he gets no reaction! Like please oh please act all angy when he 'acidently' shot tire in her car! But oh no ofc no, she had to be like "oh its okay honey i have backup in garage🥰" hes like HHUH SINCE WHEN WE HAVE GARAGE

Like tbh thats how i imagine how they met: he saw her, he wanted to hunt her, she was so chill that she didnt even leave her household while the power was off and he went inside and just saw her having lil nap on couch. 🧍🤨erm exuse me gurl im trying to roleplay epic hunter here tf

He probably kidnaped her cuz she was too weird to just kill her but he didnt want to risk her calling police. He probably tied her up and yeeted her on backseats. And then she begun judging music on the radio"yo big guy can i get some good music taste?" "What? Whats wrong with Taylor Swift?"

He will overshare everything to kinda check where is her limit if it comes to being chill "yeah so i killed this old lady.." "im sure you had good reason🥰" "🤨... anyways... yeah so i was drinking some redbull when some guy said i look ugly so i shoot his head off and-" "HEY HEY hold up geez you CANT drink Energy drinks?? Bestie you know it is unhealthy?? Also you like hunt for sport it will ruin your condition!? How you gonna shoot people with shakey hands?? You crazy or something?" "Damn😔"

Micheal myers

I tried to put him here but i realised he will be as chill as her.

Like he can give her gifts covered in blood and she' just going to clean it and wear it like nothing happened or completley ignore it

He cares about this stuff as much as y/n so like not at all. I mean tbh theres is a bit of difrence: shes at least positive about it! Like "yeah micheal go for it, love🥰😇 i know its hard to cope with trauma take it all out alr?" Shes trying to be a good supporting gf not her fault she never had serial killer bf!

Brahms Heelshire

He lives for attention! What do you mean the war crime he commited this lunch break is okay!?!? Baby pleasee

But this negativity disapears the moment he realised he can get a lot of positive attention when he will do some nice stuff! "Oh honey I didnt kill any rats today" "oh that's amazing brahms I'm sure you and the rats inside walls will get along well soon🥰" (rats in walls bully brahms)

Please complement him or he will get a tantrum and destroy something

Brahms and rats have very hard past i might do seperate hc about that

Ghostface

"Look babe! My newest victim *shows photo*" "ugh baby...😰 you NEED to buy new camera or watch some youtube tutorials about how to take good photos" "aw man whats wrong with my pictures 😔"

Otherwise y/n supports his hobbies! People need to grow😇 (and he needs to grow up)

If theres 2ghostfaces(like in most movies) they will bet money on how long you gonna keep this 'do whatever as long as youre happy' act. Well they didnt know that this wasnt an act but her personality

Also they will probably try to use this chillnes aginst her like "oooh y/n something terrible happened! I crushed my car oh what will i do!" "Alr bestie i will drive you over there😇" "😈omg you are so nice i totally didnt expect that(heheh i dont need to pay for gas today (hes very evil))

[echo-and-dust]

now that my brain has somewhat unscrambled itself i have gotten most of my thoughts in order about season 3.

and the first thing i will say is: i loved it.

while it was gutwrenching and polarizing in some ways and i feel that i am entitled to financial compensation for what its done to my mental health, i loved this season for pretty much almost everything it did.

i cannot fault people for having issues with much of the characterization and plot choices made—that’s been the trend during the entire run of the show after all, and imo it’s a testament to the phenomenal way it generates nuance—but i wanted to share my feelings on the recurring opinions i’ve seen about some of these things.

first, i do not blame simon at all for the things he said in the final scene. he’s a child who has been receiving endless verbal and physical harassment on top of all the trauma he is still trying to heal from. he just watched his boyfriend lash out in anger and hurt—while not at him, but it must’ve been a close resemblance of how he might’ve seen micke act. at least, that's what i thought, though i've seen others say otherwise.

and yes, wille is not micke, but just because wille’s source of outbursts is different from micke’s doesn’t mean simon is wrong in drawing similarities. at least he's finally getting a true glimpse into what wille has had to deal with. i've honestly grown to like that they didn't have simon immediately comfort him though; wille's mental illness is not his fault, but it is his responsibility, and instead of pushing a message of unhealthy co-dependence, the show has simon be honest: "but i see that everything hurts you and that hurts me too." and to me, that's so important.

plus, it doesn't make their love any less genuine. wille is a victim of the circumstances; he is not evil, and he is not undeserving of simon. he just has a lot of growing and healing to do, a lot of unlearning and exposure therapy because he's still blinded by privilege even when he tries not to be.

speaking of, i have so many thoughts about wille that i feel like i need to save for its own separate post, but to sum them up: i'll still defend him with my life, and he needs to get the fuck away from that institution.

also, the fact that the responsibility of controlling simon's media decisions was placed solely on wille confused me at first like—why wouldn't they get a professional to give him proper media training?

then i realized, this could be the royal court's way of sabotaging their relationship. they knew that making wille the one to tell simon what he can and cannot say or post would create distance and animosity between them. despite the ramifications of simon's behavior on social media, it seems they still thought it best to have his boyfriend be the one to try to mold him into the system. because they knew that's how they could get rid of him. in conclusion, fuck the royal court (we been knew but still).

one of the standouts this season was their transparency regarding the show's politics. it not only works well with the show's arc (wilmon is public, everything's out in the open now and there's nothing to hide), but also it felt necessary at a time where censorship has been rapidly gaining momentum. it felt so refreshing for these characters to talk so openly about racial discrimination and queerphobia and class disparities, forcing both character and viewer to acknowledge that they exist and you should feel uncomfortable about it.

i don't think i can add much more to what was already said about it—most of the fandom is more eloquent and observant than i am anyway—i just wanted to reinforce how important this season is to myself and the story even with how controversial it is to fans right now. a lot of people may disagree with me and that's fine.

[zutarasbuff]

Found this somewhere on Tumblr, it infuriated me to a great extent and forced me to crush the “coloniser-colonial romance” accusation against the Zutara nation. For this, you need to read everything quite carefully that will be presented to you.

So people who accuse Zutara use this narrative that Zuko had a princely life as a colonizer, unlike Katara. Now look at the ground reality:

Katara’s mother Kya lied to Yon Rha that she was the last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe to save her daughter. A similar act was done by Ursa (Zuko’s mother) who killed Firelord Azulon with her potion as part of her deal with Ozai to save the life of her son Zuko and got banished eventually. That makes us come to one certain conclusion:

Both Zuko and Katara spent greater part of their life without their mothers and this impacted their childhood badly as we find them dealing with the trauma of loss even after they hit puberty.

As if the absence of a mother was not enough, when Hakoda (Katara’s father) leaves with the fleet for the war, it’s almost the same time when we find Ozai getting immersed in attacking other nations, so much so that he’s never there for both of his children. Technically speaking, even if Ozai was there physically, he was never emotionally available for his children being a narcissistic father.

I would say that Zuko had the worst childhood experience as compared to Katara because Katara had a brother who always supported his sister in dealing with the trauma, but we don’t see that in the case of Zuko whose own sister used to bully him right from the childhood for being too weak and the mom’s pet.

Now let’s analyze the colonizer part. Unfortunately, Zuko was born to a father who was not just the worst ruler but an equally worse son, brother, husband, and father. One can say that Zuko’s only fault was to hail from a wrong family but other than that, he was never a colonizer. You may ask why. I will give you a reason.

It’s not just Katara who has to bear the ill effects of the war that was imposed on her, but in many ways Zuko was a direct victim of what we call “Emotional Imperialism”. In psychology, it’s a condition where the colonizers not just physically take control of their colonies, but they start infusing their ideals deep into the mentality of their subjects as well.

Coming back to the case of Zuko, we find that he never gets to formulate the normal father-son relationship with Ozai, rather Ozai treats both his children as his humble subjects who need to obey him unquestionably and need to be perfect as his subjects. He’s in every sense not just a narcissistic parent but a controlling one as well who emotionally traps both his children and wants to rule over them at every cost. The apparent manifestation of this emotional imperialism is evident through:

Zuko’s quest to be the best firebender

When the colonizers start ruling over a certain colony, it’s the colonials who feel the need to be validated by their masters. It’s their first survival strategy that they embrace the change as they know resistance is going to be of no use. They simply adapt themselves to the new ideals that are set forth by their ruling masters. Similarly, Ozai always wanted his children to be the absolute embodiment of Azulon’s great bloodline and both his children obliged to his desires because they feared the firelord. Therefore, his stiff standards force both his children to compete against each other from a very young age. This is the worst form of emotional imperialism where the subjects simply want some validation in return and therefore they are ready to even forget their kinship. That’s what we find as Zuko repeatedly wants to “get his honor back and win the trust of his father”. What do you think this honor is? It’s not the quest for being the next heir to the throne, rather it’s being the absolute best in the eyes of the master who controls both the siblings. We know Ozai has a manipulative nature and this relates exactly to the manipulative attitude of a colonizer who puts the colonials against each other.

Zuko’s almost absent friend circle

Have you ever seen the modus operandi of the colonizers? They alienate their subjects so that the subjects find no way of self-expression and eventually give up to the demands of their masters. That’s exactly the scenario that propagates in Zuko’s life. Other than Mai and Ty Lee we don’t even find his friends throughout the series. Isn’t it a bit strange that despite being a prince, he has no guy friend of his age? He has no friends at all. It’s because the master (Ozai) wanted so. The siblings never get much exposure to the outside world. When we draw a comparison of Zuko’s situation, then Katara seems to be at an advantage in that she found a peer group that allowed her to grow further and overcome her insecurities. Zuko, however never got a chance to blend into an actual peer group and that kept him secluded throughout and gave him his introverted persona. Don’t you find it strange that as a friend Zuko got no one but his uncle who had a lot of age differences and the opinions differed too? This created a rift further maybe because Zuko felt that somehow his feelings were not interpreted well by Uncle Iroh. Compared to his “angry guy” persona, he grows a lot more friendly when he finds the gang or should we say people of his age. This allows him to understand his persona in a constructive way and he strives to alter the course of his life afterwards.

Identity crisis

Out of all the characters on ATLA, people often say that Zuko is the one with the most complex attributes because he is not even sure of his “destiny”. Sounds familiar? Eh? Well, this is the typical case of an identity crisis existing in the subjects of a colony. Zuko goes through this phase where he is always striving hard to explore his identity, and his destiny thus fueling his internal rage as well. A kaleidoscopic journey is what he follows. Sometimes it’s rage, sometimes regret and sometimes he even questions the actions of his father. By the end, his driving force to change his alliances is nothing but this very identity crisis. This makes me remember a very interesting observation that whenever he’s near the gang, he’s a bit cranky and at the same time uneasy because he looks at the gang as the polar opposite of himself. To a caged bird who has accepted his fate, even the slightest call of resistance feels like Hades’ call and that’s why he repeatedly aims to avoid Aang’s calls for forming a friendship because he is afraid of peeking into his resisting side. That’s the typical thing you find in Haru who despite being a fine earthbender resists waging a war against the firebenders who roam freely in his village at first. So would you blame Zuko for never resisting the colonization when as a subject it was inherent to his mentality for a long time?

A harsh realisation

People who degrade Zutara with this stupid claim that Katara was the only one who “lost everything” need to get their brains checked thoroughly because when we compare her loss to the magnitude of the loss faced by Zuko at the end of the war, the comparing scale diverts wildly in Zuko’s favor. Though many of you know this; I will recall it for you again. Katara lost her mother to the war but in the end, she got lifelong friends to cherish with her brother as well father. On the contrary, even during the war, we find that Zuko loses not only his mother, his father, and his sister in the worst possible way. It means all his family members are lost to him in every sense when the war ends. Now some of you will come to me with the argument that the gang eventually finds Ursa back but how? With her memories all erased. It means that the war has not just left him with permanent emotional wounds but it has further taken the very idea of a family from his life.

We zutarians never ship Zutara together because we “just find them good together” but it’s deeper than that. It’s because Zuko was the one who understood Katara’s quest for Yon Rha in order to find answers behind her mother’s death in addition to revenge. This is because deep down he was always looking for the answers of his mother’s (who was the only real person known to him) banishment. That’s exactly what we find after Zuko becomes the firelord. The first thing he does is asking Ozai questions and being certain that he’s finally gonna tell everything. We ship them together because Katara was the only person who understood the value of Zuko jumping in front of Azula’s lightning to save her. We ship them together because we believe if it had become a potential canon, maybe both of them could have helped each other in healing with their individual traumas and creating a real family together.

[paradamaxima]

CoD fandom stop being ableist towards Frank Woods challenge (impossible)

Not only do I see posts from people whining about how basically “Woods is useless now” but I even saw someone draw him without his wheelchair and standing upright

If you can’t draw wheelchairs, either learn to do it or don’t draw the character at all; wheelchairs aren’t even hard to draw in the first place either, you’re just ableist and lazy

Love how notable it is that everyone’s now treating Woods like a useless burden when what happened to him wasn’t even his fault and also… that’s completely untrue because disabled people are still able to do plenty of shit (not to mention, that sentiment is as ableist as you can get because it stinks of eugenics)

Reminds me of how real life veterans are treated after not only physical injuries that result in them becoming physically disabled but also mental trauma that result in them becoming mentally disabled/ill; if you don’t view real life veterans as useless burdens, why would you view Woods as one?

[theoryofthemultiverse]

Hoyo‘s Doctors as your psychiatrist/therapists:📋

Synopsis: A therapist/psychologist is a person that listens to your thoughts and feelings and resolves problems through talking. A psychiatrist on the other hand relies on medications to treat an mental illness.

Characters: Baizhu, Dr. Ratio, Il Dottore

AN:I love the trinity of them and since y’all enjoyed the sleeping headcanons I brought something new again! It’s kinda wholesome.

~•~•~~•~•~~•~•~~•~•~~•~•~~•~•~~•~•~~•~•~~•~•~~•~

Baizhu🐍

He is really listening to everything in such an empathic way, he tries his best to validate your feelings and it would be in his expertise to show you how to deal with them.

His priorities would lay in making you recognize how you feel about given situations and help you setting boundaries. He would also dive deeper into childhood events that caused certain behaviors and traumas.

I can kinda see him having a therapy animal(not just Changsheng, you can also cuddle her, but maybe he also has a fluffy cat, or dog) . Like a calm pet that will simply lay with you and help you relax so you open up to him (only if you wanted it tho, otherwise he’ll keep it away ;)

Without a doubt he would be on the therapist/psychologist side.

Dr. Ratio🎓

The problem solver par excellence.

He fairly doesn’t do much about your feelings. Don’t get me wrong, he will definitely listen to you tell him about them, and validate them. He will also take them into the equation of solving your problem, but his main focus would be to solve the problem and come up with ways to solve them, as well as ways how you can cope with them should they not be able to be solved at the given moment.

So while he kinda works more like a psychologist he would also have the qualifications to prescribe some medication, yet if he would feel like he needs someone with a broader spectrum on that topic he would send you to:

Il Dottore🧪

Out of all 3 probably the one that is mostly focused on treating the problem through medications, so leaning towards psychiatrist.

But he is hella good at that, like really, that man knows so many substances that there are no limits to finding the perfect description. In 90% of the time he gets a perfect substance for your problems, but in the other 10%? Don’t worry about coming to him and telling him the medication didn’t do what you would have hoped it would do. He will probably find something better then according to the symptoms you mention.

If you were discouraged by one kind of medicine not working he would subtly try to make you feel better by blaming him,or the medicine in a humorous way so you see it’s not your fault for the medicine not working.

„Really it’s not your fault the stupid medicine didn’t take effect. I should have just known better and taken -sets new medicine on the table- this one all along.“

[robitherat]

Thinking about the fact that most of Tims character arch is based around him actually dealing with the things from his past

Like a major part of tims character is his denial of the things that happened to him-- his repression of memories, chalking things up to hallucinations, suffering in silence, brushing off any concern from those around him ("Tim what's that?" "Just some medicine I need to take" "Are you sick, do you need to go home?" "No I'm fine.") The fact that he never mentioned his medical history or his time at the hospital to Jay until he was basically forced to.

And what was it that finally made him tell Jay about the hospital? The operator directly attacking him and making him relive scenes from his past. It wasn't until he was forced to realize what was at stake, forced to essentially confront the danger he was in by bottling up his past, that he willingly (at least somewhat) shared that information with someone. I do like to think that maybe Tim opened up to Brian in college, but as far as cannon evidence, we only really see Tim willingly talking to Jay about it. Brian knew, sure, but it's just as easy to assume he found that after the fact-- that he caught Tim in the lie, rather than Tim telling him outright.

And Tim really isn't a great liar, either. Like I know we talk about Jay being a little bit of an idiot (rightfully so) but Tim's main course of lying is. The most obvious deflection in the world. When Jay mentions the tape in his house, Tim's response is to immediately deflect ("I'm a little more worried about my house right now.") which would be a smaller thing if Tim wasn't intimately aware of how important it was to find and watch any tapes they possibly could. Tim's only method to coping with things that happen to him and the people around him is through denial, even in times when it would be infinitely more beneficial to acknowledge the issue at hand.

What's even more interesting to me is that Tim is seemingly the only character that makes any genuine progress in fighting against the operator. But that comes with the caveat that Tim is only able to do so when he actually confronts the operator, and by association, the issues of his past.

The only way he and Jay are able to make amends and move on is by Tim telling Jay about the hospital, which was only spurred on by Tim being forced to relive his trauma. Right after Tim tells Jay to stay out his life, he (by force of tta) has a relapse and ends up paired with Jay anyways. The only way he's able to get Jay and himself away from Alex's house in one piece is by literally physically standing up to the operator. In the fight against Alex, the whole time he's being ported around, he is monologuing about his past-- he's finally acknowledging the things that happened to him, that they weren't his fault, that they affect other people, and that violence isn't the answer to dealing with them-- that isolating yourself and denying the truth of what's happening isn't the answer.

And of course this is all tied back to the metaphor of mental illness: the fact that you cannot deny the things that have happened to you if you have any hope of moving on from them. you can't lash out or harm others because of your trauma if you have any hope of moving past it. The reason Jay, Brian, and ultimately Alex all died is because they were incapable of facing their issues head on; they all turned to anger, isolation, violence, and otherwise feeding into what the operator wanted, or alternatively, feeding into the misery spiral of their mental illness, rather than finding healthy coping mechanisms to heal from and move on from it.

God I need to write a full analysis essay about him OKAY I'm ending it here these aren't all my thoughts this doesn't make sense but I'm ending it here thank you for watching goodbye

[magicaii]

The fact that when tsukasa tenma experiences something highly traumatic he instantly zeroes in on what he did wrong to end up in that situation, drills into his head how to avoid experiencing something like that again in the future, and immediately tries to forget the event ever happening because it’s not only a reminder of his failure but the memory would also cripple his self value enough to hinder his ability to be the person people expect him to and move forward with a new lesson learned to avoid being traumatized again. The problem with this is that you can’t forget your trauma, because then you’ll never be able to fully process what happened to you and recognize what effect it has on your life and outlook. Tsukasa is never able to do this because he does his damndest best to completely erase the memory. When someone has trauma, it’s a completely normal response to come up with a strategy or solution to deal with the damage you’ve been dealt, whether it’s simply withdrawing from those feelings inwardly or acting outwardly in a way to make sure it can’t hurt or affect you again. The problem is that these aren’t healthy patterns, and you’re supposed to get help so that you can acknowledge what happened and move PAST it. Tsukasa is so adamant to pretend shit never took place that he is stuck in this horribly unhealthy phase with terrible mechanisms to get through it all, and since he never processes his trauma has even taken it to the next level by piling it on and on every time something new happens. Saki forced herself to smile because of me? I can never disappoint someone again. The audience didn’t enjoy our play? I said I wouldn’t disappoint people anymore, so I can’t believe I did it again, I have to double down now. The troupe broke up and it’s my fault? I let them down as a leader, I need to take on every burden by myself so that I’m the one solely responsible for everything and I will make sure nothing goes wrong again. Thing is, all these feelings are valid to a certain extent, there’s nothing wrong with not wanting to disappoint people and feeling remorseful when you make them upset. It’s just not good when you’re basing all your worth as a person on how well you live up to peoples standards. He’s so fixated on how well he “performs” that his behaviour becomes EXTREMELY erratic when he is faced with his own failure. Sometimes he straight up lashes out or retracts, both so different from his usual demeanour that people are utterly taken back to the point where even if they are concerned about tsukasa they find it hard to say anything because it’s almost like dealing with an entirely different person. I don’t know how to wrap this up but he’s so mentally ill and I feel that people overlook it a lot because he’s also a comedic character.

[queen-of-hawkins-why-ler]

[tw: SA and depression/mental illness] Will Byers's story is so mental illness-coded in addition to obviously being about SA, trauma, and traumatic experiences that are unique to being queer. Thinking back to the final shots of season 1 in which the Byers family is so happy and everything seems fine because Will is back, he's safe, it's all over; but that doesn't mean any of it is even remotely over for Will.

Will's POV in season 2 hits so hard because it reminds me of what it was like to be a young teenager navigating depression and other mental illnesses despite being externally happy and outgoing. Will is glad to be part of his friend group again, despite how traumatized he is, but the boys, by no fault of their own, simply can't relate and can't even begin to fathom what Will has been through, which obviously leaves Will feeling isolated. It's like, he's grateful of course for all of their friendship, but he still feels like he's going through it all on his own. He's thankful for the support and love his friends and loved ones can give him even though it's Not Enough.

And that's what mental illness so often feels like. You may have the overwhelming love and support of loved ones, but your mental illness makes you feel alone anyways, because those who are not experiencing what you're going through just don't have the tools, advice, or firsthand knowledge that is going to allow them to sympathize with you or make you feel better. There's also the secrecy element, as you'll rarely share with even your closest loved ones the full extent of your suffering. And of course, you feel like you're quite literally "going crazy" (wink wink), dealing with this intense suffering that makes you see and believe things that aren't true while everyone else around you seems fine, unbothered, and completely functional.

Even in s3 when Will is supposedly "well" again, he is isolated from the rest of the party, has completely separate priorities from them, and is simply disinterested in the fun, stupid drama they're getting themselves into because he is on a totally separate wavelength, trying to heal from trauma and learn to cope with what he's been through. And once again, his friends simply lack the tools needed to be able to fully be there for him, leaving him once again sidelined, processing things on his own. It totally reminds me of being told things like "I thought things were good now/I thought you were doing better now?" Most mental illnesses cannot "get better" or completely go away, you simply learn how to manage them and they get better sometimes and flare up badly at others. It's an ebb and flow. And Will's trauma and his entire connection to the Upside Down is a daily struggle that he successfully stays on top of some of the time but buckles underneath the weight of at others. And sometimes it's like people around him expect him to be able to "keep up" or function at the same level the rest of them are at, completely ignorant to how debilitating his condition is. He's always alone in a sense because no one else can truly relate to having been stuck in the UD all that time and also literally possessed and taken advantage of by the Mindflayer and Vecna.

And then Will's s4 story is so representative of what mental illness can make you feel and believe about yourself. Despite all of the suffering he's gone through, he doesn't believe he's worthy of the one thing he wants the most, which is Mike's love. He won't even allow himself to be a contender for it, won't even put himself up for consideration because he simply doesn't believe he deserves it. He feels like a mistake, and that's exactly how chronic mental illness makes you feel: that you don't deserve happiness or any of the things you want or care about.

All I know is that it will be SO cathartic to see my gay, traumatized, mentally ill boy actually find happiness and get the love he so badly wants with Mike!! The odds feel so stacked against his him, but Will Byers is going to be happy and beyond loved and taken care of by his man for the rest of his life.

[ernmark]

Birthdays fuck with me, mentally. They always have.

There's a lot of reasons for it, but they're all little ones, nothing traumatic-- to the point where I'll find myself wishing there'd been some Big Trauma Way Back When to justify the overwhelming depression that always rears its head right then (that, I'm told, is A Symptom).

But without getting into the weeds:

There's something actively painful about things where you're Supposed To Be Happy. It creates this overwhelming expectation/demand to Be Happy Right Now that's echoed back from every single direction, and a feeling of immense guilt for Failing to Be Happy, so you try and force it, and the harder you try the harder you fail, and it keeps going like that in the background until it leaves you completely drained and miserable.

And then you're meant to respond back to every "Happy Birthday" with a performance of delirious happiness (or else look ungrateful, or prompting demands at explanation) and Exciting Plans (which are their own, additional, source of dread and anxiety). And it creates this bone-deep feeling of loneliness as you're hiding behind a performance that they don't understand and you aren't able to explain, repeated with every single well-meaning text and email and interaction. And you can't just pretend that you don't have a birthday or ask people not to acknowledge it, because having people Forget Your Birthday carries its own baggage of being Unloved and Unseen that I really don't need when I'm dealing with what's become an annual episode of Deep Depression.

What sucks doubly about it is that I like getting presents, I like being acknowledged, I want to feel special and loved. And I know that these things are done from genuine love, or at least genuine like. There's never a drop of malice or bad meaning behind it.

Hilariously, if there was, I would be a lot more comfortable saying "I'm probably going to eat my weight in whatever comfort food I have the spoons to procure and then curl up in bed for the rest of the night."

(Therein, I think, comes that Mentally Ill desire for some kind of trauma or tragedy-- because in that fantasy, you get to have the well-wishes, but also with the support and understanding that you're allowed to be miserable right now regardless.)

I suspect that this sort of thing is a big part of the reason why I've always been as aggressively Not A Fan of Christmas as I am, even before I left my childhood religion-- that same demand for Good Cheer and guilt for Being A Grinch coming from all sides, the inability to escape it without making it A Whole Thing that you already don't have the energy to deal with.

(This sort of thing is also why horror and tragedy media is easier for me to handle than comedies or fluffy stuff-- that Expectation that comes with the latter very quickly becomes stressful and upsetting if I'm not in the right mood for it. Meanwhile if horror fails to scare, it's because it failed to be scary, and tragedy can usually find something to be cathartic about).

Mentally, it's a stalemate. I don't know what to do about it or how to make it not suck. It's not anybody else's fault, and nobody is doing anything wrong for wishing well or hoping happiness on you. That's just a genuinely good, nice thing to do. They're not remotely responsible for my brain chemistry, and I have plenty of reasons not to share it with them.

It's just part of how this whole thing goes.

[punkeropercyjackson]

I'm very protective over Hobie,Gwen and Margo because y'all really showing ya asses the most when it comes to them and as an afropunk who's audhd and mentally ill due to brutal ass childhood trauma and an eldest child,i clock what y'all doin' without even trying.Hobie spent all his screentime being the personification of our heritage i.e AFROpunks,not universal punks and especially not universal alt for the 'Hobie is goth' headasses(yes,this genuinely happens)and a black gentleman who gives Mama's Boy but y'all deliberately twist his words,behavior,relathionships and even his design to cater to normies and no,i ain't talking about whitewashing,i mean the sexualization-Where the fuck is his Spidersuit top under his tee in a lot of fanarts i've seen???????And the weird ass trend of feminizing him for sexualization when he's accurate black femme rep and kink based designs have no place on a goddamn underaged children's character(He's seventeen,they've called him a teenager in all official sources and 'he's 19/20' was talking about his concept art based on the og idea of a timeskip inbetween Itsv and Atsv and you can look up Gwen's own concept art if you don't believe me)

Gwen gets victim blamed for her cop dad who pointed a gun at her,A SIXTEEN YEAR OLD TRANS GIRL,gaslighting her into moving back in with him when they already had a turbulant relathionship thanks to him as implied in the movie itself and the script and realistically there's no such thing as a cop being a good parent and y'all 'she's just like her dad' weirdos should get decked for that,ESPECIALLY the grown ones who should know how to act by now.'She should've done more to help Miles' as if the whole tragedy isn't that she couldn't because all the adults around her took away everything that would let her-It's not her fault either y'all don't got media comprehension or any problem with jokes about Peter B sexually harrasing Miguel as shipping or Miguel being antiblack to Miles and Hobie but Gwen putting her shoes on Miles' bed,opening his collectable by accident,going through his sketchbook and calling his parents by their first names is toooooo far,she's so racist omg!!!Don't play with me,she wouldn't do or say even 1% of the shit y'all do Miguel,Hobie and Miles G and she was a girls girl in the comics y'all don't read for Miles,Hobie,Margo OR Jessica either so that Margo moment was a retcon and she wasn't even mean to Margo herself

And Margo.God she's had it the worst because misogynoir is omnipresent no matter what.At least Hobie and Gwen have plenty of positive content and shipping,Margo gets a cameo if she's lucky.She might've not been an mc but she will be in Beyond as confirmed by the crew and y'all give her NOTHING.You including fucking Pavitr as Miles' love interest over her because godforbid a bisexual black boy like black girls instead of just black guys and white girls,right?That's not diverse at all!!Shut the fuck UP,Pavitr and Miles have zero chemistry compared to Miles and his black love interests!And Margo is as interesting as Gwen and Hobie already and certainly deeper of a character The Spot's discord mod lookin' and actin' ass and you're threatend by that so you have everybody hate her because black girls can't be cool,smart,pretty,funny,flawed and everything else except the sister figure or the token or the 'wrong choice' or just not exist!The way she's obviously close to Hobie because they're both black and a major theme of Spiderverse is black solidarity and is obviously only not best friends with Gwen too because the writers couldn't dare risk letting teenage girls know they have options outside of fighting over guys even if one of you is literally transfem and one of you is literally black,NTM her not even giving her a Spidey intro is demonic on so many levels.Miles is a real Spiderman but i guess Margo isn't so that's why she dosen't deserve Miles or Miles G because obviously Miles G likes Gwencel Stacy-I MEAN GWEN 42,right???????I mean why would Gwen Stacy be black,she isn't in every other universe and Ghostspider shouldn't be either because it's not like it would fix the one problem with her and Hobie as a ship in the movie and having a black girl mc in Miles Morales stories wasn't the comics either,totes!!!

Y'all thinkin' you cute with all this shit.Nah,that ain't sliding by me,mainly because it's been a year and you still at it.Sick of y'all and you need to keep my kids' names out of your mouth 'cause the bullshit is drooling through.Invest in soap instead of official Spiderverse merch Hobie wouldn't even want you buying

[mdhwrites]

how do you feel about disability rep in the owl house? Anyway it could've been done better? Cause as someone who is neurodivergent (autism) I felt like Luz's arc had unfortunate implications ('shes literally neurodivergent and a Minor' type vibes and mixed in with the whole fantasy vs reality themes and it came off as telling neurodivergent people to reject reality or like we wouldn't be hindered in the slightest by our disabilities in xyz worlds- which feels gross) but I could be reading into this too much. I also don't like how Hunter lost his 'disability' yeah you can compare it to getting a pacemaker or a mobility aid with his problem not being fixed but made better but that 'pacemaker' came at the cost of his best friend and his whole possession situation felt gratuitous to me. I'm really interested in seeing how Hunter could've been done better if you have any ideas

So I am going to try to be as calm and kind on this subject as I can. I feel like I've let a lot of heat come into my blogs lately that I try not to because I've been in distress. I am actually, legally disabled after all. It is the vast majority of my income, not helped by how randomly my brain will just break and I will have no way to get it to work again. I'm on the brink of another who knows how long run of my brain no longer functioning and am clawing to try and keep it together so I can do SOMETHING besides just ramble in these blogs. So I can keep writing or streaming rather than vanish. So this topic is important to me to put it extremely mildly.

To talk about this with The Owl House we kind of have to talk about each angle it takes on this subject one at a time. Eda and Hunter are two sides of the coin for this representation after all. I know you bring up Luz and yes, nuerodivergence can be disabling but if we want to talk about disability, I don't think Luz is actually a part of the conversation. If she is, it's for the theoretical representation of depression in S3 when she is at her worst as a character. People like to claim trauma and depression for why it's okay that she's constantly lying, or why she tries to abandon an entire world despite admitting it's her fault it's in trouble. She is her absolute worse self in that time and... If that is the rep we get for mental illness, I'll wait another five years. I don't want someone who is entirely apathetic to others and makes excuses for their actions to be the one who represents me, not when I hear that shit from assholes on the news too much already.

We'll start positive and head down from there. Eda actually starts out great. With regular medication and self care, she is able to live a fairly normal life. I have admittedly criticized in the past that there is no cure for the curse, that Eda is a slowly ticking time bomb who only through death will not end up harming all of those around her eventually, but I actually want to rescind that. As a dramatization of the anxiety that especially mental disability brings about of that day when everything breaks, even if it never comes, it works. It's within the confines of the fantasy genre and isn't demonized but sympathized that she has to work so hard to hold this back. But she can and she stands strong despite it, stronger than most in her situation in a way that is inspirational.

Then we get our first slip up with her at the end of S1. In order to find reprieve, to come back from the edge... She shares her disability. Her peace of mind, her ability to be a human being, comes at the cost of another person. I say slip up though because one could argue it's dramatization of the communal help that many disabled people need. I worked as a Home Care Aid at one point for someone in a wheelchair. My own family helps me because I am a complete mess of a person. I do my best to be able to function entirely on my own but when you are literally incapable of being a functional human being... Yeah, help is good. Do I like how high of a cost it comes for Lilith? Not really, nor the fact that she becomes disabled in the same way because some people do think disability and mental illness is contagious but I'm willing to let it slide for the sake of dramatization.

Affearances genuinely course corrects to show the small ways in which Eda deals with her illness not just with medication but also understanding of it. Her need to stay calm, the ways she tries to center herself, all so the medication is more of a stabilizer and last resort. That is genuinely good.

Then... A point I'm torn on. In the episode itself, I do not mind the formation of Harpy Eda. The process of coming to not just deal with but accept your disability is big and hard and you can come out the other side feeling like a new person. One could even see the Harpy form like that and even the deals we make with our disability to let ourselves do more like in Eclipse Lake. I'll even retract old heat I gave this for implying your disability can be a superpower because it fits within the genres of fantasy. I will even admit part of this kindness comes from writing this myself and realizing that it's just more fun and exciting to let the disability have upsides to it rather than treat it as purely debilitating.

No, my bigger issue comes from the fact that it is the end of it as a disability. Eda is essentially cured besides some lip service and if they were going to go that route, they should have just said it. In the finale, she loses to the curse in a deeper way than we have EVER seen before... And then freed from it like it's just a snap of her fingers. Harpy Eda is literally just a super form, not her having to genuinely deal with the illness, especially as it just becomes the way she fights. I do approve of the idea of showing that you CAN get better from this stuff, some people do, but it makes me wish they'd just said that. Just admitted that her coming to accept it was the final step. Would that have been realistic? No but I've showcased how many times already how much this rep relies on dramatization? Give us the feel good ending of Eda having mastered it, explicitly, instead of just letting it be up in the air and used for cheap drama in the finale. That makes the whole thing feel almost exploitative because if I lose it like Eda lost it in the finale... I can't just turn that off. I get to be terrified and shaken and have that day firmly implanted into my mind for the rest of my life. For the show, it was shock value instead and I'm not okay with that.

Speaking of things I'm not okay with, let's talk about the other side of this coin: Hunter. Now remember that I was willing to give grace to some elements... Except now they're reinforced by a second character sometimes and that makes it a lot harder to shrug off. We'll get there when we get to Flapjack though.

No, where I actually want to start with for him isn't even that he has a disability, it's actually with Willow. She tries to make it out like being a late bloomer is the same as NEVER being able to do this. Like telling a paraplegic person you understand their pain because you had a cast once. I've had someone go "Yeah, it's hard for me to get out of bed too but I always manage it," while trying to motivate me to just power through anxiety that was LITERALLY CHOKING ME and I wanted to punch them in the face. And this is the start of your ROMANCE PLOT. The core thing that tells the audience that these two are going to get close and get together.

In one scene, it becomes SUPER clear that there is no one on this writing team that actually understands what the fuck it means to be disabled. The nice portion of the blog is over.

Okay, let's actually pull back. I will give Hunter this: In his early scenes, he genuinely comes across as someone who has adapted to his physical disability and the limitations of it. His staff is his aid device and he makes up for lack of magic with increased athleticism. He is by all means, the most dextrous person we see in the entire show and genuinely, the show never takes that away from him. It's also just really easy to forget because the show doesn't exactly give a lot of chances for it to shine, not while it's mostly shitting on him or having the trained soldier lose to others, if he even seems much more physically capable than those around him at all.

But hey, how about first that aid device! We do recognize Luz takes his crutch, right? Like his staff is what takes away his handicap versus the rest of the Isles. That helps him overcome the limitations of his physical disability and an entire episode has the main character steal it from him and blackmail him with it. He is mildly annoyed about this for the entire episode, almost like not having the way that helps him feel normal doesn't mean much to him. It'd be like if in Affearances, Eda didn't get mad at her mom for taking her elixir because her elixir is the equivalent to Hunter's staff. Gwyndolen is demonized for this action while we're supposed to be on Luz's side because Hunter is a bad man who will do bad things if allowed his staff back. That... That isn't okay to me.

Btw, this isn't even the only time this happens in the show. Belos asks Luz to call him Philip. She calls him Belos. The show is really all for just being entirely disrespectful to someone's identity and personhood so long as you are morally better than them. What the fuck?

For the rest of S2, there's a really, REALLY bad flaw with having Huntlow be his ship. EVERY single one of Willow's episodes to some extent features how being a late bloomer, having struggled/struggling with magic, makes her feel like an outcast. That despite the fact that really she just wasn't great at this skill, she gets a lot of dramatic weight to this. Hunter... Doesn't. His disability is almost entirely ignored to prioritize the fact that he's a Grimmwalker or his relationship with Belos. It is just not a part of his character despite the girl he is blushing at explicitly making it clear that this society ABSOLUTELY looks down on Hunter. That not having magic makes you be less than anyone else. Hell, we get more of this from EDA AND LILITH in the first episode of S2 than we ever get from Hunter. The prejudice they are treated with and their struggles to deal with it while Hunter is at best all subtext.

This admittedly starts getting into how this show fucking hates men and how they are almost all at some point a joke, villain or both in their time. So... Yeah, Hunter not being given respect for his disability while the women are is hardly surprising.

The big thing that shatters EVERYTHING is of course Flapjack's sacrifice. You remember how I had to kind of work around how to make Eda making someone else disabled okay? Well now we have a second time where a disabled character is 'cured' to some extent of their disability... By the suffering of someone close to them. This time with literal death.

One of the worst prejudices that disabled people, of any sort but especially mentally disabled/ill people, have to face is that we are burdens and menaces to society. That we are more prone to hurting people than regularly abled people. That there is a price to having us around that everyone would not have to pay otherwise. If there is one thing you CANNOT do with your disability allegory, it is to make the disability cost someone else their life, figuratively or literally, unless you REALLY plan to examine what the fuck that means. TOH does both, once with Flapjack and once with Lilith respectively.

In order to be 'normal', it literally costs Hunter the life of his best friend. In order to be saved from the extremes of her illness, Eda cripples her sister. What the fuck are you supposed to take away from that? And there is no way to square this with it just being a fantastical representation of something. It's not just making the consequences of disability more extreme or reflecting the shared burden that can sometimes be our existence and our need for support. Being cured should be joyous. Instead, it's melancholic, not for the grief of your existence inherently changing, Hunter is meant to purely celebrate that he now has magic, but because it came at extreme cost to other people.

In that one moment, paired with Lilith, I can't approve of TOH as disabled representation. There is no way for me to ever square it, just like how Luz using depression as an excuse to be the worst version of herself makes me not okay with her as nuerodivergent representation. Not when it doesn't explore this stuff and even tries to celebrate and say this is correct, since Luz is never criticized for her awful behavior during her angst arc and Hunter is made out to be better without his disability, no matter the cost.

I am fine if you don't want to show clean or nice representation of these things. Not all disabled people are nice. Not all nuerodivergent people are functional. There is a wide spectrum to our experiences but to take the worst elements of your representation and give them the most narrative weight is BAD. Even Eda suffers from this. Her taking care of herself is mostly in passing. Way more weight is given to Eda not being able to take care of herself. To how missing her medication by even an hour makes her a danger to everyone around her, or even susceptible to manipulation like when King uses her transforming 80% into the Owl Beast. Suddenly, the fact that she manages her condition like many disabled people do feels really overshadowed by the constant reminders, and literal showings, of the danger she poses to those she cares about most. The cost of allowing us to continue to participate in society, the damage we do to others, the harm that comes from a bad day from us, is so much harder to ignore when those are the elements that your work decides to focus on. It especially sucks because it hardly focuses on the pain and incapability of the condition, just the danger. It's all about what it will do to others and not the agony it inflicts on the person who has it.

TOH is bad with almost all of its themes and attempts to be progressive and this is no different. See you next tale.

======+++++======

I am going to assume that it's the same person who sent me essentially a variation of this ask like five times. If you are that worried about me responding, the Discord is where you will get a MUCH faster response, especially since I am kind of trying to pull back from TOH criticism. It has been genuinely kind of nice to talk about other things recently.

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[rivetgoth]

I’m sure I’ll add more on this later but as I think on House of Leaves (finished it, loved it, listened through all of Poe’s Haunted and loved that too) I think the conclusion I’ve come to (and this isn’t a wildly novel conclusion, but ah well) is that it is at its core fundamentally an exploration of grief, and specifically grief of the loss of a family member. This is especially obvious because… Mark Danielewski has literally said that it was inspired by the death of his father. Poe’s album as well. So like, this is no secret. And I think this is invoked in the very obvious way of the fact that a house that should feel like a home but instead feels unsafe, surreal, and literally larger and emptier on the inside than it naturally should be is a very clear metaphor for grappling with the loss of a parent, right? But I think it goes deeper than that… I think House of Leaves also spends a lot of time dwelling on the weird, impossible to untangle intricacies of trauma, childhood and generational trauma especially, mental illness, and genetics… the things you carry with you and the things that loom over you from your family, especially those deceased who you no longer have direct contact with, left only with this awareness weighing down upon you.

I think Chad and Daisy are pretty clearly functionally author inserts of Mark and Poe, right? And Will Navidson then is their father? Both are even filmmakers. But I also think that Zampanò himself is Mark as well… his middle initial is literally… But complicatedly I’m not saying that Chad is Zampanò, I don’t think HoL is straightforward like that, it’s more like that’s another embodiment of the grief. The child experiencing that, the adult retelling it, grappling with it, imagining and reimagining it, and I think I believe that Tom Navidson is functionally an author insert of Zampanò into The Navidson Record, functioning kind of like a guardian angel to his childhood self, this sort of stand-in hero character who sacrifices himself to protect the innocence and life of the child self. I think the slippage of “me” within that one line, where he refers to Tom in first person, alludes to this, as well as his emotional outburst over his chapter where he tries to write about the relationship between Will and Tom. And in the very back of the book, there’s the fragment of a typed page where Zampanò considers an ending where Chad and Daisy die instead, are killed by the house, with this much more pessimistic tone (similar to when he gets upset about writing about Tom and Will), than what’s shown in the published/Johnny’s version of The Navidson Record.

And would it complicate things too much to say I think Chad, Zampanò, and Johnny represent a sort of trinity of different stages of Mark’s life—the child experiencing it in real time, the young adult trying (and failing) to cope with it all, and the elder now looking back and engaging with it from an aged perspective. I think Johnny represents that crushing weight of this impending, unknown genetic fuckery, constantly feeling the weight of this figure who died long ago but who you know lives within you, and you’re trying to figure out what’s traumagenic, what’s just this completely unavoidable tumbling towards fate—his mother died severely psychotic in an institution, is this unavoidable? Can he escape this future? How much of what he deals with is her, her influence, her fault, and how much is caused by trauma inflicted upon him. I really don’t like the theory that his mother/Pelafina “was” Johnny all along or that Johnny never existed or that he was a stillborn baby like in the story and she’s functionally created a Johnny headmate. I think it’s sort of silly, like I can see some interesting merit in it (there’s clearly a bizarre Oedipal psychosexual complex going on between Pelafina and Johnny and her writing these detailed accounts of her basically stillborn son’s sexcapades is a pretty fascinating idea), but I’m more interested in a sort of backwards-reading of that theory where the end represents Johnny kind of embracing or succumbing to his mother’s identity, for better or worse, and the idea of this baby in critical condition that maybe just maybe had a slim chance for life but dying the moment his mother asks him to revealing instead his relationship to her, the helplessness of those genetics and the control and power she exerts over him even in death. When Shilo Wallace says “You, I've mistaken for destiny / but the truth is my legacy is not up to my genes” at the end of Repo! the Genetic Opera, House of Leaves says… terrifyingly… what if it is? What if your genetics are your destiny? And then you lose that genetic lineage, it becomes just story, infamy, legend, but you’re there and alive and trying to grapple with it?

I kinda like the theory that Johnny rewrote the end of The Navidson Record to have a happy ending, or maybe Zampanò did. I think they both desperately want the story to have a happier ending. And honestly, I love the ending of The Navidson Record as published by Johnny. Though maybe cliché on paper I love the idea that there is a hopeful answer to all that emptiness and fear and a way to silence those endless inexplicable winding hallways and the answer is to replace that emptiness with genuine love. Like, to overcome that fear and embrace the ones you’ve loved for all that they are and that this love can fix all of that… It can make all of the fear and uncertainty of the empty, insurmountable, nightmare house literally dissolve... I think the end of Poe’s album (“If You Were Here”) speaks to that too.

Uh there’s obviously way more to it than that. House of Leaves is a lot of things. Duh. But I do think right now my primary takeaway is just how informed it is by the crushing helpless grief of the death of an immediate family member with which you have an extremely tenuous or strained relationship and the weight of family history.