#ok i'm sure i'm not the only one who thinks this but i feel like they're hinting at amy having some connection to the echidnas?

[justchillandshipit]

More thoughts:

I linked a post below that has me thinking about Tommy's actions & Eddie's place in the narrative. In retrospect, I 100% believe Tommy knows and understands that Eddie is likely going to be Buck's last. (as much as anybody can know this sort of thing.) I know Tim and Oliver said Eddie had nothing to do with the obstacles in Buck's relationship, but I think that was a partial truth on their part. Technically, Buck does spiral because of Abby and #stagefoureddiediaz has talked about the way Buck is still stuck on the hamster wheel. I think both of these things are part of the obstacles mentioned in one of Oliver's interviews. However, if you look only at those things, you overlook the Pink Eddie in the room. While I agree that Eddie didn't interfere or try to stop Buck & Tommy from being together, his friendship with Buck has remained a constant. (see the link at the very bottom for more about Eddie in the narrative.) If you check out Buddielifer's post, several good points demonstrate the breakup was about Eddie. I'll try to avoid repeating what was said there as I explain. My opinion does differ on a few small points, but I'll get to that later.

Ok. I'm going to talk about Tommy a little but stick with me. This is a Buddie post. I promise, and I do have a point. I do believe Buck was attracted to Tommy, not because he had some great destiny to be the love of Buck's life, but because he did a few really cool things while helping to save Bobby & Athena's lives. Plus, Tommy did it in the coolest way possible. Helicopter pilots are cool, or they would be if they weren't dating one-half of your favorite ship. lol. Before the kiss, Buck wasn't self-aware enough to fully engage with his sexuality, I suspect that he handled his attraction to Tommy the way he handled it with other men before we knew him as a firefighter.

As we saw in a flashback, when Buck met a man he felt attracted to, he processed those feelings by befriending him. It was the same with Tommy. That is why he was at the hangar that day. When he offered to buy Tommy a beer, I truly think Buck thought he was making a new friend. If you think about it, you can see this was a pattern for Buck. He did have a meltdown over Eddie when they first met (but with Eddie, bigger things were and are still in play) It doesn't change the fact that once Buck got past his initial jealousy or whatever that was, he threw himself all in with Eddie. It was part of his pattern and part of #stagefour's hamster wheel. (Endgame will have Buck get off the wheel and look around. The person standing there was never part of the wheel, but the person waiting for him to stop and get off of it.)

The situation with Tommy is probably closer to how Buck reacted to his friend who wanted Buck as a sperm donor. Buck actually followed that 'friend' to Peru. I have a post from a while back where I discuss Buck sending mixed signals. In his mind, he is making a friend, but he is also unconsciously flirting. Tommy was the first to push through and just kiss Buck. I don't think this was nefarious so much as an attempt to interpret the signals Buck was sending. (I'm sure many see Tommy as having bad intentions but stick with me. I'm trying to put him into the context where Tim claimed he wanted him to be seen. Tommy was supposed to be a mentor or a more experienced man helping Buck navigate this side of himself.) As a teacher, Tommy did help him navigate, but he also let Buck set the pace. Although never shown, we know Buck is a very sexual being, and the deleted scene with Tommy, Hen, and Karen confirmed that Tommy was just trying to keep up with him.

But I digress. Buck's intention to befriend Tommy ended the exact moment that Eddie showed up at the hangar with a huge smile on his face. Stoic Eddie who does not show his emotions was smiling hugely. Even though this is from Buck's perspective and he is an unreliable narrator, it is plausible to me that Eddie would be excited to go to a live fight in Vegas. Oliver and Tim have talked a lot over the past few weeks about how Buck spirals. When Eddie left with Tommy, Buck began to spiral in a way that we have never seen before or since. He was absolutely unhinged with jealousy. There is no way that Buck, who didn't even ask about Tommy's dating history until six months into the relationship, was that insane to get the attention of a man he has known for a few days or weeks. Now that we are pulling in new material from the current season, it isn't even remotely believable that Buck's reaction was about Tommy.

If Buck had experienced some sort of love-at-first-sight moment with Tommy, then he would have asked Tommy about his past at the beginning of the relationship. In fact, people entering into something serious generally ask about past partners in the first few weeks of getting to know each other or before sex. The fact that Buck didn't, is a change in pattern for him. Buck typically throws himself all in and then when things go wrong, he doesn't know how he got there. (Also part of the hamster wheel.) However, I attribute the difference this time to the fact that, subconsciously, Buck knows what he's feeling. He can use his body. (borderline sex addict). However, he can't bring himself to share with Tommy what he already shares with Eddie, but you know our unaware cowboy can't see it yet.

At the hangar, Tommy didn't have a feel for Buck yet. However, by the end of the Vegas trip, I think he had picked up a good idea from Eddie that there was something there. (not because Eddie has made some sort of confession, but because I'm confident that Eddie talked about Buck nonstop. I'm hoping that we get some sort of confirmation of this in the current season. I don't want it to be forgotten.) At any rate, whatever conclusions Tommy drew from his time in Vegas with Eddie and the time they spent hanging out afterward didn't bother him enough to refuse to date Buck. I do think Tommy was longing for the family and support he could see Buck has with the 118, but I don't think he was ever planning a wedding in his head. In fact, I know he wasn't. That's part of why he broke up with Buck.

Sidenote: (Thanks to StageFourEddieDiaz, for pointing out how Buck failed to understand the mission from Josh's speech because this is what caused Buck to shift from not letting Tommy get too close to asking Tommy to move in with him.) Until the conversation with Josh, Buck was actively shutting Tommy out of anything other than sex and possibly learning the ins and outs of the LGBTQ community.

Again, in the beginning, this didn't bother Tommy. He knew what Buck needed, and as he stated a few times during the sixth episode, Buck was hot and fun. If you need examples of Buck shutting Tommy out, I point you to anything that happened in the Halloween episode. I'm not saying Buck didn't care about Tommy at all, but he was holding back. The look on Buck's face as Josh asked about his feelings really said it all. I think this is probably why Josh was a little shy of the mark when giving his speech about comphet. Josh had to give a long list of, "Do you feel "this or that" for your boyfriend of six months," before he finally hit on something that Buck did feel. I don't want to get off topic or repeat too much from the linked post, I just wanted to illustrate that the jealousy from Buck's coming out episode was 100% for Eddie and that it was something that Tommy realized before entering the relationship.

I know there will be some disagreement here, but I also feel like Tommy's feelings for Buck actually were on the verge of changing, and he hadn't expected that. When they were standing at the grave, Buck gave his eulogy directed to Billy Boils. Tommy's face went through a series of changes. First, he seemed annoyed or concerned. I couldn't quite tell, but the more Buck talked, the more you could see of our Buck. The guy with a huge heart who can empathize with the skeletal remains of a criminal. I'll link the clip for you to judge. What Buck had to say to Billy was more open and revealed more about Buck's character than anything he had been saying to Tommy over the past six months. It was a small scene, but one that probably came back to Tommy when Buck suggested moving in together.

It was scenes like this one combined with Tommy's exclusion from group chat, etc., that probably helped to remind him that Buck's feelings six months ago were not about him and nothing had changed despite Buck's suggestion that he move in. Tommy's insecurities took over and reminded him what the inevitable end was going to be for them. He was the first not the last.

For the past six months, he's known that Eddie was between them, but you could see how comfortable he was with it. He didn't seem annoyed by Eddie's presence at all. I disagree with either Tim or Oliver when they try to play up that Tommy was Eddie's friend and this was natural. Eddie and Buck met Tommy at the same time, and Tommy was trying to shoot his shot by taking Eddie to Vegas. I don't know what was discussed between Eddie & Tommy during those few weeks where Buck was being left out, but it is clear that whatever conclusion he had drawn from the Vegas trip had been solidified by what happened on the basketball court, so much so that he wanted to apologize to Buck in person. We all know how that went, and I still think that was a good scene.

This brings me to the breakup scene itself. In the end, when Tommy talks about how he didn't see it coming. I don't think he was referring to the breakup. I think he was referring to the feelings he caught close to the end. He thought he would help Buck, provide a safe space for Buck to explore that he personally didn't have, and have some fun with a hot young thing, but he let it go too far. (His reasons are pretty much part of what Tim has said in interviews.) I don't think Tommy realized how much he had gotten caught up in the fantasy of Buck until Buck asked him to move in with him. I do think he's sincere when he says his heart would end up broken because, despite his feelings, he still understands there is something between Buck and Eddie even if they don't.

(One side note. I agree with Buck that first and last can be the same thing. I don't buy into the belief that you have to be with dozens of sexual partners, but I also don't think that would have been the case with Buck. He is a sexual character, and he's openly curious. I know people were mad about the interview where Oliver talked about letting Buck F#ck, but I think that would be in character for an upset Buck who was just dumped. It is less about his sexuality than it is about his abandonment issues and neglect trauma. That's my take anyway. We'll see what Tim does with it. I do think the part of Buck that craves monogamy already belongs to someone else, and the di was cast before Tommy came into his life, and we are back again to the hamster wheel.)

If you stuck with me this long, thank you. I know there are few, if any, fans of Tommy around here so I appreciate that you were willing to objectively view him the way Tim kept trying to present him. I'm tired and I'm pretty sure I rambled a couple of times, but I do understand Tommy is a problematic character. I consider that to be a writing issue that never got a satisfying resolution. I'm equally aware some people hate him simply because he was with Buck. I'm not doing a lot of judging these days because I already know how unreasonable I'm going to be over Eddie being with another man. After seven seasons of subtext, they are already in love. These other relationships are like cheating. lol I'm not so secretly hoping that if Eddie needed a "first" he got it when he was a teenager or when he was in Afghanistan.

I can tell I'm going to be bad because when I see posts about Eddie sleeping with a priest, I want to scream into a pillow and pretend that I'm flipping over furniture and tossing chairs across the room. I just can't be reasonable. I would never attack the actors or writers though. That's not me. My jealousy is on Buck's behalf, and my bad behavior remains entirely inside my head. I don't know what they'll do with Eddie, but they are going to need a chat group to make sure Eddie's boyfriends do not meet with Buck's subconscious mind.

Click here to see the meta on Eddie Haunting the Narrative from #buddielifers.

[guiltycorp]

Okay finished the Haruspex route of Pathologic Classic! I need to play Clara's route to see the whole picture but I'm already fascinated by the differences between P1 and P2 in terms of characterization. I think I like Pathologic 2 even more now considering how they improved on Artemy's route, I am sorry to say I didn't like it at all in classic... This is all just my personal impression after first playthrough ofc. Ramblings about both Artemy and Daniil ↓ I think what bothered me about Haruspex was mostly just his attitude and his messiah plot. Once the first day is out of the way it's all smooth sailing for him, a bit too much so?? The only personal conflict he has is figuring out his father's exact wishes for him and choosing a sacrifice. Killing anyone is treated as fair or something that needed to happen and the Haruspex is always shrugging it off... And either option, Aglaya & the Town or Polyhedron... It just doesn't seem like he is that attached to either? So it doesn't feel like he is sacrificing much personally? Like sure he wants to save the Town because of his messianic qualities, but that's again more about fulfilling his 'role' rather than genuinely wanting to save lives, or at least it read that way to me. I'm sure it's meant to be both and P2 makes this far more apparent, but in P1 it elicited a rather squinty reaction from me. Plus well yeah, getting rid of Polyhedron is pretty much just ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, like yep he sure didn't care about that thing lmao so getting rid of it isn't such a difficult choice at all. The suggestion that the Polyhedron could be his Udurgh is kind of useless because the Town and Earth are far better candidates and fit with Kin beliefs better, which in this game Artemy pretty much doesn't doubt at all.  Maybe this is why the Bachelor is so present in his route? Daniil did say he'd commit suicide if he lost, maybe we'd want to think twice about pushing him towards it... But again! Does it seem like this guy cares ahhh haha... The dialogue option that is actually engaging with what Daniil said is pretty much there to make it clear to the player what the Utopian ending is and what it would be like.

Ngl at first I thought he was meant to be the 'sacrifice' until they said it's a woman. Every time Artemy learned something about the Bachelor's motivations he'd write down in his diary like '...if it matters' since the player can always choose what ending to go with I guess. I also find it curious that he can say that they are friends but still always writing only 'the Bachelor' in his diaries while Daniil switched to 'Artemy' and 'Burakh' during the final stretch. The one-sided yaoi................ 🤔 At least Artemy doesn't get mad at him for ordering to set the mythic bull on fire, I guess their friendship did mean something to him after all at that point. Also when Capella tells him that he should ask the Bachelor for help with getting into the Polyhedron since the Bachelor 'fawns upon you a lot anyway' the Haruspex just goes 'oh yeah! ok' fjdghdjg... Now that I think about it I DID like the Haruspex route for what it did with the Bachelor hahah, his dialogues and letters are just so good sometimes. Like wow, I felt this.

Very cool, if i was Artemy I'd totally abandon my weird murderous calling for this. Tangentially related... P2 had one moment that I remember from my last replay when Rubin, if kept alive, falls into a deep deserved sleep in his home, and Artemy just starts emotionally monologuing at him.

Like, P1 Artemy would never, but also it goes to show that he's still very much a repressed man here too, buying into toxic masculinity ideals who can't just talk to his friends about his feelings directly... The same character, but more complex. I want to make it clear that I DO like him and his motivations in P2 actually, and his personal conflict being more about the future of the Kin makes that game much more powerful to me than what his classic route was. I heard that initially he was planned to be far more violent and dark, so maybe he could have been sort of a villain protagonist and this was changed later and this is why it feels a bit bland? Hmm... Idk this is fun to me because meanwhile the Bachelor didn't feel that different to me in both games lmao. A highly stressed educated guy who is just trying to prevent the spread of epidemic the 'right' way and then clinging to the only chance he has left to preserve both his ideals and his life. He is a bit less polite in P2 at first (while still very much helping by warding off Rubin) but then rather quickly becomes more cordial to Artemy and vice versa (and wow it sure is nice when Artemy can actually be polite and friendly..). And the moment when he explains some of his personal deal to Artemy feels rather similar in both iterations mood-wise.

I liked his route in P1 a lot, surprisingly so, and I now understand why so many people liked him before P2 came out and afterwards too... There's just something very real about how he is the intelligent Capital doctor but with an extraordinary dream to combat death itself, possibly given to him by the Powers That Be due to these children trying to cope with people dying around them. And instead of favoring him for it they hate him! They leave him with nothing but this final chance to fix things, even if that means destroying everything and rebuilding anew. Daniil's desperation feels very real and thus more compelling, plus like... I mean it's pretty much confirmed that it's not just the Polyhedron and that the soil itself is 'rotten' (literally in the meta real world and through blood beneath the earth in the Town itself) and the decease could return again, sooo his ending doesn't look that bad comparatively. I also appreciated how Maria (or uhh was it Nina talking through her here as well?) explained how their Utopia doesn't actually mean a 'perfect' place, more so just an impossible dream.

The Bachelor doesn't mind this at all, a detail I loved.

...Hmm that said maybe P1 makes it a little too easy for him to kinda ignore the Kin issue, he is only mad about their circumstances when it comes to Vlad choosing to doom thousands of the Kin workers inside the Termitary (which is just his doctor ethics). I mean it is realistic for him to ignore the implications of representing the imperialist side, he does mention his father was a military man too at some point I think... Still, he is very quick to accept the Kin's unique beliefs as something that has obvious merit, trusting the Haruspex with that side of things in both of their routes, and he doesn't make much of a distinction between them and regular Town people when it comes to patient treatment. If anything it's probably a sign of how the writers weren't thinking that hard about this worldbuilding aspect at the time... even if I appreciated them showing the downsides of the Kin's society, I think those were done better than in P2 purely because it was a bit more realistic (I am talking about sexism mostly, such as selling their own daughters and not respecting their autonomy, plus the mention of Kin politics and different ruling clans rather than the hive mind situation implied in P2). Like, it is more obvious in P1 that wholeheartedly embracing the Kin's return to tradition isn't such a good solution for them either, but one that will likely happen anyway with Artemy and Taya as their new leaders. And it could get trickier in Pathologic 3 I think, especially since most of us really appreciated the portrayal of colonization in P2 and would expect it getting addressed again in future games of other character routes, but we'll see I guess! Either way I look forward to that game a lot now.

[wirewitchviolet]

That thing about 'the arc of history bending towards justice...'

I'm pretty sure I've gone on about this before, and I'm pretty sure I'm preaching to the choir, but I just had a well-intentioned acquaintance try to give an inspirational speech about American trans people's fears right now, and his heart was in the right place, but all his facts were wrong, in some really important ways. I feel like the perspective he has is the same one as... basically every decent person who isn't like, intimately familiar with WPATH, so please spread this around, and please if you only read one rambling history lesson from a trans person about the current state of things, make it this one.

So here's the big problem. Trans people get brought up in the mainstream media a LOT these days, but the framing is totally wrong. The impression people get is that there is presently a big push for new trans rights, where we want proper government recognition, and trans women in particular want to be able to use public women's restrooms, and play on girls-only sports teams, and a dozen other things. That is a lie you are being fed. These are all rights we ALREADY HAD, for decades. Possibly centuries depending what we're talking about specifically and where we're talking, even. The big issue right now is that a bunch of bigots just woke up one day about 10 years ago and decided that nothing else they were angling for was getting them anywhere with the general public, so hey let's make a boogieman out of this minority of a minority nobody knows the first thing about and act like all the horrors they're inflicting are just them enforcing some totally fictional status quo.

Speaking personally, I can say that The Trans Agenda in like 2014 was something like: 1- I'm gonna make a nice big pot of chili. 2- I'm gonna maybe replay some old video games from the '90s I haven't taken down off the shelf in a while. And OK maybe 3- It'd be cool if it weren't just the medical professionals who specifically specialize in trans stuff had enough of an education to know that when there's a difference in how a drug is going to effect men vs. women, it's for reasons directly tied to the levels of various hormones, or would at least trust their trans patients to know what we're talking about and not give us the wrong doses of things and maybe kill us as a result. And also like, treat us for regular things like broken arms (real example) without weirdly panicking about some prescription we're on they don't recognize.

There was absolutely not a point where some trans woman started petitioning the government or whatever to let her pee in a toilet with a little placard of a stick figure in a dress in front. We've just been doing that the whole time. Nobody's ever had a problem with that. You didn't know we were in there? OK. If I'm like at a restaurant and have to use the bathroom, I don't know how many of the other women in there have like, type O blood. I also don't care, and I think everyone would agree it was weird if I suddenly did care, and demand they post a guard out front asking to see driver's licenses. Just completely out of the blue some nutcases from the UK started foaming at the mouth and writing weird tabloid articles about their completely unfounded fears that... I don't even know. Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs might put on a wig and follow them into the bathroom, dose them with chloroform, and drag them to some basement dungeon through some series of secret passages or something.

This was based on literally nothing at all, to be clear. Like, people pushing for this went and did serious research for anything even anecdotal to back them up on this, and didn't actually find anything. Then they started walking into public restrooms with cameras throwing doors open on people and going "see? See? Some creep could totally do this if we don't ban trans people from using bathrooms!" And... somehow this got traction? I figure it's because coincidentally there was this whole other thing going where people were looking at how every building had equal numbers of men's and women's rooms and saying "you know, like, 90% of people who come in here are the same gender and we end up with really long lines, what if we just took the signs down and told everyone to just use whichever?" which... when it's happening at the same time Chicken Little is ranting and raving about the boogieman wearing a cheap wig, wires got crossed? And suddenly we've got waves of legislation passing all over about who's allowed to use what bathrooms with weird standards that'd involve like DNA tests to actually enforce properly. Absurd stuff.

Meanwhile, your average trans activist at the time was just like... sitting there eating a sandwich and going "huh, they're making a TV series based on Fargo? That's an odd thing to happen out of the blue. And yeah we started going "hey, what the hell?" when this stuff started passing because like... yeah that's what you do when you see an article in the local newspaper that says you can't go to the bathroom at work or whatever without swabbing your cheek and waiting for lab results for 3 weeks first or whatever.

Same deal with sports. Major sports organizations like the Olympics have been weirdly paranoid about men pretending to be women since 1950. And there have been, to the best of my ability to research... zero men who have actually done this. And while the weird standards used for this have been used to kick a good number of women out over the years, none of those women have been trans, for what that's worth. Really, the whole gender testing thing has only ever been used for horrifying stuff like forcing women to strip in front of random creeps, or let them do "invasive internal exams" and of course so many incidents where some woman who isn't white wins at something and people move the goalposts to in some way to get her specifically banned. You may be thinking, "wait didn't I just see a whole bunch of news coverage about someone getting banned after some gender testing thing? She was trans right?" No. You're thinking of Caster Semenya. She's a woman. A cis woman. F on her birth certificate, born with standard issue female genitals, has periods, all that. People are just being weird racists there and crossing the streams with random transphobia. That and just... half-reading stories and making stuff up.

To the best of my knowledge, the total count of trans athletes who have competed in the Olympics would actually be... three nonbinary people, who so far as I can tell all competed against people with the same gender they had on their birth certificates, nothing done medically, so, nobody should have any problem there. Caitlyn Jenner, who didn't come out as a woman until like... 40 years after competing, on the men's team, and Laurel Hubbard, the first and only trans woman to compete at the Olympics as a woman, who placed... dead last, flubbing all three of her lifts.

If we just look at sports in general, OK, there WAS one big famous where a trans woman wanted to compete in a major sporting event, was banned from it, took the organizers to court over it, and the eventual ruling was there was no reason at all she shouldn't be allowed to play against other women. Renée Richards. And this was all the way back in 1976. Nearly 50 years ago now.

And of course in more recent years, again, after a bunch of random bigots just completely out of the blue started losing their minds about trans people with no prompting and started lobbying for new laws banning us from all kinds of things nobody had had a problem with us doing forever, there was Mack Beggs, a trans guy, who was forced, by one of those aforementioned baffling reactionary new laws, to compete on his high school's girl's wrestling team. He didn't want to be there, they didn't want him to be there, but the law said hey, F on your birth certificate, we're classifying you as a girl despite how clearly wrong that is. And then there's been a bunch of other weird cases like that like one state banning trans girls from playing any sports with other girls which only affected one single girl in the entire state, who was playing lacrosse on a team that wouldn't have even existed if she hadn't personally organized it.

But the point here is, trans people aren't asking for anything here. We're just standing here, and people are flipping out and banning us from doing all these things without any prompting. And hell, I THINK this one got shot down in higher courts, but when Florida got the brain worms on this and started passing all the anti-trans legislation they could think of, they actually included a ban on us just standing there! The wording was something like (and I apologize that I can't find it, search engines are useless now), "if a child can potentially see someone who was assigned male at birth who is wearing women's clothes, it's considered sexual assault."

It's important to understand what's actually going on here, both because what's going on here is just plain terrifying, but also because there is this huge segment of the population who has this weird idea that people's rights only ever get better, there's just some weird arbitrary ratcheting where you have to take a number and get in line. Like, "hey, used to be only white men could vote, then eventually the Progress bar filled enough that we let white women start voting too. Then we had to wait for it to fill up again, hey, we're ending this whole segregation of black people thing. Gotta give it another 30 years or so to fill up, now hey, gay people can get married! Don't be impatient trans folks, you just need to stay in line and wait for it to fill again for your turn!"

That's not how anything has ever actually worked. It would frankly be absolutely insane if it actually did, but like, this is an idea people get in their heads because history textbooks really like to gloss over all the stuff that makes the country look pretty bad and promote this whole "stuff is just always getting better!" vibe. But no, sometimes, things just straight up get worse for people. Ten years ago I could go to the damn bathroom, I could have social media accounts, I could access all the medications I need to live, I could safely set foot in any given state in the country... at least if I kept some witnesses around at all times to verify I was not in fact hitting on my would-be murderer in any of the black states on this map.

The problem is NOT that with Trump in power, the pause button is getting hit on trans people climbing towards some state of finally getting to be regular people. We were (largely) already there, and there's been a huge push over the past decade to strip that away from us. And Trump plus the rest of the Republican party in general have made very specific promises to make that way worse real real soon, including several things that will straight up kill a ton of us.

Like, when I'm talking about losing access to necessary medical treatments, I'm not talking about "THE SURGERY" and magic pills that give you boobs or beards. A lot of trans people are trans because there's weird medical stuff that in addition to messing with what does and doesn't grow mess with things like whether your blood flows properly and whether various organs do what they should. Just one of those many things the average person doesn't know, because everything written about us is from deranged bigots making crap up.

[akirathedramaqueen]

CBT and Exposure Therapy: Blitzø Showcase

An important (really, don't skip) disclaimer

If you are contemplating whether or not you would benefit from any kind of therapy, consider consulting with your medical provider first. While I did my best to validate all the points made using publicly available resources, I am not a medical professional. At the very least, I strongly advise that you do your own research and not take some amateur's opinion about a character from a silly demon show for granted.

"Everyone in this show needs fucking therapy STAT!"

We hear fans screaming into the void every now and then. Me too. I plead guilty and I willingly put myself in custody. But I am not taking these words back.

Especially often it is being said with Blitzø in mind, who, as hinted earlier and clearly shown in the latest episode, Ghostfuckers, is not doing okay. Not in the slightest.

Which is . . . yes. Indeed, trauma-ridden Blitzø is a major problem for both him and those around him. Yes, we see him reaching his lowest point now exactly because he left these gaping wounds untreated for so long.

But the tricky question is—how, though? What to do? Will a good talking to a confidante help? Or, maybe, some kind of shock would snap him out of the spiral?

I've been pondering on this topic for more than 4 months, and, as the Ghostfuckers came out, I finally got all the data I need to prove a point. The show did all the job for me and effectively made Blitzø go through improvised versions of two popular therapy techniques. And, before I even start, I want to say—I am so glad with what we ended up with. What they did, and, more importantly, didn't do, aligns well with how it would likely happen in real life.

So buckle up, and let's see where it gets us!

Therapy # 1. Cognitive-behavioral therapy, or CBT

This is, in essence and with some corrections, your good old talking. Here you can find more information about it, so, if you're not familiar with the topic, I recommend following the link first.

But, very shortly: CBT is an extremely common approach to be tried while you're dealing with anxiety, depression, and a number of other mental disorders. What it aims to do is to help you get past unhelpful thinking (distortions) and learn not to act on it.

Looks like it fits the bill, right? Blitzø has a lot of issues with self-fulfilling prophecies, infuriatingly stupid assumptions, poorly thought-out actions . . .

But he's not like, you know . . . w-we're not, like . . . we're not doing a . . . w-we . . . what's betw— It's a transactional fucking, you see.

If you don't feel like coming, that's OK! I'm sure I can do without it for one month. :)

Stolas only cares about having a rugged peasant raw-dog him into his matress! It's nothing, ya know . . . it's nothing else.

You . . . no longer have any obligation to see me, to touch me, to bed me . . . You are— you are free of me.

He sees things which aren't truly there.

It's not Stolas giving him space after the disaster in the 'Ozzie's.' It must be Stolas not needing him anymore, getting tired of him.

It's not Stolas caring about Blitzø. He is a royal, why would he care how an imp's day he happened to be fucking was?

It's not Stolas setting Blitzø free and putting an end to a problematic transaction they had with the hope for it to grow into something more. It's him getting rid of Blitzø.

As a result, he ends up hurting himself and the relationship he had with that one sad gay bird he happened to fall deeply for but literally trashed in his own house twice, acting on nothing more than frenetic fear of losing Stolas, but in reality, driving him away even more . . . for good.

I mean, you royal fucks think you can do this every time, like you can just play with our feelings because we're smaller and not as important!

Ha! I'm right, aren't I? You get off getting plowed by people you look down on!

And I can sorry more people, everyone but you! 'Cause I don't owe you dick! Everyone, but you . . .

So, the case's closed? Let someone—say, Millie—talk to him and tell him how wrong he was about himself and the others?

Well, here's the thing. Despite him being infinitely wrong about Stolas's intentions, we can't deny the fact that every one of his beliefs was not, in fact, a distortion. It'd led him to wrong conclusions, yes, but it was built on the information he received and legitimate experiences he had in his life. Here are only some of the facts connected to only this situation with Stolas, but there are other problematic behaviors and other reasons for him acting the way he does.

Fact # 1. The circus fire did happen, and Blitzø was the reason for it. Unintentional, and of course it wasn't his fault, but it still ruined the lives of many people—him included. Blitzø cannot act like it never occurred.

Fact # 2. Hell is divided by class and race. Their situationship with the grimoire was an embodiment of that inequality. A lot of Blitzø's outburst during the Full Moon and later in the Apology Tour was connected to it, to his beliefs that Stolas is the same as the rest of the privileged circle. Beliefs, I stress, justified by the real world. Stolas is more of an exception, and even then, his behavior is only different when it comes to Blitzø. He still acts the same toward other imps.

Fact # 3. We knew about Stolas's intentions all along, but before that fateful Full Moon, what Blitzø saw was Stolas avoiding him and not communicating the issue the Ozzie's date had raised. And before Ozzie's? Stolas did act entitled and inappropriate. He was baby-talking to Blitzø and used derogatory terms while addressing him. The dude literally called him an impish plaything in the Truth Seekers.

Fact # 4. Blitzø's heavily implied (though not officially confirmed by the show) existing conditions—ADHD*, BPD**, PTSD, and dyslexia/dyscalculia***—do affect his life, and while Hell seems to be somewhat receptive of neurodivergence, he still has to deal with it every single fucking day. He is going to be avoidant and afraid to be abandoned at the same time. He is going to hate himself. His learning disabilities are going to make his life harder. No way around it.

Note: *, **, and *** contain links to separate meta-analyses from @timkontheunsure and @tealvenetianmask about the respective conditions and how they show themselves in Blitzø's case.

And my beef with CBT here is exactly that. CBT's goal is to gaslight you into believing your distortions hold no water and suggests you just ignore them. And, as I've shown with Blitzø, these reactions and assumptions aren't baseless. They are legitimate, and, in fact, sometimes help to get by. Even though it's a crooked crutch, you can't learn to walk properly by just throwing that crutch away. You're still going to limp, and oh, will it be painful.

This is oversimplistic and dismissive. Anxiety and depression don't come out of the blue, and with mental disabilities, it's even deeper. The class/disability stigma is alive and strong, and just slapping a "you're fine" bandaid on your traumatized self isn't going to help.

Therapy # 2. Exposure therapy.

Exposure therapy is another approach commonly used while dealing with traumatic past and its aftermath—PTSD, anxiety, phobias, and such. Again, if you're not familiar, there's the link for you, but very shortly—the therapist puts the patient in a safe environment and 'exposes' them to the feared object in question for limited periods of time. The goal is to eventually get rid of the targeted fear and decrease avoidance.

And Blitzø has got some phobias for sure.

The fear of letting everyone down. Again.

And the fear of abandonment. Again.

All of it is a result of self-hatred, sitting so deeply it rules his life and his vision of how others perceive him. Said it himself. Almost.

So, where and how does the show expose Blitzø to his traumatic past?

First, the most recent, and the most obvious one—Rolando and his slideshow of all traumatic events Blitzø ever had in his life.

Second—Blitzø's drug trip in the Truth Seekers. While it does not contain the events of the past as they were, it does force him to face his fears.

Are you worried I might have enough of it one day as well? . . . You're going to die alone! . . . You're going to die alone, Blitzo!

With some stretch, the third one is Verosika's 'Blitzo sucks' party. Where Blitzø was forced to see the consequences of his avoidance and rejection.

Note: to be clear, I do think the party does not show the true extent of Blitzø's actions and how much he'd hurt people. It was exaggerated by Verosika, and here I explain why this is the case.

So, what gives? Or, rather, what gives it not?

It might sound funny now, considering I brought it up myself, but I, once again, say this is not therapeutic, just as CBT kind of 'talking.' If anything, all these three events did more harm than good.

The D.H.O.R.K.S.'s goal in the Truth Seekers was to torture the information out of Blitzø. He was not supposed to overcome it. He was supposed to crack.

The Verosika's goal was to ruin Blitzø's reputation. She was working her ass off to prove he's just a heartless freak.

The Rolando's goal was to fucking kill Blitzø.

And okay, their motivations had nothing to do with helping him, but maybe it did, in its own twisted way?

No. The writers added this to push Blitzø past the breaking point, not to heal him, and to show us more of his lore. Each time he was forced to face his past or fears or consequences, he was only spiraling more.

The only thing which did him some good was . . . well, Millie finally seeing his bravado mask falling off. But the cost of it was way too high. Not worth it.

To the therapy's defense, some points why it would never work in the way it was done in the show:

Blitzø had never given his consent and was not ready to face it. I might be very rude right now, but go and try producing some explosion-like sounds in front of war veterans without letting them know first and see what happens.

The amount of fearful experience exposed was way too overboard. He couldn't possibly digest it in a healthy way.

The environment was not safe. It was straight-up retraumatizing, an intentional one.

So there's that.

But what helped then?

We've briefly brushed over the fact Millie did talk to Blitzø. While I did imply this might be an example of CBT, here are some key deviations from the classic therapy which made all the difference.

Millie didn't sugarcoat all the shit Blitzø did. He was hurting their business. He didn't pay her. He was reduced to Bethanie. It showed her opinion can be trusted.

Millie apologized for not being there for him sooner. She admitted she relied too much on Blitzø being bulletproof, unbothered by everything. She admitted she didn't support him in a way he always did.

While proving she could never hate Blitzø, she used their common story, one he knows and can recall. She used evidence to prove him wrong, not a "it's all in your head" bandaid. And more than that, later she proved it with action—not for one second did she believe Rolando and his shittalk about what Blitzø supposedly was thinking about her. Her unwavering faith spoke more than any words ever could.

Getting back to exposure therapy . . . Metaphorically, she reminded Blitzø he can handle a beating or two. And physically beat the infestor demon out of him, which, as we can see later, didn't really affect Blitzø that much. He wasn't even battered. So, apparently, when the said exposure is done by someone who genuinely tries to make you feel better and knows your limits well, it might just work?

And finally, Millie acknowledged Blitzø's pain. She didn't brush it away. She validated him.

What all of this is about?

Like every treatment, too much of a medicine can become poisonous. So are CBT and exposure therapy.

They might help, and lots of research shows they do in certain cases. But there are limitations to what they can and cannot achieve, and they have to be adjusted to each individual story, to each trauma, and they should not be applied as a way to mend the outcome of the trauma without taking into account the story it comes with. Again, legitimate concerns and experiences cannot be brushed away or ignored.

Actualy . . . we've seen where it leads in the show too. In the beginning, Millie was quite dismissive of Blitzø's worries—all of this over a . . . breakup?

And here it comes full circle.

Only when Millie started taking Blitzø seriously, did it help them progress. And look how quickly we've switched from a complete despair to a glimmer of hope! Isn't that a beautiful closing scene?

As a closing note—we do not need to 'fix' Blitzø. After all this shit he went through, there won't be a day where he wakes up and be like, "Hey, I don't hate myself anymore! And look, I'm not afraid to be abandoned or misunderstood!"

I'm sorry to break it to you, but this is a lifelong battle. Being mentally whole, healthy, and constantly happy is no more than a myth, and everyone has their own demons and skeletons to deal with.

What Blitzø needs is some good support system to pull him back when he's down.

And boy, do I hope that one particular owl will fill in that role of unyielding pillar for Blitzø each time our lizard will fall into that pit again. Look, I love Millie, but there's only so much she can do. She can't be always present, she has her own life . . . and her own disaster of a husband to look after (affectionate <3). Here and here @lost-romantique talks about Stolas's capacity of loving, with me occasionally nodding, ha-ha. But to be short—it's fucking immense. And since he loves words, I do believe he has all the energy to tell again and again and again how awesome Blitzø is. Even if Blitzø wouldn't believe it himself.

[lupins-hehim-pussy]

I wanna know ur Fontaine msq criticisms 👁️👁️👂I’m all ears

I'm not sure if you wanted me to talk about this secretly or publicly but! Here I go!

The TLDR: Fontaine MSQ aestheticised prison, poverty, child abuse, the justice system/court and didn't properly address any of it.

More:

Focalors/Furina has way too much of a sympathetic angle for a dictator who's lets people drown with her inaction.

Neuvillette feels Bad for sentencing some people to death/prison, but that's it. He's one of the most powerful people in Fontaine. If he felt like there are systemic injustices, I.E sending an abused Child to prison, he should be the first person to DO something about it, not just cry and be sad so the audience can be like aw, that's complex character writing isn't it? No it's not! And guilt doesn't absolve you!!!!!!! (These are stuff we deal with in OTCOJ read my fic now /j)

Meropide has children in it, both Sentenced there (Wriothesley) and BORN THERE (Lanoire), and this is just a quirk of the place. Not only that, Meropide accepts prisoners of all genders and crimes. There are abusers and abuse victims in one place. Do you know how bad that is? How much potential for crimes to happen in a place like that— oh wait, Meropide isn't under Fontaine's jurisdiction. If you are assaulted as an inmate it literally means nothing to the court.

Wriothesley had no qualifications when he took over. Depending on how long he lived on the streets, how old he was when he killed his parents, how old he was when he was first taken in by the orphanage, etc, the man might never have more than 4–5 years of formal education. Sigewinne probably had to teach him how to write reports. And do Meropide's spreadsheets. Edit because I forgot to elaborate on this one: This isn't a point brought up anywhere, which is bad, because when poverty and incarceration robs you of a proper education (and the rights to vote in many places too, too, by the way), it reduces your prospects for jobs, reduces many people's ability to get a home etc etc. Wriothesley was just, narratively, Given his position.

Meropide is an industrialized prison, and they portray this as a good thing. Prisoners are paid in coupons for their labour, and this is also portrayed as a good thing.

The One-Meal-A-Day reform was something Paimon gushed about being so great of a perk, that people might want to go to jail for food (could be interesting and reflective of systemic poverty if MHY had brains, but they don't, so I was just Pissed because essentially all Paimon wanted to say was "Prison isn't so bad, but still don't go to prison guys! Prison labour is really hard!"). By the way, in most real-world prisons they are obligated to feed you three meals a day. Because that's how much food a human needs. MHY went with one meal just so they can say "if you want to eat more, you have to work." And then the welfare meal is a goddamn gacha. So imagine you're a starving child who's too weak to work in the fucking robot assembly line, and you wander up for your first meal in 24 hours, only to luck in with a shit one. I'd kill myself.

They wrote Wriothesley, who's a victim of the system, into a guy who's say shit like "I'm the Duke I can do whatever I want" for a cool moment where he choke-slams an inmate (I know he was a bad guy. But also, in copaganda when cops are violent/disregarding protocols, they are always only portrayed to do that against bad guys, so what does our critical thinking tells us about this one?) They wrote Wriothesley, who was an inmate of a prison so bad, so notorious that it is the literal boogeyman of Fontaine, that has a legal (???) fighting pit, with an administrator who abuses his position to be unreasonable, to willingly stay in the place and become an Administrator who would choke-slam an inmate while saying a cool line about how he has the power to do whatever he wants. They wrote him, the guy who had to be fed on the streets by melusines, to think one-meal-a-day was a good enough reform (while he spends god-knows how much on his boat). This wasn't a victim-turns-into-abuser narrative either, they want all this to be seen as positive character growth.

And then, the final kicker is, they gloss over his entire abuse. You can only read about these shit in his profile, which most people don't because they don't Have Him or doesn't care to unlock it/read it online, and they jammed his entire backstory into a flaccid info-dump at the end of his character story quest. This man isn't Allowed to feel abused and neglected and show any reaction to it within the narrative of Fontaine itself, because if they actually Gave Weight to what happened to him, they'd have to confront THE FUCKING JUSTICE SYSTEM they had NO PLANS on criticising. I don't think they ever explicitly said the fucking Crime-Theatre nonsense was Bad either.

I could go on, but this is already so long. But yeah, I hope this gave you an idea.

[titaniumions]

(some) r1999 charas but i assign them entities from the magnus archives

[forestgreenlesbian]

.

[the-acid-pear]

It's actually really funny how it is bc despite being an insane person with weird kinks whenever I see someone with kinks I DON'T share I'm instantly thrown off by it. Which is comedic to me bc you'd expect the freak to inherently Understand other freaks but no unfortunately that's not how it works necessarily.

[snug-as-bugalugs-in-rugalugs]

Hey fellow Murdochians, I need something new to obsess over :) So if you have the inclination, please reblog this post and put in the tags (or just normal reblogs) a piece of symbolism or parallel or some other kind of connection you noticed in the show that, even if the creators may not have intended it, makes you go a little insane :)

[yamikawaii]

theres just something about being inherently unworthy of love

[honeypot-sapphic]

Me holding on to the last threads of my asexual identity so I don't lose the one constant part of how I've identified for as long as I've known I'm queer

[skrunksthatwunk]

"i'm not disabled" followed immediately by "i've got bad knees and a bad back" is certainly something to read 🤨 you know it doesn't have to be cripling for it to count, right...? it's not normal to be in pain after 15 minutes of standing. ableds can stand for, like, an hour at a time before they need to sit.

i know! i appreciate the concern, but i uh. dunno lol. genuinely i don't know. but i included the afaik ("i'm not disabled afaik" was the original phrase, though i'm not like mad at you for excluding it or anything) because i'm well aware that it's a possibility. it's hard to explain but there's a lot of little things that don't add up to much but are like. noticeable. like i would prefer to do most things sitting, if i could, as a matter of comfort. it would be easier for me. and walking isn't as bad as just standing. i've never been great at taking care of my body, and this has only gotten worse with time. it's hard for me to know what i should read as necessity and what i should read as preference, and how much weight to put on said preferences. like you said, i know it doesn't need to be "if i don't sit down i'm going to collapse" or anything, but where to draw that line between Definitely A Medical Thing That Affects Me More Than Other People and.. not that, i'm not sure. i kinda just thought i was a persistently slightly tired and low energy person, but it doesn't seem bad enough to be chronic fatigue, so...? is it related to the half-diagnosed. idk it's complicated depression (and yes in hindsight i probably should've counted that as disabling but whatever)? idk it's not a rabbit hole i've explored much at all is my point. but i know it's there and uh i guess this was sort of validating in a way anon so.. yeah? yeah👍

[coquelicoq]

i have finished the first part (of five) of les misérables! that's the good news. the bad news is that i now have to read the second part, which opens with a 70-page section entitled "waterloo". like babe i do not know what ANY of these nouns are though. i'm getting that there was a battle at which lots of people died horribly (as often happens in battles) and we are now describing the battleground thirty years later. okay so are we gonna do this for the whole 70 pages or...

[perilegs]

i miss the era of internet where all we got were anime fansubs made by people who had the time to do what they enjoyed

[the-rose-owl]

I'm going to lose my mind. Why do some people think that humans just have the magical ability to interpret animal behavior completely by intuition and have it never be wrong ever

[wereh0gz]

Issue 62 good