#only that characters with religious trauma may or may not believe they’re meant to be guidance from god

[thebluestbluewords]

Anything You Like - the soulmate theology part

*

“They’re a gift from God,” Claudine says confidently. “He sends them to us so we know where to find the good people in the world. The ones who are meant for us, for us to love and learn from. That’s why so many parents will mark their children.” 

“That’s stupid,” says Mal, who is eight years old, and has exactly two soulmarks, one from her mother and one from her future-henchman in training, Jafar’s son. “My mom’s the worst of the worst. She’d never let some silly god tell her who to mark.” 

Claudine glares at Mal from behind her thick glasses. The effect is a bit like being glared at by an especially nervous monkey, one of the creepy ones with huge eyes who sometimes come on TV in the hours-long marathons they get of the stupidest children’s shows imaginable. 

With all of the fury in her six-year-old body, Claudine sticks her tongue out at Mal. “Then you’re stupid, and so’s your mom!” 

“My mom could crush you dad like a bug.” Mal says carelessly. “And probably his god too, if he’s wasting his time giving people soulmarks. My dad’s the most powerful god on the island, and he doesn’t have any soulmarks.” 

“That’s because nobody loves him!” Claudine says, full of confidence in her own correctness in a way that only children can be. Mal would punch her teeth in, if she thought she could get away with it. “If God made somebody to care about your dad, he’d have found them by now and you wouldn’t even be here.” 

“Take it back!” 

“No!” 

“Take it back right now or I’m gonna hit you!” Mal shouts, clenching her hands into fists so tight that she can feel the tiny points of her nails start to cut into her palms. “My dad’s the most powerful god on the isle and he’s gonna hurt you if you don’t take it back!” 

Claudine frowns, screwing up her whole face. “My God can protect me,” she says, but they’re a shadow of doubt to her words now, and Mal knows that she can win this. “He’s the most powerful of all time, not just here.” 

Mal, with the honing instincts of a child who has never been told to shut up, goes for blood. 

“Then why don’t you have a soulmark? If your god is so powerful and cool and loves you so much, why didn’t he make anyone who loves you back?” 

“I—“ Claudine sputters, face crumpling behind her glasses. “I— I, um, I’m waiting. For the right person.” 

Mal frowns. She’s more evil when she pretends to care about people first, that’s what her mom says. “I thought your god was supposed to show you the right person. If he didn’t give you anyone, I think it means you’re just an unlovable freak.” 

“You’re mean,” Claudine whispers, her face damp behind the shield of her glasses. “I’m gonna find my person someday, and you’re never gonna get any more soulmarks because you’re mean and  God hates you.” 

Mal laughs. “There’s no god on the island, stupid. Your dad just lies to you because he doesn’t want anyone to know that you’re a freak.” 

Claudine sniffles. “You’re mean and that’s worse.” 

Mal takes a step back. Crying is disgusting and only for babies, and at eight years old, she’s very much not a baby, and being seen with someone who’s crying could hurt her burgeoning schoolyard reputation. Making someone cry because you hit them is one thing, but standing next to someone who’s crying is a sign of weakness, and there’s no space in Mal’s world for acting weak. 

“Says who?” she demands, from a safe distance away. Bullying distance is further than comforting distance, and it should be clear enough to any onlookers which one she’s standing at. 

“My— my dad,” Claudine manages, sucking in an enormous snotty breath. “And all his followers. Being mean is the worst thing ever, that’s what they said.” 

Mal laughs wickedly. Or at least, close to wickedly. She’s still practicing her Evil Laughs. “Well, my mom says that being mean is how you get ahead in the world. And my mom’s the ruler of the isle, and yours is dead, so I’m pretty sure I know better than you.”

[multiplicity-positivity]

Traumagenic system here!! This is a genuine question, not meant to be a jab or anything!! We are fairly new to the online side of plurality, and often see servers or blogs either not welcome endogenic [?] systems, or they will ask YOU if you support them and if you do you arent welcome. My response has been that we will support them IF there is legitimate sources backing the possibility of their exsistance, simply because 1, that is true we will and 2, because we dont know much about them? NOW THE QUESTION!! um do you have any source that is backed where we could read about other types of systems that ARENT traumagenic? we saw people say there ARE these sources, so we genuinely would love to read them and were wondering if you have any!!

not many as of yet, though there’s a study aiming for 2024 completion that is examining multiplicity without trauma in young people. we’re excited to view the results of this study! there’s also this one interesting and legitimate article on paromancy (called tulpamancy in the study) by samuel vessiere. oh, and this study on writers, exploring how oftentimes writers’ characters will act as independent agents in their own minds (so basically plurality without trauma).

endogenic plurality hasn’t really been studied all that much. a big reason why we think that is, is because for many (if not most) nontraumagenic systems, their plurality is a metaphysical, imagined, or spiritual experience. and these things really cannot be proved by science. lots of people may claim to have loads of research proving endogenic systems exist, but once you get into the articles, it seems like most of those papers either already assume endogenic plurality exists without proving it, or claim to have proof backed with poor research. so those three papers right now are the only academic studies we have that we’re confident in.

does that mean these folks are lying about their experience, or that they’re not actually plural or multiple? absolutely not. what it does mean, is that those who say “i won’t believe you until there’s scientific proof you exist” will likely be waiting forever, all the while dismissing and disrespecting their fellow systems who experience plurality in a different way.

for lots of people, merely having imaginary friends makes them feel plural. others liken their headmates to spirits, ghosts, or deities.

will science ever prove that imaginary friends, ghosts, spirits, or gods exist? likely not. does that make it okay to disregard those who are religious, or who have active imaginations? not really.

this is why we believe fully in endogenic plurality without much research proving it exists. if someone tells us they’re plural, we believe them. folks just existing as they are doesn’t really harm anyone, least of which traumatized systems like us.

those who attack traumagenic systems, or who purposefully spread false information, however, are a different story. for the most part, though, endogenic systems do not behave this way. there are a few loud voices in endogenic spaces which are harmful, but these individuals do not speak for the endogenic community as a whole, even if they think they do.

something that i remember hearing from our therapist that i’d like to pass on is:

you shouldn’t have to understand others in order to treat them with decency and respect. as a white system, we will never be able to understand what it’s like to be a person of color. as a traumagenic system, we will never be able to understand what it’s like to be endogenic. that doesn’t give us an excuse to be unkind or disrespectful, or to dismiss those who aren’t the same as us. it’s still on us to treat people with kindness and respect, even and especially if they experience the world in ways we will never understand.

hope this helps. sorry it was so long.

🐢 kip and 👻 ghost

[mrbabygirl]

Hi!! I’m looking to roleplay but what I’m looking for is rather greatly specific! This is gonna be a doozy of a read so I hope you enjoy it!

I am looking for a more long term rp partner! I am a literate roleplayer and do rather long responses! I don’t regularly use this platform but I am extremely active on discord so DM me so you can get it or tell me the basics about what you think before we move further! The roleplays I want to do are rather very specific and the roles and characters are very specific! I love these stories and my old roleplay partners aren’t apart of my life or the stories development anymore and I have had them written and developing for a long time but I’m also open to outside ideas and things of that sort! I just would like to do these stories or something Fandom related!

These are my plot ideas, and if any of them interest you ask me for further information about them!

Plot 1

This one is very important to me, I hold it dear to my heart and it’s been with me for so long long time and has brought me my greatest comforts so I’m extremely particular about this.

A freshly traumatized college kid has only recently moved to London to escape his haunting past, his life takes an unexpected turn when he comes across a murder victim. He soon finds out that this killing us just part of many murders that are still being investigated. Upon getting questioned by the worlds most intelligent detective he notices something’s… not right about her. He decides to start personally investigating her, furthering his criminal justice educational work. He soon finds that she isn’t what she seems, she is a literal demon. And not just any demon, a highly powerful god of death. Now that he finds this out he’s now unintentionally become apart of her world. This rp mainly isn’t romantic with the two main characters, there are side characters with romantic involvements with others but the mains are not romantically involved with each other, this rp has extremely heavy themes such as Murder, Cann*balism, Trauma, Abuse, Su*cide, SA, Religion, Religious Trauma, and May other possibly triggering topics. It is a story of healing and of rebirth spiritually and mentally, becoming the you you were meant to be.

Plot 2

A Bitter Young King despises every magical creature, he is slowly making his way with his allies to exterminate them all. The king has an upcoming morality ball that he needs a new outfit for in order to make an impression so he enlists in the assistance of one of the most well respected drifter tailors in all of many lands. The first meeting of them has him feeling something he hasn’t felt in a very long time… he can’t describe it but… they make them feel. So he takes it upon himself to invite them as his special guest to the ball.

This rp has a few characters (most of which I would play but you can add yours as well!), it has many specific plot points and events, and it also has many different themes and elements such as reincarnation and past lives, many different magical lands and characters, as well as curses and twisted lands. This RP also has a story that takes place before and after everything else! I can give Information about that as well!

Plot 3

A Death Game in which each of the players have been invited to be apart of a game and if they did their greatest wish would be granted if they are to win but there are many things greater than them going on. It is a story with many many characters (I believe either 58 or 68! They would be split up between us with me claiming the ones I used to play as!) and relationships and many complicated things going on, such as inescapable fate, the question of when a human stops being a human, gods who may not truly have their follows in mind, and intense dark and possibly triggering themes such as Murder, Trauma, Abuse, Su*cide, SA, Childhood SA, D*ug Abuse, and May other possibly triggering topics.

Extra Ideas

I have many other plot ideas! They’re just not nearly as developed as the others! I’d love to work on them with someone and further them! I’m also open to developing my other plots further and take ideas! I’m also willing to hear other possible plot ideas if you have any!! I’m also into Identity V, Sailor Moon, Houseki No Kuni, Spy Family, Fruits Basket, and a few more things that aren’t coming to mind at the moment! I’m also alright with NSFW!

I look forward to hearing from you!

[bisexualoftheblade-old]

how many wips do you have? like what are they all, and not the number of wips in a fandom? what are all the names?

okay. fuck you. fuck you so much. fuck you.

i’m putting this under a read more cut no one else deserves to see this shit. a lot of these are requests, and for those i will just write out the request itself

Shadowhunters:

domestic polycule fluff with tem, jessa, and will because im not a coward

Supernatural

- hehe hoho i request destiel hehehe

- request 61/? cai cai cai cai i need you to rewrite the destiel scene but yk. GOOD. not like i'm in the know about the spn fandom or anything, it's been years for me. but DO IT

Bright Sessions

- caleb/adam grisha AU

- mark bryant vs. united states aka sue the AM

- caleb/adam college fluff

Umbrella Acaademy

- request 31/? i want a ben and klaus drabble please spare me some brotherly bickering

- AND SO BEGINS NIGHT 4 with request 13/? oooh oooh can i get a raymond and allison playlist??? i think their vibes together would SLAP

- hi there night 2 is technically morning 3 but who's counting not me anyway request 5/? can i get a ben moodboard? gotta rep my tua bb

Percy Jackson

- request 9/? can i get a percabeth moodboard or quote edit?? like god they're the og couple goals take me back to high school cai

- For the 100 follower things :D Jercy getting caught in the rain

- request 29/? a drabble about literally anything to do with pjo. i’ll be happy with anyone and anything i’m love these children

- *somersaults in like I’m a real fancy acrobat* hello ello ello may I request some camp half blood chaos possible involving *does a flip* ✨side characters✨ <3

Penumbra Podcast 

- request 52/? drabble about the penumbra podcast. this is for ren bc ren likes it and i don't actually know anything about it. juno? i think? that's the one ren likes. write it for ren

- Tpp ghost hunting / buzzfeed unsolved au

- sad juno smut

- final resting place fic go brrrr

Marvel

- request 6/? i'm going to my roots y'all can i get a spider-man playlist? if not a playlist then i'd honestly be happy with literally anything involving spider-man

- request 15/? i'm going crazy this is recorded evidence of me actually losing it ANYWAY can i get a quote edit for something from iron man? literally anything that man says is gold so cai's choice :D he deserved better in endgame i'm still bitter

- request 42/? do another spidey thing that differs from the other spidey thing

- request 73/? you have Opinions. rant about infinity way and/or endgame. go.

- request 74/? quote edit for deadpool!!

- spideytorch relationship character study

- peter parker as a tired grad student monitoring the young avengers (send help)

Six of Crows

- okay listen i wasn't going to request anything bc i worry about you but also? if you want to/have the time hit me with a playlist for our girl nina zenik

- request 43/? fuckin give me the ending anya should have had. she is alive and with her new son and having a great time

- request 45/? inej moodboard?

- request 47/? will you make literally any meme of your choosing for six of crows?

- request 48/? write a drabble for kaz, my favorite bastard

- okay so i don't actually like nina or mattias that much but i still wanna hear about your thoughts (and also see if you'll change my mind)

- kaz brekker turning 18 fic. birthday party, everyone singing, whole shebang. i need it stat

- religious trauma fic aka i started shipping kaz/alina/inej and i can’t stop

- kaz trauma soup (he has D.I.D. and you can’t prove me wrong)

- my two redacted fics for @grishaversebigbang​

- wesper fake dating

- six of crows bright sessions crossover: everyone gets therapy

TMA

- uhh... s1 gang having a nice time? melanie getting to have some Pride™️? some "fun" horror thing?

- request 7/? spare steph and jason bonding? please sir? spare some for a humble child such as myself?

- okay so this was meant for night 3 but i had midterm shit SO this is honorary night 3 let's DO THIS request 8/? i want a moodboard of extremely out of context magnus archives shit like i mean confuse the FUCK out of me i don't go here i know Nothing about it

- request 11/? OKAY so i need tim stoker meeting tim drake now i need my timmy to meet your tim plus i want to see character differences no i'm not trying to create a tim stoker in my head so i can read a's fic while NOT thinking of tim drake whaaaaaat you're crazy

- request 18(i think)/? i need a quote edit of every time within the first like. 15 eps of tam where jon is like “sounds fake but go off” thank u bb

- request 40/? i challenge you to write a tma drabble based only on the episodes i've heard. i'm currently halfway through episode 23

- Jon being lovingly bullied into taking a break. I'm aware this has been written a million times but it is one of my favorite things.

- spiral!sasha AU

- extinction martin go brrrrr

- high school era timsasha. they've both been friends for years, and everyone always asks when they will be a couple. they decide to fake date, to prove everyone wrong and show what a bad couple they would be. turns out that's a bit trickier than they thought

- after sasha comes back, tim is broken. he can't let go, scared that if he looks away for even a minute he'll lose her again. sasha suggests shibari as a way for him to give up control

- sasha pov mag 19 au, sacrificing herself to save the others, knows that if she gives herself up to the not!them it will let the others live

- this is the "tim finds a polaroid of sasha" trope

- early archives days,, long nights in research,,, clothes sharing,, somft. late nights and falling asleep at their desks warm and safe in the other's presence

- two parts: timsasha as kids, each picking a constellation that is "theirs". just soft kid antics. tim at sasha's grave glancing up to see their constellations

- continuing your job’s a joke (you’re broke)

DC Comics

- TIMSTEPH HADESTOWN AU,,,

- my redacted fic for @batfam-big-bang​

- request for you to get a decent amount of sleep? serious answer, dickkori, SAL's Venus

- request 4/? timsteph morning after 👀 mayhaps?

- a concept: nonbinary stephanie brown

- teehee hi mom, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, but can i request damian angst for your accomplishments 100 followers?

- hi you can ignore my first request if you want, or you can ignore this one. but bls possibly write some bikini ra’s? -the bikini bitch

- request 27/? jay is asking through me for a jondami playlist but tbh i also want it so win win yk?

- "I don't know how to help you but I can help you find someone who does" with bruce and jason? im just craving bruce being a good day to jason for once

- “I am putting you in time out because you need to understand the consequences of your actions.” with steph and jason as dumbass disaster bi best friends pretty please?

- request 32/? timsteph patrol date!!!

- request 33/? timsteph *gala* date? mayhaps??

- request 37/? tim drake drabble but make it Edgy cai

- request 39/? drabble of a prank war between tim and damian

- joyfire cuddly fluff please? or like just any outlaw fluff if joyfire isnt your thing (feel free to add every member of the outlaws, dont feel like u gotta stick with jason, kori, roy i love them all)

- barbara and robin! jason fluff? bonding over books or something?

- request 62/? i need a drabble about the chaotic trio jason, tim, and steph i'm love them ty

- request 63/? batfam x mcu crossover. batfam meets ironfam. give me ALL the cliches. ALL OF THEM

- request 64/? young justice x young avengers - jay cuz idk SHIT about the young avengers

- request 66/? jondami moodboard pls and ty

- request 67/? timsteph moodboard!!!!!!

- request 69/? HEHEHE kinky 😏 i would v much like a timsteph drabble of the almost first time. does that make sense? like i don't want you to go all the way NSFW cuz i know that's against the rules and i'm a rule follower. but like they *almost* go all the way. this could be fade to black or some shit i don't care just make it a lil steamy and have Fun

- i request damian angst! all of it

- hmm... maybe i request? jondami?

- mayhaps,,,,some batfam,,,,,committing crimes? ily be gay do crime <3 - lu

- How about a ficlet with Steph and Cass?

Found Family Bingo Prompts

- no powers au

- tunnel

- first day

- join the club

- hurt/comfort

- experiment

- playing favorites

- hold on

- possession

- 10 o’clock

- singing

- road

- snitch

- curfew

- timer

- fantasy au

- zombie au

- dreams

- campfire

- are you okay

- movie night

- games

- scared

Miscellaneous

- a request: Write A Drabble, Coward

- is it too late to request a moodboard for me?

- request 20/? i’m going off book because i’m in a Chaotic Mood™️ can you just absolutely vibe check me like go off cai demolish me

- request 21/? i formally request that you pick a favorite cai. i don’t care what that favorite pertains to, just pick a favorite something

- request 23/? roast me

- request 24/? can i have a buzzfeed unsolved spoopy playlist but spoiler alert it’s not spoopy bc shane doesn’t believe does this make sense it has been a Day™️

- request 25/50 i want a jake and amy fic make it Soft cai i’m love them b99 is so good

- request 28/? i know nothing about the lord of the rings so make something that will confuse the shit out of me

- request 34/? malvie and jaylos moodboards 😈

- request 35/? a moodboard for the bbb mods!! perceive all of us!!!

- request 36/? moodboard for the tua mods too???? mayhaps??

- request 41/? doctor WHO? idk but i want a drabble of him and the one character i know from doctor who which is rose

- request 46/? make an alignment meme with our group, have fun!!!

- request 49/? i want you to kin assign me a character from every fandom you can/want to. go feral

- request 50!!!!/? this is a special request. the most special request. can you make a bastards tbh playlist? i want our vibes encapsulated. i want us in music form. i want to hear those songs and be like "that's me and cai" and smile.

- requests 51/? i know jack shit about good omens. explain it to me in the most confusing way possible. make me know less by the end than i know now

- request 53/? can you write a mel aesthetic? i'm Curious

- request 54/? give me a list of book recs cai i want some good book recs pls

- request 56/? edit a picture of US together too

- request 58/? oooh can i have a disney edit? like. hm. i just really love disney and i want anything to do with disney. like a quote or an aesthetic or an aesthetic edit i just want disney.

- request 59/? i would v much like a recipe for carbonara. i've never had it but it sounds fucking delicious

- request 60/? ooh hey can i get a makeup tutorial? i know you like makeup, i'm shit at doing makeup. teach me

- request 65/? i need the most emo playlist you can make that vibes with dear evan hansen thank you

- request 68/? i want a superwholock moodboard. this can be serious, with the actual fandoms in mind, or literally what the era felt like. the insanity. the horror.

- request 70/? ooh ooh ooh do you have a good bread recipe?? i wanna get that bread

- request 71/? i want a playlist with the vibes of summoning a demon. please don't ask questions. i don't have answers. and if i do, no i don't.

- For the requests, how about writing something based on a friend?

- request 75/? MMMM i want literally anything to do with natasha, pierre, and the great comet of 1812

- request 76/? i want some healthy recipes. help a girl out

- a feral bbb quote or two?

- you perceive my plant but now I dare thee to perceive mine own visage

- okay this is a two for one request. 1. you did the bee movie script so now we need a shrek two script edit 2. sleep please

- Pansexual mb for my lil queer soul?

- my (probably) final request is just for you to ramble about something, i don't really care what

- HI ILY CONGRATS AS WELL CAUSE IM LATE BUT CONGRATS. could i request a pirates of the caribbean (or just pirates) or whatever you what to do, free range.

- mood board for the beluga whales who got brought to the animal sanctuary in Iceland please?

- 100 follower request: Moodboard for my stuffed cow Oaky?

[queer-crusader]

How do you think Silver & Flint's relationship would have evolved if things hadn't ended the way they did in S4? How do you think things would have progressed through time? I tend to think about the what ifs a lot. I'm just curious what your thoughts are on it.

OOFT. I mean i have many thoughts! It’s... very hard to say really. Because i think one thing Black Sails does incredibly well is the way it builds a story and a character. Many choices made in this show are so dependent on what the characters want and who they intrinsically are and how they influence each other (willingly/knowingly or not), and i feel like there are many very complex interwoven roads that led them to the conclusion they got to. Which is one of the many reasons the finale felt like such a tragedy; you know things are going to end badly because you kind of see it coming. And dear god it does hurt, even with Flint being reunited with Thomas.

So. I think there are two ways to answer this question, and you can sort of divide them into canon-ish versus fanon wish. These may not exactly be clearly indicated bc like i said i have Many Thoughts, and i apologise in advance 😅 Another thing i’ll be looking at here is something we had to lay out for our characters when i studied acting - the goals/objectives/motivations of the character, and their emotional/mental state. None of this is meant to be critical against any character. I simply adore analyising them and the paths of the story, and I love each and every character i talk about here deeply.

So, looking at that finale. There’s several things that i could take from what you say about things not ending the way they did - for now, i’m looking at the confrontation between Flint and Silver in the woods, where Silver forces Flint to quit his war and reunites him with Thomas.

Firstly, let’s analyse what we get from the canon, and what i believe motivates these characters to bring them to the point they end up at. There’s that famous line i think of Silver where he says he doesn’t know anymore where he ends and Flint begins - their thinking patterns have become so intertwined, they basically share a braincell. The tricky thing about this is, just because he and Flint think similarly, share tactics, and a knowledge of how to use people in their means, just because they understand each other well, doesn’t mean they share opinions and morals. Flint especially seems to forget this. He believes Silver is with him in his cause to end Imperial rule. But from Silver’s final actions, it’s clear Silver values his personal wants and needs above that of this abstract crowd of people. He’s not oppressed - or hasn’t felt the effects of Imperial/religious oppression (as far as we canonically know) like Flint and Madi have. And that means he doesn’t have the same drive. He’s driven by his personal connections to these people, i believe, purely from his own point of view. Like, i suspect he struggles to place himself in the shoes of Madi or Flint to feel their pain and motivation. He can see it, he just... doesn’t fully grasp it. (There’s also a question of whether he wishes to, but i feel nowhere NEAR qualified on answering that, nor do i think the canon gives us enough material to give a perfectly cut & dry answer.)

So you have this big miscommunication. Flint believes that, because he and Silver have basically become one shared braincell, they have the same goals, while Silver is still driven from a point of selfishness. (Side-note: there was a moment in the show he became selfless! He wouldn’t give up his crew when faced with torture from Vane’s quartermaster! But then he lost a leg over it and it seemed to dampen that selflessness. I think from there on, moments where he seems to be motivated by the good of the crew come instead from an internal need to belong and be loved more so than a genuine sense of brotherhood. That brotherhood may still have been there, but i think he might have suppressed that instinct a little and instead let the more selfish needs take more of a front seat. Understandable and not bad/evil, like that’s super valid of him. But my point is, he’s not exactly ready to fight for another man’s cause he doesn’t have as much of a personal emotional profit in, especially when he knows it’ll end in certain death for everyone he cares about and he knows cares about him.)

So that’s sort of where the characters are mentally in that climax. I may be skirting details and summarising a bit hastily, but it’s also been a GOOD while since i’ve watched season 4, so i apologise. Flint (and Madi as well - she plays an equally important role i think!) is fuelled by a mix of rage born from oppression/discrimination, and a protectiveness for others who may suffer the same fate. Silver meanwhile is fuelled by a need much closer to home - to be loved and to keep those he cares for and deems important to him alive and around. I’ve framed it as their emotional drive, but really it is also their goal, their objective in that finale. Flint and Madi are looking to burn down an oppressive system while Silver... isn’t. For him, their goals stand directly in the way of his. And by the end of the show, he’s gained enough power to prevail in his objective, cancelling out those of Flint and Madi.

So, could it have gone differently? I think, if we wanna play with canon and keep it as close to canon as possible... It seems almost impossible. These people’s goals just do not align. (There’s that sweet sweet tragedy again.) So what you need for it to go differently in short is for one of, if not several, of these people to change their goal. But we’re talking their MAIN objective, their main driving force at this point in the show - so like, the chances of that are slim. ESPECIALLY if we’re talking about the canon characters. After all, for that, the characters would need to look inside themselves and fucking face up to some of their issues and work on them. (This is something which these characters are not very prone to do, bc jesus it’s a mess in there and if that were me i’d preferably not turn introspective either and be forced to look at all that.)

So if we wanted Flint to change his goal, he’d need to come to terms with the Empire being untouchable - which is bullshit bc like my man has a POINT, just because they seem to be able to be brought down doesn’t mean they ain’t - and to accept the homophobia and oppression they treated him and Thomas with, which, yeah fuck that, absolutely not, his rage and his goals are valid as FUCK. If we wanted to change Madi’s - lmao like listen i understand wanting her and Silver happy together bc we ship EVERYTHING in this house, but she’s poc and proper royalty and wants to end slavery. We ain’t touching her goals. So that just leaves Silver. Silver would need to face a part of himself that keeps him from placing Flint’s goals, or Madi’s goals, over his own. (I suspect we circle back to that insecurity and need to be loved, which defo stems from whatever trauma he swears doesn’t affect who he is today.) So for that he’d uhh... need therapy. And a shit tonne of it. But then you still have the issue that Flint and Madi will likely fight their war (bc they DESERVE IT), which may lead to what Silver considers inevitable - that they will die early and horribly, and he ends up all alone.

So, looking at playing with the canon-ish to change things? It’s gonna end in tragedy. There’s doesn’t seem any other way about it, i fear; not with the way these characters were written, with who they are and what drives them and what they want. If it doesn’t end in tragedy in one way, then almost certainly in another.

So what are our other options? What if we look at the fanon wish - whether it’s silverflint, or silvermadi, or madisilverflint, or just to have these kids be fucking happy? Well, you know what? Maybe it DOESNT have to end up in tragedy. Maybe, if Silver does align himself with the goals of the people he loves - after learning to communicate and place himself in other people’s shoes and prioritise the needs of his loved ones and compromising and all that jazz (god this boy needs therapy that only the fanon can likely give him, rip) - he could join them in their war. And maybe, his genius and creativity and quick wit will in fact propel their cause forward and help so much, none of them dies an early gruesome death. It’s not impossible! It just requires that sweet sweet character growth he doesn’t get the opportunity for in canon.

Another option, and this one is perhaps a little more plausible if the show had no episode limit or a desire to end in tragedy and “align” itself with “history” (they’ve played fast and loose with real history i’ve learned, and like,, it’s a story about fictional characters so why did it have to align itself with history?? Okay fine, as a prequel to Treasure Island, it still needed to end in tragedy for Silver bc we know where he ends up. Were there no Treasure Island and no rules and we could do what we wanted with the show and write a new ending, then what?). This one is more popular, you see it in loads of fics and i like it a lot. Silver sends Flint to the plantation. Flint and Thomas break out and get their war anyway. They’re pissed at Silver for a bit for being a selfish dick shitting on Flint’s dreams, but like,, it’s not as if it stopped Flint. (We can even look at it like Silver knew they’d probably fight their war and have better odds with Thomas in the mix, giving them a better opportunity - but like, that’s just a fun headcanon to play with that i don’t think aligns with what he explicitly states to want in canon.) And then, after some years, everyone learns to communicate and talk things out and maybe, maybe, Silver grows a bit and things become healthier between him and Flint.

Listen, the moral of the story is this. I love all the ships in this show. I think they’re all neat, and i love the different iterations in which people bring them to life and try to align them with canon. Do i think that with the canon we’ve been given, silverflint could happen? Maybe. Would it be healthy?? I mean... Probably not 😅 but like, that doesn’t prevent me from shipping it. (That’s not the point of shipping - sometimes you just wanna see that sweet sweet chemistry pay off, even tho u know it ain’t healthy. The characters are fictional. It’s okay. No-one will get hurt - apart from maybe you if you end up romanticising it and taking that into real life but ooft that’s a whole other kettle of fish.) But god, that’s the fucking JOY of fanfics ya know?? It may also be why i enjoy writing my modern au so much xD therapy is an option, and canon means even less than usual. All im saying is, when it comes to the relation between silver and flint, the fan community are a fucking godsend. You want them to be friends?? We got fics for that! Want them to bone? SO many fics for that! Want a sort of father-son role?? Uhh nowhere near enough fics for that, but the fandom’s still active so you never know! Partners in crime?? Hell YEAH that has potential, even in canon i think if u just stretch out fan-written episodes far enough!! (God can you imagine the POTENTIAL?? Ignore the war, the grittiness, the drama. Get me some pirate hijinks where the stakes are low but they’re still sharing a braincell.)

(Hmm. Now i need to add another idea to my WIP list lmao xD)

Anywayyy, hope this satisfies ur curiosity anon!!

[jonthethinker]

Does the Cerberus Assembly need to be reformed, or destroyed? And can it really be either?

Let’s start with an opinion we can all agree on; Trent Ikithon sucks. He’s clearly a very bad person, and our collective hatred of him is one of the rare things this fandom seems to actually agree on. What he’s done to his “disciples” is horrifying, and his general ideology is monstrous and abhorrent, although not surprising considering the role he plays in the Empire. We can, on this, agree that the world would be a better place if he was removed from power, correct?

Now this is where I start explaining my probably very divisive opinion.

A lot of people would say that all it takes to make the Cerberus Assembly better would be to replace the members like Ikithon with Good People. Maybe Caleb Widogast, for instance. If you simply put someone with a stronger moral character into that position, then its output in turn will also be Good.

This, whether knowingly or not, implies that institutions, even those like the Cerberus Assembly, are by their nature at the very least morally neutral. That all it takes to make an institution like the Assembly be Good is have Good People run it. You do that, and with time, all is well.

But what if institutions did have a moral character? what if the responsibilities and powers given to a body like the Assembly and its requisite components are not Good or even neutral, but instead very, very bad? And what if the incentives the people deciding who stands on the Assembly, namely the members of the Assembly themselves, are actually antithetical to any ideas of a substantially reformed Assembly in the first place?

Let’s think for a minute about Trent and his job. We are all horrified by his methods of creating his Volstruckers. But as much as it bothers me, what bothers me more, personally, is what they are for. While we tend to view them as arcane assassins, what they really are is a wholly unaccountable means of performing all of the Assembly’s, and by extension the Empire’s, dirty deeds not meant for public notice. And seeing as they fall under the sole purview of the Archmage of Civil Influence, this is largely going to translate to “managing dissidence and discontent” in the polite language a body like the Assembly would use to describe its work.

What this means is that its job, and the job of Trent’s office as a whole, is to keep the wrong ideas from getting too popular and the people from getting too loud about the awfulness of their everyday lives, and inside a broader system like the Empire, this is usually going to be dealt with by means of coercion and outright violence. While it’s easy to feel sorry for the incredibly abused and tormented people under Trent’s power, like Caleb and Astrid and Eadwolf, I feel like I’m one of the few in the fandom who has really considered the true extent of terror being unleashed on so many whose faces we’ll never know.

Peasant farmers’ organizing for lower taxes on their grain sales. Laborers gathering to raise hell over the low wages they receive from mandatory state projects. Citizens concerned about the unchecked brutality of the Crown’s Guard. Religious worshipers worried the Empire is straying from the path set by their gods. The mentally ill and other people who simply don’t comfortably fit into the grand scheme of things. Races of folks seen as outsiders suspected of conflicting allegiances. How many people like this have vanished in the night, either to be imprisoned or tortured or killed, or I guess in many cases, all three? How much suffering has been caused, hidden away from any measure of accountability?

And this brings me to my next point; While Trent is truly awful, his title, and the role he plays, are also awful, and I think you don’t get into a position like that in the first place without being someone like Trent. I say this because we’ve gotten to meet a handful of people on the Assembly outside of Trent, and they’ve all generally had the same things to say about him; he gives them the creeps and they don’t like him personally, but he has his uses. I interpret this to mean he performs the responsibilities of his office well enough, and while his methods and general demeanor may be off-putting, it isn’t worth causing a fuss about so long as the work gets done. If they simply ignore what he’s doing, they get the benefits of a suppressed polity with very little of the personal hangups of what it requires to make that happen.

So let’s say, for some reason, Trent dies or is imprisoned and disgraced, and Caleb assumes his role. Caleb has experienced a remarkable amount of personal growth, although not without his own stumbles and set-backs like any victim of severe trauma such as he. He is, in my humble opinion, a Good Man. I know if given the power of this office, he’d be motivated to end the traumatizing of children, and killing of parents, and perhaps even the wholesale disbanding of the Scourgers itself. He’d maybe seek to alleviate the suffering of those his office is meant to contain instead of inflicting more pain upon them. And wouldn’t that be nice?

But when you’ve got this entrenched elite like the Empire does, those sorts of efforts are not going to go unnoticed, and in many cases, are going to cause one hell of a backlash among the powerful, who more often than not believe in their heart of hearts that those lowly commoners deserve their lot in life, and to spare the lash is to spoil the child, and soon you’ll have a bunch of peasants thinking they can go so far as to ask for actual power, actual control over the direction of their lives, and for any empire, but especially this one, how do you imagine that’s going to fly?

I’m reminded of an anecdote out of Brazilian politics. Former President Lula da Silva is one of the the most popular Brazilian political figures of all time, and managed to massively alleviate poverty in Brazil while also working with Brazil’s entrenched elite to make sure not to piss off the wealthiest of the wealthy. But the comfortably upper middle class, or “petite bourgeoisie” as Marx would call them, were disgusted that all these poor people were suddenly climbing the ladder. According to some folks, they complained “The airports are starting to look like bus stations,” because for the first time, working class people in Brazil could actually afford to fly. This discontent among the comfortable led to a chain events ending in the false arrest and imprisonment of Lula and the rise of their current terrifying president Jair Bolsonaro. I learned from this, and other tales like it, to never underestimate how angry some people will become when their special status ain’t so special anymore.

This is to say, that while Caleb is an undoubtedly brilliant man, without the potential intervention of DM magic, I don’t see someone with his lack of political savvy either holding power long or holding onto his convictions long enough to do anything meaningful, if someone like him is considered for the job in the first place. AND even if he does accomplish all those wonderful things through this office and survives until he’s old and gray, he will eventually die. And judging solely on the general quality of character among the wizards we’ve met thus far, I’m not so optimistic about his potential replacement.

This example does spill out my major beef with the whole “Good Person in power” idea of reform. Good People either can’t live up to their values and actually wield power, or the clock itself defeats them and everything they ever stood for. This is also my problem with governmental models overly dependent on norms, as all it takes is someone willing to just completely ignore them,and for the people in power around them to have no incentive to stop them, for things to completely go off the rails. This is why reforms generally don’t last unless they universally redistribute power itself, from the top to the bottom, and even this is going to come with its own backlashes, and it generally doesn’t happen from polite attempts at reform by well meaning leaders, at least not all on their own, but through the sheer force of mass movements or outright revolutions.

And its not just Trent’s office that has this problem. It’s every single seat on the Assembly. His is just a particularly egregious example. Vess DeRogna didn’t get her job by being polite, of that much I’m sure. She’s clever, devious, and patient, not to mention her skill set and interests directly line her up for the role as Archmage of Antiquity. I don’t really think her sole interest is making sure nobody gets hurt by all these artifacts lying around, and neither do I imagine the Empire itself has any intention of keeping her discoveries behind lock and key; they pretty clearly want them mass produced where they can and immediately wielded against their enemies, both foreign and domestic.

And I’ve hinted at this earlier, but if you think Trent is a unique monster in the halls of Dwendalian mages, I’m going to have to disagree. I’m certain there are more than a few wizards in service of the Assembly and the Empire, who if not already believing similarly to Trent, could easily be convinced of his convictions, and ready to use his power themselves in an eerily identical manner. People like Trent aren’t as rare as we’d like them to be, and they’re all ready to grab power just as soon as they can.

So it would seem I come firmly on the “burn it all down” side of things. If only I believed it were that simple.

You see, I see the Cerberus Assembly as an institution that exists, in its entirety, for the cementing of power of the Dwendalian Elite and the progression of its interests. It protects them from threats both from inside and out, it teaches their children magic, it helps negotiate its trade, it aids in putting food on its table, and makes sure its armed for bear with the deadliest of magic only the Age of Arcanum and ancient elves could provide. It’s very reason for existence is to uphold the way of life for those on top. Even if it competes idly for who sits at the head of the table, it very much is invested in maintaining the structure of that table.

So if it were sundered and destroyed as an institution, what is to stop its functions from simply being absorbed by the broader Empire? What’s to stop the Empire from simply recreating the Volstrucker program under a different name? What’s stopping them from hiring its wizards to perform their original tasks, just under the sole discretion of the king? So I’d wager the problem isn’t the Assembly, but the very distribution of power required to maintain an Empire like Dwendal’s in the first place. The assembly is an immoral institution upholding a much larger, equally immoral institution. And you can’t truly solve the problem without tearing the whole damn thing down.

Do I think this campaign is going to be one in which our lovely players start a revolution? Hell no. I expect Trent at least to die or be deposed, and with the aid of some DM magic, things will get a little better. But Matt has given enough consideration to the political forces present in his world building, that I wanted to treat his world as if it were subject solely to the forces and motivations our own is. Just to see how things could turn out without a generally kind god like Matthew Mercer at the helm.

Plus I just really love trying to understand how fantasy political structures would really work. It’s usually a lot less depressing than real political structures, at least in so far as there are no real consequences for their abject failures. But I’ve rambled long enough. Thank you to the poor souls who read this ramble. You’re truly wonderful.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Did you start making chapter theories in ch. 179? I would have liked to see your take in the psychology of certain convicts, like Sekiya, Gansoku and Henmi

Actually...

I began a little earlier at around chap 162, but at the time I didn’t really make a rambling post for each chapter.

I’ve also a re-reading series, but I ended up interrupting it at chap 18 (even if I actually wrote it till chap 38) for various reasons.

If you feel like listening to me ramble about those three I don’t mind doing it, just keep in mind it’s not a real psychological analysis. Those take a professional and much more information about their lives than I have at hand and I’m not even sure if Noda wanted to make them THAT psychologically accurate.

So take this more as a character analysis than a real psychological take of them.

For a moment let me group together Henmi and Sekiya as, like most of the characters of Golden Kamuy, they’ve in common they lived a traumatic event that influenced the rest of their lives and became their Freudian excuse.

Mind you, the trope is called Freudian excuse but in Noda’s case often it’s more a Freudian explanation, a ‘why they ended up like this’ a showing that they weren’t just random bad men born evil but once they were just ordinary guys like you and me and then something happened and they reacted to it in the entirely wrong way, turning them in complete monsters. A For Want of a Nail effect, if you want, something happens, and this event has a ripple effect, resulting in massive change in the character changes radically.

So, with this in mind, let’s go dig into those two.

Henmi is the first convict we meet whose life was totally screwed over by a traumatic event.

The previous convicts are:

- Gotou who, according to Shiraishi, murdered his wife and child while drunk, even though I would be more prone, analyzing his interaction with Sugimoto during which he’s friendly and harmless when drunk and attempts to murder him when he’s sober, to assume he was actually not drunk when he did it and merely said he was hoping this would result in a less

- Prisoner n 1, of whom we know nothing about except that he viewed himself as a small fish

- Tsuyama, whom we know is a murderer but not why

- Shiraishi, who’s not a murderer

- Hijikata, who’s actually a political prisoner

- Ushiyama, who killed out of self defence

- Nihei, who just couldn’t let go whose who attacked him but had to take revenge on them.

And then comes in Henmi, who actually has a backstory that explains why he became a monster.

Henmi himself doesn’t consider it an excuse, just his starting point, albeit it’s possible that, had Shiraishi never asked, he would have never wondered why he took that turn.

Henmi saw a board killing his little brother, apparently eating it alive.

We’ve no info on why this incident took place, but this seems to point out Henmi didn’t deliberately cause this.

So really, this is what turned him from an ordinary kid to a monster, so it’s not something he had caused.

Henmi watched this from his hiding spot, meaning he either arrived on the scene, was scared and hid or that both siblings were there but only Henmi managed to reach a hiding place and from there he couldn’t move to help his brother.

Henmi describes his brother’s death vividly. It was horrific, his brother was helpless and it wasn’t even the boar’s fault as the animal couldn’t understand him. Henmi thinks his brother was in a lot of pain and fear, in despair and hopelessness.

But then he says something that clearly leaves into us an impression. He says that each time he thinks at his brother ‘he really, really want to kill somebody, anybody’, and he seems to have an erection as he says so.

Due to this it’s easy to think that Noda is trying to depict him as someone committing ‘lust murders’, murders done by someone who searches for erotic satisfaction by killing someone… by is it really so simple?

Not quite because it’s not murdering someone what turns Henmi on, it’s the idea that this someone will murder him.

Henmi is not identifying with the boar, he’s identifying with his brother.

I’ll go and assume the idea here is that part of the problem here is that when Henmi saw his brother being killed, his body reacted in an inappropriate manner.

When one is scared the body produces dopamine. Some individuals may get more of a kick from this dopamine response than others do as, and according to some studies dopamine can trigger penile erection (though they’re still debating over this but whatever, Golden Kamuy isn’t meant to be a medicine text).

Anyway, in between the trauma to seeing his brother being killed in such a horrific way and his body’s reaction somehow Henmi came up with the idea he wanted to die like him.

We see Henmi doesn’t get an erection when he kills the Yakuza,

just when he thinks to how Sugimoto could kill him. We see Henmi thinks Shiraishi is masturbating to the thought of getting killed, not to the thought of killing someone.

Possibly part of all this is also due to guilt, he just stood there, watching as light died in his brother’s eyes (it’s interesting how he carve the kanji for ‘eye’ in his victims, as if to mark them with his sin) and let his younger brother be killed and even got off by it and that also explains his wish to die. In a way in this he’s similar to Sekiya, who thought he should have been the one who died, and not his little girl.

And it’s interesting Henmi has to think at it, before explaining this is what turned him into what he is, because this hints he tried to forget what he saw, that he buried it inside himself, for him it wasn’t ‘oh, okay, so this is how my brother die so let’s start killing people’, Henmi didn’t try to understand his impulses, he just followed them.

But, long story short, Henmi’s wish to die a beautiful death, like his little brother, lead him to become completely twisted.

Maybe the boar attacked them because they attempted to attack him, that’s why Henmi began to attack people, attempting to murder them in hope they would instead murder him, attempting to recreate what happened with his brother. Maybe if this experience had never happened to him Henmi would have just been an ordinary well-mannered and very sociable guy who helps friends (when Shiraishi sees Sister Miyazawa and follows her Henmi stops the guard from chasing him).

This however wasn’t meant to be.

Henmi flips, develops an obsession on his own death, whom he wants to be terrible like the one of his brother and maybe the second tragedy of his own story is by misfortune he had to kill over a hundred people before he met someone who could give him ‘his beautiful death’, hundred kills he likely felt insensible about because, when you start thinking being killed is the most exciting experience ever, you probably don’t even connect you’re doing something bad, which is also why we can label Henmi as a monster, because he’s absolutely remorseless toward his victims.

Henmi is dangerous, a serial killer that can only be stopped by death… but it would be interesting if we could peek to an universe in which he was never exposed to the trauma of losing his brother and see if in it he could have become an ordinary guy instead.

Oh well, we’ll never know.

Sekiya now as he’s similar to Henmi, yet very different.

While it’s likely that Henmi’s traumatic event or turning point took place when he was young, Sekiya’s traumatic event takes place when he’s a man and, in the volume version, Noda pays special care to it.

We know Sekiya used to be a livestock veterinarian who went around to different ranches in Hokkaido and looked after their horses and things like that.

The traumatic event that ruined his life is well known to the fandom and easy to understand and sympathize with.

Sekiya himself tells it to Kadokura, in a way that mimics a confession.

It was a Sunday morning and he was walking home with his daughter, who was still a toddler, she being right at his side, plodding around.

The images shows us a Christian church and this, combined with how it was a Sunday morning, tell us that Sekiya was probably walking home from Sunday mass.

We see him smile as he watch his daughter, light in his eyes.

Sekiya probably used to be a normal person, likely nothing over the top but what you would easily label good, and probably he felt that since he also has done his religious duty and gone to mass, God should smile down on him and protect him and his family.

(It’s possible he’s indulging a little in the capital vice of pride here… and considering his future actions in the future too)

We never hear Sekiya talking about a wife so it’s possible she died and he had to overcome that loss. Assuming a wife existed and died, he clearly overcome losing her and, evidently, being with his daughter, just watching her walk next to him, gives him joy.

Then something exploded behind him and he lost consciousness. When he wakes up he can only see that his daughter head and feet had been blown apart…. Which should be a pretty horrific thing to watch, especially for a father, but it takes him a while to realize this was due to a lighting having struck her, his eyes losing their light as he realizes this.

Abruptly Sekiya had lost his daughter, in a way that he didn’t even understand at first, a horrible way. She was a beloved child, a reason of joy for him and it could be she was the last member of his family alive.

Now there’s a really common characteristic in humans from various cultures.

Many of them tend to think that the lightning is ‘the weapon of God/a God’.

Wikipedia even have a full page in which they list the various thunder gods from all around the world and the bible too implied God can toss thunders and lightnings.

So Sekiya, man of faith, who believed to be a good person likely blessed or at least protected by his God, is facing such a terrible tragedy just after he left the church in which he probably received the Eucharist, a tragedy that took place by a mean that’s considered by many ‘a weapon of God’, a tragedy that should cause him agonizing pain because losing a child so young should be terrible.

Now… sadly the best thing Sekiya could have done at this point was just to mourn his own child and learn to cope with the pain of her loss, possibly without losing his faith but using it as a crutch in his darkest hour.

Sekiya though, doesn’t find in himself the strength to chose the best option for himself.

Sekiya can’t accept his own disgrace and the way it happened, mourn and move on.

We see Sekiya back in the church, wondering why this happened to his daughter and not him.

Actually he asks himself (or God) why his daughter was chosen and not him.

どうして娘が選ばれたのか… どうして俺じゃなかったのか

‘Dōshite musume ga eraba reta no ka... Dōshite ore janakatta no ka’

His next step, he explains to Kadokura, is to ask himself the following thing:

“Is ‘luck’ the will of God… or does the fact that a man like me was left alive prove that there is no such thing as God?”

「運」と��神の意志なのか…神のような人間を生き残らせるということは神など存在しないのではないか？

‘“Un” to wa kami no ishina no ka… kami no yōna ningen o ikinokora seru to iu koto wa kami nado sonzai shinai node wanai ka?’

It’s this thought that likely pushed Sekiya to test people’s luck over and over, ending up on murdering quite a bunch of people.

Now…

I think part of Sekiya’s problem is that he was a man indulging in the capital vice of pride.

He sounds like he believed he believed he knew how things worked (God would punish the wicked and protect the ones who walk on the right path as hinted in chap 172) and viewed himself and especially his daughter as people who should be protected, blessed by God and just couldn’t accept to be proved wrong when his daughter died, demanded an explanation, deluded himself he could understand what no human had ever understood, God’s plans or that, if he can’t, this would mean God doesn’t exist.

Of course Sekiya’s view about who God would bless and who he would punish is extremely limited as it implies God should murder whoever would deviate by the right path and would protect from everything whoever would remain on it and it doesn’t take a genius to know IT DOESN’T WORK THIS WAY, bad things can happen to good people and terrible people instead might be blessed with good luck.

But part of the problem though is that Sekiya’s obsession with trying to understand why his own misfortune happened to him works as a copying mechanism that distract him from the agonizing pain of his loss.

What’s more it makes him feel as if he has the power to control things.

What Sekiya wanted to get in fact was exactly what he got, for God to protect someone righteous and punish him for not being righteous anymore.

He’s overjoyed when he’s proved right, Hijikata survives to an extremely risky bet and kills him.

Although he says he has great interest in observing how fortune play out in people he’s never delighted when they die. He’s just businesslike, this is done, let’s move to the next.

Instead he’s delighted when he’s proved right even if this means he’ll die… but well, life had probably lost part of his meaning to him, circling about a sick game that couldn’t give him any satisfaction.

Nowadays may countries would have given psychological help to both Sekiya and Henmi after they suffered their trauma, so that they might not have ended up turning into monsters like they instead did.

However, in Golden Kamuy’s time, this possibility didn’t exist and if you couldn’t find by yourself the strength to overcome in the right way your traumas and problems well… no one would be capable to help you.

Most of the cast of GK would benefit from psychological help, Henmi and Sekiya are merely among the people who reacted to trauma in the worst way.

Now… Gansoku… well, the guy is hard to pin.

As far as we know he didn’t have a ‘traumatic moment TM’ that turned him into who he is.

When he explains himself, Gansoku says he expresses himself through violence the same way one would express himself through art but acknowledges this made others hate him as they didn’t understand him, which lead him to get jailed.

Gansoku doesn’t view this as bad as prison was a place busting with violence in which he made friends who were happy if he punched the guards and where he would go on a rampage and could only be stopped by Ushiyama.

His explanation seems to pain the picture of a violent man who can’t control himself and beat people left and right.

However when we met Gansoku we discover he’s a guy who basically promoted the stenka fights by encouraging people to bet on them. He’s a man who doesn’t attack at random but in a fight, can play in a team, tries to understand Sugimoto and helps him with his problems, helps Tsukishima when he’s wounded and can’t walk, can travel with Svetlana and protect her and wouldn’t fight with Sofia because he believed she wouldn’t be up for it.

He just love fighting and make no difference if he’s the one beating others or he’s getting beaten up. As long as he’s fighting someone strong he’s happy.

In short he’s not an uncontrollable abuser but a guy who loves to fight and who goes all out when fighting, a guy who can control himself and even being nice.

I wonder if he ended up in jail for a reason similar to Ushiyama, because he overdo it in a fight or in an argument. He said he was hated so maybe it’s the other people who would start the fight but, due to his superior strength he would hurt them too bad when he would react and end up in jail.

It’s hard to say, he’s undoubtedly strange but, at the same time, as he seems someone who doesn’t attack at random, that’s why he remind me of Ushiyama. But well, we’ll see if he’ll get more development.

For now that’s all I can say.

Thank you for your ask!

[cielleduciel]

okay okay, Black Eagles/Crimson Flower. this is very long and very rambly bc i was mad and i probably repeat myself a lot but whatever

keep in mind going forward that this was my FE3H first route and the only one i've played so far, and it was... disappointing. i really, really want to like Edelgard as a character bc she seems interesting and she has so much potential, but fact is the game never allows her any sort of true depth, and never lets you interact with her in any meaningful way

and i hate to say it bc i ALWAYS go to bat for complex underappreciated female characters, which is what i was expecting out of this, but that's not... even what she is. none of her potential is ever realized. she's one-note and static and the writers seem to think that just throwing in a traumatic backstory (that never gets explored, even as it very obviously relates directly to her worldview) and a few cute/quirky character moments will give her depth, but it doesn't

the game really LOVES to try and play up this special bond between Edelgard and Byleth and how much Byleth means to her, but it never feels earned. she always says that she feels like she can tell Byleth anything and everything, but she doesn't. i have no better understanding about why she felt like she needed to do the things she did than i did at the end of part 1. all she ever says is that she has to do it all in the name of her ideals and a better future and it's the only way, and all i ever wanted throughout the entire route was to ask WHY ? WHY is this the only way ? WHY do you feel like this is the only thing you can do ? WHY are all other options off the table ?

she's cooperating directly with Those Who Slither In The Dark (TWSITD), who not only experimented on and tortured Edelgard herself and killed her siblings, but also killed Byleth's father, but we never explore the implications of that. hell, Edelgard's issues aside, Byleth themself has their own stake in this, their own very good reasons to question Edelgard and the lengths she's willing to go to in order to achieve this future of hers, but they're NEVER given the chance. if you choose her route, the game apparently assumes that you've decided to follow her without question or reserve, regardless of everything that happened, even though it makes no sense in context. at the end of the route, Edelgard even admits that she couldn't understand why Byleth wound up taking her side, and i wanted to SCREAM !!! LIKE YEAH, I DON'T UNDERSTAND IT EITHER ??? i was HOPING we would get to explore that at some point but I GUESS NOT ????

at most, Edelgard offers platitudes by saying that she too hates TWSITD and regrets everything they've done but still maintains that her alliance with them is necessary for the time being, because they are the best allies she has against the church, and she needs their strength. again, my question is: WHY ? because while i can see how they may have been useful to her in part 1, i didn't see them do ANYTHING to help her during the entirety of part 2. they had literally zero presence in any of the battles, were not even shown or mentioned aside from the moments where they were being CLEARLY ANTAGONISTIC towards her, like when they NUKED ARIANRHOD AS A "WARNING" as soon as Edelgard captured the city bc they were mad she killed one of their officers,

and yet she felt like she needed to spin the story to say it was the church's doing so as to like, save face and rally morale while maintaining their alliance, i guess, but why ?** even in the FINAL BATTLE AGAINST RHEA HERSELF, Arundel shows up ONLY to literally say "yeah i'm just here to watch lmao". so like, as far as i know from everything i have physically seen, we defeated the church without their help at all--in SPITE of their "help", even--which does not help me understand why her alliance with TWSITD is so necessary that Edelgard has to just grit her teeth, bear it, and cover for them until the war is over so that she can finally turn on them

(**i get not telling the entire army about Arianrhod to avoid panic and questions, but what was the point of lying to the rest of the Black Eagles ? why is it that Byleth, Edelgard, and Hubert seem to be the only ones allowed to know about the empire's workings with TWSITD ? like what was even the point of Edelgard revealing herself as the Flame Emperor at the end of part 1 ((which was also a totally botched scene but i'm not even gonna get into that here))? i thought the reason for that scene WAS to reveal the truth to everyone that she was working with TWSITD, we even had that whole dramatic battle where Edelgard had to fight her own house and professor bc of it ? but i guess it wasn't, bc none of them ever bring it up again, and the game still treats it like they should all still be in the dark about it, so ???)

on top of that, i still don't understand why she felt like she needed to antagonize the Alliance, or even the Kingdom, when her enemy is the church. like i get it, there’s no negotiating with the church as it is, violent conflict with them is inevitable and i’m not against that, i understand it and i can get behind it. but why didn't she ever try talking to the other two factions or working together w them or FORGING ALLIANCES instead of resorting immediately to violence ?** maybe i can believe that Dimitri and the Kingdom are a lost cause, but for example--and again now i haven't played the GD route, but from what i understand-- Claude's values are fairly similar to Edelgard's, and he does a lot of digging into the church on his own and is able to discover much of the truth. her alliance with TWSITD is apparently "necessary" but it never occurs to her to reach out to GOOD PEOPLE like Claude who would share her interests ? why ? why can’t we even bring it up ?

(**my confusion with this is best summed up by that one interaction she has with Dimitri in part 2, where before they're about to fight, he asks her, "Must you continue to conquer? Continue to kill?" and her response is literally, "Must you continue to reconquer? Continue to kill in retaliation?" like WHAT ? WHAT KIND OF CHILDISH "NO U" NONSENSE IS THAT ? YOU'RE LITERALLY THE AGGRESSOR HERE, ARE YOU REALLY TRYING TO TELL HIM HE SHOULD'VE JUST SAT BACK AND LET YOU TAKE THE KINGDOM WITHOUT EXPLAINING ANYTHING ? HE'S TRYING TO REACH OUT TO YOU, WHY DO YOU ALWAYS REFUSE TO GIVE HIM A STRAIGHT ANSWER. WHY ARE YOU BEING SO OBTUSE ABOUT THIS. WHAT IS THE REASON)

this isn't even getting into the fact that it becomes very obvious that Edelgard does not have the whole story behind the church and TWSITD, but there's no way to call that into question either. from what i understand from a few spoilers i've been given, she even gets some parts of the story flat-out wrong. this is The Story that she uses to justify all her actions, to herself and to others, and yet she's clearly missing key details, but we never get to question it, or investigate it further, or do anything about it

and what makes it suck extra is that, as i said, i really wanted so, so badly to love Edelgard. i wanted that bond between her and Byleth to feel real, and earned, and substantial. i wanted to work together and interact with her, to  understand her, bc i genuinely sympathize with her goals. let’s erase inequality, abolish the nobility, destroy the crest system that sustains it, and tear down an oppressively intolerant religious institution ? hell yes sign me up bitch !!!! i don't like that we can't GUIDE her in her pursuit of that, or at least even try to understand why she's so committed to this horrific warpath she's on. bc why else would i have chosen to join her side and play her route ? why else is Byleth there, as her teacher ?

or maybe i'm not even supposed to sympathize with her or her cause, but they never make that point either ! like let's ignore what i want and entertain the notion that perhaps Edelgard's meant to be seen as clearly, dangerously radical and beyond all reason, that her route is supposed to be as close to a "bad" route as this game gets and you're supposed to feel guilty for helping her. i mean there definitely are points that made me go “uh, hey, what we’re doing here is kind of terrible”. the thing is they could've easily made that point at any time during her route, had moments where they highlighted the destruction left in Edelgard's wake as she "carves a bloody path" to her future with Byleth by her side, had her experience some kind of consequence for her actions or a "falling from grace" moment, exposed all the flawed logic behind her actions and examined how she came to be the way she is--but nothing like that ever happens. it’s just like “hooray we successfully invaded and conquered an independent nation :) on to the next one !” even in the epilogue, there's no downside to helping her win, no sort of realistic consequence like, idk, malcontent spreads, people aren’t happy that Edelgard took over their nation by force despite the reforms, riots flare up, etc etc., nothing that asks the player to stop and think about all this. they play everything straight but then refuse to give it meaning or make sense of any of it

and there's PLENTY of ways to make sense of it. even i can imagine some potential in-universe explanations to a lot of the "why" questions i have about Edelgard--why does she preemptively isolate herself from everyone that hasn't already demonstrated unconditional allegiance to her, why does she refuse to seek other allies or reach out to her peers like Dimitri or Claude for help and yet continue to associate with the dangerous group that is the source of her trauma, why does she rightly question one narrative while she never thinks to question the other, why does she resort to violence so quickly and easily even as she laments it, etc etc. the problem is that *the game itself* doesn't even THINK to try and address any of this, and so it's never able to make a point about any of it

so yeah, the point COULD'VE BEEN that she is too stubborn, too far gone, too caught up in her own narrative to comprehend that her actions are not as necessary as she thinks they are, too self-righteous to see the parallels between herself and Rhea as she needlessly sacrifices countless lives for her cause while she claims that HER life is too important to lose, too stuck in her own head to see the hypocrisy in her denouncement of the nobility and church and their treatment of the masses while SHE, Miss Imperial Royalty herself, throws others' lives away for her war--BUT the point is never made !! there's no statement from that point of view either ! there is literally no message ! Edelgard goes through no character development, positive or negative, despite all the groundwork for it being laid out plainly. she does not get a chance to grow, nor does she ever regress, nor is she ever faced with the consequences of her actions, and so no statement is ever made about her character or anything she represents

all the potential was there for Crimson Flower to have been a really good story, and that's why i'm so frustrated that i'm writing an essay about it. and it didn't HAVE to be a positive one with a happy ending, or even a mixed, bittersweet one, which i think would've been best. it easily could've been a tragic story about like, Byleth witnessing the fall of their misguided student firsthand as they try and fail to reach out to her, powerless to save her from herself as she drifts away from everybody, being forced into a position where her death becomes necessary in order to preserve the lives of others, or something--but it didn't try to do anything like that. it didn't try to do ANYTHING ! in fact, i would say her character is much more compelling in all the other routes where she DIES, if only bc at least then it feels like SOMETHING is being said about her character

the real kicker is that, at the end of Crimson Flower, it's said that Edelgard goes on to abolish the nobility, and yet in the epilogue she remains the emperor, and all your other units of noble birth still...... have noble titles and landholdings. not to mention i can't even be sure if the scene where Byleth's crest disappears is supposed to represent the disappearance of all crests, or just Byleth's ? so like i don't actually know what i'm supposed to think Edelgard accomplished ? what was the point of mindlessly helping her commit war crimes ? if not a character arc, or a plot resolution, or some greater message, or even the world state i was promised to get from siding with her, what exactly am i supposed to get out of this route ???

i keep thinking about how it feels in contrast to her progression in every other route, and to how Dimitri is written. bc when Byleth joins anyone else, Edelgard always dies, as Dimitri does. but unlike with Dimitri, intsys didn't adapt Edelgard's progression to Byleth's presence, beyond the simple facts of whether she wins/loses and lives/dies. what i’ve gathered from the other routes is that they portray her as a senselessly violent, incomprehensible, self-righteous kid with too much power who became consumed by it and then dies/is killed as a natural consequence of her own actions. i was expecting the difference in her route to be that we get to explore her side more and understand her inner workings and what could have led her down this path, and then to either get the chance to make a difference, or to be dragged down with her as a cautionary tale. but she STILL comes across as senselessly violent, incomprehensible, self-righteous and power-trippy, except now i get to enable her, and that’s presented as like, a genuinely wholesome thing ?

my gf has said that it feels like you're not meant to side with Edelgard, just from how poorly written and constructed her entire route is**, and i've been getting the same feeling. having finished it, the whole thing felt hollow. her actions and choices always feel absurd and frustrating because we never get any insight into what she's thinking, there's too much Telling and not enough Showing to back up any of the Telling, there are so many aspects of the route that don't make sense, and there's no ATTEMPT to make them make sense

(**seriously the production value felt so low at times that it got embarrassing to watch. like after part 1, Jeritza just dropped off the face of the planet with no explanation, and no one in the game ever brought him up again or even wondered where he was, not even Edelgard. then the recent game update suddenly added him to my roster right before i was about to finish the route, again with no explanation, and no in-game acknowledgement of this. which can only lead me to believe that Jeritza was actually SUPPOSED to be there the whole time but intsys.... forgot about him ? LIKE... THEY FORGOT TO WRITE THE DEATH KNIGHT INTO EDELGARD'S ROUTE ? WHAT)

in fact, it feels to me a lot like death was always the intended resolution for her character and everything was always written around that, but then they decided that wasn't an appropriate tone/direction to take for a route in which Byleth joins her, but then they weren't even bothered to really revise the route in any meaningful way so they just went "fuck it" and gave us.... whatever this mess is. but if so, if intsys really was so set on having her be this tragic misguided villain, i don't understand why they didn't commit to that narrative in her route as well, instead of just half-assing everything and doing nothing meaningful and wasting my time. hell i don't understand why they even bothered to include an Edelgard route if their hearts clearly weren't in it to begin with. just let her be the villain that you guys obviously wanted her to be and go

but, whatever. at least all the OTHER Black Eagle characters were great

[saintmachina]

What were some parts of seminary that you liked, versus ones you didn’t? I’m thinking about my future (read: freaking tf out) and I know I want to study theology in some way, I’m just not sure how exactly, ya feel?

Thanks for the question! Your mileage may vary: I went to a Princeton Seminary, which I would categorize as a theologically/politically moderate, academic, traditional Western-style seminary. Seminary culture varies WIDELY from school to school, so keep that in mind when choosing between, say, a Princeton, which may be a more insular academic community focused on research and internships, and a Fuller, which may be a larger community more integrated with the surrounding city concerned with practical training for missionaries, worship leaders, and Christian artists. This is NOT to say that you can’t learn to be an awesome worship leader at PTS (I know them) or an awesome theology professor at Fuller, but make sure you shop around for your particular cultural, career, and academic needs. 

Things I Loved

The residential experience. Nearly all students at PTS live in beautiful on-campus housing or in apartments specialized for families with children just a few miles away. Living a few minutes walk from the library, my professors’ offices, and the chapel was amazing, especially since students at PTS tend to be sociable with the others who live on their hall. I would often spend my evenings studying with friends in their dorm rooms, and since everyone on campus at any given time tends to eat their meals in the cafeteria together, I formed a strong clique of ten or so people who unpacked my readings + spiritual crises with me at the lunch table. 

Spiritual friendships. I was able to make deeper friends than ever before in my life from a variety of denominational and theological backgrounds. We saw each other through vocational shifts, prayed with each other, administered the Eucharist to each other, celebrated birthdays and ordinations together, and stayed up late into the night when anyone needed us. I would literally drive across the country to bail any of them out of jail at a moment’s notice.  

The emotional crucible. Seminary is bootcamp for the soul. You get exposed to so many new ideas and theologies, learn how to preach, sit at people’s bedside while they’re sick, pull together responses for every new act of violence in the news, and most of the time, are thrust into a leadership role at a church that is either going under and begging you to save them or so large and thriving that it nearly swallows you whole. Nothing will grow you up like that. I have an insane amount of poise now dealing with other people’s crises, rage, or grief, and that wasn’t the case when I matriculated. Pastors are all making it up as we go along, but seminary gives at least the appearance of sage wisdom under pressure. 

Academic engagement with theology. This one seems obvious, but after spending four years in a secular liberal arts university that was tolerant of my enduring interest in religion but didn’t offer me an outlet for it, seminary was balm in Gilead. I loved being able to dig into what I really cared about directly, be that metaphysics, church history, or the Bible as literature, and I thrived being surrounded by other people who cared about it and did the reading and wanted to explore together. 

Freedom to research what I wanted. There are plenty of demanding intro-level courses that throw you to the ground and kick you while you cry into your notecards (New Testament, what’s good) but it was fun being on that ride with the rest of your small cohort, and upper-level classes offered chances to research what you cared about. I got to present research on astrology in the book of Daniel, queer American Muslim communities, IVF treatments and theology in Ghana, overlap in myths about Odin and Jesus, and I did an independent research study linking the emergent church to the spike in Millennials re-discovering the Episcopal and Catholic churches.The library was stuffed to the brim with books I would kill for. What a treat.

The melting pot. PTS DEFINITELY has its ideological and admissions biases but they do work hard to create a diverse student body, and I was close with students from so many different counties, denominations, ethnicities, and political leanings, which was enriching beyond belief. It was one of the big reasons I chose a seminary degree. That said, not all schools skew diverse, and I was very specific about choosing a seminary that was explicitly affirming of women in ministry and the goodness and wholeness of LGBTQ+ folks, so I knew that I would be supported by general school policies. Getting that information up front is important. 

Access to university resources. This one is PTS specific, but I went to a independent seminary closely linked to and basically on the same campus as Princeton University (they were the same school back in the 1800s until an amicable split, but we’re still cozy). This meant that I had access to Princeton U libraries, free events, lectures, and religious life, and I was a member of the Episcopal Church at Princeton U for most of my time at seminary. People bribe admissions officials or work themselves to nervous breakdown to get access to the resources I had at my fingertips, and I don’t take that for granted. 

The aesthetic. If I’m gong to take tens of thousands dollars of loans out for graduate school you bet you’re ass I’m going to be sitting in American Hogwarts while I do it. 

Things I Did Not

The cliquishness. This one is a double-edged sword, because I thrived on having a clique of high-functioning. highly-educated pastors who ate at the same lunch table and gossiped about the same people and showed up to campus parties in a gang, but that’s not always healthy. People tended to fragment off by denomination or where they fall on the liberal-conservative scale, and differences can fester that way. Students of color were often implicitly excluded from certain spaces through this behavior. Humans skew towards tribalism to begin with, but when you put super socially-oriented people with strong beliefs in one space where they have to live on top of each other and are looking for low-effort socializing after a long day in the trauma ward, confessional, or picket line, it gets worse. 

Imposter syndrome. Maybe it’s grad school in general that does this, but I spent most of my degree fighting off the feeling that I was dumb, lazy, not serious enough about my “calling” or my research, and probably a heretic. Part of my character growth came from learning not to give a fuck about what people who didn’t share my passions thought of them, and from realizing that I wasn’t on the ordination or PhD track like most of my peers, and that was okay. So I grew from this, but it stung like hell. I cried a lot.

No handholding. The professors at PTS were, by and large, old school, and they were busy as hell. While there was opportunities for office hours, most engagement with professors came in the performative form of “a question, well, more of a comment really” during lectures. Students, (mostly men, I’m not going to lie to you) scrambling for a good letter of rec for a PhD tended to monopolize whatever time professors had. I can think of exceptions (Ellen Charry was exceptional and made time for me in her home when I was struggling to unpack antisemitic theology) but it was a far cry from the literature department in my undergrad, where professors were accessible and knew me personally as mentors and friends. 

Caregiver burnout. This is my big one, and is the reason I’m still in recoup mode doing the office job thing instead of working in formal ministry. Everyone at my school was a pastor, hospital chaplain, activist, or social worker. We are the people who care so much, and who are constantly doing emotional labor for those around us with no time off and usually, poor personal boundaries. Working in a field where it is your job to hold everyone’s hurt and be the face of God to them while their life falls apart is….hard. It was not unusual for me to work ten hours at Penn on my feet in campus ministry, helping people sort through whether or not they wanted to report their sexual assault, holding mini-interventions about excessive drinking, and scrambling to re-schedule worship night after my volunteer went to the hospital after a suicide attempt, and then ride the train home while my phone blew up with news of a new mass shooting that I would have to help host a candlelight vigil for. You hold your parishioner’s hand while they die in hospice. You watch social services take your client’s children away. You stand still while someone screams at you for being too political in your sermon, or not political enough. You sit down to do the budget only to realize the beloved pastor who just retired had been embezzling. Typical Tuesday. 

A lot of the items on these lists are specific to my temperament and the culture at PTS, but by and large I would say it was an amazing experience well worth my time, effort, and money. I pushed myself academically beyond what I believed I was capable of, made the deepest friends of my life, found a home denomination, learned how to effectively care for others and myself, and was met by God in transformative ways again and again. Someday I may get that ordination or work for a ministry nonprofit again, but I have skills now that no one can take away from me, skills I use every day in some capacity. 

Good luck in your discernment process, and I pray you find yourself in exactly the place you need to be!

[lettersandinkstains]

Writing Advice II: Depression

So, my other post on writing trauma seems to have taken off and been fairly well received!

Another misconception I see among media is things on depression. They believe it’s always a young white girl who cries a lot, wears all black and maybe hurts herself. Bonus points if she’s an artist. Extra bonus points if there’s some sort of resistance to therapy, medication, and, “You won’t be as creative on anti depressants!”

Disclaimer: Mental illness comes in all sorts of ways, so how it may appear in me might be different for someone else. These are based on experience as well as the diagnosable symptoms that are common.

Warning: There is some discussions of s.uicide, so please be cautious when going forward.

Clinical depression, major depression. We’ve all heard those words, and we quite likely know someone who has a diagnosis or we, ourselves, have it. But what does it mean exactly? Everyone assumes it’s just feeling sad, and you don’t always feel sad, heck, maybe you feel good a lot of days!

That’s because depression is a persistent feeling of sadness. It usually leads to physical and behavioral changes.

Well, what are the symptoms?

According to the DSM:

The Mood Symptoms:

Anxiety, apathy, general discontent, guilt, a sense of hopelessness, a sense of helplessness, loss of interest in things you may have found pleasurable in the past, mood swings and sadness.

The Behavioral Symptoms

Agitation, excessive crying, irritibility, restlessness or social isolation.

Sleep-wise:

Insomnia, excessive sleeping, early wakening, or restless sleep.

Whole body:

Excessive hunger, fatigue, or loss of appetite

Cognitive:

Lack of concentration, slowness in activity, or thoughts of suicide.

(Please note: this is just a simplified list--there’s quite a few more things to go with it)

How these things will appear in people vary. For me, I would cry excessively and for absolutely no reason. I opened my fridge one day to make chocolate milk, because for once, something sounded good and found it had spoiled two weeks prior. I sobbed for an hour. For me, that spoiled milk had felt like I was an absolute failure of a human being and adult.

I mean, I let the milk spoil. I felt utterly worthless. This may perhaps be dramatic to the outsider, after all, it is just milk, but often times, it’s not just milk or a dropped pen or even a bad day, it’s a series of things that mold up into a mountain and that little insignificant thing causes the avalanche. Perhaps, yes, it was an overreaction, but for me, it felt as it was a testament as to who I was as a person then.

When the sickness (because I consider it a sickness) first showed up, I was probably around nine or ten. The symptoms were subtle and could have easily been brushed off as being shy. I started to isolate myself from my peers, I preferred to be on the computer and away from everybody. I had thoughts of suicide, even if I didn’t quite have that word in my lexicon yet.

For me, at that age, death meant the end of suffering. I was raised in a religious household, and the church I attended was pure doom and gloom. If you died, you would be with god and nothing would be wrong. Religion wasn’t a factor, but it sure as hell was an enticer to try.

Do I think religion such as Christianity to be bad, now, as an adult? No, I do have my hang ups with it, but I’ve known religion to help a lot of people overcome or even deal with their mental health issues. And to them, I give them props.

The emotional pain I feel and had felt was something I could not, and still cannot describe to this day. The closest I have gotten to describing it was to a therapist, and it feels like there’s a giant ball of scribbles in my chest that’s constantly turning and growing bigger. It always feels like it hurts and it’s suffocating. I picked up cutting because if I could just get it out, it would go away.

It never really went away.

I stopped being able to sleep around age thirteen. For others, they sleep too much. For some, it’s disruptive, and it’s restless. But for me, it manifested itself as insomnia (anxiety played a major part in this too). The nights were long and restless, and I would often cry. Because wow, sleep is another thing I’m failing at! My weight dropped due a lack of appetite, food tasted like cardboard, and the smell made me want to vomit (I would later be diagnosed with EDNOS).

My grades suffered. Focusing was hard. Words felt like gibberish most days. Hobbies felt bland, awful, and stupid (it didn’t help I had brothers who made fun of my interests). The sociable little girl I had been, the one my parents sang praises for being smart, friendly, and witty all felt like it died when I became a teenager. Part of it had to do with my period at age nine. I would later learn this is likely a part of dysphoria.

Writing felt like my only outlet, as depression ate and took away a personality. I’m still discovering my interests today, at aged 27! And you know what? That’s okay! It’s okay to have overcome a shadow and relearn things, this isn’t a race.

So, how do you write things like this in a character? You may wonder. Surely, nobody with depression is always crying and locked away from society.

No, of course not! Give them a personality. Much like with anything else, depression isn’t a personality, it’s an illness. 

Let your characters still experience happiness. I still felt some joy and excitement at things. When I did theater in high school, I felt a rush of pride when I was able to memorize silolquies and impressed my classmates, my heart still beat fast when my then girlfriend would kiss me. Calling my friends (because texting wasn’t much of a thing in 9th and 10th grade! I don’t think it became ubquitous until I was about to graduate?) was still exciting, and I would always look forward to weekend long sleepovers.

As an adult, the things that still made me excited and got me out of bed was volunteer work. I would later foster cats and then lose that after a second suicide attempt. But there were still things that made me happy.

Because with depression, you can still experience happiness. The sadness is persistent. 

Give your characters interests, but let them have their struggles with it. I still message friends with my frustrations and anger when nothing seems right and everything I do is bad. Let this be a thing with your characters where they’ll go days without experiencing the adrenaline rush from their interest. 

Your hero in your fantasy adventure story doesn’t always have to be strong and courageous. Let them struggle with the trauma of having watched So and So die or get hurt. Let them feel the guilt. Have days where they can’t get out of bed because it’s just too much, it’s too hard. Their chest aches, their heart aches.

But force them anyways. And as usual, make sure it fits with your story. Don’t fret because you’re writing something and the character isn’t responding to a terrifying, traumatic event like you believe they should. People process things differently. If it fits in the story, do it, but do it well.

Your main character in your romance story has major depression. Okay, cool! When you bring in the love interest, and the romance blossoms and there’s roses, maybe they confess their love to each other. Maybe there’s that little bit of drama, a misunderstanding, or whatever your conflict is. Don’t go Hollywood. Do not let the love interest be the thing that “fixes” the depression.

Because that’s not how it works. Your character may decide to live, or get better for that love interest--PERFECT! GOOD! People do that all the time! I’m doing that for my cat! Let the love interest help them, but do not say that the character was now healed by love and they lived happily ever after. That doesn’t feel real, and feels very, very misleading. I’ve destroyed relationships because I was severely depressed. 

“But what if I want to write something like that? Real life isn’t always fun.” No, it’s not. It’s okay if you want to write something like that, but we already have countless movies geared towards things like that. I can guarantee the next Lifetime movie has that sort of plot. And while you’re free to write as you please, it gives people an incredibly wrong idea. You cannot heal someone by the “power of love”, they have to want to get better, and it’s an uphill battle.

I can’t tell you the countless times I’ve heard people in support groups express frustrations with themselves or their partners because they’re not better yet. “They said they love me, but they’re mad I’m still depressed.” or, “I have this person in my life now, I’m in a relationship. Why aren’t I happy?” 

So as you write this story, keep in mind, you are adding a real life element to it that people struggle with on a daily basis. And we all rely on escape fantasies, but there are still those who think those can be true. And it’s dangerous. A former friend of mine believed that if she loved this guy enough, if she stuck around, he would get better. She just not trying hard enough. He never got better. And she suffered all the more for it.

Alternatively, I watched one of my friends flourish in a relationship. She passed away this summer because she still had her demons, and those demons got the best of her. But you know what happened instead of ~love~ healing her? She worked to get better, she relied on her partner when she needed to. She used the support net she had, and strived towards healing. And she did amazing because she felt she had something to live for. 

So, if you want to add in that real life element where people struggle with, and has claimed lives, write it so that love interest is someone they decide to live for. And I think that’s a more interesting romance story instead of, “Mentally ill character falls in love, suddenly cured” trope!

The people I know who struggle with depression either do seek professional help (therapy, psychotherapy, medication) or self medicate (drugs, alcohol, etc).

Family members are alcoholics, for example. One uncle would prefer to see the bottom of a bottle starting at 7 am and going until 12 am. He only got better from alcoholism for four years, until his kids graduated. Being drunk is preferable state of mind for him than whatever reality he may be having to face (and yes, some of us are trying to help him--he doesn’t need an early grave at 65).

A friend of mine used drugs to escape the world and the demons that followed. Last year, he got clean for good. This year, he started anti depressants. This month, he is soaring.

I know someone else who uses religion. They are happy in this state, and I cannot find fault in that. If someone finds peace, contentedness, happiness when believing in a higher power, let them be. Unless it is so obviously hurting them or others.

Lastly, a small note on medication is that it’s not one size fits all. Medications can be a bitch to deal with, I had to mess around for a long time before I found something that works, which is ativan. If you want your character to go on meds, keep in mind that taking that first pill doesn’t automatically mean they’re suddenly happy and cured for life.

For some, medication means it’s a lifetime thing, and others, a short while. However you decide to do this, is up to you.

Make sure to research it. Make sure to do it well. And if you have struggles and asking if you’re doing it right, reach out to someone about it and ask questions. It’s okay. Nobody should fault you for that.

And as I’ve said before, we can have our happy ending. But it’s your choice on the characters ending because there is no “wrong” way to do it, because some people lose their battle. Some people live to survive it and tell about it, others will battle tooth and nail for the rest of their lives.

So, with this very long post ending, readers, writers, everyone, if you struggle with depression or know someone who has and wish to add on to this post (about your experiences!), feel free to do so! After all, it rears its ugly head differently in everyone, and well rounded information is often given by a multiude of people!

And if anyone has questions, you are free to send me an ask or a message!

[mrbabygirl]

Hi!! I’m looking to roleplay but what I’m looking for is rather greatly specific! This is gonna be a doozy of a read so I hope you enjoy it!

I am looking for a more long term rp partner! I am a literate roleplayer and do rather long responses! I don’t regularly use this platform but I am extremely active on discord so DM me so you can get it or tell me the basics about what you think before we move further! The roleplays I want to do are rather very specific and the roles and characters are very specific! I love these stories and my old roleplay partners aren’t apart of my life or the stories development anymore and I have had them written and developing for a long time but I’m also open to outside ideas and things of that sort! I just would like to do these stories or something Fandom related!

These are my plot ideas, and if any of them interest you ask me for further information about them!

Plot 1

This one is very important to me, I hold it dear to my heart and it’s been with me for so long long time and has brought me my greatest comforts so I’m extremely particular about this.

A freshly traumatized college kid has only recently moved to London to escape his haunting past, his life takes an unexpected turn when he comes across a murder victim. He soon finds out that this killing us just part of many murders that are still being investigated. Upon getting questioned by the worlds most intelligent detective he notices something’s… not right about her. He decides to start personally investigating her, furthering his criminal justice educational work. He soon finds that she isn’t what she seems, she is a literal demon. And not just any demon, a highly powerful god of death. Now that he finds this out he’s now unintentionally become apart of her world. This rp mainly isn’t romantic with the two main characters, there are side characters with romantic involvements with others but the mains are not romantically involved with each other, this rp has extremely heavy themes such as Murder, Cann*balism, Trauma, Abuse, Su*cide, SA, Religion, Religious Trauma, and May other possibly triggering topics. It is a story of healing and of rebirth spiritually and mentally, becoming the you you were meant to be.

Plot 2

A Bitter Young King despises every magical creature, he is slowly making his way with his allies to exterminate them all. The king has an upcoming morality ball that he needs a new outfit for in order to make an impression so he enlists in the assistance of one of the most well respected drifter tailors in all of many lands. The first meeting of them has him feeling something he hasn’t felt in a very long time… he can’t describe it but… they make them feel. So he takes it upon himself to invite them as his special guest to the ball.

This rp has a few characters (most of which I would play but you can add yours as well!), it has many specific plot points and events, and it also has many different themes and elements such as reincarnation and past lives, many different magical lands and characters, as well as curses and twisted lands. This RP also has a story that takes place before and after everything else! I can give Information about that as well!

Plot 3

A Death Game in which each of the players have been invited to be apart of a game and if they did their greatest wish would be granted if they are to win but there are many things greater than them going on. It is a story with many many characters (I believe either 58 or 68! They would be split up between us with me claiming the ones I used to play as!) and relationships and many complicated things going on, such as inescapable fate, the question of when a human stops being a human, gods who may not truly have their follows in mind, and intense dark and possibly triggering themes such as Murder, Trauma, Abuse, Su*cide, SA, Childhood SA, D*ug Abuse, and May other possibly triggering topics.

Extra Ideas

I have many other plot ideas! They’re just not nearly as developed as the others! I’d love to work on them with someone and further them! I’m also open to developing my other plots further and take ideas! I’m also willing to hear other possible plot ideas if you have any!! I’m also into Identity V, Sailor Moon, Houseki No Kuni, Spy Family, Fruits Basket, and a few more things that aren’t coming to mind at the moment! I’m also alright with NSFW!

I look forward to hearing from you!

[pinkletterday]

Carry On

Fandom: Arrow

Pairing: None. Gen.

Rating: All Audiences

Characters: Oliver Queen, William Queen

Warning: death, violence, Oliver Queen's never ending trauma conga line.

Summary: Oliver's favourite Christmas movie is It's A Wonderful Life. But not for the reason anyone would think.

A/N: I know gen fic and character studies aren't very popular but this is still one of my favourite works.

Read on AO3

Everyone jokes that Oliver's favourite Christmas movie is Die Hard. Only Thea knows that it's actually It's A Wonderful Life.

Beause not only is he a secret cheeseball and a sucker for domestic tradition, but also the idea of your existence meaning so much to so many people, touching other people's lives without ever knowing it, has always called to him.

As the Queen heir he'd been given so many speeches about expectations, responsibility and leadership and none of the direction that should have accompanied them. Which meant he had grown up floundering with a paralyzing terror of fucking up completely and being a disappointment. In typical Ollie fashion he had coped with this by deliberately becoming a disappointment and screw up. Failing by not trying is always much more comforting than trying and failing, because then you'd have to deal with proof of your inherent inadequacy. But then you also have to deal with the fact that you aren't doing much good in the world and the resultant complete lack of self-esteem.

So Ollie, every Christmas, would pretend to be humouring his Mom or Thea but secretly love watching the old black and white movie.

*

After he is shipwrecked, the island doesn't offer time or room for existential crises beyond "are you going to live or not?" All he can think about is coming back home.

And he does - in secret, with Amanda Waller's gun to his head, and it's the nightmare cousin to the movie. Not a world aching for the void of his existence but one left uprooted and devastated by its sudden end and the choices that led to it. It's a hell of a way to realize his life has always had value simply by virtue of continuing in the world. Because a dead man can't affect anything, whether he is a saint or a sinner, but a living one can seek redemption. Mistakes can be learned from, relationships can be rebuilt. The value of a life is in its living, not in an arbitrary scale of cosmic judgement.

That is the second turning point in Ollie's life.

The third one is little Akio dying in his arms. He has finally given his all to one purpose and failed as shatteringly and absolutely as one person can possibly fail. His worst nightmare come to fruition.

Yes, Oliver Queen, sneers the universe. You are fundamentally a fuck up.

What then is the point of continued living? Of trying to go home? Of doing anything? He had chosen to survive. For what? All he's good for is fighting and fucking up. Why is he not dead? Because he's just lucky and there's no real reason for any of it?

Amanda picks him out of the gutter he had drunk himself into and drops him back in hell for the second time. And suddenly, he discovers slavery, magic and a flame-slender hope in Taiana. Not only is the world a whole lot bigger, deeper and more unfathomable than he had ever believed possible, but while he was fucking around trying to find reasons to continue, there had been people gripping the tether of life with both bloodied hands and snarling defiance at pure evil. And those people were being cut down. Taiana, with her gentle hands and fierce hope, begs for death at his hands, and as her neck snaps so does something inside him.

Fuck good and evil and fuck reasons.

He wants blood.

The thing he turns into in Moscow should have scared him shitless. It doesn't. There is an exhilarating freedom in becoming this single-minded, lowering beast that can kill without second thought or remorse. There is only Kovarr and his promise to Taiana, there is only the face of evil and his determination to end it. And if he fails again, well. He and Taiana are both dead anyway.

He is completely at home in the freezing cold, the human scum and the blood and bullets, exchanging favours with the Bratva. His heart is quiet and his mind is alive. Oliver Queen is dead at the hand of Kapushin and it feels. So. Good.

He doesn't realize that this too is childish arrogance. The life of a beast is simple, but man always triumphs over even the most dangerous fangs and claws nature can create because man thinks. Oliver tries to be a beast to end a beast but Kovarr proves to be very much a man and brings Oliver under his heel.

But Kovarr is a man and therefore arrogant and sadistic. He lets Oliver escape.

He has tried being a hero, he doesn't even have to try to be a fuck up and now he realizes that he definitely is not cut out to be an animal. What is he supposed to be, then?

Talia Al Ghul answers. Be a weapon.

A weapon only has a target. A mission, an objective and an end result. Good or bad is not the point, but the fact of its completion.

The rush of endorphins that accompanies each kill bears no relevance to his skill as an archer. The desperate pleading in a man's eyes has no bearing on doing what needs to be done. Failure simply means refocusing his sights.

Accountability, responsibility, initiative. The Queen family name. The sins of his father burns a hole in the notebook against his breast as he leaves Kovarr's corpse behind on the island and swings back to Starling, purpose burning in his eyes.

He has a mission from his father. And finally, after a foolish misspent boyhood and incompetent, selfish youth, he finally has the direction he needs.

He is going to make a difference.

*

He doesn't watch A Wonderful Life that Christmas. It means nothing to him.

*

He learns some important things that year.

First of which is that a man is not a weapon. He can be like a weapon. But there is a significant difference between the two.

A man can be hurt when the woman he loves looks at him in fear.

A man can be faced with equally dire choices and still choose wrong.

A man can fail so horribly that he lets a city collapse on top of a thousand people.

A man's heart can break when his best friend dies in his arms.

It is only his bow that does not weep.

*

Lian Yu is a harsh refuge, but it offers no more answers than it ever did. He's kind of sick of himself by the time Digg and Felicity parachute in to confront him. And they're right. He has to go in some direction from this point on, since going back seems to be going nowhere. He comes back to the city, tries to focus on his family, and the city sucks him back into its greedy maw.

He watches the movie that year, haunted by Shado and Sara. Haunted by himself, really. There was a reason his younger self loved this movie. Who was that younger self? What had it been trying to tell him? Everything seems imbued with meaning and frustratingly elusive.

His mother dies. He's tired. He would like to follow her now. But they don't let him.

They win the city. They lose Sara. Barry wakes up with powers and he suddenly realizes those unfathomable forces he had glimpsed in Lian Yu are about to crash upon the world in his wake like a tsunami, devastating and changing the world order.

And every Christmas he watches It's A Wonderful Life almost religiously, clinging to it like a tether to - what? He doesn't know. The memories of his parents snuggling on the couch beside him, Tommy sprawled at his feet and little Thea on his lap? But Robert had been cheating on Moira even then, Thea had been conceived of Malcolm and they had been plotting terrible things, unbeknownst to him and Tommy. Was any of it ever real?

*

After the island blows up and Samantha dies, William comes to live with him. That Christmas it's just the Queens in Oliver's apartment, even Raisa having gone home for the holidays.

Oliver is watching his favourite Christmas movie alone in the living room, Thea's head in his lap. She's sleeping, fresh from the hospital and still needing rest and care. But they had gotten a small Christmas tree, despite William's lukewarm interest and there are some presents under it.

Oliver hears the soft pad of his son's feet on the hardwood but does not turn around. He continues eating popcorn and watching Clarence and George Bailey.

"What're you watching?"

"Hey, buddy," Oliver carefully turns around. "Can't sleep?"

William shrugs. "You like old movies?"

"Just this one." Oliver waits for William to tentatively sit on the edge of the couch near Thea's feet. "Ever watched It's A Wonderful Life?"

"Nah. Mom said it was too cheesy."

Oliver huffs a laugh. "I guess it is, a little."

"How come you like it?" William looks at him, bemused, as though he cant imagine Arrow Dad liking saccharine Christmas movies.

"Well, I used to watch it with my parents and your Aunt Thea when I was a kid."

"You're not a kid anymore," William observes.

"No," Oliver says, "but the message is still important."

"What's that?" His son's young voice has no business being so derisively bitter. "Be glad you're alive?"

"That," Oliver says steadily, even as his heart aches. "But also -"

The words come gently, as though the knowledge had been safely stored inside him until just this moment.

"It means don't be conceited. That no matter how much you may have fuc- messed up - you still matter. Your life isn't about you - or not just about you. It's about how by just living, well or badly, you change other people's lives. Sometimes for the worse," and Oliver can't help the stab in his heart as he looks at William, "but sometimes you can turn even that around for the better."

"It means everything you do matters," Oliver says, and then forces himself to relax when his son startles at the sudden vehemence, "to other people. And to think about them means to think about yourself too. It means that you matter, William," he has to swallow past the lump in his own throat as his son's eyes begin to shimmer. "You will always, always matter."

He reaches out a hand but William ducks under his arm and buries his soft head in Oliver's shoulder. Sitting under the glow of the tree lights, his son's tears on his neck and Thea's head heavy on his lap, Oliver feels his loves, past and present surround him, the ghost of the boy he was fading into the glowing memory of a Christmas fireside. And something in his heart finally loosens, lightens and tumbles free.

End

[fantroll-purgatory]

Hello mods, I hope you’re all doing wonderful! I’ve been a long time fan of this blog, and I’ve just made a troll based off of Ursula from the Little Mermaid films. I hope I’m doing this right!!

I LOVE URSULA WITH MY WHOLE BIG FAT GAY HEART THANK YOU FOR THIS GIFT 

Your name is MURANA VANTIA and you ARE A TEENAGE WITCH.

FIRST: Alternia or Beforus or some type of AU? Alternia

Name (preferably include how you came up with it and why): Murana Vantia. Murana comes from Muraenidae, the family of Moray eels. Vantia is from Vanitas, Latin for vanity, emptiness, and worthlessness.

Man the reasoning for all this is so tight. Given that Ursula has not once, but TWICE gone undercover, you may want to also give her a go-to alias besides her FLARP name. Perhaps based on Divine and just as shamelessly transparent? Maybe EIVIND?

Age: 6 sweeps (about 14 years)

Strife Specibus: tomekind? I’m kind of stumped, maybe she just whacks people around with her tomes, and her ancestor’s journal.

I think 2x3tridentkind works fine here since she does get ahold of it from time to time. A large part of her quest could actually be the pursuit of the weapon just to fill her specibus. As a backup…hmmm. We’ve seen Void players with fistkind before, representing an absence of weaponry. Given Murana’s theme, how about screechkind? Can easily be “upgraded” using others’ voices and accessories such as megaphones, but stands well on its own.

Fetch Modus: Cauldron Modus. Murana can easily captchalogue items, it seperates them into their basic components and places them in bottles on a'shelf’. Murana has to pour the right bottles into a cauldron, making a potion. It can take a bit of time to find all the required ingredients, and is a bit of guesswork most of the time.

I love it! It’s basically a more complex version of Jane’s recipe modus. It would also be interesting to see how the cauldron modus might break up the component parts of, for example, a voice.

Blood color: Violet #7C0072 (in reference to Vanessa’s eye colour in the movies, and also because sea witch & not ruler of the sea)

Also her skin is literally purple! I love it!

Symbol and meaning: A Trident, Ursula pursues Triton’s trident in the film, and is ultimately killed by it

Trolltag: charmedGibbet

Quirk: 3- Doesn’t change much, speaks properly and clearly. Calls trolls ‘sweetcakes’ and other nicknames like that. Ends all her sentences with 3-. Her laugh is like AHAHAHAHA!

Special Abilities (if any): None, except for her highblood strength

I mean I think the nature of Murana’s character is such that she inherently *does* have abilities that exceed that of a normal seadweller. You could even convincingly argue that that’s why she’s exiled; a wary empress would have to get Gl’bgolyb to kill off a significant amount of the population before her screech reached the psychic anomaly, so it would be more expedient to get her out of the way via exile than to kill her off.

Lusus: Two headed moray eel. Murana and her lusus get along brilliantly. The two heads are meant to represent both flotsam and jetsam, Ursula’s lackeys, and her two-faced nature. Murana cares for her lusus, and witnessing her death sends her into a rage unlike any other.

Hive: Murana lives within the bones of a dead creature known as a leviathan. Her room is built into a massive bone. The only point of entry is a large hole in the floor.

I know that this is pulled from canon but given her lusus lemme spin this for you: Murana is living in her lusus’s massive corpse after its death. This gives her both a creepy lair AND a visual symbol for her unwillingness to move on from the trauma of her lusus’s demise.

Personality: Murana is a cunning and merciless woman, she fears nothing! Her lusus taught her all the essentials of survival, and how to get a good deal. Anything she wants she can get. Murana has a burning desire to be heiress, she thinks it was her rightful place to usurp the empress. She sees herself as merciful, generous to poor lowbloods.

Sounds great! A good touchstone is Pat Carrol’s own perception of Ursula, which is “part Shakespearean actress, with all the flair, flamboyance and theatricality, and part used-car salesman with a touch of con artist.”

Interests: Dark magic, FLARPing(as her witchy character Arsulu), Troll Sabrina the Teenage Witch (she owns a box set, she’s not messing around), Tending to her potted coral. Murana posesses a crystal ball and cauldron. She also possesses a book from her ancestor, which she reads religiously, and a necklace which she refuses to wear. She also likes to do her makeup, she has to look very good for her guests.

Hmmm. Why does Murana refuse to wear the necklace?

Title: Thief of Hope

…I mean I can DEFINITELY see how it works but after hint upon hint upon hint you’re not gonna make her a Witch? Witch of Hope still fits very, very well with what she does.

I think you could go a step further and maybe have her be a thief of hope PRETENDING to be a witch of hope? Using her magic to disguise herself after realizing her true nature. -CD

Land: The Land of Castles and Changes, LOCAC. Murana’s quest is simple, she must become the Queen of the yellow ladder snake consorts by defeating Aite, the denizen, and restore hope.

Hmmm. SBURB generally likes to challenge and even antagonize its players rather than feed their existing personality. This is almost too heroic a quest for Murana, I feel. Até also means the hubristic action taken by the hero that ultimately leads to their death. This is a troll who believes herself to be great, and one that SBURB would likely want to bring down a peg! Consider: Land of Uprisings and Downfalls (LOUAD), which is meant to lead Murana to believe that her quest is to overthrow Aite, uncomprehending of the fact that the planet requires her own downfall for the denizen to restore hope. Despite being an active class, this is a quest that would demand an inward change to advance the narrative.

Dream Planet: Derse

Ancestor: The Faustian Overseer. (FUCK I love this name!) A beautiful witch to help those poor unfortunate souls. Her primary target was those on land, as their blood was so low they surely had little luck. Notably, she could make it possible to walk if you couldn’t, see if you were blind. But she always expected pay, and not in the way one expected. The Overseer left behind three objects. Her crystal ball, her journal, and her necklace.

Dancestor: Morcan Vantia Based off of Ursula’s sister Morgana. She was never quite good with magic…

thank you to whoever reviews this!! <3 i hope you have a wonderful rest of the day

I am already having a wonderful freaking day for seeing this submission. Boy howdy! Let’s go to the fucking redesign!!!!

Horns – aside from the note that she doesn’t wear her necklace, there really weren’t a lot of nods to what’s considered Ursula’s most iconic accessory, so I resprited her horns to resemble the nautilus shape. With that said, I do like her original horns since there’s a fan theory that the ordinary, curved horns we see on robots and movie posted are the societal ideal.

Hair – it’s not that you have to have the same hair as a character after which they’re themed but with this character??? With that iconíque widow’s peak??? It’s just got so much personality.

Face – I mostly kept it the same but I made her lipstick a little duller to match the rustblood range, which is presumably the class with which she professes solidarity to lure them into Faustian bargains.

Body – I noticed that you stuck a couple of fan-troll’s outfits together to create a sweetheart neckline, so I went one step further and used fan-troll’s more chesty lingerie template to really emphasize her curves. I feel like this is a character where her weight is exceptionally important, so I also tried to give her a bit of a belly.

Skirt – I always feel like this particular fan-troll template looks a little awkward because you can’t see how the skirt falls. This is edited from dixieko’s fancy Prospit/Derse dress, though I edited it so much that it maybe doesn’t even resemble the original product anymore? Whatever. Credit where credit is due.

Shoes – I could easily make up (pun intended) a reason for the lipstick color that was canon compliant, but not so much for the blue shoes. Since you put such an emphasis on her being fancy, I decided to just go with heels in her blood color. It also contributes to her imposing figure.

So that’s about it! All in all, I really feel like you did your research and made a troll that did justice to my favorite, favorite, FAVORITE villain.

-TR

[chroma-asks]

Here’s a FAQ because at some point we might need it

Q: Who is Chroma?

A: Chroma is basically the physical body we all reside in. It’s not the body’s legal name, but we really don’t care unless it involves Chroma’s parents, work, or legal matters. Essentially, it’s what you would see if you were to meet us in person. Alternatively, the body can go by Marie.

Q: What’s a “System”?

A:  Systems are formed from childhood trauma as a form of defense mechanism where the mind “fractures” to make alters. This is called Dissociative Identity Disorder, but there is another type of the same disorder, which is the other side of the same coin(and what we have); Other Specified Dissociative Disorder. The BIGGEST difference between the two is that the latter does not give amnesia when a different alter takes the lead. More Details.

Alters are separate people within the fractured mind formed as a means of protecting said child, either through making them forget about the trauma and holding it within themselves, by helping the child through life by taking care of things that affect them negatively, or both. Though this does not mean certain alters can’t hurt the host or body. These kinds of alters are called Persecutors, but in our system we just call them Assholes.

Alters CAN still continue to be formed throughout time, but it’s usually during or after a heavily stressful(if not traumatic) event. The FIRST alter would need to be formed before 8 years old, from what I’ve heard. Freya’s told me this was the case for us, but I wouldn’t know personally because I am an alter myself taking her place as host. I didn’t exist until Chroma turned 12. She then relinquished control to me and it’s been me ever since. I did, however, fuse with a good amount of childhood memories during the transition, so when I was first formed, I couldn’t even tell the difference until Freya explained everything. It explains the memory problems though.

Q: How come [insert fictional character] is in your system?/What’s a “Fictive”

A: Recently, I found an easier way to explain Fictives(or Fictional Introjects, alternatively): They are alters who take on the forms of things or characters the host is familiar with. This isn’t exactly a phenomenon, but rather is actually quite common among systems. It’s like a child going through an event so horrible to them that their brain creates an alter with the appearance, personality, and even memories of Superman to protect them. As I mentioned before, it’s a defense mechanism.

A lot of times, some fictives gain a sense of self and change throughout their life within the system. Many systems have fictives whose personalities and views grow and become barely recognizable from how they are in their source. Alters are people too, regardless of where they came from and/or whatever caused them to form. Basically saying, don’t be surprised or angry if someone’s fictive isn’t how you headcanon them. They are a person, just like you, and last I checked it’s pretty insulting to be compared to something else like you’re not good enough.

Q: Can I become a System?

A: Short answer; If you aren’t one already, probably no. I would not personally recommend trying to be a System. To reiterate a previous statement, Systems are formed from traumatic experiences during childhood. As fun as being a System might seem like it is, we’ve gone through a whole lot of shit to get to the silly shenanigans we go through now, some of the later which even happened internally within the system. Salem for a long time often tried to kill Chroma because the parents convinced her that she was a demon(in a religious sense) and the only way she could be free is by destroying her “prison”. It was incredibly terrifying and I would like for us to never go through that again, but things really do just happen out of our control.  

 We’ve been dealing with OSDD and what it’s like to be a system for well over ten years. For the majority of it, we learned through experiences, and trial and error. Only about five or so years ago did we go to a psychiatrist and learn that there was a name for all the bullshit we’ve gotten into. Since then, we’ve been doing more research and going to therapy. The therapy actually helped us learn how to better communicate with each other and work as a team since we’re all stuck here together. However, the team part is still a work in progress.

Q: How the hell do you remember everyone’s names??

A: We get this one a lot. Imagine you’re eternally stuck in a classroom with 80+ other assholes and almost all of them pester you. You’d remember who’s who eventually. 

Q: Sensory, Memory and Standby? What does all of this mean??

A: Those of us listed in the description are the Sensory. We’re the alters most connected to the physical world, basically the most frequent fronters. The Memory are less-frequently in the front, and are tasked with balancing memories and relaying them if/when necessary. The Standby are crisis control, emergency replacements, and take care of internal maintenance. The goal for them is that we as a system never get to a point where any of the Standby are required to front. All of us can communicate on the blog, but some people may be rarer than others. 

Q: What’s the inner world like?

A: The inner world(which we have come to call Color Isle) is the environment within the mind we live in, formed as a joint effort by all of the Primary Branch, since we have more power over the laws and physics of this place when we can actually manage to work together. It has an entire ecosystem designed to suit all of our needs, including entire thousands of acres of land for those of us who require a lot of space as territory.

We have just about everything, from an enormous city, to a vast desert, to a jungle, and even a volcano(maybe eventually I’ll get a snowy wasteland...). Hell, we even have an underworld abyss, where Jelose was presumably born. New buildings, features, habitats, and tech are frequently being planned or added, so sometimes it’s a lot to keep up with. Most of the time I don’t even get to see it myself since I barely get any breaks. I’m almost always stuck in the control room, which is basically the room that gives sensory access to the outside world. However, there’s hopes for renovations soon, if we can manage to reduce sources of stress in the near future.

Whoever is touching the panel is fronting, meaning they have control over what the body does in that given moment, as well as linked senses. Yes, multiple people can front at once, and it is chaotic. If they’re not touching the panel but are still hanging out in the control room, they’re co-conscious(or co-con for short). This means they can see and hear what’s going on in the outside world, but they cannot interact. The panel is the only way to interact with the outside, so for aesthetic purposes, we designed it to look like a combination of a computer setup and a video game controller. Other terminology you might come across on this blog that aren’t included in this FAQ can be found here.

Also keep in mind the physics in here are VERY wonky and we still have yet to pinpoint the laws of this world. Personally, I find it hilarious because that just means even though we all created this place together, we just could not decide on how things should work. The only real set law that that this world has is the existence of NPCs, which are essentially faceless replicas meant to live and act as outer world humans do. They don’t have any real impact on this place besides just being filler to add to the civilization aesthetic and food/fodder for the kill-happy alters in order to keep them busy and satisfied with living here and NOT killing each other. 

The NPCs will always be here as an infinite resource, constantly replenishing no matter how many of them are massacred. We can interact with them, they’re just generic as hell. They have absolutely 0 qualities besides basic programming that makes them act like, well, NPCs in a video game.

Q: Why do you all look like anime characters?

A: Honestly I get tired of hearing this one when making(or attempting, more like) friends outside of the internet. I have no control over how anyone looks but myself. Besides those of us who actually ARE anime(or video games with an anime-styled art concept), we appear that way because my art style stemmed from an embarrassing weeb phase that never really faded. After a while, it just kinda became a thing here. So long story short; we look anime because I draw anime.

Also do not be fooled, majority of us are WAAAAAAAY older than we look. In fact, only seven of us are actual children.

Q: This all sounds pretty fake, how can you prove all of this is a real thing?

A: Trust me, I’ve thought the same thing several times throughout several years, but after a while I just accepted it because I got tired of being slapped in the face. You don’t have to believe we exist, but this is a very real disorder, my friend. There isn’t exactly a way to “prove” we exist to new people besides the information we can offer. When you’ve known us for long enough, you eventually come to accept it too. But in the end, is there even really a complaint? We can’t harm you aside from a rude comment here and there from the more “edgy” alters, and you could even potentially become friends with your favorite fictional character(if they happen to be one of our resident fictives). So really it’s your choice whether or not you want to get to know any of us.

Q: Can I draw you guys?

A: Sure! We have plenty of references of us attached to each person’s tag if you need them since I draw everyone almost all the time.

[aion-rsa]

The Devil All the Time Ending Explained

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This article contains The Devil All the Time spoilers. You can read the review here.

After so much bloodshed and tragedy, few could expect to find peace at the end of things. That includes Tom Holland’s taciturn Arvin Russell. Yet sitting in a Volkswagen next to a long-haired gentleman, one who appeared to be part of the vanguard for the next generation, the often hyper-observant Arvin is letting his guard down, and a sense of ease washes over him for the first time in probably his whole life. On the radio, President Lyndon B. Johnson is droning on about some type of troop build-up in Vietnam, but Arvin’s mind is on his past, and the bodies it left buried. Or perhaps it’s on his future too, as he mildly considers the prospect of joining the U.S. Army.

The truth is he doesn’t know. As author Donald Ray Pollock’s own voice narrates, “Grandma would tell him to pray on it, and he’d laugh at her, but maybe she knew something he didn’t? Right now he needed sleep and just felt lucky someone was giving him a ride.” This is a far cry from the Arvin who seemed to all but swear off religion after the horrors inflicted on him by his God-fearing father, as well as the young man who only days ago was able to deduce that smiling Carl Henderson (Jason Clarke) was hiding a gun in his pocket. But here he is now, open to the first time since boyhood to the concept of God and the kindness of strangers.

Should his innocence be reborn, and is this a happy or dark ending? By design it’s left ambiguous. As director Antonio Campos told Esquire, “I always struggle with happy endings. I like endings that leave you with the hope for something better but the chance for something else and you have to kind of pick your own version of it.”

But if that is the case, allow us to dig a little deeper by picking our own destiny for Arvin after he falls asleep, dreaming both of a better life and the violence wrecked on him by his parents’ own traumas.

If there is a point to The Devil All The Time, it would be how the culture of a place, and the people who occupy it, predetermine for us the outcome we do not want. While the presence of God is a nebulous thing in this backyard fried noir, ‘the Devil’ of the title is present to just about every character inhabiting Pollock and Campos’ fictional town of Knockemstiff, Ohio and its surrounding areas: It is the hell they make for themselves and their heirs by pretending to be better than they are while ignoring the pain underneath. Consider almost every narrative thread of The Devil All the Time ends in calamity for its protagonists, often after they delude themselves into thinking they’re making a noble gesture.

Take Holland’s Arvin. A quiet and skeptical boy after he saw his father’s piousness drive him to suicide, Arvin very much is the product of his father’s upbringing. His Dad Willard (Bill Skarsgård) came to this part of the world by accident. He was passing through after seeing the horrors of the South Pacific when he met the woman who would be Arvin’s mother, Charlotte (Haley Bennett). While the chance romance might have been coincidence, his fate was already sealed by what Arvin said was “the Devil all the time” in him. Arvin did not mean that his father was possessed by a supernatural spirit—Arvin is as close to an agnostic as we have in the plot. Rather there was something horrible eating at Willard’s mind from the war. And while Arvin never saw the flashback of the American G.I. Willard discovered crucified, we know this violence haunts Willard every time he stares at a cross.

For violence very much is the religion on which The Devil All the Time’s fatalism is built. Violence is the only thing Willard bequeaths his son. While Arvin as a boy is wary of praying before his father’s outdoor cross, he remembers well Willard’s lesson about beating the lecherous poachers they’d let escape after an earlier insult. Finding them scenes later and pummeling them to a pulp, Willard returns to his son and says, “You’ve just got to pick the right time.” This lesson of optimizing your anger and need to destroy was the happy part of Arvin’s childhood. The narration even confirms it was “the best day he ever spent with his father.”

That is all the more revealing when one realizes Arvin thinks this of the day he and Dada discover Mama has cancer. The slow-killing disease ruins what little innocence there is left in the lad. Before his mother is in the ground, Willard inflicts permanent psychic damage on Arvin by attempting to appease what he thinks must be an angry God via the ritualistic sacrifice of Arvin’s dog to their Maker. It doesn’t work, and after the mother is dead and buried, Willard soon follows her by his own hand.

Willard’s primitive reliance on violence as a form of salvation is of course backwoods craziness, but then everyone in this story believes violence will save them, and likely live to regret it in their dying breath. For if Arvin’s bitterness and irreligiosity was borne out of his father’s slaughtering of the family dog in the vain hope it would give him the power to save his mother, the piousness of his “sister” Lenora (Eliza Scanlen) is the fruit of similar delusions.

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The reason Arvin and Lenora became orphans in the same house is because her Born Again preacher pappy, Roy Laferty (Harry Melling), was also blinded by his lunatic ideas. Roy killed Lenora’s mother Helen (Mia Wasikowska) in the woods, under the fallacy that God would grant him the powers to resurrect her. Instead he just murdered his wife and ran for the state line, escaping far enough to never be seen again, and allowing Lenora to grow up with her own eventually self-destructive delusions about her father and his faith not being so warped. Thus Lenora attempting to replace the hole left by the violent act of her father by believing the silver-tongued lies of another fire and brimstone orator (Robert Pattinson), who for all his zealotry really only liked his flock when they were young, childlike, and suggestible.

Pattinson’s Preston may be the evilest character in the story besides Clarke’s serial killer Carl. For these are the only two men who lack any self-doubts about their hypocrisies or cruelties. Willard took his own life after he discovered devotion conjured neither gods nor devils; Roy Laferty was wondering if he’d really fly to Heaven before his last breath. Both left broken legacies to their children. A man like Preston, however, only takes what he wants and cares about nothing else, including the girlhood of Roy’s underage daughter Lenora.

The resulting pregnancy leads to Lenora’s semi-suicide (again with the second-guessing at the last minute that no one will know about), and to Arvin committing his only premeditated murder in the movie. While he would kill again, as with how he handled the bullies who attacked Lenora earlier, Arvin has already taken his father’s lessons of violence to heart when he claims his other birthright, a German Luger his father bought off another G.I. from the war, and annihilates Preston in cold blood.

Later in the movie, we learn that copper Lee Bodecker (Sebastian Stan) told Arvin as a child, “Some people were born just to be buried.” Whether this is the actual point-of-view of the movie is murky, but it’s an actual religious tenet Arvin can get behind, and the world of Knockemstiff quietly prays to.

Most of the characters of The Devil All the Time lead empty, fractured lives that they inherited from their folks. Lee Bodecker himself was saying this as a comfort to Arvin after the boy’s father committed suicide. Hence Lee recalling that he and his sister Sandy (Riley Keough) also grew up without a father since the old bastard abandoned them. The sentiment was meant to speak just of their fathers. Yet those traits seem inherited, with Lee becoming a corrupt lawman who commits and covers up murders as the years pass, and his blonde free-spirited sister falling in with her serial killer boyfriend, Carl.

The revelation late in the picture that Lee told Arvin some people exist to die creates a self-fulling prophecy to Arvin’s life. He is here to make good on that promise, as most of these broken people would be better off in the ground where they can’t hurt anyone. It begins with the calculated murder of the predatory Preston, but through a series of convoluted circumstances, he also winds up bumming a ride with Carl and Sandy, who’ve lived in their own separate little movie as mass murderers. The only killing we see in depth is how they slaughtered Lenora’s missing father, but they’ve been collecting “models” for 15 years by the time Arvin gets into their car.

Like their victim Roy Laferty, Sandy is having second thoughts about her life as a serial killer before she dies. She did it mostly just to please Carl. Years later though, she wanted out. She even daydreamed about running away with Arvin before the young man puts a bullet in her lover’s head. Soon she follows him across the bar, unaware the path she is on has been set for years—a cynic might say since the day her father walked out—and now all that’s left is the sudden surprise of oblivion.

And this brings us back to the ending where Arvin soon sends the man who told him some folks are just here to be buried to an early grave. He didn’t want to kill him, but Bodecker wanted revenge for his murderous sister. And after that showdown, all the people who an Old Testament God might say had it coming have met their fates. But Arvin doesn’t believe in God, per se, even if he returned to his childhood home to make peace with Him and the father who created a world in fear of spirits. Arvin buries the dog his father killed, plus the Luger, which is an obvious metaphor of him trying to bury the trauma his father imparted to him. With the dog given the rest he hoped his mother and father found, he’s free to leave this dark corner of America.

But is the rest of it any better? Sitting next to a proto-hippie as he falls asleep listening about escalation in Vietnam, Arvin can imagine a world where he breaks the cycle of violence he and everyone he knows lives on. He can find a girl and settle down without the trauma that manifested itself as the Devil in his papa. But he’s already embraced Willard’s inheritance for violence, hasn’t he? Sure, he buries Dad’s Luger in the final moments, but only after using it to kill four people, the first of which was not in self-defense.

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And then there are his own second thoughts about trying to find a peaceful life. It’s troubling he entertains the idea of signing up for the Vietnam War while thinking of a better tomorrow. And then he is also considering that maybe his grandmother (and father) could be right about prayer. Even outside of Knockemstiff, he is still in a vision of America that is violent, circular, uncaring, and doomed to repeat the sins of its fathers. One war has ended but another is begun. The narrator even says Arvin “wasn’t sure if he was going backwards or forwards.” His end is his beginning.

As his father went to a war that defined him, Arvin is already on the path to repeat that horror. Hell, he’s already haunted by visions of ‘Devils’ and dead bodies he left to be buried. The greater devil is the culture Arvin’s in, and as teased by the prospect of the Vietnam War, that culture extends beyond Knockemstiff’s town limits or that of its neighbors. It’s the American legacy and a predilection toward violence The Devil All the Time seems to suggest is inescapable. Arvin can have hesitations and hopes, but like those experienced by Sandy before he shot her, or Roy before her lover shot him, or Roy’s daughter Lenora before the rope around her neck tightened, they’re just illusions of escape. And the end of the line is fast approaching.

The post The Devil All the Time Ending Explained appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[ravensunday6-blog]

The new Suspiria manages to be about women's power without being feminist

From the beginning, the Suspiria remake is intent on giving us its own vision of Dario Argento's beloved 1977 horror classic. Both films revolve around a young woman named Susie—played by Jessica Harper in the original and Dakota Johnson in the remake—who has come to Berlin to study at a dance academy, but most of the similarities end there. Where Argento tended to avoid the politics of the time and focused on creating a lavish feast for the senses, Luca Guadagnino immerses us in a grittier Berlin of darker muted color tones. The city is grappling with the revolutionary spirit of its young people; hijackings and bombings are semi-regular occurrences. Both films show Susie coming to the realization that the school is run by a coven of witches with supernatural abilities. But it's the recent version that most fails to deliver the feminine, feminist vision it so clearly thinks it does. As The Love Witch director Anna Biller wrote in her essay about feminism in movies: "To be feminist, a movie has to have the express purpose of educating its audience about social inequality between men and women (and, I would argue, not take pleasure in the voyeuristic degradation or destruction of women)." Suspiria doesn't much bother with the first, and absolutely takes pleasure in the second.

Movies about witches often act as litmus tests of how comfortable we are with female power and how women choose to wield it. Argento's leaned into fear, choosing to position the older women without male companions as the ultimate threat to the young, innocent heroine who shows a shy interest in another young man at the school. Guadagnino's film could have been an indication of how far we've come in considering such matters over the last four decades. Instead, it takes what's obviously meant as a subversion and likewise leans into the very themes it seeks to transcend. Many filmmakers still haven't seemed to learn that it takes far more than a cast which consists primarily of women to make a story feminine, and that a woman becoming more sexual doesn't necessarily make her a threat.

Like most other stories about women told by men, the 2018 Suspiria is obsessed with purity, even if the innocence depicted is of a much different kind. In the original, Harper's Susie was a graceful, elegant nymph who had viewers asking why she was lugging around all that luggage in heels. But such elegance is now widely associated with seduction, rather than naivete. By contrast, Johnson's Susie arrives wearing sensible footwear, dressed in dowdy clothing that indicates her conservative religious upbringing as a Mennonite in Ohio. Right away, one of the teachers tells her she shouldn't be at the school. That's only before Susie auditions, and then we realize this movie will truly be as breathtaking as the first. Whereas Argento awed us with through set design, Guadagnino uses exquisite choreography. Johnson's body becomes less of an instrument than a revolution in itself, breaking free from repression to find freedom.

But Susie and the other women under the guidance of the school's instructors come to learn such freedom comes at a cost, especially when they get too close to the dark truth the teachers are hiding. Susie soon becomes aware of that darkness, and as she grows more confident, she also becomes more sexual. Her clothing becomes less midwestern and more European, more stylish and often showing more skin. There are no love interests, seeing as how that would sully the movie's aforementioned notions of purity, and its misguided idea of empowerment. What Susie does find is a kind of mother figure in Tilda Swinton's Madame Blanc, and her interactions with her are loaded with both queer and maternal signifiers.

Mothers are of special importance in this version of Suspiria, which is also a meta-tribute to Argento's Three Mothers trilogy, with its far darker take on female love. Here mothers are also twisted women who likewise use the power they wield over their children in horrific ways. Susie's mother physically, emotionally, and mentally abused her daughter and believed her very existence constituted a sin for reasons that are never specified. The instructors are likewise cruel to the young women under their charge when they step out of the places designated for them, or anyone else who they see as a potential threat. One student's angry outburst inspires brutal torture, her body twisted and bent in one deserted dance studio as a response to Susie's awe-inspiring dance (with some magical aid thanks to Madame Blanc) in another. It's one of the movie's most difficult scenes to watch, made even more unpleasant as we realize Susie's growing abilities come at another young woman's expense. Afterwards, Susie breathlessly says, "It felt like what it must feel like to fuck."

Then there's Patricia (Chloë Grace Moretz), another student whose initiation into the truth of the school has left her a raving mess. Women who run to male authorities ranting about conspiracies tend to be dismissed, but Dr. Josef Klemperer (also played by Swinton), the psychiatrist Patricia is assigned to, is willing to follow up. Of course he doesn't believe in her tales of witches and magic, but he is open to the idea that her stories are a coping mechanism for her suffering. It is he who encourages others, both students and police, to investigate whether there really are terrible things happening at the school, which is rather remarkable in itself. In Rosemary's Baby, another movie about a young woman coping with evil forces around her, the title character lays out her case simply, in a mostly calm and collected manner. Patricia does not. She tells her doctor, "I let her in. I thought I wanted it." And what do the women at the school want? According to Patricia, they'll "hollow her out and eat my cunt on a plate."

Klemperer is invested in trying to help the many women who come to him because he, like the rest of the older generation, suffers from a kind of survivor's guilt from the trauma they suffered during World War II. In his case, he is haunted by the wife he lost and wonders if he somehow contributed to her death. As for the academy's instructors, they created the dance Volk, with its performance serving as the movie's darkly beating heart. Its themes of power and rebirth coincide not only with the politics of the time, but the struggle for dominance in the school itself, which sees its rulers divided over which future they should embrace.

Klemperer plays a pivotal role in the film's bloody climax, which is basically an elderly Catholic man's fever dream of of female power gone awry, and the wide gulf between the movie's intentions and the messages it actually sends is especially stark. Susie comes to power as a maternal force in her own right, and it is disturbing, though not because of the graphic, violent manner in which she does it, although it certainly plays a part. Her mother's belief in her evil nature is essentially proven correct. Susie may smash the old matriarchy, but not the patriarchy. After she does, she continues to force the young women, who are unwilling pawns, to keep dancing, describing their performance as beautiful. Beautiful it may be, but the fact remains that they are still being manipulated. Afterwards, they retain no memory of it, indicating that their manipulation will most likely continue.

Klemperer is somehow needed as a witness to all this, and the women who forcibly drag him into it are also supposedly holding him accountable for dismissing the young women who come to him as delusional, which is especially rich considering they're also the ones doling out the punishment to many of them. But Klemperer also not only gets both compassion and closure, but an apology. Susie tells him how his wife died, and that in her last moments she thought only of him. His memory is then wiped, and he is allowed to go on with a clean slate. The fact that he is played by Tilda Swinton, an actress whose persona embraces androgyny, is supposed to be a subversion of the fact that the male gaze is so often still seen as a requirement even in stories about women. However, the gender fluidity of Swinton's fantastic performance is less about allowing masculine and feminine perspectives to coexist and empathize with each other than ensuring that the male filmmakers have a kind of surrogate. Klemperer is not held accountable, he is reassured that what was done to him was a cruel and unjust mistake. He then gets a fresh start, free from the traumas in his life. In short, he is one of the "good ones." Susie doesn't similarly heal the school's female victims, who have become twisted, deformed shells of themselves. They are fallen, tainted women, and the most they can hope for is to find peace through death, which Susie gently bestows like a goddess granting the kindest of favors.

In terms of how it treats female power, 2018's Suspiria has more in common with 1971's The Beguiled, whose director Don Siegel said was about "the basic desire of women to castrate men." In this vision, when women are united, it is always to achieve an evil outcome. Similarly, the "bad" women psychologically and sexually demean the men they encounter, whether it's Klemperer or the police looking for answers. When Sofia Coppola remade The Beguiled in 2017 (with a refreshingly different take), she stated, "This story had to be directed by a woman. The essence of it is feminine, it's seen from a female point of view."

The essence of Suspiria is feminine as well, and it likewise cries out for a female director. The material is rich with themes not only begging to be explored further, but through feminine eyes-especially in a film that revolves around the complicated dynamics between mothers and daughters. When Susie's mother (who is not even named in the IMDB credits) states outright that she believes Susie's very existence to be a sin, it's a truly tragic situation, with rich material to be mined. Suspiria could have ventured behind closed doors to explore the kind of trauma that stretches back generations, with vicious cycles of assault, forced childbirth, and the self-hatred so many women pass on to their children. But the movie would rather show a woman so cartoonishly repressed she would burn her child with an iron for pleasuring herself, and even Guadagnino's considerable artistic prowess can't compensate for such a lack of not only insight, but compassion. Men are not incapable of understanding a female-centric perspective. Take Practical Magic, another movie about witches with a mostly female cast which is directed by a man, and is as feminine as it is feminist. Other men have created great heroines such as Buffy Summers, Ellen Ripley, Veronica Mars, Imperator Furiosa, Dana Scully, Princess Leia, Daenerys Targaryen, and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. But Guadagnino is so intent on fulfilling his vision he doesn't seem to have room for any perspective besides his own, leaving the women in his narrative underserved in spite of his incredibly skilled efforts.

Source: https://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2018/10/30/the-new-suspiria-manages-to-be-about-womens-power-without-being-feminist