#they have TRAUMA

[leonsgotit]

OFMD S2 SPOILERS ‼️

in season 1, stede was constantly putting his feelings ahead of other people’s—he put his own feelings ahead of mary’s and his kids’ when he ran away in the middle of the night to become a pirate and when he left ed at the dock to return to his family (and yeah, stede thought he was protecting ed from him when he did it and he was in distress after having been kidnapped and then witnessing his childhood bully accidentally shoot himself in the head and i’m not discounting that at all!! but he also ran because he was afraid of how fast things were moving with ed), and he does it in other little ways all throughout the season but i think these two examples are the most important ones.

he puts his own feelings in front of other people’s up until mary tries to kill him and he realizes how he’s sort of messed everything up for her by returning, as well as realizing his feelings for ed. then, stede fakes his own death and gives up everything he has to return to ed.

now, in season 2, we see stede constantly putting the feelings of others before his own. he sets aside his own feelings about izzy to rescue him and the rest of his crew so they can take back the revenge. he doesn’t like izzy, but stede can tell that he’s important to frenchie and jim and archie and fang, and he knows izzy was important to ed, so he sets aside how he feels and saves izzy, too.

stede does everything in his power to protect ed when he wakes up (comes back from death), but when the crew speaks their mind, stede again sets aside his own feelings for them. they aren’t comfortable with ed being on the ship anymore, and even though stede has spent months and months searching for him, and even though stede cried and begged for ed to come back, he doesn’t try to fight the crew when they’ve made their decision. even though watching ed leave the revenge must break his heart.

stede tries to give ed the space he wants from him, he doesn’t push to make ed understand why he left the dock that night, and when ed gets angry upon learning that stede “left him for mary,” stede doesn’t try to explain what happened in full. he lets ed be angry, he respects ed’s need for space.

when he tries to tell ed he loves him, and ed pushes stede away, stede respects that boundary that ed has set. he tells him instead that he loves everything about him, being near him, and breathing the same air—and stede tells ed he doesn’t have to say it back.

when stede finds that “cursed” red suit that he loves so much, he puts himself first for a little while—but when it becomes apparent that the crew won’t be comfortable until the suit is gone, stede puts them first. he gets rid of the suit and validates their feelings about it. even though he really loved that suit.

and we love character development—we love to see stede growing as a person and learning to put other people’s needs and feelings before his own—but it’s like from zero to one hundred right now. stede is putting other’s (particularly ed’s) feelings before his own, because he feels guilty about what happened in season 1. and because, i believe, he’s still thinking about what chauncy badminton said to him—that he ruins beautiful things and that he ruined ed. so he’s over-correcting in order to fix what he thinks he is responsible for breaking.

it almost seems like stede doesn’t think his feelings are important anymore, that he has to completely ignore how he feels in order to make amends with everyone, especially ed.

he needs to find a healthy balance of acknowledging and validating his own feelings while also being able to put other people’s feelings in front of his own when appropriate!!

which is why i think he and ed need to actually TALK about what happened that night at the dock. they need to sit down and lay it all out, cards on the table, no stone left unturned.

stede needs to tell ed that chauncy kidnapped him from his bunk at gunpoint, he needs to tell ed exactly what chauncy said to him about how he ruins beautiful things, and how he brought blackbeard to ruin. likewise, ed needs to tell stede why he immediately thought stede had just ditched him—he needs to tell stede why he didn’t think to go looking for him that night and jumped to the conclusion that stede had changed his mind.

THEY NEED TO BE HONEST WITH EACH OTHER!!!

[phantomskeep]

Does anyone else ever just slap funny little comments on their fics? Because it's something I enjoy and it honestly motivates me to write more, just so that I can make fun of myself ^-^;

it brings me great joy to be a chaos gremlin

[grayintogreen]

The most interesting character choice with the High Evolutionary is that he seems to have some kind of illness or disability himself (we hear his staff mention something about treatments and he can barely stand up during his confrontation with Rocket when he reveals the filtration system problem he suggested fixed the machines), so that COULD explain his obsession with eugenics even if it obviously not meant to make him sympathetic, but it’s glossed over on purpose. A lesser movie would go out of its way to show the HE undergoing treatments to show that he’s got some Freudian excuse for this, but Gunn refuses to indulge that madness. It’s a throwaway line. It’s revealed during one of his most monstrous moments. It’s literally meant to be forgotten about because SURPRISE being disabled/chronically I’ll doesn’t mean you get a free pass to be a monster.

Honestly, I’ve noticed all of the villains in the GotG trilogy follow this pattern- space racist ethnic cleansing Ronan? Family killed by Xandarians (probably in wars the Kree started). Ego? Lonely. And these traits are mentioned ONCE maybe twice, and usually those facts are presented when the character is being particularly nasty. They’re not sympathetic. They’re not meant to be treated as sympathetic. You can make villains who are irredeemable and unlikeable and give them human flaws without sitting in pathos about it. (Looking at you, Thanos.) You can say “your Freudian excuse doesn’t justify this” without stopping the narrative to prove it. Each villain gets a single moment to explain the reason why they might behave this way, and the narrative moves on without pausing on it. You don’t get the dignity of your pain having ANY focus when you’re this much of a monster.

And the HE doesn’t even get an explanation for his modus operandi. He gets a period of desperate flailing around to suggest SOMETHING isn’t right with him and no explanation. Because it doesn’t matter. He’s a monster. Details of his Space Lupus is not going to make him more relatable.

Also the fact that it happens so quickly and is NOT the focus on the scene means Gunn skirts over the issue of lingering too long on a disability in a bad guy that could be seen as villainizing disabled people. (Especially given that’s the OPPOSITE of the take we’re meant to get from the HE since he’s the one doing that. Constantly.)

[theweirdartust]

Me drawing the most angsty whump art and putting encanto characters through hell because i like to make them suffer

[speckofvoid]

Day five of drawing with office supplies until they tell me to stop

Friday! Yay!! Here is [REDACTED] (because I know you’ll see this) they are a little guy, fully traumatized. Look at them. Baby. Cannot give more information because they will appear in my session (hopefully tonight) and my players follow me on here. Baby. Trauma.

[chaparralghost]

The weight of the Moonbrook family name.

[evidently-endless]

i think we should remind musicians they can absolutely make up little stories for their songs btw. it doesn’t have to be about them at all. you can invent a guy and put him in situations to music. time honoured tradition in fact.

[cloud-ya]

outcast of the village

[tuttle-did-it]

Jake Sisko grew up in a warzone, he lost his mum to the Borg, his dad has PTSD and is struggling to hold down a job running a fucking space mall. All before like 14. And now people are telling him his dad is a god. Jake is that kid that is forced to take care of his parent because he knows his parent can’t take care of him because of trauma. Believe me. That causes trauma on the kid. Especially as he loses his dad in the end. And he’s absolutely aware of it- because that trauma, literally, results heightened awareness of others feelings- especially his dad’s.

Curzon just died a few months ago from too much sex and woke up as a woman. wtf do you mean they have no trauma

Like yes, Jadzia absolutely has whimsy and is delightful. But she also has 9 lifetimes of trauma and dying. But unlike nearly everyone on DS9 (except Quark) Jadzia has learnt how to handle her shit.

But the only one who doesn't have trauma is really Quark. His worst trauma is that he's in love with Odo and they just have hate-sex all the time. But Quark is joyful and whimsical because he's the perfect host. Well, so is Jadzia, but a different kind of host.

*u arrive on ds9*

u: wait a minute… why is there an atmosphere of… joy? Whimsy, even? Where is the melancholy?

the lone 2 non trauma havers 4 feet from you:

[mythtakens]

“these characters should be mentally healthy before they get together 😌” ummm no I actually think we should smash their mental illnesses together like clumps of play-doh and see what colors it makes

[oidheadh-con-culainn]

i do think there is a degree to which certain kinds of Instagram activists have convinced themselves that traumatising themselves in solidarity is a useful form of activism. "I'm having nightmares and crying so much I want to be sick because of all these videos of dying children but I can't look away while people are getting hurt" I mean don't you think you'd be able to help more if you weren't having nightmares and crying all the time?? don't you think this is a one-way trip to burnout? don't you think maybe increasing the amount of trauma going around is counterproductive? I dunno bro there's something to be said for bearing witness but there comes a point where you gotta look hard at yourself and go "am I helping, or am I just making myself suffer so I don't feel guilty for not suffering while somebody else is experiencing bad shit"

[tawnysoup]

Finally now that the comic is fully public on comicfury, I get to share it with all of you here, too <3

If you enjoyed, please consider supporting by buying a PDF of the comic on itch.io: https://tawnysoup.itch.io/home-in-the-woods

[hinamie]

to moving forward

[mynnthia]

was talking with a friend about how some of dunmeshi fаndom misunderstands kabru's initial feelings towards laios.

to sum up kabru's situation via a self-contained modernized metaphor:

kabru is like a guy who lost his entire family in a highly traumatic car accident. years later he joins a discord server and takes note of laios, another server member who seems interesting, so they start chatting. then laios reveals his special interest and favorite movie of all time is David Cronenberg's Crash (1996), and invites kabru to go watch a demolition derby with him

[chloesimaginationthings]

FNAF movie Vanessa and Michael would get along so well

[kosatsatosh]

Hmm I was feeling cruel, so here are more jay sketches -