#this do be an analysing moment

[lemongogo]

maybe this is my curtains are blue moment, but its so fascinating to me that we are withheld from seeing wolfwood’s likeness again (from the moment he dies) until vash kills legato. after which, we see him multiple times in the closing act of the manga, as is . complete and all.

surely nightow drew that last panel the way he did bc it was aesthetically pleasing, easier to draw, or perhaps more relevant/emotional for the situation, but i reaally really like what it accomplishes in portraying vash’s grieving process . by remembering him through inanimate objects like his gravesite , through the punisher, or through unmentionables (constantly referring to wolfwood as He, or Him) as opposed to his own Body or Self, you feel a sense of distance and detachment . its something vash doesnt really unpack until that critical moment where he has to, as wolfwood says, make an important and complicated choice . & by that point, having honored his sacrifice and finally Answered wolfwood’s dilemma, we see ww again. in full. CRAZYYYYYYYYYYY literally so cool and awesome 2 me

[featheredmoonwings]

Here's a thought.

Sam has been irrevocably changed since his coming back from hell (and jumping in of course). So often I find myself looking at later season's Sam, a Sam who's not a firey rebel against what the world wants of him, a Sam who would fight for himself. This is a quietly submissive Sam who can't stand to disappoint Rock No.1. Someone who takes on pain again and again and again because he's so used to it.

Sam from the first seasons it's not the same Sam as the later. This is a broken, traumatized man who excels at being high functioning and I am SO sure of it.

He LOOKS resigned and tired a lot of the time. And it reminds me of hell!Sam begging himself not to remember. hell!Sam knew what he was talking about and what we're seeing in later seasons is his reflection.

And let me throw in a Silmarillion reference because why the heck not. Like the souls of elves go to Mando's halls, Sam's soul needed to go to heaven and heal from all the years of hell he suffered (earthly ones and hell ones). He was not ready to be reembodied in earth and now he's come wrong.

Like 5 different entities warned us about Sam's shredded to ribbons soul. To me, that doesn't sound like a soul that should've been put back in a body.

[bisexualmultifandommess]

I’ve been updating my Charles Xavier Spotify Playlist and I’ve found songs for my three favourite Charles relationship dynamics that makes me sad 😭 these are going to include headcanons probably but most are close to what Charles really goes through

My Only Friend by Amy Shark (Ft. Tom DeLonge) - I feel like this song really fits Hank and Charles’ relationship before and during Days of Future Past. They’re my favourite friendship and I love seeing their dynamic explored in fics because it’s such a complicated relationship but for the longest time they were definitely each other’s person.

Dorothea by Taylor Swift - This song really made me imagine it as Charles talking to Raven or thinking about Raven when he misses her. He wishes he still had his sister and reminisces about their youth and the way things used to be. It really fits the sad feeling over her leaving as well as the hope of reconciliation one day.

Now with Erik I have so many that could fit different aspects of his relationship with Charles and how Charles feels about him so I’m going to list songs that I think fit the different emotions Charles may feel in regards to their relationship and especially the events in FC and DoFP.

The Grudge by Olivia Rodrigo and First Burn from Hamilton - These two songs definitely fits the anger Charles feels in regard to his relationship with Erik. He obviously loves Erik a lot but I believe that at least in the early years he felt so much anger and sadness over the miscommunication and his sister leaving that he must’ve occasionally had angry thoughts that he usually wouldn’t have. It’s an anger that he would later move on but I think it’s definitely shown in DoFP and I headcanon anyway that he felt so angry at times at Erik. The Grudge definitely feels more like Charles getting upset at Erik but saying these things to himself about what happened to him and trying to come to terms with what happened and First Burn feels more like he’s actually talking to Erik.

I miss you, I’m sorry by Gracie Abrams and The Moon Will Sing by The Crane Wives - These are definitely the sad aspect which I always love looking into because I love angst. I miss you, I’m sorry is more of a mourning the relationship song where Charles thinks back on before everything went wrong and how happy he was with him and how upset he is over the separation. The lyrics “I don’t wanna go, think I make it worse. Everything I know brings me back to us” to me show how dependent they are on each other and that they’re always going to be a part of each other no matter how many years go by. He’s always going to be connected to Erik and miss him even if things originally ended badly. The Moon Will Sing feels like it’s fits the trope of a character helping another find their spark but losing their own in the process. Charles loves Erik and Erik loves Charles but their relationship has made things difficult and Charles kind of lost himself for a bit after everything but he did eventually find his way back.

[itsalwaysforyou]

jay not asking coach about letting lonnie onto the team bc he doesn’t want to do anything coach might disagree with…….

[medilies]

Do you ever watch s3 and s4 and realise you're not enjoying it that much

[calitsnow]

Just a little detail / joy of mine in Canton VII

I want to talk about part 1 and 2 of Canto VII but I don’t have time to write everything properly but what I want to say, and that no one has talked about yet, because of course Don is the star it’s normal that people are talking about her especially after everything that has happened but…

Here we are, we have the confirmation that Hong Lu = Baoyu.

It really took me 15 seconds to understand that Baoyu’s name had been used! And to talk about Hong Lu on top of that, I screamed so much when my brain connected these lines and what they implied.

Anyway, even if the theory that Hong Lu = Jia Baoyu was I think at 97% considered canon by the fandom there was still this tiny doubt that Hong Lu was not Baoyu and whoah it’s strange to finally connect the two… T^T

[hawkhills]

talk to me about profound, formative events in adulthood impacting people's settled daemons. are their shapes set in stone? would a strong enough experience manage to cause a crack in their settled shape? is there such a thing as daemon dysphoria? do our daemons define us, or do we define them?

[enconfess]

i am so frustrated by people who dont seem to understand that the amagis are ainu.

like sure, part of it is that the story itself is often not the best about it, because the !! main story conflates their ethnicity with some weird vague idea of old traditional values that are “bad” and that doesn’t really work in a narrative sense! because while Hiiro is struggling against the mindset that his only value is as Rinne’s second (ie the bad traditional values) his story is also about trying to find a middle ground in existing in the es as an idol and being indigenous - which is very very important to him!!!! the part where Rinne disowns him is often read as just Hiiro losing the framework of where his place is in the world, but it is very specifically him also losing his identity. his family and village and ethnic background is very very important to Hiiro and people wouldn’t downplay this so much if they just remembered that he. is. indigenous.

this ramble is already a bit long so i’m not going into Rinne’s side of it but it is similarly often forgotten by fans how his story is about a person who thinks the only way he can have value in this world is by renouncing his heritage and assimilating. and the fact that he basically canonically has a gambling addiction is either played for jokes or totally downplayed like ohh he is just trying to get money for his friends. like no! he is struggling and while a gacha game of all things will not admit this, fans should!!

….oh no i did go into Rinne’s deal too whoops.

sorry, being a mod for a page like this must be tiring

- 🫧 (i’m gonna sign of with this in case i want to come back here to vent a bit again… or talk about something a bit more positive)

added!

[lnkedmyheart]

Listen, I like Oda, he's cool and everything but he tells Dazai the exact same thing Verlaine says to Chuuya. Both of these boys were struggling with their identity and believed they didnt deserve to be seen as humans. Where Dazai was desperately distancing himself but positioning himself in a spot where he could still experience humanity, Chuuya was actively trying to be human while also not fully accepting himself as one. Verlaine tried to break Chuuya by reinforcing his lack of humanity by pointing out how nothing and no one could ever fill that lonely void in him and yea sure we all collectively believe that was a nasty thing to say to a child struggling with his identity who had just lost all his friends. But Oda did the exact same thing, I know his intentions were better and he cared about Dazai when he said that and the meaning was distorted because neither actually understood the other enough, but he told a child struggling with his identity who had just lost his 2 closest friends and had no contact with his partner at the time that nothing could fill the lonely void in his soul.

And nobody is ever allowed to question it or criticise it cause Oda has the cool dead guy syndrome where he isn't allowed to be criticised or judged like other characters.

Because Chuuya heard those words at the very beginning of strombringer by someone he hated and later spent the entire book learning that people did in fact care for him and view him as human and finding out about his parents and the scar, it led to him having (slightly) less of a martyr ideology because he no longer isolates himself and tends to seek out genuine connections even if he is painfully reserved and repressed about his own struggles. Meanwhile Dazai was told those exact same words by Oda at the very end of the dark era arc at an incredibly vulnerable moment when he had literally lost everything and seen things and lives fall apart by someone who he idolized to an almost unhealthy level. This leads to Dazai quite literally losing hope (he shows a hopeful nature a few times in 15 and dark era though it is rather subtle, Dazai shows it most in his attempt to stop Oda from going to the final fight) and becoming a martyr who sees no value in his own life outside of a tool. He struggles to create genuine connections even with people who genuinely care for him (the ADA) and repeatedly puts on a mask in front of them.

Chuuya and Dazai both view themselves as people whose lives are only worth what they can do for others in different ways, Chuuya feels the need to protect because he is the strongest and feels need to earn his existence whereas Dazai feels the need to martyr himself because he only finds value in his life and death by saving people.

[widevibratobitch]

hooohoooohoooooo i think i need to go back to therapy im starting to have Thoughts that im too stupid for again

[lord-squiggletits]

I wish to love and appreciate idw optimus more too. But I also don’t want to read through the entirety of IDW 1.0. Can you please recommend me any specific issues/parts?

My best friend and fellow IDW Optimus lover made a post compiling all the comics with major story beats involving Optimus. Her list has a lot of the same things mine does, but also a lot more specific issues because she actually knows which specific issues of which series you can read specifically for ones focused on IDW Optimus. We don't agree on everything (I love some comics she dislikes and vice versa), but I would recommend her list simply because it's the most well-documented and thorough. Link I also have a lot of far less coherent but still genuine posts about IDW OP on my #idw op love tag.

As for specific parts I would recommend... since you don't want to read through all of IDW1, I'll go ahead and recommend you things based on in-universe chronological order rather than story release order, but if anything here interests you then I would recommend reading IDW1 in release order so that you get a better grasp of the story's context and how new lore was given out over time:

Chaos Theory and Police Action by James Roberts (The Transformers 2009 issues 22-23): I love love LOVE the way JRO writes Optimus talking to Megatron during the present day, it's very IDW-Optimus flavored because of how blunt, abrasive, and snappy Optimus is. There's a part in the comic where Megatron claims that he "knows [Optimus] better than anyone else," and he's right, but it's also true that Optimus knows Megatron well enough to see that he's bullshitting and it's very entertaining watching Optimus slowly lose his patience with him. I love the dialogue especially, no one (canon or fandom) has ever quite written the same IDW OP who's in this set of comics. It's also the most MegOP comic of all time because the sexual tension and the subliminal imagery of them doing BDSM together is unreal, plus it really captures their dynamic of two old soldiers who snap together with chemistry despite (or perhaps because of) being such long-time enemies. They just UNDERSTAND each other so well. Also, as a bonus point, Chaos Theory is where the pre-war lore for IDW1 began being published, so if you read Chaos Theory then the context for future pre-war lore makes a little more sense.

Shadowplay by James Roberts (More Than Meets the Eye issues 10-11): More pre-war lore that picks up where Chaos Theory/Police action left off. Important because it establishes a lot of IDW OP's character relationships, especially with "the Senator," Roller, and to a degree Ratchet and some minor side characters. I don't really know what to say about this besides it's just really fucking fun to read and features IDW OP getting to do cool shit like fight bad guys, investigate conspiracies, and do heists while also establishing one of his key character traits: being disastrously gay for suspicious men that he places entirely too much trust in to tell him what the right thing to do is.

Spotlight: Orion Pax by James Roberts: Okay, I'm really sorry for recommending JRO's stuff because it feels like favoritism and I don't even think JRO does the best version of IDW OP, it's just going in in-universe chronological order means that a lot of JRO stuff ends up first on the list. This one doesn't really have much of consequence in it and is honestly one of the weaker Spotlight issues, but like Shadowplay, it involves Orion Pax doing fun action shit and having way too much trust in a suspicious man (a new one from the suspicious man in Shadowplay).

The Autocracy Trilogy (Autocracy, Monstrosity, Primacy) by Chris Metzen: Oh my fucking god this is THE IDW Optimus to me, this trilogy is literally what made my ears perk up to even start liking IDW OP because it's what took me from "Optimus Prime, that's the guy who's the super awesome leader that everyone likes and is a paragron to everyone, yeah I know him" to "Oh.... holy shit this is such a good plot/worldbuilding, Optimus has so much CONFLICT and DRAMA with other people." It covers one of my favorite periods of the general Transformers formula, namely pre-war and early war plot events as conflicts come to a boiling point, there's political conflicts and personal conflicts, the planet is falling to shit and everyone is trying to escape and things are as depressing and scary as you would expect for a war that's literally about to consume a whole planet. I found the general plotlines to be gripping and intense (Autocracy is the weakest in this regard, but the writing gets better with each book) and I really like seeing how Optimus grapples with leadership. Especially the negative parts where people hate/fear him because of his association with Zeta's regime (the previous Prime, who Orion worked for), call his judgment into question, refuse his calls to action or waver in their faith in him, and so forth. I found it to be a really nuanced yet sympathetic view of IDW Optimus that made me fall in love with him. Because really, the thing that humanizes a character the most is making them flawed, and Autocracy trilogy Optimus is so incredibly flawed and conflicted. And also it shows him being shit on by other characters in a way that's well written in a plot that makes sense and doesn't feel like the entire plot is conspiring to shit all over him.

The Death of Optimus Prime by James Roberts and John Barber: This comic is basically the transition from phase 1 to phase 2, it establishes the branching plotlines of MTMTE and exRID, so this is another one of those comics that will help you understand IDW1 better if you want to read for more than just Optimus. Anyways, DoOP is great because it has a similar vibe to the Autocracy trilogy in that society is chaos and full of people who fucking hate Optimus' guts for the role he played in the war. You can also compare/contrast the way OP was before the war and early in the war versus the way he is after the war and see how much the war changed him (Chaos Theory also kind of is like this but it more shows bitchy Optimus specifically in his dynamic with Megatron). It also features a fair amount of Optimus Heroic Moments, Optimus Brooding, and Optimus being so fucking depressed he's literally sad when he wakes up and realizes he's not dead dude get some fucking therapy please I'm begging you--

Punishment by John Barber: This skips ahead quite a bit in the story but I think stands decently well on its own without having to understand the wider context. It's one of Barber's best-written stories and one of the only ones I've come back to reread for its own sake. It features Optimus trying to solve the murder-mystery of a bunch of Decepticons, featuring really cool plot conflicts like Optimus trying to navigate post-war society and the tensions that still linger from the Autobot-Decepticon war. I really like this one because it has that whole "not everyone loves OP and a lot of people hate him for justified reasons" thing that makes IDW OP a much more 3D character, PLUS it has some politics with the way Decepticons are treated post war. And I think it does really interesting things with Optimus in terms of showing how he DOES have this idealistic, merciful side that wants people to choose peace and letting go of vengeance, but of course it's not so easy to expect that of people after a 4 million year war. So when people inevitably choose violence, Optimus gets frustrated and angry and lashes out in a way that feels very real and understandable. It's a really good example of a comic that shows IDW OP in a nuanced way, showcasing both his virtues and flaws in a complicated situation that shows that there's no easy solution to these problems and no way for Optimus to escape without getting his hands dirty. Unlike future comics which involve OP being in complicated situations but instead the plot is super contrived and seems to overwhelmingly shit on OP without ever mentioning the very obvious ways that he could be defended, creating a story that's conceptually fascinating but incredibly mediocre in execution.

If I had to recommend any single one of these to read, I would recommend the Autocracy trilogy the most because it's literally the story that made me love IDW Optimus and made me realize "whoa, this guy is super nuanced and not what I expected of him." That's not to say that no other Optimi have depth and nuance, but I think the Autocracy trilogy was great for me personally as one of the first IDW1 comics I read. It struck a really good balance between "uh Optimus was part of some bad things that warrant being shit on" and "Optimus is struggling to overcome those bad associations he did, succeeding with some people and failing with others" and "Optimus is an optimist who has faith in others even when they don't have faith in themselves." Also, as a bonus, the Autocracy trilogy also features cunty murder-husband Megatron, an interesting character arc for Hot Rod, and the Dinobots as really interesting supporting characters (including their leader, Grimlock, having a cute veteran-rookie dynamic with Hot Rod that I wish we got more of).

[ripoffyourhalo]

Everybody's on Crowley's side and that's okay because that's what the series wants us to do but I think Aziraphale needs some allies who believe in him and his purely good intentions, who's with me?

[goldenkid]

people comparing wild blue yonder to midnight like yeah they're both good scary and unsettling BUT the huge fundamental difference between them is that wild blue yonder is about being trapped in a huge empty space with your friend and this scary thing that wants to kill you and not recognising your friend/your friend not recognising you, whereas midnight is about being trapped in this tiny space with a group of strangers and an unknowable entity and instead of fear of not knowing your friend the fear comes from the doctor not having ANY friends there, from the paranoia and mob mentality. it's a very group-focused story as opposed to wby which is only really commenting on the doctor and donna and their relationship.

there are obvs lots of similarities: twisted reflections, a monster that we never truly see or understand, a 'bottle episode' set in one location, unease and building tension and fear, paranoia, but to me at least wild blue yonder is about friendship and being with your friend but also maybe not with them, and worry that maybe you don't know this person that you love as well as you wanted to think you did...but midnight is very much about not having any friends or allies, and how groups can dissolve into paranoia and blame. wby has no 'one-off' characters whereas in midnight the one-off characters are everything. in wby you're alone in this maze of rooms and corridors...in midnight you're trapped with other people in this tiny little shuttle

tldr midnight is very mob mentality/'little pocket of humanity' focused whereas wby is all about the doctor and donna's relationship, and the different sets - one small and crowded, the other huge and empty - show this off pretty well

[valeriefauxnom]

How Euden Was Primed To Have Identity Crises Even Before Nedrick (Or: Yet Another Very Long Analysis As To Why Euden Is More Messed Up Than He Appears)

Did you know that the whole plot point of Euden not being the actual 7th scion was decided by Okada? Yeah. Make of that what you will that that one decision impacted the whole trajectory of the story, but I'm sure to many it helps explain the transition from a more typical story about royal family infighting and rescuing siblings from demonic possession to identity crises and fighting God(s).

Surprisingly enough, though, I'd argue that Euden would be in hot water whether or not he was the 'real' 7th scion or not!

The very long and short of it ties back to my long dives here on Tumblr which explored just how ridiculously self sacrificial Euden is and how his behavior is a problem, but in this analysis I'm going to narrow in on another of his problems under the giant self sacrifice umbrella he is constantly lugging about.

As the title says, I'm going to be looking at how Euden might have had an incoming identity crisis even before Nedrick popped in to say 'hi' even if he did kickstart it in the worst way possible.

First, I'd like to establish Euden's complete lack of 'selfish' motives. Everything he does or wants tends to trail back for others.

It's started even before canon: Euden only knows how to play piano was because his father made him take lessons, eventually he decided to continue just so he wouldn't disappoint King Dad (read: Aurelius, in contrast to King Dork, Alberius, in a set of nicknames me and WillOfWinnie maintain for the fam).

He seems more personally invested in practicing the violin but maintains his study of piano just to please his father.

Then there's the very start of the game, in which he only really struck out because Aurelius and the kingdom needed him to. Personally, he wasn't interested in pacting (as he is trying to remain nonthreatening to his siblings, capitulating to their supposed 'desires' of their security) or gaining the right to the throne, but he set out regardless.

Other than that I really just have to wave vaguely to all his motives throughout the entire game+side stories. Despite how he frames them all as 'selfish' they aren't actually serving him beyond emotional fulfillment in that he thinks it's the right thing to do and make him feel good.

Forming a kingdom and establishing himself as leader? That's to protect the people fleeing the empire and establishing order instead of a quick power grab. He's a very passive ruler when it comes to ruling via traditional means and mostly seems to run the Halidom in a 'don't cause too many problems or else you'll end up in my therapy class' philosophy.

Rescuing Zethia? Well, there's... many reasons for that, not least of which freeing her and thus the people from the Other's tyranny, which is another of his goals that are for the people instead of him. Besides, one of his base form's lines is: "I've grieved and grown with Zethia. She needs me." Keep that last bit in mind...

This gets pointed out in Luca's dialogue nearly verbatim in 18:

This leads to the second point of my overall argument: Euden has few things he then can characterize himself with. Most people have some sort of individual dream or trait they view as intrinsic to them. Whether it's 'I want to be the best x ever' or 'I'm very x, personality wise' we have certain markers, no matter of how well conscious they are to our actual behavior, that we use to try and keep in touch with ourselves.

But Euden's goals, so wrapped up in other people and for other people means he's lacking some of the common methods people use to define and drive themselves. Combine that with his surprisingly low self esteem I've also addressed, Euden doesn't really seem to have many of the typical means to keep in touch with himself.

So, how does Euden keep track of who Euden is and what Euden should do?

What all these other people think of him and his actions. And other people in general.

What's one of the first things to start getting to him in his hallucination?

What's the reason he's trying to stay strong for even after everyone abandons him in his hallucination? That's right: other people, instead of any of his own real drives. He can't let other people's hopes and dreams go to waste.

"Now wait a minute," you, the hypothetical viewer I am creating to discuss with in my head as if this were a Socratic circle, say, "This is from chapter 18, after Nedrick popped up. His identity crisis was already in bloom there."

Yes, but for a big point to demonstrate that this is not a recent insecurity or tendency brought up as Nedrick reemerged, look to chapter 13 before that whole plotline. This is not a recent development, and the 'title drop' moment of this analysis: even before Nedrick, Euden has a pattern of behavior and way of thinking that set him up for identity crises because he has no strong foundation of self that's not tied to others.

"Ed" Beren why did you choose 'Ed' as a fake name instantly identified this weak spot in Euden's mind to start prodding at it.

I think it's relatively fair to say a decent chunk of people's initial response to being told they were not needed would be a feeling of indignation and sadness, depending on how close they were. Euden's?

One could argue that this is a form of indignation, 'prove them wrong', but notably any of the standard 'ha! I am needed, loser' anger-driven vehemence to protect one's self esteem isn't there. He's trying to prove his usefulness...to live up to his family and his duty to serve. Again, external things he has imposed on himself. It isn't out of vengeance to prove himself to get back at whoever the rude person is, it's an attempt to make others realize he still has a use to them.

Beren, keen as ever, notices this weakness in turn, that the big chunk of his indignation is to prove the worthiness of his dragonblood and as prince and prods that.

The essence of this conversation boils down to Euden admitting that he derives a great deal of his own self-worth, goals, and general identity from others. They are what keep him tethered.

What pride he takes in himself more comes from things like possessing the legacy of dragonblood: he feels the need to live up to Alberius' and Aurelius' legacies. That others need him. Remember his ardent claim earlier how 'Zethia needs [him]?' While it by itself more broadly fits into the slow quest people gradually undertook in Dragalia to get the two of them more independent and less mutually overprotective, it also is an example of how he's anchoring himself to what others need instead of himself.

He derives identity on what others ascribe to him: 7th scion, son of Aurelius, dragonblood, Prince... these traits are what give him that framework to define his life around. He needs to practice the sword to be strong, to then fulfill his duties as prince, so on and so forth, etc.

It's a big chunk of the reason why Nedrick's revelation hits him so hard. I've seen some people misunderstand (at least, in my book) that Euden's unhinged reaction to Nedrick's claims is because he believes shared blood is the ultimate determinate of family and that he's just really upset that he thinks now all the time spent growing up was meaningless. No, he seems perfectly fine accepting others of atypical family structures.

What was really getting him, aside from the whole 'core facts of your life have been lies', is that so much of what he's tied together- this duty, most everything he's done in the past year+, -is falling apart. Euden himself essentially calls up this whole issue in the moment:

"Who am I" is suddenly now a valid question because the biggest traits he's used to characterize himself and guide his entire modus operandi has been ripped to shreds. It's the meaning behind what those labels meant to him that makes having them ripped away hurt that much more rather than the labels themselves causing the fit.

There it is again: Euden has a deep need to feel needed. And yes, most of us do to some degree, but I think and hope I've demonstrated in this post that he is a bit too dependent on this need to drive him. As Luca later hallucinates the genocide and complete destruction of his new village as what he fears, Euden's instead revolves around abandonment and being unneeded. And these run deep enough that Euden wasn't showing any sign of being able to break through on his own and likely would have died if not for Luca's intervention.

We also see this darkly demonstrated whenever Euden thinks he is truly alone. Even in as late canon as Bondforged Euden, he has this reaction to thinking every single person and dragon he fought for is dead:

All I can say here is that he's essentially (and possibly literally, I don't know) lying down, ready to let fiends maul him to death with no more struggle, which is...concerning. Before in the Ch.18 hallucination he was adamant about continuing because the others had their dreams...but now that they are 'dead' he's giving up life itself.

Even in Halloween Mym's fantasies, which are notably more closer to the core components of Euden's actual behavior (selflessness, deference to elder siblings, etc) now that she's had more time to get to know him, the vaguely southern, tough-but-sweet-on-the-inside orphan imagining of him immediately is ready to, guess what? Let himself be mauled to death by a fiend because he thinks Mym's dead and he sees no further point in living. I'm sensing a pattern with how Euden chooses to go out-

Ahem. Anyways, the point is that when Euden thinks his sources of motivation and those who need him, who gave him meaning are gone, he himself sees no more need to live either. While it certainly wasn't helped by Nedrick, this is an overall pattern to his motives and personality that existed before, too.

And it's a dangerous one in its own right, even aside from how it again falls under the 'selfless' umbrella that overhangs all his more specific problems. (Honestly, 'selfless' almost takes on its own meaning in this context, not in the sense of being willing to throw one's self onto the pyre for another, but in the sense he has no true internal drive to characterize himself. Maybe why Nedrick+Beren's no.1 go-to insult is calling him hollow? He 'rings hollow' to them and needs to find meaning and drive to fill the gap elsewhere).

Please do take this next bit with the tiniest grain of salt, as somebody who merely has taken an abnormal psych+a few other psych classes in college, but he almost seems to start showing shades of something not quite Borderline Personality Disorder or Dependent Personality Disorder. While I don't actually think he meets many/enough of the criteria for either one, nor am I wanting to play armchair psychologist and get on a whole 'x has y disorder!!!' thing some people do and unintentionally diminish the significance of what y disorder is to those who have it, he still has shades of what we would start to consider clinical degrees of dysfunction.

For the former, one of the big facets of BPD is the fear of abandonment. While, again, he doesn't show some of the other core traits like 'splitting', ie, having rapid mood swings of idealizing others and demonizing them the next, his frantic desperation to avoid abandonment lines up. So too is the tendency to feel 'lost' and 'empty', as well as his trouble identifying himself. Again, for every 1 thing that lines up well, 3 other things don't, but it still is an interesting connection, I think.

Dependent Personality Disorder also doesn't fit him for similarly many reasons. It shares the fear of abandonment, but Euden doesn't particularly struggle to decide what to do- he knows what he has to do to fulfill the duties his roles have placed on him- nor does he feel completely helpless without someone to 'take care' of him. As I've long discussed, he's more of the 'desperately seeking to take care of others' type. But it he does have other few shades, as his tendency to submit to other's wills and efforts not to aggravate them.

Again: this is not even worth 2 cents. It simply sets my eyebrows rising a bit when I linked up just how intense his behavior patterns are to concepts like the 4 D's and those disorders in my pattern-seeking monkey brain trying to hammer square pegs into round holes.

The 4 D's, as I recall, were a guideline in determining normal behaviors or quirks from actual, diagnosable, 'yep this is a Problem' disorders. They are Danger, Deviance, Distress, and Dysfunction. Danger is easy: is it dangerous to one's self or others? Deviance: is the behavior(s/thoughts/etc notably atypical compared to cultural standards? Distress, is the behavior causing marked distress in one's or other's lives? Dysfunction, does it markedly interfere with living a normal life or fulfilling one's daily tasks? I could see an argument for all 4.

I think what I intended by bringing this up is simply to stress just how disruptive his behaviors are. No, he does not have BPD (bipolar or borderline!), nor does he have DPD. But the fact he shares quite a few qualities that are considered atypical enough to be symptomatic is, again, a testament to how concerning and dangerous he would be in real life.

In any case, I really do need to wrap this up since I've danced around my points long enough. If you've suffered along for this long, especially combined with my other long dissections into what I believe is the hidden dark side of the moon to Euden's character, thank you. I hope you've found some of this interesting, at least!

[lilacerull0]

nešto pametno i od tebe da čujem

[universalthaumaturge]

ok i get why anthy has creature of delirium now