#and like. no i think shes traumatized and his death fundamentally reshaped her life

[daggerfall]

Between all the Darien postings, I did want to say my thoughts on Gabrielle as well:

In my opinion, Gabrielle's arc from base game to Solstice is a story of survivor's guilt. She goes from respectable portal mage in the Mages Guild, to combatant in the final charge against Molag Bal to stop the Planemeld. She's not some high ranking mage in the guild, she's just been in the right/wrong place at the right/wrong time. She lets Darien flirt with her for fun but plays hard to get. This isn't the time for serious feelings - this is war. And then she watches him vanish in front of her without getting to even confront her own feelings, and watches King Dynar, leader of the charge, die in front of her. She watches these two brave warriors sacrifice themselves to save the day in a way she could not. That is a deeply, deeply traumatic experience - especially when everyone is likely telling you how brave you were for your part in the battle and how happy everyone is that the Planemeld is over. They don't know what it cost.

She spends the next few years doing little but trying to find Darien - scouring books in the Anvil mages guild and making no progress until you give her the note from Darien from Wrothgar. She even joins the Antiquarian's in an attempt to find him (dialogue you can only get if you did the main quest but Not Summerset). But she has to learn about Darien returning and then being lost again in Summerset, again from you. She didn't even get to see him or speak to him or help save the world again. She's been left behind yet again and is following in the trail of the Vestige and their encounters with her obsession. And then she feels responsible for the death of Merric and the capture of Vanus, and has to step in to fill his shoes as the leader of the Mages Guild and Stirk Fellowship alongside Prince Azah.

Look. Gabrielle Benele is not a leader. She is not some legendary, powerful mage with a high ranking in the guild. She is an extremely capable portal mage with experience in war and boatloads of PTSD, and a valued Antiquarian (albeit with some... controversial codices). She's portal girl. She's one third of the OG cov gang. She should not be leading the Mages Guild. That level of pressure on her after everything is insane.

I do not think her crush on Darien is solely why she was so quick to suggest sacrificing herself to bring him back - I think she was struggling and lost for many years. Her life purpose to alleviate her guilt was trying to find Darien; someone she viewed as the best of us all. I feel like it's not unreasonable to think that she may have had thoughts of "it should have been me", knowing how much she admired the person Darien was. I think that hero worship in itself could have fed into the romantic feelings she held for him, and made them into something more than what they actually had in Coldharbour. She's had a long time to stew in those memories and obsess over them. So it's not surprising she would be rather quick to suggest the exchange with the Gift of Death when presented with her own immediate and unavoidable death, and knowing that using it even once would stop Wormblood from being able to use it.

And I think in some way, she recognized that she herself was stuck in the past. Everyone else was able to move on, but she can't. Others may miss him, but she's the only one Still Trying to bring him back. She can't heal, she can't move on.

The only people who could understand are Vanus and the Vestige. Vanus is her superior and now imprisoned, and regardless of your Vestige's relationship with Darien, I think she would feel some level of jealousy at them getting to always be involved in Darien's life. The note in Wrothgar, Summerset, the sidequest in Southern Elsweyr, his ghostly apparition in Blackwood. She doesn't get to be involved, but the hope of his return is the only thing that keeps her going.

I think her sacrifice is far more than just "girl likes a boy enough to die for him" or "killing off woman to bring back some guy". It's a disservice to character to look no further to her obsession with finding Darien and dismiss it narrative favoritism to Darien. It's a heartbreaking conclusion to an 11 year long arc about the only other regular person to leave the Chapel of Light. You got to be a Hero, and she had to just... go on with life. Alone.

And maybe it's not a conclusion! Maybe she will come back in some equally miraculous plot twist. But I think it's important to view her story not as girl sacrifices herself for a boy, but as a story about survivor's guilt and hero worship left unchecked.

[persona-brainrot-real]

Ok actually while I’m at it I think that Joker’s grief as well as Sumire’s and Akechi’s and Marukis and to a lesser degree the rest of the PT’s is such an important part of the third semester. Like yes it’s about accepting the bad and the traumatic and persevering regardless. Yes it’s about how you can’t hide from your problems forever. But it’s so fundamentally at its core an exploration of grief. This is gonna be king I’m putting a read more

Akechi is not only grieving himself and the life he denied himself, but his relationship with Joker. I do believe it’s actually him in 3rd semester don’t get me wrong from my original post but I also believe that he has been fundamentally warped in a way maybe he isn’t wholly aware of (if you woke up, aware you were likely brought back from death, would you question your newfound anger? Your newfound rage? Would you question why you aren’t as in control of yourself as you used to be, or would you be too busy wondering why you were brought back? What God or Devil chose to bring you back, and what for?). Through the third semester, he not only comes to terms with his death, but that he is going to die again (and likely convinces himself he Wants To to cope with the awareness, or rationalises himself into the mentality he has about free will and his own death) and that while he never reached his goals of becoming an authority of Shido, he is able to right one thing: he’s able to connect with Joker the same way he said, just before fighting the PT’s, that he wanted to do, or wished he’d been able to do sooner. He has to accept his deaths, both past and future, and is given a new opportunity to go back to what was likely the best part of his life and actually experience and savour it, rather than waste it focused on a revenge he never gets to achieve.

Sumire’s grief is more obvious, but not only because of her reveal about her true self and the death of her sister, but because she’s able to express it in the narrative. She reclaims herself and her life and is able to move past her sisters death by clawing and fighting and tearing her way out of the pit grief put her in- and she herself acknowledges that had she not put on the mask of being Kasumi, she may never have escaped her grief. She found the strength to keep going, the social network she needed to recover, and is able to get better because of it. But equally… when she’s playing Kasumi, and talks about the death of her little sister Sumire, she is never sad about it. She never grieves. She talks like Sumire was a friend who moved away, or a book character, and it clearly ties into a notion about her own self worth and her survivors guilt. The awareness that Kasumi was someone worth mourning, worth clumsily pressing yourself into the shape of, and worth living as, while if she had died, it would have been no more than a passing comment about whether or not Sumire could cook, or perform. So her entire arc becomes shaped around how her loss and her grief reshapes herself, and how she finds self worth and love through bringing herself back to life - the opposite to Akechi. A life recovered when Maruki fails, not a life lost.

Maruki grieves Rumi and the life he never got with her. He frames every single thing that he does as both heroic and selfless, always done for Rumi and never himself, but it is always done to make himself feel better for what happened to her. There’s a sense of self-blame and guilt, and a constant pervasive grief for what he lost when a god took advantage of his worry and his stress to ‘fix’ her. She was suffering from PTSD and grief, but could have recovered, and a higher power claimed to be helping when it robbed Maruki any chance to help her get better and frames it as the only thing to do, forcing Maruki into the belief that if she doesn’t remember HIM SPECIFICALLY, atop of losing all memories of her parents, she’d be fine. And he seems to spend every second of his life between then and now tearing himself apart, researching endlessly and studying and never pursuing his passions or interests but instead looking into whatever could have fixed Rumi. Yes, he said she could never remember him, but his palace had huge gold statues of her, video tapes of her, and there must have been some undeniable part of him that hoped that if they reached a utopia, he could be happy, too. And his happiness seemed to require Rumi, since he denied himself ever moving on as a form of self-punishment framed as ‘doing what’s right’. His narrative around grief is selfish, and desperate, and it takes being forcibly proven wrong to realise he was WRONG.

And Joker is constantly HAVING to keep moving. He can’t grieve the life that was stolen from him when he got a criminal record because he has to keep moving. And over the course of the next six or so months, he probably became grateful, in a confusing way, that it happened. If it hadn’t, he would never have awakened his persona, he would never have met any of the phantom thieves, which included likely saving Ann and Shiho’s life from Kamoshida, saving Ryuji’s future, helping Futaba, etc, and he had to have ended up insanely grateful for the life he needed up finding, despite the cost to his well-being, his life, his physical health with the 20/11 interrogation, and the risks to his future now that he had a criminal record. But he grieves Akechi. He can never properly think about it, but he is explicitly shown after the fight to be reminiscing and mourning Akechi. And that’s why the third semester is so important to him, too - he’s the only person happy with where he is while every other member of the PT is still wishing for something, even subconsciously. But he grieves Akechi strongly enough that Maruki brings him back just to make Joker happy and even believes strongly enough in their connection to subtly blackmail Joker out of the final confrontation. and that’s the only serious opportunity that Joker gets to change how the story ends. You get the final choice - take back everything, undo everyone’s grief and trauma and stress, or persevere in spite of it? And this makes for such a delicious, powerful narrative about how grief effects everyone differently and the various forms it can take.

Actually I think that what we see of Akechi in the third semester isn’t an entirely honest reflection of who he is. He’s not a ruthless bloodthirsty finds-power-arousing (pre-showtime dialogue) nor in most other aspects of the game does he mention how openly and explicitly fascinated by Joker he is, the way he does in the third semester. Yes he is fascinated by Joker yes he finds him attractive yes whether you ship them or not there is undeniable homoerotic subtext in their relationship and akechi is queercoded.

This might not be too coherent bcs it’s like 2;30am rn BUT I think one of the most important things to consider is that the Akechi that gets brought back isn’t the same level of Brought Back that Wakaba Isshiki was, or Haru’s father. You can bring back Wakaba because she had all of these connections, all of these people who knew her and loved her. She had a job, a reputation, a social life, and even if Futaba hadn’t wanted her back, Sojiro would have. Her other coworkers, her friends. The point I’m making is that Wakaba, much like Okumura, and on a smaller scale Madarame with the way his personality changed, were social people. To be brought back, Maruki could have used these different understandings of them to bring them back as they were perceived and understood. Wakaba is crafted out of Sojiro’s memories of her as a person, out of Futaba’s memories of her as a mother. Okumura by how he was to Haru as a father, turned into a polished version based on what she wanted him to be.

Those who were alive were changed by the people around them, too. Sae by Makoto, Madarame by Yusuke, Shiho by Ann, even the rude teacher whose name I can’t remember is likely changed because of the wishes of the students, who Maruki heard complain about how cruel or mean or rude he was.

And that brings me back to Akechi. The only person who got close to him for who he actually was, is Joker. The only person who got to peek past the walls he put up, even in a controlled way, is Joker. The only person he was honest with, chose to surround himself with, and opened up about his life with, is Joker. As such, it’s Joker who wants him back when he’s gone (shown by Joker staring wistfully at his ceiling after their fight in Shido’s palace and finding it hard to believe he’s gone) and it’s Jokers wish that brings him back.

And with Joker’s last experience with Akechi being this sudden reveal for what his capacity for violence is, with little time to process, probably spends the next while of his quiet grief trying to wrap his head around this sudden change and it warps his perception of Akechi. It’s not that he’s ruthless, unwaveringly bloodythirsty and takes sexual pleasure from killing people/shadows necessarily, but that as Maruki was pulling from people’s memories and experiences for this, he pulled a warped and slightly inaccurate version of Akechi from Joker’s mind.

And that’s how we end up with a version of Akechi who is attached to Joker at the hip, who is unwaveringly allied with him, who constantly says things like “jokers mad. I kind of like it, but it’s not you” or only gets the ability to throw himself in front of a fatal attack to protect joker/to endure a fatal hit because of his closeness to Joker AFTER he’s brought back in 3rd semester. He isn’t incapable of putting himself at risk for someone if he wanted to, but he has too much to do. He has his plans, his goals to become more powerful than Shido, and for that reason he can’t afford to risk dying.

But when Joker needs him to come back, to be his friend rather than his enemy, to use this tenacity and determination he has to aid the Phantom Thieves, he gets what he wanted and what he needed, and in doing so pulls out and exaggerates a worse side of Akechi because of how his own infallible memory has warped his memory of him.

So he gets the Akechi he wanted (passionate, dangerously loyal, allied to Joker and Joker alone, therefore connecting him with the Phantom Thieves too) while also getting the Akechi he never saw and never wanted to see (ruthless, bloodthirsty, capable of immense violence and capable of enjoying said violence) but being just submerged enough in Maruki’s reality not to properly question how or why he’s back, but indulging in his own feelings and choosing ignorance so he doesn’t have to doubt the one person who listens to, believes, and trusts him, when everyone else (even without knowing better)turns their back on him. That’s what I find so captivating about the third semester and their dynamic within it. I don’t think it’s accurate to Akechi, not even his own deepest and darkest desires, but those aspects of a personality are forced onto him as a result of Joker’s grief.

And that’s something I wish Atlus had been able to delve into in a little more detail.

[scientia-rex]

I'm in this streak, lately, where I don't have anything. I don't have money, I don't have time, I don't have friends I see or talk to. My marriage is, as it has tended to be, strained.

I'm at this point where it's been more than two and a half years since I saw a doctor or a dentist. I need both. I don't see a chance to take care of that for another year and a half. I don't see more money on the horizon. I no longer have any monetary reserve--I'm just chasing bills, living hand to mouth, trying to make sure we can pay for rent and groceries even if that means letting other bills slide. I was raised to see paying the bills as a moral imperative, so this has been both humiliating and guilt-inducing for me. I haven't bought new clothes in at least a year. I'm wearing my shoes completely out. I'm living in a cheap studio with shitty loud neighbors. I can't afford to go see a movie, or go on a trip, or go to a restaurant, even a cheap one. Whenever I talk about this, someone inevitably feels the urge to lecture me about budgeting, as if budgeting could make money appear out of nowhere.

And the hits don't stop coming, because this is medical school. I spend a day talking to children so severely mentally ill they have been institutionalized for months, even years, for their safety and the safety of others. Children who have been beaten, raped, abandoned, neglected, abused, and now are living in a concrete building made to look like a parody of a real house. There are common areas with televisions, but they're glassed in with Plexiglass so nobody can break them. There are quiet rooms. When I ask why they aren't padded, I learn that padding just seemed to create more problems--nobody's ever given themselves a concussion headbanging on the walls, but kids have made themselves sick eating the padding. The youngest child we talk to is seven. She's made at least ten attempts to run. She does a decent job of holding it together while she talks to all of us, the whole group of visiting medical students, but there is a clear edge of panic by the end.

This place is a safe harbor. As safe as it gets.

Because this is med school, I get to listen to an attending say that he knows "people who thought they were bisexual, and then got married and stuck with that sexual orientation." I sit up in my chair, ready to start talking, feeling my face getting hot in the particular way it does when I'm getting ready to do something that is going to end up fucking me over. But he keeps talking, there isn't a chance to break into the disorganized stream of words, and by the time he's done talking we have to go to the next segment of the day. I swallow down the rage. Later mention it to another student. A classmate jumps in to proudly say that she has lots of bisexual and pansexual friends. I stare at her in uncomprehending rage: why the fuck are you taking this moment and making it about you? Why are you doing that? I don’t say anything to her about it. I don’t want a fight.

I get warned about moving to the side of the corridor is a patient-prisoner-patient is being transported in shackles. "Shackles are policy," says the guide, "it doesn't mean anything about what their level of risk is." I don't see anyone in shackles at the institution, but the next day, back at my own hospital downtown, I'm sitting in the hall waiting for my attending and resident, and a patient gets ushered past me: in shackles, clanking and dragging, like something right out of a medieval play.

It's not that none of our patients are dangerous. I go to stand closer to the bed of a patient who was transferred to our service from the psych ICU, and my resident puts a very firm hand on my arm. He never touches me, and it takes me completely aback. I freeze. He glances up at me from his chair, and gives me a meaningful look. He's not annoyed with me, but he isn't going to let me get within hitting distance. My attending, meanwhile, has perched next to the bed and is calmly talking to a patient who never responds. Virtually everyone who transfers from that service is labeled "assaultive."

It's not even that none of them have been dangerous to me. The head-banging patient from the first day could easily have hurt me without even meaning to. The low-IQ patient with persistent hallucinations (she reports them, at any rate; I don't know if they're real, or another part of her complex behavioral cries for attention, help, care) has made comments about wanting to hurt "the people around her" when I am very obviously the people around her.

It's that I don't feel like I'm in danger. I don't wear my scarf in to the unit because I can hear my dad's voice clear as a bell in my ear, never wear something they can choke you with. My mom used to work with psych patients, traumatized war veterans; one threatened her badly, and I think that was when she decided to quit. Any time I wore a necklace on a date--Dad was always more worried about men I dated than he was about stranger-danger. Sensible.

It's that I don't care if I'm in danger. No one will fight me. I'm supposed to be a responsible adult at this point in my life. I'm thirty-two. I'm supposed to be done wanting to get into fist-fights. I'm a medical student. I'm supposed to be done wanting to die.

And I'm less suicidal, in some ways, than I have been in a long time. I have a whole essay in my on this, percolating. The way that you realize, on an inpatient psych ward, that it doesn't matter whether staying alive meets some criteria for logic or rationality; we just do it. We do it compulsively, we do it because we can't do anything else. Actual suicide attempts are rare, and the ratio of attempts to completions is something like 30:1. The attempts are, at least the ones I've seen and read about and heard about, made in moments of severe, profound despair. If the moment can be endured, there is no suicide. This is one of the core teachings of DBT, dialectical behavior therapy, which is probably the best therapy for people with borderline personality disorder. Distress tolerance. Learning tactics to make it through that moment, the moment where the distress is so intense that death seems preferable.

I'm finally done, in some fundamental way I never was before, with the whole concept of eugenics. I was raised by parents who believed openly and strongly in the concept of eugenics. They would have been horrified at the explicit suggestion that it be used to breed out Jewishness or blackness, but if I had a nickel for every time my parents said "You ought to need a license to breed" or "Birth control should be in the water, and you should have to pass an intelligence test to get the antidote," or something else along those lines, I'd be able to afford a fucking doctor now. Being on inpatient psych, I'm not kidding: you can't think like that. There are all of these arguments about how various people could still be useful, somehow, that we need the diversity because who knows what skills can suddenly emerge, like Temple Grandin single-handedly reshaping the cattle industry.

You can't look at my low-IQ patient and think that way. She's never going to be a productive, contributing member of society. She's dangerous. She is exactly the kind of patient that would be eradicated by any kind of eugenics program. I would kill you if you tried to put her down like a dog. She's still human. She greets me in the morning, happy and smiling like a child, childishly dismayed some days when she's having GI side effects from the medications we're using to try to suppress the command auditory hallucinations that tell her to die and to kill. She is not going to be a wise elder, there is no tribal scenario where she serves a function. She doesn't have to, to deserve to live. She is a goddamned human being. I don't ever want to hear again in my life any statements about how we should keep people like her from existing.

I'm done with the state taking on killing as a function. I'm done with government having the power to commit murder.

"How have you been coping?" asked the chief resident at the training on Friday. I didn't say out loud, I'm not. Drinking and crying don't count.

This is a hard rotation in different ways than the other rotations have been hard, but I'm a better person because of it. It's making me better. This year is fire that's been steadily burning away the weakest parts of me. This year has been about clarity.

God, I wish I could do it with more money. But this year has been a hybrid of unnecessary torture and unbelievable gift.