here-as-a-human

[here-as-a-human]

This post is my Roman Empire. It cheers me up every time I think about it. I get such a kick out of it! I miss the between season fandom doing things like this and arguing about the color of Jonah's hair. Bring the friendom back!

What’s going on with this kid in the pink backpack?

This kid…

…in the blue tank top, wearing the pink backpack, from the episode “Cookie Monster”.

What’s going on with him? What’s he doing?

Here, let me inform you of the details of this conundrum with the aid of several images, gifs, and maps.

Figure 1.1:

Cyrus Goodman walks into Jefferson Middle School at the east entrance where he is greeted by one TJ Kippen.

TJ is the captain of the boys’ basketball team. He was formerly mean and cold, but after meeting Cyrus, he gradually became nicer and more open. The two have grown very close. This is why Cyrus is happy to see TJ in Figure 1.1. This isn’t vital to the proceedings of this post. It’s just background information. And I like it. It’s a nice story.

Anyway, they begin walking westward down the hallway.

As they walk and talk, the kid in the blue tank top, wearing the pink backpack, henceforth to be referred to as “Pink Backpack”, or “PB” for short, passes by them in the background, also heading west as can be seen in Figure 1.2:

Here, for more clarification, is Figure 1.3:

TJ and Cyrus continue west down the hallway, discussing weekend plans, but this is the last we see of Pink Backpack in this scene.

Also, before you ask if I went and got satellite images of the actual school just for the purposes of this post… Yes. Yes, I did.

I’m not screwing around.

After the Cyrus/TJ scene ends, we go outside to the southern area of the school, where Jonah Beck is approached by Buffy Driscoll, as seen here in Figure 2.1:

At one point, Buffy was hinted at having a crush on Jonah, but that storyline seems to have been forgotten. This knowledge also isn’t vital to this post, but I have several friends who are very into Juffy and I feel like I’d be remiss to not at least mention that background information.

Anyway, they walk west towards the southern entrance of the school as can be seen in Figure 2.2:

As they walk and talk, something interesting happens. They are passed, much like Cyrus and TJ before them, by Pink Backpack, as seen in Figure 2.3:

This is truly a fascinating turn of events, as just moments ago, Pink Backpack was walking west in the north hallway, but now finds himself outside the building, walking west once again.

I’ve graphed his likely path on the map, as you can see here in Figure 3.1:

Now, is than an impossible distance to cover in just a minute or so? No. I don’t think so, not if he’s running. And he’s clearly not afraid of a quick pace, as seen by his constant passings of the main characters. So, no, I wouldn’t draw the conclusion that something supernatural is occurring here.

But it is puzzling. And it only gets stranger.

Jonah and Buffy continue on towards the southern entrance of the school where they are met by Dr. Metcalf, the school’s principal, who confiscates Buffy’s, formerly Jonah’s, skateboard, as seen in Figure 4.1:

This now puts the three near the doors to the school, as seen on the map in Figure 4.2:

By this point, Pink Backpack should have entered the school again, at the southern entrance. He’s had enough time.

And yet, as we see in Figure 4.3:

He’s still wandering around outside.

Figure 4.4:

Buffy and Jonah continue their talk with Metcalf. We get a shot of Metcalf that lasts for several seconds.

Figure 4.5:

Then we cut back to Buffy and Jonah, and lo and behold…

Figure 4.6:

Pink Backpack is now walking in tiny circles.

Figure 4.7:

Let’s take a larger look at the final map in Figure 5.1:

What conclusions can we draw from this behavior?

Well, I’d like to believe it informs his state of mind. You might think someone behaving this way would be panicked, frenzied, confused. School’s about to start and he can’t get to class.

But look at his demeanor in Figures 1.2, 2.3, 4.3, and 4.6. Other than his heightened pace, he seems calm, cool, and collected.

Is he lost? Or is he wandering with purpose? Is he at these places in and around the school at these specific moments by mistake? Or is he exactly where he means to be?

And if that’s the case, if he’s behaving like this by choice, then what’s the motive here?

I don’t want to rush to something sinister, but I ask you: what’s the innocent explanation?

Does an innocent man…

act…

…like this?

I fear this is a mystery that may never be solved.

I’ve thought long and hard about it and have come up nearly empty. In the end, I’ve only been able to reach one true conclusion:

I spent way too long working on this.

[here-as-a-human]

This is my favorite hurt/comfort fic right now and I just needed to let someone know.

[here-as-a-human]

Somebody write a fic!!!

[here-as-a-human]

genuinely as someone with DID, i'm so so pleased with how moon knight played out. i know a lot of people weren't happy with the portrayal and i absolutely understand why, but for me personally it was finally seeing myself in a hero.

first and foremost, marc and steven in the sand. THAT'S what it is to be an alter. willing to put yourself on the line for the others, because despite everything, the in-fighting, the disagreeing on everything, the feeling that you aren't in control of your own life, you love them more than anything. you are alive today because they saved you, and you saved them.

second, the commitment to portraying marc and steven as separate people. not the usual "deluded guy thinks he's 2 people" take on DID. they even had separate hearts/souls. wonderfully done (and it blows my mind that some people still don't get that they're different people)

lastly, marc's trauma. a very real portrayal of the repeated abuse and trauma that results in DID. showing how marc is affected by triggering words. and i cant even begin to explain how "you were a child, it's not your fault" affected me. that's the one sentence that everyone with did/osdd wants, needs, and deserves to hear.

thank you moon knight, for making us a hero ❤️

[here-as-a-human]

When Marc went, "awol in a fugue state," could that have been Jake? (Unless I'm misunderstanding how a fugue state would work in relation to a system. Like maybe Marc thought it was "just a fugue state," when in reality Jake was fronting. Let me know if this theory is based on my misunderstanding of how these things work in relation to each other.)

[here-as-a-human]

jake lockley reveal but he has a deep southern accent and wears a cowboy hat instead

[here-as-a-human]

"It wasn't your fault. You were just a kid"

[here-as-a-human]

Did you notice on the finale trailer there's still another scene on the psych ward?

And there's this shot from another trailer and that we haven't seen yet + the "new skillsets" line that Steven says here, just like the title of a song from the soundtrack that it's set to be on ep 6

I don't know what is this theory but it certainly is just confusing me more lmao what is going on?

[here-as-a-human]

"I'm not crazy. I'm dead." 😂

[here-as-a-human]

I’ve been seeing people talking about the scene where Marc is crying in the street outside his mother’s shiva. Some people interpret his pain as being a sign that, despite everything she did, he still loves her.

Maybe. But I feel like there’s more to it than that.

He’s crying for the loving mother he knew for a short time, the mother he could have had, the mother he should have had. He’s crying for the life he should have had but never got. Because he was a little boy who made a big mistake, and no one came to rescue him. He survived, but he still needed rescuing, and his parents, while grieving themselves, should have still rushed to his aid. They should have wrapped him up and comforted him. They should have picked him up and carried him. They should have led him out of the dark, not left him there buried beneath his guilt and grief to rot. And his mother, the person who birthed him, who knew him and loved him first, should have laid healing hands upon him, not hurt him. Not thrown more dirt on top of him, burying him deeper.

That’s what I see when I watch that scene. The pain of a better life never lived, of a love so desperately wanted but torn away, twisted into hate and loathing, and turned into weapons against him. He’s mourning, not for his mother as she was, but who he needed her to be and who she wasn’t. He’s crying for his brother, for himself, and for everything, for all the love and joy he never got to have, that were actively denied to him because of the single disastrous mistake of a child.

He’s mourning not for any one person. He’s mourning for a lifetime of lost possibilities, lost opportunities, just… loss in every sense of the word. He probably knew rationally that he would never gain any of that back, but emotionally, I think some part of him couldn’t help but hope that somehow, someday, she would wake up and forgive him and tell him she loved him, that she was sorry she hurt him. That he could regain just a small fraction of what he lost that rainy day. 

But now she’s gone. And now, definitively, he will never get any of that. 

That absence, that pain, is a yawning grief in itself.

[here-as-a-human]

Ok, last post we’re making on Moon Knight for today. We have so much to say on this, holy shit.

TRIGGER WARNING: Talk of child neglect, verbal abuse/manipulation, emotional manipulation, and abuse in general. We talk a lot about our own trauma in comparison to Marc’s. (We know sharing trauma online is unsafe. This is a very small portion of our trauma that we are comfortable sharing.)

CONTENT WARNING: Moon Knight Episode 5 spoilers

DISCLAIMER: This is our personal experience! Not all systems will feel the same as us! We also may have some grammatical errors, this was a long post. We tried our best to correct what we found.

Ok. This episode? Big oof. We were not prepared for it. But let’s get into it.

I want to finish on a happier note, so straight into the trauma. Seeing a character we already relate to because of their disorder suddenly also have similar trauma to yours is oddly healing. We hate knowing that others have gone through what we have, but at the same time it makes feel like we’re not alone. We weren’t the only one to feel these terrible feelings about ourself. For a PG-14 show, Marvel wasn’t really holding anything back, and we actually appreciate that. A warning may have been nice, but they also kind of were warning us the because the whole episode was about uncovering trauma.

Anyways, seeing young Marc curled up on the floor as far as he could be from the door while covering his ears made us feel seen. That was us. We did that. It’s fucked up in so many ways, but fuck if we didn’t tear up because we saw ourself in him. Our abuser always blamed us for everything, even when it was other people’s fault or out of our control. They never showed up for important moments in our life because we just weren’t enough and they “had their own things to work through”. The violet shouting and the loud bangs of door slamming or walls being hit. Being told we were always a certain way and would never change because it was ingrained into us. We never dealt with a sibling dying, but we sure knew what it felt like to be compared to them in a negative way and told we were all of their worst flaws in one body. It’s disgusting to watch it happen to someone else, but we understand Marc on a very deep level because that was us. Seeing representation of similar trauma to ours is actually kind of healing.

We also want to (un)kindly say FUCK YOU Harrow and Khonshu! What the fuck. Never, ever, call someone with OSDDID “broken”. Just don’t call anyone “broken”. The amount of absolute rage we felt when they called the Moon Knight system “broken” probably wasn’t even healthy. The manipulation tactics and name calling was just, uncalled for. We know it’s fiction, but damn if it’s didn’t hurt. They didn’t deserve that. We are not our trauma. Having trauma doesn’t make you “broken”. It’s literally a coping mechanism. We honestly couldn’t care less about Khonshu after seeing that scene.

Now, I’m going to talk for a bit. I’m Tene, I’m the host of this system. Like Steven, I was made to be the “normal” alter, the one to do everyday things. This is called an Apparently Normal Part (ANP). I am a lot like Steven. I had a major meltdown when realizing I was part of a system. I either don’t remember trauma or I remember it differently than everyone else. I have fought with my trauma holders over trauma. But when I calm down and look at things with a clear mind, I can see denying it happened isn’t going to help. The line Steven said, something along the line of “you were a kid, it wasn’t your fault”? The whole system felt that one. We were all sobbing. And I realize that I feel the same way. Marc was trying to protect Steven, just like my protectors were trying to protect me. We were a fucking kid. We shouldn’t have gone through that. But we did and we deal with it every day, one step at a time. They did what they felt was needed to keep us safe and alive. I will eventually know what happened. I will eventually have the full picture. But having it all now would probably make us split more and we’d forget more and that’s just, unhealthy. Working through what I have now is enough as is.

I would also like to say that your should never do what Marc and Steven did!!! Working through trauma can take years! Please, do not rush through it! It will hurt you more than help you! The only reason they got through it so fast and with little consequence was because it was a TV show with limited time. Please please please don’t try to rush through your healing process.

On our final note, Steven being a fictive??! We are an introject heavy system, so we were ecstatic! Fictive representation on a big production such as Moon Knight is so important, especially because people think systems are faking if they have an introject/too many introjects. We are very real! Believe it or not, even singlets have moments of interjection where they act like someone they know. Maybe you have someone you really look up to, so you start copying their facial expressions or body language. Introjects are kind of like that, but an actual alter is formed because the brain though the system needed them. Seeing Steven being formed because Marc saw his source as fearless made us really happy because we did that. Most of our introjects were formed as protection or comfort, so we understood why Steven was split.

All in all, we actually enjoyed the representation in this episode. Yes, Moon Knight does not always get representation of OSDDID right, but this episode did a pretty damn good job. Props to the writers, and to Oscar Isaac for his absolutely phenomenal performance. We finally felt seen for once.

[here-as-a-human]

I probably should keep my mouth shut…but I’ve seen some negativity about the Jewish rep, even after today’s episode, in Moon Knight and I wanna address it as someone born and raised Jewish and, even more than that, someone who struggled with my faith. Further disclaimer, I’m no longer religiously Jewish, but consider it part of my heritage. This will have episode 5 spoilers and it’s gonna be a long one so putting it under the cut. Hopefully I won’t regret posting this but I had so many thoughts. Please note the triggers in the tags and that this is a dark episode, okay?

Keep reading

[here-as-a-human]

I wanted to ask a question, feel free to ignore, it kinda goes along with what ya just posted about the newest episode for moon knight.

I can understand being desensitized to what the mother did. That's a whole issue there. But I haven't noticed anyone mentioning the father. He didn't get his wife any help and let his only surviving child suffer? For me that hurts on a number of levels. So why is no one mentioning the father?

Yes, his father's(Elias) involvement should really be mentioned more. He didn't stop the abuse, didn't get his surviving child help. But... he was also now in a marriage with an abuser, and that creates a very different atmosphere. But we don't know how he responded other than didn't get help. He could have just been a passive enabler, a victim blamer, or worse actively also abused in a manipulative way. Or... he could have felt helpless and that's why he didn't get help. Because the thing with abuse in a family situation, is there are likely multiple avenues in which the abuser abuses. So it's also likely Elias suffered some kind of abuse at Wendy's hands. Being around someone like that causes its own sort of trauma, even if you do nothing to stop it - it doesn't automatically make you an enabler - it often times makes you a victim too.

I don't think people are ready to talk about it yet, while still processing what happened. Also not everyone has watched the episode - so give it time. I'm sure they will. It's a pretty heavy topic for some people.

[here-as-a-human]

Moon Knight - Episode 1 “The Goldfish Problem” | Episode 5 ‘Asylum”

[here-as-a-human]

If there's one thing I want them to capitalize on from the Lemire run, it's this line:

"I am sick. I know that. I will never be cured. This is always going to be who I am. But I can still live. I can still have a life. And I won't let you ruin that for me anymore. I am Marc Spector. I am Steven Grant. I am Jake Lockley. And we are going to be okay. We are going to live with who we are. We are Moon Knight. And we never needed you.

Quiet. For the first time in a long, long time, our mind is quiet. And I.. I just let it wash over me. I let it be quiet.

Then doubt starts to creep in.. is this real? All I know for sure is that the rain feels real as it hits our face. Real enough, anyway. And that's good enough for us."

Because this is the heart of what Marc and Steven need, isn't it? To be accepted and loved and redeemed for all the things they've done in an ancient god's name, to be shown that their illness doesn't define them or strip them of their personhood, that they can be individuals and navigate life on their own terms through the same voice and the same eyes.

We protect the vulnerable.

Even if the vulnerable are themselves.

[here-as-a-human]

Marc saying he wishes he could disappear 😔

Marc honey no

Okay but now I'm thinking with the timeline falling into place

Marc's had DID since he was young

Marc was shot/maybe died and became Khonshu's avatar

Marc THEN met Layla

Marc and Layla get married

??????

Marc leaves Layla and goes into hiding and lets Steven take over everything

Up until this point I thought it could be that it was just the stuff with Khonshu coming into his life that changed things for Marc (messed up things between him and Layla, disrupted whatever kind of "control" or balance he'd had with his DID etc.) but no something that we don't know about happened and it was bad.

Like Marc just gave up. He hit a breaking point. Harrow said he's in agony and he keeps that under wraps pretty well, but SOMETHING made Marc hit the point where he decided he would rather just disappear and let Steven handle everything and the only thing making him hang on is the desire to protect Layla and Steven and stop Ammit.

[here-as-a-human]

I am starting to feel genuine sadness over Moon Knight coming to an end. With only 2 episodes left I can already tell how much I'm gonna miss having this show to look forward to each week. I mean, I know he's going to turn up again at some point in some kind of crossover-type deal, but it makes me sad to think we may never have another run like this. With him, as the main character in a story that's all his own and if we are to see him again it may only be split up across multiple sequels, in other people's stories. Spending his time setting up some other larger-than-life event to face off against later.

Don't get me wrong I think a Midnight Sons style, Ghost Rider/Moon Knight team-up would be a DAMN treat but I just want to watch these guys go on different adventures for a little bit too if that's okay. I suppose I'm just sulking like a spoiled kid because I don't get to have it both ways. As much as I'm enjoying the show I'm not enjoying the whole "Disney+ Limited series" as a mantle. It's exhausting, getting invested in a show you already know won't last more than one season. Y'Know? I don't know...

I just really like Moon Knight!

Thank you for reading.