#Brad's mental illness will have to wait until Monday

[textsfromthetva]

so I was doing some early morning mental plotting of the inevitable, angsty post-canon Brad fic (as you do while drinking a coke and smoking a cigarette at 7am, like an adult who has their life together), and there's been a problem since the beginning.

now, as a person who had suffered from debilitating depression and anxiety on-and-off for 20 years, I know very well that no one can pull you out of that hole for you, you have to climb out yourself. but it is incredibly helpful when someone throws down a rope ladder.

(from a personal perspective, an acute lack of interactions and dialogue was also going to make it infinitely harder to write. I'm not good at writing character-driven stories that just have the main character wallowing in their emotions, without external input, from start to finish)

my problem was that I didn't know who that would be. I toyed with creating an OC for the purpose, but it didn't feel right to have someone who doesn't know the truth of what happened - and never will - try to help.

and then a giant cartoon lightbulb appeared over my head and flicked on, as it occurred to me that we do actually have a canon character who is just hanging out in the universe at large at this point, letting time pass. the original unlicensed therapist of the Loki series. a guy who, at the very least, is interested enough in Brad's whereabouts by the end of the series to have a magazine with him on the cover lying on his desk, and could perhaps even care a little that the guy is in extreme self-destruction mode.

Mobius, my man, I'm gonna pull you into some serious shit, and you're gonna do great.

this will be good for him, you know? Loki's currently in a tree (or is he the tree? I'm a little unclear on that), so he's got no enrichment in his enclosure. an opportunity to practice some armchair psychology on someone else will cheer him up, I'm sure.