#and realises that their trauma has manifested in different ways

[lightninja38]

Not a Shen Jiu hater, not a Yue Qi hater, but a secret third thing.

[bloggingboutburgers]

cw: discussions of bullying and aphobia

Hearing aroace peoples' existential crises over their friends discussing crushes, as someone who was socially isolated and severly bullied for their whole childhood and most of their adolescence so had NO friendgroup until adulthood and NO community or inclusion in literally anything (and when it came to sex and romance the other kids explicitly considered my potential involvement in either to be impossible / laughible because of how "weird" they found me (my autistic traits before I even realised I'm autistic)), felt like starving while listening to someone else complain about the food they're actively eating.

Food intolerances and dislike of different foods (as metaphor for being aro/ace) ARE important and difficult to grapple with when you're expected to eat specific foods in specific proportions at different times - but man did it sting until I realised why I felt that way and gave myself a talking to since my trauma doesn't justify belittling the very real struggles of aroace people.

I guess since the choice between 'stay alone or conform' was never really a choice because I was rejected no matter how cis straight or allo I was it taught me to go "fuck it" and accept myself regardless of what other people do or say (which ironically has lead to me becoming dramatically popular all of a sudden at uni, which has been weird to get used to since I have literally no experience with any of this - platonic or otherwise - which did lead to some advantage being taken of me but f*ck it we ball ^^'). And I guess it's just been difficult understanding why anyone would care so much about whether they're "normal" or not? You really have nothing to gain from that, safety is not guaranteed in conformity so best to live aroace and damn all aphobes to hell if they have a problem with that.

It's a mindset I'll never understand and that's only ok now insofar as that lack of understanding no longer results in misplaced anger at people who, for a time, I had once considered spoilt, ungrateful and out of touch. Basically, I'm full of sh*t and to every aroace person reading this you deserve good friends that actually respect you for who you are and do not even TRY to get you to change your mind about sex or romance. Have a lovely day x

Sincerely,

An aggressive emotional support anon

I'm genuinely sorry for all the hardships you went through. I don't mean to equate at all, truthfully from reading you and considering I WAS asked some of those questions as a kid regardless (the "who's your crush" bullshit and whatnot), it definitely sounds like I had it less hard than you did, but... I was bullied in elementary school and middle school, also not necessarily because I was aroace (I don't know why it happened really, I don't know if anyone ever knows, I boil it down to... me being me and there being something fundamentally wrong with me ig), and I definitely also get some of those feelings of "oh boo hoo you call that struggle" boiling in me when people discuss their own past struggles sometimes, so... Yeah, every one person's experience is unique, but I can at the very least very much sympathize.

I think a way it manifests in me is that I now have that compulsive, debilitating fear of being "othered" in any way, shape, or form, so I guess being aroace doesn't help my case. But at the same time... Well, like you brilliantly put it, when you're in a situation like that, no matter what you do, you won't be accepted anyway, and having that knowledge back then is probably also what lead me to figure myself out as aroace so early in life. Because I was treated as this much of an outsider, I ironically had that much room in my own head to form my own identity, far apart from others and the need to conform. Yeah, that identity may include a "piece of shit that doesn't deserve to be supported of part of a group" side that's been forced in, buried deep down and can't be erased, but... It also includes asexual and aromantic, and it's been cemented so hard from so early with such self-affirmation that later down the line, it saved me from a lot of stuff. I never had to force myself into a romantic or sexual relationship because I was undoubtably aroace – and people saw me as an outsider and an eyesore anyway. I spent years of being scared to go to school or out in the street every day, but later down the line, somehow, I feel it saved me from doing so many things I wouldn't have wanted to do.

...Bleh, sorry, didn't mean to turn this into me-me-me crap when you had the courage and sincerity of not only showing your experience, but finding the strength to show more love, understanding and support than a lot of people probably cared to give you for so long, despite all the pain you felt for so long. I guess I just wanna say... This take is definitely inspiring, so thank you on behalf of myself and others I'm sure, but also... I hope that, for yourself, you're also managing to own what you lived through in a way that allowed you to affirm yourself more strongly (it sounds like you are, I hope it IS the case), and most importantly, I hope you're in a much better place in your life now and you'll never have to return to that level of loneliness again.

[supremechancellorrex]

One of the major disappointments I had with the Avatar live-action was the storyline and characterisation of Azula. Not only does the show take vital minutes that could have been spent on Katara, but Live-Action!Azula fails to feel very strong and threatening presence wise. There's a lack of mystique, mystery and reveal with her. The live-action has laid her bare a little too early for comfort in my opinion. Narratively, I think we know her *too well* now. It doesn't help she lays her feelings on her face pretty bare to see.

Where she seemed more promising in Episode 3 with her cool dispatching of rebels and plotting with Zhao, I honestly didn't really enjoy her scenes after. Also, I know this is a tall order, but I found Azula's martial arts not as strong as Zuko's actor, which is jarring for her plotline. I found her lightning reveal a little lacklustre. She's just like, wham, lightning.

Azula's Conflict

Part of Azula's original characterisation in the cartoon was she was able to keep her feelings close to her chest like a cold flame, it was smarter that way. The entire point of her characterisation is she appears the perfect royal vessel blessed with all the gifts, but she actually was hurt and mentality unstable and masking this trauma. Yet, in the live-action Azula ragefully beats and loses control in a training session fight against a servant to the point Ty Lee and Mai, her friends/underlings of a lower social station, dare to protest and physically pull her off in full view of everyone. Meanwhile, Ozai reads her like an open book for most of the season. She feels like more of an underdog, like a vicious little poodle monkey kicked every time Ozai praises Zuko, and being so obvious with her feelings in front of Mai and Ty Lee, and an entire courtyard of subjects and everyone. Apparently, Royal Family members are so much so obvious, a lowly person like Zhao thousands of miles away somehow even knows Ozai is testing her. What did she put in those silly letters? It feels like Live-Action!Azula is cottoning on a little too late on how to really play the game for someone so smart, and that would just be unacceptable in such a traditional, Imperial Confuscianist-like environment.

What Azula deals with in Season 1 of the Avatar: Live Action is a conflict Azula would have more likely had at age 10, realising a textbook answer isn't enough. By having her have this at 14, it does make her feel more slow and less of a prodigy with a strategic mind. The writers decided to do the Season 1 timeline and have something for Azula to do at the same time, but the conflict they chose for her does change her characterisation in ways so far I'm not fond of or at least confident is for the better.

Aluza, A Meaner Zuko

My problem with Azula isn't that she's "sympathetic", more she just doesn't feel like herself. She had a different way of dealing with things in the original show; she'd learned from a young age to be more generally closed off and in an imperial, authoritarian environment. In this environment, where composure is everything and every movement needs to affirm the Mandate of Heaven that is your existence and your divine right, Azula learned to restrain her self-expression where in contrast Zuko had difficulty and was punished for it. As someone who knows people in real life who are very difficult to read. Live-Action!Azula was far too obvious and readable for the characters around her at this stage, especially given the upbringing she would have had. In most of the cartoon, she does have a tighter hold on her feelings and that is more realistic due to the position she has in the culture she was born into. Although we see sparks of insecurity in the cartoon, which hint towards the original Azula's inner issues and trauma, generally she is very composed and tactical.

Trauma can often manifest in unique ways depending on the individual. People with trauma can actually be very hard to read. Similar to how an injured cat will instinctively give no sign of pain to not show a predator any sign of weakness. Zuko lashed out with his trauma, but Azula reacted in a different way in the cartoon. That was part of her characterisation. And, I'm not talking about how Azula is becoming worse and Zuko better, I'm talking about how they react to Ozai and things not going their way. In the live-action, now both just lash out, complain, get angry and have to have someone intercede. Azula is more vicious, but the reactions are more similar now than they were, and I personally feel it takes away from what were key differences between how the characters would react to problems growing up. She was a different person. Now I don't think the cartoon got it all right, I think they were clumsy with Azula's character arc at points in Book 3 especially in my opinion, but she just had more of a presence and there was a certain nuance and dynamic to her troubled and calculating personality that I feel is lacking in the live-action.

Live-Action!Azula also didn't feel very "Royal" to me in the live-action, feeling less like a girl who believes in her divine right to rule and more just a mean girl in high school. There's something often intrinsically cold and distant about people in Royal Families, their environment, the "Never Got Enough Hugs" syndrome and its mentality, even for the ones that act out. The type of people that make children march miles behind their mother's coffin in full view of thousands of faces for saving face, tradition, and duty. I'm not sure they nailed it. This Live-Action!Azula lacks a certain spark so far, and what I know of Royal Families, from the UK and Japan to the former Royal Families of China and Korea, I'm not convinced of her characterisation here as a character with a background as a princess.

Villain Crafting

Azula felt intimidating because Ozai had twisted her into what on the surface to others and even herself was a "monster". Perhaps the cartoon's mistake was not delving deeper into this characterisation more and instead focusing just on the badass spinning kick blue flames moments and smirks a bit too long, as some people didn't get Azula had a sympathetic and tragic side, but I feel the live-action's mistake is adding in details not true to Azula's character and peeling back the mystery of this character too early, because now it feels like the viewers know they know a lot, right off the bat, and storytelling wise in Season 1 it just made this Azula come across as less interesting or even authentic to me. It won't be surprising to anyone this Live-Action!Azula has a mental breakdown now, it will be predictable and more like her usual tantrums instead of a shock that shows a deeper truth.

[echoes-in-the-multiverse]

Food for Fangs: Unmasking Vampire Parts.

Personal and Educational Post.

Written by Blade.

The way dissociative identities present as individual parts reflects how trauma has affected the brain. Their traits stem from what was needed to protect against trauma or overcome stress. These traits or ways of perceiving the world may be disguised or interpreted by the brain in the presentation of different types of alters. This allows the individual to remain unaware of their trauma, as the brain may create a narrative that feels understandable and logical, reducing the likelihood of questioning these details. It may be the way the individual's brain allows itself to feel things the host personality was not allowed to during abuse. 

However, there are many misconceptions about the way parts present in Dissociative Identity disorder. This series will cover non-human parts. This part 1 post is about Vampires, written by Blade, a vampire alter. This post will also primarily only cover parts when in executive control, as we feel discussing internal worlds is a different section more suited for the post of their own.

"Can vampire alters consume human food?" 

This question often arises due to the misconception that vampire alters truly believe they are vampires trapped in a human body. However, this is not the case. While an alter may present as a vampire, they are still aware of their human biology. If an alter is unable to understand or realise their role within the system fully, it could result from high levels of dissociation, such as derealisation and depersonalisation. It is crucial to address and work through these issues, as allowing a trauma-based reaction to persist outside of the traumatic experience can be harmful. 

Do they eat human food?

Depending on the role an alter has within the system, they may be required to consume food if they take executive control for an extended period. However, there may be trauma associated with food, and this discomfort may manifest through the vampire alter. Some may have the role of holding these feelings to prevent others from experiencing them, as it may cause less distress for them as a vampire who does not have an innate connection to the concept of consuming food. This is what my part did, I was disgusted at the idea of food and I only began to feel normal hunger after some therapy focused on my individual. This was also not questioned by other members of the system because it felt normal that a vampire would not want to eat human food or find it repulsive. 

But aren’t Vampires always hungry?

Although not all vampire alters are hungry all the time, this could be another trait of protection that is allowed through a vampire part. As discussed by Howell EF (2011) in “Understanding and Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder”, a non-human part may form a protective state that is allowed to express an emotion or feeling that the host part is unable to. Expressing hunger or being allowed to feel hungry may be something that the individual was not allowed to do so the brain displaced that feeling onto a part suited for that position of dealing with that pain, or the child/adult experiencing more trauma related that feeling as being like a vampire.

“Vampire Alters crave blood”

This relates to the point I made earlier: vampire alters are not actual vampires from mythology, so they do not crave blood. However, there may be aspects of their role that give the impression they crave blood. This could include being around procedures involving blood, being around mentions of blood, or being tasked with clearing a wound if it occurs. In the mind of a child or an adult experiencing additional trauma, a vampire would be the most suitable alter for this role, as they would naturally be comfortable around blood. However, to a part that is unaware of this trauma, or even to the vampire alter themselves, they may feel them being around as an impression that they crave blood like in myths. A vampire alter may also be assumed to crave blood if they happen to also be a persecutor who causes physical harm that results in blood.

 A person's craving to drink blood, known as Clinical Vampirism, is a rare condition that has been documented through case studies. However, it is often associated with a delusion or as part of mental health conditions such as schizophrenia. But, there was a case study on a man who suffered from vampirism and was later diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). His violent tendencies, stemming from his vampirism, manifested through his other identity, leading outsiders to believe that his dissociative identity was a real vampire as an alter. This perpetuates the misconception that vampire alters are always like their mythical counterparts. However, the introduction of the case report clearly states that there is no established link between vampirism and DID, and they should be treated as separate conditions. This case study serves to show that vampirism is possible in patients with DID even if DID did not cause the vampirism. We have included the case study in our bibliography to provide sources, but we must issue a trigger warning for extreme violence, SH, su*cide, and trauma of all ages. Additionally, the use of the r slur in the introduction should be noted as it may be offensive and we do not agree with the use of the word. We will have linked more reading on the topic including other case studies of people with schizophrenia and one study that talks about the different levels/types of vampirism documented. All the same trigger warnings apply.

Although vampires do not have an inherent desire to drink blood, some may find comfort in consuming red foods. This may serve as a way for their brain to establish safe foods and comfort through this alter without it seeming out of place or may have been the brain thinking the only way the individual would be able to consume these foods was if they were a vampire and hence the trait is given to the vampire alter. In my own recovery, addressing my relationship with food was important. I eventually discovered that my comfort food was tomatoes, and I found it easier to consume foods like Gazpacho, which is in liquid form. This allowed me to find comfort in eating while also embracing my vampire identity because it felt like a natural progression towards something more positive, as it also involved addressing past trauma but brought comfort too in being a non-human part.

This post serves as an important reminder that DID is a trauma disorder so everything about an individual will be shaped by trauma. It is not a fantasy or roleplay in which dissociative identities are made or exist by.

Bibliography

Howell EF. Understanding and Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder. Routledge; 2011.

Sakarya D, Gunes C, Ozturk E, Sar V. ‘Vampirism’ in a Case of Dissociative Identity Disorder and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics. 2012;81(5):322-323. doi:https://doi.org/10.1159/000335930

O’Brien C, Hallahan B. Delusions of Vampirism in an Adolescent and Treatment with Clozapine: a Case Report. Cureus. Published online October 2, 2023. doi:https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.46352

Halevy A, Levi Y, Shnaker A, Orda R. Auto-vampirism--an Unusual Cause of anaemia. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. 1989;82(10):630-631. Accessed July 25, 2024. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1292349/?page=2

Hervey WM, Catalano G, Catalano MC. Vampiristic Behaviors in a Patient with Traumatic Brain Injury Induced Disinhibition. World Journal of Clinical Cases. 2016;4(6):138. doi:https://doi.org/10.12998/wjcc.v4.i6.138

References 3-5 are the extra case studies referenced in the post.

Written by Blade.

This is a personal and educational post.

[tidesreach]

i think the issue with cql/mdzs fandom (specifically jiang cheng antis) is that it seems to have a very rigid view on a) what being a good person looks like and b) what trauma looks like, or significantly, what it should look like, and c) the meeting point of the two: what being a good person with trauma should look like. e.g. the way wei wuxian is held up as this sort of shining example of how to be traumatised the right way. so much of this fandom consistently frames wei wuxian as Good Traumatised rather than what he actually is, which is quite simply a person with various trauma responses and trauma-learnt behaviours that he did not choose and that have no actual bearing on his goodness. whereas jiang cheng is condemned as Bad Traumatised when actually he is just a person with different trauma responses and trauma-learnt behaviours that he also did not choose and that also have no actual bearing on his goodness. people categorising the way wei wuxian responds to his trauma as Good and the way jiang cheng responds to it as Bad (or even Evil) is a mindset that is deeply rooted in stigma whether you realise it or not.

like, i don't interact with jc antis if i can help it. which, yeah, is because i have no interest in reading endless hate posts. but i also steer clear predominantly because as someone with a heavily stigmatised mental illness a lot of the discussion around jiang cheng and the notion that trauma making you angry and hateful = Bad reads as "i support people with mental illness but only the people with symptoms that i personally find palatable" which is very reminiscent of frankly dehumanising real life debates around whether people who display certain symptoms (people like me) are worthy of help (or whether they even can be helped or whether they are just inherently terrible people etc.). and that is a horrible and damaging thing to read about yourself.

essentially, it all boils down to the wholly problematic idea that there are right and wrong ways to be traumatised—as if (in the absense of therapy and/or medication) you have any choice or control over your own symptoms/trauma responses—and that anything that doesn't fit into the "trauma made me kinder" mold is the wrong way to be traumatised. which is exactly what stigma is and why a lot of people have to fight so hard to get a modicum of help. so much of the language used around jiang cheng's trauma and his emotional responses to that trauma is rooted in real life stigmatising rhetoric that denies people the help they need and deserve because they're not the right type of mentally ill. this mindset that wei wuxian did trauma right and jiang cheng did trauma wrong is based on a made up concept designed to demonise certain mental illnesses.

it's like, there are so many takes which go something like, "well, wei wuxian has trauma too and he didn't do x, y, z." and sure, you're right, he didn't do x, y, z, but he did do a, b, c, if you see what i'm getting at. and arguing that a, b, c, are better responses than x, y, z shows a lack of understanding of the complexity of trauma and the way it can be informed by self-perception or perception other people have of you, i.e. it can become a bit (or a lot) of a self-fulfilling prophecy. because if anything the idea that trauma made wwx kinder oversimplifies the damaging effects it actually had on him. because it also made him reckless and (re)vengeful. it also gave him a messy saviour complex that repeatedly leads to ruin (like, man, when jiang cheng says to wei wuxian in anger, "wei wuxian, do you have a saviour complex?" he reads him very well. he knows him very well. in the same way wei wuxian knows that jiang cheng holds on to too much anger). wei wuxian's trauma is just as messy as jiang cheng's but it manifests in very different ways. different ways, not the right ways. wei wuxian's trauma responses hurt people too and you can acknowledge that. it doesn't make him Bad.

what seems to cause real issue though, is the differences in the way they respond to trauma. what causes real issue is that those differences are indisputably to do with certain symptoms jiang cheng displays being the more stigmatised ones. it's his anger and hatred and volatility. it's his very extreme fear of abandonment and equally extreme efforts to avoid it by furiously protecting what he has left because he cannot bear to lose anything or anyone else. it's his dichotomous thinking that can make him irrational. but those are not evil or wrong trauma responses. they're just trauma responses and they are actually fairly common trauma responses at that. certainly more common than "trauma made me kinder". i don't know who needs to hear this but a person's involuntary emotional responses to trauma are not an indication of whether they are a good person or not. you can struggle with anger and hatred and symptoms considered "less palatable" and still be a good person. trauma does not give "bad" symptoms to bad people and "good" symptoms to good people because there is no such thing as a morally good or a morally bad symptom.

people need to stop letting stigma inform their (mis)understandings of mental health and trauma and try to remember that there are real life people who suffer from the symptoms they are stigmatising and who face barriers every single day because of that stigma.

[littlenightmares2]

continually pointing towards the harm that six and mono inflict upon the monsters within the little nightmares universe as evidence of their moral ambiguity (or lack thereof) is an inherently flawed manner of exploring their characters and values.

killing the monsters is a means of survival. neither of them actively seek out confrontation- each one of the entities relentlessly pursue the children with the intention of harming them in some way or another. the brutality of how the children manage to dispatch the monsters doesn’t matter either.

slicing off the janitor’s arms or lighting the doctor on fire are not actions that can (or should) have morality attached to them. every interaction six and mono have with the cast of antagonists is a largely cut and dry case of ‘kill or be killed.’

we know that everything in the nowhere exists with a purpose. there is a distinct emphasis placed upon this by people who have worked on the game. (for example, “the maw exists because hunger exists, and the pale city exists because the need for escapism exists.”) each monster plays some kind of role within the maw or pale city that is critical to perpetuating the cycle that the realm encapsulates. beyond this, they are harmful, unreasonable and actively malicious. their lack of humanity and inability to be appealed to is something else the developers have confirmed.

the only way to judge six and mono as characters with any degree of fairness is by examining the interactions they have with other unfortunate children. even this perspective has to be heavily scrutinised and take into account the abnormality of their circumstances. we have to continuously reframe the picture to ensure we are empathising with the fact that their circumstances will cause their emotional reactions to be distorted by trauma.

mono met one other child during his journey- six. he reached out his hand from the very moment they first met. over and over again, he extended kindness, compassion, a gentle disposition, active concern for her, and active desire for her company.

six met mono before she set foot on the maw. from the jump, her reaction to mono’s presence appears to be one of apprehension to say the very least. she turns away from his attempt to reach out and runs ahead. while understandable, this is already very telling of the differences in their characters. trusting and open, distrustful and avoidant.

over the course of the story, we see glimpses of compassion and a desire for company begin to manifest in six too.

she opens up to the idea of working together upon realising there are things she can’t do alone. she is the one to initiate handholding when the two of them are creeping through the tall grass around the hunter. she gestures to mono to be quiet and crouch down when they’re first sneaking past him.

when mono saves her from the bullies, he approaches her. it seems he wished to help her up, or offer some kind of comfort or reassurance. six almost seems to turn away from the offer and rebuff it somewhat. again, she isn’t being faulted for this at all- she has just been through trauma. but to me, it suggests that at this point in the story, mono is still being kept at an arms’ length.

one of the most notable shifts for her character is when the thin man breaks free from the screen. mono is pressing himself against the television, and she is lingering for him in a way she never had before, to the degree that it actively endangers her to do so. she stays beside him, she reaches out to him, she desperately urges him to follow her in fleeing- and she only begins to run away at all once the danger is no longer escapable if she remains.

then, of course, we have everything that transpires with monster six, which i believe undoes all the work she has done emotionally that allowed her to trust and care for mono as closely we she did. no matter your interpretation of why she did it, what she did to mono remains the same. she knowingly and deliberately dropped him to his death, and she did not look back. nothing implies remorse in that specific moment.

when we next see her, after the events of the pale city, she is in the maw. six has no interest in helping other children. she pulls on cages with other prisoners inside to climb and access higher places. (i’m not going to confuse outright inaction with six’s purposeful choices, because we don’t know her thought process, so i won’t get into the logistics of her not waking the children in roger’s room or helping children seen caged around the maw). she can hug the nomes if we so choose, but embracing every one of them results in an achievement that stipulates “kindness will be [her] undoing.” she also ends up sinking her teeth into one to sate her hunger. another necessary act, born of survival, but to a degree it shows an empathetic disconnect for another vulnerable creature all the same.

at her core, six values survivalism, self-sufficiency, independence and pushing through trauma. mono, in direct contrast, appears to engage in a degree of dependency with her, and seeks out companionship and support where his counterpart would just as rather go it alone.

[moiraineswife]

Moiraine And Lan - The Inability To Communicate Trauma

Hello friends. It has been quite some time. Quite some time since I have: absolutely lost all my fucking shit over my blorbos at great length via a long and quotation filled tumblr meta. Fear not: the status quo of the universe returns, and I am once again: back on my bullshit (literally hours before the next episode airs and this gets drowned/replaced with New Content. Because I’m smart like that). ANYWAY.

Today we’re going to discuss: Mo and Lan and the singular moron-flavoured braincell they share, bond or no bond. More seriously, however: I’ve noticed a few bits of commentary/takes/analysis of the current state of their…well state, let’s be frank here, and realised that my contrary ass has: Different Opinions. So I figured I’d share them. Bc that’s what I do.

(Obligatory disclaimer that there is no right or wrong way to interpret something - that’s why it’s an interpretation, and this is not a call out or a “oh wow you’re wrong and here’s why!!!!” post directed at anyone or anything. Just my observation that I am going against the grain of what I’ve seen and thus throwing out: a new chew toy for us to gnaw on).

Also: please do note that this post will cover, rather extensively/in-depth, the trauma arc that Lan and Moiraine are going through at the moment and will contain trigger warnings for: depression, PTSD, trauma response, rape (in the context of the analogy that Verin presented), suicide, suicidal ideation, suicidal attempt (again: all in the context of the show/previous events), and everything related to the topics that have been raised in the first two episodes for these characters. Be safe and tap out if you need to!

So. Obligatory wiffle aside: what shall we discuss? In a nutshell (bc I’m real good at that) I’m covering how, as I see it/am fascinated by it: the responses that they’re having to each other at the moment are mirrors/insights into the responses that they’re each having to the recent traumas that they’ve both suffered. In more depth/the points where I think I differ from the norm we’re going to cover: 

1)-why Lan is: not an idiot, actually. I see it as him being still perfectly capable of READING/understanding Moiraine without the bond; what he’s having difficulty with is COMMUNICATING with her without the bond

2)- that Moiraine is actually: ALSO failing dismally at communicating with Lan, and that she’s doing: a real fucking bad job of manipulating him. (is she HURTING him? Yes. 100%. Is she MANIPULATING him into doing what she wants? Given that she clearly wants nothing more than for him to: leave her, and that after 5 solid months he has: not left, I’m just going to put out the idea that maybe she’s not quite meeting her all of her targets in this area.

3)- wow they’re both doing incredibly stupid things, and they’re doing them for the same incredibly stupid reasons, and they are, in fact: INCREDIBLY THE SAME. See: singular moron-flavoured brain cell. This manifests slightly differently, due to their own individual traumas influencing the specifics of their actions/thought processes - but the general underlying thesis is the same for both.

The TL;DR here is that: these weirdos still know each other, and love each other, and understand each other without their bond. Can they communicate any of what they want to communicate in any kind of effective way? No. No they cannot. They BOTH suck. (I say that with legitimately all the love in the world).

So. Let’s start with Lan. Purely because I think my takes on him are the most Spicy/differ the most from everyone else’s and, let’s be honest, everything here feeds into everything else and this is going to get complicated where I start SO. Drama first. (I think it’s what they would want).

Okay so first and foremost I want to try and establish/explain what I mentioned at the outset of this thing which is: Lan is not blind, he’s not stupid, and he is not suddenly completely and utterly incapable of understanding a single feel that Moiraine feels if he can’t feel it with her via bond.

The largest and most obvious piece of evidence for this feels like the best one to start with and, for me, this is the fact that: HE DIRECTLY AND COMPLETELY CALLS HER OUT ON HER BULLSHIT, TO HER FACE, TWICE!!! 

“Don’t smile at me. You can shut me out, try to drive me away, but don’t you dare smile at me. As though everything is fine. As though you don’t know exactly what you’re doing.”

This is from episode 1, where he finally snaps at her after she gives him that fake ass little smile and is like ‘is an aes sedai not allowed her secrets’ when he tries to talk to her/get her to explain: literally anything to him. And THAT is what pushes him over the edge. 

She has been cold. She has been dismissive. She has flat out ignored him like he’s not even present. He has taken it all. Not happily, and with obvious frustration, but he hasn’t said a peep. Not when she gives him one brusque, dismissive one-word orders (“door”) like a dog. Or when she deliberately turns away from him and refuses to so much as look at them - he endures all of that and just takes it and let’s her do it. Because he understands that this is her current expression of: not being fine. 

If she WAS fine, she would not be doing these things, and he knows that, and I think sees it as something like a storm to weather? It is something that will pass (he hopes) if he has the patience and the strength to wait it out. When she smiles at him? When she tries to make a JOKE out of what she’s doing? Out of the secrets that she’s been keeping from him - secrets like the fact that she was planning on going to the Eye of the World to die without him - THAT is not acceptable. She’s smiling at him and trying to joke with him as though they’re still capable of that - as though they can still tease each other the way they did, as though things are fine, both in herself, and between them, and they are NOT. When she’s treating him like a slave, or a stranger, or an annoyance - that is strangely better - because it’s this unspoken acknowledgement/agreement (the only one they’ve been able to achieve) that this is because things are not fine. She treats him badly because she’s not fine, he KNOWS she’s treating him badly because she’s not fine - is a strange kind of shared truth. Like sarcasm - something said/done where both parties know that the meaning/intent is completely different. Smiling, joking, pretending she’s fine? That is an insult, because he knows damn well she is NOT in that place.

Okay, so let’s look at the second instance of this, which occurs in episode 2 (oh how quaint) and is as follows: 

L: “Then tell me! You and I have walked this path together. Every step, every choice, every sacrifice.”

M: “We have never walked this path together. You have never seen the forest for the trees because I have never shown it to you.”

L: “I know what you’re trying to do. You can’t push me away.”

Again, as with the previous scene, he tries to get her to talk to him, to stop keeping secrets from him, to share this with her and let him help her carry her burdens the way they always have. She puts him walls, she, again, tries to force distance - she tells him that they have never been together as he says. And he calls her out. AGAIN. He knows what she’s trying to do. It hasn’t changed. She’s still just doing the same thing she’s been doing from the start of episode 1 - trying to force him away, because she’s desperate, and she’s suffering, and she doesn’t have anything else but this - even if he knows what she’s doing, even if it hasn’t worked so far. 

Both of them are guilty of this - both of them get one idea stuck in their minds of how to handle this situation/how to fix everything, and they both refuse to change. They both dig their heels in, plant their stakes, pick their hills to die on, and are refuse to budge for love, money, or common sense. For Lan it’s in trying to get her to talk, to open up, to push back on the destructive coping mechanisms she’s got - trying to force her to include him, tying to force her to include herself and come to dinner with them etc. For Mo it’s this: it’s pushing him away, because she is no longer worthy of him (and believes she never was) and protecting him.

(to continue this: unhinged adventure, pls continue under the cut!)

So she commits to this, even if she honestly knows it probably won’t work now, either. (she empties her entire quiver on him in this scene, and the atomic bomb she had in her back pocket too for good measure. These things she’s been holding back in reserve, the last cards to play - that she misled him about Rand’s death, that she has discovered they (and notice that she still says “we” when she talks about this - even though she went to the Eye alone, even though she made that choice alone, even though she rejects the idea that they have been together on this quest, as he says - when she is not actively choosing every word to hurt him, she thinks of them and what they’ve done as an unconscious “we” and a unit) have freed Ishamael/possibly other Forsaken - one after the other, meant to just overwhelm him and be the final coup de grace. And it STILL doesn’t work. She unleashes everything she has on him and he STILL insists that he’s not leaving her. And it’s because he knows - as he just said - what she’s doing, and why. And he will not let her. And he says that to her “I’m not letting you walk away from me again” - because the last time he did: she went to the Eye to get herself killed. And it’s only by some miracle and twist of cruelty that she was left alive to suffer instead.

Also I’m going to take a brief sidebar here, before we move on to Further Evidence/thoughts on this. But I think that it’s really important to consider LAN’S trauma in what he’s doing and why? Like, I think people are doing this for Mo already? They recognise that she wouldn’t be behaving this way if she 1)- wasn’t trying to protect Lan (her intention) and 2)- wasn’t suffering the effects of her trauma/being cut off from the Power at the Eye. Lan is a little less obvious (both in that his trauma is not a single fixed point/event that’s very obvious and easy to refer back to; and that he’s a bit less blunt Lan Mo’s “brick to the face” techniques and motivations) but, as I said at the start: his reactions to Mo are a direct reflection/window into his own trauma responses.

So, as I just mentioned - Lan is SO adamant about not leaving Moiraine, not giving her the opportunity to distance them/push him away - because the last time she did that, in just nudging him, like, an inch to the left, she used that to mask their bond and skip off into the Blight to go get herself killed with Rand. And there is: no doubt, and no question, and no room for wiggling or negotiation on this. They BOTH were FULLY aware that that was a suicide mission. The first thing he says to her when he finds her is “you’re alive” - because he was sure that history was repeating on him.

Because I think that it’s very important to not just consider Mo’s actions here, I think it’s important to remember Lan’s experience with Stepin as well. The two played out very similarly for him/parallel each other almost exactly. They both talked to him about Nynaeve, encouraging him to seek a love and a life with her. They both manipulated him/the circumstances to make it impossible for him to try and protect them - Stepin by drugging him, and Moiraine by masking the bond so he was unable to sense her, so that they could leave him. They both had clear plans and intentions - and both of their ultimate goals was for it to end in their death (obviously the REASONS behind this are very different - Mo was trying to save the world; while Stepin’s had already ended). But in both cases, Lan wakes up alone, realising that they’ve left him, realising, instantly, what they intend to do and in both cases: he was too late and he feels that he failed. Stepin he finds dead - and the only reason that he DOESN’T find that has happened to Mo is not because of something he did, it’s not because he got to her in time, it’s not because he protected her, it’s not because HE did anything at all - it’s just because some whim of cruelty decided to spare her. And these two events happen within, like, a week of each other I want to say? Like that’s…That’s an incredibly damaging and traumatising thing to go through ONCE - but back to back? How guilty must he have felt? How ANGRY with himself? Because how could he not have learned? How could he have let this happen AGAIN?

Of course he’s terrified now. Of course he’s terrified that if he leaves she’s going to die. Of course he refuses - past the point of any sense or reason - to just back down and leave. He is certain that if he does it will mean the death of the person that he loves the most in this world. And it will be HIS fault. She’s being cruel to him, she’s pushing him away, she’s ignoring him, she’s ordering him around, she’s deliberately pushing every button he’s got, and stabbing her knife in every sensitive spot she’s discovered over the last twenty years. And what kind of weak, selfish, useless person would he be to let that be all it takes for him to just say ‘well fine, I’ll just abandon you and let you kill yourself without me’. He cannot fail again. He WILL NOT fail again. He has been here, history is repeating on him again and he will not let it. Whatever she says to him. However she hurts him. Whatever he has to endure to weather this storm with her he will. Because none of this pain even comes CLOSE to what it will be like if he leaves her and she hurts herself and that is entirely his fault.

(Note: I do not actually think that Moiraine is actively suicidal at this point. As Verin notes - she chooses to fight every day. She wakes up, she fills her buckets, she puts one foot in front of the other and she clearly keeps going. It’s wobbly, and it’s messy, and she’s clearly grieving and depressed and traumatised - but she is not suicidal. Does LAN know that? Can Lan, without the bond, and with Stepin, and the Eye, haunting him even begin to scrape together the required rationality to see that? No. Lan sees Moiraine as being in just as much danger as she sees him being in and all he can do, all he has left to do in this world is protect her. And so he will).

To conclude the wrap of: the most painful breakup scene in the history of the world (for me and my present blorbos at this present moment in time, anyway) I want to just talk about the infamous “we were never equals”. And a lot of it has been covered, and I agree with the takes that Moiraine does not believe herself equal to Lan (and never did (SELF ESTEEM ISSUES!? IN MY CODEPENDENT PLATONIC SOULMATE RELATIONSHIP!? NOOOOO!!!!!!! NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)) and that is how she’s able to say this oath wise. I just want to touch on the fact that some people seem to be like ‘bro how can u not see what she’s saying DIRECTLY TO UR FACE, BRO!? COME ON LAN. LISTEN!!!!’ and like. So, to bring up a controversial and possible shocking observation: Lan is, in fact: still a human being! Emotions are messy, and logic is a fine and wonderful thing from a couch, yelling at your tv screen, and with the delightful ability to rewind and replay conversations/moments in time to be able to link them together nicely.

But Moiraine has been cruel to him for months at this point in an effort to drive him away. And, as discussed - he knows what she’s doing. He knows WHY she’s doing it. He is enduring it and putting up with it and stomaching it without throwing things at her because he knows it’s an expression of pain and is a reaction to what she’s been through. But he’s also hurt by it. Not least because: even if she’s only SAYING these things to hurt him/drive him away - she still believes them enough that they’re true for her to be able to actually get them out of her mouth. That HURTS. That’s going to break you down, that’s going to GET to you, that’s going to be thing that keeps him up at night and just echoes in his head over and over again and like - my man’s self-esteem and self-worth wasn’t actually sitting up at the peak of Dragonmount BEFORE 5 months of this, like dear Light people.

To have the person you love the most in this world tell you that “I don’t want my saddle to slip” (I don’t trust you to do this for me), to have her admit that she deliberately misled him, that she has actively kept important, possibly world-changing events from you, that she says, to your face - the thing that you are MOST afraid of, the thing that tormented him via Machin Shin, the thing that torments him still about Stepin - that he FAILED her? For her to believe that so firmly that it’s truth to her? Of course he doesn’t think he’s worthy of her? Of course he’s willing to take what she says at face value. SHE CAN’T FUCKING LIE!!!! And the set-up to this is so important, because she goes right for the jugular in this scene, and she does so repeatedly, in quick succession.

So she hits him with: ‘actually I lied when I said before that WE were going to the Tower - I’m going on my own without you. We yote a forsaken out into the world OOPS. -I refuse to explain anything to you. -We have never been walking this path together. -I have never showed you everything, I have always hidden things from you. -OH also ur lil sheepherder dude is actually: not dead and never was, I #lied to ur face abt that. -I am loyal to the Dragon - and ONLY him. -You can’t protect me anymore without the bond. -No, you’re not my Warder, you failed me, and I would be dead in spite of you if not for the help of people more competent than you. -ALSO here’s our good buddy Alanna and I am going to THREATEN TO HAVE HER TAKE YOUR BOND BY FORCE IF YOU KEEP REFUSING ME and I arranged this ahead of time to make this right. ALL of this gets dumped on his head in the space of LITERALLY AROUND TWO MINUTES. Like damn Mo the bloody Fades were less efficient than that.

He has just had all of that thrown in his face - the things she’s been holding back, keeping in case she needed them - her lying to him, her isolating him, her NEVER walking this path with him or ever showing him all that she saw, telling him that he is not her Warder anymore, that he has FAILED to protect her, that she will have him bonded against his will just to get rid of him. And he stands there on the ground, while she gazes down at him from on top of her horse (which she mounted - for the first time we’ve seen on screen - without his aid (which is a GUTTING little touch, because we see him smoothly and seamlessly help her mount a couple of times in season 1)) and she just says, to his face, the TRUTH, as he asked for: they were never equals.

And she can say that because she believes that he is better than her, and we know that, but can you blame him for not quite catching that in the moment????? She’s just told him that he’s a failure, that she’d be dead and he didn’t do a damn thing to protect her, that she will have someone bond him forcibly - and in this moment she just says what he’s been thinking for months, for YEARS honestly, given what machin shin torments him with “you can’t protect her. You’ll watch her die.” Of course he believes it. He is ALREADY taking an irrational level of responsibility over all of this, over what he perceives as his failures.

Adeleas calls him out for this and tells him he’s taking it too personally (and he IS) - he is assuming responsibility for not preventing something as though that means that he caused it. And again: this is a trauma response. This is an overreaction to a perceived series of circumstances that led to the death of a friend he’s had for possibly decades, to the one person he is supposed to protect, who he let go on a suicide mission alone so that he could get fucking laid, who he let slip away from him AGAIN to get attacked by Fades - where he failed her FOR A THIRD TIME. But like…He starts this little conversation off with her by apologising because he didn’t sense the Fades. He has: absolutely no way, reasonable or other ways, to sense INVISIBLE CREATURES THAT MOVE THROUGH SHADOW without the bond giving him the ability to do so. It’s a ridiculous thing to say. It has no logic to it at all and that’s the POINT. He is not capable of logic about this situation. He is blaming himself for everything - every single thing he can think of, whether it’s reasonable or not, is his fault, and his responsibility - he should have sensed the fades, he should have sensed her leaving, he should have stopped her going to the Eye, he should have stopped her from being cut off. He is trying to assert control, he is trying to assign blame and reason to the things that have happened to him - to the losses he has suffered - so that he can stop suffering them. And he can’t. He can’t. It happens over. And over. And over. AND OVER again. The trolloc blade that hit Moiraine in the Two Rivers and nearly killing her. Logain’s shield exploding and the axe handle piercing her side and nearly killing her. Being drugged by Stepin who killed himself while Lan was absent. Letting himself be distracted by Nynaeve while Mo went to the Eye. Missing Mo leaving AGAIN and her being attacked by the Fades. Actually getting there while the attack was in progress finally at LAST being able to DO something, to STOP something - and he can’t even fucking manage that. Over and over and over he fails people and he loses them and it’s his fault and he can’t stop it. He’s been retraumatised by circumstance, and is now retraumatising HIMSELF by adding even more perceived failings to the existing tally. Of course he believes her. He’s just been waiting for her to say that to him from the day they bonded. NO ONE IN THIS DYNAMIC HAS ANY SELF-ESTEEM. LIKE THEY STARTED WITH ZERO TOTAL AND SOMEHOW IT’S GOTTEN WORSE.

Okay so shifting focus slightly for the last thing I want to say about Lan, but still related, because: the problem (for me) is not that they cannot read/understand each other, it’s that they cannot COMMUNICATE with each other. And there is a distinction here. Lan’s issue is not lack of understanding where Mo is at - he sees her suffering, knows she’s not fine, understands she is reacting to the loss she endured at the Eye, he gets that. He’s known her for twenty years - bond or no bond - he knows what pain looks like when he sees it in her eyes. That’s not it. What he’s struggling with, and what he’s frustrated by is that they are not TALKING. He knows how she’s feeling - he doesn’t know what to do about that. He doesn’t know how to TALK about that with her. He doesn’t know how to fix it because she refuses to engage with it at all - and they’re SO bad at this that they don’t even get to the part where she can ignore him trying to talk abt the actual problem, bc she just nips it in the bud and ignores him/deflects him from the opening bland ‘small-talk’ set-up questions to start making forrays into that. 

Because before all of that would have happened instinctively via the bond - she feels the bad feels, he knows why, he sends the required good feels back/makes her tea/gives her an extra blanket/just responds without having to think about and, and this is the key point: without having to talk. Because, let’s be real here: these idiots BOTH suck at talking about their emotions/needs. Genuinely think they would both just lie on the ground and fucking die rather than say ‘I need a bandage because I’m BLEEDING PROFUSELY FROM EVERY ORIFICE.’ Because they’re deeply repressed, traumatised people who were never given the tools/language/space they needed to be able to safely and healthily learn to express their feels (but that…is a different piece of meta for another day). 

THE POINT IS: we’re now going to turn to my beloved, my man, my favourite, the myth, the legend, the ICON: Tomas and his tomatoes. And by this I do of course mean that we’re doing a deep dive of the scene where Tomas gives Lan some advice after they go out to the (absolutely THRIVING - good job my man) garden to pick some tomatoes for dinner (or at least….Tomas goes out to pick tomatoes for dinner; and Lan goes out to brood in his proximity while he does so. ) But eh. Tomayto, tomahto….) ANYWAY: 

So this scene gives Lan a chance to talk about losing the bond - and I think that is important as well? Likely obviously Moiraine is Going Through It here, and Lan hasn’t been cut off from the Power/isn’t dealing with that experience but WE DON’T PLAY TRAUMA OLYMPICS IN THIS HOUSE!!! PAIN IS PAIN AND IT SHOULD ALL BE VALIDATED AND DEALT WITH IN A CONSTRUCTIVE AND POSITIVE WAY. Ahem. Anyway. It’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for: QUOTE TIME AGAIN;

“The bond made things easier. It was like a friend walking along with us chatting away so we never had to.”

I think this is a really interesting (and honestly fascinating) way to describe the bond - to personify it and see it as another individual existing between them and making things easier by doing the things that they both struggle to do - use their goddamn words. 

“She’s tired, she’s hungry, she’s angry, she’s afraid. Now silence.”

This part, too, I think is really telling. Because if I had to put money on it and pick out the Top 4 Feelings Moiraine Is Having I think I could do a lot worse than ‘tired, hungry, angry, and afraid’. He KNOWS how she’s feeling. He can read that in her still. He doesn’t need the bond to tell him that. That’s not what he’s missing. He doesn’t need the bond to point out what she’s feeling to him, and he doesn’t miss that aspect, he misses the ‘chatting away’, he misses the noise, he misses the COMMUNICATION, and he is struggling with the silence.

THAT is what the bond used to do for them - it used to ‘chat away so they never had to’. A friend, a helper, who facilitated between them and allowed them to communicate when they couldn’t speak/didn’t have the words. We see this over and over and OVER again in season 1. They have whole ass conversations without making a single peep. Most notably in extremely tense or emotional moments - Kerene’s funeral and the look they share, Lan struggling with Stepin’s grief, coming to Moiraine, kneeling beside her, holding her hand - so much happens in that scene in particular. Without saying a word he communicates an exhaustion, a fatigue, a grief and a sorrow - a need for comfort and support - and she gives it. At Stepin’s funeral - the lookk that he gives her, the way he seeks her in the crowd, again needing her strength, which she gives to him through their bond and across a room. THAT’S what’s gone. That’s what he keeps trying to get back. 

Because he gives her that same look - that same obvious cry for help and look of desperation at the end of ep 1 with the Fade battle. He is WRECKED he is DONE, he’s disarmed, he cannot stand, he can barely crawl - he NEEDS her, he needs her strength, he needs her help. She tries to channel - she reaches for the power, as she would once have reached for him through their bond - and it does not come. It is not there. It cannot help them. And the words that he speaks to her then echo a repeated sentiment he’s had for her throughout: “what aren’t you telling me?”

The bond isn’t there to talk for her anymore. And she refuses. Consistently. Verin and Adeleas comment on Bayle visiting - and Lan notes that she doesn’t tell him any more than she tells them. After Bayle is gone, Lan tries to small talk, he slaps on a casual little smile and he asks a mundane ‘let’s start the ball rolling on that conversation thing’ question, easy to answer, nothing tense, nothing painful, a very common “how did it go?” she ignores him. He presses further - asks who that person was? She gives him the bare minimum (and doesn’t answer the question he’s ACTUALLY asking) and then he tries to push again - what did she want. At which point she hits him with that fake smile and the ‘can an aes sedai not have her secrets?’ - and he’s not even really asking for much. He’s not asking what he actually wants to ask which is: how are you? Are you okay? What can I do? What do you need? What are you thinking? And this idea repeats - in ep 2, when he tries to point out it takes 8 aes sedai to cut someone off, she snaps that he has no conception of the power the forsaken have - so he snaps at her to tell him then. And she refuses. 

They are both FEELING - and their feelings are seen. Lan sees how Mo struggles he sees how she shuts herself away, he sees that she’s not eating, and not sleeping, that she’s frustrated, and she’s frightened. Mo sees that she’s hurting him, she sees that he’s frustrated as well. They know this. But they’re not TALKING. They’re not COMMUNICATING. And at the dinner sequence - this is what Verin, Adeleas and Tomas try to give them advice about - their history is the “common language” that they are; maybe he needs to listen to what she IS saying and not try and demand her to say other things. They don’t know how to talk about things like this - they’re not good at that ANYWAY - but with each other? When they’ve never had to before? When for once, for the first time for both of them, it was effortless to share these things and communicate these deep insecurities and emotions that they struggle to give to others? THAT’S what they’re lacking and that’s what the biggest problem is.

Alright let’s leave poor Lan be for now, I have tormented him enough. On to Momo. This will (hopefully, dear god) be shorter, because people have covered Mo before. We know that she’s traumatised, we know she’s trying to push Lan away to protect him, we know she’s trying to regain control, she feels powerless, she feels helpless, she is trying to deal with something life-altering, something that made her vulnerable and helpless, she’s being reckless with her safety, she’s taking foolish risks etc etc.

The point I want to touch on here is the idea around her ‘manipulating’ Lan, because I usually see this go hand-in-hand with the Lan stuff I talked about already. Largely: how ironic that without the bond Lan doesn’t understand her/cannot read her, but Moiraine is doing it so well with him and i must: respectfully decline to go along with that perspective. And this is (I imagine u know what im going to say now) *inhales deeply* because they SUCK AT COMMUNICATING!!!! 

It doesn’t really MATTER that he is trying to open her up/communicate that he loves her, and he’s there for her, and he wants to support her; while she is trying to communicate the same - she loves him, she cares about him, she wants to protect him. They are both: failing dismally. Lan’s incessant pestering of Mo to talk to him is just making her clam up more and more because she can’t and what’s more: she doesn’t bloody want to. She wants to shove her trauma under a rug in the corner of Verin’s study, and then she wants to drag a bookshelf over the top of it, and then she wants to fill the bookcase with books, and then she wants to put a whole bunch of extra things on top of the bookcase, and then she wants to flee the country and forget that any of that ever exists because she does not want to deal with it. And Lan keeps pushing. He keeps trying to make her talk, because he’s desperate, and he misses the chattering of their friend the bond, and he wants to help, her wants her to let him back in, and it’s just pissing her off. Which is what the cottage squad calls him out for (when will Mo get her ‘come to jesus’ talk?? For Fairness? Like i need this too).

So Lan is coming at this: far too softly, and far too indirectly in a lot of ways. He never asks about what he actually wants to ask about. He talks about the weather, or how shiny Aldieb’s coat is this morning, or how nice and red and juicy Tomas’s tomatoes are. He never actually just says what he wants to say which is: “I love you, and I’m worried about you, and I’m failing you more and more every day and I’m sorry and I need you” he pussyfoots around it and avoids it and lets her shut him down because that hurts and, well, he deserves that hurt so alright then.

And then there’s Mo. Who has managed to somehow twist the logic of the universe so that she can say “I love you” by, uh *checks notes*: Not saying anything at all/ignoring him. Or by saying things like “you failed me” instead. Because she is just THAT powerful. Okay I’m being a bit sarcastic here, clearly, but she has convinced herself (based on how her trauma is affecting her) that she: 1)- does not deserve Lan/is not worthy of him and so he should leave her so he can be happy and 2)- she needs to protect him and so he should leave her and go and be safe.

Maybe she tried to articulate this at some point? Sit him and down and be like ‘okay Allan so I know u have a lot of trauma abt, like, being abandoned/being left behind so ppl u love can go do themselves great harm but…it would REALLY be just swell for me if u left me all by myself while i go through possibly the worst things that’s ever happened to me: alone. Okay? Okay.” However I doubt this. Bc, as previously and repeatedly discussed: these two can’t communicate for SHIT right now.

I think she probably made some sort of roundabout suggestion? Like she didn’t directly say ‘you need to leave me because reasons’ but she probably…asked him to go the White Tower and watch over Nyn and Eggy, or maybe go with Perrin and the Shienarans to help, or even ‘hey remember Mat? The little scrungly one?? I wonder where he is’ and he just told her ‘absolutely fucking not’ (or words to that effect) so she had to try something else instead. Which is: being mean af.

So far so good and I think we’re all (relatively) in agreement to this point. But then people think…She’s being successful here? And she’s reading him well - largely because she knows EXACTLY what to say to hurt him? And yes, she absolutely does, I will 100% give you that. Blade directly to the heart each and every time, she never misses. HOWEVER. This is not the actual point. Causing Lan pain is not her endgame - it’s actually just the painful middle step that’s hurting her too to try and get her to her endgame.

Manipulation essentially involves doing ‘y’ (in this case being deliberately cruel/causing Lan pain) to make the person do ‘x’ (in this case: push Lan away and make him leave her), in theory/if it’s super successful: without the person realising that you’ve orchestrated this/making it seem like it was all their idea/decision. This is, uh, not working too great. It’s been 5 months and Lan is probably less likely to leave her now than he was when she started (because he now has 5 months worth of knowing that she is actively trying to get him to leave so she can do the Light only knows what and if that’s what she wants him to do while she’s in this state then it’s absolutely the last thing that he feels he should do - so in that sense this has actually backfired kinda spectacularly on Mo. Because: SHE’S COMMUNICATING JUST AS BADLY AS HE IS!!!!!!!!!! Just. On the COMPLETE opposite end of the spectrum to him. Because they’re drama and aesthetic that way.

And the added bonus content of this is: she CAN do this. She can (and does) manipulate people spectacularly well. Take Bayle for example (god she needed that little win SO badly, bless her and her buckets). She wanted: to see/examine the broken heartstone - but what is she actually going to DO with it? She doesn’t want to put it in a fancy display case or collect it, she wants to know WHY it broke. So what she ACTUALLY wants from him is information. Information such as: the poem. So she haggles with him on the thing she actually wants - makes him feel like he’s getting a win when he agrees to budge on that, far cheaper, item - but then he counters and says that he won’t move on the heartstone chunk itself - which she has no interest in. So she gets her essential infodump poem for a bargain price, and takes Bayle down like six pegs in the process. 10/10, excellently managed misdirection, making him do all the work and lowering the price of the poem so she didn’t even have to ask for it, and making himself look like a plonker into the bargain. Delicious. She CAN manipulate people - she just cannot manipulate Lan (not in this instance/about this anyway) because she’s as wrongfooted as he is, and is scrambling as much as he is without the bond, to try and find a language she never thought she’d need to try and speak with him.

And so if we now consider BOTH of them: they’re in this very weird space here, where the traumas that they have suffered, and the reactions they’re having are placing them in this fundamental position of opposition. Because their needs/the things they believe/have convinced themselves they have to do put them in direct conflict with one another. They’re like an immovable object meets an unstoppable force, right? And this idea reveals itself in several smaller ways - eg: Lan thinking that Mo needs company and to not isolate herself to get better; while for Mo that just feels completely intolerable and she wants to be alone and in Her Space, her study, where she is in control and can pretend to her visitors/informants that all is well and nothing has changed. But I think the biggest point it revolves around/where it’s most obvious is that, ultimately, their absolute overall goal is to protect the other person?

The difference/tragedy of this is that: Moiraine believes fundamentally that Lan is in danger WITH her, and that she has to make him leave in order to protect him. Lan believes fundamentally that Moiraine will be in danger WITHOUT him and that he has to stay in order to protect her. And this is the hill they’ve both chosen as their last stand/thing to die for. So she is going to push him and push him and push him, and she is going to hurt HERSELF by being crueller and crueller and crueller to him to protect him. And all the while he is going to endure and endure and endure and let himself be hurt to protect her.

AND THEN IT GETS WORSE (or better if ur twisted and u enjoy these kinds of parallels the way i do) because: they are both stubbornly trying to protect the other; but they’re also both feeling like they’re martyring themselves/are hurting themselves more and more to do so. She feels like he is being stubborn and forcing her to hurt him more and more every day - which she does not want to do - when he could just go, just let this end, just leave her the way she clearly wants him to! But this will make her stronger. She will be stronger for this, for having let him go, and for knowing that at least she managed to protect him. So she will just keep going - tomorrow, that will do it, he has to break tomorrow, he has to finally break tomorrow. And this goes on. The next day. Maybe the next day. The next–

And then HE feels like he is enduring, and that the pain she is inflicting on him is his cross to bear, and he has to endure it because he will NOT leave her, no matter what she throws at him. And it’s almost a test of his will and his love and his devotion (even though I think he knows it’s not: but it’s kind of become his own little personal quest. Because yes. Yes he SHOULD suffer this way. She SHOULD hurt him like this. He deserves it after how he failed her. He has to take this pain. He has to prove what he’s willing to go through for her, prove how dedicated he is, how much he will suffer for her, how even she cannot break him). And he too is thinking that next day it will get better. If he can just endure, just survive this onslaught, it will end. It will get better. She will get better. This will pass. He just has to prove his strength and last as long as he needs to in order to see that through.

And, to bring us back to the start of this extremely long and rambling essay I present you my final, deeply insightful, deeply professional, deeply ~meta~ thought which is that: they are BOTH. SO. FUCKING. S T U P I D!!!! (in a genuinely really interesting and complex and  fascinating way, as i have hopefully discussed/explained - the idea that their lost bond/connection makes them mirror/echo each other but now in a destructive way? That instead of seamlessly and instinctively meeting each others’ needs they are both unconsciously and unintentionally triggering the other person’s trauma and making things WORSE? What an absolutely fascinating take/an incredibly subtle but profound way to show the depth of exactly what they’ve lost/how much it has affected them while ALSO rooting the entire thing in their individual traumas, experiences, and characters - like who ever wrote/conceived of this NEEDS A GODDAMN RAISE I SWEAR) But also yes they are: morons. Absolutely. Without a doubt. One singular moron brain cell that ping pongs between the two of them but is, fundamentally: the same. Absolutely fucking delighted. Can’t wait to see where this goes from here. Join me again in the future for me: ‘wow Rowyn that’s a whole lotta thoughts u got there buddy’.

Also I swear I’m friendly and I like engaging/talking with ppl! Pls feel free to comment/reblog/message!!! And do note that if u reblog i WILL read and appreciate ur tags bc im: one of those Old People. 

OKAY BYEEEEEE!!!

[augustnotes]

Hi there! I just happened across your 7th house Lilith post asking people about their experiences with this placement! I’m writing you here because I see the replies are restricted. I love that you asked about this, because I could say so much about my experiences with having a 7th house Libra Lilith. First off, I just wanna note I found it very interesting you asked if people with this placement get people trying to put the “mean girl” narrative on them. I do find pretty often that people do not read my energy as warm and inviting (not sure if they see it as “mean” per se, but I think I can seem intimidating or unfriendly). I’ve attributed that to other things in my chart, but maybe Lilith is involved too!

Anyway, for me, my 7th house Lilith in Libra has been a double edged sword in my life that has protected me from getting involved with actually toxic people, while it’s also caused me to sabotage positive relations in the past. I associate Lilith, along with my 8th house Pluto squaring my Venus and Mars, for why I’ve feared dependence with someone, and have actually been hyper-independent, living alone now for all of my adulthood. But the South Node in Libra currently transiting my Lilith seems to be helping do away with my instincts to sabotage my relationship (I’m in a committed one now, for the first time in years) whenever my partner expresses a grievance. You see, I used to believe I could only ever bring bad things to another person’s life, so a simple expression of someone not being happy with one little thing in our relationship could activate my trauma response to sabotage the entire relationship.

So for me, Lilith in 7th house and Libra has had a definite connection to my hyper-independence, my beliefs I am starting to overcome that I could only be toxic for a partner, and also the fact that I have been able to walk out on problematic people without feeling conflicted about it!

Thanks for asking! I love this topic, and I find so much different info on Lilith, so I have found that watching how the transits interact with my Lilith has definitely been the best way to understand how she manifests for me personally! 🖤

hello!! omg this was so insightful, thank you so much for sharing!!

the impression of being intimidating and unfriendly does seem to make sense when you bring up your aspects. especially bringing up that pluto falling in the 8th house squaring that venus in mars. People I've met who has almost similar aspects, i would have to say you probably definitely give a rather cut-throat vibes in a competitive way especially in areas that youre passionate about. thanks to this, now i can see how the impression within that 7th house lilith is definitely strongly attributed to personal aspects.

hyper-independence is such a common theme I see in lilith in the 7th house, yet its also so contradictory to how the individual could be in a relationship which is absolutely dependent on their partner without realising. i guess personally for me, that's how I interpret your fear of only capable of being toxic to your partner. as an individual, you feel almost kind of invincible that you could do anything on your own and you are completely content with it. however, there's also that little desire in wanting a partnership but its knowing damn well of the insecurity and your worse traits coming out as a partner out of your control.

i also definitely agree with the blessing in disguise of being able to walk out on problematic relationship without hesitation. from a personal experience, i never found it hard to completely cut people out when i decide im done with them. it's to a point where i remove any traces of them in my life and as if they had never existed. this strong sense of self control and boundaries has definitely helped me in many ways than others.

i absolutely love how you brought up the way the transit affected you! im happy to hear you working through it!! i hope you always remember that your existence itself can be a blessing to someone else's life. it could be the reason someone anticipates for the sun to shine the next day. i wish you well and of the best in your current relationship!!

this was an amazing take!! thank you so much for sharing your experiences!! i think this has helped to see the effect being more concrete :)

[astroamorsworld]

Aquarius New Moon predictions for your rising sign:

Extra info —> This New Moon is happening today at 8:53pm UK time, is conjunct Pluto and also forming harmonious aspects to both Jupiter and Mars. So If you wanna put the effort and the energy into manifesting really big changes and see it pay off, now is the time to do it!

As I’m typing this, the new moon is happening in 29 minutes. Make sure you take advantage of this energy if you wanna see big transformations in your life!

Take what resonates, leave what doesn’t. Enjoy!

Please do not copy my work or repost my work. Thanks!

Aries Rising: This new moon is happening in your 11th house. You may feel the urge to connect with your friends more or you may make some new ones. You may have dreams that you want to achieve or you’re realising that you have new ones. You could also want to start over with your social media account and maybe take it more seriously. Or you may just make an entirely new one.

Taurus Rising: This new moon is happening in your 10th house. You may be starting a new job, or possibly leave one behind, either way there’s a transformation happening in terms of work. You could get a massive promotion at work which forces you to become more mature and disciplined, or you could be getting let go. Either way it ends up being for the greater good as you may easily find one that’s far better than your previous job. You could be reinventing your public image, making people see you in totally different way. You may achieve a big milestone too. You could also be mastering something at work.

Gemini Rising: This new moon is happening in your 9th house. You may want to travel a lot or maybe move overseas. You may develop new philosophies or adopt new ones, this may give you a more positive outlook on life. You may have transferred colleges or universities for a fresh start or you may have changed courses. You may have also made the decision to leave your education behind and may feel an immense amount of freedom afterwards. You also may have gotten a great result on a test which has motivated you to have a better work ethic with your education. You may find your purpose in life.🤍

Cancer Rising: This new moon is happening in your 8th house. You could receive a massive inheritance that could set you up for life. Massive massive amount of money. You could also meet someone and have a very intense connection with them. Very transformational, intimate and deep. Or there may be existing relationships that could get deeper. There could be a surfacing of trauma that you have to deal with that will ultimately be quite healing for you. It’ll feel like you’ve been reborn. You may indulge in more sexual activities.

Leo Rising: This new moon is happening in your 7th house. You could meet someone and potentially get into a long term relationship with them. Or if you’re already in a long term relationship, you could get engaged. You may see your close relationships transform for better or for worse. Could see people leaving your life and/or coming in. There may be legal matters that come to an end and benefit you in some way. You may sign an important contract that will improve your financial situation drastically.🤍

Virgo Rising: This new moon is happening in your 6th house. You may try to change your daily routine in order to improve your health. You may start going to gym, or invest some new skincare or take some new vitamins that will benefit you physically and mentally. You may develop some skills of yours and you may experience an important change in the workplace. You may try and create some good habits and/or get rid of bad ones.

Libra Rising: This new moon is happening in your 5th house. You may get into a relationship or have a new fling. You may begin a new creative endeavour or take an existing one more seriously to try and fulfil your purpose. You may want to express yourself more freely. You may be feeling more bold. You may want to indulge in things that make you happy as a form of self care. You may also get pregnant🤰

Scorpio Rising: This new moon is happening in your 4th house. You may want to move. Your relationship with your mother may transform. You may want to improve your home or start a family. You may also become more of a homebody too. You may also become more in tune with your emotions and become more private. You could also be trying to heal from your past.🤍

Sagittarius Rising: This new moon is happening in your 3rd house. You may see a transformation in the way you perceive things. Your thought pattern could change. Your relationship with your teachers could improve for the better and you may begin to slowly enjoy school again. Your relationship with your siblings and cousins could change too. The way you communicate could change, you could become more outspoken and bold. You’re not tolerating bs and setting boundaries🤍

Capricorn Rising: This new moon is happening in your 2nd house. You may see a drastic increase in your finances, your self esteem could drastically increase and you may become more independent. You may indulge in some shopping as a form of self care regardless of how expensive it may be. You may also let go of some possessions and your morals could also change.

Aquarius Rising: This new moon is happening in your 1st house. You may want to drastically improve the way you look. Whether it’s a new hairstyle or a wardrobe transformation, you wanna make a statement with your appearance. People will see you transform before their very eyes. Your confidence could improve. Your ego could get bigger. You could become more self aware. It’s a new beginning for you guys. And it will change you and the way people see you (if you care) for the better.

Pisces Rising: This new moon is happening in your 12th house. You may want to feel the need to hibernate. Do some shadow work, and come out on top on the other side. You’re getting rid of your inner demons and becoming a homebody whilst you do it. You’re trying to change your subconscious thoughts to manifest the life you’ve always wanted for yourself. You could become more satisfied with being alone and enjoy your own company a lot more than you did before. You could begin to meditate, get in touch with your higher self and connect with them and let them guide you to your soul’s purpose. Your dreams could stand out to you more than they ever did before. You may connect more with your belief system or religion and become closer to it then you ever did before. Achieving peace and personal satisfaction are the biggest themes for you guys for this new moon🤍.

Check my pinned post for more🤍

DM me if you would like a reading

[nyaaamato]

idk it’s hard to think of team minato as separate characters when i really think about it.. to me they all represent aspects of a single experience, different angles of a reaction to to the traumas of war… kakashi is the guilt-ridden survivor, obito the burning, vengeful sense of justice (“that should never have happened”), rin is simultaneously the mourner and the mourned. it makes sense when you think about kishimoto’s original vision for the series, which was a war story exploring the generational trauma he was exposed to via his grandfather’s experiences and how the effects of that trauma touch everyone differently even if the root cause is the same. rin and obito manifest as martyrs to kakashi because he’s still a part of the machine and can’t see the shinobi world on a larger scale, as a place that will never not fail the people it was built to protect, and that’s why he can’t protect his “precious people”. that’s why he fails sasuke and why he struggles at first to understand obito’s motivations as bigger than an interpersonal failing (not being able to protect rin). to me, it reads directly like an internal conflict of someone who has to contend with years and years of working for the very knife that first wounded them and only realising when in many ways, it’s too late to take back your mistakes, but still having to try.

i think that’s why team minato is so compelling to me, even past the frustrating misogyny. it’s like the perfect encompassing story about failed people being failed, but still not giving up. obito changes, kakashi changes, in some ways the ghost of minato changes (although my feelings about him in the war arc are.. HAHAHA i think that was such a mistake in writing and it almost ruined Naruto’s character for me) and eventually rin and obito can finally be laid to rest properly. it’s such a short, closed soft of story but i can’t stop going nuts about it LMAO

[askmatthias]

✕✕✕ ABOUT.

( updated 2 / 6 /2024 )

NAME Matthias Czernin. (Louis)

TITLE The Puppeteer.

GENDER Male.

PRONOUNS He / Him / His.

AGE 24

D.O.B. Happy Birthday!

ETHNICITY Czech.

HEIGHT 6ft 3in.  ( 190.5 cm )

ORIENTATION Demiromantic, Asexual.

OCCUPATION Entertainer, Puppeteer.

LANGUAGE(S) Czech, French, English.

FACTION Survivor.

✕✕✕

 PERSONALITY.

  Quiet and prone to giving the silent treatment without intending to, Matthias prefers keeping to himself most times, or using Louis to speak on his behalf. Though he’s not mute, it’s rare of him to speak for himself unless it’s through Louis, and seems to actively avoid being addressed directly.

   Louis, however, seems friendly and playful, but still carries the immaturity and ignorance of youth; due to this, it’s believable that the puppet and the puppeteer are separate entities, or perhaps different points of time in Matthias’ life, especially when arguing. If one weren’t fooled, however, they’d realise Matthias’ is unstable and uses Louis as a defence-mechanism to protect himself - even if it’s to his own detriment.

   Despite the fragility of Matthias’ mind, he is a stubborn and resilient young man who stands firm in his beliefs, regardless of opposition from others, even going so far as to dismiss his own autonomy if it means driving a point across to others.

   When push comes to shove, however, he is not without a short fuse, quick to lashing out on others if pressured, and easily resorting to violence. Lanky as he is, he can pack a hefty punch, and has no qualms with setting himself on fire if it means taking down those who mean him harm at the same time. If it isn’t obvious by his appearance alone, approach with caution.

  HEADCANONS.

×   He keeps his head slightly cocked to compensate for the loss of his left eye; he also prefers sleeping on his left side.

×   He is dealing with untreated PTSD, DID, AVPD, and Imposter Syndrome as a result of the poor treatment from his family, and head trauma from the stage’s collapse.

×   Yes, he does talk to Louis even when alone. He’s very conflicted on how his interactions with the puppet goes; the conversations can rapidly vary between fear, anger, and friendliness.

×   If someone were to steal Louis, he wouldn’t worry; that fucking thing has a habit of popping back up no matter where he goes…

×   He has moments where he seems to regret the loss of his family, if only because there was a longing for them to see him as he was, and not who they wanted him to be. This manifests as Louis pestering him with questions about the incidents and often results in Matthias displaying fits of aggression.

×   Matthias not only has insomnia, but will sometimes sleepwalk the few times he’s able to actually get some rest. During these times, he will occasionally speak in Louis’ voice.

×   Despite Matthias’ on and off dislike for Louis, the puppet doesn’t seem to harbour any ill-will for Matthias - and seems to go out of his way to try and cheer Matthias up. Even going so far as to protect him.

×   Matthias daydreams of someday being able to enjoy his birthday with friends, but that requires having friends in the first place. That, and he struggles to enjoy it even by himself as it feels it’s only a reminder of his failure to be worth loving as he is.

×   His parents named the puppet Louis because Matthias doesn’t sound as nice in French. Furthermore, he intentionally butchers the French language when speaking it. Get mad, French Losers…

×   Louis speaks French almost perfectly fluent unless he’s trying to be endearingly imperfect.

×   Matthias has terrible depth perception since the incident, and although he’s learnt to adjust he struggles with timing Louis’ use of undaunted because of it.

×   He sometimes avoids mirrors because he’ll see Louis staring back at him instead of himself.

×   Unbeknownst to Matthias, his mother and her side of the family are followers of Yidhra.

×   His father also has a prominent lineage, but it’s something of a mystery to Matthias who was only ever aware of their history in puppetry.

×   The doll repair kit on his belt has seen more use mending his own wounds than actual dolls or puppets. The lip stitches are a method of self-imposed lip-training.

  HUNTERS.

   The memories of his first match are hazy at best, but he knows he really does not like them; staying in his room because of them, Matthias makes a point to treat them as though hunters are invisible. If he doesn’t address the monsters in his nightmares, they can’t hurt him, and that’s all this is, it’s just another never-ending nightmare, right?

   And even if it isn’t, why would he ever want to befriend those who’ve proven themselves terrible?

   SURVIVORS.

   He’s just as wary of them as he is the Hunters. Regardless of this, and the fact he seems to prefer avoiding people, he has no desire to see harm done unto them by the monsters set free to torture them for entertainment in the arena. 

   MATCH STYLE.

   His match style is unknown at this time due to memories of his first match being hazy to him; based on his skills, however, it can be inferred that he relies on the use of Louis to rescue others, as he’s more than willing to let the thing be destroyed. Especially if it happens by supernatural means; get RID of that thing… Much to his dismay, Louis seems invulnerable to attacks, especially through the use of the skill ‘undaunted’.

   Overall he seems to prefer kiting these nightmarish Hunters through matches himself. He doesn’t seek to humiliate them as much as buy the others time, playing the role of silent prey.

   Also, due to circumstances, Matthias is unable to receive healing from others; however, he’s able to mend himself while mending others.

✕✕✕   CREDITS.

art & interpretation by mothysms.

Matthias Czernin, Louis // Puppeteer© Netease.

✕✕✕   MUN.

Hi, I'm Mothy!

I'll add more later, but for the sake of clarity, I just wanted to make sure everyone knows I'm A) an adult with other things I like to get up to that isn't just this blog, and B) write Matthias' disability partially from my own experiences - so ableism will not be tolerated.

While I enjoy RPing, this blog will likely end up just being an ask blog.

x Mun is 31 and would rather not be on friendly terms with minors. It's fine to interact with the blog, but please don't try to interact with me OOC unless it's joking to one another in tags or replies.

x This blog will stay relatively SFW. Minors are asked to not interact with posts that may imply NSFW on this blog. Those posts will be tagged accordingly.

x If there's something that needs tagged, you may ask me to tag it.

x Mun is intergender Agender, and knowledgeable on most intersex content and how it's portrayed poorly in media and looking to rectify that without making it an inherently explicit.

[acorpsecalledcorva]

Oh yeah one more thing worth elaborating on I think, what happens if you view behaviours and actions of system members through the lens of a child? Not to baby them or talk down to them or dismiss them, but simply "if a 7 year old child was doing this, why would they be doing it? What would be going through their mind? How would they feel and what would they think about what they're doing?"

Tw for abuse, CSA, and COCSA

I don't think there's really any action an adult is capable of that a child isn't also capable of doing. Children can steal, they can lie, they can commit arson, they can say racist and homophobic or transphobic slurs, they can torture animals or other children, they can kill, and they can commit sexual assaults. Hell, give them a chance and they'd commit tax and election fraud in a heartbeat.

I think most people understand, though, that these kind of behaviours don't just appear spontaneously, they're in response to something. Something has happened to them or is happening to them that they're mimicking or feelings that they don't know how or are unable to express are manifesting in specific ways and that intervention can be vital during this developmental period to ensure that things don't carry on into adulthood when embedded beliefs are much harder to undo, not least of all because adults are afforded much less grace.

DID is a developmental disorder, the response to traumatic events that wall off parts of our Psyche to protect them disrupt our psychological development in different ways to different degrees across the entire brain. We all have a basic understanding of what a little or child part is supposed to be and why they're the way they are, and understand how a fragment can be perpetual trapped in trauma time reliving events over and over again, but I think very few of us realise the true extent of this developmental disturbance and how it can affect the entire system.

To get personal and detailed, when I was 11 or 12 my mother was addicted to coke and having an affair with her dealer. My dad was having some kind of midlife crisis and joined a band of 18-25 year olds and kept bringing their friends of the same age to our house for house parties where everyone would get drunk and high and play loud music till the early hours of the morning on school nights. When my parents would viciously and violently argue, they would burst into my room to guilt trip the other about how they were upsetting me or try to use me as a shield hoping the other wouldn't do something in front of me, to no avail.

No one was looking after me or my brother, no one was protecting me, no one was being a parent for me. So I became my own parent, because I needed to be. I created an adult protector part to be my parents when my parents weren't my parents. Just one problem though, what's the template that I used to do that? Who could I base this part on? What were my available resources? I couldn't just spawn a magically perfect parent from another universe, I had to use my parents. The protectors that I made at that age, and still have, are my 11 year old brains interpretation of what a parent is supposed to be, and the only version of a parent that I had are my own. It may have been an idealised version that used more of their good traits than their bad, but could never be absent of the bad.

When I was being abused or sexually assaulted as a teenager and needed to create female alters that it happened to because "this doesn't happen to boys, it happens to girls" the girls I created are my teenage brains interpretation of what a girl supposed to be, and i went to an all boys school so you can imagine how much exposure i had to them and the problems that creates to this day.

Some parts might commit violent acts because they're angry and at the time they were made that's what our younger mind thought people did when they were angry, others might think that what they're doing is how you show love because that's what the people who should have loved us did to us, others might do things or believe things because those are the opposite actions or beliefs of what we did or had at the time of abuse and we thought not being that could save us.

Regardless of what it is, there's always a logic to the manifestation of parts no matter how convoluted or nonsensical it may seem, and at the very least asking "why might a 7 year old brain think this made sense?" can provide a way in to meet them where they are and afford them the grace you may have been denied at the time that you made them

[nayatarot777]

🧚🏾‍♀️ Daily Messages 🧚🏾‍♀️ ~ pac

*photos are not mine*

✨ pile 1 ✨

I’m feeling like a lot of you have put your materialistic/physical manifestations on pause. If not you, then the universe has stepped in to force you to put your physical manifestations that you’re working towards on the back burner. The reason for this is because it’s time to go inwards and focus on your inner reality instead of your outer.

You may be wanting to rush ahead and just get your physical work done, but it’s not the time for that right now. You’ve done enough to really plant the seeds to your desires and they’ve grown a considerable amount. The universe is gracing you with a period of rest. Mental rest or communicative rest specifically.

Now is a great time to slow down and spend time in your own energy. Meditation will prove to be extremely beneficial for you guys. There’s something within you that you’re going to be made aware of. Something that may even be causing blocks that your physical manifestations are having to work around, and I’m seeing that it’s mainly a particular mindset.

You’ve done all the work and invested all of the time that you’ve needed to, but this mindset could be one that affects how you feel about your capabilities to actually achieve the end result, despite seeing your seeds slowly but surely coming to fruition. Take some time to stabilise yourself mentally, and to stabilise the view that you have about yourself and your work in order to get your mind right 🤍

✨ pile 2 ✨

I’m seeing that you guys are focusing diligently on something. Physical energy or creative energy. It could be fitness, it could be art, music - whatever the case is, it’s opening up so many opportunities for you. I see so many ships coming in. Maybe even literal travel opportunities for some of you (mainly short distance to different cities, towns, or states).

I’m even picking up on a lot of focus on emotional work, and for those of you who that resonates with, you’re going to find it a lot easier to be emotionally open and available with those around you.

The creative energy that I’m feeling is strongly linked to your inner child. You guys could be focusing on a lot more play. A lot more adventure. If not, then Spirit is urging you to, because when you act on impulse (within reason) from the mindset of your inner child, all of the opportunities that you’ve been waiting for will come in. Some of you are really focusing on a project that you want to bring blessings in from, and your childlike energy is your best friend right now.

Whatever you’re working on, work on it as if you’re a child who’s spending time just playing.

Please try to not take things so seriously, and see this as play instead of work. Make it fun for yourself and take away the feeling of this being a responsibility in order to really excel forward with this 🤍

✨ pile 3 ✨

TW: trauma

Heavy shadow work with this pile. I feel like a lot of you are looking back at trauma and painful experiences from a higher perspective. You might be emotionally detached from these experiences currently, as a way to focus on learning from them and seeing the bigger picture.

I just heard “judgement” and felt a pressure being lifted, so a lot of you are realising that the guilt and blame that you’ve been holding onto is not yours to hold. I’m certain that most of you are setting the record straight within yourself. You were not wrong for making your feelings and opinions to someone known, just because they got triggered for being called out on their bs. You were not in the wrong and didn’t do anything to make these people hurt you in whatever way that they did.

I think there’s a major wound here surrounding communication. I feel like a lot of you have really been shamed for defending yourself and for calling things out that are more than unfair to you, resulting in you being gaslit into believing that you shouldn’t have in the first place. This was most likely a consistent thing since childhood, from your family or friends that were energetically vampiric. Not anymore. You’re seeing these situations and these people for who and what they are. You’re turning your pain into strength.

Your throat chakra is strengthening and opening up even more. Silently too. You’re probably going to surprise people when you start speaking up for yourself even more than you already have. And these people got triggered in the past by your communication because you spoke nothing but the truth. Good. Give them the Hell that they thought that they could avoid and don’t back down 🤍

[faithfromanewperspective]

jesse deep dive cause i can't sleep

was thinking about the Controversial Jesse Scene and--before i do any hard takes or really have opinions on it--i can't help but think the way he perfectly captures Traumatised Victorian-Edwardian Man. how we don't see how he's feeling most of the time, considering he's not a main narrator and nor is he in a position where he's constantly able to talk about his emotions. In fact it would be canon consistent to assume he actually has never been able to talk about his emotions with anyone ever. Nor is he or has he really ever been able to show them or express himself in any way. With Grace he could express his love for her, but he was always in a bit of a carer position for her; she was never really there for him to confide in properly. He's not overly guarded about everything--his trauma doesn't manifest like that. He recognises a generally caring community when he sees one; he applies all his skills on how to be respectful and kind and connect with people that he no doubt had to teach himself (Tatiana not being the best role model and all, and also keeping him away from the rest of the world for the most part).

With this background, it makes perfect sense for him to latch onto the Herondales, whom he's realised over decades how unfounded and exaggerated his mother's hatred of is. He's heard horrible things about them, and they're nothing like that when he gets to know Lucie and she tells him about her family (which as much as she vents about them in her first writing project, she actually loves her family and finds them generally supportive and not a source of trauma or hurt, so different from Jesse's experience of family). To him, getting to know the Herondales is a bit like leaving a restrictive cult and realising that rock and roll and dungeons and dragons are actually great and not charged with supernatural villains at all (and of course, subsequently getting far more into them than if they had never been forbidden in the first place). He idealises the Herondales a bit, and if I'm honest--I can't really blame him. They gave him the life he always wanted and his in-laws and wife are always going to feel like a sort of rebellion against and liberation from his mother, especially when she inadvertently but also kind of intentionally put him through you know, the whole possession thing. In which he 'did' everything he's worked so hard to not be anything like and which would've been traumatising on so many levels.

I know possession is a supernatural trauma and not really relatable to any of us (as far as I'm aware, can't ever say never) on here. But when it comes down to it: Jesse was raised solely by an arguably evil if not at least bitter, vengeful and delusional (in terms of feeding herself lies because she can't face the truth until they become her truth, I'm not sure if I'm using the word correctly here and understand it can be a sensitive and ableist thing if I'm not) woman, who isolated him from the rest of the world (much like a cult does). I know Tatiana did things to Grace she didn't do to Jesse. But it's also not a competition of who had it worse: each of their childhoods was what it was. Jesse has known literally nothing else. And yet he figured out how to be generally a good person, he researched how to be a shadowhunter and trained himself and his sister, did all the things that Gideon and Gabriel didn't figure out about their family until they left it, without actually ever leaving. We don't really get page time talking about these things, but it's pretty impressive when you think about it. But it also means his (relative, okay, okay) morality has been hard-fought for, and even though he logically knows none of what Belial did in his body isn't his fault, it's still as if he failed in the one thing he thought to be critical, more critical than what he wants or prefers: breaking the cycle of hurt breeding hurt that Tatiana lives in.

Combine that with the fact that he's never had anyone to hold space for his feelings. Had to figure that all out on his own, and grew up in an era (has it really changed though??) where it's virtuous to be calm on the surface even if, as we know, it leads to emotions simmering into rage when they do eventually surface, making an anger/trauma response when it does happen bigger than if, say, hurt was felt and processed and grieved with others who offer a corrective experience as would be ideal. And the fact that though he has a new network around him, they're not there to all be his therapists and he's still the new guy, still super polite and trying to make a good impression and super grateful and kind of surprised when they do include him--so he's not about to process, really, how to look past his own trauma and be there for his sister, when, in his eyes, she's had more agency than he had in his possession, something he would have longed to have just a smidge of so he could hopefully stop it, and seemingly taken the easy way out and done the thing that Jesse could never, ever condone and honestly thinks he raised his sister to be better than. It feels like a betrayal of Jesse: his morals he fought so hard for. And it reminds him too much of what he went through: James, who he's heard how much Lucie adores and all the times she's been worried about, not being in control of himself and accidentally hurting people (Cordelia at least, Lucie fills him in on that) for three and a half years.

Yes, he isn't taking into account the dynamics of power and abuse and how what Grace went through, too young to know better or really have any choice in the matter until it was normalised, held over her in ways she couldn't fight until Tatiana was briefly out of the picture (at which point she did straight away). Going with the cult metaphor, the brainwashing and gaslighting and blackmail and total under-thumb squishing was exactly what Grace was going through, she was being controlled as well, but from Jesse's point of view she had a little bit of autonomy, she didn't use it or even come to him for advice and help, and it just feels like a betrayal especially given all his unprocessed trauma. It's too much of a shock for a man who's just been resurrected (which would also have some jarring effects one would imagine). Yes, he wasn't kind in how he treated her, the way he should've been. Yes, he hurt someone so vulnerable and it's always going to be there in their sibling relationship history. Yes, the shock wears off and she's still his sister, James and Cordelia are back together, yes he should've stood up for her more but. I don't think it's out of cowardice, even if one could call it morally grey. He's behaving like someone with his resources and trauma would, arguably better than many. He did make a brother out of that event, putting in an effort to reach out to James. So many people don't know how to mediate, and honestly, this is a really tricky situation for all who do (Christopher mainly, who does accidentally belittle James' pain in a way and brush over it with the turn-the-other-cheek-privilege rhetoric, which is in some ways the attitude Jesse places on himself and those around him including Grace if you get where I'm taking you and the irony of it).

Anyway, I have thoroughly enjoyed every fic exploring this relationship and everything that went down with this event in every different way. I don't have a problem with saying 'oh Jesse should've' but I also don't see the point in expecting him to be morally perfect when we don't expect that of other characters, and when it happens to the extent the imperfections that make him three-dimensional are washed away, when he has so few of them to begin with and he's probably the least fleshed out male character of the main cast (not saying he's complete cardboard!!! he's just the amount of fleshiness many of the female characters are, who we also tend to expect to be morally perfect!) like yes it creates an island for Grace in many ways that Tatiana all but orchestrated the way she did Jesse's death--a lasting punishment if you will, for ceasing to be her 'weapon' by exposing her to the others she forced her to hurt. It's a shitty situation in so many ways and I hate that she gets this legacy even from beyond the grave. I only don't think Jesse should bear the full responsibility for bridging everything and processing it for all of them

[brionysea]

okay SO. @madwheelerz' manifestation theory. in trying to wrap my head around it, i have come across some THOUGHTS

season 1

mike wants will back. the universe rearranges itself to give him this. i find the first season the easiest to understand in terms of mike's internal world being expressed through the supernatural, because of its relative simplicity

season 2

mike wants el back. the universe, again, rearranges itself to give him this. the new supernatural threat draws el out of hiding and back to the party

there's also a lot of talk about trauma this season. a lot of it is limited to what they knew about PTSD in the 80s but i find it really, really interesting in this context

owens: it's called the anniversary effect. we've seen this with soldiers. the anniversary of an event brings back traumatic memories. sort of opens up the neurological floodgates, so to speak.

hopper: so what does this mean for the kid? he's gonna have more episodes, nightmares?

owens: yeah, that. maybe some personality changes. he might get irritable. he might lash out.

will's anniversary is around the time the second season picks up, but there's another one that flies under the radar: mike's. lucas and dustin were with mike when the demogorgon cornered them, but they're fine. they're having fun with max. they're vibing. meanwhile mike is acting out, being abrasive and argumentative towards absolutely everyone, shutting himself off in his basement even when his friends spend all day trying to reach him

what owens said above doesn't really apply to will at all, beyond him literally acting like a different person, but it applies perfectly to mike. mike, as of season 2, according to the show's own definition, is traumatised

owens: just treat him normally. be patient with him. don't pressure him to talk. just let him lead the way.

joyce: i'm sorry, what you're saying is it's gonna get worse and worse and we're just supposed to pretend it's not happening?

owens: it sounds counterintuitive, i know. but i assure you that is really the best thing you can do for him.

this is the approach the wheelers seem to be taking. i'm reminded of karen saying mike would "come to them when he's ready" when ted asked if he should go talk to him after will's body was found. joyce does the exact opposite of this at any given opportunity, but karen seems to buy into it, and ted follows her lead

a year later, nancy's not better yet. mike's not better yet. that's to be expected, but i think the way those facts are treated is pretty reflective of the emotional situation in their household. will has endless support from joyce and jonathan, to the extent he feels suffocated by it, but mike just gets told to suck it up and stop making his parents look bad. nancy clearly understands this more intuitively from how she isolates herself before letting herself express much of anything unless she's drunk (and even then, she didn't start laying into steve until they were alone). their reputation is more important than their mental health

the demodogs, as an antagonist, are a physically smaller (but larger in numbers) retread of the demogorgon. almost like when something traumatic happens and your brain keeps going back to it in bits and pieces. and who got directly traumatised by the demogorgon? who thought they saw their friend get taken away by it right in front of them? mike. that scene in the middle school was very obviously traumatic for mike and mike alone

owens said that more episodes should be expected close to a traumaversary. and when's the last time mike was as upset about anything as he is about el being gone, one year later? when will disappeared. so he did something about it without realising again

season 3

following the pattern of the upside down being used as a tool to address lingering trauma: the mind flayer comes back

again, the mind flayer being will's trauma is more obvious. it took control of his body. it used him to kill dozens of people. it used him against his friends and family. but another thing that flies under the radar is the fact that mike witnessed all of it

mike saw will get taken on the field. mike saw will's nightmares. mike saw will's seizures from the tunnels being burned. mike saw will screaming. mike saw will slowly becoming less and less of himself. mike was the only (conscious) child trapped in the lab with the demodogs

if you think that just witnessing things like that isn't enough to count as traumatising, allow me to remind you of something this show's certified Trauma Monster has said:

vecna: i just want you to watch.

just watching is what got max killed. just watching is what got fred killed. just watching is what traumatised mike the first time around. just watching is what traumatised lucas and dustin. experiences like this do not have to be firsthand to be harmful

mike's more clued in to the wheeler rule of acting like everything's fine this time around, but he's still... not quite himself. he's ignoring most of his friends. he's extremely anxious and panicky about the idea of seeing el die again. he's denying himself things he used to love. he went through hell to get will back and keep will and now he's suddenly pushing him away out of nowhere. things like that don't happen without a reason

he's got even more trauma now than he did before, and when you're a 14 year old boy who can't go to therapy because it would make your parents look bad, that's not going to go away just because you act like it's not happening

season 4

being the Trauma Season, this one's source is more unabashedly, purely emotional: the relationship drama

last season, el took max's advice and dumped mike. while they were broken up, they started having friendly conversations again and both seemed happier and more comfortable, both as individuals and with their relationship. then the whole "because i love her" mess happened and they got back together, notably without any input from mike at all. immediately after that, the byers and el moved halfway across one of the biggest countries in the world

here's mike's issue: he's not aware that you can Not Date someone and also Not Lose them. el saying that she loved him back recontextualised all their interactions when they were broken up as romantic, and made him think that if he isn't el's boyfriend, he can't have her in his life at all. this is unacceptable to him for obvious reasons

so mike, knowing full well what he's doing, tries to give el what she wants without lying to her. obviously, this doesn't end well, but it also has a massive impact on mike's mental health in the meantime, which is only compacted by the distance from el and will. he's not eating. he needs constant reassurance. his bedroom and basement are messier than we've ever seen them. mike, much like max and chrissy and nancy, is not okay

mike sees things in a very, very black and white way. good and evil. monsters and superheroes. that's why he was so weird about el hitting angela: good guys protect, bad guys hurt. mike rarely thinks violence is justified, even in self defence when it comes to his own bullies, and el's physical safety wasn't being threatened

now put someone with a mindset like that into a situation like the one we've laid out

mike isn't an idiot. he's young and inexperienced and doesn't have a clue how to handle his emotions, but he's not unintelligent or lacking self awareness, and he's not this dense. he knows what he's doing. he knows he's not okay. he's just not doing anything about it, because that would mean hurting el, and mike would always rather get himself hurt than another party member

and isn't it convenient that the latest supernatural threat is one that says, "admit you're not okay or die. get better or die. fix this or die." doesn't that sound like exactly the kind of thing that mike, when backed into a corner, with his binary viewpoint of how good people and bad people act, would think of? doesn't it sound like his subconscious telling him this isn't right? to get his act together and stop pretending?

[firehcart]

𝐓𝐑𝐀𝐔𝐌𝐀. — Let’s talk trauma. It’s pretty obvious for anyone who has read Throne of Glass that Aelin suffers through various kinds of traumas and a degree of mental illness through the series – I’m going to break down the main ones I’ll be referencing throughout my own writing, featuring spoilers. It’s worth noting that even with the below, Aelin never lets the majority of this show. Most of the time, this will feature in introspection – please never presume your character is aware of everything, though she’s likely to show hints and symptoms along the way. She keeps the walls up, and holds trauma close.

—  oo1. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder:

This does not occur from one isolated incident in her life. There is a long series of history here dating back to her childhood and the trauma of being afraid of her own powers and the extent of her abilities, which we see the King of Ardalan take advantage of and weaponise against her to make her paranoid extend to her own form of control – this manifests during her adolescence and training in Wendlyn with Rowan, where she is terrified to truly unleash without hurting anyone. It’s severe training that allows her to overcome this particular fear.

We then have the trauma she undergoes in her time in the Assassin’s Guild – what is essentially grooming from Arobynn, the deep seated trust issues she forms after his betrayal, and also from the atrocities she commits as Celaena Sardothien who I firmly believe she has partially disengaged from our own self as Aelin. We even see her reluctance later to adopt the identity again, and the visible difference in how she acts when she does slip back into the character ( though if I’m honest, this a whole meta on its own ).

The most obvious of her trauma occurs in the Salt Mines of Endovier – we know she spends one year in the mines where most only survive three months within the prisons there, endured frequent beatings, and is responsible for killing over twenty-four guards on the anniversary of her parent’s death, the same day she attempt suicide. We know during this time she witness physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, as well as being exposed to unbearable living conditions, the verge of starvation, and being broken down so physically that most would have died long since. It is the Salt Mines of Endovier that generated her absolute hatred of slavers, and her fear of whips ( which we reference when Rowan threatens to lash her in her disrespect during training, and later when Maeve uses this fear against her ) ; even now she can’t stand the sound of a lash.

Let’s then factor in the experience she has at the hands of Maeve, and specifically Cairn. We know in that time that she endures broken bones, kneeling in broken glass, being flayed, at minimum – the extent of what she goes through is only hinted in various chapters, and witnessed by Fenrys. I think the most interesting moment of this abuse is when he threatens to use fire against her, and we see a moment in which Aelin realises if he uses fire against her, she will fear it, and in doing so, fear part of herself. I think this introspection confirms she knows at least to some extent how traumatised she is, and what wounds linger.

At the end of all of this, she has a long list of triggers, and a very damaged psyche ( largely masked by her sarcasm and her attempts to push people away ). Even after the series ends, that trauma lingers – and factors into each of the issues I’ll list below. Her months spent disassociating during her time with Maeve ( no doubt a tactic partially employed in past torture ) mean she does occasionally revert to that mindset without realising, and most commonly in silent communication with Fenrys without realising. Touches without her consent – ie. coming up behind her without warning – likely yield a violent response due to shock. Crowds place her on alert because she’s so used to looking for danger. This kind of trauma manifests in social withdrawal ( not externally, she’s good at a mask, so it’s internal – she’ll pretend she’s fine while suffering in her own head ), emotional detachment on occasion, and throwing herself into distractions like physical training in effort to remove from the demons in her mind. Time does not heal this trauma entirely, though time does bring closure and allow her to live with it.

—  oo2. Insomnia.

We already see this several times in canon, that where most sleep, Aelin does not. Most commonly her form of self -soothing when it comes to her own insomnia is to render herself exhausted – not necessarily just by her daily activities, but most of the time we see her roaming at night and often times her plans and plots take form by night, where she will spend hours on end employing tactics when no one else is awake. Most of the time, it’s only by utterly exhausting herself that she manages to find some form of rest. More commonly than not, particularly after her time within captivity in Kingdom of Ash at the hands of Maeve, she has nightmares, and can’t discern if she’s awake or asleep because of the months spent in that nightmare like state. She wakes, and for those few moments she doesn’t know if she’s in the Iron Coffin, or if the darkness is nighttime ; it’s only herself that can bring her mindset back and remember she’s not there, that her dreams are only dreams, and that she’s long since gone from their clutches. And then it’s the realisation that she’ll have the same fears in the next day when she wakes, and however tired she might be, she begins to loathe sleep.

I think, again, this is something that eases with time ; Terrasen is never completely dark, even in the night time, so when she awakes the moon and the stars are always bright enough to pave the starlight through her chambers and ease the fears. But it’s only in time that she begins to properly find some form of rest.

—  oo3. Cleithrophobia.

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about whether or not she suffers from claustrophobia and cleithrophobia and why she may be one more than the other. Where claustrophobia is a fear of enclosed spaces, the latter is a  more specific trauma – that is, the idea of being trapped in any confined space, unable to escape.

After three months spent in an Iron Coffin, with a mask on, literally unable to move, her fear manifests in the second far more than the first. Where claustrophobia indicates an irrational fear of small spaces, her own terror is something based on experience. It’s not the actual space that bothers her ( though I doubt she loves it ) but the very specific situation, that she can’t get free or she can’t escape. Any remnant of that situation likely triggers the same response – panic, in her chest, an almost manic desire to get free, eventual disassociation to cope with the scenario. To put it bluntly, it’s not a situation she ever willingly enters into – small spaces are fine, but if the door were to close behind her, or something blocked her getting free, it’s a deal breaker.  

—  oo4. Thanatophobia.

To be clear, Aelin does not fear death for herself – it’s not something that makes her uncomfortable, given she knows how many people she’s lost along the way, and I believe part of her does have full faith she’ll see them again after her own death. However, the deep seated issues she has in not being able to save the ones she loves, particularly after witnessing some of those deaths, is something that she finds manifested into genuine fear. We witness it constantly in her self sacrificing behaviour – it’s not self destructive as such, but it’s demonstrated in the fact she places everyone else as more important than her own life. We see it when she admits to Rowan she can’t lose anyone else ; it’s not as shallow as not wanting to lose loved ones, it’s that she can’t deal with the loss again, which manifests in her seeing danger to loved ones even when there is none.

—    oo5. Body Dysmorphia.

This develops entirely after Kingdom of Ash, and I think it’s so important to acknowledge here that Aelin was very, very attached to her body. We see her reference her scars repeatedly through the series, the fact that each means something to her, and it helps ground her – physical marks tell her a story of what is real and what was not. I honestly believe this is why she’s so traumatised by the fact her torture at Cairn’s hand results in her entire body being remade over and over for the course of months, that she doesn’t know what was done to her, what was real, what never happened ; there’s nothing to track each injury to the matching wound. Likewise, the years she spent in that body are now remaining only in her own mind.

Not to mention in terms of her physicality, she is suddenly a stranger in her own skin – she knew what her strength was, what her body could handle, had built thick skin, had muscles toned by years of her own training. Suddenly she’s in a body that is untrained, and it’s a blank canvas.

I truly believe this results in a disconnect between her own mental state and her body, and a hypercriticism because her body isn’t as trained, isn’t as fit, isn’t what it was before. Even after resuming her training with Rowan to self correct this, it’s not good enough in her own opinion – it isn’t the same as it was before. Factor into it then that she then loses her mortal body entirely when she forges the Lock ( which is traumatic on another level because her fae form is the one she was reluctant to take for years, and suddenly she’s mourning the loss of her human self, as well as everything she’s been through ), and it takes literal years for her to feel like she’s settled into her skin again in any way shape or form.