#do you think all the trauma of a neglected abusive youth by the only parent he's ever known that forced him to numb himself and find joy

[twdgwritings]

Character Discussion;

Marlon

Something I experienced while being in the fandom is a lot of a backlash for liking Marlon. Now I’m not saying anybody has to like him or agree with me, but I don’t think he is just a black and white character that most believe. I don’t think it’s true at all, he has many shades to him. In this post I’m going to deep dive into Marlon, the things he has done, overall opinions and stuff like that. I might even do this with other characters if y’all would be interested in hearing my thoughts.

Also my power was out for a few days, so that really set me back with writings and other stuff. So please be patient with me!

Warnings: typos, talk of parental abuse/neglect, children dying, kidnapping, accidental murder, violence, other stuff probably?, spoilers

1. Marlon’s Past

While we don’t know his past for sure, I think it’s important to consider what we do know or could influence his current behavior. I’ve headcanoned, since the first time I played, that Marlon was abused as a child. Given his problem with authority figures (adults, the headmaster, Lily and Abel), anger issues and the need to be in control I believe this is a strong point. Acting out from his terrible home life is probably what landed him in a troubled youth school, especially since we can assume his parents were possibly tired of dealing with him. Of course this isn’t canon, but I don’t think it’s out of the realm of possibilities. Regardless, I think it’s important to keep a troubled past in mind when discussing a questionable character.

We know it’s been about eight or nine years-ish since the apocalypse started. (Clem was 8 when it started, and she was 11 when AJ was born. AJ is now 6 in the final season and Clem is 17.) Marlon is clearly older and confirmed 18-19, so he was 10-11 years old when the world went to hell. Imagine yourself at that age and no adult to help guide you because as we know they all but the nurse abandoned these kids. So a little kid stepped up to take care of many other kids when the adults left, and some kids died under his care and protection. (Not his fault though) As said a few times in the game there used to be a lot more of them, which means a lot of them died. Which that stress and trauma added onto Marlon’s mental issues.

2. The Twins

Let me say this; I don’t like what happened with Sophie and Minnie, but was there a choice? No. There was no right answer in this situation, the world is killed or be killed. Morals are out the window, only survival. I think Marlon caved to Lily and Able because of his trauma and fears, because of his past as mentioned above. He either said no and they all got kidnapped or killed, or he could give up two people to save the rest. Why didn’t they fight back like they did in the game? Because, as much as I love Marlon, he could never lead them and organize a battle like Clementine did. They NEEDED her, without her NONE of them would have made it. Why didn’t they go save him? Again they probably couldn’t do it without Clem, and as Marlon said he was afraid. He could die, they could all die or they could all get taken. Marlon thought he was doing the right thing. He should have told the truth of the fate of the twins, that they were kidnapped (because they were). Marlon is a coward, I’m not even going to pretend he isn’t, he knows he is. Marlon’s fear of losing his friends/family is what lead him to make the mistakes he did. He feared being casted out, them becoming angry at him, or even death(them and him).

I think it would have been interesting to see in the game Marlon witnessing what Minnie became, what he had done. To realize even more how badly he fucked up. Though unfortunately he didn’t get to see what he had done, nor was he given the chance to try to atone his mistakes; to make it up to everyone, or redeem himself.

3. Brody + Trading Aj and Clem

“He killed Brody!” “He hit/hurt Brody!” I KNOW. I’m not happy with what happened between Marlon and Brody either. We know Marlon has anger issues. We know when he gets scared he gets mad (As Brody told us) But, we also know her death was accidental. As soon as Marlon hits her he instantly regrets it and feels remorse, so much so he even goes into denial that he can save her. I fully believe he did not go into the basement with intent of hurting or killing Brody, he never wanted to hurt anyone. “He was going to trade Clem and Aj!” I doubt he saved them with an intent to trade them, I don’t think it even crossed his mind until the run in with Abel. I don’t blame him either, why give up friends you’ve known for years when you can give up two strangers.

4. Marlon’s Death + Alt choices

Obviously his death was supposed to leave an unfinished business kinda vibe, which is dumb as hell in my opinion. I also think it’s very random of Aj to automatically shoot Marlon but not Abel? Like if he was going to kill anyone without warning it should have been the guy who was armed the entire time, not the dude who dropped the gun and was no longer a problem. It goes against everything Clementine taught Aj, and it just feels really rushed and unnecessary. I know Marlon’s death is what pushed the plot forward, but I think there were other ways to go about it. Like if you chose to kick him out, Clem and Louis/Violet could escort him out (like Violet and Louis did to Clem and Aj) and that’s when they have the run in with Lily and Abel. Obviously different out comes for what yoy decided to do with Marlon, so his death wasn’t necessary. The writers would have just had to taken more creative liberties and shit.

I think it would have been more impactful for Aj’s character is Marlon lived. It would be an opportunity to teach him that some people can change, that sometimes people can be redeemed. Marlon wasn’t a monster that deserved to be gunned down after being disarmed, something I think Aj could learn. (Lily’s situation was vastly different. Lily would always be a threat, she would have come back for revenge and needed to die). It would have been interesting to see Marlon during the battle against the raiders (probably after being coaxed to fight by the player) and maybe he was one of the people to get kidnapped. (As I stated before him seeing what Minnie became would be intriguing.) Once aboard the ship Marlon refuses to leave the cell, believing he deserves this. Then the player can talk him out of leaving or chose to leave him in the cell. Or at least give Marlon a better death, dying a hero to atone for his mistakes. Maybe instead of Louis/Violet at the bridge, it was Marlon who throws Tenn across and sacrifices himself to the walkers or tries to stop Minerva.

Final Thoughts.

Is Marlon a perfect character? No. Absolutely not. He made mistakes, stupid decisions and has flaws, that’s what makes him such a well rounded character. I always dive deep into characters, never taking them at face value which is something I think more people should do. I just find it a little strange people will beat down Marlon, but turn around and defend Minerva when she wanted to kill her own little brother(I don’t hate Minnie either). Marlon feels like wasted potential and I wish we could have gotten more development around him and his character.

I appreciate everyone who read this post and I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions! I hope you all have a great day/night!

What are your thoughts on Marlon?

What would you do if you were in his position, would you trade the twins away?

What would you want to happen if Marlon lived?

[bielobog-kun]

i think the most shocking thing i've learned while trying to live with my brain has been how many therapists just do not deal with trauma at all. i know there are many people who did not experience childhood trauma, but in terms of its effects on the lives of trauma survivors and how they interact with others it is one of the defining characteristics of the human experience. can you imagine becoming a mental health professional and saying you know what, that's a little too rich for my blood. i think i'll teach my patients yoga nidra and breathing exercises and ask them if they go to church, and if they come to me wanting to talk about CSA or other abuse or neglect i'll end the "relationship" and ask if they've considered forgiving their abusers.

i genuinely don't think we can move forward as a species until we acknowledge trauma and deal with it at the root. but people are SO powerfully invested in pretending that we don't hurt each other, sometimes without meaning to at all. i wonder if many people don't fear (or know) that they were the person who hurt someone, and that if we acknowledge trauma they might be held to account somehow.

i personally no longer blame anyone for what hurt me in a lasting way and i don’t desire any punishment for anyone. i am a CSA survivor, but i had the support of my parents during that time; they believed me and protected me and shunned the abuser (though of course nothing happened to him legally). it was the long-term and complete neglect i experienced later in youth, for which my mother was responsible but not really accountable because of her own terrible circumstances, that has done the most lasting harm to me. and there are very few resources that would allow me to have a serious discussion about this with a professional i trust who is also in my insurance network.

i have done a lot of work on my own and read a lot of books but it’s only now that i actually have health insurance and spare cash for the copays. it’s a sad thing to discover that therapists essentially want only the easiest cases.

[thatsneakymedic]

(Father-verse)

What do you do if a child has a flashback to something traumatic, or a breakdown/meltdown?

As someone who often gets these during the nights or certain holidays and moments, even now. He's just better at hiding it.

"You'd be surprised how often children with psychological or emotional issues are often brought here, whether they have been taken from their abusive/neglectful parents and relatives or if their parents had died and they have no one to take them in or worst. Straight up abandoned for not "being normal or perfect". A lot of them also were brought back from their adopted parents who had abused or have taken advantaged of the kids they adopted and were caught by the authorities. All of those things can traumatize a child, and it's not often taken seriously by most people despite this time of age."

"The main thing is to be there for them when such episodes happen, touch isn't always a needed thing as not a lot of kids like to be held or touched for various reasons. When it happens, I clear out the room of prying eyes and talk them down from it and let them vent out whatever is bothering them. And take note of it to avoid possible "triggers" to their trauma in the future and be aware of it."

"But if you're asking for an expert's advice on how to help a child deal with mental issues, there's Ms Sakura Uchiha's mental health clinic that I often take our more troubled youth so that they can get the best treatments and she would give me the best advice on what I can do for them to help them cope."

Of course, Sakura once asked him to also start going to therapy. But he only answered that he would "think about it", though he would prefer the children to get help more than himself.

[you-are-perfectt]

Isolation

I am 25 now. Young to some, yet old to others. I've always been placed in the category of "wise beyond my years." Yet, now when I think about it, does/did anyone actually wonder what that really entails? My perception on life comes from experiences in my youth that I would not wish on any young person. Sometimes I ponder on the younger me, as I am trying to better myself, she feels like a child I never bore. I wish I could have been the protector she needed.

Yet, I do not blame my parents. Two human beings, trying their best in this unfair, unjust life. I was the youngest of four. My mother having me at 25 and here I am at the same age. The thought of raising four children, working multiple jobs, giving her absolute all... I love her. I respect her. I look up to her.

All the while, no one knew, I was being sexually assaulted. It created intense, crippling anxiety in me. For years, I myself, had no idea what was happening to me. Being so young. At times, I blame my father. If only he cared as much as my mother. If only he was as nice as her. I can remember him always being so angry. Growing up now, I can understand him being clinically diagnosed with bipolar disorder. At the end of the day, it doesn't "right his wrongs" but I can now understand more.

I actually have no idea why I am typing this. It feels freeing I guess? I don't personally know anyone on here and I've had this account since I was thirteen, I think? I have gotten way off subject for the reasoning of why I titled this "Isolation".

I read a post before typing this, about a woman feeling sad because she doesn't have girl friends. It hit home because that used to be me. For years, I isolated myself, unbeknownst to me. My SA was from the ages of maybe 4-8or9? But I didn't really understand what happened to me until I was 14. So around 14-15 is when I started self-sabotaging and really feeling just feeling disgusted with myself. So, I isolated.

I felt as if everyone knew something was wrong with me, as if it was my fault what happened to me. I mean, come on... we all know how much pressure we felt in high school. My middle sister, just three years older than me, was making really bad decisions in life. I won't go into much detail but my parents were so focused on her that (looking back now) in a way I felt neglected. I lost any care for anything important in life.

They say your mind blocks out traumatizing events, which is why some peoples childhood is hazy. That explains mine. It explains why it has and is taking me years to overcome what happened to me. I know now why my sister acted out, for a better sense of words, when she did. We both were sexually abused by the same person, for years. Except, I am sure it affected her more at the time because she could remember more, being older.

To refrain from making this long story any longer, I am happy to admit that I am overcoming my childhood trauma. I wanted to shed miniscule backlight, for anyone who might see this, maybe you can relate? It does get better. Which is something I used to scoff at and think "not for someone like me".

It is an everyday task and I still have bad days. Days where I feel mental walls, like cement, that I can't push past. I've realized that, that feeling is okay. We need days to rest and be mentally okay. That does NOT make us weak or less capable than any other person. Accept yourself, love yourself. There is so much power in being YOU!

Looking back now, it's comical how 14-year-old me made the account name to my Tumblr as "you-are-perfect" when I was FAR from believing that in myself. Manifest your dream life babes. BELEIVE in your words and your mind, every day, even when it feels stupid or that it's "not working". I am here to vouch that IT. GETS . BETTER.

With Love,

[herssian]

friend

[heavensgateiowa]

I seen you mention latent homosexual Jason and if you're interested in further elaborating I would love to hear it

hello hi!

so i would love to someday write a full piece about jason grace with like. real textual analysis and shit but i'm letting my ideas fester first

i've also made a few posts talking about where he as a character is placed in relation to other queer characters (as nico's initial confidant and friend, as piper's comphet partner) and also his relationship to leo (and to percy lmao) already.

essentially, jason has, almost from birth, had his life controlled by jupiter, king of the gods and ultimate archetype of masculinity, fatherhood and virility, and juno, his wife, goddess of marriage. riordan's characterisation of both these characters deliberately skews negative, for a very specific reason: the series hinges on just how scary it is to have a parental figure reject you.

percy feels abandoned by the father he never knew at the beginning of the series. annabeth is desperate to impress her mother, and feels overshadowed and abandoned by the rest of her family. piper is completely disconnected from the idea of heterosexual love and traditional, eurocentric feminine beauty which she associates with her mother, and repulsed by the association while so fascinated by it and desperate for the approval associated with it that she seeks it out in the form of her relationship with jason. i could go on, and each of these examples probably deserves its own in depth examination.

but for all these characters, alienation from and abandonment by a parental figure is the ultimate evil, the thing they fear most, the most destructive force in their lives. it's a reflection of the adolescent experience which makes the books resonate so hard with young people. it's an example of the 'there is a dragon. the adults don't believe you when you say there is a dragon' philosophy of childrens books; it is so hard to articulate as a child the negative experiences you are having with a parent or caregiver, and even if you can articulate those experiences, who will believe you? certainly not the parent themselves.

jason represents all this in extremis. what if a child was taken from his mother and sister (the same thing that happens to nico, incidentally, only jason was too young to remember it and is therefore almost numb to the trauma by comparison because he has never known it any other way), and groomed to become a leader and a hero in such a way that he could never become anything else? jupiter and juno are villainised because they represent the ultimate evil of the series, parental neglect, abuse and control. the distant father, who says out loud that he will not give his son the attention, praise or affection that he so clearly needs as a matter of principle. the overbearing mother and wife archetype, who becomes an embodiment of both heteronormativity and control, those things being one and the same in jason's life. when he seeks control he also seeks heterosexuality.

conversely, when he gives up control, when he gives up his role as praetor, when he and piper break up, he stops seeking heterosexuality. i would argue this very slow slide begins when he sees juno's true form and starts losing his vision (god im so hazy on this point ive only read the books once sorry if i get this wrong). he is exposed to the 'true form' of the goddess that represents, to him, heterosexuality and control. he then loses his vision, and is given glasses (by asclepius the son of apollo dont even get me started on that particular train of thought). this represents a physical transition, a step-down from youthful masculine perfection into almost a form of old age.

this is jason’s attempt to reclaim his own life and agency, and it ultimately leads to his death.

there’s something very compelling in the accidental ‘bury your gays’ moment that happens in trials of apollo. riordan has talked about how, upon reflection looking at the first series, he realised that nico was a queer character.

this is fascinating, and an excellent statement regarding nico, but the context of jason makes it all the more interesting. nico and jason are almost total opposites; nico is an outsider, a victim, associated with death and hell. he’s a lot more easy to shape into a queer narrative, where he comes out and is accepted within the group. instead, jason has spent his whole life on top of the world. a praetor, son of the king of the gods, the embodiment of strength and classical masculinity and heroism (but completely without agency). shaping a queer narrative out of that proves to be a great deal more difficult, and so riordan doesn’t. i don’t believe he intended to do this, i don’t think he recognised jason’s queerness for what it was, but he sublimates jason’s queerness into other things; he has jason fight for the underdog, like nico and the underappreciated gods. he has jason move from praetor to pontifex maximus, one of the only remotely autonomous choices he makes in the series. he has jason wear glasses with all they represent. he has jason slowly back away from heteronormativity, from jupiter and juno and all that they represent, from his failed relationship with piper.

but jason still dies. he fails to escape his fate, and dies the death of the very heroic warrior he no longer wanted to be. and his queerness dies with him.

there is so much more i could elaborate on, and someday i will, but this is already way longer than i meant it to be lol. long story short jason grace my beloved

[a-tired-narwhal]

Tell me more about your feelings about the details of Caleb's backstory!

Okay listen anon. LISTEN. This is going to be LONG. Did I immediately rewatch/go back through the entire wrap up to take notes? YES I DID. Anon I'm sorry this is so late, I didn't see your ask until after the stream. I hope this finds you (*＾3＾)/～♡

----

Caleb fucking Widogast. Liam O'Brien always creates/portrays characters that CAPTURE ME. And it is purely the undertow of SUFFERING that I crave.

As a survivor of an abusive childhood, specifically with manipulation, neglect, and physical trauma, and having a controlling abuser in a position of power over you - I was surprised and delighted by Liam's playing of Caleb, and I'm sure that I'm probably not the only one, but Caleb's backstory just had me nodding along. Was not surprised at all by what was revealed about the blumentrio's relationship being trauma-bonding and probably why I'll never be an avid shipper of them. Nothing about Caleb's backstory left me gasping - because it's a relatively common abuse survivor story, except it's in the world of dungeons and dragons with high fantasy and magic and more common place murdering than today in places where most Critters presumably live.

Let's break it down.

Caleb was born as Bren to a less than well off family, who wanted their child to have a better life than them. Bren is a gifted child, and this will immediately put a bullseye's target on a child's back, make no mistake, for abusive persons. Now, I don't know if it's a pretty obvious that parents would trust in a teaching figure to take their child for that child's betterment, because I don't have parents who wish for my betterment ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, but I like to think that Bren's parents handed him off hoping for his brightest future.

Trent is basically the textbook example of a Cult Leader. Beyond the experimentation he did on his students; everything he put the Blumentrio through is how you beat down and brainwash people, especially children/adolescents. Textbook. TEXTBOOK. It was the dnd equivalent of the Hilter Youth. Now my personal experience featured the tool of isolation, so I didn't have two childhood friends to pour myself into and have threesome's with, but that's actually smart of Ickythong, because when you're left alone with your whirling brain for too long, and there's no one to hold over your head - we start thinking those rebellious thoughts, and at some point we decide we have nothing to lose, and we will do ANYTHING to shake that control. No, he left them in that abandoned tower together so they would be forced to bond with each other, as well as allowing them not to die of exposure alone.

Trauma-bonding CAN be a manipulation and used against you. Now. We have three adolescents trying not to freeze to death by being as close as physically possible. For those that don't know; sharing body heat works best skin to skin - ya get naked and THEN you wrap up together to stay insulated. Awkward groping is going to happen, and it's more than likely accidental. But when you add raging hormones to the mix, yo it's not going to stay accidental for very long (that in no way indicates non consent, it can be either way), and the feelings can catch hard when you're young and physical and EVERY HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP YOU HAD HAS BEEN TAKEN FROM YOU, IF YOU EVEN EVER HAD ONE. (I do not know Eadwulf or Astrid's home lives so your guess is as good as mine. We should probably ask Liam)

So you've got horny teenagers, with above average intelligence, being systematically abused... Bam. Trauma-bonded Blumentrio.

BUT HERE'S THE THING. Trauma-bonding can only get you so far. And they are children, actively being raised to NOT HAVE THEIR OWN THOUGHTS AND IDENTITIES. The relationship they built, the romantic and sexual, are based off of a shared hostile environment and survival needs. And when those circumstances are no longer there, the relationship tends to fall apart.

I love that Matt talked about Astrid for a bit, sad we didn't get more on Eadwulf - but Matt didn't really spend a lot of time roleplaying Wulf compared to Astrid, so he'd have more insight into her. I also find it interesting that the Blumentrio took 3 very different, but again SO COMMON, paths in dealing with their abuse. But that's a different rant.

Focus with me now on what Matt said about Astrid. She was actively seeking power throughout the campaign, looking always to climb that ladder to the top, for her own purposes which were not stated, and was willing to do anything, sacrifice anyone, to get that power. Was it a burden to her? Yeah I think so. Did it weigh on her? Again I personally think it did. But she was goal-oriented and she wasn't going to let anything stop her, not even herself, and she hated Trent. Matt implies that all three of the Blumentrio did/do. Astrid, Wulf, and Caleb were wildly different people - I don't think they would have stayed together even if Bren had stayed Bren instead of becoming Caleb.

I know A LOT of people were miffed over how Liam and Matt showed Caleb's and Essek's love for each other; and I am SO glad that Liam touched on this; Essek reminded Caleb too much of Astrid and Eadwulf. Now I know we love to joke that that Redhead Dirt Wizard has a Type (smart, ambitious, vaguely amoral), and believe me I LOVE THE JOKE, but Caleb pumping to brakes on Hot Boi makes THE MOST LOGICAL SENSE AND I WAS SO DELIGHTED WHEN LIAM PLAYED IT THAT WAY. Caleb was still trying to heal himself; WHY THE HELL WOULD HE JUMP INTO A MESS CALLED ESSEK? That's some mf UNHEALTHY, TOXIC romance trope ya got there. People fix themselves, not each other. THAT'S WHY CANON SHADOWGAST IS SO GOOD. THEY ARE WORKING TO IMPROVE THEMSELVES FIRST. THAT'S SO HOT.

Ahem.

So the Blumentrio hangout in Astrid's room to sex and study, in threes and twos (I have weird polyam questions, Liam). Now, I'm foggy on the exact timeframe that was together at Academy > kill your parents > Bren is chucked into the Sanitarium; but it's clear that after the murdering of parents, Bren is tagged as the "weakest link" - maybe he broke because he actually loved his family/had a loving family, maybe the manipulation spell from Ickythong didn't sit on him as well as Astrid and Wulf, maybe boi wasn't made for killing (a lie, the boi is a total killer, you have to be in most dnd campaigns), who knows. But he broke, and Astrid and Wulf handed him over - it would be dangerous for them if they tried too hard to protect him.

Because in that environment, in those circumstances, in that set up; you do what you have to, to survive. You hurt people you love, you hurt people you don't know, you even hurt yourself if it means improving your own odds. It's instinct. It's not your fault. You are doing the best you can with what you have available.

I don't hate Astrid and Eadwulf; I just have more emotional attachment and investment in Caleb, and prefer the color purple on him.

Which is actually a great segue into THE WOMAN AT THE SANITARIUM WHO FREED HIS MIND; Matt Mercer you beautiful man, thank you for giving us a Moonweaver connection, my lil widomauk heart was sent aflutter! So, here's the thing. Places like that, sanitariums, psych wards, etc - if you are not certifiably insane before you go in, you will be eventually. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest is not a fucking joke. But the thought of some forgotten Moonweaver Cleric recognizing Bren's torment and just, poof, dissolving that spell? *Chef's kiss* glorious, wonderful, everything I needed.

Anon, I don't know if this is what you wanted or expected - but here it is, my sincerest apologies 🐳

[flying-elliska]

one of the most impactful things I have read lately are two of French author Edouard Louis' books, Pour en finir avec Eddy Bellegueule and Qui a tué mon père (translated into English as The End of Eddy and Who Killed my Father). It's been two months and I'm still thinking about it.

The first book is an 'autobiographical novel' about the author's childhood growing up as an obviously gay boy in one of the poorest areas of France, until he leaves and reinvents himself as a writer. It's fraught with bigotry, abuse, bullying, violence, deprivation and social despair, and it's one of the most harrowing things I have ever read. It reads as many things as once : a recognition of trauma, an angry exorcism, a cry for society at large to pay attention, and to be honest, as a horror story.

It was criticized by some in France as portraying the working class in a manner that was too negative, which tells me they missed the point entirely...ironic for a book by someone who actually grew up poor - one of my least favorite things ever is progressives telling a marginalized person they can't talk about their own experiences because they don't fit the desired mold. (The French love to romanticize the working class and I'm pretty sure it's often an avoidance mechanism.)

The point of the book is so obviously not about 'look at how terrible and bigoted those poor people are'. Little Eddy spends a big part of the narrative trying to escape - himself at first, then his family/circumstances and the persistent homophobia everywhere. In the end of the book, he finally manages to get accepted into a fancy high school in the city on a scholarship and tries really hard to fit in. The last scene of the book is a bunch of his - educated, upper/middle class - classmates throwing homophobic taunts at him, starting the cycle anew. I can't think of a clearer way to say 'this is not a story about a sad gay boy escaping the evil bigoted countryside for the city and then everything was wonderful!!!! this is a story about a systemic, pervasive problem.'

One of the key arguments of the book, to me, is how homophobia, sexism and bigotry in general are both a product and a reproduction mechanism of social and economic exclusion. For instance, he describes how the norms around what it means to be a man in his village (being tough, disobeying authority, quitting school early to go work at the factory, drinking alcohol, neglecting your own health, fighting over women, repressing your feelings, etc) perpetuates the cycle of poverty ; but again this isn't 'oh these people are so stupid' and more 'these people are trapped'. Because he makes it evident how degrading and dehumanizing poverty can be, this masculinity reads as a desperate attempt to cling to a certain amount of dignity - it's an extremely dysfunctional coping mechanism. At the same time, anyone falling outside of the mold is violently ostracized (like Eddy, who tries and fails to fit in). So the system keeps reproducing itself.

In Who Killed my Father, the author makes his political argument clearer. This is more of an essay, centering on his father, arguably the most complex figure in the first novel. The man is an angry, bigoted alcoholic who makes his family miserable ; at the same time he is the son of an abusive father who makes a point of honor to never hit his kids or wife even though it's very normalized in this context. In this essay the author keeps talking about the moments of almost tenderness with his father that haunt him, the picture he has of him doing drag in his youth, the fact that the father tried to leave the village when he was young to find a better life for himself with a close friend but failed and had to come back - the moments of what-ifs, of trying to struggle free from the cycle, when the system appears almost fragile and not so unbreakable after all, that the son kept holding close like a sort of talisman.

The narrative is structured around the fact that his father injured his back working in a factory and that he had to keep doing physical labor afterwards for money, instead of resting to recover, until it completely destroyed his body. Now he finds himself bed-bound at 53. Louis inquires into who is responsible for this premature 'death'. After considering individual choices, he turns towards political decisions - the successive governments, left and right, who have been destroying the French welfare system for decades and accelerating inequality. The point is to step out of the neoliberal obsession with personal responsibility and who is guilty and who is a bad or good person, and look at systems.

An element that isn't focused on but hovers over the story constantly is that this village is one where the majority of the population consistently votes for the extreme right National Front party in most elections. The book is too angry and nuanced to be some stupid "it's not their fault that they're racist because they're poor!" argument. It doesn't make any excuses for how awful this is but instead illustrates how dehumanization replicates itself, how people being denied basic dignity leads to them wanting to deny it to others. If you want to really understand the rise of the far right you have to look at where the inequality comes from in the first place, and how easy it is for people in power to wash their hands of it by blaming the bigoted masses. (Just like you can blame societal ills on minorities ! Two for one strategy.)

Towards the end of the essay, the author talks about how proud his father is of his son's literary success - for a book who clearly depicts him as a horrible person ! And this is a man who has spent his life openly despising anything cultural, because it never showed him a life like his own. But maybe now he feels seen, now he knows people want to read about these things. Maybe there is a reclamation of dignity through looking at the horror head on. Maybe his son somehow slipping through the cracks of the cycle gives him more room. The man stops making racist comments, and instead asks his son about his boyfriend. Most importantly, he asks his son about the leftist politics he's engaged in. They talk about the need for a revolution.

I think what strikes me the most is this attitude of "wounded compassion" that permeates the book. What do you do when your parents are abusive but even after you grow up, you can't help but still love them, and you know they've been shaped by the system that surrounds them ? Recognizing, speaking the harm is essential. You need to find your own freedom, sense of worth, and safety. You need to dissect the mechanisms at hand so they lose at least some of their power over you. You need to find people who love and believe you. But then what? Do you dismiss your persistent feelings of affection and care for those who hurt you as a sign you're just fucked up in the head ? You could just decide to never speak to them again, and it would be justified, but is that really what is going to heal you the most? It's important to realize you have the choice. But there are no easy conclusions.

This makes me think of a passage I have just read in Aversive Democracy by Aletta Norval. The essential ethos of radical democracy, she says, is about taking responsibility for your society, even the bad parts, instead of seeing them as a foreign element you have to cleanse yourself of. It's too fucking easy for queer progressives, especially the middle class urban kind, to talk about dumb evil hicks, to turn pride into a simple morality tale, and forget that any politics that don't center the basic dignity and needs of people are just shit. The injury is to you and by you and you have a duty of care just as much as a duty of criticism. (And this is obviously not only applicable to class matters.) You can't just walk away and save your sense of moral purity. (This is not an argument that the oppressed are responsible for educating the oppressors ; it's about how privilege is not an easy simple ranking and it is too damn easy to only focus on the ways in which you are oppressed and forget the ways in which you may have more leeway.)

There is no absolute equivalence between political and family dynamics but the parallel feel very relevant somehow. Several truths can coexist at once : you needed help and it was not given. You were let down. It's important to recognize that people are responsible of how they treat each other. You need to call out what isn't ok and stand up for yourself. At the same time, there is a reason why things are like this. Making people into villains is often bad strategy (within reason!), and in the end, easy dichotomies are often an instrument of power. The horrors you have been through might have given you a very specific wisdom and grace you do not have to be afraid of ; you are not tainted by your compassion (it is very much the opposite of forced forgiveness ; it has walked through the fire of truth.)

To me these books fit into what French literature does best, sociological storytelling a la Zola or Victor Hugo - the arguments aren't new and they can come across as heavy handed, even melodramatic. But I'll argue that the viscerality is the point, how the raw experience of misery punches through any clever arguments about how exploitation persists for the greater good of society. Really worth reading if you can do so with nuance.

[uncloseted]

Recently I've been seeing some tiktoks from people who are apparently "against adoption". I don't really go into their profiles to see what they mean exactly and what they think we should do with children in foster care. They always say that "no one is entitled to another person's baby". At the risk of sounding insensitive, it looks like most of them were adopted and had a bad experience with it and probably resent their birth parents for "abandoning" them. But I don't really know.

I also know that there are some problems with the adoption system in America, but I'm not extremely familiar with it because I don't live there. Please tell me if you need more information and I'll look for it

Honestly, you have no idea how much I've wanted someone to ask my opinion on this 😂 TikTok has been trying to feed me these videos, too, and I have very strong feelings about them. I've been wondering if the fact that TikTok is a Chinese company has something to do with why anti-adoption TikToks keep getting promoted, since China is one of the most common countries that the US adopts from.

I think you're probably right in your assessment that a lot of the very vocal anti-adoption people on social media are people who were adopted themselves and have unresolved trauma around it. Many of them seem like they're not really in a place emotionally where they can imagine experiences of adoption that aren't like their own, or situations in which adoption might be logistically necessary.

That said, there are some serious problems with how we approach adoption in the US, and those problems are important to talk about. So first let's go over some of the issues that the adoption system in the US has, and then we can talk about some potential solutions to those issues and why being totally anti-adoption doesn't really make sense.

What Does Adoption Look Like in the US?

To start, let's go over what adoption actually looks like in the US. The US has an unusually high rate of adoptions- about 3 adoptions per live birth, in contrast to countries like Sweden and Norway (1.1 per 100 live births) and Australia (0.2 per 100 live births). Approximately 15% of those adoptions are international, 40% are from foster care, and 45% are "other" (including voluntary adoptions through domestic adoption agencies and stepparents or other family members adopting a child directly). Roughly 2-3% of all children under the age of 18 are adopted. Infertility is the most common reason that parents seek to adopt a child they're not related to. Kinship adoptions (children being adopted by family members or close family friends) are typically the first option considered by foster care workers when children are removed from their homes.

Types of Adoption

In the US, we have both open and closed adoptions. Open adoptions allow the biological parent to be in touch with the adoptive parents and the child, and provide the adoptive family with identifying information about their biological parent. In some states, adoptive and biological parents can enter into a legally binding contract that enforces visitation rights and what information can be exchanged about the adoption and about the child.

Closed adoptions seal all identifying information in order to protect the identities of the biological and adoptive parents, as well as to protect the child's identity. This is generally done in cases where the child is adopted as a baby, where the adoptive parents don't want their adopted child to be able to find their biological parents or to know anything about them. An estimated 5% of adoptions in the US are closed.

Disruption

In the US, we also have a process known as "disruption", which is ending an adoption. Sometimes, an adoption is disrupted before the adoption is finalized. Other times, disruptions are a court proceeding after the adoption has been made legal- more like a divorce. Disruptions can happen because the adopted child has psychological, developmental, or health issues the adoptive family can't handle or was not aware of prior to the adoption, or because the parents cannot handle being parents themselves. Disruption seems to be especially common in international adoptions, where children have suffered from spending their first few years in an orphanage. One US Department of Health and Human Services review suggested that 10-25% of adoptions are disrupted or dissolved, but it is unclear how frequently this happens because of the social stigma around disruption. Frequently, post-finalized disruptions (also known as "rehoming") are not regulated, so the child's new housing situation is not investigated to see if it is the best place for the child. As a result of this lack of oversight, rehoming is a target for child and sex traffickers.

What are the Problems With Adoption in the US?

Foster Care

Okay, so now let's dig into some of the big problems that the US adoption system has. The first one I want I want to talk about is issues with the foster care system in the US. There are a lot of issues to do with foster care, but for now I want to focus just on children who are adopted out of the foster care system.

Foster care is when a child is placed into a group home or the home of a state-certified caregiver. The state makes all legal decisions for the child, while the foster parent is responsible for their day to day care. Despite the fact that foster parents go through a licensing process that determines their fitness to be a foster parent and requires foster parents to take parenting classes, one third of foster children in the US report being abused by a foster parent or other adult in the foster home.

The goal of foster care is generally reuniting families when possible; 51% of children who exited foster care in 2010 were reunited with parents or caretakers, 8% went to live with a relative, and 21% were adopted by new parents. The majority of children are placed into foster care due to concerns of neglect (81.2% of cases in California), but those issues are not always resolved once the child enters into the foster care system.

Children who have been in the foster care system are disproportionately likely to have a mental illness, and some studies suggest that as many as 47.9% of foster care youth show signs of serious emotional or behavioral problems. In California, as many as 30% of previous foster children are diagnosed with PTSD. Nearly half of all children in foster care have chronic medical problems. Only 56% of children in foster care graduate from high school (compared to 89.80% of the general population), and 3% graduate from college (compared to about 34.98% of the general population). The emotional trauma that can accompany having been in the foster care system may make children more difficult to adopt and make it more difficult for them to adjust to their adoptive family. About 10% of children placed in foster care stayed in foster care for five years or more.

Further, never being adopted from the foster system comes with negative consequences of its own. After aging out of foster care, 27% of males and 10% of females were incarcerated within 12 to 18 months. 50% were unemployed, 37% had not finished high school, 33% received public assistance, and 19% of females had given birth to children. Before leaving care, 47 percent were receiving some kind of counseling or medication for mental health problems; that number dropped to 21% after leaving care.

There is some data to suggest that because of the way financial incentives are set up in the foster care system, there's a financial incentive for the Department of Children and Family Services to remove children from their parents and keep them in the foster care system. There is also some data to suggest that unfit people become foster parents for the financial benefits.

International and Interracial Adoptions

Now, let's talk about international adoptions. I think when a person uses the word "adoption" this is typically what we think of- an American adopting a baby from a developing country to "give it a better life" in the US. The US is responsible for around 50% of all cases of international adoption. This practice is seen by some to be patronizing or neo-colonialist, particularly since there are children who need adoptive families within the US.

Per the Hauge Adoption Convention, inter-country adoptions should be made in the best interests of the child. Despite this, international adoptions are more likely to be products of adoption fraud than domestic adoptions. Because international adoption is a popular option in the US, instead of being about finding homes for orphaned or abandoned children, international adoption sometimes becomes about finding children for first world parents who are looking to make an international adoption. Infants are particularly "in demand" in the international adoption market, which creates a financial incentive to identify more infants for adoption even though most children available for adoption internationally are school-aged. Because of this demand for international children to adopt that outpaces the supply of international children who need an adoptive family, adoption fraud occurs.

Adoption fraud can take many forms. For example, the birth parents may have not consented to the adoption of their child at all, are under the impression that their child will be returned to them after a period of time, or were paid to relinquish custody of their children. The child may have living relatives who are willing to adopt, they may be represented as being more impoverished than they actually are, or they may be represented as having no siblings even though they do.

International adoptions are also frequently interracial adoptions, which can create some unique difficulties. Adoptees who are POC but whose parents are white still face societal discrimination, particularly if their adoptive parents live in a predominantly white community. Their identities are fundamentally different to those of their parents, and so they may struggle with feeling "different" to their family. Children of interracial adoptions are more likely to report feeling like they don't fit in anywhere, although this can be mitigated by how the adoptive family discusses race and ethnicity, how they encourage their child to engage in socialization with other people of their race/ethnicity, and how they construct a "shared family identity" that does not center race or physical appearance.

Familial or Kinship Adoptions

The last thing I want to talk about in this section is familial or "kinship" adoptions versus non-familial adoptions. As I mentioned above, kinship adoptions are typically the first option when a child is removed from their home or loses their parents. Up to 36% of children who are adopted from foster care are adopted by relatives, and around 50% are reunited with a birth parent. I had difficulty finding the number of children who are directly adopted by relatives without being put into foster care first, but know that it's relatively high. Kinship adoptions are thought to minimize trauma since the caregiver is familiar to them, kinship adoptions are more likely to preserve sibling groups, and the caregiver is more likely to live in the same community (meaning that the adopted child can continue attending the same school and won't have to move).

Proponents of kinship adoptions say that children in the care of relatives experience increased stability, fewer placements, are more likely to express positive feelings about their placements, and have fewer adverse behavioral and mental health outcomes. It is important to note that some of these factors are not directly related to familial ties themselves; for example, the reduction in behavioral and mental health problems may be due in part to spending less time within the foster care system when compared to children without family ties. Kinship adoption also increases the likelihood that the children will be reunited with their biological parents in some capacity.

Detractors of kinship adoption argue that we prioritize kinship adoptions because they are less expensive, entail less vetting and follow ups, and reduce risk of liability. They argue that kinship adoptions encourage people who should not be caring for children to do so, and that the financial incentives involved in the arrangement complicate the situation.

Difficulties Being an Adoptee

There are difficulties that can be associated with being an adopted child, particularly for international adoptees or adoptees who were previously in foster care. Adoption research can be somewhat difficult to parse because researchers do not always differentiate between different types of adoptees when recruiting for their studies. Additionally, researchers are more likely be looking at a clinical population to begin with (adoptees already diagnosed with a mental health disorder), so the data they find may not be generalizable to the entire adoptee population.

As we talked about above, international or interracial adoptees can develop feelings of a lack of acceptance or difficulty understanding their identity. Foster children can struggle to cope with the trauma they experienced before being removed from their environments, the ensuing instability that can occur from being moved within the foster care system, and the trauma from the foster care system itself.

The impact of adoption before birth (when a biological parent agrees they will let a person become the adoptive parent once the child is born) on the adoptee seems to be less clear, since the adoptive parent is the only parent the adoptee has ever known. It seems that having a stable, secure, loving, honest, and supportive family is the best predictor of outcomes, whether the child is adopted or not.

Other concerns that I've seen raised on TikTok specifically relate to the role of an adopted child in the adoptive family. They sometimes raise the belief that children are being adopted with the intention of being "parentified" (to provide physical and emotional support for the parents as opposed to the other way around). I couldn't find any evidence that this happens, but I did find a lot of articles about adoptive parents who are looking to help their adopted child stop exhibiting parental behaviors.

I also see concerns that a child is adopted with the purpose of fixing a marriage or to help the parent feel fulfilled in their life. I couldn't find any data on this claim, either. I imagine it does happen. But it also happens in parents who decide to have a biological child, and I would wager a guess that it's less likely to happen in the case of adoptions because there's an extensive vetting process before a person or couple can legally adopt.

Why Adoption is Sometimes Necessary

I do think there are cases in which adoption is necessary. In childhood development research, there's this concept called "adverse childhood experiences". These are various forms of abuse, neglect, and dysfunction that a child may experience. In the original study, the ACEs were as follows:

Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often... Swear at you, insult you, put you down, or humiliate you? or act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt?

Did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often... Push, grab, slap, or throw something at you? or Ever hit you so hard that you had marks or were injured?

Did an adult or person at least 5 years older than you ever... Touch or fondle you or have you touch their body in a sexual way? or Attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you?

Did you often or very often feel that ... No one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special? or Your family didn't look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other?

Did you often or very often feel that ... You didn't have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, and had no one to protect you? or Your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it?

Were your parents ever separated or divorced?

Was your parent or caretaker: Often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her? or Sometimes, often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard? or Ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or knife?

Did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic, or who used street drugs?

Was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide?

Did a household member go to prison?

ACEs are associated with high-risk health behaviors such as smoking, substance abuse, promiscuity, and severe obesity, as well as health conditions such as depression, heart disease, cancer, lung disease, and overall shortened lifespan. Children who had four ACEs had a seven fold (700%) increase in alcoholism, a doubling of risk of being diagnosed with cancer, and a four fold increase in emphysema. An ACE score above 6 was associated with a 30-fold (3000%) increase in attempted suicide. The greater the number of ACEs in a person's childhood, the more likely it is that they will be at risk for negative health and wellness outcomes.

I bring this concept up because adoption is essentially one ACE. It is traumatic to be removed from your primary caregiver, especially if you're old enough to remember it. But being left in a dysfunctional household will typically result in several ACEs over a child's lifetime. When these kind of events occur, it's important to immediately reduce the risk that the child will experience another one, whether that means removing the child from their home or not.

But even if you believe that adopting a child is the equivalent of 10 ACEs, there are some situations in which adoption is unavoidable. If a child loses both their parents, adoption is unavoidable, especially if they have no living relatives. If a child is "safely surrendered" (abandoned at a site such as a hospital or fire station), adoption is unavoidable. If a pregnant person decides they don't want a child, adoption is (and should be) unavoidable. We shouldn't be forcing parents to give up their children, but we also shouldn't be forcing biological parents to raise a child they don't want and aren't ready for. I think people who are fully anti-adoption fail to consider these types situations.

So What Can We do Better?

I am 110% with anti-adoption advocates when they say that there are real problems within our adoption system. But to get rid of adoption entirely is to almost literally throw the baby out with the bathwater. I'm not an expert in this field by any means, but it seems that some things we can do to improve the adoption system might include:

Introducing comprehensive sex education into schools, making access to birth control options inexpensive and easy, increasing access to abortion

Introducing easily accessible options for mental health treatment to anyone who needs it

Offering more support to parents who are struggling to take care of their child, with the goal of reducing the number of children who are removed from their biological parents to begin with

Reducing the prison population by decriminalizing certain victimless crimes

Tightening restrictions around who can be a foster parent or an adoptive parent, regardless of their relationship to the child, and standardizing those requirements across the country

Requiring all adults in a household to be considered "parents" to the adoptive/foster child, meaning that they are also subject to restrictions and foster/adoptive parent training

Putting regulations in place for "rehoming" a child

Encouraging domestic adoptions before international adoptions, if not ending the process of international adoptions entirely

Making rehabilitation of parents and reunification of families the goal except in extenuating circumstances

Ending the practice of completely closed adoptions, and legally protecting post-adoption contracts

Providing better mental health support for adopted children

Providing better resources for parents looking to adopt, including required parenting classes for states that don't already have them and specific training for parents who are adopting from the foster system, adopting interracially, or have other circumstances that may make their situation more emotionally complicated

Realigning financial incentives so that family reunification and adoption are the goals

[vampiresuns]

Again and Again, Even Though We Know Love’s Landscape | Asra x Milenko

☽ AGAIN AND AGAIN, EVEN THOUGH WE KNOW LOVE’S LANDSCAPE ☽

2.1k words. Written for Asra Week 2021, Day 4: Bonds. In which the secret of the Scourge is discovered, Anatole and Asra fight, and Milenko has no choice but to be caught in the middle.

Title comes from the poem of the same name, by Rainer Maria Rilke. Dani’s @apprenticealec​‘s Baudelaire family has a cameo here.

You can catch up with Milasra’s pre-game canon, ‘Like Thirst Holds Water’, here.

CW: Trauma talk, mentions of captivity, suggested regicide.

Milan had only seen Anatole angry, really angry, a couple of times. While his cousin was easy to rile up, he truly believed in being kind and understanding with people and lived by it, even if sometimes (a lot of times) people exasperated him. Anatole was rather introverted but there was no doubt he was as people-leaning as can be. He believed in the freedom and fulfilment of the people with a candidness that refused naiveness. Anatole, while not immune to his own youth, was no fool. 

He had a very determined set of things which did tick him off, that made him forget he was a polite person and unleashed his vindictive wrath upon whomever dared to do any of those things. Neglectful incompetence, abuse of power, people who tried to buy him over, cruel people, or people who spoke over him too many times. Same as people who purposely messed with his schedule, when he had already explained why he had one. Being lied to for no good reason or feeling betrayed by people he loved and actively gave his time to, also angered him. 

He supposed Asra’s was a good reason, or at least, he understood the reasons behind it. However, Milenko also wanted to think Asra had a good reason to keep from all of them why Muriel wasn’t around any more.

Milenko had always known there had to be another reason as to why Asra could not stand the Count — besides him trying to ask about his parents and getting nothing, Lucio’s slumming and overall intolerable personality, or the way he ruled. Milenko didn’t know what it was exactly, but he knew it had stirred something up in Asra, something that had been happening for at least a year. He had offered Asra the opportunity to come to him, whenever he was ready. His mothers had done the same, offering their home as a safe place; so had Anatole and Paris albeit in a different way than Milenko had.

Or was it different? He didn’t know. It was love, after all. 

Anatole had found out about Muriel because he had been more or less forced to go to the Colosseum. As a general rule, no Cassano, and certainly no Radošević-Cassano, went to the building. Public entertainment was not a problem, even when it was not their brand of public entertainment. Their problem was when aristocrats, or worse, rulers, used it to provide some sort of macabre bread and circus, holding people against their wills and depriving them from their rights, grooming people in a lesser position into fighting, and another set of practices they had tried to mend for years upon years with their hold of the Consulship. 

That was, perhaps, why it was even more crucial that the Cassano never went — because all of the social failings of Vesuvia which procured the main source of “gladiators” were things the Consul was usually responsible for, having to find ways to mitigate them. However, there were always people like the Baudelaire family and their circles who did not hesitate to use their own influence to keep their business models. Owning things was not a job, exploiting others was not a job. It had gotten to such a point of tension that when Valerian Cassano was still performing, he refused to do it if a Baudelaire was in the audience, especially if it was their patriarch. His husband, Iovanus, former Consul of Vesuvia, had not been much better when he was still alive: the old Count Spada had to force him to hold meetings with them, otherwise, he plainly refused to, and Iovanus was stubborn as a mule. 

The Cassano took their civic duties seriously. Way too seriously to some people. Lucio was one of those people, which made matters worse. Count-Consul cooperation was minimal, despite certain rumours flying around in the City, and with Vlastomil as the Praetor, the criminal justice system in Vesuvia was decidingly falling apart. Lucio could say whatever he wanted, but everyone who had an ounce of critical thinking could tell what the Scourge of the South, or rather, Muriel —Milenko would not use that never, he would never use a name that wasn’t Muriel’s own— actually was to him.

Now they knew Lucio had threatened Muriel with hurting Asra, and lied to Asra about his possibility to free him if he paid his “debt”. Of course, the debt didn’t really exist, it was all a fabrication from Lucio, who did it simply because he could. Anatole was so angry about it Milenko heard him say something which he had only heard him say for the worst kind of people: “In Balkovia, people like this get murdered for less.” He was so angry, Milenko saw his cousin do something he never did — he reminded Asra everything he had offered with his friendship, how his family had opened up for him, a home, a safe place, all of it with nothing attached. For him and for Muriel. 

Nothing was attached still, Anatole wasn’t asking for retribution, he was asking for Asra to acknowledge the bond they were supposed to have, when in a time of need he could’ve used the entire weight of the Cassano to get Muriel out of it. Milenko had talked to Anatole first, caught between his friend and partner, and his cousin; Asra had wanted space anyway, so Milenko offered that to him. 

One way or another, he knew better than to tell Anatole what to do. He knew his cousin like he knew the water, so all he needed to do was let him talk and nudge him, and he would come around on his own. However, the more he heard him talk, the angrier Anatole got. 

“You know Muriel is everything he's got. Muriel didn’t talk about it either.”

“Muriel is the only person more hermetic than Asra, and if he doesn’t tell Asra first, he’s probably not telling anyone. Ever. Not to forget, he thinks we’re loud and weird. I just feel—”

“Stupid and you hate it?”

“So incredibly stupid.”

Milenko tried to tell Anatole it wasn’t his fault, and he meant it. Asra had to learn how to rely on others, instead of just enclosing himself so no harm ever came through his defences, nor to him, nor to his loved ones. Who better than Milenko to know. 

Anatole just sounded bitter and dejected when he spoke. “He knows I can tell when he’s lying to my face, Milenko. I’m not asking him to tell me everything. He can tell me he doesn’t want to talk about something and establish a boundary, which he knows he can do. I am asking my friend not to lie to my fucking face when I can literally feel he’s lying to me.”

Milenko hated how bitterness looked on him. It was wrong. Out of place. 

“I’m sorry, Nana. Maybe we should’ve all seen this sooner.”

“You saw nothing of this, didn’t you?”

Milenko sighed, being his time to sound defeated. “Yes and no. You know I can’t really control what I see. I wasn’t like it was with— with… you know—”

“Decimo?” Anatole smiled for the first time in their conversation, trying to reassure him. “You can say the name of the rat bastard, even if he doesn’t deserve to step on the same earth we do.”

“No,” Milenko said, surprising himself with how teeth-grinding angry he felt, “no he doesn’t. But what I was saying is that it wasn’t like that, when I just knew you weren’t safe. I think it’s because I’m not as close to Muriel as I am to you.”

Anatole sighed. “I think he uses protective charms. He’s never shown me much, but I’m pretty sure Muriel can do abjuration like,” Anatole clicked his cheeks, a gesture he had unknowingly copied from his friend Leonore, “better than most people we know that can.” 

They sat together for a long while until Anatole said he had to go. Milenko asked him what he would do, his cousin answering with a shrug. “At this point? I am willing to do anything in my power so this slimy, little, petty tyrant eats up everything he ever did to Vesuvia, and maybe everything he’s ever done to me in Court while we’re at it. And to Aunt Cassie, and to Iovanus, and to every living person whose life he’s fucked over. I don’t know how, I don’t know when, but I’ll do it, whatever it takes.”

Milenko didn’t say anything. Anatole looked determined, and once Anatole was determined to see something through, he didn’t waver.  

When he went back to find Asra, he was curled over himself, quietly crying. Asra felt the dent on the bed when Milenko sat in it, his cries erupting and resurfacing the moment he felt Milenko rubbing his back. The poet began humming a song for Asra, offering all the comfort he could. He was always so kind to him, he was always so loving to him; Milenko was always so good to him, and Asra was a mess. He knew better than to say anything, because after the three years and counting they’ve been together, Asra knew Milenko had very disarming arguments for that line of thought of his. 

When Asra spoke again, was to ask Milenko if Anatole was angry at him. 

Milenko sighed. “I think with you is more appropriate. Not for the reasons you think, though.

“What about then?” Asra asked, voice raspy through a sniffle.

“Beloved, he understands you grow at your own rate. No one is judging you or blaming you for not knowing how to deal with things, or not knowing when to reach out. He’s angry you lied to his face. Beloved, you know Anatole senses that. You know he can tell when you do it. He doesn’t care that you don’t tell him things you’re not ready to talk about, just, don’t lie to my cousin to his face.”

Milenko didn’t know what he was expecting, but Asra beginning to cry again was not it. With a lovefull sigh, he pulled his partner closer, letting Asra cling to him like an anchor to something Milenko didn’t quite understand. He knew, however, that Asra’s grief, that which he carried alone and alone only, was deep. A wound so deep it had pierced him to the very centre of his being and changed him forever.

He wanted to tell him he understood. Milenko’s first memory wasn’t a memory; it was a pit of panic ingrained in him out of something he had been told about but couldn’t really remember. He was a toddler, and the war in Balkovia was still raging on, and someone had decided Blasio, Violeta and him weren’t the right sort of people— 

Yet as Asra cried himself to sleep, Milenko helping him wash his face and handing him water to drink before he finally passed out, Milenko said nothing. Something told him it was not the right thing to say and that Asra, distressed and afraid, would not appreciate it. It was through no fault of his own, though, and Milenko knew this. Trauma and loneliness were fissures which never sealed right, no matter how well one learnt to handle them. On top of that, Asra was not a great fan of confrontation, and his argument with Anatole had hit not in one but two places because Asra now didn’t just carry the fear of Muriel being hurt (which he had been, several times) or Muriel dying, but also the one of losing Anatole for this, or Anatole doing something that he wouldn’t be able to stop and getting hurt for something Asra would assume was his fault. 

There had to be something tragic waiting to happen in a friendship so coloured by Romance. 

Milenko couldn’t sleep, so he held Asra instead, drawing idle patterns on the magician's back as he felt his soft, sleep-heavy breath tickling his skin. For the first time in the years they’ve been together, Milenko looked at their relationship and he Saw. Again and again, Asra and him chose to walk together, a love that made Milenko feel like anywhere was a field of flowers, a love that made him feel like he would burst at the seams with it. A love so heavy, no one that young should feel it, but perhaps they felt it because they were young. 

This was what the poets meant when they said Beloved, and maybe even then, when it came to him and Asra, love would not be enough. 

Morning came, and at least for the morrow, Milenko chose to love Asra again. He’d deal with the rest later.

[atlasshrugd]

Hi,sorry to bother you.. what are your toughts about Brian being abusive with Justin like Jack was with his mother in the first two season? I mean, he definitely had his bad habits and sure didn't always treat Justin well and wasn't always emotionally available for him (especially in s1) and this eventually resulted as Justin being hurt sometimes but I never thought that it was that bad..

Thank you for this ask! 

Brian definitely was harmful to Justin in season 1 and 2, but I wouldn’t go so far as to compare him with his father.

In season 1, Brian is definitely emotionally unavailable. He doesn’t just not want a relationship; he despises relationships. He has removed that possibility from his mind and vocabulary, and most of all, he doesn’t believe he deserves one or is made for one.

Naturally, with all of his emotional trauma and his unwillingess to face it in any direct and healthy way, he is not ready for a mature relationship either. So when Justin comes along with his persistence and youth and adoration, Brian pushes him away. He doesn’t want to entertain the fact that someone may want him for more than sex, or for being ‘the stud of Liberty Avenue.’ Many factors come into this: Justin’s age, Brian’s belief system, his past trauma, his moral code, his experience, etc. He doesn’t believe or even want to believe that someone as young and innocent as Justin could want to be with him, and he doesn’t believe Justin should want that anyway.

But Justin makes him question this all the time. He is constantly pushing Brian, willing Brian to be the man Justin knows he is. This scares Brian; nobody has ever known him deeply enough to see through him. Even Mikey and Lindsey are blinded to who Brian truly is through their own filtered perceptions of what they want him to be. Nobody truly knows Brian Kinney. But Justin Taylor gets pretty damn close. “You can’t push me away,” he says. “I’m onto you.”

Nobody has ever stuck around long enough, or even wanted to stick around long enough, for Brian to ever hear these words. This is the first time someone has ever said that to him and meant it. Brian, most of all, is afraid to be known. He hides behind his persona and uses external means to prove his self-worth. So when Justin consistently sees through him and isn’t afraid to say it, it terrifies Brian. Most of the time it makes him retreat even further into the asshole persona as a defence mechanism. When Brian is afraid, he lashes out. 

And because Season 1 Brian Kinney is quite unhinged and in denial, he doesn’t think twice about lashing out at Justin. He convinces himself he doesn’t want Justin in his life, that he’s “trying to get rid of him” but he just keeps bouncing back. And the scary part of it is - that Brian might actually want Justin to stick around. 

Because of Justin’s maturity, I think everyone forgets how young and impressionable he is (including Brian), so Brian doesn’t think twice about possibly conditioning Justin in a potentially harmful way in the long-run. I don’t think Brian realizes just how much of a sponge Justin is until the King of Babylon contest when he uses Brian’s own tricks against him. I think that was also his first flash of fear where he thought: Perhaps I have made him too much in my image.

The truth is, Brian in Season 1 is mostly irresponsible and selfish. As much as I adore him, nobody can excuse his actions even though we know his reasons for them. He has not yet learned responsibility for another person, because part of his code of conduct is that everybody should be responsible for themselves. This philosophy is not wrong, but he takes it to the extreme to further shield himself from being let down. Even with a kid, Brian makes the choice to only be a ‘drop-in’ dad who only contributes through money, because that’s all he thinks he can be. He doesn’t want to even risk turning out like his father, so in his mind, it’s better just not to try. (However, he has a moment of clarity when he decides not to sign over his parental rights to Mel. That was his first flash of ‘Hold on. I am responsible for this child, and I want that responsibility. I accept it.’)

It isn’t until the prom when he learns what it truly means to be responsible for another persons life. There, he is forced to face reality head-on; how easy it is to lose a person, how precious life truly is, how easily it can be snatched away from you. Here we see Brian in his barest form. Terrified out of his skin, guilt-ridden, and hollow. Here is when he takes full responsibility; too much, in fact. He believes the bashing is his fault, that Justin nearly died because of him. It’s a turning point for Brian where he ceases to be that callous, selfish man from Season 1. That night at the prom, his heart was broken.

In Season 2, we see a new side of Brian. The caring, hesitant, selfless side. He knows how easy it is to lose Justin, so he doesn’t make the same mistake of pushing him away to protect himself. He lets him in a little more, he admits that he wants Justin to stay, that he will be “doing exactly what I want to do: coming home to you.” But while Brian has had a wakeup call, that doesn’t mean he will change his entire way of thinking overnight.

Throughout the second half of season 2, we start to see Brian sink into his old habits of neglecting Justin emotionally. Brian’s ‘love language’ isn’t through words of affirmation; it’s through acts of service. He believes actions speak louder than words, and with that philosophy, he convinces himself that he is taking care of Justin in all the necessary ways; namely, paying for his school fees, asking him to stay in his loft, helping him financially, driving him around, etc. Because nobody has ever done those things for Brian, he believes these actions scream affection. 

The truth is, Brian Kinney is a man of conviction. As an advertising executive, he knows the futility of words and how easy it is to manipulate them. He knows they are just words, and this has been proven to him time and time again by his parents. This is part of why he doesn’t believe in marriage and relationships. “Love is just something people tell themselves they’re in so they can get laid.” He has been proven how meaningless words really are, so he doesn’t see the necessity for them.

But Justin does see the necessity. After the bashing, he changed. He was no longer that cock-sure, confident, self-assured boy from Season 1. The bashing wiped away all control he thought he had over his life. Something was taken from him against his will, something he will never get back: his memories, the control of his left hand, his boundless dreams of being an artist. He realized that Justin Taylor is not invincible. This loss of control terrified Justin, as it would anyone. He realized that reality was harsh and life takes and takes from people who don’t deserve it. He felt like a stranger within his own body, like he didn’t own any part of himself. He felt lost and confused and helpless. 

So, understandably, he needed reassurance. He needed clarity. He needed the words, and things spelled out for him. He needed some semblance of control, some certainty in all the chaos of his mind. He no longer had the mental energy to play the guessing game with Brian. He could no longer assume Brian’s feelings, or read into his actions. He needed Brian to say the words.

But Brian couldn’t. And that was why Season 2B happened. The moral of all these ramblings is: yes, Brian inflicted some form of emotional abuse on Justin in Season 1. Yes, their relationship had toxic elements. But no, I don’t believe their relationship can be compared with that of Jack and Joan Kinney’s. That was a loveless marriage between two hateful and bitter people. While they each have their issues, Brian and Justin’s relationship ultimately is one built on trust and love.

We don’t need rings or vows to prove that we love each other. We already know that.

[ethrenisnotthehero]

Let’s talk about this now.

Everything that follows in this post is totally my own opinion. It has nothing to do with Jill; it wasn’t read by her or condoned by her. It’s my story and my experiences, and I think it’s important in this context because some of a survivor’s worst enemies are often other survivors.

As someone who has survived abuse, and as someone who is currently in training to become a Court Appointed Special Advocate for youth victims of abuse and domestic violence, I’m going to explain why internet callouts and motions like the #MeToo movement are not only something you can believe, but that you should believe because of the complete and systematic failures that continue to persist in our real-life institutions of justice.

Please heed the tags. Nothing is in too graphic of detail, but I remember when just the words were enough for me.

TW: Abuse, Neglect, Gaslighting, Sexual Assault, Pedophilia, Trafficking, Drug Use, Mental Illness, Violence

I spent a majority of the first years of my life in sexual slavery.

Before April, 2004, pseudoephedrine could be purchased over the counter and without an ID in the United States. Tablets of it were used across the nation to manufacture what some people still call “the drug of the 90s:” methamphetamine. In 2021, many people might know meth because of television shows like Breaking Bad, and make xenophobic jokes about Mexican drug cartels and the infamous “Wall” while breaking up blue-tinted sugar candy.

The truth is, few people our age this day remember methamphetamine use being the epidemic it was when Oklahoma enacted its ban of pseudoephedrine in stores. In 2005, which required medication to be sold at licensed pharmacies and for purchasers to present a photo ID to acquire limited amounts, OK officials located and shut down 334 home meth labs -- less than half of the 812 seized before the ban.

In fact, meth use was so widespread and easily accessible that 93% of people who went through rehabilitation for it would end up using again. It was viciously addictive, and the help that was offered was only a drop in the bucket of a growing sickness that the government wrote crime bills to control instead of trying to treat the symptoms. By 2004, it was too late for a lot of people. By 2004, it was too late for me.

My birth parents spent their entire lives addicted to meth. My birth mother grew up in the American foster care system and was adopted as a teenager by junkies in the deep South; my birth father was a paranoid schizophrenic who spent the first 7 years of his life locked in a closet by his parents until they lost custody, and then aged out of the system. She used drugs to get away from the fact that her birth parents despised her; he used meth to “calm” his paranoid rages when he couldn’t afford medication. They both tried rehab. They both failed to stay sober.

They had several children before us. My birth mother miscarried. She tried again. My birth father lost custody of his first before he met her, and they relapsed together and lost custody of a second child. That child died from complications of neglect.

They had me.

They stayed sober for six months. They relapsed again. They weren’t smart enough to make meth, so they bought it. They had another kid. My birth father lost his job. They couldn’t afford it. They couldn’t afford medicine or food. They had no money, they couldn’t get work, and so they gave up what they did have.

2004 was too late for me.

When the ban came, my parents moved to try to escape. We came to a new state. They found a job. My “uncle” became their new dealer and they paid the only way they knew how. One day, a SWAT team showed up at our door. They told us we could pack one box of our belongings, and that was the last time we ever belonged to those people.

The law chased them down, but not for what they did to us. They were given a plea deal; my birth parents would sell out their suppliers and their “business partners,” and they wouldn’t go to prison. The entire case would be locked up, the records closed, and they could try to get their kids back.

My parents never served a single day for their crimes.

They showed up once to visitation. They kissed me. They promised me they would come back. I privately wished that they would disappear forever, and they did. I later learned they relapsed the day before our next visitation, and had parental rights terminated.

The law does not protect children. It rarely protects the victims that it’s meant to, but it never protects people who can’t speak for themselves. Unless you have money, no one will care. If no one cares, your transgressors will never, ever answer for their crimes. To this day, the United States Justice System will not let me own records or copies of records of the case against my parents. I couldn’t speak until I was six years old. When I was put into foster care, I couldn’t eat solid food for three months. My gag reflex was so bad I couldn’t brush my teeth comfortably until well after I was adopted. I trembled under my bed because my nightmares blended into my waking hours and I was so scared I couldn’t even scream.

When I turned 18, my birth mother found me. She lives with my birth father in a state known for its rampant meth use. She had another child. He’s 14 now. He plays soccer, has girlfriend, learned the flute last year, and his favorite Pokemon is Rayquaza. He got all A’s in his final year of middle school. They started over.

I talk to him sometimes. I don’t talk to her, because when I asked her to apologize for what happened, she told me the government was lying to me. She told me there were two sides to every story. She told me that my adopted parents had poisoned me against her. She called me an ungrateful little whore and told me that God would punish me one day. She told me she was a victim, too, and she deserved a relationship with me.

She is a victim. I still remember the sound when my birth father broke her arm in a rage when she threatened to leave him. 

I also still remember trying to hide with her as she lay on her bed, high as a kite, not so much as lifting a finger to help me.

Being a survivor doesn’t give a person the excuse to minimize the experience of other survivors. Some people get justice. A lot of people don’t. Sometimes the police swoop in and make predators pay. Sometimes they shoot mentally ill foster children to death because the alternative takes too much time and effort. Technology is a useful tool, because it gives a voice to the voiceless. It empowers people who are made powerless. My adoptive parents didn’t believe me when I finally had the words to say “I was harmed.” They beat the shit out of me when I was little for trying to draw out what was wrong. They stopped letting me see a therapist when she told them I showed signs of serious trauma from sexual violence. The internet gives a rope to people who are stuck in a whole with everyone around them calling them a liar. Technology gives survivors and outlet to make their story their own again.

Your story doesn’t erase other peoples’ stories. People who are nice to you can be hurtful to others. What you see isn’t necessarily the truth and until we have a government that survivors can rely on it’s always, always important to believe survivors.

[treestargarden]

wonder egg priority, episode 5, “the girl flautist” analysis below the cut

tw: paedophilia, suicide, beauty standards (thinness, fatphobia, colorism/racism, youth)

FUCKING FINALLY WE GET SOME INFO ON NEIRU

neiru’s weapon

so neiru’s weapon happens to be a combination weapon. i’ve discussed previously that the weapons seem to correlate to each girls’ life--i’ve even discussed specifically they could be coping mechanisms. 

stay with me here, but i honestly think neiru could be an assassin. we know so little about neiru’s life up to this point, and it was very briefly mentioned how her sister died at the very end of the episode. 

as mentioned in the episode, neiru was stabbed by her sister, before she jumped off the bridge to her death. its unknown /why/ this happened, but i have a guess, which will be discussed later. 

anyway, neiru’s coping mechanism after her sister’s death has been to fight more. she said specifically she isn’t saving wonder eggs to save her sister, she’s doing it for herself, so she doesn’t have to live with the pain of forgetting about her (literally and metaphorically). the weapon is a combination sword/gun--gun for assassination? and sword to commemorate her sister stabbing neiru. 

neiru’s wonder killer quotes

so up to this point, i’ve made it pretty clear that i think even if the wonder killer’s are the wonder eggs’ specific abusers, the killers are also very closely linked to each girls’ own trauma as well. during both of neiru’s wonder egg scenes, there were some specific quotes that caught my attention that could point toward neiru’s backstory a little more and provide motive behind neiru’s sister’s death. 

the first wonder killer briefly spoke about the egg’s parents not loving her, and that only he could ever love her (grooming). but this also points to a very specific trauma--possibly neglect for this egg. and as mentioned previously, the girls’ are probably working through their own traumas as they save the eggs. its quite possible that neiru and her sister faced a lot of neglect in the household (which would make sense, considering neiru has inherited a large company--her parents being rich/powerful would be significant support for such an inference). this wonder egg also spoke about capitalism, which i found really interesting, considering much of the stories up to this point haven’t really mentioned... capitalism. 

quite honestly, i’m not sure how to take this into the context of trauma, but it could also lead into some of the beauty standards trauma talked about later in the episode. i suppose, though, that this sort of line could point to the fact that beauty standards are very capitalist-motivated. its within the realm of tell women they aren’t good enough naturally, so they must spend all their money on looking young. 

now that i think about it, i kinda wanna delve into the beauty standards controversy that’s been going on in the fandom. 

neiru’s next wonder egg broaches the subject of beauty standards. in this scene, neiru is being tormented by both the wonder egg /and/ the wonder killer. the wonder egg belittles neiru for continuing to live, when she could die young and beautiful.

i think a really important key word in this killers quote is “fairest.” often, people tend to read it as “most beautiful.” but, given the context of this being in neiru’s scenes who is the dark-skinned girl of the ensemble, its important we read more closely into this quote. what its really asking is “who is the /lightest/ of them all” specifcally to denote that lightness = beauty. 

the colorism that /should/ be read into this scene is compounded by the fact that the egg berates neiru for the state of her hair, asking if she does “hair treatments” and that her hair has gotten “damaged.” this could directly point to some other traumas neiru has experienced irl, too. up to this point, no other girls’ appearance has been specifically commented on like this. i want to point out that literally the scene just before this, rika was tickling neiru. neiru’s reaction was to laugh, because she /somewhat/ trusts rika. 

the juxtaposition between being touched affectionately, and being touched to be criticized is incredibly important in this scene and can definitely point to some of the background we have yet to uncover into neiru’s past. 

in terms of neiru and her sister: my line of thinking is both girls’ parents were absent, but when their mother (specifically mother, because this egg is the one repeating the beauty “advice” rather than a male wonder killer) was around, she probably belittled the girls about their appearances. 

i don’t think neiru’s sister’s age was mentioned, but i have a feeling she was older, given there was a lot of emphasis on age in this particular scene with this wonder egg. perhaps neiru’s sister had finally decided 1 of 2 possibilities:

1) enough was a enough. she was miserable and wanted a way out. but this doesn’t explain why she would stab neiru or 

2) neiru’s sister was probably of the same mind as this wonder egg--kill yourself while you’re young so you can stay beautiful forever. neiru’s sister was probably so enticed by this idea, that she felt she was doing neiru a favor by stabbing her (hoping it would kill her, too). 

the controversy behind the beauty standards of this particularly series is that... everyone is thin, young, etc. And I absolutely agree that is the case for this series. HOWEVER, i do not think its controversial. i think the creators are using a very specific medium to drive home points about racism/colorism, paedophilia, beauty standards, fatphobia, etc. Most of the wonder killers have been... paedophiles to all of the girls in the show up to this point (eggs included). i think this show specifically tackles a lot of the issues people don’t /think/ it tackles. 

for instance, the girls are children. they’re small, frail, “helpless”. All of these are characteristics that paedophiles look for in a “victim.” this series specifically calls out the traits in our society that are deemed “valuable” or “attractive” as they are /very/ childish traits (flat chests, thin legs and arms, small stature, meek personality, youthfulness, etc.)

that’s just my 2 cents on the situation though. i think this anime does an incredible job at tackling a lot of these difficult subjects. no it isn’t perfect, but i think that’s actually realistic--real life, real /trauma/ is messy and there’s no one /right/ way to talk about it. i think this anime does a fantastic job highlighting the different ways different people talk about it, excuse it, resolve it, think about it, etc. i think that’s the beauty of healing. the fact that we can all sit here and argue about the validity of what this anime has been illustrating is an act of healing. 

anyway, this is long enough and it ended up being more of a neiru character analysis more than an episode analysis, lol. but i really love her character and i can’t wait to see where she goes from here. i am absolutely in love with the mystery of her background. 

[poetryofyouth]

I did it, I finally quit psychiatry

(I wrote this for r/antipsychiatry, but I thought I might as well post it here too. don't read if you're easily triggered)

It's been a long journey through hell, but I've had enough. I'm not taking any more shit from incompetent, clueless doctors who think they know me better than I do myself. Who do not listen to me when I beg them to change the medication and instead just give me more of the stuff that is making me worse. I'll finally be free.

I doubt anyone cares, but I'll just tell you my story from the beginning. This is going to be a very long story. Basically, I became depressed at 14 or 15, I'm a 22 year old woman now. The reason was mainly that I couldn't handle the pressure from school. I am a very ambitious, perfectionist but also extremely lazy person. I was constantly beating myself up for not achieving what I wanted to achieve but also unable to fix my behavior. I did also have some slight, not even that serious trauma from a emotionally neglectful childhood and my parents telling me I was a failure every time I would get a grade that wasn't an A. At some point it all became too much and I started self-harming. Then I got worse and worse, self harming occasionally but severely, until I finally attempted suicide at 17.

I was locked into a youth psychiatry institution against my. will. I had my rights, my freedom taken away and was forced to take heavy medications. The very first evening I asked the psychiatrist at the hospital about the side effects of the medications, but he refused to tell me anything and instead just said I should trust his professional judgement. Unfortunately I was too tired and unwell to keep asking so I just accepted not knowing what would happen to me.

They gave me very high doses of Seroquel (Quetiapine), SSRIs and other stuff that I don't even know because they didn't even tell me the names of what they made me take. I just know the names of the medications I was supposed to continue to take after the hospital stay because they were in the papers they gave me. Then after a few days I begged the doctor to take me off the meds because I was so tired I could barely move. I had never felt worse in my life. she refused and instead upped my dose further.

I got worse and worse until I managed to get access to a razor blade I injured myself with on purpose. When my roommate told the nurses what I had done, I was forcefully, against my will restrained onto a bed. Yes, they actually tied me to a bed. And then pushed the bed into a small room where I was alone, and tied to the bed, unable to move. Of course I had a severe panic attack. The room had video surveillance, but it took them quite some time to notice that I was having a panic attack. they finally came and gave me something to breathe into and I calmed down more or less, but they didn't untie me. I later had to pee, and they didn't even untie me for that. I had to pee into a bedpan while tied to the bed, with a nurse watching me. it was incredibly humiliating. I was not untied the entire night. I was restrained until the next morning. When they finally untied me, I had quite seriously injured myself from fighting against the restraints. I had basically torn the skin off my ankles, the scars are faded now but they were visible for many years. It was quite painful. I do consider this incident of being restrained against my will psychiatric abuse, especially because I was restrained for so long. In total probably 10 hours, maybe even more.

Then the hospital didn't really know what to do with myself. I had of course lost any trust I had into the nurses and doctors and shut myself off from them. So they transferred me to a different institution, a more high-security one. Of course I wasn't asked if that was okay, I had to comply. I had began to form relationships with some of the girls, so being taken away from the small support system I had was very stresssful, especially considering how fragile I was at that time.

The other institution wasn't much different, but it was good for me to be taken away from the people who had abused me. I got a tiny bit better. I started to trust the nurses there a little bit. I got along with the other patients and over all liked the hospital better for maby reasons. And then they noticed I was a little better. And then they decided I was well enough to go back to the other hospital. Of course I wasn't asked this time either. But I had made more progress there in two weeks than in the other hospital in a month. I had again started building a little support system. But worst of all, I was forced to go back to the place where I had been abused, and at the time I was still very affected by the experience. I felt incredibly powerless and betrayed, but I didn't have a choice.

Then back at the first hospital I decided I would get better, for no other reason than to finally be able to leave that horrible place.

Then two things were getting severly uncomfortable. I was weighed every week and started noticing significant weight gain. At the same time, I was hungry all the time. painfully hungry, ravenous, even. I basically felt like I was starving all the time but still put on weight. Of course that was because of the high doses of Seroquel, but no one told me. I told nurses, doctors and therapists about the hunger and weight gain, but they simply didn't tell me that was a side effect, they told me an increased appetite was a sign i was getting better. I legit thought I was losing my mind.I have struggled with weight all my life and putting weight on like that made me feel horrible.

Then the doctor decided I was well enough to start taking up school work again. I begged him not to force me to, I told them the pressure of school was the reason I was sick in the first place. Of course no one listened to me. I was forced to do school work even if I knew it wasn't good for me. they didn't care.

Then, after three months of hell, I was finally released. And only because it was Christmas, and my parents refused to leave me there over Christmas. I got a therapist and medication for home.

Then after the Christmas holidays I, against my will, started going to school again. And after about two weeks, my new therapist told me that I had to choose between dropping out of school or going back to the hospital, because school was already making me severely suicidal again. And that was one of the few good things a mental health professional had said to me. I dropped out of school and actually started getting better for real. I sometimes forgot to take my medication, and every time I did, I instanty felt better. I suddenly didn't feel like a tired zombie anymore, I actually had emotions, I felt... alive. So I begged my psychiatrist to let me stop taking medications, and a few months after being released from the hospital, I was free of them.

And everything was great. I got a job, then I volunteered in New Zealand, then, when I was in a more stable place than at 17, I took up school again and graduated with flying colors. I was doing incredibly well.

And then I started university. The first semester went okay, but my mental health quickly started deteriorating. It was the academic pressure again. That's simply something I cannot handle. Soon I started self harming again, and it became more frequent than ever before. I also got into a bad, one might even say toxic, relationship. My girlfriend had issues on her own, but her behavior towards me was often extremely triggering and I very frequently self harmed because of something to do with our relationship. I do not want to blame her for my behavior, but she often made feel worthless, like I was not good enough for her. She would frequently cancel our dates at the last minute, and when she didn't, she would be half an hour late, and when we were together, she didn't make me feel very appreciated either. I was very much in love with her and always blamed myself for everything she did. She once even talked me into having sex with her, when I had said no repeatedly. She did not accept no for an answer and kept pushing until I slept with her to make her shut up. I felt like I didn't have a choice. She didn't force me to, but she simply did not accept my "no". Anyways, it was not her who took the knife to my skin, but she was a big factor in why I did it. I never told her she was a reason for my severe self harm, I didn't want her to feel bad. I didn't hide my wounds fro. her, I mean we did see each other naked and I always had at least four or five big bandages. We just kinda... ignored that.

So then I was getting desperate and decided to get professional help once again. I went to a free psychiatrist from the student councellors and she prescribed me Seroquel once again. I told her I didn't want to take it because it had made me gain a lot of weight and made me very tired. She laughed in my face and told me Seroquel doesn't do that. I don't know if she was just incompetent or lied to me on purpose, because these side effects are experienced by pretty much every single person who takes Seroquel, they are listed in the information leaflet, and I know many people who have taken this medication, all of them had them. During the appointment, she did not even ask me how I was feeling. She prescribed me 200 mg of Seroquel XR. Now, the recommended starting dosage is 50 mg. She prescribed me a starting dosage of four times the recommended amount. Unfortunately, I did not know that back then, I didn't expect a doctor to be that negligent. I took the first 200 mg pill that very evening before going to listen to a debate. Seroquel XR takes a while to kick in, but oh boy did it kick in. I didn't even notice the tiredness that much because I was having severe heart palpitations. My vision was going from normal to black and to normal again all the time. I was dizzy and desoriented and felt my heart was about to jump out of my chest, and sometimes it stopped beating for several seconds. I legit thought I might die in the audience of a debate on ethical farming.

Of course I didn't take the pills the next day and started looking for another psychiatrist. I got an appointment relatively quickly at a private one, it was relatively hopeless to get an appointment with one my insurance would pay, but I thought if she could help me, money wouldn't matter. She prescribed me some stuff that didn't do much harm but also didn't do much good. basically, i was a little tired but that was it. i got a therapist.

About 9 months passed, I had several psychiatrist appointments where I told her the meds didn't do much good, but she never really changed anything. She also insisted that I would get tested for Borderline personality disorder and the psychologist she told me to go to diagnosed me with it. My therapist at the time agreed with me that there was no way in hell that I have BPD, but she also said that when psychiatrists see an adult who self harms, BPD is the only thing that can explain that for them.

Then fall came and a new uni semester started. I had been alright over summer, I had broken up with my girlfriend, but of course with the start of the semester, everything came crashing down.

I lasted a month in university until i impulsively took the whole pack of Seroquel I still had laying around and went to the hospital telling them i was suicidal and also told them what i had done.

Now, I have to say that the nurses in this hospital were absolute angels. They treated my with respect, I almost felt mothered. I was given a lot of activated charcoal and basically had a good night in the hospital. I also got stitches for my freshest self harm injuries, but I had several ones that were too old to be treated that way.

The next morning I was transferred. Can you guess where to? The mental hospital i had been to as a teen. Again, I didn't have a choice.

But overall, the experience at the emergency ward was not as horrible as the first time. I was an adult now and actually treated like a human person. it says a lot about my first experience that I was very surprised by that.

I felt better rather quickly, mostly because the stress factory university was eliminated. The doctor there again insisted that I had BPD even when I said that was ridiculous. They evalued me again and the psychologist came to the conclusion that I had a borderline accentuation, basically borderline borderline.

The emergency ward doctor talked me into treatment at the psychotherapy ward, so I did that for 8 weeks. it was okay, again I was treated way better than as a teen. I was allowed to have an opinion about the medication, I was even allowed to read the little side effect pamphlets. But overall it didn't really do it, I self harmed less but I still self harmed.

During that stay I decided to drop out of university and start an apprenticeship as a baker. I found a company to work for, I loved work, then Corona happened. The company had to shut down. They laid me off after I had only worked there for three weeks. Basically I fell into a hole again, became a depressive husk again.

Then some time passes and a new therapist asked me why I didn't want to go to university anymore, she basically thought i was too intelligent not to. I told her how I could never focus, how I struggled with procrastination, how I couldn't handle the pressure and she recommended that I get assessed for ADHD. Now, I had suspended I had ADHD for years, but I didn't want to bring it up myself. I didn't want to seem like hypochondriac, or an attention whore, and after all, I had told so many people about my struggles and they never suspended ADHD. But I was relieved she brought it up and I had an "excuse" to get assessed. I was professionally diagnosed with ADHD soon after and happily went to my psychiatrist with my brand new diagnosis, I was full of hope that I would finally be "fixed". She basically told me she couldn't help me because she didn't know a lot about adhd. She prescribed me a very low dosage of Strattera (10 mg) and recommend me a specialist. I called the specialist, but they told me they couldn't give me an appointment and I should call in a few months, maybe it would be possible then.

It was july, and over the course of summer I decided I would try university again. Maybe if I was medicated for ADHD, I would actually be able to study. In fall of 2020, I started a brand new program, something very different from what I had done before.

I realized pretty quickly that the Strattera wasn't helping so I found a private ADHD specialist. I was extremely excited for the appointment. Again I thought "I only have to get through these few weeks, then I will finally get proper treatment" I didn't get proper treatment. He prescribed me more Strattera, which didn't help. The next appointment was a month after the first and again, I was excited. I was sure thia time he would fix me. I was sure after that appointment I wouldn't have to suffer anymore. But again, despite me saying I wanted to try something different, and that Strattera was not helping at all, he prescribed more Strattera.

Then university was getting really stressful, I had exams before Christmas, I was frustrated about him not listening to me. I started having suicidal thoughts again, I even relapsed with self harm, it had been months since the last time. But I more or less got through it in a piece, I even passed the exams (surprisingly), and was again looking forward to the next psychiatrist appointment after the Christmas vacation.

Strattera wasn't doing nothing, but it was not doing anything helpful. Basically, it made me feel quite relaxed, chill, less stressed. Which sounds good at first. But in order to get anything done, I rely on negative motivation. Basically, if I'm not panicking over possibly failing an exam, I'm just simply not going to study. So Strattera took the tiny bit of self-discipline and motivation that I had away and replaced it with a "idgaf"-attitude.Of course I told the psychiatrist. But can you guess what he did? Bingo, he upped the Strattera dosage. Again.

Then I had a second appointment with a new therapist, an ADHD specialist for adults. I told her how he did not care what I told him about Strattera and she was extremely upset and said that I can't let myself be treated like that. I needed to call him immediately and yell at him until he does something actually useful. I was baffled. I am not a confrontational person at all and I had never even considered actually arguing with a doctor. Yes I know, it sounds stupid in hindsight, but even after all that I had experienced, I still naively thought the professionals know best.

Okay so I called him. unsuccessful. I texted him. he ignored me. He had ignored my texts telling him that I was actually worse even before that last appointment, even though he told me to contact him with any concerns, and said that he prefered texts best, I thought he was maybe busy or something and didn't think much of it, but then he was ignoring my calls and texts. I was basically ghosted by a s

psychiatrist.

Okay I thought, then I'll simply go to someone else. To my suprise I got an appointment really quickly. I knew this wasn't a good sign, because good psychiatrists, if there even are any, don't have appointments free that soon.

But still, I had hope. And was of course disappointed again. I went to her with a professional ADHD diagnosis, but for her, that wasn't good enough. She had the audacity to tell me I needed another diagnosis from her psychologist friend who, by the way, has his office in a town over an hour away. She refused to treat me at all until I got that second diagnosis. Now,. I went to her out of pure desperation, out of knowing I simply could not go on like this any longer. Because I needed treatment quickly. And she told me she wouldn't give me that. I couldn't keep a few tears from escaping my eyea, she noticed and said very condescendingly "you don't have to cry, that's normal procedure". I tried my best to fight the tears, but as soon as I left her office, I started bawling my eyes out in the middle of town

And then I knew I was done. I had tried and tried again to get help, and I had not gotten it, I had not been listened to. Something in me snapped right in front of that office building.

I went home and threw my medication in the trash. Sure, it's bad to quit cold turkey like that, but honestly I don't care. I'm done. I'm done with psychiatry, I'm done with doctors. I have had the patience of a saint, but enough is enough. That was yesterday. And today I flipped a coin, twice, once for the psychiatrist and once for the new therapist. It told me to quit both of them, so I did.

I'm done with the mental health industrial complex. It has not helped me in all those years. I have only been sedated. Fuck psychiatry, fuck psychiatrists. Maybe I am simply meant to be miserable. I'll probably drop out of uni again, I thought I would be able to do it with treatment, but I did not get treatment, and I simply cannot do it this way. I've already attempted suicide because of academic pressure twice. Maybe I'll just have to live a miserable life working a low-paying job until I'm sad enough to finally actually kill myself. I'll probably always be a wreck, but at least I won't be a sedated wreck any longer. I'll be free, until I will be free for real.

Thank you for reading all this. I know it was a lot, but I needed to get it off my chest. Thank you.

[goodluckbabe2024]

my friend i am here with the self insert oc sam parallel episode, i have a history exam tomorrow and i refuse to revise in favor of writing this. let me take you on a journey.

this is very self indulgent and spans kind of the entirety of the series (because im nosy and want to be involved in every cool plot) so im not gonna embarrass myself OR bore you but the general gist of the first episode is this:

i am an 18yr old psychic kid raised by a hunter, meeting the boys in s2 through a “my father was also murdered by a ghost of his past”, except he did not immediately assume i am the antichrist while i was an infant and raised me relatively normal, thus demonstrating that john winchester was a fucked up parent because he allowed himself to be.

i am what sam could’ve been and he is once again reminded that all he ever wanted was to be normal and loved and how that was taken away from him, unfairly. he is angry. he is jealous. he feels bad about being jealous because “her dad’s dead, what the fuck,man”. he wants me to be ok, ultimately, ofc he does, but he doesn’t understand why i got it, why he didn’t, why couldn’t john do it. this serves as more material for soul-searching bc i am a firm believer that understanding the circumstances of abuse and neglect and wrapping ur head around them helps lift the guilt we often burden ourselves with: it’s not that if sam had been a better son john would have loved him more, it’s that john refused to look at sam for what sam really was: a child wracked by generational trauma and unprocessed grief, whose autonomy was violated before he could say his first word, in need of love, and chose to instead look at sam through his own grief muddied goggles and link him to mary’s death. insane how this is turning into sam analysis isn’t it.

i am also angry because im still sort of a child but not really, not anymore, im on the cusp of adulthood and going into it knowing that the world is unfair and hateful, grief is written all over me and sam thinks oh nono, because hope’s kind of the whole point isn’t it, and i had it and now it has been taken from me along with my parent and sam feels so alone and furious with everything, he’s plagued by skull cracking demonic visions, and he doesn’t want this idealized version of himself to ultimately end up like the version of himself that he is now, the one he doesn’t understand, the one he’s afraid of. he’s looking in a weird funhouse mirror, sees a kid who was different like he was but was cherished, and sees her end up in the same position he is now: fatherless, on a quest for revenge. he thinks that if we get the monster of the week, ill be better and he’ll find his hope in that. all roads lead to rome but he wont allow this one to reach the colosseum (defying destiny theme, hello).

the monster of the week hunt begins thusly, with sam generally uncomfortable. i confide in him about my psychic abilities and i explain to the brothers that i can help. both are opposed, but i am a chaotic little bitch and get involved anyway. throughout my involvement, sam learns more about the world of psychic mediums and thinks aha! hope! maybe if i dig deep enough (whore for lore amirite babes) ill find someone who’s lived an experience similar to mine! miss oc what are ur book recs for “i think i am psychic and terrified of it” and i say “fear not nerd have a very small cup of coffee and let me tell you about this great college course on divination”. this is relevant because i wanted to see more of sam desperately trying to fit into some sort of community, even a community of supernatural folk john and dean might’ve disapproved of, and finding that, at this point in time, he does not. he’s an outsider to normal people, he’s an outsider to those in contact with the paranormal. really hammer in that freak (affectionate) tagline. (he WILL build a safe haven in the men of letters bunker for all misfits in his adulthood, party city wig sam i do NOT perceive you)

the hunt culminates in an impressive showdown that includes the following: pyrotechnics, a cool spell, seeing things that aren’t really there, the power of friendship and a butter knife thrown like a frisbee. at the end we all look like final girls because im gay so blood is sexy. sam, who has come to regard me like a younger sibling/some sort of manifestation of his inner child, learns what it’s like to be deeply concerned with a youth’s safety and has a heart to heart with dean about how yeah, handling a teenager with incredible amounts of simmering rage and unprocessed grief while being barely equipped for any guardian-like role IS hard, man, is this what it felt like every time i busted out a batshit plan last minute and barely executed it in time to survive??? “yeah. bitch” “jerk.”

the epilogue is as follows: we see sam feeling many complicated things, but he is satisfied for the moment. we have a little heart to heart while laying flowers on my father’s grave. we both look a little worse for wear, but hopeful. “what’re you gonna do now?” “im not sure. college, maybe?” we keep in touch. i go on to art school and make homoerotic art pieces, as is my right. i make guest appearances whenever they need a deus ex machina bs spell to get out of trouble.

maybe in later seasons i go a little ape shit and commit some magical atrocities in the name of the greater good. maybe i get a little antagonized and he gets to offer me the understanding he couldn’t get when he needed it. i see you, sam, treating all misfits in later seasons with kindness, and i offer you a claire-like parallel to be there for through the tough times, thus healing some of your own wounds. everyone deserves an angsty wlw teenager to bond with . (i am only on season 9 of my rewatch and i have not seen seasons 12-15 in their entirety, if he does get one im not disrespecting that character and i love them probably)

the boys hit the road. vienna by billy joel plays, because it makes me feel things.

Slow down you're doing fine

You can't be everything you want to be before your time

Although it's so romantic on the borderline tonight

Too bad, but it's the life you lead

You're so ahead of yourself that you forgot what you need

Though you can see when you're wrong

You know you can't always see when you're right

You got your passion, you got your pride

But don't you know that only fools are satisfied?

Dream on, but don't imagine they'll all come true

When will you realize... Vienna waits for you?

end scene.

this is poetry. i will cherish this forever thank you for sharing with me and good luck on your exam

[jebazzled]

SOOO the Drama: Making it Work with Tragic Backstories

Hi everyone, how are we doing? It’s been a while since my last unsolicited tutorial. Is everyone eating well? Is everyone drinking water? Dressing warmly if it’s cold wherever you live? 

Today we’ll be talking about tragic backstories, and how to use them rather than abuse them. 

This tutorial will mention a number of triggers, though not with great detail - more in the interest of providing context. 

Specific triggers mentioned: abandonment, verbal abuse, child neglect, car accident, transphobia, animal death, cheating, bullying, parental death

In the rp community we often joke about loving to put our characters through hell - about really running them ragged - making ourselves weepy. For a lot of us, writing Heavy Emotional Content is a lot more fun than fluff, or characters who are happy, fulfilled, and well-adjusted. I’m literally planning to kill off one of my characters in the next couple of weeks. I get it. 

But there’s also a fair amount of discourse in the rp community about what is pejoratively called “trauma porn.” It’s discourse that is warranted! Because while we love fictional drama, the truth is that sometimes...

well, sometimes it can be too much, can’t it? 

Here’s the thing about trauma: a tragic backstory does not a well-developed character make. Too often, too many of us lean on these traumatic histories as a crutch towards building a character, without meaningfully exploring that trauma with any depth. The truth is, in fiction, tragedy only builds character when when you do. And tragedy is far from the only way to create a nuanced character. 

In this tutorial, we will examine common approaches to character backstories, alternatives to tragedy-as-a-default, and figure out how to have your cake (the feels) and eat it too (with purpose.)

BUILD-A-BACKSTORY

In my experience, the most common approach to writing a freestyle application is writing a chronological history (you can read my app guides, including thots on alternative styles of freestyle, here). Ain’t nothing wrong with that! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it! 

It’s an approach that makes sense, as it forces you to fill in the blanks to answer the question: why is my character Like That? And often, as writers, our first instinct is to provide the saddest answer possible.

“Why is Susie so clingy?” 

Her parents abandoned her at a fire station when she was an infant, and rather than being raised in foster care, she grew up at the fire station. But the entire company that raised her died while fighting a wildfire, and she is certain that any time anyone walks away from her, they will never come back. 

“Why is Brent such a misogynist?” 

His mother never wanted him and told him so every day of his youth. When he hit puberty, she stopped speaking to him entirely, and the day he turned eighteen, she changed the locks while he was at school. 

“Why is Lichen such a high-achieving go-getter?” 

Lichen was born with glass bones and paper skin. Every morning they break their legs, and every afternoon they break their arms. At night, they lie awake in agony until their heart attacks put them to sleep.

Feels like a lot, doesn’t it? I may have done a little exaggeration, but - not a lot, frankly. 

Especially if other characters on a site are loaded with tragic histories, it can be hard not to equate a certificate from the school of hard knocks with a Pulitzer. You want something juicy to write about, yes? And this is all so juicy! 

But here’s the rub: often, these histories will never come up again outside of an application, or will not be practically dev’d out beyond shock value. Susie will never be reminded of Frank, the fireman who taught her to ride a bike. Brent will focus his sexist comments on objectifying women’s bodies rather than degrading their personalities and motives, which were the issues with his mother. Someone who didn’t read Lichen’s app would have no clue that they have had a total horror show of a life. 

If you are writing a tragic backstory that doesn’t have a continual impact on your character, you are writing trauma porn, and it is doing nothing for your character. 

This doesn’t mean that your characters should be fully and constantly occupied with memories of their trauma - in fact, constant introspection is an easy way to stall threads (per my “why aren’t people writing with me?” guide here) - but it does mean that if your answer to the question, “why is my character Like That” is a compelling one, it is one that a reader should be able to answer even if they haven’t read your app, if they’ve read a few of your threads or other writing. 

This is a careful balance, of course, but think of your characters the way you think of yourself! For example: probably the most Potentially Dramatic thing about my personal life is that my older sister is developmentally disabled, and I am one of her legal guardians. When my parents die, I will inherit my older sister, and will uproot my life from wherever I am living at the time to move back to my hometown and make sure she is taken care of and happy. This is not something that I constantly think about, but it is difficult to know me for any meaningful length of time and not be aware that I have a developmentally disabled sister, as I mention her in passing, think about her when her favorite music comes up on Spotify, and tell people to donate to her favorite charity, Special Olympics. 

If I were writing an app of myself as a character and spent a good portion of the app untangling my relationship with my sister, and then never mentioned her in any of my thread posts, then is she really important to my character? Or was I flexing her for depth?

Do you see what I am getting at here? If it matters, it will come up more than once. If it only comes up once, and it’s in your app, you should think of something to explain your character’s personality and motivations that is perhas a little less loaded. 

BUT WITHOUT THE SADS, HOW DO?

The good news is: you absolutely do not need a tragic backstory to write a nuanced character! Again - think of your characters the way you think of yourself, or of other real people. While everyone has gone through heavy things in their lives from time to time, chances are that your life does not resemble that of a soap opera protagonist. And aren’t you a multifaceted person, full of depth and life? Aren’t you someone whose story is worth telling, even if it feels like your life is pretty ordinary? 

After all, it’s not the past that makes a character - it’s the present, their current voice, actions, and missteps. That is where you want the real juice to be, because that is the shit you’re writing! 

Some potential “everyday histories” for our above cast of characters:

“Why is Susie so clingy?”

In elementary and middle school, Susie was bullied on and off - a few weeks spent hanging out with the in-crowd, followed by a month as a social pariah. She could never understand why. When she moved to a different state for high school, she attached herself like a barnacle to the clique the Tulips, and has made it her goal not to let herself get shaken back to the outskirts this time. 

This isn’t as dramatic as Susie’s earlier backstory - in fact, it could apply to any number of people, being passed between friend groups for years on end. But again: your character doesn’t need a one-of-a-kind daytime talk show-worthy backstory to have a unique and compelling history and voice! 

“Why is Brent such a misogynist?”

Brent’s mother never wanted children, and made it pretty clear to him throughout his youth. His father, though, as always there for him - including when his mother walked out and never came back, after cheating on Mr. Brent’s Dad for years. From then on, Brent and his dad only had each other - and their bitterness towards the woman who wronged them.

This still gives you some family drama - unloving mother, and some adultery - but having Brent be raised by someone who has their own beef with women eliminates the shock value of locking your son out merely for being a boy. Also, this take acknowledges misogyny as a learned behavior.

“Why is Lichen such a high-achieving go-getter?”

When their parents divorced, Lichen only came out to their mother as nonbinary, and presents a fully different persona when they are with their father. Being in the top 5% of their high school class and being a national champion Lincoln-Douglas debater is the only thing Lichen and (deadname) have in common. 

I acknowledge that Lichen’s previous story was a meme. The above story could be made much more intense (for example, if Lichen’s father were a member of the Westboro Baptist Church and then Lichen’s supportive mother dies in a freak accident and Lichen, unable to hide their true identity, is imprisoned in their father’s basement until they pretend to have seen the error of their ways and identify as cis again) but the above gives plenty to chew on! 

While drama and trauma can be satisfying to write, there is plenty of drama to be found in the everyday. Building a well-rounded character is much less about what happened to them and much more about what they are doing, thinking, and feeling now. 

That said, 

TIPS & TRICKS FOR WRITING TRAGIQUE CHARACTERS

Don’t go overboard. If it is not going to come up ever again after the app: leave it out. 

Impact is about the character, not the reader. If it was important enough to leave in the app, it should have an identifiable impact on your character. The main purpose cannot have been to shock the reader. 

It’s not meaningful JUST because it happened. If someone can follow your character’s story for any extended amount of time and not realize that, say, your character’s mother died in a boating accident, then it isn’t actually important that your character’s mother died in a boating accident, and you should let her live. 

If ALL of your characters have a heavily dramatic backstory, ALL of your heavily dramatic backstories lose their meaning. Dramatic backstories are fun but they should not be a constant: they will begin to feel cheap and lazy. 

Your character does not need to dwell on their tragic backstory! While a character should acknowledge their history, a character does not need to realize that their backstory is meant to be tragic. For example, Sally might have been raised by her Aunt Agatha after her parents disappeared in a hot air balloon when she was a baby. Rather than being sad about her missing parents, Sally might think of them as total strangers and of Agatha as her sole parental figure - and her sadness might be for Agatha, who does miss Mr. and Ms. Pumpernickel. 

And that’s literally all she wrote! I hope you find this helpful when you’re writing your characters - tragic or otherwise - and developing their plotlines. The world is not made of trauma and fluff alone, friends. Go forth and contain multitudes!