#it’s gonna take a lot to forgive

[keepersofmyheart]

Oh me episode 8 is next

Then 9

Then 10

Then 11

Then 12

5 more weeks of this and I may be the one addicted to alcohol.

Somebody save me !!

Don’t read the tags please. It could make someone angry

[jamiesfootball]

I knew the forgiveness line was gonna split the audience, because it gets touted out in a lot of dramas (usually without the hours of therapy and explaining it deserves). And yes, Ted did make the (important) distinction of it not being for Jamie’s dad but it being for him-

-but I also appreciate that it was front loaded with his mom reassuring Jamie that he shouldn’t feel like he owes anything to that man, that his dad has always been a toerag, and that jamie doesn’t have to feel guilty about anything that happens. Because that part’s important too.

I wanted James Tartt as far the fuck away from Jamie as possible. He’s in rehab, and he hasn’t spoken to Jamie in over a year. Good enough. (I would have preferred prison but fine, away. Fuck that man)

Jamie is… soft now. He’s allowed to be soft. And even though he doesn’t want his dad back, even though he is clearly still struggling to process Wembley (and fuck that hurts too), he wants to know where he stands with Freddy Krueger and his hands full of knives.

Forgiveness is not an invitation for the people that hurt you to return; it’s a cessation of the arms you held up for years waiting for them to come back and hurt you again. It’s not forgetting; it’s accepting that something awful happened and that being angry won’t undo the fact that it happened.

It doesn’t make what happened to Jamie okay. And it doesn’t mean he’s expected to brush it off and move on like nothing happened. And it definitely does not mean he owes the man a cent of his time. But he owes it to himself to not carry his anger for that angry man like it’s the only guiding torch he’s got. And he’s got plenty of people in his corner now, who are gonna help him and protect him if that text doesn’t work out. So yeah, let him lay down his weapons against his dad. Let him rest. Let him find out what happened to the monster under the bed. And then let him move on, with the people who love him.

Also something something the only way to defeat Freddy Krueger is to wake up from your nightmares. James Tartt was his fucking nightmare. 4 am is when you’re weakest. Roy Kent is training him in the middle of the night when he’s weakest. 4 am is the best time to beat bullies with ropes dipped in red paint. Jamie can feel safe, because his sadist mentor coach BFF- you all know where I’m going with this

[cattatoir]

I think I have unpopular Sandman takes bc I'm usually on his side

[fluffs-n-stuffs]

/my god y'all this is gonna be one of the most inconsistently drawn updates yet with how my meds' sedation affected me between panels (the left being from last week's attempts skjdfnsds 🚶‍♀️🚶‍♀️🚶‍♀️)

I'll still need a bit more time, but I think we're Slowly getting back there in terms of my art's momentum huhuu 🙏✨

[theoestofocs]

but the thing is, melanie hates jon because he is so very much like her.

they work in adjacent fields, they've got such similar temperaments - they both run straight for whatever supernatural horror they need to understand, they both suck at planning ahead (poisoned coffee, melanie?) and they both lash out as a primary defense mechanism - and jon wasn't qualified for his job, and martin's only "degree" was in paranormal psychology, so clearly the Institute was hiring from a broader pool than "qualified archivists." i can't imagine ghost studies are all that lucrative as a field. if melanie hadn't made it as a youtuber, what would she have done? we don't know a lot about her educational background but - she knows what it's like, to need to know. she walked into the Institute and got a job because Elias saw that he could use her.

If she'd had a legitimate encounter sooner, if she'd started her quest a few years early, if she'd come to the Institute to give her statement and stayed to use their library before Gertrude had died -

Or even if she just couldn't survive on a youtuber's salary, if she'd gone looking for job postings in relevant fields -

It could have been her. She looks at Jon, and she sees exactly who she could have been. It's only luck that it wasn't.

And that's the kicker, isn't it? It's luck, that she's in her shoes instead of Jon's.

And is she supposed to feel lucky? To feel thankful that she's had to suffer through attack after attack, Elias showing her how her father (her dad, who called her his little moth) died screaming, her body torn open by things that don't exist, her sense of self slipping as she ripped into flesh with no recognizable form, her trust violated as she woke up to two of the few remaining people who are supposed to be on her side cutting into her against her will - to feel lucky, because she had to gouge her eyes out just to have her body back in her control -

Is she supposed to be happy that she lived through all that? Is she supposed to be glad, just because she could have been Jon?

Nobody told Melanie she needed to feel sorry for Jon, or give him her sympathy, or any other kind of pity. She just wants to give it, because God, what he'd gone through -

(Thank God it wasn't her -)

- Fuck that, she isn't lucky.

She hates Jon, because she refuses to feel grateful for the horror show her life has been. (Because she's grateful, that it wasn't her; and she's furious, because - yes it was. she paid the price of the apocalypse in blood and scars and trauma, too. She wasn't Jon, and could have been - but fuck it, she was still Melanie. and the hell that she has lived through isn't nothing.)

It's just bad luck, that it was Jon of all people. It's just bad luck, that it was Melanie.

No one here is lucky.

[note-boom]

I was thinking about BSD's female characters again (as one does) and being mildly frustrated that a lot of their trauma comes from being controlled by an outside male source....and then it hit me.

Almost EVERY BSD character has a past and trauma rooted in being controlled or having a lack of control.

Atsushi under the orphanage headmaster. Akutagawa under Dazai. Kyouka under Akutagawa (and keep in mind Koyou helped get her out in the end). Yosano under Mori. Kenji losing control after his best friend dying. Chuuya under the government and then the Port Mafia. Koyou losing control over her freedom thanks to the old boss. Ranpo having no control over his own self and having been isolated from the world. The Hunting Dogs under the government. Sigma under the DoA and the Book. Even Dazai a little (more on that later).....just this persistent theme of people not getting control over their lives.

And you know what that sounds like? Characters in a story being manipulated by an author.

We have this persistent theme of literature and writing and books throughout BSD, after all. And this incessant use of a character having a tragic past rooted in lack of control or losing control and being manipulated by some superior force screams (to me at least) literary imagery. And what's most interesting is that Dazai both is a character and a manipulator.

Of course he's not the only one pulling the strings, as we know. But he does eat up a BIG part of the narrative, I think...a character who previously had no will to seek out anything to do (and thus adopted the values or reasons of the people around him) trying to craft a narrative of his own after the death of his friend. A character essentially trying to become the author (the light novel Beast just makes me wonder more about this, tbh). But also one whose story is told through the stories of other characters.

And what I find interesting about that AND Beast with regards to Dazai is this page from Vol 17...

People writing. The writer including their own self into the story. Being both a character AND an author and in that sense taking control of your own life and your circumstances....

I'm not sure where I'm going with all this, but I just wanted to really point out that part of a lot of the BSD characters' narratives have to do with this lack of control over their own lives....and we see the ADA full of people trying to take back control. Kunikida and his ideals, Yosano and her healing, Ranpo being the agency's core, Atsushi trying to save people, and Dazai trying to become the author in other people's lives if he can't be the author of his own (his inability to die, you know?).

So my question honestly is just what's the deal with that? Am I making mountains out of molehills or seeing themes and motifs that aren't there? And if not, what does the existence of the Book say about these characters struggling to write their own narratives? (Or the narratives of others, in Dazai's case). Just....literary imagery in BSD and the "toxic" relationship between the author and the character....

[athetos]

Okay this is something that has taken me years to come to terms with and I just need to get off my chest especially since im not in therapy anymore and honestly only a few close friends know this but talking about it is still hard and I want to be able to better forgive myself and get rid of some of the internalized shame that plagues me because of this, and like, just be more comfortable admitting this fact to myself so I can better heal from it. And I know it’s also triggering to a lot of people so I never feel like it’s ever appropriate to discuss I should have a therapist again maybe sometime. But I’m gonna just say it and maybe delete this later. But I’m a rape + abuse survivor and it’s took me years to even “unlock” this trauma and properly process it. I’ve come a long way but idk I just wanted to get this off my chest because it’s been aching to come out but I also don’t wanna burden people.

[faineant-girl]

i wish all addicts, in recovery or not, a life free of sorrow forever

[nero-neptune]

that disney+ peter pan and wendy trailer looks monochromatic and boring as hell. i say this as both a hater and a peter pan connoisseur. lost girls exist (bad And wrong). costumes look just ok. where's the whimsy? why is every color in that trailer some uglyass shade of green and brown? mary blair did Not paint dozens of works of art for the 1953 production of peter pan just for its next gen disney reimagining to be this bland. and ugly. i simply must reiterate how Butt Ugly it looks.

[miss-plum]

tw: sickness, negative

My stepmom vented to my brother how her life is over, that no one is gonna want her once my dad is “gone” and that she’s gonna stay single forever, like he’s already dead and cold.

She’s emotionally detached and bitter about having to care for him despite being the one who manipulated him into not seeing a doctor or taking medication to at least slow down the symptoms, when there was still a chance to treat it. She had him drink chlorine and do meditation sessions instead, because she doesn’t believe in allopathy.

I worry about him a lot, he told me that everyone at home (her brother lives with them and her sister + husband visit a lot) pretty much ignores him. Isolating a person with Alzheimer’s and leaving them alone all day is the worst thing you can do to a person that’s supposed to train their mind, memory and conversational skills.

He’s in an assisted living facility 3 times per week during the day so at least he’s getting some stimulation but I feel so bad for him. Being unwanted and despised by everyone in your household, especially your wife, after years of loving her, cooking for her, writing her poetry - bending your entire being for her - is so cruel and sad.

When she was diagnosed with breast cancer he was there for her, during the good and bad times, the least she could do is give him a few dignified last years, because despite him being a lot younger than the usual person with dementia, Alzheimer’s does have an expiration date, when their bodies simply give up due to weakened immune system. 10 years of which he already passed 6.

He’s not the person we all knew, I’m his daughter, I’m painfully aware of that - but he’s alive and healthy and still there but now she hates him because he’s clingy and dependent and confused and it’s just not fair.

[coldflasher]

not me thinking i'd finally started to find a good work/life balance where i could actually like. write and enjoy working on things that are fun and fulfilling while also keeping my head above water at work (aside from, y'know, minor details like the semi-frequent repetitive strain injuries and eye strain and also the fact my house is an absolute disaster 70% of the time) and then being violently humbled in my quarterly review by getting the worst quality score i've ever had in my 3 years working for the company...

[aziraphale-protection-squad]

i wanna keep the crowley hate to a minimum here because that's not the point of this blog and i don't want to alienate people who can still love him despite what happened but like.

i need to grieve for a minute.

i loved that demon so goddamn much, but seeing him force a kiss onto the character i project SO much of myself onto... god. i'm gonna miss him but yeah no i can't even look at him now.

it's going to take a lot and i mean a LOT of work to get me to feel like he is a safe and comforting character again. if that's possible.

[mx-heinous]

Mike: Why don't you just forgive and forget? It's a lot better for you.

Mal: I don't "forgive and forget". I resent and remember.

[irawhiti]

man there is really no way out of poverty huh. like for real.

[happy10thousandyears]

Why is it the older I am the harder it is to forgive my mom but at the same time I care less about whether I'm going to forgive her or not ..

[heffrondriving]

brb getting sent straight to heaven by big time rush's immaculate harmonies?????