#malevolent discussion

[vmprsm]

Arthur Lester is dealing with complicated grief.

Let's break that down.

(Long text post ahead!)

Your first reaction may be: well, duh! But hear me out, 'cause this is fascinating (and also my current study). It's a real term, used by grief therapists, defined, arguably, as "An abnormal grief response that is more intense than normal grief, yet different from clinical depression." It's basically when the normal process of mourning goes way too long, goes sideways, doesn't resolve appropriately. Arthur is a poster child for this grief and I find that to be really amazing writing.

Complicated grief is highly stigmatized, especially in more emotionally strict cultures (a factor of this grief, actually, and oh my gods he's a male in the 1930's, he's repressed by design), and is separated into different sections. For Arthur, I argue he is primarily dealing with 'chronic' (lasting longer than average), 'delayed' (normal grief reactions suppressed consciously), and also 'exaggerated' (heightened, potentially self-destructive reactions) grief, with a little 'masked' (unaware of abnormal behavior being due to loss) grief mixed in, for fun.

I'm going to say right out that grief is a complex beast and does not fit neatly into categories, but we try.

The thing is, grief takes a course. It's not exactly linear, but it has a known pattern. Researchers argue about how to name the steps, tasks, phases, whatever, but the general gist is: accept the loss, deal with it, move on.

So....Arthur got stuck right near the beginning. You can tell by how reluctant he is, how painful it is to even mention Faroe even years later, that he has not accepted the loss. It's not full-blown denial, he doesn't believe that his little girl is alive somewhere, but it's close. Every mention brings fresh grief because he's avoided it, this is one hallmark of chronic grief. But it's taken years to to get to this point, so it's also delayed. In delayed grief, you put it off until you can't, and when the dam finally breaks the grief feels fresh, or, in Arthur's case, even more intense (exaggerated) than it would if it were normal grief. A lot of complicated grief doesn't fit in nice little boxes, and Arthur is a terribly complex case.

Arthur masked his grief during the time he was desperately delaying it in the course of the story: with unusual behavior, physical and mental reactions that he didn't realize was grief (his dogged determination to save the baby, his mood swings at John, etc). The take-away: knowing is not the same as accepting, and you cannot continue with mourning if you don't accept that loss has occurred. You simply cannot.

He helps mercy kill an animal and calls her Faroe. He kills a man and flips out (displacement, anyone?). He has self-destructive impulses via a stunning lack of self-preservation. This man is heavily grieving and doesn't know how to do again, so it's coming out in any outlet it can.

His guilt is out of control, which can deeply stall the grief process, and that's partially because 1) it's mixed with shame, or guilt from outward sources, and 2) he's not reality-testing it. Reality testing is critical to managing guilt in loss. Is Arthur right in feeling some guilt? Yes, but also, the reality is more complicated than that, and he isn't allowing himself to see the multi-faceted truth of it. He has massive survivor's guilt as well, compounded from multiple prior deaths that he probably also did not mourn sufficiently for. The poem about the death of his parents was a very good and healthy step towards mourning that loss, but did he ever complete the process? Did he find a way to relocate his feelings about the deceased and make new, meaningful relationships? Given how easily he destroyed his friendship with James (part 31), I seriously doubt it. Peter was his lifeline, but one man does not a support system make. Arthur purposefully stayed alone to avoid processing his grief because of his guilt.

And compounding factors for the potential for complicated grief? He's got those in spades, let me make a quick list here: multiple prior losses, complex relations with the deceased, early parental loss, negative self-concept, socially negated loss, absence of support, nd that's all I can think of just off the bat. He's fucked.

Frankly, I don't know Harlan Guthrie's relationship with grief, but he's smacked into our hands a classic example of a person who DEEPLY needs grief therapy, who I argue will not resolve his grief on his own without more damage. By the nature of the story he is forced to confront the delayed aspects of his grief, and, expectedly, his reactions are more exaggerated. John has been helping, albeit ineptly and accidentally, with putting Arthur through the process. His nightmare shows that he does, on some level, want to grieve ('you can't help but watch the horror' dream-Larsen says), but his self-loathing makes it difficult to see his grief clearly, and there's really no one else to do it for him. I'm fascinated to see how he evolves as the story progresses, and how he continues in his journey of mourning, no matter how many turns and backtracks it takes.

[radioactivebumblebees]

*Potential kind-of Malevolent spoilers. Just future names mentioned, otherwise it's about ep.1*

Re-listening to Malevolent and John very clearly rolls dice before answering some questions.

Just now, (44:52, ep 1) Arthur asked "D-do-do you see anything else?"

John responds "No, let us leav-... wait." *sound of dice clacking & rolling on a table* "Yes, I do. It's barely noticeable but-"

Idk if I missed something on my 1st listen but is there a reason for this? Why would *John* be rolling dice? Kayne I'd get, but why John? Can he even roll dice? Does he have a corporeal form in the dark world still? Is it just chillin' at a table with some dice, rolling to see what info he divulges or keeps from Arthur? Is this just something Harlan does? I'm confused.

On my first listen through I noticed it, but I can't remember *why* it happened or if that was ever explained. All I know is John does it less and less frequently as the show goes on.

John holds a lot of power, being able to simply withhold information from Arthur, and thinking of him rolling dice to determine how much he gives away really adds to the sinister vibe of him. I just can't figure out why he does it, or if rolling dice/chance has anything to do with him in particular.

[humming-fly]

sadly Arthur can't make friends with every cute woodland creature he comes across in the medieval countryside I can't believe the setting for season 5 has been out for over a month and I haven't seen a single monty python reference yet I guess I'll do it myself

in the spirit of choose-your-own-adventures here's an alternative timeline

[the-magpie-archives]

The sad thing about great horror podcasts is that it's really hard to just sit down and enjoy an episode with a friend unless you're driving somewhere or something.

It takes a very specific kind of friendship to sit in a room together silently listening to some guy suffering.

[arthurtaylorlester]

controversial i know but yes, malevolent is a queer story.

no, jarthur are not /r gay.

yes, malevolent is unintentionally queer.

no, this does not take away from the queerness actual queer people have found in it.

[mr-tll]

the bad ending

[little-the-rat]

The horrors persist but so do I

Also the shitty bloody version

[kahtiihma]

A friendly reminder that Malevolent is not a queer horror podcast

It’s a horror podcast with no canon queer representation between the main characters. This has been confirmed and clarified multiple times over the last several years by the creator and at this time there’s no intention to change that fact. The story is wonderful and the characters well written and I’ll recommend it with every last breath I have to anyone who enjoys audio dramas but I will not call it queer when it is not queer. This creates a misconception that there’s meant to be explicit representation when there is not.  Yes, there’s a thriving fandom and yes, it’s fun to ship. But don’t misrepresent the show when there are many other wonderful things about it that are true. If someone is looking for canon queer representation in their audio dramas then there are many MANY other options!! 

[dearmarigold]

At least once it happened I swear

how long did the 'temporary vague peace' take, there must have been time for a 'normal' day

[comas-are-for-sleeping]

KAYNE HE/THEY???

[shadow0haven]

I'm gonna do some rambling below about the Malev Christmas thing a little bit because people have been saying people have taken it too seriously and I want to explore/explain why I think people are upset and why I agree/my thoughts.

So HG released a christmas episode for malev and its a silly and campy episode of jokes and a "they get snowed in on christmas" episode like from a sitcom.

Honestly, that would have been nice from the get go. It's an interesting and trope I enjoy so I was ready to listen, until I heard negativity.

People are claiming that people hate the special specifically because HG makes fun of shippers. It's not *just* those two specific lines about shippers that I see people being upset about. It's quite a lot more.

For the longest time, Harlan has been poking fun at shippers in a lot of lines, in livestreams, in jokes and specials he puts out on patreon. A lot of the patreon people aren't mad or upset specifically because he does it, but because it's done so often. We KNOW Jarthur is never going to be Canon. We don't need a reminder constantly in the specials that they aren't canon and never will be, because it's a horror podcast and it's been explicitly stated all over John and Arthur are platonic in canon and always will be as far as we know. Having it constantly joked about when we know it won't happen is tiring.

A joke is made about the mail delivery person hating Arthur and loving John. On server and in conversation, etc, it's come up that HG finds it weird people like John, or Yellow, or other characters, more than Arthur. He also does "playful teasing" about people who enjoy certain characters or make certain theories, while also being annoyed people don't like Arthur more. A lot of us DO like Arthur, but not certain aspects of the character or how the character handled certain situations. That doesn't mean we hate the character. Part of this I think stems from HG having said that Arthur is "basically him", saying that Arthur is a self insert. That's fine and dandy, but it does make a lot of us uncomfortable for a lot of situations when we try to separate the character from a real person when the person playing the character insists "the character is me". This isn't a slight against HG, but I find it frustrating and that it ruined a bit of the "this is a narrative based around fictional characters etc" when the creator insists the main character is his self insert and essentially just him. Self inserts are cool! I also have my own! But there has to be a degree of separation that people aren't getting and it makes a lot of us uncomfortable.

A joke by the mail carrier also about "people going online and arguing for a living" or something along those lines. A lot of people that enjoy the show also critique it, make theories, and always talk about ways things could be handled better or how things could have turned out. Yes, there are people who are strictly only negative because they dislike HG for a myriad of reasons, and this joke felt like it was aimed specifically at these people that have issue with him, his interactions with fans, and the way he's handled things in the past that was just... unneeded.

On a less serious note, there were things that were just not my style in which I myself specifically don't vibe with the special. It was very campy and cracky, which is what it was obviously going for. For ME, I just wasn't into the "staged sitcom script because of Kayne" deal. And that's okay! Just because it wasn't my mileage, doesn't mean it was bad for other people. Like how I don't read certain kinds of fanfiction because they just aren't for me, this special just wasn't for me because of the tone of it.

I know there are probably more things, or things I'm forgetting, I know there was more teasing about "Arthur having PTSD but he can get over it in seconds" joke that made me a little meh, some of the jokes were funny and gave me a good chuckle, but I think this is the main reason people are having issue with the special.

To clarify, I'm talking about JUST the Christmas special and not the show itself. Just this specific episode. If I wanted to talk about why I and other people have issues with the show, or if people were interested in what I think, I'd make another post.

This is NOT a hate post, but simply talking about why I myself take issue with several aspects of the special, as well as why others (and the reasons I've heard from others) have mentioned about it.

Your mileage may vary, etc etc. I still enjoy the show and the characters very much, but sometimes this kind of stuff makes it difficult.

[karmacean]

Thinking about how both Scratch and Oscar told Arthur that he gave them purpose hbu

[canon-autopsy]

I just caught up on malevolent and I need MORE😭

[averysaurus]

Okay but like, I don't understand why John couldn't have just TOLD ARTHUR what happened. "Yeah, I was stuck in the Dark World, it was horrible, the reason I got to come back is because I told Kayne I would do this thing." Arthur would probably be like "Alright, if that's what you had to do, fine." Like Arthur had just been thrown into the mines! He was in a very desperate place and John's return gave him the will to fight for both their lives. The whole plot hangs on this huge "betrayal" by John, but John didn't actually really betray him that much.

The thing John would want to hide from Arthur wouldn't be the deal he made, but the atrocities he (presumably) committed in the Dark World.

Also, kind of bummed that Kayne showed up and narrated all this information. I'd have prefered to hear the deal conversation between them. So, a little bit too much telling vs. showing. Overall, good show and I'm still happy to be on the ride.

[ndaths]

this is so sad alexa play faroe‘s song

[soliusss]

you know whats worse better than one Hastur? TWO!!