#trying to think of other mentally ill fictional characters i love.

[amarimeta]

i’ve said this a million times before but truly no matter how crazy you think the crazy woman from your tv show is. she can never be nora durst.

[aph-estonia]

healing means being so confused on how to deal with the ocs you made while being so deeply mentally ill. i would scrap them but now i'm too emotionally attached to them

[ask-the-prose]

Writing Mental Health With Compassion

I've gotten a few questions regarding depicting characters with mental health challenges and conditions and I wanted to expand a little more on how to depict these characters with compassion for the real communities represented by these characters.

A little about this guide: this is, as always, coming from a place of love and respect for the writing community and the groups affected by this topic at large. I'm also not coming at this from the outside, I have certain mental illnesses that affect my daily life. With that, I'll say that my perspective may be biased, and as with all writing advice, you should think critically about what is being told to you and how.

So let's get started!

Research

I'm sure we're all tired of hearing the phrase "do your research," but unfortunately it is incredibly important advice. I have a guide that touches on how to do research here, if you need a place to get started.

When researching a mental health condition that we do not experience, we need to do so critically, and most importantly, compassionately. While your characters are not people, they are assigned traits that real people do have, and so your depiction of these traits can have an impact on people who face these conditions themselves.

I've found that reddit is a decent resource for finding threads of people talking about their personal experiences with certain illnesses. For example, bipolar disorder has several subreddits that have very open and candid discussions about bipolar, how it impacts lives, and small things that people who don't have bipolar don't tend to think about.

It's important to note that these spaces are not for you. They are spaces for people to talk about their experiences in a place without judgment or fear or stigma. These are not places for people to give out writing advice. Do NOT flood subreddits for people seeking support with questions that may make others feel like an object to be studied. It's not cool or fair to them for writers to enter their space and start asking questions when they're focused on getting support. Be courteous of the people around you.

Diagnosis

I have the belief that for most stories, a diagnosis for your characters is unnecessary. I have a few reasons for thinking this way.

Firstly, mental health diagnoses are important for treatment, but they're also a giant sign written across your medical documents that says, “I'm crazy!” Doctors may try to remain unbiased when they see mental health diagnoses, but anybody with a diagnosis can say that doctors rarely succeed. This translates to a lot of people never getting diagnoses, never seeking treatment, or refusing to talk about their diagnosis if they do have one.

Secondly, I've seen posts discuss “therapy speak” in fiction, and this is one of those instances where a diagnosis and extensive research may make you vulnerable to it. People don't tend to discuss their diagnoses freely and they certainly don't tend to attribute their behaviors as symptoms.

Finally, this puts you, the writer, into a position where you treat your characters less like people and story devices and more like a list of symptoms and behavioral quirks. First and foremost, your characters serve your story. If they don't feel like people then your characters may fall flat. When it comes to mental illness in characters, the people aspect is the most important part. Mentally ill people are people, not symptoms.

Those are my top three reasons for believing that most characters will never need a specific diagnosis. You will likely never need to depict the difference between bipolar and borderline because the story itself does not need that distinction or to reveal a diagnosis at all. I feel that having a diagnosis in mind for a character has more pitfalls than advantages.

How does treatment work?

Treating mental health conditions may appear in your story. There are a number of ways treatments affect daily life and understanding the levels of care and what those levels treat will help you depict the appropriate settings for your characters.

The levels of care range from minimally restrictive and minimal care to intensive in-patient care in a secure hospital setting.

Regular or semi-regular therapy is considered outpatient care. This is generally the least restrictive. Your characters may or may not also take medications, in which case they may also see a psychiatrist to prescribe those medications. There is a difference between therapists, psychiatrists, and psychologists. Therapists do not prescribe medications, psychiatrists prescribe medications after an evaluation, and psychologists will (sometimes) do both. (I'm US, so this may work differently depending where you are. You should always research the specific setting of your story.) Generally, a person with a mental illness or mental health condition will see both an outpatient therapist and an outpatient psychiatrist for their general continuing care.

Therapists will see their patients anywhere from once in a while as-needed to twice weekly. Psychiatrists will see new patients every few weeks until they report stabilizing results, and then they will move to maintenance check-ins every 90-ish days.

If the patient reports severe symptoms, or worsening symptoms, they will be moved up to more intensive care, also known as IOP (Intensive Outpatient Program). This is usually a group-therapy setting for between 3-7 hours per day between 3-5 days a week. The group-therapy is led by a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) or Licensed Professional Social Worker (LPSW). Groups are structured sessions with multiple patients teaching coping mechanisms and focusing on treatment adjustment. IOP’s tend to expect patients to see their own outpatient psychiatrist, but I've encountered programs that have their own in-house psychiatrists.

If the patient still worsens, or is otherwise needing more intensive care, they'll move up to PHP (Partial Hospitalization Program). This can look different per facility, but I've seen them to be more intensive in hours and content than IOP. They also usually have in-house psychiatrists doing diagnostic psychological evaluations. It's very possible for characters with “mild” symptoms to go long periods of time, even most of their lives, without having had a diagnosis. PHP’s tend to need a diagnosis so that they can address specific concerns and help educate the patient on their condition and how it may manifest.

Next step up is residential care. Residential care is a boarding hospital setting. Patients live in the hospital and focus entirely on treatment. Individual programs may differ in what's allowed in, how much contact the patients are allowed to have, and what the treatment focus is. Residential programs are often utilized for addiction recovery. Good residential programs will care about the basis for the addiction, such as underlying mental health issues that the patient may be self-medicating for. Your character may come away with a diagnosis, or they may not. Residential programs aren't exclusively for addictions though, and can be useful for severe behavioral concerns in teenagers or any number of other concerns a patient may have that manifest chronically but do not require intensive inpatient restriction.

Inpatient hospital stays are the highest level of care, and this tends to be what people are talking about when they tell jokes about “grippy socks.” These programs are inside the hospital and patients are highly restricted on what they can and cannot have, they cannot leave unless approved by the hospital staff (the hospital's psychiatrist tends to have the final say), and contact with the outside world is highly regulated. During the days, there are group therapy sessions and activities structured very carefully to maintain routine. Staff will regulate patient hygiene, food and sleep routines, and alone time.

Inpatient hospital programs are controversial among people with mental illness and mental health concerns. I find that they have use, but they are also not an easy or first step to take when dealing with a mental health condition. Patients are not allowed sharp objects, metal objects, shoelaces, cutlery, and pens or pencils. Visitors are not allowed to bring these items in, staff are not allowed these items either. This is for the safety of the patients. Typically, if someone is involuntarily admitted into the inpatient hospital program, it is due to an authority (the hospital staff) deeming the patient as a danger to themselves or others. Whether they came in of their own will (voluntary) or not does not matter in how the program operates. Everyone is treated the same. If someone is an active danger to themselves, then they may be on 24-hour suicide watch. They are not allowed to have any time alone. No, not even for the bathroom, or while sleeping, or during group sessions.

Inpatient Hospital Programs

This is a place of high curiosity for those who have never been admitted into inpatient care, so I'd like to explain a little more in detail how these programs work, why they're controversial, but how they can be useful in certain situations. I do have personal experience in this area, but as always, your mileage may vary.

When admitting, hospital staff are the final say. Not the police. The police hold some sway, but most often, if someone is brought in by the police, they are likely to be admitted. They are only involuntarily admitted when the situation demands: the staff have determined the person to be an imminent danger to themselves or others. This is obviously subjective, and can easily be abused. A good program with decent staff will do everything they can to convince the patient to admit voluntarily if they feel it is necessary, but ultimately if the patient declines and the staff don't feel they can make the clinical argument that admittance is necessary, the patient is free to leave. It should be noted that doctors and clinicians have to worry about possibly losing their licenses to practice. They don't want to fuck around with involuntary admittance if they don't have to, and they don't want potentially dangerous people to walk away.

Once admitted, the patient will have to remove their clothing and put on a set of hospital scrubs. These are mostly made of paper, and most often do not have pockets, but I have seen sets that do have pockets (very handy, tbh). They are not allowed to take anything into the hospital wing except disability-required devices such as glasses, hearing aids, mobility aids, etc. Most programs will require removing piercings, but not all of them, in my experience.

The nurses will also do a physical examination, where they will make note of any open wounds, major scars, tattoos, and other skin abrasions that may be relevant.

The patient will then be led to their bed, where they will receive any approved clothing items from outside, a copy of their patient rights, and a copy of the floor code of conduct and rules, a schedule, and any other administrative information necessary for the program to run efficiently and legally.

Group sessions include group-therapy, activities, coping skills, anger management, anxiety management, and for some reason, karaoke. There is a lot of coloring involved, but only with crayons. A good program will focus heavily on skills and therapeutic activities. Bad programs will phone it in and focus on karaoke and activities. Most hospitals will have a chaplain, and some will include a religious group session. I've never attended these, so I can't speak for them.

Unspoken rules are the hidden pieces of the inpatient programs that patients tend to find out during their first visit. There is no leaving the program until the doctor agrees to it. The doctor will only agree to it if they deem you ready to leave, and you are only ready to leave if you have been compliant to treatment and have seen positive results in the most dangerous symptoms (homicidal or suicidal ideations). Noncompliance can look like: refusing your prescribed medications (which you have the right to do at any time for any reason. That does not mean that there won't be consequences. This is a particularly controversial point.), refusing to attend groups (chapel is not included in this point, but that doesn't mean it's actually discounted. Another controversial point.), violent or disruptive outbursts such as yelling or throwing things, and refusing to sleep or eat at the approved and appointed times. All of this may sound like the hospital is restricting your rights beyond reason, but I've seen the use, and I've seen the abuse. Medications are sometimes necessary, and often patients seriously prefer having medication. Groups are important to a person's treatment, and refusing to go can be a sign of noncompliance or worsening symptoms. If someone is too depressed or anxious to go to group, then they're probably not ready to leave the hospital where the structure is gone and they must self-regulate their treatment. Violent or disruptive outbursts tend to be a sign of worsening symptoms in general, but even the best of us lose our tempers from time to time when put into a highly stressful situation like an inpatient hospital stay. The hospital is supposed to be a place of healing, for many it is. But for many more, it is a place of systematic abuse and restriction.

Discharge processes can be long and arduous and INCREDIBLY stressful for the patient. Oftentimes, they won't know their discharge date until the day of, or perhaps the day before. Though the date can change at any time. The discharge process requires the supervising psychiatrist to meet with the treatment team and then the patient to determine if the patient had progressed enough to be safely discharged. Discharge also requires a set outpatient plan in place, such as a therapy appointment within a week, a psychiatrist visit, or admittance into a lower level of care. This is where social workers are involved. Patients are not allowed access to cell phones or the internet. They cannot make their own appointments with their outpatient care providers without a phone number and phone access. Some floors will have phone access for this reason, others will insist the social worker arrange appointments and discharge plans. Social workers are often incredibly overworked, with several patients on their caseload.

The patient cannot be discharged until the social worker has coordinated the discharge plan to the doctor's approval. Most often, unfortunately, the patient rarely receives regular communication regarding the progress of their discharge. I've been discharged with as much as a day's notice to two hours notice.

Part 2 Coming Soon

This guide got longer than expected! Out of respect for my followers dashboard, I will be cutting it here and adding a Part 2 later on.

If you find that there are more specific questions you'd like answered, or topics you'd like covered, send an ask or reply to this post with what you'd like to see in Part 2.

– Indy

[classpectpokerap]

How do you feel about the portrayal of plurality in Homestuck? Because it’s not good.

Cherubs are “supposed” to predominate over their other personality. With Calliope being portrayed as naive for trying to co exist.

Horuss is mocked for being a system. But I’d say it was a king fun of people who pretend to be mentally Ill on social media for clicks.

Then their are the sprites

okay so

i guess we're doing this

HOMESTUCK AND PLURALITY: A PRIMER

BECAUSE JESUS CHRIST THERES SO MUCH

SO SO SO MUCH

okay. so

homestuck is one of the best pieces of media of all time for plurality and i fuckin mean it. no shot do not pass go i have NEVER seen anything that is more built from the ground up to Support plural reads. like, to the point where it feels impossible to read homestuck without it.

as a work dealing with two huge primary themes of a) finding yourself/identity/growing up, and b) ideas coming to life, plurality is pretty much the Perfect intersection between the two of them. like.

take rose for example.

rose is plural and it's great.

when the doomed timeline evaporates, future dream rose does not actually "cease to exist." she ceases to exist as her own person -- her memories, experiences, personality, thoughts (or, as shorthand, her selfstuff) all flows back into rose prime. and that experience is just something rose has to roll with. one becomes two -- that other rose is still in her mind.

jade's plural and it's great.

when her dream self awakens as jadesprite, jade has a horrific argument with her. if you're plural i'm sure you understand. fighting with an age-regressed version of you, stuck in a traumatic past, who WONT FUCKING LISTEN -- we've all . been there.

she has involuntary barks, she can't stop seeing images of fire, she wants to go back to nonexistence but she doesnt want to die and it's torture,

and then in cascade, jade fuses with her.

dream jade is still in there. that part of her she has to grapple with is still real. her dog who she loves is in there, too -- but, yknow. woof

then grimbark gets forcefully introjected into her. i've seen a few fics play with the idea that the grimbark personality is still residually there (read ygtpoasu), but it's not a huge thing that's explored in the text. more backgrounded. but still! her crisis of identity is in there.

wanna know what's NOT backgrounded

tavros's plurality is like, a pretty big factor in his character!!!! it's one of the bigger points vriska uses to bully him with (because she's projecting because she's projecting because she's projecting, because she's also plural and kins mindfang), it's like. a big thing that he has to cope with and figure out.

kanaya suggested tavros treat his self-confidence as his own brain guy, like, completely sincerely. she genuinely thought it would help, and it sorta did!!!!!

and like

it is FAR from the only positive example of plurality in the comic.

like. look at sollux and aradia defending "alternate reality copies" of characters -- which can be pretty easily extrapolated to them talking about fictives

like. !!!!

i dunno, man. i think that homestuck is a DEEPLY plural story. you should read mtm and kgtac for more exploration of these themes. read detective pony too while you're at it. like.

i havent even TOUCHED on horuss or dirk or karkat here because there is just so much. there's so much! like ultselves. oh my god i completely neglected to talk about ultselves or cherubs or --

augh

but anyway here's The Screenshots from mtm

homestuck is, like, the single most fictive compatible fictional work i've ever read.

"oh im being sent to another universe as a brain ghost? that happened to my buddy dirk"

"oh im one of many incarnations of myself, and perhaps not even the most 'canon compliant' one? haha dream bubbles moment"

"ive been isekai'd into another world? lol sburb"

it. yeah. god. i could literally talk about this all day. but instead im gonna direct you to my ao3.

check out no metaphors and then scroll through the "multiplicity/plurality" tag on my page

and if youve got more specific stuff, send in another ask!

[mournersandfunerals]

Alice Oseman's Solitaire is a very important book and here's why:

A lot of the time when mental health is being depicted in fiction, it centres so much around the person struggling with it. Which, of course, makes sense. It's important to show what people go through when they suffer from mental illnesses, and it helps others in similar situations know that they're not alone in dealing with it. But it isn't very often you see something from the perspective of a friend or a relative and what they go through when someone they care about is struggling. Solitaire is a book that's so important for this specific reason.

Here, you have Tori. A teenage girl who spends 50% of her time worried about her brother, Charlie, and the other 50% of her time trying to convince herself that she isn't worried about him. She puts so much pressure on herself to keep everyone's heads above water that she doesn't realise that she, herself, is starting to drown. Their parents don't know how to handle everything that's going on with their son, so they act like everything is fine, relying on Tori to be the problem-free "normal" one. That's a lot of pressure to put on your 16/17 year old daughter. Tori takes on the responsibility of keeping her family happy and together, which ends up having the opposite effect and drives them further away from each other. So now you have two siblings that are so near but not within reaching distance when they need each other the most.

Which leads us on to the themes of guilt within the book. This is something that is so well executed and hard-hitting and absolutely crucial.

Tori is someone who feels a lot of guilt and regret when it comes to what Charlie is going through. She feels partially responsible for everything that happened to him. It's not her fault in the slightest, but when someone close to you is hurting and struggling, and you notice but don't do anything because you don't know how, it takes its toll. A lot of the pressure that Tori's under comes from the crippling guilt that she's trying to hold in. It manifests itself into something entirely different. She suffers with anxiety, she has negative thoughts, she hyperfixates entirely on solving the Solitaire mystery so she has something to do while her family is barely holding it together. She spirals.

And what's super interesting about this is how Charlie has a similar reaction at the end when he eventually comes to terms with the fact that his sister isn't okay, either. He mentions how he noticed but didn't do anything, and he feels awful about it. The Spring siblings have a remarkable way of avoiding what's right in front of them because who in the world would want to admit that their brother or sister is the opposite of okay?

And to add to this, I think we really need to note the importance of Michael Holden within this entire situation as well.

Michael is there for Tori consistently. He shows up when she doesn't even realise she needs him, he comes back whenever she pushes him away, and it's almost as though he's her only form of stability within the chaos. And that's exactly what she needs. She doesn't know how to handle what she's feeling about her family so she's pushed everyone else away. She needs someone.

Because it's so easy to ignore the state of your own mental health when someone you love is going through hell. So now we have Michael, a character who essentially says, "I'm here. Let me worry and look after you, while you unwittingly take on the weight of the world." Of course, Michael has problems of his own but if he and Tori can share their burdens between the two of them, maybe the weight of all of it won't feel so heavy.

Alice Oseman created something so underrated and special with Solitaire. It tackles things that can be difficult to talk about but need talking about. It reminds you that it's okay to not be okay. You shouldn't feel bad about feeling bad. And just because someone you love is struggling, it doesn't mean that you're entirely responsible for them. It doesn't mean that you're not allowed to grieve and be upset about it. And it doesn't mean that you're not allowed to struggle through your own issues either. But it does mean that you can find your own support system and let them pull you out of the metaphorical and, I guess in this instance, literal fire that's burning around you.

[tabr1-s]

sunday rant and personal frustrations with him that i begun to write at 6am running on an entire 3 and a half hours of sleep (my cats woke me up.....)

(tldr at the end. i might be as bad as Sunday in terms of yap mileage (yappage) but i'll do one better than him and provide you with the concise version if you scroll all the way down.)

i have never felt such intense emotions about a character's moral viewpoint... Ever. and i've liked characters that were mass murderers before. morals (or lack thereof) usually never played a significant role in whether i liked a character or not (unless they did something i considered worse than plain ol murder, then i wouldn't associate with them), and 99% of the time i could find the character's motivations understandable under the circumstances that they were in.

and, technically, i can understand where Sunday is coming from too.

but that doesn't stop me from being Absolutely pissed at him.

(sunday-esque yap about myself incoming, i will eventually get to the point (which i will highlight))

as someone who has been told that i have "ocd features" Multiple times by my psychiatrist (practically each session) i understand the need for control. my obsessiveness manifests in the form of feeling the need to control practically everything - my current obsession for control being my own emotions, which extends to needing to control entire situations, and in turn makes me severely overthink all the possible outcomes to those given situations. i've also been guilty of controlling others before, and having the mentality of "i know what's best for you". hell, i still feel like that a lot, but i really try to push it back.

and this need for "control" is mainly the reason why i even find comfort in fiction. because it's oftentimes very predictable to me (it also made me think of how i do not find any interest in reading books, but i love writing stories of my own. particularly fan-fiction. and the only time i can feel comfortable enough to feel romance is towards fictional characters - because i control the narrative! it's something to think about.). if i like a character or a narrative, it's easy for me to pick apart where the writers will go with that story. and, even if the story turns out to disappoint me/be different than what i hoped for, i would still be Prepared for that possibility.

i somehow... failed to prepare for what would happen with Sunday.

i had set my sights on the wrong thing for 2.2. i invested my whole energy on trying to comfort myself that hoyo wouldn't take the ipc colonialism route (basically turning out to be capitalist/colonialist apologists) with penacony (which i Guess will be explored in 2.3? but now that i have some more context on the story and how it's unraveling i'm not as anxious about it anymore), that i overlooked a lot of other things that could've gone wrong.

namely, my favourite hsr character to be... Like that. (i'm not even being intentionally vague. i'm just dumbfounded)

i had Heard of the theory that Sunday is possessed by Ena (which didn't particularly make sense to me, and i refused to look at leaks concerning Sunday lest they upset me. either way i Really hated that theory. plus, Sunday being said to have ocd would've been an incredibly cheap way to foreshadow that he's "possessed" by the Order. you can't just create your first(?) important/playable character that has a confirmed mental illness and then go "it's okay actually he's Normal! he was just possessed". i took this very personally. and still am.), and saw a lot of theories concerning his involvement with the Order as well. i shut it all out, because i didn't like the implications of that.

which in turn made me Not think/comfort myself regarding the possibilities that he truly Was connected to the Order.

...

well, rest in pieces, me - it's always the things i don't pay much attention to/ignore/fail to think about. which is actually a bit strange because i was not expecting him to be an entirely sane person from the start - he was a politician type, a leader, and a manipulator, to name a few things. that much was obvious. in 2.0-2.1 i wouldn't have been surprised if it turned out that he was the one that "killed" Robin. again, nothing was out of the question. but, 2.1 showed a different side of him. one that cared for his sister and (seemingly) listened to her and cared about what she thought. so they became quite a comforting little sibling duo to me. tragic, yet you could depend on their mutual trust in eachother... or so i thought.

and then he... went and did all That. which just showed me how, despite him caring for his sister, he was still putting other things above her.

to conclude with my yap: in a sense, he is just my "grim reflection of the self". and although i feel sympathetic towards my past self and how naive and selfish i used to be, there are some flaws of mine i will never forgive myself for. and, Sunday, in a way, reminded me of... Everything. it was almost triggering.

(hey, writing this all down in one place helped me calm down! (it's a neverending cycle that will continue tomorrow. all it will take is seeing a post concerning him and his sister and i'll get pissed anew) yay!)

the point(s) (aka my qualms):

- how sunday manipulated robin + was planning to use her in the charmony festival to complete his plan. she was going to be an unwilling participant in creating a "utopia" that she would've been absolutely against, but he didn't stop to fucking. fill her in, maybe? talk it out? the sheer disrespect on the concept of free will and on the fact that your own sister is a human being of her own sickens me

- he should've cherished the relationship he had with her (x1000 because that's the ONE FAMILY MEMBER YOU HAD LEFT AND THAT IS SUCH A PRIVILEGE!!! IMAGINE HAVING SOMEONE CARE ABOUT YOU WHOLEHEARTEDLY AND THEN YOU GO AND THROW IT AWAY!!! YEAH I'VE ALMOST DONE THE SAME EXACT THING MULTIPLE TIMES (AND STILL WOULD) BUT THAT'S WHY I ALSO KNOW HOW MUCH OF AN ASSHOLE MOVE IT IS!!!)

- he forsook his own self and shoved down his own biases and interests (fucking rat. you can't change the fact you're human and i'm very much saying that from experience) to become something Grander than life itself and in fucking turn isolated himself and shut out the one person who actually cared and then had the Gall to complain about being misunderstood/alone. (when you're finally sitting in your unreachable throne in this "dream" that you've created, who will you blame for being lonely? who will you blame when you have no one to fall back into? no one to support you? when everybody you did this for forsakes You?)

- HE DIDN'T EVEN HUG ROBIN BACK AT THE LAST SCENE. LIKE SHUT UP ABOUT YOUR FAILED PLANS AND COME DOWN FROM THE CLOUDS A LITTLE - THE JOY YOU SEEK FOR IS RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU!

- all i hoped for was that sunday and robin would reunite and get the chance to be happy together, and the only true reason i'm mad is because i'm guilty of a lot of the same self sacrificial behaviours as him and very much understand the sentiment of "my loved ones would be better off without my negative presence and influence". but instead of empathizing with him, i feel betrayed. i thought he was better than me. i thought he was someone worthy of admiration, and that doesn't come easily from me. despite all the warning signs i fell for his obvious facade, and i Very rarely get taken by surprise - especially in a way like this.

- if it wasn't for the fact that Robin would feel sad if Sunday died i would personally go and strangle him myself

tldr; i'm just a big baby that placed a lot of faith on Sunday and his relationship with Robin post 2.1 and my ego took a Huge hit once he turned out to be just some immature emo idealist type. (come on, man - i genuinely thought you were better than me! someone worthy of respect! and i usually have a feeling of superiority over others! this was the biggest compliment/act of faith i could give! (talking to a wall (fictional character (I'M FUCKING UPSET))))

[tildeathiwillwrite]

genuine qustion, bc i dont understand whump, why do you like it? whats the appeal? am i missing something?

I'm going to assume from the wording of this question that you already have an idea of what whump is, and you're asking why someone would want to read/write it, but if not here is a good post summarizing the genre.

This post is divided into two parts below the cut: the appeal of whump for me, and an explanation of why I like whump.

For me, personally, the appeal of whump comes from putting a character (whether that be an someone else's character, my original character, or a nameless whumpee) in Situations (with or without a whumper), and then having the difficult recovery or healing process (usually with a caretaker). Sometimes I deviate from this pattern, such as omitting the recovery, but that is usually my main focus.

A bit more emphasis on the comfort in hurt/comfort, but there's also hurt in the comfort.

My main love of whump stems from the tropes I enjoy:

Used as bait (where a whumpee is captured with the intent on using them to lure the caretaker into trying to rescue them in order to capture the caretaker too). I like this one because of the suspense of knowing it's a trap, and wondering if the caretaker will manage to rescue the whumpee, or get captured themselves.

Magic whump (whump but in the fantasy genre). This one gives more possibilities or twists on usual whump tropes by adding magic into the mix. Combined with my love for fantasy writing.

Captivity whump (a whumpee captured by a whumper, usually including various forms of torture). This trope is very versatile. Why were they captured? What does the whumper gain by torturing them? So many possibilities. Not to mention the rescue afterwards!

Sickfic (whumpee is sick, usually with a caretaker). Someone else mentioned this before, I don't remember who otherwise I would've linked them, but illness is something rarely seen in existing media. When a piece of media has whump, it's usually torture or a fight scene, but I've only ever seen sickness a handful of times. I like the idea of a character having all these cool abilities but still getting the common cold, especially when they have someone else to take care of them. Also it's easier to write from experience for this then, say, getting stabbed.

PTSD whump (when a character has trauma). This is more of a recovery trope. I hate it when a piece of media has a character go through an incredibly traumatizing event and then as soon as they're out, they're perfectly fine mentally. Let the character have ptsd, dammit! I don't really write this often, but when I do I love writing the nightmares in particular.

Immortal whump (with a character who, for whatever reason, cannot die). I love this one because it opens up even more possibilities for whumping. It usually depends on how the character's immortality works, but they can take a lot more damage than any other whumpee.

Realism in whump (realistic injuries, illness, and recovery). Really just a preference, as I'm studying in the medical field and already know a lot about how the human body works, so I use that knowledge and apply it to my writing. For example, fainting as portrayed in hollywood movies is a lot different from how fainting actually is. Involves a fair amount of research, but I personally think it's worth it.

(side note: I haven't really found any tropes which I strongly dislike, but out of personal preference I avoid smut and nsfw whump such as rape)

As to why I like whump? This was a tough question to answer, to properly articulate. It's fiction. And writing give me freedom to do pretty much anything to the characters and through the characters. I suppose whump is another way to exercise that creativity. "I know how the character reacts to this Situation, but what about this other Situation?"

I know some other writers use whump writing to work through their trauma, as catharsis. Props to them, but I don't write whump for that reason. I always liked putting my characters in Situations, and then a couple years ago discovered what whump was, went "that's a thing?!" and basically dove in head first.

The Tumblr whump community itself has also been very sweet and welcoming, I draw a lot of inspiration from the other writers, especially when I'm trying to figure out what to write next. I doubt I would still be writing whump if the community wasn't as welcoming, and I'm very glad it's not the case. If you go back in my archive, the first writing I started posting was whump. Nameless whump turned into oc whump, which turned into posting about my WIPs. So if the whump community gatekept me out, I probably wouldn't be posting any writing at all (and that's very sad to think about).

I hope this post was helpful to you! I can't speak for other members of the whump community, these opinions and motives are my own. If you have any more questions feel free to ask.

[leoleolovesdc]

I really don't get what's so appealing to writers and fans who make Bruce an abusive father. Why is it so fun? Why do people enjoy doing one of the biggest superhero of all times that dirty? How does that make any sense?

People always complain about how Batman is a power fantasy, but the fact that his actions aren't justifiable if applied real life doesn't mean that you have to fuck the character's fictional morals.

Every hero is a power fantasy, but they are enjoyable because they are good people (or people who try to be good). Bruce Wayne is a human being and he is capable of bad parenting and committing mistakes, but making him willingly hit his kids is just stupid.

Batman is and has always been about hope, about rising above your trauma, protecting who you love, using your pain to make the world a little better. Bruce doesn't go around "beating the mentally ill' just because, he does because they are dangerous people, criminals, terrorists who are constantly harming citizens with their actions.

With all that said; Bruce hitting his children/sidekicks/allies (or just purposefully harming them in any way shape or form) is incoherent with his character and all that he represents.

Batman brought Robin, especially Dick Grayson, in to help him. He didn't want a child soldier, he was comforting this kid and taking him to the police station when he asked to be trained so he could get the guy who killed his parents. He asked to become like Batman and Bruce, realizing that they were very similar, saw that he was also filled with anger and needed to be guided. That's why Dick became a better person than Bruce ever was, not because he was inherently good or something, but because even if their relationship was not perfect and troublesome at times they understood each other's pain like no one else would.

With all of Bruce and Dick's history saying that this father-son bond was filled with physical abuse just sounds wild to me. Same thing goes for Cass, Jason, Steph, Tim, Duke, Damian and any other child that Bruce parented or taken care of.

Jason and Dick are usually the victims of writers and fans who are full one Abusive-Bruce-Shit™️, and honestly, I don't think that's because they have remarkably difficult relationships, but because this fandom loves to make their favorite pretty "white" boys suffer.

No one cares if it makes sense for Bruce to be abusive towards his first sons, they just care that Dick and Jason are angsty. My prove of that? When do you ever see content of Bruce being abusive towards Cass? Damian? Steph? Duke? Never. Because those characters are either women or people of color largely ignored by both canon and fanon.

I'll admit that Damian and Tim do get angsty abusive dad content at times, because regardless of their actual relationship with Bruce Tim is a sad white boy and Damian is the largely white washed blood son, but they are still not the most common alternatives whenever family angst is the focus (despite the large fanon torture porn industry that Tim Drake goes through it is usually focused on other aspects of his life).

I don't really know how to end this, at this point I'm just ranting about annoying batfam fans, but, yeah, don't fuck over legacy characters by making them abusive dads bcuz u like saying ur fav has it worst👍

Little edit: In this post I talked abt Dick as a white guy, would like to apologize for that, I do know that he is romani but ended up forgetting to add that. Either way my point still stands as, just like Damian, his race is pretty much ignored by writers and parts of the fandom

[lesbianneopolitan]

hey why do you like Neo so much lol. No hate, just curious cause like, there are so many characters in RWBY I just wanna know why you (and a shocking amount of others apparently) identify with her so much

I've been asked this before, but because I was also recently asked on Twitter, I'll answer it again

Everything started with V2- Neo's design and personality caught my eye, yeah, her personality and the fact she was a sadist despite being presented with softer and 'cuter' colors, that's what I liked most at first

Even if her character wasn't thought to be part of the main story, the show gave me enough to end up liking Neo even more. And before I realized it, I caught up with V8 and not long after they gifted me RWBY Roman Holiday

Learning about Neo's past managed to make my brainrot worse, mainly because it managed to make me see myself reflected on Neo even more (for one reason or another)

I really loved witnessing her descend into madness due to loneliness and revenge, or the fact she isn't a good person (even if she suffered in the past, I think the book and the show made sure to make clear the bad tendencies that Neo has, independently to how much she has suffered, she's a chaotic person)

I also really REALLY LOVE her Semblance and I wish I had it lol

They also ended up referring to her as the Mad Hatter on occasion, reference to Alice in Wonderland (another of my main interests), and that gives points- part of her fighting style is based on fencing (my favorite kind of weapon and sword is the rapier)- everything just feels like perfection

And all of this without the necessity of Neo speaking, because she's mute

I just, love this bitch

On the topic of WHY I identify with her, though, it's probably mainly mental illness and trauma, as in, this is a topic I've talked about with my therapist before. I've noticed how a good bunch of women I know that are traumatized and are mentally ill tend to identify more with the villains than they do the heroes, and for each of us, there may just be part of our traumas that are comparable to certain fictional characters even if sometimes the reactions of the fictional characters are often more exaggerated and stuff because, well, they're villains lol

In Neo's case for me, there's also small things like my hyperphantasia compared to Neo's Overactive Imagination, or the fact Neo had an imaginary friend when she was younger that was an alter ego and a side of herself (when I was younger, I too had an alter ego that was the part of me that I couldn't express irl, born from the trauma I suffered), and while I personally headcanon her mutism to be a physical problem (vocal cords), my anxiety and certain stressing situations make me go mute, so I thought the fact she's mute is pretty cool

There's deeper stuff, like relating to how ashamed her own parents were of her for how she was, who she wanted to be, having parents that controlled her a lot, or that feeling of feeling lonely even when in a crowd of people because people keep pointing at you and saying how weird you are for being different, despite trying to be friendly

Or when it comes to relationships, I could also understand the struggles of being so attached to one person, that you try to fill that void with someone else almost desperately once losing them

The thing with the Curious Cat, despite being fictional possession, also reminded me too much of my sexual abuse (entering by the mouth made me really uncomfortable- hell, I did break for a week, in a way, and the loss of control of someone's body to be at the mercy of another reminded me of those dark times too), so I just got an extra reason to identify with Neo in this V9, it's why I gave my Neo's design 'scars' from that incident (physical changes, that to me are a representation of PTSD scars left behind and that you have to learn to live with)

I also have a tendency to identify with some characters that want revenge or are lonely- the revenge part because the person that abused me most in life didn't get any kind of punishment, so it's cathartic when fictional characters can have revenge instead (independently of the target being the real problem or not) and BRUH, there are possibly more things I'm forgetting, but I think the ask already got long enough to know there's a good bunch of psychological and spiritual factors between me and Neo that made me so attached

It's one of those cases in which it feels like, 'Neo was tailored for me' even if I'm obviously not the only case lol

[cloudcountry]

I don't play sdv so im sending this on anon in case i say something wrong but it's always been bizarre to me how people dehumanize shane

I've seen multiple videos talking about the worst bachelors and they always put him in first because "he betrays the player" by relapsing on drinking but like, isn't that just realistic? Shane is human that's normal, it's always weird how they want to just save and fix Shane instead of accepting and loving him, they treat him like shit and for what? it's not like he's abusive he's sweet and caring he just has an addiction 😭

anon you hit the nail right on the head.

under the cut because im talking about mental health and relapsing.

the people who yell about shane being a fixer upper the LOUDEST are the one who actually WANT him fixed. nobody who genuinely cared for shane and loves him for who he is wants to "fix him," in fact you as the farmer dont even really push him to do anything. shane decides to get therapy on his own, he decides to repair his relationships on his own, HELL he even asks the farmer to take him to the hospital after he drank too much ON HIS OWN.

people love to cry out "YOU CANT FIX HIM" when nobody, not even the IN GAME FARMER is trying to do that. shane is a very realistic character, one of the most realistic in the game, and to say he "betrays" his spouse because he RELAPSED or "isn't a good husband" because his room is messy is CRAZY to me. its like people aren't even hearing themselves talk.

ive seen some people who seem to genuine like shane talk about how his room is so bothersome because "its messy" and "doesnt look as nice as the other candidates" and EVERY TIME i'm like. Yeah and you know why? because shane is depressed. because shane, who struggles to get out of bed sometimes, may not have the energy to clean up his room every day. shane, who still has horrible thoughts about himself, may feel like he's too worthless to even bother trying because what would a little cleaning do? shane, even after he marries you, is still VERY MENTALLY ILL.

its like some of the posts on here talking about how people only support mentally ill people if theyre clean and up to THEIR standards. shane is literally a walking representation of that. even the people who love him cant completely accept his mental illness because it makes him nasty to them and yet not a single one of them sees a problem with it. it makes me so angry because i HAVE struggled with depression, i HAVE gone through days were i couldn't clean, i HAVE been disgusting. and to me, every single time i see someone talk about shane this way, a character who i relate to because we have very similar struggles, it tells me that people would think this way about me too.

stardew is such a great game for finding fictional characters that embody your struggles. shane is one of those characters. people like him because of his many flaws and even greater amount of strengths. people like shane because he embodies them. the stardew fandom screaming over and over again that shane is nothing but an outlet for people with fixer complexes will never not piss me the hell off.

[galaxythreads]

To be honest, I don't know. If you'd asked me a few years ago I would have honestly said no and been kind of offended anyone could hold Loki accountable for anything. But the thing is - now, after a lot of therapy, I don't think that mental illness or distress is an excuse for hurting people unless it is a genuine psychosis. If I was Loki's lawyer, which I'm not, I would say he was experiencing temporary insanity (a type of psychosis sort of) at the end of Thor 1.

But here's the thing, even if Loki wasn't really aware that what he was doing was wrong - did he still hurt the people around him? Yes. He did. Thor will carry lifelong mental scars from that fight. So to me, it's a gray area. Loki may not have understood what he was doing was wrong per se, but Thor was still hurt anyway. And this is not, in any way, a trade-off. Thor has hurt Loki in the movie, so Loki gets one free pass for all that he did to Thor? No. Not how this works. You don't get to hurt someone just because they hurt you. Like that works in fiction as motivation because it's fiction. Thor was hurt, and Loki was hurt. Their relationship is a mess and that was the point of the movie. They both hurt each other.

In the Avengers, Loki's official, MCU given body count may be 80-160ish people, but what about injuries? Mental trauma in the aftermath? Grieving loved ones? That's a minimum of 1000+ people affected.

And here's a not-so-secret secret: I don't think Loki was mind controlled in A1. I don't.

I know MCU has said Loki was being influenced by the scepter, but what does that even mean? They've never explained and Loki doesn't behave the same way that Clint or co did when they were mind-controlled. The scepter clearly has WEIRD effects on people, but what that means for Loki is ?????? They've never explained that further than a couple of sentences and before I accept this as being like canon-canon, I have to know what that means.

I will happily die on the hill that he was tortured by Thanos -- you will pull that from my dead, rotting fingers -- and that is a type of coercion that would absolve a lot of guilt, but I do and don't think Loki bares some responsibility for the invasion. I don't know. It's a gray area. I like the idea that Loki was tortured and then he agreed to attack New York to escape it. Mostly because I'm not afraid to wrap characters in darkness. I think Loki is allowed to have done something awful to escape something equally awful. Gray area. I'm not afraid to poke at the gray area.

But the thing is? Even if Loki 100% absolutely bares blame for Thor 1 and Avengers 1, canon matters very little to me in MCU anymore. They haven't given me anything I was happy to accept into my personal canon since Infinity War. I write fics with whatever now. I characterize Loki off of OG Loki and will continue to do so until I die, sometimes I put in that he was mind-controlled, more often than not I don't. I write Loki as a good person who did an awful thing to escape a worse thing that defines the rest of their existence but they're still trying to be a good person anyway. When I engage with Thor 1, I write Loki as having gone through a massive psychosis, but still having hurt Thor. I write Thor and Loki's relationship as both of them having hurt the other but still willing to burn down worlds for each other. Y'know, just a tad (lot) unhealthy. (But in a fun way because this is fiction and no one is hurt by it). Like my version of canon is slightly detached from canon and I know that, but like? I don't care. No one cares? Do you know the amount of comments I've gotten about a character being ooc in the last 1-2 years in MCU?

0.

Because what even is canon at this point? I could write Loki as literally anything and there would be a canon justification for it because Loki's canon characterization is such a mess now that there's no "correct" version of him anymore.

Like guys -- I write about Hela being a good sister. Do you think canon backs that? Absolutely not. Do I care? No?????? no I don't. She, Thor, and Loki are the best siblings in my heart and I will continue to write about that despite what canon says.

Once I let go of the idea that every character I like is secretly a 100% moral human being who is free of any guilt or terrible things, it relieved a lot of guilt and expectations I have for the characters. One of my main characters in my original book series has a body count in the actual millions and I absolutely adore them, okay? Because it's fiction. No one is hurt by me liking this character. I'm not going to start advocating for death. I've liked Loki since I was 15, and I didn't grow up to be a murderer. Honestly, now I kind of prefer the little bit of darkness because redemption stories are just my Thing TM. I love, love taking the dark or dark-adjacent characters and then dragging them into a found family against their will.

So I don't need Loki to be free of all guilt in order to like him. But I'm also happy to explore the idea that he is because it's fun either way. Darkness or less darkness, he's still just Loki.

(That's why I'm having fun with the Loki season 2. Because to me it's like a fic that took one interpretation of what happened and rolled with it. Because canon is whatever at this point. Loki in the series did attack New York by choice. Does that strictly agree with canon of A1? No. Absolutely not. They're ignoring so much, but the series isn't about that event specifically even as much as I wish it WAS, it's about Loki's relationship with the other characters. Idk. It's complicated.)

Fics are often a love letter to canon, an exploration/extension of what canon is, but other times they're someone looking at canon and going "WHY." and then rewriting it. I'm in the latter part now. I used to be the former, but MCU is just. MCU now. So I kind of looked at Loki and Thor, took a cookie cutter to both of them and then left with that. There's still other dough, but I don't care about it.

So yes I hold him accountable. And no. And kind of both?

[tyrannuspitch]

i understand that not everyone knows this, but i would really like the loki fandom to be a little more aware that psychiatry is institutionally biased against people with npd, and this bias is particularly magnified in social media and pop psych for sensationalist, commercial reasons. even the npd diagnostic criteria are Not Great (especially the short version - there is an expanded version!), and even if they were perfect, the understanding of the disorder you get just by reading a checklist is not a whole, rounded picture.

npd is (at least very, very often) a trauma disorder. people with npd having very low self-worth and self-destructive tendencies is incredibly common. npd is not "abuser disorder" or "evil disorder", it's just another mental illness, and honestly, any disorder can be framed in a demonising way if you try. (depressed people are scary because they're obsessed with death! adhd people are scary because they have no control of their emotions or impulses! etc.) i have yet to see a "debunking" of loki being "a narcissist" that gets past this popular, biased surface level.

here and here are two posts explaining how stigma can distort common descriptions of npd symptoms, and here is an unofficial suggested revision of the npd diagnostic criteria written by someone with the disorder to focus on the patient's experiences, and not on how others view them.

loki cannot "too good" to have npd, because having npd does not make you a bad person. reading loki as having npd is not inherently demonising or victim-blaming. and if a specific person's npd loki reading really is doing that, then the fundamental problem is not that they're biased against loki, a fictional character - it's that they're biased against a very vulnerable, stigmatised and real group of mentally ill people.

now that we've dealt with all that - DOES loki have npd?

personally, i go back and forth on whether i think he fully qualifies for the disorder, but as i interpret him, he absolutely does show many traits of npd, such as the following:

perfectionism and fluctuating, fragile self-esteem. he has to be best, because if he isn't the best that would mean he's the absolute worst, worthless, monstrous, unlovable, etc. even when he is succeeding in his goals then maybe he's somehow the best and the worst at once, and almost anything could bring him crashing down again.

constant comparison of himself to others, leading to insecurity, jealousy, bitterness, paranoia...

basing his feelings of safety/security on his connections to people he sees as powerful and/or admirable, and basing his self-esteem on their approval, to the point where he becomes dependent or defines himself by them.

desperately, sometimes destructively, acting out for attention - whether showing off (begging for approval) or picking fights (demanding it.)

experiencing loneliness, shame and guilt easily and extremely intensely, making him hypersensitive to criticism and the possibility of rejection or abandonment - which can provoke a fight/flight/freeze/fawn response.

defensive/paranoid distortion in his analysis of others' feelings - focusing intently on what they think of him (do you love me, hate me, want to hurt me?) while less aware of their own feelings (eg, he can be fairly insensitive to thor's own capacity to be hurt). (in loki, as in many real people, this seems to have originated as a defence mechanism against being manipulated, and from having to walk on eggshells in a toxic family where *everyone* has more social power than him.)

a deep-rooted fear of being manipulated or controlled, which leads to a very strong need to feel in control of himself.

a deep-rooted fear of emotional vulnerability which makes him very reluctant to express his emotions, and when he does, it's often either a calculated tactical decision (so he can tell himself he's still in control), or the result of an emotional breakdown because he just can't keep up the mask any longer.

a paranoid view of the world in which everyone always wants to control him, and controlling power imbalances are an inherent feature of all relationships ("freedom is life's great lie"...), leading him to try to "defensively" manipulate and control others. (this is the ugliest symptom on this list, but it's also arguably the least textbook npd - something this literal and pronounced might be better characterised as ptsd's "distorted understanding of own trauma"/"change of fundamental beliefs" symptoms.)

obviously everyone has a right to their own reading and headcanon, and of course you can reject any reading at all based on simply Not Vibing with it. this isn't the Mandatory NPD Loki post, just me trying to encourage you to consider the possibility. there's a lot here! it's a very plausible reading!

(and honestly, why stop there? you might also note that thor, who grew up in the same toxic household, display a fair number of these symptoms too...)

[this post is meant to be informative and to give people a little insight into an alternative perspective on npd to the dominant pop psych one. i'm happy to answer questions, but if you want to "debate" me or approach this as "discourse", please don't.]

[dropintomanga]

What Smoking Entails in Manga

Last year, a survey was given to Japanese manga publishers about what top 5 manga to recommend for 2023 and the number one title was symbolic of many things related to Japanese culture - one of which was smoking.

The title was called Smoking Behind the Supermarket With You by Jinushi. I got a chance to read Volume 1 recently and it's a very fascinating romantic comedy about a middle-aged salaryman and a early 20s' female convenience store clerk and how they're bound by their love of smoking. The author made a comment saying that their admiration of how cool smoking was in fiction was a huge inspiration in creating the story.

Which got me thinking about how much smoking is prevalent in the anime and manga worlds and how much characters who smoke are beloved by many.

When I was still exploring new titles to follow in my '20s, one that stood out to me was Great Teacher Onizuka. The main character was someone who was a total idiot, but was pretty badass. Oh yeah, he smoked. I later got into Rurouni Kenshin and fell in love with Saito Hajime. Oh yeah, he smokes. A LOT. It's funny because I got into comics because of X-Men and the characters Wolverine and Gambit smoked quite a bit. I liked both, but not as much as the anime/manga characters who smoked.

When you think about it, there's a lot of anime/manga characters who smoke. Sanji from One Piece, Revy from Black Lagoon, Nara Shikamaru from Naruto, Toshiro Hijikata from Gintama, several adult characters from Cowboy Bebop (like Spike Siegel pictured above) - I could go on.

In video games, there's Yakuza/Like a Dragon characters and one of my favorite heroines ever, VA-11 Hall-A's Jill Stingray, smokes.

I love how cool all of those characters look when they smoke and I don't even smoke. I don't want to because of all the health risks smoking entails. My father used to be a smoker, but quit before I reached junior high school because he was having health problems.

At the same time, I do something a bit silly. I pretend to smoke with the air around me. I like to pretend I'm holding an imaginary cigarette to my mouth and inhale/exhale oxygen when no one's looking. It's a habit I've built from following my favorite characters who smoke.

Smoking is indeed something that shouldn't be romanticized. But I think about why people smoke in the first place - particularly my dad and Chinese people (particularly men) smoked. I remember one time when I was at a Chinese doctor's office, there was a video played for Chinese people addicted to smoking. There was a doctor in the video who said when Chinese people immigrate to the United States, they're often exposed to a lot of stressors (usually related to acculturation) that weigh a ton. Smoking is one way to help process and relieve their stress. They're coming from a country where smoking is definitely the norm in their culture.

There's a lot of talk about smoking being a sign of maturity and surviving through tough times. I decided to look up the relationship between smoking and mental health/illness. It's not surprising that there's negative effects. People with depression and anxiety may smoke a bit more than those who aren't affected by them. What makes it really hard for them to quit is that smoking has social benefits. Nicotine can help calm nerves and make smokers feel more confident in behaving in a proper social manner.

When I think about the many characters who smoke, smoking does help them before they get ready to take on a big task involving other people. It's literally the calm before the storm. Hell, I do "oxygen smoke" as a way to feel calm before facing reality or having big conversations with my friends. But I was drilled so hard by United States anti-drug programs (when compared to Asia) that I didn't want to feel like I was dying. That's why I never took the plunge despite the coolness of smoking found in Japanese media and try to encourage anti-smoking measures. Plus I think it helped that I wasn't super-stressed despite my mental illness to the point where I resorted to substances. Plus I had people who genuinely cared about my well-being and a somewhat optimistic belief in the best of humanity.

While Japanese media (and other Asian media in general) continues to showcase smoking to a decent degree, there's contentious pushback in America over the portrayal of smoking in their media. Yet smoking rates in Japan have gone down though quite a bit over the years due to anti-smoking measures. It's not as low as health organizations would like, but progress is progress.

The only thing I think we can agree on is that the world is so cruel and there should be wider acknowledgement of how the bad parts of life can lead people down to dangerous substances in order to cope. I think this is what creators intend to show when they have characters who smoke. Yeah, they look cool, but they're flawed people trying to find some sense of meaning/connection to worlds that disappoint them over and over again.

We're just trying to find ways to breathe life into inner peace, whether it's with oxygen or smoke.

[bumblingest-bee]

Out of all assassins from titular musical who do you think is the "most sympathetic" and the "most worst"?

oooh that's a really really good question. setting aside personal opinion for the moment (i'll get to it promise!), one thing i find interesting about assassins is that it doesn't necessarily ask us to sympathize with the characters, but just to consider them as they're presented to us and sit with whatever conclusions we draw from that on our own.

that being said the show does present some as more sympathetic than others imo. (there's no such thing as an unbiased narrative, no matter how hard you try!) for example czolgosz is never directly condemned by the balladeer unlike, say, booth (kind of balancing the audience's immediate resistance to a character like booth). it also neutralizes oswald quite a bit by taking away his agency in the actual assassination, which i think is a very intentional way to let the audience relate to him in that final scene.

anyways! so who do i think is the most/least sympathetic in the show? i'd say the "worst" is booth because he's purely ideologically motivated by hatred. aside from whether you think he was mentally ill in real life, as a character he's presented as sane, if a little unhinged. someone like guiteau, who's obviously not in his right mind, can be pitied. but booth? he's calculated and manipulative and even aside from the assassination he spends most of the show being a total asshole. (but he's very very entertaining while doing it lol)

as for my most sympathetic? lynette squeaky fromme. no, seriously.

because the thing about assassins, as i mentioned earlier, is that we as the audience aren't necessarily meant to make moral judgements. we're meant to consider the assassins as people like us.

if i was taking "sympathetic" to mean the most morally justifiable, or if we were talking in terms of real life rather than fiction, i'd say czolgosz (or even one of the assassins who was obviously mentally ill and unable to make moral decisions). but the point of assassins is not to morally justify the characters. it's to see ourselves in the characters. and that's meant to scare us.

i see myself in squeaky. i feel for her! even though she's largely a comic character, she's a poignant one. she's desperately lonely and insecure. at her core, she's still a frightened teenage girl who wants above all things to be loved. that's what i sympathize with. but she's willing to do awful things to get that love. and that's what scares me.

the great thing about assassins is it doesn't force you to sympathize with these people, but it gives you permission to. it can show you the parts of yourself that you don't normally want to look at, and that's a powerful thing to see if you let it.

[spite-and-waffles]

I get so infuriated when people reduce Jason's ultimatum to "trying to force Bruce to kill someone to prove his love". The dishonesty of it. Remove all context from the situation and make it sound like an insane inhumane choice. I can do that too actually. Batman is a rich kid who whales on poor and mentally ill people instead of going to therapy. He colludes with cops to bypass due process and collect evidence illegally. He creates child soldiers and makes them into canon fodder for his obsession. It sounds pretty indefensible when you remove every single context and convention that makes a story work doesn't it? Almost like you're only willing to extend the in-universe rules to the rich white manbaby and not the child whose death he was responsible for, huh?

Also? Moral absolutism is harmful and egoistic. You shouldn't kill people, not even criminals, of course not. But that doesn't mean refusing to kill in any situation whatsoever is the moral choice. There's a difference between killing to protect and killing to avenge. Between killing an active threat who will definitely escape and slaughter a family and killing one who is safely contained. Any rule that's taken purely prescriptively and without regard to the individual context of the choice is simply dogma. Especially if the role you have voluntarily taken on requires the willingness to do whatever it takes to do your fucking job. That's why morality isn't fucking black and white.

That's the crux of it for me; why I take this defense of Batman's choices so personally. I don't trust people who see the world in such a black and white way (this includes Jason, who is exactly as myopic as Bruce, but happens to be right about the Joker imo. Fortunately he's a fictional character and also a kid who has not yet had the opportunity to grow, unlike Bruce). I don't trust people who think morality is about a set of correct judgements rather than the process by which you arrive at said judgements. I don't trust people who won't fucking choose. Inaction is complicity, bitch. The consequences of your choices exist and fall on other people regardless of your refusal to take responsibility for them. Bottomline – if your version of "mercy" results in the death and suffering of other people, maybe consider that you're the villain of the story.

[laceratedlamiaceae]

Izzy and Trust

I want to talk about Izzy and trust because I was talking about it with my therapist and projecting onto my blorbos helps me process because I think there's a lot to say about it.

As I have regrettably been made aware recently, trust is essential for forming meaningful connections with other people; why would anyone want to be vulnerable with someone they don't trust not to exploit that vulnerability? And, as I have even more regrettably been made aware recently, having close, meaningful relationships with other people is unfortunately very important for one's mental and emotional well-being.

Izzy is surrounded by pirates and pirates are, generally speaking, not trustworthy. It's safe to assume that he's learned, whether through harsh experience or observation, that he can't trust people (with the exception of Ed--more on that later), and he was right. Our Flag Means Death is set in a comedic world, but the show itself states that pirate culture is "a culture of abuse," along with whatever else Stede says in the first episode. In the environment Izzy has lived in, trust and vulnerability are dangerous and can only lead to harm, and he's been right to avoid them so forcefully.

As a brief aside, the reason Ed is able to so easily open up to Stede is because he isn't making himself very vulnerable by doing so--he's the biggest, baddest pirate on the seas and Stede is just some guy who doesn't know what he's doing, so he isn't risking much by trusting Stede not to use his feelings against him, and Stede would be an idiot to try--Ed could easily destroy him, even if we as the audience know he wouldn't. Izzy, on the other hand, doesn't have that same reputation to protect him.

Trust comes from a sense of belonging (at least, that's what my therapist tells me). Izzy very obviously does not belong on the revenge, so he never has a chance to develop trust in the crew. This isn't an immutable fact--Fang, coming from the same crew as Izzy, is welcomed by the crew of the Revenge (Lucius in particular) and is able to open up fairly quickly, but Izzy doesn't get the same reception.

Izzy may have belonged on Blackbeard's crew to some extent, but even aside from the fact that it was a crew that actively pushed the idea that vulnerability was to be avoided ("the love of a pet makes a man weak," for example), as first mate he was alienated from the others by virtue of being their superior. It's easier to trust an equal than to trust your manager, and belonging to a workplace is different than belonging to a friend group.

Izzy does trust Ed; he's able to openly voice his feelings, even if they are usually ignored, and he believes that Ed will follow through on his promise to kill Stede long after it's become clear to the audience that he won't. This trust comes from Izzy feeling like he belongs with Ed; most of what he does throughout the season is to ensure that he can continue to be with him.

As of the end of season one, Ed violated that trust in an extreme way by entering Izzy's room while he was asleep (the most blatantly vulnerable it's possible for someone to be) and, well, you know what happened next. We briefly get to see Izzy trying to pretend like everything is alright, but it's unclear how long he'll be able to keep up that shallow facade. In season two, Izzy will likely be even more isolated and unable to trust than ever.

One other factor I feel is worth mentioning is that being neurodivergent or mentally ill makes it very difficult for a person to feel like they belong anywhere. Obviously it's impossible to diagnose Izzy with anything for certain, considering that he's a fictional character, but there has been a lot of meta already written analyzing his character from this perspective and it isn't difficult to imagine him with something like autism or anxiety.

I, personally, have anxiety and I see a lot of myself in Izzy. I've always felt like an outsider, even around fellow queer people who I would think I should get along with. Even when I do manage to get marginally close to someone, I'm always on the alert for them to leave or turn on me for doing or saying the wrong thing, and I always make sure to never give them too much of myself so I don't get too hurt. I bring all this up to say that I see all of that in Izzy as well, and I can't fault him for it.

All it takes is a few bad experiences for someone to withdraw like that, and it's hard to stop once you've started. If you've learned to feel like trusting people inevitably leads to betrayal, even if you know that logically that isn't true, why would you ever risk it again? But if you don't take that risk, you can't ever unlearn that belief, and so you just stay withdrawn forever.

What Izzy needs is to find a place he belongs--a place with people he can relate to, where he feels safe and included. Then he can begin the gradual process of learning to trust people, and maybe eventually he can open up and make friends. I'd imagine that if this were to happen, given the fact that Izzy is a secondary character and this show has a pretty short runtime, that it'll happen with the crew of the Revenge.

This is where I would explain how I see that happening, but to be honest I don't. I can only imagine it happening with a new group of people (ideally ones who haven't tried to kill him) who are more like him in terms of personality and aesthetics--more "traditional" pirates, by the standards of the show. Who knows, maybe his role will be expanded, maybe it'll happen offscreen, or maybe the writers will manage to pull it off with the crew of the revenge.

Or maybe Izzy will never learn to trust people and he'll just get worse and then die, but I'm going to choose to ignore that possibility.