[ SECRET POST #3705 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3705 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.



__________________________________________________



02.
[Bonnie Bennett, from The Vampire Diaries]


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.
[Criminal Minds, Alvez/Garcia]


__________________________________________________



06.
[Barton Fink]


__________________________________________________



07. [(possible) SPOILERS for Supernatural]













Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 00 secrets from Secret Submission Post #529.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

04. http://i64.tinypic.com/30tlwef.jpg

[(Anonymous)]

Depression and anxiety are so common that most people will have one or both of them for at least some time in their lives, so I don't think applying them liberally to characters is unjustified.

[(Anonymous)]

Maybe the OP is saying you can be depressed without suffering from a Depressive Disorder or anxious without suffering from an Anxiety Disorder. Everyone gets sad and worried but not everyone gets to the point of having a pathology.

[(Anonymous)]

Getting sad does not equal depression

[mimi_sardinia]

And not all depression needs medication.

[(Anonymous)]

I really expected something more specific or rare, not just anxiety or depression or PTSD. Like, those are pretty common and I bet a lot of characters, depending on the show, could definitely have those. Unless your fandoms are all like How I Met Your Mother comedies or something.

[sarillia]

I've been trying to get some of my friends to understand that "not all personality quirks are pathological" for a long time and it's been really frustrating.

[(Anonymous)]

I certainly think that people can just live their lives and be perfectly happy and functional and have bad days and good days and not everything needs a couch session and navel gazing. Honestly.

And the need people appear to have to diagnose people onscreen with dire prognoses sometimes strikes me as wanting to get more sympathy and attention for the woobie character they love (and vicariously enjoy it themselves) but maybe that's just me.

I am not saying always. I am just saying sometimes.

[(Anonymous)]

And the need people appear to have to diagnose people onscreen with dire prognoses sometimes strikes me as wanting to get more sympathy and attention for the woobie character they love (and vicariously enjoy it themselves)

This is frequently the vibe I've gotten as well. It's one of the reasons I've always tended to be put off by BBC Sherlock fics that "diagnose" Sherlock with something - even when they're otherwise really good fics.

I just find that definitively diagnosing Sherlock (or any number of other characters in other fandoms) with a disorder kind of chorales the reader into interpreting his actions a certain way and sympathizing with him in a certain way. Suddenly it's like every atypical thing he does, good or bad, he does because he has [disorder X]. As opposed to him just being ambiguously flawed and/or troubled in a number of complex and intersecting ways, which is pretty much my way of viewing the character.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

Yup. It's definitely a different lens.

[(Anonymous)]

In my experience, at lot of people who write meta or fic on this theme are often dealing with those issues themselves. I see it as a form of therapy. I know that's definitely why I read a lot of the fic and search it out.

I don't know which characters you're talking about.

[(Anonymous)]

Because given most of the shows that I watch, the things that happen to the characters, and their reactions to them, none of those things would be out of the blue. Sometimes the reactions are short-lived or the immediate aftermath of a bad thing happening isn't shown (time skip), but seriously, I could see it for anybody on Teen Wolf, I could see it for everybody on Teen Wolf. Also, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, NCIS, Hawaii Five-0, Lethal Weapon, MacGyver, Elementary, and Blue Bloods. If you watch procedurals, superhero shows, horror or sci-fi, a lot of bad things happen to the characters, a lot, and there's a lot they have to deal with. I just think those characters dealing with PTSD, depression, and/or anxiety would be completely understandable. I mean, the writers mostly don't have them do it, but that doesn't mean it's implausible.

[(Anonymous)]

As someone who actually suffers from depression and anxiety, I really hate it when people just slap those labels onto characters who have perfectly logical reasons to be depressed or anxious about something because it's not the same thing at all. Anxiety is not being anxious about things it makes sense to be anxious about, it's about freaking out because someone didn't answer your text so clearly that must mean that they hate you and are ignoring you because you did something bad. Being anxious because the fate of the world rests on your shoulders or whatever isn't even remotely comparable to that and I find it insulting when people try to equate the two things.

[(Anonymous)]

If you had said Narcissistic PD or Borderline PD or Manic Depression (or Autism, though I don't want to put it in the same class as personality disorders) then I would agree with you. I very rarely subscribe to any sort of fanon in which a character is/has any of these. Because IMO it usually feels forced and like everyone wants the character have a particular diagnosis for some kind of personal reason.

But generalized anxiety? Depression? Even PTSD? As other people have already said, there are a lot of characters on television who have been through the kind of shit that would make practically anyone come out the other side with a mood disorder and/or PTSD.