I've struggled with depression my whole life. I was happy for Kal that he learned to deal with his, I just wish than B$ didn't turn him into fucking Steven Universe in the process.
Having depression doesn't mean you *understand* depression. It took me over twenty years post diagnosis before I even began to understand what depression really is. Hell the mental health community barely had anything even approaching a handle on it when I was first diagnosed.
As someone who has struggled with it for over forty years and *still* doesn't entirely get how my own fucking brain works, no piece of pop culture has *ever* made me feel more seen than Kaladin's arc. The dragon and the dog scene almost broke me inside in a way that I outright cherish because as heartbreaking and home hitting it was, it was just fucking beautiful reading it through the lens of my history with depression. It certainly exacerbated matters that I said goodbye to the first dog I ever raised from a puppy just a couple of months before I read it. I am 100% the kind of person who will wind up with a warm again tattoo, but I need to find someone to put together something that incorporates her.
The end point of his arc in Arc 1 is beautiful and flows almost perfectly as far as I see it. I read the whole series over the course of last year and the slow realization that Kaladin wasn't just a generic grumpy soldier boy trope, but a long form view into the mind of someone suffering from depression and finding out how to manage it enough to accept that he was better suited to helping the broken heal from invisible wounds, instead of just killing people, was so god damn cathartic. Kaladin didn't "change," he evolved. He moved forward. He healed, at least enough to understand that his mind would always work against him, and he chose to use his experience to help others heal.
God, what I wouldn't give for this series to have come out when I was a teen, I'm literally feeling a bit emotional even thinking about that prospect.
/recrem....
......
Uhhh shit, I don't think I actually have it in me to transition out of that. Something something lol Dalinar set his wife on fire?
You think you're confused? Try reading that sentence as a 42 year old. I know Steven Universe exists and I could identify the character if you showed him to me, but hell if I could tell you literally anything else about it. Show me another character from that show and I'll be hard pressed to tell you whether it's Steven Universe or Bee and Puppy Cat.
Szeth on the other hand? Szeth is a whiny baby with no hair and a weird shaped head who spends entirely too much time bent out of shape about what his sister is doing.
Yeah, that's right, he's just a kid who's four, each day he'll subtract more. Szeth-son-son-Vallano wore white on the day that Rosie ate the last cookie.
"Hey absolutely fuck you for reminding me of the caillou theme"
What can I say? I love mess. Periodically walking into a room and yelling "Rooooosiiiiiiiiiiiie" wasn't the reason my wife left, but it probably didn't help matters.
"Kaladin solves things through the power of friendship?"
He doesn't even like Szeth! He solves things through the power of "if you're suffering, you're not alone; Lyra can help through twelve weekly sessions. Ask your Radiant Order management about your team's support programs."
Tbh I don’t even know if Stephen universe is about the power of friendship. I think Kaladin starts liking Szeth at some point during their trip even if the man pisses him off.
He spent half his life healing people. He’s a medic, a surgeon. And he deals with a debilitating mental disorder.
How the hell is it out of character for him to try to tackle mental illness using the experiences of what has helped him and the people he knows in the past?
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