Thread by @swordsoprano, thinking about cad saying "the pain is inconsequential" vs caleb putting...that...in his [...]

thinking about cad saying "the pain is inconsequential" vs caleb putting...that...in his tower

(this is NOT me saying caleb is inferior in any way. if you're here to say that, don't bother commenting. also...just give me a second to gather my thoughts here? thanks?)

i Can't Believe i have to put disclaimers like "if you think a traumatized character is a bad person or a bad character for being visibly affected by that trauma, this isn't the place for you" on all my tweets but ANYWAY. now time for me to Actually Have Thoughts.

(also, bashing cad isn't welcome here either, but i've found that to be less common. i have my own thoughts on why that is, but that's not what i want to talk about right now.)

okay now for real after i've slapped on the 500 disclaimers that are necessary in this fandom

i think that dichotomy really speaks to caleb and cad's different worldviews, in a way that doesn't condemn either of them.

while cad finds destiny to be a comforting thing, caleb finds it to be a scary thing. i was talking about this with @otdderamin the other day.

cad has known mostly love, while caleb has known mostly pain and fear and abuse.

i don't think cad was WRONG to say it's love that matters, but since he hasn't known pain on the same intimate level that caleb has...it's probably easier for him to call pain inconsequential.

and i don't mean to say cad has never known pain, or sadness, or anger! even before his travels with the nein...i'd imagine that being completely alone for a decade isn't fun.

but i think it's fair to say his life has been shaped by love in a way that caleb's (and most of the nein's, let's be real here) hasn't.

so what am i getting at here?

i think that while cad calls the pain inconsequential, caleb's choice to put that room in the tower shows he DOESN'T view it as inconsequential-quite the opposite, actually.

i think this post that i screenshotted does a good job explaining that. gone, but not forgotten. the pain is still there, and it still shapes who caleb is, even if other things are also shaping him. https://twitter.com/swordsoprano/status/1309555074251870208

https://twitter.com/swordsoprano/status/1309555074251870208

in case it's not obvious, my personal view of trauma is something that lines up a lot more with caleb's.

so what does that mean for cad, at least how i view him?

cad is a flawed person, as much as people pretend he's not. he's often judgmental. he thinks his way is always the best way. his experiences have been limited, and he doesn't always grasp that, at least not to its full extent.

does any of this mean that cad is a bad person? of course not.

does any of this mean that i don't like cad? um, have you seen how i talk about cad? i've admitted to having been uncomfortable with him, but on the whole, i think he's a wonderful character and i love him a lot.

there are a lot of things that set cad apart from the rest of the nein-of course, all of the nein are different, but cad seems to view himself as separate from the group in a way that the others don't, at least, not as much.

this seems to be another example of that.

i feel weird and not great about this. maybe he distances himself bc he's one of the few members who has a home to go back to and doesn't want to get too attached? i don't know, that's not my main point here, but yeah.

if you can't tell from my more rambly tweets and the fact that my time between tweets is getting slower...i feel like i might be running out of things to say, or at least coherent ones.

i'd like caleb and cad to talk about this.

but going back to what cad said at the dinner...it felt like a nicer version of "your trauma doesn't define you"

which, in my experience, is a coded way of saying "shut up about your trauma, you're making me uncomfortable, it wasn't that bad, i don't even really believe you."

but that's not what cad was saying.

not only is it kind of impossible to disbelieve caleb when trent is Right There

but cad has always believed caleb, and the rest of the nein, when they talk about their trauma.

for all his flaws, he believes them.

and that's...new for me. cad positions himself as a therapist figure in some ways, and i often feel like i have to prove myself to people like that.

and proving myself isn't the same thing as just telling my story.

proving myself means operating under the assumption that no one will believe me. proving myself means being retraumatized.

but all cad needs to believe the nein is the story.

i definitely don't agree that the pain is inconsequential.

i do think cad's dinner speech is going to live down in cr history as one of those lines that literally, without exaggeration, changed my life.

how can that be?

i think @bigbyslefthand said how it can be. the pain matters, and it is also inconsequential, because those mean different things, and coexist at the same time in different ways.

i've said that i don't view my Actively-Being-Traumatized self as a person, and of course that isn't literally true, and i wouldn't dream of saying that to/about anyone else bc it feels dehumanizing as hell.

but i feel like it makes sense here.

i disagree with caduceus about a lot of things, because my experiences have caused me to view the world in a way much like how caleb does.

so why did i call that speech life-changing?

because it told me i can be something other than what they made me, but in a way that made me feel believed, and in a way that did not deny me any of my experiences.

because it told me they can be "gone but not forgotten."

that's as good a place as any to end this thread.

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