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The Beauty of All Life: Being Real, Not Always Positive

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“You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both and there you have the Facts of Life”  In “A Life in the Day”, (The Magicians, Season 3 Episode 5), Quentin and Eliot are transported to the past in Fillory and spend 50 years together trying to solve the mosaic puzzle. According to the book, the solution to the puzzle is supposed to “represent the beauty of all life,” a very nebulous, objective, and ineffable goal. And then of course, it's only after spending that 50 years there, working on the puzzle, loving, arguing, grieving, remembering, trying again and again, all of that together is what leads to the iridescent tile that finally reveals the key. At first watch, it may seem that the “beauty” they're representing is love – Quentin loved Arielle and Eliot, Eliot loved Quentin, and they all loved Teddy. It makes it seem as if the answer is having someone to love, or someone who loves you. But the episode is careful to show us more than the happy loving moments. We s...
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Bringing the Power Together: Willow's Four Personalities

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Back in 2004, I was in grad school, and had the amazing opportunity to take a class on Buffy (this is what led to my thesis and book, but that's another story). I was recently reminded of this paper and decided to post it for anyone interested. Do keep in mind this was written many years ago, but it's still a fairly solid analysis.  August 10, 2004 Bringing the Power Together: Willow’s Four Personalities Throughout the seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer , Willow Rosenberg evolves in stages: a shy and insecure high school outcast, a timid but enthusiastic computer nerd, a fairly confident magic user and girlfriend, and finally, through heartbreak and confusion a relatively balanced lesbian and a quite powerful witch. Upon losing Tara, Willow discovers yet another side to her personality: that of a pained, vengeful murderer. It is only in Season Seven that we see Willow begin to incorporate all of these aspects into her complete personality, finally stepping close...
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Why Can't We Give Love??

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  “ Can't we give ourselves one more chance? Why can't we give love that one more chance? Why can't we give love, give love, give love, give love Give love, give love, give love, give love, give love? 'Cause love's such an old fashioned word And love dares you to care for The people on the edge of the night And love dares you to change our way of Caring about ourselves” I've heard “Under Pressure” countless times, including several covers and mashups, but recently, this verse caught my attention. Especially the “love dares you to care for the people on the edge of the night” and “love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves.” These two statements about love are some of the truest I've heard, but not some of the most frequent. It reminds me of Doctor Who (Death in Heaven 8.12) The Doctor realizes he's never needed an army, because he says “Love is not an emotion. It is a promise.” Cybermen delete emotions – like a person who's b...
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Location: Chocolay Charter Twp, MI, USA
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Staring into the Abyss - The 'Untempered Schism' of PTSD/C-PTSD

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Trauma is no easy thing to deal with, whether your trauma is from years of microaggressions in the form of racism or misogyny, or a singular (or multiple) traumatic event such as a health crisis, poverty or homelessness, physical attacks, no matter the source of the trauma, those internal, emotional and mental injuries leave their damage.  In Doctor Who, the Tenth Doctor talks about being taken, as all young Time Lords are, to the Untempered Schism as a child, "Eight years old, staring at the raw power of time and space, just a child. Some would be inspired; some would run away, and some would go mad." ("The Sound of Drums") These are some possible reactions to trauma, especially childhood trauma. Some people become inspired – to create something from their pain or to reach out to others, some try to run from their pain, and some end up spreading their pain to others. Many times, we go through at least a couple of these stages. Imagine that when we have been hurt...
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Location: Iola, WI, USA
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Depression Monsters Abound; TV can teach us how to fight them

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  "The Monster Behind Me" by Bella Moon “Get too near a Dementor and every good feeling, every happy memory will be sucked out of you. If it can, the Dementor will feed on you long enough to reduce you to something like itself – soulless and evil. You’ll be left with nothing but the worst experiences of your life.” Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban*   I’m having a rough day emotionally. A variety of issues comes together and I find myself crying, feeling isolated, feeling frustrated by time lost, like some monster (Dementor) is slowly stealing my life from me and I’m powerless to stop it. After my shower, I put on one of my favorite T-shirts; a cartoon drawing of the TARDIS and 10 th Doctor from Doctor Who, with glow-in-the-dark Weeping Angels around it. It’s comfortable, which is why I thought I chose it, but only moments after putting it on, I realized it’s more. My favorite stories have always been a comfort to me, just as they’ve challenged me, taught me, and ...
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Location: Dickson, TN, USA
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Diving in to Save Ourselves

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Intro: Pop Culture Therapy (originally published summer 2019 at conversationswith.net) Photo property of Cynthia O'Malley "I'd forgotten not all victories are about saving the universe."  Rory Williams, Doctor Who: God Complex   O kay, here’s the plan. We’re going to talk about Pop Culture (think Doctor Who, The Magicians, Buffy, Supergirl, and more) and how we can use it for personal understanding and growth. I call it “Pop Culture Therapy” but this is not in any way intended to replace actual mental health care with a licensed therapist and/or doctor. I encourage you to have a professional you can turn to, if not on a regular basis, at least during times of high stress or intense personal reflection work. I say “we” because I very much hope others will comment and share their experiences and their personal pop culture therapy moments and allow this to become a conversation. It’s scary to talk about these things publicly, but breaking down that stigma is a very...
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Location: Memphis, TN, USA
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Shedding Light on Your Inner Asylum

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"The Monster Behind Me" by Bella Moon Most everyone I know with mental health struggles has at some point been told those struggles weren’t real. Dismissing mental illness is unfortunately very common and rooted in stigma and shame and fear. It’s also gaslighting. It’s really difficult to explain to someone who’s never had these struggles just how real they are despite not being visible, tangible things. It’s my hope that these examples and parallels from various stories can help everyone understand it a little better, both those of us living with mental illness, and those not. The mental hospital is surprisingly prevalent in sci-fi/fantasy. Called "Cuckoo's Nest" by TV Tropes, it shows up in Buffy ("Normal Again"), Warehouse 13 ("Don't Hate the Player"), Charmed ("Brain Drain"), Smallville ("Labyrinth"), and The Magicians ("The World in the Walls") to name just a few. In each of these cases...
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Location: Kansas City, KS, USA
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