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Tired & Exhausted Character Traits

 ˙⋆✮ Reading the same sentence four times and still not absorbing it

 ˙⋆✮ Losing track of a word mid-sentence and just trailing off

 ˙⋆✮ The specific clumsiness of bumping into furniture that's always been there

˙⋆✮ Forgetting why they walked into a room and standing there deciding whether to care

 ˙⋆✮ The way emotions become unreasonably huge when exhausted

 ˙⋆✮ Staring at a text for minutes and then forgetting to reply

 ˙⋆✮ Laughing at things that aren't funny just because the filter is gone

 ˙⋆✮ The way sarcasm sharpens when someone is running on nothing

 ˙⋆✮ Falling asleep in any position that isn't fully horizontal

 ˙⋆✮ Asking a question and immediately forgetting the answer given

 ˙⋆✮ The squint at a screen that's been at the same brightness all day

 ˙⋆✮ Rubbing eyes until colors appear behind eyelids

 ˙⋆✮ That slight delay before responding like the signal is lagging

 ˙⋆✮ Eating whatever requires the least effort regardless of hunger

 ˙⋆✮ The way a tired person's handwriting changes completely

 ˙⋆✮ Nodding along to a conversation they've fully checked out of

 ˙⋆✮ The misdirected irritability that lands on whoever's closest

 ˙⋆✮ Forgetting whether they locked the door and being too tired to go back

˙⋆✮ The involuntary breath held during an awkward silence

˙⋆✮ Laughing at the wrong moment because the body needs an exit

˙⋆✮ Picking at the skin around fingernails without noticing

˙⋆✮ That specific swallow before saying something difficult

˙⋆✮ Nodding too much to overcompensate for not listening

˙⋆✮ The way legs bounce under tables when sitting still feels impossible

˙⋆✮ Counting things on the ceiling to avoid eye contact

˙⋆✮ Rubbing the same spot on the palm over and over

˙⋆✮ Clearing the throat before speaking even when nothing's there

˙⋆✮ The micro-flinch when someone gets too close unexpectedly ˙

⋆✮ Smiling through something that genuinely hurts

˙⋆✮ Blinking more rapidly when caught off guard

˙⋆✮ The sharp exhale that's almost but not quite a laugh

˙⋆✮ Gripping a cup or glass tighter than necessary

˙⋆✮ That quick look toward the nearest exit in overwhelming rooms

˙⋆✮ Talking faster when the topic gets too personal

˙⋆✮ The pause before answering that gives everything away

˙⋆✮ Pressing lips together in a thin line instead of responding

⟢ ⟢ ⟢ LONG POST!!! ⟢ ⟢ ⟢

⋆˙⟡ Grief is not sad all the time and that will mess your character up more than the sadness does. There are going to be hours where your grieving character forgets. Where they're laughing at something stupid on their phone or annoyed about traffic or genuinely hungry and thinking about what they want for lunch and then it comes back and the forgetting makes it WORSE. The return of it after a moment of normal is its own specific violence. It feels like betrayal. Or it feels like proof that you're not grieving right, that you didn't love them enough to remember every second. Writers keep their grieving characters sad in every scene because it reads as respectful and consistent and it is WRONG. The grief that ambushes you in the cereal aisle is realer than the grief you perform at the funeral.

⋆˙⟡ THE STUFF!!! nobody talks about the stuff. Someone dies and suddenly there is a BODY and there are OBJECTS and both of these things require immediate logistical decisions that do not pause for your feelings. What do you do with their half-finished cup of tea. Their reading glasses on the nightstand. Their voicemails still on your phone. Their shampoo in the shower that you cannot bring yourself to use but also cannot throw away so it just. Sits there. Getting lower somehow. Did someone use it. Did you use it without noticing???? the material reality of someone's absence is brutal and specific and most grief writing floats above it in abstraction like feelings are the main event. The feelings ARE happening inside a body that is standing in a house full of objects and that matters. SO WRITE THE OBJECTS.

⋆˙⟡ Grief makes people act completely out of character and everyone around them handles that badly. Your character might get mean. Might get inappropriately funny. Might make a terrible financial decision or sleep with someone they shouldn't or stop showering or clean the entire house at 3am for the fourth time this week. Drief does not make people into better, softer, wiser versions of themselves on any reliable schedule. Sometimes it makes them into someone they don't recognize and that is terrifying on top of everything else. Snd the people around them (friends, family, whoever) they want the grief to be legible. They want it to look like grief is supposed to look so they know what to do. When it doesn't look right they get uncomfortable and then they get scarce and then your grieving character is also somehow dealing with the secondary loss of people who couldn't handle it. which is its own thing.

⋆˙⟡ Someone died and your character didn't like them very much. Or loved them and also resented them. Or is relieved and then immediately guilty about the relief. Or is grieving someone who hurt them, someone with whom things were unfinished in a way that can never be finished now, someone who they had been estranged from, someone who they were about to reconcile with, someone who they had been slowly losing for years before the actual death so the death was almost anticlimactic except that it closes the door in a way that slow losing doesn't. Grief for a complicated person is complicated. You grieve who you wished they were alongside who they actually were. You grieve the relationship you deserved and didn't get. None of this is clean. None of this resolves. Stop writing grief like the person who died was beloved and simple. MOST PEOPLE ARE NOT SIMPLE.

⋆˙⟡ The body keeps doing its thing and that's horrifying. You know what happens the week someone close to you dies? you get hungry. You get tired. You wake up at the normal time. Your body does not know. It has not been informed. It wants breakfast and it wants to stretch and at some point it is going to want things you feel like you have no right to want right now. The physical continuation of your own life in the immediate aftermath of loss is one of the stranger things a human being has to experience and almost nobody writes it. Your character needs to eat. They need to sleep. Their back hurts. They have a headache that won't quit because they've been crying and dehydrated for four days. They are a body doing body things in the middle of the worst thing that has ever happened to them and those two realities exist at the same time with no resolution.

⋆˙⟡ Anniversaries and dates are only half the ambush. the random Friday is the other half. Everyone knows about the first birthday without them. The first holiday. The one year mark. Those dates are braced for. Your character knows they're coming and steels themselves and sometimes that even works. What nobody warns you about is the random Tuesday in March that isn't any significant date at all except that something small happens: the light is a certain way, a song comes on, they see someone wearing the same jacket, and it is somehow worse than the anniversary was. Grief has terrible aim. it does not respect the calendar you've organized it into. it goes quiet for weeks and then destroys you on an unremarkable Wednesday because you drove past a gas station you used to stop at together. Write the random Tuesday. it's realer than the anniversary scene and it will devastate people who know.

⋆˙⟡ People say insane things to grieving people and the grieving person has to just stand there and take it. They're in a better place. Everything happens for a reason. i know exactly how you feel, when my dog died--and your character cannot say anything because this person means well and grief has a strange etiquette where the bereaved is somehow responsible for managing the comfort of everyone who comes to comfort them. The grieving person ends up performing okayness for the people who came to check on them. Ends up reassuring people. Ends up saying thank you for coming when what they want is for everyone to leave and also for no one to ever leave. This role reversal is so common and so rarely written and it is one of the most exhausting parts of early grief. Your character is drowning and spending energy making sure everyone else feels good about the life jacket they brought.

⋆˙⟡ The person who died keeps getting fixed in time while everyone else moves. This one is strange and i don't see it written enough. Your character ages. Changes. Has experiences. Develops opinions. And the person they lost stays exactly the same age they were, exactly the person they were, forever. Which means the gap between who your character is now and who the person was gets wider as time passes. You become someone they never knew. You have thoughts you can't tell them. You reach an age they never reached. Eventually you outlive them. You are older than they ever got to be. And the version of them in your memory is younger than you now. The relationship you carry continues to evolve even though only one of you is still here to evolve it. That is bizarre and sad and completely human and almost nobody writes it. WHY??? :///

perfectionism - never being satisfied

honesty - coming off as rude and insensitive

devotion - can turn into obsession

generosity - being taken advantage of

loyalty - can make them blind for character faults in others

being dependable - always depending on them

ambitiousness - coming off as ruthless

optimism - not being realistic

diligence - not able to bend strict rules

protectiveness - being overprotective

cautiousness - never risking anything

being determined - too focussed on one thing

persuasiveness - coming off as manipulative

tidiness - can become an obsession

being realistic - being seen as pessimistic

assertiveness - coming off as bossy

pride - not accepting help from others

innocence - being seen as naive

selflessness - not thinking about themself enough

being forgiving - not holding others accountable

curiosity - asking too many questions

persistence - being seen as annoying

being charming - can seem manipulative

modesty - not reaching for more

confidence - coming off as arrogant

wit/humor - not taking things serious

patience - being left hanging

strategic - coming off as calculated

being caring - being overbearing

tolerance - being expected to tolerate a lot

eagerness - coming off as impatient

being observant - being seen as nosy

independence - not accepting help

being considerate - forgetting about themself

fearlessness - ignoring real danger

politeness - not telling what they really think

reliability - being taken advantage of

She really took it as if it was a loss of a friend or someone she knew personally-

She also said everyone should put a Trigger warning on anything involving Castiel's death.

Ma'am this is a make believe person...

I keep circling back to the fact that a lot of them are probably like 15-22 year olds who got wrapped up in it from online friends, and think of this behavior as a video game. They don’t think they are hurting real people, but then I read something like this, and it’s deeply worrisome that they can’t seem distinguish fiction from reality, and understand real emotions for real life events.

The concerning thing is that their pre-frontal cortexes likely haven’t been developed yet, and so they don’t know how to deal with a lot of adult themes that pop up in Supernatural. It makes me think that the TV age disclamer rating probably should be updated, or more parent supervision is probably needed. It’s just odd because I never had a problem separating fact from fiction, but it’s 2021, and people seem to have real problems separating those concepts.

HOWEVER

Characters dying is not going to be one of them. Characters die and are revived so many times within the show that it loses its impact every quickly. A Character dies and we know, at least for the brothers, they be back by the end of the episode. The sadness you feel for that first death will slowly fade with time.

Now if you tell me you were scared by the bug episode, the wendigo episode, the lake episode, hellhound episode, I will believe. As those episode did put a fear in me. Character death though, not so much as it was used so much it became a stick for them.

Now that is not to say there aren't shows of movies that can be traumatizing, I can make a list of things to never watch twice, supernatural just isn't one of them.

Married the love of my life at 50.

Got my Class A CDL at 59.

You've got time.

It's wrong of the world to expect you to know things or handle situations you have never been in or been told how to handle.

You'll learn through your experiences and pick it up along the way.

OR

refseek.com

www.worldcat.org/

link.springer.com

http://bioline.org.br/

repec.org

science.gov