Eva.

Tori herself gives you the impression that she’s just a walking corpse who’s sucking all the life and joy out of everything and has nothing outside of that, but paying attention to what she actually describes-

Tori still jokes with Becky— “not everyone loves the Cera like you do Becky”— and seems engaged in their friendship even if she’s internally exhausted with it. She’s this tenfold at home with the people she loves most and is willing to completely be goofy with Oliver and joke with Charlie. She’s going out with friends and she’s over at Becky’s house to hang out before Becky’s birthday party.

While her head is extremely bleak and she’s constantly fatigued and zoning out, she’s passable for normal to her family and friends enough to mostly ignore the signs they’re seeing, (Charlie says he saw the signs but didn’t say anything, “You look a bit like you want to kill yourself,” from Becky but her not putting any pressure on that) until Solitaire.

Solitaire— ironically considering who’s pulling the strings— genuinely sends Tori off the deep end because it’s highlighting everything Tori finds wrong with the world. The pretentious bullshit Solitaire is obviously huffing, the violence everyone either does nothing about or contributes to, and most importantly the underlying focus on herself. Tori KNOWS it’s about her at least by the midpoint but keeps going back on this belief because how could anything be about her? Solitaire is like her depression come to life, orchestrated by a childhood friend that is deceived and blindsighted the worst by Tori’s depression because it’s so unlike anything he ever imagined her to have.

Tori continues to at least try to present herself as somewhat functioning until the scene, even though it is crumbling pretty fast because of the sudden increase making it hard to ignore anymore, where her mother refuses to iron her skirt and forces Tori to use an old one. Now this isn’t actually that big of a deal, it’s definitely clear how Jane can be frustrated by Tori in the moment; however, Tori NEEDED this care from her mom in that moment, and the denial of this hits Tori in just the right spot that mentally she throws up her hands and decides she doesn’t fucking care anymore. She doesn’t put on any makeup and doesn’t put on any front either. And that’s when everyone can’t ignore it anymore.

- Michael lives with his grandmother, who is old and fairly well off— hense Michael’s house—but rather distant. Like I picture a younger Michael going “Grandma I got in *insert super important skating competition*!” And her responding with a tired “That’s nice, dear.” I mean the man has terrible grades, no one at his skating events, and casually just gets suspended for 3 days. No one is really looking out for him

- Adding onto this, I picture Michael’s much earlier childhood as living with extremely toxic parents. Alcoholic dad on a recliner and a mom who’s never home. I imagine he lived there until he was about 9. I don’t know why exactly I picture Michael with such a shit homelife. He gives me vibes like his worst fear is the quote “if there was an angry man in your house, there will always be an angry man in your house” because of his lines about always being angry

- Michael likes jazz

- He exclusively had female friends as a child. And I highly doubt any of these friendships were particularly valuable to anyone that wasn’t Michael

- The kid that had to be made to skip recess a lot but was deeply sweet. I picture my classmate when I was in 1st grade (Year 2) who was always interrupting the teacher without thinking but had rigid beautiful handwriting and really wanted to be everyone’s friend

- He has a really good relationship with one of the reception ladies at TRUHAM. Sweet old lady who he talked to a lot

- Michael loves to braid hair

- Michael was a horse girl

Apologising for the harm that you've caused.

Trying to change your behaviour.

Accepting that not everyone will forgive you and they don't have to.

Things Accountability ISN'T:

Wallowing in your guilt until you think of yourself as nothing but bad.

Accepting an overly distressing punishment for your actions.

Twisting yourself into knots to make sure everyone knows how disgusted you are by yourself.

everyone will forgive you

and they don’t have to.

to claim credit for the work

of a contralto.

do not resent the fact that

people live in them