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Anons you genuinely got me fucked up </3 i did not think half-assed tags would get this much attraction LOL but ok I suppose if the masses want to see it. This is basically scraping together tags from previous posts, dms and convos I’ve had w/ people, and things i’ve already mentioned so please bear with me.

There was one thing I touched upon in my BPD stormz post that I didn’t expand upon, and thats black-and-white thinking. Looking back, I dont know why I breezed over it since it’s so integral to his character and actions but I digress. It’s not just black-and-white thinking, but splitting too.

Black-and-white thinking, known also as all-or-nothing thinking is when someones thoughts, experiences, and perspectives are categorised into extremes. Hence, all-or-nothing. This can affect a majority of someones life as it does with Stormz - His achievements, relationships, and self-image. A single mistake or misunderstanding can completely flip Stormz’s opinion and perspective on others, makes situations and failures seem more extreme and also heavily contributes to his own stress. This also goes hand-in-hand with how often he oscillates in his POVs of other people, thinking of them perfect one moment; and feeling completely betrayed and disgusted the next.

Then there’s Splitting. The key difference between Splitting and B&W thinking is the intensity and speed. Splitting is immediate and emotional, while B&W thinking is a more ingrained mindset. This is so prevalent to Stormz’s character, and is basically spelled out to us. Black Wings, White wings. You get me?

Stormz already struggles with his identity and what his ‘purpose’ is, and his way of dealing with it - “Human” or “Weapon” is also just a different font of his B&W thinking. His ‘Humanity’ to be his White Wings and his ‘Violence’ (Weapon) to be Black Wings. If you’ve sat through TB, you can see how volatile he is with his changes between this two ‘personas’.

To be perfectly clear, B&W thinking is not exclusively separating things into ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’. It is just two extremes with no thought or inclusions to anything inbetween. This is how Stormz views himself many times — either completely committing towards violence and fighting, or completely committing to being ‘peaceful’ and not partaking in server politics. Stormz cannot find a balance between these two because this is a coping mechanism. It is a coping mechanism for his struggle with his purpose which is a direct response to his struggle with his identity. The two ‘personas’ Stormz has are two extremes in both identity and purposes.

This is why, during TB/TE, he oscillates and spirals so frequently. This is what he viewed TB/TE as — TB was laying down the sword and TE was picking it up and committing to it. If anything, this period in his life not only perpetuated this way of thinking, but made him actively internalize it. Stormz was not only facing extreme internal confusion and stress over not being able to confront a balance between these two lifestyles, and forcing the possibility of ‘picking a side’ inside his own head — he was also being put up to expectations and labels that he could not conform to. 

The fact that he was only being pushed deeper into this mindset and encouraging the labeling—hence the false perceptions—and could not live up to these expectations that people he trusted and was vulnerable to had of him only triggered this, leading to a very quick downfall of his views on himself and others and effectively making that core fear of abandonment/rejection much more prominent.

It is correct to say that he does this to himself, it is also correct to say others have a hand in his degrading health. These facts can co-exist. Depersonalization isn’t actually the right term, i dunno why i said that. It’s moreso him devaluing himself down to splitting, and not wanting to exist outside of it. Almost all periods/arcs of his time on Bliss have been one extreme or the other, encouraged by a good amount of villainizations which has led to him complying to this and not thinking himself of anything outside of these personas. Because Stormz does not know who he is, he hasn’t known who he is for a very long time. He is reducing himself to two extremes, two counterparts that are destructive to him as a person.

I did expand upon this in my actual analysis post — But Stormz has a very unstable perspective on others and his relationships with others. It seems very sudden when he can go to liking them, to straight up hating them in under a minute. I said this was because of his fear paired up with getting incredibly attached very fast and I still stand by it. But, what I didnt mention is that it triggers the Binary thinking mindset that Stormz as well.

When Stormz can’t fathom a ‘middle ground’ and is faced with the slightest failure or a slight misunderstanding — it can snowball into insurmountable issues and even betrayal. He is going to sort it out the way he can and that is sorting it into extremes. This feeds into the negative self-narrative and viewing his relationships in a way that lacks nuance and is extremely simplified to even completely inaccurate. This leads into a cycle of idealising someone only to devalue them the next. This lack of ability in viewing grays and only in absolutes is what leads to Stormz being unable to learn from his experiences.

to say that Stormz is a 'power-seeker' and only seeks that and nothing else is kind of redundant. That choice he makes is so intrinsically connected to his mental state and who he is as a person and the role he takes up that watering his motives/actions down to that alone is just... dumb? That formula of Power=Protection has been engraved into his brain across the servers he's been in, and it's pretty important to his history - which, again, is fundamental to him as a character.

Learning to draw the Rick Sanchez. Also technically anatomy practice.

4 Extra alts under the cut where I take his clothes off bc I made him my Barbie doll. 😚

negative rambling below