i don’t often talk about fandom stuff myself, but I wanted to put this out there. this is from the perspective of someone who sympathized with Caine’s crashout and suspects I have some form of NPD
the thing that resonates with me most personally is that he thought he was trying
he was unfortunately too selective and very lackadaisical about what exactly he truly listened to, and also he had a different frame of reference than the others in the first place. But within the framework he *did* know (his world, his adventures) he tried to do better by them, only in his point of view to keep facing further ridicule even as he believed he was “improving” himself and his work, and his existing inner instability compounded with that and bottomed out his self-esteem, pushing him into his ultimate breakdown as he tried to defend his psyche by dialing up the delusion that he *was* better to 11
I identified with that, as someone who also felt I was being ridiculed when I felt I was trying to do better, even though the reality was that I hadn’t fully understood what the problems were and my efforts were half-assed. While I don’t have super violent crashouts, being the more covert type that sinks into my low of self-hatred instead of feed the high of delusion as a defense mechanism, I DO get angry when I’m at a low. I’d get passive-aggressive, I’d shout, I’d even charged at people I care about, all because I felt personally attacked when I let myself believe I was doing better.
I got the opportunity to improve. I easily could have just been kicked out, but I wasn’t. I had a family willing to help despite all the suffering I caused.
Caine no longer has that chance. He realized he fucked up only when it was too late, and now he never will have the opportunity to be better, the one that I received. And that broke my heart.
