#tplb

awesome enlightened take: mel tries to offer advice to santos because santos obviously has a thing for mentor/mentee

but, then, you log onto social media, and you see both her haters and her diehard fans defining her by her trauma. you know the type of post. it’s either every misogynistic word in the book to describe a well-written, realistic female character who would be adored by the same person if she was a man, OR “langdon was a man in power, and santos had been abused, so how else was she supposed to react/feel?” or smth to the effect.

the former’s issue is obvious, so of course, it’s the latter’s reasoning that I bounce around in my head whenever I think abt dr bpd. it’s such a surface-level reading of her, akin to saying that she has brown hair. like, duhhhh. but her continuous movement away from this victimized state is what actually makes her interesting. she is an extremely smart person, even among a profession of extremely smart people, specifically because of her emotional intelligence. her “hunches.” but emotional intelligence comes from our pattern seeking brains, a part that is especially set into overdrive when you have c-ptsd/bpd/trauma. and that pattern seeking isn’t perfect; to see an angry man and be reminded of a male abuser is ultimately a false positive. and, since both the show and the fandom are so invested in realism, those false positives can get you in troooouble… especially in a professional setting…

both for her relationships and for her professional development, it is in santos’s best interest to put up an honest fight against her fears of abandonment, her fear of men in positions of power, her defense mechanisms of being snarky and rude, etc. and, in the text, she IS. and then you log on to here and people are like “she should’ve killed that rapist dad” when her actions (taken in trauma) inadvertently led to the incident not being reported. she overstepped and was indelicate with the young girl instead of going through proper channels, leading to a threat that ultimately put the girl into more danger. (telling the abuser they’re in biiiig trouble and then sending them back into the house with the person they abuse usually doesn’t end very well.) like…she fumbled because her trauma made her act in a way that was ultimately dangerous for the victim.