#trauma representation

"To all the traumatized kids out there:

That light in your eyes? The one you lost?

It comes back.

yes, she grooms shinji. yes, it's messed up. eva wants you to feel disturbed by that. but flattening her entire character into "pedophile" misses what's actually going on with her writing.

misato is written as hypersexual, but not in a way that's empowering. it's survival. it's her crutch. she uses sex and flirtation as coping mechanisms, the only way she knows how to build intimacy after a life defined by abandonment, second impact trauma, and the death of her father. her relationships (with kaji, with shinji, even her casual joking) show how she's stuck in this loop where she equates intimacy with sex, because genuine vulnerability feels impossible.

her "hypersexuality" isn't meant to be titillating, it's meant to be tragic. it's messy, it's inappropriate, it's self-destructive. eva keeps showing us how she drinks too much, pushes boundaries too far, hides behind seduction instead of honesty. and when she offers herself to shinji, it's not some secret truth of "oh she’s a pedophile," it's a breakdown of everything she's been holding in. her fear of dying, her terror of being alone, her inability to connect in any way that isn't sexual.

that's why her character is important. she embodies adulthood in eva's world. not wise or put-together, but broken people dragging their baggage into every relationship. misato hurts shinji, but not because she's only predatory, it's because she's caught in the same cycles of trauma he is.

There’s something quietly powerful about scenes where a mother figure braids a girl's hair. It’s intimate. Symbolic. And sometimes deeply unsettling.

Both Tangled and K-Pop Demon Hunter have versions of this moment, but what they reveal about care, control, and trauma couldn’t be more different.

In Tangled, the hair-braiding scene is part of a power move. Mother Gothel showers Rapunzel with “affection,” only to undercut her at every turn. She’s the textbook narcissistic parent: she isolates Rapunzel, feeds her fear of the outside world, makes herself the only safe haven. And she does it all under the illusion of love. But it’s not love. It’s control. It’s ego. Gothel isn’t raising Rapunzel for Rapunzel’s sake—she’s hoarding her like a resource. Her youth. Her power. Her usefulness.

The hair isn’t just a symbol of femininity or connection here. It’s also Gothel’s main tool of exploitation. The braid becomes a twisted tether. Something that looks tender but is rooted in manipulation.

Now look at K-Pop Demon Hunter. Celine braiding Rumi’s hair hits a lot of the same visual notes but the emotional context is very different.

Celine isn’t Rumi’s birth mother. She raised Rumi after the death of her best friend. And while she clearly loves Rumi, it’s not a simple love. It’s tangled up (no pun intended) with grief, loyalty, fear, and internalized beliefs she never fully unpacked. She was raised to believe demons are evil—full stop. But her best friend loved one. And that daughter, Rumi, carries a demon inside her.

Celine didn’t cut ties with Rumi. She stayed. She tried. But her way of surviving the dissonance was to dissociate. To emotionally separate the part of Rumi she couldn’t understand or accept. That’s not healthy, but it’s not malicious either. It’s trauma. It’s fear masked as protection.

Where Gothel manipulates Rapunzel to feed her ego, Celine ends up passing down her own pain to Rumi—not out of cruelty, but because she never learned how not to. It's intergenerational trauma, not narcissism. And that makes the hair-braiding scene so charged.

It’s also striking where the two confrontations take place. Rapunzel faces Gothel in the tower : a space literally built to preserve Gothel’s ego, a prison crafted for control. Rumi, on the other hand, confronts Celine under a tree—which often stand for family, lineage, and memory. If towers isolate, trees connect. It feels fitting. Their pain was passed down, but so was the chance to stop it.

In both stories, the braid symbolizes a maternal bond. A transmission of femininity. But in Tangled, that bond is laced with lies and exploitation—you have to break it to heal. In KPDH, it’s more complicated. The trauma is real, but so is the love. The bond hurts, but it’s also a site of care. Something inherited, tangled, and tender. Something you don’t escape but slowly unravel. You learn to name it, break the pattern, and heal.

You escape from Gothel. You break the cycle with Celine.

Now that the series has ended, and we have witnessed how cruelly Will’s arc was handled after Volume 1—reduced almost entirely to his sexuality, weaponized to humiliate him through his feelings for Mike—I feel compelled to address something deeply disturbing: the trauma porn constructed around Will Byers.

It is no secret that Will is the most tortured character in the series, whether by society or by the supernatural. His abduction is not merely a plot point; it is the very root from which the entire story grows. And yet, despite everything he endures, there is no true payoff at the end—nothing beyond the bare minimum of survival. He is alive, yes, but the narrative refuses to truly engage with the impact of his trauma on his inner life. This absence defines the treatment of Will as pure trauma porn, made all the more disturbing by the fact that it began when he was a child.

For ten years—and especially in Season 5—the Duffers exploited Will’s suffering, pain, and violence not for healing or growth, but for spectacle and aesthetic effect. They subjected him to relentless torment, repeatedly dragging him back into it through flashbacks: the Season 5 opening revisited twice, and the recurring imagery of the Mind Flayer entering Will’s body in Season 2—scenes that stand among the most explicit allegories of sexual assault in the series, inflicted upon a child. Yet instead of exploring these experiences—of showing us, for instance, the vision Vecna forces him to witness—or granting Will a complete arc of confrontation and recovery, they chose only to torture him further. His trauma becomes a narrative excuse to humiliate him through his homosexuality, to force him to renounce the one desire that mattered most to him: his feelings for Mike. The coming-out scene, and the symbolic use of the name Tammy, exist not as liberation but as erasure.

Will’s trauma is never for Will. It is aestheticized, instrumentalized, and redirected to serve other characters’ arcs and the writers’ agenda. And when one considers that Noah was only twelve years old during Season 2—when one of the creators openly admitted to enjoying watching him scream and suffer on set, when Noah screamed so much he lost his voice—and that Season 5 subjected him to similar extremes, leaving physical marks on his neck, marks compared to those left on women after childbirth, the discomfort deepens. The cast continues to praise Noah for enduring everything “without ever complaining,” despite what he went through physically and emotionally. All of this makes it impossible not to suspect that, beyond their deeply internalized homophobia toward Will as a character, there is something profoundly unhealthy in the pleasure they seem to take in making Noah suffer, in pushing him to tears again and again.

Will does not go a single season without crying—except Season 1, when he was absent altogether. In Season 5, the frequency is staggering. There is not a single episode in which he does not cry. Yes, some tears are tender or relieving—the scene with Robin in Episode 4, the conversation with Joyce in Episode 5, the epilogue—but the overwhelming majority are tears of terror and pain. And one cannot help but wonder whether the Duffers enjoyed this, because Noah—like Will—is beautiful. He was a strikingly beautiful child, with wide, doe-like eyes, and he has grown into an objectively handsome young man. Even in anguish—crying, screaming—his face does not become grotesque. He is what is cruelly called a “pretty crier,” not an “ugly crier.” And I sincerely believe this aestheticized suffering was appreciated in a deeply unhealthy way.

There is nothing inherently wrong with portraying beauty through suffering. Entire archetypes—like the gothic heroine—are built on this very idea, and it is no coincidence that Will’s imagery in this season evokes it so strongly. He has the face for it, undeniably. But suffering is only justified when it serves a precise narrative purpose—when the character’s happiness, fulfillment, or desire is reached in proportion to what they have endured, and when trauma is explored deeply for the character’s own arc. That is not what was done with Will. Instead, he is made to suffer endlessly, to cry relentlessly, without the true compensation he deserves at the end.

And when all of this is placed alongside the coming-out scene—when we know that Noah’s own emotions and lived experiences were mined for that moment, that he was made to cry and repeat the scene for twelve hours in front of the entire cast, forced to relive it again and again—the cruelty becomes unbearable. Especially when the sole purpose of that scene was to eliminate Byler, even at the cost of destroying the series’ own narrative coherence and character integrity. The motivation behind this choice was nothing more than homophobia, following years of queerbaiting the audience and even the cast themselves—Noah in particular. That scene then became a weapon used worldwide by homophobes, turning both Will and Noah into scapegoats for hatred and mockery.

They marketed this season as Will’s season. After Volume 1—largely written by the other writers, those who still respect the characters, the narrative, and the audience—it was easy to believe. But the Duffers have never respected Will. And they confirmed it with the volume 2 and the finale. They used his trauma purely for visual aesthetic—because apparently a beautiful gay child or young man in pain is acceptable, even desirable, but allowing him the love he longs for is “unrealistic” In the same way, they reduced Eleven to a vessel for their own incel fantasies.

What remains is not tragedy with meaning, but suffering without justice—pain drained of purpose, beauty weaponized, and a character who deserved healing left suspended in silence.

They inflicted extreme suffering upon a queer, traumatized child, then denied him love, giving him the MINIMUM of agency and repair—while transforming that suffering into spectacle. Will’s treatment is narratively unjust, emotionally exploitative, and symbolically violent. And the fact that this violence was borne, again and again, by a child who grew into adolescence makes it impossible to dismiss, impossible to excuse, and impossible to look away from without moral consequence.

Volume 1—and Episode 4 in particular, once again written by the other writers rather than the Duffers or Shawn Levy—stood as a rare and powerful example of how Will’s suffering could be portrayed with beauty and purpose. It showed pain not as spectacle, but as a path: toward self-acceptance, toward the first fragile steps of healing, toward the reclamation of control. It is no coincidence that Episode 4 is the highest-rated of the season and among the most acclaimed episodes of the entire series. In a single hour, it granted justice to Will—to everything he has endured and everything he represents. His trauma, his suffering, his queerness, his feelings for Mike were not isolated traits, but interwoven threads, each given weight and meaning, each anchored to the very heart of the supernatural plot.

Had Volume 2 and the finale been written with the same care and coherence, this season could have stood as the strongest of the entire series. Instead, Will’s final confrontation with Henry fails to truly engage with what Henry inflicted upon him. Yes, Will is allowed a moment of projection—of empathy for the child Henry once was—and in doing so, he speaks to himself, reminding himself that he too was only a child, that none of it was his fault. But this gesture, however meaningful, is not enough. The narrative never lingers on Will’s trauma, on what it left behind in him, long enough to create genuine catharsis. By the time we reach the finale, his healing feels abrupt, almost instantaneous, as though reassurance from his family and friends—that they will continue to love him even if he is gay—were sufficient to undo years of terror and violation.

Once again, Volume 2 sets aside the true weight of Will’s trauma after having mined it for aesthetic effect, reducing his arc to his sexuality alone. Yes, in the epilogue, Will is healed. He has reclaimed his agency, as he deserves, and that brings relief. But the writing of Volume 2 and the finale, by pushing him into the background, renders this resolution incomplete. It is not unearned, but it is underdeveloped—glimpsed rather than lived, suggested rather than fully realized. The healing exists, but the journey toward it has been treated too lightly to feel truly satisfying.

Ever since my special interest in CRK started, one of my favourite things to talk about has been just how WELL they pull off diversity and representation—every character is complex and developed to be more than just labels.

So, I decided to make a formal list of all the representation I noticed!

I only joined during the Beast-Yeast saga, so I know there are a lot of characters I missed, so if I got anything wrong or there's any representation category or character I missed, please let me know!!

(It does not have to be explicitly canon, if there is at least some canon evidence or if something is confirmed outside of the game by a VA, that also counts! You can mention characters from other Cookie Run games too!)

(Mandatory disclaimer that some of these are based on my own analyses of the characters, and I do not intend to misrepresent any of the conditions I talk about. Also, this is a post for general representation of all kinds—I am NOT referring to the LGBTQ characters as having a mental health disorder.)

Okay now to ✨️ the list ✨️:

Existential crisis: Burning Spice Cookie (clearly struggles with immortality and the inevitable passage of time)

Cluster B symptoms: Eternal Sugar Cookie (I say symptoms because it's not agreed among fans who have BPD whether she is actually representative of having a Cluster B disorder.)

Miscarriage: Eternal Sugar Cookie (implied in her trailer)

Stockholm Syndrome: Pavlova Cookie, Sugarfly Cookie, Triumph of Sloth Hollyberry Cookie (Stockholm Syndrome isn't necessarily romantic—it can refer to any type of psychological bond with a captor.)

Amputee: Red Velvet Cookie

Wheelchair user: Baumkuchen Cookie

Survivor's guilt: White Lily Cookie, Dark Choco Cookie

Eating disorders: Pure Vanilla Cookie pre-awakening, Agar Agar Cookie

Peer pressure: Dark Choco Cookie being pressured to join the Cookies of Darkness

Estranged parents/children: Dark Cacao and Dark Choco Cookie, Clotted Cream Cookie and Custard Cookie

Death, dying, and grief: Frilled Jellyfish Cookie, Sherbet Cookie, Elder Faerie Cookie, Frost Queen Cookie, White Coral Cookie (implied at the end of Song of the Night Sea story), basically the entire Golden Cheese kingdom

Lack of ability to feel empathy: Mystic Flour Cookie

Religious psychosis/Religious trauma: Black Forest Cookie, Pastry Cookie, Menthol Cookie, Seltzer Cookie, Doughael

Alcoholism/Substance use: Hollyberry Cookie pre-awakening (again, it's debatable whether her thing with Berry Juice makes her alcoholic, but she does seem to turn to it a lot in times of hardship)

Speech differences (Mute, Selectively mute, Language barriers, etc): There are a LOT of these but the ones I can name off the top of my head are Candy Diver Cookie, Fettuccine Cookie, Sorbet Shark Cookie, Space Doughnut, Squid Ink Cookie, and Snapdragon Cookie

Social Anxiety: Strawberry Cookie

Dwarfism (character is canonically an adult, but has the height of a child): Cream Ferret Cookie, Milky Way Cookie

Non binary/genderless characters (these characters use they/them pronouns, characters who use multiple sets of pronouns are indicated with parentheses): (probably the longest list of any of these!) Angel Cookie, Aurora Candy Cookie, Candy Diver Cookie, Cloud Haetae Cookie, Cream Ferret Cookie, Cream Unicorn Cookie (they/it) Devil Cookie (they/it), DJ Cookie, Doughael, Fig Cookie, Granola Cookie (they/she), Icicle Yeti Cookie, Lord Oyster (he/they), Peanut Sandwich Cookie, Peppermint Cookie, Pinecone Cookie, Pitaya Dragon Cookie (they/it), Lotus Dragon Cookie (they/it), Ananas Dragon Cookie (they/it), Lychee Dragon Cookie (they/it), Longan Dragon Cookie (they/it), Poison Mushroom Cookie, Snapdragon Cookie (they/it), Snow Sugar Cookie, Snowflake Cookie (she/they), Sorbet Shark Cookie, Space Doughnut (they/it) Squid Ink Cookie, Strawberry Crepe Cookie, Sugar Swan Cookie (she/it), Fettuccine Cookie (she/it), Dark Enchantress Cookie (she/it), that one random Capybara in the Flower City story (they/it), Tiger Lily Cookie's Butter Tiger (she/it), Choco Werehound Brute (she [Choco Werehound Princess]/he/it), Kumiho Cookie (she/it), Trader Touc, Obscure Umbra Cookie

(usually I wouldn't include minor non-cookie characters in this list unless they play a major role in the lore to avoid being too long, but, CAPYBARA.)

Blind/Visually Impaired: Pure Vanilla Cookie, Dark Choco Cookie

General chronic illness/fatigue: Prune Juice Cookie, Shadow Milk Cookie (confirmed by Korean VA)

Trauma from being held in captivity: The Five Beast Cookies, Capsaicin Cookie, all the Garden of Delights Cookies

WLW: Sea Fairy Cookie, Moonlight Cookie, Eternal Sugar Cookie, Hollyberry Cookie (only canonically confirmed for the Triumph of Sloth AU)

TW: SA, mentions of phobias, mentions of bullying