#wids

Why is Dating Scary? ─── Sanders Sides

youd burn the world down for him, you never get to. you just sit in the dark corner of his mind, watching, trying to help. saying "if i could. i WOULD" you want nothing except his happiness and survival, and yet still, parts of him hate you.

Like, each side is fundamentally representational. They are manifestations of concepts in Thomas' head, so their expression is limited to only a facet of Thomas' expression. I mean if Roman, literally the acting side, can't do a half decent impression, then it likely points to a larger system where the sides genuinely struggle to be contradictory to their nature.

The exception to this is, of course, Janus. But as Deceit, part of his identity IS to imitate and lie, and even then, he's still not that great at it! Even in scenes where he isn't caught, we see him struggle to conceal certain mannerisms. (Like the decapitation gesture in CLBG and the metaphors when he tries to imitate Logan in SVS)

I'm only now just realizing the importance of Patton's whole argument through the video. What he was saying about spending time and money morally because people don't actually do that on a regular basis. Yes a lot of day to day life is spent on responsibilities: jobs, families, pets, basic care, but for a lot of the rest of the time, leisure time is usually spent selfishly. And this ISN’T said to demonize anyone’s day to day rest time, people NEED this time to recoup, and plan vacations between work/school. As with everything, we must have balance.

But when do people regularly volunteer, donate or pick up trash? Maybe some do this on the regular, that's amazing. Maybe others only have a couple days a year to spend on this kind of thing, that's all okay.

What I'm saying is, Janus’ counter argument plays to cThomas' already fragile mood from Patton’s chastising. CThomas was already feeling bad, questioning if he was a bad person, which made him have enough anxiety that he had intrusive thoughts, and by SvS:Redux, he's actually getting angry. Angry by his decisions to be a 'good' person and not receive any reward for it.

What Patton was saying was NOT what Thomas wanted to hear. He wanted a side of himself to say YES it's ok to be selfish because your mental health deserves it. You deserve it for being so good all the time! And I'm not saying Janus is wrong in the short term, but Roman was right to question him. WHEN is it enough?

When will Thomas actively do good again for the sake of doing good? Janus convinced Patton that it was okay, and Patton relented almost immediately because of his guilt.

I keep thinking about this because I wonder if it’ll be addressed again since WIDS came out. Can cThomas be as selfish as he wants now that he’s decided to try and be with Nico or will that selfishness affect their relationship? Did the decision of going for Nico’s affection in fact tie into his self-care/selfish forward tendencies? Will he learn true balance is actually only being ‘selfish’ some of the time does NOT actually make you a bad person? Things to think about…