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So, a recap on the Canon Blake backstory for those who don't know it so we all got the full context:

Blake grew up in a "small agricultural village". It's kind of unclear, but it can be presumed based on Blake's general lack of knowledge that the area either had Very Little Magic usage or none at all. This idea also comes from Blake referencing fairy tales, including dragons; being mentioned in a "this totally doesn't exist but little child me believed it" way.

Anywho, so a small village dependent on its farmland and has little to no access to Magic, with it potentially being seen as made up. Then, a drought occurs. It's never stated how long it lasted, but it was long enough for people to begin leaving the village in search of a better life (keep this in mind for later). Child Blake, not older than maybe 10, is left almost entirely unmonitored as both her parents focus all their energy into working the land. Child Blake likes to explore forests and caves while imagining scenarios she's read from fairy tale books (again, including stuff like dragons). One day when she's exploring caves when she meets a dragon named Ohm. One thing leads to another, they become friends and he begins to teach her Storm Magic. She eventually learns how to summon storm clouds to bring the rain back to her land. It's not stated how long this took. After she brought back the rain, she went to tell Ohm, but he was gone. So, for the entire rest of her childhood, teenagehood and young adulthood, Blake had no one to help her regulate her Magic at all. And that's why she goes to Atlantide, to learn.

Okay long ass recap but it had to be done ANYWAYS. Me extrapolating on that now. Because I'm generally normal.

Okay first off I just wanna shout out the idea of a place so culturally isolated that MAGIC. FUCKING MAGIC. is seen as nothing more than a fairy tale in a world so full of it is such a fun concept to me!! Like the amount of time I've spent just thinking about the events that must've led up to this place having an entirely different outlook to. Like the entire WORLD. Do you know how thoroughly a place needs to be separated from the outside world in order for people to believe that the factually existent magic doesn't exist??? For one, it must've been isolated for A While, at least five generations, for the Reality to become just Stories — and for that disconnection to continue? Jeez. It means no new people come through the area, because it's literally impossible for an entire Large Area Of Land to be unaware of magic in a world where it's so prevalent (unless it's a situation where they grew up on an isolated island BUT!!! as I will get into when I talk about the famine itself that just wouldn't be consistent with the information told to us). Like,,,,, me thinking about the existing isolated groups that still exist on Earth today, while they evolved their culture and language largely independently, there was still a point where we were all together; I want to know about what made the village (or the area it general) cut off and isolate itself from the rest of the world, and how long ago it must've been for the material reality to be erased to such an extent. What would've happened to erase Magic, a real thing, from these people's' culture? What could've caused that social change‽ Because People Have Magic Naturally in this world but Blake's home village Doesn't. I want to know WHY. Like RRGRGRGRGRGR GUYS YOU DONT KNOW HOW LONG IVE THOUGHT ABOUT THIS!!!!!!!!!! ITS SO INTERESTING!!!! THE IDEA OF AN ISOLATED GROUP THAT HAS BEEN SO FOR SURELY CENTURIES SUDDENLY EXPEIENCING SUCH AN EXTREME NATURAL EVENT THAT IT CAUSES PEOPLE, FOR POTENTIALLY THE FIRST TIME, TO LEAVE. TO LEAVE THEIR HOME AND NOT COME BACK. TO ABANDON THEIR CULTURE. THEIR UNIQUE CULTURE THAT HAS EVOLVED WITHOUT OUTSIDE INFLUENCE!!!!! imagine the reaction when someone from different lands visits. Imagine what happens when the drought ends. When people migrate through these forgotten lands. And they discover an entire small society of people who made it through and are the reason the drought even ended. Like. Ohmygoddoyouunderstandwhatimsayingrightnow. Especially the part about people having to leave behind their home. That happened to Blake. She had to leave it behind. I'm sorry my Irish is showing but the devastation that would cause. You lose your food, you lose your people, you lose your culture, your language, your child. That reality that people must've come back, but Different people. People from Other Places, and their lack of knowledge on how to speak this likely distinct dialect of a pre-existing language forces adaptation but that adaptation breeds loss. They speak with the New People accent now so they can understand the words you don't use anymore. You learn their dishes but you no longer have access to the ingredients to cook yours. I'm rattling tha bars ofmy caGE CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME??!?!?!

Okay okay okay I'll talk about something else now: the drought itself. Idk why I didn't just make Blake Irish I mean she already has our history LMFAAOOOO . Nah but in all seriousness I find the Presence of the drought incredibly interesting. And I think the impact of it on Blake runs far deeper than anybody really realises on the first watch.

Okokok where do I start okay well, I think it's a choice to refer to the drought solely by that, and not what would've inevitably come afterwards (a famine). Divorcing this from the VA and purely looking at it as it's own thing, the idea of Blake avoiding using the term famine to refer to what happened to their village could be SUCH AN INTERESTING THING TO TOUCH ON. Like,,, it's literally impossible to not acknowledge that the drought happened, but it is possible to gaslight yourself into believing the famine never did!! Oh yeah I should probably touch on that. Where there is a drought there is a famine. They're absolutely not linear to each other — you'd need a big drought to cause a famine but you also wouldn't even necessarily need a drought to even cause a famine, cause there are other stuff that can cause that n all — but the fact of the matter is that when humans (and plants and animals) do not get access to water for an extended period of time, things begin to starve. ESPECIALLY when that group of humans is so dependent on agriculture to both physically but also economically survive. While it was not explicitly stated how long the drought lasted for, it's a fairly easy guess that it was AT LEAST several months for food shortages to occur, people to leave etc. Remember that things can still Last for a while even when there hasn't been a large amount of rainfall; many countries go through "dry seasons" but these typically don't cause actual droughts and such an agricultural strain on the populace to cause them to migrate elsewhere; typically a drought has to be prolonged to cause mass migration. Droughts can last for weeks to even years. Now I'm not gonna say this lasted for years. But I am gonna say that all this coming together the drought must've lasted longer than a typical dry season, but short enough to not have Everyone leave and the land to still be somewhat workable (reminder droughts are not from No Rain but from something like less than like 2 millimeters of it)

If a weather pattern that results in a precipitation deficit lasts for a few weeks or months, it is considered short-term drought. If the pattern and precipitation deficits last for more than six months, it is typically considered long-term drought.

Drought.gov [link]

The most negative impacts of drought for humans include crop failure, food crisis, famine, malnutrition, and poverty, which lead to loss of life and mass migration of people.

Effects vary according to vulnerability. For example, subsistence farmers are more likely to migrate during drought because they do not have alternative food-sources. Areas with populations that depend on water sources as a major food-source are more vulnerable to famine.

Wikipedia [linky linky]

This is how I spend my adult time :).quoting articles while talking about an mcrp okayyyyy

Anywho I got sources to back me up — for this drought to genuinely be so bad as to cause people to migrate elsewhere, it would've had to take place over an extended period of time, likely over 6 months (making it a long-term drought), which also correlates to the presence of a famine. Okay? Okay. You know what comes with a famine?

This phenomenon is usually accompanied or followed by regional malnutrition, starvation, epidemic, and increased mortality.

Wikipedia [link]

Ahh yes. My two favourite things: epidemic and increased mortality.

Imagine being a child, no older than 10, and suddenly the rain stops, the plants don't grow, and people start getting sick. And you're soo hungry. All of a sudden bodies are beginning to line the dirt paths — whether they died from hunger or sickness you do not know — and your parents aren't there to help you because they're so focused on tending to the land, instead of their child. So you avoid the bodies, avoid them like the plague your neighbour caught last week, running to the forests because the only dead things there are the leaves and bugs. You take shelter in the caves because they're the only place shielded from the scorching sun, and truly the only place without death. And then. Then, you meet what was only a fairy tale. Happened to my good buddy Blake.

Needless to say I think the natural horror of famines are more terrifying than literally like anything else in the world. I don't need to tell the tale of the man in the Irish famine who went mad from starvation and supposedly ate himself do I? Famines are so scary. And that's it; Blake, throughout this, is just a scared little child who doesn't know the first thing about what is happening or why people are leaving or dying or getting sick — why she is so hungry, why the sun won't stop beating down, why the rain has gone away. She is literally incapable of understanding, and her parents (bless them) are incapable of doing anything but trying as hard as they can to push through it as people around them hunger, get sick, and die. This little child is forced to bear the brunt of this tragedy, and take on the responsibility to fix it. Of course, they didn't understand as a child the implications of their actions when she first asked Ohm if he could teach it how to make the rain come back. He was just so hungry. And the rain would bring the food back. So she fixed it. But that didn't resolve all of their problems.

You see, the effects of famines and droughts — epidemics and mass death too — don't just go away as soon as the rain comes back, or as soon as the food begins to grow again. The human body needs to readjust to eating after going so long without any food (if you eat too much after an extended period of starvation you will most likely die, fun fact), the soil needs to regain its nutrients. The brain remembers. Even after Blake brought the rain back, issues with crop yields and eating still would've persisted. And, as I've neglected to mention, being such a young child and having not eaten properly for so long would weaken the immune system immensely, Blake would've been a sickly child because of this. Not to mention Blake would've had stunted growth, as well as potential physiological adaptations their body made to survive without food (a real thing that happens btw, an example would be the Irish adapting to absorb Iron better during the famine since we were So Deficient in it because. Famine. Which means today we're more likely to have high iron levels because of our bodies' adaptation), and the most important psychological effects on them. Also the whole becoming a Dragon Slayer and expending a Huge amount of Magic while weak, malnourished and sickly as a CHILD .Blake looks like that for a reason. Is all I'll say. All this to say, even after Blake almost killed himself to "fix" everything, things realistically wouldn't have gone back to normal immediately, it just wouldn't have.

Anyways I wanna get into Blake and food insecurity. Because this is something I recently connected the dots with and I NEED TO SHARE IT.

So we already covered the drought and the famine, and, of course experiencing all of that would've absolutely given Blake some level of PTSD. But trauma manifests itself in many different ways — it isn't always just "sad:(" — sometimes it's not understanding when people do not wish to share food that is available and "public". The episode "Garden Makeover" on Blake's channel (iirc) focuses on David and Blake, he's showing her around the new Divinus island, most specifically his precious garden. Here we see a huge interpersonal conflict between David and Blake; David doesn't want the fruit (or, plant food in general) from his garden being touched or picked, and Blake cannot understand why he would want that, siting that "it's what you do when there's food" (not a direct quote). Originally I thought of this as more of a cultural difference between them. Makes sense, Blake is from a small village where sharing and taking what you need would be common place whereas David was not. That's what the tension was.

But I realised. This!!!! This is deep rooted food insecurity in action. Blake sees food and her brain goes into overdrive, because no matter what you do, after experiencing such starvation, you could never look at food as a 'neutral' thing ever again. It's needed. If there's food available you need it. You take it. If you don't you'll starve. David, while he did experience a lack of food, he never experienced a famine (there's also his own personal issues revolving around his mother there that I'm not gonna unpack here), he never experienced the desperation to eat and stay alive that Blake was forced to live through at such a young age. While there's no doubt a cultural factor within this conflict between them, I'm comfortable saying that the larger drive was how Blake and David view food differently.

Even after David told Blake to not take food from his garden, she did. They explicitly told Kit this in another episode. It's selfish, to go behind David's back like that after he expressed it so clearly, but there is no such thing as a perfect victim. Prices of food in mainland Atlantide are high, higher than Blake has ever seen before, and nowhere else on Divinus island is there readily available food. So they take it anyways. Because they need the food. Even if it doesn't really. That's what food insecurity does to you, you stock pile and you take — even steal — just to ensure you'll never go hungry again. It's also kind of.. especially awful knowing that just before Blake got to Divinus she was held captive for who knows how long in canon, and it was heavily implied she didn't get to eat. So that primal fear of starvation just hits them like a truck all over again. He's out right back where she started; a starving child desperately clawing it's way to not die.

I mentioned previously of Blake essentially gaslighting herself into believing it was Just A Drought and Not A Famine and I do want to touch on that a little (it's 1am.ok). Acknowledging your trauma is hard. Really hard. It's so much easier to confront a small piece of the puzzle than to actually see the full picture, because that would mean confronting everything. Blake could not shy away from the droughts existence — it's the reason he's even a dragon Slayer to begin with — but they can, through slight manipulations of the truth, convince itself that the famine — deaths, sicknesses — never happened. If she just leaves it at "people began to leave", and never thinks about the people who "left" a different way, she doesn't have to think about what truly made them "leave" in the first place.

It's kind of funny, the more you think about it, the more of their actions begin to make a whole lot more sense when you factor in its absolute horrific childhood.