A Disaster and a Half

is/has been an active suicide risk

Lucy lived happily with her loving mother, had her pick of three lovely suitors, was given full freedom to choose whom she would spend her life with and has that decision respected by all the men involved, who all admire and care for her so much that they remain devoted friends to her (and I mean REALLY genuine friends) up to and past the point of her death where they risk their lives to avenge her and put her soul to rest.

Mina is in an unusually healthy, loving, devoted marriage to a man she completely adores, again with a bright future ahead of them both. Jonathan constantly thinks of Mina, compares almost all women against her, and is absolutely utterly in love with her. Mina and Jonathan regularly subvert Victorian expectations of a married couple in that they deeply love and respect one another to the point of flouting “proper” Victorian customs by being affectionate out in public. In fact, the one time Jonathan decides to play the traditional man and ignores Mina’s wishes to leave her at home while he goes hunting vampires w the other men, he is IMMEDIATELY punished by the narrative! Draculas predation of Mina starts that night because she was left behind, and in response Jonathan affirms and reaffirms his total devotion to Mina above the other men for the rest of the story. In the third act of the novel while the team is trying to stop Mina’s slow turn to vampirism, Jonathan not only explicitly tells us the reader through his private journal entires that he will LITERALLY go against god if Mina is turned and damn himself to be by her side in hell rather than kill her if she becomes a vampire, he is unsubtle enough about it that the other men genuinely worry about where Jonathan’s loyalties will lie if they fail in killing Dracula and saving Mina.

So when adaptations pose that either of these women were just your typical trapped, bored, sexually frustrated poor Victorian traditional ladies looking for an out until bad boy Dracula comes to sexually liberate them…. Motherfucker they were ALREADY about as liberated as female characters written by a man in the 1800s could get. Lucy is introduced to us as a young woman flush with bright and happy futures and her pick of the litter for the life she wants to lead until Dracula kills her and takes that from her. Mina marries her childhood sweetheart who literally prioritizes her over God and is building a business with him before Dracula nearly ruins her life permanently.

Not to get personal, but I have been to the Doctor for some IssuesTM, and he ran some labs and basically said that my body runs on "fight or flight" mode all the time and that that's why I don't heal properly.

(For context, I use a cane on and off and some parts of my body will just. Stop working sometimes. Pain in joints, room spinning, all that good stuff.) From what we can tell, it's a stress disorder of some kind. My body's cortisol is so high all the time that it doesn't know when I am and am not being attacked, so I don't rest well and can't heal.

Qifrey has been in a similar, self-induced state for around 20 years for survival purposes. I know everyone loves to think about the happy (if possibly angsty) ending where he gets rid of the tree and lives with his little family in his atelier forever HOWEVER.

The medical issues that long-term stress causes are genuine and can be quite severe. Qifrey isn't going to have a smooth time, even physically. Issues he could face in the future, even when he's in a safe situation include deep breath:

Anxiety, depression, issues with memory and focus, trouble sleeping, (more) headaches, muscle pain, digestive issues, sexual issues, heart issues, shortness of breath, stroke, vomiting, appetite changes, wild mood swings, and severe illness from the crash if he ever does truly relax.

@linguisticparadox you're so right and I feel like, if this did end up happening, Qifrey's breakdown (physically and mentally) would be so big he'd probably send the girls away for a while.

He knows they're just kids, and he doesn't feel like it's fair to burden them with their master's pain, (even if the girls disagree) so I imagine he'd hide it and it would build and build until his eventual crack is a FULL MELTDOWN and he sends the girls to Beldaruit or Coco's mother (who's fine now) for a while while he works through it.

Not to get personal, but I have been to the Doctor for some IssuesTM, and he ran some labs and basically said that my body runs on "fight or flight" mode all the time and that that's why I don't heal properly.

(For context, I use a cane on and off and some parts of my body will just. Stop working sometimes. Pain in joints, room spinning, all that good stuff.) From what we can tell, it's a stress disorder of some kind. My body's cortisol is so high all the time that it doesn't know when I am and am not being attacked, so I don't rest well and can't heal.

Qifrey has been in a similar, self-induced state for around 20 years for survival purposes. I know everyone loves to think about the happy (if possibly angsty) ending where he gets rid of the tree and lives with his little family in his atelier forever HOWEVER.

The medical issues that long-term stress causes are genuine and can be quite severe. Qifrey isn't going to have a smooth time, even physically. Issues he could face in the future, even when he's in a safe situation include deep breath:

Anxiety, depression, issues with memory and focus, trouble sleeping, (more) headaches, muscle pain, digestive issues, sexual issues, heart issues, shortness of breath, stroke, vomiting, appetite changes, wild mood swings, and severe illness from the crash if he ever does truly relax.