No. 1 Overthinker

A blog where i share my thoughts on stuff and poetry cuz life's tough AND BTW this is my original blog (https://www.tumblr.com/iris-w11) :)

[number1-overthinker]

Alright, so after being doubtful for days, I finally had the guts to post this.

I felt that this wasn't something that was frequently mentioned, therefore I really wanted to talk about the psychology behind Jameson's and Grayson's varied trauma response.

The Inheritance Games series shows us that trauma comes in various forms and coping mechanisms. Jameson and Grayson Hawthorne are perfect examples of that. They're both deeply affected by the way Tobias Hawthorne raised them, but the damage shows up in completely different ways.

Grayson turns inward.

Jameson explodes outward.

Grayson blames himself for everything. He carries everyone's burdens, buries his emotions, and constantly sacrifices his own happiness because he believes it's his responsibility to fix everything. He's quiet, brooding, dependable—the kind of character readers naturally gravitate towards because we're used to seeing this type of pain in fiction. The self-sacrificing hero who suffers in silence has become a familiar archetype.

Jameson, on the other hand, doesn't suffer quietly.

He lashes out. He pushes people away. He says things he doesn't mean. He hurts the people he loves. He acts impulsively, makes selfish decisions, and often lets his emotions control him. His trauma is loud, messy and uncomfortable.

And that's exactly why so many readers dislike him.

I've seen countless people call Jameson immature, selfish or simply a jerk, especially when it comes to how he treats Grayson. While some of that criticism is fair—because Jameson absolutely does make mistakes—I think people are often far less willing to extend him the same empathy they immediately give Grayson.

The interesting part is that both brothers are products of the same environment.

Their grandfather didn't just leave them puzzles and fortunes. He left them emotional scars.

Grayson learned that love meant responsibility. That if something went wrong, it must somehow be his fault. So he became the protector, the fixer, the one who would rather break himself than disappoint the people around him.

Jameson learned something different. He learned to chase approval through risk, to hide vulnerability behind games and recklessness, and to protect himself by pushing first before anyone could hurt him.

Neither response is healthier than the other.

They're simply different survival mechanisms.

I think readers often overlook Jameson's complexity because his trauma isn't packaged in a way that's easy to admire. Fiction has conditioned us to romanticise characters who internalise their pain. We praise the quiet, self-sacrificing, emotionally constipated characters because they look noble. Their suffering feels poetic.

But trauma isn't always poetic.

Sometimes it makes people angry.

Sometimes it makes them selfish.

Sometimes it makes them hurt the people they care about the most.

And that's uncomfortable because those behaviours affect other people.

That doesn't excuse Jameson's actions. Understanding why someone behaves a certain way is not the same as saying they're right. He should be held accountable for the people he hurts. But I also think it's unfair to reduce him to those mistakes while celebrating Grayson for coping in a way that simply looks more acceptable from the outside.

People often expect Jameson to wake up one day, apologise, communicate perfectly and suddenly become the emotionally mature version they've imagined for him. But healing doesn't work like that.

Trauma doesn't disappear because the plot reaches its final chapter.

Growth isn't linear. People relapse. They make the same mistakes. They hurt others while trying to figure themselves out. Real healing is frustrating to watch because it isn't neat, and Jameson reflects that reality better than most characters do.

I also think this difference explains why Avery and Jameson worked better together than Avery and Grayson ever could. (He has Lyra now, but that is not my point here.)

Grayson loves by protecting. He carries people. He makes decisions for them because he believes that's the safest way to keep them from getting hurt. His instinct is always to shoulder the burden alone, even if it means shutting the people he loves out. Avery has spent her entire life surviving on her own, making impossible choices, and refusing to let other people define what she can or can't handle. She doesn't need someone to rescue her. She needs someone who trusts her enough to stand beside her.

That's what Jameson gives her.

For all his flaws, Jameson never tries to put Avery on a pedestal or lock her away for her own good. He sees her as his equal. He invites her into the game instead of asking her to watch from the sidelines. He challenges her, follows her lead as often as she follows his, and trusts that she'll make her own choices—even when those choices scare him.

Their relationship isn't built on one person saving the other.

It's built on choosing each other despite the mess.

That's why their chemistry feels so natural. They don't complete each other because one is "broken" and the other "fixed." They understand each other's chaos. Avery doesn't expect Jameson to be perfect, and Jameson never expects Avery to become someone she's not. They grow together instead of trying to change each other into ideal versions of themselves.

I'm not saying Grayson is a one-dimensional character—he absolutely isn't. His quiet resilience, overwhelming sense of responsibility and tendency to carry the world on his shoulders make him incredibly layered. But we've seen characters like Grayson before. Fiction is full of heroes who internalise their pain until it consumes them.

Jameson feels different.

His flaws aren't hidden beneath quiet suffering; they're impossible to ignore. His pain spills over onto everyone around him. He's emotional, contradictory and often hypocritical. And that's exactly why he's easier to judge.

Ironically, he's also the type of person many of us have actually met in real life.

Not everyone processes trauma by becoming gentle and selfless. Some become defensive. Some become reckless. Some become difficult to love because they're still trying to figure out how to love themselves.

I think that's why Jameson is one of Jennifer Lynn Barnes' most interesting characters. He isn't easy to defend, and he isn't always easy to like. But complexity isn't supposed to be comfortable.

The Hawthorne brothers are two sides of the same wound.

One bleeds inward.

The other bleeds onto everyone else.

Neither deserved what happened to them.

Neither is coping in a healthy way.

And that's exactly why I think they both deserve the same compassion from readers. It's easy to empathize with pain that is quiet. It's much harder to empathize with pain that is disruptive. But both are still in pain. Both still have trauma. And both are deeply human.

[number1-overthinker]

My friend recently started watching Haikyuu and she gave me the amazing idea to do a character analysis of our Great King, Oikawa Tooru.

This one is for you @theuselessgurl

Character Analysis of Oikawa Tooru-

People either love Oikawa Tooru or absolutely hate him, and I think that's exactly why he's one of the best-written characters in Haikyuu. He isn't easy to understand. He isn't the naturally humble genius everyone wants to root for, nor is he the perfect captain who always says the right thing. He's insecure, competitive, jealous, dramatic, hardworking, kind, petty, inspiring, and selfish—all at the same time. He feels like a real person.

A lot of people reduce him to "the arrogant pretty boy" because that's the version he shows the world. He's loud, cocky, flirty, and loves teasing people. But the more you look at him, the more you realize that confidence is something he performs rather than something he always feels. Behind every joke is someone who constantly questions whether he's enough.

The biggest reason Oikawa is misunderstood is because people judge him for emotions that are actually very human. He's jealous of Kageyama. He's intimidated by Ushijima. He envies people who seem to have the talent he had to fight for every single day. And instead of pretending those feelings don't exist, the story lets him have them.

People often act like jealousy automatically makes someone a bad person. It doesn't. It's what you do with that jealousy that matters. Oikawa never stopped working. If anything, his insecurities pushed him to work harder than almost anyone else. Every serve, every set, every strategy came from hours of effort because he knew he couldn't rely on overwhelming natural talent alone. He wasn't trying to become better than everyone because he thought he deserved it—he was trying because he was terrified of never being enough.

That's what makes him so relatable.

Most people don't react to failure with perfect grace. They don't smile after losing to someone naturally gifted and say, "I'll do better next time." Most people compare themselves. They get frustrated. They cry. They wonder why someone else has what they don't. Oikawa does exactly that. His reactions aren't pretty, but they're honest.

One of the most misunderstood parts of his character is his relationship with Kageyama. People sometimes paint Oikawa as a bully who hated Kageyama simply because he was talented. But it's much more complicated than that. Kageyama represented Oikawa's biggest fear—the fear that no matter how hard he worked, someone younger, someone more naturally gifted, would eventually surpass him. That fear didn't make him evil. It made him human.

And despite those feelings, Oikawa still became an incredible setter. Instead of trying to outshine his hitters, he devoted himself to bringing out the best in every single one of them. That's why his teammates trusted him so much. They didn't follow him because he was the strongest player on the court. They followed him because he made them believe they could be stronger together.

Even his rivalry with Ushijima shows another side of him. Ushijima tells him that if he'd gone to a stronger school, he could've become an even greater player. Most people hear that as practical advice. Oikawa hears it as someone dismissing everything he's built with Seijoh—his teammates, his friendships, and all the effort they've poured into reaching the top together. His anger isn't just pride. It's loyalty.

What makes Oikawa stand out in Haikyuu is that he doesn't get rewarded simply because he worked hard. He loses. Again and again. He never gets to stand on the national stage during high school, despite dedicating years of his life to volleyball. He gives everything he has, only to run into players like Ushijima and later Kageyama—people who either have extraordinary talent or happen to be on teams strong enough to make it further.

That isn't a failure of effort. It's just life.

One of the hardest lessons Haikyuu teaches is that hard work doesn't guarantee success, and Oikawa is the character who carries that message. We grow up believing that if we work hard enough, we'll eventually get what we deserve. But sometimes you can do everything right and still come up short. Sometimes, someone is simply better. Sometimes, circumstances don't go your way. Sometimes, your dream slips through your fingers despite giving it everything you had.

Oikawa doesn't get the fairytale ending. He doesn't get the dramatic victory over his rivals or the triumphant ticket to Nationals. And that's exactly what makes his story so powerful. His journey isn't about proving that hard work always wins—it's about showing that hard work still has value even when it doesn't.

Despite every heartbreaking loss, he keeps showing up. He keeps practicing. He keeps believing in his teammates. He keeps choosing volleyball, even when volleyball doesn't seem to choose him back.

And that's why I find it so difficult when people reduce him to "the jealous one" or "the arrogant one." I'm not defending every decision he made. Some of his actions were wrong, and the story itself never pretends otherwise. But acknowledging that doesn't mean we have to strip away the reasons behind those actions.

It's easy to judge someone from the outside. It's much harder to ask yourself how you would react if you spent years giving everything to something you loved, only to keep falling short because someone else was simply more gifted. How many of us can honestly say we would never feel jealous? Never compare ourselves? Never resent the person who seemed to have everything we wished we had?

The uncomfortable truth is that many of us probably would. We just don't like admitting it.

That's what makes Oikawa such a brilliant character. He doesn't represent the version of ourselves we'd like to believe we are. He represents the parts we try to hide—the insecurity, the envy, the fear of being left behind, and the desperate need to prove that our effort means something.

In a series full of incredible players, Oikawa might be the most realistic character because he reacts to failure the way most people actually do. He breaks down. He gets angry. He envies others. He doubts himself. He isn't rewarded every time he gives his all. He doesn't always win. But he gets back up anyway.

That's not weakness. That's resilience.

Maybe that's why his story stays with so many people. Not because he became the greatest player, but because he reflects a truth most of us eventually have to face: life doesn't always reward the people who work the hardest.

Sometimes you lose anyway. Sometimes your best isn't enough. And sometimes the strongest thing you can do is get back on your feet, knowing that, and still choose to continue.

I think that's the real tragedy of Oikawa Tooru. He isn't hated because he's a bad person. He's hated because he's one of the few characters who openly feels emotions that most people are taught to hide. He's messy, flawed, and painfully human—and that's exactly what makes him unforgettable.

[number1-overthinker]

Octopus

A tangle in the chest, a shadow in the deep,

With eight long arms that never seem to sleep.

It doesn't have a bone, it doesn't have a frame,

It changes every color, though it stays the same.

One arm is a "What if?" and one is a "Not yet,"

Tying little knots of things I might forget.

It squeezes very gently, then it pulls too tight,

Turning sunny water into sudden night.

When it gets afraid, it sprays a cloud of ink,

Making it so cloudy that it's hard to think.

It hides in tiny spaces, waiting for a scare,

Until I start to feel it even when it isn't there.

The ink stays thick and heavy, drifting in the grey,

Still waiting in the shadows at the end of the day.

The grip is always steady, the arms are always near,

Living in the silence of the cold and salt-thick fear.

~ Iris W. (This poem is a little different than my usual direct style but I think thats how i felt in that moment when anxiety and panic hit; choking and grappling and surreal in that moment. If i had to associate anxiety and panic with an animal, I always thought it would be an octopus.)

[number1-overthinker]

Big thanks to my best friend for inspiring this post!

She suggested I dive into one of the most disturbing yet psychologically gripping books we've ever read together. In this post, I’m sharing my thoughts on What Lies Between Us by John Marrs.

~ SPOILERS AHEAD ~

This book is often marketed as a psychological thriller, but beneath its twists and shocking revelations lies something far more disturbing: a study of how trauma mutates people, how love can become possession, and how victims can slowly transform into perpetrators without ever realizing it.

What fascinated me most about the novel was the way it dismantles the comforting idea that there is always a clear villain and a clear victim. Maggie and Nina occupy both roles simultaneously. Throughout the story, they hurt each other in ways that are unforgivable, yet the deeper the reader digs into their past, the harder it becomes to condemn either of them completely.

The most prominent theme is the blurring of the line between motherly love and obsession. Maggie genuinely loves Nina. There is never any doubt about that. Yet her love is so contaminated by fear, guilt, and an overwhelming need for control that it ceases to be nurturing. Instead of protecting her daughter, she possesses her. Instead of allowing Nina to heal, she decides she knows what is best for her and takes away her ability to choose for herself.

What makes Maggie terrifying is that she never acts out of hatred. Her cruelty is born from devotion. She commits horrific acts while believing she is being a good mother. The novel forces readers to confront an uncomfortable truth: love, when stripped of respect and autonomy, can become just as destructive as hatred.

Nina, meanwhile, embodies another blurred boundary—that between revenge and brutality. At first, her desire for revenge feels justified. After everything she has endured, readers naturally want her to reclaim her agency. But as her plans unfold, the novel begins asking a difficult question: when does revenge stop being justice and start becoming cruelty for its own sake?

Nina's anger is understandable, but it gradually consumes her. The same desire for control that destroyed her life begins to emerge within her. She becomes increasingly willing to manipulate, deceive, and hurt others to achieve her goals. In trying to punish the person who damaged her, she starts adopting some of the very traits she despises.

This is where the novel's exploration of cycles of abuse becomes especially powerful. Trauma is not presented as something that simply hurts people; it is shown as something that can reshape them. Maggie's damage spills into Nina's life, and Nina's response threatens to continue the cycle. The tragedy is not just what happened to them—it is what they become because of it.

Another major theme is the unreliability of perspective. Throughout the novel, every revelation forces readers to reevaluate previous judgments. Characters are never exactly who they appear to be. Marrs constantly reminds us that people construct narratives about themselves to survive. Maggie sees herself as a protector. Nina sees herself as a victim seeking justice. Neither description is entirely false, but neither is entirely true.

The novel also explores guilt as a form of imprisonment. While Maggie is literally trapped, both women are psychologically imprisoned long before the story begins. Maggie is shackled by secrets and remorse. Nina is trapped by anger, betrayal, and unresolved trauma. The physical confinement at the heart of the novel becomes a metaphor for the emotional prisons they have built around themselves.

Perhaps the saddest theme running through the book is identity and self-destruction. Neither Maggie nor Nina begins as the monster the other perceives her to be. Yet years of pain slowly erode their ability to recognize themselves. They become defined by the worst things that have happened to them. Their lives revolve so completely around their trauma that they lose sight of who they could have been otherwise.

That is what makes the novel so haunting. It is not merely a story about a mother and daughter destroying each other. It is a story about two people whose lives become consumed by fear, guilt, resentment, and obsession until they transform into reflections of the very people they hate.

In the end, What Lies Between Us is less concerned with shocking twists than with asking a deeply uncomfortable question: if trauma can turn love into control, justice into cruelty, and victims into perpetrators, then how much of our identity is truly our own? The answer the novel offers is bleak. Left unchecked, pain does not simply stay with us—it can become us.

That is why the book lingers long after its final twist. The real horror is not what Maggie and Nina do to each other. The real horror is watching them slowly become the worst versions of themselves while believing they are justified every step of the way.

These are my thoughts on the story. Feel free to share your insights and thoughts on the book and this review :)

[number1-overthinker]

I just re-read Once upon a broken heart a few days back and god, I didn't think it was possible to love Evangeline and the series more than I already did. But, guess what? I was wrong. I fell in love with her and the series ALL OVER AGAIN. And here is why-

There’s something about Evangeline that makes people either adore her instantly or completely misunderstand her. Honestly, I think a lot of that comes from the fact that readers are so used to female protagonists in YA fantasy having to prove themselves through strength in a very specific way: emotionally detached, hyper-competent, sarcastic, intimidating, always ten steps ahead of everyone else. Evangeline just… isn’t that.

She cries. She hopes too much. She believes people even when she probably shouldn’t. She romanticizes love and destiny in ways that feel almost painfully sincere. Because of that, a lot of readers reduce her to being naive or weak, when that’s really not what the series is doing with her character at all.

What makes Evangeline interesting is that she’s soft without the story treating softness like a flaw that needs to be corrected.

And that’s rare.

Especially in YA fantasy, where female leads are often written to survive by becoming emotionally hardened. Evangeline survives by refusing to completely lose her sense of wonder, even after being betrayed over and over again. That takes a different kind of strength. Cynicism is easy after heartbreak. Staying hopeful is harder.

Throughout the series, she keeps getting punished for believing in love, in people, in the idea that things can still turn out beautifully. Every time, you expect the story to finally turn her into the typical cold YA heroine. But it never fully does. She changes, obviously—she becomes more hurt, more cautious, more aware of how cruel people can be—but she never loses the core of herself. And I think that frustrates some readers because we’ve been conditioned to see femininity, optimism, and emotional openness as signs of immaturity.

But Evangeline’s emotions are actually what drive the story. She makes decisions based on grief, loneliness, hope, love, fear—all these messy, deeply human feelings. She doesn’t move through the world like a strategist manipulating everyone around her, and because of that, she feels more like a real person than a fantasy archetype.

People also misunderstand her because they compare her to characters she was never trying to be. She’s not Jude Duarte or Aelin. She isn’t written to dominate every room she enters with power or intimidation. Her strength is quieter and far more emotional. She’s the kind of protagonist who changes the atmosphere of a story simply by continuing to care when caring is painful.

And honestly, that’s why Jacks works so well with her. Jacks is cynical in the exact way Evangeline refuses to become. He expects manipulation, selfishness, betrayal. She expects meaning. Even after learning harsh truths, some part of her still wants to believe there’s goodness underneath everything. Their dynamic only works because Evangeline never fully bends to his worldview. She softens him without losing herself entirely in the process.

The series itself honestly feels a lot like Evangeline: whimsical, emotional, irrational at times, driven more by feelings and fairy-tale logic than realism. Whether people enjoy the trilogy often depends on whether they accept that tone or keep waiting for it to become something darker and more grounded. Because these books run on emotion first, logic second. Promises matter more than politics. Heartbreak matters more than strategy. And I think that’s exactly why the series stands out.

It feels like a modern fairy tale in the truest sense—not because it’s soft and pretty, but because emotions literally shape reality inside it.

Evangeline embodies that perfectly. She treats stories, curses, destiny, and love as things that matter deeply because, to her, they do. People might call her unrealistic, but honestly, she feels realistic in a way people don’t always want to admit. Most people want to believe in love. Most people want things to mean something. Evangeline just says it out loud instead of hiding behind irony or pretending not to care.

And yes, she makes frustrating decisions. Sometimes you want to just grab her from the book and tell her to stop trusting people so easily. But that frustration is part of what makes her feel human. She isn’t emotionally detached enough to protect herself properly, and the series never pretends otherwise.

I think what makes Evangeline memorable isn’t that she’s the strongest or smartest YA heroine ever written. It’s that she feels emotionally sincere in a genre where sincerity is often mistaken for weakness.

She reminds you that softness is not the absence of strength. Sometimes it’s strength without armor. And honestly, that’s much harder to write convincingly than another emotionally unavailable girl with a knife.

[number1-overthinker]

I know i am late but I REALLY REALLY needed to talk about the Netflix series, Adolescence (2025).

Ok so Adolescence is one of those shows that pretends to be a crime story but is actually just… a really uncomfortable, brutally real look at what it means to grow up right now. Like yeah, on paper it’s about Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old who kills a girl from his school, but the show doesn’t really focus heavily on the “who did it” part. It cares about the how did we even get here—and then it just sits with that question until it starts to feel uncomfortable cause it starts to feel too real.

The first episode already sets the tone in the most unsettling way. Jamie’s arrest isn’t dramatic. There’s no cinematic build-up, no shocking twist energy. It feels almost normal. Like just another morning that slowly goes wrong and that normalcy is what makes it suffocating. Eddie, his dad, is trying to hold himself together, talking to Jamie like he’s still just his kid who messed up, not someone accused of something irreversible. You can literally see the denial happening in real time, that disconnect—between who someone was to you and who they might actually be—is one of the hardest things the show makes you sit with.

And then you get to Jamie himself, and this is where the show completely flips the usual narrative. He’s not your typical cold, calculated killer you see in documentaries. There’s no emotional detachment, no eerie calm. He’s awkward, defensive, confused—like painfully, recognizably human and a typical teenager. He fidgets, he contradicts himself, he tries to downplay things like a kid who doesn’t fully understand the weight of what’s happening and that’s what makes it worse. Because you can’t distance yourself from him. You can’t just label him as “just another cold blooded killer” and move on.

He’s not emotionless—if anything, he’s overwhelmed by emotions he doesn’t know how to handle. Rejection, humiliation, anger, insecurity… it’s all there, just completely unprocessed and the show very quietly suggests that he’s not just acting out of nowhere, he’s been shaped—by isolation, by social dynamics, and especially by the kind of content he’s consuming online. There’s this whole undercurrent of incel/manosphere ideology creeping into how he thinks. The way he talks about girls, about respect, about consent about being ignored—it doesn’t even feel fully his. It feels learned, absorbed and that’s honestly one of the scariest parts of the show.

Because this isn’t framed like some extreme, rare mindset. It’s shown as something that’s slowly, quietly becoming normal in certain spaces. Boys being fed this idea that they’re owed attention, that rejection is humiliation, that their worth is tied to how they’re perceived—and when reality doesn’t match that expectation, it turns into resentment. Not always violence, obviously, but the show is asking: what happens when that resentment builds with no emotional outlet, no guidance, no interruption? it doesn’t justify what Jamie did, but it forces you to look at the environment that made it possible and yeah, that whole incel culture thing—it’s not just “internet nonsense,” it’s actively shaping how some people understand relationships, rejection, and themselves. And that has real consequences.

Now coming to the therapy sessions with Briony, this is where you can see all of it come out. They’re quiet, almost slow, but they hit hard because you can see her trying to untangle his thought process. And the more she does, the more you realize how much of his thinking isn’t grounded in reality, but in this warped framework he’s picked up somewhere along the way. It’s not that he set out to become violent—it’s that he never learned how to deal with feeling small, or invisible, or rejected. so those feelings just… sat there, growing.

and then you’ve got Eddie, and honestly his arc might be the most quietly devastating because there’s no big emotional explosion where everything clicks. Instead, it’s smaller. he starts replaying memories, normal everyday moments, trying to find where things went wrong and the worst part is, there isn’t an obvious answer. Nothing was dramatically broken. it was all just slightly off, slightly missed and that’s such a real kind of guilt—the kind where you realize love wasn’t enough to actually understand what was happening.

another reason why Adolescence hits hard hat it’s not just about one boy doing something terrible—it’s about how that boy was built, slowly, quietly, by everything around him. and one of the most uncomfortable parts of that is how much of Jamie mirrors Eddie, even when the show never says it out loud.

Like Eddie isn’t a bad parent and that’s what makes it worse. He’s trying, he cares, he shows up. But the way he handles emotions? very controlled, very bottled up, very “keep it together.” You rarely see him actually process anything openly. Even during the arrest, he’s focused on staying composed, staying practical, not falling apart and that seems like strength on the surface—but when you look at Jamie, you kind of see the flipped version of that.

Because Jamie doesn’t know how to process emotions either. He just does it messily, impulsively, in ways that spiral. It’s like he learned that emotions aren’t something you talk through—they’re something you either suppress or react to. There’s no middle ground and that doesn’t come from nowhere.

There’s this subtle pattern where Eddie avoids going deeper emotionally, even when he has the chance. Like during those quieter moments—especially around the birthday scene—everything feels off, but no one actually says what they’re feeling. Like he doesn't want to have that "difficult" conversation with his wife, it’s all surface-level normalcy and that’s such a key detail, because it shows the kind of environment Jamie grew up in. Not abusive, not neglectful in an obvious way—just emotionally… limited and teenagers pick up on that more than people think.

Jamie’s reactions in the interrogation scenes reflect that too. When he’s pushed to explain himself, he doesn’t really have the language for it. He deflects, minimizes, gets defensive , starts yelling or tries to "assert dominance". It’s not just guilt—it’s a lack of emotional vocabulary. He literally doesn’t know how to articulate what’s going on inside him and that’s something you don’t just randomly lack. It usually means you were never taught how to.

There’s also this really subtle parallel in how both Eddie and Jamie try to maintain control when they’re actually overwhelmed. Eddie does it by staying calm and functional, even when he’s clearly breaking inside. Jamie does it by downplaying, denying, or lashing out. different expressions, same root problem: neither of them actually knows how to sit with vulnerability.

And the show never makes this connection obvious. it doesn’t have a moment where someone goes “he learned this from his father.” It just shows you enough that you start to see it yourself. Like when Eddie starts replaying past moments, trying to find where things went wrong—you realize there wasn’t a single failure. It was a pattern, a way of bein, something that felt normal enough to go unnoticed.

And that’s kind of the scariest takeaway: teenagers don’t just get influenced by big, dramatic events. They absorb the tone of their environment. How people talk, how they avoid things, how they react to stress, what they don’t say. All of that becomes a blueprint.

So when you look at Jamie, you’re not just seeing a kid who was influenced by the internet or by peers. You’re seeing someone shaped by a mix of everything—home, silence, expectations, and then amplified by external noise that gave those feelings a direction.

And again, this isn’t about blaming Eddie. the show is very careful about that. It’s not saying “this is his fault.” It’s saying: this is how influence works. It’s messy, indirect, and often invisible until it’s too late.

And yeah, the show has a bunch of scenes that feel almost unnecessary at first. Like random conversations with neighbors, or Eddie’s birthday celebration. They feel out of place, almost annoying, because you’re expecting the story to stay focused on the crime. But that’s exactly the point. real life doesn’t pause for tragedy. People still make small talk, birthdays still happen, routines keep going and that contrast—between something horrific happening and everything else staying normal—is what makes it feel so real.

Eddie’s birthday especially is just… hollow. Nothing dramatic happens, but you can feel how wrong everything is underneath the surface. It’s people trying to act like things are okay when they’re clearly not and that’s way more painful than any big breakdown scene.

The show doesn’t give you a single breaking point either. There’s no one moment where everything clearly goes wrong. It’s just a buildup—small humiliations, quiet resentment, emotional neglect, toxic ideas, silence and that’s what makes it so unsettling. Because it dismantles the idea that extreme actions come from extreme situations. Sometimes they come from very ordinary feelings that just keep piling up until something snaps.

And the victim being almost absent from the narrative feels intentional too. The show isn’t trying to emotionally manipulate you through the tragedy itself. It’s forcing you to focus on the cause, not just the outcome. Which is uncomfortable, because you’re so used to crime stories giving you someone to mourn so you don’t have to think too deeply about why it happened.

In the end, the message isn’t subtle, it’s just hard to accept. It’s not saying “this is why he did it” to excuse him. It’s saying this is how something like this becomes possible. It’s about how kids are growing up in environments where they’re emotionally unequipped, influenced by things no one’s really monitoring, and surrounded by people who think they understand them but don’t actually see what’s going on inside.

And the worst part (in a good way)? nothing in the show feels unrealistic. No exaggerated drama, no over-the-top characters. Just a normal setting, normal people, normal routines—and something going very, very wrong inside that normalcy.

It doesn’t leave you with closure. It leaves you with recognition like this isn’t some distant, rare tragedy. it’s something that could quietly exist anywhere. It could very much be happening around you and that’s what makes it stick.

I know this was a very very long post and i am thanking all the people who read till the end, but i just felt like i really needed to talk about this series because it was not something you see everyday. Thank you for coming to my ted talk :) please feel free to share your inputs and takes of the series.

[iris-w11]

~ Iris W.

[iris-w11]

~Iris W.

[iris-w11]

~ Iris W.

[iris-w11]

The Enemy Inside My Skin by Iris W.

[iris-w11]

All The Whys

I am so fucking tired

of understanding.

Tired of being the one

who sees the whole picture

while everyone else

just throws pieces

and walks away.

I see it—

the reason, the backstory, the hurt—

I see all of it.

And I don’t care anymore.

I don’t care

what made you this way,

I don’t care

what you went through,

I don’t care

if you didn’t mean it—

you still did it.

And I’m the one

who has to sit here

holding the impact

like it’s my responsibility

to make it hurt less.

I am tired

of being the only one who notices.

The only one who pauses.

The only one who thinks,

maybe I should be careful with them.

Because no one is careful with me.

No one stops and wonders

if I’ll break.

No one rewinds their words

to make them softer.

They just are—

and I deal with it.

And then I’m supposed to be okay with it too?

No.

I’m tired of being okay.

I’m tired of being the bigger person

when all it does

is make me smaller.

I’m tired of giving people

the kind of understanding

they never once gave me back.

And the worst part?

I still see the reason.

Even now—

even while I’m angry,

even while I’m so fucking done—

there’s a voice in my head saying,

they’re just different,

not everyone is like you,

you can’t expect that from people.

So what—

that makes it my fault?

It’s my fault

that I feel too much?

that I think too much?

that I care in a way

that doesn’t get returned?

Then what am I supposed to do—

become less?

Because I can’t.

I tried.

God, I tried to care less,

to think less,

to not read into things—

but that’s not me.

And I hate

that being me

feels like a punishment.

I hate

that I’m the one left exhausted,

the one left hurt,

the one left holding everything

while everyone else

just moves on like nothing happened.

I am so tired

of being the one who understands

why it hurt—

instead of being the one

who gets to say

it shouldn’t have happened

in the first place.

~Iris W.

[iris-w11]

Okay so i am finally ready to talk abt Takopi's Originial Sin. Here are my thoughts on this (bear with me cause i love psychoanalyzing stuff) -

First, I'd really like to say this series did an amazing job in portraying the curse of perspective. Like at the end of the day we all r the victims of perspective. We judge other people on the basis of our OWN LENS and so from that point, no one is inherently right or wrong. Like personally, i really hated Marina but later on in the story, i obv couldn't defend her actions but i came to empathize where she was coming from. So my first take was, never judge somebody solely based on what u see or someone told u. People are complex and we don't know whats going on in their life. Everyone is a victim and everyone is a culprit. It just depends on who is narrating the story.

Second, I really loved how the show didn't really conclude with a sole victim or a sole perpetrator. Marina and Shizuka were BOTH victims of adult negligence. They became the victim to the environment they grew up in and picked up morals and ideas from a crooked world, and thats what shaped them. In the end, unfortunately we see that they became exactly what hurt them. Shizuka's dad were selfish and her mom was manipulative . In the Shizuka also became selfish and discarded people when she thought they were of no use to her. She also started victimizing herself in the end as we see, thinking she had no other choice to that in that scenario. Which, again is only natural since she was just a fucking child. Marina on the other hand became abusive like her mom, like we see her hitting Takopi all the time. She also started becoming angry and a finger pointer just like her mom. She believed Shizuka was responsible for her misery and took satisfaction in bullying her. Maybe satisfaction is extreme, but definitely a venting mechanism.

Third, I really liked Azuma's character. We can see that Azuma didn't go through extreme physical abuse like Marina or Shizuka but he was traumatized by emotional abuse . He was a victim of extreme expectations and constant comparisons. Its so common, especially in South East Asian countries but still very overlooked. I loved how they touched upon the topic that when you aren't loved or cherished enough at home, you start seeking to fill that hole outside. Like how Azuma was constantly seeking Shizuka's approval just because she looked like his mom. How we was willing to go against his own principles just so he could feel wanted by Shizuka. This clearly shows how love deprived and people with extreme low self confidence find love outside in the most worse ways possible.

Lastly, the ending is what got me. I was really skeptical about how the show makers were going to end this series because we didn't really have a culprit to catch or a victim to avenge. Also, there was no real solution because there wasn't a concrete problem.However, I loved the realization Takopi had, that no fancy gadget could make anyone happy. It was human connection and understanding is what brings people close and spreads happiness. Empathy is the greatest gift and a little bit of understanding and patience is what can break the cycle of unhappiness. thank u yall for coming to my ted talk :)

( this is just my take on the series. feel free to share abt your take on this masterpiece to me. i really love talking abt complex characters and storylines like this which constantly makes me stare at the ceiling at 2 AM)