Okay so I was talking with @appynation about the possibility of Kurone being the actual Shiro (and we’ve all just been hating on his hair like a bunch of a**holes) and that made me think about how Shiro’s been since he’s gotten back. The changes are pretty obvious if you know what to look for; change in tone, he’s become more demanding and less patient, he pushes and he pushes hard. The same guy who told his team ‘People have to want to be a team’ is telling those same people ‘You’ve been chosen, you have to live with that.’
But he’s the scary part: Kurone or Takashi he still thinks he’s the original Shiro.
And Shiro’s gotten mean.
(I’d be angry too if the animators did that to my hair)
We talk a lot about how Shiro’s time with the Galra has changed him and in what ways, but we almost talk about it in a sort of static way: that Shiro had changed and had been traumatized.
But he still is.
Let’s look at his track record:
Pre-Season 3
-Worked hard non-stop to rise in military ranks and be eligible for a mission taking him months into deep space farther than any man has gone before (And we’re assuming he’s done lots of other stuff too if he can garner enough attention to be a cadet’s ‘hero’ all before the age of 25. So non-stop hustlin’)
-Was abducted by aliens and got a nice pistol whip for trying to plead his case.
-Forced to fight for his and his friend’s life, promptly taken away from his teammates and the only other humans
-Lost his hand, underwent however many experiments causing drastic changes in appearance (especially to the face which is notably traumatizing even if you aren’t particularly vain)
-Fought (probably) hundreds of creatures and prisoners for a year in a bid for survival
-Crash landed back on Earth to be held against his will by his own peers. Rescued by toddlers only to go back into space and be confronted with the immediate threat of recapture.
-Became the leader of 4 freaking minors with little to no experience (fighting, piloting, space travel, etc.)
-Was recaptured by Sendak and briefly tortured (then taunted by his ghost or whatever tf)
-Remember that time Allura was captured through no fault of his own and everyone blamed him? And then when he tried to get back he was SPIT OUT OF A LION!?
(Oh, end of season 1 already?!)
-Fought and was injured by one of his tormentors, severely injured, and then crash landed on a garbage planet with giant lizards.
-Got the beans beat out of him by said lizards while his lion kinda just picked her butt. (Red would not stand for this!)
-Reunited with his rescuer and watched them DIE not 24 hours later.
-His best friend and the captain of the ship totally bail.
-Has to put up with the head slug of the Taujeerians bitching at him (I can’t stand those guys, kudos to him jfc)
-Tricked by his own lion into thinking he was being kidnapped. Dragged to the astral plane to have his astral-ass handed to him by astral-Zarkon while astral-Black just watched or whatever-- LOL we never left and I wasn’t gonna let him *kill* you, I just wanted to make sure you’d defend my honour.
-Watched his best bro get spanked by a bunch of Marmora and a phoney copy of himself bully said bro until he cried. Also, you know, knowledge or death.
-All of Slav. Everything. Slav.
-All of the Season 2 finale. Enough said.
Season 3 and post
-Woke up in his captor’s hands. Again. AND saw his own body being Ken dolled by a bunch of druids.
-Escape 2.0 which ends with, you guessed it, another crash-landing. Only this one is about to fall off a cliff and dude literally was a luscious hair’s breadth (and a writer’s pay check) from certain death. How many of you had to cauterize your own wound?
-Threatened to be eaten.
-Launched into space to explode in a crap ship so he could sneak onto another shit and steal a second little ship only to be left in the dust. Almost suffocated. Definitely dehydrated and hungry. Probably sat in his own waste for days. (Angst isn’t always pretty)
-Black saved him only to give him the cold shoulder. No longer the leader of Voltron. Kind of a lackey. Plays with hologram lego ships to keep busy. Best boy is NOT listening.
(You’re doing great, sweetie)
Regardless of Takashi or Kurone, Shiro still woke up with all his memories. He is, in essence, the OG. So these changes are natural changes in Shiro. Being a perfect clone, no matter how sketchy, gives him the same thoughts, feelings, and insights pre-Kerberos Shiro would have.
He’s not being a jerk because he’s a clone, he’s being a jerk because he’s mentally rubbed raw. We don’t know how much time passes between shows or seasons, but even if we go in real time with the show’s posting schedule that’s a LOT to happen in a little less than a year and a half.
And now, on top of everything, he’s not a paladin anymore (until he becomes one under duress)
A fun note mentioned by @appynation was that the lions seem ready to take any port in a storm. For all we know Red could have taken Lance, and Blue Allura (who isn’t a pilot at all) because they were out of preferable options. Black clearly didn’t want Shiro, but in the face of being emotionally and physically abandoned by Keith and the other lions in peril might have swayed them to let him back in.
So if we’re deciding to hang the clone theory off of Shiro’s temperament, his lack of patience, and (in a lot of cases) his change of tone, we might be making the mistake of discounting his continuous trauma.
I honestly cannot thank you enough for the bpd Lucio post. I'm borderline as well and struggle pretty hard even with being medicated. So to see someone share the idea of Lucio having it is very validating and rather heart warming. I think that's also why I sympathize and gravitate towards him so much.
I feel you; it’s a headcanon I’m really attached to, especially the more we see of his route being about starting a positive cycle, rather than “fixing” him. The fact that all of Lucio’s Very Neurodivergent Behaviors are treated as character traits (and sometimes, things the MC likes about him) instead of something inherently wrong with him or something that needs to be stomped out makes me feel a lot better about my own VNBs, and I think that’s why I like digging into him so much, too ☕
just wanted to say thank you for that lucio bpd meta post, bpd is admittedly something i dont know much about but one of my friends is borderline and its made me start thinking about ways i can be more supportive of him. also a lot of what you talked about was relatable as someone w adhd. i knew about symptom overlap between autism and adhd but hadnt really thought about it for other conditions. thank you again for the post!! hope life's treating you well xx
Thank you!! 💕 There is a lot of overlap with BPD and ADHD (and sometimes they show up together which is stellar) - even if it’s not coming from the same place, the rejection sensitivity and attention problems are a big one. And it’s sweet of you to be thinking of how you can support your friend 😊 hope you’re doing well, too! ☕
Electra Heart is a fictional character created to represent the songs in the self-titled album by Marina and the Diamonds. While stated Electra Heart was created to represent female stereotypes in American popular culture, taking Electra Heart’s thoughts and actions, as stated in the lyrics, shows that she can be seen as a woman with BPD.
Electra Heart struggles with having, keeping, and wanting control in her life. She jumps into relationships with men she does not truly like, ensuring that she is the one to eventually leave when the time comes, urging others that do the same to not wear their heart on their sleeve, or not to fall for someone they are not absolutely sure will stay. In relationships, she wants it all - all of the other person, or she doesn’t find it worth staying, due to the overwhelming doubt that if she can’t have it all, she’s going to lose what she does have very quickly.
In a similar vein, Electra Heart has trouble picking her own identity, often mimicking others she looks up to or else feeling lost. She has admitted to having no real personality of her own, stating she “only feels alive” when she is pretending to be somebody she is not. If she does have her own personality, which she most likely does, she doubts it is good enough for anybody, so she picks and chooses traits that make her feel secure, confident, and she knows that others like and adore. Though this is all, straight up, a facade.
Electra Heart often also takes risks that could end up hurting her. Whether this is entering a relationship that is rocky, unstable, or has no foundation from the beginning, hooking up with men, or destroying the stronger relationships she already has. The latter of the three, destroying relationships, ties back into her need for power and being in control of her life, or else she falls apart, disassociates, and goes numb for however long it takes for her to reform herself and start over.
In season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Faith Lehane, a second slayer shows up. She is meant to be a foil to Buffy herself, showing what Buffy could have been like if she had grown up in different circumstances. Right off the bat she’s shown as far more impulsive than Buffy, having all these wondiferous stories of all the demon fights she’s gotten into, which portrays both her increased impulsivity, and her increased love of attention. Within days of meeting Buffy and all her friends, she is already extremely attached to them, especially to Buffy herself. In one particular episode, Faith is given a new watcher (a slayer’s mentor). At first, she’s very opposed to any forms of authority, but by the end of a two day period, she’s unbelievably attached to her new watcher. Because of her attachment to her new watcher, and the fact that she feels Buffy is abandoning her, she splits on Buffy and attempts to kill her vampire boyfriend behind her back. After realizing her mistake, and having her watcher betray her, Faith withdraws and becomes more angry towards authority and towards the world.
Throughout the rest of the season, Faith grows more and more attached to Buffy, as if she is her fp (favorite person). Faith brings Buffy with her on impulsive missions, and at one point brings Buffy with her to break into a weapons shop, get arrested, and run away from the police. Later, while Buffy and Faith are patrolling for vampires, Faith accidentally kills a human. After this she makes a complete 180, pushing away Buffy and all of her friends in favor of self preservation. She then tries to blame the crime on Buffy, and goes to work with the main villain, the city's Mayor. The Mayor grooms her, and becomes the father figure she never had, thusly transferring Faith’s allegiance from Buffy to him. She continues spiralling, making more and more bad impulsive decisions, and using her anger as a weapon. At the end of the season, after yet again attempting to kill and poison Buffy’s vampire boyfriend, Buffy stabs her and puts her into a coma.
After awaking from her coma, Faith immediately checks in on Buffy and her life, very clearly still emotionally attached to her. She then switches bodies with Buffy, and her obvious self-loathing is shown when she screams at her body how worthless and disgusting she is. After switching back bodies, she runs away to L.A. and runs into Buffy’s ex-vampire-boyfriend, Angel. Angel stops her from killing him and torturing his friend, and during their fight Faith begs Angel to kill her, because she is evil and needs to die. Angel tries to rehabilitate her, and when Buffy and the police come looking for her, she accepts responsibility for her actions and goes to jail to try and redeem herself.
Faith again shows up in the final season of the show, and in the second to final season of the spinoff show, Angel. While at this point she’s become a very minor character, she still shows large amounts of impulsivity and anger, and still holds a large fear of abandonment regarding losing both Angel and Buffy.
Overall, Faith displays many symptoms of BPD, including:
Unstable and intense interpersonal relationships
Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment
Impulsivity
Emotional instability
An unstable sense of identity
Chronic feelings of emptiness
Intense anger outbursts and difficulty controlling anger
Mary, the third protagonist and the last playable character you encounter in the game, is a young girl appearing to be about 9 - the same age as the main protagonist, Ib. Her true age is unknown, considering she is not actually real and is instead the personification of Guertena’s last painting.
Having read many books about the importance of friendships, and consequently due to her existential status, not having any friends of her own, Mary quickly attaches to Ib shortly after running into her and Garry. She follows very closely behind Ib at all times, showing deep concern for her well being and extreme anxiety and fear when the possibility of becoming separated from Ib is presented. She is also immediately envious of Garry for already being close to Ib, and when she is faced with a decision of who to replace in the over world, Garry is her immediate and most obvious choice.
Ib is obviously Mary’s favorite person, exemplified by the fact that she calls Ib her sister within a few hours of meeting her for the first time. Mary is the only one to keep her memories of the fabricated world fully intact, and if she makes it to the over world with Ib, she is very quick to snuggle up to Ib’s parents.
However, when Mary’s secret (that she’s not a real human) is revealed, she grows desperate and angry, making an attempt on Garry’s life. Ib, naturally, defends him, and while reluctant at first due to the shock, Mary quickly changes her mind about them both, making renewed attempts to kill Ib as well, as they now both stand in her way of making it to the over world.
Mary displays very little sense of any sort of identity. This could be due to the fact that she’s, obviously, just a sentient character from a painting, but she bases all of her morals and ideas on the books she reads, most prominently her extreme desire to make and maintain friendships, which fuels her desires to get out of the fabricated world so that she can achieve this dream.
Overall, Mary displays an unstable sense of identity, unstable and intense relationships, explosive/impulsive bursts of anger, and extreme fear of abandonment and loneliness.
At the core of her character, Tharja is a prime and even obvious example of a borderline character. The most obvious trait is that her favorite person is the player character, default named Robin, regardless of their gender. This comes off in a sort of creepy way, of course, with Tharja stalking Robin and able to cite on a whim how many books Robin read the previous day and how many times they turned over in their sleep.
When called out by Robin for this behavior, Tharja removes herself from the conversation almost immediately, returning some time later and acting far out of character. She tries to make pleasant small talk with Robin, offers them their favorite flavor of pie that she cooked herself. The change in personality is so dramatic that Robin becomes concerned, both for her current state of mind and whatever “plan” she’s cooking up for them. When questioned about it, Tharja denies she’s acting any differently, but Robin tells her that she shouldn’t have listened to their request to be “normal” - which wasn’t a request at all, simply a comment Robin made in way of concern for how Tharja was behaving compared to their other “normal” friends.
It is implied at more than one point that Tharja cursed and/or has considered cursing Robin to fall ill or behave/appear in such a way that other people stay away from them or that Tharja has no choice but to take care of them. However, this is never confirmed to be true, and Tharja even worries, when Robin does collapse from a bad fever, that they may accuse her of cursing them, to which Robin assures her that they would never think that. Tharja also feels very threatened by other characters getting close to Robin, to which she considers cursing them as well, though to herself and the threats never come to fruition.
Even when Tharja manages to direct her love somewhere else, she always seems to make sure her partner knows that they are only second best to Robin. In the instance of marrying Henry, she makes him promise to sacrifice her if it means saving Robin, if the two of them were ever in danger. With Libra, she tells him that he is the ‘second most important’ person in her life, right behind Robin.
Tharja seems to have difficulty being secure in her relationships as well. On event tiles with her partner, she says things to them like how they better run in the afterlife if they die before her, and that, if they cheat on her, the ‘consequences’ will be dire, despite the fact that Tharja is heavily implied to not even be able to cast curses at all; given that every time she tries, she fails, and anything she does manage successfully is mundane and not harmful, or in one instance even beneficial.
In conversations with her friends, she is seen multiple times to threaten them with a curse or hex, even lying that any alignments they have are entirely her fault. She does this in an attempt to get that person to hate her and avoid her from then on, but since it usually fails, she later reveals, either to herself or directly to the person, that she never actually cursed them.
Despite this, she is shown to be empathetic to the needs and emotions of others. Upon learning that Nowi’s parents are dead, she tries to play it off that they are just far away and her magic can’t find them because of this, in order to spare Nowi’s feelings. When she later finds Nowi crying because she may in some instance know the truth, she assures her that in the near future, Nowi will be extremely happy and loved, even more so than she feels now.
When confronted with the inferiority complex and severe anxiety of her daughter, Tharja assures Noire that she does love her and wants to keep her safe, hence both her and her future’s self’s decision to not teach her dark magic. Noire reveals that the future Tharja made a talisman that, whenever held by Noire, alters her personality in a way that, while it does make her rude, also temporarily erases her anxiety and makes her more confident, allowing her to be a capable soldier and defend herself in times of trouble, considering Noire actually grew up in a very dangerous and unstable time in the kingdom.
Perhaps on a smaller scale, Tharja has cursed both herself and others so that she appears invisible to them, under guise that, in battle, she doesn’t want them trying to protect her. When Frederick still takes a blow on her behalf despite this, she gets angry and snaps at him, demanding to know why he would do such a thing despite not knowing she was there. When soldiers inevitably die in battle, she removes herself from camp and regrets not doing more to save them, showing that she feels extremely responsible for the safety of everybody but herself.
All in all, Tharja, while she doesn’t display all borderline traits, displays quite heavily, unstable relationships, unstable/easily manipulated sense of identity, intense emotions (obsessions with Robin), problems with interpersonal functioning, poor impulse control, engaging in dangerous or risky behavior (dark magic), easily angered, unstable emotions and mood swings, and overall, these behaviors and feelings impair her interpersonal functioning and social life within the army.
