Alright, so @ihaveglitterbombs and I were talking about Spirit Animals and I promised I'd make a longer post about some of my issues with the source material. Soooo here it is!!!
Before I begin, I just need to preface this by saying that this is deeply, deeply personal. I was going through some serious shit when I read these books and I inadvertently ended up trauma bonding with Conor's character. I will touch on some of my own experiences, just for my issues with the books to make sense, so here's your warning for:
Childhood bullies
Mentions of the american foster system
Antisocial personality disorder (apd)
Anxiety
Discussions of severe trauma and the effects it has on children
As well as just a general warning for canon topics such as war, canonical character death, and near death experiences
I will also touch on my problems with Devin Trunswick/Worthy, so i just need to clarify this now: I DO NOT HATE WORTHY'S CHARACTER. On the contrary, I actually find him to be one of the most compelling figures in the story. HOWEVER, I am going to talk about the shit he did to Conor in a not very nice way, as well as how I would have handled their conflict if I had written the books.
I will need to reread the last half of Fall of the Beasts before I tackle some of the bigger overarching problems I have, so this post will mostly focus on Heart of the Land. This is my biggest issue with the entire series, as well as the point that most deeply affected me irl, but I will mention some of what else I remember from later on.
Anywayyy, with all that out of the way, HERE WE GO!!!
When I was 4 years old, my parents adopted my two older brothers. Both of them had some pretty severe behavioral problems that led to them relentlessly bullying me. That pretty severely messed me up as a kid, to the point where I remember more of the fictional worlds I immersed myself in than I do of my actual life. Spirit animals, Percy jackson, Guardians of Ga'Hool, Warrior Cats- they were my escape from reality, and it was an escape I desperately needed.
When I was 11 (the same age a summoner would be, mind you lol), my oldest brother was arrested for breaking into the neighbor's house. He was put back into the Foster system because we just could not take care of him anymore. There, he was diagnosed with Antisocial Personality Disorder. What does that mean, you may ask? Well, colloquially, you might call that psychopathy. That's right, I was raised alongside a psychopath with violent tendencies for my entire childhood! *insert finger guns here*
Those experiences shaped me... As intense trauma tends to do. He almost killed us a few times! He tried to light the attic on fire, he was a kleptomaniac, he successfully killed a family pet by breaking her spine and letting her starve to death (rip Rosie, you were a good bunny), and he tried to stab one of his foster fathers while we were going through the whole custody battle/court case mess, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. All that to say I was going through some seriously traumatic shit while reading these books.
You may be wondering how any of this ties into Spirit Animals and my connection to it, so here it is: My default trauma response was the same as Conor's!
The first book, Wild Born, came out in 2013 (I was 8) and I picked it up as soon as I saw it. I literally grew up with these books, snatching each new release up from the library as soon as they came out. I clung to these characters, and specifically to Conor, because I saw so much of myself reflected in him. I *needed* to see someone like me, going through the horrible things he went through and coming out the other side, to have hope that I would be able to do the same thing.
I, much like Conor, primarily feel one emotion: Happiness. We're the sunshine characters, the shy kids with hearts of gold, the people who are loyal to a fault... but below that, there is a genuine fear of allowing yourself to feel anything but happy. You've built your entire personality around lifting other people up, even as you feel like you're drowning. It's become second nature to ignore or repress any emotion that doesn't align with the happy-go-lucky, cheery persona you've created.
That's what I was going through, as I read the Spirit Animals series. I latched onto Conor like a damn koala bear because I felt like he would understand me. It was like: "Here's this kid who always has a smile, who is friendly and trusting and naive, who you just want to wrap in a blanket and squish... And now, we're going to give him a bully that torments him, put him through actual war, make him lose his very sense of identity, and see how fucked up he gets 😃"
You might be able to see how appealing that prospect was to me lol.
Now, with the context out of the way, here's my actual issue with the second series- specifically, Heart of the Land:
They were doing such a good job. Do you remember how changed he was in the first half of the book? If you compared 'Wild Born Conor' with 'Heart of the Land Conor'- those are just two fully separate characters!
'Wild Born Conor' is sweet, trusting, very open, naive, all the qualities you would expect from an 11-year-old. 'Heart of the Land Conor' is quiet, angry, jaded, depressed, isolated- in a word, he 👏 is 👏 traumatized 👏 He's become a boy who has experienced the toll of War and death, but can't yet comprehend The Horrors. May I remind you, THESE KIDS AREN'T EVEN TEENAGERS YET. He's been through literal hell, but his brain is literally incapable of understanding or processing it!!
And how do they portray that? I'll remind you: he canonically has night terrors. He has severe anxiety. He has panic attacks and flashbacks. He's bitter and lashes out at people who get too close. Conor now and Conor then are two completely different people. As I wrote in one of my fics from years ago: "... that person is gone. The person I once was, that innocent little shepherd boy, is long dead and buried. I'm a new person now..."
And they were doing such a good job at showing that!!! At showing that trauma does change you. That going through terrible things changes the way your brain deals with future scenarios! They were doing SO GOOD...
And then what happened? Allow me to direct your attention to Chapter 11 of Heart of the Land. In this chapter, our favorite boy has a nightmare. He wakes up and descends directly into an anxiety attack. Abeke, my dear sweet Abeke, jumps to his side and soothes him and makes sure he's okay- but she does something else too: She kisses him. And not even "true love's kiss"! Just a nice little kiss on the forehead, directly over the scar from the Wyrm.
Initially, when I first read the book, this part was fine with me. Little 12-year-old, aroace spec Me thought "awww that's sweet, these friends love each other so much..." Except that wasn't all. The author just. Never wrote about it again?? It even says it IN THE BOOK:
A LONG TIME???? WHAT DO YOU MEAN "A LONG TIME"??? IT'S BEEN- WHAT? SIX MONTHS?? AND HE WASN'T EVEN *WITH* THE OTHERS FOR MOST OF THAT- HE WAS BACK IN EURA WITH HIS FAMILY!!
Okay, gotcha. All you need is half a year, friends who Love you Very Much, and a platonic kiss to heal a child soldier's trauma AND A LITERAL POSSESSION. Okay. Sure. Got it 👍👍
LIKE WHAT????
This book came out in 2017- EIGHT YEARS AGO. Even now, STILL, to this day, it makes my blood boil. I remember walking my best friend home from church events and ranting to her (lol a lot has changed since then🤣) about how upset I was- and I still am!
Anyways, i just graduated college! I have a degree now! What's it in, you may ask? I'll tell you: my degree is in Behavioral Science- psychology, the study of trauma, sociology... THAT IS MY THING. That's what I went to school for, that's what I graduated in, that's what I want to do with my life!!
12 YEAR OLD ME DIDN'T NEED A DEGREE TO KNOW THAT THAT'S SOME BULLSHIT RIGHT THERE.
It hurts so much, not because they just gave up, but because they gave us a glimpse of what could have been and then just got tired of it?? "Oh, I'm sorry, is my trauma inconveniencing you? My bad, let me just- *un*traumatize myself for your writing ease and convenience!"
Now look. I know it's just a book series. It's not that serious. They're just fictional characters, so why am I getting so worked up about this?
Here's what people usually fail to understand: your brain doesn't know the difference between fictional people and real people. You can get attached to and love fictional characters without your brain ever making the distinction between what is real and what is fake.
I loved Conor... but more than that, I needed him.
I needed to see someone who felt like me: someone who had been scared of showing emotions, finally reach the point where they can't keep up the facade anymore. I needed to see him be accepted and loved, trauma and anxiety and panic attacks and all- *because I needed hope that someone would do that for me.*
But that's not what I got, is it? Instead, I got a sisterly kiss on the forehead, a reassurance that "You're alright", and somehow that was supposed to make everything better??? Somehow that "fixed" every fractured part of him and he was suddenly all better??
Do you have any idea how damaging it is for a kid who was going through everything I was, seeing this character I loved be healed with the Power of FriendshipTM? Do you understand how broken I felt when I tried that... and it didn't work? It made me feel like there was something wrong with me, that I didn't love my friends enough, that my friends didn't love me enough- it made me doubt myself and my relationships because their love wasn't fixing me. I still had anxiety. I still had night terrors. I still flinched at loud noises and tried hiding all of my Big Emotions behind the veneer of a fake smile.
That's the part that hurts the most: that my trying to "fix" myself eventually led to the (completely false) understanding that having trauma meant you were broken or subpar in some way. Instead of teaching me how to deal with it, how to overcome it, how to develop that inner strength to combat my hurts, I was told that Love Heals All and if it doesn't work, you aren't trying hard enough.
Is that really the message we want these books to be giving kids? Cuz I don't think it is.
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Now, this part is going to be relatively short compared to the rest of this post, but it's time we talk about the other part of my issue with canon: Worthy.
The first two characters we are ever introduced to in Wild Born ARE CONOR AND DEVIN. There's been beef between them since literally the first page of the first book.
On paper, the concept of a bully returning as a reinvented individual, redemption arc in full swing, is not one I am opposed to. Hell, Draco Malfoy is my favorite Harry Potter character so the entire trope is not one I am unfamiliar with!
However, here's where the first part of my issue lies: the power imbalance.
It's something that I touched on in one of my other fics: Conor was not *allowed* to portray anything other than meek servitude while he was serving Devin. He was literally an indentured servant, sold to the Earl to pay off his family's farm debt... he was mistreated, neglected, taken for granted-
And then in Hunted, it just got worse! He and Rollan were thrown in the Howling House, nearly killed, then hunted across the Euran countryside by the same boy that tormented him for his entire stay in Trunswick!
AND NOT JUST THAT. It's shown over and over that Devin *likes* hurting people. In that final fight in Lord MacDonnell's garden, he sent Elda after Conor. Once he was wounded, with a literal chunk missing from his shoulder, Devin held him down and would have made him watch Briggan die, if it hadn't been for Finn and Donn taking all of the Conquerers out like a damn bomb going off. Devin didn't want to kill Conor- he wanted to *hurt* him. He wanted to make him feel small and alone and weak- and that has always rubbed me the wrong way.
Here's the thing: 'Wild Born Conor' would have forgiven him. He *did* forgive him- or, at the very least, he wanted to see the best in him, which is why he and Rollan went to Trunswick in the first place!
'Heart of the Land Conor'? No. There is always a point of no return, and i think Devin found that mark- and then just kept pushing until he was so far beyond it, there was no conceivable way he could have come back.
When Devin became "Worthy", he tried to leave behind all the bad things he's done, to try and start things over with a blank slate. He's trying to be better, and we see that he is mostly successful! I do believe that people can change, and I think Worthy truly has...
But it just... doesn't matter anymore. He's pushed Conor over the breaking point, he's hurt him, he's tormented and belittled and threatened and, after a certain point, I think Conor would just. Snap.
Worthy can change. Worthy *has* changed. But it doesn't matter how different he is, or how much he apologizes, or how he's matured and realized that he actually was a massive dick... Conor does not owe him his forgiveness. Conor does not have to forgive him, or trust him, or even *like* him! He. Owes. Him. Nothing.
My brothers hurt me. They pretty severely traumatized me. I wish I could say I didn't understand the whole 'life or death' situation, but my oldest brother *did* try to kill me. (He hid behind a door and tried to jump me- the only reason I made it out is because I could run a whole hell of a lot faster than he could... but that's a story for a different time).
I don't know war... but I do know bullies that thrive on pain. The whole message that was portrayed in the latter half of the books was the power of forgiveness. That isn't necessarily A Bad Thing. However, Conor should never have forgiven Worthy for the things Devin did.
In the comments of one of my fics, I had this delightful conversation with one of my readers:
Just like I said here, even if Conor would be open to the idea of forgiving Worthy for Devin's actions, it will not be anytime soon. He needs to work through all the other child soldier/wyrm possession/war veteran stuff before he can even *think* about dealing with the trauma from his time as Devin's personal punching bag.
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Finally, in conclusion, I am not at all satisfied with the tail end of the second series. I still love the books and I always will, but there is so much I would have changed.
I understand that trauma is a difficult thing to write about, but I would have preferred a half-hearted attempt rather than the complete erasure we got. If you feel like it's too difficult to write about trauma when you're the author of a series about child soldiers, you need to step back and reevaluate what you're comfortable writing. If that isn't something you feel good portraying, *let someone else do it*.
Thank you for coming to my TED-Talk. I'll probably be back with more thoughts later... but I feel like that pretty much covers all the most pressing points.
