Here are the Thoughts™️I promised @discordkittenterumi
This post is a much longer follow to this post from last night as I was listening to episode 60.
This post is also in conversation with with something @peppedstep mentioned about Neil’s loyalty to the coterie, which I touch on briefly.
Everything sort of solidified in my brain after finishing 60 at like 2 am last night.
In 60, we see Neil wake up in a strange place with Weathers and Amara with him. The last thing he remembers is running from his sire which seems to be several days ago.
Neil also does not remember much of Baghdad (which is a whole separate post that is coming. I have many thoughts about Nara and Neil in that situation).
He routinely has panic attacks, some of which lead to dissociation. For example, before his trial in 37 and 38, we see him go catatonic when he realizes his haven is under attack. Dissociation is not usually something that happens to someone once and then never again. It’s a coping mechanism, and I don’t think it’s a stretch to say it’s something he experiences, perhaps not regularly, but with some sort of frequency.
In addition, many of his rituals require his mind to be separated from his body, and we know kalif also impacts his cognitive function as also seen in Baghdad. He has the capability of astral projecting which leaves his body behind, defenseless. The ritual with the bull in 6, he had others stay nearby just in case something were to happen. The second time he completes the ritual, Johnny escorts him.
Neil is often dependent on the people around him to keep him safe, and we see him repeatedly look to others for their judgement before he makes a decision on his own. He looks to Nara to trust Jubair, and he looks to Amara to trust Catherine and this mission. In these two cases in particular, he’s forced to rely on others’ assessments of the situation because he cannot make his own. In addition, relies on Britta and Miles to defend him in court while Johnny and Wynn take care of his haven. He also places an immense amount of trust in the coterie and their decisions, generally speaking.
Peppedstep mentioned that family is important to Neil, the coterie is important to Neil. He consistently revolves around the idea of keeping them together and spending their final nights together. I agree, but to add another layer to that, Neil trusts everyone in the coterie, and as has often been discussed, trust is an extremely rare commodity for Kindred, and in some cases doesn’t exist at all. What Neil has with the coterie almost seems to be unprecedented given the general picture of the Camarilla and Kindred society the audience is presented with. He knows these people will protect him and/or his body when he is unable to.
I would imagine, without them, his quality of life would be diminished, and all it would take is one mistake, one bad episode, for him to meet final death or another horrible fate, especially considering his abilities. It was a stroke of luck that Amara and Weathers picked Neil up.
His drug use, mental health issues, and magical abilities all work closely together to form a complex web of memory loss and a distrust of his own opinions. Even further, I would argue that his memory loss contributes to his lack of a sense of identity.
I believe it’s been mentioned a few times that Neil doesn’t really have a strong sense of identity (I am not going to sort through all 60 episodes to find those sources though, sorry! I do think it might have been brought up at the party when Fester was preparing him?), and that’s proven by how he talks about his worth early on when Wynn confronts him after the bull ritual. He, and I am paraphrasing here, believes he is useful because he can provide the coterie with knowledge. Later on, he mentions that Miles kept him around because of his specific abilities which again, his worth is tied up in his usefulness to people.
This mentality is compounded by his early history with his sire. In 51 or 52 (I can’t remember which and I’m not going to look it up), it’s described that Neil looks at his sire the way one might look at an abusive parent. Neil is absolutely terrified of this person even now. Based on Neil’s nonconfrontational personality, some of his coping mechanisms in the face of this abuse could easily be making himself small, agreeing with his sire, etc. leading to the people-pleasing nature we see in Neil now. Peppedstep also posited that Neil could have been Embraced to be made in his sire’s image. We know he is a loner, we know he has visions, and maybe he also feels the need for family in his own demented way. Regardless of if that is true, Neil’s sire had a massive effect on who Neil became as a Kindred and without question would influence his sense of identity. If Peppedsteps’s theory is true, then Neil’s sire would have stripped away any sense of who he was to remake him in his image.
TLDR: Neil has memory loss from a combination of drug use, mental health issues, and magical abilities which make him reliant on others for his safety in certain circumstances and further exacerbate his lack of a sense of identity.
Thank you for coming to my ted talk.