DEADLINE open thread. Have a party.

I wondered if Shaun realizes how badly they fucked up the inside of his head, especially where his grief-reactions were concerned. I mean, not to sound callous, but in this nightmare world of theirs, is there *anyone* left who hasn't lost a major chunk of their heart to KA fatalities? I'll grant that someone like Shaun, who only ever *had* one important interpersonal relationship, far as I can tell, has lost more than just the average bereaved lover/sibling/whatever, but still. He just careens from damn-near catatonia to insane rage and back. Sounds like just the sort of unhealthy reaction you'd learn from a set of parents who replaced every emotion with either 'get the story' or 'go numb.' That's almost the worst crime on their parental rap sheet, that kind of emotional rape.

Yeah, because PTSD from shooting the person closest to you wouldn't make someone act like that.

Come to think of it, if the Masons do behave that way, that would be why. I refuse to see this as a "crime" on their part. I'm also morally opposed to blaming parents for the way that a grown man behaves. Either he, as an adult, is responsible for his actions, and they, as adults, are responsible, or none of them are because they are all kind of broken, but you can't hold them totally responsible and him not.

My reaction has been "Wow, Shaun has problems ..." and then, when my brain goes on the "...and we would fix this by: ..." it catches up with "Wow, their world is SO FUCKED, and he's coping fairly well all told."

In my head-canon, there is a rising cottage industry in psych-and-guns shops. Someone close to you dies, and if you're feeling like having contact with another human being, you go down to the ammo store in person (omg), and the person there who is trained in all the latest methods of psych listens to whatever form your grieving takes, and makes sure that you're properly armed.

you can't hold them totally responsible and him not.

Nor do I. He's a big boy now, and (entirely justifiable) PTSD or not, he's just lucky he has such understanding associates. Most people's patience, rightly or wrongly, runs thin after a year of violent madness, after all. My point was more to do with the 'nature or nurture' argument, and the Mason home sounds like such a massively unhealthy environment-- especially where emotions are concerned-- that the guy never had a chance to learn any way of coping. That anything he ever leared about emotions he had to figure out on his own, with only ever the help of an equally scarred kid just six weeks his senior. The Masons probably couldn't help it. But parentally, fucking up a kid's head that badly... that's just a sin and a shame. They are a pair of broken people who raised their kid(s) to be equally broken, and it's painful to read, that's all.