madimpossibledreamer | idle thought #435

I was trying to figure out why ~~“Why Do All the Monsters Come Out at Night?”~~ "Monsters" by All Time Low has such BtVS vibes and I think I’ve figured it out. Sure, there are a lot of unhealthy relationships in the series, but there’s something more metaphorical here, too.
It’s Sunnydale Syndrome. Sunnydale itself is a perfect metaphor for an unhealthy relationship. It looks nice, friendly sometimes. And sometimes it tries to kill you.

You know it’s dangerous. But you pretend everything’s normal, because you need to feel safe. You want to feel safe. You develop coping mechanisms to deal with it. You try not to talk about it, or sometimes you do and you’re overly casual about it because it’s not weird to you anymore. That’s just your new normal.
You get mad at anyone who points out the truth and doesn’t give you some out to pretend it’s normal. That’s where all the humor and minimization comes in.
That’s probably why all the Scooby stuff I don’t enjoy, but in this reading it makes sense. Because you want to pretend everything is good, because if it’s not normal you actually have to face the full truth of the horrors. But you’re not actually dealing with all the pain, so it just keeps adding up, and part of you is screaming for help and wants people to notice, even though you would die if someone noticed because you’d feel embarrassed, like it’s all your fault. But if they were really good friends, they’d notice. But if they noticed, things could never go back to the way they were. You couldn’t pretend anymore. And what if they don’t know the right thing to say? What if they do and they try and it only makes it worse? What if that just makes you a burden? What if they treat you differently? And sometimes, on a good day, you can believe your own lies.
No wonder none of them had really happy relationships, poor kids. Never mind the slight parental issues. In such a toxic environment, they don’t have a hope of getting out of this one unscathed.
(Never mind the toxic environment on set. Which makes this meta x2, too. Yikes.)