Do you think SE saeran can eventually be happy? like, i mean, i know in theory he could with the right help.... but I can't help but think of how sad he is at the end of the secret endings. he's not lashing out anymore, which is an improvement, but he still seems so... defeated. saeran needs to be happy too 😭 no more sad just an infinite supply of ice cream
At the end of the day, I do think it's a complicated question that's hard for me to answer in a realistic sense because what I have to say about it is much more depressing than it is positive. If you want the honest answer about why SE Saeran is in one piece by the time we're shown the final image, well, I have to remind people Saeran is only alive because he is fully aware his brother won't allow him to die.
That means there is no point in trying to get rid of himself. It doesn't matter how many times he tries to get rid of himself, his twin brother isn't going to let him die. The reason why he stops fighting right at that moment is simply because of that. It's not some moment of clarity and realization where he decides he wants to live his life. He knows that he can't fight his brother anymore.
So, Saeran turns to apathy. What's the real point in fighting anymore when there's no winning or getting out of this situation? He gives up. He gives up trying to fight Saeyoung and decides that he'll just... move through life because he has no other choice. He has to live going forward but that doesn't mean he has to be happy about it. If anything, apathy keeps him from hurting others or himself. Not that he has very much fight left in him, regardless.
But, there is a reason why he looks so defeated and that's because he was defeated.
He wanted to die and he couldn't even do that.
That choice was taken away from him like every other choice was taken away from him. He's never been allowed to make decisions for himself. He has been pushed around by other people's decisions for the entirety of his life.
That is not to say that he hasn't done things of his own volition, but his actions have always been spurred by the results of other people's decisions for him.
When it comes down to it, a lot of people don't put much thought into SE Saeran when it comes to how much he's been robbed of his autonomy. Everyone in his life decided his fate from the minute he was born and he has never been able to make a decision for himself.
Saeyoung made choices for him when they were kids, V and Rika made choices for him as he grew up, and Saeyoung's still in making choices for him to this day. Saeyoung pulled him away from that hospital, and even if we are able to understand his reasoning behind it, it still wasn't the best thing for Saeran.
Saeyoung hovers. His paranoia and parentification trauma have put him in a place where he struggles to see his brother as anything but a helpless child who can't do anything for himself. Even though his heart is in a good place, the way he tries to help his brother get better isn't going to be the way things get better for anyone.
His actions are akin to what I can only describe as smothering. He is afraid that his brother will die and he wants to prevent that no matter what. That will only going to strain the already fragile relationship in the long run.
What can Saeran do about that? He doesn't have the language to communicate how that makes him feel, and for the most part, it puts him into a place where he shuts down and closes everybody out of his mind. He shuts down quite a bit and it's going to be that way for a while. Saeyoung is going to be on the wire trying to find the best way to communicate with his brother in a healthy way.
Unfortunately, the only way the two of them are going to be able to make peace will come from the two of them going to therapy separately and then together. Saeran needs to have an outlet where he can talk about how he feels about not having any control and feeling like everybody treats him like some helpless child.
Saeyoung needs to have somebody acknowledge his paranoia and fear but remind him that he can't smother everyone around him by trying to be their parents. Once they have some kind of outlet to talk about these things, it'll get better in the bunker for everyone. It's going to take a very long time to get to that point, though. That's not something that's going to happen in a day. It's going to take a few years. That's putting it in a realistic manner. It isn't impossible but it sure is going to be an uphill battle. Everyone is going to have to be truly committed to healing to get there.
Do I think he's going to get better for himself someday? Yeah. It would be miserable for me to say that he isn't going to feel better in the future. It would be nihilistic to think that things couldn't get better. I don't want to imagine the secret ending timeline as a place where everyone is miserable and things don't get better. But, it's going to take a lot of hard work to make things okay, not even just better.
I tried to find a realistic conclusion for the secret ending when I wrote my story [Iris]. In that reality, nothing is perfect, everything is a little bit broken but that doesn't mean it isn't okay. They have to live with their mistakes and the things that happened to them, but they're allowed to be happy, too.
A part of reaching that conclusion came from acceptance. Saeran needs to accept that he can't change the past but he can decide to live for himself and when he makes that decision, I think his life will be better for it. But it has to be on his time frame and when he's ready. Nobody can force him to want to live his life.
He struggles with passive ideation of death and apathy for the world around him for a long time in my mind. But, I have a lot of opinions about him as a person that tends to deviate from the way most people tend to characterize him. Frankly, there is only so much we know about him after the curtains close, so we can only assume and take things with a grain of salt at the end of the day. I think it's going to get better for him eventually. Just let him make that choice for himself instead of trying to make it for him.
When it comes to the last interaction in the secret ending, I'm sure somebody would use this point of the conversation to try to say that this would be the point when he decided to live. But, I don't think so. This is more like resignation and accepting that he can't die so he has to get used to another option... This option has to be living despite not wanting to or even knowing what the point in living is.
When he says that he might give his brother the benefit of a doubt, it's not something he chooses because it's an outcome he wants. It's resignation. It's defeat. He hasn't forgiven his brother and it's going to be a long time before he truly decides to live for himself. It'll be a while before he decides to live in the name of something he wants instead of living because he has no choice but to do so. This traumatized man has suffered unbelievable things throughout his life... but, I have faith that he'll get to a place where he wants to live for himself.
Saeyoung.. in this comment below where he says that he wants to go back to how they were before? That's a part of his problem that he needs to work out as well. Saeyoung is stuck in the past. There is no going back. There just is no being who they were before everything happened to them.
They aren't those little boys anymore. Saeyoung is in desperate need of acceptance in that regard. But, you didn't ask about him so I won't go too deep into that aspect.
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