Crackpot Theory: Beata Asylum

No, it's from Gasoline by Halsey xDD It's like the first words in the song.

Getting back on topic, I personally don't agree with this theory. A lot of personality problems or bad habits are more of an indirect result of the characters' gifts rather than the gift being something directly involved; that, and there's way too many external factors to take into account with all of this, considering that not all tragic backstories are because of powers or anything. It's a nice theory and all, and in hindsight, it makes a lot of sense, but I'm not really a fan of the imbalance of mental stability because of the gifted gene. There are way too many examples that could disprove that part of the theory, to be completely honest.

Leo, pre-Keirsta pregnancy and pre-Frontier, was extremely normal and lived a really content childhood. The only really big thing about him was that he's an angel and he's overly nice to everyone he possibly can be. I haven't actually seen him enraged with anything, minus the fact that he nearly killed Devin because of the devil vs angel clash when they both fully manifested their powers, and him being pissed that Keirsta ditched him. Even then, it's not that he's angry or anything, it's more so that he is really upset about all of it. He can't really control either of those, and even then, Leo isn't as hung up on his past as most characters.

Same goes for Devin. Despite being a demon - I think he might've had some minor bullying here and there, but that's about it -, he grew up relatively normal, for the most part. There was the one thing that Badge wrote before where he had a bit of self-consciousness issues about being a demon, considering he's in a religious family, though that gets resolved with a bit of reassurance and the like. He's a nice guy and doesn't have any of the issues labeled.  Well, that is, post-Frontier!Devin seems to suffer from some of it because he was attacked by a Goatman and then nearly killed by his buddy, but that's besides the point.

On the other hand, almost everything for Magic and his insanity and such are almost purely because of external factors, from what I can gather. Pretty much born a bastard child with a stripper mom who seriously hates him (and he hates her too) without any support from anyone - sans Barry, but that's before he was forced to move schools and Barry didn't recognize him until recently anyway. The only backup he could get was from a gang. Seriously. A gang. A gang that taught him how to fight, break bones, and all of those other things. Him having a power that amplified his strength only helped nudge him towards becoming the gang leader. Gangs are pretty much known for their bad tendencies - with having sex, drinking, breaking into fights, etc. Add that onto the fact that he can hear everything within a pretty large radius around him, it's no wonder he's driven the way he is. It's all overwhelming and woohoo, he just happens to like Lamia, who's pretty much working herself to death 24/7 and has nearly killed her on multiple occasions, and bam. Breaking point 3x. Probably a couple more coming down the line, but that's besides the point.

I'd argue this for Eve as well. Yeah, she was born with Perception Bending and all, but it's not like she was born with all of her problems. Her crippling anxiety and poor social skills seem to stem from the fact that people can't see her and won't remember her; that must make for some pretty bad self-esteem issues. A strict mother pressuring her constantly probably didn't help. Add in the whole situation with Monty and everything that's happened at the academy, her being drunk shouldn't really be questioned all that much. I mean, her reasons for drinking are about the same as every other drunkard on campus. It's the isolation that her gift gave her that made her the way she is; I doubt she was all that mopey and such from when she was really young.

Would keep going, but oh well. Point is, some students are still pretty extremely normal - as normal as they can get -, but certain events/circumstances tip them off and they're stuck where they are. The fact that they're teenagers means that their mental/emotional stability is pretty weak already. There's a whole lot of emphasis on fitting into the crowd and being part of the norm - they're stuck as never being able to actually fit into the real world. I'm 90% sure they're all getting the same amount of dopamine as other teens around the world. Considering all the crap these guys go through, it's no wonder a lot of them are pretty unstable.

tl;dr: too many external factors, doesn't work but it's still a good theory. If there's anything I had to pick up from AP Bio, it's that behavior, personality, etc. are all determined by environment, surroundings, and just in general, how the person is brought up. There's little to no genetic factor to it.

*ahem*

Thank for for the tl;dr because that's too many words

I must agree a bit with Echo, here. I see where the whole 'madness is the gifts fault' thing is coming from, because many characters probably do act the way they do because of their power, but I don't agree that it's genetics. Much of the way Ash acts came about because there really was nothing else for him to do but study and try to make new friends. He was already pretty nervous from moving around a lot and it didn't help people found it odd that he had static coursing across his skin 24/7, but his nervous/jumpy behavior is more because people teased him about it.

I like the theory, it's pretty amusing to think that everyone's insanity is based on genetics, but connecting the gift gene to the insanity gene (because some mental disorders are genetic) is a bit of a stretch.

Perhaps there is a gift out there that makes people insane or gives them some mad gene or just some mental disorder in general?

Okay, I probably should've made this more clear, but this is a joke. The theory is intentionally silly and trying to make fun of the fact everyone acts weird but accepts it as normal.

Echo wrote:

Getting back on topic, I personally don't agree with this theory. A lot of personality problems or bad habits are more of an indirect result of the characters' gifts rather than the gift being something directly involved; that, and there's way too many external factors to take into account with all of this, considering that not all tragic backstories are because of powers or anything. It's a nice theory and all, and in hindsight, it makes a lot of sense, but I'm not really a fan of the imbalance of mental stability because of the gifted gene. There are way too many examples that could disprove that part of the theory, to be completely honest.

That being said, I'll still argue back. ;D

Echo wrote:

Leo, pre-Keirsta pregnancy and pre-Frontier, was extremely normal and lived a really content childhood. The only really big thing about him was that he's an angel and he's overly nice to everyone he possibly can be. I haven't actually seen him enraged with anything, minus the fact that he nearly killed Devin because of the devil vs angel clash when they both fully manifested their powers, and him being pissed that Keirsta ditched him. Even then, it's not that he's angry or anything, it's more so that he is really upset about all of it. He can't really control either of those, and even then, Leo isn't as hung up on his past as most characters.

You don't have to be murderous levels of Modem insane to fall under this umbrella. Leo is inhumanly compassionate, noble, and righteous, as an extension of his gift, which is its own brand of crazy. It might be a bit more subtle and subdued compared to Maria or Kayla, and might be hard to think as a negative thing, but it's certainly atypical and unconventional thinking.

This is the same reason people think Kamijou Touma is crazy (in a series—Raildex—where everyone is categorically batty). He goes around day after day putting himself through hell to help people with no expectation of reward and little sense of self-preservation, and then goes through his life still convinced he's a normal highschool student when all this crazy shit happens to him. Leo might not exactly be at the TouMAN's level, but it's the same principle in that he probably would put himself out there and never turn down someone in need.

"Well, they're mostly normal except for the time when they went berserk and tried to murder someone."

Leo wrote:

The angel had been at a near by creek that they had found their first few days there. It couldn't be called a river, yet couldn't be called a stream. He was about to touch the water when the familiar anger appeared at the back of his mind. Assuming it was Devin approaching, he ignored it for a time before stopping. His narrow eyes opening wide in shock. The hatred had suddenly increased. So much that it caused Leo to stagger as he stood up. His chest hurt with this amount of anger that he felt. What was happening?

Whatever thought he had a moment later disappeared. Anger, hatred, all the things that Leo normally never had in him appeared in a tidal wave. While his mind was in shock, his body was not. It moved without thinking, his wings appearing in a glow of white, and took off into the foggy forest, narrowly missing a dozen trees. His feet touched the ground in front of a black and green creature. The source of the hatred. The angel didn't like feeling this way. The source had to be eliminated.

Any shred of his Radiance of Heart, was locked away, taken captive by his natural anger towards this being. Here stood a dangerous Leo. A Leo with no morals. Blue eyes were dark, there was no light in them. It was as if any light that was usually in his eyes, were in his hands, which were formed into fists. The soft glow of Holy Energy was the light from his eyes. In a flash, the angel sent a barrage of fists toward the demon, taking the first attack between them.

Never forgetti.

Echo wrote:

Same goes for Devin. Despite being a demon - I think he might've had some minor bullying here and there, but that's about it -, he grew up relatively normal, for the most part. There was the one thing that Badge wrote before where he had a bit of self-consciousness issues about being a demon, considering he's in a religious family, though that gets resolved with a bit of reassurance and the like. He's a nice guy and doesn't have any of the issues labeled.  Well, that is, post-Frontier!Devin seems to suffer from some of it because he was attacked by a Goatman and then nearly killed by his buddy, but that's besides the point.

Again, you don't have to be full on insane to be a bit quirky and unbalanced, or easily pushed off the edge. Many in the Academy, probably, are normal. The theory would argue that they start off a bit... fragile. If a normal person is a cement pillar, they're a Jenga tower. They might have a loving family, a normal life, and lots of friends, but remove a few pieces and it all comes crashing down. This usually manifests in strange quirks, atypical behavior, or unconventional thinking, but trends toward more unstable behavior. And of course we know Devin probably isn't 100% normal in every single aspect, berserk Goatman rage aside.

Echo wrote:

On the other hand, almost everything for Magic and his insanity and such are almost purely because of external factors, from what I can gather. Pretty much born a bastard child with a stripper mom who seriously hates him (and he hates her too) without any support from anyone - sans Barry, but that's before he was forced to move schools and Barry didn't recognize him until recently anyway. The only backup he could get was from a gang. Seriously. A gang. A gang that taught him how to fight, break bones, and all of those other things. Him having a power that amplified his strength only helped nudge him towards becoming the gang leader. Gangs are pretty much known for their bad tendencies - with having sex, drinking, breaking into fights, etc. Add that onto the fact that he can hear everything within a pretty large radius around him, it's no wonder he's driven the way he is. It's all overwhelming and woohoo, he just happens to like Lamia, who's pretty much working herself to death 24/7 and has nearly killed her on multiple occasions, and bam. Breaking point 3x. Probably a couple more coming down the line, but that's besides the point.

External factors, sure, but this would be something exacerbated by the internal like I said to Ebs. Magic, frankly, is not the model image of mental health. He talked to a fish, Sleepystar style. He stumbled through the woods singing a creepy murder lullaby and has tried to kill or hurt his friends on multiple occasions. He blew up an airport. There's having a rough upbringing that puts you on a path for violence, and there's Magic, proud classmate with the likes of Arbor and Cayden. Of course it all looks like it's all purely external factors, because no one would know about any underlying gifted propensity for insanity (because all the gifted people capable of looking into it are also insane).

Echo wrote:

I'd argue this for Eve as well. Yeah, she was born with Perception Bending and all, but it's not like she was born with all of her problems. Her crippling anxiety and poor social skills seem to stem from the fact that people can't see her and won't remember her; that must make for some pretty bad self-esteem issues. A strict mother pressuring her constantly probably didn't help. Add in the whole situation with Monty and everything that's happened at the academy, her being drunk shouldn't really be questioned all that much. I mean, her reasons for drinking are about the same as every other drunkard on campus. It's the isolation that her gift gave her that made her the way she is; I doubt she was all that mopey and such from when she was really young.

Evelyn, along with her incredible insecurity and depressive tendencies, also struggles with extreme paranoia and is known to randomly caress a dagger for comfort. She's clingy to the max and lies around all day, wasted off her ass, giggling about her sophomore year boyfriend and being in denial of her own gayness. She has weird nightmares where her mom turns into a harpy and slices her into ribbons. The only reason she can't be called my craziest student character is because she's in direct competition with Kayla (legally-defined mass murderer and emotionally stunted child with extreme rage issues) and Jane (creepy, selfish, adrenaline-seeking exhibitionist and histrionic death-obsessed lunatic).

Echo wrote:

Would keep going, but oh well. Point is, some students are still pretty extremely normal - as normal as they can get -, but certain events/circumstances tip them off and they're stuck where they are. The fact that they're teenagers means that their mental/emotional stability is pretty weak already. There's a whole lot of emphasis on fitting into the crowd and being part of the norm - they're stuck as never being able to actually fit into the real world. I'm 90% sure they're all getting the same amount of dopamine as other teens around the world. Considering all the crap these guys go through, it's no wonder a lot of them are pretty unstable.

We're teenagers but none of us have snapped and joined a black-wearing murder cult bent on world domination. HMU when that happens.

Echo wrote:

tl;dr: too many external factors, doesn't work but it's still a good theory. If there's anything I had to pick up from AP Bio, it's that behavior, personality, etc. are all determined by environment, surroundings, and just in general, how the person is brought up. There's little to no genetic factor to it.

The difference is that AP Bio is for normal humans, not gifted ones. ;D The disproportionate craziness at Beata Academy as compared to normal human populations has to come from somewhere and be something other than coincidence. Across all these diverse backgrounds, the only true thread stringing everyone together is their gifts, and thus, their genetics. Ergo, weirdness or outright insanity on this site correlates with possessing the gifted gene in your DNA.

Sleepy wrote:

Okay, I probably should've made this more clear, but this is a joke. The theory is intentionally silly and trying to make fun of the fact everyone acts weird but accepts it as normal.

I was aware it was a joke from the start; just wanted a friendly debate to stir something up for my own amusement.

Sleepy wrote:

You don't have to be murderous levels of Modem insane to fall under this umbrella. Leo is inhumanly compassionate, noble, and righteous, as an extension of his gift, which is its own brand of crazy. It might be a bit more subtle and subdued compared to Maria or Kayla, and might be hard to think as a negative thing, but it's certainly atypical and unconventional thinking.

This is the same reason people think Kamijou Touma is crazy (in a series—Raildex—where everyone is categorically batty). He goes around day after day putting himself through hell to help people with no expectation of reward and little sense of self-preservation, and then goes through his life still convinced he's a normal highschool student when all this crazy shit happens to him. Leo might not exactly be at the TouMAN's level, but it's the same principle in that he probably would put himself out there and never turn down someone in need.

"Well, they're mostly normal except for the time when they went berserk and tried to murder someone."

To be completely fair, there's really nothing Leo could do when Devin turned into a demon. The fact that demonic energy was just seeping around the area was enough to trigger his gifts because of the natural hatred that angels and demons had for each other; this was played on before with how Leo didn't seem to really like Devin before until he actually got to know him. They're now gym buddies. There's been a number of situations that he got dragged into against his will too, but I can't really argue with his sheer kindness outside the fact that there are such altruistic people in the real world today. Whether they're actually insane or not is a different question.

Sleepy wrote:

Again, you don't have to be full on insane to be a bit quirky and unbalanced, or easily pushed off the edge. Many in the Academy, probably, are normal. The theory would argue that they start off a bit... fragile. If a normal person is a cement pillar, they're a Jenga tower. They might have a loving family, a normal life, and lots of friends, but remove a few pieces and it all comes crashing down. This usually manifests in strange quirks, atypical behavior, or unconventional thinking, but trends toward more unstable behavior. And of course we know Devin probably isn't 100% normal in every single aspect, berserk Goatman rage aside.

Doesn't that apply to everyone, though? People, especially teenagers, are extremely fragile and sensitive with their mental stability. That kind of analogy just doesn't work because removing a few pieces, more specifically important pieces, in anyone can cause their entire world to crash and fall apart. And when their world crashes down, it's almost guaranteed that they have rather peculiar things about their behavior, almost as a means to cope. I wouldn't pin this down to strictly the gifted, though. Though I could bring up the point that technically nobody is normal because everyone is too different to be an exact replica of one another, but that's besides the point. I get where you're coming from.

Sleepy wrote:

External factors, sure, but this would be something exacerbated by the internal like I said to Ebs. Magic, frankly, is not the model image of mental health. He talked to a fish, Sleepystar style. He stumbled through the woods singing a creepy murder lullaby and has tried to kill or hurt his friends on multiple occasions. He blew up an airport. There's having a rough upbringing that puts you on a path for violence, and there's Magic, proud classmate with the likes of Arbor and Cayden. Of course it all looks like it's all purely external factors, because no one would know about any underlying gifted propensity for insanity (because all the gifted people capable of looking into it are also insane).

Considering his past, I'd doubt his mental health is stable at all. Coming to the academy only worsened it. He has an aggressive nature from being a gang leader and it's one of the few ways that he knew how to respond. And in multiple instances, hurting/trying to murder his friends was an accident as a result of his instability. There's been many times where he outright stated he didn't want to hurt anyone and fears doing so; it's the whole reason he and his brother got into a fight and he ran off to avoid causing any more damage. Given the hell Coon and I wrote prior to his grand public destruction - Warren attacked them while they were trying to have a bit of fun at the water park and they ran away from the police; Magic was also under the impression that Warren wanted to kill Lamia, but all he was really doing was trying to tip his instability off a bit more to cause public destruction -, It just took one thing to tip him off from his already really bad day and that one thing was Lamia telling him to just let her die next time something bad happened and to forget that she ever existed. That ticked him off and his gift activated violently as a result. He's extremely regretful about how many people he killed later. He couldn't control what happened that day at all and there's way too much he couldn't control in the first place.

As for the comparison to Cayden and Arbor, who have pretty similar backgrounds, I'd say that it's all a matter of nuance. People react differently to the same situations. There's no way you can expect them to eventually come out the exact same way. They have similar traits - aggressive, distant/disconnected from others, stoic -, but they're much more individualistic. Cayden has a tendency to manipulate and play with others like toys, for the sheer amusement of it, while Arbor is driven by her desire for power and to be the very best that she doesn't care about the costs that it takes to get there. Magic gets himself involved when he feels it's necessary and has a really fierce loyalty towards protecting his friends from harm, but he doesn't want to get involved with others to avoid hurting them as well.  

Sleepy wrote:

Evelyn, along with her incredible insecurity and depressive tendencies, also struggles with extreme paranoia and is known to randomly caress a dagger for comfort. She's clingy to the max and lies around all day, wasted off her ass, giggling about her sophomore year boyfriend and being in denial of her own gayness. She has weird nightmares where her mom turns into a harpy and slices her into ribbons. The only reason she can't be called my craziest student character is because she's in direct competition with Kayla (legally-defined mass murderer and emotionally stunted child with extreme rage issues) and Jane (creepy, selfish, adrenaline-seeking exhibitionist and histrionic death-obsessed lunatic).

Dreams are generally a manifestation of conscious and subconscious problems that people have. At least, that's what I've bothered gathering from the Jung Dream Theory and Freudian Dream Theory. The harpy is clearly metaphorical and the fact that she's being sliced into ribbons just adds onto that. And as I said before, a lot of her problems stem from the fact that nobody can remember her, let alone see or talk to her very well. Being that isolated is not healthy for anyone and the one person she could turn to, Jace, finally left her life. Her clingy nature is completely justified and her obsession with Jace blends into that as well. I'd throw in her lesbo nature as something that she got curious about due to coming from a religious family; religion has a tendency to spurn homosexuality. She doesn't really have anyone to turn to. People use drinking to drown all of their problems away sometimes, and that's exactly what Eve does.

Sleepy wrote:

We're teenagers but none of us have snapped and joined a black-wearing murder cult bent on world domination. HMU when that happens.

We also don't go through a quarter of the crap that these guys do. Wayyy too many of their problems are caused from gift mishaps or having awful as hell childhoods.

Sleepy wrote:

The difference is that AP Bio is for normal humans, not gifted ones. ;D The disproportionate craziness at Beata Academy as compared to normal human populations has to come from somewhere and be something other than coincidence. Across all these diverse backgrounds, the only true thread stringing everyone together is their gifts, and thus, their genetics. Ergo, weirdness or outright insanity on this site correlates with possessing the gifted gene in your DNA.

Let me boast about my knowledge a tiny bit without you pointing out that fact. :c Still, I've been under the impression that the gifted gene is coded by one strand of DNA and whether it gets expressed or not relies heavily on 1) the regulatory region regarding the operon, promoter, and repressor 2) its proper transcription/translation and 3) how many proteins are generated to regulate its expression. But that's getting too technical; I'd love to work out the science behind how being gifted works at one point in time, though. And to be far, the actual true thread is that they're all still human in the end. |D

It's definitely not coincidence. The Amells are driven for an insane amount of power and exploit that. A crap ton of traumatic backstories stem from the fact that their gift caused it - Ethan lost a leg and his parents died and he managed to survive because healing is OP, Jane and her boyfriend had a suicide pact but she survived because of resurrection, Lamia went from an overconfident and boastful kid to someone way too anxious and nervous because she outright killed three of her classmates by accident, etc. etc. I can't really explain why there are a lot of characters with abusive parents or anything, though, because there definitely are. Personally, I've been thinking that the gifted gene is present in all humans but with enough proteins being made, it is prominent enough to be expressed, hence the gifted people; this would mean blocking transcription/translation could easily result in them being normal again and the reason that 99% of the population can't express this gene is because it's generally blocked - a mutation that can be inherited is what causes the expression. That could possibly explain why there seem to be some insane parents - especially the Rylen father -, if we would go with the gifted = insane theory. But I seem to be digressing.

*raises hand* I'm not a teenager

New Theory: Hitler was related to the Amells.

I agree with that theory. "Hail Hitler!"//solutes

Sieg heil, you uncultured swine. >;c
This is why Bridget isn't a real Amell.

Actually, it's called a bitchy family//z snaps

*looks back at French Shy Charrie* Four days and nobody has responded to her Entrance topic.

I guess she'll have no friends xD

Echo wrote:

To be completely fair, there's really nothing Leo could do when Devin turned into a demon. The fact that demonic energy was just seeping around the area was enough to trigger his gifts because of the natural hatred that angels and demons had for each other; this was played on before with how Leo didn't seem to really like Devin before until he actually got to know him. They're now gym buddies. There's been a number of situations that he got dragged into against his will too, but I can't really argue with his sheer kindness outside the fact that there are such altruistic people in the real world today. Whether they're actually insane or not is a different question.

Again, it's not just that Leo is a bro, it's that he's angelic. To be angelic is not to be human.

Echo wrote:

Doesn't that apply to everyone, though? People, especially teenagers, are extremely fragile and sensitive with their mental stability. That kind of analogy just doesn't work because removing a few pieces, more specifically important pieces, in anyone can cause their entire world to crash and fall apart. And when their world crashes down, it's almost guaranteed that they have rather peculiar things about their behavior, almost as a means to cope. I wouldn't pin this down to strictly the gifted, though. Though I could bring up the point that technically nobody is normal because everyone is too different to be an exact replica of one another, but that's besides the point. I get where you're coming from.

I think you're overestimating what it takes to knock a person down. Normal people do not have a propensity for strange characteristics or disorders in the way people on Beata are. Teenagers might be emotional and dramatic, but complete emotional wrecks are not common among normal people. Mental stability, and mental soundness, means you can endure losing your sanctuaries and foundations without losing your marbles. That's what it means to be stable. If everyone was one light nudge away from the edge, then nobody would be balanced and healthy.

Echo wrote:

Considering his past, I'd doubt his mental health is stable at all. Coming to the academy only worsened it. He has an aggressive nature from being a gang leader and it's one of the few ways that he knew how to respond. And in multiple instances, hurting/trying to murder his friends was an accident as a result of his instability. There's been many times where he outright stated he didn't want to hurt anyone and fears doing so; it's the whole reason he and his brother got into a fight and he ran off to avoid causing any more damage. Given the hell Coon and I wrote prior to his grand public destruction - Warren attacked them while they were trying to have a bit of fun at the water park and they ran away from the police; Magic was also under the impression that Warren wanted to kill Lamia, but all he was really doing was trying to tip his instability off a bit more to cause public destruction -, It just took one thing to tip him off from his already really bad day and that one thing was Lamia telling him to just let her die next time something bad happened and to forget that she ever existed. That ticked him off and his gift activated violently as a result. He's extremely regretful about how many people he killed later. He couldn't control what happened that day at all and there's way too much he couldn't control in the first place.

I fail to see how this detracts from my point whatsoever. So he's pretty batty, you would agree. He's mentally unstable and can't control himself, you would agree. How is that not a sign pointing to underlying issues? Sure, he's been through a lot, but this isn't something that happens to everybody. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world grow up in broken, dysfunctional households or fall into a life of gang violence and most of those people do not completely lose their shit when confronted with these kinds of things. What sets Magic apart from, say, everybody else in his old gang (who I imagine grew up in similar circumstances) is that he's gifted. It's in the blood, man.

Echo wrote:

As for the comparison to Cayden and Arbor, who have pretty similar backgrounds, I'd say that it's all a matter of nuance. People react differently to the same situations. There's no way you can expect them to eventually come out the exact same way. They have similar traits - aggressive, distant/disconnected from others, stoic -, but they're much more individualistic. Cayden has a tendency to manipulate and play with others like toys, for the sheer amusement of it, while Arbor is driven by her desire for power and to be the very best that she doesn't care about the costs that it takes to get there. Magic gets himself involved when he feels it's necessary and has a really fierce loyalty towards protecting his friends from harm, but he doesn't want to get involved with others to avoid hurting them as well.

This is an argument where I don't think you're actually saying anything. I never tried to say they're the exact same (???), just that there's a common trend of general battiness among them. Cayden clearly has some sort of antisocial personality disorder and Arbor is a violent strength-obsessed weirdo that lacks empathy for other human beings. Of course they're their own individual, coming from their own circumstances, but that's just the thing. There's a common thread linking them, and that's why they're in the madhouse.

Echo wrote:

Dreams are generally a manifestation of conscious and subconscious problems that people have. At least, that's what I've bothered gathering from the Jung Dream Theory and Freudian Dream Theory. The harpy is clearly metaphorical and the fact that she's being sliced into ribbons just adds onto that. And as I said before, a lot of her problems stem from the fact that nobody can remember her, let alone see or talk to her very well. Being that isolated is not healthy for anyone and the one person she could turn to, Jace, finally left her life. Her clingy nature is completely justified and her obsession with Jace blends into that as well. I'd throw in her lesbo nature as something that she got curious about due to coming from a religious family; religion has a tendency to spurn homosexuality. She doesn't really have anyone to turn to. People use drinking to drown all of their problems away sometimes, and that's exactly what Eve does.

Evelyn wrote:

The girl plopped unceremoniously back down on the piano bench and reached blindly with a shaky hand for the dagger strapped to her thigh, mostly concealed under her skirt. It was a strange thing, but it comforted her to hold it... to just grip the hilt tight and stare into the metal. It was funny to think the girl had resented it so much, at one point. She drew it from its sheath, with no regard for Penny's presence for the moment, and pulled it out in front of her, looking at her pale and distorted reflection in the blade to calm her quaking.

Whenever Evelyn looked into it, it was as if she forgot all about social grace and those around her. All of the complicated and choreographed actions she had to go through to seem 'normal' that seemed to come so easily to everyone else. Faintly, the little voice, her own voice, in the back of her mind was yelling at her, calling her an idiot and a weirdo for just siting there cradling a knife, but for once she ignored it. I need this, just for a second...

This is some Lord of the Rings shit. She's a paranoid, depressive, insecure, self-loathing mess that drinks like a fish. If that's not a bit loony, I'm not sure what is.

Echo wrote:

We also don't go through a quarter of the crap that these guys do. Wayyy too many of their problems are caused from gift mishaps or having awful as hell childhoods.

I feel like the disproportionate trend of tragic backstories only supports my point. And it's not like all of them are outside the realm of imagination. An abusive household doesn't warp you into a ruthless murderer as a rule of thumb.

Echo wrote:

Let me boast about my knowledge a tiny bit without you pointing out that fact. :c Still, I've been under the impression that the gifted gene is coded by one strand of DNA and whether it gets expressed or not relies heavily on 1) the regulatory region regarding the operon, promoter, and repressor 2) its proper transcription/translation and 3) how many proteins are generated to regulate its expression. But that's getting too technical; I'd love to work out the science behind how being gifted works at one point in time, though. And to be far, the actual true thread is that they're all still human in the end. |D

Getting into the nitty-gritty of gifted DNA and arguing that they're all still human distracts from the overall point. They're not normal, on any level, no matter what way you spin it.

Echo wrote:

It's definitely not coincidence. The Amells are driven for an insane amount of power and exploit that.

An entire gifted bloodline is insane. No, it's definitely not coincidence. ;D

Echo wrote:

A crap ton of traumatic backstories stem from the fact that their gift caused it - Ethan lost a leg and his parents died and he managed to survive because healing is OP, Jane and her boyfriend had a suicide pact but she survived because of resurrection, Lamia went from an overconfident and boastful kid to someone way too anxious and nervous because she outright killed three of her classmates by accident, etc. etc. I can't really explain why there are a lot of characters with abusive parents or anything, though, because there definitely are. Personally, I've been thinking that the gifted gene is present in all humans but with enough proteins being made, it is prominent enough to be expressed, hence the gifted people; this would mean blocking transcription/translation could easily result in them being normal again and the reason that 99% of the population can't express this gene is because it's generally blocked - a mutation that can be inherited is what causes the expression. That could possibly explain why there seem to be some insane parents - especially the Rylen father -, if we would go with the gifted = insane theory. But I seem to be digressing.

Who's arguing what now?

Ebony wrote:

New Theory: Hitler was related to the Amells.

If Hitler was French then he would've just gone to art school.

Echo wrote:

Sieg heil, you uncultured swine. >;c
This is why Bridget isn't a real Amell.

"Sieg heil" and "heil Hitler" are separate greetings that mean different things, you uncultured swine.

lovedove5667 wrote:

*looks back at French Shy Charrie* Four days and nobody has responded to her Entrance topic.

I guess she'll have no friends xD

Thank you for your contribution.

That was fun while it lasted. I was trying to be devil's advocate. Was a really nice debate, and you've proved your point, so I'll back down from attempting to disprove this theory. You caught the holes in my argument really well. ><

To be fair, an entire gifted bloodline is insane because they're all incestuous Europlebs. Inbreeding isn't best for the sanity. /shot

But hey. Hitler theory is best theory.
The amount of influence over people's thinking he had, and the obvious evil he was capable of, could only be supernatural.
Hitler was a gifted mind-bender.
Spread the word.