pockysquirrel | Topic Meme: Day 5

I finished my Alpha fic, yay! Only posted it 2 hours late, too! Can't wait till everything's revealed and I can read all the things.

thesecondbatgirl requested that I discuss my favorite fictional therapists. Which, YAY.

OK, of course this is a topic near and dear to my heart because as y'all are probably already aware, I'm a therapist myself. (Sort of. At this point I do diagnostic evaluations and ER crisis work instead of long-term therapy. But still!) And you know, therapists in the media pretty often get a bad rap. Things are either portrayed really wrong, or therapists are blamed when people go crazy, or therapy is made out to be a joke, or all of the above. So yeah, it always attracts my attention when characters who are therapists show up in my fandom. Here are a few who are near and dear to my heart:

Deanna Troi: I couldn't possibly post about this topic without giving props to the lady who started it all. I was in eighth grade when I decided I wanted to become a social worker. There were a lot of IRL reasons for this, and by an act of fannish serendipity, that was also a point in my life during which I was very into Star Trek: TNG. Consequently, I do count Troi among the influences that led me to become a therapist. (I have said this directly to Marina Sirtis, and she was really sweet about it.) And what's neat about re-watching TNG as an adult with actual training in therapeutic techniques is that it turns out a lot of what you see Troi doing onscreen is the real deal! Sure, a lot of it is sci-fi psychology, since she is an empath (That would be hella handy in my RL job) and practicing with a number of alien species. But a lot of it is based in fact. I was particularly pleased with the scenes of her conducting family therapy with Worf and Alexander. Kudos, show.

Honorable mention for Trek therapy goes to Ezri Dax. I really need to rewatch DS9 and remind myself of exactly how much therapy she actually did onscreen, since all I remember of her character is her being cute but not Jadzia and then getting boned by Bashir. But she does technically occupy the same position as Troi, so there is that.

George Huang (Law and Order: SVU): This is a show I have never gotten involved in the fandom for, but I've watched an awful lot of SVU marathons with the Bugster, and I have SO MUCH LOVE for this character. He's a gay Asian guy who works in NYC law enforcement, come ON! How does it get much better than that? Not to mention the fact that he's smart as fuck, his clinical judgement is usually spot-on, and he is a soft-spoken badass and general sass master who takes no shit from his cop co-workers or anyone else. He also used to provide mental health treatment to sex offenders. I have done that work. It is NOT easy.

Did I mention he was CANONICALLY gay, and no one makes a big deal about it?

Also the actor is mad cute.

Maxine Gray (Judging Amy): Not technically a therapist, but she is a social worker - a profession even more maligned in pop culture than therapists in general. My degree in social work, and I have to give credit to this show for how much it got right in terms of how the child welfare and family court systems operate. Plus Tyne Daly is just one of the baddest asses that there ever was.

Rung (Transformers: MTMTE): This little guy is the latest addition to my collection of "characters I just want to scoop up and put in my pocket". I only discovered his canon a few short months ago - I believe my exact words were "Holy shit, this guy is a robot therapist!". And can I just say, of all the canons that could really USE therapy, Transformers is near the top of the list. Their entire race has been torn apart by civil war for millions of years and their society was several shades of fucked up even prior to that. EVERYONE is traumatized and grieving, and a bunch of the characters are crazy in other ways. Enter Rung, a small, unassuming, derpfaced little robot who no one ever seems to remember, despite his having been around forever. He's done psychological evaluations on members of the Autobot special ops team the Wreckers, and he's treated everything from paranoia (Red Alert) to PTSD (Fortress Maximus), to antisocial personality disorder (Whirl). In the process he's been choked out, used as bait, taken hostage and gotten his head blown off. And for all of that, he's still more likely to complain about the fact that no one can remember his name than he is about the tribulations of his work. Bless his spark.

Robot therapy is obviously a very different animal from human therapy, so I can't comment on the realism of this. I just love the fact that this character exists. And everything else about him, for that matter.

But I really, REALLY wish that the fandom would quit shipping him with his patients. That's a total breach of ethics and it squicks the hell out of me, which is sad because there needs to be more shippy Rung fic in the world.

Regarding headcanon: All of the above, as you've noticed, are canonically therapists or otherwise mental health professionals. I do occasionally have headcanon about characters who would make good therapists, or canons that I imagine would need therapists - mainly for Power Rangers. Because come on, you can't fight evil without having a few issues, and you can't go to a regular therapist when you have a secret identity. So here are a few bits of mental health headcanon for PR for you:

- I forget how exactly this happened, but at some point I decided that Rocky would make an awesome social worker. I headcanon him coming up with the idea when he's volunteering at the children's shelter and meeting Justin for the first time, and then going on to have a career working with at-risk kids and teenagers. And acting as resident therapist to any and all Rangers who desire or require his services. Except his own teammates. Especially Tommy.

- All of the Rangers who are affiliated with military or governmental organizations - Lightspeed Rescue, Time Force, SPD - have access to Ranger-friendly mental health support within their own organizations. Because that's the right thing to do, dammit!

- And there really ought to be a school counselor around one of the teenaged teams at some point trying to figure out why this group of normally well-behaved kids is suddenly skipping class and lying about things all the time.

And in conclusion, I'm always looking for more of this sort of thing. So if you know a canon with an awesome therapist in it, please feel free to point me in that direction!

Tomorrow's post is on ROBOTS and why I love them, as requested by