Oh, Ivan. You got too close, didn’t you?

Pursued by the need to know, Ivan is a classic archetype of the “scientist who pushed it too far”. He’s not a bad person, or a bad father, but he is a bit selfish in his pursuits. There are a lot of modern inspirations for Ivan, primarily the structure of the “working dad” we've seen since the dawning of digital story telling. He goes to work, he comes home. He focuses on his projects, he comes home. He architects an apocalypse, he…well, no one really knows what comes next.

All stereotypes aside, I think Ivan is one of the more complex characters in the Suncatchers universe. He can be a bit unreliable, but somehow he keeps a finger on the pulse of everything happening around him. Part of his complexity comes from being the most intelligent person in Suncatchers. How can a mind capable of so much not be able to actually think about consequences?

Ivan’s inspiration comes directly from my own experience, and watching those I love navigate their own lives. I often wonder if people get so wrapped up in what’s expected of them, they forget to draw boundaries, thus allowing duty to dictate every decision. There’s a lot of anxiety that comes with that. And mixed with the dangling carrot of monetary benefits when you climb a corporate ladder, sometimes what you strive for ends up being the very thing that destroys you. “Duty” and “dedication” is all that defines you, and the glue you thought you’d made turns into acid, fracturing everything you wanted to build.

During my EMDR sessions, I was simultaneously experiencing my own ego death within a corporate structure. The cards always seem to fall at once, don’t they? The carefully curated version of myself that navigated these spaces started to crumble. And the facade of the “girl boss” hid something terrifying behind it - a quiet little girl who just wanted to be seen. The limelight and praise from my bosses and the c-suites gave “grown-up me” a reason to think nothing was wrong. I was making good money, my ideas were being circulated and used. Hell, I was even getting featured in corporate virtuals and presenting my success to hundreds of people.

But EMDR took away my mask. I could’t just smile and say “okay” anymore. Little me wouldn’t let that shit go. I got angry, less focused, my numbers started dropping and within six months, I had a giant scarlet letter on my chest. “F” for fucking fuck-up. I lost the only thing that ever defined me: my success. The provability of my worth vanished and I was left to clean up the mess. You’d think I would go down quietly. I didn’t. I kicked and screamed in the most embarrassing way possible, pointing out the transgressions of others in shitty attempts to get the attention off of me. The hurt teenager inside of me desperately screamed “No, please, please tell me I’m still worth something!” I told myself it was because I believed in justice. My morality would save me, right? That was, by far, the hardest lesson so far to learn. Just like the things that put me in EMDR in the first place, this beast had no shape, no “perceivable” reason to exist, and no way to compartmentalize it.

Ivan is all of those things, but mostly that part at the end. He’s just a portion of the journey, but letting go of what makes you “worthy” is by far the hardest part. At least for me. It brings questions about what “worth” really means, and why we assign “worth” at all. End of the day, just being a human being is all we need to prove we exist. And the further you go down that rabbit hole, the harder the questions become to answer. If the only thing that matters is that we’re humans having a human experience, what does that mean when humans do bad things? Are they less “worthy”? Are their actions justifiable if horrible things happened to them? What do you do when the victim becomes the perpetrator? Does being a cycle-breaker make you a better person? Or does it just make you strong? And what does it mean when that cycle gets passed down to your kids, especially if you did everything you could to prevent that very thing from happening?

This is that in-between space where stuff gets interesting. It’s the grey area amongst polarity. And honestly, I think it’s the most important part to figure out.