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waitmyturtles · 1 year

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Okay, so color me surprised. I thought Double Savage was going down an incomprehensible and overdramatic road (New Siwaj side-eyes) -- in the words of the lovely @shortpplfedup, shit do still be happening -- but with this episode, especially the ending, Rung’s trajectory, and the preview to the last episode, I’m actually finding myself quite moved and devastated. Episode 9 thoughts, here we go (only one episode this week -- episode 10, the finale, is next week).

So what trauma trajectories have we seen in this series? From Dad Beng casting out Korn and willingly subjecting his unwilling family to psychological abuse; to Korn choosing a life of crime to survive, because that’s all he literally thinks he deserves; to us seeing Win rise and fail at his career, because he’s never processed that he was set up to be the golden boy, and hasn’t faced real adversity in his life; to Rung, naturally reckless and impulsive, getting caught in Korn’s and Mek’s webs and trajectories, and processing it as recklessly and impulsively as ever.

The metaphor here is the drop of rain that splashes in the ocean, causing the start of the pulse of energy that creates a wave. To me, this show has taken a turn towards 10 Years Ticket, and has begun really coalescing the community trauma aspect of Dad Beng’s history of violence against Korn. (And I’ll DEFINITELY count in this Li’s and Ah’s clear attraction here, because -- we now know, from the last episode, that Li doesn’t work, she may not have even gone to college, and who else is in her external community that she engages with? We don’t see it. So who else WOULD she be attracted to, but the people that her family engages with? It’s actually, incredibly, a very common and natural way to meet partners in traditional Asian societies like the Thai-Chinese society that this whole show is rooted in. And it’s not surprising to me that it’s happening. And Korn’s “yo, I’m out” reaction when he was seeing it was hilarious to me, but anyway.)

But I’m now realizing that Rung’s own independent streak -- her recklessness -- was another drop of rain in this ocean, one that absolutely matched the energy of the trauma that Korn’s family was emanating. I get why Rung wants revenge on Korn and his family -- I get that taking the fall for that drug run in the truck was devastating to her -- but I really happen to like this metaphor of multiple “good” people in the show not taking ACCOUNTABILITY for their actions (Dad Beng, Rung, Win), and that the “bad” people who ARE taking or HAVE taken accountability (Korn, Ah, Mek) are the ones who originally had to turn to crime to escape their realities with the so-called “good people” in the first place. And then Mek paid for it -- he paid for Rung’s recklessness, just as Korn has, too.

It’s another scenario of how-the-world-should-work getting twisted and turned over, as the police captain was ultimately implicated in the middle of a drug war. Who knows if Rung could have lived a straight-arrow life -- maybe not, considering how impulsive she is.

In any case, while I think this show could be interpreted as messy, I actually, again surprisingly, think it came together in a heartbreaking way. I think the last scene -- seeing Win confirm that he WILL go against his morality and try to set Rung free -- is exactly what we could have expected of him, and exactly where we know Rung wants to take him. And it’s messed up and heartbreaking to me. Mek’s death and Korn and Rung’s reactions were wonderfully acted.

And I think the last thing that’s gutted me about this episode is that in the preview for the finale, we see that damn mother FINALLY confronting Dad Beng and saying the thing that’s long needed to be said -- “your kids hate each other now. Are you happy?” It might seem overdramatic to some, but I think it got my Asian heart in a weird place.

Because that Asian silent mother thing is very real. Families and siblings are left to burn on their own so very often, without structure from a sensible, mature parent or a stable family infrastructure. Middle children like Korn -- darker-skinned, maybe clumsy, maybe struggling at school -- are left to flap in the wind, while praise is heaped on the golden children. I’ve seen this paradigm fail in the adult lives of children time and time again, and to be honest -- this show nails how that paradigm is just always set up to fail, and it got me good for this episode.

#double savage #double savage the series #double savage meta #ohm pawat #perth tanapon #film rachanun #asian family systems #asian family trauma #family systems

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happyfanofeverything · 1 year

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“love” in umineko chapter 2

[just finished umineko chapter 2]

i maintain that the “love”s “granted by magic” of shannon & george and kanon & jessica are falsehood in that they won’t free any of them from the ushiromiya family’s power structures, as per my current Magic As Concealment To Uphold Abusive Power Structures theory.

(this is going to a rather disordered essay-length ramble because i struggle a lot to structure my thoughts coherently even on a good day.)

during shannon and george’s interactions: george has near-complete control over not only what activities they do together and what long-term plans they make (!!) but also what framework of thinking they use to understand their interactions and relationship (notice how during their dates, he explains every action of shannon to suit his own desires, often to shannon herself, effectively manipulation). he enjoys their relationship so much because he enjoys having so much power and control over shannon, he literally narrates this etc etc but it’s more interesting to explore how shannon understands their relationship. she is so abused in the ushiromiya family that she thinks of their relationship as a miracle that she is so undeserving of that she can only earn/seize it using magic. that this love is what makes her human and gives her new life.

does this framework really help her towards freedom and agency? if we refuse the theoretical force of magic and solve the situation of this love from human reasoning, we can deduce the abusive power dynamics at play. the way george exploits shannon for the secure comfort of a home life he’ll have complete power over. the way his uncles and aunts are happy to support their relationship to lower george’s position, not caring to protect shannon whatsoever. the way jessica supports their relationship because she harms people she has power over by acting like they’re friends as if the isolated servant and wealthy master power dynamic isn’t there at all. the way kanon struggles to protect shannon from what he understands is dangerous and subjugation-all-the-same-as-before without having the theory grounded in material reality to argue why to shannon. and more. the rhetorical forces at play in the abusive ushiromiya family are so twisted from reality to uphold the abusive power structures that the ways characters understand or at least talk about shannon and george’s relationship hit very far off the truth.

getting into kanon and jessica:

jessica says she thinks of kanon and shannon as her childhood friends, a way of thinking that obscures and upholds the abusive power structures involved. notice i always call the power structure abusive, not jessica (or whomever else): the material power structure is what enables her to harm & exploit people she has power over, regardless of her awareness or intention.

jessica’s power over kanon enables her to use him to benefit her social life at school in a power-imbalanced date off the island both similar and different to george and shannon’s. when kanon is whisked off to the school festival, he accesses huge amounts of new information (particularly standing out is the new knowledge of jessica having huge fulfilling aspects to her life that he knew nothing about, while he has nothing like that for himself, and may be too late to ever have it), and kanon works to understand this into his theorization of his world, uncertain whether to accept magic as part of the answer.

when jessica calls kanon human and advises him to act more human, it’s not truly effective because his material situation does not actually change to treat him as human and enable him to treat himself as human. jessica talking at him without acting to improve his life conditions won’t do anything substantial. kanon talks about his material situation of being stuck abused with hardly any personal resources as a framework of himself having a permanent sub-human identity, which, though not really accurate, is a grounded justified theorization of his situation. he refutes jessica’s “you’re human like me” with “no, you can do almost anything, but i can’t. i’m trapped here with no future.” though he’s (probably) incorrect in saying it’s a totally permanent matter of his identity, his words are more grounded in the reality of the abusive power structures around them than jessica’s words.

ryukishi calling a story a “question arc” seems to mean that the frameworks it presents for thinking about its contents are all mostly inaccurate, and it’s up to the readers to deduce ways to think about what’s happening. umineko’s main theme seems to me to be about abuse, and ryukishi seems to be trying to discuss abuse to audiences across widely varying positions of power. idk if i even agree that this premise should have been acted on, i have many criticisms of umineko piled up already. i hope i will learn from his umineko answer arcs and that they won’t disappoint me

#umineko #umineko liveblog #shannon #kanon #george ushiromiya #ushiromiya george #jessica ushiromiya #ushiromiya jessica

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eavanyhuang · 5 months

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The Depressive Realism of Addiction

Today’s podcast is, again, from Frontline Herbalism, an episode in which Nicole interviews her partner Rob about his experience of and thoughts about substance addiction. While I have known some advocacy for decriminalizing drug use in North America, Nicole is right that there is not much organizing around addiction, especially as a public health issue, in social movement spaces. This makes me into wondering if and to what extent “organizing” itself is narcotic, as well as how modernity-coloniality relies heavily on addiction-based affective structures to operate. But before it goes too far, I want to take notes on a couple things they discussed that are important.

First, being addicted to substance, especially in the current society that stigmatizes, infantilizes, criminalizes, and dehumanizes addicts, is extremely traumatic. Such trauma is disproportionate, considering other completely normalized forms of addiction, such as work, heteronormativity, ableism, standardized body image, meritocracy, hierarchy, capital, consumption, screen time, toxic positivity, etc., because the way modernity deprives societies of their medical sovereignty. It is particularly hard to maintain any kind of relationship with the world, such as medical professionals and schools, not to mention building and sustaining close communities of friends and family. Even those who built a bond among themselves often lose members to incarceration, sudden death, and/or displacement. In addition to this, the amount of anxiety produced by the unpredictability of the dosage and components of the drugs they get each day is insane. A big part of the high rate of relapse among addicts is exactly this traumatic experience and the sense of pain and isolation it induces, which drives them to seek more solace from substances.

Second, it takes coordinated social support to help, which in and of itself should be a political campaign. It is not easy to “come clean” once you are addicted to substance and forced to live on the street in the current society. On the street, drug addicts usually need to work extra hard to fund their habit via risky choices, a reality that Rob describes as a “full time job”. In such circumstances, community detox cannot happen. Only when there are funded infrastructures providing safe and free drug use and temporary staying spaces, as well as resourceful communities coming together to help individuals in need of healing and recovery, would the whole weaning off process be likely to succeed.

Third, drug addiction should be framed, thought of, and treated as a disease instead of a moral failure. At the end of the episode Rob corrected the language of “enabling”, as addicts don’t need drug dealers to “wave it” in front of them, they would seek it out themselves. By using such language, the society encourages the deprivation of substance from addicts as the ultimate solution, whereas in reality it could be deadly and immensely traumatic to them. Instead, addiction is a condition of sickness that manifests in substance abuse, the latter of which is the symptom not the cause.

I find addiction extremely generative for thinking about modern-colonial affect, not as a metaphor, but as a description. What if modernity-coloniality is a form of addiction, the forms of substance of which, as Rob points out, do not really matter. As I mentioned above, this could be work, heteronormativity, ableism, standardized body image, meritocracy, hierarchy, capital, consumption, screen time, toxic positivity, information, professionalism and authority, commodities, etc.. The objects can shift and change, but addiction per se is the disease left untreated. This helps formulate a loving critique of Lauren Berlant’s discussion of cruel optimism that limits itself in the confine of “American dream”’s brutal awakening: it’s not even timely, but applicable to modern-coloniality at all times. In the first chapter of Cruel Optimism she offers an interpretation of Charles Johnson’s Exchange Value that has stuck with me for a couple years. The story is about two black brothers, who grew up in poverty, robbing their possibly dead neighbor, ending up with a giant amount of money. They each approach this very differently, one through binge consumption, the other compulsive hoarding. She comments, in her usual style of depressive realism, on page 41,

“’Exchange Value’” demonstrates the proximity of two kinds of cruel optimism: with little cultural or economic capital and bearing the history of a racial disinheritance form the norms of white supremacist power, you work yourself to death, or coast to nonexistence; or, with the ballast of capital, you hoard against death, deferring life, until you die. Cooter is the realist; he can see that there’s no way out, now, no living as if not in a relation to death, which is figured in all of the potential loss that precedes it.”

Here she makes clear the disproportionately high cost of the transparency thesis on the black Subject. He simply cannot afford it because of the materiality of race. Throughout the whole book there were cases after cases of deep insightful analyses of why people of various backgrounds stay attached to the visions of a “good life” that do not work anymore. It is the kind of work that provide a descriptive account that is itself powerful in decluttering the affective barriers in the way of collective action and liberation. But in liberation work, there is only so much decluttering can and should do. I think “the good life” and the cruel optimistic attachments to it explains the choice of objects of addiction very well, but remains unhelpful for thinking about the root source of addiction in our organism. This is precisely why I want to holistically consider the attachment to the modern Subject expressed in Ricoeur’s golden triangle: ethics, morality, and justice. The economies of care, recognition, and power can only coexist harmoniously in the minority rich white Subject. The rest are forced to reinvest their excessive energies in one category at a time, readily sacrificing the others.

#academia #research

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ausetkmt · 1 year

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Somebody who grew up in the church recently died. Committed suicide. This is not the first time and won’t be the last. This tragedy happens all the time in society⁠—in “the outside world.” Our economic and political conditions will surely fluctuate through various levels of shakiness and unrest from now into upcoming decades, in the U.S. and globally, and this undoubtedly means that working and poor people will struggle even more, potentially with even less access to medical services, including mental health services. It’s safe to assume that suicides are generally going to increase.

I’ve known three members who committed suicide. In some sick way, I am thankful that there aren’t more second generation who have committed suicide. Knowing how often I’ve gotten close to it, as well as others in my family and among my friends, I’m genuinely surprised there’s not more. Unfortunately, I don’t doubt that in the next few decades, there will be more⁠—and not just because of global politics making everybody’s every day harder. But because we’re getting older, and so many of us have never dealt with any of our demons, and when things in our life gets shakier, uncertain, or scary, and we hit a breaking point because of some tragedy or sudden life change, we will lose our shit.

So many of us have an endless rage we are unwilling to look at or know. We hide and lock up huge parts of who we are from ourselves and those we love. And so many of us end up clueless to the structures and voices we’ve inherited from the church that we still obey and are tormented by.

There’s so much more to the story of leaving the church as a second generation than I’ve been told. I am trying to figure it out for myself. I’ve been out for a decade and yet too often I feel so behind in my healing. I am not over it, and I feel guilty for that. I only recently detected that guilt coming from an old place in me⁠—the place that says not to be negative, the place that dismisses negative people. I’ve been in therapy on and off for the last decade, I’ve been medicated, and the past few years I’ve talked to other 2nd generation who left, I’ve been keeping up with the blogs and the podcasts⁠⁠—and none of that is enough.

What is enough? Will there ever be enough? Will I ever not have this rage following me?

Somehow, even in the safest ex-2nd generation spaces, I still feel like the violence we witnessed and endured is not taken seriously. There are so many ex-2nd generation who affirm the church being problematic, but barely any more than other fundamentalist sect. We can read HWDYKYM headlines about 6,500 Japanese women going missing after the blessing, or Moon sexually assaulting Annie Choi, or the church funding death squads in Latin America, and say, “oh yeah, the church is fucked up” and shrug. Even if we did not personally experience certain abuses, we were born through and in the midst of exploitation and abuse. It was all around us. In one way or another, we all experienced⁠ it and it played a huge role in shaping our realities and who we are.

There is so much trauma in us that we are unwilling to interact with and know.

It is not normal to be in a room of people slapping themselves, with some getting bruised or bloody. It is not normal to be in a locked room where people are forced to make confessions and then get beaten. It is not normal to have your church leader pressure you to give up your child to another family. It is not normal to have your parents pressure you to go across the country, or world, at 17 or 18 or 19 years old, to have your eternal spouse chosen for you. It is not normal to have to make a sudden life change, including moving countries, due to the sudden whim of a church leader. It is not normal to be given a knife by your mom to kill yourself with if approached by a rapist. It is not normal to have to beat your spouse’s ass with a bat as hard as you can in front of your peers and leaders.

Whether this was our experience, or our sibling’s, or our friend’s, or our parents’ it was all traumatic and it was our basis for reality. It was not normal, good, or healthy. That stuff takes a long time to unpack, and the messaging we received takes even more effort and humility to actually unlearn and deal with.

There’s so much to unlearn and re-learn, and I’m afraid of what that means for me, and for all of us. Going to therapy is important, even if your therapy ends up not always super insightful or mind-blowing. It helps to have somebody on the outside seeing what’s going on inside us. I’ve had some mediocre therapists, but they’ve all been helpful at some point in highlighting things in my thinking and behavior that I just couldn’t see otherwise, and reminding me of the things I always forget or dismiss. They’ve continually helped me take myself and my life seriously.

But there’s more to this than therapy. How do we reckon with ourselves? There still seems to be some missing pieces in this story. Maybe it’s something we, the second generation, have to figure out.

Everybody has their own pace and capacity, and I respect that we all have a different route for recovery and healing. A lot of us are mentally ill, dealing with CPTSD and PTSD, as well as depression and anxiety and other disorders. I know some people feel unable to even consider working through their trauma, aware that it’d trigger them in ways that they do not think they can manage, in ways they’re scared might break them. For those of us who want to actively find some sense of resolve, who want to be free from Moonie-brain, and to feel free, and genuinely be freed, from being psychologically and ideologically in the church—I wonder what else we can be doing to find whatever peace we can with our families, our past and stories, ourselves. I wonder if my Moonie-blinders are still keeping me from seeing something.

#Some questions and reflections on the missing pieces to leaving the Church as an ex-2nd generation #cults #religious lies #religion #ptss #brainwashing in the name of jesus

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 2 years

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Some questions and reflections on the missing pieces to leaving the Church as an ex-2nd generation

Originally posted on WhatIsOnTheMoon

▲ Chanyang team leading ansu in Cheongpyeong

What is enough? Will there ever be enough? Will I ever not have this rage following me?

There is so much trauma in us that we are unwilling to interact with and know. It is not normal to be in a room of people slapping themselves, with some getting bruised or bloody. It is not normal to be in a locked room where people are forced to make confessions and then get beaten. It is not normal to have your church leader pressure you to give up your child to another family. It is not normal to have your parents pressure you to go across the country, or world, at 17 or 18 or 19 years old, to have your eternal spouse chosen for you. It is not normal to have to make a sudden life change, including moving countries, due to the sudden whim of a church leader. It is not normal to be given a knife by your mom to kill yourself with if approached by a rapist. It is not normal to have to beat your spouse’s ass with a bat as hard as you can in front of your peers and leaders. Whether this was our experience, or our sibling’s, or our friend’s, or our parents’ it was all traumatic and it was our basis for reality. It was not normal, good, or healthy. That stuff takes a long time to unpack, and the messaging we received takes even more effort and humility to actually unlearn and deal with.

From a comment on facebook in response to this post:

Thank you for re-sharing it, when it was posted i was also dealing with the loss of someone i grew up with to suicide. this piece jolted me awake and out of my individual trauma to the need to be outspoken, the need to process in community and heal from this wild wild shit, and to start to imagine and work for a new world without punishment, without control, without hierarchy. how many more of us will die for this, how many more will live half-lives, how many more of us will have to work through complex trauma? even one more victim is too many

#second generation #ex-members #ex-moonies #recovery #trauma

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starr-fall-knight-rise · 3 years

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Humans are Space Orcs, “Maladaptive Coping.”

This idea was given to me by a good friend of mine

*WARNING* This issue of Krill’s journal contains literally ALL of the things that might bother you. Every self destructive behavior I could think of is mentioned in this piece. So PLEASE do not read it if there is even the slightest chance that it may bother you. I wont list everything here, and trust you to make your own decision on weather it is a good idea for you to read this or not.

Also, a important note is that this is from an aliens perspective, and so does not contain every last nuance of these behaviors and the reasons behind them. I hope those of you who read a great day, and those who don’t read a great day as well! :)

The Journal of Xenomedical Biology

Author: Dr. Krill of the Vrul

The Human Manifestation of Self destructive Tendencies and Their Signs.

Over the past few years of studying and learning to understand humans, It has come to the attention of the medical community that humans are the most volatile species, psychologically. This is not meant as negative commentary on human issues as it might seem, but merely an observation that humans have the most widely varied pattern of psychological maladaptive responses when it comes to stress and related mental illness. Where each other species tends to have only two or three typical maladaptive responses, humans have been known to have analogous representations of all known mental abnormalities.

Now this journal is not specifically about all the ways the human brain can go wrong, but more accurately about the maladaptive response I have seen in humans over the past few years primarily demonstrating self destructive behaviors in one way or another.

You might notice an interesting pattern in my analysis today that clearly demonstrates a repetitive contradictory pattern in human self destructive tendencies, which will demonstrate just how varied and widely differing their responses can be.

First, humans have socially destructive behavior.which can come in many forms.

Withdrawal: from friends or close loved ones is a common self destructive behavior to look for in humans. This can happen on a large or small scale where the human withdraws for hours or even years. As a social species, humans find social interaction important, even if that is only remote communications with other humans. If that human begins to withdraw suddenly or even gradually over time, I might suggest being concerned about their well- being.

Now here is where the contradictions come into play, and forgive me if some of these social behaviors also overlap with the physical behaviors, with humans, they are often one in the same.

Increased socially dangerous behavior: now this may account for many things. Some humans will fall into a downward spiral where they surround themselves with other like minded humans and participate in dangerous physical activities, which I will discuss later

Increased partners: Now, while this behavior may be common for many humans, and could be argued as a physical behavior, there is cause for concern if a human suddenly increases the number of physical partners from their average. This usually accompanies reckless social behavior like not meeting the partner first before entering into a physical relationship, doing this on multiple occasions and might also be connected with the following -

Staying with an objectively horrible partner: now it is hard to identify why some humans do this, but often humans will choose a partner who is objectively horrible to them either physically or emotionally. Sometimes humans do this because they are afraid of the repercussions, are afraid of being alone, or they have been convinced that there is no other possible person out there who might love them. Humans put a lot of stock into physical relationships and many of them would rather be with someone horrible than be alone. Due to their social nature many humans put social interaction and partnership over their safety and mental health. If you see a human participating in this behavior, it is advised to get them help,even if the human does not want it. They deserve more than being treated horribly.

Now on occasion two humans in a downward spiral might come together and create a codependent relationship where they cannot function without one another. What the other human does the oher will follow and this can lead them both into a spiral of horrible physical and mental behaviors that will cause anguish in the long term. If one of them is involved with drugs, the other will follow etc.

Now some humans might even participate in self destructive behaviors that look good from an outside perspective. For instance, it is a common occurrence that humans overwork themselves to the point of burnout. Often humans throw themselves into their work to distract their minds and avoid the pain of something else, thi may include memories or having to return to an environment where they do not wish to go. These humans will work many hours and sacrifice their social lives to do more work, causing long term stress that can lead to heart attack stroke and other physical diseases related to increased stress and heightened blood pressure. Some humans may participate in this behavior as a way to prove themselves to others, that they are either competent or hard working.

On the flipside of this there are other humans who may just stop working at all. They let everything in their lives fall apart, and stop doing anything of note causing them to lose their jobs, their hobbies, their families and their friends. This one is often related to a withdrawal from other people and might include elements of physical recklessness like drug abuse.

Secondly and including a much wider range of self destructive behaviors, we see the physical manifestations of this phenomenon which vary widely and tend to come in opposing pairs..

Overheating and undereating: are two very common forms of stress response from humans. If humans have conditioned to see food as a reward for behavior or as a comforting mechanism (oten developed in childhood) they will eat in order to comfort themselves and to the point where it is adversely affecting their physical health. They may eat even if they are not hungry or if they are actively full. Some humans experience digestive issues while under stress and may even refuse to eat at all. There are other extreme cases where humans, usually in response to a perceived lack of control, will regulate their food intake to the point of starvation or other food related disorders.

This is closely related to over exercising, and also has links with a perceived lack of control in their life. These humans, often paired with restricted eating, will push themselves to their physical limit to control their own bodies as a form of having a hold on their own lives. This paired with restricted calories can cause an untold amount of damage both physically and metnally. Mental disorders linked to these behaviors are known to be the most deadly of disorders known to humans.

The consumption of Drugs and Alcohol

This is a very common and often overlooked behavior in humans. Drinking is the consumption of beverages that contain Ethanol, which when reacting in the human brain causes, extreme mental degradation related to fuzziness and euphoria. Humans find this a pleasant feeling though it causes damage to many internal structures most primarily the liver. Unfortunately drinking is seen as a socially acceptable behavior with humans and so excessive drinking is often caught too late or not called out at all. These humans may drink from the beginning to the end of the day and will build up a tolerance to alcohol amounts that would kill another human. They build up an immunity to the point where they need larger and larger doses to feel the same effects. They will often neglect their social connections including friends and family for a chance with the bottle.

This is the same with other illicit drugs, which may have even more severe effects on the person and my lead to drug induced psychosis. Both substances are highly addictive to the point where a human may commit horrible acts like murder, robbery, etc to get the drugs that they crave. This is usually in response to some sort of mental anguish they are trying to drown out but may be related to them becoming hooked on drugs they needed after surgery. On rare occasions, this behavior began in conjunction with destructive social behaviors which lead them down into a spiral.

Excessive partying is often paired with drug use and an increased amount of intimate partners. Many humans who have fallen into this spiral might refuse to admit that they are spiraling at all. Generally limited use of a substance can be acceptable for a human, but there are plenty of other chemicals that should not be consumed at all.

There are even some drugs that are known to be mild on the user but may cause emotional dependence. These drugs are not known to cause physical dependance, but the human can convince themselves that they require the drug to function emotionally during the day and will neglect their family, friends and lives in order to spend more time with their drug of choice Again you will see the withdrawal from social contacts as an extreme warning sign in humans.

Sleeping too much or not sleeping at all:A human getting enough sleep is important for their mental health but sleeping too much is proven to throw off circadian rhythms and increase chances of depression or worsening depression. Humans require an amount of sleep that is no more or no less than what they need. Many humans will claim to not be getting enough sleep because they feel tired, when in reality their oversleeping causes grogginess and reduced amount of energy though it might seem counter intuitive. On the other hand humans might refuse to sleep at all, instead occupying their time with some other activity. It is important to remember though that an inability to sleep might also be insomnia, and the human hs no choices in the matter. I find that humans, in general, are horrible at regulating a proper healthy sleep schedule.

Participation in dangerous hobbies. Now, I understand that this is common for many humans and does not indicate self destructive behavior, but I would consider noting when a human suddenly involves themselves in dangerous hobbies after not participating for a long time, especially when that human is not careful and doesnt take time to properly consider safety protocols.

Another very common one is humans causing intentional physical harm to themselves. This comes in levels of severity and I would say that most humans do this to some degree or another. Often these are connected to nervous ticks or even learned behaviors from childhood. This can include, picking scabs, biting nails, picking at the skin of the thumbs or the lips, pilling hair, and biting the inside of the cheeks. These smaller behaviors are usually minor and do not require attention, they may cause scarring but are not generally connected to extreme mental anguish.

However, these behaviors can escalate dramatically to the use of knives and razors. This behavior is EXTREMELY maladaptive and indicates severe mental anguish and trauma and must be addressed immediately. These behaviors might escalate and be linked to loss of life by the human’s own hand. I have not witnessed this personally, and I never intend to as I keep a very close eye on my humans.

#HUMANS ARE WERID #humans are space orcs #humans are space australians #humans are insane #humans are deathworlders #earth is a deathworld #Earth is space Ausralia #humans are space oddities

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sidespart · 3 years

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For the fake fic title, if you're still doing it: Why do you hate me? (I honestly don't know where I came up with this lol)

X-Men AU!!! Found Family + Anxceit friendship. TW: child soldiers, child endangerment, abuse etc

(So typical X-men universe set up: some people are born with the X gene, which typically triggers during puberty, giving that person a mutation which normally results in cool powers. Many people hate mutants for their differences (/ bad press of people using their mutant powers for the evilz) and so most mutants live in hiding. The Xavier Institute is a school set up by an extremely powerful mutant which seeks to provide a safe space for young mutants to learn to manage their powers, get a regular education and hopes to see peace between humanity and mutant kind. The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants is a group of mutants who believe humans will never let mutant live in peace and do various anti-human, pro-mutant vaguely terrorist-y actions (there’s like a billion version of the x-men and these details may not be correct for all the versions all of the time because comics but this is the vague idea))

ANYWAY PLOT - Containment breach at the Super Secret Child Soldier Lab (SSCSL) - Subject VII has escaped. Subject VII is only 6-7 years old but his mutations were artificially triggered much younger than is normal. He can warp reality and create very sophisticated illusions, but has very limited control over his powers.

Cut too - Virgil and Dee, a couple of teenage mutants living on the street. They find a little boy with a buzzcut wandering around The Bad Part Of Town and Virgil immediately decides they need to adopt/help him (Dee makes more of a fuss about how this is not their responsibility and the kids barely even talking and do you know how hard I work just to keep you and now you wanna add another mouth to feed?? Huhh?? but obviously does not actually say no) (Dee is like. Barely any older than Virgil he’s just dramatic).

Naturally, just as the three of them have had time to bond, the SSCSL and other assorted bad guys show up to try and take VII back. There’s a big fight, Virgil and Dee have a lot more experience with flight and would probably have ended up dead if the X-men (Patton and Logan) hadn't shown up to save them.

But they lose VII.

Patton and Logan take them back to the Xavier institute to recuperate and offer to let them stay. They can go to school there, get some training and help the X-men track down VII and the whole SSCSL. Virgil says yes, Dee says no.

(So, reasoning - Virgil's mutation developed when he was 12. It was not pleasant. Various students at his school were injured and the media set up a which hunt for the mutant that caused the chaos. Virgil ran away from home because he was worried about the backlash on his family and about hurting anyone else again. So to him, this school full of mutants who can help him control his power, can offer him stability and a return to normal structures and routines, who are promising to help him get in contact with his parents if and when he’s ready?? This is like every fantasy he’s ever had come true

Unlike the other characters, Dee’s primary mutation is physical. He was born with it, its very obvious and its resulted in him being rejected for most of his life. He bounced around increasingly disturbing foster homes before running away when he was very young, so most of his memories are of living on the streets and surviving on his own. So, to him, number one: all adults are inherently untrustworthy idiots and number two: stay at a school? where they expect him to have a curfew? and, what - write essays? follow all their random arbitrary rules? rely on them for food and heat and all that shit? Completely ludicrous.)

It doesn't occur to either of them that the other one isn't going to agree with them. The resulting argument is epic and cruel, both hurling accusations at the other (Ungrateful /controlling are two of the big ones..) and both basically feeling hateful and 100% betrayed. Dee leaves and although they look for him, he’s got a lifetime experience of hiding and they cant find him.

CUT TO - 5 years later. Virgil is a (semi) well adjusted 19 year old junior X-men. He’s still a bit withdrawn, but is very close with Patton and Logan. He’s still holding out hope of finding VII one day and still firmly pretending he’s not listing out for any possible news of Dee (there were rumours some years ago of him joining the brother hood of evil mutants but then it all went quiet) who he, of course, hates for his betrayal.

BUT THEN - mysterious knocking at the door in the night. Dee, now wearing a hat and cape and calling himself Janus, has returned. And he’s brought with him a little boy with a buzzcut and a tattoo of XXII on his foot.

Janus and Virgil need to put aside their resentment and work together to help XXII, who really does not seem interested in helping them, and hopefully use any clues he can give them about the SSCSL to track down VII. But that's difficult when they’re both still struggling with their own trauma and have no idea how to reconnect - both of them want to ask why do you hate me but are a bit too scared of the answer. ...

This already got way to long so mutant power/ extra back story descriptions under cut!

Patton - 22/27 years old. An extremely powerful telepath/empath. It takes him serious concentration and focus to not hear peoples thoughts and its almost impossible to not feel their feelings. Some people dislike him because of this as they feel he's spying on them. Grew up in the Xavier institute and 100% believes in and is committed to the future where humans and mutants live in harmony. Has pretty limited life experience in the real world. Sometimes floats. (inspired by professor X)

Logan - 21/26 years old. Fires destructive laser beams from his eyes. Was in a car accident when he was younger leaving him with permanent but apparently harmless brain damage - until his mutation developed and he slowly realised that no matter how much he trained he just couldn't control his power. Has to wear specialised eye guards at all times to keep himself from accidentally destroying everything around him. Had big plans to go to university and was angry at his mutation for a long time for getting in the way of that. Eventually enrolled online and is now a very dedicated teacher at the Institute. (inspired by cyclops)

Janus - 15(?) / 20(?) His primary mutation is lizard/snake like scales over most of his body, but especially the left side. Has oversized fangs, and yellow eye and a short lizard tail. His secondary mutation makes him immune to almost any sort of mental based mutation (so Logan could still knock him on his ass with his lasers, but Patton cant sense anything form him and Virgil cant whammy him). Spent a lot of his life on his own and got by being sneaky, cunning and charming. Initially took Virgil in because he saw that his powers could be useful for keeping them both safe, but eventually Virgil became his first real friend.

Virgil - 14/19. Shadow manipulation and ‘draining’. Virgil can make himself (and with practice, people he touches) literally disappear into the shadows. He can also direct shadows as powerful energy ‘blasts’, but in order to do so he has to drain any surrounding living things of their energy. When his mutation first developed he took out half of the school hall where his exam was being held, leaving 15 students in a coma. (inspired by rouge/shadow cat)

VII - 6? / 11? Reality warping/illusion powers. One of the institutes first successful subjects. He was able to escape by changing the wall of his cell into a door. He finds it hard to talk but can project his ideas as lifelike illusions who can talk for him. One of his best is the image a handsome grown up Prince and he will often use this Illusion as an avatar to communicate. When he was 6 he did have some hazy memories of outside the SSCSL and expressed a desire to go home. Current status is unknown.

XXI - 7. Illusion powers (reality warping has been removed from the program by his time as subjects proved too difficult to control). Has no memories of outside the institute and is extremely uncooperative with his new captors/guardians. He does not understand the affection they’re trying to show him and lashes out a lot, often by creating a lot of extremely disturbing and graphic illusions. Bites.

#sanders sides #anxceit #virgil sanders #janus sanders #roman sanders #logan sanders #patton sanders #fake fic meme #remus sanders #sidespart writes #x men au #giving it its own tag because ive been thinking about this one for a while and might do some more with it.#Anonymous

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foilfreak · 3 years

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Beauty and Her Beast: Chapter 5

WARNING PLZ READ BEFORE CONTINUING: This fic is rated NSFW and contains graphic depictions of things some people may find disturbing or alarming, including, but not limited to: violence, gore, unhealthy family relationships, Oedipus complexes, gratuitous amount of pornographic literature, ableist language, physical, mental, and emotional abuse, etc. If you are someone who does not enjoy fiction with these elements in them, then I suggest you refrain from reading this, because this fic will have all that, and probably a lot more. So, this is your first and final warning to turn around and go somewhere else if stuff like this just isn't your vibe, because from this point forward, your emotional wellbeing is in your own hands, and I will not be accepting blame if you disregarded my warnings and ended up reading something you didn't like. Idk why I feel compelled to write one of these despite this being Resident Evil fanfic, but I figured I'd cover my ass just in case.

(AO3 Link below)

This was a bad idea... no, actually, scratch that. This wasn’t just a bad idea...

‘THIS WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA’ Salvatore thought to himself, as he frantically hid beneath a large blue tarp covering a couple of old, rotting shipping crates, his body trembling uncontrollably and his shoulders heaving from the terrified and panicked state Salvatore had managed to work himself into.

Now, for those of you who may be wondering why Salvatore was currently hiding behind a bunch of crates like prey hiding from the hunter, despite being in the safety of his own reservoir-

“Hello?”

-that would be why.

Yes, the 2 days that Salvatore had been given to prepare for his gift’s arrival had come and gone faster than the disfigured man could have ever imagined. And while he’d done a marvelous job of cleaning up the reservoir to make it suitable for the beautiful young lady who’d now be calling this place ‘home’, what he hadn’t anticipated having to deal with was the full blown panic attack he got the second the villagers arrived to release her into his custody. Thankfully, his anxiety grew more manageable when one of the villagers explained that, due to Nadine’s tendency toward violent behavior, combined with her superhuman strength, Mother Miranda had gone ahead and given the young woman a nice heavy dose of sedative to keep her asleep throughout the journey to the reservoir, as well as for a couple of hours afterwards, too.

You know… just in case.

After the villagers finally left, Salvatore closed and locked the gate behind them before turning his attention to the large wooden coffin that, according to the men who’d carried it here, contained his long awaited gift from Mother Miranda.

Taking a few tentative steps forward, Salvatore takes the metal key the villagers had given him and slowly, but eagerly, unlocked and opened the wooden vessel, gasping in shock and awe as the sight of Nadine’s perfectly angelic face finally came into the light. He wasn’t sure how this was possible, but somehow the young woman looked even more perfect than the first time he saw her, the soft glow of the early morning sun reflecting off her blue scaly skin in a way that gives her a gorgeous, almost iridescent shine.

The continued nudeness of Nadine’s body, while mesmerizing to look at, did unfortunately make the act of keeping his hands to himself rather difficult, and Salvatore quickly found himself grappling with his inner demons as he contemplated reaching in and taking a quick feel, just a quick one, if only for the sake of finally figuring out what on earth her skin was made out of.

Was it smooth and silky to allow for rapid aquatic maneuverability, like that of an eel, or did her soft, feminine exterior hide a rougher, more textured sort of skin, like that of a shark or a whale?

Oh how Salvatore longed, with every fiber of his disgusting, twisted being, to reach inside that wooden carrier and run his hands over the mutant woman’s perfect little body, every atom in him aching to touch, hold, kiss, lick, bite, and devour every square millimeter of this gorgeous specimen, blurring and melting the lines of reality that once separated them until you couldn’t tell where beast ended and where beauty began.

But he refrained.

As much as Salvatore desperately wanted to give in to the primal desires of his still-human mind and mostly-human body, he instead decided to give the young woman some time to wake up first, guessing that she probably wouldn’t want some random stranger, much less one that looks like him, touching her without her permission. So with a deep breath, and a strong swallowing of his raging libido, Salvatore stepped away from the crate Nadine was sleeping in, pocketing the key in case Mother wanted it back later, before turning around and beginning to hobble back toward the lake to complete the few minor tasks he hadn’t managed to get to before the villagers arrived earlier.

It would be well into the afternoon, nearly evening by this point, before Salvatore heard so much as a peep from Nadine. Mother Miranda must not have been kidding when she said she’d given the young woman enough sedative to knock her out for hours. If it weren’t for the fact that she was still breathing, Salvatore might have thought her dead after this amount of time.

Unfortunately for Salvatore, it would appear as though Nadine taking ages to awaken from her drug induced slumber would be the least of the deformed man’s concerns, quickly overrun and forgotten about in the blind panic Salvatore went into once the young woman’s voice, soft and slightly high pitched, though a bit scratchy from lack of use, calls out from, presumably, the spot where Salvatore had left her by the front gate.

The heavenly tone bounces and echoes off the wood and water of the surrounding area, filling the reservoir with a song-like magic that made Salvatore’s knees buckle weakly in reverence, and his stomach want to turn itself inside out from complete and utter terror. Hit with the sudden realization that Salvatore was going to have to actually look at AND speak to Nadine now that she’d awoken, and at the same time no less, immediately sends the mutant man tumbling into a full blown panic, resulting in Salvatore locating the nearest solid structure, the tarp and crates in this case, and throwing himself underneath it, hoping and praying that if he remained quiet for long enough, Nadine would lose interest and go somewhere else-

“Hello? Is anyone here?”

-Unfortunately Salvatore wasn’t a man who had his hopes and prayers answered terribly often, and today seemed to be no different than usual.

Despite being given extra security due to the rapid approach of nightfall, Salvatore didn’t even dare breathe as the sound of footsteps passed by his hiding spot, his heart pounding uncontrollably in his chest as Nadine came within just inches of finding him. This is it, the jig is up, there was absolutely no doubt in Salvatore’s mind that Nadine was mere seconds away from pulling the tarp back to reveal his horrible and disgusting self, scrunched up into the tightest little ball between the narrow spaces of the crates.

Closing his teary eyes and accepting his fate, Salvatore merely sat and waited for the inevitable moment of shocked silence after the tarp had been lifted, followed by the sound of Nadine’s smooth and rich voice bursting his eardrums with a piercingly shrill and terrified shriek, as well the heavy booming of feet against wood as she ran away from him, disgusted, horrified, and appalled by so much as having to look at the monster that Salvatore was, much less do anything else.

“Ah man, I could have sworn I saw someone around here, earlier,” the low but feminine voice of Nadine said aloud, sounding quite dejected as she leaned against the blue tarp covering Salvatore’s hiding spot.

“Maybe they just went out to look for food, and will be back later?” Nadine says to herself, sounding more optimistic than before, though her hopefulness fades as quickly as it arrived when she continues with, “Then again… maybe the poor bastard caught a glimpse of me as I stumbled around and took off in terror at the sight of me. I suppose I can't really blame him… not with the way I look now, at least.”

Nadine pauses, trailing off for a moment as Salvatore remains rooted in his spot, hands clamped firmly over his mouth and nose to prevent any noise from escaping, despite the increasing burning sensation from his human lungs, which, despite their somewhat shaky ability to do their prescribed role ever since the cadou mutations screwed him up, still very much needed air going in and out of them if Salvatore wanted them to continue functioning at all.

The young woman remained in that spot leaning against the tarp-covered crates for a few more moments, not saying or doing anything as far as Salvatore could tell, before the sound of shuffling and more footsteps, softer and less hurried than the ones he’d heard earlier, caught his attention.

Silence persists for another moment, causing Salvatore to grow curious the longer he waits. And so, despite his earlier reservations, Salvatore can’t help but shift his position slightly so that he could peek through a narrow space between the wall of crates, just enough to give him a solid view of Nadine, who currently stood with her back to him just a few feet away from where the mutated man was hiding. Her gaze seemed transfixed on the lake’s surface, or perhaps it was less the water that held her gaze, but the reflection staring back at her from the mirror-like surface.

Even without seeing her face, Salvatore could tell that the young woman was afraid and in pain, and his heart wrenched agonizingly as he watched her beautiful form shrink in on itself. Her arms curled around her body defensively, as if trying to hide herself shamefully from any potential onlookers, while her torso slumped limply forward, shoulders shaking heavily as she sobbed quietly to herself in the ever growing darkness of evening time.

“Whatever, it’s not like it matters anyways,” the young woman sobs dejectedly after a while, pointlessly rubbing the tears from her face away, only for them to be quickly replaced as new ones fell. “Even if somebody did actually live here, it’s not like anyone would even want to help a disgusting abomination like me... much less have anything else to do with me.”

The sound of Nadine jumping off the dock and into the cold lake water below pales in comparison to the sound of Salvatore’s whole world turning itself upside down from beneath the large blue tarp under which he was hidden.

Disgusting abomination?

Nadine?

No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, NO!

Of all the things Salvatore has ever heard in his entire life, this one has to be the most ridiculous thing by far.

Salvatore was a disgusting abomination, that much he was more than aware of and had long since accepted, as painful as it still was to admit from time to time. But Nadine… Why Nadine was quite easily the most beautiful woman he’s ever laid eyes on, save for perhaps Mother Miranda herself maybe, which was certainly a very high standard to be compared to in Salvatore’s book. While the young woman did indeed have several mutations that would make going back to her previous life almost impossible, that didn’t mean she was disgusting, or an abomination.

Not to Salvatore she wasn’t, at least.

The fact that the poor young woman thought this of herself sent a sharp, stabbing pain directly into his heart, practically tearing him apart from the inside out as he frantically thought of something, anything he could do to make the tiny woman feel better.

Thinking back to when he’d watched her just moments ago, he remembers the way in which her arms and hands curled around herself as she sobbed, looking like they were attempting to cover as much exposed skin as physically possible. How Nadine could call herself an abomination when she looked like the picture perfect definition of beauty, Salvatore didn’t know, but what he did know was that women, at least the women he was used to, always enjoyed receiving pretty things with which they could cover and decorate themselves, like dresses and jewelry.

And luckily for Salvatore, he just so happens to know of a few places where he might be able to acquire both of those things.

With a quick peek from beneath the tarp before taking off, Salvatore quickly makes his way toward the exit gate, barely managing to close the gate behind him and pull his cloak over himself before sprinting, as much as his mangled body would allow anyways, down the snowy path that would lead him to the estates of the only two people Salvatore can think of to help him in this messy situation.

Hopefully Alcina and Donna won’t be terribly upset with him for stopping by unannounced.

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whatisonthemoon · 2 years

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Some questions and reflections on the missing pieces to leaving the Church as an ex-2nd generation

What is enough? Will there ever be enough? Will I ever not have this rage following me?

#second generation #ex-second generation #moonies #unification church #trauma #mental health #mental illness #depression #c-ptsd #cptsd #ptsd #cults #ffwpu #family federation for world peace and unification #abuse

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thermodynamiclawyer · 3 years

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yeah, this is gonna be a trainwreck. here’s @bandagegirl ‘s and my GHS headcanon masterpost. our goal was to have at least 3 per character, if not more. we kinda had to group the last few characters together in the end, though. it’ll be split up in categories between the characters in the Game, then Anime-Only, and then overall Worldbuilding at the end as for easier reading.

Game Characters

Gregory

the Lost World/Gregory House is Gregory’s own manifestation through loneliness and envy. (see Worldbuilding)

he’s WAY older than a grandfather of James. he’s more of a great-great-great-great grandfather, but it’s easier to just call him grandpa.

he’s been long dead in reality for years. always constantly dreaming and manifesting his Lost World and eventually never woke up.

there is almost 0 records of him from reality. because of this, there is no clear time period he originated in, unlike the guests.

he’s a collector. he loves historically significant antique items to put on a shelf and learn all about.

as taken from the manga, his favorite historical subject is War.

he suffered from frequent night terrors as a teenager, making it difficult to sleep before the manifestation of the Lost World.

while he usually tries to set up a weekly chore schedule for the residents in the hotel, he usually ends up doing everything himself (both because the guests throw in the towel very quickly and that Gregory wants to do everything right).

his magic abilities include teleportation and immortality, but he’s still very prone to injury.

Gregory Mama

she’s actually a manifestation within the Lost World that Gregory used to cope/punish himself with.

has the tendency to adopt new guests as family members only to eat them/their souls later. this also applies to Gregory attempting to manifest new family members in the past, to which he stopped after Gregory Mama has shown to steal their souls each time.

obviously, she’s not Gregory’s real mother, rather a personification of the abuse Gregory suffered in reality.

as young children usually don’t use their parents real name often, she doesn’t have a real name.

James

he’s a child who escaped reality after discovering a forgotten family member (Gregory) in very old family photos; having little to no relation to the rest of the family.

plus, hearing rumors of a hotel that only appeared during moonless nights only encourage him to take on a challenge.

since he’s related to Gregory (even if it’s very distant), his monster transformation was a lot faster, becoming a full rat in little under a month.

he LOVES horror movies, especially slasher films. he might be a little too influenced by them.

he owns a large range of weapons, from toy water guns to actual chainsaws. that doesn’t mean he’ll use them responsibly, though.

he’s a very smart kid, even to the point where he can be manipulative to both the kids and the adults. he’ll even convince other kids to take the blame for him whenever he starts problems.

his parents from reality miss him very much.

Catherine

in reality, Catherine was a German nurse in the 1940’s during WW2.

as a human, she was actually afraid of the sight of blood and would get lightheaded whenever she had to treat a soldier’s wounds. however, as a determined nurse, she tried her hardest to become tolerant of blood. tolerance became fondness and fondness became obsession to the point where she was hurting her patients just to see blood again.

she is attracted to both men and women, however she experiences internalized biphobia. due to this, she’s desperate to find true love with a man while specifically trying to avoid romantic relationships with women.

she knows how to take care of children.

she molts her skin during periods of time, you know, since she’s a lizard.

she didn’t gain magic powers along with her transformation, but instead gained physical strength.

Cactus Gunman and Cactus Girl

both originated in the Mexican revolution, especially around 1910.

Gunman had been shot in the chest a few times in his life and surprisingly survived each of them.

Gunman’s personality completely changed once he arrived in Gregory House with his sister, becoming a paranoid coward from the brave “hero” he made himself out to be.

they both grow seasonal flowers in the springtime. Gunman grows one large red flower on his head, which he hides with his hat in the spring time. he prefers to only show to his potential lover. Cactus Girl grows smaller white flowers in her hair.

Gunman is in dire need of glasses.

Gunman is quite fond of gardening, and loves to talk about flora. sometimes, Lost Doll will accompany him in the courtyard while he weeds.

they would die for each other, so don’t cross them.

Cactus Girl can shoot better than Gunman, but prefers her lasso and other melee weapons. she’s sworn off using guns after the revolution.

Cactus Girl has the ability to spawn in zones in smaller closed areas, such as turning her hotel room into Cactus Land; sort of like a pocket dimension. it’ll disappear as soon as she leaves the room.

sometimes, they both don’t need to eat due to the occasional Photosynthesis, and can go a long time without water.

Hell’s Chef

he worked as a highly regarded chef in Russia at a fancy restaurant, with mixed European family origins.

him and Mirror Man were coworkers of some sort.

he came from a long line of wrestlers, but broke family tradition to cook as a passion and career.

he died after the restaurant went up in flames.

his throat is still scratchy and rough from the incident, so he isn’t much of a talker. not to mention the language barrier and that he’s still attempting to learn the language everyone else speaks in Gregory House.

while the appearance of his meals look absolutely irredeemable, Chef’s cooking is actually very tasty; so much that you almost can’t taste the poison. he prefers making meals that are hearty and savory, rather than “looking good”.

he prefers to do all the food shopping and butchering. nobody knows the best ingredient selections like he does.

like Catherine, all of this “magic ability” went to his incredible strength.

most, if not all of his body is made out of wax, with vein like wick all throughout the body, giving him general bodily structure.

Neko Zombie

(see Worldbuilding)

Clock Master and My Son

My Son was a stillborn in reality; the death of him and his mother gave Clock Master an alcohol addiction and depression.

1960 is the year My Son and CM's wife died, making it when time stopped for CM. he’s sort of “stuck” in 1960 in a way, which is why the year is plastered on both of their foreheads.

My Son was technically "born" in Gregory House.

when Clock Master came to Gregory House, an infant My Son was already waiting in his room. Because the child died before getting a name, CM referred to him as My Son.

while CM's time abilities are getting worse with age, they never were great to begin with due to the Lost World's unusual flow of time.

My Son's time abilities on the other hand have the potential to be the most powerful ability out of everyone's when he gets older, being able to play multiple timelines at the same time and even rewriting reality. this is due to being born in the Lost World, so his ability has adapted to Gregory House’s “time” system.

Judgement Boy + Gold

instead of a singular character, Judgement Boys are classified as a “species” considering there are multiple of them, with more being produced in the Judgement Factory daily. there is not a singular JB.

the Judgement Factory in Gregory House is a sub-factory of a much bigger Core Factory, where it branches off into different zones and other manifestations. There are countless Judgement Factories in existence, all with numerous JBs being produced and trained.

Judgement Boy Gold is an individual one-of-a-kind model, however, there are more in the “Metal” series similar to him in different factories with a variety of training jobs.

JBs came into existence after a lawyer in the early 2000’s won a court case that suppressed the rights and safety of these assembly line workers in a Toy Factory, which caused hundreds of workers to be injured or even killed. realizing the consequences of his actions, he spiraled downwards into insanity and ended up in Gregory House, rarely leaving his hotel room and eventually manifesting the Factory.

most models or designs of a Judgement Boy are based off of toys; one of the very few things reflected from the lawyer’s fatal court case.

the standard JB’s appearance is a bastardized caricature of the original lawyer, only with added cages and robotic features. the lawyer began transforming into a red monster with sharp teeth and claws, but never saw the results as he disappeared into the Core Factory one day, never to be seen again.

see @ask-factory and the #extended factory tag for a more extensive story.

Mummy Family

Mummy Papa, Mummy Dog, and Mummy Mama originated somewhere in the 1980’s.

the reason they’re in Gregory House is an overlap of death and the fact that Mummy Papa was unintentionally poisoning the 3, leading to ending up in the hotel as a “punishment”.

they’re Bloodhounds.

Mummy Papa loves to collect weapons and owns a saber collection, especially older historically significant ones.

Mummy Dog enjoys morbid facts and likes to tell the other children about death.

Mummy Papa has Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy, which is triggered when the sword shifts in his head. because of this, he keeps himself and the rest of his family sicker with unclear motives, perhaps to have the ability brag about their ailments. (more details here)

Mummy Mama suffers from more immune-system based illnesses and anemia while the other two deal with physical and phantom pain, which they all pass off as colds.

the plant in Mummy Mama’s head is a parasite, and needs to be fed directly to continue living if Mummy Mama gets too weak. (the plant prefers blood)

TV-Fish

one of the few characters classified as a species.

TV Fish have a wide variety of fish or other sea creatures they can be. the TV Fish in Gregory House are much smaller.

some TV Fish don’t even have to be TVs. some can be other electronic appliances just as long as they’re combined with a fish skeleton.

they can be found across other Zones and places besides the Lost World, some with localized and native species differing from what we already seen.

TV Fish are an invasive species in the Lost World.

they’re attracted to people with better memory. a person more intact and in touch with their memories could attract an entire school of TV Fish!

Roulette Boy

practically a God, Roulette Boy has reality bending powers.

however, since he follows his own rules strictly, he sets limits on himself as to only use them for his games, and won’t apply them to himself since he’s the Game Master.

nobody knows what the “rules” he follow are, but he restrains himself on what he can do while hosting a game. though, once you’re in his game, it’s almost a free-for-all and he can change you to be whatever pawn he sees fit until the game is over.

while RB prefers traditional board games, nothing’s stopping him from hosting RPGs or other turn-based video games (as seen in Lost Qualia.) he also loves gacha games and gambling.

when not hosting a game, he likes to roleplay.

Angel/Devil Dog

she is not a guest in Gregory House, neither a manifestation of the Lost World. she is a messenger from an entire separate outside world/reality, and she’s always been Angel Dog.

her, Death, and Gregory have been around equally the longest.

her and Gregory have a long history of rivalry. she’s always meddling in the Lost World and trying to let souls out a backdoor. whether she’s doing it to free them, or just to piss off Gregory, depends on her mood.

Angel Dog has a solid grasp on reality, however, her reality is different from the guests. it’s why her and Neko Zombie get along.

she doesn’t have a split personality disorder, as she chooses to become Devil Dog whenever she feels like it. her decision making is very emotion-based.

she’s a Dachshund!

Devil Dog likes soccer, and Angel Dog likes american football.

Lost Doll

ever since coming to the Lost World, she has either stopped aging altogether or she ages very slowly, as most object-based guests do.

she’s a wooden marionette with the ability to change her size.

in reality, she belonged to a very poor family who could only afford a few outdated wooden toys, which is why Katie was so special to her.

she’s good friends with James, even if she’s usually the one falling victim to his pranks. sometimes, when Katie takes over, it can be the other way around.

she has poor volume control and tends to shout when she’s excited or provoked.

she’s the youngest guest.

Death

Death, like Gregory Mama, is a manifestation of a part of Gregory's life.

he was created from Gregory’s favorite comfort movie, The Seventh Seal.

Death used to work in Gregory House as a doorman, welcoming the guests and wishing them goodbye, but fleed when Gregory Mama appeared and got rid of all other "manifestations".

his goal is to free Gregory's soul and end the Lost World, which is only possible if Gregory is the only person left.

Anime Characters

Dr.Fritz

Dr.Fritz is also German like Catherine, but came a little later in time.

back in reality, his body slowly stop responding, so he illegally tried to build himself a new body. that new body wasn’t fully ready yet when he decided to transplant his own brain when he was wheelchair bound and starting to lose arm control, so it was a very long process.

because of his condition, doctors either didn’t treat him correctly or flat out ignored his problems, so he has a strong mistrust to other doctors, which is why he wanted to operate on himself. the other doctors said there was nothing they could do, but he had other plans in mind.

he was there for the Berlin wall falling, and still has a piece of it as a keepsake.

he falls apart easily and has to re-sew body parts or snap his neck back into place. Catherine helps put him back together (in return, Fritz helps her shed.)

Catherine calls him Fritzchen on occasion.

he documents the species of the patients he treats out of curiosity and hopes to help them better. his treatments may be considered “unethical” but he knows for certain that if it’s to cure or treat the patient, he’ll go great lengths to break any rule in the medical field.

Mono Eye Wizard + Frog Fortune Teller

both are canonically married to each other, i just wanted to make sure everyone knew :]

Mono Eye Wizard wears a helmet, and he’s also an amphibian with one eye underneath his robe.

both are very interested and knowledgeable in the Magical and Paranormal side of the Lost World.

both held onto their souls for longer than most people, but lost them in the end.

Wizard is normally very powerful, he just SUCKS at summonings. (plus, he’s a little bit of an idiot)

on the other hand, Frog Fortune Teller isn’t very powerful, but she is very smart (and stubborn). she’s almost always right, especially if it’s a bad thing she predicted.

Wizard, and other characters such as Musha Dokuro and Egypetit all worship the same Dark Lord.

the little horned skeletons in Wizard’s cult are also classified as a species. sometimes, he allows in other interested members.

Wizard is fluent in latin.

Second Guest

the Second Guest, as shown at the end of the season two, has the silhouette of a rat. that’s her actual form; a shadow.

her “job” is to eavesdrop on other guests to go and report to Gregory Mama.

she’s very fast, quiet, hard to catch, and a big snitch.

the others call her “Hello Sister” as a title, while Gregory Mama calls her “My Lovely Daughter.”

her cigarette embers still glow on the wall, which is one of the only signals she’s in the room, especially in a poorly lit one.

usually only Gregory, James, and Mama can “hear” what she’s saying.

Chef strongly dislikes her and Lost Doll avoids her like the plague.

Prompters

a pair of indistinguishable twins, escaping reality after being rejected of their dream to become famous theater actors. both young adults.

they work multiple part time jobs, including helping out in the Judgement Factory in the hotel and Kabuki's theater, along with Poor Conductor’s performances.

they share drinks at the bar. their favorite drink is a raspberry/strawberry milkshake with two cherries. don’t forget to give them two straws!

they’re both learning how to cook with Hell’s Chef. so far, they can dice onions very well. :]

Public Phone

he’s in the Lost World as a punishment for being a greedy thief in reality.

he can create fake alibis, passports, various cards in addition to faking voices.

he’s drinking pals with Clock Master.

he takes any currency, just nothing fake. only HE can be the swindle here.

he’s a perverted little bitch.

Various Species

Haniwa Salarymen are classified as species, created from overworked businessmen in reality. The occurrence of them are very common, and season 1 happens to focus on one of them.

Black Ducks are a species, specializing in working kiosks, amusement parks, and other booths. Speed Mouse is never seen without a team of Black Ducks. Street Vendors sometimes accompany them.

Musha Dokuro are an invasive species to the Lost World.

Trap Mice are a (rare) artificial species built in the Lost World.

Dead Bodies are also classified as a species. they are the result of Death freeing an individual’s soul, leaving a husk/empty body behind.

species like these show up in reality to those who are close to their visit in the Lost World, appearing in the background or the corner of their eye, replacing real people.

individuals in all of those species are not visible/noticable until you interact and get close with them. they’re like NPCs.

Others

Wooden Lizard was Captain Wood’s favorite keychain that came to life.

Fat Chicken is an omnivore. He can and will eat anything.

(see here for Pig Gentleman and Mirror Man.)

Mirror Man can summon his own pocket dimension.

Kinko and Inko know more than they lead on, and Kinko is definitely much more powerful, but he can’t be bothered to do anything about it. he’s lazy.

Inko smokes cigars, but hates cigarettes.

Earth Man (from Lost Qualia) is non-verbal. he’s also very eco friendly!

Hell’s Taxi is a manifestation of a false sense of hope to escape the Lost World. it can also manifest in Reality to pick up new guests.

Egypetit’s head is made up of Gold, a strong conductor of magic in the Lost World.

Poor Conductor was powerful enough to manifest his own room into the Lost World, rather than checking into the Hotel himself.

Unbaba is semi non-verbal and cannot remove his mask. he’s definitely powerful enough to make guests lose their souls.

Bonsai Kabuki needs to water his head frequently or else he’ll be drained of energy, and be unable to open his third eye.

The Rainbow Dragon fossils, which Bonehead is after, are cursed, and uses his wife’s voice to compel him into seeking after them to claim yet another victim.

Toilet Baby may not be as powerful, but he can still summon dangerous attacks related to pocket dimensions.

Sleepy Sheep is used as a vessel in his sleep for those who are powerful enough to enter dreams.

Worldbuilding

Gregory House was a real place back in Reality, and it originally belonged to Neko Zombie and his loving family.

However, years and years of built up envy and hatred from Gregory, a person who didn’t receive the same love and luxuries as Neko Zombie, manifested the Lost World as a way for him to cope with the things he didn’t have in Reality, bringing the house down with him.

The remains of the house in Reality is now a mere rumor in the town, but its influence spreads across many zones to this day.

Neko Zombie is the final remaining member of the original owners of the house.

Him and Gregory are LONG forgotten for generations in Reality.

Zones are a loose term in the Lost World, which could mean alternate realities, different dimensions, etc. The Lost World is a zone with its own manifestations.

Another Zone could have its own origins and realities. Reality is not a zone, if that makes sense.

A Zone itself can manifest as a single individual or object being the Core that keeps the zone existing. (See The Core Judgement Factory that branches off Sub-Factories into different Zones.)

The Lost World is a very large Zone that reaches and branches off into other Zones, pulling in individuals.

Because of Zonal shenanigans, time moves a lot differently in the Lost World.

awful hospital does a better job handling zones better than this, actually. we took a little bit of inspiration from it. see here and here for a better grasp on what i’m trying to say.

#ghs #gregory horror show #ghs headcanon #I CANT TAG ALL THE CHARACTERS ILL ACTUALLY RUN OUT OF SPACE #i didn’t include firebird bloody wheel or bell seal only cuz we didn’t have shit for them n they weren’t related to other characters #anyways holy SHIT please enjoy i’m gonna fuckin shower or some shit #oh yeah That Guy isn’t included either cuz he hardly exists

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that-wizard-oki · 3 years

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Hello! I've been aware of your blog for years, and made a Tumblr blog very recently. I want to say that your posts are extremely well thought out, and give the storyline of Wizard101 a lot of much needed depth. I think if Wiz had the gameplay and story structure of Pirate101, it would benefit highly especially for worlds like Azteca and Khrysalis. Currently I'm rewriting Wiz and your posts are a huge inspiration. Finally. what are your thoughts on Arc 3? Imo it had potential but failed.

Hey there! Thank you so much for all your kind words, I’m glad you enjoy my thoughts and theories about the game- and I’m flattered to hear they inspire you to create your own fan work :D

Personally, I wouldn’t say that Arc 3 failed in any sense. I think the idea of a children's/family game to tackle the theme of a broken family\divorce is pretty smart- it gives the opportunity to adults who play this game with their kids to find a way to perhaps talk about their own experience with the same themes in their real lives (if it applies to them). Likewise, i also like that the story focuses on that the CHILDREN are the one who have to clean up the PARENTS mess, more or less. Often times the children in families who have a parent/parents that are either split, should split, or are abusive to one another, are the ones who get caught in the cross fire- this is SO evident with Mellori and Bat in Empyrea.

Following that, I think it was also super clever to have Mellori (and the wizard) initially ALSO be fighting against Spider’s children. Another common occurrence in families that experience abuse between their parents/ect, is that one or both of the parents will try to divide their children onto sides- furthering the divide and conflict in the family itself. THIS was exactly what was happening in arc 3- we weren’t technically fighting Raven and Spider, but their children were fighting each other in their names.

One of the most beautiful things to come out of this game was the fact that Mellori and Bat WERE able to see through that, and instead focused on the real threat at hand- their parents. In fact, it is their COMBINED power that allows the wizard to defeat the result of Raven and Spider- the Aethyr Titan. This reflects so well into reality, where when the children of broken families try their damned to support one another, instead of letting their parents continue to control and divide them, it leads to the kids being able to break the domino effect that comes with that kind of family dynamic. They are able to become individuals- instead of being some mini version or “part” of their parents (which is also clever on KI’s part to make Mellori and Bat/Rat/Scorpion LITERAL extensions of Raven/Spider, which makes it seem like they are just kind of mindless bots doing whatever their entrusted parent tells them).

One part i particularly like as well is that towards the end of Empyrea, Mellori talk about how she’s going to go home to her mom- and it’s not Raven, it’s Baba Yaga. I absolutely love this idea that, yea, Mellori (and any kid for that matter) SHOULD be able to choose who their mom/dad/parent is if their birth parent(s) don't provide for you the way a parent should. I think that is a SUPER important lesson for Kids AND parents to hear. You choose your own family if that’s what it comes down to, and there is NO shame in that.

That being said, i do have my issues with some things too- this might seem small, but I never liked how when we’re in the Husk, and Raven and Spider are talking to one another about who’s “really” at fault, and eventually Raven goes “oh what have i done?” and Spider just goes “.... Yea were were BOTH really bad huh?” Like.... listen, sure, Raven probably shouldn’t have locked Cob away for eternity and stole his chaos heart in order to reform the spiral, BUT imma be real with y’all... Spider also did shit to aggravate Raven- specifically, he messed with her kids into a fucking war. I mean this half sarcastically, but tbh, if you mess with a mother’s kids... that's fucking on you man, you know the grave your digging for yourself on that one lmao.

But more seriously- i feel like they REALLY tried to make Raven out to be “worse” than Spider, and having Spider just beguile her with his words at the end in a way were she ended up being like “oh nooo IM the really bad one, oh no oh noo :((” JUST for him to be like “no its ok babe :) we’re BOTH equally as bad, stay here with me and we can be bad and alone together :)”

Actually now that i write that out, it is a little.. weird that Spider kinda got what he wanted- to be with Raven, when imo, they really should have STAYED split. I don’t come from a divorced family, but I’ve many friends who do, and I’ve gathered that more often than not... divorce can be a good thing, as it is likely to stop/lessen the conflict within families. I think that yea, they both did bad things to one another, and need to stay apart, not spend the rest of eternity together.

That’s probably my biggest qualm with the entirety of Arc 3, beyond the various obvious one, which is that Morganthe played like, absolutely no part in it lmao. I’ve talked endlessly about it, so i won’t repeat myself too much lol.

Just to briefly reiterate- i think that Morganthe, the one who re-discovered shadow magic, was groomed by the Shadow Magi, and very blatantly infused with something akin to the conversion tables we see in Khrysalis, I think she would have been an invaluable source of information and help for the Wizard. Not only does she probably know the most about Shadow Magic outside of Spider, but it’s insanely alluded to that she was under his control- perhaps even had contact or conversation with him somehow in her time as Shadow queen.

The biggest frustration of her lack of presence though, comes from the way Khrysalis built up this INSANELY interesting Foil between the Wizard and her. The way that they both weirdly fit the prophecy, the way their lead into The Hive was so eerily mirrored, the fact that we were both called the Children of Light and Shadow by Spider, and not to even mention how the shared feelings of loneliness and fear of failure as students of Ambrose... like I could go on about these two and how amazing it would have been for them both to work together in arc 3, but also help heal and grow as The Children of Light and Shadow... but that’s not what we got unfortunately.

Anywho, i don’t wanna ramble on about that too much because i touched on it in another ask post and you can look at that if ya want in my tag, but yea! Those are my general thoughts on Arc 3. Again, i love this arc, i think it truly has some of the most nuanced writing and characters thus far in the game.

Besides, i always think they could easily write in Morganthe’s return for a redemption with the wizard, especially now with the Wizard seemingly trying to fight their own shadows.

Hope that satisfied your question though, and good luck with your writings :D

#wizard101 #oki answers a thing #marvelousmagicalaura

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ecoamerica · 1 month

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scripttorture · 4 years

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Hello! I've browsed this blog a bit and came across the idea that torturers often develop mental illness because of their repeated exposure to the violence/trauma of seeing another person in pain, which I'd never considered before. A) Do you believe torturers can therefore be a type of victim as well, depending on the circumstances, and therefore deserving of compassion/therapy? B) Can you point me to more information about this/what kinds of mental illnesses develop in torturers? (1/2)

C) Do you think it's possible for a mass murderer/torturer character to have a realistic, satisfying redemption arc? Do you know any media that's pulled it off believably? Thank you so much for taking the time to read/answer this if you do! And for this excellent resource!

The most accessible sources that cover this are O’Mara’s Why Torture Doesn’t Work (good grounding, start with him), Rejali’s Torture and Democracy and the appendices to Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth where he describes treating two torturers.

The most current research is about 600 pages of print on demand untranslated French. If you’re fluent in French (I am not and lock down etc has got in the way of me getting this translated) Sironi Comment devient-on tortionnaire?

Broadly speaking the symptoms appear to be the same as those survivors and witnesses develop.

And I will go into this in more depth later but keep in mind there is not anywhere near enough research on torturers for us to be entirely sure about most of this. I’m working with the best information we have right now.

The other two questions are subjective and sort of complicated. By definition a lot of this is going to be my opinion because well that’s what you’re asking for.

I think we need to be really careful about describing torturers as ‘victims’.

Yes they’re put in this situation by social structures beyond their control. It is not their fault that they weren’t given training or support in their job. It’s also not their fault that we have this global message that violence is effective or that so many workplaces are unnecessarily pressured/stressful. Most of the time they are drawn in to abusing others because of the social groups and structures within the organisation they join.

Oversight (with a drive to eradicate torture), funding, training and clear consistent messages about the right way to handle difficult situations would probably prevent most cases of torture.

This does not change the fact that on an individual level each of them chose to hurt other people.

Some of them will have made that choice understanding there was a threat to their own safety if they did not. Some of them will have made that choice just because it was what everyone else was doing. Some of them genuinely believe what they did was the ‘right’ decision at the time.

They still made that choice. And given that we have records of people in similar positions refusing, even when it put them at risk of attack or death, I don’t have a lot of sympathy with the choice torturers made.

The fact I’m a pacifist factors into this. Consider my biases.

Torturers typically show a very low understanding of the impact their actions have had on other people.

They might regret their actions but this is typically framed in a very self-centred way. They usually don’t express more then cursory regard for the victims. They regret it because they’re suffering now, because they have nightmares, because they can’t keep a job. And oh it’s all so unfair.

I don’t know why this is the case. But it’s a feature Sironi described in interviews about her work. And I’ve seen it over and over again in interviews with torturers.

Yes torturers suffer. The symptoms they develop are terrible and have a lasting impact on their lives. They typically can’t hold down jobs and struggle to re-integrate into society in any meaningful fashion.

And yes I believe they should be treated. I believe that anyone with a disease or condition which requires treatment should have access to care and treatment. Whoever they are. Whatever they did.

I believe that as fellow human beings torturers are entitled to a degree of compassion. When I say that torture and mistreatment are wrong I mean it. My position doesn’t change just because the theoretical victim is a former torturer.

I do not think that treatment and compassion should be dependant on a person being suitably victimised. For me the only thing it depends on is their need and their humanity. In the literal physical sense of them being a human.

But we tend to think of ‘victim’ as a simple category that doesn’t overlap with mass murderers.

And I don’t believe the position of torturers is that simple.

Especially when so few of them are charged. Torture trials are rare. Convictions are rare. And sentences are short.

And their victims deserve justice too.

I feel conflicted about calling torturers ‘victims’ because of this complex reality. And because in fiction we have a tendency to focus on the torturers prioritising their voices over the survivors. I feel like presenting torturers as simple victims of society could risk adding to that.

For me the focus has always got to be the survivors.

And I think all of this feeds into how we handle redemption arcs.

I don’t think that writing redemption arcs for villains, even torturers or mass murderers is ‘wrong’. In fact I think that it can be a really good idea. Showing how toxic the environments these people are in is a good thing. Puncturing the way it’s romanticised is a good thing. And showing a way out of it, even if it’s imagined, is not a bad thing.

But if we’re going to do that in our stories then I think we need to think about what redemption means and in whose eyes the character is redeemed.

There’s also a small problem: we don’t really know what recovery for torturers looks like.

There isn’t enough research on them. Partly because of lack of interest but partly because the low conviction rates means sample sizes are small. We’re talking about a limited number of individuals who are jailed and we can’t really ‘prove’ that individuals who weren’t convicted were torturers. We don’t really know what the long term outcomes are, what treatments might be effective or- Much of anything.

Studies on torturers are typically based on very small numbers of individuals. (For a long time Fanon’s work was the only example of a mental health professional talking about torturers specifically. He saw two of them.) They are not statistically sound. And a lot of resources were simply journalists or mental health professionals compiling notes on the handful of individuals they talked to.

Everything I say about torturers is based on things like interviews, a handful of studies that have flaws and anecdotal evidence. Unfortunately as of right now it’s the best we’ve got.

Personally I don’t think there’s enough research on torture generally. Or enough attempts to collate relevant research from other fields. But that’s a rant for another day.

Let’s get back to that central question: what does redemption mean?

I think that it’s pretty easy to write a character changing for the better. You can build up the character’s level of insight into what they’re doing/did over the course of the story. You can show them choosing to stop. You can show them shifting to oppose their former allies.

But bundled up in the idea of a redemption arc is this: is it enough? And who is it enough for?

I don’t think survivors should be obliged to forgive former torturers. I also don’t think they’re likely to interact positively.

I’ve talked about this now and again when asked about the difference between legally defined torture and abuse. Because of the organised and widespread nature of legally defined torture there are usually communities of survivors. And communities that are collectively moving through a recovery process because even those people who weren’t directly attacked are likely to be witnesses, carers and relatives or friends of survivors.

These things echo down generations.

Cyprus gained independence from the British in 1960, my father is too young to have any real memory of the violence during the colonial period. But he referenced it in arguments with my English mother during my childhood. There are people throughout China today who won’t buy anything Japanese because of Japanese war crimes there during World War 2. There are people who won’t eat fish from the Black Sea, because the bodies of their ancestors were thrown into that sea during a genocide over a hundred years ago.

I know that as a both a Greek Cypriot and an English person there are people all over the world who will not want anything to do with me based on what my people have done to theirs. And the fact I wasn’t alive at the time does not really factor into it.

What I’m trying to illustrate here is that this is much bigger, broader and more complex then individual acts of forgiveness.

Survivors are a highly varied group of individuals. And each torturer can have thousands or tens of thousands of victims. Expecting each impacted individual, and any witnesses and all their family members and friends, to forgive these people is… let’s say ‘unlikely’.

So does redemption require forgiveness from the wounded party? Is there any possible action that can atone for the sheer scale of these atrocities?

If we play a simple number game causing this level of harm can be achieved in months or years, but saving the equivalent number of lives takes decades of skilled, dedicated work. If we look at concepts like wergild or jail as ‘paying your debt to society’ then how do we measure something like torture where the numbers are so big?

I haven’t seen a piece of fiction seriously tackle these questions. But then again I also haven’t actively looked for that fiction.

I feel like a lot of fictional redemption arcs judge a character to be sufficiently redeemed based on audience sympathy and the main cast forgiving the character. They don’t typically go on to broaden the scope of the narrative and question whether any one else impacted by the former villain’s actions also sees the character as redeemed.

One of my stories has a former torturer as a major character and I think they are a sympathetic character in many ways. I think that my readers would empathise with them through a lot of the story (which takes place decades after they stopped torturing).

They’re a mentor figure to some of the younger cast members. They’ve acted as a protector to them and taught the younger generation a lot about the minority culture they themselves are from. And they do genuinely care about these people that they helped to raise, consistently sacrificing to protect these ‘kids’. (The ‘kids’ are 30s-20s at the time of the story.)

But they’re also incredibly self centred. They don’t really interact with or have a lot of sympathy for the people they hurt. And while this particular family loves and forgives them society at large views them as a monster. Albeit one that is now leashed.

Is this a redemption story? Is this character redeemed? I genuinely don’t know. In fact that’s part of my interest in writing the story: trying to work out if there is a point, as this character grows, develops and helps others, when I believe they’ve done ‘enough’.

I think that redemption means different things for different people. A satisfying redemption story is different for different people. And if we can disagree so strongly about it with much simpler, smaller scale crimes then where does that leave us with torture?

There isn’t a simple answer or a one-size-fits-all writing solution. There can’t be.

My approach is to try and use the story to see if I can find an answer. Even if it’s only a limited one. For me the story itself is a forum for exploring human complexity and difficult ethical questions.

I don’t think we have a good solution for how to deal with these people in reality yet. But I do hold out hope that a good solution is possible. Fiction is an arena where we can safely explore possible solutions.

I guess in the end I’m not sure if there’s any story or arc that will work for everyone. I don’t think there are any hard rules for writing anything and I don’t think there’s ever a way to please everyone.

Redemption and forgiveness are complicated topics. I think we do a much better job when we engage with that complexity then when we assume a character just has to do a, b and c in order to achieve it.

When you consider someone to be truly redeemed is an ethical question that I can’t answer for you. I don’t think I should. The chances are you’ll know when you think your character has done enough.

Just be open to the fact that it won’t be enough for everyone. Consider reflecting that with the characters, because that can make for truly powerful moments.

In Midnight’s Children Shiva never forgives Saleem, even though Saleem isn’t responsible for Shiva ‘losing’ his life and family because they were both infants at the time. And damn there are a lot of flaws in the movie adaptation but that scene between them in the jail, when Saleem throws that in Shiva’s face hits hard. It shows us so much about both characters.

And I think that’s a better way to approach it then trying to figure out if a character is redeemed yet: figuring out how they’ve progressed, how others respond to that progression and why.

I hope that helps :)

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soulvomit · 4 years

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For a lot of middle class reared people, ageing is an “out of sight, out of mind” problem that they put off thinking about for as long as possible; they don’t really have to deal with their parents’ ageing in ways that people from relatively poorer families have to. This is one of those “material realities faced by most of us” issues that constitutes one of my biggest disconnects with so many white middle class leftists. Most middle class, urban white Americans have been raised to think that their parents’ ageing is something they’ll just get to wash their hands of. They think dealing with it is an OPTION and something that’s the earned reward of their parents having loved them enough, and that nobody will frown on them, and or the consequences of that disapproval will be minimal. (And this may change because of social media and cancel culture, but the world most of us grew up in is still one where middle class-reared white urban people don’t think they have to think about these things.) Gen X middle class urban Americans “went to visit Grandma.” Grandma did not live with us. And when Grandma finally died, she did it in a care facility or hospital, distanced from us. And lots of Silent Generation middle class and even working class people had pensions. So lots of people imagine that our parents’ ageing is something we can just put off thinking about, because our own parents possibly didn’t even have to think about it. There is a broad feeling that “I don’t owe my parents anything.” This isn’t even from people who actually hate their parents. It’s a relatively normified WASP, middle class sentiment. But what’s actually happening *on the ground* is that in my own age group - Gen X - quietly, one by one, elderly parents are moving back home, and in with their middle aged offspring. Quietly, one by one, Gen X people have had to even move in with their parents to do direct care. The number of working Gen X people I know who live under the same roof with an elderly parent, is incredible. The support structures that would enable any other kind of option, have completely fallen away for a lot of us... and what younger people say? “I don’t owe my parents anything?” Yeah, the thing is, lots of us said that, once. The reality is that even if you don’t technically owe your parents anything, unless you actually hate them, you’ll probably take them in, too. Or go to live with them. (Which is a common situation. We need to talk about how McMansions are actually becoming multigenerational compounds.)

And it’s not necessarily about providing direct care given how many of the seniors in question are comparatively able-bodied. Sometimes it’s about household economy. Often times a family member with their social security check, becomes preferable to a roommate or boarder: “the devil you know.” Sometimes, too, the spry ageing parent is who we turn to for child care. For the past 25 or more years, the shape of the white middle class family has been changing to match the household shape of practically every other group of people. Eventually, multigenerationalism could be a broad norm. And because of the taboo against talking about actual material realities that seems to exist among so many white middle class people? Feh. Nobody will talk about it. Then there’s the thing with our parents that we may have if the family is of a marginalized group. In my own family, my “owing something to my mother” is... well.. I get something out of this relationship, too? She is my only living connection to Jewish culture, where I live. It means that I put up with a lot of things in our relationship that other people feel like they don’t have to put up with. And I have an actual cultural obligation to carry on the work my dad is doing for his tribe. Would I just let my parents fend for themselves? No. I can’t even imagine doing such a thing. I could imagine it at 20, because the idea of my parents eventually being seniors *wasn’t real to me yet.* I didn’t know that I would have to eventually go to my mom’s doctors’ appointments with her because doctors had stopped taking her complaints seriously. And this is leaving aside the family obligations we inherit when we get married/have a partner. Sometimes we do things because SOMEBODY HAS TO DO THEM, and YOU ARE THE ONLY PERSON WHO CAN DO THEM. And if your parents were abusive or neglectful, you end up having to weigh whether it was bad enough to warrant leaving them to twist in the wind, and possibly die. My mother was not always a good mother, but I still love her. She would have had to have been a lot worse for me to not look after her. And seriously, society exists outside of ourselves and our feelings. If we are prosocial people, and our parents didn’t actually abuse us, then we WILL do those things because otherwise we’d broadly be known as assholes, and we don’t want to be seen that way. I wonder how much it’s an urban individualism thing, because... if you’re in a small town or you’re in a tight knit cultural community (with no support from the outside) then do you really want to be known as the Village Asshole? (I’m not guilt tripping you! I’m saying that you WILL make these decisions. Eventually. You are just not there yet.) We really underestimate how much social pressure eventually will catch up with us. Like, if I became the Village Asshole, I’d not only be leaving my mom to twist in the wind, but everyone at Chabad would know I was the Village Asshole and I’d lose the meager thread of support as a Jew that I have in this community.

This is a thing where I feel like it’s easier for *actually* antisocial, uncaring people to socially climb, because less structural access equals more obligations that get shouldered, and (especially if you’re a woman) your parents’ and family members’ lack of social safety net, eventually catches up with you. I feel like people who have a lot more access and options, whose families have always had a lot more access and options, tend to imagine that those options will always exist for them. People also tend to think they’ll always have the perks and bennies they have now, unless they’ve already experienced losing those perks and bennies, or there have been a *lot* of examples in their lived reality of people *not* having those perks and bennies. The people who won’t consider ageing in their own ideology, likely don’t know anyone in their neighborhood who has grandparents under the same roof, or takes on those kind of family obligations. If you’re a white urban person then chances are, you might have even been raised around people who *did* have multigenerational family obligations or households, but if they weren’t white, chances are... you didn’t notice, you wrote it off as “that’s their culture,” and didn’t consider *why* multigenerationalism was the most economically sustainable family shape. Most of my generation didn’t imagine we’d have to eventually make up for the social safety net that has fallen out from underneath our parents. It’ll happen to Zoomers, too.

And a big reason I feel like progressive social causes *are* a big emergency, is because of the cultural crisis we will have when multigenerationalism becomes a standard American norm, across the board, most people raising families will be doing it in multigenerational families. I don’t think multigenerationalism is *bad* inherently... but I’m worried that it could end up with a lot of personal liberties and civil rights getting walked back. We need to fix this problem NOW and we need to fix our family relationships NOW because otherwise, the norming of multigenerational households, could actually have a negative effect upon gains for women and, in general, LGBTQ people. Imagine NEVER being able to get away from your abusive, homophobic/transphobic parents. Imagine that the image of Woman As Caregiver is an even *more* broadly entrenched social institution, especially as jobs become more scarce.

We need to fix these problems NOW, and we can’t unless we actually FACE them.

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 3 years

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Religious Trauma Syndrome: How Some Organized Religion Leads to Mental Health Problems

By Valerie Tarico

Marlene Winell interviewed March 25, 2013

At age sixteen I began what would be a four year struggle with bulimia. When the symptoms started, I turned in desperation to adults who knew more than I did about how to stop shameful behavior—my Bible study leader and a visiting youth minister. “If you ask anything in faith, believing,” they said. “It will be done.” I knew they were quoting [3] the Word of God. We prayed together, and I went home confident that God had heard my prayers. But my horrible compulsions didn’t go away. By the fall of my sophomore year in college, I was desperate and depressed enough that I made a suicide attempt. The problem wasn’t just the bulimia. I was convinced by then that I was a complete spiritual failure. My college counseling department had offered to get me real help (which they later did). But to my mind, at that point, such help couldn’t fix the core problem: I was a failure in the eyes of God. It would be years before I understood that my inability to heal bulimia through the mechanisms offered by biblical Christianity was not a function of my own spiritual deficiency but deficiencies in Evangelical religion itself.

Dr. Marlene Winell is a human development consultant in the San Francisco Area. She is also the daughter of Pentecostal missionaries. This combination has given her work an unusual focus. For the past twenty years she has counseled men and women in recovery from various forms of fundamentalist religion including the Assemblies of God denomination in which she was raised. Winell is the author of Leaving the Fold – A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving their Religion [4], written during her years of private practice in psychology. Over the years, Winell has provided assistance to clients whose religious experiences were even more damaging than mine. Some of them are people whose psychological symptoms weren’t just exacerbated by their religion, but actually caused by it.

Two years ago, Winell made waves by formally labeling what she calls “Religious Trauma Syndrome” (RTS) and beginning to write and speak on the subject for professional audiences. When the British Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Psychologists published a series of articles on the topic, members of a Christian counseling association protested what they called excessive attention to a “relatively niche topic.” One commenter said, “A religion, faith or book cannot be abuse but the people interpreting can make anything abusive.”

Is toxic religion simply misinterpretation? What is religious trauma? Why does Winell believe religious trauma merits its own diagnostic label?

Let’s start this interview with the basics. What exactly is religious trauma syndrome?

Winell: Religious trauma syndrome (RTS) is a set of symptoms and characteristics that tend to go together and which are related to harmful experiences with religion. They are the result of two things: immersion in a controlling religion and the secondary impact of leaving a religious group. The RTS label provides a name and description that affected people often recognize immediately. Many other people are surprised by the idea of RTS, because in our culture it is generally assumed that religion is benign or good for you. Just like telling kids about Santa Claus and letting them work out their beliefs later, people see no harm in teaching religion to children.

But in reality, religious teachings and practices sometimes cause serious mental health damage. The public is somewhat familiar with sexual and physical abuse in a religious context. As Journalist Janet Heimlich has documented in, Breaking Their Will, Bible-based religious groups that emphasize patriarchal authority in family structure and use harsh parenting methods can be destructive.

But the problem isn’t just physical and sexual abuse. Emotional and mental treatment in authoritarian religious groups also can be damaging because of 1) toxic teachings like eternal damnation or original sin 2) religious practices or mindset, such as punishment, black and white thinking, or sexual guilt, and 3) neglect that prevents a person from having the information or opportunities to develop normally.

Can you give me an example of RTS from your consulting practice?

Winell: I can give you many. One of the symptom clusters is around fear and anxiety. People indoctrinated into fundamentalist Christianity as small children sometimes have memories of being terrified by images of hell and apocalypse before their brains could begin to make sense of such ideas. Some survivors, who I prefer to call “reclaimers,” [8] have flashbacks, panic attacks, or nightmares in adulthood even when they intellectually no longer believe the theology. One client of mine, who during the day functioned well as a professional, struggled with intense fear many nights. She said,

“I was afraid I was going to hell. I was afraid I was doing something really wrong. I was completely out of control. I sometimes would wake up in the night and start screaming, thrashing my arms, trying to rid myself of what I was feeling. I’d walk around the house trying to think and calm myself down, in the middle of the night, trying to do some self-talk, but I felt like it was just something that – the fear and anxiety was taking over my life.” Or consider this comment, which refers to a film [9] used by evangelicals to warn about the horrors of the “end times” for nonbelievers.

“I was taken to see the film “A Thief In The Night”. WOW. I am in shock to learn that many other people suffered the same traumas I lived with because of this film. A few days or weeks after the film viewing, I came into the house and mom wasn’t there. I stood there screaming in terror. When I stopped screaming, I began making my plan: Who my Christian neighbors were, who’s house to break into to get money and food. I was 12 years old and was preparing for Armageddon alone.”

In addition to anxiety, RTS can include depression, cognitive difficulties, and problems with social functioning. In fundamentalist Christianity, the individual is considered depraved and in need of salvation. A core message is “You are bad and wrong and deserve to die.” (The wages of sin is death [10].) This gets taught to millions of children through organizations like Child Evangelism Fellowship [11] and there is a group organized [12] to oppose their incursion into public schools. I’ve had clients who remember being distraught when given a vivid bloody image of Jesus paying the ultimate price for their sins. Decades later they sit telling me that they can’t manage to find any self-worth.

“After twenty-seven years of trying to live a perfect life, I failed. . . I was ashamed of myself all day long. My mind battling with itself with no relief. . . I always believed everything that I was taught but I thought that I was not approved by God. I thought that basically I, too, would die at Armageddon.

“I’ve spent literally years injuring myself, cutting and burning my arms, taking overdoses and starving myself, to punish myself so that God doesn’t have to punish me. It’s taken me years to feel deserving of anything good.”

Born-again Christianity and devout Catholicism [13] tell people they are weak and dependent, calling on phrases like “lean not unto your own understanding [14]” or “trust and obey [11].” People who internalize these messages can suffer from learned helplessness. I’ll give you an example from a client who had little decision-making ability after living his entire life devoted to following the “will of God.” The words here don’t convey the depth of his despair.

“I have an awful time making decisions in general. Like I can’t, you know, wake up in the morning, “What am I going to do today?” Like I don’t even know where to start. You know all the things I thought I might be doing are gone and I’m not sure I should even try to have a career; essentially I babysit my four-year-old all day.”

Authoritarian religious groups are subcultures where conformity is required in order to belong. Thus if you dare to leave the religion, you risk losing your entire support system as well.

“I lost all my friends. I lost my close ties to family. Now I’m losing my country. I’ve lost so much because of this malignant religion and I am angry and sad to my very core. . . I have tried hard to make new friends, but I have failed miserably. . . I am very lonely.”

Leaving a religion, after total immersion, can cause a complete upheaval of a person’s construction of reality, including the self, other people, life, and the future. People unfamiliar with this situation, including therapists, have trouble appreciating the sheer terror it can create.

“My form of religion was very strongly entrenched and anchored deeply in my heart. It is hard to describe how fully my religion informed, infused, and influenced my entire worldview. My first steps out of fundamentalism were profoundly frightening and I had frequent thoughts of suicide. Now I’m way past that but I still haven’t quite found “my place in the universe.”

Even for a person who was not so entrenched, leaving one’s religion can be a stressful and significant transition.

Many people seem to walk away from their religion easily, without really looking back. What is different about the clientele you work with?

Winell: Religious groups that are highly controlling, teach fear about the world, and keep members sheltered and ill-equipped to function in society are harder to leave easily. The difficulty seems to be greater if the person was born and raised in the religion rather than joining as an adult convert. This is because they have no frame of reference – no other “self” or way of “being in the world.” A common personality type is a person who is deeply emotional and thoughtful and who tends to throw themselves wholeheartedly into their endeavors. “True believers” who then lose their faith feel more anger and depression and grief than those who simply went to church on Sunday.

Aren’t these just people who would be depressed, anxious, or obsessive anyways?

Winell: Not at all. If my observation is correct, these are people who are intense and involved and caring. They hang on to the religion longer than those who simply “walk away” because they try to make it work even when they have doubts. Sometimes this is out of fear, but often it is out of devotion. These are people for whom ethics, integrity and compassion matter a great deal. I find that when they get better and rebuild their lives, they are wonderfully creative and energetic about new things.

In your mind, how is RTS different from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Winell: RTS is a specific set of symptoms and characteristics that are connected with harmful religious experience, not just any trauma. This is crucial to understanding the condition and any kind of self-help or treatment. (More details about this can be found on my Journey Free [15] website and discussed in my talk [16] at the Texas Freethought Convention.)

Another difference is the social context, which is extremely different from other traumas or forms of abuse. When someone is recovering from domestic abuse, for example, other people understand and support the need to leave and recover. They don’t question it as a matter of interpretation, and they don’t send the person back for more. But this is exactly what happens to many former believers who seek counseling. If a provider doesn’t understand the source of the symptoms, he or she may send a client for pastoral counseling, or to AA, or even to another church. One reclaimer expressed her frustration this way:

“Include physically-abusive parents who quote “Spare the rod and spoil the child” as literally as you can imagine and you have one fucked-up soul: an unloved, rejected, traumatized toddler in the body of an adult. I’m simply a broken spirit in an empty shell. But wait...That’s not enough!? There’s also the expectation by everyone in society that we victims should celebrate this with our perpetrators every Christmas and Easter!!”

Just like disorders such as autism or bulimia, giving RTS a real name has important advantages. People who are suffering find that having a label for their experience helps them feel less alone and guilty. Some have written to me to express their relief:

“There’s actually a name for it! I was brainwashed from birth and wasted 25 years of my life serving Him! I’ve since been out of my religion for several years now, but I cannot shake the haunting fear of hell and feel absolutely doomed. I’m now socially inept, unemployable, and the only way I can have sex is to pay for it.”

Labeling RTS encourages professionals to study it more carefully, develop treatments, and offer training. Hopefully, we can even work on prevention.

What do you see as the difference between religion that causes trauma and religion that doesn’t?

Winell: Religion causes trauma when it is highly controlling and prevents people from thinking for themselves and trusting their own feelings. Groups that demand obedience and conformity produce fear, not love and growth. With constant judgment of self and others, people become alienated from themselves, each other, and the world. Religion in its worst forms causes separation.

Conversely, groups that connect people and promote self-knowledge and personal growth can be said to be healthy. The book, Healthy Religion [17], describes these traits. Such groups put high value on respecting differences, and members feel empowered as individuals. They provide social support, a place for events and rites of passage, exchange of ideas, inspiration, opportunities for service, and connection to social causes. They encourage spiritual practices that promote health like meditation or principles for living like the golden rule. More and more, non-theists are asking [18] how they can create similar spiritual communities without the supernaturalism. An atheist congregation [19] in London launched this year and has received over 200 inquiries from people wanting to replicate their model.

Some people say that terms like “recovery from religion” and “religious trauma syndrome” are just atheist attempts to pathologize religious belief.

Winell: Mental health professionals have enough to do without going out looking for new pathology. I never set out looking for a “niche topic,” and certainly not religious trauma syndrome. I originally wrote a paper for a conference of the American Psychological Association and thought that would be the end of it. Since then, I have tried to move on to other things several times, but this work has simply grown.

In my opinion, we are simply, as a culture, becoming aware of religious trauma. More and more people are leaving religion, as seen by polls [20] showing that the “religiously unaffiliated” have increased in the last five years from just over 15% to just under 20% of all U.S. adults. It’s no wonder the internet is exploding with websites for former believers from all religions, providing forums [21] for people to support each other. The huge population of people “leaving the fold” includes a subset at risk for RTS, and more people are talking about it and seeking help. For example, there are thousands of former Mormons [22], and I was asked to speak about RTS at an Exmormon Foundation conference. I facilitate an international support group online called Release and Reclaim [23] which has monthly conference calls. An organization called Recovery from Religion, [24] helps people start self-help meet-up groups

Saying that someone is trying to pathologize authoritarian religion is like saying someone pathologized eating disorders by naming them. Before that, they were healthy? No, before that we weren’t noticing. People were suffering, thought they were alone, and blamed themselves. Professionals had no awareness or training. This is the situation of RTS today. Authoritarian religion is already pathological, and leaving a high-control group can be traumatic. People are already suffering. They need to be recognized and helped. _______________________________

Statistics update:

Numbers of American ‘nones’ continues to rise

October 18, 2019

By David Crary – Associated Press

The portion of Americans with no religious affiliation is rising significantly, in tandem with a sharp drop in the percentage that identifies as Christians, according to new data from the Pew Research Center. …

Pew says all categories of the religiously unaffiliated population – often referred to as the “nones” grew in magnitude. Self-described atheists now account for 4% of U.S. adults, up from 2% in 2009; agnostics account for 5%, up from 3% a decade ago; and 17% of Americans now describe their religion as “nothing in particular,” up from 12% in 2009.

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2019/1018/Numbers-of-American-nones-continues-to-rise

_______________________________

Marlene Winell interviewed by Valerie Tarico on recovering from religious trauma Uploaded on January 31, 2011

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIfABmbqSMA

24:12

On Moral Politics, a TV program with host Dr. Valerie Tarico, Marlene Winell describes the trauma that can result from harmful experiences with religious indoctrination. Dr. Winell explains that mental health issues are widespread and need to be understood just as we understand PTSD. There are steps to recovery, treatment modalities, and resources available as well. She now refers to this as RTS or Religious Trauma Syndrome. _______________________________

Links:   [3] https://www.biblestudyonjesuschrist.com/pog/ask1.htm  [4] https://marlenewinell.net/leaving-fold-former  [8] https://journeyfree.org/article/reclaimers/  [9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Thief_in_the_Night_%28film%29  [10] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+6%3A23&version=KJV  [11] https://valerietarico.com/2011/02/04/our-public-schools-their-mission-field/  [12] http://www.intrinsicdignity.com/  [13] https://www.maryjohnson.co/an-unquenchable-thirst/  [14] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+3%3A5-6&version=KJV [15] https://journeyfree.org/category/uncategorized/ [16] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qrE4pMBlis  [17] https://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Religion-Psychological-Guide-Mature/dp/1425924166 [18] https://www.humanistchaplaincy.org/ [19] https://www.christianpost.com/news/london-atheist-church-model-looking-to-expand-worldwide-91516 [20] https://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/  [21] https://new.exchristian.net/  [22] https://www.exmormon.org/  [23] https://journeyfree.org/group-forum/ [24] https://www.recoveringfromreligion.org/

_____________________________________

Get God’s Self-Appointed Messengers Out of Your Head

Valerie Tarico Which buzz phrases from your past are stuck in your brain? “God’s messengers” were all real complicated people with biases, blind spots, favorite foods and morning breath. They were not gods and they are not you. So how can you get them out of your head or at least reduce them to muffled background noise?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElfyYA420F0

#religious trauma syndrome #Marlene Winell #Valerie Tarico

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ingek73 · 3 years

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Meghan and Harry experienced discriminatory gaslighting. Here's how you can tell.

The palace has said that their experiences could be characterized differently — but is now talking about hiring a diversity czar.

March 28, 2021, 7:02 PM CEST

By Christy Pichichero, author and professor of history, George Mason University

In the wake of Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and Prince Harry’s “bombshell” Oprah Winfrey interview earlier this month, there were reports last week that Buckingham Palace is conducting a much-needed diversity review and is even considering hiring a “diversity czar,” a diversity consultant or a chief diversity officer for the palace.

As a historian of race and a diversity professional, I am glad to see that the royal family is finally taking the allegations by Meghan and Harry of racism and exclusionary treatment seriously. But it does come after the palace's initial brief and tepid response March 9 that said, “While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously,” and Prince William's March 11 declaration that the royals are “very much not a racist family.” (Given the diverse British citizenry and the global scope of the Commonwealth, one would hope not.)

At first glance, the palace's statement may have seemed innocent enough; noting the obvious reality that people recall events differently is hardly shocking. Yet in the context of Meghan and Harry's allegations of race-based exclusion, negligence and mistreatment, this statement has two rather devastating implications.

First, positing that “recollections may vary” calls into question the veracity — and thus legitimacy — of the experiences Harry and Meghan conveyed. It leaves open and even invites the questions of whether Harry and Meghan were exaggerating in their claims, what their real motivations were and even whether they are trying to take down the institution. Ultimately, by suggesting that others remembered the events they recounted differently, it had the effect of undermining their public legitimacy.

It is easy to write off an accusation of discrimination by saying the victim misunderstood a decision, misjudged a gesture or misinterpreted someone’s words.

But more perniciously, that sort of statement also calls into question Meghan's and Harry's own memories and even their capacities to perceive. It invites, if not demands, that they, too, wonder if they misunderstood the comment about the skin tone of their son, remembered things wrong or exaggerated the sense of race-based exclusion, negligence and mistreatment in their own minds. Challenging the truth of their recollections could have the effect of undermining their self-confidence and self-regard.

Consolidating one’s power by causing individuals to question their own judgments, perceptions of reality and memories has a name: gaslighting. It is a form of psychological manipulation by which abusers build their authority — and ability to continue abusing — by breaking down their victim's or victims' sense of self and their confidence in their grip on reality.

Gaslighting not only leads to cognitive dissonance, low self-esteem and disempowerment on the part of the victim, but it can foster further dependence on the abuser as the only valid and veritable source of judgment, truth and memory — and it can even crush a person’s will to live.

Gaslighting and discrimination often go hand in hand, which is why we need a new term to refer to this particularly dangerous coupling: discriminatory gaslighting.

The palace statement displays discriminatory gaslighting, which is an abusive way to treat “much loved family members.”

Discriminatory gaslighting happens when dominant social groups or individuals exclude or discriminate against minoritized groups and people and then deny their discriminatory behavior by calling into question the legitimacy of the victims’ perceptions or allegations. It is, in our society, tragically easy to write off an accusation of exclusion or discrimination by saying the victim misunderstood a decision, misjudged a gesture or behavior or misinterpreted someone’s words ("recollections may vary").

Discriminatory gaslighting, then, is a powerful and timeless tool of oppression.

While I have no objective knowledge of what occurred in the incidents that Harry and Meghan described, it is clear that the palace statement displays discriminatory gaslighting, which is an abusive way to treat “much loved family members.”

It is bewildering that the royal family did not utilize the opportunity of their response to Meghan and Harry to model a better way to respond to claims of exclusion, discrimination and neglect.

The process of cultural change is tricky, in large part because racism and other forms of bigotry most often work unconsciously.

They could have said: "The whole family is deeply saddened and concerned as we comprehend the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan."

They could have added, "We regret the ways that we may have failed to care for them or create an inclusive environment."

They could have stated, "We stand firmly against all forms of racism and discrimination."

And they could have promised, "As such, we will launch an investigation into the incidents described in the interview and into the functioning of the institution with the goal of upholding policies and cultures of inclusion."

So why didn’t they? Especially given that, but a few weeks later, they seem to have taken the last step anyway?

Hiring an expert in diversity and inclusion and revising policies is a critical step toward structural change, of course, but procedural changes from the top down are not enough. Cultural change is also necessary — and that will take a deep commitment to reckoning with the past, as well as cultivating new ways of thinking and behaving for all members of the royal household.

The process of cultural change is tricky, in large part because racism and other forms of bigotry most often work unconsciously. Every human — including royals — has implicit biases that inform their perceptions and decision-making about people, places, events and things. These biases are a part of cognitive functioning and are shaped by the prejudices of the world around us. It is only through continual training and intentional action that one can combat these tendencies and heal from evolving in a world of intersectional prejudice.

I hope the royal family will take it upon themselves to begin thinking about these larger concerns in good faith and face their answers. I also hope they will continue to investigate the allegations and commit to hiring a diversity professional to help them institute inclusive policies, practices and culture.

In this time of reckoning, when British citizens of all backgrounds are tearing down relics of the nation’s colonizing and slaving past, it is high time that the British monarchy owned up to its failures and led the way in the work of anti-racism and anti-discrimination. History — not to mention the new generation of the royal family — is watching.

#meghan markle #prince harry #royals #brf #christy pichichero #british royal family #duchess of sussex #duke of sussex #british monarchy #oprah winfrey #nbc news #gaslighting #racism

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