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pjo-hoo-toa-freakazoid · 24 days

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A lil rant about my experience with this god forsaken fandom

I made this blog around 2020 when I was 13 years old. This was my first shot at a dedicated fandom blog and I was pretty excited for it, to make friends, draw fanart, post fun stuff and what not.

All fun right? Right, so tell me why was it that literal 20 years olds felt the need to harass me, a then 13 year old girl with a relatively small blog, for the dumbest reasons possible?

What did I do that subjected me to 2 and a half years worth constant daily threats and harassment? Hmm???

You wanna know my crime? Apparently I showed interest in an antagonist character, which is so awful that grown adults felt the need to bully me. And following those adults came young impressionable people my age, that joined the bandwagon of hate against me.

As if other fandoms don’t have people literally dedicating themselves to a villain, no one bats an eye to that. Why did this fandom have such an issue? I also apparently dared to criticise the main character for a few of his flaws. Such a horrible thing to do right? I need to be burnt at the stake for it right?

I didn’t follow the “fixed” standards of the fandom so I was to be sent de*th/r*pe threats daily?? For not following the “rules” I was to be ostracised?

No please someone explain…I’m but a dumb bitch, I don’t understand what I did so terribly wrong to deserve this? Did I start a war? Did I rip open someone’s plush? Did I bully someone for not having the same ideology as me?

No it was but the fandom itself that for some reason found it so fun to bully a 13 year old, send her de*th and r*pe threats all because of not being of pjo fandom standards…let’s go and bombard her with hate!!

Do you realise how fucking stupid…this all sounds? Do you realise how low this is? Was bullying a child so fun? So trendy at the time?

Then came the victim blaming- I laugh everytime I remember people saying I must have done something really bad to get such harassment, that it’s all for attention. What kid wants to get hate everyday of their life for 2 whole fucking years? Tell me?

You know wanna know what I did wrong? Fight back, call the hate anons out for their bigotry. I was vocal about it, that’s what I did wrong right? Stand my ground? People said to ignore it and I did. But I still got bullied daily even if I didn’t respond. What was all this for?

I can imagine people asking why I didn’t simply leave the fandom? Why the fuck should I? I enjoy the stories, I enjoy the characters, they were my escape from real life struggles. It was the bullying I didn’t enjoy. Everyday I’d log on to enjoy posts and a few minutes later when the bigots found out I was active I was sent an anonymous threat.

Many of my oldest friends had to reduce the amount they interacted with me in fear of receiving harassment themselves. The extent of this is bigotry is beyond my understanding.

I did not deserve this much suffering AND ALL FOR WHAT? A STUPID LITTLE REASON THAT HAS BARELY ANY WEIGHT TO IT. Do people even realise the extent of what happened is beyond me. And Idc if I sound selfish, I want a fucking apology from all those bigots. I want compensation for the 2 and a half years of abuse I endured alone. I just want this bigotry to end, which surprise surprise! Still continues to happen.

Why do I bring this up now that it’s all over you ask? I’ve actually brought it up once before, but it was swept under the rug, (My deepest appreciation to the very few people who supported me when I first talked about it) I’m just finally being more vocal, because this has stuck with me. For all those 4 years this has stuck with me. It doesn’t mean if it’s over for now that all the trauma doesn’t linger. It still affects me to this day.

In fact I’m still being stalked by one of the people who sent me hate anons. One of the hate anons was revealed to be one of my bestest friends, they had admitted this to me and had the nerve to beg me to still remain friends. They were also the person who groomed me. They have left the fandom scene and I’ve rid of them from my life but they still continue to stalk me.

What do I get from ranting about all this? A bit of solace, a bit of weight off my shoulders. But nearly not enough for me to actually fucking heal. I also want people to realise how bigoted some are and how horrible the mentality of “fixed fandom standards/ideologies” is and that we as a fandom need to fucking change. Heck I know this issues in every fandom. But can we at least start with ours for a change for once?

Along side all of this there’s also a lot of racism and trans/homophobia that still actively prevails. Just look at what Leah went through when her casting was announced. Did she deserve all of that?? “Not my annabeth” do you realise how horrible that is to say to a CHILD? She is Annabeth whether you like it or not. And you are very welcome to leave if you wish to stick to your stupid racist nonsense.

I bet there are many others who have probably suffered the same may it not be for the same reasons, but everyone of them deserve their apologies and compensation as well.

Idc if I’ll get hate for this. I said what I said. I’m just so done.

#trigger warning #tw hate #I was also informed I was being mocked in group chats and there were sick rumours about me.#i won’t give a fuck if I get harassed again cux this literally shows how low this fandom will get #there’s so many layers to this I haven’t even gone into detail on #but I just want atleast this off of my chest. I was shaking and short of breath as I wrote this #I wish to thank all my oldest moots and friends that stuck by me despite everything. I cannot express how thankful I am to you guys #love you all tons.#what do u mean by compensation? just an apology from the same people who hurt me. which is nearly impossible. but idc I want to find them #and confront them. I need to bring my 13 year old self justice for what she went through. I pushed her feelings aside when this was over #but she never healed. I’m hoping she gets a bit of peace for now.#pjo fandom #percy jackson fandom #fandom toxicity

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red-moon-at-night · 1 year

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An Analysis of Haruka’s MVs: Distance and Disability

Hello! I’ve recently fallen down the rabbit hole that is Milgram and I have been itching to make some completely normal and sane analysis posts. My silly alternate title for this was gonna be “Things About Haruka’s MVs That Just Make Sense: A Hyperfixation-fuelled Analysis”, because honestly my autistic brain has been having a field day over here.

I am in awe with just about every single music video in this project; the animation is incredible and each one packs so much carefully laid out information. But I have been rotating Haruka’s in my head constantly since I first watched them, and I have a lot of Thoughts. Not about whether he’s guilty or innocent/forgiven or unforgiven. Not about whether or not I can justify his murders. Just some straight up imagery and symbolism analysis, through the lens of disability.

Haruka’s disability has not been specified, but I am confident we can at least say he is neurodivergent. I feel like the cultural differences in names for several things e.g. ‘learning disability’ vs ‘learning difficulty’ will just invite unnecessary drama, and is a little pedantic. What does matter here is that Haruka's experience as a disabled person is heavily intertwined within his story and his motives.

So, without further ado... let’s get into this!

Trigger warnings/TW: I will be discussing ableism, eugenics and harm towards disabled people. Everything else will be related to the music videos ‘Weakness’ and ‘All Knowing and All Agony’, so any triggering content within them may also be mentioned. Read at your own discretion and stay safe!

Disability: some brief (important) historical context

It is only within the last few decades that those who are disabled have been ‘seen’ for the first time. A modern society is (ideally) expected to be built to include and accommodate for disability, and to acknowledge disabled people’s existence. But for many countries (even the ones making steps outlined above) this is still not the case. For a very, very long time, globally, that has not been the case.

For most disabled people, society makes it very clear that they are a burden to it and are better off not existing.

I’m going to make this section as succinct as possible because...it’s heavy stuff. But it’s important, and I want you all to get the gist of what I’m saying. The weight of it.

Let’s highlight a piece of history regarding IQ and eugenics, surrounding the publication and subsequent worldwide reception of ‘The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-mindedness’ by Henry Herbert Goddard in 1913:

“In 1927, it was used as evidence in the case of Buck v. Bell, which culminated in a Supreme Court ruling that the involuntary sterilization of ‘mentally defective’ persons was not unconstitutional in the United States. By 1938, thirty-three US states had passed laws allowing for the forced sterilization of women with learning disabilities and twenty-nine had made sterilization compulsory for people who were thought to have genetic conditions. Many European countries followed suit: Denmark in 1929, then Norway in 1934, and after that Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Iceland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Latvia, Hungary and Turkey.”

— Limburg, J. (2021) Letters To My Weird Sisters: On Autism and Feminism, p. 126

This history of a ‘sterilization law’ includes Japan, who between 1948 and 1996 enacted the Eugenics Protection Law which “authorised the sterilization of people with intellectual disabilities, mental illnesses or hereditary disorders.” According to the government, about 25,000 were sterilized.

SO. It’s important to bring this up. To establish how much disabled people are not wanted, just from their governments. Let alone society. To this day, disabled people are hidden away from the public by families that are ashamed of their existence.

Japanese culture values collectivism, and maintaining the harmony of a group...to the extent of excluding those that don’t fit into the mould. That are different.

The question is: where do they go? The ones that are publicly rejected?

Haruka and The Curious Case of Distant Waters

Okay that’s enough of the heavy real-world stuff! Time to delve into some...*checks notes*...heavy fictional stuff. Fun!

Haruka’s MVs prominently display themes of distance and separation through the motif of water, specifically being submerged underwater.

The name Haruka reinforces this concept as the specific kanji used (遥) translates to ‘distant’, ‘remote’ or ‘far away’. As there are many, many kanji choices for the name (including but not limited to: ocean/sea, eternity/permeance, clear/distinct/obvious, and spring/growth/cherry blossom) it feels like a particularly cruel and intentional choice to go with that one.

Through the exploration of this motif, we can see the extent in which Otherness/the state of being ‘Other’ drives Haruka to great lengths to close the distance and escape it.

What I noticed throughout both MVs (particularly AK&AA but note the beginning scene of Weakness), is that whenever Haruka looks at himself in a reflective surface (e.g. the vanity mirror, the fish tank), water either begins to rise and overwhelms him, or is already there and he appears submerged:

I think this is the “All-Knowing” part of AK&AA. He knows he’s different, and he knows there’s a huge ocean between him and his peers, his family, everyone. A disconnect when trying to listen and understand, but also when trying to be understood by others and listened to himself.

You know when you submerge your head in water, and your hearing gets all muffled and incomprehensible? And have you ever tried speaking underwater? You can’t, because if you open your mouth you’ll drown. It’ll just come out as bubbles rising to the surface.

I also think the bubbles symbolise rising tension, between what he wants and what he currently has. Bubbles are everywhere in these MVs, even in places where they shouldn’t logically be? Such as this scene, following the line “don’t wipe me out, don’t wipe me out”:

Immediately pans up to Haruka gasping for breath, droplets of water rising from...somewhere. For about a split second, and they’re gone.

This boy is really going through it. I’m getting an ‘emerging from the ocean before I drown’ vibe from this one folks. When the line that follows this scene is “I can’t stop, I can’t stop”, what I’m REALLY hearing is “I can’t stop (killing) or I’ll drown”. This is his lifeboat, pulling him out from the depths of being neglected and hidden away, into the spotlight.

Some interesting images from Weakness in relation to that (of spotlights):

Anyways, onto the next point:

Blue to Orange: Water to...Nectar?

So, the orange liquid. It’s clearly representing blood, but I don’t think this is just a “danganronpa pink blood” situation of censoring/getting this video onto youtube without restrictions.

I think it’s most likely honey, specifically nectar.

The etymology of the word nectar shows its compounds translate to “death” and “overcoming”. Nectar is also called the drink of the gods, so it would make sense for it to be a ‘death-defeating’, immortalizing liquid.

For Haruka’s victims to contain nectar is very interesting. It reinforces that necessity to kill, to take the life of another, to sustain himself. To overcome the ‘living death’ he is experiencing by being hidden away from society.

This is his means of escape from drowning.

However, as we all know, things don’t turn out great for him. By the end of AK&AA Haruka is rejected once again by his mother, after which the door is shut (the light with it is gone too) and we’re met with this imagery:

The nectar floods the room, engulfing him much like the water from earlier.

There are many things we could take from this. One being that the nectar-gathering/killing-spree has clouded his vision; it’s so sweet, so sickly sweet and he’s addicted to the taste of attention, even if it’s very bad attention.

Who else has honey imagery in their MV again?

Oh, right.

Anyway, the nectar/honey situation could also be representing submerging into an even further level of distance. All that murder is gonna push people away, despite his motive being to close the gap between him and normal people. The 'ocean’ has lost clarity and become a maddening, delusional substance. After all, there is a type of honey literally called ‘mad honey’ known for its medicinal and hallucinogenic properties.

That’s enough about honey, though. Let’s move onto less unfortunate... oh, sorry, what was that? *checks notes*...Ah, yes. I meant to say, let’s move onto even more unfortunate symbolism:

The Necklace

So, this necklace. Haruka steals it from his mother’s belongings, and is his only material, physical connection to her. It is taken on the declaration of “making (her) love me again” and getting her attention once more, now he is no longer a child but a teenager closer to adulthood (at least, that’s what I consider the ‘shirt with a vest sweater and tie’ to represent. child him = the blue polo, teenager him = this one, adult him = an amalgamation of his teenager clothes).

I wasn’t sure if this was an opal or pearl/mother of pearl, but I’m leaning towards opal from the other depiction of it in Weakness:

Opals are fun because they can symbolise both good luck and bad luck, usually to do with whether it’s your birthstone. There’s something to be said of Haruka’s belief in his ‘misfortune’ and the superstition surrounding these gemstones.

But they are even more interesting for the powers they supposedly have; in medieval times the opal was considered the ‘patron of thieves’ for their ability to grant the wearer invisibility.

There is a deliciously sad irony to Haruka’s theft with that titbit of information.

Now, if this isn’t an opal, and it’s a pearl/mother of pearl there’s still some fun interpretation to be had! A little less sad, even. Pearls invoke strong imagery of the sea, of purity, and of a connection to the maternal. If this is the last thing he has relating to his mother, I can see this necklace representing a lifeline when he’s deep in the ocean. A reminder of why he’s doing all of this killing, and who it’s for.

His mother’s attention (or the idea of having a mother at all, any mother) is his driving force in life.

Speaking of that...

So We Really Need To Talk About That Fish Tank: AKA, Why Haruka’s Mom Wins ‘The Worst Parent of The Year’ Award

This fucking fish tank.

Okay, I’m gonna start by saying: I don’t think this is reading too far into things. When it takes an animation team months, sometimes years to create a 3-5 minute music video, and one as detailed as this...you don’t just wing it. There are storyboards, there are key frames and there are choices made down to the smallest of details.

From the sheer volume of animal/insect/fish décor that resides in the Sakurai household, you bet I’m gonna pay attention to what type of fish are in that fish tank.

For one thing, they live in saltwater. This is a marine tank, aka the harder choice of aquarium to have. I mean, way, WAY harder. For the experienced only.

These fish right here? One is a clownfish, and the other is a yellow boxfish.

Boxfish are a nightmare to keep alive. This article goes into more detail than I will, but all you need to know is: if there was ever a fish out of all the fish you could possibly want in your tank, this is the one to avoid like the plague.

They release deadly toxins when stressed, as a survival instinct. Boom. All your fish are dead. They need to eat a shit ton of food, but are notoriously clumsy swimmers and slow eaters. Boom. Starving, stressed out boxfish. Boxfish either dies from starvation or dies from stress and toxins.

For Haruka’s mom to have not just one of these fuckers, but a tank consisting ONLY OF MULTIPLE BOXFISH AND CLOWNFISH...

This is a high-maintenance tank. And it shows how much time and effort, how much care she puts into the things she loves.

How neglectful she is as a parent of a disabled child in contrast.

There’s something about the last scene between Haruka and his mother that reinforces this for me:

Haruka’s relationship with animals and himself: AKA, “why don’t I just become the damn fish tank?”

Let me backpedal a little bit. This subheading will make sense in a minute.

So, like I said earlier we have a lot of décor in this house relating to insects and fish. We also have a lot of pets. Both living and dead, taxidermized creatures in one household, proudly on display.

I think this may have created some confusion for Haruka regarding the value of animals being alive or dead, as in his perspective his mother values both equally. The fish in a tank may be full of alive creatures, but they’re still on display as if it’s artwork. Isn’t breaking the glass of a framed picture of a fish equal to breaking the glass of a tank with a ‘picture of living fish’?

(This isn’t to say Haruka is clueless to the impact of his actions, nor to justify any harm to animals. I just find the train of thought to be intriguing.)

So when considering these ‘objects’ are proud trophies of his work:

This is a carefully arranged display, which by the way, doesn’t contain a single fish. In fact the only piece of that moment visible here is the...large piece of driftwood? Okay. Keep that in mind.

We proceed into Haruka’s mother opening the door and seeing her son, for the first time in any of the MVs. Note the way they composed this shot:

I’m obsessed with this scene. The blue eye framing Haruka, with a literal fishbowl effect on him...

He is the goddamn fish in the aquarium now. His mother’s full attention is on him and him alone, with only the dead animals, the books, the lamp and the driftwood as window dressing to this wonderful display.

Doesn’t it just scream “Look at me! Look at what I did, mom!” to you?

That blue spotlight is on him once more. He is not just drifting deeper into an endless ocean, but contained in a vessel to be stared at.

One Last Observation

I didn’t know where to fit this in but I think the end feels appropriate.

His clothing here:

Is a frankenstein-esque mash up of clothes from his younger years. He wears this throughout AK&AA, and as I mentioned before it signifies him as an adult. However, I should clarify what I mean here as Haruka says “he thinks he’s 17″ and “doesn’t care about his age”. So... not an adult, but on the cusp of adulthood.

But I think he actually does care about his age, and quite a lot too.

This outfit feels symbolic of refusing to let go of the past, and of himself as a child. He’s literally grown out of his clothing, but he still clings onto it. He’s attached to the past because it not only contains his happiest moments, but the change from being loved to becoming neglected.

As a disabled person, you’re often treated with a lot more forgiveness when you’re younger. That is to say, some people don’t realise that children with disabilities grow up into adults with disabilities. There is a point where even support from medical and social services drops off like a cliff edge once you turn 18.

The ill-fitting clothing in this context becomes more than a reflection on Haruka’s feelings, and extends to reflecting society’s feelings on disabled adults ‘refusing to grow up’.

I don’t blame Haruka for holding onto his childhood like this. He’ll be even less publicly visible and seen once he is no longer a pitiful child, but a ‘weird’ adult in ill-fitting, children’s clothes.

#milgram #haruka sakurai #analysis #weakness #all-knowing and all-agony #symbolism #disability #*drops this onto the fandom like a ton of bricks* hi i'm new here pleasure to meet u #oh man I finally finished it... this is a very (and I mean a VERY) long post asdfghjkl #I'm pretty happy with how it turned out though! I got most of the things I wanted to say and point out down #believe it or not there was actually MORE I could've said but I think tumblr may have crashed on me if I did that lmao #particularly to do with Weakness as I focused more on AK&AA here. but anyways #I love how morally grey everyone is in this series! It makes for some really fun analysis!#it's so so nice seeing a disabled character in such a position too and not just 'is a cinnamon roll' or 'the devil reincarnate' yknow #I debated leaving in the real-world history stuff but I think it sets the tone of my analysis pretty well and shows the importance of--#--haruka's disability not as a justification of his actions but as a vital backdrop to his environment and struggles

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