#but it doesnt even do that its like ''i killed my (abusive and murderous) father (as he was literally trying to kill me) and that was evil''

[stellawolfe30]

thinkin about how the journey to the west is just one big mess for wukong. but like, in a family sense.

idfk this might make no sense. also tw for mentions of abuse and manipulation.

i like to imagine before he meets tripitaka he's not a bad person at all, hes just wild, impulsive and theres things he doesnt understand. like as a very powerful monkey with no parents or role models there are things he doesnt understand regarding society, morals and right vs wrong.

hes impulsive and wild, a good person at heart but he doesnt know that some of the things he tends to do is moraly wrong. like okay he takes the immortal peaches yeah he knows its stealing but does he completly understand what stealing does? does he understand how it impacts other people? no. he just thinks "oooooh pretty yummy peaches i want some. people are gaurding it? oh no problem im sneaky"

like a child.

he doesnt understand how things affect other people until someone explains it or it happens to him.

"why are you pouting mihou"

"you ate my pile of peaches"

"oh...well, they were just laying there i dont really see the pr-"

*mihou sniffles*

"oh shit-"

then he rushes and grabs an even bigger pile of peaches from the mountain and drops it in front of mihou and then watches him eat while also thinking about how his dear friend reacted to him eating his peaches. hes king? cant he have anything he wants? so why did mihou care so much when he took his peaches? and why did he panic when he saw mihou cry.

he doesnt understand emotions or consequences until the result is staring at him in the face. especially when its someone he cares about or himself. then he starts to understand.

so he's childish, impulsive, wild, chaotic but also protective and thoughtful. he'll take a moment to think about things but the thought it almost never finished unless he really wants to understand something. and sometimes lui er mihou has to teach him and explain.

but in the end wukongs just a little monkey guy that wants to hang out on flower fruit mountain with his monkey people forever. he doesnt want to die because he doesnt want to lose what he has. he became strong because hes king. hes supposed to protect them so he will be strong enough to do so.

then imagine tripitaka comes in. tripitaka tries a simple worded approach to tell wukong dont do this dont do that, 'DONT KILL PEOPLE!!!! even though in wukongs mind "they were stealing our stuff and tried to hurt you tho-" the circelt activates.

wukong doesnt understand what did he do wrong? he was protecting his master like he was supposed to right? is this not? is this not how it works? how is this supposed to work?!?!

wukong does not understand most of the time why tripitaka activates the circlet. he did his job to the best of his understanding so why does he keep activating it?!

but i also think about how alot of media portrays the relationship to be father and son. mentor and student

"if a man teaches you for a day regard him as your father for the rest of your life"-chinese proverb.

so lets say tripitaca does explain things. but he doesnt explain it good enough. he doesnt understand how little wukong actually genuinly doesnt understand.

hes spent 100's of years on his mountain with other monkeys. he's never had to REALLY think about morals or emotions or complex things like right and wrong. hes just been a funky monkey eating fruit under the sun.

so when tripitaka tries to explain it doesnt get through to wukong because he doesnt understand how wukong works mentally.

"killing people is wrong"

"why, it gets them out of our way faster then just idk kicking them or breakign thier legs"

"because it is wrong wukong"

"but...why? why is it wrong?"

"because murder is evil"

"why, i dont get it, ive seen evil people murder as ive seen good people murder i dont get why it is wrong"

the circlet activates.

tripitaka (and thank you wolfcamellias for this beautiful idea GO READ THIER ANALYSIS NOW I HAVENT FINISHED READING IT BUT YOU SHOULD GO NOW THEYRE WRITING AND ART AND AASDFEGRHTFJYHGMSO GOOD) see's wukong as a parent would thier child in the sense that they want to mold and shape them into thier perfect image of child/student. and they will do that through any means. even if it hurts. its an abusive familial relationship. wukong is manipluated to think of tripitaka as a father and why wouldnt he know any better? hes never had a father but this monk is...teaching him? thats what he says hes doing. shaping him into the perfect hero weapon hes meant to be. hes meant to be perfect, hes meant to be a hero people can look up to. a king that protects and he loves that idea. he smiles at the image of being a hero people can look up to and depend on for proection, people will love him.

but hes confused, why is tripitaka using the circlet? perhaps thats just how discipline works. yes yes thats what master says. he says its discipline its neccasary

tripitaka is doing what is necasarry to make wukong better. to make him perfect. was he not good enough before? master says he wasnt. so he couldnt have been. but hes good now? yes yes hes good enough hes good hes perfect.

and thats what wukong thinks. thats his mentallity through the journey as the circlect stays. it becomes a mentallity of, "i deserve this" or "its for the best", "he only does this because he cares enough to teach me"

dont even get me started on how this plays out when macaque tries to get him out. bro...

"i never understood..."

"i never understand what it meant to carelessly stain my hands with blood until i drowned in your's"

its a manipulative situation and i like to think back then wukong was easier to manipulate because there's things he just didnt understand or pick up on.

but then he went on the journey. he learned things dont get me wrong he learned important things whether he wanted to or not. he picked up on alot during the journey and even after. he started to see more and understand better the way the world and people work. how morals and consequences affect the world and the things we do and he kept learning throughout his time as hero until he decided to retire. then again he stll doesnt seem to be good enough. he keeps fucking up he keeps making mistakes.

maybe something he "learned" from his master wasnt right?

no no it was fine, that was fine. it was all for the best and betterment of himself.

he does end up finnaly realising that some things he ended up learning/picked up throughout the jourey wasnt right. kind of in the same sense as how abused children adapt to thier surroundings to survive. "dont bother when upset" "watch thier emotions" "keep it to yourself"

i think thats what causes wukongs HORRIBLE communication skills and desire to carry evem the heaviest weight alone on his shoulders.

its when he realises that some things he's been doing and "learned" isnt good. thats not what "normal" or "healthy" people do.

the circlet wasn't fucking necessary

and thats when he decides to retire.

what a long winded way to say wukong is neurodivergent and has been abused and manipulated.

#stellas rambles #lmk #monkie kid #lego monkie kid #sun wukong #lmk sun wukong #lmk wukong #lmk spoilers #shadowpeach #lmk swk #six eared macaque #monkey king #tw mentions of abuse #tw manipulation

[ur-friendly-neighborhood-simp]

What were those theories about atsv you mentioned in the post with my ask? It's the Daily Yappathon™ so feel free to talk as much as you want :3 I'm all ears or eyes since I'll be reading this and not listening

OH YESSSSS >:]

so, miguel is wrong. just, dead wrong.

first of all, hes a fucking psychopath. he was stalking the other miguels family and when he died, he could replace him perfectly and no one noticed. and hes delusional, like bro, its not your life or your daughter, and just because you got attached to them doesnt give you the right to act like a psycho. if you want a family, download tinder or smth

second, i get that he was a little bit nice to miles in the beginning (even though he threw a trash can at him), but here he is.

???????????????????????????????????????????????

who gave you the right to act like that? chasing a teenager on all fours and choke slamming him into a fucking train and repeatedly calling him a mistake just because he refused to be part of your fucked up fake sustem?

because the canon is basically murder. letting people die "because they have to" is murder. and seriously, before the spider society existed, who took care of the canon? when miguel made the spider society, he also made the rules and he also made the canon. hes fighting a villain that he created.

also, miles is not an anomaly. if he was, his universe would have collapsed when the spider bit him. because thats what the supposed canon says, anomaly = universe falling apart. and yet, 1610B is very very stable. you know which universe did collapse?

miguel is projecting his problems onto everyone else. miles isnt the original anomaly, miguel is. and he knows that, but hes too emotionally immature to understand what 2+2 is.

miguel blames miles for everything, when nothing is actually his fault. miles didnt start the collider or kill peter or create the spot or anything. if you look into it, you understand that even though it seems that its his fault, it isnt. was miguel too bored to look into it? maybe.

& hes a drug addict. rapture is the most addictive drug the universe and hes addicted to it. whats 1+1 again?

from what i understood, it was jess' idea to save gwen in the beginning of the movie (also we stan mother jess 🙏), miguel was very hesitant to save gwen, which means he was full on going to leave her there. and he neglected her. and he sent her back. to her father. who pulled a gun on her. bro, you cant only take care of the people that comply to your system. its giving government

i get that he has trauma, but like, so does everyone else. peter b has trauma, miles has trauma, gwen has trauma, hobie has trauma, everyone in the society has trauma but you dont see them abusing minors. miguel is the only using trauma as an excuse to be a horrible person.

also, i have strong reasons to believe that jeff dying wasnt miles' canon event. i mean, it was, but not 1610 miles'. when the go home machine read miles' dna, it sent him to E-42, because thats where the spider that bit him was from (which was ohnn's fault, btw. its not your spider bro put it back). and thats what probably happened when miguel was seeing miles' "canon events". jeff dying was miles 42's canon event, and it happened. like, the one is fatherless and the other is uncleless. why does one have to be both uncleless and fatherless? bffr.

basically, miguel to me is this: "oh, look at me, im miguel ohara, im the leader of the spider society and that makes me 200% better than you, nothing is my fault ever, everything is your fault, im a literal fucking psychopath, id rather beat a teenager up than admit that im wrong, my ego is the size of the atlantic ocean and im a furry who doesnt know non-violent communication. grr 👹"

and im not a hypocrite, if miles had done something wrong, i would be able to realise that. like, "miles is a great character but thats where he made a mistake". but he didnt do anything wrong. he didnt know that the canon existed, he only wanted to save his dad.

and i know that if the roles were reversed, if miguel was the one who couldnt save someone he loved, he would do the exact same thing. and so would everyone else in the society, who took miguels side. like, didnt your moms teach you "dont treat people the way you dont want to be treated"??

and it pisses me off so much when people defend miguel, first of all youre defending an abuser and second you dont have any good arguments.

1. "miles shouldnt have ran" thats victim blaming. and seriously, youre telling me that if you saw this

chasing you, you wouldnt have ran? bffr.

2. "he has trauma, thats why hes aggressive" i already explained that before, but trauma isnt an excuse to be a horrible person.

yeah, there are a lot of shit arguments ive seen over time but i dont remember all of them.

also, hes not even hot. not that him being hot would excuse his actions, but then id partly understand when people liked him. but NOW? girl, he has 0 good angles and he looks like he hasnt showered in 3 months. you only like him because hes tall and has muscles and speaks spanish. have some self-respect

i wanted to say another thing but ive talked too much already lmao

#these arent really theories theyre just me yapping but yk #also now im fuckin pissed again #i hope he dies so i can dance to gagnam style over his grave #disrespectfully #☺️🫶🏻 #miguel slander #atsv #selene core

[kinkajouwof]

HIII I KNOW U GUYS LIKE MY OPINIONS FOR SOME REASON.....SO I RAMBLED ON ABOUT SOME OF MY THOUGHTS ON ANEMONE. THIS IS JUST MY THOUGHTS SPILLED OUT INTO A POST WITHOUT LOOKING BACK, SO SOME THINGS MAY BE A BIT OFF AND NOT CORRECT. HOWEVER!!!! THIS IS MY BLOG AND I CAN BE INSANE ON IT IF I WANT. FEEL FREE TO ADD ANYTHING YOU WANT IN THE TAGS OR JUST TO READ THIS AND BE LIKE "HMMM OK"

ALSO IM DEFINITELY LEAVING STUFF OUT OF THIS POST BUT. ITS ALREADY LONG ENOUGH. IT DOESNT NEED MORE EVEN IF I HAVE SOOOO MUCH MORE TO SAY....

I WISH WE COULDVE SEEN ANEMONES REACTION TO FINDING OUT ORCA WAS 1. AN ANIMUS 2. KILLING OFF HER BABY SISTERS ALL THIS TIME

LIKE. SHE WAS TERRIFIED OF ALBATROSS, HER 2000 YEAR OLD RELATIVE WHO WAS A MURDEROUS ANIMUS. IMAGINE HOW SHE'D FEEL NOW KNOWING HER SISTER WHO WAS GLORIFIED TO HER ALL THESE YEARS BY CORAL WAS ONE TOO.

WOULD SHE FEEL RESENTMENT TOWARDS ORCA AS WELL, FOR THE FACT THAT HER LITERALLY BEING CHAINED TO CORAL SINCE HER HATCHING WAS HER ALL FAULT? WOULD IT ADD TO HER CORRUPTION THAT IT SEEMS HER FAMILY IS ALWAYS OUT TO GET HER IN SOME WAY? THAT HER FAMILY CAUSES HER NOTHING BUT SUFFERING?

THE SEAWING ROYAL LINEAGE IS ONE PAVED IN BLOOD FROM DRAGONS JUST LIKE HER, THATS WHAT SHE WAS ALWAYS TAUGHT. IS IT TRUE THAT SHES THE ONLY ONE WITH THE POSSIBILITY TO BE EVIL IN HER FAMILY? THEN HOW COME SHE FACES SO MUCH CRUELTY AT THE TALONS OF HER OWN MOTHER? A CRUELTY THAT IS IGNORED EVEN BY DRAGONS WITH THEIR OWN FREEDOM, LIKE TSUNAMI? ITS ONLY WHEN TSUNAMI SHOWS UP SHE BEGINS TO REALIZE THE FLAWS IN HER UPBRINGING. SURE, WHAT TSUNAMI WENT THROUGH WAS HORRIBLE, BUT SHE WAS FREE. FREE TO SAY AND THINK WHAT SHE WANTED. WHY WOULD SHE WANT TO MEET HER FAMILY? FAMILY IS NOTHING BUT EXPECTATIONS AND CONTROL TO ANEMONE. CONSIDERING SHE COULD NEVER VISIT HER BROTHERS, AND HER FATHER DIED SHORTLY BEFORE(?) HER HATCHING, ALL SHE HAS IS CORAL. AND CORAL IS CONTROLLING AND CRUEL.

IN ANEMONE'S EYES, BEING A DRAGONET OF DESTINY SOUNDS PERFECT. SHE'S FREE AND FULL OF DRAGONS WHO WILL DO ANYTHING FOR HER- AND SHE STILL RETAINS THE ATTENTION AND GLORY SHE DESERVES.

OH, ATTENTION. THE THING ANEMONE GREW UP WITH CONSTANTLY. AND FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HER LIFE, WITH AUKLETS HATCHING, SHE HAS TO SHARE. SHES NOT USED TO THIS, BUT ANYTHING TO TAKE CORAL OFF OF HER BACK IS BLISS. JADE MOUNTAIN IS EVERYTHING SHE COULD HAVE EVER HOPED FOR. HOWEVER, BECAUSE OF, ONCE AGAIN, HER UPBRINGING, SHE DOESNT REALIZE NOT EVERYTHING WILL BE HANDED TO HER. NOT ALL EYES WILL AUTOMATICALLY STAY FIXED ON HER. BUT THATS WHAT SHE GREW UP WITH. SHE IS NOT USED TO THE SUDDEN LACK OF SPOTLIGHT. HOW SHE CRAVES IT, BUT DESPISES IT. SHE DOESNT WANT CORALS ATTENTION, BUT SHE DOESNT WANT TO BE IGNORED. SHE DOESNT KNOW WHAT SHE WANTS.

DARKSTALKER. DARKSTALKER APPEARS AND CHANGES EVERYTHING. A DRAGON WHO FINALLY UNDERSTANDS HER. WHO UNDERSTANDS HER FEAR OF TURNING OUT LIKE DRAGONS OF THE PAST, THE FEAR OF HER OWN TALONS BETRAYING HER. AND FINALLY A DRAGON WHO SEES HER FOR HER POTENTIAL AT THIS SCHOOL. THE ATTENTION SHE WANTS, SHE FEELS SHE NEEDS, TO SURVIVE. DARKSTALKER IS LIKE A PARENT SHE ALWAYS WANTED.

BUT THEN THERES MOON. DARKSTALKERS FAVOURITE. IN ANEMONE'S EYES, DARKSTALKER SHOULDNT PAY ATTENTION TO MOON. SHES REGULAR, SHE HARDLY UNDERSTANDS AND RELATES TO ALL THE STRUGGLES THEY AS ANIMUS DRAGONS HAVE. SHE JUST GETS IN THE WAY. SHE REMINDS HER OF HER UNVOICED FRUSTRATIONS WITH TSUNAMI- STOP COMPLAINING, YOU SUFFERED, BUT YOU WERE FREE! YOU HAVE HARDLY ANYTHING TO COMPLAIN ABOUT! OF COURSE THATS NOT TRUE, BUT AGAIN, ANEMONE DOESNT SHARE THE SPOTLIGHT. AT LEAST, SHES NOT USED TO HAVING TO. SHE CRAVES THE ATTENTION AND WARMTH SHE ONCE FELT, BUT WITHOUT THE CRUELTY OF CORAL. AND IN DARKSTALKER SHE SEES THIS. UNAWARE SHES BEING USED, OF COURSE.

AND THEN OF COURSE DARKSTALKER SEES AN ABUSED EMOTIONAL VULNERABLE CHILD WITH VERY LITTLE INSIGHT TO THE WORLD AND SEES A PERFECT DRAGON TO MANIPULATE.

AND FOR ONCE, ANEMONE THINKS SHE KNOWS WHAT SHE WANTS. THESE CONFLICTING FEELINGS, THE THRONE. THATS IT, ISNT IT? ITS WHAT DARKSTALKER WANTED, AND SHE WANTS TO BE LIKE HIM. FREE TO THINK AND DO WHAT HE WANTS, BELOVED BY ALL. THATLL MAKE IT ALL BE OK. AND FINALLY, SHELL BE FREE PERMANENTLY FROM CORAL. HER PERSPECTIVE IS TWISTED TO FIT THE VIOLENT BELIEFS DARKSTALKER HOLDS. BECAUSE SHES BEEN MANIPULATED SO HEAVILY, SHE THINKS LIKE HIM. SHE DOESNT CARE WHO GETS IN HER WAY TO THE THRONE, THEYLL REGRET IT. BECAUSE THATS WHAT SHE NEEDS, THE THRONE.

ITS ONLY WHEN TURTLE, A DRAGON SHE BELIEVED ENTIRELY OPPOSITE TO HER. A STRANGER IN HER LIFE, YET HER BROTHER, STEPS IN, SHE BEGINS TO SNAP OUT OF THE CONTROLLED HAZE.

THE PAINFUL WAKE UP CALL IS WHEN DARKSTALKER ENCHANTS HER. HE CONTROLS HER WITH EASE. TO DO WHATEVER HE WANTS. HER FREEDOM WASNT REAL THIS ENTIRE TIME, AND SHES MORE CONTROLLED THAN SHE HAS EVER BEEN. HOWEVER, DESPITE HER LASHING OUT AND DESPITE THE FIGHT THEY JUST HAD, TURTLE STEPS IN. SELFLESSLY. HE SAVES HER. WHEN SHE DIDNT DESERVE IT.

SHE DIDNT DESERVE IT. SHE TRIED TO KILL HIM. SHE BELIEVED HER FAMILY MEANT NOTHING TO HER. YET HERE TURTLE IS, SAVING HER LIFE AND SACRIFICING HIS OWN IN THE PROCESS. BECAUSE HE CARES. NOW SHES LEFT ALONE WITH HER THOUGHTS, AN INABILITY TO SPEAK, THINKING ABOUT WHAT JUST TOOK PLACE. THAT ALONE SHOULD BE ENOUGH TO SET HER ON A BETTER PATH. A PATH TOWARDS HER REDEMPTION, BEING SHOWN ULTIMATE KINDNESS WITH NO STRINGS ATTACHED. THE ULTIMATE ACT OF FAMILIAL LOVE BY A BROTHER SHE HARDLY KNEW.

So tell me why Tui decided she needed an enchantment to magically fix her flaws to have her redeemed what the fuck

#KINKAJOU BABBLES #anemone wof #wof #wings of fire #long post #abuse mention

[marrow-minded]

"we're team leaders now jaune! we cant afford to fail. we have to put our teammates first and ourselves second!"

i used to really like this scene because i feel like it really highlighted rubys "simple soul" thing she was SUPPOSED to have as well as just being a sweet moment between jaune and ruby that reminded the audience that theyre best friends

but now? nine volumes deep, im sitting her racking my brain for any moment ruby or jaune have ever taken a blow that actually did lasting damage to them?

blake was stabbed by adam and had to confront him multiple times. weiss was slapped by her father, had to save herself from an abusive situation, and was impaled. ren had to confront the literal demons from his past. nora electrocuted herself to the point of severe scarring in a form of self harm. yang lost her whole arm and had to confront her deadbeat mother, the source of a lot of trauma, and she and blake had to murder a man in self defense. pyrrha fucking DIED.

im not saying that ruby and jaune have gone through EMOTIONAL or MENTAL struggles but i cant think of a time ruby or jaune have really put their team first and themselves second in any sense especially a physical or mental sense

ruby never met or encountered adam, its unclear if she was even aware that adam was a problem or was killed by her teammates. weiss is a capable women who can rescue herself but ruby never seems in a rush or a hurry or even that WORRIED about her or blake or even yang during vol 4/5. jaune knew about rens backstory and yet they just HAD to walk this way when going through the entire continent (instead of, idk, hopping a train to argus and then to haven?) jaune never once seems to reach out towards nora, they dont even act like theyre friends, he barely says anything to ren. ruby LEFT her sister alone with a neglectful father, and again, doesnt seem to even know about what yang went through, doesnt even seem to ask or care or for the two of them to even at like sisters even more (shown by how ruby sort of just stares and lets yang fall to her supposed death when miss girl can basically fly). pyrrhas death is often cited as manpain for JAUNE when actually in my opinion, she died moreso for RUBY; ruby is the one that gets a deus ex upgrade witnessing pyrrhas death whereas jaunes actions dont really change post pyrrha (he was already pushing himself to train and sort of grow up before pyrrha died, he just continues that trajectory in honor of her. if anything, pennys second death is the one that just there for jaunes manpain and development and that was infinitely more contrived and useless than pyrrhas death, which meant something)

maybe im just not remembering but have ruby or jaune ever suffered physically? have they ever shoulders a great and terrible burden so that their friends could live in peace even a moment longer? do they check up on their friends in any meaningful way that exemplifies their role even now as a LEADER? have they ever put themselves first and their teammates second

#rwde #canoncrit ruby rose #canoncrit jaune arc #like why do ruby and jaune not feel like leaders anymore

[technicallyelegantkitten]

sigh

imma say smth whiny again so plz ignore, im emo lately

my biggest pet peeve in any fandom is hypocrisy but my second biggest one is extremism

idk, ive been reading a lot of "deruth isnt as bad as other dads so he did NOTHING wrong" type defenses lately and... no?

i freely admit that deruth isnt the worst father in existence but he's not perfect either?? he has messed up, he has (accidentally) caused serious harm to his child through poor parenting skills and tbh he's just a bit dumb and shortsighted

ofc i dont care for the reverse either, "deruth is not the perfect dad therefore he's the worst most evil scum imaginable" but i tend to prefer this version even though its more ooc and i deeply dislike ooc content

theres just smth abt saying “he’s not actively trying to kill his child like other fathers so he’s the perfect dad” that srsly skeeves me out. I think its bc its the excuse thats made for a lot of real life abusers (i wouldnt say that deruth is necessarily an abusive person but he has done things that are irresponsibly harmful towards his children) and seeing that excuse just makes my skin crawl

“You shouldnt be upset, your dad didnt beat you unconscious so he’s not abusive” or “he doesnt hit you so everything else he does is justified” and so on and so forth. Its just a personal preference of mine, but despite my dislike for ooc content, if im forced to choose between ooc and abuse apologetics, im going to choose ooc

But thats the main problem. I dont see why there needs to be any extremism in any direction. Deruth doesnt need to be written as an irredeemable monster for him to be a deeply flawed parent but he also isnt a fucking saint who needs to be protected at all cost. Idk, when i see these conversations it just feels like it murders nuance

I mostly lurk cuz i dont have a lot of confidence in socializing with ppl but sometimes i’ll just be lurking and i’ll see smth like “i HATE how ppl bash deruth, he’s an AMAZING father” and then a bunch of ppl replying to that with agreement that lacks any nuance. Again, to be fair, there are plenty of ppl who make the opposite argument to an uncomfortable extreme, but at least there arent any abuse apologetics in deruth bashing

All of that said, i am not saying that i think that ppl who engage in those extreme debates abt deruth are bad people or they support child abuse or anything else insanely over the top like that. Frankly, ppl can enjoy fandom however it makes them happy. If it makes them happy to defend deruth to their dying breath, you do you dude, have fun. Im just stating that i am personally a person who is deeply uncomfortable with reading abuse apologetics

But moreso than opinions like “deruth did nothing wrong! He’s the perfect dad! He never did any irresponsible parenting cuz there weren’t any bruises!” i am even more deeply uncomfortable with blaming og cale for deruth’s poor parenting. Now if you’ve read any of my fics, you might notice that while i rlly like og cale, i think that his behavior is shitty. He had noble goals but much like his father, he was too short-sighted and stupid to actually help his family properly and the things he did would have made being his parent an absolute nightmare

One of my favorite fics that i wrote has an entire plot centered around cale needing to realize how harmful and toxic his behavior was and start himself on the long and painful path towards growth and improvement. I think that cale has potential to be a better person than he is but no matter what, even if he was faking every second of it, the shit he did was fucked up and he hurt a lot of people through his thoughtless foolishness

So if i think that cale is such a flaw character, why would i dislike it when people blame deruth’s poor parenting skills on the difficulty of raising a child as explosive and irrational as cale?

Very simple reason. Cale isn’t the parent. And the majority of cale’s misbehavior happened before the age of 18. The concept that a literal child with clear trauma is supposed to be the one who’s mature enough to make things better and shouldnt have been a difficult teenager just makes me feel gross

This is when the abuse apologetics start dipping the toes into victim blaming. If my understanding of the canon lcf timeline is correct (it might not be, lcf timeline is a bit hard to understand sometimes), cale lost his mother at 8 and started acting like trash to protect his step brother around the age of 10. A child. He was a child. Not even a teenager. A very small and stubborn child.

Ron stated in the sidestory that cale was quite similar to ohn when he was a child. Specifically while referencing how ohn will try hard to seem mature even when she’s scared or worried about the people she loves. The sort of child that tries to hide their pain so that other ppl can be taken care of instead. Ron is an unreliable narrator so its dubious how accurate this is but for me, it makes sense with cale’s character

I feel like people see 18 year old cale acting like trash and they think he was 18 yrs old for the last ten years. Nah dude, he was 8. Hell even at 15 when he started drinking, 15 is a really young age. Instead of blindly endorsing cale’s misbehavior by giving him money and supporting him irresponsibly, deruth needed to be a real parent to the boy. but instead he chose to do what he always does (even in lcf) throw money at the problem in hopes of making it go away

I have a lot more thoughts on deruth and cale and criticisms of both their personalities (and just how much cale really does take after his father) but that would derail further from my point. My point is that blaming a traumatized child for being a difficult child to parent is just… not it. Ive helped raise enough problem children to know EXACTLY how hard it is to raise a child like cale but just bc he’s hard to raise, it doesnt mean you just throw money at him and ignore the real problems

(also never get me started on how much it upsets me that no one, not a single person in cale’s life, realized that he had been possessed. It’s not like roksu did a flawless job impersonating cale. He didnt. His attempts to act like trash were cute in comparison to cale’s quite convincing act, but no one noticed and im the most upset at deruth abt this bc out of *everyone* i feel very strongly that his father should have noticed)

Anyway, this is a lengthy and foolishly thought out way of saying it makes me deeply uncomfortable to read blind defense of deruth’s character. Im not saying he’s an abuser, he isn’t in my opinion, but he is a *deeply* flawed parent who has done abusive things to his child, even if those things were unintentional. That said, if deruth apologetics are what make you happy, enjoy yourself. Im just not personally comfortable with the way those defenses often mirror abuse apologetics and victim blaming in real life situations.

(again, to be clear, i do NOT think that ppl who defend deruth are victim blaming abuse sympathizers. I think that they have an opinion of a fictional character that i disagree with and my reasons for disagreeing make it uncomfortable for me to read their opinions. That said, im also not saying that there isnt something morally wrong abt making deruth the most abusive scumbag on the planet bc i think that also tears away the nuance of how subtle and insidious abusive neglect can truly be. BUT ultimately i would prefer to read a removal of subtlety rather than arguments that appear uncomfortably similar to abuse apologetics)

[magnoliamyrrh]

-_- same with western leftists who will yell all day long abt killing the rich and torturing ppl and whatever else

how much u wanna bet most of these ppl have never had to genuinely contemplate killing someone in their lives. genuinely had to sit down and realistically think about it, the pros and cons. because ive had to. ive really had to. for years. particularly, my father. and i mean that seriously, ive thought extensively about what both taking human life is like, and what torturing someone would be like. and it cant be said he doesnt,,, deserve it per say, or that it wouldnt have bene fair to do so, especially in the context of doing so not just as revenge but mostly to protect other children from him. and if his daughter hadnt been stillborn, and i couldnt hsve adopted her or gotten her out, it is very likely id be in jail for murder rn if i wouldn't have gotten away with it

i aint saying peaceful revolution. my grandfather used to say, its not a revolution unless blood is being spilled. in rømania we killed causescu at the end. i aint saying opressed ppl dont have the right to revolt, im very much with malcolm x on this one. im not saying at all killing opressors or abusers makes someone as bad as they are themselves (torturing them tho,,,, hm?). im really not.

.... but i AM saying taking another human life is no small thing, and it chances you, and it does something to you, and it kills a part of youself when you kill someone else, and if you get used to it or even further if you relish in it and like it, yea, it makes you one step closer to what they are like

...... killing people,,, shouldnt not be glorifyied, and the vast majority of internet leftists have no clue what theyre talking about when they fantasize about killing, death, and torture. there is a certain glory, sure, in war and revolution and killing opressors and defending the weak. but it is always, more than anything, a horrid, horrid ordeal

dont call for death if you arent genuinely willing to be the one who swings the knife and live with it.

[pareido1ias-7]

TW: mentions of SA and death

i dont think people understand how fucked up henry actually is. like i see SO many posts like "oh i can fix him" "he was just in a goofy mood" and yes i understand most are just joking and i might be a little too upset about this but when people try to twist the actual canon of the show to defend henry? like what the fuck. the amount of symbolism hinting at SA and real pervy shit is insane.

even in s1, henry targetting will and then stuffing a vine down his throat and impregnating him with a demodog? look me in the eye and tell me that isnt creepy as fuck.

him only targetting teens and pre-teens? like some of the max being vecna'd scenes were shot in a way that feels like its designed to make you uncomfortable. like him groaning and rolling his eyes back when he puts his hand over their face? the cheek stroking? he did that to el too (who was like nine at the time) he like stroked her cheek while she was crying and told her not to worry as they stood in a room filled with childrens dead bodies.

the will getting possessed scene? will said it himself: he felt it everywhere. i know there was one quote that really had alarm bells ringing in my mind and i dont remember it exactly but when will was possessed he said that henry (the mindflayer) was making him do it (aka making him do things he did not want to do)

its all creepy.

and even if we arent talking about that kind of thing, he is just a literal psychopath and you cant change that. he murdered a room full of children. he murdered his mom and sister. he murdered chrissy, fred, patrick, and max (although el started her heart back up, she still died)

he tricked el into thinking she had an ally and then traumatized her so much that she blocked it out of her brain and had to relive it to get the memories back. he gave her an entire speech about how life was pointless, cruel, and repetitive when she was nine.

to add to this, the stuff that happenedI when billy gets possessed. the visuals of him kidnapping hannah (im pretty sure it was hannah, please correct me if im wrong) were definitely NOT subtle. he tied her up, gagged her, laid her down on the ground, and knelt over her while whispering "be quiet, it will all be over soon" which is also said by henry when he targets his victims, usually right before he kills them. but yeah, the whole thing with billy wasnt subtle at all, and that wasnt actually billy, it was henry using billy's body.

i also wanted to talk about brenner, because thinking about all the el shit has me thinking about him too.

there is so much that creeps me out about brenner. like not just creepy things but like things we have seen him do to el on the show. like he tried to make her kill a cat and when she refused he locked her in a small, dark room while she screamed for him to let her out because she was terrified, and it scared her so much that when mike got her into the closet she had flashbacks. and then the scene after she kills the guards (which also severely traumatized her) brenner carried her away after saying "incredible."

like, he doesnt see her as human. at all. she is a lab experiment to him.

another thing that bothers me is the "papa" shit, for obvious reasons. i dont know if he is trying to get her to trust him more and see him as a father figure or if there is more to it, but it creeps me the fuck out. she was kidnapped as a newborn by this man who works at a lab, and he forces her to call him papa while he basically tells her that everything he is doing to her (abusing, experimenting, using her like a tool) is okay. he gives her the illusion that she can back out at any time ("is that okay with you, eleven?") but when she does back out she is punished severely and cruely. which is a very common tactic to make women feel like they are safe and they are okay while being raped or assaulted.

there is also the fact that one of the only women that isnt a number we see at the lab when el is with all of the other numbers (before henry kills them) is the nurse. and yes, women can be creepy too, but it gives me really bad vibes thinking about all of those children in the hands of men who didnt see them as human and didnt care about them at all, and the children thought that anything the men did to them was okay.

that is scary.

there are also a few shots that are just creepy, like a specific one i can think of is a shot in s1 ep8:

(sorry for the ass quality)

yeah. interesting shot. and its lingered on for a LONG time.

but yeah. brenner and henry give me terrible vibes, besides the whole psychopath thing. i just feel like not everyone is really thinking about how weird some of the situations these kids are being put in.

#dr brenner #henry creel #st analysis #henry creel analysis #dr brenner analysis

[voidpumpkin]

I don't know anything about Demon Slayer but I DO know Rengoku sorta and he's my favorite character. I have never seen that other guy you have been posting him with! Could you talk about both of them/who they are and why you like them together?

K lets go over them separately, Rengoku Kyoujurou is the Flame Pillar, the strongest swordsmen wielding the flame breathing swordstyle. Set up to act as a mentor character to the main cast. Key belief of his is the temporariness of life makes it beautiful and that it is the role of the strong to protect the weak. Revealed in his introduction arc have a lot of hidden insecurities about his worth due to his abusive father. He dies at the hands of Akaza but succeeds in saving everybody's lives.

Akaza, number 3 most powerful demon underling, believes the only goal in life is to get stronger (but doesnt eat women, which apparently would make him much stronger, demons need to eat people btw), thinks temporary life is gross and despises the weak. He's the one who kills Kyoujurou. Pretty much all demons have a tragic backstory that they forget upon becoming a demon with Akaza's being that he was a kid who dedicated and risked his life to looking after his father, then lover after his father dies, whilst being taught to protect the weak, with belief of his being that weak, sick shouldn't view themselves as a burden. He's forcibly turned into a demon after killing the people who murdered his fiance and mentor, (though his love for his fiance preventing him from harming a women even though he has forgotten her.)

Why i like them together: First off, them being together requires Kyoujurou lives (i've always been of the opinion that his death is one of the earliest signs of demon slayer going downhill) and i love Kyoujurou and i want to see him and his relationships be explored. Secondly what happens in their fight together, mainly: they have ideological conflicts with each other, Akaza is utterly enamored with him asking him to be immortal so they can fight together/each other forever and literally begging for him to become an immortal demon after dealing the killing blow. What they say during the fight and who they are creates so much juicy drama, Kyoujurou can confront Akaza's belief and make him remember his backstory, convincing him to join the good guys, an idea i'm obsessed with is him asking Akaza 'what is true strength, giving into your urges as a demon, or resisting them'. Akaza in his complete admiration of Kyoujurou can get him to value his life more and confront his insecurities in a way nobody else can as he is the only equal/above Kyoujurou's level to express such admiration (everyone else are family members, students or colleagues).

Other drama created is of one of the people who kills demon's falling in love with them, slayers can be kicked out for just refusing to kill one that hasn't eaten anybody. This drama as well as Kyoujurou coming to recognise the humanity of demons as well as their suffering as demons are constantly monitored by their creator who can kill them on a whim, is just another reason for me to love it. They have to keep relationship a secret, existing on opposite sides of a conflict and wanting to be together, which is so juicy to me.

There's also a plot reason as the good guys require high level demon blood to create a cure for demonism. Akaza, as number 3, becoming a good guy would mean they would have a lot more of the cure and make it even more powerful, this along with him fighting on their side in the final battle and Kyoujurou being alive to fight in the final battle means we wouldn't have that shitty ending where half the cast dies.

Renkaza is a relationship that by its very nature would require/causes drama and character growth, which is what makes it absolutely golden for a story.

As you can see i am completely normal about them.

#ask game #there's nearly a dozen interesting relationships in that manga #bu the creator just had to get bored and rush the final two arcs

[fakeboitherottengirl]

I was diagnosed ODD at 12, so about a half decade before my brief squatting saga (which was less “crashing in an abandoned building” and more “deciding as a collective house to not pay the landlord until he fixed our heat which he never did until we moved out”, but legally i was considered a squatter and didn’t want police attention drawn to the living situation).  And yeah like I said a lifetime of body terrorism including from my eating disordered mother and emotionally abusive father was in the long run more traumatizing than the violation and embarrassment of my assaults and just because I was too drugged to remember the encounter doesnt mean it wasn’t violating and traumatic and horrible thats some soren-tier rape apologist bullshit “oh it must not have been traumatizing because it wasnt violent” like fuck u dude ur literally talking about one of the most traumatizing and personality changing events in my life ur talking about somebody violating my body in the most intimate way possible can you at least afford the subject a LITTLE gravity?  And the CSA I experienced was, outside of the incidents with my soulmate’s family fiend, exclusively from older children and none of the incidents were violent, I didn’t even know anything bad had happened until we learned about it in health class and I was like “what do u mean ur not supposed let people touch u there, lots of people touch me there” and I developed a religious trauma complex around purity and virginity that lasted through my teens.  But being touched in a non-violent way by somebody who tells u they just want to show u how to feel good is very different from finding out that a postal worker in my area has violent rape fantasies about women on his routs and wants a fic where he breaks into all of their houses and rapes then murders them, including their facebook profiles in the request “for appearance reference” and specific details of how he fantasized about killing these real life women (that one I actually did report to a tip line because real women were being involved) or a man claiming to be a teacher asking for a story about making his female students submit to sex with him for protection during a mass shooting. I knew pedophiles were out there, I was literally an underage fetlife “star” pedophilia is an upsetting concept and a horrible crime but my skin had been thickened by my own experiences being groomed and preyed on by  pedophiles all through my teens on fetlife but hearing these everyday unassuming men having these violent fantasies about women especially women in their lives made me feel like any man who cast his gaze upon me wanted to kill me in some horrible way, like there was no telling who was safe.  I wasn’t afraid of pedophiles, they wanted to hurt kids not me, but these sadistic men made me feel like I couldn’t tell who around me was dangerous.  Finally I never said fatphobia is worse than rape, I said the two can’t be compared because one is a single traumatic instance while the other is more of a slow erosion of your humanity and dignity.  Its the difference between ripping a bandaid off and picking at it, its the same amount of pain just distributed over a different timeline.  U cant quantify pain in such an absolute way, especially emotional pain, and just because something is more traumatizing to UR brain doesnt mean the event itself was more traumatic or that another brain might have stored it differently (For example, I have a very strong PTSD reaction to the cartoon Happy Tree Friends for some fucking reason where I don’t respond with typical PTSD symptoms to talking about my rape.  That doesnt mean Happy Tree Friends is worse than rape, just that my heart starts beating weird and i cant breathe when i see that cartoon but I can talk about my sexual trauma in a very matter of fact way because instead of coping with it I just went numb).  But again we are talking about the literal worst things that have ever happened to me I can’t imagine talking about somebody‘s trauma with such callousness.  Am I even a real human being to you or just disembodied text on a screen to scorn and mock?

[k1ngj0ve]

Playing a game lets call it 'Cinder Sella Phenome', its an otome about people being cursed with 'reverse fairytail' curses. so our main character started out a princess but is turned into a begger

(that is not what cinderella is about but okay)

and the logic in t he game (as well as the opinion ive heard everyone have when talking about it) is that the main character is a villainess, is cruel and evil and that this curse will turn her into a better person and they are happy to see her grow

ive barely started it, im like 2 hours in, on chapter 3

and im full of so much impotent rage

in WHAT way is she a fucking villain?? because shes rude to the father that she consistantly says hates her? the father that recently murdered a fuckton of witches (when we are told that many witches are good)? the father that refuses to hug her after her mom died and left for several months alone afterwards?

this girl whos mother was abusive and controlling to the point that she convinced her everyone wants to kill and hurt her? who never let her leave the castle after she was 4?

because she wouldnt call her stepmon 'mother' even though she only married in a year ago and the mc is 18?

because he wouldnt lie to her stepsister and pretend to have left the castle to hang out with her when actually her father ordered her to do it?

the only proof anyone has that shes evil is that she fired a maid for damaging one of her dolls. wow! so evil! that doll was literally a witch in disguise and the mc is so isolated that she talks to the dolls and refers to them as her only friends!

like 5 characters have told her she needs to smile more because 'good people smile because it makes other people happy'. like literally one of the things that makes her a bad person is that she doesnt smile. that character literally says 'i dont owe people a smile' and they just brushed it off and said she should do ti anyways

like damn sorry this traumatized emotionally abused isolated depressed grieving and terrified girl doesnt smile for you, fucker, i guess that mustve ruined your fuckin day

they keep saying she doesnt have enough faith in people but people are literally constantly plotting in open air about how she should lose her title and her new stepsister should be the corwn princess because shes-- what? prettier? because she smiles more??

the 'good' witch literally ripped her family and name and title from her and dropped her shoeless in the road and everyone in town was nasty to her and wouldnt let her buy food because she looked too poor. she got chased down and injured so badly she was unconcious for days. couldnt eat even though she had money, couldnt walk because the witch took her shoes. after shes injured the witch puts her up in her hotel for cursed people and says 'you can stay here but you have to work to earn your keep' and threatens to throw her in the street again (specifying 'without shoes') in order to make her work. then enchants a broom to force her to clean whenever there is dirt on the floor.. of a MEDEVIL TAVERN.

shes been there for MONTHS at this point but people still refuse to tell her why everyone hates her so much, even though other people in the curse house have shown themselves ready to beat her the fuck up for NO REASON. she says 'i have only left the castle twice in my entire life, i dont know why they hate me'

absolutely sickening <3

and then it turns out i cant even romance the 2 male leads that were nice to me (though they BOTH said i should smile more....) until i romance 2 of the shitty assholes.

wild writing

people keep trigger warning this game because you have the OPTION to romance your step brother (again, they only married into the family 1 year ago its not a big deal and also he wants me dead and is purposely refusing to help me get my family back so there is no familiar feelings there) but no one is trigger warning the insane abuse from the mother or the way the entire game is 'you deserve all the pain and wounds and mocking and punishment you get because you arent a warm enough person after your mother manipulated you'

tw 'you CAN date your stepbrother' no tw for 'physical mental financial emotional abuse from parental figures AND the LIs AND the 'good witch' of the story'

#long post #she is not making money working 12 hour days in this tavern and working her hands until they bleed #and has repeatedly said that she doesnt knwo how she will have time to try to break this curse when she workss constantly #they specifically chose the cleaning job for her because they thought a princess sweeping floors was funny #maam you are 100% earning more money for them with the waitressing and errands and cleaning than room and board costs #this is just a slave labour racket. they curse people and take all their resources and then force them to work for fear of death #it also doesnt make sense lorewise so im forced to assume they are lying #this girl specified 'when my father saw me as a homeless stranger he looked at me more kindly than he ever did in my life as his daughter' #like DAMN then shes not IMAGINING it #you cant fucking tell me she sucks because shes not nice enough to her dad when it says THAT #this game does not give the impression of having a twist where the witch turns out to be evil later on #so this seems fully earnest and heinous #luckily it was free though #i am forced to keep playing because i need to see the MC be happy at the ending #otherwise i wont have closure

[greekromann]

konoe is objectively like a pretty shit person and his plan of "use ai to control everything" is, of course, terrible, but among his many crimes, "killed his own father in self-defense because said father was Literally Going To Kill Him" is. Not one of them. and the game trying to paint that action as "pure evil" is uhhh Not It Team

#like. wgsjgxd hes done a lot of objectively evil things! kill that researcher! turn hundreds into puppets with no control of their lives! #plan world domination! like cmon game #it would kind of be another thing if the game implied that the issue was blaming the murder on an innocent person #bc obv thats Not Great #but it doesnt even do that its like ''i killed my (abusive and murderous) father (as he was literally trying to kill me) and that was evil'' #idk it just puts a bad taste in my mouth like. not to say i expected anything else from an atlus-associated game BUT #:/ #p5 #persona #p5s spoilers

[spookys-diary]

Some of my hp unpopular opinions:

- this one isnt really unpopular (or I hope its not) but remus lupin gets the short end of the stick Constantly (specifically in his relation to harry but also just in general considering hes a werewolf and all). Like imagine teaching the kid of your dead best friend and 1. he doesnt even recognize you (although harry is stupid so...) and 2. even after he figures out that you knew his dad he doesnt even try to have a close relationship with you like he did with sirius. I get that he was harrys teacher and its a little weird to suddenly have a close relationship with him but also hes one of the only last living people who was friends with your dad and he isnt an insane fugitive. Like it sometimes feels like the only reason harry isnt as close with remus is because he isnt harrys god father like... c'mon.

- percy weasley isnt that bad of a person. like yes hes a dick and shouldnt have been on the side of the ministry but also his family constantly bullied him, not just fred and george but everyone in that family was mean to him and disrespected his work, something that he was insanely passionate about. and its shown that he holds a lot of value and pride in the ministry this shouldnt really have been as big of a surprise to the family, and everyone is susceptible to propaganda especially when they put so much value in the ministry.

- the books were written somewhat badly. like theyre great and i love them but i feel like jkr ruined a lot of things that could have been really cool. also the overuse of adverbs. like i understand using adverbs to a point and i dont agree with some people saying that you shouldnt use adverbs at all but when its after every single line of dialogue it gets too much after a while. also the plot conveniences! the most famous example probably being the time turner where they just use it and it never comes up again, but i also feel like there is a lot of things that could have been used less like polyjuice potion. in the second book polyjuice potion was like super hard to make and in the restricted books section and then they go on to use it so many other times. i guess they do have a whole potions master in the order so it would make sense that they have a store of it but it just feels like a copout most of the time.

- i dont think sirius should get so much hate for acting impulsively in the books. my man was locked up for twelve years, and not in any normal prison, no, in one where the guards literally suck away all your happiness, after he got framed for ratting out his best friend to voldemort, getting them killed, by one of his other best friends. and then when he finally got out he had to go on the run fully knowing that the murderer of his best friend is still on the loose, and starving because he was on the run. and then when he finally had a place to go after all of that it was the home of his family who abused him! and on top of that snape is constantly making fun of him for being stuck inside and not being able to do anything. and then he heard that his best friends son is in danger and cant help himself from going to save him. and somehow people hate sirius for being impulsive. (also the people who defend snape and attack sirius by saying he only sees harry as his father need to shut up because like what do you think snape does..? im not saying either of those things are right just get a different thing to hate him for. also this isnt @ people who criticize that with both parties just the people who think snape can do no wrong and then hate on other characters for doing the same things snape does)

- i dont think in the first book when dumbledore gave the win to gryffindor instead of slytherin was all that terrible. although definitely shouldnt have made it seem like the slytherins had won and then rip that away from them but the points he gave them were completely justified like its not everyday that you defeat the most powerful wizard in the world when you are 11 (even if he was less than a ghost). plus everyone knew that something happened they just didnt know what so its not like it was all that random for the other students either. was it still unfair to the slytherins? yes. was it as bad as people make it out to be? i dont think so (but i do understand if you disagree)

- (again probably not all that unpopular but) there was a serious lack of good slytherins. i think the best we got was regulus and even then he still became a death eater (largely because he was forced into it and then once he realized that the death eaters were horrible he sabotaged voldemort and sacrificed himself to protect his house elf and the wizarding world at large) + we didnt even meet him and only know about him through letters or something (cant remember exactly how we learned about him). you also have slughorn but he "collected" people which is very weird and he only cared about his students when he thought they would become powerful and help him in some way. then theres draco who barley if at all got a redemption arc, and again became a death eater (although again largely by force). then some people try to claim snape but hes just not. anyway being ambitious and cunning are not bad things and doesnt mean you are selfish or only care about stuff when it personally benefits you.

- idc why everyone is so against cho chang. like oh no shes crying after her boyfriend got murdered by a fascist *shocked face* like i agree that harry and cho should not have even tried dating after that but its clear that they both liked each other before and i feel like cho wanted to relate to harry with the murder (which is probably not the best way to deal with that but therapy in the wizarding world seems to be severely lacking)

- i like kreacher way more than dobby. kreachers vibes are just more immaculate. also is it bad if i say dobby kinda annoys me.

#harry potter #hermione granger #ron weasley #albus dumbledore #fred and george #fred weasley #ginny weasley #wizarding world #harry james potter #george weasley #lily evans #sirius #james & peter & remus & sirius #sirius black #unpopular opinion #harry potter unpopular opinion #regulus deserved better #regulus black #horace slughorn #professor slughorn #snape slander #dobbyharrypotter #dobby the house elf #kreacher

[gerrydelano]

i wish i had a character like daisy who was not daisy. does that make any sense at all??? just a character who has always been around something like the hunt in some way and who has been shaped by it and who embraced it but also through something that puts her on the other end of that kind of experience decides to try and escape only to ultimately return but in a way that can try to help someone instead of hurting for the sake of hurting. because i just. thats a compelling journey. but see it doesnt WORK to look at daisy like that bc it isnt her!! it isnt how she fits in the story and it doesnt do justice to what she was (that being. cop and murderer.) or any of what her context is. but see its like that journey at least kind of has details pulled right from her story!! but it doesnt fit to try and read her in that kind of "perhaps getting better" light!! idk. this might be a nonsense message but i just want to know ur thoughts on like. the idea of some character that is daisy but not daisy. or even other "x-but-not-x" ideas you may have, actually, i rly like ur character thoughts for everything

hi! first of all, thank you for this, i had fun answering it! it’s not a nonsense message at all, don’t worry. you make sense & i’m right there with you. it’s nice to get the chance to talk about the more obscure stuff especially, which! is exactly what i have for you today.

when you sent this last night, i kicked it around my server (as per Often) and honestly they came up with a pretty rad solution: julia! 

under a cut! you know the drill.

we don’t get a whole lot of her story between what happened with her father, how she met trevor, and then what she ended up doing to gerry & the institute and frankly even with that end result, you could totally explore how much of that was really her versus how much came From years of involvement with the hunt. 

she’s got a lot of actually genuinely sympathetic backstory that may never serve as an excuse for where she ended up, but certainly explains a Big Chunk Of It, and it’s inherently just a lot more compelling than most of daisy’s deal just right off the bat while still giving that kind of potential trajectory. if anything, her getting so lost to it is tragic on its own.

max @femmedionysus said: 

still easier to imagine a redemption/healing/etc arc for her than for daisy just by virtue of like. Julia didn’t have the same institutional power to abuse for her shit that daisy did.

Julia as a character feels more like someone who definitely did bad things and caused real harm, but there is an element of like...I won’t say her heart was in the right place or make excuses for it or anything, but I do think her backstory explains how she got started on that trajectory without excusing the harm she caused. her mom got eaten by a monster, and her dad was caught up in that shit and she ended up losing him too, and there’s something very tragic about her becoming a monster while trying to hunt down monsters.

versus, y’know. Alice Daisy Tonner Is A Cop And A Bastard

and jaya @tolbyccian summed it up REALLY perfectly with: 

it’s just a lot easier to have understanding for how a haunted orphan and a homeless man would end up skewed this way than it is to feel bad for the lady who saw cruelty younger than she should have and decided her answer was to become a cop and add to the worlds cruelty under any capacity

and i couldn’t agree more, yeah.

aster @ofdreamsanddoodles​​ also pointed out that:

julia was a security guard, but it was a job she took specifically bc she was being encouraged to confront her fear of the dark & like... kind of ended up immediately leaving that position bc it Killed her. she never went to the position to hurt ppl, but as a way of trying to strengthen herself, and when she found out she couldnt do that, she left

one more bit from jaya in response:

yaaa and much like basira, she acknowledged that it wasn’t a structure designed to protect ultimately, she had to eventually confront that the same system encouraged what happened to her father, if I remember her first statement right

and, yeah. robert lied to her everytime she came to visit because he didn’t want her to know how badly he was being hurt by the guards. that’s something she didn’t know when she was 18 and just started visiting him. also honestly working nighttime security in an office building is, like. not quite in the same ballpark as active state-sanctioned violence. she listened to podcasts in the dark. dkjfdnj.

some people do go into those jobs without an understanding or consideration of the bigger picture (cough dark influence in her case cough.) that doesn’t mean sympathize with the decision or ignorance! it isn’t an excuse. it just means the next thing to do is judge by what they choose to do once it clicks: stick with it and get worse, or leave and oppose it. julia left!

the other thing about julia, is like... she lived her entire life under the stain of her father’s shadow and his name and his history. no matter how much he loved her and she loved him, no matter how much he had been cornered into it and how he only did what he did to protect her, no matter how he tried to rebel against the people who put him in that position in the first place, no matter how much she might have learned about him later that made it all make sense — it ruined her life. it torched her chances of sincere individuality because people would never see her as anything but the daughter of robert montauk. the assumptions people made, the way they would look at her, the complete lack of privacy.

aster also pointed out: 

while daisy was busy planting evidence and placing blame on her victims by going like "oh, this guy had prior offenses, he was doing this... obviously he attacked me" julia was like. dealing w the reprocussions of the ways society views felons & the ppl adjacent to them. basically daisy was the kinda person who made julias life a living hell.

it’s no fucking wonder she withdrew and lashed out! this isn’t even a case of that shitty trope where “abused person becomes an abuser” like! she was isolated from people from the start and not for lack of trying, she DID try. and she still thought that what she ended up doing with trevor was “the right thing” in her own twisted way, because what example of “the right thing” was she ever given in the first place? her father? all that love between them or not, he still secured her fate either directly or indirectly, and if there are times she resents him for that, it makes sense. we can love and resent someone at the same time.

and the amount of conflict that this girl was put through, the violence and abandonment and loss and people putting words in her mouth and actions in her hands before she even went and did it herself? no wonder she eventually went “fine. if that’s what you want from me, fine.”

i think what julia and trevor did to gerry in particular was cruel and unforgivable the way that gertrude putting him in the book to begin with was, but at the end of the day, comparing them to their counterparts? you can better understand how they got to this point, you can even offer them potential routes to changing their tune in the right circumstance that WOULDN’T come off as copaganda and woobification of an inherently oppressive institution, and also like.

someone who did something fucking terrible like that eventually changing doesn’t mean the people they hurt have to forgive them, or be present for that change? sometimes you just plain Fuck Up Bigtime and have to live with that and just move on. what they did was wretched and still they have a better shot than daisy.

even basira does! basira STILL has a better shot than daisy in this sense when it comes to “leaned into this thing, hurt people and did wrong, made a change but still struggles with undoing the thought process learned through the time spent doing something so harmful.”

jaya also said:

it’s in the same grounds that for as fucked up as basira is it’s easier to respect that she tried to quit as soon as she realized the system she was in did more harm than good, and had a penchant for bigotry specifically, she just stayed too susceptible to the habits she’d picked up and took a little too long to call herself out for it, than Daisy who effectively only experienced remorse the moment the fear she caused people was turned on her, and then still never stopped idealizing the habits she’d lived so long

to which ren said: “and lord knows understanding that youre the Sole Tether To Humanity for this serial killer would corner you Just A Touch”

so, jaya responded: 

that is a pretty big part of it with basira, yeah. like... she knows she’s a shield between Daisy and the others whether she wants to be or not but the thing about abusive codependency is that that sort of dynamic will still inflict you with a sense of importance and value even if it’s a terrible place to be, and when you’re out of your career, taken hostage, and handling the weight of several lives depending on you sticking with this person? s3 basira especially makes a world of sense, and s4 basira sucking as a result of basically losing her last tether of value, it makes sense that she overcompensated so desperately. shits bad for her and its all policy mentality’s fault lmfao

all of this IS worth exploring. you can and should still say ACAB because it doesn’t change the underlying issue but if you’re juxtaposing between daisy and anyone else, there’s still. so much more depth and conflict and Being Genuinely Cornered applied to basira’s story than there really was for daisy.

basira is sort of like elias and gertrude in the written sense where, like. they’re all absolutely FASCINATING, have extremely tight characterization, cohesive storylines, understandable (even if not relatable) sources of thought process and expressions of values, Genuinely So Fucking Cool As Characters Within The Narrative — without ever needing to say they’re good people.

you don’t need to try and argue that someone’s a good person to justify enjoying how they’re written! just like you don’t need to scramble to pretend you hate them more than you do because you think you’ll get in trouble for thinking their place in the story at large is useful and interesting. 

there’s honestly plenty to like about basira as a person, too, without for a second validating the terrible shit she let go on and excused, etc. even daisy is really interestingly written for what she is intended to be. she’s cool as a character because she is Fucking Awful and realistically represents a lot of real life shit we recognize. it’s when we try to soften that that it becomes Fucking Weird and it demonstrates a Loss Of The Point. a lot of people fall for it! unfall for it.

daisy and elias are, like... the ones that exploring the inner workings of in fic to try and apply sympathetic nuance is not actually super useful because they’re operating from a particular position that? like? they’re MEANT to Represent privilege and abuse of power.

basira is a bit closer to gertrude in the sense that they both have done fucking awful shit and by all accounts are not good people, but the complexities afforded to them within the narrative already open up doors for exploration without demanding that you make them gentle or secretly benevolent.

and then there’s julia who, again, is my actual first choice for “i wish we had a character like this” and, like. i don’t spend a lot of time thinking about her! but i won’t deny she’s interesting and has so much potential for this kind of story if it’s what you want to tell. i love robert montauk please. he was my first one-off favorite, julia’s first statement was the first one to Get Me and Stick with me, just like the statement from phillip brown talking about how they brutalized him in prison is still my least favorite because it makes me fucking sick.

what happened to this family was devastating! and i’d be way more interested in seeing exploration of THAT and of julia’s aftermath and how she might or might not come back from what she became, than anything to do with daisy anymore.

and consider this bizarrely tragic sidenote because i am who i am:

julia and gerry? could have actually Gotten Each Other a lot more than most anybody might have, frankly, and the really painful of what happened there is that the circumstance by which they even came upon each other had been so brutal on both sides that they were no longer the sort of people who could ever connect, and it just made them both worse. it put gerry in his own personal hell which really continuously sapped Who He Was when he was alive, and the more julia kept up with keeping him there, the worse she got sucked into what made her amenable to doing it in the first place, which led directly to her going too far and not being able to come back from it.

talk about a missed connection! there’s plenty to be said about him probably finding her annoying but that really does depend on WHEN they met, in some other world. if it was before she got too sucked into the hunt, who knows! maybe there’d have been a chance. and we’ll never know, because she was someone else when he was no one and it hurt absolutely everyone involved.

ANYWAY! honestly the first response to your message in the server was “i wholeheartedly encourage anon to make a hunt OC” which i ALSO agree with! you clearly have an attachment to this part of the story and i think you’d have a lot of fun making your own wholesale, so i hope you already have one honestly! making OCs for this is so much fun and it definitely allows us to explore different facets of the entities we don’t see in canon but wish we did.

#ronologues #julia #basira #anon #asks

[bluebeetle]

what IS the worst character assassination youve ever seen? i can think of some guesses but its a long list

its a VERY long list....

1) the time cassandra was evil and could also suddenly speak perfectly when she was previously struggling. it makes no sense. so much of her character was built on doing the right thing and not wanting to kill. it was so fucking stupid and im glad its long forgotten

2) whatever the fuck jason was doing in battle for the cowl and batman and robin 2009. some of it was ok in the latter but the former... he just went full evil villain without any of the nuance he had before. also red head jason my detested

3) wanda wanda wanda wanda. she gets this so many times. her in trial of magneto where shes calling erik daddy and stuff despite not knowing that man was her dad until she was a married adult woman.

avengers disassembled where she went ~~~crazy~~~ and killed a bunch of people.

house of m with the no more mutants thing. just yikes yikes yikes. they tried to fix it later by saying she was influence by dark magic and stuff and doctor doom played a role but then that got ignored.

she's still blamed for house of m by the xmen and other mutants even NOW where they all hate her still despite it that story literally being 15 years old

4) any time bruce is abusive and hits his kids. what the fuck. bonus points to all star batman and robin for being so bad at that, its acgtually kinda funny. he made dick eat RATS in a CAVE the DAY HIS PARENTS DIED IN FRONT OF HIM after calling him the r slur

5) damian almost being turned evil after teen titans 2016 and stuff; it got fixed thank god but hes been written like he has to redeem himself for it and that racist writing ugh

6) speaking of: talia going from a loving, caring person who hadnt even killed until she met bruce and did it in self defense, who sacrified her own happiness to make sure her child was safe and away from her father, who had morals and loved bruce to a scornful woman assassin who kills people indiscriminately, abuses her child, rapes the man she claims to love, and continues to meddle with his "real" love because shes jealous, and then clones her own son and gets that clone to murder her 11 year old, also has sex with bruce's 18 yr old son who she was taking care of.

yikes

7) trickster in countdown. why is he suddenly homophobic. he and pied piper have known each other for years, theyre both old silver age flash villains. pied piper was not quiet about being gay even back in the 90s. he interacted with trickster multiple times during that flash run prior to countdown. why does trickster suddenly make homophobic jokes. answer me dan didio. ANSWER ME

8) catch all for any bad live action versions. like. everything about mcu hawkeye is a crime agaisnt hawkeye. i mean other mcu characters suck but i feel bad for him bc he usually doesnt get that treatment. jason in titans. the mcu maximoffs. stripping loki of being nonbinary and bi.

9) why did wally become a mass murdered in heroes in crisis and then try to cover it up. i know it wasnt murdering on purpose ig but also it was just a bad storyline ugh.

10) akihiro being stripped of all personality to be the slutty bi guy in x-factor. die.

anyways notice how half of these are characters of colour? yeah tip of the iceberg lol. anyways....

#txt #marvel #dc

[zenosanalytic]

Harrow the Ninth: Blood and Guts; With Feeling!!!

While I’m sure the physical trauma, gore, intentional autophagia, unintentional cannibalism, and necrophilia in the book will be what turns mainstream heads, what really grabbed me about Harrow the Ninth was its unabashed and sincere humanity.

Every character in Harrow the Ninth gets to be a full human being. The best example to my mind is Crux: a gruesome cadaver 2 parts loyalty, 3 parts shouting, and 5 parts sheer bloody-minded cussedness; who blew up a long-grieving, broken family(and their completely innocent pilot) for the “crime” of leaving the place that murdered their husband and father and broke them; who insulted, beat, and tortured Gideon her WHOLE DAMN LIFE. And, also, the major, if not only, source of kindness and sympathy in Harrow’s own.

CRUX!!! Kind uncle Crux sneaking her sweets once a year and whenever she gets sick? Reliable retainer Crux always honest with her about her hallucinations and never judging or dismissing her for them; doing EVERY BIT of what little he can to help and protect her? Soft-voiced and kind Crux being the only member of the household who DOESNT abandon her in the Nova AU? THIS IS HOW HARROW SEES CRUX! The guy who casually kicked and spit on Gideon, who treated her as less than trash and never showed her even the shadow of an ounce of kindness is, in Harrow’s mind, the kindest person in her life. That is Fucking Wild.

Everyone is allowed to be 3D in this book, even when Harrow and Gideon disdain them. Ortus -a too-big blubbering joke in Gideon the Ninth, and Gideon and Harrow’s minds both- doesn’t JUST get to be brave, to be selfless, to confront and face up to and SURMOUNT his mistakes and flaws and then ride off glorious and stupid into Valhalla, he gets something so much more important; to speak for himself. To be Known. Understood. Through Harrow’s petty sniping we get to see the love and care he has for his shitty poetry; through her defensively projected self-loathing his regret, his sympathy, the breadth of his Heart, the loyalty to Harrow which lets him be insulted and also the stubborn pride which insists those insults not go unanswered. I’m tearing up just writing this! We get to see, in his meeting Protesilaus, him struggle with the very image of EVERYTHING he wants to be but isn’t, AND we get to see him resolve that displaced self-hatred to BOTH men -who he is, and who he isn’t- and befriend them both, and realize that the physical distance between them is superficial before the siblinghood of souls, and even more: that the conceptual distance between his ideal and his reality doesn’t have to prevent him from being good. He’s still a side character but he gets an arc, development, a story, and resolution, and HE gets to give its summation. And he’s allowed to be Heroic in his own way! HIS words summon his Hero from The River to speak HIS meter while fighting to save them all powered by THEIR shared belief in HIS Art, and then a heaven of his own defining. What other book does that for a JOKE character?!

And again: this is everybody. Yes of course the souls Harrow unknowingly called up, all those too-soon dead from Gideon the Ninth; We get to see Abigail and Magnus’s love for one another -and the dreadful teens, and their universal big-heartedness- up close, and the refutation of(or perhaps counterpoint to) Ianthe’s selfish conception of love gets to come from Magnus’s lips(oh: and Abigail SAVES THE FLIPPIN DAY! Harrow gets to know her and, through this, we get to know the true tragic waste of her death at the same time that we get to watch her MAKE her own meaning from beyond the grave); we get to see Protesilaus’s bravery and grace and kindness; Dulcinea’s indefatigability and cleverness and morbidity; Marta’s selflessness and unshakeable faith in Judith; we get to see ALL OF THEM run literally soul-risking cosmic dangers to shepherd one grieving, suffering, traumatized young woman -their jailer!- not only THROUGH that grief, but also through spiritual invasion by the product of their society’s sins: Of COURSE that was Noble as Fuck and I was Sobbing.

but EVERYBODY! John, for all his exTREMELY fucked up morality and inability to understand her, GENUINELY cares for Harrow, GENUINELY tries to see the best in everyone(even if, I suspect, that’s for mostly selfish reasons), and we get to see the sincerity of that; his care, and the self-recrimination his missteps bring despite that unyielding, bullheaded, self-warping insistence to continue on one Faustian course after another. The Lyctors in all their twisted, ancient cruelty: we get to see their surviving virtues beside their ENORMOUS, demented, murderous flaws -Augustine’s cleverness, wit and charm; Mercymorn’s outrage at endangering the young; Gideon’s faithful dutifulness; the endless love and sorrow all of them have for their Cavaliers- in the context of the fear and strain and loneliness the Emperor has forced them to endure for ten thousand years. We get to see the true grief and betrayal, fresh and bloody even now, they feel at John’s lies and manipulations, the relief they feel at thinking it all finally over, and even some small glimpses of the love they’ve managed to carve out for themselves in all of that: Gideon’s necrophilic makeout with Cytherea’s corpse takes on a whole different meaning when you learn that the first soul he’s truly loved since Pyrra is driving it around. And this too is significant; for all the discomfort it brings Harrow, and the general gross-out factor, and despite their villainy, the Kindly Prince and his Lyctors, the “Adults in the Room”, are allowed to have desires; allowed to be full and sexual people.

And the same sentiment extends to how Ianthe is written. As much as she is Harrow’s tormentor(and she is); as much as she is a ghastly, gaslighting manipulator(and she absolutely is); we also clearly see that she is Harrow’s fellow prisoner and victim on that station. Her terror is real; her suffering is allowed to be real. As much as they would Harrow, the Lyctors would as soon kill Ianthe as help her, and the Emperor not only allows that mindset but orders it thinking it helpful; just so long as his deniability remains plausible throughout. She gets to be Harrow’s safest harbor in a sea of troubles while ALSO being the person fucking with her perceptions to build in her feelings of helplessness and dependency for the SOLE PURPOSE of getting in her pants. Yet Gideon herself names her joy at seeing Harrow alive Genuine; her love for Harrow, Genuine; as twisted and awful-made by the cruel ideals instilled by her life of entitlement and emotional abuse they are, those feelings are still allowed to be real and heart-felt. Her attraction to Harrow, expressed cruelly and selfishly as it is, isn’t dismissed; Muir treats it always seriously, as she does Harrow’s own desires, and repressed confusion over them, for Ianthe. Everybody in this book gets to be REAL.

Fuck even Alecto. Over and over again we get to hear the Lyctors call her a Freak, a Monster, Subhuman(and given her eyes, those white-on-black oddities, it’s very likely she ISNT human; either a Planet-Soul herself or something even stranger); we get to hear from John’s own lips -the person SHE guarded; HER Necromancer in a pairing we have seen presented as the epitome of intimacy through two books- how he betrayed and “killed” her to calm their fears of her; and yet all the while there she is with Harrow, comforting, advising, never shaming or judging, being the only real friend Harrow’s allowed herself to be aware of.

Harrow the Ninth may very well be “Genre” Fiction, but its emotional universal is not only meticulously naturalistic, it is radiantly understanding and humane.

#Tamsyn Muir #Harrow the Ninth #Harrow the Ninth Spoilers #The Locked Tomb Series #HtN Analysis #zA Reads #analytic posts

[leonardalphachurch]

ask game: simmons and/or delta

oh i only saw the preview for this and did simmons. delta coming soon i guess

late af but this was actually really fun i don’t think about simmons enough

Why I like them as an insane person i can say this: simmons is fucking insane. he simultaneously thinks he's the greatest person fucking ever in existence and literally the lowest of the low. he wants nothing more than to be the best subservient underling ever and to murder his boss to take over and run everything. if he doesnt have a rigid structure he loses his mind but he literally only chooses to be in the most chaotic situations possible. he would kill without a second thought but havea moral crisis over drinking milk out of the carton. hes gay and hes homophobic. whats not to love. hes maybe the literally the funniest sleeper character.

Why I don’t too relateable LMAO. also not a fan of the like, weird nerd misogyny hes got going on. imagine if chorus like actually had him learn to respect his team instead of just jokes about him being afraid of them.

Favorite episode we’re so fucking bad at this please. maybe the one were he makes wash his dad. that was so funny.

Favorite season SEASON 4 he was so good in season 4. simmons has LITERALLY no loyalty and we stan him for that.

Favorite line i feel like simmons doesnt really have a lot of good one liners? he usually plays straight man and his comedy is more situational. but like we also have shit trash memory so. uh his eulogy for sarge was funny. WAIT NO its when he says that he can- here let me pull it up

Simmons: If you want me to multiply two big numbers in my head, that I can do. [...]

Grif: What's thirty-two times fifty-six

Simmons: Thirty-one thousand, four hundred fifty-two.

Sarge: Is that right?

Simmons: Yes.

Sarge: That's pretty impressive.

Simmons: Eh, you know, it's a gift.

the answer is 1,792. he says it with so much confidence. he’s off by thirty thousand. grif and sarge just believe him. PERFECT encapsulation of simmons' character.

Favorite outfit halo 3's maroon that was like, a little magenta? so fucking good

out of armor outfit he'd wear a button up 24/7. this exact fucking shirt

simmons this you???

OTP is there even a question that its grimmons. hello

Brotp simmons and church are good together. literally the only way i can think to describe them is like. platonic kismeses. they argue about technology and star trek. they made out once when they were drunk and neither of them talk about it.

Head Canon

-hes trans and gay. thats basically canon

-hes got ocpd (and a billion other anxieties)

-hes a software guy not a hardware guy which means he has no fucking idea how to take care of his cyborg parts

-hes really into weaponry (as all good reds are)

Unpopular opinion i dont think simmons’ dad was incredibly evil i think he was just like a normal abusive father. he just doesnt seem like his backstory should get to be that interesting

A wish make grimmons canon stop fucking queerbaiting oh my god

An oh-god-please-dont-ever-happen he isnt straight. dont make him straight

5 words to best describe them

anxiety, math, contradictory, kissass, spreadsheet

My nickname for them cinnamon

#okay i try to avoid bringing fictive stuff into these since they come out better if i talk about this stuff as a fan of fictional characters #instead of as some guys i used to know BUT. as a church fictive. it was hard not to say ‘nothing suck it red’ for the first question #ask game #asks #anonymous #simmons #also how do i fix the formatting of the block quote. fuck tumblr mobile.