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moonstruckme · 3 days

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I know nothing about spencer actually, since I never watch his series. But I read on one of your fics that spencer is germphobia?

Could I request one where spencer gets home after a case for a week and found reader sick in the bathroom?, and she's kinda locked herself since she knows spencer germphobia?

You know that kind of fever where you sweat and throw up nonstop

It's been so long after you write spencer. I miss your spencer a lottttttt TnT

Thank you for requesting! I’m not totally sure if Spencer is canonically confirmed germophobic but he’s definitely sensitive to germs, so we’ll roll with that :)

cw: nausea, vomiting

Spencer Reid x fem!reader ♡ 832 words

You’re not at your best, shaky and sweaty, but when you hear the front door open you move quick as a flash.

“Hello?” Spencer’s call echoes through the apartment.

“Hi,” you say back, quieter than you intend. Still, he finds you easily, and you’re glad you reacted fast when the handle on the bathroom door jiggles. “What are you doing here?”

Spencer’s taken to staying at your place, but when he’d called you from the jet to tell you his case was over you’d said to go back to his apartment. With what he knows about how sick you’ve been the last couple of days, you thought he’d listen.

“You shouldn’t be by yourself,” he answers simply. He doesn’t try the handle again, but his voice sounds just on the other side of the door. “Are you okay?”

“I’ve been better,” you admit, breathing through another wave of nausea, “but I’ll be fine. You should go home.”

“I am home. Open the door.”

“Spence,” you sigh. The tips of your fingers are cool against your temples, and you press them in to quell the uneasy feeling that comes with having your brain so muddled. “You don’t want to come in here.”

“Why can’t I decide that?” There’s an odd scraping sound on the other side of the door.

“Because you’re too nice. I know how you feel about germs.” The mutinous acid vat of your stomach revolts again, and you cough a couple of times, swallowing forcefully.

“I’m just as likely to get sick from pressing an elevator button,” Spencer insists gently. “Seriously, let me in.”

“Go home,” you plead.

“I’m coming in.”

You sigh, bending to lean your head against the cool porcelain of your tub. “What, are you going to kick the door in?” He’s told you about his coworker Morgan doing that, but you don’t think of your scrawny (though you love him for it) boyfriend as capable of such measures.

“Not quite.” Another scraping sound, and you sit up as your bathroom door tips outward. Spencer catches it before it can fall, easing it down onto the floor before stepping over it. He’s taken the whole thing off its hinges.

“Show off,” you say tiredly, too spent to do anything about it as he walks over to you.

“Yeah, well,” Spencer lifts some flyaway baby hairs off your neck, cool knuckles pressing to the hot skin, “I didn’t want to damage your door. You didn’t tell me your fever was this bad.”

“I told you I was sick.”

“I feel like ‘sick’ is more or less ambiguous,” he says, not unkindly. His touch moves to your face, long, slender fingers laying down across your forehead. “How high is it?”

“Dunno.” You swallow thickly. “Haven’t checked. Are you okay?”

“I touched a dead body yesterday; so long as I shower after this I’ll be fine. How have you not checked?”

“I can’t—find—” You cough as bile rises in your throat, bending over the toilet “—the—”

“Okay, it’s okay.” Spencer rubs your back. Your coughing turns into retching. “I got it. I’ll look for the thermometer soon, okay?”

You nod, tears pressing at your eyes as you dry heave. The muscles in your throat and abdomen spasm painfully.

Spencer makes a sorry sound, his hand coasting up and down the ridges of your spine. “You haven’t been eating anything, have you?” It’s not really a question. “We need to get something in your system. You know that ‘starve a fever’ saying is an old wives’ tale, right?”

He sits with you until the fit abates, then stands and leaves the room. You hear cabinet doors opening and shutting, and before long he’s got a wet rag cooling the back of your neck, you’re sipping water out of a straw, and he’s sticking your previously missing thermometer in your ear.

“I’ll probably have to go soon if I want to get to the store before it closes,” he’s saying quietly, free hand settled comfortably north of your knee. You’re trying really hard not to breathe in his face. “It’d be good to have some cheerios or something for you to eat, and something with electrolytes.”

The thermometer beeps, and he pulls it close to read the screen, a frown pursing his pretty lips.

“Are you sure you want to stay?” you ask, though at this point you really want him to as well. “I don’t want to freak you out.”

Spencer sets the thermometer aside. “You’re not freaking me out,” he says, hands gentle as he takes the rag from your neck and folds it onto a new side before putting it back. You almost sigh. “The worst thing that can happen is I get sick, and” —he meets your eyes, mouth tipping upward as he shrugs— “if that happens, it can’t be helped. But if I went back to my apartment, and I was fine there but you were still sick here by yourself, well, what’s the point in that?”

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golden1u5t · 3 days

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back home | e.p x fem!reader

ꨄ requested: anonymous

ꨄ genre: smut

ꨄ summary: you and emily have just gotten back home after a long case, one where you stayed in different hotel rooms and never had the chance to enjoy each other's company aside from the case. luckily you're back home and can enjoy each other as much as you like.

as you and emily finally stepped through the door of your shared apartment, all the exhaustion melted away, instead replaced by a rush of relief to finally be back in the comfort of your home. you made quick work of putting your hardware away safely before you dragged yourself into your bedroom and collapsed onto the bed with an aspirated sigh. emily followed close behind you and leaned against the doorframe, crossing her arms as she watched you bury your face into your blankets.

the feeling of the bed dipping caused you to turn your head, she had laid down on her side beside you and propped herself up on her elbow. the sight of her never failed to make you giddy inside, not being able to really see her all week definitely had a lot to do with that feeling also. really the only times you were able to actually sit down with her was when you were taking a break to eat, all the other times you were purely working.

also, having separate hotel rooms meant that by the time you were finished with the day you were both too tired to even think about going to the others room, only wanting nothing more than to take a shower and pass out on the crappy beds.

“you know, i really don’t appreciate how amazing our apartment is until we have to stay in those hotels.” you groaned, dropping your head back onto the bed. emily let out a soft scoff and lightly shoved your arm before getting off the bed. you turned around and sat up, watching her walk over to the dresser. “what are you doing?”

“i’m gonna go wash up…in our amazing shower.” she looked at you through the mirror that was on the dresser as she picked out her clothes, you immediately perked up when she said that. showering with emily had always been your favorite thing to do since the first time you did it, even if you literally didn’t do anything other than clean yourselves. you stood up and walked up behind her, wrapping your arms around her waist and leaning your head on her shoulder.

“mind if i join you?”

“not at all.”

+++

the shower had started off fairly normal, you both took turns under the water, kept your hands to yourself(mostly), and so on. it was fine until she went to wet her hair, her body had arched back just enough that she could get all of her hair and it gave you a perfect view of her chest. you tried to keep your hands to yourself but the longer you watched her chest rise and fall with each breath she took, the harder it was for you to keep your hands off her.

you contemplated on whether you should have just let her finish washing her hair or if you should give into what you really wanted to do. it only took you a few seconds to decide, honestly. you reached up and placed your hands on her waist, tugging her from under the water and pressing her back against the shower wall. emily hardly had the chance to react before you were crashing your lips into hers.

her breath hitched for a second before she melted into you and wrapped her arms around your neck, pressing herself into your body as your hands roamed over her skin. you couldn’t find a place on her to settle your hands, they moved from her ass to the back of her head, from her chest to her hips, from her hips to back around to her ass. you loved every part of her body and sometimes you wished you had extra arms and hands so you could touch every part of her.

“we can never take a normal shower.” emily breathed out as you tucked your head in the crook of her neck and started to litter kisses across the soft skin of her throat. you only hummed in response to her because to you normal had a vast definition; for some people showering without their partner was normal and for others showering with their partners but never touching each other was normal, but for you and emily, having sex every time you showered together was perfectly normal.

“i know but- fuck, em. i’ve been thinking about this all day.” you huffed out, pulling away from her to look her in her eyes. “you can’t tell me you haven’t been waiting for this very moment either.”

emily ran her fingers through your hair as she tugged you back into a kiss. she couldn’t deny that she had been thinking about doing this all day, honestly, she’d been thinking about it since the first night at the hotel but she had been too tired to do anything about it. finally, you used your knee to push her legs apart and reached down between her thighs. you swiped your fingertips through her soaked folds, groaning at how wet she was, all the way up to her swollen clit.

you pulled away from her and carefully lowered yourself onto your knees, you hooked your hand under her leg and pulled it over your shoulder. emily’s hand went into your hair to hold it back as you looked up at her for permission, to which she simply nodded her head.

she watched you intensely as you leaned forward and closed your mouth around her clit, your fingers gently prodding at her entrance. when you finally slipped a finger inside she let out a soft whimper and tighter her hold on your hair. your thrust were slow for now since you were only trying to get her ready for another finger and when you did add another one, her head tipped back against the shower wall and a drawn out moan slipped from her lips.

as you found yourself falling into a good rhythm, your fingers and tongue working together to push emily over the edge, her hips started to grind down into your. they bucked wildly against your face as you curled your fingers in her pussy and the sound of the water hitting the shower floor was slowly being drowned out by the sound of her moans.

the water from the shower had started to go cold and with it hitting your skin, it had you letting out a small moan. the noise was completely unintentional but the vibrations against emily’s clit was just what she needed, her fingers tightened in your hair as she tugged one last time and her back arching from the shower wall.

you helped her ride out her high before gently pulling your fingers out and standing up, you pushed her hair from her face and placed a quick kiss to her lips. you would’ve stayed in the shower longer just to kiss her but goosebumps were starting to form on your skin from the coolness of the water.

“come on, em, it’s freezing in here.”

#emily prentiss x female reader #emily prentiss #emily prentiss smut #emily prentiss x fem!reader #emily prentiss x reader #emily prentiss x you #emily prentiss x y/n #emily prentiss x fem!reader smut #criminal minds fic #emily prentiss fanfiction #emily prentiss fandom

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deluweil · 1 day

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To be honest the way part of the fandom has treated this Tommy character as a god makes me dislike him more. Unfortunately the Buck bi arc was tainted for me because it all feels force. Also what doesn't help is that Eddie was to much involved in that storyline.

The way people are acting like it's a perfect relationship and yet we barely saw them together feels just weird.

Also I don't like how some literally push Eddie away for this new white man.

This is Taylor Kelly all over again. The sad part is that the season is short and people wAnt to to spend their time giving more to the new guy.

I hope him and Marisol are gone, but I'm afraid. These two characters took the joy out of the Buck and Eddie storyline for me.

The fandom, I think, in this case, is definitely the problem here,

Lou is completely unassuming and enjoying the process and being a buddie shipper just like us - if one actually bothers to read the interviews and not just pick and choose what to talk about.

That is what makes me like Lou.

The fandom has somehow glorified Tommy's character after a couple of episodes and yeah it rubs the wrong way, because, what about the story we had so far?

Is season 7 a reset to 911? and everything that came before that doesn't count? Why not just make it 911 abc pilot then?

I don't think that's the case, but I think the last minute switch between Buck and Eddie kind of ruined it for the Tim because, yes, in a way it feels forced and out of left field.

Supposed that Buck was indeed vying for Tommy's attention, why do it like that? and why involve Eddie in the first place?

I have a lot of questions and my main problem here is not that Buck is experimenting with Tommy, it's the way they practically propelled this ship off the cliff into a dangerous spin, they went from zero to 200 in a second. - That is not how you build a relationship.

You don't try to figure out what you want, mess up the first date, then invite said date to an apology coffee and then invite him to family wedding on the way. It just doesn't work that way.

I may be straight, but I have gay and bi and lesbian friends, neither one of them has ever brought a second or even a third date to so much as a friends get together before they were sure that this is something that would last, before they brought the intended victim to be judged by friends and family.

And people who talk about Tommy as being established in the 118 family, that is not true. He has a connection with Chimney in that that he owes him his life and an acquaintance with Hen, who is clearly not very fond of him, because of obvious past she had with him and their old house before Bobby came into the picture. - Remember - Chimney was her ONLY lifeline in that house.

Tommy was not a liked character before.

Arguably Buck had more history with Taylor than he did with Tommy (which is none at all) - But Taylor is a strong opinionated and often self-serving woman (not unlike Buck mind you), emphasis on woman. - That is the only reason she never stood a chance. Because the writers could have made her and Buck the greatest love story this show has seen, but they continuously managed to ruin any fondness for any female LI to ever grace that set.

And this season is short, to bring in a new LI kinda defeats the purpose of re-establishing the team and this show, because it does feel the same as any of Buck's old relationships that were being pushed for the benefit of 'god forbid Buck actually learns how to be alone and healthy and happy' - the only thing that changed in Buck this season is his sexuality and nothing else, and that vexes me.

My problem is not with Tommy, it's the perpetuation of 'poor baby Buck' society. - I love Oliver and I love Buck - I am tired of the ever repeating pattern of forgiveness for his self serving ways without any accountability that we keep seeing.

I don't think Buck's or even Eddie's firsts or you know what? even seconds should be each other, I am more than happy to make this journey with them, but let it be a marathon not a sprint to the finish line - they knew they would get renewed for another season, they could have written and built it better than what we got - because the moment they switched gears after the second episode, the story became written in the same messy last minute way both S4 and most of S5 were written.

There is no grand plan, at this point they are merely winging it and see where the wind takes them. - And that is idiotic, they had SO MUCH TIME to make this a well written story with the strike and long break after that, to write as they film is lazy and stupid and mostly childish.

And yes this is Taylor all over again, not in that they are the same type of people, but that Buck is jumping head first into a relationship without actually knowing how he got there. - Bobby said that himself - and it is the same, because who in their right mind invite a second (kinda) date to a family event? Like dude have you ever dated before? Do you how this works?

It is a LOT of pressure and not even for Buck himself - because he brought this on himself - but rather for Tommy (aka the intended victim) to be first introduced to the family after a couple of dates when he himself has no idea where he and Buck are standing.

Marisol, has indeed sucked the joy out of the Eddie's story, I don't get why do either of the boys had to be in a relationship starting this season to begin with. Like, she is literally a handbag, the token hetero symbol, so to speak, what she is doing there? is beyond me.

The catholic guilt of her being a nun is bullshit, and as Bobby said himself, Eddie has no problem committing to certain people/things. She serves no purpose this season other than a seat warmer/ glorified babysitter since Buck is otherwise engaged.

They could have gone for Eddie finding his way in the department, Eddie dealing with his mommy issues, Eddie trying to figure out what and who he wants in his life, Eddie trying to navigate Chris' terrible teenage years.

They could have explored the fact that a guy going with his supposed gf/wife in the golf course checking Eddie's hot ass (6X17) - Oh wait, they were going to... the ground for Eddie's coming out was all laid out and they took a sharp turn to left field in the second episode of S7 and made it all about Buck again, because the Natalia actress couldn't come?? what kind of a weak ass reason is that?

And yes, the cliche of receiving the odd white man out (who played a controversial role in early seasons) rather than the regular casted poc male or the guest starring woman, for that matter, better is all kind of f-ed up, but no one would talk about that, of course. 👀

Anyway, I am hoping that whatever is coming next will be worthy of our time and attention because so far we got about more of the same as far as Buck and Eddie are concerned - except that Buck has just broaden his variety and has a bigger pallet of mate choosing at his disposal.

I have two very close bi friends, so I know how their minds work, because God knows they share with me more than I ever wanted to know lol. And one of them is watching 911 with me and she is happy for the rep as well, but unhappy with how it was developed too.

At the moment, I have decided to put any Buck and Eddie topics aside and just want to get the LONG AWAITED Madney wedding, if anyone deserve a happy ending, it's them. ❤️

#911 ask #evan buckley #eddie diaz #tommy kinard #marisol whatever her last name is #buddie #911 spoilers #911 speculation #don't you dare to rb this with an opposing opinion - i don't care that you think tommy farts rainbows out of his ass make your own post #and if you don't like what i write block me so you can save me the trouble of blocking you #not directed to this anon #just a warning to toxic fandom groopies that has done it before - naturally they were blocked #I am entitled to my opinion just like you are entitled to yours #deluweil replies

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evidence-based-activism · 11 hours

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you’re still ignoring WHY the rates for men are so high, because women get underreported and don’t get taken seriously at all when they commit crimes. Women abuse children more and initiate 70% of domestic violence, yet men are still portrayed as the villains. You should read the comments or some of the reblogs under that post. Full of people who have been abused by women and have been safer when around only men,and never been taken seriously. You say it’s a strawman fallacy but no it’s not, radfems say this shit all the timesee. and are very gender essentialist themselves. Maybe you’re not saying it but a lot of popular radfems are, to mostly agreement from other radfems,so you can’t really blame people for seeing that and understanding it to be a popular TERF take.

Hi -

So, I'm going to answer this ask and the one that includes the bustle link that I expect was also sent by you? However, I'm not going to continue putting in this degree of effort (i.e., reading and researching the information you send) unless you start matching that effort. It will be difficult for you to do so in an ask (although I suppose you could try), so I suggest you reblog this post to further discuss.

So, on to the response:

---

No, there is not a significant reporting gap (at least, not one caused by sex).

You said "women get underreported and don’t get taken seriously at all when they commit crimes", but there is no evidence that is the case. Let's take the crime data from two sources: the criminal victimization survey by the BJS [1] and the FBI crime data explorer [2]. These two sources are helpful for this discussion because the BJS attempts to determine total offenses including those not reported, while the FBI only looks at reported offenses.

For 2022 (rounding numbers) and looking at violent offenses (excluding homicide as the BJS report is interview based):

Male violent crime: 4,750,000 estimated by the BJS and 1,990,000 reported by the FBI for an overall 42% reporting rate

Female violent crime: 1,220,000 estimated by the BJS and 777,000 reported by the FBI for an overall 64% reporting rate

These numbers would suggest that more female offenders than male offenders are reported (i.e., a greater percent of female offenders, even though in absolute terms there are far fewer female offenders). However, there are some caveats to this data that makes me reluctant to state this conclusion:

The crime definitions between the BJS and FBI differ slightly. For example, I had to search through the "other crimes" for the FBI to find simple assault and several additional sexual assault categories to try and match the overall BJS "violent crime" statistic.

These stats are incident based not offender based. So, for example, if John commits 10 aggravated assaults and 5 of his victims report the assault to the police, 5 incidents are recorded in the system. Therefore, recidivism may or may not play a role in reporting rates.

I calculated the rate using the offender stats for individual offenders and "both male and female offender". Proportionally speaking a greater percent of female offenders are in the "both" category (23% vs 6%). Other statistics suggest more severe crimes are more likely to be reported to the police (e.g., 50% of aggravated assault is reported vs 37% of simple assault). If we make the assumption that violent crimes involving multiple offenders are more likely to be severe, then this could partially explain the disparity.

However, this point is essentially irrelevant, as the statistics previously discussed in the CDC report don't rely on reported crimes, they specifically interview representative samples in order to determine prevalence rates. (The difference between this data (and data in the BJS report) and the number of reported cases is how we know these crimes are under-reported.)

Just to drive the point home: the BJS study, which again, looks at both reported and unreported crime indicates:

Men take part in 84% of violent crimes and the only offender(s) in 79% of violent crimes (the stats for women are 21% and 17% respectively)

The offender-to-population ratio is 1.6 for men and 0.3 for women. That means the share of men in the "offender population" is 60% more than the share of men in the US population. The share of women offenders is 70% less than their share of the US population.

And before you send me another debunked myth: no men are not victimized more: the victim-to-offender population ratio for all violent crimes is 1.0 for both men and women.

I've also talked about how men don't under-report abuse (at least, not anymore than women do) in the past, so see this post for a couple more sources.

There's also no evidence that crimes committed by women get taken less seriously. However, it is true that when women do commit crimes, they tend to be less severe than the crimes committed by men (i.e., women commit more simple assault and aggravated assault). Given this, women's crimes may be taken "less seriously", but that's because the crimes are less serious, going by the accepted definitions of the crime. (And this is not my personal opinion! There is an actual "crime hierarchy" used in the American justice system that ranks crimes by degree of severity.)

In terms of legal consequences, women and men receive similar sentence lengths with one major caveat [3]. Caretakers of children, especially, young children, routinely received shorter sentences. Since women are more likely to be the primary caretaker of children, they'd be more likely to see this sentence reduction. However, this gap has been closing since the introduction of mandatory minimum sentencing. Some research suggests women may receive harsher sentences than men for "traditionally male crimes" [4].

Either way, crimes by women are clearly taken at least as "seriously" as crimes by men.

---

No women do not abuse children more.

You said "Women abuse children more", but this is an oft-repeated statement from terribly misinterpreted data.

The misconception comes from data from the child maltreatment report from the HHS [5]. This report looks at reports of child abuse and neglect. In it they found that 52% of victims had a female perpetrator and 47% had a male perpetrator. At first glance, this looks like women abuse more children (hence the wide-spread misinterpretation), however this neglects to take several things into consideration.

First, since about 51% of the population is female, even if we considered nothing else, these values would suggest parity in maltreatment (abuse + neglect) rates. Of course, even this interpretation is deeply flawed, but I thought it merited pointing out.

Second, and perhaps most important, these stats are not looking at incidence or even prevalence rates. This isn't a rate at all. For example, you may be tempted to interpret these as "52% of children in a women's care are abused" or "52% of women abuse children". These are, and I must stress this, completely incorrect interpretations. These stats say only that of child maltreatment (abuse+neglect) victims identified by CPS, 52% of them were maltreated by a women.

Next, these stats fail to take into account the fact that many more women are the primary caretaker of children. According to the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), mothers spend 80% more time caring for children than fathers. This disparity widens even further when you exclude the "entertainment" categories like playing or reading to children (130% increase, or more than double) [6]. This matters because it provides some insight into how rates of abuse would be different. You need to adjust for time spent with children to get a meaningful rate. Another way to look at this is that despite mothers spending almost twice the amount of time around children as fathers, they account for the same number of perpetrators. This alone should tell you that a child is more likely to be safe in the company of a randomly selected woman than a randomly selected man.

In case you still aren't convinced however, the report also clarifies that the perpetrator sex varied widely by maltreatment type. Women were the perpetrator in 58.5% of neglect cases (vs 41%) and 70.5% of medical neglect cases (vs 29%). But men were the perpetrator in 49.5% of physical abuse cases (vs 49%), 89% of sexual abuse cases (vs 8%), and 59% of emotional abuse cases (vs 41%). While no form of child maltreatment is ever acceptable, I hope I don't need to explain how abuse (which "requires an action") is different from neglect (which "occurs from an inaction") and requires different responses.

Speaking of neglect: there is much discourse on how much of the neglect (and medical neglect) registered by CPS is "true neglect" and how much is a result of poverty. This is particularly relevant considering single mothers are much more likely to live in poverty than married couples or single fathers. Examples of this may include: a mother doesn't have enough money to buy food and pay for rent so she and her child eat very little until her next paycheck, a single mother can't miss work without being fired so she sends her sick child to school, a single mother can't pay for child care so she has to choose between leaving her child home alone or having an unfit adult (her own abusive parent? an unsuitable boyfriend?) watch her child. In all of these situations, something absolutely needs to be done to help the child, but it likely isn't the same something as a child who's being beaten or sexually abused by his father.

Other notes on neglect: even the relatively higher proportion of female perpetrators for neglect and medical neglect in this sample are well below parity when adjusted for time spent with the child. It’s also likely that men’s rates of neglect are likely severely under-reported here. Why? Because a neglect case is rarely (if ever) opened for absentee ("deadbeat") dads; it's also unclear how many men with non-primary custody are listed as perpetrators of neglect. (I ask you: if mothers are considered neglectful for failing to intervene on behalf of their child in abusive/neglectful situations, why aren't fathers?)

Other studies on child abuse perpetration (sadly no national reports) show:

Evaluations of child fatalities in Missouri over a 8-year period showed men inflicted 71% of fatal injuries on young children [8]

Evaluations of fatal and nonfatal abusive head trauma over a 12-year period at the Children's Hospital of Denver found 69% of the perpetrators were male (including 74% of the perpetrators of fatal head traumas) [9]

Data from conviction rates and victimization surveys suggest that 4-5% of adult, child sex offenders (as in child sex offenders who are adults) are female, meaning that 95-96% are male [10]

Altogether, this indicates that men are more likely to abuse a child in their care than women. Unsurprisingly, it’s safer for children to be around women than around men.

---

No, women do not initiate more domestic violence/commit the same amount of abuse.

You said "women ... initiate 70% of domestic violence". It took me a while to find a source for this statistic, but I eventually found out it comes from a poorly done study that unfortunately finds company with a number of other poorly done studies touted by MRAs and anti-feminists.

Before we address that study specifically: a brief history of the nonsense plaguing domestic violence research.

To be clear, this is not a new discussion, we (the general we) have been having this same discussion about whether there's gender parity in domestic violence for, oh, 50 years or so. It is, possibly not entirely, but certainly mostly the result of the "Conflict Tactics Scale" (CTS). Intended for use in family violence research, it has several methodological flaws which make its results ... let's go with unreliable.

I really thought I'd discussed the CTS before now ... but can't find anything on my blog. But there is this post which is a nice pictograph about this next topic, which I will loop into our discussion of the CTS.

So ... why is the CTS so unreliable? Because "domestic violence" is not a homogeneous phenomenon. If I asked someone to picture an abusive relationship they are almost certainly going to imagine an abusive man controlling his partner through intimidation, likely restricting her behavior, and possibly hitting or otherwise physically harming her. This "typical" dynamic is what we think of when we hear "domestic abuse/violence". (I'd argue that it's what we should think of when discussing domestic violence, but I'm open to being convinced otherwise.)

Notably, what this doesn't include is the -- far more common -- case of situational violence. A "typical" example of situational violence is arguments that "gets out of hand" and end with one partner slapping/shoving/etc. the other (switching between perpetrator for different incidents) or two people who routinely get "nasty" (name calling, personal insults) to each other during arguments. There's no intimidation or controlling behavior and it doesn't escalate. It also is generally not associated with significant victim hardship (i.e., no/little increase in depression, anxiety, or PTSD; little fear or feeling unable to escape the relationship; no or few physical injuries; little or no economic hardship; etc.). It's also what's predominately being measured by the CTS.

This isn't to say that situational violence is "okay". It clearly isn't, no more than a bar fight or slapping a co-worker is okay. It is, however, far more comparable to these examples (bar fight, slapping a coworker, etc.) than it is to the standard conception of domestic violence (which itself is more comparable to being a prisoner of war [11]). Some people have tried to resolve this by renaming the standard conception to "intimate partner terrorism" or "domestic abuse with coercive control". I have ... mixed thoughts on this, so I'm going to leave it at this for now.

If you'd like to read more about this, Michael P. Johnson at PSU (who originally proposed this division back in the 1990s!) has written a book and also has numerous articles about the topic.

I have a lot of sources about the CTS/differences in violence perpetration rates, but this post is already very long and I plan to make a whole separate post about this at some point. So, I'm going to briefly summarize the points and give some references that would be particularly helpful.

So, the issues with CTS include:

Failure to include a full range of possible violent behaviors, including many that are almost always perpetrated by men, including: rape, murder, choking, and suffocation.

Failure to examine post-breakup/divorce time periods, despite post-separation being one of the most dangerous time periods for abused women (but, notably, not men).

Failure to examine context. This gets back at the paradigm I mentioned above: studies that do examine context have shown that the vast majority of coercive controlling violence (i.e., traditional abuse) is perpetrated by men and the vast majority of responsive violence (i.e., self-defense) is perpetrated by women.

Failure to examine the severity of the violence and/or violence impacts. Studies have also shown that women routinely receive the more severe injuries than men. That applies to both the injuries received from coercive controlling violence and from situational violence. Notably, men are rarely ever injured from responsive violence. Women also routinely report more severe psychological and social problems as a result of abuse.

Extremely poor phrasing of the questions. The CTS is unique in its false positive rate, as has been established by several other measures of violence. For example, simply adding the stem "Not including horseplay or joking around..." reduced the number of violent incidents reported and also showed higher rates of female victimization than male victimization.

Inconsistency with every other scale/measure used for determining prevalence rates of abuse! Hopefully it is obvious why this is an issue, but as an example: if I created a new measure for "depressive symptoms" and I found that it correlated very poorly with every other accepted measure of depressive symptoms then my new measure would be considered to have very poor "convergent validity". In non-politicized situations, my measure would likely never make it to the publishing stage, and would certainly fall out of use once this poor validity demonstrated by another study. Unfortunately, science is not immune to politics any more than the people conducting it are, as we can see with the survival of the CTS.

I gathered this information from a bunch of sources, but I've selected a few reviews (i.e., papers that "review" or condense many other papers into one) that would be helpful to you [12-16]. I recommend [12] in particular, although [13] touches on much of the same information and is much shorter. Ultimately, the CTS can, at most, be considered a measure of situational violence (and it's not even very good at that!).

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So, finally, why is the 70% study [17] particularly bad?

All of the above problems with CTS apply, but in addition to all of that, they didn't just use the already flawed measure as it was ... no they, narrowed it down into 6 total questions. In total it asked about the respondent's perpetration of victimization of the following forms of violence: threatening with violence, pushing/shoving, throwing something, slapped, hit, kicked. They then "assessed" severity by asking a single question about injuries ("How often has partner had an injury, such as a sprain, bruise, or cut because of a fight with you?" and the corresponding victimization version.)

So, let's see ... failure to include predominately male forms of violence? Check. Further exclusion of even the existing items on the CTS that do examine this? Check! Failure to examine time past the relationship? Check. Failure to examine context? Check! Failure to examine severity of violence? Check. (Asking about a sprain or a bruise but not hospitalizations? broken bones? concussions?) Inconsistency with all other measures? Definitely!

Other problems with the study: they asked individuals to rate their perpetration and victimization, they did not examine their partners responses to such questions. This is a problem for a study like this, given that men tend to over-estimate their partners violence towards them and under-estimate their own violence towards their partner, and women do the opposite over-estimating their own violence and under-estimating their partners [12]. A note that a related problem has also shown up for the original CTS (i.e., if you asked both partners to complete the scale, their responses may agree on the "explaining a disagreement" item pair, but there was little if any agreement on the severe items like the "beating up" item pair).

To make a bad problem even worse: they condensed their multi-item (8-point) scales into binary (yes/no) categories and 3-item (low/medium/high) categories. This reduction in variance likely created artificially high rates for women and artificially low rates for men.

Hilariously (infuriatingly), they make it all the way through this data and then acknowledge that their study may not actually have examined domestic abuse at all! Instead it describes "common couple violence or situational violence", which, again, goes back to what the paradigm I introduced earlier. Of course, they don't revise their title or abstract to be less misleading ... that wouldn't be sensational enough.

Also, just to point this out: even this poorly designed, misleading study still showed "men were more likely to inflict an injury on a partner than ... women". So ... there you go. Even tipping the scales/design as far in favor of a "gender symmetry" result as they can possibly go, women still end up injured more than men.

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So, for the rest of your ask:

"yet men are still portrayed as the villains"

well when 1 in 3 men around the world openly admit to abusing women, and they are the perpetrator of 90+% of homicides, and 10-67% of men openly admit to believing non-defensive physical and sexual violence against women is at least sometimes okay it's pretty easy to see why women can see them as the villain/enemy.

"You should read the comments or some of the reblogs under that post. Full of people who have been abused by women and have been safer when around only men,and never been taken seriously."

This is one of those cases where critical thinking skills are pretty important! Let me start you off:

Do I think that a social media post will garner a representative sample from which to draw conclusions? Or is more likely that people who agree with the post will comment on and re-blog it, spreading it more people who are more likely to agree with it?

Can I see the re-blog I'm making comments about (i.e., evidence-based-activism's re-blog?). If not, (hint: it's not in the re-blog viewer :)) is it possible that there are other hidden replies that are disagreeing with this post?

Maybe most importantly: do I need female-on-male or female-on-female violence to be as common as male-on-female and male-on-male violence in order to show compassion to those who do experience it? (Hint: you shouldn't!! Something doesn't need to be common to deserve sympathy and rare =/= excusable.)

In addition, this is touching on a pretty common issue with discourse these days -- the prioritization of "feeling" over "being". Someone (male or female) may feel safer around men, but statistically speaking they are safer around women. It's reasonable to respond to and accommodate people's feelings on an individual basis, it's not reasonable to base an ideology or policy around them.

"You say it’s a strawman fallacy but no it’s not, radfems say this shit all the timesee. ... Maybe you’re not saying it but a lot of popular radfems are, to mostly agreement from other radfems,so you can’t really blame people for seeing that and understanding it to be a popular TERF take."

Similar to the last point ... views on social media are not representative of a population. Views that you, specifically, are seeing are not representative! If they were, then "well, I see more posts preemptively criticizing people for not including men than I see posts excluding men" (which is true, almost every post I read now-a-days includes caveats like "but men are abused too!! and women can be abusers!!") would have been a valid counter-argument to your ask. But see, I know that my experience on social media is not universal, and I should hope you can acknowledge the same of your own!

Also ... to be fair to all these unnamed "radfems", I'm guessing that you would consider my posts (like this response) to be an example of someone "saying this", which is very much not the case. I am acknowledging social trends and making reasonable generalizations to allow for communication about a complex topic (you know, the way people do for any and every topic ever), but I'm not claiming that no women is ever abusive or that no man has ever been abused. I'm guessing that these other posts are pretty similar (if less verbose).

side note, you also said: "radfems ... are very gender essentialist themselves".

Either you don't know what "gender essentialist" means or the people you are talking to/about are not radfems. I acknowledge that there are a number of people going around and saying they're radfems, but the nice thing about a political group like this is they have (at least some) defined beliefs.

So, for example, if someone went around saying they are a communist, but then when asked to describe their desired economic system, describes an economy based around the free market and decentralized production ... then they aren't a communist no matter what they call themselves. A command economy is a central tenant to communism, so much so that a desire to implement one/have one is intrinsic to being a communist.

In the same way, if someone is calling themselves a radfem, but supports the preservation of gender/gender roles or believes that femininity/masculinity is biologically innate ... then they aren't a radfem.

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TL;DR:

Violent crimes for women and men are reported at similar rates.

Women and men are punished similarly for violent crimes (i.e., people do take crimes by women seriously).

Children are safer in the company of women than men. There is insufficient research to accurately describe perpetrator demographics of "minor" child abuse/neglect, but there is significant research indicating that men are the perpetrator of the the vast majority of severe injuries, fatal injuries, and sexual abuse.

Men commit the vast majority controlling domestic violence (the type of violence people think of when thinking about domestic violence); women's violence is predominately responsive. Women are also the recipients of the vast majority of injuries (minor and severe) and are the victim of almost all fatalities.

Social media posts are not representative studies.

Critical thinking skills are important!

And, everyone -- regardless of sex or any other demographic characteristic -- deserves compassion when harmed. It is still appropriate talk about trends and create policies that assist the majority of those harmed.

A reminder that I will expect a reasonable degree of engagement with this information if you plan to engage in further discussion! I'll answer the bustle link ask, but after that I'll simply delete asks that don't make a genuine attempt to think critically about this information. (Clarifying questions are okay to ask though :)).

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References below the cut:

Criminal Victimization, 2022 | Bureau of Justice Statistics. https://bjs.ojp.gov/library/publications/criminal-victimization-2022.

“National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) Details Reported in the United States .” Federal Bureau of Investigation Crime Data Explorer, https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#/pages/explorer/crime/crime-trend.

Myrna S. Raeder Gender and Sentencing: Single Moms, Battered Women, and Other Sex-Based Anomalies in the Gender-Free World of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines, 20 Pepp. L. Rev. Iss. 3 (1993) Available at: https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/plr/vol20/iss3/1

https://web.archive.org/web/20240406064949/https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2019/jan/12/intimate-partner-violence-gender-gap-cyntoia-brown

Child Maltreatment 2022. https://www.acf.hhs.gov/cb/report/child-maltreatment-2022.

“Average Hours per Day Parents Spent Caring for and Helping Household Children as Their Main Activity.” Bureau of Labor Statistics, https://www.bls.gov/charts/american-time-use/activity-by-parent.htm.

Shrider, Emily A., Melissa Kollar, Frances Chen, and Jessica Semega, U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Reports, P60-273, Income and Poverty in the United States: 2020, U.S. Government Publishing Office, Washington, DC, September 2021.

Schnitzer PG, Ewigman BG. Child deaths resulting from inflicted injuries: household risk factors and perpetrator characteristics. Pediatrics. 2005 Nov;116(5):e687-93. doi: 10.1542/peds.2005-0296. PMID: 16263983; PMCID: PMC1360186.

Starling SP, Holden JR, Jenny C. Abusive head trauma: the relationship of perpetrators to their victims. Pediatrics. 1995 Feb;95(2):259-62. PMID: 7838645.

McCartan, K. (Ed.). (2014). Responding to Sexual Offending. Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137358134

Comparison Between Strategies Used on Prisoners of War and Battered Wives | Office of Justice Programs. https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/comparison-between-strategies-used-prisoners-war-and-battered-wives.

Michael S. Kimmel. (2001). Male Victims of Domestic Violence: A Substantive and Methodological Research Review. The Equality Committee of the Department of Education and Science. https://vawnet.org/material/male-victims-domestic-violence-substantive-and-methodological-research-review

Flood, M. (1999, July 10). Claims About Husband Battering [Contribution to Newspaper, Magazine or Website]. Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Centre Newsletter; Domestic Violence and Incest Resource Centre. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/215068/

Walter DeKeseredy & Martin Schwartz. (1998). Measuring the Extent of Woman Abuse in Intimate Heterosexual Relationships: A Critique of the Conflict Tactics Scales. VAWnet.Org. https://vawnet.org/material/measuring-extent-woman-abuse-intimate-heterosexual-relationships-critique-conflict-tactics

Shamita Das Dasgupta. (2001). Towards an Understanding of Women’s Use of Non-Lethal Violence in Intimate Heterosexual Relationships. VAWnet.Org. https://vawnet.org/material/towards-understanding-womens-use-non-lethal-violence-intimate-heterosexual-relationships

Whitaker, Daniel J., et al. “Differences in Frequency of Violence and Reported Injury Between Relationships With Reciprocal and Nonreciprocal Intimate Partner Violence.” American Journal of Public Health, vol. 97, no. 5, May 2007, pp. 941–47. PubMed Central, https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2005.079020.

#feminism #male violence

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my-rose-tinted-glasses · 16 hours

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My memory is terrible so I wanted to do a breakdown of my stuff every once in a while. Might be monthly, might be whenever I feel like it.

QL - Currently Watching

🇹🇭1000 Years Old [11/12] - I know some of you are enjoying this one and I'm glad. And I have no idea what the finale has in store for us but this is just not the show for me. One episode to go and I honestly can't remember the last time I was this unenthusiastic about a finale. It's not even that it's that bad, it's just incredibly boring to me. I'll update this tomorrow with my thoughts on the finale.

🇹🇭23.5 [8/12] - The main couple lost me but I love Aylin and Luna. View is a delight to watch and whenever they're on screen together I'm in heaven. Also... THE TEACHERS!!! THEY ARE GIVING THEM TO US! We are blessed.

🇯🇵25 Ji, Akasaka de [2/10] - I like it a lot. I'm doing my best to not compare it to 'I Became the Lead in a BL Drama' for obvious reasons, but the tone seems different enough. I like the aesthetic a lot and I really like their dynamic, at the beginning it reminded me of Kabe Koji a bit. I'm mildly obsessed with Shirasaki's eyes and facial expressions. And a 'secret' crush is usually a win with me.

🇰🇷Boys Be Brave [2/8] - So far so good. Gi Seop is obvisouly not the best boy but there's something about his energy on screen that is compelling to me. I really liked that Jin Woo was honest about his feelings and I like the 'I love you but I don't like you' dynamic a lot. The second couple gave me some ODS vibes so I'm bracing for some angst.

🇯🇵Living with him [3/8] - It's great. Much like what I said above, I love that things are out in the open so soon and honestly Natsukawa reaction to the confession being basically 'how can I help?' was amazing to me. Also for anyone interested, this one is being fansubbed which is good cause according to my dear @colourme-feral the subs are not good at all.

🇰🇷Love Is Like a Cat [2/12] - I'm waiting to binge this one. Didn't like how this started and the rhythm just isn't working for me.

🇹🇭My Stand-In [1/12] - Pretty is pretty. But I don't trust Thailand with high concept so I have reservations. I hope I'm wrong. I liked the first episode so we'll see.

🇹🇭Only Boo! [4/12] - Moo is my child and he must be protected at all costs. I'm fighting myself with the singing and dancing because I should not be enjoying it at all and yet he's so charming. I hope Book's character is not here to do what I think it is because that would seriously damper my enjoyment of this otherwise bright spot in my week.

🇹🇭We Are [2/12] - I like the group scenes. They all seem very comfortable with each other. The main couple is the least compelling to me, just nothing new or interesting to see there. Aou is great at the comedy and I'm enjoying Poon a lot. Overall this show just doesn't flow, it keeps jumping from scene to scene/couple to couple without much of a threat and so I'm not really connecting. @bengiyo said it best here when he said it's like watching the actors ig reels.

🇹🇼Unknown [11/12] - I still think it's an incredible show, the best one airing right now probably, but I have to admit that the sex scene was a blemish in my overall enjoyment of it. I saw both versions, and although the reedited one is better is still not good. I don't think it was the right tone for the moment nor for the characters. Also it just doesn't flow well and the sound drove me crazy.

QL - Finished

🇹🇭Deep Night - This one surprised me a bit. There was a refreshing amount of good communication and they gave the people what they wanted, poly and older lesbians. I wish there were more acrobatics and the editing was weird in places but overall it's an entertaining show.

🇰🇷Gray Shelter - This is weird one. Because I feel like I have to fill in the gaps myself and that just shouldn't be the case. I enjoyed the actors a lot, and Lee Jae Bin presence on screen kept me engaged for most of it. There is definitely potential here if they had the time to explore all the different elements. But this runtime it's just not enough to fully flesh out these characters and the complex issues it wants to tackle.

🇯🇵Love is Better The Second Time Around - Started great but lost itself by the end. I don't think it needed that external conflict by the end with the brother and the mother because they weren't on firm ground to begin with. If I were to make a list like this one by @lurkingshan I don't think Myiata and Iwanaga would make it there. Iwanaga was amazing to watch though. He pretty.

🇯🇵My Strawberry Film - One pining gay boy does not a bl make. With that said, even as a drama there's nothing interesting here.

🇹🇭To Be Continued - Meh. It was fine. I wish I had more of the side couple because Gumbie is adorable. Midway this was getting into The Promise territory, and while it's not that bad, and I guess the reason for the separation is a valid one, I don't think Achi being the 'bad guy' for most of the show actually makes sense.

Rose Watches OJBL

Junjou (2010) - Second chance romance. I liked it. It's a nice watch, nothing particularly outstanding or new about this one, although that's not really fair considering it's more than a decade old, but alas I've seen other versions of this particular type of bl. Nevertheless I liked the characters, specially Tozaki,

Athlete (2019) - The visuals were the best part for me. There are several things I like in this, the main actor does a really good job imo and I truly enjoyed the bar scenes. But it doesn't all come together for me. I don't have a problem with the ending as much as how we got there.

Other - Watched

This was a slow month for me. I started a new job and some other stuff happened so I haven't really been in the mood to watch new stuff. Mostly comfort watches and rewatches. Oh I did watch Heartbreak High S2. It was good.

That's it for right now. My ask box is always open. Wishing you all a wonderful holiday tomorrow💜

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ghostlyarchaeologist · 1 year

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Leverage S05E03 The First Contact Job.

#leverage #eliot spencer #sophie devereaux #nate ford #definitely a case of i should not have said that #i should not have said that #nate is not surprised at all #ghostly'sgifs

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the-judicial-assistants-notebook · 2 months

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the Klavier-Edgeworth parallels of I Don't Care How You Feel, the Truth Is the Only Thing That Matters™ are very interesting, but the Klavier-Phoenix parallels of nothing bad has ever affected me in my life idk what you're talking about that didn't mean anything I'm not talking about it I'm not thinking about it I'm not acknowledging it they may not be dead but they're dead to me and that's how I like it I'm never looking at them again because they're dead they're gone they're a ghost and this is a perfectly healthy way to live look at me I'm thriving I'm thriving I'm thriving are also very interesting, do you get what I'm saying.

#i dont think this is what people meant by have you ever thought of making a narumitsu fanchild #(<- nobody has asked me that i just thought it was funny)#addendum to the klavier post because i somehow didnt make the connection then. starting to think all the aa4 characters are several old #characters stuck in a blender and poured into a shiny new cup.#klavier gavin #phoenix wright #klavier's definitely better at the never looking at it again thing & i think that's due to his edgeworth iciness like i said originally #phoenix has too much heart and i think he's sort of in recovery from that type of behaviour (it's a work in progress)#anyway they should have faced off against each other again. dual destinies did many things poorly but having them appear in the same case #and interacting with zero tension was probably one of the things it did worst.#also awful that im still thinking about him. he's gotten in my head.

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south-sea · 3 months

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i think a lot of people don’t always realize the difference between “this is how i interpret canon” and “this is how i want to write it because that’s what’s fun to me”. a lot of times the latter is all headcanons or AUs are, not an indication of what the writer thinks “is” or “should be” canon

more power to those who are super tuned into actual canon and know these details like the back of their hand, but sometimes people just wanna use a series as a sandbox, not a ruleset. genuinely nothing but respect for people who ARE that knowledgeable, but i and a lot of other people are just here to have fun with characters we enjoy—and want to put them in more accessible settings

#this isn't meant to be grandstanding or anything i'm just thinking aloud. i know i've said stuff like this before it just hit me suddenly #thinking about those weird anons from a while back who were really getting on my case about this #and i could not wrap my head around what the problem was because it’s like. that’s why it’s an au?#why are you mad about details of an au not lining up with canon #that’s the whole point of it being. an au #like of course shadow would normally be able to visit certain places. of course he should already know omega.#but there is a deliberate reason why second chance shadow can't/doesn't #and now i realize it's probably because they were seeing my posts entirely out of context #but still don't go attacking people for out of context posts either??#i'm shocked no one's seriously gotten on my case about aruna's hive yet because it's a prime example of 'intentionally nowhere near canon'#and like overall just don't be a penders and you're fine #lord knows i've got plenty of 'characters who have strayed so far from canon they may as well be OCs' in my pocket #but i still acknowledge they're not by definition OCs yknow #sometimes you just wanna use a funny lil guy as groundwork and then do your own thing #sea talks

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kyouka-supremacy · 3 months

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#This is about the last thing I could have imagined happening to me but.#A girl just slid what pretty realistically is a love letter under my door and. I really don't know what to do about it #God. I like her a lot but I also really just love her as a friend??#I don't. I have no idea what to reply because on one hand if I said something like #“yeah every second we spend together is precious to me too I love you <3 ” I would probably. Definitely come across wrong #But at the same time I can't just reply coldly I don't want to be rude. I do enjoy the time we spend together.#I just feel that if I don't reply with the same love and dedication I will come off as rude and make her sad and I really don't want to #But also I'm like. 100% sure I'm not into her romantically #It's just. The way she talks to me in the letter makes me feel... Odd in the bad way.#She spent words of admiration on me I really feel like I can't own you know.#She seems to look up to me a lot and I don't think I should be looked up to at all.#“You're a wonderful‚ very strong‚ and intelligent person” HOW DO YOU EVEN REPLY TO THAT.#“Uh I disagree but you're entitled to your opinion”... ?#Thank you?#This is. Ugh. I'm really not fit for this kind of stuff.#I LOVE exploring characters being in love and putting them in awkward ridiculous situations that make them miserable.#I HATE to be in such situations #As if exams weren't enough. How do I deal with that #Posting this just in case anyone has genuine advice btw. How do you reject a girl you actually like a lot #And how should I even write her back. Because she said to and I'm the WORST at writing back #Sis this is stressing me off so much. I want to dig a hole and disappear in it. I'm not getting out of my room for the next six months.#(For context we live in the same students dorm)#random rambles #I'm so distressed right now this is the absolute worst.#Like I was pretty fine with where we were at but now I feel like I really don't want to spend time with her again for a long time.#Deleting this soon hopefully

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aquilamage · 11 months

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I haven’t been insane about Vi enough lately so time to pour out some random thoughts. free association thinking time:

been thinking about her “It's my savings. I wanna be rich, okay? So I can travel, eat well, buy cool stuff… So no one can say I can't do something!” And none of the following will really be insightful or revelatory because it’s just what she says here but. yeah! that’s vi! the main reason she’s so big on money is because she has to be to get what she wants out of life! it’s what lets her say no to people telling her what to do, and that’s important to her because she has no choice but to be independent and support herself. because no one else will. No one at the Hive had anything positive or supportive to say about her being an explorer until she went out and did it (to a ridiculously successful degree, too. I have to wonder if/how it might’ve differed if she was on a regular accomplishment level team. not the one leading them all to the mission to the Hive). she never had a choice not to be. I could also see that being a little part of why she starts out not really being a teamwork person. past experiences have taught her she can’t rely on anyone else for support. (does make me wonder about what if she’d met Chubee before leaving the Hive. obviously she still would’ve left, but how might even a bit of support have changed other things?)

I feel like we don’t talk about the fact that The Beemerang Is Also Knives enough

ok so at one point there was this post talking about people with money and how it affects their life like. if you can afford to get a nanny then you can only do the fun parts of childcare and when you stop feeling like taking care of the kid you can just hand them to someone else to take them away. and again likely not especially revelatory but I would guess that’s the kind of way queen bianca handled the bees as her daughters (she does care about them. absolutely. but not in the same hands-on attached way as we usually associate with parents) and thinking about how that kind of treatment would then apply to vi....hm

in universes where discussions of Gender and Pronouns etc happen I think she has moments where she gets frustrated with the everything of Being Referred To and Having Complicated Identity She Hasn’t Quite Figured Yet and is like. gender is cancelled how dare you refer to me. but especially anyone else calls me a girl ever i will be stabbing them

also I think a lot about what circumstances she finds out about gayness/Gender being things. and whether she’s thought about it in herself before and whether she’d been dismissed on it/told it wasn’t a thing etc. most circumstances she ends up angry about the finding out times because of (un)consicious internal conflict stuff

underground tavern stuff implies she was definitely doing quests and stuff for money with them precanon. would kill to know what specifically it was. but also the first talk with utter implies that she was doing stuff off that questboard as well which is even more intriguing. utter’s spy also implies you don’t have to be an explorer to do them but otherwise you would think you did I feel. so again very curious what was up there

#inspired by that girl blorbos post and also me trying to think about where in the game they drop facts and such about precanon stuff w her #the urge to try and fic about the stuff between her leaving the hive and showing up at the association....strong again #'the hive didn't do anything' my ass. vi might have also been a jerk but it's just that she was the more obvious #easily labeled incident version of it. she was active while her treatment was the subtle passive neglect type of bad treatment #complex situation and also. yeah #an aquila original #vi bug fables #bug fables #also featuring funky gender lesbian stuff because thats not even headcanon. to me #hopefully the reasoning out stuff doesn't just come out like a load of nonsense #vi's one of those characters where I definitely feel comfortable in writing her on a basic level but some parts I'm super insecure about #and the part with her is in really capturing the complexities of her backstory and family issues #and the thing is it's like. I have to remind myself that some parts of how canon did her on that are actually decent #and I should pay attention to those complexities. but then also canon definitely did some of their 'this hasn't really been earned'#resolution stuff on her. mostly thinking about the postcanon dialogue with Bianca. it's jsut too much of a jump for that for me #and it's not even that I necessarily think bianca's dialogue is out of character. it's that I'm contemplating whether it would've #made more sense for vi to get angry about it. like.#ok so. sometimes i think about what coming out to my family might be like. and I've come to the conclusion that if they were just accepting #despite the fact that it would be best case scenario I'd be angry about it. because they've said some shitty stuff in the past. in general #they've made me feel unsafe about myself. so no actually you don't get to just suddenly be chill about it now fuck you.#it doesn't change the past hurts #and I could see Vi being like that too. even if part of her is happy about getting what she wanted to start with she's pissed about #only getting it now. with a side helping of also wondering if the approval /now/ is only because she's been so successful about it #what if she hadn't been so specially favored by elizant? what if she hadn't been on the team that saved the world? why did she (maybe) have #to earn the approval she should've had from the start?#also not gonna get into this one right now but tweaking her story with jaune to acknowledge that theyre both at fault in different ways #(again). would be nice #but now I'm definitely veering into repeating myself type rambling territory so

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