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throttlegainwell · 1 month

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I was thinking again about the similarities between what I was doing with Iconoclast (a Stranger Things fic in my please don't wake me series) and Proxemics (a standalone X-Men fic).

Cut for absurd length (naturally) and non-graphic discussion of child physical abuse/CSA and neglect.

I took a very loose artistic interpretation of the word, but I chose "iconoclast" because the story is about the destruction of false beliefs and images that scaffold our worldview, which is ultimately what happens, in a very metaphorical way: the internal structures on which Joyce has come to rely are shattered and she's forced to confront truths that break with what she thought she knew. She has to reframe her whole way of looking at things. "Proxemics" has to do with the spatial distance zones through which we communicate affinity, closeness, and comfort within cultural contexts (and to some extent how we use these zones to communicate other information). It's the study of these zones between people, like how close we allow them to get (on a very literal physical level) and in which social contexts. I used that more metaphorically here because that's basically the whole ballgame for the story: who is permitted to know what information and when and what that means, who is held at arm's length and what happens when these boundaries are transgressed or when people are allowed past them.

Iconoclast is very much focused on Joyce and tracing the path she took, from the decisions she made to the forces that were pushing her there; it's about her relationship with herself and with her son. It's a very narrow focus because it's about this family. Proxemics takes a much broader view because Scott's role is much bigger. He's responsible for many people and extends himself accordingly; whereas Jonathan's family is his world, and Joyce is very much the same. So Proxemics is about Scott's role in his world and the understanding his community has of him, not his familial relationships specifically, but his relationship with Corsair is important enough (in the sense that it's a big, gaping wound) that it constitutes the entirety of chapter two. There's more verbiage breaking down that relationship than all the others combined.

Proxemics has to be the most self-indulgent thing I've ever written. It's a bunch of conversations and realizations that I wanted to see and things I wanted acknowledged slapped into one story and loosely tied together. And I committed really hard to doing it in a way that felt true to the characters because it wouldn't have been satisfying for me to get these people to give a shit about what Scott had been through and understand him a little better if they'd felt like strangers or if I'd completely glossed over the roots of their enmity. Scott was surrounded by people who were extremely critical of him, at best, and extremely angry with and dismissive of him at worst. Even his own father had given up on him by that point. (I committed so hard to taking these characters at face value that a couple of people thought the story was anti-Scott, lol. They wondered why it was so mean to him, when in actuality the alternate title of this fic might as well be Reasons You Should Love Scott and Cut Him Some Slack: An Itemized List. If ever I've written a love letter to a single character, this is the one.)

And that's where I see a lot of echoes of Proxemics in Iconoclast. They're both about how trauma and difficult circumstances can push us farther from or closer to each other and how we can have the best intentions and still fall short. Corsair wrote off his kids because he couldn't deal with his trauma, then he and Scott reunited and had just this incredibly strange and unsatisfying relationship for years. Corsair really never came through for Scott, and Scott just had to accept it and live with that. Joyce's deal is very different, but canon shows her in a very difficult situation (and I think it's likely that she's just been through a lot of shit we don't see, so I creatively extrapolated a bit in a way that was particularly thematically resonant with the issues I gave Jonathan in pdwm). Corsair is a pretty shitty parent, for the most part, who makes a lot of mistakes and doesn't make much of an effort most of the time until he decides he'd like to give this parenting thing a try after all; Joyce is by no means a shitty parent, but she makes a lot of mistakes, some of which are more forgivable than others but none of which happen because she doesn't care or try. Corsair is a dude, though, and while I doubt anyone is out there claiming that he's not a terrible father, it's interesting (if a giant bummer) to consider how his story would play out (and be received) if he were a woman and his parenting (or lack thereof) were judged according to the harsh standards against which mothers are measured. His abandonment would be read very differently. On the flip side, Joyce's status as a mother often consumes her character, and she's not given room for that motherhood to be complex, flawed, and still ultimately loving and well-meaning. So that's just something to consider.

Then there are their kids.

So Scott and Jonathan are two characters whose circumstances make them extremely vulnerable to abuse and exploitation and who have suffered canonical abuse and neglect (in Scott's case, pretty extreme abuse and exploitation). In Jonathan's case, I think some form of CSA is likely but not an absolute; in Scott's case, I'm absolutely certain that it occurred. They're both socially isolated and rejected ("freaks" regarded with suspicion and contempt for reasons outside their control). They're also both very closed-off and reserved (Scott significantly more so than Jonathan, but still). They're heavily burdened with outsized responsibilities not appropriate to their developmental levels. Their identity development has been subsumed by these roles and they measure themselves by their utility to others.

pdwm is, at its heart, a story about the complex dynamics of a dysfunctional but loving family and how that love can shape identities and decisions in ways that can be painful or unhealthy, but that can also be healing and strengthening. Responding to the fluidity of those things or recognizing our mistakes and figuring out how to adapt when something isn't working, even when we thought it was. It's about the double-edged sword of loyalty and the meaning of autonomy and the layers of truth that we selectively divulge and how (or the truths that we ignore--what we hide and why and how we frame it all). I created a specific scenario to highlight some of these things (the rape in the first installment) and that theme runs through many of the other stories in the series, but a lot of the issues at play are just what we see in canon (the parentification and neglect, Lonnie, Joyce's distance, Jonathan's secrecy and independence) or extensions of them. There's a strong forward momentum because it's about how you can dust yourself off and keep going and whether or not that serves you in the long-run and what other choices do you have, anyway? But ultimately it's about healing. Things aren't better by the end of that story, but they are each now in a position where they can get better because they're finally being honest and actually seeing each other more fully, if not communicating particularly well. The door has been opened. It's a beginning, in a way.

Proxemics is not about healing. It's about scar tissue. Scar tissue so thick and so deep that it shapes the way you move and the choices available to you--so deep that some of it's just numb. Scott is in a place where he's accepted these things because he never had a choice. His options were cope or die (and in doing so, letting a bunch of other people die). And he's got a lifetime of people telling him that he doesn't matter and neither do his feelings and if terrible things happen to him, tough--either ignore it and move on or use it to make yourself stronger, and isn't it better that it be you than someone defenseless? Shouldn't you be that shield? He can never get off this ride. That's the tragedy of it all. Like, it's nice that people have more compassion and understanding for him by the end of that story, but it doesn't really help him in any particularly meaningful way; it's really something that happens around him more than something that affects him.

But they're both very maligned and poorly-understood characters, Scott both in-universe and in fandom at large and Jonathan more so in fandom at large. Though I'd argue that there's an element of in-universe misunderstanding even for Jonathan.

So the crux of the matter is this:

Joyce and Corsair just go about their lives not really seeing what their kids have been through because, in many ways, they don't want to see it. Not completely--there are definitely ways in which their circumstances prevent them from seeing it. But to some extent, yeah, it's a survival mechanism. Corsair gets the time-displaced Scott to have his do-over dad experience and Joyce (though grieving and traumatized) finally finds herself in a position where she doesn't need to rely on Jonathan quite so much and she and her children are in a safe living situation. They both just want to reap the benefits of this and quietly move past the painful stuff as though it never happened. They're living in the moment and looking toward the future. It's understandable, but not really feasible or fair.

Enter Proxemics and Iconoclast. Because I wanted them to see this stuff, and I wanted them to reckon with the reality of it--what happened and why and the consequences and how to move forward with that understanding. They needed to see before they could get that future, even though Scott and Jonathan didn't particularly want to be seen. They didn't need graphic details for this, but just the shape of it was enough to accomplish these goals.

Joyce and Corsair are equally horrified and guilt-stricken to learn about what happened to their children. For Joyce, it all happened right under her nose; to some extent, she was actively manipulated and lied to, and in other ways she simply wasn't able to see it. For Corsair, he's left to live with having abandoned them and knowing that things would likely have been different if he'd been there to protect them (though it is a little more complicated than that). Scott was truly alone, certain that his family was dead even though it turns out they were out there somewhere after all, where Jonathan had his family but he felt incredibly alone and he effectively was. Joyce had no idea how alone and isolated he felt or why--we know this because she chastises him for not recognizing that he's not alone. So that was something else that she needed to come closer to understanding. Without truly comprehending that, there's just this massive, impermeable barrier between her and Jonathan.

Joyce tried her best in a terrible, difficult situation. Corsair arguably did not, but every decision he made was shaped by heaps of trauma, shame, and emotional immaturity. They're very different, on many levels. But ultimately both stories involve a traumatized parent who failed their child recognizing the suffering that followed. But it's not about guilt or shaming them for their parenting (or lack thereof). It's about the seeing--it's about the understanding.

Corsair and Joyce both recognize that terrible things have happened to their children--they don't want to see it, but it becomes undeniable and this knowledge haunts them. They both recognize that their right to push is limited, Corsair because he abandoned Scott (more than once) and Joyce because she hasn't been there for Jonathan and so they just don't have the kind of relationship where she feels entitled to push. Despite their similarities, she doesn't know him that well. But where Joyce eventually overcomes this and pushes quite hard (arguably more than is really fair--she oversteps in Iconoclast a bit), Corsair does not. He asks, Scott gives him a non-answer that says it all, and he backs off. He fixates on the possibilities, but he doesn't ask again, and he leaves it to Scott to decide whether to open up; when Scott does crack that door open, it's to talk about a different trauma entirely, but the one that's really bothering him at that point. Scott would have told him if he'd asked again--he makes this clear--but Corsair really feels both that he's forfeited the right to certain knowledge and that he still can't quite cope with knowing more than he does. Jonathan really only says anything because Joyce makes it clear that 1) she can't really believe his claims that nothing is wrong and that 2) she will spin out and make herself miserable wondering what that something is. Because a significant motivator for his secrecy is to protect her (though not all of it), this puts him in a position where he feels compelled to reassure her that it wasn't "worse" than it was. He shares a lot more than Scott does, but it's not particularly cathartic for him at the time.

Scott and Jonathan both feel very differently about their childhoods and their parents' roles in them. Scott does have a lot of anger toward Corsair, but he basically gave up on ever reaching any kind of resolution for any of it. He recognizes that that's all Corsair is capable of giving him and accepts that. Which is what makes All-New X-Men so fucking heartbreaking--it shows Corsair at a point where he's capable of being what Scott needed, but that means fuck-all to adult Scott, and in fact it's used to condemn adult Scott. And Corsair gets to have a nice vacation with his still very traumatized son while coasting on his laurels and never really having to face the consequences of his actions or be there for Scott in a truly meaningful way. The book really glosses over the immense horror of what Scott has suffered and Corsair's utter refusal to engage with any aspects of parenting beyond being the fun dad who breezes in occasionally after a lifetime of abandonment. Conversely, Jonathan isn't angry with Joyce. He may have some resentment or anger in canon, but I just think he has too much understanding of their circumstances to really be able to sustain any kind of genuine anger. He's angry with the society that failed them and the town that threw them away and then penalized them for not being able to rise above it; he's angry at Lonnie for a lot of things. But not with Joyce.

Anyway, I dunno, it's just sort of interesting to me how I essentially tackled the same thing twice. But they're very different in many ways.

#writing tag #scott summers #christopher summers #joyce byers #jonathan byers #stranger things #meta #x-men #director's commentary #very long post #long post #please don't wake me series #rape mention tw #child abuse mention tw

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laufire · 3 years

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(CW for mentions of csa)

A lot of Commonly Accepted (Often Through Uncritical Repetition) Wisdom in fandom leaves me baffled, when not straight up ticked off, but one that's been on my mind lately, that never fails to bring a scrunched up expression to my face, is the idea that Bela Talbot's backstory was some last minute add-on to her character.

You might argue that the reveal was rushed since the writers caved in and killed her off against their original plan (or at the very least, earlier than). Or that using abuse is a trite way to raise sympathy for an antagonistic character. You could even say that some of the finer details might’ve not been set in stone until they sat down to write her exist, although that one is dubious. But I’m never really going to buy that Bela’s backstory hadn’t been already planned, likely in big part.

The reason why is Season Three Episode Six, “Red Sky At Morning”, Bela’s second episode, co-written by Eric Kripke himself. As all episodes with Bela were, may I add; which means he had a hand in crafting her story from the beginning, as creator, director, and writer.

There Dean, a character that has been shown as sharp and intuitive (although his success rate ain’t that great when it comes to Bela, admittedly xD), immediately pegs her as someone with Issues TM, asking “how did she get like this”. He even taunts her by referencing her father, showing off his talent to hit where it hurts by asking if he “didn’t give her enough hugs”, ‘cause he’s classy like that. This visibly affects Bela, changing her demeanor in their conversation, from more playful to defensive. Hell, I remember during my first watch in real time this moment, especially paired with the rest of the episode, was when I first thought it was possible she came from an abusive family.

Because, c’mon. This whole episode is about parricide. The monster of the week is a ghost who haunts those that “spilled their own family’s blood”. We get two other examples: a woman whose accidental car crash killed her cousin, and two brothers who killed their father for the inheritance. Clearly, the ghost doesn’t have a narrow criteria when it comes to means or culpability -which makes sense given his particular story: he was tried for treason and his brother, the captain of the ship, issued the sentence.

And just as we find out this information... Bela sees the ghost ship that foretells her death. This, paired with the insinuations about an unsavvory past and her discomfort at the mention of her father, aren’t a wealth of information, but they start to paint a picture. We now know for a fact that Bela caused the death of at least one relative (mom and dad); that she wouldn’t have needed to do it directly (she made a crossroads deal); and that she might’ve had a sympathetic motive (her father sexually abused her and her mother turned a blind eye).

That scene offers some more tidbits of information about her past that seem too in tune with 3x15 to be coincidental, and that absolutely break my heart: Bela’s “You wouldn’t understand. No one did.“ and “I’ll just do what I’ve always done. I’ll deal with it myself”. See, I always thought Bela must’ve told people, when she was a kid. That she reached out for help not just to her mother, but to everyone around her that she thought could’ve help: teachers, maybe even law enforcement; adults that should’ve being worthy of that trust and protected her. Except no one did (and the fact that her family seemed to be not only very rich but influential paints a very bleak picture that surely contributed to her cynic view of the world). So she took matters in her own hands, and sold her soul for ten years of relative safety and freedom from her abusers.

To tie it all up, her final scene in that episode offers some more moments that again, are very in line with her backstory. We see how she treats relationships as transactionals: she pays ten grand to the Winchesters for saving her life, like she paid with her soul. Dean, again, draws attention to her likely messed up past by calling her damaged, and she replies that “takes one to know one”. Terrible childhood, ammirite. The show wasn’t been subtle here: it’s telling us Bela has a terrible past, like the Winchesters do, but of a different kind that has resulted in a different kind of person. So yeah, I think all the facts were hinted at back in 3x06.

We could go even futher back and point out 3x03, Bela’s introduction. One of the very first things she says in the show, during her first face to face with Dean (a character that just condemned his soul to Hell), is “We’re all going to Hell, Dean. Might as well enjoy the ride”. Sure, it could be an incredibly fortuitous coincidence; as a writer, I’ve had those and they’re damn great. But it seems VERY lucky, and more likely to be a case of the kind premeditated, well-placed foreshadowing that Kripke excels at.

So, okay. I’ve established why I think Bela’s backstory wasn’t a spur of the moment decision. But why is there a notable narrative in fandom that it IS?

First thing first, I want to get something out of the way: you don’t have to like it even if it was planned ahead. I understand it’s a very thorny subject, and to make matters worse, it’s inherently tied to her death. You might even be fine with the what, but not with how it was dealt with (although personally, I appreciate that neither the abuse nor her death were shown onscreen. In fact, the worse violence we see Bela on the receiving end of in her run is Dean’s threats and manhandling, which seems like a very purposeful choice ngl. Even Gordon freaking Walker was gentler lmao).

But I do disagree with some extended fandom opinions on the topic, and I guess that’s what the post is about. For one, I don’t see how the show “condemned” or morally judged Bela in this scenario. If anything, they clearly wanted to make her sympathetic, AND they showed Dean as being in the wrong by robbing him of information. Dean’s opinion on Bela couldn’t count for shit, for once, because he didn’t have the full picture; because Bela had deemed him UNWORTHY of the full picture, and thus anything he had to say on her couldn’t be taken at face value (except this is Supernatural, so I guess this was a little too much to ask of some people?). I think saying that just because Bela died and went to Hell as a consequence of her deal, IN THE SAME SEASON the same happened to our co-lead, because the writers deemed her evil and irredeemable is simplistic at best, and the audience projecting their own feelings (or being unable to see past Dean’s) onto the writing.

All that said, to go back to the initial point of all of this xD: WHY does fandom seem to insist on viewing this narrative choice as some cheap last minute addition?

There might not be one explanation that fits all, but I have a few ideas. One is that, if this wasn’t planned for and hinted at from early on, some people might feel as if this “absolves” them of their previous (and disgustingly hateful and misoginistic) reactions to Bela. Others will see this as absolving Dean, and maybe even Sam to a lesser extent, for not helping her and for being callous towards her; if her tragic backstory was this artificial, rushed choice made by Those Writers, then Dean wasn’t responsible for reprehensible attitudes towards someone who deserved his compassion (and it can’t be denied that this fandom loves absolving Dean of responsibility lmao). And a lot people are probably only repeating what they've heard from others as the accepted narrative, especially those that didn't even watch all of s3 if at all (Castiel is my fave too, but seriously, s1-3 are worth it).

It’s like they’re creating this imaginary separation between Bela pre-reveal, and Bela post-reveal, to make the situation easier to themselves. See, Bela pre-reveal was this annoying bitch who inconvenienced and embarrassed our leads (not to mention dared have chemistry with them), and thus deserved to be punished for it; or, if we’re going with more modern fandom sensibilities, she can be made to fit into the shallow #GirlBoss mold, with a side of “Secretly A Lesbian And Therefore Not A Romantic Threat” flavour -the current preferred method to make controversial female characters more palatable.

The reveal throws a wrench into this narrative. “Bitch who deserves her comeuppance” is a hard sell when you’re talking about a character who survived csa. And a shallow #GirlBoss reading doesn’t work if you have to acknowledge that Bela was one of, if not the most tragic characters in the entire run of Supernatural.

She spent over half her life at the mercy of her abuser(s), hurt by those who should’ve loved her and protected her most. The rest of her life was extremely lonely, with seemingly only a cat as company, and a surface-level freedom that hid under the sentence that loomed over her head. She died without a single friend, or a simple show of kindness and compassion, without anyone bothering to fight for her. And then she ended up tortured for who knows how long until she became one of her torturers.

All of that is extremely difficult to digest. And when things are hard to swallow, people do as people do, and they try to simplify them. So, sure. Bela’s reveal wasn’t ever hinted at, it’s completely removed from her character and the person we met, and is not even worth trying to fit into the narrative. Sounds easy.

#talking to the void #my thoughts #spn thoughts #supernatural #bela talbot #bitter lau tag #fandom nonsense #spn 3x15 #spn 3x06 #spn s3

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delcat177 · 3 years

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FALSE DUALITIES: How NOT to address The Serial Rapist

Hopkins keeps doing these “wacky” Drip stories where he’s a bumbling uwu sillypants and I frankly can’t think of a single worse way to “redeem” a character

More rape tw plus abuse tw, csa tw, fucking generally grotesque shit under cut

Drip is canonically the sin of Lust and has raped, tortured, and killed at least a dozen women onscreen and hundreds more off (there is a LOT of detail about it), including a cave full of enslaved souls he molests at will while they beg and scream for mercy, one particular enslaved soul who he raped multiple times daily after Death gave her to him for the sin of avoiding death, his own kindergarten-age son,

...and, as much as Dave wants us to forget it, *countless* victims in (ugh) Musical Holes, a game he invented to play in Hell’s arena with damned souls, at fifty women a go:

Oh yeah, the karmic punchline to this one was gay rape is scary and reprehensible whereas rape rape is pretty entertaining:

Same character. But look, he’s got big soft eyes and he’s kinda dumb! It’s not creepy at all!

It’s not creepy at all that she’s using real-life self-defense scripting against real-life rapists (soil yourself however possible, bring up pregnancy, ask about women in the rapist’s life, humanization etc)!

It’s especially not creepy when you realize that this character, Megan (sorry IRL Megan it never stops being weird) was stalked, threatened, brutallized, humiliated, raped, and fucking dismembered over a series of violent events in her own arc, by three different rapists, at that, one of which also wanted to rape the little girl she was trying to save! This is a character who should by all means be in the middle of raging PTSD shock, but it’s funny and cute because her buddy from that arc might eventually rescue her after having sex with everyone else ol’ silly Drip tied up to rape-murder later!! u fucking wu!!

This is my Thing. I have no problem with dark fiction. I have no problem with noncon or rape fiction, even (with a good list of caveats, but let’s not digress). I have no problem with creators tackling mature subject matter, the response to there being terrible things in the world is not to pretend that isn’t the case.

But that’s exactly what is happening here. And it is fifty kinds of fucked up. If these were completely whole cloth characters...well, I’d still have a LOT of problems with this comic, not least because Silly Drip’s comeuppance is getting raped himself and then shamed by the rapist leaving his TV to tape gay porn so the cops laugh at him (HA HA, HA HA HA HA, MUSICAL HOLES ALL OVER AGAIN, GOD HOPKINS WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU), but it would read a lot kinder than its reality--an attempt to reform a character who was built specifically to never be redeemed by giving him a soft outline and hanging a lampshade on his dick.

And there’s no damned reason for it, except brand. People like Drip. People *love* Drip. He’s their fantasy. So Dave goes “okay here you go but remember Drip is a BAD GUY” and then whines that nothing he does is ever enough for the critics.

This is why, Dave. THIS is why. You can’t take a character, spend fifteen years having him as a worshipped figurehead for brutalizing innocents, and then turn around and make him Boner Mickey Mouse. Your audience knows what they’re looking at. Paint him pink and call him Bippo the Clown, he’s still going to be the one who raped his own kid not only because he has no qualms with child rape, but because as self-stated, he wanted to use it to hurt another character on the deepest level possible. He has done nothing to earn redemption, learned nothing, has given no compensation to his victims, has no accountability.

Oh yeah, and the last time he and Megan met?

It was just soooooooo cute! That darned wacky boy uwu

yeah no he ripped her tail out at the spine because he didn’t get a chance to rape her and she never recovers it and nearly never recovers from it. They have to remove her to Heaven to keep her from dying and they can’t regrow her tail because.......well, Heaven is Hell with a paint job in this comic. They’re the lawful evil to the chaotic evil of Hell. There is no recourse for souls. There is no recourse for the wronged.

Except WACKY DRIP ARCS!!

*laugh track*

Yes, he states these are “comics for friends” and have “no relation to his other comics”, and, I imagine, come from roleplay sessions or streams. I do understand the professional distancing of the character that you write for a serious publication and the behind-the-scenes “actor” quality of those characters, that running silly antics with them is a fun exercise for blowing off steam and letting them say and do things they wouldn’t otherwise do. It makes them stronger as characters, builds in detail, provides material to make the organism of a story work better with itself.

But you don’t fucking invite the serial rapist to the party and expect people to go “oh he’s so cute now”.

That is, of course, exactly what’s happening in the comments. Honestly, I would be lying if I said I didn’t find this comic to be kinda cute, because I do like Specks, I like Megan in theory, and I thought that the two had chemistry to interact in. It even has a page where a character asks if they can choose not to consent to sex for rescue and the reassurance that no, that’s not the case, which is something I legitimately never thought would ever be addressed in a Jack comic. Which is why it is so goddamned frustrating that it remains the most fucked thing I’ve seen all week, and I’m working with Screaming Barrel right now.

Don’t whitewash the rapist. Don’t fucking do it. For the love of God, Montressor.

Fucking kill Drip already.

Don’t bring him back.

Jesus.

ETA:

A visual aid

#jack #dave for god's sake #david hopkins #dave hopkins #jack webcomic #rape tw #abuse tw #csa tw #probably nws #i covered the majority of the bits i think #but really honestly #nws #criticism is not for profit and covered under fair use

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drowningcomicart · 6 years

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time to wrestle with the pigs i guess, because this has got to end right the fuck now

content warnings for this post include pedophilia mentions, abuse mentions, suicide/suicide baiting, and csa mentions, and to everyone not involved hi, this has been my life for almost a year, it’s a lot of bullshit so tread with caution i guess. (and no i’m not putting it under a read more because this is important.)

with that out of the way, i want to make it very explicitly clear that i’m not writing this post as an apology, nor am i going to ‘justify’ myself because there’s nothing to fucking justify. but i’m addressing it because we’ve officially hit november, and that means that for nine fucking months, i have heard every disingenuous opinion on this mess there is to hear, whether i wanted it or not. and i am tired, and i am done, but y’all wanna keep beating this horse, so here i am.

for those who are unaware, in february of this year someone in the fantroll circle--or at least the one i’m part of--was being unjustly harassed by some dumbass teenagers with a chip on their shoulders and nothing better to do. and because no one else was saying or doing anything, i made a post calling out the stupidity of bothering someone over an art style and if they were blown, they should just block and move on. i never mentioned the harasser’s usernames, not even in the tags. but i guess the ringleader’s guilty conscience took over, because they came crytyping at me in a dm to take the post down and how it wasn’t faaaaiiirrr. and when i gave no sympathy, saying i had not mentioned them by name and if they felt guilty, maybe they shouldn’t be a vicious asshole to people, magically they weren’t sad and anxious about how people would treat them (ha) anymore; they got mad. mad enough that they started a smear campaign against me under the guise of Protecting The Community and horribly twisting one of my characters into something he’s not so they could call me a pedophile.

he is a csa survivor. he has bad coping mechanisms for that trauma, and yes, it is dark. it is uhealthy and sad and tragic and awful. but it is still part of his story, and i am not going to shy away from telling it. and since that entire blog always had nsfw tagged, and unless tumblr was fucking around should not have been accessible to anyone under 18 in the first place, the abusive little shits who made it their personal goal to drive me out of the community, off of tumblr, and apparently hopefully into killing myself, should not have been able to see that content at all. unless they chose to, and again as mentioned above, it was definitely a choice. a choice born of spite and violence, because it was ONLY to have “dirt” on me when i called them on their shit behavior. because, i cannot stress this enough, it was never ever about pedophilia. it was about a power struggle. a made up stupid power struggle they felt the need to ‘win’ at any and all costs, including making a wildly serious accusation with no substance, altering screenshots to serve their purpose, and taking everything out of context to suit their narrative. and this is how it is for literally every single anti-based argument out there.

now we all know how i feel about the purity crusade happening on this dumpsterfire of a website, but in case you don’t THERE IS NO CASE WHATSOEVER IN WHICH DARKFIC IS THE SAME THING AS REAL LIFE CRIMES. if you disagree with that, please block me. please. literally right now. block me. block me and go away and i only pray you learn to separate fiction from reality and don’t turn into what these demons are. because i don’t care how much you disagree with someone, i don’t care how much you don’t like them, i do not care about any of it. your presence in those spaces is your choice. because despite what antis will have you believe, people writing and drawing this stuff always--and i will say always knowing you’re smart enough to not give me The One Exception as your airtight strawman to render every other argument invalid--tag it, keep it in adult-only spaces, and are responsible enough to know what ‘i understand and wish to continue’ buttons mean.

and so, knowing that fiction does not equal reality, and that the spaces these fictions are written in are inherently designed to make it so only people who say yes i wanna see it can access it, or hell even knowing basic fucking human decency, there is NO reason to suicide bait someone. ever. period. do not tell people to die you actual fucking monsters. people HAVE killed themselves. and if you’re okay with that, if you are really seriously willing to say someone deserved to die over fiction, block me. i don’t want to see anything from you until you find your humanity again. and yet here i am, again 9 months after the fact, and people are STILL messaging me about it. even my would be supporters, the ones who claim they’re only concerned for my reputation or whatever, are being disingenuous and victim blaming. all i have heard is “you should prove your innocence cos you’re making people uncomfortable otherwise”. it belies their stance on these things; that they secretly agree it’s ok to harass content creators so long as they can pretend to themselves it’s justified in some small way. that if someone doesn’t want to give their abusers--and internet harassment IS abuse do not @ me on this one--a platform, it’s the same as admitting they’re correct, no matter how absurd the lie. Yet they do nothing to show support for people being harassed because they’re too concerned with living in their comfortable bubble to make even the smallest effort to oust abusive jackasses from their own community, and then go on to bellyache that the fandom “isn’t what it used to be” and wonder “where everyone went”.

with any luck, they’re like me and they “went” to doctors and got medicated for the depression and anxiety this sort of shit exacerbates, and blocked all involved for their own sanity and because they don’t owe anyone shit. but more likely, from what i’ve seen? they’re dead. and if that makes you sick, if that makes you uncomfortable, it fucking should. people are fucking dead because of fictional characters, from a source that in and of itself deals with very upsetting and adult themes using child protagonists. regardless if they’re survivors of abuse themselves, or just like to explore anxieties and fears in the very VERY safe environment of fiction, where there are no real life consequences, it doesn’t matter. there’s no such thing as people who are “allowed” to write these subjects and people who are not. no one needs to put their life and vulnerabilities on the table for complete strangers to judge and deem worthy or unworthy of basic decency. to say otherwise is despicably transparent in their motives to exploit already vulnerable people for their personal entertainment or self gratification, and yet people fall for it every goddamned time.

i’m not going to make an argument that i’m not a pedophile because i shouldn’t have to. y’all should be able to use your fucking brains well enough to know that someone drawing fictional scenarios is not the same as a real adult abusing real children with very real world consequences. if it is personally upsetting to you, or makes you feel uncomfortable, or even triggers ptsd please for the love of god leave the blog. why would you put yourself through that? why would you, if you are so against it, actively seek it out and harass people who make it? i would never call people outright liars about what does and does not trigger them. but it seems to me the only people who would behave in this way are either not as bothered as they have convinced themselves and everyone else they are, or they have some seriously bad coping mechanisms for their own trauma that are in no way the fault of the authors and artists at the receiving end of their vitriol. but as someone who was horribly abused, emotionally and psychologically, for the majority of my life, i know an abusive power trip when i see one.

if y’all have been supporting these people without thinking about it, i don’t want your apologies and shame, and likely no one else you’ve let get trampled with no help does either. but you have to do better. WE have to do better. even something as small as blocking people you know to be abusive jerks in the community can make a world of difference because they can’t have power if you don’t let them have a platform.

and as for the people in the community who started this mess, cos i know you still look up my posts in the tags--i’m not afraid of you. i’m not fucking going anywhere. i am here to enjoy my characters, enjoy my writing, enjoy making art and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. you are not going to silence me because you got mad that i called you out for being an abusive asshole. and anyone who listens to your bullshit deserves better than to be manipulated and frightened of you. fucking grow up and get some help, because lying about wanting to protect people by causing active harm to others is more morally bankrupt than any darkfic could ever be.

#purity wank #anti culture #abuse #internet harassment #fantroll #last tag only because it's the relevant community #do not respond or @ me with disingenuous arguments on this either #if you don't think people shouldn't be told to kill themselves #go get your life sorted and fucking block me #cos i don't want to talk to you #and if you do it anyways i will block YOU #because i do not owe your stupid ass my time or energy #rant #personal

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sparklyjojos · 5 years

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--[Disco Wednesdayyy 24/?] The brave new world is made out of closed rooms, or are we really switching the genre over 1000 pages into the book? Okay then. [tw: csa, child abuse, brief gore]--

Last time, Disco arrived at the World’s End, accidentally jumped to the year 2019, and discovered that a company called Styron Japan built themselves a nice new skyscraper in Chofu. As soon as Disco enters the building, a bunch of company vicepresidents introduce themselves and tell him JJ Styron is already waiting. Judging by their quick explanations, JJ naturalized himself through marriage with a Japanese woman and was planning on spreading his influence to Japan.

JJ welcomes Disco with tea and sweets and says he’s been awaiting this visit for years. He looks startingly young for his 38 years, but asked about it claims he’s just taking good care of himself, since it’s not like he can jump in time or something, haha! Already unsettled, Disco asks about Sharon Styron’s death.

“Ah, yes, she’s dead.” JJ answers casually. “I killed her. Drugged her so she couldn’t move and cut her to pieces while she was still conscious.”

“...Why?”

“Why? Because she betrayed me, of course! The only thing she cared about was protecting you. I’ve been trying to find you and your family, and she refused to give me any information. She claimed you were an orphan.” So she must have sincerely believed the lies Disco told her about his identity... “Well, but it turns out she wasn’t lying... Mr. William Eady.”

Completely confused, Disco looks at the documents JJ shows him. A birth certificate. ‘William Eady’, ‘orphan’, a slightly different day of birth, ‘St. Paul’s Church in New York’ as the place he was found in. Everything exactly like in the made up story he told Sharon. ...If emotions can take external shape, can imagination, fiction? But then Disco notices the documents were ‘found’ by the law office in which the real William Eady is employed, so it’s likely that the lawyer forged the certificate to protect Disco.

“What were you going to do to me when you found me?”

“Kill you, if you went in my way. But now that the company is big enough to no longer be threatened by you, I don’t really care. And you know what? I can’t help but feel deep respect for you for doing your best to solve the mystery. Which is why I’d love for you to become the sales promoter for our wonderful Kozue Method! I can vouch for its effectiveness -- why, I’m my company’s client as well, and look how youthful I am. Well, my body is physically 11, haha!”

He spreads a variety of pamphlets on the table.

“You’ve heard about using stem cells acquired from clones to grow organs and such, have you? The Kozue Method is bolder! You can exchange the entire body at once! It’s perfectly possible, since the personality of a person is tied to consciousness, and not their physical body. Of course, we cooperate with the Blackswan company, who’s the patent holder for the Main Child treatment and for thouroughly preparing the Jacket, that is, the vessel Sub Child. It’s the single greatest development in the world’s history, and it’s all thanks to you, Disco!”

The Kozue Method involves the following procedure. The client -- the Main Child -- is given horrible abuse, so just like it was with Kozue parts of themselves split off and take over fetuses still in the womb, pushing the original souls out. These split off parts -- the Sub Children -- are born and raised, then mysteriously disappear one day, and the empty bodies (the ‘Jackets’, as JJ calls them) are used as new vessels for the Main Child.

That’s not all. From what JJ says, it seems the global consciousness, humanity’s emotions and will, can now be curated -- after all, there’s a way to get negative emotions and violent thoughts quite literally out of you, and apparently resentment will vanish with ‘split personalities’ too. This resulted in a clean, shiny, perfectly peaceful world with apparently zero creativity, to the point that no new fictional media is really made. [I’m... honestly confused as to how this exactly works, especially considering some later parts. Maybe JJ is just overexaggerating.]

“It really is all thanks to you! You found Kozue and the six others, managed to connect them back together, and the news spread all over the world. You’re a hero, Disco!”

“...How many kids did you... did you sell?”

“In the last 10 years it’d be, hm, two hundred millions? Now, now, I understand you have reservations. There’s a little guilt involved, but it’s not like people don’t live with many little guilts on their backs anyway. We’re improving the procedures, too! We already established that sexual abuse makes the job done the quickest, and hey, the faster it is, the shorter it hurts! The kid will just forget it anyway. The Blackswan guys are true specialists, they can do a lot in just one tiny moment. In a single second the child gets, what did you call it? ‘Abuse’, and in the next, the memory has already been moved to the other personality. It’s good that the parents don’t have to see it, since nobody likes to live thinking their children are being hurt.”

Blackswan. The company’s logo on the pamphlets looks familiar.

[The name Blackswan (or Black Swan? I’m not sure of the spelling here) may be a reference to Project Bluebird, which -- at least according to all the conspiracy websites out there -- involved among other unethical experiments trying to induce DID in healthy subjects.]

“You may think: what about the parents of the Sub Children?” JJ continues. “Aren’t they angry? Here’s where one of our big achievements comes into play. You’ve heard about the vanishing twin phenomenon, right? Of course you have, you met Daibakusho Curry. It happens a lot in nature. The strongest survives. What we’re doing here is just giving the poor weak kids a chance! We retrieve and raise them, so they can get a go at living before... being reused.”

How can this future be avoided?, Disco thinks. Is the Black Bird Man involved? Maybe if Disco finds and defeats him, all this can be fixed. But no, he can’t change the future in any way... so what can he do? Find children. Somehow protect the Main Children from abuse, so this entire system breaks. So twins no longer vanish, just like he promised to Run Run -- oh God, if Run Run can speak and act like a human, does this mean...?

Disco asks JJ if Run Run was a victim of their experiments too (maybe they tried to transfer human souls into animal bodies at first?), but JJ seems to genuinely have no idea what he’s talking about.

“Ah, whatever,” JJ says, waving his hand. “You don’t seem convinced, and I’ll forget everything that happened here anyway once you leave.”

But before Disco can actually leave, JJ turns on a futuristic screen and shows him a documentary called LAMIA SYNDROME (2019), sponsored among other by Styron Japan. “Just so you know I’m not lying to you,” JJ says.

The documentary states that 4- to 8-year-old children have been disappearing all over the world since autumn 2006 in a phenomenon called Lamia Syndrome. A few parents talk about how their children suddenly vanished even under close supervision. We see a recording from a mall security camera showing a little girl holding her grandfather’s hand one second and disappearing the next. The footage is then repeated frame by frame. Just before the girl vanishes, another man shows up in the frame.

It’s not the Black Bird Man.

It’s future ‘Disco’. He looks around sixty and seems very happy about something. Looking straight into the camera, he gives it a thumbs up, and with the other hand holds up a sign with a single sentence:

THE WORLD IS MADE OUT OF CLOSED ROOMS

The documentary has a literary critic explain that “this is the title of Ehimegawa Juuzou’s 1996 novel, the 7th book in the Runbaba series. In it, a criminal called the Locked Room Billionaire announces that he’s going to kill a billion people in locked room situations in just ten years. Even if people may try to avoid going inside buildings or returning home, they’re nevertheless trapped in the locked rooms of their own fear.”

[Lore note: this is not even remotely what Maijo’s 2002 novel The World is Made out of Closed Rooms is about. Instead, it seems to be a combination of Seiryoin’s Cosmic and Carnival, with the main villain’s name and modus operandi being a mix of the Locked Room Lord and the Billion Killer. 1996 is when Cosmic was first released, too. I honestly wonder how different JDC is in Disco-verse if Mitamura could get away with this.]

“The crowded mall situation seems similar to one from the book,” the critic continues, “although there’s no proof that the same locked room trick was used. This time, there’s just an evil man at work. He seems similar in looks to Disco Wednesdayyy, a detective and one of the 31 people who disappeared in the Pine House case, which concerned Ehimegawa Juuzou’s death. The same man was involved in finding Yamagishi Kozue, the origin of the Kozue Method. Closed Rooms predicted our current situation in which children are sent to shelters in order to protect them from the Lamia Syndrome. Maybe by using the book’s title, the man is trying to say that he, a great detective, will eventually open the locked room... that is, bust open the shelters and kidnap the children.”

(Disco’s like, no, no, I’m not even a great detective, I’m a hardboiled detective! I don’t know shit about locked room tricks! I haven’t even read Mitamura’s books! [You know, you probably should, Mitamura seems to have put a lot of useful hints in those.] And all this must be a mistake, it’s not like I’d ever start kidnapping children... right?)

The documentary then shows an interview with the only survivor of the Pine House -- Dezuumi Style, now much older, who isn’t sure whether the man in the photo really is his friend Disco Wednesdayyy (and aw, he really refers to Disco as his friend, even if they hardly ever talked). From the interview we learn that this new world doesn’t need writers or great detectives anymore; no locked room murders or tricky false alibi cases or anything similar ever happens anymore. Dezuumi believes that ‘Disco’s’ Closed Rooms message is sarcastic, to show that “in a stiff world without different points of view or creativity, instead of people being closed in locked rooms in mystery novels, it’s now human emotions, ideas and values that are closed in new locked rooms...”

“But isn’t it right to stop the unwanted thoughts and focus on the useful ones?” the interviewer asks.

“No. People should be always thinking about new topics and coming up with new inventions. They should dare to break things. Trying to keep everyone’s thoughts perfectly ordered is terrorism.”

Next, the documentary shows Iwasaki Kousuke, the taxi driver from Nishi Akatsuki, who also isn’t sure if that’s Disco in the photo. When the interviewer brings up that Iwasaki’s family defeated cancer thanks to Kozue Method and that the idea of ‘a lifespan’ may soon be irrelevant to humanity, Iwasaki says that he’s still not sure if that’s a good thing. Death is a fact of life, after all, and we should be grateful for happiness and sadness.

The documentary then says the whoever the mysterious man is, he has kidnapped close to three hundred million children since 2006...

JJ stops the movie, saying that what he wanted Disco to see is that there really is only a tiny group of people in Japan standing against him, and the rest of the world is pretty much his. “But do you understand now why I have respect for you? Three hundred millions! For the first two years, we could hardly ever find the kids, since you hid the majority of them! I thought that maybe killing your family would lure you out, but that plan didn’t work out... and it’s not like the Blackswan guys haven’t already killed you seven times.” The time fold effects must have protected Disco from permanently dying in the future.

Three hundred million kids?! That’s be over 60 000 a day! You’d need an entire organization of space-jumpers to pull off something like this... or thirty one people from the Pine House. Did ‘Mercury C’ prevent everyone from leaving because they were meant to form a group, and their mysterious disappearance meant they simply moved to the shadows? Have the others spent years and years helping him hide the kids from Styron and recruit new space-jumpers?...

But where do you even hide three hundred million kids? They could probably warp any small space to accomodate even that number, and since they could jump in time they’d just make it so a child stays there for merely a second before it’s returned to their parents once the world becomes safe. But would they ever return them, considering that Styron won the battle for the world?...

Disco asks if JJ hurt the families of Disco’s accomplices, to which JJ claims he wanted to take down Disco first, so he didn’t bother yet. But anyway, JJ really wants Disco to stop this whole children kidnapping thing, because can’t Disco see how much the parents are hurt by his actions~? [You’re one to talk, buddy.] He resumes the documentary to show one last scene.

19-year-old Kozue says she’s not sure if the man in the photo is Disco. “I feel sympathy for the affected parents, and I think it'd be best to return the kids to them. The Disco I knew wouldn't do something horrible like that. Are you sure it's not someone else?” Then, as she’s leaving the shot, she looks back at the camera and yells that maybe it’d be better if she had never gotten involved with Disco at all.

The documentary ends by stating that the global birth rate is drastically falling, since women are afraid to bring children into the world in which the Lamia Syndrome runs rampant. It’s predicted that by 2080 the human race will stop procreating except for the purpose of prolonging their immortal lives.

“See? If you keep going, you’ll be the one responsible for the destruction of the human race,” JJ says. “Don’t you feel bad about it?”

But all Disco answers with is “Thank you for the movie, JJ. It was quite illuminating.”

“Huh? That’s not just some movie, that’s reality! Don’t you feel bad? Angry?”

“Not really. All it did was prove me that I’m right. Have you ever seen the kanji for ‘lifespan’ (寿命)? The first one (寿) may mean ‘congratulations’, ‘celebration’, ‘being happy with life’. There would be nothing to ‘celebrate’ if there wasn’t a finite ‘lifespan’. You really aren’t naturalized yet if you don’t get it. Japanese people understand why there would be no charm in making sakura trees bloom all year long.”

“Well, clearly Japanese people are mistaken. You can’t look at kamikaze pilots and tell me there’s nothing wrong with their heads!”

“You really don’t get sacrifices for a great cause, JJ. While kamikaze sacrificed their lives, they yelled ‘banzai’, which means ‘ten thousand years of life’. Not death, but life. You saw me smile in that photo in the documentary, did you? That smile is my banzai. If the future can’t be changed, then all this movie proves is that my future is bright: every single day spent fulfilled as I’m protecting children.”

As Disco sets to leave (again), JJ pulls out his last trump card and calls his Japanese wife to the room.

It’s Norma Brown. Or rather, Fuyuno Norma Brown. JJ’s new name is apparently Fuyuno Shinji.

Norma is overjoyed to see Disco and sweeps him in a hug, saying that she’s been looking for him all this time. She’s different than he remembers. Sure, she has the same personality, but she looks Japanese, which overall makes her the spitting image of Norma-faced Koeda.

“Do you not like this body of mine, Disco?” she asks seeing his reaction. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t obtained from some poor child! Shinji, haven’t you explained that to him yet?! The method has been improved, Disco! The Jackets are now cultivated in artificial wombs. No more pushing out souls out of the original to obtain a Subchild! After birth, they’re raised by good volunteer mothers. In addition, we discovered that stimulus other than ‘suffering’ works for inducing new personalities. Children aren’t hurting anymore, Disco!”

“It’s useless, honey,” JJ says. “This isn’t the Disco you knew. He no longer protects children.”

Norma tries to persuade Disco to stop taking children away, but he still won’t budge. She has a little exchange with JJ who seems to be seriously jealous (”Do you love me like you love Disco?”), and assures JJ that of course she loves him, Disco starts considering to bring out one of his hidden knives and attack JJ...

But before Disco can make a move, something explodes. It takes Disco a few seconds to realize that while he’s still holding Norma in his arms, her lower half was blown off by a small bomb hidden inside her body, much like the one Disco once pulled out of Nils. Her last words are, “You’re my hero, Disco.”

Disco desperately puts her body back together, trying not to ‘run away to the Pineapple Home’ [I like that this became a metaphore for withdrawing into your mind from shock]. But no matter what he does, she doesn’t come back to life.

“This isn’t her original body,” JJ says. He looks almost as shocked as Disco by what just happened. “The soul can’t return to it, and the original body is already gone...”

“But there’s a spare one, right? There must be!” Disco yells, mortified at his own response. Would he really sacrifice a child for her?... “No, wait... If I just return to the past, all will be undone. She’ll be alive again--”

“No. Norma is dead,” JJ says. “She’s going to be dead in every possible history from now on. Sure, this is just an imaginary, fictional future... but she wasn’t. She came from the past. We met in 2003, and the Blackswan guys helped arrange it so that she’d be taken to 2008, and then we’d get married. Now that she’s gone, her research will disappear too. She was the one who came up with all the new projects, so our progress will be lost... according to plan. Of course! The Blackswan guys must have swindled me again! She’s been kept here all this time for the sole purpose of being killed in front of you! It’s your fault!”

Was it really his fault?... No. Everything's already decided. Every attempt to change history is already contained in that history.

While JJ is still blaming him, Disco doesn’t take that shit and asks “JJ, what was the phrase activating the bomb? It was the question you asked her, wasn’t it?”

[Wait, those bombs are phrase-activated. Which means Nils openly opposing JJ Styron while in a conversation with him was even more awe-inspiring than I thought. DAMN, kid.]

Disco puts the bomb back together, slam dunks it into JJ's body, and starts the last barrage of questions.

Why isn’t JJ busy with drug cartels anymore? Apparently the Blackswan guys managed to somehow remove the hallucinatory effect of drugs, since it could destroy their idea of perfectly managed global consciousness.

So there’s peace in the world, but no new media is created, no Spielbergs or Hendrixes? Maybe so, but hey, even Disco’s beloved San Diego is now clean and pretty! (Disco finds this fact hard to imagine and honestly quite disturbing.)

What was going on with that case with JJ’s seven underlings, why were they all hanging by just one leg? “I don’t know, have you tried asking that kid that should be in the Pine House, Nils Mikami?” [Yeah, you better remember his name!]

Does JJ know about the Pineapple Home? No clue what that even is.

Alright. As Disco prepares to leave (for the nth time in this sequence), JJ says, “If you go back to the past now, the childless method Norma invented would cease to exist too, you know.”

“No. Norma was a great person, but not a unique one. There are many others like her who can come up with it.” [I assume that since the future is unchanging, somebody else really will come up with it.]

“...in the end, I’m weak and you’re weak. No matter the time or place, the weak are an easy target. No, maybe we just have different kinds of strength. After all, you didn’t run away even as Norma was dying in your arms. ...you know, she didn’t answer my question properly. She said that she loved me. But my question was... Do you love me like you love Disco?”

Disco instantly pulls the bomb out of JJ’s body and tosses it through the window, where it explodes at a safe distance. Not ouf of mercy or anything, just because fuck you, you slimy bastard, you’re not getting off that easy, and Disco will be sure to think of a much, much worse punishment later. [HELL YEAH]

Leaving the room (and pretty devastated looking JJ), Disco happens to glance at the sweets he was welcomed with, and notices the logo of a shop called Makuri-ya. ‘Makuri”... “Mercury”? Mercury C did say he was the owner of a traditional Japanese confectionary shop in Chofu...

It may be a good time to go shopping for some explanation.

#sparkly reads disco #maijo and jdc stuff #long post #I still have no idea how this entire system works tbh this was... a confusing chapter #also are there really TWO female characters who solely exist in this book to get fridged for manpain. seriously maijo what the hell

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