#like ugh it's complicated

[thedroloisms]

just an essay bc it's been on my mind but the way that victimhood becomes a weapon on social media is so fucking stupid and counterintuitive to actual advocacy. people wielding "im a victim" as a defense not only in situations actually involving their specific case but also in basically every damn situation in the world is so ???? even in cases involving dream, for example, i will see people using his history as a means of defending him (it's really fucked up that you would accuse a victim of ___, he's an abuse victim i'm sure he won't defend ___ and that he'll ___) and while i understand where that sentiment comes from, the base assumption it's making is...nakedly untrue. and assuming its truthfulness can hurt victims moreso than it helps them.

being a victim isn't moralizing. being a victim doesn't make you a good person. suffering isn't absolution, and going through fucked up shit doesn't make someone "good." people equate abuser = bad person and victim = good person, and then assume that victims are incapable of abusive behavior or "problematic" internalized ideas. an abuser can't be neurodivergent, or mentally ill, or part of a marginalized group, and most importantly an abuser can't be a victim. the boxes of victim and abuser are strictly defined with no overlap. once you've been through something truly, verifiably, Fucked Up (tm), congrats! you get a certificate of eternal victimhood that prevents you from ever being a Real Bad Person ever for the rest of your life.

only that's not how real life works! it's just not! generational trauma leads to cycles of abuse that perpetuate themselves over whole generations of people! the kids that think that it's perfectly fine and a-okay for a parent to physically punish their children don't tend to be the ones with parents that don't lay a finger on them! and you know, it sucks. it sucks that you get nothing out of being hurt, that there's no fucking prize, that there are no suffering vouchers for you to cash in because of the abuse you suffered that can give you good-person-points. it sucks to endure all that shit for nothing. but the opposite idea of suffering making you a good person is the exact reason why some people preach about the miles they walked to school in the driving rain to excuse taking out their shitty temper on their small children.

being abused generally doesn't make one "better." if anything, trauma tends to fuck you up in ways that hurt you...and others. going through shit tends to make people worse. working to get better is something that requires actual conscious effort, not something that you are given as a side effect of going through hell. over and over again, traumatized individuals who are made to feel powerless and given little freedom and ability to change their circumstances, when in a situation where they are given power to some degree over some person, may choose to abuse that power while they're in their own abusive situation or after. part of being a victim of abuse often means having a distorted view of the abuse you've been through! it can mean normalizing fucked up behavior! looking at shit and treating it lightly because you've been taught that it's "not that bad," if you've been taught that it's bad at all! victims aren't granted perfect ideologies from god because they walked through flames--cult survivors usually have to unlearn all sorts of messed up beliefs that were drilled into them--beliefs that many people on twitter would then damn them for, because obviously if you've thought something like that in the past then you're a bigoted hateful individual.

i can only speak from my own experience, but i can't fucking count the number of people i've heard of or met or known personally who have been through some kind of trauma in the past, who are undoubtably victims of abuse, who then go on to act in toxic, manipulative, and abusive ways to others. oftentimes, these people are aware of the fact that they were in abusive situations in the past and make quite a big deal about the fact that they care about victims, as a victim, and want to advocate for them. they're the same people who react extremely negatively to anyone alluding to the idea that they could be abusive--they're not like that, they've been abused, how could anyone accuse them of abusing another person, don't they know how much that hurts with their history. and so on and so forth.

and...i have a lot of sympathy for these individuals, generally speaking. because as mentioned above, being abused in the past doesn't necessarily make it harder for you to be a perpetrator in the future. sometimes--oftentimes, even--it's the opposite. and i feel for them, because going through trauma and being hurt makes you scramble for ways to not be hurt again, and oftentimes the easiest answer for that (and the ways of solving problems as modeled to them in the past!) is control, and controlling another party can very easily slip into manipulative, abusive behavior. especially if you still have internalized ideas mixed in with the fear that surviving abuse entails, internalized ideas that are often left unexamined by people who believe that their victimhood absolves them from any further responsibility. i feel for people who are deathly afraid of ever being seen as terrible people, oftentimes because of the shit that they went through, who seek explanations for their abusers' behavior that make it so much easier to simplify the matter into "they're something separate from me, something that i can never become." i sympathize with the anger and fear and frustration and grief that might never had had a healthy outlet while in a past situation that ends up poured out into places where it shouldn't be in the present, i sympathize with the desire to find reason in being hurt where it doesn't exist, to want there to be something to make the whole damn thing worth it instead of having nothing to take with you but your pain.

but at the end of the day, that's not how life works. that's not how abuse works. yeah, there are abusers who are cruel for cruelty's sake, who are aware of the harm they do and desire to cause more--and there are just as many who genuinely believe that they're doing the right thing, that they're doing good, that they care for the one that they're hurting unselfishly and wholeheartedly. there are many, many people who hurt others because they have been hurt before, and this isn't an excuse--of course not--but refusing to acknowledge the ways that pain can perpetuate itself and blinding oneself to the possibility of their own actions ever being abusive can literally be how this pain continues. it's good to be self aware, it's good to want to do the right thing, but assuming that victims are good people because of the suffering they went through not only means that so-called "bad victims" (or anyone that's not yet Acceptably untangled the thought patterns and actions that have been normalized to them, or anyone who lashes out in quote-unquote appropriate ways as judged by whatever social media council is handing out social justice tickets for the week) get overlooked and ignored, but abusive patterns of behavior are allowed to continue to exist, just in a repackaged form with different language. it's not fair to victims to nail them to this standard of so-called righteousness that is also inextricably connected to their experiences, allowed to be revoked if they're too "abuser" to be "victim" anymore, or to overlook the victims of their behavior because their inherent suffering-borne righteousness keeps them from crossing the line into bad behavior.

at the end of the day, no one deserves abuse, victims deserve to be advocated for, and people who have been through horrific shit didn't deserve to go through horrific shit. but you don't get handed get-out-of-jail-free cards for being treated badly, you know?

#abuse #like ugh it's complicated #but i need people to stop using victimhood as a catchall excuse #and this isn't criticism of like. dr eam btw #who really hasn't ever used anything re: his experiences as an excuse as far as i can remember #it's one thing to say that 'these situations affected my actions' which is half of what this essay is abt #because yeah. going through shit affects your actions ... and not always for the better. #now the other ccs whose opinions ive been unwillingly subjected to over the last few weeks ? lol. lmao. #like look this idea of victimhood earning anyone anything is inherently damaging and completely untrue #sympathy and understanding extended towards abuse victims shouldn't be dependent on the morality points that they falsely earn #as a result of going through fucked up shit

[archivebottles]

been messing around with my drawing process so i decided to do a bunch of cephalopod group shots to get a bit more confident with it

[IMG ID: Image 1 is a group drawing of Shiver, Big Man, Frye, Callie, and Marie from Splatoon. The first four are posing for a photo with Marie in the back. They are in Alterna with the buildings and the hole in the sky visible in the back.

Image 2 is a group drawing of Agents 3, 4, and 8 in casual wear in an apartment all posing for a selfie. Various objects are littered in the background with a backpack, skateboard, and part of a switch being present by 8.

Image 3 is a a drawing of Pearl and Marina dressed in casual wear taking a selfie at night. /END ID]

#splatoon #do i have 2 tag literally every splatoon character.. #shiver #frye #big man #callie cuttlefish #marie cuttlefish #agent 3 #agent 4 #agent 8 #pearl houzuki #marina iida #good lord. #ive been playing wayyy too much of the game so its always on my mind rn LOL learning splatana wiper for fun just for the thrill of it #myart #ugh you cant move tags in the new editor..awful #im getting pretty confident drawing like this! im gonna try and record a timelapse of one #idk what tho..it cant be anything too complicated

[aboveweirdest]

Okay but you know what i really love about bingqiu?? Big ol spoilers for svsss btw, if you haven't read all the books.

I just love how when the System puts SQQ through original LBH literally ripping him limb from limb as "alternative punishment," SQQ just wants to see his Binghe. Like it would be totally reasonable to project that trauma onto his Binghe, but all he wants is the reminder that HIS Binghe is sweet and caring to him. Fuck idk this isn't expressing the depth of the importance of that action, but the fact that he NEEDS to see Binghe instead of fearing him again is so big

He doesn't even seem to hesitate, it doesn't occur to him to be afraid of Binghe. His first thought and the first person he mentally reaches for takes the same form as the man who just put him through torture, but it doesn't matter because to him they are fundamentally different. Not everyone could make that kind of immediate distinction.

I just love them so much 😭😭

#lou binghe #bingqiu #shen qingqiu #svsss #mxtx #my feelings for them are so complicated #like binghe is so unhinged but i still love them #sqq just loves him without even trying sometimes ugh

[descendant-of-truth]

Hey I might be forgetting something but. is this legitimately the first time someone has described Sonic's positive traits out loud in the whole show. I feel like there's been general "you're strong and helpful" comments here and there, but when's the last time someone showed this kind of confidence in him without any caveats?

Sonic doesn't even get to hear Nine say these nice things about him, either. And what does he get told by him instead?

Most of what Sonic gets to hear from other people in this show is all the ways he's messed up, how he's too reckless and untrustworthy, and I think it really would've helped him at this point to hear someone show that kind of confidence in him. But now his only frame of reference for what Nine thinks of him is this last argument, and that's definitely gotta sting.

But you know who else could've used a vote of confidence, and who got one while he wasn't around to hear it, only to be told the opposite during that fight? Nine.

Yeah I feel totally normal about this why do you ask

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic prime #sonic prime spoilers #nine the fox #Like they're saying what they mean it's just that their feelings are complicated and they're each only hearing the worst parts of it #which is just. UGH it's so good how are they doing it

[skellydun]

why is my mother drunkenly telling me that I may or may not be stupid like it's a big secret

#???????????????? i said what and she Ugh NM. like ok?????????? #shout out to all the folks with complicated relationships with yer mommas where ya at!!!!!

[unopenablebox]

i admit that i find it a little bit frustrating how Wildly Astonished other antizionist jews act when i tell them my israeli jewish family have lived in the region since [some unknown length of time before 1800 when there start being records about it]

#and then they're like ''ohhh they're mizrahi!'' [connotation nonwhite‚ virtuously indigenous] #and i have to be like. no. it's just that‚ as palestine was in fact ottoman-administered greater syria for most of the last 600 years‚ #you could get there from other parts of the ottoman empire. such as the part of now-ukraine your ashkenazi family is also from. #it wasn't actually a hermetically sealed arab-only ethnostate that evaporated immigrants on sight. it was a pretty decent place to live as #a jew by at least some accounts. or better than the front of the hapsburg-ottoman war anyway which is where they were coming from. #i'm not sure who you think it's serving exactly to believe that there were literally no ashkenazim in the middle east before the 1st aliyah #however there were some. and this information does not actually threaten a modern anti-state of israel position like at all. #but since apparently you've constructed your new Diaspora-Centric Identity around the idea that 'palestine' and 'diaspora' #are the two mutually exclusive nonoverlapping regions and the former is ontologically a no-european-jews-allowed zone #i guess i can give you a minute to try to figure it out. #ugh sorry this is nothing it isn't anything. for one thing it's fantastically unimportant #and for another thing i don't know how to like talk about it in a way that doesn't make me sound at least kind of like im trying to justify #myself as being somehow less complicit or something. i mean i think my complicity as an american dwarfs the rest of it honestly but. #i just feel really insanely alienated where the rhetoric of my theoretically most closely politically aligned group is not really built to #like. accommodate the facts of my family history. #sorry. i have honestly no idea why im so obsessed with articulating this concept ive just been chewing on it pointlessly for days #box opener

[coolnonsenseworld]

Keith looks cute but comes to pick Lance up from soccer practice, because after his first semester in the same team, the amount of red cards he received re-directed him to kick boxing.

#klance #lance mcclain #keith kogane #voltron legendary defender #klance fanart #laith #anyone remembers soccer AU i started like 6 years ago??? #where Shiro steps down from being a captain and hands the position over to Keith #making Lance remain a vice-captain #i lovee both the idea Lance was robbed but grew into this #and how Keith had to take the responsibility and stop being so hot-headed on the field #ugh its basically a marriage setup #it was 4 years ago* #i cant wait for my holiday like just for a break i know everyone is very interested in travels and all #but i just... idk want to collect rocks #that's kind of a metaphor #its complicated let me get back to it someday

[skitskatdacat63]

"Death is nothing, but to live defeated and inglorious is to die daily."

+ process(tw blood)

Also, look at him, bloody little guy 🥹

This drawing was inspired by several matador pics :D here and here:

^ I don't think I'll ever live up to the second one ah. There's several pics of that specific guy just soaked with blood, and I'm uh a bit obsessed with then ITS FUCKED UP I KNOW OKAY! But I've not drawn blood in a while so it was a bit difficult so I added less than I would want to I guess. Also I'm obsessed with how often they kneel in bullfighting?? Like okay who are you arching your back and spreading your legs for-

#ah not 100% sure abt this one but i think i still like it!!! #i was practicing matador poses during the wknd and im like yeah should prob paint one #and then it felt like all the energy left my body djfkkglg i was like ugh how do i paint again????? #mostly: just really wanted to draw him bloody #i love how every time i draw him in ferrari colors its just the most eye bleeding thing ever #my eyes get too used to it on my ipad's display and im like aw this isnt red enough :( #and then i transfer it to my phone and it feels like the red suddenly is hurting my eyes even worse djfkkglg #im glad the blood turned out well. i honestly think it was probably easier bcs the clothes are red already #but yes yes suffering ferrari nando. hes my comfort character atp 😭😭 #perfect catie drawing: depressed ferrari fernando. blood. napoleon quote #anyways yeah lmk! i think it looks okay?? idk i think i just love the first 2 matador drawings i ever did #and its very hard to live up to them. but whatever. we move on #im glad i did a more complicated pose at least ????? #also god i was somewhat annoyed w his face and then i redrew his eye and it was like OH OKAY suddenly good okay #tw blood #<- i would put this drawing under the cut but like. my blog i do what i want and i want to draw blood #i used to draw bloody stuff a lot more but ah idk less opportunities now sjfkkglg so it was kinda nice #catie.art. #f1 #formula 1 #fernando alonso #matador au

[kittykatninja321]

ok so the thing is Jason doesn’t speak the most highly of Willis and you sorta get the impression that Jason is used to him being absent

But when he finds out Willis was killed by Two Face he’s sullen all day

And then he loses it on Two Face the first chance he gets

#‘Doing time again most likely’ is crazy that means at some point Willis disappeared and Catherine was too sick and Jason too baby to know #to file a missing persons report. Ugh I have so many Jason and Willis thoughts actually #Part of why I hate the out and out abusive Willis retcon is because I think the ‘It’s Complicated’ dynamic is much more interesting #Jason Todd #dc #Willis Todd

[inconclusionray]

If I see one more "poor Izzy was in an abusive relationship for twenty years :'(" take I'm going to set this pirate ship on fire.

#you don't get to erase the gorgeous fucked up mutual toxicity of their consent-free sadomasochist trauma survival relationship on MY watch #they SAVED EACH OTHER and MADE EACH OTHER and FUCKED EACH OTHER UP and it was so so bad it was sooooo gooooooooood #like i know disk horse has trained us to think there can only be The Abuser and The Abused and one is always bad and one is always blameless #but babies sometimes relationships are fucked up and when it's fictional it can be so gorgeous like come on #izzy got so hard when fed his toe I'm surprised he didn't have an aneurysm and die right then #if you're gonna claim him as queer then let him be QUEER not an uwu sanitized self insert okay? #he was fine with losing his toe he wasn't fine with losing his playmate #and blackbeard came back WRONG #this thing the two of them created this fucked up dangerous pirate game called blackbeard wasn't about belonging anymore #it wasn't about the two of them surviving the cruelty of their former captain or the worse cruelty of civilized society #it was a caricature and it had to die #and it did in the end #and Izzy realized he didn't need it anymore #and Ed didn't need it #and he was so so happy about it #that was worth dying for #ugh I'm so in love with this story #anyway Izzy wasn't abused & he was abused & he was an abuser & he saved Edward & they were so bad for each other & they loved each other #learn to love complicated fucked up harmful problematic things babies #because you are one #and you deserve love too

[juminsfakecat]

ji changwook as a pathetic heart of gold ex-boyfriend and shin hyesun as a goofy optimistic female lead going through a hard time? can’t believe there was a show made for just ME

#welcome to samdalri #DOOOO YALLL KNOW #HOW MUCH I LOVE MR QUEEN AND LOVESTUCK IN THE CITY #THIS IS LITERALLT MY FANON UNREALISTIC PAIRING COMING TRUE PLEASE IM DYING #IVR CRIED ALREADY AND ITS NOT EVEN A SAD SHOW #I JUST LOVE THEM BOTH SEPARATELY AND IT WORKS SO GOOD HERE FJDJDJJS #I loved her in mr queen so much bc she plays goofy cool girls so well like her demeanor and her energy gives old granny who makes dark jokes #AND LIKE UGH #ji changwook has been trying to be more comedic and romcom since he came back from the army #and I KNOW MY MANS POTIENTAL but his counterparts have not been good #not that they weren’t good at acting but the chemistry test just wasn’t there imo like his antagonist role is doing fine bc he has the look #but UGHHHHH YOU JUST HAD TO FALL IN LOVE WITH HIM DURING THE DRUNK CRYING SCENE IN LOVESTRUCK AND THATS WHERE I KNEW HIS BEST WAS THIS TYPE #loved him and jiwon actually bc he does ‘I’m pathetic for this complicated woman’ so well like idk how to explain it #their chemistry is great in samdalri bc her comedic timing and his pathetic guy thing is just so good I love it #it’s so SPECIFIC FOR ME

[bonefall]

Living for the Grandma Mistystar designation because she's grandma in such a specific way. Like she's been around forever and goes on and on and we know and love her and she lived through The War™ and had a hard life, etc, but sometimes things come out of her mouth that make it VERY OBVIOUS that she attributes the horrors she lived through to a bad person, a bad group, as opposed to the culture in which she lives, and therefore doesn't really have the right takeaways. So there's grandma telling you stories and then she says some shit and it's like "Grandma Mistystar didn't you literally survive an attempted half-clan genocide. The fuck are you on about." But also she's old as hell and you know she loves you and you love her so you just sort of sit uncomfortably in her living room and drink your tea. Literally an old-ass woman who lived through hell and still votes Conservative. I'm obsessed with her.

The old grandma characters in BB have my entire soul. They've all been through AWFUL shit, they came so close to the right conclusions, you love them SO much but then they drop some shit that makes your skin crawl. What can you do with that?

You can see a bit of progress with cats like Mousefur, but even then, it's never in the exact way you were hoping for. It goes from, "foreigner Bad" to "Some foreigners Not bad." But progress is progress, right...?

It's a sort of hopeless feeling, but not strong enough to tip into despair. The world is changing and they're remnants of the old one. You have to fight them when they try to drag it back, but totally changing their person is an unwinnable battle.

#I'm obsessed with the characters who can't change entirely #who always have a bit of that toxicity hanging onto them #People are complicated #I love elders so much though ugh #A little off topic but you know something weird I think about a lot? #How elders are like... treated as a group in WC #They're never just. Hanging out in camp #They're always in Old People Areas #Hanging out of the elder's den or the medcat den #They rarely just leave camp for funsies or go for walks with their kids or grandkids #Has anyone else noticed that...? #How the den is treated like a retirement home more than like... a den in the same camp #WC is bizarre about its elders. On one hand they're supposed to be respected and valued #But then it just sweeps them out of sight and mind most of the time #Like an afterthought #Where's the old people just playing cat chess in the park or whatever? #what no 3rd spaces does to a mf's writing style #bone babble

[chthonic-cassandra]

[abuse discussion] The petty hill I will die on is that Dracula should never be handsome. Oh, it's easier if he's pretty. Then it's love; these poor maids who are his victims take one look at his face and can't believe something so evil could look so nice. [...] But I'm not in the business of ease. The Brides have always fascinated me, in a very different way than the could fascinate male writers, because I know them. They interest me in the way Melania Trump does, in the way Georgina Chapman Weinstein does. In the way that every woman, at least once in her life, wonders, "Could I just...?" Most of us could never go through with it, of course. But some do. What if the Brides did? What if Dracula wasn't a handsome Romanian prince, but a nameless, faceless, ancient terror? What would you trade for a life of enormous wealth, released from the cruel rigors of ageing into a state of eternal beauty? How much would you be willing to fake, and for how long? Of course the deal is bad, and the monster turns out to be even more of a monster than you suspect when you make it. But again, this is no surprise to most women. And ask any abuse survivor, you have to become a little bit of a monster yourself to escape it.

Alex de Campi, "On monsters," afterward to Dracula, motherfucker!, Alex di Campi and Erica Henderson

Okay, I know I am absurdly biased on this topic, but this is the second time in the past few years that I've seen Dracula's brides discussed in this very specific framework and both times it's made me very uncomfortable so I want to consult with all of you, my friends - how does this land for you, as a way of discussing abuse and as a way of discussing these characters?

#I am still turning over in my head how to articulate what precisely is making me uncomfortable here which maybe I will share later #but it's something about lack of nuance when talking about different kinds of complicity #and cheap analogizing in general #but I'd really like to hear from all of you how it lands #it is a curse of my present life that we have entered a moment of Feminist Vampire Bride stories and all of them feel Wrong to me #ugh #dracula #abuse #trauma frameworks

[runawaymun]

.

#sorry let me rant real quick in the tags #cw personal #once again hitting an insurance pothole bc the psych says she accepts my OHP plan HOWEVER the therapy group she is contacted with says #THEY don't #they only accept the insurance if it's through my employer but NOT through the government?????????????? #so there's still some kind of payment??? #anyway I want to scream why is this so complicated #like will she take my insurance or not who's right here #anyway called her back directly and went to voicemail so now I've done all I can for now #why the hell is this so hard man #the person on the phone didn't know really how to explain #once again no one knows what they're talking about #like can y'all not communicate and figure this out? #AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH #i need to get an ADHD eval before my next PCP appointment in june so that they will continue giving me my meds #and the psychiatry through the hospital has a limited number of visits that insurance will cover #*contracted #not retyping all of that #and once again the only reason this is so stressful is because the psychiatry group at the hospital fumbled the communication ball last tim #and the psychiatrist I was with never put the ADHD on the chart #and now somehow it's MY responsibility to fix that> #UGH #like I am grateful to have some kind of coverage but holy shit is the US healthcare system in shambles #the bureaucracy is INSANE #i had to just sit down and put my head in my hands for a second #and then go 'right okay nothing i can do about that rn moving on' #uGH #literally said 'what the FUCK' out loud a couple times #like not on the phone after I hung up obvs

[kanerallels]

Hate when I start writing something that is, technically, cute, but then immediately starts to feel out of character/contradictory to what I already wrote

#listen. this is about the sm au #cause i decided that in twi'leki culture saying i love you out loud is something that you don't do often romantically #unless you're married #which is fine because there's also the lekku sign for i love you! so kanan would know that hera loved him too when he said it! #BUT NOW #I'M IN SEASON THREE #AND HE CAN'T KRIFFING SEE IT #how pray tell do i write around this? #part of me is thinking 'oh well hera would say i love you! she'd know that he can't see it and want to express it to him' #plus she'd know that humans have different traditions so not saying before marriage is a liiiiiiiiiittle impractical maybe? #but then. it's kinda. starting to seem like an analogy for something else #in a way that i don't particularly like #because if i keep writing it the way i am i'm taking the side i wouldn't want to take personally #SO IT'S KINDA WACK OKAY #I'M NOT SURE WHAT TO DO #because hera and i hate hate hate hate the fact that kanan can't see her say i love you anymore #like seriously. i realized it the other day and it physically hurt #but i also know that kanan wouldn't want her to do something that was (to her) wrong just for him #but SHE DOES LOVE HIM SO MUCH OKAY IT'S COMPLICATED #ugh #i hate it when this happens

[oh-gh0st]

awww...

#ghost's doodles #ghostoro #I HATE HIS OUTFIT. ITS SO COMPLICATED TO DRAW. UGH!!!! but he serves kinda so i guess its fine #whatev at least it came out cute #i love the idea of ghost being like his lapcat but like. a bat.... on his shoulder and arm #he'd go “aww you're so cute when you're tiny...” then theyd screech at him Very Loudly <- demanding attention #im not gonna be able to stop thinking about this au for a LOOONNGG time my goodness.... #guys did u kjnow bats r my favorite animal next to raccoons. did u kn