#the fact that you perpetuate cycles of self harm and abuse!!! because its all you know!!!! and having to learn to break that cycle because—

[owlf45]

A couple comments on Candor going like:

“Doesnt this mean he could have escaped the entire time??”

Or

“So none of it mattered”

Or

“He didn’t have to go through all that”

THATS THE POINTTTTTTTT!!!!!

#candor fic #some of yall bitches would rather die or go through hell and back than love yourselves!! thats the point thats the POINT!!!!!!!!! #the pain and misery you jump headfirst into just because its routine and easier than having to forgive yourself for being you!!!! #the fact that you perpetuate cycles of self harm and abuse!!! because its all you know!!!! and having to learn to break that cycle because— #no one else can do it for you!!!! #self hatred is the epitome of irrationality of COURSE it was the pretty option of COURSE it could have been avoided #but you can tell someone who beats themselves up all the time that theyre fucking stupid but you KNOW they arent listening to SHIT #thats the POINTTTTTTTTT!!!!!!! #*screeches at the top of my lungs* #okay. im good now 😤 #im totally down for people to interpret my works however but my god is it a struggle when someone literally explains the main theme without- #understanding it #and rather than not commenting something else they take that misunderstanding and speak of it like its a flaw in the actual work #delete later

[sexisdisgusting]

I really feel for the "omg so mentally ill" e girls. they are mostly abuse victims who seek approval of men no matter the cost of their health. they make sex their whole personality, letting everyone degrade them and overall act VILE to them as a person. calling themselves a "Sub" and laughing off the fact they self harm.

that being said.... I cant express enough how those women get people killed and otherwise groomed. its similar to anatwt. yes, they are struggling. yes, they don't deserve to suffer. but they cause others to suffer too by playing it off as a quirky personality trait.

I fallen into that trap of thinking and it caused nothing but pain. Now whenever I see someone letting themselves get humiliated and degraded whether it be pretending to be an e girl or practicing DDLG or age play or whatever, I feel a pit in my stomach knowing the men (and troons) who are getting off to hurting her. its like free candy to predators.

most of mainstream sex positivity is just thinly veiled self harm for women. its a lot easier to accept being nothing but an object than overcome your trauma. i wish I could give them all the strength to overcome all that so theyd stop feeding into the cycle of abuse. you are benefiting the most toxic people imaginable who literally see no worth in you. just because they say they care doesnt mean they do, they only "care" as long as you keep giving them what they want.

GHDDJDHHHHHHHHH YOU SAID IT PERFECTLY OH MY GOD!!!!!!

my heart goes out to those girls, they are perpetuating a vicious cycle in the worst of ways, i only wish for them to wake up

theres nothing that makes a moids attention worth it, i wish more women would learn this

#asks

[best-underrated-anime]

Best Underrated Anime Group A Round 2: #A7 vs #A3

#A7: Immortal being learns what it’s like to be human

#A3: Girl who sees ghosts meets poor shinigami. Comedy ensues.

Titles, summary, trailers, propaganda, and poll under the cut!

#A7: To Your Eternity (Fumetsu no Anata e)

Summary:

An Orb, known only as It, is cast to Earth to be observed from afar. Capable of changing forms from beings whose reflections It captures, It first becomes a rock and then, due to the rising temperature, moss.

It does not move until one snowy day, a wolf at death’s door barely crosses by. When It takes the animal’s form, It attains awareness of its consciousness and starts to wander with an unclear destination in mind. Soon, It comes across the wolf’s master—a young boy waiting for his tribe to return from a paradise abundant with fish and fruit in the south. Although the boy is lonely, he still hopes those whom he holds dear in his memories have not forgotten him and that he will reunite with them one day.

The boy wants to explore new surroundings and decides to abandon his home with It to find the paradise using the traces his tribe left behind. However, with a heavily injured body and no sight of his elder comrades, what will become of the boy?

Propaganda:

I don’t think I’ve ever watched an anime that has meant so much. It’s/Fushi’s journey from being born as nothing and without emotions, to becoming a genuine, real person who loves and cries is so special to me. The constant war he’s in between being too human and being not human at all is written so well—for him to love so much it hurts, leading him to isolate himself for years on end, for him to want to make friends, to love, but too afraid of them leaving and eventually dying to meet anyone new. For him to get so detached from life and death and the cycle it perpetuates that he loses understanding of why human life is so special—why should he save people, if they will die anyway? Why should he save them, if he can just bring them back to life, if he can just become them? The constant cycle of him learning to love again, and learning to treasure life again, only to lose it once he’s experienced death in a new and agonizing way. It’s about love, and it’s about humanity. Always.

Trigger Warnings: Animal Cruelty/Death, Child Abuse, Graphic Depictions of Cruelty/Violence/Gore, Racism, Rape/Non-Con, Self-Harm, Suicide

All TW’s apply to the protagonists, except child abuse and the racism. The world itself has hints of racism/discrimination throughout the anime, and not directly towards the protagonist. As for the rape, an antagonist attempts to rape the protagonist. There is a ton of self harm (protagonist and side characters) and blood as there is a lot of wars also happening in the anime

#A3: RIN-NE (Kyoukai no Rinne)

Summary:

Rinne Rokudou has bigger problems than going to school—namely, helping spirits pass over to the next life. Because of this responsibility, he often finds himself short on money and struggles to buy his necessities: food, clothes, and exorcism tools.

Sakura Mamiya has been able to see ghosts since she was little. She hoped she would outgrow it, but even after starting high school, nothing has changed. To make matters worse, the first time her ever-absent classmate, Rinne, shows up for school, only Sakura can see him. She assumes, as anyone would, that he is a ghost. However, to Sakura's surprise, Rinne proceeds to attend school like normal the next day.

Propaganda:

This is one of Rumiko Takahashi’s underrated works (mostly getting overshadowed by Inuyasha due to her releasing this series after the fact), and I don’t see a lot of people talk about it often. While it’s not my favorite of her works, it’s one that I still like because of the way she portrays the characters. Plus, it still has that classic Rumic comedy and feel to it and I really love the animation with her artstyle. Anyways, if you like supernatural comedies (with a hint of romance) then vote for Rin-ne!

Trigger Warnings: None.

When reblogging and adding your own propaganda, please tag me @best-underrated-anime so that I’ll be sure to see it.

If you want to criticize one of the shows above to give the one you’re rooting for an advantage, then do so constructively. I do not tolerate groundless hate or slander on this blog. If I catch you doing such a thing in the notes, be it in the tags or reblogs, I will block you.

Know one of the shows above and not satisfied with how they’re presented in this tournament? Just fill up this form, where you can submit revisions for taglines, propaganda, trigger warnings, and/or video.

#anime #best underrated anime #polls #poll tournament #tournament #anime tournament #animation #group stage #group stage round 2 #tournament polls #to your eternity #fumetsu no anata e #rin-ne #kyoukai no rinne #rin ne #rinne #group a

[thenightling]

Interview with the vampire episode 5 review:

No wonder I don’t like this version of Claudia. They merged her with Baby Jenks. And I always found Baby Jenks a bit insulting.  That character actually was fourteen-years-old and very vapid.  When I first read the novel Queen of the Damned I was fourteen and characters like Baby Jenks in The Queen of The Damned and Mona Mayfair in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches both insulted me.

  Now we have Bruce AKA Killer with his motorcycle and talking about The Fang Gang.  I never expected Claudia to be merged with Baby Jenks. 

Claudia’s questioning of if she’ll always be a virgin because she heals down there is right out of True Blood. This isn’t Claudia.  It’s Jessica from True Blood merged with Baby Jenks.  

Louis somehow psychically triggered a serious Parkinson’s tremor in Daniel and got a well-deserved slap for it. Claudia is being abused by Bruce.  There’s no elegance in this.  It’s cynical and rather mean spirited and that’s saying something when it’s a vampire story.  There’s no charm, no Gothic poetry.  It’s so... shallow. They even off-handedly tell you Lestat’s not a reader. That he reads the first ten or eleven pages of books to seem “cultured.”  Lestat loved to read in the novels.

 Yet again all the characters say that Claudia’s emotional state is the result of perpetual puberty so it’s dismissive. Lestat nearly killed Louis because he was going to leave him.  WTF?!  That is literally the opposite of his character in the books!    This version of Lestat behaves more like Armand, it’s insane. Having Claudia want to kill Lestat because he’s physically abusive to Louis really, really bothers me. They amplified Lestat’s abandonment issues to make him a violent and self-absorbed asshole.   

Even hearing the audio preview for the next episode with Daniel mockingly saying “He only beat me the one time, officer.” really bothers me.  It’s cynical and dismissive of cycles of abuse for the sake of plot drama that wasn’t even in the book! 

This show runner is awful.   He’s just an awful human being.   His commentary on the behind the scenes video of episode 5 shows his nature.  This is a terrible person running this show.  He trivializes and even seems to mock domestic violence and abuse.   The fact that they added physical and sexual abuse really rubs me the wrong way.  How are we ever supposed to potentially sympathize with Lestat later when he’s portrayed like this?   He would never, ever, ever have harmed Louis in the books, no matter what he did. Something that bugs me is the showrunner actually behaves as if Claudia being raped by Bruce / Killer was some sort of righteous punishment to make her realize her homelife isn’t that bad.  It’s victim blaming for any vulnerable person, especially runaway, or homeless, child who gets sexually assaulted.  And it really rubs me the wrong way.  It’s like the guy hates teenagers, especially girls.  It’s agist and misogynistic and I’m saying this as a forty-year-old woman.   This show is cynical, mean-spirited, unsubtle, in-your-face, blatant, exploitive, and crass. This episode in particular, with its blatant use of modern domestic abuse, and implied sexual abuse, is just mean spirited and it feels exploitive.  I went from disliking this show to starting to feel disgusted by it. 

#Interview with The Vampire #Anne Rice #AMC #AMC+ #AntiInterview with the vampire #Anti-Interview with the vampire #anti Interview with the vampire

[violentviolette]

I am not arguing that narcissistic abuse is worse than any sort of abuse, and "special", "worse", and "unique" in fact has nothing to do with it. Narcissistic abuse (at least in the way I use it, and now I really do want a different term for it) is an umbrella term to quickly describe a set of specific abusive behaviors that range MULTIPLE types of abuse (it's not just emotional abuse!) that are very similar and widespread amongst abusers whose abuse is heavily colored by their egocentrism. Like all terms regarding abuse - they're there as a shorthand so you can just say "physical abuse" instead of "they did this and that and this and that-". Narcissistic abuse is, for many, so they can just go "narcissistic abuse" instead of "enmeshment, emotional neglect, medical neglect, physical abuse, emotional abuse, covert incest, NCCSA,* this and that and this and that and [...] intensely colored and motivated by her egocentrism." Yep, an umbrella term is easier than listing all that. Narcissistic abuse has grown as a term because it is used by people to find people with highly specific shared experiences. It is not just "I was abused by a narcissistic person!!!1!"

*A vastly incomplete list of my personal experiences from the abuser I apply "narcissistic abuse" to cover the abuses of. I really want a different term because the term IS unfair and IS often used in an ableist manner.

anon I need u to pull ur head out of ur own ass for 5 seconds and actually read what u just wrote to me

"yes I know this word that uses the name for ur marginalized medical condition as a shorthard for various specific types of abuse is wrong and harmful and ableist but it saves me from typing out 15 extra words so like maybe consider that I should get to keep using it"

like bro seriously fuck all the way off. I dont care what makes describing ur experience easier for u if its ACTIVELY HARMING OTHER PEOPLE

like shit, talk about being ego fucking centric. "I get ur fighting for ur humanity but like consider how long winded it is to describe my highly specific experience in detail" maybe instead of focusing so hard on ur mother's behavior u take a long hard look at which of those behaviors uve internalized and are now perpetuating against others in the cycle of abuse. u know uve lost the thread when the narcissist in the conversation has to tell u to get some fucking perspective and stop being so self centered

also, the things ur lumping together and naming there literally have nothing to do with npd. anyone can exhibit those specific abusive behaviors and on top of that they are not universal. those experiences are unique to u and someone else will have a different set of similar but not exactly the same experiences. because thats how fucking abuse works. it actually doesnt do anything productive or useful to lump those traumas together under one moniker. it literally only makes ur personal specific life easier

like u literally just listed fucking CSA and incest as an abuse specific to narcissists because of their narcissim. like are u seriously not fucking hearing urself????

and again, ur STILL harrassing a stranger because I disagree with u about how ur literally demonizing my mental illness and dehumanizing people like me. u are so hell bent on being right and can't accept that someone else is telling u that not only are u wrong, but ur wrong in a way that is actively harming other people and u need to change ur language and the way u view ur abuse. so u keep coming back over and over again to argue with me. but keep sticking ur fingers in ur ears and sending me messages trying to get me to agree with u and pat u on the back for being an ableist piece of shit at me for multiple messages, thats totally not problematic behavior that u should maybe take a long hard look at /sarcasm

#jack.speaks #anon #npd #narcissistic abuse #I'm really screaming how can u be so utterly un-self aware #like wow

[bigskydreaming]

#when i read about tim i often kind of come to the idea that he's relatively self centered#and that can be both a flaw and a strength#but he doesn't often consider other people's feelings and circumstances#like when dick made damian robin he didn't really consider the situation from anyone else's view#or in his origin story#he doesn't seem to consider how dick would feel about hearing how tim was affected by dick's parents' death#or with the spyral situation#or in regards to him earning robin#and its pretty consistent in fandom characterization even if a lot of writers don't seem to be aware of it#its interesting cause i think its something i think he has in common with bruce#its honestly a surprisingly consistent thing from what i see#and it can be a strength to#it can absolutely lead to some confidence and self actualization#as well as being able commit to fixing something and working hard at it#because you believe you can and don't think anyone else can/will do it via @emenerd

Y’know, what’s interesting to me about these points is the fact that like.....Tim having tendencies towards self-centeredness is actually something that COMPLETELY makes sense and can be quite sympathetic in light of his backstory of having neglectful parents.

In an age of armchair diagnosticians eager to label anyone who expresses a controversial viewpoint while centering themselves as an example, as like, having a narcissistic personality disorder (and with the loaded implication that this makes them a bad person even if its true, instead of just....having a disorder, yay weaponizable ableism) like, it can be important to add in distinctions that even tendencies that share overlap with a lot of things born of entitlement, etc....aren’t always necessarily proof of that.

For instance, in Tim’s case, an overemphasis on himself and his own position in situations and arguments can very reasonably be attributed as a coping mechanism he developed in an attempt to acknowledge and address self-esteem issues he sees himself as having, DUE to parental neglect.

Its not that he thinks he’s the most important person in the room, necessarily, its that he spent so many years not even being considered a person in the room, that now he OVERCOMPENSATES on his own behalf, in an attempt to remind himself that no, his opinion and feelings and situations do matter.....and because he like most of the Bat-characters has a tendency towards hyper-fixating on a problem they’re trying to address, this can also understandably create a kind of tunnel vision. Where he’s so busy focusing on what he’s diagnosed as an actual issue he has that he’s trying to address or make up for, in order to build up his self-esteem....that he neglects to keep everyone around him equally centered in his interactions with them, and remember that like, they have their own issues and ignoring that to focus entirely on his own runs the risk of negatively impacting them in the exact same way he’s still learning to cope with having been negatively impacted in his development as a child.

None of this makes him a bad person, or is stuff that can’t be addressed and developed just by paying the appropriate attention to it and his interactions.

SO the issue I tend to more often have....

Is with how often in fandom and fanon we hear references to Tim’s neglect and emotional abuse and how this impacted him.....much in the same way we see Jason and Cass and Damian and Dick’s various forms of abuse and the developmental impact it had on them....

BUT there tends to then be a disconnect, IMO, because that acknowledgment of the WHAT of Tim’s neglect and abuse and the HOW it hurt him.....isn’t often followed up by an examination/awareness of how it also SHAPED him.....at least, not compared to how discussions/fics about say, Jason’s abuse tend to point out the latter as much as the former.

And this is a big part of my gripe with the ways abuse is centered and tackled as a topic in fics and fandom discussions, because its so often capitalized upon as a defense or shield for a character from criticism, stuff like that.....without ever actually EXPLORING the topic itself, or the FULLNESS of the impact it can have.

But only in regards to some characters.

What I mean is like....we see a lot of focus on Jason’s childhood abuse, yeah? And this often is then connected through headcanons, meta and fics to various aspects of Jason’s characterization as a teenager, and as an adult as well.....with a tendency towards anger or violence, abrasive personality, etc. Don’t get me wrong, its usually presented as such in a SYMPATHETIC light, especially when raised by fans of Jason themselves.....but his abuse is very much present and centered in fics and discussions as something that not only impacted him and made him suffer, but something that actually shaped him to varying degrees as well....with a lot of focus then in fics of him as an adult, like, paid to him going to therapy and unpacking his childhood abuse in an effort to WORK on these aspects of himself that make his present day life harder or less healthy than he’d like it to be. The issue of how his abuse lent itself to various behaviorisms is raised in order to address various byproducts of his abuse as FLAWS that he seeks to eliminate, in order to make himself happier and make himself someone that people want to be around more.

And again, don’t get me wrong - for the most part, this is a GOOD thing. The caveat here is just a personal dislike I have for how often these narratives smack of a kind of saviorism, and act like it was only through the grace of Bruce and becoming part of the Batfam that Jason’s ever afforded the opportunity to better himself as a person. I dislike the hell out of this because it not only pairs all too well with a lot of classist shit, it feeds into the singular narrative we’re so often presented with by media about abused kids: the myth of the victim being destined to become a victimizer, it all being an inevitable cycle. The reason this myth is so easily perpetuated is the exact reason I’m so critical of the saviorism in a lot of abused-Jason fics.....people can very easily fall into the trap of assuming that abused kids are likely to grow up to be abusers because they never have anyone to TEACH them that abuse is wrong, or to lead by healthy example. 

The harm of this perception is that it kinda throws under the bus every kid who never lucks out and gets a Bruce Wayne style savior swooping in to not only save them from their abusive environs, but TEACH them that they deserved better and that abuse is wrong. 

Because its like, uh, the thing is, plenty of abused kids who never get a personal mentor or savior figure are fully capable of figuring out for themselves that they deserve better and that people hurting them is wrong, because it makes them feel bad and they don’t like that? 

Many abused kids don’t grow up in a media vacuum where they simply have no access to glimpses of lives different from their own.....we see kids having happier, healthier family lives on TV or in books and are able to figure out that society overall thinks that’s what family is SUPPOSED to look like, and its ours that is the aberration? 

The very fact that we’re taught or have it instilled in us by abusive parents that like, we’re not to bring up instances or examples of our abuse to teachers or friends, that its a SECRET, is like, usually a dead giveaway that there’s something WRONG with it that we’re being instructed - and enforced with abusive consequences - to keep from alerting others to....like, this is basically a blaring siren to a lot of us that no, what’s happening to us ISN’T normal and acceptable, and that’s literally WHY the parent we’re afraid of is so insistent on us keeping the facts of it hidden? 

And so like, tons of abused kids figure out for ourselves the difference between right or wrong, based off nothing more than our own feelings about things and a desire to not be like the people who make us feel miserable - like, never underestimate the power of spite to like, keep a kid from growing up doing the same thing to others that was done to them, lol. 

But point being, lots of kids never get a Bruce Wayne figure to take them away from their abuse and also teach them that they never deserved it and how not to pass the hurt forward by doing the same things to others. And its kinda condescending as fuck that we so often see narratives that take it as so obvious it barely merits commenting on, that like, ‘of COURSE abused kids grow up to become abusers if they don’t have someone else step in and show them a better way’....mmm, no. Fuck that. But you get what I mean.

So like, its a mixed bag. Its a good thing, to see Jason-centric stories that show him addressing his childhood and seeking just a more fuller, happier, healthier life for himself. Its a less great thing to see this narrative presented as all encompassing, with it never being raised that no, Jason actually could figure out he deserved better and how to treat people in ways he’d want to be treated even without a billionaire guardian angel.....NOT because the narrative wherein someone helps an abused kid figure out what was wrong about how they were treated is like, NEVER valid....but rather it just becomes a problem when looked at as a data point against the larger tapestry of fandom-wide works....and noticing that this specific narrative is pretty much the ONLY one raised or treated as valid. With it just being ASSUMED to be the natural course of events and characters, rather than just....the direction society overall has their perceptions of abuse steered towards due to a singular and constantly reinforced abuse narrative shown to us in media.

And the way this all plays back into my point about Tim and what took me down this road in general.....

Is that disconnect I was talking about, lies specifically in HOW Tim is often acknowledged and regarded as an abuse survivor due to his emotional abuse and neglect......with this abuse and its impact on HIM often taking center stage, much the way Jason’s abuse and its impact takes center stage in his narratives.....

BUT with a key difference being that while a lot of Jason’s narratives go on to denote the specific ways his abuse helped SHAPE him and his interactions with others, and raise and address the ways in which he can better himself and his relationships by unpacking all of this openly....

Most of the stories about Tim’s abuse/neglect tend to just STOP at the awareness of its existence and impact on him. Never taking it that one step further to examine how those specific forms of abuse could have additionally SHAPED him....in ways that sometimes negatively impact those around him and his own loved ones, even if this is completely unintentional on his part. The difference, the disconnect, lies solely in how rarely its ever acknowledged that Tim’s own upbringing can and does play directly into how he interacts with people later on in life.....and in ways that he’s fully capable of addressing and bettering himself so as to be happier and healthier just in his own life, and in his relationships, as someone others want to be around.

Aaaaand once you actually examine or consider WHY there’s this discrepancy between the full ramifications of Tim’s abuse and that which various siblings of his underwent, when there’s full agreement that what he did go through absolutely can be termed abusive as well....like, its the implications of what about Tim makes him more naturally resistant or whatever to being shaped by his abuse in ways that have actual negative impact on others in his life, whereas the same isn’t true of say, Jason.....that’s when the red flags start to go up for me, and the unintended subtext starts to get Less Than Stellar, IMO.

Anyway. Just food for thought on the subject of Tim, his upbringing, the various impacts this had on not JUST him but also on how he interacts with others, and ways in which all of this compares and contrasts with how the subject of abuse is raised and depicted in regards to other Batkids.

[meta-squash]

So, last night I had a thought about self-harm (and addiction) and the reaction or framing from the press re: Richey Edwards vs Peter Doherty.

(This went off on a tangent, I’m sorry if it’s a little nonsensical and also I know my opinions are maybe kind of controversial.)

[Blanket TW for discussion of self-harm, eating disorders, and addiction in this post]

My best friend and I were having a conversation last night about self-harm as a coping mechanism and how people who have never self-harmed before don’t understand it and don’t know how to react to it, among other aspects of the subject. Later that got my brain on a different train going in a similar direction but a different destination.

I was thinking about the difference between the media interest surrounding Richey Edwards and Peter Doherty, and how the media framed their struggles and problems etc. (There is a slight difference between the two given that the Manics never got huge in the media and Richey wasn’t around for the explosion of internet tabloid culture.)

But my thought starts out with this: Peter and Richey seem to have done similar types of self-harm in similar amounts, and yet it is Richey’s self-harm that got all the media attention. Richey’s alcoholism and anorexia were not as chaotic or as....public?...as Peter’s drug problems, but it was all but ignored by the media even when he was fairly open about it.

Aside from the original 4REAL incident, which was a complex combination of situationist spectacle, self-expression/release of frustration, and intense message to the industry, Richey’s other moments of self-harm seem to be a more (for lack of a better word) normal level; they seem to have mostly been smaller, shallower cuts or cigarette burns. Aside from the one other recorded incident in Amsterdam ‘94 where Richey cut his chest enough to need stitches, there are no other instances on record of moments at the level of the 4REAL incident. Richey’s moments of self-harm seemed to typically be a more moderate coping mechanism rather than a tendency towards grievous injury. And yet the media’s main focus when it came to Richey was his self-harm and the spectacle of it rather than his lyrics or his other obvious struggles with alcohol and eating disorders.

And it’s interesting to compare that to Peter’s self-harm. I don’t think he’s ever had a moment like 4REAL, but he has used moderate cutting and cigarette burns presumably as a coping mechanism. His “strop” at Brixton ‘04 being the most outwardly dramatic and maybe the closest to 4REAL. But there are plenty of photos or footage of him with visible cuts and/or cigarette burns. And yet it doesn’t seem to be something the press really cared about.

On the flip side, there’s Peter’s addiction and all the media craze surrounding that. (As an aside, I cannot imagine how awful it must have been to have the media obsessing over your drug use while telling you to get better while essentially being its cause.) The press practically documented Peter’s every move re: his drug use and addiction. It was sensationalized and plastered everywhere and this obsessive attention was placed on it.

Which is the opposite of what happened to Richey’s problems. He talked fairly openly about his alcoholism in a number of interviews but rarely was he directly asked about it. Off the top of my head I can’t think of any interview that directly asked him about his eating disorders either, but he did mention some aspects of that in a few interviews (most notably his last ever TV interview for some Swedish channel).

Part of this difference in media focus kind of makes sense. The media picks the thing that’s more dramatic and crazy-sounding and a bigger spectacle. For Richey, it was self-harm, because he started with a proverbial bang by coming out the gate with the 4REAL incident that catapulted the Manics into the eye of the industry proper (despite the fact that he never reached that intense level again). For Peter, it was his drug abuse partly because of its more widespread chaos (drinking alone in your room is not as interesting or glamourous as smoking crack at wild parties, plus a dramatic band breakup draws readers) and partly because of his proximity to Really Famous People (ie Kate).

I guess it just interests me how the media decides which thing is more “concerning” and how that false concern in fact fuels the very thing it pretends to be so worried about.

The 4REAL incident was a shocking thing; it seems as though over the years the remaining Manics have come to acknowledge that that was pretty much the point. Nicky called it an “amazing, fantastic statement” in the 98 Up Close documentary. It’s something that was outside of Richey’s other self-harm because it was very much for a spectacle (JDB does say in the same docu that he was pretty sure Richey had sort of planned it). But none of Richey’s other moments of self harm were as public or as performative. I’d even say his Bangkok chest-cutting was only partially performative, considering how horrific the band considers that trip to have been. But really, his self-harm seemed to be mostly a private, personal thing, a coping mechanism. And yet it was pretty much all the press focused on, ignoring the alcoholism and anorexia that a) were likely actually affecting his ability to function and b) were likely bigger problems that the self-harm was used to balance out. The remaining band have talked about Richey’s drinking and how it affected him and made it difficult for him to function, and none of them ever really talk about Richey’s anorexia but looking at photos of him in 1994 you can really see the toll it takes on him. But the press weren’t interested in that.

And again, similarly, Peter’s drug use was fascinating to the press because it was dramatic and chaotic and an interesting spectacle. But after reading the Books Of Albion etc it sure seems like the press were major instigators of a lot of Peter’s problems and his need to use drugs to cope and/or escape. They ignore his self-harm because it’s not as interesting as his addiction; the opposite of the “mundanity” of Richey’s introverted alcoholism.

The press chooses which problem it’s “concerned” about depending on which one is a more interesting, easily-maintained spectacle. If it can flaunt “concern” in order to goad or stress their victim into doing that thing more, it can perpetuate that cycle: “we’re so concerned about you, look we’ve written an article on your drug-induced antics/your dramatic self-harming tendencies with pictures and misquotes and misunderstanding, oh we’re so concerned we’ve parked ourselves outside your venue and/or house to ask intrusive questions about your problems rather than your art, wait why are you still struggling with this drug/self-harm problem we said we were concerned about you, look we’ve written another article about how you’re struggling and we’re concerned but we haven’t actually asked you what’s wrong or how to help or done the most obvious thing which is leave you alone” ad nauseum.

Plus, these things are always appropriated by the press rather than a request made for clarification from the person. The victim’s candid thoughts about their hurt or their reasons for needing this coping mechanisms are not actually heeded but are twisted round and into part of the “story” rather than taken seriously as an explanation or a plea for the media to fuck off because they’re exacerbating the problem.

And now I go into more theoretical ramblings.

(Side note and/or clarification or...something: I can speak from long-term experience when it comes to self-harm as a coping mechanism etc, but I have not personally dealt with drug addiction so when I’m talking about that, it’s definitely as an outsider. I have friends who are recovering addicts and who I’ve known during their more intense struggles but I have not experienced it myself, like, in my own brain/body.)

Something my best friend and I were discussing in the conversation that triggered this entire thought-train is self-harm as seen by outsiders/people who have never self-harmed or thought about it in any seriousness. (And here comes some more serious discussion, as a warning.)

We talked about how there really isn’t a good argument against self-harm as a coping mechanism. (And I know my opinions here are probably controversial.) Most seem to center around “healthy” coping mechanisms vs “unhealthy” but if it’s your own body and you aren’t hurting anyone else, who’s to say what’s what? The other problem re: “healthy” coping mechanisms (like taking a bath, treating yourself, etc) is that the concern against self-harm seems to be that it isn’t addressing the underlying issue that requires the coping mechanism. But neither does doing some skin care or eating an apple (that is, if the problem is a stressor outside of needing sustenance or being able to do something “relaxing” enough to actually relax). That isn’t to say that self-harm is a good reaction to every stressful moment, but it truly is a very singular type of stimulation and release that is sometimes the only effective method of reacting to and coping with an internal or external stressor.

As a clarification, most acts of self-harm are not to the severity level of 4REAL. Cigarette burns and collections of minor-to-moderate cuts are much more common, neither of which are particularly threatening to the overall wellbeing of the person.

The other thought about self-harm and the reason for the media’s focus on it is the discomfort of and fascination a “badge” of struggle. When you’re depressed and you can’t get out of bed, it’s not like you get up a few days later and there’s a big sign that says “Was Depressed, Couldn’t Move,” or if you feel stressed and overwhelmed so you go drink wine in the bath, you don’t spend the rest of the day with some sort of sign telling other people that you felt bad so you bathed. But self-harm is a personal coping mechanism with evidence attached. And that evidence makes people who can’t understand it uncomfortable. Self-harm leaves a mark which other people are confronted by and they don’t know how to react because they cannot imagine how that can be something that helps. Self-harm is a “badge” of struggle and/or coping--not that it’s a proud mark or anything, just that it’s visible to others in a way that stands out and is singled out. I’ve gone out in public in my pajamas after not getting out of bed for 5 days and nobody looked at me funny or asked me why I looked all rumpled. But I’ve had random strangers at the grocery store ask me about the self-harm scars on my upper arms. Scars are a sign of hurt or stress etc that are visible to others which means they feel compelled to confront their feelings about it and often come up uncomfortable and not understanding and confused.

Similarly, I think drug use/addiction can sometimes be a similar “badge” of struggle, especially if it’s apparent onstage or during various public appearances. It’s something that people outside of it don’t understand. Likely they don’t understand the use of drugs as something other than “for fun.” People don’t understand the depths of using drugs as escape from or coping with (or both) stressors. Raw dogging reality is kind of a tall order if reality is overwhelming and stressful to a degree that’s difficult or impossible to control and/or manage. Not to mention using drugs for coping or escape then can lead to dependency and addiction and that’s a whole new game. Because, you know, that’s the thing: it’s not just about kicking an addiction. If you try to kick an addiction without replacing it with something else, you can pretty easily fall back into it because it’s not just a physical dependency, it’s a way to deal with reality. If you’re trying to go from a using a crutch to deal with reality to straight up raw dogging it without a fallback crutch, it’s gonna be real hard. In terms of a “badge” of struggle I think that use of drugs where intoxication is more obvious or more intense than, say, weed, people are uncomfortable. With a drug’s effects on behavior, I’m sure, but also with the outward signs that the person is obviously using a coping mechanism to deal with stresses or hurts.

In both situations it’s an exposure of this internality that outsiders can’t fully understand or touch. Everyone’s reasons for self harm or drug use are going to be different. The “benefit” that the coping mechanism brings is going to be different for everyone. And it especially means that strangers who don’t have experience with these things cannot fathom them and cannot comprehend them. There’s that desire to understand, that curiosity, (and sometimes an actual desire to help), but no one can read another person’s mind or understand their internality completely, and the visuals of self harm or of drug use are a very intense and forward reminder of that.

And I think those “badges” of struggle are something the media loves to capitalize on, because they can be turned into a spectacle and can be monetized due to outsiders’ discomfort. People watch horror movies or read tabloids because it makes them uncomfortable from a safe distance; these things aren’t happening to them, but another person’s obvious pain/fear/sadness/struggle/etc is just discomforting and strange enough to evoke a dark fascination rather than a total rejection. And the cycle continues as the media capitalizes on their victim’s stress and their coping with that stress, and which then causes more stress which then causes a need for a more intense coping or escaping mechanism, etc.

To bring it back to my original point, the reason the press focused on Richey’s self-harm (despite it being not too terribly excessive or intense) and not his addiction or ED problems, and the reason the press focused on Peter’s addiction and not his self-harm is because of the degree and type of fascination/discomfort those things brought. Richey’s self-harm was interesting enough and obvious enough that they could show lurid photos of his scabs and scars and talk to him about it, but he did his drinking in private and didn’t really cause any sort of scene onstage. And Peter’s drug use was interesting enough and public enough that they could show lurid photos of it as well as collect all sorts of gossip and rumour and twisted-around tales while his self-harm clearly wasn’t as dramatic or fascinating to them. People can read the tabloids and be darkly fascinated by a person cutting themselves up but maybe not by someone drinking at night in their bed (because that’s boring to read about). People can read the tabloids and be gleefully horrified by abuse of class A drugs and the actions/behavior surrounding that but that’s going to be more interesting than a person stubbing a cigarette out on their arm in frustration and despair. It’s all about what can be painted in a more dramatic light. It’s all about what internal things can be made public.

#self harm tw #eating disorder tw #drug abuse tw #addiction tw #this went a lot of places #i know my opinions re: self harm as a coping mechanism are maybe kind of controversial #richey edwards #pete doherty #manic street preachers

[bubonickitten]

Summary: Jon goes back to before the world ended and tries to forge a different path.

Previous chapter: AO3 || Tumblr

Chapter 18 full text & content warnings below the cut.

CWs for Chapter 18: discussion of passive suicidal ideation; unintentional self-harm (scratching at arms as a stim, to the point of drawing blood); brief allusion to childhood neglect; internalized ableism (re: ADHD, but not explicitly stated as such); brief acephobia (past experience & internalized); Jon-typical negative self-talk, guilt, & rejection sensitive dysphoria; discussion of past trauma (including having bodily autonomy overridden, canon non-consensual surgery, & stabbing); internalized victim blaming/comparing victim to their abuser; discussion of self-inflicted blinding/eye gouging (past attempts & potential future attempts); brief mention of Mr. Spider/arachnophobia themes; swears. SPOILERS through Season 5.

Chapter 18: Reconciliation

Once Jon opened the door and the Fears rewrote reality, not only was sleep no longer a physiological necessity – it was no longer an option. Much like the Coffin, even a temporary escape via unconsciousness was contrary to a world defined by the ceaseless generation of terror. And just as it did any human in that place, perpetual wakefulness took its toll on Jon’s already ravaged mental health.

The fact that he was no longer plaguing the nightmares of his victims may have been a small consolation, if not for the fact that he was instead witnessing the waking nightmares of billions of new victims: the same scenes looping over and over, layered one on top of the other, an endless soundtrack screaming in the background of his mind. Venting a statement from time to time could only do so much to quell that storm. He’d really had no choice but to learn to compartmentalize on autopilot and dissociate on command.

So when, for the first time since before the world ended, Jon awakens to Martin at his side, his mind cannot immediately reconcile the sight. He might think he was dreaming, if not for the fact that he hasn’t had a pleasant dream of his own since he became the Archivist. And even before then – well, he’d always been more predisposed to nightmares.

Jon feels his heart stutter in his throat when he sets eyes on Martin. Their hands are still clasped together, and despite the sweatiness of their palms and the way Jon’s arm is cramping from the angle, he has no desire to let go. Instead, he lies still, breathing shallow and measured, fearful of any sound or movement that might shatter the almost uncanny peace of the moment.

He really shouldn’t be staring like this, though, should he? Martin has given him permission to stare many times before, but that was in a future where they had Seen each other at their most vulnerable. Being seen, truly seen – as terrifying as it was for the both of them – became a comfort, because of what they had been through together. Here in the past, Martin hasn’t shared that experience. He might not be as keen to put up with Jon’s incessant watching.

Those reservations still aren’t enough to stop him, though.

Martin is still sat in his chair, but bent sideways at the waist to lean halfway on the cot. He’s snoring lightly, his head pillowed on his free arm, glasses askew. The angle is probably hell on his back.

Maybe I should wake him up, Jon thinks idly, one corner of his mouth turning up in a small, fond smile.

He doesn’t. Instead, his eyes remain rapt on Martin, soaking in every detail, as beloved and familiar as always: the length of his eyelashes, the shape of his lips, the spray of freckles across his nose, that particularly stubborn cowlick that always, always stands on end. Jon wants to reach out, sink his fingers into those curls, massage his scalp in that way Martin used to love – but that would be a step beyond staring, wouldn’t it? So he watches: unblinking, aching, adoring, and so overwhelmed that he's at risk of tearing up.

It’s painfully, embarrassingly maudlin of him, he knows, but can he really be faulted for that? Jon surpassed the lifespan of a normal human several times over, bereft and alone in a desolated realm of his own making. He spent much of that time out of his mind with grief, drowning in hopelessness and guilt, cycling between numb dissociation and raw destruction. When he wasn’t wandering aimlessly – near-catatonic, subsumed by the never-ending deluge of fear permeating that world – he was lashing out. Although he couldn’t die, he could still hurt, and so he did, with exacting focus: both himself and all the other monsters going through the motions in that doomed world.

Ending them neither decreased nor increased the net output of fear, but it was the closest Jon could come to some nebulous, fleeting sense of justice. He didn’t enjoy it – in fact, he hated the other Avatars sometimes, bitter that they could attain a release that seemed impossible for him. His first few acts of vengeance in those early days had felt good in the moment, but the high never lasted: just like taking a statement.

Eventually, once the fear began to grow scarcer, it felt more and more like granting mercy – often to monsters who never showed any themselves – rather than meting out justice. A few moments of pain was preferable to slow, torturous starvation. Breekon was the first to request such a favor. He was far from the last.

It made Jon feel monstrous in an all new way, offering escape to predators when he could do nothing to save their victims – at least not without turning them into Avatars themselves, creating more monsters to replace the old. But it also made him feel real – a tangible, active presence interacting with the world, as opposed to a ghost, unseen and unknowable. An undeniable consequence, rather than a detached observer.

Tears start to gather in the corners of his eyes. Jon tries to swallow them back, but his throat has grown thick with emotion. He never expected to escape that place; never expected to see a friendly face or hear a kind word ever again. And now that he has…

This isn’t for you, says an insidious little voice in the back of his head: some twisted chimera comprised of all those who have known him well enough to see him for what he is, to catalogue his failings, to pass judgment. There is no place for you in this world. You don’t belong here. You were made for something greater; eliminate that, and what remains –

A gentle knock-knock at the door startles him out of his thoughts.

“Jon?” Georgie pushes the door open and peers through the gap. “You awake?”

“Yeah.” It comes out as a fractured whisper. He sniffles and rubs his eyes, but Georgie has already noticed his distress.

“Bad dream?”

“No.” Jon clears his throat and props himself up on one elbow. “No, ah – quite the opposite, really.”

“Oh?” Georgie says, probing for an explanation.

Jon's gaze drifts to his hand, still joined with Martin’s. “None of this feels real, and…”

“And?”

“I, uh…” Jon closes his eyes, blinking back tears. “I don’t deserve it.”

“The world doesn’t work that way.”

“Maybe it should.” Jon lets out a wet, clipped laugh.

No one got what they deserved in the world he created, only what hurt them the most. Tempting as it was to find some meaning in it all, to retroactively draw correlations between past actions and current circumstances, Jon Knew from the very beginning that there was no cause-and-effect at play. Not really. Any misery being experienced in that new world was utterly unrelated to the lives people lived before the change. It was indiscriminate. Everyone was afraid and in agony, regardless of any subjective judgment on whether or not they deserved it.

And nothing Jon did changed those material conditions in the slightest. He could shift an individual’s role from subject to object and vice versa, reassign their place on the spectrum of the tortured versus the torturer, but at the end of the day, he was still just facilitating fear, regardless of what shape it took. Despite being one of the most powerful and fearful things roaming that scorched earth, his options were as limited as they’d always been. Every choice led to more or less the same end.

By every measure that could be said to actually matter, he was ultimately powerless.

Would it have been any more tolerable if the suffering was more proportionate? If at least some of the people trapped in the domains could be said to be receiving just punishment for any agony they themselves had inflicted before the end of the world? Maybe. But probably not. Securing vengeance never actually yielded any meaningful catharsis for Jon. Even Jonah Magnus' ultimate fate produced nothing but revulsion. The Archive may feed on such fear, but after all this time, Jon – all the pieces of him that still belong to him – has no desire to behold suffering. He has seen enough for several lifetimes, and he was never once given the option to look away, let alone put an end to it.

Jon shakes his head and begins to fully sit up, slowly and carefully so as not to disturb Martin. He’s hardly expecting Georgie to engage with his newest avenue of brooding, but after a minute, she gives a thoughtful hum and leans against the doorframe.

“Don’t know that I want to see what that would look like,” she says pensively.

“What?”

“A world where ‘deservedness’ was quantifiable – where you could put a precise value on suffering, and every action had a moral price tag on it that stayed the same regardless of the circumstances. Where subjective experiences could be – shoved into neat little categories that everyone could agree on.”

“Like Robert Smirke,” Jon murmurs.

“Sure.” Georgie shrugs. “I don’t know if humanity as we know it could even exist in a world like that. We’d be… unrecognizable.”

“O-oh?”

“Mm. We aren’t equations. Or – well, we are, I guess, at the most basic physical level, if you scale down small enough. Atoms, physics, chemical reactions and all that. But when it comes to the experience of consciousness, personal identity, free will… isn’t the complexity what gives it all meaning? If we could account for every last variable, know the exact effect of every cause, what would that make us?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“Life isn’t about the destination, I guess is what I’m saying.” Georgie runs her thumb over her lips as she muses. “We already know the destination. One way or another, everything dies.”

“‘The moment that you die will feel exactly the same as this one,’” Jon recites, a distant quality to his voice. “There’s no difference between that last moment that ushers us out into oblivion and the one we experience now – everything ends, even the universe, even time. And… that means it has always already ended.”

It takes a moment for Jon to come back to himself, blinking dazedly. It's another few seconds before he realizes what happened – and when he does, a sudden, heavy coldness takes root and blossoms in his chest.

“I’m so– I didn’t – I wasn’t –”

“It’s – fine,” Georgie says, although she sounds a bit rattled. “It was an accident.”

“Still, I’m sorry, I –”

“Apology accepted, Jon. I’m not angry.” When she sees Jon gearing up to belabor the point, she holds up a hand. “You’re forgiven. Let’s just move on, okay?”

Jon bites down on his lower lip, torn between dueling impulses: groveling, berating himself, shutting down, or… simply taking Georgie at her word. With a long, shaky exhale, he settles on trust: Georgie expressed a desire to drop it and move forward. He should respect that, right? Right.

He bites back his protests and nods stiffly. “Okay.”

“Look, what I was trying to get at is – knowing the destination doesn’t invalidate the journey, right? If anything, the inevitability of an ending is what gives meaning to all the rest.”

The End forced Georgie to confront the insignificance of her own birth and death against the backdrop of a vast universe – but rather than allow that realization to immobilize her with despair, she opted to make all the moments in between meaningful. Jon can't help but once again remember the confidence with which Martin countered Simon Fairchild's brand of flippant nihilism: I think our experience of the universe has value, even if it disappears forever.

I might have a type, he thinks to himself, equal parts wry and endeared.

“We all end up in the same place,” Georgie continues, “but that doesn’t have to mean we all follow the same path. What matters is what happens along the way, and – if you could map out every bit of the journey, predict the outcome of every single step you take, then – what else is left?”

“If you already know the answer to every question,” Jon says softly, “what’s the point of being?”

Jon isn’t sure what expression he’s making, but whatever it is, Georgie blanches when she catches his eye.

“Oh, I – Jon, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean –”

“No, it’s – it’s alright. You’re not wrong.” Jon chuckles awkwardly. “Is it odd that I find the thought…reassuring? Sort of?”

“We’re getting lost in the weeds, aren't we?” Georgie says with a flustered laugh. “My original point was – this obsession you have with deservedness, and establishing dichotomies, and trying to find simple, objective answers to complicated questions – it’s a skewed way of looking at the world, and it’s eating you alive. You have to stop treating your life like it’s a scorecard. Relentlessly punishing yourself isn’t going to change the past. It’s not healthy, it’s not productive, and it just makes you more likely to sabotage your future.”

“I know. It’s just… the things I’ve done, they’re – unforgivable. I can’t leave it behind, and I can’t take it back.”

Jon used to wonder when the Eye would make him too monstrous to feel shame. It never did, never had to: he abetted it regardless of how he felt about it. For the most part, he can’t even apologize: the people he hurt are either dead or have no memory of what Jon did to warrant it. Besides, some consequences too irrevocable, too catastrophic to cushion with remorse.

Sorry that you died because I failed; sorry that I burned a bridge that could have kept us both safe; sorry that you’re trapped here just because I stood too close to you. Sorry for the invaded privacy, sorry for the mistreatment, sorry for all the hunger and fear and nightmares. Sincerest apologies, everyone, for the eternal torment.

He could have composed a personalized apology for every last person in the world had he wanted – he’d certainly had the time to spare, as well as detailed knowledge of each victim’s plight. But any apology he could possibly make, no matter how eloquent or sincere, would have been insulting in its inadequacy. What reparations can be made to soften the blow of a life lost or a world ended?

“S-so,” he says, eyes downcast, “that just leaves… guilt.”

And fear. Fear enough to cram an Archive full to bursting.

“I know,” Georgie says.

“I’m sorry, I –” Jon breathes a bitter laugh. “I’m a broken record, aren’t I? I fall apart every time I see you.”

“Jon,” George sighs, “you don’t have to apologize. You’ve been through unimaginable trauma. You’ve had barely any chance to start to heal from it. You’re still living it. I don’t expect a few heart-to-heart conversations to close the book on… all of that.”

“Still, it’s – annoying, I imagine.” Jon picks nervously at a loose thread on his trouser leg. “To sit through the same conversation over and over again.”

“I’d be more worried if you went back to just – pretending to be okay, refusing to talk about it. It’s been barely a month since you got out of the hospital. Shit, it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours since you crawled out of that Coffin.” Her eyes narrow slightly, intent and searching. “Speaking of which, I should ask: Are you a danger to yourself right now?”

“What?” The question catches Jon off guard. “No? N-no, I’m – why would you –”

“Just checking in. Which I’m going to keep doing. Regularly. So you may as well make peace with that now.”

“It’s not like I’m going to kill myself,” Jon mumbles – aiming for casually unconcerned and instead landing squarely in transparently uncomfortable territory. “I’m fairly certain I can’t die a mundane human death, anyway.”

“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean you can’t still hurt yourself. And being suicidal sucks regardless of whether you actually plan on going through with it.” Jon studiously avoids eye contact as Georgie speaks. “Anyway, I know I sound like a broken record, but I’ll say it as many times as you need reminding: You have a second chance. You said you were going to make the best of it, and you can’t do that if you won’t let yourself have some peace.” Her expression softens, as does her voice. “Just… let yourself be, won’t you?”

There’s truth to what Georgie is saying. Even if he wasn’t mired in guilt, though…

“I’m afraid,” Jon whispers. “Of losing him, of losing everyone, of…”

Of dooming everyone. It was so easy. All it took was his voice, an incantation, and this ceaseless, aberrant hunger. He’s seen the consequences of the destiny for which he has unwittingly been prepared. Like it or not, he is the most dangerous thing in this world – a walking hair-trigger, already having overstayed his welcome on this earth by several lifetimes. One misstep, and…

“I should be grateful to have this, to have him – and I am, but every – every time I come close to letting myself feel – safe, hopeful, content, it… it never lasts. It’s always swallowed up by fear – not of if something goes wrong, but when. It just feels like… any choice I make is bound to end in tragedy. Like there’s no way out. Like nothing I do will change anything. I – I’ll mess it up; I always do.”

It’s a pattern that began long before he became entangled in Jonah’s machinations. Jon was a difficult child who grew into an even more difficult adult, always saying and doing all the wrong things because he’s never been able to fully grasp the invisible rules that other people seem to navigate so naturally. At home he could never shake the feeling that he was an odd guest, secretly unwelcome but with nowhere else to keep him; at school he was a menace, asking all the wrong questions at all the wrong times and prone to following his own lesson plans whenever the curriculum failed to hold his interest. Peer relationships typically failed to take root: he’s too guarded, too abrasive, too annoying and tactless and awkward. Whatever friendships managed to blossom tended to wilt before long, for all the same reasons.

Romantic relationships have historically been even more fraught. There are expectations that he will never meet, forms of intimacy that are traditionally assumed to be required rather than optional for such a relationship to qualify as normal, healthy, and sustainable. In his experience, setting those boundaries have usually been a deal-breaker. Georgie was the first to accept that aspect of him unconditionally; Martin was the second – and although Jon no longer believes that it’s a problem to be fixed, those old, long-held insecurities still rear up from time to time.

He had hoped he could at least prove himself capable as a Head Archivist, but, well… he was inexperienced with the duties of a mundane archiving job, unsuited to managing a department, and his preexisting difficulties with establishing rapport were exacerbated by his need to maintain a professional boundary between himself and his assistants. He tried to make up for those shortcomings with effort and dedication and – in retrospect – frankly obscene levels of overwork, but he never did manage to be a good boss or a good coworker.

It’s a cruel joke that of all the roles to finally excel in, it’s as the Archivist – or, specifically, Jonah’s Archivist. He met every expectation, even – perhaps especially – when he didn’t know what those expectations were. Not like Gertrude. She would doubtless be disappointed by her successor: constantly second-guessing himself, resolving indecisiveness with impulsivity, stumbling around in the dark, pointlessly sabotaging himself and those unlucky enough to find themselves in his orbit – ultimately devastating a world that she had made so many ruthless sacrifices to protect.

Jon has spent most of his life fumbling at being a peer, a friend, a partner, a colleague, an ally. If he couldn’t manage to figure it out when he was still human, how is he supposed to play at being a person now, when he’s…

“This – this isn’t for things like me,” Jon says hoarsely. He can feel more tears teeming as he looks down at Martin: kind and good and so, so deserving of happiness, of security, of a peaceful life that Jon fears he will never be able to provide, no matter how fiercely he loves. “I don’t get to” – end the world – “to become – this, and still get a happy ending.”

“Do you Know that?” Georgie asks.

“N-no, I can’t predict the future, but –”

“Then you shouldn’t assume the worst. You don’t have a fixed destiny, no matter what you’ve been led to believe.” She scowls at him. “And stop referring to yourself as a ‘thing’. It really doesn’t matter how human you are or aren’t, you're still you. You’re still a person.”

Jon doesn’t know how to respond to that without either contradicting her or offering lukewarm, disingenuous agreement. Luckily, he doesn’t have to: Martin begins to stir, and Jon hurriedly wipes away any evidence of tears, fighting to regain his composure. With a snuffle and a sleepy groan, Martin opens his eyes, blinking blearily.

“Hey there,” Jon says with a soft smile.

Martin returns a vague grin, muzzy with sleep. With unfocused eyes, he appears to slowly take in his surroundings, gaze lingering briefly on and then skating over his hand, fingers still interlocked with Jon’s. When his attention drifts towards Georgie, he stares at her for a long few seconds, squinting at the influx of light from the hallway. Another slow blink, another extended stare at his and Jon’s linked hands, and then his eyes widen. Color blooms on his cheeks as he abruptly surfaces into full consciousness, glasses tumbling off his face as he jerks upward.

“Oh, god, I’m sorry,” he says, groggy voice at odds with the panicked embarrassment in his eyes. He pulls his hand back, mumbling apologies about clammy palms. As he straightens in his seat, he lets out a pained hiss.

Jon cringes sympathetically. “You should’ve taken the cot.”

Martin ignores the comment, scrubbing at his face now, hiding it in his sleeve. It does nothing to conceal his reddened ears, Jon notes with amused affection.

“Did you sleep alright, otherwise?” Jon asks.

“Mm?” Martin retrieves his glasses and slips them back on before turning his attention to Jon. “Oh, uh – yes. You?”

“Yes, actually.”

His first routine breakdown of the day notwithstanding, Jon did manage to sleep through most of the night, only waking once after a brief foray back into Karolina’s nightmare.

The rest of the dreams were relatively benign. He spent some time with Georgie. Naomi was pleased to see him and eager as ever to regale him with cat anecdotes. Dr. Elliott was less pleased, but he was at least no more afraid of Jon than he had been during the coma. Seeing Jordan Kennedy was as uncomfortable as ever; Jon doubts he’ll ever know what to say to him. Tessa was more difficult to read. She wasn’t exactly happy to see him again, but she didn't seem angry, either.

Should’ve known it wouldn’t last, she’d sighed to herself – and then promptly changed the subject before Jon could stammer out an apology.

“Learned a lot about the right to repair movement,” Jon says absently.

“What?” Martin asks, bewildered.

“Oh, uh – Tessa Winters. Gave a statement in 2016 about a haunted chatbot. It forced her to watch a seventeen-hour-long video of a man eating his computer.”

Georgie perks up at that.

“Oh, is that the, uh – that creepypasta about that guy who mutilated himself trying to upload his mind to his computer?”

“Sergey Ushanka.”

“Yeah! Something about how he tried to crack open his skull and wire his brain to the motherboard?”

“That is one variation of the story, yes.”

“What,” Martin says flatly.

“I was thinking about doing a What the Ghost episode on that one,” Georgie explains, her sheepish smile doing little to conceal her lingering enthusiasm. “Haunted technology is always a popular topic. Didn’t expect that one to be real, though. I wonder –”

Jon answers her question before she can ask it: “I doubt Tessa would be interested in being a guest on the show.”

“Yeah,” Georgie sighs, “I guess not.”

Martin lets out a nervous chuckle. “What, uh – sorry, what does any of this have to do with right to repair?”

“Oh. Right. Tessa’s one of the people whose nightmares I… invade. Perpetuate, I suppose. She’s, ah, not my biggest fan, considering what I’ve put her through, but she says I’m a decent audience.” Martin gives Jon a blank look. “She basically gives me free lectures sometimes? Technology-related subjects, mostly. Fascinating stuff.”

“God, you sound like a grandpa,” Georgie says.

“Yes, yes, Tessa tells me the same.” Jon rolls his eyes. “Anyway, she has some, ah… strong feelings about Apple. Among other things.”

“Right,” Martin says slowly. “Wait, back up – you know what creepypasta is?”

“Yes, Martin,” Jon says with a sigh and an indulgent smile, “I know what creepypasta is.”

“That particular internet rabbit hole was one of his many, many avenues of procrastination in uni, believe it or not,” Georgie says.

“Contrary to popular belief, I’m not a Luddite. I tried to introduce the Archives to the twenty-first century, remember? It’s not my fault the Beholding has a retro aesthetic.”

“Huh,” Martin says with a bemused smile. Then he yawns. “Sorry. What time is it?”

As soon as the question is posed, the Beholding drops the knowledge into Jon’s head.

“About 10:30,” Georgie answers, just as Jon says, “10:28 and forty-six seconds” – and then, wincing at his own pedantry, “Sorry.”

Georgie looks ready to let loose with a snarky reply, but before she can say anything, Martin is on his feet, the blanket on his lap sliding to the floor.

“10:30? Jon, why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I – I wasn’t really paying attention to the time, I haven’t actually been awake for…”

Jon trails off as the Beholding casually notifies him that he woke up thirty-seven minutes and twenty-three seconds ago. He can feel heat pooling in his cheeks as a vague sense of shame sets in. Good lord, was he really just watching Martin sleep for that long?

“I should have been upstairs over an hour ago,” Martin says, frantically scanning the room for –

For his shoes, the Eye informs Jon.

Do you ever mind your goddamn business? Jon shoots back. On impulse, he swats at the air to his side, momentarily forgetting that the ever-present eldritch tagalongs he’d grown accustomed to during the apocalypse are no longer with him. In his dreams, he’d come eye-to-eye with them again for the first time since waking up in the hospital; apparently, that’s all it took to reintroduce this old, reflexive shooing tic to his waking life.

Georgie raises her eyebrows at the gesture, but Martin appears not to notice, preoccupied with his escalating panic.

Jon scrambles for some way to soothe him, but he’s at a loss. In his future, through trial and error and intense observation, he had painstakingly learned how to comfort Martin. Now, though, after so much time spent alone, Jon is out of practice. Moreover, he’s always been more adept at offering comfort through action and touch rather than words – and right now, he’s still uncertain where Martin’s boundaries lie.

So Jon continues to sit there, hands fluttering slightly as his mind rifles through a mountain of inane clichés in search of something, anything that might be able to help. Meanwhile, the Archivist in him is distracted by Martin’s growing anxiety. It isn’t the same as abject fear, per se, but it’s similar enough to pique the Eye’s interest.

Once again, Jon takes a swipe at the empty space beside him – and again ignores Georgie’s amused expression.

“If Peter notices I’m not in the office…” Martin nearly trips over the blanket on the floor as he turns in place to search behind him. “He – he’ll be suspicious –”

That’s when Georgie decides to speak up. Thank god, Jon thinks to himself. She exudes far more confidence than he does in this sort of situation.

“Won’t he already be suspicious?” she says, calm as can be. It’s enough to bring Martin’s fretting to a pause. “It’s not like you can keep this a secret forever, right? Your change in attitude is… pretty noticeable, Martin.”

“I – I – I didn’t really think much further ahead than –” Martin laughs nervously. “I was just – playing along, and it felt right, like if I just kept following the path I’d reach a – a – a conclusion? I don’t know what, but…” His shoulders slump, leaving his arms hanging awkwardly at his sides; he tugs at the hem of his shirt, as if he doesn’t know what to do with his hands. “I don’t think I cared much? I figured I could just – gather information and pass it along, and if nothing else I could keep Peter’s attention away from the Archives, and… that was the whole plan, to just keep doing that until… until whatever was going to happen happened, I guess, and now I don’t – I don’t know where to go from here, and…”

“Martin?” Jon says softly.

“Huh?” Martin finally glances up to meet Jon’s eyes.

“Can I take your hand?”

Cautiously, wordlessly, Martin offers his hand. Jon takes it in his, lacing their fingers together loosely.

“It’ll be alright,” he says. “You don’t have to figure it out on your own. Not anymore.”

Martin’s lips move minutely for a few seconds before meekly saying, “That doesn’t feel right.”

“I know.”

“I’m – I’m not saying you’re lying,” Martin says, rushed and anxious to appease, “it’s just…”

“Hearing something isn’t the same as accepting it. Or trusting it.”

“I do trust you, I do, it’s just… I don’t know. It’s like I can’t wrap my mind around it.”

“It’s alright,” Jon says gently. “I understand.”

“I’m sorry,” Martin whispers, his voice steeped in guilt.

“You don’t need to apologize.” When Martin opens his mouth to protest, Jon reiterates: “You have nothing to be sorry for. I promise.”

“Okay,” Martin says after a pause, still sounding somewhat doubtful. Then he grimaces. “I, uh, still don’t know what to do about Peter, though.”

“That depends on what you want,” Jon says, squeezing Martin’s hand. “I trust you. I’ll follow your lead.”

“O-okay,” Martin repeats. He blinks several times, surprised, before giving a nervous chuckle. “Only… I, uh, don’t really know what I want, to be honest?”

“Break it down into smaller pieces,” Georgie says. Martin flinches slightly – he must have momentarily forgotten she was in the room. “Do you want to go back to the Lonely?”

There’s only a short delay before Martin says, “No. I don’t… it feels different than before. Doesn’t fit right.”

“Do you want to continue working with Peter?”

“I don’t know,” Martin says slowly. “Not really? I mean, I never wanted to in the first place, it just… seemed like the thing to do.”

“Okay, rephrase,” Georgie says. “Do you want to stop working with him now?”

“I think so.” Another pause. Martin’s brow wrinkles as he stares at the floor in thought before glancing back up at Georgie. “Yeah, I – I think I do.”

“But…?” Georgie prompts, sensing Martin’s uncertainty.

“I worry about how he might react. He’ll probably start paying more attention to the Archives, and…” Martin looks at Jon. “What if he takes it out on you? Or – I mean, I don’t want him to hurt anyone, but I…” He looks down at their joined hands, tightening his grip just slightly. “I think you would be his most likely target.”

“Maybe,” Jon admits. He’s witnessed firsthand how vindictive Peter can be. “But I would rather take that risk than have you torture yourself on the off chance he’ll let me be. And… I think we’ll all be safer if we cooperate as a group rather than stay divided.”

“I guess. I’m not sure how to go about it, though.”

“Well,” Georgie says thoughtfully, “it depends on whether you want to quit all at once or ease into it.”

“I don’t know.” Martin looks to Jon again. “If I continue to work for him in some capacity, would it give us an advantage?”

At this point, they know more about the Extinction than Peter does, and Jon has a decent grasp on Peter’s goals and how he operates. So…

“I… don’t think there’s anything to be gained if you keep working closely with him, no,” Jon replies. “And anyway, I – I would rather that not be the deciding factor? It’s your decision, of course, it’s just – your wellbeing is more important.”

“Hypocrite,” Martin mutters, but there’s a tinge of endearment there.

“I know,” Jon sighs. “I’m working on it. But to the point, I worry that working closely with him might drag you back into the Lonely.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m also worried about you confronting him directly to resign. Especially on your own.”

Peter is patient. Moreover, he enjoys a long game. If he sees Martin’s change of heart as a surmountable obstacle, Peter is likely to take a step back and wait for another opening to regain the upper hand. If, on the other hand, he decides that Martin is a lost cause… well, Peter is a sore loser. There’s every chance that he could drop Martin into the Lonely out of spite again.

“Either way,” Jon says, “I don’t think it’s safe for you to be alone with him. Sooner or later, he’ll realize that the Lonely’s starting to lose its hold on you.”

Unthinkingly, Jon tightens his grip on Martin’s hand.

“It’s been slipping for a while now,” Martin says quietly. “I think he’s already noticed.”

“In that case… there’s no telling how he’ll react if he decides your allegiance to the Lonely is too tenuous to salvage.”

“Do you – or…” Georgie appears to grapple with wording for a few seconds. “Can you Know what Peter knows?”

“No,” Jon says. The last time he tried to Know something about Peter, not only did it yield nothing of value, it nearly incapacitated Jon – and he didn’t recover until he gave in and fed on a new victim. He can’t afford to repeat the experience. Daisy’s supply of statements is finite; Jon needs to ration them as much as possible. “I do know that Peter can’t spy from a distance, but that doesn’t mean he can’t just turn invisible to eavesdrop. Or that Elias won’t feed him information.”

“Let’s focus on the immediate question, then,” Georgie says. “Do you want to go upstairs and walk into your office two hours late with bedhead” – Martin runs a self-conscious hand through his hair, eliciting an affectionate smile from Jon – “or do you want to no-call/no-show?”

“Well… Peter isn’t actually around much,” Martin says. “Sometimes days go by before he checks in. He might not realize I’m not in my office yet. Maybe I can just – go about my normal routine for now?” He glances at Jon, almost beseeching. “At least until I have an idea of how much he knows?”

Like everyone who has worked in the Archives, Martin has developed a harder edge over the years. Early in his tenure, he seemed unassuming on first impression. He was by no means a pushover, but he was eager to please and preferred to avoid unnecessary confrontation. It made him an all-too-easy target for Jon’s insecurity-fueled ire.

But rather than roll over in the face of criticism, Martin has always been determined to prove his detractors wrong. Whether it’s risking his life for the sake of doing his due diligence – Jon cringes at the memory – or stubbornly caring for people who deemed him incompetent and didn’t appreciate his attentions, Martin is tenacious. It would be admirable – and it is, to an extent – but all too often it leads to self-neglect, bordering on self-harm.

And right now, despite the thicker skin that Martin has been forced to grow through necessity and loss, his demeanor when he looks at Jon is vaguely reminiscent of those early days in the Archives: cowed, cautious, desperate for approval and dreading reproach. With a pang of old guilt and a desire to soothe, Jon forces a smile and kneads the back of Martin’s hand with his thumb.

“I trust you,” Jon says, “and I know you’re more than capable. Just – when the fog starts to creep up on you, try to remember that there are people who care about you. You’re not a burden; you’re not – unseen, unwanted, undeserving, or – or whatever other lies the Lonely wants to tell you. You’re not alone. Not anymore.”

“Right,” Martin says in a breathless whisper. He gives Jon’s hand another squeeze before letting go. “I guess I, uh – I guess should head upstairs.”

“Text or call if you need a reminder,” Jon blurts out as Martin turns to leave. “S-sorry, I don’t mean to – to hover, it’s just… sometimes it helps.”

In Scotland, once Jon was too hungry to safely visit the village, Martin had to go on supply runs alone. Although he had largely left the Lonely behind, it still lurked in the background, waiting for quiet moments in which it could seep back in through the cracks it left behind. It was opportunistic and insidious, passive until it wasn’t, and it could strike unpredictably. And so, he and Jon would check in with one another frequently whenever Martin had to go into town.

In many ways it was an exercise in codependence, but they were doing their best, considering their particular circumstances.

“Thanks,” Martin says, splotches of pink staining his face again. “I – I will.”

“There’s no service in the tunnels,” Georgie reminds them. “Just in case you were planning on going down there today, Jon. Martin, do you have the rest of our numbers?”

“I have Basira’s. And Melanie’s.”

“Give me your phone. I’ll add my number. And Daisy’s.” Martin makes a face at that, but hands his phone over. “If Jon doesn’t answer, text one of the rest of us. We can make sure to always keep someone up here and reachable, just in case.”

“That’s really not necessary,” Martin says stiffly. “I don’t need my hand held every second of the day.”

“No, but you might need your hand held at any second during the day,” Georgie says, entirely unfazed by the shift in attitude, “and there's no shame in that. Sometimes a bad time sneaks up on you. Doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

“I’ve always taken care of myself. I can handle a few hours alone.”

“I’m sure you can, but that doesn’t mean you have to.” Martin looks ready to object, but Georgie cuts him off. “You’re not going to win this argument; I’ve already heard it all before. I’ve known this one” – she jerks her thumb in Jon’s direction – “for years, and you have near-identical hangups about being an inconvenience or whatever.”

“I’m right here, you know,” Jon mutters.

“Yeah, this is directed at both of you. People want to help you. The world won’t end if you let yourself accept it without berating yourself in the process.” Georgie looks between the two of them as she hands Martin’s phone back, and then chuckles. “Huh. You two have damn-near-identical scowls, too, by the way.”

Simultaneously, Jon and Martin both roll their eyes.

Compared to the last time Jon saw her, Melanie looks… well, better. The wild, furious look in her eyes has subsided and the bags underneath are no longer quite so heavy. Her posture doesn’t look relaxed, exactly, but she doesn’t seem nearly as overwrought. She's still clearly weighed down by ambient tension, but she always has been – and the Archives have a way of making even the most well-adjusted person feel on edge.

She pauses at the bottom of the ladder, watching Jon with an air of distrust and uncertainty. Then Georgie takes her hand and a little more of that stiffness bleeds out of her. She allows Georgie to lead her over to the circle of chairs where Jon waits, and mirrors Georgie when she sits.

The ensuing silence is thoroughly unsettling. When it becomes clear that Georgie isn’t going to break the ice for them, and Melanie likewise keeps her silence, Jon reluctantly takes the initiative.

“Hi,” he says eloquently. He starts to give a little wave, but doesn’t fully commit to the motion, instead allowing his hand to hang awkwardly in the air for a few seconds before lowering his arm again, self-conscious.

“Hey,” Melanie replies – guarded, somewhat flat, but without any outright hostility.

Melanie scuffs one foot against the ground. Jon bounces his leg, chewing the inside of his cheek as he stares at the floor. Neither of them speak.

“So…” Georgie says after a minute, drawing out the vowel. “Do you two want me to, uh… I can leave, if you’d prefer to have this discussion in private?”

“Stay,” Melanie says abruptly, seeking out Georgie’s hand again. Georgie looks at Jon, a question in her eyes.

“I don’t mind. You can stay, Georgie.”

“If you’re sure,” Georgie says. “Just – let me know if that changes, I suppose.”

More silence. When Jon can’t take it anymore, he blurts out: “H-how have you been?”

“Well,” Melanie says sardonically, “I’m essentially trapped in an eldritch fear prison, doing the bidding of an evil voyeur-god, and apparently the only way out of its unfathomable contract is to gouge my eyes out.”

“Right,” Jon says with a hollow laugh. “Stupid question.”

“How are you?” Melanie asks with mock cheeriness.

“Same as you, really. Well. Except for the eye-gouging clause.”

“What, don’t have the stomach for it?”

“No, uh – it… it just won’t work for me, is all.” Staring down at his lap, Jon occupies himself with tracing circles onto one knee with his fingernail. “The Beholding isn’t keen on losing its Archivist.”

“It didn’t mind losing Gertrude.”

“Gertrude… wasn’t as far gone as I am,” Jon says quietly. “She never fully embraced the power the Eye offered. Not to the extent that I did. Blinding herself would have released her from the Eye’s service. She planned on it, actually, but Elias got to her first. And she was still human enough for a gunshot to kill her.”

And wasn’t that a release, in a way? Is it morbid for Jon to envy the fact that Gertrude even had that option available to her?

“Right,” is all Melanie says. She sounds dubious.

“I’m not just speculating a worst-case scenario to give myself an excuse not to go through with it.” Jon can feel himself bristling now. “I know it won’t work. I’ve tried. Multiple times. It hurts like hell, and then I heal. All I got out of it was an onset of chronic cluster headaches – though, who knows,” he adds acidly, “that may have just been the side effect of becoming a linchpin of the apocalypse and having all the world’s terror crammed into my head. I didn’t bother Knowing. It wouldn’t have made a difference.”

“Jon,” Georgie says gently – and all the fight goes out of him, shoulders slumping.

“Sorry,” he sighs. “Didn’t mean to snap.”

“I wasn’t scolding you. It’s just – you’re scratching.”

Oh. Jon looks down to see long, angry red scratches on his forearms, already fading now.

“Sorry,” he says again. “Didn’t notice.”

“It’s alright.”

Another awkward pause, until Melanie breaks the silence.

“Are you sure blinding will work for the rest of us?” she asks. She no longer sounds suspicious. Simply… curious: reminiscent of how things used to be, back when she was an avid investigator, beholden only to herself.

“Yes.”

“Did I…? Last time?”

“Are you sure you want to know?” Jon waits until Melanie gives a firm nod before he answers the question. “You did.”

“And it worked.”

“It worked.”

Melanie nods again. She’s clenching her teeth, if the subtle movements in her jaw are any indication. Closing her eyes, she takes a deep breath in, lets it out slowly – and her shoulders relax. By the time she’s opened her eyes, there’s the hint of a smile on her face.

“Good,” she says, equal parts relief and determination.

“S-so, do you think you’ll –” Jon stops himself, shaking his head. “No, sorry, I shouldn’t pry.”

Melanie simply shrugs. “I haven’t made a decision yet. Let’s just say I’m strongly considering it.”

Georgie’s hand tightens on Melanie’s, worry lining her face.

“Tell me what happened last time?” Melanie says. “I’d like to hear the whole story.”

Jon takes a deep breath, rubbing his arms as he orders his thoughts.

“Last time, I didn’t know about the bullet until after I woke up,” he begins. “I, ah, only saw you briefly – you were, um… you were convinced that I wasn’t me anymore. Didn’t want me anywhere near you.”

Thought I should have been the one to die, he doesn’t add. Most days, Jon couldn’t find fault in that assessment. He didn’t want to die – most of the time, anyway – but if he could have traded his life for Tim’s… well, it wouldn’t have been a difficult decision.

“So how did you find out about it, then?”

“I just… Knew it, all of a sudden.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Melanie narrows her eyes suspiciously.

“It’s an Archivist thing. I mean, you're probably already aware – I just… Know things, sometimes, even without compelling anyone. It started before the Unknowing, but it wasn’t as noticeable. Or as often. And it was typically more vague impressions, rather than specific truths. It got worse after I woke up from the coma. More frequent, more detailed, more – intrusive.”

“Fantastic,” Melanie says sourly.

“Yes, I’m not thrilled about it either. Sometimes I can Know things by choice, but the Beholding has a tendency to withhold answers to the questions I actually ask. Mostly it just airdrops information on me unsolicited. Often without me even wondering about a thing. Just… apropos of nothing. I did have much more control over it after the world ended, but, well…” He shrugs, awkward. “Not anymore. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Melanie repeats.

“Last time, I had – still have, I suppose – a tendency to Know things about specific people. Things they wouldn’t normally share with me. I still remember things I Knew back then. Including some things about you.”

The color rises in Melanie’s cheeks. “That’s –”

“An invasion of privacy, I know,” he says, contrite. “I really will try to avoid it, just… sometimes things slip through the cracks when I’m not paying attention.”

“So, what, you can read minds?” Melanie says, an accusation threaded through the question. “Like Elias?”

Jon visibly recoils.

“Melanie,” Georgie begins, but Jon cuts her off.

“No, it’s – it’s a fair question. Elias’ powers come from the same source mine do.” He pauses, nervously flexing his fingers as he composes an explanation. “I can’t see your thoughts verbatim. It’s just… Knowing things. It’s the same with Elias. Sometimes it seems like he can read minds, b-but that’s – that’s just because he’s very – very good at reading people –”

“– finding you when you’re at your lowest point, when you’re your most emotionally vulnerable. And when you’re at that point it’s astounding what can crawl into your heart and start to fester there –“

Jon bites his tongue, applying pressure until the Archive stops its clamoring. Melanie raises her eyebrows in an unspoken question.

“Sorry. Sometimes it just slips out, and…” He laughs and massages his temples. “Well. Still an Archive, in the end.”

His voice cracks and Georgie’s already-concerned expression grows more serious.

“Jon –”

“I’m fine, Georgie,” Jon says, more curtly than intended. “Sorry. I just – I can’t go there right now.”

“We can take a break if you need,” she says.

“No, I… let’s just continue.” He nods at Melanie. “You have more questions.”

Melanie gnaws on the inside of her cheek for a moment, mulling over her words.

“Can you do that…” She wiggles her fingers vaguely. “That thing where you put thoughts in people’s heads?”

“No. Not – not really.”

Not anymore, he corrects privately. During the apocalypse, he was able to make others See and feel things, but… only because he could call upon the Ceaseless Watcher to turn its gaze upon them. Here in the past, the Beholding and all the other Fears remain cloistered behind their door, leeching through the cracks but unable to fully manifest in the world.

“But I, um…” Jon pauses, wetting his lips nervously. “In addition to compelling people to tell me things, sometimes I can compel people to… to do things. Nothing – nothing complex. Simple commands, mostly. ‘Stop,’ ‘leave,’ ‘look,’ ‘don’t look,’ that sort of thing. I haven’t done it often, but the times I have… with a few exceptions, it’s usually been accidental. A sort of – knee-jerk defense mechanism of sorts.”

“Hmm.” Melanie crosses her arms, tapping her foot on the ground.

“I realize that reflects poorly on me.” He swallows, mouth going dry. “It’s… a terrifying prospect, being near someone who can do something like that, and doesn’t have full control over it.”

Jon knows – and Knows via billions of proxies – what it’s like to have something other supplant his will and commandeer his body. Melanie deserves to know the risks of standing too close to him.

“I promise I’ll try to keep it under control, I just – wanted you to be aware of it. I won’t blame you if you’d rather not be around me.”

“Stop being so melodramatic,” Melanie says, rolling her eyes.

“I’m not,” Jon says flatly. “Compelling answers and – and subsisting on a diet of fear has always been more than enough to justify people keeping their distance. Adding more sinister bullshit on top of the pile doesn’t exactly do me credit. I know – Know how people see me.” He laughs, a harsh and humorless thing. “I can’t not Know.”

People tend to naturally give him a wide berth, as if they can sense that there’s something wrong about him, even if they can’t quite discern why. If he’s too careless, if he locks eyes with the wrong person, sometimes they can’t look away – and sometimes he can’t, either, and he’s forced to watch as the terror dawns in their eyes. Just like the nightmares, bleeding into his waking life.

Jon can feel when people are afraid; the Archivist in him relishes it, gravitates towards it like a flower turning to face the sun, soaks it in regardless of whether or not he wants it. And there is always a part of him that does want it, that always wants more – and isn’t that fitting, taking a page from the book of his very first monster? He is, quite literally, a thing of nightmares. Helen is right: he is what he is, and there’s no use denying it.

He’s always been hypersensitive to how other people perceive him. Being able to Know how people really feel about him has historically tended to confirm his customary hostile attribution bias. Vicariously feeling the reality of others’ hatred and fear of him, passively basking in it, being forced to derive sustenance from it – god, it’s like cannibalizing his own vicious self-loathing, a sustainable resource that can be recycled ad infinitum. It takes self-flagellation to a new and perverse extreme.

“I Know when people don’t want to be near me,” he says, unable to suppress the bitterness in his tone. “When someone nearby is afraid, I feel it – as natural as sensing the temperature in a room. I feed on it. It’s an automatic process. So if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not bask in the knowledge of how much the other people in the room can’t stand breathing the same air as me, if I can avoid it.”

“Jon,” Georgie tries again, “I know how things used to be, but –”

“It’s different now, I know. But the Eye tends to prioritize – well, unpleasant impressions. I know it’s only giving me one side of the story. That there’s more, even if I can’t See it. But fear is loud. Doesn’t leave room for mindfulness.”

Georgie has a reply ready, but Melanie speaks first.

“Okay. I get it.” At Jon’s blank expression, Melanie heaves a sigh – aggravated, but not hostile. “It’s like how anger was for me, okay? Rage has a way of drowning out everything else. Reliable, when nothing else can be trusted. Makes things clearer, simpler. Made me feel more… alive, real.” She hesitates, crossing her arms and shifting uncomfortably in her seat. “Nourishing. Sort of. I guess.”

“Yeah,” Jon says, picking aimlessly at his sleeve.

“I’ll just avoid being in the same room as you when I’m… having a day,” she continues. Jon nods. “Or you can just tell me to go away if I’m – I don’t know, giving off rancid vibes, or whatever.”

Jon breathes a surprised, amused huff. “Well. Same goes for you, I suppose.”

He’s even more shocked to see a grin twitch to life on Melanie’s face – very small, but present all the same. Then, appearing to take pity on him, she changes the subject.

“So, you Knew about the bullet.”

“Yes,” Jon says, grateful for the opportunity to move on. “But not until a couple weeks after I got out of the hospital. Didn’t even realize I Knew it until I said it aloud.”

“Meaning it had more time to poison me, where you’re from. Was I… worse?”

“Well, the first time I saw you after I came back, you attacked me on sight, so… maybe? But I don’t really have a point of comparison. That was the only time I saw you up until we removed it, so I don’t know how much you deteriorated in the interim. And this time, I only saw you after the bullet had already been removed.”

“I attacked you?” She doesn’t sound surprised, really. More… intrigued.

“In your defense, you didn’t think I was me anymore. Tim died, Daisy was presumed dead, and I was still alive.” He knows that, of the three of them, Melanie wouldn’t have picked Jon to be the survivor. I hope it hurts, she’d said in her testament. Instead, he slept for six months and then woke up wrong. “You were angry, and afraid, and you had a bullet in your leg making it worse. You needed someone to blame, and Elias was beyond your reach.”

So I was the next best thing, he doesn’t say. Bitterness aside, Jon can’t say he blames her.

Melanie narrows her eyes suspiciously. “Then how the hell did you convince me to have it removed?”

“We, uh… we didn’t. I told Basira first. She – didn’t think you would have agreed. So, we…” Jon forces himself to meet Melanie’s eyes as he gives the confession. “We performed some amateur surgery. Without your consent. Basira procured some local anesthetic, and the Eye let me See where the bullet was, how to remove it with… minimal damage. You were using some rather strong sleep aids, at the time, so you slept through most of it. You only woke up once the bullet was out. And you, uh, promptly stabbed me with the scalpel, though I – I probably deserved that.”

“What the fuck, Jon.”

“I – I know, I know. I’m – well, it might be – odd, to apologize for something that never happened from your perspective? But I am sorry. It wasn’t right, for us to do it that way. We should have asked you.”

“I might not have agreed.” Her voice is tightly controlled, but there’s still a quiet sort of fury simmering just under the words.

“No, uh – probably not. You said later that the anger was always there. Motivating you to keep going. Helping you survive. The Slaughter validated that rage. Made it feel like home.” Melanie stares, unblinking. “You told me the bullet stayed because you wanted it, and… we took that choice from you, decided what was in your best interests without asking you how you felt about it.”

Melanie is quiet for a few more moments, glaring at the floor, before her eyes flick back up to meet Jon's. “What would have happened if you didn’t get it out of me?”

“I can’t say for certain, but it’s likely that you would have become a Slaughter Avatar. Reached a point of no return.”

She scoffs. “So it was worth it, in the end?”

“I don’t know. I want to say yes. You saw me as a monster, and I doubt you would have wanted to become like me. Something inhuman, feeding on suffering. But…”

“But?”

“It’s easy to look at how things ultimately worked out for you and use that outcome to justify what we did,” he says, “but I – I’m not fond of the idea that the ends justify the means. I didn’t know at the time that you and Georgie were this close. If I did, maybe I could have asked her to talk to you, except…”

“We weren’t speaking,” Georgie says.

“Yeah. I – honestly don’t know what else we could have done, but… still, the way we went about it was wrong. You were trapped here like the rest of us, and we… we stole the only thing that gave you some semblance of control. What we did was a violation of your autonomy. I know that feeling, I know how it feels to…” Jon shakes his head. “We saved your life, or – your humanity, at least, but in doing so we took away your choice. Subjected you to more trauma, made it so you couldn’t feel safe anywhere. Eventually you quit, and you and Georgie seemed happy together after that, but the fact that you were able to start healing – that doesn’t change the fact that we hurt you in the first place. I’m sorry.”

“This place,” Melanie says with a breathless laugh.

“Yeah. It’s… not known for presenting benign choices. I’m, ah… I’m glad that this time, it was your own choice.”

“And what if I had still said no?”

“I probably would’ve given you the line about becoming a monster like me. I would have told you what happened last time – or, told Georgie and let her tell you, more likely, if only to avoid any, ah… stabbiness.” Melanie huffs, but it sounds amused rather than offended. “And if you still decided to choose the Slaughter after being fully informed… well, it wasn’t my place to take the choice away from you.”

“Even if I wasn’t in my right mind?” she asks.

“Even if you weren’t in your right mind.”

Melanie’s stare is piercing, scanning him for any signs of dishonesty. Eventually, she folds her arms and leads back in her chair with a hmm.

“What?” Jon asks, heart in his throat.

“Just – unexpected. Would’ve expected you to make a unilateral decision.”

Truthfully, Jon doesn’t trust himself to make those kinds of decisions. Last time, he’d let Basira call the shot. Not only did he trust her judgment more than his own – secretly, selfishly, he was relieved to abdicate at least some of the responsibility. He doubts that his conscience would have been able to carry the full burden of that choice.

Later, during the apocalypse, he had made an executive decision on someone else’s behalf: Jordan Kennedy. In that instance, there was no one with whom he could share the blame. Although it was intended as an act of mercy, Jon cannot deny that he created an unwilling Avatar – stripped a man of his humanity and reshaped him into something other, same as had been done to Jon.

The people in that domain would have continued to suffer just the same whether it was controlled by an Avatar or a hivemind of ants. At least this way, one person could be spared the torture. But it didn’t save anyone. It did not even end Jordan’s suffering, only transformed it into a different, hypothetically more endurable but still horrific shape – one that Jon knew all too intimately.

It was done with merciful intentions, and he may have given Jordan the choice to reverse it – a choice that Jon has never been given himself – but making that decision for Jordan in the first place… well, at the end of the day, Jon could never shake the feeling that he’d taken a page out of Jonah’s playbook. It wasn’t the same, but it felt… adjacent, too much so for comfort.

The choice has haunted Jon ever since. It eats away at him every time he sees Jordan in his nightmares, whenever Jordan watches him with the same dread that he does Jane Prentiss. Yet, Jon still cannot say for certain whether he would do anything differently, if faced with Jordan’s agonized pleading a second time.

But as for Melanie’s particular situation…

“I know what it’s like to have someone else decide on your destiny for you,” he says quietly.

Melanie looks thoroughly unimpressed.

“Look, I – I understand why you resent me. Elias used you to further the Archivist’s progress. Same as he used Tim, Sasha, and Martin, and Basira and Daisy, and Helen… even Jane Prentiss, Mike Crew, Jude Perry – and Jared, Manuela, Peter… everyone, everyone who crosses his path is either irrelevant or a stepping stone. Which means that everyone who crosses my path suffers.”

Stop, Jon tells himself, shutting his eyes tight against the first stirrings of panic lapping at the edges of his mind. It’s pathetic, he thinks, how easily he sinks into this headspace. Jon’s mutinous brain does all of Jonah’s work for him – like prodding at a recent wound, just to see if it still hurts, even knowing full well that it only sabotages the healing process. Stupid, pointless. Just stop dwelling on it.

He can’t.

“All of it – all of it was to create the Archive to his specifications –”

“– bound together – I would look at him, and see a grim sort of destiny for myself: trapped here, until I became him; any future I might have had, sacrificed to his –”

“– and I just – I don’t want people to look at me and – and see him. Or the Beholding –”

“– keeping its prisoners ignorant in pursuit of… knowledge –”

“– I've spent enough time being synonymous with the Eye. I don’t want it. I never wanted it, even if I did choose to – to keep looking for answers –”

“– idiots who destroyed themselves chasing a secret that wasn’t worth knowing –”

“– I can’t reverse that, but I can still make it difficult for Elias to get any use out of me. But I’m sorry – I’m sorry that I let him do it for so long –”

“– any idiot could have seen it would play out that way –”

“– I’m sorry you got dragged into all this. I wish I could have gone back to the very beginning, back to the day I took the job, and – god, I thanked Elias for the opportunity, and he – he smiled, because he knew, he knew I would be easily manipulated, knew everything about me – knew all about –”

Thankfully, Georgie interrupts his heated muttering and brings that thought train to a jarring halt. Or – no, she's been saying his name, but he's only just now heard it.

“Jon,” she says, loudly but calmly. She's leaning forward in her seat, hand prepared to reach over to him. “You’re scratching again.”

So he is. Badly. As soon as he stops, the scratches along his forearms heal, leaving only drying blood behind: thin, messy streaks painted across his skin and caked under his fingernails. He should probably clip them shorter, at this rate.

“Sorry,” he says, pulling his sleeves down to hide his arms. “I’m just – sorry.”

“Change the subject?” Georgie offers, lowering her arm.

“I think that would be best,” Jon agrees, discomfited and more than a little annoyed with himself. Will he ever be able to spare a thought for Jonah Magnus without completely unraveling in the process? Hell, will he ever be able to go a day without sparing a single thought for Jonah Magnus at all? Okay, no, stop harping, he reprimands himself. “Just – give me a minute.”

Jon forces himself to take several breaths until he can no longer hear his heartbeat thundering in his ears. Once he regathers his composure, he meets Melanie’s eyes again.

“What I mean to say is – I owe you a lot of apologies, Melanie. I was dismissive of you when we first met, and it just sort of – snowballed from there.”

“It was mutual, I think,” Melanie says guardedly.

“Still, I was – unprofessional, at the very least. And unnecessarily cruel. It was my job to be impartial, but I didn’t have to be callous. Most of the statements that come in aren’t real, but they aren’t impossible, either. And even if a story was due to – substance use, or mental illness, or – or even just an overactive imagination… most people who came in still believed that their story was true. Their distress was genuine. They deserved comfort, not ridicule, regardless of whether or not their story actually happened the way they remembered. And beyond that, it was… poor research methodology, really, to refuse to entertain the possibility of a story’s veracity simply because of my first impression of a statement giver.” His voice grows quieter. “Or because of my own baggage.”

“Your own baggage?”

“I, ah…” Jon deliberates for a brief moment on whether to share this part of himself. It seems only fair, given the personal details he knows about the rest of them. And… telling Daisy had felt cathartic in its own way, hadn't it? “I had a supernatural experience of my own once. Before working at the Institute, I mean. I was a child, so of course it was chalked up to an overactive imagination. And then at some point I was too old to still be afraid of monsters.”

Jonathan, this has gotten out of hand, his grandmother had told him with hands on her hips, exasperated after once again finding every door and cupboard in the house thrown open. Ten is too old to be sleeping with the lights on and checking closets for monsters.

And with that, she had closed the closet doors, flicked the light off, and pulled his bedroom door shut on her way out. He had clung desperately to the hope that she would at least leave the hall light on – but moments later the thin strip of light filtering through the crack under the door was snuffed out. When he heard the click of his grandmother's bedroom door down the hall, he'd dissolved into tears. Turning his face into his pillow to muffle his sobs so as not to alert her to yet another of his childish meltdowns, he spent the rest of the night – and countless nights thereafter – sleeping in fitful stops and starts, plagued by phantom knocking and chitinous clicking and creaking doors. He knows now that such sounds were nothing more than hypnopompic hallucinations, the remnants of nightmares chasing him into wakefulness; knows that the web binding him in place and the hulking presence in the room were only symptoms of sleep paralysis; but at the time…

Jon shakes his head.

“The fear doesn’t go away just because people don’t believe it’s based in truth. So, I learned to hide it instead. To stop talking about it, even though I never stopped searching for an answer –”

“– was there when he was taken; he never got over what he saw. Or didn’t see. After much searching and despair, it drove him into the waiting arms of the Institute –”

“– damn,” he hisses, flustered.

“You okay?” Georgie asks.

“Yeah,” he says gruffly. “Just – one moment.”

Pause, breathe, recollect. Listen to the quiet – which really shouldn’t be so difficult, should it? Aren’t archives supposed to be quiet? Why does this library have to be so horrifically noisy? – and breathe, breathe, breathe. Okay.

“What I’m saying is, I coped with it – poorly – with denial. I could never shake the conviction that what I saw was real, no matter how I tried to rationalize it. But I was still afraid that admitting belief in monsters would – draw their attention to me, somehow. Again. And because of that, I was… unsympathetic, to people who were genuinely afraid. The last thing they needed was derisive skepticism. Or projection. I know what it’s like to not be believed. I shouldn’t have put others through the same thing.”

“Huh.” Melanie looks him up and down. “That’s… unusually insightful for you.”

“I had a lot of time alone to obsess during the apocalypse,” Jon says drily. “Some of it even ended up being productive.” Melanie snorts; Jon gives a cautious smile. “I, ah, also should have tried harder to warn you away from India. Or the Institute in general.”

“And I would have told you to fuck off, because I already didn’t like you, and you would have been just one more in a long line of pompous men acting like they knew better than me.”

Jon laughs. “I suppose you’re right.”

“Look, we just – we both treated each other poorly. You were the easiest target to take my anger out on. Martin’s too nice, Basira was basically a hostage, Daisy is Daisy, and Tim… Tim wasn’t around much, and anyway, he would have thrown whatever I gave him right back in my face. You were a prick, but I think I blamed you more than was fair. And I guess… you were – are – trapped as much as the rest of us. So. I’m sorry too.”

“Well, it’s not like I tried to make a good first impression.”

“Neither did I.” She glowers at him, daring him to challenge her. “Accept the apology or don’t, but don’t throw it back in my face.”

“Fine,” Jon sighs. “I accept the apology.”

“There. Was that so hard?”

“Excruciating,” he deadpans.

Georgie snorts. Melanie and Jon both look at her with a combined, “What?”

“Just… watching the two of you. I think I may have a type.”

Another simultaneous, “What?”

“Curious, stubborn, temperamental, cute, short…”

“H-hey,” Melanie protests, “I’m at least a few centimeters taller than he is –”

“One-point-eight, actually,” Jon mutters under his breath – and then cracks a smile, encouraged by Georgie’s bright, surprised laugh. Melanie just glares at him.

“You know,” Melanie says, “you make it very hard to like you sometimes.”

“Sorry.” He’s not sorry at all. Shooting Georgie an indignant glance, he adds: “Also, I’m not cute.”

“I’m sure Martin would beg to differ,” Georgie teases. Jon sighs, arms crossed and face uncomfortably warm. “Well, anyway…” Georgie grins, looking between the two of them. “Does this mean… truce?”

Melanie gives Jon another long, searching look, and Jon forces himself to meet her eyes.

“Yeah, alright,” she says after a moment, then looks down, bouncing her heel against the floor. “Seems the only one who isn’t trapped and miserable is Elias. And you’re not him. Or working with him. So.” She shrugs one shoulder. “That just makes you one of us. I guess.” When Jon doesn’t reply, she glances back up at him. “What’s that face for?”

“That, uh…” Speechless, Jon roots around for something substantial to say. Instead, one corner of his mouth quirks up as he says, with tentative daring: “That might just be one of the nicest things you’ve ever said to me, is all.”

“Yeah, well…” Melanie scoffs, but there’s a hint of amusement in it now. “I’m still going to call you out when you’re being a dick, mind.”

“A public service, really,” Jon says, wry and more than a little elated.

An invitation to playful bickering as opposed to scathing antagonism is, as far as he and Melanie are concerned, an undeniable olive branch.

End Notes:

Jon: my type is Aggressively Idealistic Existentialists Who Give Amazing Hugs, apparently Georgie: and my type is Short Nerds With Strong Feelings About Basically Everything ~*mlm/wlw solidarity*~ But seriously though,,, I love the idea of Georgie and Martin meeting the End and the Vast, respectively, and basically going "hey why don't you read some Camus and maybe you'll calm down???" I may or may not be projecting. I need them and Oliver to have a philosophy book club. Actually everyone else can come too. Basira strikes me as the type to have some Strong Opinions about Certain Philosophers and yes sure that dude may have died ages ago and maybe she shouldn't take it so personally but if she found a Leitner that let her temporarily resurrect him for an hour she might just do so if only for the opportunity to debate his pompous ass in a Tesco parking lot. (I, once again, may or may not be projecting. I was a philosophy minor and I WILL pepper in the fact that I hate Kant. You cannot hold this against me.)

____

Citations for Jon's Archive-speak are as follows, in order of appearance: MAG 094; 153; 144/101/111/014; 101.

Martin's "I think our experience of the universe has value, even if it disappears forever" quote is from MAG 151 and yes it IS one of my all time favorite Martin quotes, how could you tell

Disclaimer re: how Jon talks about his ace identity: I'm ace & projecting a bit, like I do with Jon's ADHD/neurodivergence. The way I describe ace stuff is not meant to be reflective of all ace-spec people's experiences.

would you believe me if I said the whole 'deservedness' spiel was written before the latest episode??? bc it was and then I read the newest ep transcript and I was like "oh"

Sorry for the delay in getting this chapter out, btw. funny story: I accidentally let the prescription for my ADHD meds expire and I had to go like four days without them before I could go get another paper script bc it's one they can't submit electronically or call in, soooo I got fuck-all done for half of that week and it broke my writing flow :0  hoping to get back into my usual flow from here on out and manage to have the next chapter ready in 2ish weeks, but we shall see. Thanks for sticking with me <3  (I might start shortening chapters again, the last few have been 10k+ compared to the earlier 6-8k and I could probably stand to split them up a bit.)

Speaking of the next chapter - yes, I AM planning on moving the plot forward I swear. I realize the last few chapters have basically taken place within a single week and have been mostly People Talking About Things, RIP.  

And as always, thank you for reading, and for all your comments! <3 They're basically 50% of my regular serotonin intake. The other 50% is my cat's motorboat purring.

[ardenttheories]

Homestuck's always been antagonistic and insensitive, but I don't recall seeing any of you try to dox Hussie? But please, continue to rationalise how cyberbullying lgbt people for not being nice enough and having opinions about a fictional character you disagree with puts you in the right. A story doesn't go the way you'd like and this is how you respond? You COULD have just not bothered reading it instead of CHOOSING to make your online life about something you hate like a toxic weirdo.

Hi, Kate. I’m so glad you could find my blog. (Edit: that was a joke. Apparently, some anons find it impossible to tell that I don’t actually think you’re Kate). It’s clear to me that you didn’t take the time to read through any of the content that’s actually on here, since you’re throwing around rather wild accusations, so let me take this down step by step.

Homestuck has only rarely been antagonistic and insensitive. Things like the Alpha Trolls - which were clear criticisms of fandom culture - were relatively few and far between, and when we complained about them, they actually stopped. Remind me, for instance, how relevant the Alpha Trolls were to the plot? How long they stayed as mockeries towards the fandom? Yeah, not long. I actually have talked about this before on the blog - alongside other things I thought were negative towards the fandom from the original comic - but the difference here is that... in the entirety of Homestuck, these things were outliers and inconsistencies. They stuck out because they were in stark contrast to the otherwise wonderfully handled content Homestuck went over.

For instance, Homesuck is critical of abuse - especially in terms of relationships. We see through a critical lense the shit normalisation of parental abuse can do to a child - with actual talk of triggers and of the mental and emotional scarring left behind, and the complexities of the child’s feelings towards the parent’s death through Dave - and we see how self destructive relationships can be, how harmful they are, and how hard it can be to leave them - such as Terezi’s very toxic blackrom with Gamzee, which was always portrayed as something negative and harmful especially with how worried Karkat was for her and how withdrawn she became during its run, and Dirk’s relationship with Jake, which goes very much over how communication can cause a deterioration in romantic relationships especially when the two participants have conflicting mental illnesses. 

It also goes over how men, though they can be mired in toxic masculinity, can choose to be good. How sometimes we’re not born as good people, but we can become good people through the love we have for the people around us, through frequent attempts to check what we’re doing, through the sheer willpower to be good. Dirk’s entire arc, knowing that he could very easily become Bro but deciding he doesn’t want to be, that it’s something he wants to work on, is so important and incredibly powerful. Mental illness in men is often just given as an excuse to make them violent with no attempts at betterment - so Dirk actually existed as proof that you don’t have to be that stereotype. 

In contrast, Homestuck^2 completely uncritically gave Jade, who was cis, a dog dick, made her, a bisexual woman, a sex maniac and the yaoi “woman who gets in the way of the gays” trope, made her a cheater and someone who forced her partner into the relationship to begin with, and made her a neglectful mother after having cheated with her best lesbian friend in something that has incredible recall to just about every futanari video ever - and they tried to claim that this was good representation of trans women, actually, and that the only reason we didn’t like it is that Jade is “a woman” who “has sex”.

Likewise completely uncritically, they made Gamzee, an anti-black stereotype, enter a relationship with Jane, a fascist, and then made the entire thing into a cuck joke wherein Jake being frequently drunk and sexually assaulted was funny because he wasn’t “man enough”. They then forced him to go back to his abuser after he left her in a scene that read very much like, “ridiculous man thinks woman is abusing him, go back and do your manly job”. 

This, of course, doesn’t even go into the travesty that is any form of trans representation in the comic. Roxy, a trans man, is barely even focused on as trans; they make no attempt to enforce in the fandom that he’s a trans man the way they do that June is a trans woman, and even then, they seem to think that just saying someone is a trans woman is actually good representation. Not, like, bringing it into the comic - just saying that it’s a thing. And of course, that’s not even going into the completely uncritical lense they have of Vriska, wherein her being a trans woman completely frees her of any and all blame for the past abuses she has comitted, and once again she becomes an amazing character to save the day without a single flaw - which in turn inherently associates trans women with abuse apologism, abusers, and the ideology that just because we’re trans we can get away with anything scott free. 

I honestly cannot think of one instance of good and genuine representation in Homesuck^2, nor can I think of any scene where negative content was actually treated as the negative thing it actually is. There’s no critical lense at all, not like we have in Homestuck; there’s just no fucking comparison. And this isn’t a one-off situation, either. Whereas Homestuck does do fuck ups - isn’t perfect - in between the otherwise brilliant content, Homestuck^2 is just founded upon these horrific takes. There’s almost no good content in between, and what is left is a slog to get through when surrounded by the thick slurry of shit that compromises futa Jade, abuse apologism Vriska, and victim blaming Jake. 

Of course, we didn’t “doxx” Hussie. Hussie actually listened to our complaints, for the most part, and worked with us to create something that worked well. The way Homestuck^2 was touted to work. You know, since it was meant to be written with the fandom in mind, influenced by the things we suggest and react to. We went into Homestuck^2 with the explicit idea that we were going to be listened to and taken into consideration when it was being written - the way we were with old Homestuck. I’m very sorry to say that, when you make these expectations, people are going to be a titchy bit upset when you then commandeer the entire thing and exclude the fandom from any of the process that you said they were going to be part of.

Additionally, it’s rather funny, isn’t it, that what you call doxxing is actually just people upset with how triggering content is being handled, and going to the people who actually wrote the content in order to voice their complaints? It’s almost as if social media exists to allow this communication between reader and author, which is a fundamental thing you’ll learn in any creative writing course, such as the one I’m on currently, wherein you’re actually taught how to respond to social media and to build up your image with your fans. 

Homestuck^2 is an ongoing piece of media. We’re well aware that we have a potential to change these uncritical takes and the horrific way they’re being handled if the writers will just listen to genuine criticism. This is, frankly, no different to the people who go to J. K. Rowling’s Twitter to tell her how harmful her transphobic comments are; because if she believes these things, they will work their way into her texts and will perpetuate harmful ideologies. 

The literal same thing is happening in Homestuck^2 - again, such as futa Jade, which normalises the point of view that bisexuals are cheaters and completely trivialises what it means to be trans, or Gamzee, which perpetuates just about every anti-black stereotype possible. Media does have a very powerful impact on what people see in the real world. This is why, for instance, positive black characters are so important in media; if they’re always portrayed as villains, then people will see real world black people as villains as the ideology is perpetuated to the point of fact. This is especially true if the people already believe in the ideology.

Fiction is one of the best ways that we can counteract this cycle. If you make a character that they like, and they happen to be positive representation, and then they watch more media that is likewise positive representation, it’s more likely to stick that these positive representations are the actual experiences of minority groups. Also? It’s important TO those minority groups. A black person, especially right now, doesn’t want to see an anti-black stereotype fuck a fascist, engage in sexual assult, and then enact pedophilia - only to die at the hands of a hero and be laughed at for the death. Surprisingly, shit like this is why we need to tell the writers that what they’re doing is harmful, that they’re perpetuating phobic ideologies, and that we need better representation - especially in a comic that is this widely read, and also has a very large minor fanbase. 

I shouldn’t need to explain why exposing minors to anti-black stereotypes, transphobic, homophobic, biphobic, abuse apologism, victim blaming, and the trivialisation of rape and sexual assault (especially towards men), might be a federal fucking issue. 

So, no, we’re not actually cyberbullying LGBT+ people. We’re trying to hold shitty writers accountable for the incredibly toxic and harmful ideologies they’re forcing into a text that has always been written with critical thought in mind. 

I should also point out how funny it is that you’re focusing on how some of the writers are LGBT+ - as if we’re not? I’m trans, I’m gay, and I’m ace. Yes, I can actually be these things and absolutely furious that a trans women is writing some of the most transphobic shit I’ve seen in a while into characters she then claims to be completely free of blame. We can be furious that people within our own community are enforcing negative stereotypes.

Being LGBT+ does not make them free from blame. We cannot give them a free pass to be racist, to be transphobic, to be homophobic, biphobic, to be abuse apologists, just because they’re LGBT+. Not only because that’s just a terrible fucking idea to begin with, but because it also reflects so, so badly on the community as a whole. As if being part of the community instantly means that you can do no wrong? As if there can be no toxicity within our own community, despite the fact that there very much is and it is still an issue to this day?

That is such an issue, one of the biggest issues even shown just in Vriska and the way Kate handles her as a whole - and, once again, is WHY we need to get them looking at this shit more critically. This view that LGBT+ people can do no wrong and cannot be criticised is shoved into Homestuck^2 and, once again, perpetuates the ideology. This isn’t something to be proud of. This isn’t something that’s actually okay.

Also, your point that the writers aren’t nice enough and that we disagree on fictional characters - well, I’ve already been over the second part. But for the first part, I would like to remind you that they aren’t just random LGBT+ people on the internet that we’re going to because we think their takes are a little shitty. They’re actual writers working on a piece of media. They are official content creators. 

Again, one of the first things you learn on any creative writing course is that when you become a writer, you gain a significant amount of responsibility for your interactions with the fandom. This is something that you genuinely have to expect, and if you don’t, then, unfortunately you just don’t know what it means to write something that thousands of people have a potential to read. As a writer, it is your responsibility to portray your image online; it is your responsibility to engage with the fans in a meaningful way; it is your responsibility to not cause drama and to listen when criticism is brought up, to have genuine discussion and not to perpetuate hatred - especially towards your own fanbase.

Consider, for instance, the way I’m talking to you right now. This is the sort of tone that someone should take when talking to a fan about genuine criticism. When things are brought up, you go over them step by step, you listen, you write back - you don’t go on a flurry of “fuck yous” to a minor who asked you why your team didn’t post anything about the BLM movement on the official Twitter, and you definitely don’t respond to every comment with genuine criticism with the word “pigshit”. You almost definitely don’t tell your trans masculine and masculine-aligned nonbinary fans that their opinions don’t matter.

As a writer, Kate and the rest of the team have a responsibility with their interactions with their fans. They aren’t just normal fandom voices anymore; they’re official fandom voices, voices that have more weight behind them than anyone else. They’re who people are going to turn to when it comes to anything regarding Homestuck^2. Their words now reflect literally everything about Homestuck^2, the future of Homestuck as an expanded universe, and the opinions of the group as a whole. They have to be careful with what they say. They have to be held to the same standards as industry voices because that’s essentially what they are - especially now that Homestuck is something you pay for. 

Also, this isn’t a point of the story not going the way I want. This is a point of many of people in the fandom being upset with how content is being handled, upset that their voices are being shut down, upset that triggering content is being laughed at or used flippantly and without care or respect. This is people being upset that trigger warnings were removed specifically to make the comic unsafe for them as a punishment for daring to say that something was wrong. This is people being upset that a piece of media that used to be so fucking good at portraying sensitive content in a critical light, that used to be so good at normalising LGBT+ identities and healthy representations of those identities, has suddenly turned to this. 

The story can go whatever way it wants - and frankly, that’s fine be my. What isn’t fine is that content is being used specifically to hurt and to incite.

And, of course, that final piece; nothing will improve if we don’t say that it’s wrong to begin with. Someone needs to voice the complaints of the fanbase, othrewise these toxic ideologies are going to go unchecked. One of the biggest things I’ve come to understand while making these posts is that a significant portion of the fandom feels isolated in their hurt; they don’t think other people feel the same way they do, and several people have mentioned feeling like they were going crazy because they were upset with things that the text and writers are normalising. It’s so important to make sure that these people know they’re not alone. It’s so important to make sure that our voices are heard. It’s so important to try and create critical discussion and debate over something that so many people still fucking love. 

The thing is, I don’t hate Homestuck^2. I actually really, desperately wish I could enjoy it. I wish I could read through it and theorise, could go in depth about how amazing the characters are, could write long and extensive posts on how creative and engaging it is - could even just go on about how interesting the Meat-Candy divide is, and all the points they’re trying to make about canonicity. But I genuinely fucking can’t. There is just so, so much wrong in the text that is completely unrelated to plot and to the overarching Point that makes it impossible for me to read, to want to read, to try to encourage other people to read. They’re things that literally don’t need to be in there, either; stereotypes and toxic ideologies and uncritical or badly handled sensitive topics that could be rectified so, so easily. 

Homestuck^2 could be amazing for a lot of the fandom. It could be something that we all rally around the same way we did for the original comic. For for a lot of people, it has ruined their fandom experience, has ruined their desire to want to read anything more to do with Homestuck, and has caused a significant portion of the fandom to just drop out entirely. That in and of itself should be a sign that this isn’t just a little fandom drama. That this is something much bigger and much more serious that, just maybe, needs to be looked into, talked about, understood - and, potentially, changed. 

#homestuck^2 #homestuck^2 critical #long post// #ardenttheories #Apologies for how long this is. I wasn't going to finish it until I got every point across #And that ended up being... uh. Several thousand words I suspect #Anonymous

[belonglab]

Gaslighting: A Tool of Oppression and Exclusion

by Alisha Patel, Communications & Research Fellow at GenLead|BelongLab

February 2, 2021

“I don’t see color.” This is one of the most common phrases people will use to defend themselves against accusations of racism. It isn’t the best, but at least it’s not explicitly racist, right? In a culture where calling out institutional and systemic racism feels like an ongoing battle that’s fought tiny steps at a time, that phrase feels like an adequate place to start. However, this phrase is actually a form of racial gaslighting, and its acceptance only perpetuates stereotypes and the racism we are trying to fight.

Gaslighting in general is a form of manipulation and psychological abuse where the perpetrator convinces the victim that they are imagining or overreacting to abuse. Over time, this can solidify the perpetrator’s position of power over the victim, turning it into an ongoing cycle of abuse. The effects of gaslighting are extensive-- the victim will start to second guess themselves and their judgments. While this form of manipulation is often talked about with regard to personal relationships, it can additionally be used to to cloak bigotry like racism.

Racial Gaslighting

Racial gaslighting often is used to excuse microaggressions in all forms. It can invalidate someone’s experience of perceived racism by subtly denying their feelings and emotions, excusing implicit comments meant to demean or discredit them, or even excusing explicit attacks on them. Its effects are grave; it subtly reinforces and sustains racial and social hierarchies that inevitably hurt minority groups. Not only does racial gaslighting allow stereotypes to continue, but it also degrades the victim’s sense of self and teaches them to invalidate their own instincts and judgments.

For example, imagine if someone had experienced racism in the workplace and attempted to tell a fellow coworker about the incident; instead of empathizing, the coworker reassured the victim “it couldn’t possibly be racism,” “it is all in your head,” or “you’re too sensitive.” Statements like this place the perpetrator in a position of power and control under the guise of morality, while undermining the victim’s experience as lesser-than. In turn, the victim can develop feelings of anxiety and depression as they start believing they cannot trust themselves and cannot express their emotions outwardly. According to clinical psychologist Dr. Roberta Babb, racial gaslighting also, “overtly and covertly erodes a person’s sense of self, self-worth, agency and confidence.” Thus, racial gaslighting feeds internalized oppression and Imposter Syndrome.

Racial gaslighting is so common that it is sometimes difficult to tell when it is happening, and it can even be unconscious or unintentional. Normalized phrases like “I don’t see color” seem to mean well at first glance, but in actuality serve to invalidate the struggles of a minority group while erasing the group’s lived history. It tells the listener, quite unequivocally, “I am not racist. What you are perceiving as racism on my part cannot possibly be racism.” Phrases like these are un-nuanced and oversimplified takes that may have been accepted in the past, but as we learn more about deep and entrenched racism, we see they are outdated, insensitive, and quite frankly, racist.

This type of manipulation often is used by mainstream media and people in power, ingraining its use in our culture and further highlighting the power dynamics underpinning racial gaslighting. Think of Donald Trump and his response to protest movements through the past year: On one hand, he refused to condemn Neo-Nazi protestors, saying there were “fine people on both sides.” But he mischaracterized Black Lives Matter protests calling for an end to police brutality as thugs and threatened them with the National Guard, warning “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” He then mischaracterized the white supremacist, violent insurrection he incited on January 6th as a march, declaring his love for the insurrectionists. According to Trump, white supremacists are allowed the benefit of the doubt and could possibly be good people at heart. Yet, those in support of black lives are automatically dangerous and should be perceived as a threat. With these statements, Donald Trump at once validates the platform of white supremacists while invalidating black lives in the United States and negating the idea that racism is a problem; he normalizes the presence of white supremacy while revealing the inability of the country to acknowledge its inherent racism and bigotry. Anyone witnessing photos and images of how the BLM protesters were treated versus how the white supremacist insurrectionists were treated at our Capitol can see that racial gaslighting has deeply permeated our country systemically and is a problem that outlives the Trump presidency.

Gender Gaslighting

Also problematic is gender gaslighting, where a woman may not feel comfortable voicing concerns about sexism because her concerns are automatically dismissed. Consider a woman -- let’s call her Jana -- who has been working for a company for many years and is very qualified for a promotion. Yet every time Jana expects to be promoted, a man is given the promotion instead, even though he has had less time at the company and is not as qualified. Jana may attempt to discuss this with her boss, but he insists it has nothing to do with her gender; he tells her she is overanalyzing the situation and being over-sensitive. While it is possible that Jana’s boss could be telling the truth, it is more likely that her gender is in fact playing a role in not receiving a promotion, as this pattern has repeated multiple times. However, Jana has learned that she does not have a space to speak up about this sexism, will likely be negatively judged for speaking up and thus have an even harder time getting that promotion, and therefore most likely will not attempt to speak up again. This is the same situation that is seen with racial gaslighting-- the cycle will continue for Jana, and her emotions may inevitably turn inwards, convincing her that she is not qualified for any promotion and deserves to be limited to her current level.

COVID-19 Gaslighting

We even see gaslighting around COVID-19. As a college student at a very urban university, the pandemic has shaken up every single aspect of college life. Though my school has adjusted as best as possible (we are tested twice a week and receive our results within 24 hours; most classes are online and if they aren’t, there are usually less than five people in-person, all socially-distanced; so on and so forth), interacting with other students and people my age really reveals the mindset around the pandemic.

As the pandemic has raged on, it feels as though people have accepted its presence, or stopped caring altogether. It’s a stark difference from the first lockdown in March, where it felt (at least for the most part) that everyone was on the same page. But now, instead of staying inside and mitigating the impacts of the pandemic, it feels as though it’s now a matter of working around the pandemic to do things we used to do. Those who are still staying inside have become more of the minority than the majority, and are sometimes gaslighted to feel overly paranoid for continuing to take the pandemic seriously. This gaslighting is clearly very harmful to society as a whole, as it simultaneously perpetuates coronavirus while undermining common sense and the empathy to care about the collective nation.

COVID gaslighting can exist on a small interpersonal level. Consider a situation where two friends want to get together, but one is insisting on following social distancing regulations while the other is suggesting to abandon them altogether. The one wanting to abandon social distancing may claim that they have both been isolating themselves since the beginning of the pandemic, and it is unlikely that they could infect each other. They may go on to call their friend overly paranoid of the virus and accuse them of not wanting to get together. Though this is not actually the case, the friend who was attempting to follow COVID regulations is made to be the villain, which is a common gaslighting mechanism.

Even worse, COVID gaslighting has been perpetuated by some people in power, who can afford to preach a careless and selfish mentality around COVID-19 because, even when they contract the virus, they have the money, power, and resources to combat it. Meanwhile, they continue to manipulate the American public into believing that COVID is not something to be taken seriously.Their followers adopt the same invincible mindset, but it is clear that they -- and most other average Americans -- are not in the same situation and do not have the same money and resources to combat COVID if needed. The situation is even worse for identity groups that have been historically oppressed.

Many Black and brown communities are disproportionately affected by COVID-19: African-Americans deaths are two times higher than would be expected for their population, and it is the same for Hispanics and Latinos. On the other hand, white deaths from COVID are “lower than their share of the population in 37 states.” These disparities result from institutionalized and systemic racism (fed by racial gaslighting) that has been snowballing since our country’s inception.

Combatting Racism by Contending with Gaslighting

It is in no way, shape, or form the victim’s responsibility to attempt to change their gaslighter’s behavior. Instead, it is important for us to create safe spaces for these victims to be heard and validated. Thus, putting a stop to gaslighting begins by looking inwardly at our own behavior and preconceived biases; particularly, if you find yourself recognizing some of the behaviors symptomatic of gaslighting, it may be wise to engage in self-introspection and attempt to accept some responsibility. Though some gaslighting may be done unintentionally or what you believed to be well-meaning, it clearly is still harmful and must be mitigated. To confront the biases that may underlie your possible gaslighting of others, you can also take this online test that examines and assesses internal biases that you may not have even noticed (it takes about 10-15 minutes). Attempt to challenge these internal biases, and pay attention to how they affect your interactions with others.

Additionally, be prepared and open to truly listen to and learn from other people and their experiences, and focus on increasing your awareness of others’ circumstances. These steps can begin the process of acknowledging gaslighter responsibility. By first starting on a personal scale, we can expand this introspection to a larger scale and begin holding the racist systems in our country accountable.

If you find yourself a victim of gaslighting, it is important to safeguard your mental health. This can be done by taking a step back from the situation and removing yourself from the environment to consider the hurtful behavior and resulting emotions. You can write down your thoughts to affirm your judgement as valid and for reference if necessary. It also can be helpful to talk with other members of your identity group and share experiences like this. Affirmation from others with similar circumstances can validate your experience of harmful gaslighting and remind you that you are not alone. This can help you to trust yourself more as well as recognize the gaslighting as it is happening.

In the moment gaslighting is occurring, it is important to call out the behavior publicly (when possible and safe to do so), showing the perpetrator and others in proximity that the behavior is inappropriate and will not be tolerated. Further (again, to the extent safe and not harmful), you can talk one-on-one with the perpetrator to discuss the behavior, making sure to describe the behavior and why it is harmful. Setting boundaries (e.g., taking a step back, removing yourself from the situation, as described above) will help to loosen any grip the negative environment or perpetrator may have on you.

As an ally, it is important to help support victims of racial gaslighting by helping to call out the unacceptable behavior, as well as creating a safe space for victims to express themselves and be heard and respected. Make sure that what you are doing is not self-indulgent or performative, but rather is truly helpful to the victim and in their self interest.

Combatting racism in a present day context is not an easy task -- it is extremely complicated and has far-reaching and entrenched roots in the United States. That said, the task should begin with dismantling the practices that perpetuate racism on interpersonal and societal scales. By recognizing racial gaslighting, it is possible to disrupt stereotypes and racial hierarchies, while also offering the historically oppressed, excluded, and marginalized a safe space to speak and be heard, which uncloaks hard truths from underneath imposed false narratives. Those who insist they don’t see color are not seeing people of color and their lived experiences.

Without seeing the hard truths, we are unable to address them.

#genderequity #racialequity #belonging #bias #gaslighting #impostersyndrome #diversity #inclusion #racism #allyship #equity #deib #dei #diversityandinclusion #internalizedoppression #internalizedbias #covid19 #power #leadership #inclusiveleadership #stereotypes #colorblind

[northamptoncouplestherapy]

For most couples, the path to marriage is the same. You meet, you spend time getting to know each other, and you fall in love. You discover life could not exist without your partner, so you get married. After marriage, masks are removed. You discover the true nature of the person you walked down the aisle with: the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Perhaps you were aware of some of their faults during the courtship. Yet, you accepted them as they were. Maybe you even thought that they would change, or that you could change them.

Every couple enters marriage with the illusion of bliss. From the time a couple first says “I do” and checks into their honeymoon suite, the plans for their future are formed. Then, dreams are unfolded, and life happily-ever-after begins. But no couple ever considers that they could fall victim to a codependent marriage.

What is Codependency?

Every marriage will have struggles. From mortgages to who left the milk out, married life is not without conflict. Your marriage will be no different. What matters is how you handle that conflict.

Dr. John Gottman of the Gottman Institute states, “Conflict is inevitable.” He goes on to encourage couples saying, “It can be a way that couples get closer to each other if they can understand each other more fully. It is a mechanism for learning how to love each other better.” This is determined by how you handle conflict.

Dr. Gottman asks, Do you:

Turn toward? – Sit down and discuss it rationally?

Turn away? – Ignore it, bottle it up, or sweep it under the rug?

Turn against? – Explode and call out the fault displayed?

“Turn away” conflict can create a lopsided marriage. When one person commits an offense, the other smiles and takes it. They can internalize it and even feel guilty. When these individuals continue this cycle, they end up in a codependent marriage.

Within a codependent marriage, one partner has extreme emotional or physical needs, and the other partner is willing to do whatever it takes to meet those needs. The codependent is so in love, and they want that love reciprocated. Out of fear of rejection, they do what they feel is necessary to keep the love and attention of their partner. This can become disastrous when the other partner is involved in self-destructive behavior, including substance abuse.

How Does Codependency Affect a Marriage?

In many cases, codependency doesn’t suddenly begin with courtship or marriage. This trait is often learned through the growing up process. Since a child's adult behavior will be the byproduct of life experiences, he or she must grow up with positive influences. When a child is privy to relational negativity, they will continue these bad habits because they think it’s normal life. The same applies to codependency.

If a child sees one parent bowing to every need of the other, then that child will be more likely to view those behaviors as necessary to keep a romantic relationship alive. This pattern can be manifested in a few distinct ways: low self-esteem, the loss of boundaries between right and wrong, and an unhealthy obsession with the relationship.

Low Self-Esteem – When someone feels they are unworthy, any affection they receive is like water on dry soil; it immediately soaks in. Doing whatever they need to keep the water flowing, even if the process hurts.  Living off the other’s opinions, allowing them to define their self-worth. But soothing words only last so long. The soil will dry up, and negative feelings will resurface until the next affirmation comes along.

Loss of Boundaries – The desire to please others removes boundaries regarding what is acceptable behavior. The codependent often defends their partner’s behavior, allowing them to say and do things that not only harms themselves but harms the relationships around them. They avoid saying ‘no’ to their spouse at all cost, fearing it would make them unhappy.

Honesty is another factor that affects the codependent. When they are afraid of offending their partner, they tend to lie and deny that there is a problem, just to keep the peace.

Obsessiveness – The need to always keep their partner happy can become obsessive. In fact, they will get upset with anyone who throws that balance off. Their obsession is the other person. They want their acceptance, need their approval, and are terrified of losing it. So, they will often do what it takes to keep their spouse engaged in the relationship. Even if it means giving in to their destructive habits.

How Substance Abuse Affects the Behaviors of a Codependent Partner

When one partner has a substance abuse problem, this only increases the codependency. The codependent spouse can act out of fear, habit, or even worse, pity. They might want to help their spouse, but sometimes the thing they do is the very thing their spouse doesn’t need. Caretaking is enabling. Silence is acceptance. But to the codependent, the consequences of saying something is too much of a price to pay. So, they often continue permitting the habit, acting in ways that are centered around keeping the peace.

Codependent fear exists on different levels:

Fear of rejection by the partner.

Fear of failing the partner.

Fear of what could happen if you don’t live up to the expectations.

Through these fears, the codependent’s submission continues. They live in a constant state of negativity and amplified fear, as if they are walking on eggshells, always trying to help but never sure if it is what their spouse wants.

Dr. Gottman says of a negative outlook, “They can distort reality and even see positive things as potential put-downs.” He also says that with that negative perspective you will “fail to see 50 percent of the positive things the other partner is doing.” Even when a codependent spouse is trying to do good, their partner may not notice. Or worse, they may misinterpret it as something negative.

Finally, there is the fear of losing the relationship if the situation is resolved. The codependent might feel their spouse or partner will not need them anymore and leave.

Actions out of Habit – Just like driving on the right side of the road, we do things repeatedly because they have become habits. It would seem abnormal to do things any other way. This is also something that is learned young. If you have a habit of keeping your mouth shut at a parental scolding, you will most likely keep your mouth shut with the scolding from a spouse.

Additionally, just as we saw our parents argue, or how they made, up, we will behave the same way with our spouses. The cycle continues in what we think we should do, and without any correction from an outside source, we perpetuate the behaviors we have learned.

Clinician and couples therapy thought leader Dr. Stan Tatkin reminds us that, “We all come [to the relationship] with our fair share of unresolved painful experiences from relationships.” These issues become ingrained in who we are. And will determine how we react to conflict with our current partner. These habits can evolve into codependent habits.

Whether we know it or not, we tend to view the people we engage with through the lens of the past. Tatkin calls the areas of our brain that have assimilated such behavior “primitives.” They act out of habit, based on personal experiences. Codependency can very well reflect those primitives in action.

Actions out of Pity – The excuses the codependent uses to justify their partner’s actions can sound pretty defensive:

What can I do? They don’t know any better. Their dad drank or their mom was an addict. They need me to help them. If I’m not there, things would be worse. I am able to make excuses to their boss, their friends, their family for why they are acting that way. If I don’t, they would be jobless, friendless, and family would keep their distance.

But it is important to remember the chasm between pity and love. Love is about respect. You cannot respect someone you pity. Just a sorrowful ache that a codependent tries to make up for through attempts to hide their spouse’s shortcomings. Covering up becomes a habit, then helping becomes an addiction in itself. The codependent partner can become so dependent on their spouse that defending them has become their identity.

Ways to Deal with Substance Abuse in a Codependent Marriage

When a marriage falls into codependence, the codependent partner becomes an enabler to the abusive habits. While they may genuinely want to help, their codependence becomes an addiction of its own. This traps both in a cycle that can only be broken by getting help. Not just for the substance abuse, but for the codependency.

First, admit There is a Problem

To begin the road to recovery, you must admit there is a problem. Just as the partner with the substance abuse issue is reluctant to admit they have a problem; the Codependent partner shares the same reluctance to accept they have a problem. Unfortunately, the Codependent may be standing in the way of the abusing partner overcoming their issues. Their enabling habits never give the abusing partner the opportunity to get out of their destructive patterns.

Then, Stop Enabling

Once both spouses realize that they are in too deep and need help, they can begin the road to recovery. The next step is to stop the process from continuing. This is probably the toughest step. It begins with setting firm boundaries. The codependent needs to stop enabling their spouse. And on the opposite end, the spouse with the addiction needs to quit their abusive behavior that feeds the addiction of the enabler.

Next, Seek Professional Help

Seeking help is never easy. It means airing your laundry outside the confines of your home. Seeking substance abuse help is just the beginning. A codependent habit can be just as challenging to overcome. They should also undergo some form of treatment for their codependency.

Follow-up

You can admit there is a problem, set boundaries, and seek professional help, but you must always continue to move forward. It is never one and done. It is never a completed task. It is a minute-by-minute, day-by-day process.

Final Thoughts

Even when you gain a grasp of the situation, continue the new healthy habits you and your spouse have learned. Eventually, it becomes easier. It is a long process, but one worth fighting for. The ability to repair the broken relationship will strengthen your marriage. As Dr. Gottman says in his Making Relationships Work seminar, “Every relationship experiences conflict and periods of alienation. The difference between the Masters and the Disasters is they’re able to repair.”

While codependency gives the appearance of a happy marriage, it is based on pretenses. It is always a fragile relationship. Yes, there may be peace, but the tiniest spark can set the whole thing ablaze. All it takes is for someone to go too far, then happiness quickly dissolves, and animosity takes its place.

Admit there is a problem, get help, and keep at it. Don’t give up on your spouse.

Understand that there will be setbacks; substance abuse is not easy to overcome. Neither is a codependency issue. But together you can work on repairing your relationship and living the life that you envisioned from day one.

If you are having trouble coping with codependency or a host of other possible marriage challenges, reaching out to a licensed couples therapist might be the way to go.

From the Gottman Method to Emotionally Focused Therapy to the PACT model, we apply science-based methodologies to every couples retreat or couples therapy weekend we offer. We also offer weekly sessions for those who can't find time to break away during the week.

Like what you’ve read? Sign up to receive my musings filled with heart, concrete tools, and cutting edge resources via my blog: Loving Well.

#substance abuse #gottman method #Emotionally Focused Therapy #couples therapy

[minatsuki-on-main]

Why do you relate to Laica? Why do you ship LaicaxMinatsuki?

(So this reply got accidentally deleted once, which is frustrating because I wrote a whole essay. I’ll just start over now.)

[[MORE]]

I think having a complex over one’s own perceived insignificance is a particularly hard thing to portray in fiction. By virtue of talking about a character or giving them focus, they appear at least somewhat relevant. Laica was the first character with whom I felt like this theme came across properly, mainly because his flying under everyone’s radar was played on from the audience’s point of view as well. Until around ep 10 he just loiters in the background and only shows up to conveniently take care of the dirty work and I don’t think anyone would have given him a second thought if he just disappeared. By how little even I personally paid attention to him, it hit me really hard why he was so indignated. I feel that way very often. However, it’s so unaddressed as an issue that I wasn’t even fully aware of it before watching BTB.

It makes sense too, because imagine a life where you don’t even have official documents to prove you exist, a family, or anyone to interact with for most of your childhood, then everyone around you gets obsessed with this one specific person that you get informed you’re a spare for. I think of Izanami’s monologue about Koku a lot because to me it was — ironically — more applicable to Laica. I mean the part where they say something like “it’s as if you were screaming ‘I exist!’” because yes, Koku was trying to get his messages noticed, but it was to attract Yuna’s attention while he had a very clear image of his placement in the world and was even a bit too self-assured about it. Laica was actually just frantically trying to prove he existed because it didn’t go for granted in his case. His actions are a very obvious overcompensation, it happens with anything a person is insecure about. “I got denied recognition by everyone so I’m gonna aim for world domination.” Ironically, it’s so ingrained in him that he ends up perpetuating it by exploiting his own talent of not getting noticed; he stays in the background in order not to get suspected, works underhandedly, even gives his name — the only proof of his identity — to someone else. I suspect this started a vicious cycle with his problems. After all, you can’t rely so heavily on a trait of yours without being firmly convinced it’s unchangeable.

Another thing I appreciated and found relatable and — weirdly — respectfully portrayed was how Gilbert was pulling his strings all along. It’s mentioned briefly but they make it evident that it was very heavy psychological manipulation. It prevented Laica —someone who brainwashes people, gives no consideration to their deaths and went up against Koku (and Yuna) in a brutally sadistic way — from harming Gilbert at all when he technically had many chances to. And Laica does not like Gilbert very much at all (as per his dismissiveness when they talked over the phone or the fact that he and Minatsuki were plotting to eliminate him around the start of the show) so he was clearly forced into the partnership. BTB didn’t try to make this pathetic or revel in Laica being weak or anything like that. He was terrifying and dangerous which, though it made him fairly unredeemable, maintained his dignity. People who get manipulated aren’t always ‘soft’ deep down. It’s difficult to process emotional abuse that has gotten you massive authority issues when every fictional character who goes through it ends up being woobified, coddled by someone who’s ‘good’ or such, so this detail really was a gift.

As for why I ship him with Minatsuki... I’m convinced, for a starter, that Laica was incapable of connecting to people in a healthy way. Growing up either alone or around Gilbert is a foolproof way of making sure a kid will never learn a way to relate to others without manipulation and egoism. As much as it’s the wrong way to go about it, what Laica did to Minatsuki was the only way he could have ever felt understood by (and empathized with, with a stretch) someone. The whole incentive behind making Minatsuki take up his identity was to make someone feel the same thing he felt being Koku’s replacement, as he says himself. And I don’t know how much people consider this, but not only was Minatsuki kept around for way longer than it would have made sense, but this whole stunt was largely unnecessary. Laica could have led the Market Maker branch from the shadows on his own — all he had to do was regularly delete everyone’s memories and his identity wouldn’t have gotten out. Minatsuki had a weird symbolic importance to Laica in my opinion. As much as these are two characters who would never show outward affection, there’s a sort of lenience on Laica’s part I can’t place anywhere else. For years he indulged Minatsuki by letting him do basically whatever he wanted, only sort of reprimanding him when he was gonna get himself killed or make massively stupid decisions.

A nagging thing in Laica’s life is people prioritizing Koku over him. It’s a problem that’s never going to go away. I think it’s fair to bring up Izanami because I can see people asking ‘but wasn’t Laica closer to them than to Minatsuki’? And while yes, that bond definitely had its importance, the obstacle is always the same one: Izanami very blatantly preferred Koku. I don’t think Laica would have ever gotten over that. Aside from the fact that he wasn’t really close to anyone, not beyond a certain extent. He didn’t care about either Izanami or Minatsuki dying for instance, it’s just that with Izanami it wasn’t that accentuated with what was shown on-screen. It’s fair to say he doesn’t care about people dying in general. Minatsuki was perhaps the only person who was focused on Laica specifically, something that seemed deliberately induced with the drug addiction and all that — but there still wasn’t anyone else like that. The way Minatsuki ended up was terrible and ep 11 still makes me sad for him, but, just to be controversial, consider the alternative. He would have died as a kid without even having a proper name if Laica didn’t pick him up. Minatsuki started suffering from the moment he regained his memories, but Laica didn’t allow that to happen for about a decade prior to it, a decade in which Minatsuki got to be a mafia boss, give people orders and sit around drinking his expensive whisky, which is possibly more fun than whatever Laica was doing, smuggling drugs, hauling back Kamui from dark alleys and being angry at Koku.

There was no way I wasn’t going to get verbose about this ask.

#anon #ask #b the beginning #b: the beginning #minatsukicest #alternatively consider the homoerotic face touching

[milkshakedoe]

what really bothered me about that four lung post was the way she feels obliged to actually -thank- people for participating in surveillance culture. that, to me, is really sad. it's a very good reflection, i think, of how in critiquing surveillance culture people often feel forced to concede to its self-image of greater moral purity in order to avoid inviting too much scrutiny to themselves. you can critique the form of surveillance culture -- as long as you quickly acknowledge its practical usefulness and good accomplishments, lest you be seen as sympathetic to molesters. this is different from simply acknowledging that most people participating in surveillance culture are probably well intentioned, because you have to explicitly thank people for perpetuating the culture itself. it's the same thing when people make these sorts of flippant posts that are like,

me: talking about how callouts can be abused and stuff some bad person / bad fandom shipper / etc: yeah! it really sucks cause i can't do bad things! me: i'm not associated with you

it's a form of, like, appeasement. it's a way of saying, "look, i accept the basic framework of your logic, that critiques of surveillance culture are more prone to encouraging predators than surveillance culture itself. i am not a predator and i don't support predators. i acknowledge that surveillance culture holds predators in check; or at least, that the general spirit of it is correct, even if the specifics are flawed. please don't kill me."

but surveillance culture really isn't better at this. the reason that a culture of widespread mutual policing held in check by guilt and fear, or any system that values law and order, can look so morally pure by comparison to anti-surveillance rhetoric is precisely because surveillance culture encourages abusive people to rise within the ranks and become a part of the loud and authoritative voices declaring the standards by which everyone else shall be measured lest they seem friendly to perpetrators. in short: it looks good because it says it is good, and if you think otherwise, there's a good chance that you're collaborating with perpetrators if you aren't one yourself. and if you repeat a lie a thousand times...

extremely stupid perpetrators may be weeded out, but then you're left with the people who've insinuated themselves into positions of power, who are very good at hiding behind charisma or by condemning the faults of others.

in fact, surveillance culture actually encourages this actively, not just as a side effect. because any bad action can be seen as a stepping stone toward monstrosity and exile [callout], every small bad action becomes an existential crisis. it encourages people to conceal their faults and bad actions and to develop themselves as a kind of celebrity to their peers, and even, again, as a culturally prioritized voice of hellfire and damnation, often using their identity as a tool to insulate themselves from criticism by well meaning fellow activist-types. surveillance culture loves building up perpetrators because the more "powerful" the abuser can be seen to be, the more emotional drama can be wrought out of tearing them down, and such powerful abusers being publicly condemned and/or exiled can even be used to prop up the mythology of surveillance culture itself while disguising the fact that this is all part of its normal and encouraged function. we shot down this powerful abuser! clearly surveillance is doing something right.

fundamentally, the problem here is disgust. people use disgust to build social capital, by vilifying people for minor microaggressions or simply disagreeing in an unfavored way. disgust is part of the everyday routine of maintaining social capital in these spaces. every day your eyes are assaulted with barrages of dozens or hundreds of reblogs condemning the latest (or often, several months or years old) trend in oppressive or abusive behavior or loudly consigning obviously bad ideologies or groups of people to the dumpster, or handwringing about another stupid fandom or what have you. disgust is woven into the fabric of these online social justice spaces; it's a big part of how you know you're in one at all. it's how you remind everyone that you are one of them, that you are not collaborating with perpetrators; it's a way of reminding everyone that you fear the law.

we treat perpetration as a mark of monstrosity and any bad action can be seen as part of a road to abuse. it's a vicious cycle because loud public disgust and vilification and alienation of the perpetrator incentivizes exactly what surveillance culture claims to be against. it's essentially removing any reason to be better at all, while completely ignoring why toxicity and abuse happens by aggressively individualizing it. despite social justice claims of structural critique and change, and sometimes acknowledging that structural harm can manifest as toxicity, only one cause can ever be ultimately indicted in an act of abuse or toxicity: the perpetrator theirself. this is not to say, of course, that victims should be obliged to interact with or "love" their abusers, nor that perpetrators should never be held to any sort of personal responsibility. but responsibility is different from damnation. a culture of disgust turns abuse from a problem to be addressed into a source of emotional drama to be exploited, and a kind of looming personal apocalypse that encourages people to hide their faults, to pretend to be perfect, to self-aggrandize and capitalize on popularity to always keep a step ahead of their moral debts. and the crowd eats it up every step of the way, right on to their final fall from grace. toxicity and abuse can never be seen as stemming from trauma or social conditions, but ultimately just an innate individual greed and selfishness which might be informed by trauma but really has nothing to do with it. there's just no fucking way to talk about any of this and that frustrates me to no end.

#politics

[portraitoftheoddity]

Time for some fandom Discourse and Real Talk.

(content warning: frank discussion of mental illness)

When I was in my late-teens/early-twenties, I went into a state of crisis mental-health-wise. I went off my medication, began rapid-cycling (I was later diagnosed as Bipolar), went through numerous periods of depression where I was passively (and sometimes not-so-passively) suicidal and self-harmed extensively (I will have scars on my body for the rest of my life). I was very much Not Well, and generally regard this period as the Worst Time of My Life.

Eventually, after an intervention, a lot of medication and counseling, and a complete environment change that reduced my stress significantly, I was able to pull my life together and recover, reaching a more stable and sustainable mental and emotional state -- which thankfully, I have been able to maintain ever since, thanks to my support network and access to adequate mental health services and medication.

But part of recovery meant looking at some really unpleasant truths:

I was not a good person when I was in crisis. 

To put it very frankly, I was, in fact, an asshole. I was in pain, so I lashed out and inflicted my pain on those around me -- those who loved me. I felt helpless and powerless and out of control of my own mind, so I became controlling toward those closest to me. I was selfish and cruel, and at times inexcusably abusive. And yes, I was mentally ill, but I was not so divorced from reality that I had lost a sense of right and wrong. My state of crisis, while an explanation, was not a justification by any means. At the end of the day, no one was responsible for my awful behavior but me.

I deeply regret the person I was during this time. I feel shame and remorse, and if I had the ability to go back in time and change things (or even drop-kick past-me in the face) I would. But I can’t. The best I have been able to do is to make amends where I could, and move on where I couldn’t.

Since that time, I have worked hard to be a better person. I take responsibility for my own mental health and its capacity to affect others. I have worked to be a support in turn to those people who supported me, and not to be a toxic drain on their energy and love. I strive to listen to others, and respect their boundaries and needs. I try to be a good and kind person where I can, and modify my behavior when I realize I’m doing something harmful. I recognize that I am a perpetual work in progress, but overall, I much prefer the person that I am today, and like to think that I am an okay human being overall.

Why is this relevant to fandom? Well....

I love redemption stories in fiction. I love characters who, while perhaps initially well-meaning, fall into a dark place where they do bad things, things for which there’s no good excuse -- but then have an opportunity to recover and work to be better. To be rehabilitated, and ultimately redeemed.

There is a validation of my own experience to be found in these stories; if a fictional character can screw up that badly, but be redeemed enough to earn forgiveness (and be a beloved and important character to boot), then I feel better about forgiving myself for my own past screw-ups. I don’t need to define myself moving forward by the worst point in my life, and the worst things that I have done. (I won’t forget them or repeat them -- but I won’t limit myself to them or wallow in them inescapably forever.)

But by a similar stroke, when fandom latches on to a character who did bad things and claims they ‘don’t deserve a redemption arc’ or that they are Problematic™ forever and ever, no matter their attempts to recover and be better, or when portions of fandom reject wholesale any attempts to give the character redemption (denied to them in canon) via fanfiction... That has an effect too. While I know not to take criticism of a character I relate to as a personal attack (I am capable of telling fiction from reality), there is nonetheless a small voice in my mind that uses these claims as fodder to whisper all my doubts and self-loathing: You are a bad person; you will never make up for it; you should just give up because there’s no point and you’re awful forever. 

Now, if you are reading this and rolling your eyes because you’re not a fan of redemption arcs; maybe you have never hit that dark place. Maybe you have never broken so badly that all your edges were brittle and sharp and cut everyone around you. And I honestly hope you haven’t; and I honestly hope you never do! I truly don’t wish that on anyone. But I hope that you can have compassion for those who have. And while those redemption stories might not be your personal cup of tea, I hope you can at least respect the value they have for people in recovery, who have clawed, are clawing, or want to claw their way back from that dark place and be better. 

I’ve seen arguments that redemption stories excuse bad behavior, and forgive abusers; I would like to posit, as a counterpoint, that redemption stories encourage those who have fallen into those bad places to do and be better, and give them hope that they can overcome their sins and not be defined by them forever; sometimes hope is enough to fuel change. And if they can do so... shouldn’t forgiveness be on the table?

Shouldn’t we want everyone to recover and be better?

And shouldn’t we encourage stories to exist that help with that?

#fandom wank #redemption stories #lena's personal crap #mental health #mental illness #villain discourse

[metaformers]

Megatron and Abuse

I’ve spent months emotionally gearing myself up to make this Megatron meta post. It will contain mentions of real life abuse--verbal, emotional, physical, sexual--from my own life, as well as links to sites that discuss said topics. There will be a focus on emotional and narcissistic abuse, as that is the kind I have the most experience with--and the kind I most see Megatron perpetuating in More than Meets the Eye.

I understand that many people identify with Megatron. It may be best for you to skip this post if you count yourself among them. I want to be clear that this is my reading of the character, and I do not fault others for reading him differently; I’m not going to go after anyone for liking him or shipping him with people. It’s fiction. Do what makes you feel safe and happy. I can guarantee you are not the first to block me for saying I believe Megatron is abusive.

If you are interested in reading about why I, personally, view Megatron in this light, I would like to make one final request. This subject matter is extremely personal. I have spent four and a half years in therapy, but this still affects me powerfully. If you find yourself getting the urge to argue with me, please keep in mind that I will not be responding to comments for my own health.

So why am I posting? Because I have seen no discussion of this in fandom. When Megatron’s abusive behavior is described, it is invariably treated as a thing of the past, not the present. And I think that multiple views of a character in fandom lead to richer interpretations in fanworks and other meta.

And, with that, we’re off to the races.

(Note: This post is over 18k words long and contains over 70 images. If you would prefer to read this as a Google Doc, use this link. I recommend going to the View dropdown and un-toggling Print Layout if you do so. If you would rather read this as a Tumblr post, please use the read more below. The Google Doc may be better if you would like to use a functional outline navigation system or if Tumblr’s habit of stretching images bothers you.) 

***

First things first: abuse is cyclical. An abuser is not always going to be abusing someone--if they did, no one would ever tolerate the mistreatment. When times were relatively good, my mother and I would crack jokes. My ex would hold my hand and tell me cheesy pickup lines. This is known as the ‘honeymoon’ or ‘idealization’ stage of the abuse cycle, and it is as much a fixture of abuse as the tension-building and abuse phases.

If an abusive relationship never left the abuse stage, no one would ever tolerate it. No one would stay. So violence must be rationed, and after each new outburst, the abuser is likely to promise that--this time for sure--it will never happen again. They then ‘prove’ it with a honeymoon period and the cycle turns anew.

As a result, there is no way to point at one instance of kindness and say that someone isn’t actually abusive. It is likewise not generally possible to point to one instance of cruelty and call it abuse. Abuse is almost never a one-time thing. As a result, I’ve gathered examples from throughout season two of MTMTE and from the latest issue of Lost Light.

Since it’s the most clear and unambiguous example of Megatron’s abuse, I’m going to be singling out one particular relationship--the one between Megatron and Rodimus.

RODIMUS

To help me structure the problems I have with Megatron’s treatment of Rodimus in the time since the Lost Light left Cybertron, I’m going to borrow text from Psych Central’s “Eight Mental Abuse Tactics Narcissists Use on Spouses” article as well as tactics mentioned in their “Signs of Emotional Abuse” article and my own experiences.

Degradation

This is perhaps the most obvious type of abuse Megatron commits. He constantly belittles and demeans Rodimus. On the surface, it may at times seem justified. A minor comment on a fair annoyance.

Here he calls the Rodpod a vanity project, for instance. Getaway does much the same. But we know--and he likely has been told--that this wasn’t a vanity project. This was a gift from the crew to Rodimus.

It’s easy to forget. There’s no clear origin for the Rodpod before it was rebuilt, and, frankly? It’s not important. Whether it was a gift or something he had built, this is a privately owned ship, and this is a possession that clearly means something to Rodimus.

I grew up in the 90s, and I had a lot of tacky plushies and furbies and beanie babies--all extremely easy to mock, especially as I got older and they remained sentimental. Even when I wasn’t a kid anymore, I wanted to hold onto these things, and I think that’s understandable. If I’d lost my neon purple stuffed frog and had gotten a replacement as a gift, it would have been an easy avenue of casual attack. As it was, I mostly got, ‘Are you seriously keeping this ratty old thing?’ about anything that reminded me of happier times. It was always a coded jab at me, a deliberate forgetting of where a gift had come from or why I might want to remember.

This hits me especially hard since everything Megatron says here? Is an uncharitable lie. But believable lies have a way of spreading and turning into a commonly held ‘truth’--and Getaway later cites the Rodpod as a reason that Rodimus deserved to lose everything.

Which, ultimately, is the goal of abuse--start small and build until you can justify anything because of their ‘bad behavior.’

But, of course, this particular comment is targeted at a different audience, intended to undermine Rodimus’ standing with the crew and change the story to something that makes it seem as though Rodimus is squandering quest resources on trivial items.

Much of the time, the audience for Megatron’s comments is Rodimus himself--wearing at his already thin self-esteem and feeding the self-hatred we’ve seen him manifest throughout the series. (If you doubt either of those assertions, I plan to write meta about Rodimus later on. For now, I ask that you remember that he self-harmed by carving the results of the vote into his palm--explicitly so he would always know how many people didn’t want him there.)

Actually, for further confirmation, let’s take it to canon:

While he ‘admits’ to thinking he’s better than everyone else after having a very direct cry for help shot down with an insult, I hesitate to say this indicates in any capacity that his self-esteem is fine.

You see, I’ve been accused of the same. Literally--to the point where this exchange with Ratchet made me sick the first time I read it. How else is Rodimus supposed to respond to this kind of jab, especially when he’s in the middle of handling a crisis?

To me, the willingness to accept as ‘true’ something that directly contradicts his own experiences, especially coupled with the reassurance-seeking behaviors and low self-esteem, makes him especially vulnerable to emotional and verbal abuse.

And so, let’s turn our focus to Rodimus himself and answer the questions posed by the article to see how well Megatron’s behavior holds up.

Do they tell you that your opinion or feelings are “wrong?”

Without any warning of what to expect, Rodimus was presented with his own corpse--which has half its brain sliced out. They specifically didn’t tell him why they were calling him in, which I can’t imagine helped soften the horror. He’s in a very reasonable state of shock.

And there’s Megatron calling his reaction tiresome, even though his eventual reaction when faced with the spectre of his own death is to scream and punch Perceptor. Rodimus is just quietly attempting to come to grips with an upsetting situation, not hurting anyone by taking a moment to process.

But, of course, he isn’t allowed to process. Megatron is the captain of this ship, and he expects everyone else to handle their feelings quickly and efficiently, even if he never does.

This is a hallmark of narcissistic abuse--considering one’s own feelings bigger, more important, more valid than those of others. And it’s fully in line with the dynamic, too, to attempt to invalidate said feelings by emphasizing one’s role as an authority over the victim.

“Don’t you think, as your mother, it’s fair to expect a little consideration?” might have been fair if the consideration hadn’t involved her demanding things I’d already done for her--which she promptly pretended I hadn’t done, or that I’d done them improperly, or that I hadn’t adequately managed my emotions while doing them.

It’s patronizing enough from a parent. From someone who shares the same rank as you? It’s condescending in the extreme--not to mention entitled.

Do they belittle your accomplishments, your aspirations, your plans or even who you are?

But, of course, Megatron doesn’t respect Rodimus’ rank. Rodimus owns this ship--Drift purchased it as a neutral vessel and I would be genuinely shocked if he didn’t insist on signing it over to Rodimus after convincing Rodimus to let him take the fall. This ship? This is his ship. Optimus had no right to set Megatron up as captain; he didn’t even have the right to forcibly install him on the crew roster.

In fact, if you’ll pardon the brief aside, Rodimus had very fair misgivings about allowing Megatron onto the Lost Light.

Rodimus points out that Megatron is dangerous--this is undeniably true, no matter what your stance is on his character. And Ratchet responds by lying to Rodimus to convince him to let a powerful criminal aboard. Which is, ironically, the same thing that kicked off season one--only this time it’s Megatron instead of Overlord.

Personally, I think that this shows Rodimus has learned his lesson and is trying to avoid a repeat of that particular disaster.

He also offers a great insight into why Optimus is cooking up this outrageous plan:

And, although this is just conjecture, I think that this is part of why Megatron targets Rodimus. He can be insightful--especially when it comes to people and their motivations. This makes him a threat to Megatron’s otherwise nearly unchecked power as captain of this ship. However, he is also susceptible to manipulation, as we saw with Prowl.

Megatron is extremely intelligent and very good at manipulating others; he plays a long game, as Ravage walked us through at the end of DotL. And with the idea that Rodimus tried to bar him from his ‘rightful place’ at the helm of this ship, with the idea that Rodimus was the one chosen by the crew to be captain, I would like to return to the panel at hand...

Here we hear Megatron say--exasperated, belittling--“How many times?” As if this argument should be concluded by now, and Rodimus is being childish to keep forcing the issue.

I’ve heard this exact line in this exact tone too many times from multiple abusers. How many times would I dare to defy them? I wasn’t trying to be defiant; as Rodimus just did, I reminded them of an inconvenient (for them) fact, one they wanted to convince me wasn’t true. I doubt I could list every iteration of this I’ve seen in real life.

This is not something you say to an equal when discussing something that is objective fact. Rodimus is the co-captain, much as Megatron wishes to deny it.

And he continues to deny it. It’s not a real rank. It’s a made-up rank. He is the one true captain, and Rodimus is a recalcitrant second-in-command in denial. Megatron doesn’t have the best track record with those--which Rodimus would be fully aware of. I refuse to believe that the Autobots never saw footage of Starscream’s treatment at Megatron’s hands.

So I think that it makes sense that, rather than push farther when Megatron has already raised his voice, Rodimus redirects. This was a tactic I, too, used to avoid moving from the tension-building phase to the abuse phase in my own relationships.

Do they regularly ridicule, dismiss, disregard your opinions, thoughts, suggestions, and feelings?

This is a pretty obvious example of ridiculing someone’s feelings--and it’s another dig following right on the heels of the last two. Although all three are relatively small, the fact that they come one after another, basically coloring every statement Megatron makes, feels uncomfortably familiar to me.

Even if these are justifiable complaints--which I don’t believe they are, but I recognize they may be open to interpretation--the steady build-up is worrying.

My mother did much the same thing. One mild example was that she would tell me to go wash my face--I had acne, so this could have been reasonable advice. However, it slowly escalated until every time she saw my face, she would suck her breath in between her teeth and cringe. “Go wash your face!” If I complied immediately, there was no reward beyond, “See, isn’t that better?” (Which it wasn’t--the repeated scrubbing made my acne substantially worse.) And even then, within an hour, she would repeat the comment.

And if I didn’t comply? She would keep cringing and insisting until she brought acne pads over to physically drop on top of me before walking off with a smug smile. This despite the fact I was bathing twice a day and scrubbing with one to four of those pads a day. (No wonder my acne got worse, right?)

So when I see these types of minor but incessant insults--nothing big enough that any onlookers would feel comfortable defending Rodimus, nothing serious enough to justify lashing out--it rings alarm bells in my mind.

Furthermore, Rodimus turns away, but Megatron looms right behind him. I find the body language of this interesting--even when Rodimus approached previously, he left roughly an arm’s length between them--enough to not really be getting into Megatron’s bubble despite his frustration. It may be an angle thing, but it seems as though Megatron is closing that distance, subtly physically intimidating Rodimus. He’s closer still in the next panel:

Much less than the almost-arm’s length that Rodimus gave him--and he’s much larger than Rodimus, not to mention more powerful, which means that his physical presence alone can be a weapon. Healing Abuse Working for Change, an abuse prevention group founded in the 70s, specifies “looming over you, getting ‘in your face’ or blocking a doorway” as a variety of physical abuse (source).

Rodimus may have approached Megatron, but he respected Megatron’s space. Megatron did not return the favor--particularly when escalating his ridicule and getting increasingly aggressive in terms of tone and expression.

I’ll discuss other aspects of this panel in a later section--for now I want to focus on the intimidation and the way he insists that it is impossible for Rodimus to do something as adult as ‘take stock’--he is capable of it, but clearly Rodimus is not.

Why? He doesn’t need to state it explicitly; his previous comments are explanation enough. Rodimus is childish for not tailoring his emotional reaction to a traumatic scene to suit Megatron’s needs--and for not conceding the argument to Megatron and arguing about facts.

And when Rodimus turns back to look back at his own corpse?

When you complain do they say that “it was just a joke” and that you are too sensitive?

Rodimus’ head is bowed, and he looks resigned to me. Another red flag, since that was usually how I reacted to that particular brand of abuse, particularly when my ex or mother got into my personal bubble. If I didn’t shut down and comply, I ran the risk of inciting something worse.

Especially coupled with yet another dig at his emotional maturity and sensitivity, this conclusion to their altercation leaves me queasy.

If you have never been in a relationship where this is the norm, it can be hard to fathom exactly how taxing it is. You think that, if it were bad enough, you would notice. You would leave. But none of these comments are quite unreasonable enough to prompt a full-blown fight; none of them are hills worth dying on, particularly for someone who already has (hidden) self-esteem issues.

I’ve heard a metaphor for situations like these. If you place a frog in a boiling pot, they’ll jump out immediately. But if you place them in cool water and gradually turn up the heat, they get used to it. Eventually, they boil--because they were trained to tolerate minor abuses along the way.

Over time, in an environment where nonstop digs are normalized, they become background radiation. Rodimus turns away, unable to fight back against any single point aside from the few attempts at fact-checking and explanation he already made. It’s not worth fighting. It’s not worth pushing. If he pushed harder, maybe--but Megatron knows what he’s doing. He knows how far to push.

He wrote the script, after all: attack, withdraw, isolate.

Of course, if this scene were the only such example in the series, I would put it down to Megatron waking up on the wrong side of the bed and Rodimus not wanting to deal with the grumpiness. It’s the context of the entire series that informs the cycle.

Do they give disapproving, dismissive, contemptuous, or condescending looks, comments, and behavior?

Because this panel--containing a very similar dig--takes place a full year later. Instead of encouraging Rodimus or bantering back at him, he dismisses him.

‘But doodling is a sign of inattention and Rodimus should focus!’ you might say. And you would be wrong. As Time reported, doodling helps people focus. So, while teachers and other authority figures demean it, it’s largely because of the lack of respect they (falsely) believe it implies.

Furthermore, even though no one was aware of it, Rodimus was doodling the lost map to Cyberutopia. It’s possible that he was compulsively driven to carve it--and I do mean compulsive in the true sense of the word.

(An aside: I have obsessive-compulsive disorder and, when unmedicated, perform up to six hours of compulsions a day, so I think I’m qualified to make that call.)

He had merged with the matrix--it reformatted him, in fact. It seems reasonable that having the map lodged in his processor would itch like having a word on the tip of his tongue. His doodling in this case would have been more like filling a genuine physical need.

If you have never experienced a genuine compulsion, I can’t explain the visceral need of it. Fighting it down is much like holding your breath--if you hold out too long, it becomes intolerable. You feel like you will die. Like you are actively dying.

Of course, this is conjecture--it’s entirely possible that his doodling serves only the usual purpose: increased focus. And you know what’s a helluva lot more disrespectful than doing what you need to do to focus? Disguising verbal abuse as jokes.

Do they tease you, use sarcasm as a way to put you down or degrade you?

This example is super upsetting to me. On the surface, yeah, haha, Megatron made a joke, good one, Megs.

But...Rodimus was literally turned inside out. He was left in a dark hallway, alone and in pain, unable to move, unable to speak, for an indeterminate amount of time. Someone violated his mind to remove knowledge so basic it’s fundamental to them as a species.

To make sure not to understate things, let’s ask the psychiatrist who has the most experience with the procedure:

The most painful thing a Cybertronian can ever experience. A mental violation followed by incredible pain.

And that painful-looking mess of organs there in the brig?

That’s Rodimus. Who apparently rushed ahead to shut off the lights and protect the mechs in the brig--mechs who were trapped in place and likely targets for a criminal who likes to feast on ‘sin,’ wouldn’t you say?

Meanwhile Megatron and the others are far enough behind that Sunder has come and gone--turning Rodimus inside out, but not prisoners like Getaway, who were left safely in the dark. The timing, to me, makes it look like Rodimus barely got there in the nick of time.

Which, of course, only gets a disparaging comment from Megatron, who won’t even get off his moral high horse to fight back against Sunder and protect his crew.

Rodimus may or may not be able to hear this condescending comment, but when he comes back to work, fresh out of the medbay? Megatron kicks off by making fun of the experience. Rodimus counters humorlessly--clearly not digging this particular joke--and Megatron follows up with, oh, by the way, the only mech you probably count as a friend these days? Helped me come up with this terrible joke at your expense.

Making fun of your own trauma can be cathartic. Making light of someone else’s trauma, particularly when they’re literally leaving their hospital bed for the first time after the fact? No--that’s cruelty. That’s another example of convincing Rodimus that he’s too sensitive. Can’t he take a joke?

And he does take it--with only a minor dodge. Hence the barbed follow-up.

I would say that this is just an example of a tasteless and poorly thought out joke, but Megatron knows people. We see him manipulate the DJD masterfully--and those are mechs who know him, mechs who know the ins and outs of manipulation and abuse. So I’m inclined to believe that this is deliberate rather than a misstep, especially in light of his follow-up...

He cuts off Rodimus’ attempt to move away from the unpleasant subject by literally talking over him (note the overlap of the speech bubbles) in order to make a ‘joke’ about Rodimus resigning. Which--as we saw in the first scene, as we see in many scenes--is a continual point of contention between them.

Megatron is taking advantage of a moment of probable vulnerability by priming him with a ‘joke’ followed by a comment meant to make him feel alone, and then another ‘joke’ meant to indicate the desired behavior.

This is a pattern I’m familiar with, as you might expect by this point. In the case of my ex, he would use this pattern--making light of something traumatic that had happened to me, following up with a non-apology that referenced the fact that no one wanted to put up with my issues, and then bringing it home with an unsubtle joke about things he wanted to do to me to ‘make me feel better,’ no matter how I tried to indicate my own discomfort.

And I, personally, don’t think that this is any less bad here, even though that was really awful and--after enough rounds of it--inevitably succeeded in getting me to give him what he wanted to make it stop. Because, even if Rodimus seems to be in good spirits, trauma can present itself in different ways. And an experience like that, especially given the complete lack of emotional support he experienced before, during, and after? Yeah, no, I’m not prepared to believe that he's actually unbothered instead of coping by acting tough, not when he tries twice to dodge the ‘joke’.

And I’m also not prepared to believe that Megatron can't see right through that act, especially in light of the fact that he also makes a habit of making fun of Rodimus in front of everyone he can.

Do they make fun of you or put you down in front of others?

Megatron continually puts Rodimus down in front of the crew.

In case the screenshot ends up too small to read, he says, “I hope this puts paid to the notion that I ignore everything my ‘co-captain’ says on the grounds that he’s lazy, petulant, and pathologically ill-suited to command…”

From the air-quotes around ‘co-captain’ to the specific insults he uses, every word of this is supposed to cast himself as the responsible, capable captain and Rodimus as the immature usurper. He maintains a formal voice for his own actions--he’s being magnanimous by agreeing to Rodimus’ rendezvous plan on the planet below. Why, if he doesn’t, Rodimus will probably be petulant and whine about it, so really, any inconvenience is on Rodimus’ unstable emotional state.

Which seems over the top, but look at what he said. He starts by heavily implying that Rodimus shouldn’t be respected as a leader, then follows this assertion with three ‘reasons’ for this.

Lazy - Rodimus goes out of his way--literally--in season one to go on side-quests that help people. He’s always personally willing to go to the frontlines of any conflict he’s willing to risk his crew in. And when the co-captains are each presented with the opportunity to risk their lives for the sake of saving others (Rodimus in #21 and Megatron in #33), they have two very different reactions.

We are shown no panels of Rodimus balking; he immediately allows Perceptor to wire him to the anti-killswitch. When told it might kill him and will certainly destroy the matrix, he says, “There goes our map.” And after spending what might be his last moments telling Minimus the truth about Overlord, he says, “Self-sacrifice, Magnus--it’s cheap. It’s a cheap way out. I need to live so I can make amends and--” before the anti-killswitch cuts him off.

We go on an entire hunt while Megatron avoids coming clean about being able to mass-shift; it’s how we find out Brainstorm is a Decepticon. It takes five pages. And although Megatron agrees in the end, his quote on the matter is, “Oh, I could’ve said something earlier, but here’s a survival tip: when everyone’s lining up to make sacrifices...always get to the back of the queue.”

Which maybe doesn’t qualify as laziness--but it still paints a very different picture than Megatron is doing here.

Another point of fact is that even though Megatron has said in this arc that Rodimus has spent the time since launch hiding, Ravage points out later in the arc that he’s observed the same behavior in Megatron. More on that later--under Double Standards and Projection--but worth noting here to undermine the ‘honesty’ in the lazy point.

Petulant - This particular insult is set up to make Rodimus look emotional and childish. This is a pretty common tactic in abuse--it makes it hard to believe anything the person in question says. After all, they’re a child, do they really know what they’re talking about? Surely they just misremembered. Surely it’s safe to ignore their petulant demands unless you feel like indulging them.

Which is exactly what Megatron is implying he’s doing here. Indulging the whimsy of a child instead of working with the mech who shares his rank.

This particular brand of trivializing is a favorite when setting up for gaslighting, which I’ll talk about later. After all, if you can convince someone they’re immature--that they’re too inexperienced or emotional or downright crazy to trust their own perceptions--then they need to turn to someone with the authority to tell them what the truth is.

And if you can also convince those around the victim that this is true--as the villain does in Gaslight (1944), which gives us the technique’s name--by slandering the victim and undermining their authority, you have others who can ask, ‘Are you sure you didn’t imagine that?’ even when you aren’t around to enforce the reality you want.

The air-quotes around ‘co-captain’ are small, and words like ‘petulant’ are minor--but as Psychology Today’s article on Gaslighting points out, it always starts out slow. These words are weapons--and words have always been Megatron’s weapon of choice.

Pathologically Ill-Suited to Command - The final nail in this sentence’s coffin is this one. As I mentioned above, prepping for gaslighting is easier when you can convince your victim and their would-be support network that the victim is crazy--and here we see Megatron pull out that argument. Pathologically ill-suited to command.

It’s not poor baby Roddy’s fault, you see--his brain isn’t wired for command. He doesn’t have the intelligence of the True Captain. He doesn’t have the stability. He might like to pretend, but these are delusions.

As someone with several mental illnesses (primarily anxiety disorders, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, but also depression), I heard this one a lot. A lot. I tried for years to take crazy as a point of pride; sometimes I still want to. But it’s been used as a weapon against me for years. “Are you insane?” prefaced a lot of furious dismissals of innocent requests I made when I was young, but it sometimes still happens when I try again to interact with my family. I also had panic attacks that got called ‘tantrums’ to trivialize them.

Rodimus likely has PTSD--he’s a veteran with a traumatic childhood, after all--and I’ve seen headcanons that he has ADHD. We also know for a fact that he self-harms--and so do all the people Megatron is addressing, since the cuts were visible all the way until the morning of the day this issue began. (It was even commented on when they were looking at Rodimus’ corpse.)

Casually pathologizing someone who visibly self-harms is an easy way of isolating them. Making it an indication that Rodimus is unfit for command? Easier still. It’s also a ready-made dismissal whenever someone doesn’t like your argument. I could offer examples, but this blurb has gone on long enough as it is--and I think every mentally ill person I know could likewise offer examples of it.

This is far from the only time Megatron publicly insults Rodimus in ways that undermine his credibility as a leader. In fact, he does it often enough to have become an in-joke among the crew between Dark Cybertron and the first arc of season 2:

This is the first arc in season 2. The first arc. And yet they’re already saying that Megatron always says this.

Which...isn’t really fair. Rodimus isn’t an engineer. If you review the scene in issue one, he gives the order to jump, and no one tells him that the engines aren’t ready until after they’ve malfunctioned, and even then they can’t tell him why. He immediately has them set down and refuses to take off until they’ve figured out exactly what went wrong--which seems responsible to me.

But, of course, anything that goes wrong can become Rodimus’ fault, even if he wasn’t the one responsible.

Megatron also deliberately insults Rodimus in front of Ultra Magnus, the mech who was, once Drift left, probably the closest thing to a friend Rodimus had on the ship:

Note the way he frames it: “a crisis in morale precipitated by his own woeful captaincy.”

We know people actually liked the Rodimus Stars, even though they were ridiculous. Maybe because they were ridiculous. We saw that in the Trailcutter Spotlight, where the entire story revolved around characters like Trailcutter and Swerve trying to get Rodimus Stars.

Yes, it’s silly. He doesn’t have a great system for passing them out. But that’s not what Megatron focuses on--instead he once again targets Rodimus’ supposed ineptitude.

Am I boring you to tears yet? It’s five hundred insults that all make the same point, one after another, to everyone he can get to listen, for over a year.

Until eventually…

Even the mechs that once supported him are instead convinced that Megatron is correct. Rodimus is incompetent, incapable of leadership--Minimus is comfortable joining Megatron in mocking Rodimus after he took a long weekend off to do something he enjoys.

Something I find interesting about this is that they accuse him of disappearing when there’s work to be done, but he has no idea whatsoever what the work they’re doing is.

In fact, he doesn’t know anything about the situation at all. He’s been gone three days, and they clearly hadn’t started decorating before he left. He even makes the reasonable suggestion of maybe just maybe avoiding the death zone, even if he goes with Megatron’s reasoning in the end.

This implies to me that he didn’t know there was work to be done. Either it came up after he left, or he wasn’t properly informed before he left.

As for the ‘not returning their calls’ bit--I suspect that meteor storms might interfere with comms. I’m fairly sure that’s a repeated subplot in most sci-fi I’ve seen, and the Lost Light’s comms aren’t especially robust at the best of times, let alone whatever handheld or internal unit Rodimus might’ve had.

Leaving things in the hands of Megatron and Minimus for three days--just a long weekend--isn’t irresponsible. Everyone deserves to be allowed to have hobbies. Everyone deserves to have a long weekend now and again, no matter their job. But Megatron has turned this--along with a laundry list of things he himself does--into a way to justify isolating Rodimus.

Isolation

How isolated is Rodimus? Since season two started, there have been no scenes of Rodimus spending downtime with anyone--until Drift returns, the one friend who hasn’t been exposed to months of Megatron’s unending degradation and insults.

It’s possible I missed a scene in my reread, but even though every other member of the group who ends up on the Necroplanet in Dying of the Light has at least a panel of casual or friendly interaction with others, the closest I found for Rodimus was the scene when he was fresh out of the medbay and Megatron made fun of him. Not promising, to say the least.

From all the available evidence, I’d say that Rodimus is an extrovert. He seems more energized in front of crowds, he was so charismatic he was partly responsible for short-circuiting the personality ticks, and he does things like naming his favorite crowd the Rod Squad. He likes people, clearly--and he’s shown repeatedly to care about protecting his crew, as well as total strangers.

He also habitually seeks external validation because of his low self-esteem. Without this kind of support, he resorts to self-harm (see the numbers he carved into his palm) and other unhealthy coping mechanisms.

Again--planning to do a Rodimus meta at some point. For now, let’s roll with the idea that he’s a social mech who craves being around others and needs external validation to function, which I don’t think is particularly difficult to believe.

The lack of interpersonal interaction in season two--alongside the belittling comments he faces when he does interact with others--indicate that he’s isolated. He’s a charismatic mech; that’s part of how he helped to kill off the personality ticks. And yet by the time they leave for the Necroplanet, he’s receiving no external validation, no interpersonal support, nothing. He’s alone.

He may not be the best at friendship--but neither are Whirl, Cyclonus, or Swerve, all of whom end up with strong friendships and support networks. Considering the previous section and Megatron’s clear attempts to isolate Rodimus, one can only surmise that he was ultimately successful in cutting him off even from Minimus.

So what does Megatron accomplish by shutting out all sources of external validation, anyone who might rebuild Rodimus after Megatron verbally tears him down?

In my experience, he’s setting himself up to have power over Rodimus. Remember--Rodimus is so full of self-doubt even before the beginning of the series that he reaches out to Ratchet, only to get shot down there. (“Beneath my cocksure exterior I have terribly low self-esteem.”) No longer able to lean heavily on Drift for emotional support and cut off from any positive reinforcement, he’s put in an extremely vulnerable place.

I, too, am an extrovert. Sometimes I’m fairly sure that it makes me intolerable to be around, especially since I do the same reassurance-seeking behavior as Rodimus. If I go too long without interacting with friends, my depression makes a bitter comeback.

Yes, it would be awfully nice if I could go without social interaction or reassurance or positive external feedback in general, and certainly no one is obligated to provide such things for me. But the fact of the matter remains that without these things, I’m left vulnerable and hungry for any scrap of affection I can find.

And, in my experience? My abusers have deliberately starved me from outside attention to put me in that vulnerable state. It was easiest for my mother, which isn’t surprising; she already had absolute power over where I went and who I saw. What she didn’t have--and what she wanted more than anything--was my undivided attention and affection.

So when I displeased her--and there were quite a lot of ways to upset her--one tactic she used was cutting me off from other sources of support. People who could verify that she’d said one thing on Tuesday morning and something radically different by Wednesday night. People who could help me cope with the nonstop insults, the micromanaging, the unbearable pressure.

Without them? I crumbled. I did anything my mother asked--and I apologized when I did it ‘wrong,’ or if I had ‘misunderstood’ the order she’d changed halfway through my obeying it, or if she’d simply forgotten that I had, in fact, obeyed her already. She was the only one who could arbitrate the Truth; I didn’t have anyone else to turn to.

My siblings and I banded together sometimes to stave this off, but at other times they behaved more like Minimus--going along with Mom to keep the peace, to keep her focused on me instead of them, or just because they actually agreed with her, I can’t quite be sure. In the end, I’m not sure that it matters.

For a specific example--I was required to hug my mother and tell her I loved her before I went to bed every night. One night, I could tell she was sleepy when I hugged her, but she said, “I love you, too,” so I thought I was safe.

No such luck--she woke up at two in the morning convinced that I hadn’t hugged her good night or said I loved her. She burst into my room, sobbing and shouting, and I had to stumble out of bed and try to calm her down.

I’m fairly confident that she didn’t cite that as the direct reason for the ensuing silent treatment and enforced ‘family time’ that meant I couldn’t see friends for a while, but the timing was suspicious.

We see this general pattern a few times with Megatron and Rodimus, as well, the most recent of which was in Lost Light #4. I’ll cover other aspects of that later, but, for now:

Transgression: Rodimus asked about teleporters.

Warning: “Hush.”

Withdrawal: “Not now, Rodimus.”

Isolation: Public humiliation.

And that pattern--do something ‘wrong’ to earn punishment, an initial outburst, pulling back with the silent treatment, and then isolating them from others as a way to build tension for a final blowout? Uh...

That’s a script Megatron wrote a long time ago, and he knows exactly how effective it can be.

Ultimately, what Megatron gets out of setting himself up as the only one to interact one-on-one with Rodimus is a lack of oversight, a lack of outside influence, and--if he presses hard enough, if he twists Rodimus around for long enough, if he sways the opinions of enough of the crew--eventually he might succeed in becoming sole captain of their merry band. With Minimus in his pocket? It’d be a recipe for total control over not just Rodimus, but the entire group.

Rage

“This is an intense, furious anger that comes out of nowhere… It startles and shocks the victim into compliance or silence.” (“Eight Mental Abuse Tactics Narcissists Use on Spouses” by Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC)

This is what most people think of when they picture abuse--the most violent of the symptoms. It’s also the one that Megatron has deliberately been keeping in check, pulling it out only when the long game he’s playing is at risk of being cut short.

I have said before that abuse can only be viewed in a pattern--one instance of shouting doesn’t necessarily make an abusive relationship. In the context of an abusive relationship, however, even one instance of rage is a powerful tool for controlling someone. Even if someone never again takes it ‘that far,’ the victim remembers. And they know that the threat is always going to be present.

When I was fifteen, I did something to upset my mother. To this day, I have no memory of exactly what I did wrong. What I do remember is my mother taking a book and slamming it against my temple so hard that it knocked me to the floor. She then grabbed me by the hair and dragged me up to scream in my face. I remember being held high enough that my knees weren’t on the floor, but my legs were still bent--the only point of contact I had with the world was my toes. I remember being so terrified that I had no idea what she was saying other than the tone, the way spit hit my face. She then stormed out of the house and blamed me for it.

The older of my two younger sisters tried to run away that night, and I nearly jumped off the roof of our house. I remember very clearly that the only reason I didn’t was because I was convinced that I would only break my legs, and she would use it as an excuse to trap me at home with her.

Beyond that, my memories blur. I remember that either that night--or perhaps another night--my littlest sister caught our mother’s attention. I remember making an attempt to distract our mother. Was that why she attacked me? I don’t remember. Did I make her more upset? I don’t remember, although I recall fearing I had. What I do remember is the moment that she grabbed my seven-year-old sister and threw her--physically threw her--out of the way. My sister landed wrong--on her wrist--and broke a bone. I remember her crying. I remember my mother telling her to shut up. I remember that it took a while before Mom took her to the hospital, and then that we were all ordered not to tell anyone how she’d broken the wrist.

Aside from these instances, my mother never laid a hand on any of us.

She never had to. It’s been twelve years--almost thirteen years--and I still feel it every time we interact. I remember that she’s capable of it. I remember that she was willing to shift her rage onto the more easily accessible target despite my best efforts. All the way until I moved out--and beyond then, and into the present--it’s kept me from being willing to confront her about some of the worse things she says and does.

It’s been over a decade and I don’t think I’ll ever forget that fear. For a while, I was so deeply afraid of even sharing the story--after being ordered to be silent about it--that I think I’ve only told a few of my closest friends and my therapist. The only reason I’m sharing it now is because I’m posting this anonymously. Because, at heart, I am still afraid.

Now, I could cover the handful of examples of Megatron hitting characters here. I could make conjectures about how Rodimus cares more about the wellbeing of others than his own, and threats of violence against characters like Trailcutter, Perceptor, and Minimus would be more likely to keep him in line than violence against his own person. I know that was true for me.

But none of those were done directly in front of Rodimus, even though he would have heard about them later. That makes it harder to draw conclusions about without wandering a bit too far off panel. So I’ll be discussing physical violence in those characters’ subsections--and for now, I’ll be looking at the times Megatron has threatened violence directly at Rodimus.

In context, Rodimus respectfully said that he and the others were reporting for duty; he even saluted. Megatron then ordered all of them to carry Ravage back to Ratchet, and Rodimus objected.

What was his objection? Was it, ‘but this is only half of Ravage, and even Ratchet probably needs both halves to repair him’? Was it, ‘but there are a lot of us, and probably we don’t all need to carry Ravage, so maybe some of us could stay and help’? We don’t get to find out, because Megatron doesn’t accept any objection to his orders, no matter how softly or respectfully put.

In this scene, with the DJD nearby, his long game is, as I said, at risk of being cut short. So he breaks out the rage to terrify Rodimus into unquestioning compliance.

What’s more, it worked. They all fled.

Maybe this doesn’t look like violence to some of you. But his expression and the way he towers over Rodimus as he screams? Looks almost identical to my mother’s face in the anecdote I shared above. And to me, that screaming was violence.

In fact, screaming like that was the only kind of violence my abusive ex-boyfriend perpetrated against me. He was physically larger than me; he would get me cornered in a bus seat and loom over me exactly like this while screaming insults. And I know for a fact that some people don’t think this counts, or believe this behavior can be justified--when I reached out to the older of my two younger sisters about how he kept doing this, she told me that I deserved it, and she wasn’t the only one.

As a result, in the context of Megatron’s treatment of Rodimus, and in the context of this being a tool that worked to control him, I would personally count it as an abusive tactic--one that I believe was deliberate. Especially since he never apologized.

And then, almost immediately after Rodimus risks his life to save Megatron…

Rodimus is standing directly behind Ratchet as they try to convince him to pretty please put down the gun, as we can see in the next panel:

And, of course, Megatron pulls the gun on them--all of them. And Rodimus, the one who brought him through the portal, the one who rescued him, is looking down the barrel of a fusion cannon over Ratchet’s shoulder. This group of mechs--the Rod Squad, his favorite people--are all being threatened.

And then Megatron says that it’s time he left, and it’s hard not to think, under the circumstances, that he means he’s done playing at being an Autobot, done being nice. He’s wearing Tarn’s mask as a deceptibrand, for goodness’ sake! For all intents and purposes, at this moment, it looks like Megatron is through with the quest and has no intention of going to trial.

A few days later--or however long it takes them to build the Den and end up on Functionist Cybertron--you can see that Rodimus is still thinking about this:

There are other potential explanations, of course, but--in context? I find it both telling and worrying that Rodimus’ instinctive reaction when Megatron shouts his name is a full-frame flinch. Not with battle prep or defensive stances or anything that would indicate he learned this response from being ordered around in battle. Just the same sort of flinch I still sometimes get when my mother raises her voice.

And, although it’s been a bit since I used this format, let’s answer another question from the checklist:

Do they accuse you of something contrived in their own minds when you know it isn’t true?

This is the last example I’m going to use for rage--and a tirade like this is an example of out-of-nowhere fury used to shock Rodimus into silence.

The thing is? Megatron pulled all of this out of his tin-plated ass.

In this scene, Rodimus did not once mention the Lost Light. He only tries to ask about the teleporters, and then Megatron derails him with this.

Now, I’m going to give JRo the benefit of the doubt, here. Instead of assuming he’s forgotten about Nyon--the core of Rodimus’ backstory--and abandoned Rodimus’ main driving force as a character by having him sacrifice others to get what he wants instead of, y’know, literally being willing to risk his life saving people at every single opportunity he’s ever had… Instead of pinning writing that terrible on JRo, I’m going to assume instead that Megatron cut off and then derailed Rodimus before he could suggest what he actually had in mind. Misunderstandings and assumptions being thwarted both play a role in JRo’s writing, after all.

And, with any thought at all, it actually makes perfect sense that Rodimus might need teleporters for a plan--for saving the people of this Cybertron, not for tracking down the Lost Light. These mechs aren’t safe on Cybertron, even in this supposed ‘sanctuary city’--and there’s no way to transport all of them offworld. There are too many of them--we see veritable thousands in the streets.

So how do you save everyone? Do you start another war to rise up against your oppressors--because the first one went so well--or do you get everyone the hell off the planet?

Sure, maybe Rodimus wants to use the teleporter after the fact. I’d be surprised if he didn’t--he left half the crew he still has on a distant planet with a bunch of potentially dangerous strangers.

As for why Rodimus responds to this accusation the way he does instead of by saying what he actually intended--have you ever been accused of the worst thing? Something that is so antithetical to your character that you feel like the person accusing you of it has never interacted with you? How could you have given this person the idea that you would ever, in a million years ever, consider doing what they’ve just accused you of?

Well, you see, that confusion? That disorientation? The scrambling to find any common ground to argue on and finding that you have no footing because you don’t even know what to expect--what’s real and what you’ve made up? Leaving you floundering to counter a point in a way that at least connects to their reality?

That’s another abuse tactic. And it’s called gaslighting.

Gaslighting

“Narcissistic mental abusers lie about the past, making their victim doubt her memory, perception, and sanity. They claim and give evidence of her past wrong behavior further causing doubt. She might even begin to question what she said a minute ago.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

I have more experience with gaslighting than literally any other form of abuse, to the point that I still struggle to believe that my memory isn’t just faulty, that I’m not just overreacting, that these things really did happen, that I’m not the one making things up. That’s why I extensively cite every point I make: I feel as though no one will trust me or my word, but maybe if I bring in enough data points--enough hard facts--it’ll make up for the fact that I’m the one writing it.

Gaslighting seems so minor, and it is so hard to point to examples when you’re living in it. Even the extensive trauma I described above doesn’t hold a candle to the scars left by decades of gaslighting. I cannot overstate how deeply emotionally scarring it is, the way it can change the entire way you see the world, the way it makes trusting yourself and others almost impossible at times.

This is a hard section for me to write. Perhaps the hardest, in fact, and I say that despite the fact that writing the last section gave me flashback nightmares so intense I couldn’t sleep for three days. To get through the experience, I’m using the framework offered by the article linked in the above description and referencing other sections of this meta post. Any brevity in this section is a result not of a lack of evidence in canon but of an overabundance of my own trauma.

And with that disclaimer, let’s dig in.

They deny they ever said something, even though you have proof.

“You know they said they would do something; you know you heard it. But they out and out deny it. It makes you start questioning your reality—maybe they never said that thing. And the more they do this, the more you question your reality and start accepting theirs.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

I would personally amend this to say that they deny they ever said or did something, even if you have proof. This can range quite a lot:

“Mom, you said that you’d already picked up the stuff for my school project, but I can’t find it anywhere. Where is it?”

“You never even told me you had a project! This is what happens when you leave everything to the last minute.”

“But I have your text message right here?”

“Let me see that. No, no, that’s not what I meant at all, why would you think that was what I meant? Are you stupid?”

Which was a pretty staple ‘misunderstanding’ in our house, but less frustrating than the times my mother’s reaction to evidence was to say, “I swear to God that I never said that, and if I’m lying, may He strike me down where I stand!” Which was, unfortunately, at least as common--more common, actually, when we were in public. And when God didn’t smite her, she gave us a smug smile and considered herself proven right.

As this escalated--gradually, over the course of my entire childhood--eventually she built to a moment so big and so obvious that I actually realized what she was doing. That it wasn’t forgetfulness. That it wasn’t a case of repeated misunderstandings. That she was reconstructing reality as it suited her, and I was powerless to stop her.

What moment could possibly have been jarring enough to open my eyes to that? I talked in the rage section about the night my mother knocked me to the ground and hauled me up by my hair. What I didn’t tell you is that after she dropped me back to the floor again, I looked up at her and, still sobbing, asked her why she’d hit me in the head with her address book.

“I didn’t,” she said, still towering over me as I lay curled on the floor. “I would never.”

“Then--” Maybe it was her hand, I thought. Maybe I was confused. I felt so disoriented and terrified and I didn’t understand what was happening. “Then why did you pull my hair?”

“I didn’t,” and she looked angry enough to do it all over again. “It must have gotten caught in the zipper.”

The zipper, of course, being on the address book she’d just denied smacking me with.

When I tried to point out this logical flaw, she redirected--and then stormed out of the house, blaming me for the fact that she needed to abandon us. Even though she came home a few hours later, the guilt worked--and I was too afraid to bring up the incident ever again.

And here’s where I’ll be frank--I said that that incident opened my eyes. And it did--but not that night. That night, I was terrified I’d imagined the whole thing. I had no evidence. She’d hit me, but it hadn’t left a mark. She’d pulled me up by the hair to bellow in my face, but I couldn’t even remember what she’d said.

If my siblings hadn’t been there to question her with me--to reaffirm it had actually happened--to be honest? I might to this day believe it was a nightmare. That she’d never actually laid a hand on me. And that’s what long-term, slow-build gaslighting does.

So--a few small denials, a pointed redirection whenever holes get poked at, all of that seems trivial in comparison, I’m sure. But it builds. It has to start small if the abuser hopes to normalize it. Because, at first? You question them. You start hoarding evidence. But if it goes on long enough? You start to question yourself. You start to question any evidence that you, personally, collected. Eventually you’re left questioning yourself so often that you stop questioning them.

Which is why even minor instances of gaslighting--if they’re part of an abusive pattern--should be noted as soon as possible.

In this case, Megatron asserts he’s been saying something when Rodimus has proof that he hasn’t even been around to say it. He says it both to belittle Rodimus and to set up a reality where he’s been dutifully doing his job instead of secretly doing prep work for the ultimate supervillain device in his habsuite (I’m talking, of course, about the antimatter he spends months channeling, almost certainly in violation of his parole).

Before you doubt Rodimus--and I wouldn’t be surprised if you did, because another goal of gaslighting is to make others doubt the perception of the victim--I’ll point out that Ultra Magnus also comments on Megatron hiding himself away.

So Megatron was lying to begin with--he hasn’t been saying that for weeks. He hasn’t been in a position to say anything to Rodimus for weeks. And when called out on it, he neither apologizes for the lie nor even allows time to address the fact that he did so. Instead, he picks something we know to be a sore point--and therefore a good distraction.

Taking stock, not sulking. Because, as Rodimus clearly remembers:

And from the way Rodimus reacts? Especially given my own experiences? I would guess that this wasn’t the only time Megatron said it--just the only time caught on camera, so to speak.

Also, yes--in the next panel, Megatron claims that he’s been working, something that both Ultra Magnus and Rodimus have both confirmed isn’t true. The truth is that he’s channeling antimatter for his own purposes--regardless of whether he eventually uses them to benefit the others, with no one aware he’s setting this up, he has no oversight.

They tell blatant lies.

“You know it's an outright lie. Yet they are telling you this lie with a straight face. Why are they so blatant? Because they're setting up a precedent. Once they tell you a huge lie, you're not sure if anything they say is true. Keeping you unsteady and off-kilter is the goal.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

These lies, in my experience, can range from nearly inconsequential to the extreme. My mother would routinely tell me that I hadn’t said something that my siblings later confirmed I said, but that could be dismissed as forgetfulness or poor hearing. She would also tell me that I’d promised to do something when we’d never discussed the matter in the first place, then tell me that I was the one forgetting. That was a little harder to handle--my siblings didn’t listen to every conversation between me and Mom, so I had no one to back me up. It’s much more difficult to prove you never discussed something than to prove that you did.

But, like I said--minor. Hard to prove or disprove. These tiny lies make it hard to trust reality and harder to trust your memory or judgment. These are also almost impossible to point to when discussing abuse with those who have never experienced it, because they look like misunderstandings at worst. It’s insidious and frustrating and only when you get to a big lie--the kind you build up to over years (or after more than twenty issues)--that you can point to it and say, “See? I have proof. I can prove this time it isn’t true!”

Megatron is claiming--genuinely daring to claim--that he was the one to first suggest stopping to help people along the way. When he’s been complaining about Rodimus’ so-called “side-quests” since day one. In season one alone, we saw them stop on the DJD homeworld so Ratchet could help cure a plague, Temptoria to rescue prisoners being used as batteries, and, eventually, the Big Hero moment when Tailgate uses a semicolon to save them all.

Except something that nobody seems to talk about in season two--as far as I’ve found, at least--is the fact that Rodimus is actually the one who saved all the constructed cold mechs with the help of Perceptor. Tailgate shutting off the suggestion beam and shutting down the Legislators was also critical to the operation’s success, of course, and I’m hardly going to say that Tailgate doesn’t deserve his due credit, but Rodimus was also fully ready to die for a universe of strangers.

I covered this above when talking about how Megatron called him lazy, but let’s pull in the panels for comparison’s sake.

Here we see Rodimus getting hooked up without a single panel of hesitation. As soon as they were ready to wire him in, he went.

He asks if it’ll kill him and has no qualms when he’s given a decided maybe.

And when he does save the CC mechs, you would expect, wouldn’t you, that he would never let anyone else forget it. After all, everyone (especially Megatron) insists he’s a self-centered jerk. But he lets Tailgate take full credit, and the only mention of Rodimus’ role in the proceedings after the fact comes when Optimus gets angry at him for destroying the Matrix.

Meanwhile Megatron drags his feet for five pages as the foam gets progressively worse and more dangerous, hoping they’ll find Brainstorm’s shrink ray so that someone else can go in his place.

But it was Megatron--who stays on the ship, who sends mechs to do battle but spares himself from the dirty work that would strip him of his self-righteous high horse--who first had the idea to help people. Right. One hundred percent his idea, and Rodimus should have told him they were saving organics so he could leave them to die.

It’s a lie. It’s a big enough lie that anyone could point to it and objectively prove that it’s not true. But Megatron says it, and Rodimus placates him instead of fighting him on it. He’s just happy that lives are getting saved; he doesn’t try to take any of the credit.

I find it unpleasantly relatable that Rodimus’ first reaction is no longer to correct Megatron, as he once did--in fact, as he did in the last example where we caught Megatron out in an obvious lie--but instead to offer him something to calm him down. Something to mitigate fallout. Something I, myself, have done countless times.

Their actions do not match their words.

“When dealing with a person or entity that gaslights, look at what they are doing rather than what they are saying. What they are saying means nothing; it is just talk. What they are doing is the issue.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

I want to write a separate meta post about Megatron’s bullshit redemption arc because I don’t want my opinions on that to distract from the primary point I’m trying to make with this meta. However, it also fits this point to an almost ludicrous degree.

Rather than break down Megatron’s entire character arc, I’ll focus on a few relevant points and save the rest for another post.

What Megatron says: “I am on this quest to make amends by finding a new world for our people after destroying our original planet.”

What Megatron does: never apologizes to the people he wronged using his own words, takes control of a privately owned neutral vessel with the help of a mech who holds no democratically appointed position nor has any kind of oversight, deliberately sends them three jumps off course to the necroplanet for the express purpose of derailing the quest.

What Megatron says: “I’ve renounced violence.”

What Megatron does: continues to send others into battles he’s not willing to fight, refuses to act even when it means that his crew will likely suffer casualties, orders acts of violence from behind the protective distance of a screen.

What Megatron says: “It’s not about me! I am taking a vow of pacifism because, if I were to pick up a weapon again, I would be unstoppable.”

What Megatron does: continues to reach for the dark matter that would make him unstoppable (even at the cost of shirking his duties--note that he missed Brainstorm’s trial), continues to risk the lives of others--apparently, by this logic, for their own good.

I could go into greater depth--I hope that someday I will get to tear this particular topic open--but, for now, I’ll leave it at this. What Megatron says can be very pretty, particularly if you ignore the overblown narcissism hidden in the message, but in practice it’s functionally worthless. He does virtually nothing to actually advance the honorable goals he’s espousing--only enough to make himself look good and noble.

This is something my mother and ex excel at. My mother can talk anyone into believing she’s a good and loving person who gives everything she has for us kids, tailoring how she frames her beliefs to most please whoever her audience is. Growing up, I heard a lot about how lucky I was to have such a loving and wonderful mom. My mom has even been able to talk me in circles--‘I only threatened you with a pray-away-the-gay camp because I wanted you to know you had other options! I didn’t want you to be bullied, so I had no choice but to completely isolate you from your DFAB friends any time your sexual orientation came up!’

Only, uh, of course I’m not framing that the way she did. That’s just what all the pretty talk amounted to. I only picked it apart years after moving out of the house.

Actions speak louder than words--because in situations with this brand of abuse, words are just tools to further the abuse, not tools for honest communication. With gaslighting, especially, words are meant to confuse.

They know confusion weakens people.

“Gaslighters know that people like having a sense of stability and normalcy. Their goal is to uproot this and make you constantly question everything. And humans' natural tendency is to look to the person or entity that will help you feel more stable—and that happens to be the gaslighter.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

Gaslighting has profound effects over time. In “Identifying Victims of Narcissistic Abuse” on Psych Central, the provided list offers some idea of the scope of the damage that victims endure.

What I find most interesting about that list in the context of this meta post, though, is that it increasingly describes Rodimus as season two of MTMTE and then Lost Light each progress. From second guessing and increasing difficulty concentrating and making decisions to being highly strung and irritable to fear responses when Megatron says his name, this all actually adds up to a potentially realistic picture of how trauma can affect someone.

It’s not pretty. In fact, it can leave people looking and feeling unstable, which adds further fuel to the gaslighting fire.

I can’t say for sure whether JRo intends Rodimus’ increasingly erratic (and, at times, desperate and out of character) behavior to be read as a response to this prolonged abuse. I hope he does--it makes more sense to me than the alternatives.

Especially since this particular article on gaslighting goes on to cover many of the points I’ve already addressed in this meta, which I think hammers home their severity.

They use what is near and dear to you as ammunition.

“They know how important your kids are to you, and they know how important your identity is to you. So those may be one of the first things they attack. If you have kids, they tell you that you should not have had those children. They will tell you'd be a worthy person if only you didn't have a long list of negative traits. They attack the foundation of your being.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

I could rehash this point--but I’ve already spent several thousand words on it. From mocking the Rod Pod to tearing down Rodimus’ identity as a leader and a hero to rattling off reason after reason why he’s worthless, the entire degradation section could fit under this bullet point.

They wear you down over time.

“This is one of the insidious things about gaslighting—it is done gradually, over time. A lie here, a lie there, a snide comment every so often...and then it starts ramping up. Even the brightest, most self-aware people can be sucked into gaslighting—it is that effective. It's the "frog in the frying pan" analogy: The heat is turned up slowly, so the frog never realizes what's happening to it.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

Once again, a point I covered in previous sections. Abuse builds up bit by bit, allowing the abuser to skate by without being called out. What would have looked like a vicious and unfair tirade at the beginning of the abuse--uncalled for and baseless--eventually looks like a righteous ‘dressing down’ of a petulant child.

They tell you or others that you are crazy.

“This is one of the most effective tools of the gaslighter, because it's dismissive. The gaslighter knows if they question your sanity, people will not believe you when you tell them the gaslighter is abusive or out-of-control. It's a master technique.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

This is the reason I homed in on that particular choice of words by Megatron in the degradation section. It seems like it’s no big deal--all varieties of this abuse seem like they’re no big deal. Until they build and build and suddenly everyone believes--both in the comic and in the fandom--that Rodimus deserves the treatment he receives at Megatron’s hands and should not be trusted with any serious task. Everyone immediately believes the worst of him in every situation.

They try to align people against you.

“Gaslighters are masters at manipulating and finding the people they know will stand by them no matter what—and they use these people against you. They will make comments such as, "This person knows that you're not right," or "This person knows you're useless too." Keep in mind it does not mean that these people actually said these things. A gaslighter is a constant liar. When the gaslighter uses this tactic it makes you feel like you don't know who to trust or turn to—and that leads you right back to the gaslighter. And that's exactly what they want: Isolation gives them more control.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

And here we have the final critical point I covered above--the result of all the dismissive comments, the intention behind the isolation. No one trusts Rodimus’ judgment. No one trusts Rodimus to even have good intentions anymore.

It’s a personal hell for someone as extroverted as Rodimus--and it could all end if he ceded power to Megatron. And wouldn’t that be easier?

They throw in positive reinforcement to confuse you.

“This person or entity that is cutting you down, telling you that you don't have value, is now praising you for something you did. This adds an additional sense of uneasiness. You think, "Well maybe they aren't so bad." Yes, they are. This is a calculated attempt to keep you off-kilter—and again, to question your reality. Also look at what you were praised for; it is probably something that served the gaslighter.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

This seems counterintuitive, doesn’t it? If you’re spending months or years breaking someone down, why would you ever throw in a compliment?

The thing is, this particular brand of abuse--this variety of manipulation--makes the victim especially susceptible to praise as a weapon. When starved of praise, it’s natural to crave it. And in two rereads of season 2? I found exactly one instance of someone praising Rodimus. In issue 43, Rodimus says that Swerve called him the best dancer he’d ever seen. Other than that? Nothing. I reread twice specifically looking for positive comments about Rodimus, and there was absolutely nothing for him.

I was lucky enough to have friends who told me that I was worth something even when I was being abused. And even then, I craved praise from my mother more than anyone--both because she’d conditioned me to look to her above all the others, and because she was the one who was the hardest to please.

Of course, when she did praise me, it was either performative--‘look what a good mother I am’--or it was to get me to do something that I desperately did not want to do. “You’re such a good daughter, (name)--I know you actually do love us. That’s why you’re looking forward to this three month trip (where you’ll have no contact with any of your friends and no means of escape), right?”

And I went. So help me, once she pulled out that card, I honestly believed I had no choice but to go. Every summer, I fell in line.

If I’d been as starved of praise as Rodimus had--if my mother had succeeded in fully isolating me as she so often tried to do--I don’t think I could have pushed back on any subject at all.

At the start of Lost Light, the issue summary indicates it’s been five years since the ship first took off. Assuming half of that was during season two, that’s two and a half years--during which we only have evidence of a single, passing compliment. Especially for someone like Rodimus, that’s downright devastating.

And then Megatron drops this bomb during their most critical argument:

It works.

Rodimus stops pushing. Rodimus stops fighting him. Stops begging him to help them not die by standing with them instead of watching them fight from a screen, directing them in how to die. (Which he doesn’t do, by the way--he makes no contact with the group once they leave until he strides out onto the battlefield.)

This is the antithesis of everything Megatron has said for the last two-ish years. This is everything that Rodimus has wanted to hear.

It’s pure manipulation, of course--Megatron goes back to doubting Rodimus’ leadership and judgment without a single pause. He doesn’t hear Rodimus out on the battlefield or on functionist Cybertron. If this compliment had been genuine? He would have.

But no. It was a means to an end, and it worked. Rodimus did exactly as Megatron wanted. As Megatron knew he would.

The final point the article on gaslighting brings up is one I want to address separately--projection and double standards.

Projection

“They dump their issues onto their victim as if she were the one doing it. For instance, narcissistic mental abusers may accuse their spouse of lying when they have lied. Or they make her feel guilty when he is really guilty. This creates confusion.” (“Eight Mental Abuse Tactics Narcissists Use on Spouses” by Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC)

“They are a drug user or a cheater, yet they are constantly accusing you of that. This is done so often that you start trying to defend yourself, and are distracted from the gaslighter's own behavior.” (“11 Signs of Gaslighting in a Relationship” by Stephanie Sarkis Ph.D.)

Megatron has claimed--first to Optimus and later to everyone who would listen--that he would find success where Rodimus found failure. It was part of his sales pitch to avoid imprisonment until his retrial.

So he said then, when they had no map and their only plan was to track down Thunderclash, who was having visions to guide him toward Cyberutopia. And, once they’d found him, the map he’d carved was destroyed in the fight with the personality ticks, leaving them rudderless once again.

Or so it seemed.

Up until this point, Megatron has disapproved of Rodimus taking supposedly pointless sidequests. However, as soon as Rodimus produces a hand-carved map to Cyberutopia, he changes his tune.

Rodimus has just very reasonably expressed that Cyberutopia is in the opposite direction and given his position as co-captain: they need to stay on task and find the Knights. Here, Megatron overrides him without even acknowledging that, technically speaking, he doesn’t have veto power. Of course he gets the final say even if they share the same rank. Why shouldn’t he? Co-captain is a position made up for Rodimus’ ego; if Megatron decides that it’s time for a literally pointless sidequest, then it’s time to start getting the quantum engine jumping.

He looks so smug as Rodimus arches an optic ridge in the background. No one questions Megatron’s authority to make the executive override here, though, including Ultra Magnus, who would be the one in the best position to point out that the captains share a rank and Megatron can’t just arbitrarily ignore the chain of command. Ultra Magnus is also probably the closest thing Rodimus has to a friend on the ship, and he still doesn’t speak in Rodimus’ support here.

Even though, by the terms of the quest and Megatron’s parole? Rodimus is the one clearly in the right.

Megatron has been accusing Rodimus of shirking responsibility, of laziness, and at one point of not having the steel to face his own death (in the form of his corpse). And yet, when they can finally actually get on the right path--when Rodimus has hand-delivered a map--his first action is specifically to derail the quest.

And for what possible reason?

Because of character flaws he’s been accusing Rodimus of since day one.

Of not facing his death quickly enough.

Of not even being able to start the quest--when, of the two of them, Megatron is the one who sent them deliberately off course as soon as he could.

Of vanishing when work needs to be done.

This is all par for the course with projection. It can look coincidental; it can even on occasion look well-intentioned. But it ultimately comes from a self-centered place where the one doing the projection can have a few possible motives.

Self-Centered Motive 1: Being unable to conceive of motives separate from those they would have.

Self-Centered Motive 2: Being unable to conceive of being wrong about someone’s internal motivations--or, indeed, about any assessment they make.

Self-Centered Motive 3: Deliberately using the projection to cover for one’s own behavior. (This isn’t necessarily indicative of shame or guilt; it can be done to draw attention away from behavior they believe they will face repercussions for when they would like to continue perpetrating said behavior.)

Self-Centered Motive 4: Deliberately using the project to confuse and disorient an abuse victim, putting them on the defensive. (After all, “No, you,” is an argument that could be regurgitated by a ‘petulant’ two-year-old and therefore easy to dismiss, particularly when you habitually tell others that your victim is just childish and overly sensitive.)

The first and second motives are unlikely to be the case for Megatron, who is a master-class strategist used to dealing with schemers. He wouldn’t be able to remain several steps ahead if he was unable to read intentions behind other people’s choices. He also wouldn’t have lasted particularly long as leader of the Decepticons if he couldn’t infer the motivations of others.

Meanwhile, motives three and four would serve him extremely well, particularly in this situation. If he spends sixteen issues convincing the crew that Rodimus is the irresponsible one holding back the quest, if Rodimus tries to counter by saying, “But you’re the one trying to keep us off course!”--well. Can you imagine anyone taking him seriously?

Oh wait. You don’t have to--they had that argument in Lost Light #4.

And, as Megatron knew would happen, even Minimus Ambus believed his lie. No one--no one at all--believed Rodimus or took his side.

Great bit of misdirection, isn’t it? It also has the benefit of leaving Rodimus doubting himself--questioning whether he actually is working hard enough. That’s the gaslighting aspect of the technique; it destabilizes your reality and makes it harder to question what your abuser says about you or asks of you. Because if you and you alone think that something is true? Peer pressure is likelier to silence you.

It won’t always--the Asch conformity experiments are an interesting place to begin for further research, if you’re interested--but in those experiments, even though it was clearly objective reality being described, only one in four participants consistently fought majority opinion. When it’s something more nebulous--personality traits, personal failings--it seems likely to be a little harder to fight.

And when you’re already being conditioned not to fight this particular person (with bouts of rage and the other abuse techniques I’ve described here), it can be hard to convince yourself that it would be worth fighting in the first place.

Mix this with Rodimus’ already present self-worth and guilt issues? And it’s frankly stunning to me that he contradicts Megatron as often as he actually does. I know that I didn’t have it in me that often--it’s almost unspeakably exhausting to have this kind of fight, particularly when you have no one on your side and no hard evidence to point to.

This is still relatively early into the abuse, admittedly--six months after the trial. But Rodimus is still trying to assert his own reality in the face of Megatron projecting.

And he is projecting. Need proof? Ask Ravage an hour or two later in this arc:

He’s been sitting in his room for six months, the same as Rodimus. But to distract others from that fact, he loudly accuses Rodimus of it--publicly, purposefully. “I ‘take stock.’ You sulk. You’re sulking now.”

As the second blurb says, it puts Rodimus in a position where he must defend himself against the accusations, distracting from the fact that Megatron is also doing this.

And it works: Rodimus goes on the defensive, and no one questions the narrative that Megatron is setting up.

This narrative allows Megatron to twist situations (and facts) to suit himself with relative impunity.

Twisting

“When narcissistic spouses are confronted, they will twist it around to blame their victims for their actions. They will not accept responsibility for their behavior and insist that their victim apologize to them.” (“Eight Mental Abuse Tactics Narcissists Use on Spouses” by Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC)

Megatron avoids apologizing like the plague. He apologizes exactly once in the series--and then leaves without trying to get the injured party to the medical bay or calling a medic, which makes it more than a bit hollow. Beyond that? He never apologizes for his actions during the war--for Grindcore, for setting up the DJD, etc--and he also never apologizes for things like decking Perceptor and nearly sending him through a computer screen. He certainly never apologizes for his behavior toward Rodimus.

Instead, he twists the situation so that he’s justified in his awful behavior or so that the blame falls on someone else. He does this, too, when something threatens the narrative he’s been building or Rodimus ‘disobeys’ him. For example, when Rodimus overrides his condescending hush command that Megatron had no place issuing...

Rodimus is offering a potential counter-strategy that Megatron hasn’t approved: evacuation and escape. It’s something they discussed while Megatron met the ‘troops’ instead of coming to the briefing:

A solution Rodimus brought up at the time, using the same language he describes the teleporter with above:

So he’s trying to work out, it seems, whether there’s a possibility of rescuing the mechs already teleported away--and whether there’s a chance they could get all of these civilians to safety.

I discussed this possibility in rage, but I’d like to look at a different panel for the lead-up to that, where Megatron twists the narrative:

See how he turns his controlling and dismissive behavior (“Hush, not now.”) into an attack that invents a sinister motive Rodimus is clearly supposed to apologize for? This being despite the fact that all Rodimus asked about was teleporters--something that would be absolutely vital in evacuating a civilian population off-planet.

It’s a successful twisting of the situation--successful enough that even I bought it on my first read-through. Despite everything, despite all logic and circumstance and evidence, Megatron convinced even me that his narrative was the right one.

But when I read again? It was groundless. Megatron describes Rodimus as being obsessed; if he’s referring to the paint job, then Drift pointed out it lends itself to multiple interpretations--including mourning. Other than that, all Rodimus has done is organize a plan to get them home. Nothing about his behavior reads as obsessive to me.

But let’s stick to these panels and break it down:

Rodimus attempts to participate in the conversation. Considering that he and Rodimus share a rank and the group is currently planning what to do, it’s perfectly appropriate for Rodimus to try to pitch in, especially since he was the one at the briefing while Megatron met the ‘troops’ in another area. He knows more about the situation than Megatron in some ways, and he’s trying to use that information to help.

But Megatron gets visibly angry and tries to shut the attempt down. Based on his behavior through the series as well as my own experiences, I think I can guess why.

Rodimus ‘disobeyed’ him, which undermines the vision Megatron has of himself as the ‘real’ captain. The image he’s been trying to sell the crew. If he can spin this as Rodimus being childish, he can salvage the situation and maintain his narrative. Scolding him like a child sets that up.

It’s technically also possible that he’s somehow forgetting Rodimus’ experiences with Nyon and nonstop heroism despite being present for both, although that seems like an awfully large and uncharitable lapse on his part.

This implies to me that this isn't the first time Megatron has dismissed Rodimus like this--but before Rodimus can call him out further, Megatron twists the narrative, and now it's not about teleporters or exit strategies. It's a personal attack on Rodimus.

This comes, frankly, out of nowhere. It's an unprovoked attack against someone who shares his rank and is trying to contribute to the planning process--you know, trying to do his job.

Here's the thing. I'm familiar with these derailing types of attacks--where anything I do can get twisted and turned into something that requires an apology when I'm (a) trying to help, (b) doing my job, and (c) trying to do it respectfully but also efficiently due to time crunches. And, like Rodimus, I've been baited into shouting back at my abusers.

It's a win-win for them. Sure, they derailed first--they shouted first--but since I fought back, it can't be abuse. Since I got distracted from the point I wanted to make, I proved them right. I'm too sensitive. I deserve to be ‘taken to task’ or ‘put in my place’ or whatever euphemism you care to use. Because I stop looking like a crying victim on the floor, it stops counting as abuse.

If you think I'm exaggerating, I can assure you I'm not. Read any comment thread about abuse or assault and see how long it takes for people to find reasons why this person wasn't really a victim. Why they deserved it.

I should have talked above--under almost every section--about my abusive ex-boyfriend. Really, it's painful how much is relevant. But I haven't, because… Fuck me, this is the sixth complete rewrite of this section, and I'm still tearing up. I haven't, and it's because experience has convinced me that no one will take my side because I wasn't a good enough victim.

I'll keep it simple and relevant--just a single example that I feel parallels the above scene. It happened within a week of when my mom hit me; I was 15. My ex was failing a writing class, and he showed me his homework. I thought he was asking for feedback, since, y'know, he was failing. But I only got as far as saying he'd misused a comma before he told me to shut up.

I say he told me. That sounds so mild. We were sitting near the front of the school bus together; I was trapped between him and the window. He had eight inches and fifty pounds on me, and he used it to loom over me like Megatron continually looms over Rodimus. I say he told me to shut up; he got in my face and screamed it in front of a bus full of our peers.

He then proceeded to scream insults at me until he was red in the face. I wasn't qualified to judge his commas, I was an idiot, on and on. He had a bad habit of yelling at me in 1337-sp34k--yes, out loud--because it made him feel intelligent when I couldn't understand it. To be honest, I think that parallels with Megatron’s consistent condescending use of ‘big words’--the point of communication is to communicate, not to feel smart about our superior vocabulary.

Like Megatron, he would get loud and condescending and demeaning and use speech I couldn't understand to prove that I wasn't as smart as he was. Like Megatron, he would loom over me, using his height and bulk to intimidate me when I started getting ‘uppity’ or otherwise ticked him off. Like Megatron, he mostly did this when we had an audience--it was other types of abuse he perpetrated in private.

And, like Rodimus, sometimes I backed down--but sometimes I shouted back.

Not often. Usually I kept it to a few incredulous statements. But there were times when he said something so shocking, so untrue, I had to defend myself--like Rodimus does in this scene. And--once again, like Rodimus--I got so ‘het up’ that I would lose my point, forget my words, and find it impossible to actually figure out how to fight his points. Partly because they were so groundless it felt like there was no evidence I could pull to counter them.

I told my sister about it, once. And she said that since I yelled back sometimes, I deserved it.

She wasn't the only one to say that, but it hurt the most coming from her. And it hurts again when I read posts about Megatron and Rodimus where people talk about how great it is that Megatron finally put Rodimus in his place, how much Rodimus deserved to be screamed at. It's just fiction, true, but in the back of my mind, I always think, ‘If I told you that this happened to me, would you say I deserved it, too?’

Because I've seen very little recognition of the fact that victims do sometimes fight back. They often pay for it, but when you're driven into a corner you don't lie down and take it every time.

No one looks like a Hollywood victim all the time--crying and ‘weak’ and only staying because of fear. Anyone of any personality type can be abused. And abusers are experts at seeming like good, upstanding people; they need to be able to build a narrative that casts them as the hero or anti-hero. You need to see a whole pattern to recognize them for what they are--and they're invested in hiding that pattern by any means necessary so they won't lose that control, that power over both their current victim and other future victims.

Some abusers apologize going into the honeymoon phase of the abuse cycle as part of perpetuating that narrative. Others avoid taking blame at any cost, refusing to take responsibility for their actions. Megatron makes excuses rather than apologies and never does the work to make amends; like my abusive ex, he thinks experiencing any guilt at all absolves him of the hard work of fixing things. It doesn't; feeling bad is meaningless. It accomplishes nothing. And excuses relieve that guilt--the false high of unearned absolution.

Do they make excuses for their behavior or tend to blame others or circumstances for their mistakes?

It’s not his fault, you see! This murder squad he personally trained massacred two hundred of his crew members (the theory at the time of this panel was a ‘near future’ scenario, not parallel quantum shenanigans), but really, he knew this would happen the moment Optimus made him say sorry. These are natural consequences of making him do something he didn’t want to do.

Now, it’s true that Megatron didn’t order them to do this, but immediately putting the blame on Optimus making him vocally renounce the cause he was already claiming he’d renounced… When, y’know, these are his hand-picked and hand-trained assassins who he used to terrify his troops into abject obedience to all Decepticon beliefs… It’s just mind-boggling to me.

To explain another way: he just entered a ship full of two hundred mutilated corpses, all but a few showing signs of extreme torture. And he makes it about him. And he does that while still trying to dodge all blame. It’s a natural consequence of him reading the speech Optimus wrote for him, but it’s not because he trained a team of murderers in the art of violent murdering, no, that part has nothing to do with anything. They didn’t answer to him, he says, when he’s the only one who has Tarn’s comm number. When Tarn personally credits him with shaping him into the person he became.

The DJD are responsible for their own actions, certainly, but that doesn’t mean that Megatron isn’t responsible for giving them a list of traitors and turning them loose on his troops--and on innocent bystanders.

This would be a good opportunity for a sparkfelt apology. We could have seen Megatron mourn these dead and regret training the DJD and tell the survivors that he’ll find a way to talk to the DJD and make sure this never happens again (something he could have done at any time--he does have Tarn’s number, after all). We could have seen him start making reparations six months after saying he’d changed.

Instead we see him give a self-righteous little speech about how he’s totally blameless.

This may not be directed at Rodimus, but Rodimus numbers among the dead--he was the first corpse they found. And he cares not one bit that his living co-captain and second in command have vanished, with only gray and disfigured corpses to replace them. No, the most important thing in this situation is to twist the narrative and make sure everyone knows it’s not his fault.

This is what happens when he’s made to do things he doesn’t want to do. There are consequences; he doesn’t need to make reparations because the consequences are natural and right.

Living for millions of years with the DJD as real boogeymen who could appear and wreak this kind of devastation without warning if Megatron gave a single word? It’d be hard not to see those natural consequences as a threat.

Manipulation

“A favorite manipulation tactic is for the narcissist to make their spouse fear the worst, such as abandonment, infidelity, or rejection. Then they refute it and ask her for something she normally would reply with ‘No.’ This is a control tactic to get her to agree to do something she wouldn’t.” (“Eight Mental Abuse Tactics Narcissists Use on Spouses” by Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC)

All of the above is manipulation, without question. But I’m including this as a separate bullet point because it allows me to address a particular tactic that doesn’t fit neatly under any of the other sections.

Do they continually have “boundary violations” and disrespect your valid requests?

Megatron has no respect for Rodimus’ personal space, particularly when he’s being ‘defiant’ in some way. Paring away text to focus on body language, it becomes even more abundantly clear.

From the beginning of season two, he towers over Rodimus, jabbing a finger less than a hand’s breadth from his face.

When he wants to be obeyed, he physically gets in Rodimus’ face--snarling and huge.

And as a new arc begins, he’s once again looming and jabbing fingers in Rodimus’ personal space.

If I listed every panel where Megatron was shown leaning physically over Rodimus, I’d be including almost every panel they share. And before anyone says it’s because of Megatron’s size, and he can’t help but loom--he doesn’t do it to other characters unless they, too, are ‘misbehaving.’ He’s perfectly capable of keeping a straight back and relatively professional distance with most mechs, even when being threatened, even with extreme height differences:

Straight back, no leaning over Tailgate, no snarl. It’s the same with other crew members. With Rodimus, however, his nonverbal cues are constantly screaming dominance fight.

Now, I’m a small person, so maybe I’m especially sensitive to this--I’m just barely five feet tall and not muscular in the slightest. When much-bigger people get in my space the way Megatron gets in Rodimus’ space, it’s terrifying. Respectful people don’t do those things, and you can’t convince me that it’s merely a product of his size. My boyfriend of almost ten years now is eleven inches taller than I am, and he’s never once loomed over me or used his size to intimidate me.

I might be willing to call it thoughtless rather than an abuse tactic, since it is possible to loom unintentionally--except he singles Rodimus out for this treatment.

And it works.

After the first example above, Rodimus is visibly cowed while Megatron practically presses himself against his back:

Note the lowered spoilers on Rodimus’ back, the lowered head, the expression on his face.

And after the second panel, he literally transforms and obeys Megatron without further question.

Constant physical intimidation has unfortunate effects on a person, particularly when used alongside verbal and emotional abuse tactics like the ones I’ve been describing. This is a documented aspect of physical abuse--of which physical intimidation is a part--but I also know it intimately.

My abusive ex boyfriend never hit me, but he used physical intimidation tactics like these on a daily basis. He sat between me and the aisle on the bus and got in my face and snarled at the least provocation, but he also just--loomed. He was always--always--in my bubble, to the point that sometimes my friends would literally push him out of it. He would stand behind me like that, and when I have nightmares I can still feel his hard-on pressed against my lower back, his hands on on my hips or shoulders to keep me where he wanted me, the heat of his breath on me as he curled above me, around me, cutting off every exit until he was physically my entire world.

Which brings me to the panel that finally set me off enough to write the meta post I’d been mentally composing for over a year:

I feel sick when I look at this panel. When I look at the hand on his back and the way Megatron curls around him and the way the hand that’s always jabbing fingers in his face is caging him in. When I look at the way Rodimus is hugging himself, pulling in and away from Megatron--because in is his only escape route, because Megatron has cut off everything else. Verbally isolating him, then emotionally, then physically.

Rodimus doesn’t have any friends here to shove Megatron out of his bubble. Rodimus has the certainty that Megatron could be screaming at him (again), could be threatening him with hands in his face (that we can see are the size of Rodimus’ torso), could actually be injuring him--which we haven’t seen, but, honestly? “Whenever you shout my name I expect to get shot,” uh, isn’t a ringing endorsement of what might be happening behind closed doors, where most actual violence plays out.

Even if Megatron hasn’t hurt him--and I haven’t got enough proof to conclusively say one way or another--the threat is still there. As I said, my abusive ex never hit me. But I knew--every time he screamed, every time he got in my face--that he could. That he was capable of it.

He didn’t have to hit me. Like Rodimus, my defiance never lasted--without support, with too much fear, I decided that I needed to pick my battles. And, one by one, he pushed through my boundaries. Because if it wasn’t worth picking a battle over him stroking my inner thigh outside my shorts, was it worth fighting him on stroking the inside of my waistband? With that boundary demolished, was it really so unexpected--really worth challenging--when he went past the waistband?

After all, it was my fault he was so riled up. I’d done this to him. Didn’t I owe it to him to fix the problems I’d caused? But I guess that particular bit of nastiness comes from the next section--the victim card.

Victim Card

“When all else fails, the narcissist resorts to playing the victim card. This is designed to gain sympathy and further control behavior.” (“Eight Mental Abuse Tactics Narcissists Use on Spouses” by Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC)

At every point in Megatron’s “redemption” arc, he casts himself as a tragic figure. Poor Megatron, made to stand trial! Poor Megatron, asked to provide evidence to expedite the trial! (optional; he didn't consent to mnemosurgery and they immediately left) Poor Megatron, asked to read a speech renouncing the cause he already said he'd renounced! (optional; purely a get-out-of-jail-free card) Poor Megatron, surrounded by incompetence on this privately owned neutral ship he was given captaincy of in place of his prison stay! Poor Megatron, forced to drink ‘poison’! (optional; again, he made the choice himself) Poor Megatron, having to share the ship with the mech who owns it! Poor Megatron, faced with the knowledge that some people wish the war had never happened! Possibly even the knowledge of how many mechs he killed! What terrible knowledge.

Poor Megatron, indeed.

All of these situations are fair and reasonable for him to encounter. He's not a tragic figure for facing any of these things; in fact, the last two are hardly even about him. Billions died, and we're supposed to feel sorry for him surveying the field of flowers? For having to face the facts of what he did when he still doesn't face any negative repercussions for his choices?

This is entitlement, but it's also an abuse tactic. My ex used this trick to guilt me into roleplaying sexual situations I was really, really not comfortable with, while my mother used it to get me to do...well, in retrospect, basically anything she felt like I owed her.

Used on the wrong party, this tactic is just grating--case in point, Getaway and his mutineers. He specifically cited this overall strategy in his last call with the crew on the Necroplanet. But on someone who already has a guilt complex--someone who's easily manipulated by authority figures telling him it's his duty to do one thing or another, insisting nothing he does is enough and he owes more than he can give--the sort of person who carves into his hand the number of people who wanted him gone? Yeah, that's a different story.

Do they blame you for their problems or unhappiness?

Prior to this panel, Rodimus just informed Megatron that Brainstorm seemed to have jumped through time. Rodimus specifically gives him time to process the info, too.

He's beings downright nice about it.

And, yes, it's absolutely fine to need time to process or to freak about things not going according to plan. That's natural! I say this despite the fact that Megatron--a mech made of black holes--isn't exactly unfamiliar with weird science. In fact, one of the thirteen ores seeded by Shockwave had time properties, and they literally just met quantum doubles of their entire ship. I'm a little dubious about his claims of a minor breakdown here, but the freak-out itself isn't the real problem here.

What's not fine is taking that as an excuse to once again lean in over Rodimus (note the angle Megatron shifts to once he starts yelling), jab a finger in his face, and personally insult him. What's he done to warrant the “You are ridiculous” line and accusatory tone, other than tell Megatron something he didn't want to hear? How does keeping him briefed and patiently waiting for him to process lead to the conclusion that Rodimus is his own, personal punishment?

Well, keeping a level head while publicly briefing Megatron means undermining some of that narrative he’s so carefully constructing, where Rodimus is rash and rude and impulsive and irresponsible. Unsuited to command. Because in this scene? Rodimus looks and acts like a capable and considerate commander.

There's also the fact that Rodimus is treating him like a peer rather than a superior here.

Now, that might not be why Megatron lashes out. He might genuinely be disturbed by the idea of time travel and instinctively target his current favorite (emotional) punching bag. But I think it's telling that he immediately turns something going wrong into being Rodimus’ fault when he's actually doing his job quite well in this scene, not to mention respecting Megatron as co-captain. It's also telling that he breaks out the same physical intimidation tactics I described in the last subsection the moment he gets agitated.

So why do I think this is an abuse tactic and not poorly-handled panic, aside from Megatron's extensive experience with various types of weird science? Because Rodimus doesn't try to contradict him. He doesn't fight the point or defend himself. And, sure, that could be a sign of maturity--but it can also be a sign that he's beginning to internalize Megatron's message, especially when looked at in the context of everything else I mentioned in this post.

In fact, let’s cover his motivations and intentions a bit more directly.

INTENTIONALITY

Assessing whether abusive behavior is deliberate can be nearly impossible when you’re living in it. For example, I highly doubt that my mom is any kind of mastermind with an ultimate end goal of control over me. I’m not actually sure what she was thinking for any of that--she insists most of it never happened and has a different justification every time I ask about the parts she doesn’t deny (although she sometimes denies those, too, depending on her mood).

Even if Megatron’s behavior wasn’t intentional, it would still be unacceptable, dangerous, and traumatic. But I do genuinely believe it’s deliberate--partly because of the following scene:

This is coming from Ravage--a spy with extensive experience that goes all the way back to the day of the Senate. He’s seen a lot. And he makes a compelling argument:

Ravage points out numerous occasions where Megatron played the long game--planning ahead, setting up for what he might want someday as well as what he wants today. Reaching for the dark matter, delaying his trial with sidequests as soon as the opportunity presented itself--those, too, are examples of this.

So it stands to reason that all of this manipulation could serve the fairly straightforward goal of setting himself up to be sole captain of the Lost Light--or some other goal we haven’t yet worked out that requires tearing down Rodimus’ reputation and isolating him from the rest of the crew.

IN CONCLUSION

Megatron is abusing Rodimus. Emotionally and verbally at the very least, but possibly other forms of abuse. He’s certainly threatening physical abuse with his nonverbal cues--and, by some definitions, is in fact perpetrating physical abuse by bodily intimidating Rodimus.

The evidence is overwhelming, and I think that this interpretation gives greater depth and meaning to JRo’s characterizations of both Rodimus and Megatron. Through this lens, Rodimus’ increasingly erratic and seemingly out-of-character behavior as the series progresses can be viewed as a response to gaslighting and other abuse. Meanwhile, for Megatron, this interpretation serves to connect his current behavior to his wartime behavior in a way that feels more in line with IDW’s past version of him instead of a sudden and hollow change.

Ultimately, though, this interpretation is important to me as an abuse survivor. I don't fault those who want to write their own version of Megatron, but, if I'm being honest? I never again want to see another post insisting that Megatron can't be written as abusive. (and if you think this is vagueblogging about someone in particular, I swear it's not. I've seen multiple posts and tweets echoing this sentiment. This isn't some vague callout post; it's an alternative interpretation that runs counter to the dominant fandom narrative as I've encountered it.)

You can keep your interpretation of Megatron. He is a fictional character who has been written by dozens of different people in numerous canons. If you don't want to write about him as an abusive and manipulative jerk, by all means, don't. The only request I make is that you not condemn those who do.

Multiple interpretations of canon lead to more varied and interesting fan works. And I think that's good for everyone.

Additional Reading

In case you want to do further reading, here are some links to other articles I looked at while making this post. I may add to this if I find any others that feel relevant.

15 Types of Verbal Abuse in Relationships

10 Signs You Are in a Relationship with a Narcissist (first part in a series)

#maccadam #mtmte #transformers #transformers idw #transformers meta #that's five tags so it SHOULD be safe to add #megatron #rodimus #hopefully those won't prompt this to show up in the tags #i just want them for blog post archiving purposes #should i tag this as #character hate #just to be safe? #please let me know if i missed any tags #warnings are included in the disclaimer at the top of the post

[hollywoodjuliorivas]

EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE Tech’s Damaging Myth of the Loner Genius Nerd Claire Cain Miller @clairecm AUG. 12, 2017 Continue reading the main storyShare This Page Share Tweet Email More Save 155 Photo Credit Abbey Lossing The Google engineer who was fired last week over his memo wrote that most women were biologically unsuited to working in tech because they were more focused on “feelings and aesthetics than ideas” and had “a stronger interest in people rather than things.” Many scientists have said he got the biology wrong. But the job requirements of today’s programmers show he was also wrong about working in tech. In fact, interpersonal skills like collaboration, communication, empathy and emotional intelligence are essential to the job. The myth that programming is done by loner men who think only rationally and communicate only with their computers harms the tech industry in ways that cut straight to the bottom line. The loner stereotype can deter talented people from the industry — not just women, but anyone who thinks that sounds like an unattractive job description. It can also result in dysfunctional teams and poorly performing products. Empathy, after all, is crucial to understanding consumers’ desires, and its absence leads to product mistakes. Take digital assistants, like Google Home or Amazon Echo. Their programmers need to be able to imagine a huge variety of home situations, whether households with roommates or abusive spouses or children �� as made clear when a child ordered a $160 dollhouse and four pounds of sugar cookies on the Echo. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story “Basically every step is very collaborative,” said Tracy Chou, who was an engineer at Pinterest and Quora and is now working on start-ups. “Building a big software system, you could have dozens or hundreds or thousands of engineers working on the same code base, and everything still has to work together.” She added, “But not everyone is the same, and that’s where empathy and broader diversity really help.” The memo distinguished between empathizing with other people’s feelings and analyzing and constructing systems, and said coding is about the latter. But it requires both, as do most of the jobs that are growing in number and in wages, according to economic research. Jobs that require a combination of math and social skills — like computer science, financial management and nursing — have fared best in the modern economy, found David Deming, a professor at Harvard. It’s true that programming can be a solitary activity in college computer science classes or entry-level positions. But soon after, it’s impossible to avoid teamwork — with the business or legal departments, but also with other engineers. There’s a joke in computer science that one of the hardest tasks is naming things in code. It’s funny because it’s a nontechnical task. But it involves something that can be even harder than technical work: communicating with other people and intuiting what they might need and understand. Computer programming was originally considered a woman’s job. They were programmers of the Eniac during World War II and at NASA, as shown in the film “Hidden Figures.” That began to change when programming professionalized in the 1960s. The stereotype of an eccentric genius who would rather work with machines than people was born, according to Nathan Ensmenger, a historian at Indiana University who studies the cultural history of the software industry. Yet that was never an accurate description of the job. It was social from the beginning, in university computer labs and, later, Silicon Valley garages, he said. The social circle just didn’t include women. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story “For a lot of these young men, a certain computer culture becomes an expression of masculinity,” he said. “These are people who aren’t doing physical labor, aren’t playing professional sports. But they can express their masculinity by intense competition, playing pranks on one another, demonstrating their technical prowess, in ways that don’t translate well to mixed-gender environments.” The mythology of the antisocial programmer is self-perpetuating, said Yonatan Zunger, a senior engineering leader at Google until this month, when he joined Humu, a start-up. Early on, children who are less comfortable with social interaction — particularly boys, who are more likely to be socialized that way — are channeled toward science and engineering, he said. Teachers generally focus on the technical aspects and not the interpersonal ones. The result is a field filled with people who dislike social interactions and have been rewarded for it. Silicon Valley culture encourages it. Google calls engineers who aren’t managers “individual contributors.” Technical skills are valued above soft skills or business skills. “Anyone who deals with a human being is considered less intelligent,” said Ellen Ullman, a software programmer and author of a new book, “Life in Code.” “You would think it would be the other way around, but the more your work is just talking to the machine, the more valuable it is.” Photo Google Glass, worn in 2013 by Sergey Brin of Google, was a technical feat but landed flat with consumers. Credit Robert Galbraith/Reuters One example is the distinction between front-end engineers, who build the parts of a product that users interact with, and back-end engineers, who work on behind-the-scenes systems, like data storage or scaling. There is a bias that front-end engineering, which generally pays less and has more women, is less technically difficult. People who have done both say the skills are different, but equally challenging and valuable. Problems arise when engineers get to a point in their careers when they’re required to demonstrate social skills, Mr. Zunger said, like understanding diverse points of view, building consensus and reading people’s subtle cues. “Suddenly they’re told that these skills that are their weak point might be really important,” he said. “Their own value is in question.” In the tech industry, the lack of interpersonal skills has become a weakness and a liability. Edmond Lau runs an engineering coaching business with many clients like Google and Facebook called The Effective Engineer. His work can sound like touchy-feely therapy sessions. Newsletter Sign UpContinue reading the main story The Upshot Get the best of The Upshot’s news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. Sign Up You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. SEE SAMPLE MANAGE EMAIL PREFERENCES PRIVACY POLICY OPT OUT OR CONTACT US ANYTIME For example, he said, a senior engineer spots a bug and fixes the code, trying to be helpful. But the person who wrote it thinks the person overstepped onto his territory, or was sending a passive-aggressive message. At Quip, a workplace productivity company where Mr. Lau is an engineering leader, he leads circles in which engineers talk about how to work together or ask for help. “You might have ideas in your head, but unless you communicate them, no one’s going to understand,” he said. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Technical skills without empathy have resulted in products that have bombed in the market, because a vital step to building a product is the ability to imagine how someone else might think and feel. “The failure rate in software development is enormous, but it almost never means the code doesn’t work,” Mr. Ensmenger said. “It doesn’t solve the problem that actually exists, or it imagines a user completely different from actual users.” With Google Glass, for example, it was a technical feat to make a tiny computer you could wear as a pair of glasses. But the product wasn’t one that typical people needed, or wanted. When Apple introduced its Health app, it tracked sleep, exercise, food, medications and heart rate, but not menstrual cycle. Yet period trackers are one of the most used health tools for women. (The app now includes it.) Google Plus, the company’s social network, initially required that users make public their name, photo and gender. There was a technical argument for including gender — to construct sentences like “She shared a photo with you” — but it also exposed women to online harassment. “The team that made this decision was entirely male,” said Mr. Zunger, who was the chief architect of social networking at Google at the time. “It was a really clear case of getting things wrong, for the simple reason that the people in the room weren’t diverse enough to notice an obvious problem.” Less visible, but highly influential, are the judgments that go into building algorithms that determine the news you read, the loans you get or the people you date. Facebook has been criticized for showing people only news stories that align with their political views, for example. Research has found that ads for arrest records are more likely to show up on searches for black fraternities. Empathy also affects which products are built in the first place — why, for example, Silicon Valley has spent more time building apps for expensive food delivery than for decreasing hunger. Some people in the industry say computer science students would benefit from more liberal arts courses. “We need future adults to be able to discern what it makes sense for machines to make decisions about, and is the code base fair and equal, and do they have a basis to even judge that,” said Amy Webb, founder of the Future Today Institute, a technology forecasting firm. “There’s no cool technology toy that teaches that there are different religions around the world and it’s O.K. to be tolerant.” ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story When engineers build products with empathy, it can seem like magic: Technology seems to predict what people want before they know they want it. That was part of Steve Jobs’s genius. Just look at the number of people connected to their phones, or a child using an iPhone for the first time. One way to develop empathy at companies is by hiring diverse teams, because people bring different perspectives and life experiences. But the more widespread the stereotypes like those in the Google memo, the harder it becomes. When people hear negative stereotypes about the skills of a group to which they belong, they are less likely to pursue those skills, according to a variety of research. In a study by Shelley Correll, a sociologist at Stanford, when participants were told that men had a higher ability to complete a task, women said they were less competent at the task and less likely to enter a field that required it. When they were told that men and women were equally good at it, those differences disappeared. “That nerd identity is really damaging to women,” Mr. Ensmenger said, “but it’s also damaging to minorities and to a lot of men who don’t want to subsume their identity in that.” That’s why the consequences of the Google memo could reach far beyond the particular case, influencing which young people choose to go into technology, and which products they make that affect every aspect of our lives.