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tempoaryblogformightyjensblog · 3 years ago

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After a Longass time, I'm gonna make a response post to a post from @itsclydebitches. Not sure if I'll acknowledge All

Of it, but still..

1.Thats, the opposite of what the First episode shows, the first episode shows that the Military presence in Mantle dosent really do anything to actually help them with the Grimm. With it even being joked about as usual for the Military by Nora. The next episode also states that wasn't even the reason James had for it. It was to handle the 'eventual' Panick.

2.This and the recurring point of this later on is something I kinda want to address, because it's sort of what I was trying to say in My ask but I should go into more detail.

The point is basically that If James was shady for what he did, then So is Ruby for being willing to work with him for that long...I kinda want to mix this with a different Criticism I heard. That Ruby not trusting Ironwood was horrible and ungrateful because of all the good stuff James had done and how sympathetic and well meaning he was. The issue is that they are both 2 halves of the picture that ignore the other half, wich was what the heroes actual response was.

Him being sympathetic, clearly just trying to help and all the Good stuff he was doing is why they are willing to work with him and help with things. But Ruby didn't like his shadier actions either, wich is why she didn't trust him completely. And also? ""Nora dosent agree...But Ruby, the leader, does. She pushed Ironwood to finish Amity somwhow", that....isnt What happens, we see After Nora yells at James, ruby walks up to him and tells him more calmly that his actions, his management of Mantle and such were only helping Salem and it's what was making it easy for Salem to frame him. And earlier on we saw her with the other protags suggest working with Robyn. That's not 'Reaping the benefits of his actions even if they don't like them', that's not liking some of his actions but still trying to Understand him, and hope to reason or talk him down. Basically...Well it's a display that the other charachterization for Ruby, that she was a judgmental child who considered anyone who went beyond her standard of perfection to be Evil, isn't true. She tries to help and Understand James because she knows despite his flaws he is trying to do good, she tries to reach out to him and get him to see his actions were flawed.

Hell, the Jobs they were actually given were jobs where they could actually help soften the consequences of James actions, like Ren and Nora guarding the wall. the Robyn thing was a direct display that they weren't just doing anything James asked or were perfectly fine with his morally ambiguous actions. When ordered to attack a Huntress who was just trying to help, they instead went against his orders and even tried to actually fix things in a better way.

3.This is a few different issues, I'll start by saying that, that wasn't Ozpins problem in the Previous Volume, Some fans and some of the Heroes in there Angrier times think that, But the big thing was basically that Ozpin wasn't trusting anyone With that Info, that's what separates it from Rubies situation with James, Ruby wasn't trusting James because he actually did have many traits that made him look untrustworthy. And...well Finishing Amity and the plan is not pointless even with Salems immorality. Ruby dosent 'Know' That her being immortal means that the whole plan is pointless for 2 reasons, 1 is that she never had the mindset that it made it all pointless, she was actually distinctly against that when the others thought that under the Apathies influence, and makes her stance clear later, that Salem being Unkillable doesn't mean she's unstoppable. And 2, she dosent 'Know' that because....Its not true. Even if they can't directly kill her like James is planning...Were explicitly, directly told in Salems first actual appearance in the show that Humanity United was a threat and that was why she was going to ensure she divided them. Not to mention that...It isn't even all about the plan? It's made clear that global communications being down was a really bad thing and fixing that alone would help.

4.Im just gonna address one point here...It was not 'The Majority of Mantle' Being taken, were told that they were not even close to being done evacuating.

5.Basically what I said at 2, But to also state, James wasn't an Unambiguous Bad guy in Volume 7, He was in the Wrong In Volume 7, but he wasn't meant to be a Villain yet. The point of James charachter is basically he's someone who meant well but was highly flawed and made bad decisions, and instead of growing from his mistakes, he doubled down on them and let his flaws consume him. I'll get to it more later, but, that doesn't mean he was always evil or meant to be, Also...Jaunes license was given to him by James but, he was not part of the Military being fused with Huntsman, especially by this point. And with Winters words in her and James fight, I have my own issues with that fight or Winters Arc, but I don't think that point holds up either because we weren't meant to see Winter as unambiguously a good guy in Volume 7. Her words in there fight was after she had changed, that dosent mean we're supposed to believe she was a hero while working under James. It just means her POV changed after leaving him, now she wasn't following her programming of being blindly obedient anymore. Penny called out Winter for her being willing to follow through with euthanizing the Winter Maiden, Marrow calls her out in Volume 8 asking the Weiss question.

6.Well, to answer the questions there, were told in episode 5 what the recources were. Clover says how they were taking 'Construction resources', were told this again by Penny in the Car ride, wich makes total sense. They are changing Amity so that it could serve as a shuttle, so needing Construction stuff makes sense. While we may not be told how much power James had explicitly, they do give us a decent idea, that he had way more then he should. It's said in the Council meeting that they set in Checks and balances to keep him from overstepping with his seats, and that he basically just Ignored them to pull the actions he did in Volume 7. And Watts gives us both one Major decision that shows James flaws and gives a Clue as to part of the reasons Mantle was crappy as it was, saying how James updated most of the code in Atlas after the fall of Beacon, but 'As Usual' None was updated in Mantle. Aside from showing a...Truly Spectacularly callous move on James part, it also gives a big clue as to part of the reason Mantle is as crappy as it is, That Atlas and James basically treat Mantle like an afterthought and neglects changing things there to make things better, resulting in the City's state that we see. And, I imagine that being surveillanced and patrolled almost constantly wouldn't be ideal, and it's established by Winters line in that first episode that not cooperating with Personal was a punishable offense. I think you also....Picked a really bad example with Rhodes, if anything, Rhodes is probably a perfect demonstration of why being complacent or loyal to a system is bad for Huntsmen. I think if he would have loved to help Cinder more, it's just that he was loyal to the System and wasn't doing anything to upset the status quo despite knowing it was wrong. If issues like that existed, then it makes James specialist program, wich is specifically supposed to be Huntsmen trained to be loyal to the system, an even worse idea. Also I sort of feel like the bits at the end are sort of a false equivalency. I explained Ozpin amd Rhodes but also...Well for one, while we don't see portals line up in those specific areas, the plan was to have Jaune explain what was going on with everyone. And Qrow, Marrow and Robyn were still taking in the other Ace ops,they knew the plan so they would likely just head over to the nearest portal after, and...Maria and Pietro weren't there. And in James case, it wasn't just him 'saving who he could', it's that he could have tried to do more but didn't because he didn't want to risk it, and as Volume 8 showed, they really did have lots of time to evacuate people and could have found a way to Launch Amity. And...Well in his case there's the little fact that, as his Convo with Oscar makes explicit, James plan involved leaving the rest of Mankind To the dust and at Salems mercy.

There are problems with RWBY, but I don't think it's shoddily written, partially because I don't really find it 'particularly' flawed and think the good far outweighs the bad. And you know what? To some degree, I agree. I do think there's a weird bias towards authority in the FNDM, but maybe alot of fans are too dismissive of criticism, I do think to some degree we should acknowledge the RWDE and such aren't all right wingers and there's now a Vocal part of it that are on the left or members of minority groups. I don't agree with a ton of the things they say, and think most of it dosent hold up, but instead of just dismissing, perhaps it's better to look at things in detail and give proper arguments agaisnt them. So I won't treat you like an idiot, I'm going to give a full rundown on why I don't feel like it holds up under analytical scrutiny.

For one, while it doesn't have those specific issues like in the real world, I don't agree with this Criticism because I feel it is the one that sort of ignores the worldbuilding and what's been shown or said about the Military and the world itself and not the show, It sort of feels like people just bring up the basic concepts that would seem reasonable and ignore how the show executes certain things. For one, the military was a leftover from a time when they were meant to fight against other humans, It was something an Authoritarian state held over after its defeat and reformation, James and the Military helped Jac as he turned the SDC into the horrific corporate empire it is, Covordin shows that Nationalism is indeed a bit thing and that there were high ranking officers who were fully comfortable with the possiblity of just waging war on the other Kingdoms again. And then there's the specialist program, I've seen people sort of distill it to its very basics to make it seem more reasonable, describing it as just stuff like Huntsmen having rules and such, when the show displays it being way more screwed up then that. It literally involves indoctrinating people as students, were shown Elm reprimand the protagonists saying how they don't need to think about Orders just follow them. As both Volumes show, the culture of the program is deeply screwed up and unhealthy for them, were shown how they taught stuff like repressing your emotions and how deeply unhealthy it is for them.

And...Furthermore? If we're judging by how things are In Universe with the show the world built...James way of doing things is, completely absurd. I already dislike Cynical 'This is the REAL world 'Types IRL. But....In the world James is in, his strategy is just....

He lives in a world where negativity causes monster attacks and the villains whole Shtick is manipulating narratives to cause disarray and ensuring people stay divided. James strategy involved closing off Atlas from the rest of Remnant after they were framed for causing the Fall of Beacon, never bothering to clear there name when sleet and Camilla say he could easily do so, he dismisses both his image across the Globe and in Atlas, and dismisses what the people of Mantle want and the stuff his actions currently cause, all as Neccesary sacrifices when that's all completely insane and Relies on basically ignoring absolutely everything about the situation they are in and how there enemy works, wich again, Ruby points out, that he was actively playing into Salems hands and making it easier for her.

I think it's a decent display of the Tunnel Vision James has, he's prepared for the negativity of the END result of his plan and made preparations for it, but he...Basically ignores the consequences his actions are having right now and how that will affect his ends.

Overall...I think the issue is that James is not meant to be the Bad guy through Volume 7, and I feel like its not that the show 'contradicts' it's pure black and white take on things, it's just that it wasn't there to begin with. Whenever a Major flaw Ironwood had from the start is brought up, it's claimed that it means he was supposed to be 'Always evil'(admitedly some fans as well), when it dosent, it just means his flaws and darker aspects were always there and he didn't jump off the slippery slope instantly like some claim.

Were meant to sympathize with James, understand him, ECT. We're meant to want to see him get better, to be escatic when he does almost get better.

Overall, I don't agree with the idea that James was a reasonable charachter who was bastardized, the show set him up as flawed pretty well already, he's sympathetic because he's designed to be sympathetic. He's not potrayed as a Villain through 7 because he wasn't meant to be til the end.

Also...Well, even if you still felt that him 'Just' abandoning Mantle was still just morally gray...That isn't dropped in V8, it's bascially dropped not 2 episodes later. Where not only does he shoot Oscar but Oscar pointed out not only was he abandoning Mantle, but abandoning the rest of Mankind. Wich James just responds calling it an 'excellant philosophical point'.

#rwby #rwby volume 8 #rwby volume 7 #Anti-RWDE #I can finally sleep now...#itsclydebitchsz

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tumblingxelian · 7 months ago

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I am one of the most outspoken dislikers of Tai and a quick scan of my recent post history doesn't indicate use of the term resentment. I would also note that Yang in V2's resentment regarding Raven didn't look like snippy anger either. People contain multitudes, especially main characters.

(Shrugs) You're the one who demanded certain behavior for Yang to qualify as having suffered parentification. I highlighted why that argument sounds bad and drew a comparison that would be easy to understand. If you want to make that into something its not then that is on you.

Oh fun your post and then lying about my friend sure as hell pissed me off too.

Yang didn't have anger issues, a woman expressing anger is not an issue. Yang never lashed out at or hurt people in anger outside of combat scenarios. We see her express anger to get the frustration ot and then move on. Even Blake who was expressly traumatized by and afraid of anger, doesn't fear Yang's anger, the closest she came was in V2 and even then it was used strategically to demonstrate how Blake was endangering herself and then offset with a hug.

Yang had just been framed, lost an arm, lost her new home and was abandoned by her partner. Your total lack of empathy for the girl and dogged defense of her minor character father is confounding

The apathy, you mean those things that were explicitly effecting everyone's moods save Ruby 7 Maria's because they have magic eyes? That is your evidence?

You couldn't even provide episodes or scenes, though I assume in V5, you mean her being upset when Blake was brought up then instantly removing herself from the situation? Gee its almost like she hadn't actually recovered from her trauma but forced herself back out there to protect Ruby because their father wasn't doing it.

Ruby was fine talking to Yang about all her issues until she started taking on all the worlds burdens as her own. Which also coincided with Yang showing vulnerability and weakness that Ruby was not used to seeing and clearly had zero idea how to deal with.

You consider a stress induced meltdown to be accurate? What, do you think Ruby is homphobic too? I only ask cos you seem to be throwing out all the usual garbage that RWDE/HTDM do, I almost want to check if you have a Rewrite going.

He.. He literally was, that is why they are both used to Qrow being brought home black out drunk by strangers! We don't even see Tai until Volume 3 and his intro scene is having taken only Ruby to visit Summer's grave, giving a pretty clear indication of which child he prefers.

Your claims that Tai is a good dad who never neglected his daughters and that Yang didn't suffer from parentification makes them liars.

Yang outlining that she had to keep the family together and Ruby saying that Yang raised her were not them referencing brief moments of change in their childhood that only lasted a small time. That was the perpetual state of things, much as it is now. Hence Tai not going after them.

I love that you say you don't call them liars and then literally do it by claiming Ruby only said what she did to make Yang feel better. Like, even ignoring that being a totally baseless reading of the text with zero support, the fact you can say in one sentence you don't call them liars and then establish a headcnaon where Ruby lies... I mean its rather reflective of our entire approach.

Namely, ignore what is on screen, ignore what the characters say, ignore who the actual main characters are, frame everything via misrepresentation or lies to be about Tai and how amazing he is. As though this show isn't called RWBY.

That's not what the characters said, or what their words indicates~ and the main characters words matter more than your headcanons about a minor character~

I had to pick up the pieces. I had to keep things together. Alone. If you thought we wouldn’t come for you, then you must’ve forgotten who raised me.

Because the team was in an alien, magical fantasy land on a timed clock to get out. Because Yang actually did check in with Ruby and did try to reach out to her and Ruby kept shutting down any effort to comfort her, ask after her, or otherwise talk to her.

While Tai left a 5 and 3 year old in a Grimm infested forest alone while grieving for hours on end and then left the 5 year old to do the parenting, despite being an adult, not on a time limit, with access to other resources & support, & is continuing to rely on Yang to parent to this day.

Your counter argument's are farcical because they don't actually address anything I say. You just accuse me of being awful and then create elaborate, baseless and nonsensically negative interpretations of Yang and go "See!" even while obviously believing these things to be true given your hateful little notes in the post you made lying about my friend:

But hey, I have an official source on whether or not Yang is a bad sister and they have something for you!

Just block me again already, I have better things to do than argue with someone who acts like RWBY is about a dude.

genuine question: do people want bad, inconsistent writing? is that it? because that's the only way "taiyang is and always has been a horrible father and yang had to raise ruby all on her own and she resent him for it" makes any damn sense.

like. where's the resentment?

where is yang, while happy that ruby is one step closer to achieving her lifelong dream, feeling just slightly frustrated that she's once again sharing a room with her sister, when going to beacon was supposed to be a place just for her for at least two years without having to watch after ruby and feel guilty over it?

where's the resentment when tai sent zwei to the girls to be taken care of while he's away on a mission, placing that responsibility on yang again? why show yang instead being flippant about the whole ordeal, and shrugging it off like it's nothing, being ready to leave zwei alone in the dorm room for the week they're away because he has the absurd amount of food and a can opener tai provided them?

where's yang bringing up how she had to apparently grow up early because tai wasn't there, when she wanted to be treated like an adult?

where's the resentment when yang was about to leave home under the assumption it was her keeping her father from going after ruby, only to find out he isn't coming with her, once again leaving the responsibility of taking care of ruby on her shoulders?

because the show i watched, it doesn't exist. to even remotely get to that point you'd have to ignore ruby talking about their dad in a way that makes it clear he was present and raising them, you'd have to ignore yang having to wait for him to be out of the house to leave herself once again proving he was present and attentive of them, you'd have to ignore ruby's first happy memory being from that same time period (and with no corresponding sad memory to counter it), you'd have to ignore him reading them bedtime stories and taking them out for boba after school, making sure he's spending time with them even when he's busy with work.

you'd have to ignore that both yang and ruby have a good relationship with their father.

that is not to say tai doesn't have his flaws—every damn character in this show does—, but that's exactly what V4 is about. the rift that existed between yang and taiyang was his refusal to talk about raven and doing his best to prevent her from looking for her. that's it. just compare the difference in tone between yang's "oh, so now we can talk about her?" and "i don't know. some things you just need to be there for." and it's clear as a day where the resentment actually lies.

therein lies the core of the arc between yang and tai, and like many issues between characters in this show, it gets resolved: for the first time ever, he properly talks with yang about raven, and when yang is about to leave, he doesn't try to stop her like he has before; instead, he asks her where she's going, and gives information that might help make her journey easier.

if they intended there to be any lingering resentment from yang, 'boba' was not the way to do it. we know what yang's resentment looks like: anger, snappiness, the like. it's not quiet, almost somber.

they could have written yang treating tai's absence in vacuo as something she has come to expect from him, but they didn't; instead, she wonders why, because she can't fathom what could be more important for their father than being there, in vacuo, with them.

and that alone comes as validation for everyone who has wondered the same: why is tai staying in patch when everyone else is on the move? this is a character we're first properly introduced to as a father who has fallen asleep by his daughter's bedside waiting for her to wake up, a father who is almost brought to tears by relief that both of his daughters are back home and safe.

a father we last saw being absolutely desperate for his daughter to come back on screen when ruby's message cut short.

and beyond brings a sledgehammer and says yes, it is odd that taiyang hasn't left home to be by his daughters' side. wonder why that is, must be something important, wink wink ;)

and if you ask me, that sounds like a pretty damn good "long con", and damn good writing.

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melonsmessymusings · 4 years ago

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Preventing ‘Dark Willow’

This essay is based off an argument with my brother a long time ago. The question is if Giles staying in Sunnydale in S6 would have prevented Darth Rosenberg. There are many thoughts on this, but I’ve probably put my foot in my mouth as per usual and made a mess.

No. Giles staying in S6 would not have prevented Willow from being a magic junkie.

Throughout the show, magic is used as a metaphor for drugs and sex, albeit ham-handedly. In this case, it’s about drugs. With this in mind, let’s focus firstly on Willow. From as early as S1, Willow expressed an interest in learning magic. Her relationship with Jenny Calendar and her Technopagan badassery led to her forming what seemed at first to be a harmless interest in magic and Paganism. Towards the end of S2 in I Only Have Eyes For You, Willow admits to Giles: “I found loads of websites and stuff on paganism and magic... it’s really interesting.” which demonstrates her interest may be a little more than purely ‘educational fun’.

Her first taste of powerful magicks was restoring Angel’s soul at the end of S2. In Becoming Part 1, Giles warns Willow of the consequences of such mystical forces: “Channelling such potent magicks through yourself… it may open a door you won’t be able to close.” The Passion of the Nerd touched upon it briefly and explained the choice of phrasing is especially key here. It’s not as simple as a one-off spell that has no ramifications, the nature of the Soul Restoration uses a kind of magic that will stay with the caster forever. It leaves a mark. As we know, Willow does the spell anyway after waking up from a coma (don’t even go there) and successfully restores Angel’s soul. This is how her addiction started and it is the ONLY explicitly direct warning of the impact caused by using magicks that Giles gives her.

In Faith, Hope and Trick, Willow tries to persuade Giles to let her help him with the ‘spell’ to bind Acathla and lets slip that she knows more about the black arts than she’d originally led him to believe. There’s an interesting bit of dialogue between the two:

WILLOW: Are you mad at me?

GILES: No, of course not, no.

It’s obvious that Giles is anxious about this but because of his well-established role and priorities at this point, he’s not going to dwell on it too much, despite it being a genuine concern. Later in the episode, Willow also says, “Giles, I know you don’t like me messing with mystical forces…” so it has evidently been the topic of discussion previously. In Gingerbread, Willow is messing with magic again trying to make a protection spell for Buffy. The symbol used by Willow, Amy and that other kid is one commonly associated with human sacrifices according to Giles. The Black Arts. Even if that isn’t the spell they were casting, the symbol had other less pleasant implications. And so, it continues. By S4, Willow is doing much more than floating a pencil, progressing alarmingly quickly and becoming highly proficient by the end of the season. Giles reminds her of the dangers of magic subtly, “I don’t think it’s wise for you to be attempting spells, your energy is too unfocused” and Willow is still doing magic that is both powerful and harmful enough to have caught the attention of D’Hoffryn, Lord of the Vengeance Demons despite his apprehensions.

In S5 we get a first look at ‘Dark Willow’, when Tara gets brain sucked by Glory. There’s no way the whole gang didn’t know about that. Not a chance. Yet oddly, it’s never mentioned? Obviously, the writers had other priorities with the main plot and Glory etc. but it was criminally neglected. Willow used extremely dangerous dark magicks to go after Glory for hurting Tara at incredible risk to herself and the others who ended up having to rescue her. Justifiable or not, her actions were a reckless abuse of power that very nearly had fatal consequences. How any of them just let it slide without so much as a comment is infuriating. In The Weight of The World, Giles says to Xander, “It’s extraordinarily advanced” when he learns that Willow is trying to enter Buffy’s mind yet again, concerned. Also, we start to see the black eyes when Willow attempts more advanced spells, like teleporting Glory away in Blood Ties, or casting the protective wards in Spiral so it can be theorised that the magicks Willow evokes are steadily darkening.

Roll on S6. Set after Buffy’s death, a huge trauma for all the characters. Willow raising Buffy is evidently a massive achievement from her perspective. She considers herself to be a God. In Flooded, she gets the gut-punch from Giles that he is not in fact pleased with her at all. She’d expected him to be “impressed or something” which he was, but in the wrong ways.

GILES: The magicks you channelled are more ferocious and primal than anything you can hope to understand, and you are lucky to be alive you rank, arrogant amateur!

He blames himself for not stopping her, and rightfully so... to an extent. He failed to provide her with proper guidance or even show an interest in the types of magic that she was engaging with. If he had done so at an earlier stage, then perhaps Willow would not have taken things as far as she did. One interpretation of the argument in Flooded is that Giles is lashing out at Willow because he’s frightened. Most likely for Willow instead of Willow herself. He makes a point of saying that she was “the one [I] trusted most to respect the forces of nature” and bringing Buffy back defies the laws of nature. She had no respect for these forces, bending them to her will which is a scary concept. The argument that the Scoobies were selfish for bringing Buffy back notwithstanding, Willow was the one that actually performed the spell, hell bent in succeeding. That horrifies Giles and if anything, is a wakeup call for him to pull his head out of the sand and deal with this seriously. Willow meanwhile doesn’t want to hear a word of it, pacifying him instead of actually understanding the implications of her actions and listening to anything beyond his anger. There’s a lot that could be dissected in this scene but that’s unnecessary at this moment.

Magic is also the primary factor that caused Willow and Tara to split up at the end of Tabula Rasa. Tara had brought her concerns to Willow as early as Tough Love, saying that she was ‘scared’ about how powerful Willow was getting. When Tara tried to explain why she felt this way, Willow refused to listen. Every single time that Tara raised a concern about Willow’s use of magic, Willow either ignored it or reassured her that it was fine, and she was totally in control. But Willow has a history of altering people and their actions to suit her. She attempted to do so in Lover’s Walk by casting a spell on Xander to stop them having feelings for each other. Again, in Something Blue, while unaware of the effects of the spell, she still made the conscious choice to use magic to ‘have her will be done’. She ended up hurting her friends, however unintentionally. Then in S6 when Tara and Willow are arguing about magic, instead of having a proper conversation, Willow uses the Lethe’s Bramble to make Tara forget they were even arguing. A direct invasion of her mind. And Willow didn’t show any indication that she thought it was wrong. Barely two episodes later, Willow then used a spell which caused everyone to forget who they are after promising Tara that she would go a week without using magic. It’s no surprise that Tara wanted to break up.

Willow does get ‘clean’ by Entropy. Subsequently Tara comes back, and it all seems to go well until the brutal, vicious, non-sensical murder that causes Willow to launch herself back into the dark magicks stating, “I’m not coming back.” Only then does Giles do something about it. Only then does he take it upon himself to step up and realise that he has failed her, by which point it was far too late and resulted in her very nearly killing him, a price he deemed a suitable penance for his neglect.

But NOT ONCE prior to this did Giles intervene. He had the resources and was capable of it, and not once did he sit her down properly and say, “Willow, I think we need to talk about your use of magic because I’m a tad concerned.” Even after resurrecting Buffy, he only chastises her for her recklessness, he doesn’t actively do anything beyond this except a few powerful glares. He is watching her make all the mistakes he made as a young rapscallion and doing nothing about it. Then in S7, he fulfils the mentor role to her and helps keep on track of her recovery, an older addict helping the younger. It just highlights that he could have helped her sooner before it was out of control.

This comes back to Giles’ basic structure as a character. He’s a Watcher, the mentor to the Slayer. His purpose is to be in Sunnydale for Buffy. His whole life is revolved around Buffy, she is factored into every single one of his decisions. He never signed up to be the ‘father-figure’, despite appearing to adopt that role very quickly. He never signed up to care for Xander and Willow, he isn’t the Watcher of them. He has never given any indication that he wants that responsibility, and it shouldn’t fall to him to care for a group of random teenagers. It’s this fundamental construction of Giles’ character that means that he’s borderline dependant on Buffy, which isn’t her fault at all. He sacrifices everything, even parts of himself for her and most of the time gets nothing in return. The point is that Giles is so busy being a Watcher that he can’t think of anything else. It’s not necessarily his fault, that’s exactly how he was trained, and arguably after the whole Eyghon debacle, it’s unlikely that he ever truly had faith in his judgement again. Remember when Giles put Buffy before Jenny, the woman he loves? Buffy comes first, always because the mission is what matters.

On a more speculative note, Giles was aware of Willow’s obsession with magic and didn’t know what to do, instead choosing to believe that he wanted to help her, but he didn’t trust himself to teach her the control she needed. It does narratively fit for Giles to be reluctant to help Willow learn the magicks given his past. However, he neglected her and is at least partially to blame for Willow becoming a magic junkie. He had every opportunity over YEARS to step in and offer her a proper education. He had the skills and if he were hesitant, certainly had the connections to find someone who would teach Willow properly, e.g., the Coven in Devon. The audience is acutely aware after The Dark Age that Giles has a history of abusing dark magic. Note that throughout the series, he does not actually use that much magic himself. This abuse led to Giles having to murder one of his friends among whatever else he and his ‘friends’ got up to, which means he knows full well the ramifications of messing with that kind of power and doesn’t want to go down that rabbit hole again. Magic is an addiction and he’s a recovering addict.

Equally, Willow never asked Giles for help. It’s all very well blaming him for being negligent and grossly irresponsible, but she didn’t ask him to teach her. She didn’t ask him for guidance or whatever, at least not memorably. Assume that he did help her. That he trained her and gave her a proper education in the magicks. There’s no guarantee that any of that would have prevented Willow from taking it too far. Willow has an addictive personality and therefore it makes logical sense for her to become addicted to magic. Ultimately, Giles could have spent years training her, but he can’t make decisions for her, nor does he wish to. Willow is her own person, a bright, capable young woman who is an adult. He cannot push her to do anything and it’s not in his nature to do so. Dark Willow is an inevitability in a sense.

Essentially while Giles staying in Sunnydale would’ve been preferable on a personal level, it would have made very little difference as to whether Willow would abuse the magicks. She’d already done so on countless occasions with no intervention therefore he likely wouldn’t have interfered until it was too little too late. It’s not that he doesn’t care for Willow, but he had other priorities, right or wrong. Should he have helped her? Absolutely. But it takes two to Tango...

#btvs #Buffy The Vampire Slayer #rupert giles #willow rosenberg #meta #very long essay that took too long #sorry for my mess

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alexannah · 5 years ago

Text

MLB: Character Theory

***season three spoilers***

I’m no psychologist, but I’ve had some thoughts about Chloé Bourgeois that have made me look at her in an entirely new light …

First of all, let me say that this is entirely speculation. I’m not saying this is definitely canonical. But it’s a thought that occurred to me when I started exploring a plot idea last night, and it’s certainly an interesting way to consider Chloé’s character. (But the more I think about it, the more I believe it.) (Also after writing all of this, it occurred to me to do a Tumblr search to see if someone had got there before me. Although some of this has definitely been touched on, I haven’t found anything which puts it all together.)

Chloé became added to my list of favourite characters very recently (a couple of weeks ago), despite what happened in Miracle Queen. Actually if it hadn’t been for that episode, she might not have done; which sounds weird, but although I warmed up to her a lot in season 2 and loved the development of her character we saw in that, I wouldn’t have called her one of my favourites until the urge to write her a redemption arc struck. (And I am. Several. But, not the point of this post …)

Anyway, so this theory is about why she is the way she is. And I know we already have plenty of canonical evidence for that, but I’m going to dig a bit deeper …

To recap the obvious:

André Bourgeois. He’s spoiled Chloé rotten by giving her anything she wants, and has no backbone whatsoever, so the few times he’s not sure about giving into her demands, he usually does anyway. The only time I can think of when he does say ‘no’ is when she demands he close down the school, and then right afterwards when she and Audrey decide to move to New York. Giving your child whatever they want is terrible parenting enough on its own, but since he’s the mayor, she ends up getting whatever she wants from other people as well just by threatening to call “my daddy”. Case in point: Despair Bear, when everyone’s punished except her, the actual culprit. He abuses his own power for her, as evidenced in Rogercop; and yet I headcanon that the reason he said no in Malediktator was because he knew that closing a school down just because his daughter told him to would cause an uproar, and he was too afraid of losing his position. Also why he didn’t want to go to New York, because he loves his power too much.

Now Audrey Bourgeois. She comes on the scene not long after the first sign of Chloé character development we get, which I bet is no accident. She’s also a power abuser, firing people without a second thought for minor or even non-existent crimes, including people she has no actual power to fire. She has a huge ego, demands the best, and basically is a total bitch. If it wasn’t obvious enough from all of that that Chloé mimics her, the fact that they have the same catchphrase basically seals it.

(Now I’ve added that picture, and look: she is literally mimicking her mother.)

So on one hand we have a parent who panders to Chloé’s every whim, and on the other we have one who sets a terrible example of how to treat other people.

But I’m beginning to think there is more to Chloé’s bad behaviour than that.

We know that, at some point before the show began, Audrey took off for New York. We don’t know when exactly that was, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess it was several years ago. Chloé herself says that she “felt so sad”, which is completely understandable, even if they didn’t have the most loving relationship. (Which they obviously didn’t.) We can only guess whether or not they had any contact while Audrey was away, but if they did, I doubt it was very much. Even when Audrey comes back, at least at first, she’s dismissive of Chloé, ‘firing’ her for something as trivial as her choice of gift wrap, getting her name wrong repeatedly (which I’ll come back to in a moment), and she clearly struggles to say the words “I love you”.

I don’t think anyone would disagree that’s pretty neglectful behaviour. And Chloé’s response is pretty heartbreaking. Despite her mother having left her and ignored her for goodness knows how long, she still gets her a gift (this being a girl who doesn’t even get gifts for Adrien herself—it’s possible she had Sabrina get this one too, but I don’t think so), and tries to impress her. When Audrey eventually does accept her, it’s only because she realises Chloé is “just like” her. That’s not unconditional love.

(On a side note, I think it was pretty sweet of Marinette to do that, though in the end I don’t think it was particularly good for Chloé’s character development. But that’s not the point of this post.)

It makes sense for a child who’s been abandoned by a parent to have some abandonment issues, and this is where I finally get to the point! See, I think there’s more to Chloé’s bad treatment of other people than simply mimicking her mother, or because she holds herself above them, or just doesn’t think of other people’s feelings. I think those things are all true, but I also think there is another reason, and that is a fear of getting close to people. A subconscious one, most likely, but one that results in her intentionally keeping people at an emotional distance.

There is one particular reason I think this, and that is Butler Jean. One of his lines from Despair Bear: “I’m sure mademoiselle can remember when she was a little girl; when Mr Cuddly was always nice to mademoiselle when she was sad.”

I draw two things from that. One, that Jean has been in that job at least since Chloé was little, if not before. And two, that when she was little, he used to make Mr Cuddly ‘be nice to her’, showing that Jean used to comfort her when she was upset. He’s one of the very few characters who show Chloé genuine affection, so you would think that Chloé would appreciate that. Yet she treats him as badly as she treats everyone else, going as far to call him the wrong name, a different wrong name, every time she addresses him.

Audrey does the exact same thing with Chloé; calling her a different wrong name; though in Audrey’s case she does actually correct herself, at least when we see her do it in Queen’s Battle. Whether Audrey does it on purpose or is really that forgetful of her own daughter’s name, I don’t know. But in Chloé’s case, I think she must know Jean’s real name. If he’s been waiting on her for most of her life, paying her more sincere affection than either of her parents, I just do not buy her really not knowing it at all. Either she pretends not to know it, or she’s repressed it. But if she actually tried, I’m sure she could recall it.

Now to the three people other than Audrey that Chloé does not treat like dirt:

First, Miss Bustier. Chloé is more respectful to her than she is to other adults, and clearly likes her (as evidenced in Zombiezou when she wanted to give her a present); but I think the fact that she’s her teacher and therefore is expected to keep a certain professional distance is enough to keep her from wanting to push her away, if that makes sense.

Next, Adrien. We know that the two of them have been friends since they were toddlers. We also know that Adrien had a lonely, isolated childhood. And that, I think, is the crucial reason why Chloé is never mean to him. Nowadays, I’m sure her crush on him comes into it, especially since he has other friends now. But when they were younger, she knew he was as reliant on her friendship as she was on his. And therefore he was the one person she could be certain would never leave her.

Now to Ladybug. As we all know, prior to season three, Ladybug was Chloé’s idol. The reasons for this are never explicitly stated, but I reckon it’s because Ladybug is universally adored and admired, and Chloé knows full well that she’s hated: “I have no reason to be here. Nobody likes me; I have no friends; I’m useless.” She clearly didn’t want to become a superhero in order to do the right thing, or otherwise she wouldn’t have deliberately jeopardised the Metro train; instead she craves the admiration, and we know she became Queen Bee in response to Audrey dismissing her and offering Marinette the chance of a lifetime. (Only now noticed she actually has tears in her eyes in this moment; see the picture below.) The fact she wanted to be Queen Bee for the wrong reasons is greatly criticised by the people who don’t like her, but it just makes me feel more sorry for her.

(With regard to the ‘I have no friends’ thing, I always thought of that as an odd thing for her to say, because of Adrien and Sabrina. I’m still not one hundred percent certain on why she says this, but I don’t think it’s because she’s trying to get Ladybug to feel sorry for her. At least in that moment, she clearly believes it.)

Becoming a superhero was a dream come true for her, so when she started to realise that Ladybug was neglecting her in favour of other superheroes, it’s no wonder she was hurt. As usual with Chloé, it showed itself in anger. When Ladybug actually explains to her that she can’t give her the bee Miraculous back, and why, I now think Chloé reacted the way she did because she felt like, once again, she was being abandoned. This time by her idol.

I’m not saying this excuses her eventually accepting Hawk Moth’s offer, but I do think it explains it better than Chloé just having a tantrum over not being a superhero anymore. When Hawk Moth (very manipulatively) says “You’re Ladybug’s biggest fan. You’ve helped her. You’ve trusted her. And what has she done for you in return?” Chloé responds, “Nothing! She couldn’t care less about me!” Which is not true, and Chloé should have known this, because Ladybug specifically told her that not giving the Miraculous back was “for your own safety”. But Chloé’s response says, to me, that she felt betrayed. Feelings of abandonment are not necessarily rational. Back in Miraculer, when she said “I understand,” I think she was trying really hard to accept Ladybug’s explanation. I do. But she clearly was hurt, as evidenced by ripping up the photo of her and Ladybug and saying she didn’t want to pretend to be her anymore when playing with Sabrina. Then time went on, and then Ladybug chose Ryuko when it was Chloé’s own parents that had been akumatized, and that was just the last straw. She forgot what Ladybug had said, and she forgot all the times before that when Ladybug had helped her, out of feeling personally rejected.

When I’d written all of this out and went back to the episodes to check the accuracy of my quotes, I was much closer to crying than I had ever been watching those moments.

If this is canon, then it gives me hope, because I don’t see how the writers can not give her the redemption she needs. If her abandonment issues are addressed/dealt with, if she finds people who accept and care about her no matter what she’s done (I’m looking at Jean and Miss Bustier here—possibly Adrien, but I think it might take him a while to forgive her considering he and Ladybug were personally hurt by her actions), I think she could actually change for the better on a more permanent basis.

As I’ve written this post, I’ve come to believe more and more in my conclusion. Really, now I think about Chloé in this light, I don’t blame the writers for what they did. As destructive to Chloé’s development as it seems, it was a logical and in-character plot direction. Hawk Moth had already taken advantage of knowing Queen Bee’s identity to distract her during Heroes’ Day; there was no way he would pass up on using it against her again. He knows Chloé personally and was able to press all the right buttons to tap into her unresolved issues. What happened wasn’t just foreshadowed in Miraculer; it was probably inevitable. But that doesn’t mean Chloé can’t come back from it.

I’ve also said before and I’ll say it again; Chloé was fated to be Queen Bee, and I don’t believe that was because her destiny was to betray Ladybug and Cat Noir. I’m starting to think that she’ll be the key to the heroes’ eventual victory. Perhaps because Hawk Moth now sees her as an ally (or at the very least a pawn he can manipulate), she’ll be able to use that against him in the end. So Miracle Queen had to happen in order for them to win.

I hope this proves hopeful to everyone else who felt let down by the season three finale.

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kob131 · 5 years ago

Text

https://rwdestuffs.tumblr.com/post/187342767682/not-be-be-all-double-standards-but-taiyang-has

I’m tackling his reblogs from here.

I think it’s more about how the narrative built them up rather than the actions.

The narrative made Tai out to be a guy who was struggling to put his life back together for the sake of his kids and had a definitively good relationship with all of them and would go to the sun and back for them. Then it turned out that not only did he drown himself in his work, but he also opted to garden instead of go with Yang to look for Ruby.

Notice how he tries to treat ‘struggling to put his life together and ‘drown himself in work’ as if they were happening in the same timespan, not, you know: one after the other. Dudeblade, you don’t get to rewrite the order of events to support your headcanon while arguing it to be truth.

And let’s honestly think about this for a second. Do we REALLY want yet ANOTHER character to the cast? I could give the same argument of ‘he’s suppose to teach at Signal’ but let’s address the actual reason why Taiyang can’t go with Yang: He serves no purpose. There is NOTHING for him to do as Yang’s issues need to be dealt with by Yang, Ruby is closer to Qrow, we already have Qrow as the tragic member of proto-Team RWBY. We already have issues between Oscar and Jaune, we don’t need ANOTHER fight for screentime. So the question is: Do you want Taiyang to eat up screentime, especially considering your hatred of him is because of your issues with your mom, or can we just accept the excuse since it makes sense AND prevents more writing problems?

Willow, on the other hand, was made out to be neglectful at best, or abusive at worst. Since she got married to Jacques and ended up being an alcoholic, she was indeed made out to be neglectful.

No, that’s RAVEN.

Willow is portrayed as a victim who incidentally caused issues with Weiss, since her being an alcoholic is DIRECTLY related to Jacques using her. And by your rules, that means she should be attacked.

And Raven was made out to be a bitch.

You know Dudeblade, you’d be more convincing if you didn’t have a history of trying to portray Raven as basically being Summer or trying to downplay her abuse while completely rewriting canon to demonize Taiyang.

TL;DR: Willow and Raven fulfill what their characters were made out to be, Tai was not. Which is why he gets demonized while Raven and Willow do not.

Except by your own rules: Willow isn‘t fulfilling her character.

You BLATANTLY ignore canon with Taiyang.

And one look at your ‘savior mom raven’ series says otherwise.

Also, at least Raven saved Yang’s life once. Taiyang just belittled her and made callous comments about her lost arm.

Raven: Saved Yang’s life once which she used to try and manipulate Qrow into siding with her while also using Qrow to tell Yang that she didn’t actually care about her.

Taiyang: Gave not one, not two but THREE speeches about how great Yang is while using moping as a way of empahsizing how little her depression is in comparison to her while raising her alone for over a decade and even trying to make Raven look good to Yang despite all the damage she caused not just to him but Yang and Qrow as well.

THAT is what you are comparing.

You could have directly had this conversation with me instead of doing it like this. I mean… Bashing me for my ship preferences? How much of a warning is that?

Dudeblade you BLOCK him in this chain because he corners you.

And your shipping preferences actually DO matter here since it feeds into the idea that you’re a man hater.

But also, your idea of Taiyang needing to teach at Signal is kinda debunked by the fact that both Port and Oobleck point out that it would be perfectly reasonable for him to go out and look for Ruby. Taiyang instead states that he has to take care of Yang instead.

And Port and Oobleck are right...why again? Also refer to my previous argument about this.

But let’s give the benefit of the doubt here. let’s say that Taiyang wasn’t teaching because he was taking care of Yang. Then why does the narrative choose to show him gardening instead of teaching or defending Vale/Patch?- That was a choice on the narrative to show him gardening instead of teaching or clearing out grimm. Which means that either a) Taiyang wasn’t teaching at the moment (In which case, that needed to be better conveyed to the audience), or b) that Taiyang is slacking off.

Because the narrative needs to show Taiyang noticing the feather of Raven in order to communicate that he knows she’s there. It also gives us some insight into what he actually thinks of Raven (seeing as he looks miserable at the sight), connects Raven to the home in Patch (which itself acts as the grounds where the family lives) and makes Raven more pitiable (The ONE person left who might have accepted Raven is visibly miserable at her arrival? That’s pretty fucking sad even for Raven.)

Also, what canon evidence do you have that Taiyang is absolutely needed to teach at Signal? What evidence do you have for Taiyang even teaching at all?- That’s all your headcanon.

“With Beacon gone they'll need Dad at Signal more than ever-”

Nope, that’s what Ruby said. And if Oobleck and Port, two people who we never knew had a connection to Taiyang before are right, then Ruby Rose, Signal graduate and his fucking DAUGHTER, is most certainly right.

And Yang has two moments where she says that Taiyang wasn’t entirely there for her. She explicitly says this twice.

Yeah, bullshit.

A. Don’t think I didn’t catch that manipulative little detail of yours. ‘entirely there’ and ‘always there’ imply VERY different things, with entirely saying that Taiyang is somehgow distant to Yang and always implying a period of tie of disconnect. You choose that word because while it’s surface level means the same thing, the actual meaning is very different.

And B. That second example also says Yang was being emotional and has Yang placing blame on Summer for dying. That is disingenious as fuck.

Do you have evidence to the contrary? Last I checked, all you have is a headcanon that Tai is best dad™. Meanwhile, I have actual canon evidence.

“ She's actually a really great fighter! You can tell she's learned a lot from Dad!”

The fact that TAIYANG TAUGHT YANG, meaning considering Yang’s level of skill and how she went through all years of training at Signal, means he was there for a significant amount of time.

And your evidence is one manipulation of intent and one disingenuous. So no, you don’t.

And “Sociopath”?- Really? Just because I sympathize more with Yang over Tai?

More like you demand fictional characters be killed off or maimed in brutal ways (Jaune or Taiyang) because you project onto them...or the numerous incidents where you either call people Nazis, call them brainwashed because they don’t fit your narrative or ACTIVELY CALL FOR DEATH.

You reblog from known harasser/stalker/racist/sexist KOB.

Cool-

You reblog from known racists, know sexists and known SUCIDE BAITERS while all being ONE YOURSELF.

If he’s wrong, then you are. And funny thing is, I don’t believe that.

1: I never told anyone to drink bleach. I wanted it for myself because of knightof “BLM Is making things worse for black ppl by making more racists” balance. A person you reblog from regularly. Guess you didn’t catch him saying that.

Yeah-

He’s probably talking about Mage. The bisexual guy you said that to after you preached about LGBT suicide rates and he called you out ad then ‘apologized by putting the blame on him and saying you wanted him to go into a coma. And just for reminding me of that: I’m gonna be as sadistic as possible.

2: I apologized for that, and I took the post down.

You said you took it down because ‘neo-nazi right wingers’ were ‘harassing’ you and added on a fake ‘and it was wrong’ thing while keeping that waterboarding tag of yours. Also, that JSWV incident you keep pulling out even in THIS post? I did the same thing AND MORE. So you’re actually worse STILL by your own rules.

3: I headcanon Yang as a lesbian. I just get angry when people shove other headcanons down other people’s throats.

Then I assume you punch yourself whenever you call people homophobic for disagreeing with you?

Yang doesn’t have to resent Tai for him to be negligent. She can have other reactions to it. Like, say, not opening up to him about her issues. Or her calling him by name instead of “dad” like she did when she was talking to Weiss. It’s a complex thing.

Or you know, open up to him about her issues and call him dad like EVERY OTHER APPEARANCE?

Also: You ignore the resentment against Raven.

Aside from this, you are ignoring what my original response was about. It was about intended characterization

And you’re full of bullshit either way.

Y’know what?- I’m going to block you after this. And don’t think about using that as an excuse to claim that you won or anything, I’m just tired of your bullshit. Also, don’t think you can just pull a kob and just copy/paste my posts so that you can argue them. Otherwise, I’d have to report you.

Yeah, how many times have you tried that with me? It never works.

And you ARE silencing him. SO guess what? Time for a classic KOB-style beatdown.

(I’ll unblock you after this for convenience sake, but next time, don’t pull this shit because it could be seen as block evasion).

Oh fuck off.

All I’m saying is that it should have been better conveyed. It was also the middle of the day when Tai was last seen, he should have been in school teaching if that were the case. I would have less of a vendetta against Tai if he was shown in a classroom, or out in vale clearing out some grimm when Raven went to him, but the narrative chose to show him gardening. Which is a poor look for Taiyang.

If you ignore everything we know about school, like days off, or the limitations of the budget while also maliciously misinterpeting scenes: sure.

Although you never seem to accept that with Yang or Raven...

And again: I have to go back to intended characterization.-

Once again: You CANNOT try ‘intended characterization while ignoring the intentions in other scenes and EXPLICTEDLY trying to make things look worse than they are. You’re bullshitting.

Lastly: It was bad writing that made Taiyang out to be a bad dad.-

No Dudeblade, as seen by how the writing continuously CONTRADICTS you: it’s personal bias.

On top of all of that, Yang got shafted on screentime in volume 4 because the writers said that it would be “boring” watching her mope around a house all day

Citation needed and when they tried that you all proceeded to huff paint and demand more fight scenes.

It’s your choice to like Taiyang and not ship ros/ebird, just like how it’s my choice to do the opposite. I ship rosebi/rd because I’m a slut for angst. And that Raven is leagues more interesting than Tai.

Except that A. You ship rosebird because you have a yuri fetish and B. you project a perfect vision of your mom onto Taiyang. Just more bullshit.

No really, if you love angst so much: PHOENIX should be your ship as there’s more angst on Taiyang’s side than Summer. Or SummerXQrow. Or hell, QrowXTaiyang. All of which have more positive chances (and thus, more angst) than from Rosebird, where one side nuked Ruby in the face for sounding like the other side.

Plus, I find it irritating that criticism about Tai always has to go in the rwde tag while criticism about Raven can go in her main one. It honestly feels like a double standard… Which is something that I have found to be commonplace in the fndm.

It doesn’t.

You just do it because the main tag isn’t your echo chamber in regards to Taiyang.

Did you know that some people unironically called Jacques “A stern parent trying to discipline Weiss” but then turn around and call Willow “A bitch who should take care of her kids”?

Citation Dudeblade, that sounds like a troll.

And it’s still not as bad as Taiyang “abusive parent who was never there for Yang” and Raven “misunderstood loner mom who totes cares for Yang more than the loving father who raised her.”

#dudeblade

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defendtranswomen · 6 years ago

Link

I am too sick to write this article. The act of writing about my injuries is like performing an interpretative dance after breaking nearly every bone in my body. When I sit down to edit this doc, my head starts aching like a capsule full of some corrosive fluid has dissolved and is leaking its contents. The mental haze builds until it becomes difficult to see the text, to form a thesis, to connect parts. They drop onto the page in fragments. This is the difficulty of writing about brain damage.

The last time I was in the New Inquiry, several years ago, I was being interviewed. I was visibly sick. I was in an abusive “community” that had destroyed my health with regular, sustained emotional abuse and neglect. Sleep-deprived, unable to take care of myself, my body was tearing itself apart. I was suicidal from the abuse, and I had an infected jaw that needed treatment.

Years later, I’m talking to my therapist. I told her, when you have PTSD, everything you make is about PTSD. After a few minutes I slid down and curled up on the couch like the shed husk of a cicada. I go to therapy specifically because of the harassment and ostracism from within my field.

This is about disposability from a trans feminine perspective, through the lens of an artistic career. It’s about being human trash.

This is in defense of the hyper-marginalized among the marginalized, the Omelas kids, the marked for death, those who came looking for safety and found something worse than anything they’d experienced before.

For years, queer/trans/feminist scenes have been processing an influx of trans fems, often impoverished, disabled, and/or from traumatic backgrounds. These scenes have been abusing them, using them as free labor, and sexually exploiting them. The leaders of these scenes exert undue influence over tastemaking, jobs, finance, access to conferences, access to spaces. If someone resists, they are disappeared, in the mundane, boring, horrible way that many trans people are susceptible to, through a trapdoor that can be activated at any time. Housing, community, reputation—gone. No one mourns them, no one asks questions. Everyone agrees that they must have been crazy and problematic and that is why they were gone.

I was one of these people.

They controlled my housing and access to nearly every resource. I was sexually harassed, had my bathroom use monitored, my crumbling health ignored or used as a tool of control, was constantly yelled at, and was pressured to hurt other trans people and punished severely when I refused.

The cycle of trans kids being used up and then smeared is a systemic, institutionalized practice. It happens in the shelters, in the radical organizations, in the artistic scenes—everywhere they might have a chance of gaining a foothold. It’s like an abusive foster household that constantly kicks kids out then uses their tears and anger at being raped and abused to justify why they had to be kicked out—look at these problem kids. Look at these problematic kids.

Trans fems are especially vulnerable to abuse for the following reasons:

— A lot of us encounter concepts for the first time and have no idea what is “normal” or not.

— We have nowhere else to go. Abuse thrives on scarcity.

— No one cares what happens to us.

This foster cycle relies on amnesia. A lot of people who enter spaces for the first time don’t know those spaces’ history. They may not know that leaders regularly exploit and make sexual advances on new members, or that those members who resisted are no longer around. Spaces self-select for people who will play the game, until the empathic people have been drained out and the only ones who remain are those who have perfectly identified with the agendas and survival of the Space—the pyramid scheme of believers who bring capital and victims to those on top.

My first puberty was a nightmare—faced with the opportunity to make my second one a healthy, healing experience, I was instead abused and broken. The community practiced compulsory BDSM sexuality, which was deeply inappropriate considering it was one of the only visible spaces for trans people interested in making games. I didn’t need that coercion in my life; I needed safety and mentorship.

I spent those years of my early twenties not making connections or gaining valuable socialization that I had missed in my youth, but being exploited and brainwashed in nightmarish isolation. I was scared away from the “inclusive” coding spaces, the “inclusive” conferences and their orbiting alt events, and everything else that people like to pretend is available for trans fems.

Things escalated at the Allied Media Conference of 2013. Unfortunately I was traveling alone. People from the abusive community overheard me asking about safe-space resources in Oakland and became angry that I was seeking to escape their community. I was intimidated in person by someone who had a great deal of social power over me. I had a panic attack and went to the bathroom to dry heave and cry. Shortly afterward, threatening messages began bombarding my Twitter and my phone, and the community began to develop a coordinated political response to my desire to leave. People suddenly stopped talking to me, and I felt the icy net of isolation drawing tight.

This was the only time a conference responded appropriately. AMC apologized, notified their security team to check up on me, and encouraged me to submit a talk next year. I came back and ran a workshop (with two friends for security) and a small amount of healing was possible.

This reintegration was not made anywhere else. I was excluded from the vast majority of game spaces because of what happened to me. Of course, the multimedia nature of AMC meant it had the least stake in preserving the reputation of games and other things that matter more than people.

When I got back home, I was kicked out of my housing. I later learned that the community had been contacting my landlord for months prior to the actual eviction, as well as spreading rumors throughout my field. These seed rumors are a common tactic in those spaces, cultivating a brittle structure around people that can be shattered when necessary.

Living was my sole attempt at innocence.

ATTACK

One of my abusers was sent a list of the nominees for the upcoming games festival Indiecade. Unfortunately, I was on the list. I ended up winning an award, ostensibly to recognize my feminine labor in the areas of marginalized game design—years of creating access for other people, publicizing their games, giving technical support, not to mention the games I had designed myself. Instead of solidarity from other marginalized people in my field, I was attacked.

Anyone else getting that award would have been able to just … get that award. But people like me aren’t allowed to just have careers. Feminist culture saw fit to give a pass to every man and every cis woman who got that award, but when a trans fem from a disadvantaged background stepped up, she somehow happened to be the worst. The culture was fine with me as long as I was window-dressing, but daring to excel got me kneecapped.

They spread rumors that I was sending harassing messages to people, even as the messages streamed one-way toward me. They said I controlled a misogynistic mob and was using it to attack people. (I had never been more alone.) I was called a pedophile, a rapist, an abuser (the typical dog whistles used in feminist spaces to evoke the dangerous tranny stereotype invading ur bathrooms.) Even when the rumors were debunked, even with a history of co-habitating respectfully with partners and a history of being a respectful tenant, the damage was never repaired. The purpose was to keep firing until I was gone, until every possible bad thing had been said about me.

The reputation game was used to paint a vulnerable, isolated trans girl, too scared to leave her room most days, as having power which she did not have—power which my abusers, veterans of queer and artistic scenes with decades of institutional privilege, did have.

It happened without warning or recourse, without a single attempt at conciliation. Multiple times I had noticed tension building and had asked explicitly for mediation. Each time this was refused. When you’re exiling someone for petty political reasons, it works best when they can’t tell their own story. By privately vocalizing concerns that I was being abused, I became a public target—presenting a false chronology to observers.

Previously their ostracism had been silent, made simple by the fact that no one cared about what happened to trans fems who made games. The fact that my games had inadvertently made me visible meant that the attack had to be devastatingly public, my fake crimes commensurate to the amount of disgust required to repel me. This is the danger of the token system—it elevated me to a level of violent politics I was unprepared for.

Very few people want to defend a target of disposability. I was told by one person that she couldn’t risk losing her job, another that she didn’t want to become a target too.

I was threatened into not defending myself, gaslit into silence, told that people knew “things” about me that were never explained. When I asked how I could do accountability, when I said I would do whatever they wanted, they said that I was “incapable” of accountability, that my crime was unknown and my sentence was permanent. That is the point where the body starts to die.

My attackers were expert pathological liars who had been getting away with it for years—entire fictional realities playing out on their social-media accounts like soap opera. Escaping from abuse is the most certain way to become painted as an abuser, and being an abuser is the most sure way to be believed. You know how movies are realer than reality? How the sound effects and physics become so normalized to us that reality seems flat and fake? Talking about abuse is kind of like that. Abusers know what sounds “real.” They are like expert movie-effects artists. Victims are stuck with boring fake reality.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND HEALTH

Social media is significant to my story because for a long time it was my only outlet as a disabled individual barred from many physical spaces, and a way to express myself artistically when traditional outlets were closed to me. However, it came with its own set of problems.

When I told another trans person that I had been abused, I was told in response that my follower count on Twitter was higher than hers.

I tried talking to people about my poor health, how I needed to withdraw and have space. After unfollowing most people related to games, a subject which was quickly becoming a trigger, I was told that I was “manipulative” for unfollowing, and my following list on Twitter was scrutinized and brought up as evidence that I still followed certain games people and that I was doing this to hurt people.

I was pressured not to post about certain things I cared about (“crystals,” ”slime”) and not to use my favorite emoticons. I was pressured to join in social-media smearings of other trans people (which I frequently rebelled against, to my detriment) and to RT things I didn’t want to RT.

My twitter was incompatible with the rest of the network because I mainly posted poetry-style tweets that had no connection to anything else. I would be accused of subtweeting or encoding hidden messages into my tweets. People would associate random words in my tweets with some random thing going on in their life that I surely must be commenting on.

Social media became a scientific metric for my abusers, a set of numbers and behaviors to obsess over and divine hidden messages. The games network constantly abraded against my nonparticipation—my desire for a safe, therapeutic online space, not a competitive one.

Feminist practice of declaring privilege and marginalization became a way to collect information about victims: Look at someone’s profile bar for their elemental weaknesses. Being frank about my health problems was never an advantage for me in feminist spaces, only something to be used against me. I was an object, an invalid on a bed that could be infinitely manipulated and extruded through social media to fit the agendas of a thousand bored strangers.

The ethereal potential of the net had become rigidly hierarchized and numbered to the point where I could be managed and controlled as efficiently as if I were in 3-D space.

MOBBING

CALL-OUT CULTURE AS RITUAL DISPOSABILITY

Feminist/queer spaces are more willing to criticize people than abusive systems because they want to reserve the right to use those systems for their own purposes. At least attacking people can be politically viable, especially in a token system where you benefit directly by their absence, or where your status as a good feminist is dependent on constantly rooting out evil.

When the bounty system calls for the ears of evil people, well, most people have a fucking ear.

When I used to curate games, I was approached by people in that abusive community who pressured me not to cover a game by a trans woman. Their reasoning was blatant jealousy, disguised under the thin, nauseating film of pretext that covers nearly everything people say about trans people.

When I rejected their reasoning and covered the game, the targeting reticule of disposability turned toward me. What can we learn from this? Besides “lofty processes in queer/feminist spaces are nearly always about some embarrassingly petty shit,” it’s about the ritual nature of disposability, which has nothing to do with “deserving” it. Disposability has to happen on a regular basis, like forest fires keeping nature in balance.

So when people write all those apologist articles about call-out culture and other instruments of violence in feminism, I don’t think they understand that the people who most deserve those things can usually shrug off the effects, and the normalization of that violence inevitably trickles down and affects the weak. It is predictable as water. Criminal justice applies punishment under the conceit of blind justice, but we see the results: Prisons are flooded with the most vulnerable, and the rich can buy their way out of any problem. In activist communities, these processes follow a similar pragmatism.

Punishment is not something that happens to bad people. It happens to those who cannot stop it from happening. It is laundered pain, not a balancing of scales.

If a man does something fucked up, all he has to do is apologize, if that, for feminists to re-embrace him. If a trans fem talks about something fucked up that happened to her, she is told to leave and never come back.

MOBBING

A common punishment for infanticide in the Middle Ages was living burial. This was a feminine-coded punishment, often reserved for women, one that allowed execution without having to actually be there at the moment of death. This line of thought pervades feminine punishment to this day.

One of the most common tools of exclusion is through mobbing, which is rarely talked about because unlike rape, murder, etc, it’s not easy to pin it on a single person (or scapegoat). Mobbing is emotional abuse practiced by a group of people, usually peers, over a period of time, through methods such as gaslighting, rumor-mongering, and ostracism. It’s most documented in workplace or academic environments (i.e. key points of capitalist tension) but is thoroughly institutionalized into feminist, queer, and radical spaces as well. Here is why it is horrible:

1) It has an unusually strong power to damage the victim’s relationship to society, because it can’t be written off as an outlier, as some singular monster. It reveals a fundamental truth about people that makes it difficult to trust ever again. People become like aliens, like a pack of animals that can turn on you as soon as some mysterious pheromone shift marks you for death.

2) The insidious nature of emotional abuse: How do you fight ostracism and rumors? They leave no bruises, they just starve you.

3) Mobbing typically occurs in places where the victim is trapped by some need or obligation: work, school, circles of friends. This can prolong exposure to damaging extremes.

For these reasons, PTSD is an almost inevitable outcome of any protracted mobbing case.

In ideological spaces, this damage is exacerbated by the fact that the victims are often earnest people who take the ideals to heart and can’t understand why the culture is going contrary to its own messages. They appease, self-incriminate, blame themselves—anything to be a Good Person. They don’t want to fight. Fighting sickens them.

From a report by the Australian House of Representatives Education and Employment Committee: “90 percent of people being bullied make the comment: ‘I just want it to stop.’ They don’t want to go down a formal path, but just want the behaviour to stop.”

Those who participate, even unwittingly, feel compelled to invest in the narrative of victims as monsters in order to protect their self-conception as a good person—group violence creates group culpability. For their ego they trade the career, health, community (and sometimes life) of the victim.

MOBBING AS WITCH HUNTS

One lesson we can draw from the return of witch-hunting is that this form of persecution is no longer bound to a specific historic time. It has taken a life of its own, so that the same mechanisms can be applied to different societies whenever there are people in them that have to be ostracized and dehumanized. Witchcraft accusations, in fact, are the ultimate mechanism of alienation and estrangement as they turn the accused—still primarily women—into monstrous beings, dedicated to the destruction of their communities, therefore making them undeserving of any compassion and solidarity.

—Silvia Federici

The term witch hunt is thrown around a lot, but let’s look at what it really means. Witch hunts, as discussed by Silvia Federici, were responses to shifts in capital accumulation, as is slavery. To jury-rig the perpetually self-destructing machine of capitalism, huge amounts of violence are required to obtain captive labor (fem and non-white). The effect is to devalue our labor as much as possible, and to destroy the bonds between marginalized people.

You see this in games and tech spaces where the intense amounts of competition and capital accumulation, both physical and social, are a breeding ground for mobbing. But the popular two-sided discussion of mobbing as carried out in numerous clickbait articles ignores the fact that mobbing goes all the way down—even as white cis women struggle for safety, they participate in the exclusion of others, creating a hierarchy of labor and competition. Because mobbing is a form of capitalist violence, the popular discussion (conducted by those who are intricately entwined with the flow of capital) must omit the nuances of mobbing in favor of a narrative that is about replacing uncool regressive masculine consumerism with liberal feminist consumerism.

When the people who are scapegoated happen to be from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, the culture calls it coincidence, clutching our respectable counterparts to their chest like pearls, a talisman of tokens to ward away reality.

SEXUAL MENACE

I saw a queer black woman, struggling to survive by her art, falsely accused of rape by a white queer. The call-out post was extremely vague and loaded with strong words designed to elicit vigilante justice. Immediately, hundreds of other white queers jumped on the bandwagon. Many of them likely didn’t know either of the people involved.

Accusations of sexual menace are a key weapon used against marginalized people in feminist spaces, because it arouses people’s disgust like no other act—the threat of black skin on innocent white, of trans bone structures on ethereal cis skeletons. It’s as common for many of us as cat-calling or any other form of ubiquitous harassment that cis feminists talk about, except no one wants to talk about it. It’s a way for the dominant people in the group to take us aside and say, you are not welcome here, or do this thing you don’t want to do or I’ll ruin your life. But frequently it happens without any particular thesis, just as a general tool to keep us destabilized and vulnerable. Don’t forget who you really are in the unspoken hierarchy.

Mobbing uses these rumors to trade a vague suspicion for the actual reality of violence. It’s like turning the corner and watching someone on the street having their teeth kicked in by a mob who assures you that just before you appeared, this person had committed some mysterious act which justifies limitless brutality.

DAMAGE

PTSD AS DISPOSABILITY ALCHEMY

I was, in effect, beaten until I had brain damage, over a long period of time. Unlike some other survivors of trauma, I was unable to heal because I was never separated from the source of the danger. I was never given the chance to vent, to express myself, to tell my side of the story—but I had to keep working, harder than ever, while being constantly exposed to violence.

The pressure on me was not merely to survive but to display no signs of the incredible amounts of damage pouring into me daily. To never display the slightest hint of anger, to never cry, to not argue with people telling me horrible things. Every hint of damage was an excuse to further isolate and demonize me.

The cost of resisting disposability was PTSD. It was catching a lethal amount of negative energy with my body and becoming a poison-processing factory.

My job is wired to give me electric shocks. What do you do when your alternative is homelessness?

“The allostatic load is ‘the wear and tear on the body’ which grows over time when the individual is exposed to repeated or chronic stress.”

“Stress hormones such as epinephrine and cortisol in combination with other stress-mediating physiological agents such as increased myocardial workload, decreased smooth muscle tone in the gastrointestinal tract, and increased coagulation effects have protective and adaptive benefits in the short term, yet can accelerate pathophysiology when they are overproduced or mismanaged; this kind of stress can cause hypertension and lead to heart disease. Constant or even irregular exposure to these hormones can eventually induce illnesses and weaken the body’s immune system.”

To cover up the abuse and protect the “reputation” of the games industry, it was deemed worthwhile to lower my lifespan, weaken my immune system, and permanently damage my body.

Even if I drink multiple cups of water before bed I wake up with severe dehydration. An interesting side effect of being a trans fem on hormones is that spironolactone (an antiandrogen) is a diuretic, so the dehydrating effects of stress are added to the dehydration of my gender, tipping it over to agonizing extremes, the unspoken tax of pursuing both gender and a career. The amount of water in my body is political.

I wake up feeling burnt. Damaged. Corroded. I crawl up from an insane, nauseating, unreal pit and slowly come back to the world. I have constant headaches.

By the end of the day my neck and left arm are aching from nervous tics.

I forget things rapidly. Triggers leave me exhausted or panicking at inconvenient times, sometimes for days or weeks.

My hair fell out in handfuls. I still have a nervous tic of running my hands through my hair to pull out loose strands.

Having PTSD is like breaking a limb and never being able to rely on it as strongly. The sudden weakness of standing on it wrong, suddenly being unable to hold something, a fatigue and spasm of nerves.

It became difficult to diagnose other medical problems because of the all-consuming nature of the symptoms. It became difficult to talk about what happened to my body in general. When my hairdresser asked, the only way to explain the damage was by saying I had been in a car accident.

Attacks on marginalized artists go beyond merely denying them access to networks; they also damage a person’s faculties of expression.

For a long time, PTSD deprived me of the privilege of being a multitemporal being. The space of time I was able to safely think about shrunk to about a minute. Larger projects, the kind most tied to commercial value and to the media coverage apparatus, were difficult for me due to the traumatic potential of expanding my aperture of time.

The diversity-centric system expects more jobs to fix the problem, ignoring how long we’ve been damaged and made unfit for their jobs. They encourage the Strong Woman stereotype because it means taking the damage onto ourselves. We need more than jobs; we need social reintegration.

COMMUNICATION

INABILITY TO SHARE STIGMA

Traumatic events destroy the sustaining bonds between individual and community. Those who have survived learn that their sense of self, of worth, of humanity, depends upon feeling a connection to others. The solidarity of a group provides the strongest protection against terror and despair, and the strongest antidote to traumatic experience. Trauma isolates; the group re-creates a sense of belonging. Trauma shames and stigmatizes; the group bears witness and affirms. Trauma degrades the victim; the group exalts her. Trauma de-humanizes the victim; the group restores her humanity.

—Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery

The worst thing is not having other survivors to commiserate with. I can think of people who went through similar situations and were defended, re-integrated. Their stories are paraded through feminist spaces, saturated through social media, and every time I’m exposed to them, I feel less safe, not more. This enhances my feelings of dehumanization: “Why was I not worth protecting in the exact same situation? I must not be human like them”.

I often have the overwhelming physical sensation of having a dead person in my life, someone as close as an identical twin. The sensation is of me being the only one still alive after a terrible accident, lingering like an unshriven thing. The inability to share stigma is even worse than the original act of violation. The greater part of a wound is its inability to heal.

INADMISSIBLE NARRATIVES OF ABUSE #1

The typical narrative of abuse on social media doesn’t include the problems of the most vulnerable, like how public verbal harassment may only be an ultimately minor part of a trans fem’s exile.

The most skilled abusers know that a good exile is done with pure silence, through the whisper network, by having the person wake up one day and have every second or third person she knows or who practices her profession block her and/or stop talking to her. No one tells her why. She has to painstakingly talk to every friend, every contact, every person she would normally have a cheerful conversation with. The electric shocks of knowing that every simple human interaction you have with a friend or stranger could turn into a nightmare of victim blaming or worse, a cold iciness where they pretend nothing is wrong. Imagine repeating that experience hundreds and hundreds of times, with no way to end it. After the noise, the long years of silence are what kill us.

The backchannels that should be used to protect people from abusers and rapists are instead used to protect abusers and rapists. Any usefulness these channels have is reserved for Real Women. No one warned me about any of the comically large number of predators in my professions. I was considered unrapeable, unabuseable, not worthy of protection. A trans fem can try to talk about her experiences of abuse for years and have no one listen, but the instant one of her abusers smears her, everyone is alert and awake.

One reason it took me so long to talk about my experiences was that I associated being able to speak against abuse with being an abuser. Because every abuser throughout my life was so good at being believed, I thought that being believed was the exclusive domain of abusers.

This is why my first months in therapy were spent convincing me that I wasn’t a sociopath, crazy, abusive, or any of the other terms I had been brainwashed with. Abusers don’t spend years disabled by those thoughts because they don’t care if they hurt other people.

INADMISSIBLE NARRATIVES OF ABUSE #2

And when verbal harassment does occur, it’s often cloaked in feminist language, making it impossible to fight.

If they call a woman a bitch, people comprehend that as misogyny. But they call trans fems things that are harder to respond to. Rapist, pedophile, male conditioning, etc. They call us things so bad that even denying them is destructive. Who wants to stand up in public and say they aren’t those things? Who has the privilege to not get called those things in the first place?

When I look at a cis woman these days, the first thing I think is, I bet no one ever casually called her a rapist.

TRASH ART

When it was really bad, I wrote: “Build the shittiest thing possible. Build out of trash because all i have is trash. Trash materials, trash bodies, trash brain syndrome. Build in the gaps between storms of chronic pain. Build inside the storms. Move a single inch and call it a victory. Mold my sexuality toward immobility. Lie here leaking water from my eyes like a statue covered in melting frost. Zero affect. Build like moss grows. Build like crystals harden. Give up. Make your art the merest displacement of molecules at your slightest quiver. Don’t build in spite of the body and fail on their terms, build with the body. Immaculate is boring and impossible. Health based aesthetic.”

Twine, trashzines made of wadded up torn paper because we don’t have the energy to do binding, street recordings done from our bed where we lie immobilized.

Laziness is not laziness, it is many things: avoiding encountering one’s own body, avoiding triggers, avoiding thinking about the future because it’s proven to be unbearable. Slashing the Gordian Knot isn’t a sign of strength; it’s a sign of exhaustion.

Although I’ve fashioned this reflection in a manner that some may find legible, it is not a fair representation of my sickness. Writing these paragraphs has taken constant doses of medicine, fevered breaks, a few existential timeouts, and a complete neglect of my other responsibilities. When I tried in true form to write – in my realest moments of sickness – all that emerged were endless ellipses and countless semi-coherent revelations.

—Alli Yates

With the trashzine, I tore up the pages because I didn’t have the time or energy to bind them. I put them in ziploc bags—trash binding. In this new form they were resistant to the elements and could go interesting places. I hid one in Oakland under a bridge, and posted coordinates online. Someone found it.

When read, they come out of the bag like my thoughts—fragmented, random, nonlinear. If dropped they become part of the trash.

SOCIAL DYNAMICS

COMMUNITY IS DISPOSABILITY

There are no activist communities, only the desire for communities, or the convenient fiction of communities. A community is a material web that binds people together, for better and for worse, in interdependence. If its members move away every couple years because the next place seems cooler, it is not a community. If it is easier to kick someone out than to go through a difficult series of conversations with them, it is not a community. Among the societies that had real communities, exile was the most extreme sanction possible, tantamount to killing them. On many levels, losing the community and all the relationships it involved was the same as dying. Let’s not kid ourselves: we don’t have communities.

—The Broken Teapot, Anonymous

People crave community so badly that it constitutes a kind of linguistic virus. Everything in this world apparently has a community attached to it, no matter how fragmented or varied the reality is. This feels like both wishful thinking in an extremely lonely world (trans fems often have a community-shaped wound a mile wide) and also the necessary lens to convert everything to profit. Queerness is a marketplace. Alt is a marketplace. Buy my feminist butt plugs.

The dream of an imaginary community that allows total identification with one’s role within it to an extent that rules out interiority or doubt, the fixity and clearness of an external image or cliche as opposed to ephemera of lived experience, a life as it looks from the outside.

—Stephen Murphy

These idealized communities require disposability to maintain the illusion—violence and ostracism against the black/brown/trans/trash bodies that serve as safety valves for the inevitable anxiety and disillusionment of those who wish “total identification”.

Feminism/queerness takes a vague disposability and makes it a specific one. The vague ambient hate that I felt my whole life became intensely focused—the difference between being soaked in noxious, irritating gasoline and having someone throw a match at you. Normal hate means someone and their friends being shitty toward you; radical hate places a moral dimension onto hate, requiring your exclusion from every possible space—a true social death.

CURATING QUEERNESS

An entire industry of curation has sprung up to rigidly and sometimes violently police the hierarchy of who is allowed to express themselves as a trans or queer person. The LGBT and queer spheres find it upon themselves to create compilations of the “best” art by trans people, to define what a trans story is and to omit the rest. Endless projects to curate, list, own, publish, control, but so few to offer support and mentorship.

The stories that reflect poorly on alt culture are buried in favor of utopianism that everyone aspires toward but where few live. People feed desperately on this aspiration, creating the ever more elaborate hollow structures of brittle chitin that comprise feminist/queer culture.

To find the things I wanted in queerness, I had to find those who had been exiled from it, those who the name had been torn from.

COMPLAINT AND PURITY

there is nothing “wrong” with a politics of complaint but there are several risks like developing a dependent relationship with “the enemy” politically neutralizing oneself by dumping all of one’s subversive energies into meaningless channels or reifying one’s powerlessness by identifying with it because it makes one virtuous complaint becomes a form of subcultural capital a way to morally purify oneself —Jackie Wang, the tumblrization of everyday life

Popular feminism encodes pain into its regular complaint/click cycle, keeping everyone on the rim of emotional survival. Constant attack, constant strength, constant purity.

Lacking true community, the energy spent is not restored. Those with more stability in their life can keep up the cycle of complaint, and those with lower amounts of energy are filtered out, creating culture that glorifies a “strength” not everyone can access.

There is immense pressure on trans people to engage in this form of complaint if they want access to spaces—but we, with our higher rates of homelessness, joblessness, lifelessness, lovelessness, are the most fragile. We are the glass fems of an already delicate genderscape.

Purification is meaningless because anyone can perform these rituals—an effigy burnt in digital. And their inflexibility provides a place where abuse can thrive—a set of rules which abusers can hold over their victims.

Deleuze wrote, “The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves, but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people from expressing themselves, but rather, force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, or ever rarer, the thing that might be worth saying.”

ENDING

People talk about feminism and queerness the way you’d apologize for an abusive relationship.

This isn’t for the people who are benefiting from these spaces and have no reason to change. This is for the people who were exiled, the people essays aren’t supposed to be written for. This is to say, you didn’t deserve that. That even tens or hundreds or thousands of people can be wrong, and they often are, no matter how much our socially constructed brains take that as a message to lie down and die. That nothing is too bad, too ridiculous, too bizarre to be real when it comes to making marginalized people disappear.

Ideology is a sick fetish.

RESISTING DISPOSABILITY

— Let marginalized people be flawed. Let them fuck up like the Real Humans who get to fuck up all the time.

— Fight criminal-justice thinking. Disposability runs on the innocence/guilt binary, another category that applies dynamically to certain bodies and not others. The mob trials used to run trans people out of communities are inherently abusive, favor predators, and must be rejected as a process unequivocally. There is no kind of justice that resembles hundreds of people ganging up on one person, or tangible lifelong damage being inflicted on someone for failing the rituals of purification that have no connection to real life.

— Pay attention when people disappear. Like drowning, it’s frequently silent. They might be blackmailed, threatened, and/or in shock.

— Even if the victim doesn’t want to fight (which is deeply understandable—often moving on is the only response), private support is huge. This is the time to make sure the wound doesn’t become infected, that the PTSD they acquire is as minimized as possible. This is the difference between a broken leg healing to the point where they can run again, or walking with a limp for the rest of their life. They’ve just been victim-blamed by a huge number of people, and as a social organism, their body is telling them to die. They need social reintegration, messages of support, and space to heal.

— Be extremely critical about what people say about trans people, especially things said in vagueness. The rumor mill that keeps trans people out of spaces isn’t even so much about people believing what is said, it’s about people choosing the safest option—a staining that plays on the average person’s risk aversion.

— Ask yourself if the same thing would be happening if they were white/cis/able-bodied.

— “Radical inclusivity recognizes harm done in the name of God.” —Yvette Flunder

Marginalized spaces can’t form healthy community purely from rejection of the mainstream. There has to be an acknowledgment of how people have been hurt by feminist spaces and their models.

— A common enemy isn’t the same as loving each other.

— Don’t be part of spaces that place an ideal or “community leader” above people.

DREAM

On January 18, 2015, I woke up from a dream. It was early morning, still dark. I felt very sad that the dream wasn’t real. I wrote it down, like I’ve written down all my dreams for the last eight years.

“She was my abuser. She came to my house on the island. I begged her to stop what she had done, to clear my name. She would not. It had been two years of being abused like a child because of her. I turned to walk deeper into the house. I looked back. She had a knife. She stabbed me. It was the happiest dream of my life. Because finally an abuser had done something to me that people would pay attention to. When I woke up my entire spirit was crushed because I had not been stabbed. I felt the weight of all these years of abuse. I wished so badly I had been stabbed.

I pulled the knife out. I wrestled the knife away. I called my friend to come over and help me.

I walked along the beach of the island and saw for the first time how PTSD had numbed and corroded every perception I’d had since that August, this debilitating disease. I finally felt the brightness of the air in my lungs, the color of the sand and the waves. It was so beautiful. I just wanted to experience all the things that had been stolen from me.”

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owletstarlet · 6 years ago

Text

Excessively Detailed Headcanon Meme: Natsume Takashi for @saeryenkalador

Hey all, so @saeryenkalador asked me the following three questions from this headcanon ask meme, they were great ones and I had fun with it.

(18) Favorite beverage? (20) Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them? (47) How do they express love?

18: Favorite beverage?

I don’t have one specific thing in mind but I think he’d enjoy sweet soft drinks, like pretty ordinary stuff you can get out of any vending machine, because they were never something he really got to have growing up and probably hasn’t tried many of. The ones that came to mind immediately are milk sodas and milk tea because to me those straight up taste like a soft lovely dessert in a bottle, or something overly sweet and colorful and clearly intended for kids, like (magnificent, inspirational) unnaturally green melon soda. (Milk soda as a side note sounds gross but it’s surprisingly really not, Calpis in particular is pleasant and candy-like.) Also, I’m dead sure Nishimura’s made it a mission to make sure Natsume gets to try every drink/sweet/junk food that Natsume never got to try during his Terrible Childhood, and he’d probably spend his own allowance to make that happen because he is a Good Friend. And of course whether Natsume even ever said anything or not about what he likes (most likely he would not), Touko would figure it out anyways, maybe from some bottles he left in the recycling, and start buying it for him.

20: Childhood illnesses? Any interesting stories behind them?

Inevitably a whole host of awful things can crop up as a result of not being consistently well fed or physically looked after, especially when you’re a little kid. And one of those problems is a compromised immune system. And any family that’s not even giving him enough food sure as hell wouldn’t take notice or care if he was getting sick, or if he was getting steadily worse, until it got serious enough that it could no longer be ignored. That’s probably a situation that’s repeated itself a few times with a few different homes he stayed in, but as to the way I imagine the worst occasion of it playing out:

It’d have been not so long after he saw that youkai in the park that impersonated a human to try to talk to him, so when he’s still very little and in elementary school. It’d have started as a cold, or what seems like one anyways, and he spends a week or two sniffling/coughing/feverish/all-around-miserable, but he’d just slap on a flu mask and go to school anyhow, because what else can he do, really. Until at some point he passes out at school or on the way, and ends up in the hospital with pneumonia or a bad flu or somesuch. (And this likely after he’s already spent at least an entire day just sleeping in the school nurse’s office because nobody was there to pick him up, and after said school nurse explicitly told whichever guardian finally came to get him that day that he needed to go to the doctor.)

Anyways, I also imagine there’s some tiny, harmless youkai that’s been hanging out watching him. (Let's say he’s a frog youkai because frogs are superb, and there was a frog youkai in some fantastic official art once, just be-boppin’ in a yukata and trying to steal some snacks.) This lil froggy dude probably doesn’t want to get super close and chummy with someone who radiates sheer power like Natsume did even when he was small, but it’s good at staying out of sight. And it’s fascinated watching this cute little human that the other humans don’t seem to like, who is constantly trying to run from all these spirits after him when he seems like he’s actually stronger than most of them. And the youkai considers it a good way to kill the time anyhow. So when he winds up in the hospital the youkai just kind of follows him there out of boredom/curiosity. It mostly just hangs out outside the window of his room and watches, but then it notices that even here the strange child is always alone; the humans who are supposedly his guardians are rarely ever there even though he’s so sick. So it works up the nerve to go inside and keep him company, because it’s not right for anyone to be left alone when they’re so ill. And Natsume probably doesn’t necessarily appreciate the presence of an uninvited youkai, but he’s really in no state to make it leave, especially if he’s on oxygen or something and just generally out of it. So this lil dude probably forgets its fear pretty quick when it sees Natsume close-up, and just sits at the foot of his bed and chatters away about some big ugly fish it caught and swallowed whole the week before, and leaves behind a small collection of rocks/leaves/snail shells that it found interesting (baffling the hell out of the nurses who keep finding them in Natsume’s sheets), and Natsume eventually reaches the conclusion that he’s gladder to not be alone (because he is tiny and he is scared). And that at least this youkai never tried to lie to him about being a youkai in the first place. Anyways. When he eventually leaves the hospital, he likely never sees the youkai again, because after the hospital staff and the school have both caught on that at the very least he’s being neglected at home, he’s quickly shuffled right off to the next family.

Bonus points if, at any point during his hospital stay, he grabbed the youkai in his sleep and held it close like a teddy bear. The youkai would initially be quite jarred by this but ultimately decides it’d rather let him rest than try to wriggle free.

47: How do they express love?

By being himself. He shows love by being open and genuine with someone. This is so hard for him to do; I think for him it’s the equivalent of straight-up exposing the jugular—but, as Nishimura notes in his character chapter/episode, despite the overall impression he first gives off of fakeness and a polite facade, he slowly allows that to fall away when he’s with Nishimura and Kitamoto (“—but once I got to know him I realized he was really kind of a kid.”) Even if he can’t be honest with them about everything for obvious reasons, or still has a tendency to hide/downplay/straight up lie about things (even where Taki and Tanuma are concerned), he still feels like he’s free to safely be Natsume Takashi and not some courteous soft-spoken ghost of a person who carries himself with the knowledge that nobody wants him around.

I can’t really say that he also shows love by being willing to risk his life and safety for others, or by being really ridiculously thoughtful (Touko’s probably lost count of how many times this sweet child has brought her flowers by now), because even though of course he behaves that way towards the people he loves he also acts that way towards people who don’t really deserve it— as an example, towards Matoba in chapter 91-92ish. His actions are fueled by a kind of reckless compassion about 90% of the time, towards humans and ayakashi both…

(I do think it’s hard for him not to see acts of kindness or of love shown towards him as some kind of transaction, that he’s not required to give some gesture in return, and I could go on and on about that…)

It bears mentioning that the people he finds it the most difficult to be open and feel free to be himself with are in fact the Fujiwaras. This doesn’t mean for a second that he loves them less, because he loves them so much, but. The people who hurt him the most in his life up to this point were the adults he was supposed to be able to rely on to take care of him, and they’re the ones that made his defense mechanism of withdrawing into himself to protect himself necessary. So understandably the process of opening up to the Fujiwaras is going to be terrifying to him, and of course he’s also just got this innate sense from an entire childhood of experience that if anything goes wrong, or that if he’s not at his best at all times (anything that another family would’ve chalked up to him being “troublesome,”) he’ll just be shuffled off to the next family. I think this is the most clear in the episode where he wrecked a room trying to do an exorcism and was just so afraid when Shigeru walked in to find him standing in the mess, that this was it and he’d have to leave. I think it’s getting better as the series progresses, he’s learning the Fujiwaras love him and he’s slowly allowing himself to be loved, which is all they want, really. (“Will he ever open up to us? Tell us what he wants to do, or wants to have? ...One day, we’ll be just like a family. Slowly, little by little, surely we will…”)

Sorry I didn’t really touch on romantic love, here, but I think it’d be more of the same: learning to let his walls down, and learning that love is not merely a transaction of kindnesses he has to uphold. (And being patently terrible at the Science of Flirting.)

Cheers, and once more I’m sorry for the lateness of this! I answered some of these about Tanuma as well here.

#natsume yuujinchou #headcanon meme #ask meme #saeryenkalador #natsuyuu #natsume's book of friends #natsume takashi #fujiwara touko #fujiwara shigeru #nishimura satoru

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amatres · 7 years ago

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Himiko the Dawn Dragon. Patron Goddess of Hoshido, Goddess of the Dawn, Healing, and Harvest.

The Dawn Dragon is worshiped as a Goddess among the Mortal Plain Nornir, and is most widely worshiped within the Kingdom of Hoshido, championed as their patron. Both the Raijinto and the Mirror of Truth are attributed to her and considered holy artifacts of the Kingdom.

Other Characters of the War of Twelve;

- (old) Sawsan

- (old ver.) Atropos

-The Dawn Clan was one of the many clans that were denied membership among the Council when the decree to ban interpersonal relationships between clans was decreed. Seen as hybrids born from continued joining of Flame Dragons and Storm Dragons, they were shunned and scorned by the council and, in turn, the recognized clans. They were not allowed near recognized clan's territories, though tolerated to exist in what was considered undesirable habitats.

-Himiko was born to the clan's chieftain and was well loved by her people, partly due to the fact the birthrate of children had drastically fallen in the centuries after the first Great Degeneration. She showed a high aptitude for magic and was soon hailed as a prodigy among her peers.

-With her nearing birthday, she was sent on a pilgrimage to a nearby holy ground as part of tradition of all those who would one day run the clan as chieftain. Before she parted, her mother gave her a bronze mirror as a celebratory gift. She had noticed how much Himiko would admire her own mirror, and thought it would be a perfect gift. Unfortunately for Himiko and her clan, this would be the last time she would see any of them while they lived.

-The Dawn Clan had been framed by the true culprits of the Storm Clan's massacre and in retribution the Dawn Clan was wiped out as well. All except for Himiko, who returned from her pilgrimage to find the ravaged remains of her home. She took on the duty of laying her family, friends, and clan to rest, performing the funeral rights all on her own.

-This caught the attention of a nearby human tribe. Upon finding her among the ruins of her people, they offered her a place among them. Himiko agreed, and began to travel with them. In honor of her clan, the tribe named themselves the Dawn Tribe.

-It wasn’t long until the massacre ebcame widely known, and for knowledge of her survival to travel among the scattered communities. For one reason or another, many began to flock to Himiko’s side and rallied her into seeking justice for her people in the only way she could, a war.

-At first the Council of Six ignored her existence, not seeing any point to kill a lone survivor and believed her people would simply die off with her. However, they soon were forced to take notice when her and her growing army gradually increased in number and in boldness. First attacking merchants and travelers, then smaller communities of the Clans. The Council gathered together an army of their own but from infighting and inner mechanisms, the army splintered and began fighting each other.

-Himiko took full advantage of this, and soon enough had managed to put a strong dent into the recognized clan and tribes’ numbers. Her followers just as well had been growing and learning from their allies. Humans most of all grew from this, as they had learned not only the ways of healing and curses from Himiko, but also what would later become the skillset of a ninja from their Kitsune allies and the brutal fighting of the Wolfskin that would influence the fighting styles of Berserkers.

-Some time near the end years of the war, Himiko came across an injured human boy in the aftermath of a battle and realized he had simply been an innocent caught in the crossfire. Feeling sympathy for his situation, she took him back to her followers base and personally healed him. While she was unable to do a complete job, he eventually came to and the two became friends.

-The human boy soon was inseparable from Himiko and trusted each other explicitly. However, he was unhappy with his lasting injuries and one day admitted it to Himiko. She offered to create a blood bond with him, in hopes the dragon blood would give him an edge other humans didn’t. He accepted.

-However the war at this point had been dragging on for generations of humans, and those who once sympathized with Himiko were all gone and in their places were their descendants who had become increasingly weary of the fighting. When word spread that the Water Dragon and her companion were offering humans an edge against the dragons, enough members of the Dawn Tribe grew interested and sent a group without Himiko’s knowledge to Notre Sagesse to hear what the two offered.

-When the group returned, they shared that a weapon could be forged that would easily fell even a dragon and that all they needed to craft such a thing would be a dragon’s dragonstone. Soon after, Himiko’s own dragonstone disappeared. Distraught and endangered for being left in a near powerless humanoid form, she begged her human friend to find what had become of it.

-He left and months passed as Himiko’s anxiety grew until he eventually returned. Yet instead of the stone he promised, he instead wielded a blade forged from it’s shards and no longer able to be used for Himiko.

-The Dawn Clan, with the boy now a man as their leader turned against Himiko, and restrained her. At the man’s behest, they did not immediately kill her and tried to reason with her, but the betrayal had cut to deep and instead she cursed her former friend and the sword he so proudly wielded.

-’All those who wield that blade born from your betrayal shall never know a peaceful end until I myself lift this curse from you and all after you.’

-Unable to bring himself to kill her, he instead took a second method advised to him by the Water Dragon and sealed her away within the mirror given to her all those years ago and her last remaining memento of her massacred clan.

-The man was named the tribe’s new leader and he soon after the war’s end founded the Kingdom of Hoshido, where he was crowned King.

-Despite marrying and having children of his own, his deeds haunted him and he became more and more reclused as he would spend hours praying at the shrine set up to Himiko with her mirror. He begged for her forgiveness and for her to speak to him like she did his children, but was met with silence. One day, his retainers convinced him to leave for once and spend time with his family he had been neglecting. But their peaceful outing was shattered by an attack of bandits. His wife and children escaped as he remained behind to defend them and in the battle he was killed.

-The blade made from Himiko’s dragon shards, the Raijinto, was passed onto his eldest son when it seemingly chose him on his coronation day, the curse placed onto it forgotten.

-The mirror soon became hailed as a holy relic to communicate to their goddess with, and it became tradition for at least one of the royal family bearing the blood bond would join the priesthood as they could hear her the clearest. However, this honor was also considered a curse, as those who got too close to the mirror were rumored to go mad. So, the mirror is contained within the Temple of the Dawn, once the Royal Palace, near Fort Jinya.

Finally finished Himiko! Her hairstyle was supposed to be somewhat based off an interpretation of her namesake, albeit altered. In the end it... doesn't look anything like the hairstyle I had originally wanted to base it off of, taking on the look of another hairstyle I had found while looking for references. Is what I ended up with a realistic hairstyle? Probably not. But mmmm I like it so. The mirror originally was supposed to a reference to her namesake as well, as the Queen Himiko was said to have received mirrors from China when they officially recognized her as Queen.

However, mirrors are also used as a representative of the kami or even a conduit for which the kami will use to communicate from. Read about that here. I thought it fit well, especially since the considerably most famous one is that of Amaterasu, the Goddess of the Sun. Considering I assume the Dawn Dragon was probably meant to act as a reference to Amaterasu, at least somewhat, in the original game, I thought it was fitting and kept with the idea. The pattern on the non-reflective side shown here is based off the design in the town square in game which is underneath, what I assume is supposed to be, a statue of the Dawn Dragon.

If you want to discuss or ask about my ocs, feel free to! I know I’m slow making these profiles h aha sorry.

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thewillowbends · 4 years ago

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I agree with that article that I think Bridgerton needed more focus on Simon’s side for balance. The consent issues are extremely complicated due to the circumstances of their marriage, especially considering the catalyst that started the domino effect leading to it was him grabbing and kissing her impulsively in a garden, after she repeatedly tried to walk away - and even if that consent issue is rebounded by her willing engagement after. The fact that somebody saw them tied her hands further, since they explicitly live in a society where women take the biggest losses where those missteps of propriety occur. It’s messy, but the narrative should have taken more pains to balance Simon’s upset, especially in light of how Nigel is framed earlier in the season.

This being said, I don’t wholly agree with the article writer’s statement that Daphne is never rebuked by the narrative. There is, to me, a very blunt one made by the scene of Marina discussing George’s letter and how she made him a monster unfairly in her ignorance as to his true fate. That is contrasted very intentionally against Daphne’s self-involved grief, the way she has wallowed in anger born of ignorance of what her husband wants, needs, or even consideration for how he has suffered. It’s the moment that pivots to her realizing that she’s being a shitty wife and not considering why Simon doesn’t want kids in the first place, that he would sacrifice his own happiness to uphold hate, driving her to do the research to gain better empathy.

There are definitely ways I think that needed to be handled more delicately (as dubious consent should), but it’s definitely leagues above the book, IMO, and not quite in the same class as the WW84 problem. For the most part, I think it is okay to explore issues of complicated consent and even violations of consent in situations that are deeply nuanced in fiction - I mean, where else do you get to explore them in a place that isn’t actively harming a real person? And I think it’s even fine to ask or even suggestion that some of those violations are even forgivable with growth and understanding. The flaw in the Bridgerton narrative to me is not so much that a difficult consent situation arose but the lack of balance and a more explicit examination of how society played a role in arresting consent - in Daphne’s unbelievable ignorance and lack of agency within a system where her options are limited against Simon’s lost childhood and sense of compassion and trust, the way his father stole the idea from him through abuse and neglect. The consent issues are there, absolutely, but they aren’t the same level of problematic to me since Bridgerton does want us to understand and sympathize Simon’s choice and why he feels that way, whereas WW84 doesn’t seem to consider it at all.

Glad to know I wasn’t the only one who made this connection after hearing the spoilers for both of these.

CW for discussions about sexual assault in the article.

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leonbastralle · 7 years ago

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Can you share 10 facts about Trellis? :3 No "send this to 5 five others" this time, just pure curiosity lol

Well this only took a year, I’m so sorry…no idea when I’ll actually finish and post these xD I didn’t expect to get so insecure about this smol baby but I guess it’ll all be explained.

Sexuality wise, Trellis belongs into the aro spectrum. She’s not oppposed to romantic interaction, she just feels differently. That might be a surprise to some (or maybe not, since I’ve been leaving hints once she ‘told’ me) and it definitely doesn’t explain her current state well so this is what I’m gonna try to do.

Growing up, Trellis wasn’t really subjected to a great many positive emotions. Sure, her parents supplied her with what she needed (and more), they were somewhat supportive of her hobbies if she didn’t neglect anything they had planned for her and gave positive feedback when she was successful, but it was still a pretty cold, loveless relationship.

Not knowing how friendliness worked, Trellis struggled with socialising. She was too bossy in primary school, too detached in high school. Shine’s the only one who has always been able to get to her, and that really impressed Trellis - it was also why she considered romantic feelings might be involved.

Trellis mentioned their relationship was rushed, and while they had been extremely close for a long long time, they started dating pretty sudden, got engaged very quickly and wasted no time to get married either. The former is mostly due to pressure they received from various sides (the other Unicorns, Sprout), Trellis probably wouldn’t have asked Shine out otherwise. The latter though can be ‘blamed’ on Trellis herself. She was still figuring herself out, and at that point it seemed reasonable to her they would get their relationship to the next levels asap (she hoped when that happened, her feelings would also change)

I think shortly after Connie’s birth was when she finally found out (or stopped ignoring it, more likely) which was when everything was pretty much already set in stone. If not, she might have left Shine, but I can’t say that for sure. She’s happy with him, definitely, he’s her soulmate and closer to her than anyone else could ever be, and they have a pretty healthy marriage with better communication than most couples. (plus, the sexual attraction is still also a thing)

This also doesn’t mean she’s ALWAYS happy tho - we’ve seen her pretty insecure and doubtful as well. Usually it’s enough for her to know Shine and her are both happy, but she can’t help but feel like he just deserves better at times and she feels guilty for not being able to give him said things he deserves. But ever since the argument she had with Connie when she was a child, the two of them have started talking more openly whenever she feels this way and Shine reassures her when needed (and when not needed) and she’s been doing better ever since.

Trellis hasn’t explicitly come out to anyone, and I’m not sure if she’ll ever be comfortable to do so, but essentially she’s been pretty obvious towards Shine, his parents and Opal. Glade and Connie also caught some vague hints she dropped.

Okay now that we’ve had heavy stuff for a lot of facts in a row, here’s something lighter. Everyone probably knows that Trellis is obsessed with sports, but her main passion is basketball. She used to be a professional player until she retired in her late thirties, but she’s been a coach ever since. She never got along too well with the girls on her team, but she’s always had Opal as her trusty companion (he plays for the men’s soccer team that belongs to the same…group of teams?). He’s now a coach too, and they spend a lot of afternoons discussing their players’ state and whining about managers with great expectations but small budgets.

Trellis is one of the most stubborn Miracles, more stubborn than Aur (who does it without getting obnoxious, unlike her). She probably DID get that from Malachite, even though she likes to not acknowledge that. She’s used to always getting her way, which adds to the feeling of guilt - is there really something she can’t do?

BUT one final cute fact: she’s really really REALLY attached to her family in law, which she considers to be her only family. She’s got an especially soft spot for Aur and keeps up to date with politics mostly for him (now that he’s retired, she also does it for the scandals, this damn family and their love for scandals will grow), she looks out for him, calls him a lot to talk about these things, gives him shout outs on social media and probably even is a very small very local member of WU. These days, she’s really concerned and constantly asks him if he’s okay and safe because of all the things that are happening in politics. She’s even offered to be his bodyguard. This fact is getting so long but I just…love their relationship.

Okay this was the most giant fact post, I hope I cleared some things up and didn’t offend anyone! Thank you so much for asking, this was overdue but I kept procrastinating XD

#bouquet-of-scissors #replies #sims somehow #miracle rainbowcy #trellis

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empowercbcgl · 5 years ago

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God is in Pursuit of My Heart

This post by Ken Ngai, who took the opportunity to reflect on his transition from high school to college, something he hadn’t had much time to reflect upon ever since COVID -19 hit the nation and everyone’s lives were thrown into chaos. So sit back, get some snacks and drinks, and enjoy his ramble. It’s long.

Going into freshman year, I wasn’t on the best of terms with God. To be more specific, I really hadn’t tended to my relationship with God. In general, I would sum up my senior year as a turbulent time characterized by apathy, bitterness, and neglect towards God. Of course, I rarely opened up to anyone about what I was experiencing, partly because I was too ashamed and partly because I didn’t really care. When I say I was ashamed, I mean that I was afraid of being seen as a fake Christian. Throughout my life, especially in high school, I built myself up as an individual seemingly dedicated to God 100%. I did all the right things that one would do like consistently attend CBCGL, become a LYTE team member, find a mentor, etc. I have to admit, there were definitely stretches of times that I really felt close to God, particularly sophomore to junior year in high school. Nevertheless, I look back at my time in high school and I see that my faith was a mile wide but an inch deep. I was too busy doing things for God that I missed the times actually dwelling with God. As such, my times alone with God rarely struck me as “life-changing”, “peace-giving”, or “reassuring” as many promised to me. Sure, I picked up a few things here or there, learned to become a better Christian by title and was proud to do so. In fact, I distinctly remember how happy I was when some of my high school peers explicitly noted aloud that “Ken is Christian, he wouldn’t do __________”. I assure you, I was happy living my life like this because during this time of my life, I wasn’t aware of the lie I was living. They say “ignorance is bliss”, and for me this was definitely the case. No matter how academically advanced and mature I thought myself to be, my spiritual life itself was beyond my comprehension. Therefore, you can understand why I began to stumble when senior year came around and I started noticing the holes in my faith. For once, I was becoming conscious of how distant I actually was from God. The more I reflected, the more I realized that I treated my faith as some object detached from my life. Quickly, I realized that the foundation of my faith was sinking sand, and soon everything else I was accustomed to came crashing down. Daily devos, worship, prayer, everything started to fade away from my life as if it was never there to begin with. On the outside, senior Ken was no different. By the account of the world, I was doing better than ever. Grades were fine, relationships were fine, emotions were fine, everything seemed fine. Everything WAS fine because they were always fine, whether or not I happened to squeeze 30 minutes of prayer between it all. Herein lies a reality that was hard for me to swallow: I never did rely on God for anything in my life and treated him as an obligation of my faith rather than the source of my life. I thought that if this “god idea” could be satisfied by my small offerings that I gave hesitantly and without thought, I could run away with blessings. Yet, all (capital g) God really wanted was heart, which I never once considered to offer.

Senior Ken also didn’t care to share all of this. I signed up for LYTE team again because that’s what I did for the past 2 years. I continued going to church because that’s what I did for my whole life. I made it clear to the world that I was the same “Christian Ken” as ever because that’s what mattered to me. I didn’t care for anything else. In the back of my mind, I justified myself saying, “even if I don’t feel like a Christian on the inside, God can still use my actions for His will”. And thus I began senior year with this sentiment, again caught up with the same old cycle of doing things for God instead of dwelling with God. To be clear, I’m positive God used me for good ( “You take what the enemy meant for evil/ And You turn it for good”) even when I didn’t feel a fire for God, for the Church, or for my brothers and sisters.

To this end, I want to write a confession and a request for forgiveness to those that I may have hurt, may have neglected, or may have deceived during this time. Psalm 139:24 sings, “See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting”. God really struggled with me when I began reflecting upon my senior year, and He showed me the offensive ways that were within me and how there has always been a better way, a way everlasting.

This conveniently leads to me arriving on campus at the University of Michigan. After surviving a turbulent time as a senior and a summer that quickly came to an end, I was promptly placed on the bottom of the academic totem pole once again. To be honest, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to stay Christian in college. After all that time of faking it, I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. I was just tired, tired of trying so hard, tired of keeping a reputation, and tired of failing again and again. I resigned myself to the fact that if I was going to keep sinning, I could at least drop the act. But God had different plans; He wasn’t going to give me up so easily.

One after the other, opportunities came up for me to join a fellowship and a church. Whether it was Will and Anthony bringing me around, going church hopping with some friends, or attending the welcome events of various on-campus fellowships, the beginning of my freshman year was quite busy with other Christians. Soon, I fell in love with the people of Harvest Mission Community Church of Ann Arbor. It was refreshing to not have the burden of serving and the burden of doing. I simply showed up one night to a small-group gathering and the leaders accepted me with open arms and a warm smile. All around me were brothers and sisters dedicated to living life on life with other believers. I was overwhelmed by how hospitable they were from the get-go. But God didn’t merely use this as an opportunity to fill my social needs, but He also made it clear that this was a time of refocusing and restructuring of my faith...bottom up.

The first thing God taught me was that He places specific people in my life to remind me that He is still faithfully working in my life. God placed older brothers and sisters that were unashamed of their past, their sins, and their shortcomings. For some of them, it was their years in undergrads. For others, it was only a year before. Nevertheless, they just poured out their lives to me, and by the end of it, I was enamored by how faithful they had stayed with God, and how faithful God had stayed with them.

Constant encounters with God’s faithful eventually struck me deep in the heart. I couldn’t help but begin to feel curious about who exactly God was and how God could work in such great ways. This curiosity was a first for me and marked a time in which I had to rediscover my faith.

A popular saying in my church is that, “You have to rediscover your faith in every new life stage”. For me, I rediscovered my faith through the Word. I realized that in the past, it was rare for the words of the Bible to actually mean anything to my life. Nothing really struck me deep, nor did the Word change how I viewed my life. For me, it was like reading a textbook for an exam and to be forgotten by next semester. Yet, when I picked up the Word again after a few-month hiatus, I started to pick up different things from the same words. I’m confident that God, in restoring my soul and my life, also gave me a new set of eyes because words began to jump out and invade my life like never before. For example, the first chapter of James held me speechless. Trials in life don’t merely happen to you. They are actually the building blocks to our faith, and when we have remained steadfast under trial, we are left more complete and satisfied in God than ever before. How wonderful it is to know that not only is God guiding us through tumultuous times, but in fact there is an end-goal. The second thing I learned is that God is purposeful, a master in His craft, and truly all-knowing. God, in control of all things, all the waves of the storm, is also meticulously in control of my life amidst the storms.

“God the Father” is a common saying in the Christian community. For me, I never understood what it meant for God to be my Father. It has always been hard for me to picture God, the creator of the universe and all that dwells in it, is also my very own father. But through the Word, I was finally catching on to what “God the Father” meant. Going back to my newfound curiosity for the Word and for God himself, I came to understand that the Word was providing a sense of assurance that I never knew existed before. The Word wasn’t just a sacred text outlining religious doctrines, but more importantly it is the way God communicates His love for us, both on a humanity scale as well as a personal level. The last part in particular resonated with me when I came into the presence of God in complete desperation. I just came back onto campus from winter break, and our church started a two week period of fasting. In the process of abstaining from meats, God met me through the Word and showed me that He is a good Father by providing, not food, but spiritual nourishment. During the time of fasting, I was feeling, in general, very fatigued and without motivation. In Michigan, it was getting colder and darker every day, and my mood was downtrodden to say the least. But in my weakest moment, God the Father came to give me a pick-me-up, and led me in deep prayer and devotional time, which established a long-running routine of daily reflection that lasted the whole semester. God the Father was both disciplining and maturing me through a time of fasting and repentance, but He also couldn’t help himself from embracing me through Biblical breakthroughs. The third thing I learned was that God is my heavenly Father.

Here’s a quick recap: I learned that God places people in my life to remind me of His work, that God is in control of my life because He has not brought me this far to abandon me, and finally that He is a good Father for doing so. These three points combine to ultimately culminate to my mission’s experience. Feel free to read my Final Support Letter Update (it’s in the Empower Facebook, you just gotta scroll down). In that letter, I talked about God shattering my heart into pieces because God needed to restructure my heart for His people, His broken people. This sentiment has stayed strong coming out of missions. Truly, I am the clay and God is the potter. He forms me according to His will and when I get too dry and brittle, about to break under the weight of this world, God nourishes me, satisfies me with the everlasting water, and keeps working with me to form me into His beautiful creation. In the same way, God is in pursuit of my heart. God knew that my heart was stretched all over the place for things of the world. In His infinite wisdom, He knew that the only way for me to continue dwelling with Him is to break my heart into pieces, refine it, and shape it again. “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” (James 1:2-4). My heart had holes, scars, wounds keeping me from loving Him, the Church, other people, and even myself. Apathy, bitterness, and neglect were just the product of my ruined heart. But God wants my heart to be complete, lacking in nothing. God chose to pursue my heart, and in the process mended it.

This was all said not to show that it’s all rainbows and sunshine since my semester ended. In fact, with the quarantine situation and all, it’s been harder than ever to be motivated for God and His word. But, the beauty of God and His relentless nature is that He continues to pursue me when I don’t feel like pursuing Him. He meets me where I am at, more than halfway and beckons for me. I’ve gone through the trial of my senior year, and I now know that I can go through it again, this time holding fast to the God that is in pursuit of my heart.

#building blocks of faith #testimony #God shapes us

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perpetually-jungshook · 8 years ago

Text

How to Change a Fuqboi (Hoseok)

Word Count: 3,912

Loosely inspired by the song “Fuqboi” by Hey Violet and “Not My Type at All” by Jacob Whitesides

Rated M (language and like REALLY REALLY suggestive sh!t yo 😂)

How To Change A Fuqboi

Volume 1: Happenstance (Jungkook) Volume 2: For-Getting His Attention (Jimin) Volume 3: Bonding and Binding (Taehyung) Volume 4: One and Done (Yoongi) Volume 5: Unintentional Liar (Seokjin) Volume 6: To Be Loved (Namjoon) Volume 7: Checklist (Hoseok)

✩✩✩♔✩✩✩

Step 1) Pay attention to first impressions*

After a little…thinking time, I have decided to write this last volume in sight of the fact that there is something we failed to discuss earlier.

In the words of the great poet William Shakespeare, “Some are born as a fuckboy, some achieve fuckboy-hood, and some have fuckboy-hood thrust upon them.” Okay, yes, I changed it a LITTLE. But that’s beside the point. In this volume, we will be addressing the third version, those that have “fuckboy-hood thrust upon them” which I will henceforth reference as a “convert.” Often times, these are guys who have experienced emotional trauma in a romantic relationship, but instead of working toward a healing resolution, they will compensate by seeking comfort in… something else.

Jung Hoseok, a name that anyone- nay, EVERYONE in the Middle Earth dormitory has heard.

Jung Hoseok, the dancer, the straight A student, the part time waiter in the university’s only sit-down restaurant.

Jung Hoseok, the most notorious fuckboy on campus.

See, rumor has it, he keeps this list, a LITERAL list. It has no title and no explanation, but neither is ever really necessary. It only consists of names…about three hundred of them, though the general consensus stands that slightly more than half are crossed out. And let’s just say it’s not because he’s handing out party invitations.

So obviously, when you moved into your Middle Earth apartment, having transferred over from another university, within the first two days you knew who he was and that you should stay the hell away from him at all costs.

You want NOTHING to do with Jung Hoseok.

It’s not that he’s trouble, because let’s face it, you are NO stranger that word in any sense, but rather your avoidance of him has everything to do with how you first met and what he said to you. Or maybe what he didn’t say.

The empty carton of cigarettes stares back at you with a vengeance, the last one poised between your fingers.

By now, one would think you’d learn to keep a reserve, but NO. You let your vices eat you alive and then cyclically get angry when you neglect them out of laziness. You shrug, skillfully flicking on your lighter before letting the tip of the flame kiss the edge of the cigarette.

Fine. Whatever. Learn nothing, that’s okay too.

Taking a thoughtful drag, shifting your position at the base of the tree, you pull out this quarter’s class schedule and the campus map to look them over one last time instead of watching students pass between small dormitory buildings, meeting neighbors, greeting friends.

As you have or desire neither, you devote your attention to the paper, pretending to be thoroughly interested in wherever the hell “Science Lecture Hall B” is located- especially as some boy decides that out of ALL the decorative trees to sit under, he’ll be occupying the space under YOURS.

“You know this is a smoke free campus, right?” he deposits his book bag beside the trunk, looking at you like you just killed a man.

You arch an eyebrow, unsure whether to be irritated or curious, “You know I don’t actually care, right?”

“Great, because I don’t either,” he laughs at his own bad joke, taking a seat and stretching out his legs. You’ve got to admit (or I’ll force you to), he’s a little attractive with his bright smile, tanned skin, lean frame, and dark, feathery hair- but oh GOD is that a choker?

“Fantastic,” you smirk before taking a long drag and blowing the smoke right into his face, hating the burning, but loving the coughing fit your new companion bends into.

“Was that…really necessary?” he bats at the air, action so (possibly unintentionally) comical that it makes you laugh. The boy seems to take this as the go-ahead to continue, “You got a name?”

“Would you believe me if I said no?” you’re more amused than anything at this point, ego being stroked fervently by his insistence on finding everything you say hilarious. You want to believe your interactions are reluctant, but the smile on your face as you tell him your name says otherwise.

He extends his hand for a shake and you’re one hundred percent ready to accept the greeting until he says, “I’m Hoseok. Jung Hoseok.”

“Oh.”

You immediately retract, having skimmed the skin of his palm, watching him now with a look of disgust. His smile falls.

“Did I do something wrong?”

You stand, shoving your schedule into your bag so haphazardly that it audibly crumples, “Don’t think I haven’t heard your name before. I know what you are.”

“What I am…?”

You decide to not grace him with an answer, opting instead to walk away. But the persistent boy follows.

“Wait, what do you mean? I don’t understand.”

If your roommate hadn’t warned you about him, you might think Hoseok is actually upset by your leaving, rather than simply pining for attention. If your name is on that notorious list of his, you want absolutely nothing to do with him- a thought that I encourage enthusiastically.

You drop the cigarette, stomping on the smoldering end until satisfied, words gruff, “You don’t NEED to understand. Now, unless you have a pack of smokes that you want to share, we’re done here.”

*Elaboration: first impressions are not always correct and should not be used to judge the ENTIRETY of a person, but rather your impression of them should based in what they do to maintain a good image or repair a bad one.

Step 2) Keep an open mind**

By now, we’ve learned changing people is close to impossible and best case scenario, the only person you CAN change is yourself. Still- humor me for a second, we might consider the possibility that he’s not an ENTIRELY bad guy.

We’ve gone over the importance of compromise (see Volume 3) and have learned why baby steps are vital (see Volume 2). To help a converted fuckboy heal, first you must have a grasp on these two lessons. Then, apply the concept of “standing your ground” (see Volume 1) and slowly but surely, coming from a place of love, offer kindness, resources, and most importantly, a safety net.

A balmy breeze filters through the open window above you, cracked to ward off the stubborn smell of body odor that seems to linger in every corner of every dorm room you’ve inhabited, the kind that persists no matter how much Lysol or Febreze you use.

You keep telling yourself that someday, you’ll get used to it and won’t have to fight the urge to put on one of those medieval bird masks that shove posies up your nose.

And while you have not purchased said mask, someday still has yet to come.

Your thumb leisurely drags across the surface of your phone screen as your eyes fervently follow the words. Your muscles tighten in anticipation of the climax. Your fingers ball into a fist around a handful of sheets.

“THAT’S IT?” you whisper, frustrated, rolling over to bury your face in your pillow. “What the hell! Is she a lesbian or NOT? WHY doesn’t it say explicitly?”

You lift your face to look at the last qualification of the fourth step of the 5th Volume of your favorite satire, How to Change a Fuqboi. The ambiguity killed you, but I’m sure you ALSO understood that this was kind of the point and supposed to be part of the series’s charm.

Scrolling all the way back up to the top of the post, you decide that yes, you have time to finish Volume 6 before class starts as well- maybe even get a peek at the first step of Volume 7.

“Oh, back in a retail store are we?” you mumble to your phone screen, recalling the several other stories that abused this setting. “Are you just running out of ideas? Oh well, I think the change of pace is nice.”

Change of pace my left ass cheek.

“What I don’t understand is why you always assume we don’t listen,” you roll your eyes as you move on to Volume 7, skimming through the first step. “And what is this ‘protagonist doesn’t give a shit’ thing? How is she supposed to change Hoseok ‘with love’ or ‘compassion’ if she doesn’t interact with him?”

I just thought I’d shake up the characters a bit. There’s no need to scold me…

“Well,” you stand, pocketing your phone after glancing at the vague words of the second step of the 7th Volume, “That’s enough of you yelling at ME.”

Are you seriously challenging me right now? I’m the narrator, you can’t do that.

“Hell yeah I am. Just watch. I’ll show you who’s ‘not listening.’”

You exit the dorm, a bounce in your step and a smile on your face. Ah, but don’t forget, little bird, you have class in ten minutes.

“Well shit.”

Two hours and a surprisingly interesting lecture later, you weave your way through the Middle Earth apartments, searching for that head of dark, feathery hair.

Jung Hoseok had never approached you in the two years you’d gone to the school, meaning you probably weren’t on his list. This… is a little bit of a setback, namely because you’d have to spontaneously generate sexual interest, something you’re not all too familiar with, but you’ve never been one to give up easily.

You hear his bubbly laugh first, gaze honing in on the notorious fuckboy who appears to be all sunshine and smiles.

His companion seems the complete opposite, a pretty girl in a “sweatpants, oversized flannel, ‘I’d bite off your dick during a blowjob if you say the wrong thing’” kind of way. She takes a long drag on her cigarette, completely ignoring Hoseok as they walk.

“I can do this,” you assure yourself quietly, much to my amusement. “Just be brave and stand your ground. HOSEOK!”

Even at a distance, you can see him stiffen with surprise, looking around with confusion written on his expression. The girl takes this opportunity to disappear.

“Hoseok!” you call again, trotting forward until you stand at a respectable distance to introduce yourself.

The boy greets you with an ounce of skepticism, obviously unsure why you, a complete stranger, are randomly approaching him.

See, from the first volume, each pair has met by HAPPENSTANCE… at least as far as we know. Never have any of the protagonists first approached the fuckboy. By doing this, you’re asserting self-confidence and dominance, something that is often a turn off for them.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” you give his hand a firm shake.

I’m telling you, confidence is NOT the way to-

“All good things I hope,” he laughs, running his fingers through his hair.

“Definitely. My friend was right. You ARE one of the cutest waiters on campus.”

Hoseok, now probably in familiar territory, visibly relaxes, “One of the cutest? Please, sweetheart, I’m THE cutest.”

There’s a gravitational, toxic sort of positivity in his presence, one that I’m sure every girl on his literal “to do” list has fallen for.

Anyway, you two sound like freshmen, flirting like that. He’s never going to-

“I’m assuming you’ve been to the restaurant then?”

You shift the weight of your books to your other arm, tugging at a strand of your hair shyly but not breaking eye contact, “Sadly, no. I’m very indecisive so going ANYWHERE I haven’t eaten before is… a little bit intimidating.”

Okay, I see what you’re doing. You’re giving him the option to offer to eat there and take charge of what to order. You’re playing up to his masculinity by letting him “be an expert” on the subject. Learning how to seduce fuckboys is NOT part of this series and I seriously doubt that you’ll hit all the marks necessary to-

“What? You haven’t?” his tone suggests that this is the single most astonishing thing he’s ever heard. “Well good thing I’ve got some free time then. You MUST let me treat you to lunch. It’s only the right thing to do.”

This is a trap. He’s trying to manipulate you to get you to spend more time with him by… wait. Never mind. YOU’RE the one who WANTS this to happen.

Whatever.

“Actually, I have class in a few minutes,” you bite your lip coyly, fibbing, playing hard to get. “But why don’t I give you my number and we could meet up sometime tonight?”

Hoseok sighs, pouting, but hands you his phone, “That’s too bad, I’m going to be working.”

“Then I’ll see you there and you can… recommend something,” you wink, earning a knowing smirk from him.

“Sounds good. I look forward to our little date.”

You say nothing else, turning on heel and shifting the weight of your books again as you stride away like you own the place.

Seriously, I can’t believe you just did that.

Do you even KNOW the trouble you’ve probably just gotten yourself into?

You go back to your dorm after turning a few unnecessary corners, making sure Hoseok isn’t following and as soon as the door closes, you plop down on your bed, opening the Tumblr app, skipping down to step three of Volume 7. You whisper, “Baby steps and compromise, huh? I can do that.”

**Clarification: By open mind, I STILL don’t mean “be a doormat.” Continue to stand your ground, just refrain from being judgmental.

Step 3) Remember a little thing called “follow through”

Because we are simply reverting and not converting, this process will be both easier and more difficult. It is typically in a convert’s original nature to be emotionally responsive and caring, so getting him to return to this is less demanding than teaching it from scratch. However, it might start opening up some old scars.

By now, we’ve also learned the significance of persistence (see Volume 4), the ability to discern between types of situations (see Volume 5), and more importantly, being able to see which fuckboys are worth changing (see Volume 6).

It is good to note that each case will be a little bit different, but some are more incompatible with change than others.

“Well, well, well! I didn’t think you’d actually show up,” Hoseok trots over with a thousand watt smile aimed directly at you, a lethal weapon.

“How could I not?” you giggle, picking up the menu, “We had a date after all.”

“Touché.” he laughs lightly, easily, “So, can I start you off with something to drink?”

You let him call the shots, ordering what he suggests without hesitance or an ounce of shame. You also make sure to eat slowly, meaning you’re still around when he goes on break, which he “conveniently” decides to spend with you.

However, YOU “conveniently” make yourself scarce just before his shift ends.

This playing around, TOYING with him, continues for a week, teases of interactions with genuine laughter and flirtatious glances in their wake. Nothing serious happens as you barely touch him beyond a purposeful brush of the hand or arm, a lingering touch on shoulders or knees…but then you happen to bump into him on a Friday night.

It’s pleasantly warm, a breeze caressing your cheeks, sending strands of your hair tickling across your skin. The lights around campus are just beginning to turn on, bathing the pathways in soft white.

You’re on your way back from the campus’s only pizza place- because let’s be real, the only date you’ve got is with Netflix- when you see the familiar dark head of feathery hair. You’re about to let the opportunity pass, tired of keeping up this “sexually confident” facade, but then he calls your name and it’s not like you can IGNORE him.

OH WAIT YOU TOTALLY CAN. But you don’t.

Hoseok nods goodbye to the girl who was entrapped in their conversation before he bounds over, “So, where are you going this late at night? Pretty girls shouldn’t be walking alone.”

This is where I MUST remind you of the checklist. Y’know, the one he keeps with all the names of the girls he wants to FUCK. That one?

“Look, Hoseok,” you sigh, pushing a few stray strands of hair out of your eyes, resting the pizza box against your hip. “You’re a funny, great guy and I love talking to you, but I had an exam today and I’m a little stressed out.”

Yes, good decision.

“Well let me help you… destress?” he quirks an eyebrow, lifting his hands, palms up in a suspended shrug. “You said it yourself, sweetheart. I’m funny. Humor lightens the mood, relaxes people.”

You let out an indecisive hum, biting your lip to bide your time. I’m sure you’re contemplating how much effort you actually want to put into proving me wrong, but-

“Okay, you have a point.”

ARE YOU KIDDING? Can you at least stop interrupting m-?

“Just Netflix, no chilling,” you warn teasingly.

Now you’re just being petty.

Hoseok gently takes the pizza box from you, “Why don’t you let ME do the heavy lifting? You just focus on leading the way.”

The two of you settle down on the bed in your room, comfortably lounging side by side as you start up your laptop and scroll through the list of recommended movies. I’d warn you that he was watching with a smirk the whole time, but I doubt you’d care.

Eventually, you agree on a comedy, but when you offer him a slice of pizza, you do the worst thing possible and bridge the gap to allow for interaction.

“So this ‘no chilling’ policy,” Hoseok asks before taking a bite, chewing to allow for a suspenseful, pregnant pause, “Does this mean no cuddling? Because, at least for me, that’s like a staple for movies.”

“Alright, I’ll allow it,” you shrug, scooting over until your arm is pressed against his, computer swaying haphazardly in your lap. “But hands to yourself.”

He gasps, placing his free hand over his heart, “I’m shocked you’d think so lowly of me.”

It takes all of twenty minutes for to you find yourself straddling Hoseok’s waist, his back pressed against the wall, his hands roaming between your shoulder blades.

Your lips mold to his and though he’s silently asked for entry twice, you’ve denied his tongue access. This will be on your terms, of course.

Your fingers travel up his shirt, skirting under the cloth easily and ghosting the firm muscles of his abdomen. Hoseok’s skin is peculiarly soft and you trace your hands across his chest, palms devouring every inch until you press and lightly drag your nails down the contours of his ribs.

He groans and you take the opportunity to slide your tongue past the seam of his lips. I bet you want him taste like something nice, mint maybe, but it’s likely both of you can’t get past the pizza.

Oh, sorry, am I ruining the moment? I’ll just… be over here. Keep doing your thing.

Breathless.

Hoseok’s fingers begin to wander, exploring under the loose fitting fabric of your shirt until he’s able to lift it off of your frame. You take the opportunity to return the favor, bearing his toned chest.

Both of you pause for a moment, kiss broken, searching the other’s expression for something, but you only find a playful glint in his eyes and a reassuring smile.

I wonder what he saw in you.

Your attention continues the downward motion, tracing his neck, caressing his chest, dropping down to the trail of fine hair that starts at his bellybutton and disappears into his jeans. Before he can follow your gaze, you grind your hips against his.

“Fuck,” is all he whispers- an eloquent response- a laugh lacing his undertones.

You hush him with a quick nip on his bottom lip, reminding him that your housemates are only a wall away. He nods, running his hands up your thighs. You grind down on him again.

Likely in an attempt to keep himself quiet, Hoseok attaches his lips to your neck, grazing his teeth and tongue along the soft skin under your jaw. His fingers find the straps of your bra, tugging them down before deftly unhooking the back clasp with a single snap.

And this noise, this small insignificant sound, causes you to stiffen.

Abruptly leaning forward, pulling him flush against you and wrapping your arms around him, you keep the cloth of your bra pressed to your chest, a barrier only held up by the embrace.

Hoseok immediately stops, concern in his tone, “You okay?”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper, burying your nose in the crook of his neck. “My last boyfriend didn’t… I can’t… I’m sorry. Just- not yet.”

What? Now you’re going to let him play the hero? Stroke his ego a bit more?

Hoseok carefully snaps the hooks of your bra back into place before wrapping his arms around you comfortingly, “No sweetheart, don’t worry. I understand.”

“You do?”

He does.

“Yeah,” he nods, “I… well something happened to me too.”

***Define: FOLLOW THROUGH (noun)- The continuing of an action or task to its conclusion

Step 4) …?

“Alright what are we watching today?” Hoseok hops onto your bed, setting down the pizza box to clap his hands.

“You pick, I think I might just nap.”

“Sweetheart, you promised you’d stay up this time,” he whines humorously, pushing out his lower lip. “Did you lie to me?”

“Never,” you admonish, joining him on the mattress to lean your back against the wall, “I’m just really tired.”

“You’re always really tired.”

You laugh. “I know.”

It had been five weeks since that little escapade in your dorm room, but for some reason, it did nothing to hinder your “friendship” with Hoseok. In fact, Friday night “Netflix sans chill” had become a weekly occurrence. Neither of you attempted to resume the…promiscuous activities.

I’ll admit, I’m a little impressed. BUT JUST A LITTLE AND YOU CAN’T QUOTE ME ON THAT OKAY?

You fall asleep halfway through the movie with your head on Hoseok’s shoulder, but he doesn’t wake you until half past midnight, and it’s only because he needs to head home. With a sleepy hug goodbye and a few more jokes for the road, you assure him that you WILL, in fact, be stopping by his dorm room tomorrow to help him study for that calculus test coming up (even though he probably doesn’t need it).

You close the door, a smile playing on your lips, voice quiet as you say, “He’s changing, y’know.”

Right. Changing. You didn’t even read the last step.

All you’ve done is befriend him and bond over heartbreak that, quite frankly, MIGHT NOT HAVE EVEN HAPPENED TO YOU. At this point, I don’t whether or not you lied to him. AND I’M THE NARRATOR.

“Wasn’t that a Volume Five thing?”

Yes, but does reader want to see the exact same trope played out a SECOND ti-?

“What’s this?” you interrupt my thoroughly delightful and inspiring rant, walking over to the wastebasket at the foot of your bed.

You’d emptied it yesterday and you hadn’t thrown anything away before Hoseok arrived. But now a crumpled piece of paper sits, harmless, at the bottom.

Obviously, Hoseok threw it away and you don’t want to pry, but from what you CAN see, it looks like some sort of list.

✩✩✩♔✩✩✩

EOPQ 6: Which volume was your favorite and why??

Send me your theories/answers here. Or just come say hi ;) please make sure to include the EOPQ number thank you!

Support me/Donate and get some super rad 😎 rewards

Much love ~🐰 xx

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pluckyredhead · 8 years ago

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Daredevil 101: Typhoid Mary, Part 2

CONTENT WARNING: Same as last time - dubcon, attempted sexual assault, sexual violence, infidelity, child abuse, ableist depictions of mental illness.

When we last left the Nocenti/Romita run of Daredevil, Matt had begun cheating on Karen with the sweet, innocent Mary Walker, little guessing her other identity as the unhinged killer Typhoid. He was also about to face off against Foggy in the courtroom, via a proxy at least, with Foggy representing the slimy corporation Kelco, whose illegal toxic waste dumping had blinded a little boy named Tyrone, and Matt coaching Tyrone’s inexperienced lawyer.

Foggy, canonically one of the best and most expensive lawyers in the MU, somewhat pityingly expects to run rings around his opposition - until Matt walks in (just as an audience member), and he completely falls apart:

Get a haircut, Matt.

While the jury deliberates, Matt goes to the apartment Foggy now shares with Glori to rub it in:

“What happened to your morality, Foggy? P.S. I have literally attempted murder multiple times."

Foggy doesn’t say a word in this whole sequence, which just...baby. My sweet baby. MATT’S GOOD OPINION MEANS SO MUCH TO HIM.

Anyway Matt concludes his speechifying by offering Foggy a job at the clinic and is about to leave when Glori hauls him into the other room and reads him the riot act, pointing out that Matt is acting like this at least in part because he’s pissed that Foggy and Glori started dating after Glori dumped Matt. Matt ignores this and high-and-mighties his way out of the apartment, and...that’s, um, kind of the last we see of Glori for a really long time??? Which is so weird??? I love you, Glori, I’m sorry that you, like most of Matt’s love interests, eventually come to a Tragic End (TM).

The jury deliberation goes on for long enough to Daredevil to fight Typhoid again, but just as she’s about to kill him:

Mary loves Matt so much (apparently...this is not a relationship that has much emotional weight, since we basically only ever see them sucking face while neglecting a blind child and never, like, having things in common) that she’s managed to exert some sort of control over Typhoid for the first time. Matt, meanwhile, is still completely oblivious.

Matt dries off, and the jury reconvenes:

SOMEONE GET TYRONE AWAY FROM MATT, JESUS.

Meanwhile, Foggy finally does what he’s known he has to do for issues and issues now, and quits.

(That second panel in the second row is a reference to Fisk having attempted to pay off a juror, which Matt managed to put a stop to.)

Anyway, Tyrone’s family wins their lawsuit! Hooray! Fisk is furious, and also increasingly jealous of Typhoid’s toying with Matt:

I’m pretty sure this is supposed to make us thing Typhoid is even more evil and disgusting, which, you can move right along with your slut-shaming and your fatphobia, Daredevil comics.

This raises the question of whether Fisk is committing infidelity here, since he is technically still married, though Vanessa is currently institutionalized in Europe due to the trauma she sustained at the hands of the, um, sewer people. Or, what I find more interesting - whether Fisk thinks he’s committing infidelity, because the overall morality of having what is technically an affair when one’s partner is ill and indefinitely incapable of consent is certainly not something I feel equipped to make a call on. But Fisk is very invested in the sanctity of marriage - note his meddling in the Nelson marriage - and I don’t think he's shown with anyone besides Vanessa or Typhoid. It’s also worth noting that Matt, who is in a similar situation many years later, does consider himself to have cheated.

And speaking of cheating!

Any guy who ever said to me “Oh, darling...you’re like a child” would immediately find himself dumped so hard, even if he did look like Matt Murdock/Charlie Cox/kind of a redheaded Robert Redford in terrible sunglasses. But this is what I’m talking about when I say that Mary is all supplicant and innocent and sweet, and also what I’m talking about when I say this is a full-on affair where Matt is considering leaving Karen, and not just the occasional dubcon-y stolen kiss.

Also, for those of you who were not yet born in the 80s, that dress is real.

Typhoid has realized that Mary won’t allow her to kill Daredevil - oh, and Fisk explicitly told her not to, because he wants Matt broken, not dead - but she decides to get someone else to do her dirty work anyway, and uses Fisk’s IBM Henchman Database to hire all of Matt’s rogues from this particular era (none particularly interesting...Bullet, Bushwacker, I’m already asleep) to beat the shit out of him instead:

That last line is such a cliche I can’t even make a joke about it. I’m so tired.

Brief interlude for Matt and Karen to rescue some missing kids with the help of the Fatboys, and then for Matt to be adorable:

I love the consistent canon that Matt is great with kids, and this scene is so heartbreaking and sweet (even if Butch hasn’t shown up since like 1990 and Matt hasn’t thought about him once, but what can you do?).

ANYWAY. Back to Typhoid destroying Matt’s life!

There are a lot of covers during this run with Matt in a tattered costume and a subject position, but this one might be the most explicit - especially with the hints of pink on the torn underside of the costume and the massive phallic object between Mary’s legs. (And the liquid trickling down Matt’s face towards his open mouth, can’t forget that!) Over and over again we see Matt weak and in peril, defeated and violated, both by Mary and later by the gender-bending Mephisto.

What strikes me is that Matt’s not just victimized here - he’s sexualized. He’s objectified. Matt’s always been a fairly lithe, graceful hero as opposed to your Supermans, your Caps, your Punishers, and in these covers - which, remember, are a marketing tool, meant to entice customers to buy - he’s portrayed as beautiful and eroticized in an entirely submissive, feminine way. And this was during the chest-thumping, uber macho, xenophobic 80s!

But it’s part of the handwringing, too. The fact that he’s an eroticized victim is part of what makes Typhoid so threatening. If part of Matt didn’t “want it,” she wouldn’t be scary. (PLEASE NOTE I am not saying that sexual assault survivors want their assault in any way! I’m talking about the unhealthy construction of this narrative and the underlying anxiety of it, especially to the straight male reader.)

And while we’re talking about the underlying anxiety of changing gender roles and also power dynamics and also kink...

Yeah, I don’t even know what to do with that last panel.

This is after Typhoid has sicced Matt’s rogues on him and they’ve all beaten him to hell and back. He starts hallucinating that his father’s ghost is yelling at him in an alley, and is then rolled by some random petty criminals and beaten further. So yeah, he’s calling some random mook “daddy” there.

I honestly don’t know if it’s intended to be kinky, but...I kind of think it is? Again, so much of this run is about the dangerous subversion of gender roles. Early on Matt gets hit on by a dude in a seedy bar (“Well, well, well...red spandex, tight as a drum. You pitching or catching, Redman?”); in the next post, he’ll kiss someone who normally presents as male and it will UPEND THE MORAL FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE, I’M NOT KIDDING.

So yeah...when I look at Matt here - chest bared, head bowed, legs spread, calling the person beating him “Daddy” - I can’t help thinking that this is yet another lesson on the dangerous enticement that is male submission.

Matt eventually tangles with Typhoid while still in this sorry state, and she manages to push Mary down far enough to strike the killing blow and throw him off a bridge (though she does shed a solitary tear over it):

Matt doesn’t die. (Surprise! They do still publish Daredevil comics, after all. In fact, Matt’s never totally died and come back, though he has faked his death at least four times that I can think of off the top of my head.) He just lies there under the bridge until he’s attacked by an evil vacuum cleaner.

...Yeah, so this had something to do with the big company-wide “Inferno” crossover, which I didn’t read, but all the electronics in the city come to life and attack people? And there’s a vacuum cleaner under this bridge?

Anyway Matt fights it of, and then who should show up to take him to the hospital?

Why, it’s Typhoid Mary of the incredibly obvious name! Judging by her hair not being in weird inexplicable dreads and her speech bubbles being white and not pink - and the fact that Matt recognizes her as Mary - I guess she’s attained some sort of compromise between her two personalities for the moment?

Meanwhile, Karen has been keeping the Fatboys safe with the help of a guest-starring Natasha and worrying herself sick over Matt’s disappearance. She’s confused when Mary shows up at the hospital to see Matt as well, and especially when Mary (who appears to be fully Mary now, no Typhoid) calmly tells Karen that she knows all about Karen but it’s Mary that he really loves:

Karen leaves the hospital in tears and doesn’t return to their apartment.

The city burns. Matt eventually hauls himself out of bed and fights demons until the crossover is (almost) over.

The legal clinic is closed on the basis of Matt operating without a license. The Fatboys hate Matt now for cheating on Karen. Mary was an illusion.

Matt’s reaching rock bottom, and he’ll hit it in the next adventure: Gay Panic Road Trip to Albany! There are genetically engineered pigs and straw feminists, it’s pretty exciting.

#daredevil #daredevil 101

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