#Abuse victims being conditioned by their abusers or having “bad” trauma responses doesn't make them “enablers”

[drunkenclown555]

HUGE AND HONESTLY PROBABLY REALLY TRIGGERING RANT/VENT UNDER READ MORE

Person(s) this is about are blocked so if they see it then that's their own fault for bypassing the block to stalk me.

Also tagging @greasy-ugly-nasty because he's my boyfriend and he defended me through the entire ordeal.

TW/CW: Harsh language, addressing "you" but not targeted at anyone who is supposed to be reading this, ableism and sanism, SA, CSA, grooming and conditioning, rape, incest, abuse, mentioned drugging, misusing feminism to silence male abuse victims, mentioned transphobia and general queerphobia, mentioned triggering (CPTSD, OCD) and flashbacks (CPTSD, DID), dismissal of (trans) men (feelings, experiences, trauma, opinions, identity, ect), guilt tripping (and emotional abuse), ableism/sanism against systems, sanism targeting mania, gender essentialism, mistreatment of male abuse victims, victims being talked over, villainization of grooming and conditioning victims, villainization of "bad" victims, villainization of disabled/mentally ill people, villainization of "bad" trauma responses, probably more so read at your own risk and take care of yourself, thank you.

^ Woman who called a male grooming, rape, abuse and incest survivor an enabler* and misogynist** while he was actively having a mental breakdown about people being absolutely disgusting*** to male abuse victims

* Also called my bf (grooming, abuse and rape survivor) an enabler (because shes convinced you should just be able to snap out of it and man up or whatever the fuck)

** She tried to make it out like I was "talking about misandry when I specifically said " people who call themselves misandrists" (two very different things, which is why I specified)

*** See: victim blaming, justifying/celebrating abuse, shaming, vilifying, minimizing, ignoring, silencing, sexualizing and romanticizing, ect ect, so on so forth.

Insane superiority complex on this lady I dont even fucking care anymore, stop acting like your shit doesn't stink, you aren't a feminist you're just repackaging misogyny and using it against people you deem evil or lesser (cough cough, men, especially vulnerable men and queer men, cough cough). Gross as all hell. Rich people piss me off sooo bad, get off your inebriated equine (high horse).

Bringing this beautiful poem back too because it really fucking fits this whole "I know more than you about the very thing you've experienced because I am smarter than you and if you disagree then you're aggressive/stupid/childish/bigoted" mindset she has going on.

Imagine trying to faux-intellectual therapy-speak "I know more than you"-argue with a mentally disabled person with dyslexia and dysphasia. Thinly veiled ableism at its "finest", truly. Also telling someone with moral OCD they're a bigot for finally standing up for themselves? Dude just slap proud sanist in your bio and gtfo you're disgusting.

I'm so happy I dont have to tiptoe when talking about literally anything and walk on fucking eggshells anymore, I'm so happy I'm not waiting for you to yell at me for being dumb or selfish or whatever, I'm so fucking relieved this stupid "friend"ship is over. You didn't give a fuck abt me at any point, I was just an obedient doormat and attack dog. Using me like your fucking token transsexual, the fucking audacity to pretend I didn't respect you when you could literally blame me for shit that wasn't my fault and I'd apologize because of how much I respected your judgement.

"This friendship isn't built on respect", yeah no shit, it sure as hell isn't me disrespeting you tho. Writing off me having a mental breakdown as me being sensitive/unreasonable/aggressive and acting like the only thing you did wrong was "Mix two different friend groups". I didn't (and honestly probably still don't) have a problem with your friends (except Rhaa for the thinly veiled transphobia). Acting like I was being aggressive when I asked them not to react to me venting with question marks when I specifically went out of my way to not be mean Oh you fucking hate my guts lmao.

Continuing to push me to "talk" (argue with you) after I told you like four times that I was actively manic and having a mental health episode that made me unable to express what I was thinking and that I didn't want to talk (argue with you) because I was manic and then saying I should have "thought about that before I said inflammatory shit/vented at all"??? Like idk if you know this miss "I'm better than everyone" but when you are actively having a manic episode and a mental breakdown you dont really fucking think too much!!! Considering the fact YOU'RE MANIC AND HAVING A MENTAL BREAKDOWN. Not even mentioning the fact I WAS trying to be calm and collected and articulate myself despite how hard it fucking was. Like way to out yourself as not knowing shit (or giving a shit!) about severe mental illnesses. You dont fucking know shit so stop pretending you do, its embarrassing and quite honestly ableist and sanist. Fucking get a grip.

Also dont even get me started on the "well he should have thought about it before talking" when my BF told you I was especially sensitive about the topic you were arguing at me about at the moment due to the fact I very recently formed an alter who literally only exists to make me relive being sexually and physically abused and most likely fucking drugged. How fucking dare you honestly! You don't know what DID is like! You don't know what C-PTSD flashbacks so vivid you cry and scream and puke are like! I fucking hate singlets so much!!! How dare you, as a singlet, try to claim that a system needs to "calm down" after YOU triggered them! I'd be impressed by how confident in yourself you are if you weren't being such a fucking dick! The nerve, honestly!

Your comfort when talking about things you haven't experienced and TALKING OVER people who HAVE experienced it is fucking concerning. The fact you, as a cis woman, felt so incredibly comfortable talking to a male rape, grooming and incest survivor like you knew more than him on the topic is actually fucking nauseating. You aren't a man, you aren't a male rape survivor, you aren't a male incest survivor, you aren't a male grooming survivor.

I know damn well this whole fucking mindset you have is because you dont think men can be victims, you wouldn't have said shit if I was a woman or if the topic was about women. Pretending you're a feminist when you're actually contributing to the exact rape culture your swear up and down that you hate is fucking disgusting. This mindset is the exact reason boys and men who are raped dont speak out, because people like you think they're "lesser" victims. You are contributing to the culture that made ME refuse to open up about being groomed and raped. That is the culture YOU have chosen. The one you are so proud of that you're willing to berate a grooming, rape and incest survivor because he DARED to disagree with you. You are a horrible person and I want you to realize that before you go full fucking gender essentialist "men and boys deserve it."

TLDR: The person claiming I'm an enabler because I got groomed is an actual enabler.

[whispersleo]

MY TASTE IN MEN

This was supposed to be a warm-up meme sketch, but I started writing the comparisons seriously, so here’s the post...

Astarion and Illario

They become "villains"/bad guys as a response to trauma.

They use their beauty and body to deceive and objectify themselves to get what they believe they want.

They have suffered physical, verbal, and emotional abuse that would break anyone.

They don't want to see themselves as victims, nor show—they hate feeling—weakness. They want to be stronger and crave power at any cost.

They display superiority toward others when their entire lives they have been beneath or in someone's shadow.

They have become so accustomed to lying and manipulating that I doubt they even know their true selves.

They approach someone who welcomes them with open arms, all the while thinking about how to use that person.

They fall to pieces if you show them genuine affection and love, what it’s truly meant to be.

They would kill for you.

They are my wet rats; they have no body hair.

I think, after all, they do enjoy sex—it probably involves unconventional things.

What they want and what they need are VERY different things.

I can fix them.

They have a strange relationship with blood.

They would betray you if it meant saving their own lives.

Showing vulnerability is the last thing they want, and strangely, it's what would save both of them from becoming monsters.

I have a weakness for men who try to kill me. You're screaming for me to fix you babe.

This could end very badly or very well.

They are charming and it is easy to fall for their lies instead of seeing beyond that mask.

People see them as "dumb" when they are tremendously intelligent. They may not be textbook smart, but they know how to read people, ask the right questions at the right time, they wait for the opportunity and always analyze the situations they find themselves in. People call them "dumb" because it's easier to accept it instead of the complex idea that a character can be smart but a moron at the same time.

They won't be jerks to you, but they'll probably treat the waitress on the date poorly if she fucks up something.

They are the kind of person who is worth being romantically with, but to get there you have to take off their mask and that in itself is a great effort.

They definitely want to be someone's first choice, for once in their lives.

Deep down, all they want is adoration, love and respect.

I want to hold them and tell them that they deserve to be loved without any ties or conditions to that love.

Gale, Emmrich and Lucanis

They are sweet by nature, kind souls despite all the pain they've been through.

Showing kindness is what makes them strong.

Once they fall in love with you, they are lost.

They have enormous insecurities.

They feel the weight of the world on their shoulders all the time.

Great facial and body hair.

They have a strange relationship with death.

They have a huge heart that yearns to love.

I would feel very proud to introduce them as my partner. Like yes this good man loves me, isn't that amazing?

They have self-destructive tendencies.

It makes me blush to hear them laugh because it’s the most precious sound in the world.

I would feel safe with them around.

They would die for you.

Gale and Emmrich

They are professors, and I DEFINITELY don't feel an incredible attraction toward men who can teach me interesting and unknown subjects in depth (of course, that DOESN'T turn me on).

They are the smartest and kindest in this room.

They love to show and share their studies and knowledge with anyone willing to listen.

They are patient.

They know how to listen.

They offer their opinion when you clearly didn't ask for it.

Too many times they want to help or give advice without being asked.

They've had many partners, but they love you a lot, and that willingness to learn how to love again is one of their most beautiful qualities.

In some strange way, they know how to fight when I think they're meant to be treated with care and delicacy or they'll break (just kidding).

Oh, and by the way, both of them are mages—guess it's sexy that you can do a bunch of magical things...

They are nerds even when it comes to sex and I love that. Of course I don't know anything about anatomy, do you want to explain that to me, professor?

Astarion, Illario and Lucanis

They have killed more people than I should feel comfortable with.

"The hands that cradled your face and tilted it upwards to kiss your forehead are soaked in unfathomable quantities of blood." But they cradled me, yes?

They are trained assassins, and that raises some questions about my own morals.

Why do we kill?

What does it feel like to take a life?

What does it feel like to hold the weapon with which you snatch away the last moments of someone who was as human as you and me, who had desires, fears, aspirations, who didn’t want to die?

What kind of superiority do you think you have to do that and see your target as nothing more than a simple cockroach?

How can you sleep at night?

Do those thoughts torment you, or are your dreams sweet as if you hadn’t done anything wrong?

How do you decide that someone deserves to die, my love?

Would you kill me like you've killed so many if, in some way, you believe I deserve it?

Don’t you think the sins you see in others, in those you kill, are also your own?

I LOVE characters with complex morals, it's so sexy. Yes, baby, kill a few more, let's bathe in the blood of our enemies or anyone who opposes us, let's dance with their corpses, I love you.

I know they are flexible.

Astarion and Emmrich

A date in a cemetery? Sure! Wait, why am I excited to do it on a grave? Ugh, I hope this doesn’t awaken another weird fetish in me...

I can't stop thinking about blood and corpses in a way that's too pleasant.

Their sense of fashion is superior.

They always carry a brush with them, in case they get a little messy in the middle of a fight.

I think both of them can sew pretty well.

They have a strange desire to become some kind of superior being, and that could end very well or very badly.

There’s some strange necromancy here.

They love to read, and that's very cute.

Gale, Illario and Lucanis

Their long hair gives me years of life, I want to run my fingers through it, caress it, comb it, pull it, I love it.

Maybe I like their hair because it's like mine, but either way.

I love drawing them.

Thinking about them makes my brain jump in my skull.

I just want to take away all your pain.

They have been emotionally abused but they cannot recognize themselves as victims, because they feel love for their abuser and the abuser loves them in a horrible way, the way only a mother's love could twist you.

DEFINITELY MOMMY ISSUES.

(This becomes more complex thinking about the relationship between Mystra and Gale / Zara and Illario and Caterina but that needs a whole power point presentation).

Gale and Lucanis

Canonically, they are THE wife material.

They are soft and loving once you’re with them.

They know how to cook and do any domestic task you can think of.

The house/camp is always in perfect condition thanks to them.

They look at you like you are the most precious person in the world.

I want to get them pregnant.

They have the saddest, most puppy-like brown eyes that make you love them instantly.

Their face screams for kisses and affection.

I know that between your arms is the warmest place in the world and that I could fall asleep to the sound of your beautiful heart.

I would distract myself by running my hand through their beards and remove any white hairs I found (without them asking me to).

Lucanis wins points for speaking spanish but Gale also wins points because let's remember that he is a professor.

Astarion, Gale, Illario and Emmrich

Absolutely freaks in bed BUT they can be vanilla if you ask them pretty please.

Lucanis

This man is virgin and demisexual like me so I think I would feel extremely comfortable knowing that there is no pressure to do "it" and that he is a man who values ​​company beyond pleasure, calming one of my biggest insecurities.

Not saying the others here can't value company is just... Yeah just sex isn't for me now. And that has ruined many of my relationships. So it gives me more peace of mind to think that my lover can also be a virgin like me and none of us have that expectation.

I'm not saying that the others here would pressure me to do it either. I don't think any of them would. But I know that they can see it as something important in the relationship and there's nothing wrong with that.

Mph-mph.

Gale

He is MY wife.

I have his name tattooed on my arm like branded cattle and I love it.

I have 500 hours on Baldurs and I always start a game again just to hear him breathe.

His relationship with his ex wouldn't create insecurities in me because I already have them so nothing new.

I fear that this man has taken my expectations to a place that cannot be reached by "real" men and I will die alone bUT happy to have met a fictional character written as beautifully as him.

I want to fall asleep while he reads me a book.

He has a cat that talks and has wings, I love her.

I love men who just can't shut the fuck up.

I'm sure his mom would like me and you have no idea how important that is to me HAHAHA my mother-in-laws (except one) always hated me so I would like to feel welcomed in a home for one damn time.

I love him.

I can always like other characters but none as incredible as you, Gale.

[erriga]

i don't the have the willpower to write essays right now so here's just a simple numbered list of things/details I love about Mouthwashing

(SPOILERS)

The use of mouthwash itself as a multilayered symbol is so genius. Because not only is it a perfect represantation of a product for a manufactured need (calling back to how Listerine "invented" halitosis), which really works in tandem with the overall commentary, but it's also a perfect metaphor for Curly's inability to commit to anything other than his own sense of right and wrong. Too much sugar to be effective, so to speak.

I love how Anya is not particularily special in any way. She is just a person, just like eveyone else on the ship and the game treats it as an obvious thing. That that in itself is more than enough to justify her humanity and make (mostly but not only) Jimmy's treatment of her all the more reprehensible. This shouldn't be a high bar but still. Bonus points for her character model being just as exagerrated as everyone else's.

Speaking of Anya, multiple people have pointed out how her SA plotline fortunately avoids several trappings of how this topic is often depicted in media (objectification, treating the victim's suffering as "deep" and artistic in nature, torture porn-inness, reducing the character to their biological functions and trauma that comes with them, etc). I do wish we could get to see the situation from her perspective, but I also respect the creators' decision to focus on how she as a person is overlooked in the multilayered system of abuse that governs the ship. All in all I think they managed to avoid the issue of portraying a problem (in this case absive treatment of women but more in general, maginalized people) without recreating it, while also highlighting that the issue is deeply systemic and not just the result of one bad actor we have to punish and everything will be ok guys, fr.

The world building - it's specifically not a science fiction narrative (even though there is nothing wrong with sci-fi ofc). This situation could happen anywhere, but the outer space just hightens the sense of hopelessness (it's almost lovecraftian in a way now that I think about it). There's no discussion of space exploration, no shiny gagdets, no talk about some great government cospiracy, just a bunch of average people, working in terrible conditions for a company that is only ever so slightly exaggarated. I think that's one of the reasons why the narrative feels so human - it doesn't allow the player to get distracted by specifics, only ever alluding to them.

I find this one just kinda amusing but god WHY is the captain the only one allowed to do literally anything? The lack of agency it leaves all the other characters is just aaaaa. I mean, it reduces them to children who have to wait for an authority to enact any sort of change. Everything is controlled. Only one person can take responsibility. The hierarchy in this is insane.

if I think of anything more I'll update it but those are my main observations

[devout-khajiit]

This might be a hot take but is something that needs to be discussed, even if you completely disagree, the conversation should be had.

Something I wish a lot more people understood and accepted was the ableism present in a chunk of the empath, spiritual and non-spiritual, community, especially towards Narcissistic Personality Disorder. I'm not saying every single person who claims to be an empath, or even clairsentient, is ableist, but rather that the community has a problem with it. (I'm clairsentient myself, and I work quite hard to speak out again ableism and hope that I've done my best in life to not be.)

People with NPD are not inherently cruel, abusive, terrible, horrifically horrible people. While they are just as capable of being abusive as anybody else is, their NPD is a result of trauma they themselves endured, which yes, could have been at the hands of another with NPD.

And yet so much of the empath community consistently singles out and targets "narcissists" (in which is easy to equate to NPD, because to be a narcissist is considered by some with NPD to be inherently a form of NPD, you can't detach one from the other) as these things, claiming that they inherently can sense empaths and then inherently seek them out to abuse them to "leech" off of them and their power and existence as an empath.

As well, there's a problem of armchair diagnosing, where people go "This person has these traits so they must be an evil narcissist sent specifically to abuse me!" and diagnose all of their relatives and exes with the evil narcissist disease.

If you're not aware somehow, that is ableist. To equate an entire mental health issue to being abusive and cruel, that is ableist. To armchair diagnose is bad. Most people with NPD are more likely to become repeated victims of abuse than to be the ones doing the abusing, as all trauma survivors are.

Yes, I'm aware much of the empath community have been a victim of abuse, perhaps even at the hands of someone who actually has NPD. But that does not excuse the generalization of an entire mental illness to a few, cruel, stigmatized traits.

We also need to recognize where empath is actually someone with hyperempathy as a trauma response instead of a magical skill. I'm someone who experiences both hyperempathy and clairsentience, which I can only tell apart by years of learning how to*, and I can verify that they are not one and the same through my experiences. Empathy is a learned skill, but it doesn't actually allow you to magically tell what someone feels. That would be clairsentience, which is an intuitive psychic skill that more or less does, though how and why you can be very debate-y about.

My point being with this post. The empath community isn't bad, but their hatred of NPD is.

This post also isn't a "you should never identify as an empath because of the ableism your fellow empaths spout" post, because it is a succint term for the experience. I myself prefer to be called clairsentient, but it's not really because of the ableism part, it's because of my religious and magical beliefs, I just prefer clair- terms to other terms. This post, however, is a post about the ableism and the exaggeration of a mental health condition into a spiritual/magical experience, and nothing else.

*If you must know, the main difference is my hyperempathy is triggered and doesn't allow me to actually tell what someone feels as it's just a trauma-fueled guess instead of a "mind reading skill", whereas my clairsentience is a "passive skill" that does allow me to tell what someone feels. Hyperempathy is also a lot, lot, lot more faulty, and actually makes my clairsentient skills a lot more muddied, hence why I don't really use my clairsentience.

[jalebi-weds-bluetooth]

Hello dear. Hope you are well. I am not sure how best to articulate my thoughts but here we go. It's very very long but you inspired me today. You've been a beacon of change in questioning and challenging ITV. I wanted to quip in. Hope you don't mind. Arnav anger is often excused as coming from trauma and his 'grey/anti-hero' character is often glamorized. He is without a doubt compelling and attractive. Plus, he has his strengths such as honesty and forthrightness.

Ok, so this is a LONG question with a lot of your own analysis and I wouldn't touch that at all cause analyzing is a beautiful thing and I wouldn't want to add/remove from your lovely analysis. I'll just be adding some of my thoughts here and there :D

(rest of the ask below)

His greyness amplifies a lot of the hypermasculine stereotypical traits such as aggression, strength, power etc. In the narrative like in Kabir Singh this makes us discount the wrongs when perhaps his treatment of Khushi in many ways in similar. Rather we swoon over his charm when in reality most 'charming' men have similar shades and unfortunately, never change. The sense of entitlement and the joy of wielding power over others is observed in abusive men.

Tbh though, Arnav doesn't have any charm. Shyam has all the charm in the world and that's interesting considering he's a villain.

Often we excuse this behavior by comparing them to worse portrayals when again abuse usually escalates with time. For example, at least Arnav didn't violate Khushi's consent. How different were Shyam and Arnav? Weren't they both ultimately two sides of the same coin? Isn't this afterall a way to build tolerance towards worse behavior? Shyam is the 'bad' guy because he plans things deliberately, but aren't Arnav's actions also not something he is accountable for?

Fun fact, Arnav and Shyam were written to mirror each other in multiple situations. It was very intentional of the creators to draw a thin line between the anti-hero and villain and to be honest, at one point we all simply believed Arnav is the hero of the story only because he is Khushi's choice.

I wish Arnav's actions were far more accountable for - hence the guesthouse and resignation scenes are some of my favorites.

We don't talk much about Arnav and Anjali here. They are incredibly close, but the co-dependency is discernible. He is obligated to her for being the 'mother' but she is his first and Khushi the second. It does perhaps from trauma but Anjali has a lot of control over Arnav and he is guilt-ridden if she is hurt. We blame Khushi for her mistakes but do we ever consider that it is her desparation to receive unconditional love which is missing.

Arnav and Anjali have developed codependency over their trauma -which is what Shyam exploits.

Coming to Khushi, she is often criticized for her world revolving around Arnav, being infantilized, that she should 'stand up' etc. However, it's not a new fact that abusive relationships can be incredibly difficult to leave and can have a huge physical and emptional impact on a person's self-esteem. Is this not victim blaming? We also dismiss the impact Arnav's family has on Khushi. Anjali,Akash,Dadi -all had a role to play as their support was conditional or inadequate.

Hmm interesting. To share my opinion and take on this - my gripe with Khushi rarely comes from considering her and Arnav as real people and assessing their relationship as such. My gripe is with the writing in the show coming to Khushi. Khushi recessing to childlike behavior is a signal of trauma that @honeybellexox had once brilliantly discussed.

But the show is not portraying the delicate pained layers of emotions you described. The rest of the family is left out to hype TRP forced romance or family politics (not plot) and Khushi's weight of being in an abusive relationship is seriously traded for terrible writing which things suicide is funny, pissing off an abusive husband is hilarious.

We do not SEE Khushi's behavior as a response to a terrible marriage. We are made to see this is how Khushi is 'one upping' against Arnav by irritating him the way she poured juice in his shoes. And wow how intelligent.

There's no depth, no gravity, nothing in Khushi. She becomes hollow - not because of the pain you aptly put above - but due to a very Star Plus enforced 'bahu' trope.

Victim blaming would be wondering why Khushi didn't shove Shyam off the terrace scene and froze when Shyam hugged her - no, any reaction she had at that point is absolutely justified!

But wondering why Khushi acts around Arnav post revelation that she is having an affair of Shyam instead of providing facts or actual reasonings is a flaw in the show. Why? Because the intention of the show at that point was to ensure that Arnav's misunderstanding does not break and he is 'justified' in the audience's eye to mistreat Khushi. Now that is a problem.

The complication of Payal being married into the same family, lack of societal, financial and family support almost meant that Khushi had no choice but to humor situations and find happiness in meaningless trivalities. He child-like behavior and adherence to patriarchal traditions/rituals was her only resort to be accepted. That is so ingrained in her mind, that any attempt to tilt the balance might cause her more problems. Perhaps Khushi's character arc was realistic.

I absolutely wish the show showed the nuance you are writing. Her dancing to Nani for Holi was beautiful - it conveys everything you're saying. Her force-feeding Arnav mid meeting, forbidding anyone to give him food, then eating up food that can feed upto five people and still tasting the food before she gives him to eat is... ridiculous and demeaning as a character.

I do disagree with you on Khushi's arc because her arc, after a moment, is stunted to serve Arnav as a character. An excellent character that displays everything you wrote is Gauri from Ishqbaaz. They lend her the grace and gravity that one can only dream of in Khushi.

(I'll show it to you!!! You'll absolutely love it - it's a solid recommend from @aye-masakalii)

It wasn't the lack of strength or that she had certain traits. Her reality and worth had been controlled, toyed with and manipulated that she no longer could see things clearly which made her sink deeper into the marriage. Should the IPK writers be criticized for mirroring the reality many women still live in or is it an eye-opener which makes us very uncomfortable in acknowleding the sad reality that many women meet the same fate?

Our innate optimism makes us favor the idealized world that Arnav and Khushi were a fairytale. Perhaps they do end up being together but is that the only yardstick to measure marriage? More questions than answers, but isn't is critical to shift the repsonisbility towards Arnav rather than victim-blame Khushi? Love, RDX

I loved your analysis, and if the writing hadn't been so flat and actually conveyed everything you wrote - I would've never wanted Arnav and Khushi together.

Lol, maybe that's why my edits and fanfics exist.

Arnav needed to be held more accountable and Khushi needed to be written further as an independent character - these are perhaps some of my main grievances against the show only because they proved they could do it.

Best,

Soapy

[3liza]

hey im not gonna spread your weird social media-mediated brain infection on my blog, instead here are some cool studies to look at about how the "beautiful people have an easier life, every day, all the time" is a simplistic view, and is also patriarchal as fuck. more recent studies on "beauty privilege" are finding that the issue is complex, and that perceived beauty acts as a negative pressure in some/many social situations. i have always wondered why my experiences varied so much from the apparent wonderland the pop-science concept of "beauty privilege" paints, and more recent studies (often designed by women this time, imagine) are getting into the complexity there.

you personally may want to think about not reading my social media accounts if they are making you feel and act like this. i think i am not going to interact with you anymore if i can help it because i feel bad about what it is doing to you. anyway.

the short version is that beauty is beneficial in heterosexual social situations when dealing with the opposite sex, but detrimental when dealing with the same sex. this aspect of the research is usually ignored because who needs nuance in their pop psychology, right? not this guy (pointing 2 self)

very simply put, a beautiful woman can flirt her way out of a ticket from a heterosexual male cop. if she tries it on a person who doesnt consider her a potential romantic partner, there may be (and apparenly often are) negative consequences.

similarly in my own life i find that 99% of the apparent opportunities i'd been given for being young and fuckable were predicated on me actually fucking* the person who "offered" them, and most of them turned out to be fake/insincere opportunities anyway. tumblr refers to this as "grooming" when applied to child subjects (which i was, for much of it) but the behavior persists into the target's adulthood, middle age, and even old age if certain conditions are met. i can't find any studies on this because you can't put a Sleazy Guy in a lab setting and ask him "hey were you actually going to hire this woman on hte up-and-up, or were you going to 'hire' her and then spend 16 months making increasingly deranged sexual harassment attempts before reporting her to HR for made-up reasons and then finally firing her or hamstringing her career? just wondering".

i always think about that episode of Always Sunny where Mac goes nuts because every kid in his class was molested by the gym teacher and he imagines this to be some sort of privilege, even though charlie was one of the victims and is clearly devastated by it. thats what this conversation feels like every time it gets to the level of anons making fake tumblr accounts to KEEP pestering me about this stuff. remember that thing i said earlier about blood in the water, and how i dont post about bad shit that happened to me because it attracts the wrong kind of attention??? hehuehueheuheuhuehriuhgfidsrhru

actually thats a whole other realm of study: why victims of sexual assault and abuse are often re-victimized. until recently it was assumed that the victims were making bad decisions in who to trust, and this is sooorrrrtt of true, but doesn't tell the whole story. i read a study once that i am trying to find and will post later if i find it, that took video of adult women study subjects (who had agreed to be filmed) walking normally just down the street publically, and showed this video to male test subjects. if im remembering the study correctly, which i may not be, the male subjects who scored higher on psychopathy indices were better able to indentify the women in the test footage who had been sexually assaulted at some point in their former lives.

something to think about is a lot of "attractive" qualities (including proccupation with physical appearance leading to altering that appearance to be more beautiful), especially in the manic pixie archetype, are very strongly represented in trauma victims, especially sexual assault survivors (as is the opposite, intentionally trying to be "unattractive" to avoid further victimization). this includes "seductiveness", one of the adjectives used to diagnose child sexual abuse victims before the verbiage in the literature got cleaned up. obviouly a child cant be "seductive" and thats pretty offensive and fucked up to say. what they meant is that the childs behavior has been altered by trauma to become sexualized to appease attackers. this is part of the "fawn" sector of emergency responses in humans (along with fight, flight, and freeze).

so when we talk so cavalierly of "beauty" and "attractive people" vs "unattractive people" we are simplifying an issue that is so complex it is difficult even to think about. this complexity makes me go "hmm" every time theres a study on it, much less a popular belief. a lot of it sort of doesnt square with easily-observable phenomena: if physical beauty is so correlated to success, why are the 1% of wealthy people, politicians, actual power-holders, hell even the CEOs of normal companies, very very rarely what you would consider physically beautiful, even when they havent aged out of what the culture thinks is the maximum span of time someone can be "hot"? some of this is just personal preference, and it's real hard to study any of this because of how complex that issue becomes. but where are all these hot successful people i keep hearing about? are they all trophy spouses and retired from the public eye? you can definitely cherrypick examples of "influencers" etc but thats an extremely narrow line of work, and not representative.

anyway! lot of the "do beautiful people get more stuff" research is from quite a while ago, wasnt designed well, and was based on a work and social culture that was quite a bit different than it is now. but even older studies document this effect. ive spent like many minutes typing about this stupid bullshit so im bored and annoyed now and i dont want to type about it anymore

1. Effects of Self-Esteem Threat on Physical Attractiveness Stereotypes

2. Does being attractive always help? positive and negative effects of attractiveness on social decision making (cant find the sci-hub version, alas, but documents a negative effect we're actually seeing an anecdotal example of in my inbox rn)

3. Is beauty a gift or a curse? The influence of an offender’s physical attractiveness on forgiveness

* often it wasnt even just a sex thing. it's very very often a romance/relationship that is desired by the perpetrator. it's a misapprehension of the public that sexual harassment/grooming is "just about sex" or even less accurately "just about power", it isnt

[braceletofteeth]

Do you think people can actually snap like moonjo? Like....what are your thoughts on that? Nice people who were traumatized to hell and back and then they just snap.

Hello there, anon.

To me, it's interesting that you used Moonjo as an example of someone who 'snapped', instead of Jongwoo, like most people would. However, it does make things more complicated for me from a character-dive perspective, since all we know about Moonjo's first kill are assumptions. We suppose it was during his childhood, we suppose the first victims were his parents, we suppose it was a response to abuse. On other moments, we also suppose he was just responding to Ms. Eom's influence, we suppose she groomed him into what he is, and so on, but we don't really know what happened, and who he was before it went down—if he went through a fundamental change at all. I have my beliefs regarding that, of course, but I shall discuss it in a more appropriate opportunity.

For now, I'll focus on the core of your question. Do I think that nice* people, who were traumatized to hell and back, can 'snap'?

Yes. Yes, absolutely. Some of them will. People have all kinds of response when it comes to processing trauma. And while others will have an entirely different reaction (e.g. shutting down, recoiling into themselves; splitting personalities; harming or sabotaging their own person), some will resort to violence as a way of fortifying their constitution against the outside world, or even to express their feelings. If they feel like they have been wronged, they might go on in a quest to right things, however they deem just/necessary. Sometimes it leads them to seek revenge on what/who wronged them, but it may also lead them to destroy things and/or hurt living beings that didn't have anything to do with them previously, but the person may feel as if they hold some kind of responsibility, or that is only fair that they suffer as well.

Once it's done, there is a chance the sudden compulsion, filled by rancor, will subside, and they will see past it, perhaps going back to a previous state of mind. But, whenever it doesn't happen, it's possible that they are (consciously or unconsciously) clinging on to resentment, in order to avoid facing other issues (e.g. depression; fear; anxiety; self-reflection; regret; loneliness; grief).

Another possibility is that they are trying to grasp a sense of control, as a form of reassurence. Whenever they are not in control of a situation now, they feel as if they are vulnerable to whoever or whatever is, and it's only natural that they might not feel yet ready to put themselves in a place of vulnerability again (since they haven't healed, or still vividly remember how tough it was the last time they were in a helpless position, and fear reopening old wounds, or opening new ones that will be just as unpleasant as the ones before).

It's worth reminding that I'm only referring to general behavior induced by traumatic experiences, not considering any other previous psychological condition the victim may have had before/been born with. However, even with nothing as such to influence the way they respond to the experience, as I mentioned and defended throughout this post, the reactions may vary tremendously from one person to another.

Someone may never snap, producing different responses, just as much as they may snap and then go back to a previous, healthier state of mind, or stay, for a long time, in the emotional state they were in when they snapped. They can go through foundational changes in order to adapt to a new reality (which the body processes as surviving). The world may feel different after the experience (more hostile, bitter / emptier, pointless) and some of them might get trapped inside their own minds, lost in halls of bad memories and pessimistic thoughts, causing them to 'not act like themselves', or have irrational ideas.

*In a more personal note, I was hesitant to use the word 'nice' before 'people', since I can't tell what you consider a 'nice person', and I'm afraid you might think all 'bad' people are susceptible to have a violent reaction after going through a traumatic experience.

A person can't be classified as either a 'good guy' or a 'bad guy', and 'different people can have different reactions' applies to everyone, independently of whatever they have done before the trauma. If you see someone crying painfully, for example, you shouldn't assume it's because they are 'good'; it's because they are hurt, and everyone can get hurt.

... In conclusion, I believe every person on this planet is capable of doing things that can be considered good or evil. The things we do are determined by circumstances, environments, influences, choices, and emotions—the state of your mind and the state of your heart.

[shimurah]

THE PAST NEVER FORGETS

this chapter outright stated a message this arc and story overall send. the league are results of the hero society's deeds and 290 focuses solemnly on one character.

it starts off, unlike everything we've seen so far, a dabi that we never quite saw. sitting with his head bowed in his head, dabi is bracing for the vulnerability he is to expose. he isn't just exposing his father, he is exposing the very deep of himself. weighting all the possible ways his message will be received, the knowledge that there are many chances of not being belived, of being mocked, attacked, etc. in spite of his worry he doesn't back off and drives into who is dabi and how he come to be this way.

the dabi the public eye is used to is this: the notorious 'terrorist' from the league of villains. he is known - which was intentional on dabi's part. it makes sense that dabi would want attention drawn to himself, he's never been shown as trying to hide who he is not, not really. from the moment we see him, he specifically used language that doesn't even suggest, outright tells, dabi is a name he goes by now. looking at his outfit as well, he was carrying the hair dye remover (?) from that moment. he has been ready for this moment the whole time.

he recorded in advance, planned in-depth not only the way he faces his endeavor but the world as well. there is a critical importance in the way the society will take the message, it's crucial that they believe what he is saying in order to destroy endeavour's career. dabi starts with something they are aware of or suppose of him, that he is not innocent. he states having killed more than 30 innocent people, there would be no point in denying in any sense. 1. a big influence in dabi's killings is endeavour. to ruin endeavour reputation, he first had to create the villain he is now. 2. it's true that he not once tried to mask dabi, actually thrilled for being recognized as THE dabi. his notoriously would make it more than difficult for him to play the act of the innocent victim now, which he never even tried to.

why would dabi go for being a villain, with the knowledge that the chances of him being taken seriously are small? did he acknowledge that even as a favorable type of victim his credibility against endeavor's is lower to the ground? personally, i think he made all of his decisions with a clear eye, all plausibilities being taken & judged through and through. by stepping into the shoes of a villain, the scum of the society, his chances spectacularly lower. but by doing so, he is free to rightfully avenge himself.

greed for power, something that as dabi says can lead men into unimaginable depths. endeavour had willingly chosen, not forced by anybody, to walk that path. taking a wife by force even, using her as a tool to create more tools to satisfy himself. what he would do to achieve this can be summoned into one simple word. anything.

dabi was abused both physically and emotionally. a bad constitution that was in the way of him reaching the place his father wanted. the frustration he every day had to go through, likely blaming himself for it, and adding to the mix the way endeavour would encourage him to push his own limits to achieve something greater than himself. the training was something deeply toxic, you simply don't force a kid through something like that. we have seen how it scarred shoto, someone who unlike dabi, had nothing standing in the way of endeavour's goal.

if dabi was an almost perfect, shoto was THE perfect. there is great pressure on the perfect yes, no denying, but there is great pressure on the almost perfect as well. their trauma is equal, dabi's trauma is just as valid as shoto and vice versa. and while their siblings didn't go through the training, their trauma is just as equal.

dabi lived with the knowledge that the only thing he was "created" for was his father's selfish dream. abused children often wonder the reason their parents brought them into this world, why do they exist besides to suffer. as a child, it is absolutely excepted and understandable to desire parental love. even if dabi hated what endeavour put him through, in his heart he would wish to become what his father wanted in order to achieve his love. did he wonder if making endeavour happy would result in his father changing and coming to love him? did he have to grow up and watch that idea shatter, to be tossed aside as something no longer useful, a broken thing?

such things are not something he could simply let go of, even if he was out of that place. like adults no longer in the abusive, toxic environments, that still carry the effects of the abuse they went through. dabi simply cannot move past it, it is not something one is to be asked or excepted to do.

endeavour, on the other hand, is living the dream. even before becoming the no 1, the perfect heir was on his move to the top. he successfully trained shoto into a promising tool that will eventually fulfill the dream and had to watch himself rise in the position he always wanted. it is easy for him to decide to move on, forget of the past, leave everything where they belong. but the past didn't decide that, the past came back to him. he is forced to now deal with the consequences he avoided and denied.

the past never forgets. even if endeavour tossed dabi aside and let him become a past, and then attempted to leave him altogether in the past.

facing one's consequences, often thrown in arguments against the league but i firmly believe in the difference between the two situations. saying they are the same is false. endeavour & the hero society planted the seeds not willed by anybody but themselves.

the league & dabi were forced into reacting. a hand forced is not the same as a hand willingly pushing said hand. the league is more than encouraged to react back, and while not all of their acts have been agreeable, i still stand by that. the flaw is in hrksh's intentional writing, which i won't be driving into as others discussed it very well.

dabi's goal to kill shoto once shoto reached the age and the top is something you cannot deny to be a response to the abuse. is it alright? no, not by any means. there is a complexity here, into which you can't drive in without remembering you are talking about child abuse victims. abuse responses aren't black and white, good and bad. dabi isn't inherently selfish or evil for thinking that.

dancing together in hell, falling together gathered all types of reactions. does dabi intend to die is the question. after some time of thinking, i dare to think and hope that won't be the case. it's true that dabi is in a bad condition, true that his phrasing is suggestive. but from a narrative, logical view, which i ABSOLUTELY don't claim to be hrksh's style up until now, that would be deeply disappointing and sad. a tragedy that would not serve. it's early to speak but for now i personally choose to believe dabi is going to live to at least completely reach his goal. endeavour is an important piece yesm but he is, still, a piece in dabi's game.

[villains-with-benefits]

Playing the blame game, and other pointless endeavours

A reflection on BNHA Chapter 291

Before and after: or, How to violently radicalise an abuse victim in five easy steps

I think a lot of the people throwing blame around or trying to declare that one character or another is the One True Villain™ or the One True Victim™ need to stop seeing personal responsibility as a zero sum game, because it really isn't.

Arguing about whether Dabi and Endevour should each have 50% of the blame or if it's more of a 60/40 or 70/30 split (in either direction) is pointless. Endeavour is 100% responsible for his abuse of his family and general failings as a human being, and Dabi is 100% responsible for the lives he's taken and people he's hurt in retaliation because of it.

Sure these two things are absolutely related in that good ol' cause-and-effect sense, much like how an earthquake at sea will cause a tsunami. And much like them neither happened in a vacuum, the surrounding environmental conditions needed to be just right for a perfect storm of this magnitude to occur. It just so happens that in this case both the earthquake (Endeavour) and the tsunami (Dabi) are not faceless forces of nature, but human beings with superpowers who chose to take action based on their deep-set mental and emotional issues at everyone else's expense, either because they think their needs are more important, they think the price paid is worth being the means to the end or (most likely) a combination of the two.

Please note, I don't say this to excuse or condemn either character, the readers who are taking sides, or even Horikoshi's writing. It's pretty well established by now that one of the biggest themes in BNHA is that there is no perfect black and white when it comes to people and society and morality, and just about all the conflict is driven by just how badly their entire system (which is built and determined to die on that hill) messes it up for absolutely everyone on all sides. Saying Dabi is a Bad Victim while Shouto is a Good Victim is just as pointless, because you're missing that the real villain is their broken society, of which everyone is a victim, even Endeavour.

Again, Endeavour was the one to abuse his family and he gets no passes for that so don't even try to argue that's what I'm saying, but he didn't wake up one day and just decide to do it. If Chapter 291 has done anything it's shown how escalation is nine tenths of the law in cases like this. He was already an asshole narcissist with a raging inferiority complex, we've heard from his own POV in an earlier chapter that he purposefully chose Rei to have kids with to eugenics a solution to his problem, he was never an upstanding guy.

While we don't see Endeavour's own upbringing there's a reason he's been such a strong narrative parallel with Bakugou, so we can make an educated guess from what we've seen of his what it must have been like having a powerful Quirk and ambitions being fed by the people around him, and the way Bakugou has clashed with characters like Deku and Shouto when he was confronted with the reality that he wasn't going to get Number One effortlessly, we can guess how well he took realising he was always going to be Number 2.

Pictured: the hero equivalent of always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

At least with Bakugou's rivals they're his own age and acknowledge him as a rival, All Might is at least a decade older than Endeavour and he's always been a loner who didn't get to know his colleagues that well. As readers we know All Might keeps his distance because he's kinda awkward socially, and because between the threat of All For One and maintaining the flawless image of the Symbol of Peace he wasn't ever able to let his guard down or it might risk people's safety. But just like Bakugou assuming Deku was looking down on him, from Endeavour's perspective it probably looked like All Might was looking down on Endeavour too.

Again, not excusing Endeavour. He's an asshole and needs to be held accountable for his actions. But just like Bakugou he didn't spring fully formed from the womb as an asshole, sure he had all the ingredients for it but their society is what decided it was a good idea to put the lime in the coconut and mix it all up, just like he's the one who broke Touya which ultimately led to the creation of Dabi.

Which brings us back to Dabi not just calling out his abusive dad but making a spectacle of it, and while again, yes, he's done a lot of murder and that's not okay either, he is absolutely justified in this. Especially because the part of his reasoning for his actions which isn't just maniacal laughter (also totally valid) is that he's correctly identified, much like Shigaraki, that while specific individuals have hurt them and must pay for it, that the overarching problem is hero society itself.

Shigaraki attacked All Might at first because Sensei said so, but later on because he was the symbol of everything he felt wrong with society, everything he's done has been to attack the pillars of the hero system like All Might and UA. Dabi attacked Endeavour, his abuser, but not just physically attacking him as a man and a father, but by attacking his reputation as the Number One Hero and the new pillar of society.

Pictured: an asshole who's realising that no matter how badly you think you done fucked up, another asshole can always come along and point out just how much worse it actually was than you thought.

Endeavour's sin was always acting as a hero first and a father second, if ever, and even then it was usually still to further his own ego and ambitions, which was tied so tightly to his role as a hero that Endeavour pretty much didn't exist outside of that. So Touya with his healthy sense of dramatic irony is naturally retaliating by treating him as a hero first and a father second, if ever, because that's the standard of behaviour that Endeavour himself set. Before discarding him for the new model he made it clear he wanted his son to be powerful, aggressive, independent, and to take down the Number One Hero without regard for anything else, and that's exactly what Dabi is doing. He's giving Endeavour exactly what he wished for and is making him choke on it.

Just like he said, Touya's making sure Endeavour reaps exactly what he sowed because it proves his point, that if he hadn't been such a violent, toxic narcissist none of this would be happening. His desire to call out his abuser is both personal and justified (regardless of how he's going about it), and it shouldn't be condemned because it has nothing to do with his family. His family, who he was the scapegoat of and who he hasn't seen in probably around a decade, and who are still keeping silent about the abuse even though as far as they know it killed him. I'm not saying he hates the rest of his family like he hates Endeavour (though it probably comes closest with Shouto, there's a lot to unpack there) but it would be a very complicated web of love and grief and resentment and guilt that he'd need a weapons-grade therapist to unravel, which he's clearly never gotten considering this is how he's dealing with the trauma.

tl;dr Touya is a victim just like Shouto, and all the awful things he's done as Dabi don't detract from that, just as his victimhood doesn't excuse his actions either.

In conclusion, you don't have to reconcile or find explanations or excuses for Endeavour's abuse or how any of the other Todorokis have been dealing with it, especially Touya. They are all established facts and exist as objective truth regardless of our feelings on the matter. Instead of making moral judgement on the characters (or the readers who love them/hate them) maybe we all need to stop and think about it critically first, especially when chapters are still incoming and we don't even have the full story yet.

If we can all spend some quality time thinking objectively about all the sides of the story and what lessons we can learn from them, I can guarantee that little things like 'having compassion', 'listening to victims and survivors before they have to resort to domestic terrorism to be heard' and 'learning from the mistakes of the past' will get us all much better results than just sharpening some pitchforks, no matter who they're pointed at.

[funeral-clown]

What is your opinion on the movie Split, if you have seen it, with regards to how it depicts DID? Because like I feel like someone with DID would be offended but at the same time don’t KNOW whether they actually would be? Like when I see anti-asexual or anti-Irish sentiment and think “Hmm. Well that is certainly offensive from an objective viewpoint, but am I personally offended?” I do feel like if the twist behind the ‘Beast’ alter being superhuman was that he had been bitten by a werewolf, because there were so many hints towards him being a werewolf and the whole backstory they gave the protagonist about being a hunter, I feel like it would have suited the story better and avoided the ‘all people with DID are evil’ trope. Am I saying this right?

Hi! I get what you're saying. Right off the bat, I have never been officially diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder. I quit therapy for a multitude of reasons, and while it was something brought up it was nothing we had the time to go into more. So while I do have a dissociative condition that shares many symptoms, I would be incredibly remiss to say this is an answer from a person with that condition. Anyway!

The answer to that question is extremely long and complicated but you are asking specifically what my opinion about their portrayal of DID was, and what it basically boils down to is did they make the mentally ill man a bad guy. Yes they did.

Did they clearly do a lot of research into the condition? Yes and that comes through. They make it clear where the behavior comes from, it's stemming from abuse, that in fact the majority of his System is extremely against what is happening, and yet at the core of it they very much did give a man a mental illness that has been demonized by social media over and over and then made one of the alters a pedophile and another alter, the beast, a violent cannibal.

I see what you mean about potentially a werewolf twist coming in, and that would be interesting! However I feel like the metaphor portrayed there, that of the predator and prey, was made pretty well without lycanthropy, especially when you lump it in with the rest of the trilogy. She was a hunter who was the victim of a predator. He was a victim who became a predator. Because of their shared trauma, she is spared. If you watch the movie purely for it's narrative on abuse, it is a very profound film. But that doesn't excuse their making a monster out of a character with a mental illness.

The film has a lot of nuance. It does it's best to portray the characters as sympathetic, and i appreciate that it tells a stark story about abuse without ever showing that violence on screen. But is that enough? Is making some effort, and later redeeming the character in the following film, enough of an effort to make it safe from ridicule or judgement? No. And honestly no film should be above that. But this film specifically did a bad thing. I own this movie. I enjoy it. It still perpetuates negative stereotypes. People who just look at the cover or watch a trailer know exactly what this movie is supposed to make them feel. That Man Has A Scary Mental Illness! That Mental Illness Makes That Man Dangerous! And that's just black and white. It's bad.

That said, if you like the movie, then ok, you like it. Liking a movie with a bad message isn't a mortal sin, as long as you acknowledge that it is, in fact, a movie that did something bad, and accept that a lot of people don't like it for very valid reasons. this has been like. An essay. I don't think I've ever even mentioned Split on my blog. Whoever you are you should DM me this like. Barely scratches the surface. But yeah it was bad that they made the villain a man with DID that was offensive, but it's portrayal of DID was one of the more accurate ones. shit that could have been the whole response.

[antis-delete-your-blogs-pls-thx]

Bringing back this old post as the definition of grooming and abuse get watered down more and more. Adding some other red flags:

DARVO - Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender - if you try and discuss their hurtful behaviour, they will refuse to admit wrongdoing and deflect responsibility as much as possible, likely onto you. You're suddenly at fault for their bad actions.

I'm going to triply highlight what was previously said by Ellis: YOU ARE PUNISHED FOR SETTING BOUNDARIES, usually with guilt trips, harassment, abandonment, or other means of withholding affection. This is a HUUUUGE sign.

Guilt tripping in general, actually. "You want your own space? Okay. Guess I haven't been good enough for you then." - "I've been having such a bad day and you're just making it worse by calling me out like this. Not like anyone cares about me anyway."

There's also a very special mix of gaslighting and guilt tripping that comes out when you are visibly upset by their behaviour. Usually sounds like "oh, what, so you're upset now?"/"I bet you're going to be all moping/sulking about this now, huh?"

Another form of guilt tripping that I think is important to highlight is the "I'm a terrible person, I don't deserve you. I should just die/leave you/*do something dangerous and terrifying* because you've been so hurt by what I did." guilt trip after they've done something abusive. You're conditioned to fear calling them out because they'll use their own remorse against you by doing something reckless or hurtful in the name of self-punishment. Similarly, "Nobody cares about me. Not even my own partner wants to be with me./I can't even make my own partner happy."

They try to use you as their therapist/make you do all their emotional processing for them

Threatening you with abusive behaviour, not necessarily just doing it, in order to cow you into submission by making you afraid of what they could choose to do

Them choosing not to be awful to you is a special gift/something you should be grateful for, and not acknowledging that means they'll revert to the abusive behaviour

Often times how you respond to abusive behaviour is irrelevant in getting it to stop. You can fight back, you can ignore them, or you can be passive, they'll likely abuse you either way. This isn't always the case, sometimes abusers are trying to get a certain response out of you. But it can often feel like nothing will make it stop.

I cannot highlight the lovebombing or using how they display affection to condition you enough. Especially when they withhold affection (for any reason, whether because you did something they didn't like or just because they feel like it), lovebombing is a way of keeping you coming back for more.

They expect rewards for their kindness. This can be anything from "you didn't thank me enough" to "I paid for your meal/gave you this gift/let you stay in my house rent-free, so now you owe me *X thing that you don't want to do*" to "why do I even bother doing nice things for you?"

Along the lines of withholding affection, abandonment for doing something they dislike (often this is speaking up about abusive behaviour). This can be threats to leave, ignoring you, refusing to spend time with you, withholding sex, etc

Makes your choices for you, does things "for your own good/for your protection" without consulting you, doesn't listen to your objections or concerns, doesn't value your opinion

Negging, aka backhanded compliments

Gaslighting doesn't just come in the form of denying their bad behaviour, but also mocking you or implying you're overreacting for having a trauma response to their abuse. You may get told to toughen up, stop having such thin skin, stop being so sensitive, etc. or they may simply imply you're irrational and out of control. "I don't know why you're reacting like this, I only did *x thing, downplayed or justified to make you sound ridiculous for being upset*"

Taking their anger/bad day/bad mood/negative emotions out on you

Being upset at you or guilt tripping you for things you cannot control. This can be obvious things like not being able to have sex because you have a headache, or not being able to go somewhere because you're sick. But also can manifest in being shamed for not being able to act like you're not traumatised/not being able to stop panic attacks or other trauma responses regarding their (or others') behaviour. You may get called/implied to be weak or pathetic for this.

There's also a good image with some red flags I'll attach below. Pay attention to using coercion and intimidation as well. Threatening to hurt you physically or emotionally is just as abusive as actually doing it.

What steps can we take to make it more difficult for abusers to use fiction as a tool against their victims?

Education! Education, education, education. I understand the actual education system itself is on a societal level, but if you’re interested in combatting this on an individual level, I can think of a few things that could help. If you have kids, tell them (in an age appropriate way) the signs of abusers/predators, how important personal boundaries are and being able to say no, internet safety and privacy (don’t reveal personal information to people you don’t know, etc), some red flags to watch for, etc. You can make educational posts here on Tumblr about the same thing. Obviously most people know abuse/pedophilia/incest is wrong, but it’s essential to give them the tools to actually recognise dangerous behaviours rather than just saying it’s wrong and not explaining why, or how these things can happen.

A few red flags for anyone reading:

The person in question tells you how to feel about an event/denies your experiences actually occurred or were as severe as they felt

Pushing boundaries, insisting on sexual topics if you’re underage (or an adult who has made it clear you’re uninterested)

Encourages you to see things you’re not comfortable with, not necessarily on a sexual level

Threatens you with suicide/self-harm if you don’t do as they say (or threatens you at all)

Guilt tripping for maintaining personal boundaries/saying no

Insisting you’re special or more mature for your age (in cases of grooming) and can uniquely handle topics you’re uncomfortable with/aren’t ready for

Constantly messaging you and expecting you to drop everything and answer

Claiming they “need you to live” or “would give up without you”

Insulting or belittling you, or encouraging you to insult and belittle others

Shaming you

Isolating you from your friends or alone time

Insisting you can’t hang out with other people unless they’re around

Going through your personal messages and information without you wanting them to

Tracking your location/activities

These are just some of the signs someone is abusive. It’s important to be able to recognise these!

[itsgettingcrazieroutthere]

Now, wait a little bit. His suicide attempt wasn't even mentioned in this post. I didn't say he whined about his suicide attempt. In fact, I was (I thought it was clear, but I'm going to write it expressively) talking about the events of S3, since I only mentioned events from S3.

I said ESPECIALLY Dick because I distinctively remember that Dick was supportive of Jason, tried to help and save him and this season Jason acted like Dick kicked him and mocked him, like Dick didn't try to help and whatever else. I was actually really disappointed with how his character was written this season, because I liked the plot he had in the end of S2. It humanized him and it did make me sympathetic. There is also this comparison that he always does between him and Dick, especially about how Bruce treats the two of them, even though, so far we saw Bruce try a lot harder with Jason than he did with Dick.

This also applies to Bruce. Because Bruce tried. He asked Jason to stop being Robin because he was worried for him. He made him go to therapy. He said he didn't want to make the same mistakes with Jason that he did with Dick. And do you remember what Jason said? He said "So am I mistake now?". NO, Bruce didn't say that at all. He said that the way he treated Dick was wrong and he was trying to be better with Jason. Jason jumped into conclusions about the therapist, and to be honest, it didn't take a genius to see that Jason was in no condition to be Robin at that moment.

He had that one normal friend, whom he actively put in danger. If the scene was a little different, that friend (Molly, I think) would be dead, and Jason would have to deal with that. That friend tried to help him. At least twice.

The fact is, Titans made Jason at least 18, probably 19. And they simultaneously made him act like a child for most of the season. He was reckless and irresponsible.

He thought it was a good idea to cure his trauma with a drug. He thought it was a good idea to work with Crane, one of Gotham's most feared villains. He did betray everyone time and time again. He killed Hank in an awful way. When he realized he wasn't the one that called the shots (when Crane abused him and basically told him he was expendable), he tried to go back to the Titans. Dick appeared to be willing to hear him. Then Crane fucked that up and that wasn't Jason's fault, but he went back with Crane. Like, that doesn't make sense?

Besides, there is a very large difference between being angry at people and putting a bomb on Hank, making up a plan to have one of the Titans pull the trigger, and betray them time and time again. And then he felt bad about Hank for a while and then apparently forgot about him and went back to being angry.

There is also a very large difference between being responsible for his actions and having random morality crisis that lead up to nothing, because he continues to do the same things that he's (rightfully) angsting about. For example, I thought that when he called Dick to try and talk, we would have some development there. Even if he couldn't leave with the Titans, I thought maybe he would leave alone, or go to Molly, and I certainly didn't think he would go back to work with Crane like nothing happened.

And you can't actually tell me to go watch the show again and then say Jason never made himself as the victim and that he felt so responsible. Those two things don't add up. I just watched ep. 11 and that's an actual thing Jason said: "Standard Bat shit. Intimidating through terror." Like that wasn't exactly what he was doing the whole season, Crane's whole plan (intimidating Gotham, creating pure chaos and presenting the Red Hood as the only alternative). Like the city wasn't falling apart and Jason helped a lot to create that chaos. Like Jason wasn't the one to set up this whole confrontation, etc. At that moment, he was such an hypocrite that it can only be explained by bad writing.

Jason felt abandoned and that justified his actions, but he had, in fact, a support system. He went through something traumatic, yes. But he wasn't abandoned at all. Not by Dick, not by Bruce, not by Molly.

Anyway, it wasn't my intention to put the blame of Jason's suicide attempt on himself, and I'm sorry if it was how this came across. I'll edit that part of the original post.

At last, I don't quite get why you came here so angrily, this post wasn't for you, it was tagged correctly and you didn't have to be offensive about it. I didn't lack critical thinking and I wasn't trying to victim blame Jason for something that wasn't even mentioned in the post.

Also, as I said in the original post, there were times in which I thought I could understand him, but then he did something worse or went back to how he acted before those moments, so yes, that made him unlikeable to me.

Oh, my GOD.

Every time I'm like "no, ok, Jason did some dumb shit and betrayed everyone and is very hypocritical and pretends to be the victim every fucking time, but I can try to understand him now", Jason does something WORSE.

He literally ran away while Dick was getting beaten up, he is always whining about how much of a victim he is (even though he is the one that is doing bad things and was expecting everyone to always forgive him and everyone was always trying to help him), he betrayed the Titans, then tried to betray Crane to go back to the Titans, then betrayed the Titans again because he started to work with Crane after Crane betrayed him and blew his chance to go back to the Titans up (yeah, it makes NO SENSE), he refuses to be responsible for ANY of his actions and always blames everyone else, he is so angry at Dick (and everyone else, but especially Dick) for NO REASON, etc.

Were the writers TRYING to make his character unlikeable????