#And people deny it because they don’t see this behaviour as abuse

[bisexualseraphim]

I’m not like an expert on childcare or anything but I am a human person who has been around for over two decades and I have made a couple of interesting observations about kids during my time on this Earth:

If you scream at a small child, they are probably going to either scream back in defiance or start crying out of fear.

If you get rough with a small child and try to physically drag them around, they are probably going to feel trapped (because they are) and instinctively try to escape.

Doing either of these things will scare the child and make them significantly less likely to do as you ask and stay by your side because they don’t want to get screamed at or hit.

Now, this all might seem like common sense to you; and it absolutely is!

SO WHY THE FUCK DO MOTHERS OF TODDLERS AT THE SUPERMARKET KEEP BEHAVING THIS WAY

[starleska]

i think ‘Big’ Jack Horner is Disney, and here’s why

many of us have had the pleasure of seeing the incredible Puss in Boots: The Last Wish by now, and were blown away by its clever writing, enchanting animation and emotional character arcs. yet there is one character who booted the trend of having a reason for his behaviour, and outright refused to experience any growth whatsoever.

let’s talk about ‘Big’ Jack Horner, and why i think he’s supposed to represent Disney:

‘Big’ Jack Horner isn’t just an antagonist in The Last Wish - he’s a villain. a self-obsessed, exploitative, murderous, petty, cruel bastard of a man whose awful behaviour isn’t just motivated by personal slights or childhood trauma: he sincerely enjoys hurting other people. whether it’s cheating his goons (’The Serpent Sisters’) out of a fair payment for their services or being excited about shooting a puppy in the face, there’s no denying that Jack delights in causing others pain and suffering. but what does he have to do with Disney?

let’s answer that question with another question: do you think that Jack, when placed next to the other antagonists - Goldi, The Three Bears, even Death - sticks out like a sore, plum-coloured thumb?

of course he does! but why? well, let’s look at Jack on a surface level. Jack is a monolith of a human being. not only is he physically huge and intimidating, he is the inheritor of an enormous pastry fortune and operates in the manner of a mob boss, with countless resources and a whole variety of powerful magical items at his disposal. indeed, Jack employs a crack team of bakers/assassins called ‘The Baker’s Dozen’ to carry out many of his tasks. although Jack does harm others himself, it is because of these resources - including the people who work for him - that he is able to bypass many of the obstacles faced by our protagonists in an honest and character-developing way (e.g., the Pocket Full O’Posies in The Dark Forest). Jack doesn’t need to have a character arc the way the other characters do, because he is so wealthy and owns so much.

but Jack’s reason for owning so much and being obsessed with magic and magical items isn’t through intellectual curiosity, or a traumatic backstory where he needed to learn how to wield magic. do you know what Jack’s covert motivation for owning all of the magic in the world is?

it’s money.

when we get the flashback of Jack’s childhood, dancing for the entertainment of an audience using his nursery rhyme, we see him becoming jealous of Pinocchio - and we see Gepetto in the back, absolutely raking in the cash. if we consider this flashback as that crucial moment within which Jack decided to become what he is today - and the presence of our off-brand Jiminy Cricket inclines us to think so - then we can understand that Jack decided that from that moment forward, he would own all of the magic. 

let’s go back to The Baker’s Dozen for a moment. this team of highly-competent, multidisciplinary artisans do everything for Jack, whether it’s baking the pies which make him rich, or laying down their lives at his service. we aren’t given an in-universe reason for why they do this. yes, Jack is feared, but he is still the subject of mockery due to his humble beginnings as a nursery rhyme character. it certainly isn’t due to being treated or paid well. however, if we view the Baker’s Dozen as a metaphor for overworked, exploited artists whose views are routinely dismissed by the money-hungry, powerful corporation who owns their craft...things start to add up, don’t they? considering historic allegations of worker abuse at the hands of Disney, having Jack Horner literally step on their spines and encourage them to flex takes on a whole different meaning. 

it doesn’t end there. do you recognise the items that Jack pulls out of his Mary Poppins bag when his Baker’s Dozen are being destroyed by the Pocket Full O’Posies - the items that he calls ‘the big guns’? it’s the broomstick from Fantasia, the spinning wheel from Sleeping Beauty, the size snacks from Alice in Wonderland, and a knock-off Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio - all references to some of Disney’s earliest and most famous films.

still don’t believe me? well, let’s recap more of the items Jack has in his repertoire:

a hook-hand (referencing Captain Hook in Peter Pan)

a trident (referencing King Triton in The Little Mermaid)

poison apple bombs (referencing The Evil Queen in Snow White)

a glass slipper (again referencing Cinderella)

remember what happens when the knock-off Jiminy Cricket (interesting that there are so many Pinocchio references specifically, huh?) is horrified that Jack is losing so many men? Jack says he isn’t worried about losing the manpower, because he has a bottomless bag full of magical weapons. Jack literally gets his power off of the backs of his workers. sounds a lot like a big company justifying worker layoffs and exploitation because they have so many properties and are too big to fail, doesn’t it? 

hell, Jack doesn’t even know what half of these items do! when he’s using the unicorn horns as ammo, he is surprised that they cause people to explode in a shower of confetti. viewing Jack through this lens, it’s difficult not to think about enormous corporations gobbling up properties and churning out content with little to no regard for their artists (looking back at The Baker’s Dozen - some of whom do perish in the fight with the unicorn horns) or what the properties are about. we haven’t even touched on Jack coveting the Wishing Star, a recurring motif in countless Disney movies as representing magic, dreams, and boundless creativity. 

now, i hear you saying, ‘but Star! why would DreamWorks bother writing their bad guy as a metaphor for Disney?’ believe it or not, this isn’t the first time that DreamWorks have done this. in case you didn’t know, Lord Farquaad is a caricature of Michael Eisner, former chairman and CEO of The Walt Disney Company. the production of Shrek was actually quite troubled; animators who were perceived as having failed on other projects were ‘Shreked’, or sent to work on Shrek, instead of working on other (presumed to be more lucrative) films. of course, DreamWorks was co-founded by previous Disney CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, hence the animosity towards Disney and its works evident in the Shrek franchise. this is what formed the story of Shrek: an ugly, crude outsider character taking on the clean-cut moralising of a dictator hell-bent on a so-called ‘perfect’ world, all created against the creative backdrop of a painful separation from Disney and a great deal of pent-up rage. 

the irreverent, crass and sometimes adult humour of Shrek was a middle finger to Disney’s high-censorship control on animation. this is why Lord Farquaad (which you may have noticed sounds a bit like ‘Fuckwad’) is so obsessed with Duloc being ‘perfect’, and why he couldn’t stand the freedom of the fairy tale creatures who are the heroes of the first Shrek movie.

in fact, this kind of meta-commentary permeates the Shrek franchise: 

The Fairy Godmother from Shrek 2, despite being a fairy tale creature herself, is highly prejudiced against characters who break out of their perceived social norms: i.e., Shrek marrying Princess Fiona and getting his Happily Ever After. she is an expansion of the control left over by Lord Farquaad, and rich because of her monopolisation of fairy tale creatures and their stories. 

Prince Charming in Shrek the Third fails miserably to capitalise on these themes, but we’ll get back to him! 

Rumpelstiltskin from Shrek Forever After tackles the gluttony of franchise reboots, and how soulless and rooted in corporate greed attempts to reboot often are. whilst not necessarily Disney-specific, Shrek Forever After follows the box office bomb that was Shrek the Third: a movie which noticeably fails to write a compelling narrative approaching any of the themes of the previous two films. the writers learned from their mistakes and wrote a movie which satirised their own selling-out of the franchise, becoming hollow and unnecessary and ‘perfect’ - the very thing they were making fun of in the earlier Shrek films.

there is one more area i’d like to touch on: Jack Horner’s source material. we know that Little Jack Horner is quite obscure: an 18th-century English nursery rhyme involving a boy who pulls a plum out of a pie with his thumb, and congratulates himself for his fortitude. but did you know that from its earliest conception, Little Jack Horner was associated with foolishness and dishonesty?

it’s true: the simple yet inexplicable nature of the poem was lambasted for being infantile, and quickly became the subject of revision, moralisation, and even political satire. it is no mistake that to ‘be under one’s thumb’ (as many of the characters in The Last Wish are to Jack, both literally and figuratively) means to be under one’s decisive control. the choice of Jack Horner for the villain of The Last Wish is a clever one, because we could easily have ended up with a sympathetic Jack, whose ostracisation as ‘not even a fairy tale’ may have led to a justifiable motive, even for his specific brand of cruelty. but instead, the writers of The Last Wish have gone one step further; they’ve transformed a source affiliated with idiocy and deception into a metaphor for a global multimedia conglomerate...all while portraying him as simultaneously terrifying, powerful, and ridiculous. 

it has been over a decade since Shrek Forever After was released, and Disney has changed dramatically in that time. a global giant, Disney now owns more enormous money-making properties than ever thought possible, and consistently capitalises on nostalgia for its early properties to make more money and accumulate power. since breaking out of its exclusive licensing agreement with Disney in 2016, DreamWorks has had no official connection to Disney, making the ground for mockery and satirisation of the company which spawned the studio all the more fertile. ‘Big’ Jack Horner is not just a glamorous return to form for the dreadful, unapologetically evil villain which Disney has eschewed in modern times - he’s a hulking, egocentric monster whose avarice rivals that only of the corporation he’s inspired by. 

and those are my thoughts on ‘Big’ Jack Horner! of course this is by no means the definitive interpretation - we should all just have fun with the movie and come up with whatever theories we like 🥰💖 i’d love to hear your thoughts on him and The Last Wish in general - he’s definitely one of my favourite bad guys to be released in the past few years!

thanks so much for reading, and have yourselves a wonderful day 🥰

[ceaselesswatchersspecialboy]

Offering an NPD perspective on Ford Pines, because I feel the most common discussions surrounding his narcissistic traits tends to go in two ways — from what I’ve personally seen — and that’s defending him, and denying the mere possibility he may have NPD because it’s seen as a negative, or using NPD as a way to villainise him, and thus demonise NPD. Or, the alternative, this part of his character is completely overlooked.

That isn’t to say I haven’t seen some wonderful analyses on Ford and NPD, rather, I find it surprisingly lacking when his character might be some of the best representation of my own experience struggling with narcissism (alongside Bill).

I believe a lot of it stems from the misconception and stigma around NPD, and the fact Ford goes again common, typically incorrect, ideas, such as showing genuine care for other people, and accepting his failures and where he went wrong in the end, trying to repair his relationship with Stan, and realising that he doesn’t need to be recognised worldwide, as he’s found happiness with his family instead. All of these do not correlate with the media idea of a narcissist, but the fact is, narcissists are no different from any other disorder or mental health issue. We come in all different forms, and the idea we are inherently abusive or evil is such a widespread misconception that it becomes difficult getting help or support.

And that’s why I find Ford so important.

This alone, to me, describes in simple words how it feels to deal with NPD, and though you could argue Bill is projecting here, I think the point is they’re so similar, the lines blur. Both struggle with this same mentality, but Ford is able to reach out, and accept help, and Bill lets himself sink deeper and deeper into his own lies. Also, I’d argue it isn’t Bill projecting, because we sees evidence of this behaviour in Ford in the show and the journal.

He’s someone who believes himself destined for greatness, and won’t accept the bare minimum, such as when Fiddleford suggests he publish his research as is — No, he can’t have that. He has to be the one to uncover this grand theory. He has to have his name cemented amongst the greats. He believes himself to be special, different and more capable than other people, and yet he longs for the company of others all the same. He lives off of validation and praise, and strives for it, his own ego clashing against his lack of self-worth. Bill’s manipulations work on him because Ford eats up this sort of validation — it’s like one big high. It’s confirmation he is special. He is meant for greater things. He was right.

Ford notably struggles with empathy, which is likely both related to his autism, and also his narcissism. Other people simply don’t make sense to him. It takes effort for him to be able to understand people where they’re at, and he is willing to put in that effort notably, taking note of Fiddleford’s habits for example.

He also does struggle with manipulation and being deeply self-centred. A great example being Dipper’s apprenticeship. Ford is very subtly manipulating the situation here, and he doesn’t even notice, which is, in my own experience, common with NPD. He’s also unable to see Dipper and Mabel as, well, Dipper and Mabel, rather putting his own issues with Stan onto them, especially Dipper. He sees Dipper as a younger version of himself, and is trying to point him in that direction, never thinking whether it’s actually right for Dipper, or whether it’s for himself.

I could probably go on, like how he tends to have a black and white view of people, with his opinions on them easily flicking between extremes as a method of coping, or how he panics at the idea of his life’s work being destroyed, despite knowing the dangers.

Whether you agree he has NPD or not, Ford definitely has a lot of narcissistic traits, and yet, despite that, despite every mistake he’s made, everyone he’s pushed away, he gets a second chance. He gets to be loved and understood. He finds happiness. He gets to recover.

It’s very rare that characters with so many narcissistic traits get endings like that!

Ford is not a bad person because he’s a narcissist, he’s just a person, one who’s fucked up, and who’s still learning, and still healing, and that’s why he works. That’s why he’s such a comfort.

On a final note, If you are someone who’s going to argue vehemently against this idea, I kindly ask you simply scroll by!

[extremely-judgemental]

Subtext is completely lost in this fandom. I partly blame SJM for it. This is a rant from both reading and writing standpoint and leans towards the characters since I like to psychoanalyse them.

The one thing that tired me the most in these books is the excessive narration. I don’t mean the wordy description to support world-building but the never-ending monologues. SJM takes ‘show, don’t tell’ advice literally with the visual cues when it should apply to the characters and their personalities as well. Where subtext usually exposes depth of these characters and lets you decide who they are, SJM strips away that chance by writing it down for you word by word. The reason so many are going with 'in the book' argument is exactly this.

Here’s what I mean.

In real life, people don’t think linearly. They have an idea about themselves as much as they have about everyone else around them. There are self-imposed restrictions on their thoughts based on who they believe to be and who they strive to be. And it shows in their interaction with outside world. Say, when someone is ashamed of their actions, they will deny it for as long as possible. Someone who regrets something, they will sugarcoat it.

But in her books, her characters think clearly—way too clearly so that you latch onto the ideas she perpetuates. You don’t get to know them based on their thoughts, words, and actions, and see how these three support each other. You don't get a chance to draw conclusions as to if they are the hero/villain and good/evil based on their actions. If their behaviours match their words or if their choices are acceptable. Because SJM sets it in words for you. The characters come with a label beforehand. (Feyre, Rhysand and Inner Circle are good guys. Tamlin, Eris and Nesta, sometimes Lucien are evil.) It's why so many toxic and abusive themes are dismissed because it’s the 'good guy' or the 'morally grey guy’ who does it.

And so, her lead or ‘good’ characters fall flat since they have everything figured out. They know themselves inside out. They are never wrong about themselves, there’s no part they hide from themselves or the others. There’s nothing for you to read and identify the beauty or ugliness in the character. There’s no depth in them because they don’t contradict themselves, they don’t struggle to be someone they always believed to be. They don’t have to prove anything to themselves or others. They say what they think and they do what they say. They are very aware of their shortcomings and they all seem to know the exact consequences of their decisions.

Feyre doesn’t change in the three books. Her ‘rags to riches’ story doesn’t lead to much character growth. She starts out as an adamant, reckless child and ends up being arrogant, reckless woman with a crown. She doesn’t undergo a shift in personality but climbs up the social hierarchy. And that’s considered character development. Rhysand remains the same throughout. He starts out as a villain but later revealed as a good guy playing bad. Instead of growing into a hero—given his crimes, his ill deeds are negated with sympathetic backstory. And from there, it’s a flat line. There’s no growth.

In the end how does the character change in the aftermath of the events? Which of their beliefs are shattered and rebuilt? What is the emotional impact on the other characters? SJM does offer some closure on these regards but they are solely focused on a list of traumas and specific reactions set by SJM herself. And so readers refuse to think for themselves how these scenarios may play out and take the words relayed through the unreliable narrators who are essentially preaching SJM’s biases. Also, when they are so explicitly written down, there’s not much room for subtext. After going through pages and pages of justification, it tires you from using reason.

Even if we get past this (writing) flaw, there are other major issues. Story telling is a way of experiencing life. It helps build empathy, compassion and understanding of the world. Even in a fantasy book, when that world doesn’t exist, when the characters aren’t real, their journey are drawn from real life experiences. Relating to these characters is subjective and solely depends on the reader, but determining the rightness of their actions is not. This too is warped as SJM dictates which behaviour is acceptable and how far through her lead characters(Feyre vs Nesta imprisonment). Instead of allowing you to judge the choices, the verdict is spoon-fed through the ‘hero’. If the characters are forgiven, it’s not abuse. It’s a simple mistake. (It’s a mistake if it happens once and if there’s a changed behaviour after the apology.) If the characters are happy in the end, their acts are admissible. Unless SJM stamps the word ‘abuser’ and ‘bad guy’ in block letters herself(Tamlin), it's not even considered a possibility.

In short, in this fandom, ‘reading between the lines’ is acceptable as long as it supports what the author preaches. When it contradicts ‘it’s in the books’. Logic is valid only if you use it to justify the fan favourites and applaud them. Empathy is conditional. Compassion is conditional. Critical thinking is so discouraged that it’s pitiful.

[ssnowiejo]

I’m just venting here.

I first liked joe because he seemed normal, like genuinely average (which is not a bad thing) I think It was nice to see someone like him in the entertainment industry, not your typical pretty Hollywood boy and it was working no one can deny that, that’s what was appealing about him and I know many people found comfort on that and I don’t blame them.

The whole situation with DC did disappoint me but I wasn’t surprised, he’s a man after all and as I said before I took him out of the pedestal a long time ago.

But what it genuinely bothered me so much was the behaviour of the fandom, many people felt disappointed on him and expressed their opinions just to be harassed by others in the fandom, just because they want to defend a MAN.

Poc and black fans expressed their opinions,their concern and at least to me they expressed how they often feel left out of the conversation and what was the response…telling them that they’re making a big deal, you bullied a girl to deactivate and called her the N-word just because she was calling Joe out (and also DC). You called fans who question joe behaviour crazy and that have a parasocial relationship but it’s you who treat him like the f messiah, a 30 year old man that can do no wrong, he’s just uwu chocolate button eyes and everyone is mean to him, Joe CHOOSE to be with DC, real or pr, he wanted to be with her, it’s clear he wants the fame, the money I literally saw that when he choose to work with marvel so stop acting like he’s an innocent lamb.

With that being said, he can do whatever he wants that’s on him, I don’t pray on his downfall and I never will after all I had a great time while it lasted, I cracked some jokes, I had fun…but I’m not gonna be defending him he is responsible for his own actions and if he ruins his image, his career it’s on him.

To anyone who felt deeply affected by this whole situation, poc/black fans, victims of abuse, people who find comfort in being a fan, I just want to tell you that your feelings are valid and if you want to talk you’re very much welcome here. I hope you all find healing, I know sometimes being a fan brings happiness and comfort but It can also be mentally draining, so I hope this situation encourages you to take care of yourself, put yourself first not celebrities, take yourself on a date, go to a nice restaurant, spend your money on a face treatment or spa.

[autisticwriterblog]

Izzy, Ed and abuse

okay, so I’ve seen a few people talking about Izzy and Ed, and it genuinely disturbs me that I’ve seen people deny that Izzy is a victim of abuse. By most definitions, physical abuse is categorised as causing physical harm to another person’s body with intent to hurt them. Some things, like punching Izzy for selling Stede out, or choking him for saying hateful stuff when Ed was at his lowest, whilst not acceptable in the real world, are perfectly normal reactions for a pirate to have toward a member of his crew, so I’m not talking about things like that.

But the toe scene and the early parts of season 2 are clearly abusive, and only by sheer character bias (framing Ed as someone who could never do anything wrong) can you look at the way Ed treats Izzy and not consider Izzy a victim. Izzy and Ed have had a mutually toxic relationship for a long time, judging by their interactions, but I personally only see abusive behaviour starting with the toe scene. And the abusive one is Ed. Which shouldn’t be a controversial thing to say, considering what we see on screen, and yet…

Even at the end of season one, we saw Ed cut Izzy’s toe off and force him to eat it, and it is confirmed in season 2 that he took two more toes. He is even about to take a fourth toe when Izzy reports that the crew refused to throw their treasure overboard, and Izzy doesn’t argue, much unlike in season 1, when he often bitched at Ed for his decisions. Now, Izzy just takes the punishment.

Things between them come to a head when Ed shoots Izzy in the leg, leading to infection, and the amputation of his leg. He even puts a gun in Izzy’s hand, directly leading to Izzy’s suicide attempt. And in the end, all Izzy gets is a mumbled apology and that's that.

I know many people don’t like Izzy, but do they not sympathise with him? I’ll be first to admit that I don’t like Ed and Stede (I used to, but season 2 made me dislike them more and more for reasons too complicated to go into now), but I feel bad for them when bad things happen to them. I got bullied as a child, so I sympathise with Stede in the flashbacks to his childhood, and I was horrified when I learned what Ed's father was like. I don't particularly like either of them, but I feel bad for them when they're suffering. Which is why I found it so strange and appalling that people who dislike Izzy seemed to find it funny when Izzy was crawling along the floor, or died a painful death.

Even ignoring Ed's treatment of Izzy, the way he treats the crew is abusive too. He overworks them, pushing them into three months of consecutive raids (assuming they did one raid a day), leaving them all so stressed that Fang seems to always be crying. He forces Jim and Archie to fight to the death for no reason other than he said so. He expects Frenchie to kill Izzy, and it is clear how terrified Frenchie is the entire time he lies to Ed. The whole crew walk on eggshells around Ed because they don't know when he'll explode again. Basically, even if Izzy isn't being mentioned (and he should for the record, because he got the worst treatment - and he didn't deserve it, despite that some people seem to think being mutilated is a fair punishment for yelling at Ed), Ed was still abusive towards the crew. During that time period, Ed is incredibly unstable. He wants the world to burn and doesn't care who gets hurt along with him. Which is why the crew still show signs of trauma after Stede returns. Because they are traumatised by Ed's behaviour.

I know that Ed is a victim of abuse, and I have seen people bring this up when his abusive behaviour is mentioned. The thing is, it's perfectly possible for a victim to become an abuser themself, because they're a human being and are capable of doing bad things. Yes, survivors don't have to become abusive (see: my mum, who was smacked as a child but never raised a hand to her own children, because she didn't turn out like her parents), but it can happen. And that is what happened with Ed. There is even a direct parallel between Ed's dad throwing a plate against the wall, scaring Ed's mother, and the scene where Ed throws a chair against the wall, making Stede visibly flinched. If you want someone to be annoyed with about this comparison, don't pick the fans who are just noticing something in canon - blame the show for writing Ed doing the same thing his abusive father did.

In conclusion, Izzy fans aren't just making things up. We're pointing out things that canon showed onscreen and how Ed's behaviour toward Izzy is abusive. I wanted to like Ed this season, but the way the show wrote him made it impossible for me to tolerate him, because he treated everyone badly and they were expected to just move on. I understand that Ed is a romantic lead, but perhaps it wasn't a good idea to make your romantic lead act so abusive toward his subordinates and then never show any real consequences of that.

[animegirl3476]

Another day, another discourse comparing and contrasting Shoya and Shoko’s relationship in A Silent Voice with Katsuki and Izuku’s relationship in My Hero Academia.

At the end of the day, you’ll never get a 1:1 comparison with these two cases due to the fact that 1) They belong to vastly different genres, 2) One is far longer than the other and 3) One is a grounded character drama and coming of age tale.

But…

I think that A Silent Voice provides a fairly good basis for judging the way MHA handles the relationship development of two characters, where one used to bully the other and an arc of atonement occurs. More importantly, comparisons to A Silent Voice highlight the shortcomings of Katsuki and Izuku’s relationship development and allows me to understand and actually communicate what I don’t like about the way the story handles it.

In my opinion, what sets these two stories apart in the way they handle the atonement arcs of their respective bullies is the way they portray consequences. The big “C” word tends to elicit a hostile reaction from certain fans, who assume that your idea of consequences must necessarily involve the bully character being gratuitously punished and made to suffer as retribution for their past actions. But a consequence is just the “result or affect of an action or condition” and can range in severity, it can have many different effects.

A Silent Voice uses social consequences to prompt change from its main character. Shoya’s bullying results in him being shunned by his classmates and friends, and the story goes to great lengths to show how his actions not only hurt his victim, but that they also hurt people he cared about. His mom has to reimburse Shoko’s mom for the damaged hearing aids (when she is already short on money) for example. Furthermore, the knowledge of his past is something that impacts the way others perceive him, and that change in perception is essential to his arc.

More importantly, A Silent Voice makes it clear to the viewer/reader that despite Shoko generally being a kind and forgiving person, the bullying still hurt her deeply enough to leave a long lasting impression. Shoko is receptive to Shoya’s will to change, but the story doesn’t ignore that Shoko suffered greatly and that the bullying made her sad, frustrated and even angry. Her negative emotions are not overshadowed by her desire to see Shoya become a better person.

The thing that holds me back from enjoying Katsuki and Izuku’s relationship development is the lack of consequences Bakugou receives for his bullying (which is directly connected to the way the narrative denies Izuku both agency and introspection) The hard truth is that Bakugou faces little to no consequences for his past behaviour, and one would think that such a topic would have to be brought up at some point because, ya know…he goes to a hero school. A HERO school, a place where people train to be role models, help people on a large scale and protect those who cannot protect themselves.

The first scene we see with Bakugou depicts him as the opposite of a hero. A mean bully who beats up people weaker than him, and this is emphasized by the fact that he targets Izuku, who has no means of defending himself. Despite this, he gets into UA, which isn’t necessarily a problem because it communicates a major flaw in the system that cultivates heroes (Overlooking certain problematic traits in favour of innate talent and strength) BUT, the information that he used to be a bully never comes up among his classmates in any major or lasting way. We saw his classmates, and even his new friends discuss or think about how much they abhor bullying. The students of class 1A do not like it when people abuse their strength to pick on those weaker than them…yet that never seems to connect back to Bakugou’s past as a bully.

This issue is exacerbated by the lack of attention given to Izuku’s side of the story. In stories that involve the atonement or redemption of a bully, it is CRITICAL that the victim’s side of the story is treated as something equally important to the bully’s side. It’s not something that can just be overshadowed by the bully’s side, it must be focused on in order for the atonement arc to work.

It’s disappointing that Izuku lacks the introspection that Katsuki gets, and very unsatisfying that it effectively lets Katsuki off the hook for literally every bad thing he’s ever done. The ways the bullying might’ve impacted Izuku for the worst is hardly ever discussed because every time the narrative approaches the topic, it always pivots to Izuku praising Katsuki for the things he did right. This is a big problem, because it silences any discussion that focuses on Izuku’s feelings and shines the spotlight on Katsuki instead.

Before I end my little tangent, I also feel the need to say this: Pointing to any instance of Katsuki’s suffering throughout the series IS NOT EVIDENCE OF CONSEQUENCES! Any bad thing will happen to Katsuki and people will proceed to say: “SEE?! Did you see that?? Katsuki HAS faced consequences! How can you say that he never faced consequences for his actions? Why do you want him to suffer?” It’s so disingenuous and it’s a terrible argument that refuses to criticize the text.

[lokisprettygirl]

Brokenhearted (Daemon Targaryen x Female Reader) (Non Canon Modern AU) (18+)

Read Chapter 15 here // Series Masterlist

Chapter 16

Summary : Daemon's love and care has made your life easier post accident, however you can't help but feel that he's not being entirely truthful to you.

Warning: 18+, Smut, violent thoughts, stalking, Discussion of mensuration and Pregnancy, bloodshed, kidnapping, Abusive relationship, mention of rape, ptsd, toxic masculinity, gender norms, sexual abuse, Samantha, traumatic distressing content, Daemon is a big time smoker so if it’s something triggering don’t read it, alcohol drinking, mention of past trauma and therapy, cigarette smoking, possessive behaviour, violence, baby needs therapy, baby is trying

It had been two weeks since you returned home from the hospital. Daemon had practically moved in with you, and it felt like he had always been there. There was no official discussion, no grand gesture. You just found a luggage full of his stuff in your room one morning and none of you said anything about it. He was taking such good care of you that this whole traumatic incident didn't feel like the worst thing that had ever happened, even though it actually was the worst experience you had ever been through in your life.

You still had the recurring nightmares and you used to see a therapist before for anxiety issues so Daemon got in touch with her and she was visiting you as well to help you deal with the aftermath of the trauma the accident had left behind.

There was just one problem, just one tiny problem, you had this ugly sinking feeling in your gut that he was hiding something from you.

Everytime he left the center, he came home almost an hour later, which didn't make sense to you because it was merely a twenty minute drive. Viserys had told you that maybe he was going to his condo but when you had asked him the same he had denied doing so. He had told you that Samantha was there and he didn't want to see her under any condition.

The next evening you had your friends over at your apartment so when Daemon came back from work, he was already a bit distracted and seeing a group of ladies just lounging in your apartment was a bit of a surprise for him. You knew you had to introduce them to each other at some point so that's what you did. Once they left he sat down on the couch next to you and kissed you softly before he slumped onto the couch.

"Tired?" You asked him softly as you raised your right hand to caress his scalp,

"No..but that feels good…keep going" you smiled as he said that. You couldn't understand how he wasn't tired, he trained himself and the new guys that turned up at the center and he was basically your caretaker for the rest of the day, taking care of your diet and medicines that you needed and were too careless to take on time.

"You had fun i see" he mumbled, making you smile, it was nice to see your friends. You always enjoyed gushing about the guys you were seeing with them but Daemon was not just some guy, he was the love of your life.

Next day as he came home he found you in the kitchen trying to do whatever you can with one capable hand and you felt his eyes on the nurse Sally who was also a bit worried about the whole situation but more than that she feared his wrath for allowing you to do this.

"Stop glaring at her, I insisted, I practically forced her to let me do this" you told him so he sighed and rubbed his forehead with his hand before he spoke.

"You can leave for the day" he told Sally so she immediately scurried off as soon as she could.

"You scare people, you know that?"

"Good. What are you doing hmm? You're supposed to be resting so you could heal" he stood behind you and hugged you like that with his arm secured around your waist and chin down on your shoulder "You're making Cheese Burger"

"Yeah well i was going to surprise you but you are early today"

He didn't say anything for a few seconds and then he just placed a soft kiss on your cheek. He was early because he had decided to not feed Samantha today, she was difficult to break but he wasn't going to give up. He had come so far to take a step back now. He had left a candy bar on the bed yesterday though, even though he wanted to be as cruel as possible he couldn't actually bring himself to be that way.

"You are magnificent darling, if i could.. I'd just fuck you right about now" he mumbled in your ears and it made you feel all tingly.

"Well you absolutely can, you choose not to"

"Husshh"

After eating while he was in the shower, you received a call from the owner of Cuisine waves telling you that they were hiring someone else in your place because they couldn't hold your job any longer. When Daemon stepped out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist and found you crying with your head smushed in the pillow he was immediately right next to you,

"What is it hmm?" He asked you firmly even though he was a bit terrified.

"I lost my job..they fired me" you mumbled between your sniffles and the sight made him tear up but there was also a small smile on his face

"That's it..that is what is making you bawl my silly girl?" He asked softly so you glared at him.

"I liked working there…I felt.. comfortable..i was there for four years for a reason" you sniffled again like a baby so he wiped your tears and kissed you.

"Yeah?? felt comfy there huh?" You nodded as he questioned you and then he pampered you all day long to comfort you.

Two days later you discovered that he had bought the diner and hired you back in your previous position. You didn't know whether to cry from the sweet sentimental gesture or be infuriated by his impulses. At the end you decided to cry indeed because you knew you'd never treat him the way Samantha did. He did something nice for you in the hope that it would make you happy and feel better so you weren't going to go all mommy on him and tell him that he needed to spend his money wisely. Also, he knew better about financial management than you did.

A week later while you were alone with Sally, she had received a call informing her about a family emergency and she asked you if she could leave so you didn't really think much of it and allowed her to go. When Daemon came home he was furious you could tell but he didn't really snap at you, no, he waited for a day, kept his anger bubbling until he saw Sally again and snapped at her instead.

However once he noticed the tears in her eyes he calmed down and strictly told her to not be so careless about your safety and inform him first if she had to go somewhere.

After she had left for the day, you were watching Daemon huffing and puffing still, cursing at every little inanimate object that seemed to have irked him somehow. He even had an argument with his hair brush for not being able to get rid of his tangles.

"Come here"

You mumbled softly so he grunted and then eventually walked towards you.

"What?" He asked you as he carefully got on top of you with one of his knees between your legs and the other on the left side of your thigh.

You curled your fingers around his neck and pulled him closer to kiss him, his body was stiff at first but soon he melted with your touch. As your hand wandered down he grabbed it swiftly and pulled away to look at you.

"What are you doing?"

"You know what I am doing"

You struggled against his hold so he allowed your hand to wander lower and you slipped it under the waistband of his trouser but he grabbed it again.

"Noo"

You halted in your tracks as he said that, you had to know what he was feeling, you had to be careful with him after everything he had been through.

"Is that a no in the sense that 'Stop it I'm uncomfortable' or no as in 'I want it but I'm scared I'm going to hurt you'

His brows crinkled as you said that and he placed his forehead down on yours,

"The latter ofcourse..I can't do this love..half of your limbs are broken and you know how I get when I'm fucking you" you bit on your lips as he said that. Your eyes were glittering with different emotions,

"When did you start to love me this much?" He narrowed his eyes at the question,

"Don't get too cocky"

"Okay but I never said anything about fucking now did i? Let me just.." You mumbled as you took his cock out and gave it a few strokes, he was already hard just from the close proximity and sexual whispering in his ear "You have been so grumpy.. let me fix that"

His breathing got heavier as you worked him up and down slowly.

"Look into my eyes" your tone was sharp so he glared at you and grabbed your chin with his fingers.

"Don't talk to me like that"

"Mmmm sorry..look at me dae pleaseee"

He kissed you deeply and passionately before he did what you had asked him to, his knee that was settled between your legs had inched closer to your heated core and as he pressed it right against your damp soaked clothed flesh you let out a loud gasp,

"You need this too don't you?" he snickered as your hips gyrated against his knee.

"Of Course i do ..it's been months, the last time I touched myself was night before the accident"

"And what were you thinking of when you pleasured yourself?"

"I thought about you and how good it would feel to have your fingers playing with me instead of mine"

His finger slipped under the waistband of your shorts and panties at once as he rubbed your wet dripping lips ,

"Mmm spread your leg darling, only one of them is broken..the other one works well" he commanded in an authoritative tone and the gravel in his voice made you moan,

"Gosh I miss this side of you Daemon "

"I know you do, pampering isn't enough for you is it? You need to be put in your place once in a while"

"Mmm yesss sir..I wish I could suck on your cock, drink all of the cum you're going to spill on me"

He moaned at your words and he really wanted to please you but the way you worked him up with your touch and your filthy words were making him lose all his inhibitions, he unbuttoned your shirt until your breasts were exposed and then his mouth sucked and nipped on the erect buds while his thumb rubbed in circles over your clit and middle finger curled inside your warmth.

You didn't really need much stimulation, you have been craving his touch for months now so when you came so suddenly he was only pleased with himself. His fingers were soaking wet as he pulled them out of you, looking right in your eyes he licked them all at once into his mouth, the way his full soft lips wrapped around his own digits was the most erotic sight you had ever witnessed in life.

The ecstatic look on his face gave you enough indication that he was close and you wanted to feel it all on you, you wanted to feel his warm cum on your skin.

"Cum all over me dae…please" your whiny begging voice pushed him over the edge and he aimed for your breasts as he let go, covering every inch of your tits in his glistening cum. The constant whisper of your name as he rode through his high was enough to turn you on again.

"Feeling better?" You asked him in a sheepish manner but he kissed you in response instead of answering and got off the bed to clean the mess he had made on you, once he was done he buttoned up your shirt.

"Was I too rough?" He asked you softly so you smiled,

"Noo come here" you opened your arms, well one arm to be precise, so he sighed before he leaned down and rested his head on your chest

"What's bothering you baby?"

"Nothing I'm just worried about you"

"I'm okay now..I'll be okay"

"I know I just…I'm being stupid'

"No you're not..you're adorable like this"

"Shut up"

"Mmmhhm'

When you woke up from the nap he wasn't there in the bed with you so you called out for him but when he didn't answer you picked up your phone and called him instead

"Darling you up?" He asked you

"Yess where are you?"

"At my condo..had to grab a few of my things" he said and you felt worried thinking about him being alone there with her.

"Ummmm okay..is she there?"

"Yeah" he mumbled as he looked at Samantha, all tied up in chains and bound on the bed still,

"Okay be careful baby and come back soon okay?"

Well he wasn't the one that had to be careful anymore.

"Will be there in a flash i promise"

"I love you" you mumbled softly so he smiled.

"I love you"

Once you hung up, he got up from the chair and walked towards Samantha to take the duct tape off her mouth and she immediately began to hurl verbal abuses towards him which didn't impress him at all, it's not that he hadn't heard her creative words before. He sat back down on the chair and glared at her for a moment before he spoke,

"All of this can end Samantha, you know that right? All you have to do is prove to me that you'd confess for your crime"

"I have given you my word you bastard" she yelled at him so he let out a sound of disapproval. He didn't trust her at all.

"But I don't believe you ..I don't trust you to not change your mind"

"Daemon if I die here you'd be in prison forever..is that what you want?"

"Well at least you'd be dead ey?" He smiled and her eyes welled up in tears of anger and hurt at the same time "Don't fret though, you think I'd let you get away so easily after what you have done to her? Just a slow torturous death? No no no no" He snickered as he leaned into his chair

"I want to watch you rot in prison sweetheart"

You were on the bed waiting for Daemon to come home, being almost bedridden wasn't fun to say the least, sure you were getting to spend plenty of time with him but when he wasn't there you felt absolutely alone.

"Where is the stuff?" You asked him as he entered the room all empty handed.

"In the car..ummm in the backseat of the car" he mumbled as he took his hoodie off and his shirt followed, you were only getting pudgier everyday while he only got hotter somehow. You wondered if Samantha said something to him but you decided to not bring her up.

"Once i recover I want you to train me back to shape"

He smiled as you said that and crawled into the bed to get on top of you, you could smell the cologne mixed with the aroma of freshly burnt cigarette on him.

"In shape you silly girl? You're all perfect but I'll help you get healthy if that's what you desire" he grabbed your chin and talked to you as if you were a petulant child.

"Yeahh ..that .."

"What do you want for dinner?"

"You"

"You had me ..no more exertion..what else?"

There was a smile on his face and it made you smile even wider.

"You seem..in a good mood"

"Yeah you put me there with your little stunt this afternoon" you couldn't help but giggle at his words but then your expressions turned somber.

"I'm bored Daemon..I'm losing my mind over here"

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"You're doing enough for me..I can't ask you to be here with me 24/7" he sighed before he got off the bed and quickly walked towards the closet to put his shirt on again.

"Let's go"

"What?"

"Come on …I want to show you something "

He picked you up as carefully as he could and made you sit down on the couch as he went back in the room to grab the car keys, then he picked you up again and took you downstairs.

"Where are we going?"

"Shhhh.."

You got quiet as he gave you the eyes, he really wanted to wait for your birthday but he figured this would brighten your mood. Halfway on the road he made you close your eyes and when you opened it you were right in front of the diner. From outside it looked different, he was getting the exteriors changed now that he owned it but that was not what took you by surprise, you gasped as you looked at the new name of the diner. It was no longer Cuisine waves.

"Silly's Cheeseburger" you read the name out loud so he looked at the diner,

"It's so fucking stupid I know..I just wanted you to have a place where you'd feel at home even when you're at work and perhaps think of me every time you see the name"

He chuckled as he looked your way and he was expecting you to laugh or give him eyes or something but he saw you sniffing and crying instead, those were the tears of happiness for a change. He immediately took his seat belt off and scooted closer to comfort you,

"Sentimental little thing aren't you?"

"Shut up ..this is ..the sweetest thing..i ..oh god"

"Hey hey hey okay no crying..no more yeah?" He cooed in your ears as he embraced you as tightly as he could without hurting you. Once you had calmed down a bit he stepped out and opened the door on your side to pick you up so he could take you inside, it was all empty in there due to the renovation. The diner was going through a complete transformation.

"Wait where are ..what about the other staff?"

"Don't worry, they're all off with pay..it will reopen a week later..on your birthday" you gasped again as he revealed that.

"Gosh Daemon i love this..i love you …but is this really the best use of your money? I don't want you to regret it in future"

He smiled as you said that and made you sit down on the bill counter, cupping your cheeks he made you look at him,

"This is not just a financial investment, this place is the reason why you were there in the alley that night, the reason why I met you..why I am no longer just living but alive. I'd never ever regret anything that involves you my love, now I'd shut up because you're going to cry again and I don't like little girls who cry all the time "

You bit on your cheeks as he said that and pulled him closer to kiss him as lovingly as you could.

"You know we are not far apart in age right?"

He chuckled as you said that.

"I'm jesting darling, you can cry all you want but –"

"You hate it I know" he nodded in affirmation.

"Want to see your favorite place?"

"Do you even have to ask?"

You giggled as he picked you up again and took you to the kitchen, it was newly furnished as well, you didn't even recognise it at first.

"New burners oh my gosh, we have been complaining for so long..wait a minute– " a look of realization flashed on your face so he raised his brows .

"Does that mean you're my boss now?"

"Technically yeah..don't look so shocked though ..you know I'm your boss any which ways"

"Haha funny..do you think people will hate me for fucking the boss?" He grimaced as you said that,

"You're so crude and no.. I think they'd suck up to you instead"

"I don't want that either"

"Are you happy?"

"I'm more than happy right now dae, you have no idea how amazing you are"

Only if you knew what he was capable of he thought.

While he was grabbing dinner you were in the car by yourself and something felt off but you couldn't put your finger on it, you had the same sinking feeling in your chest now but you didn't understand why. However as soon as you were back in your apartment suddenly it dawned on you.

You looked at him as he was taking the food out, contemplating whether to ask him the question or not. He seemed happy and relaxed for once and you didn't want to ruin that but then you didn't understand why he was lying to you.

There was nothing in the backseat of his car, none of his belongings, he went to his condo to bring his stuff but he came back empty handed and he told you that his things were in the backseat of his car but you had just been there and it was empty so why did he lie to you?

Where did he go? Was he still seeing Samantha or was he in some sort of trouble with her? Millions of questions bothered you and you knew you had to figure out the truth sooner than later.

☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️☺️

Taglist (please check your setting if I’m not able to tag you)

@simbaaas-stuff @ajthefujoshi @witchybitch2 @hypocritic-trash-baby @mariaelizabeth21-blog1 @thefallenangel21n @kmc1989

@stupidthoughtsinwriting

[makingspiritualityreal]

Benefics vs Malefics in Nakshatra

When you really understand the themes of Nakshatras, you see them play out in people's lives, and you can see how different planets operate in them. You notice the difference between malefics and benefics.

Benefics in a Nakshatra give you a free pass, and that is not always good. Essentially, you can get away with wrongdoing unchecked, because you're somehow spiritually "protected". In reality, your soul is in childlike stages of learning this energy so it is given room to gain experience. That can actually be really harmful in the long run. You will still face long term consequences of your behaviour, but you get a free pass so nothing will stop you until you stop yourself. Often, I've seen people be completely unaware that they messed up their whole lives because of abusing their benefics. That is especially prominent if a benefic planet is in a more severe Nakshatra, especially of a Rakshasa nature, because it leads to things like people abusing their anger or authority, and it takes ages for them to know they're paying the price for it.

On the other hand, malefics in the same Rakshasa Nakshatra delay results, will even subject the native to unfair treatment from others, but they show them perfectly how to toe the line of using destructive energies responsibly, for purification, not for an ego trip. I have seen a lot of refined, responsible leadership, that fell upon these natives even when they were hesitant to embrace it. However, the people who failed to grow in this area were as a result flat out denied access to the power of these Nakshatras. You will just not get any results, unless what you are doing is coming from the right place, which is a stark contrast to benefic planets, that don’t properly “discipline” the more fierce Nakshatra energy.

People with benefic planets in destructive Nakshatras, that go unchecked, ultimately destroy themselves, as over time no one wants to be around them and they live surrounded by the results of what they have done.

Fun fact, not all classical benefics suffer from this consequence. The more soft, kind and giving the planet is, the more it suffers in a Nakshatra with fierce qualities. Venus and Mercury have a certain element of spiritual duality about them, and with that comes neutrality, which can adapt to Nakshatras of either nature. Moon, Sun and Jupiter suffer the most in Rakshasa Nakshatra, as they are energetically the most susceptible.

[asakiyumemishiii]

The Steve Harrington to Jamie Tartt to Evan Buckey pipeline. The way they've all been my hyperfixation this year and we can clearly tell why.

Questionably shitty parents. Cannot maintain a relationship. Or at least tries and fails. Cocky to sweet character arc. Good with children. Steve is so good with the kids in the show. Jamie is good with Roy's niece. And Evan literally takes care of Eddie’s son so well that Eddie made him his son’s legal guardian should anything happen to him.

The way they just like are always saving the day, whether directly or indirectly- they always have a part in making a situation better. But it’s in the most reckless way that it’s like practically self-destructive or like kind of self-sabotaging. They're the Hero Character™️, even though they're not even the main character.

They all kind of have like gay best friends too! Or like they themself are super gay coded. Robin comes out to Steve. Colin comes out to the entire team and then everyone is like, “Oh I thought Jamie was the gay one!” And then Jamie doesn’t even deny it, which is crazy. And Buck literally kisses a man. AND both Buck and Steve have insane tension/chemistry with a dude named Eddie LIKE…

The way like people don't even like any of these three characters at the start of their shows. They’re annoying, arrogant, cocky, overconfident, etc… Despite having reason for being that way, like, yeah, they're overconfident but only because they do have the skills to back them up. Steve has charisma and is generally dorky/charming, even though he's like kind of an obnoxious idiot at the same time. Jamie is literally insanely good at football in season one, and he hasn’t even reached his full potential! Buck is also an idiot but he is admittedly still a good firefighter, just careless. And they all just progressively get better without losing their charm. If anything, Jamie becomes so puppy coded, but like in a good way. They all just go from being annoying (derogatory) to annoying (affectionate).

Steve projecting his implied negative family situation onto the kids that he continuously puts his life on the line to save and protect. Jamie having an abusive dad and finding his found family in the Richmond team and also doing his best to make sure they stay at the top of the ranks and don’t get relegated again. Buck having shit parents, but finding family and strength in the 118 firehouse. Steve Harrington, Jamie Tartt and Evan Buckley finding their found family in somewhere and someone that they would have never expected. All three of them learning from the people around them and just genuinely realising their flaws and then actively working to change themselves for the greater good.

Steve hanging around Robin and Dustin and slowly realising that they’re the kind of people who he should have surrounded himself with from the start. Because both of them didn’t cater to his fake King Steve persona but rather bantered with him and treated him for the Guy he is and saw him at his lowest and still stayed. Jamie spending time with the Richmond team and learning how fulfilling it feels to be a good team player, and letting himself be a real person around them and also being vulnerable with Roy because he gets over himself and his prince prick behaviour because he genuinely wants to form real connections with his team so he’ll stop feeling so isolated and then he just becomes so much better. Buck working on being less callous in both his words and actions with his team, realising that his impulsivity can affect other people and learning how to save others more carefully. Buck realising he uses sex to deflect his problems so he starts overcoming his fear of real intimacy by letting more people in.

Steve and Robin beefing at the start but they end up besties. It’s the same with Jamie and Sam, or Jamie and Roy, and again we see it between Buck and the 118 and Buck and Eddie.

The way like all these characters have depth, even if they’re all such a cliches. It's the way that they have so much to them, but the people around them often treat them like they're idiots. Like yes, there have been many, many times where they DO behave like total idiots thus it makes sense that their friends treat them as such, but like, they also have so many moments where they're genuinely smart.

Jamie is rude at the start and lacks tact, but he’s still super strategic both on and off the pitch. It irks me that it takes 3 seasons for him to realise that his team trusts his judgement but the sheer awe and disbelief on his face when he sees that his team is actually listening to him when he’s explaining the Total Football play is so heartwarming. He’s finally seeing that his team isn’t treating him like he’s being stupid on purpose and damn it, this should have happened sooner. Also the fact that Jamie was the only one who executed the play correctly? I love me a smart man.

Then there's Buck who has moments where he's suggesting new rescue tactics and everyone is like, ‘Oh wow Buck that's actually pretty smart!’ Which is so annoying sometimes that they treat him like he never has good ideas. Sure he’s a dork but it shouldn’t be so surprising that he can think on the spot like that. He’s a grown man who’s good at his job and has spent years working an insane variety of jobs which just gives him more experience in so many other things and not just firefighting. Also they keep saying ‘Buck you’re being too Buck’ and they mean it negatively like when he’s genuinely inquiring why people didn’t call Animal Control during that landslide/zoo episode but everyone brushes him off like he’s asking stupid questions? But then other times when he performs well, they say ‘Good job being Buck, Buck,’ like it’s suddenly a good thing. So which one is it? The team treats him like him being himself is a good or bad thing depending on the situation which is kind of fucked up because it shouldn’t be a conditional thing.

And then there’s Steve who often gets treated like he’s stupid by Dustin (which is crazy because they were super buddy-buddy in season 3) and the other kids and it’s like… He was the first one to notice the obvious clue in the the russian code. He’s the one who dove into the lake first because he knows he’s the strongest swimmer. He’s the one that saved Jonathan in season 1 because he had an instinct that something was wrong. People just look at him and think he’s a just some pretty boy with nice hair but he has always saved their asses. He’s selfless and thinks things through despite the others thinking otherwise and he actively wants to be helpful.

Something something people treating Steve, Jamie and Buck like they’re pretty accessories sometimes but they’re all smart and intuitive when need be.

OH! Steve Harrington falling down the popularity ranks when Billy Hargrove gets introduced. Steve realising that he’s not the hottest shit anymore but he doesn’t even care about that in the end. Jamie seeing Zava get integrated into the team and hating his fucking guts, not only because he’s upset about not being the best anymore, but because Zava is tearing up his team’s dynamic. Buck being the coolest guy in the 118 and then Eddie gets introduced so now he has to grapple with these changes that now there’s another cooler guy (but he learns to love him teehee). RAGH!

Their character development is so special to me! It's like their persona literally changes. Like Steve goes from being flirty, arrogant, to wanting a meaningful relationship in season four. His self-identity cracks. He makes up his King Steve persona and pretends to care about being prom king and hangs around Tommy H because he thought that kind of superficial shit mattered but he learns that it doesn’t. He just starts embracing being a babysitter and the more time he spends around real people who actually care about him, the more his old identity chips away and it’s so nice to witness.

Jamie literally goes from being an individual player to such a good team player. He even says it himself that he’s becoming the better kind of man that Keeley said he could be. He's so aware that he wasn't a good person and he actively seeks to build better bridges with everyone. The fact that he put himself out there to individually apologise to everyone in both words and actions because he’s so fucking serious about wanting to stop being a piece of shit and then it works!

And Buck literally calls himself versions Buck 1.0, 2.0 and 3.0 because he KNOWS that he's changing for the better. It happens so early in the show too. He’s learns that he can’t save everyone, learns to stop being afraid to let people see who he is, learns to stand up to his parents, fights to save Maddie and Eddie’s son; just altogether becoming a literal Hero. UGH! I can’t be coherent about Buck’s character journey because it’s so insane to me.

All of them… all of them are like the same! But even though they're same, they have their own individuality to them. BUT STILL! They're all literally the fucking same. It’s clear that I have a favourite and very definitive character archetype.

Anyway! I need a Steve Harrington, Jamie Tartt, Evan Buckley edit right now!

[incubationformadness]

I just finished the latest chapter and I’m absolutely obsessed with Effie and Corisande’s relationship. Her confession about what happened to her went so badly but I think I am becoming a Corisande defender because it’s clear she’s just as stunted by the trauma she endured as Effie is and while their experience is different they both firmly believe that the other is the one that got away/ had it easier and neither one of them is willing to let go of that perspective. Im very hopeful for a Trinket sister reunification in the future of this fic because it’s clear they’re not ready yet but maybe once they’ve had time to process what’s happened to them they will gain the mental capacity to feel empathy for the other. I don’t really know why, but Corisande is so fascinating to me, despite the fact that we only ever see her from Effie’s perspective so I was wondering if you have any headcanons about her character that you can disclose 🤍

Thank you so much!! Corisande (brief as her appearances have been) is such a polarising character because she's very much 'the abused becomes the abuser' while also being such a tortured soul under all that rage. I have a lot of empathy for her - for all that she wants to escape her childhood and remove herself from the past, she arguably clings to it even more than Effie. So, here are some thoughts I have about her:

•Corisande's occupation as a nurse comes from her desire to have complete control over other people. She probably would have become a doctor if the Trinkets had the money for the University - she's much smarter than Effie gives her credit for. I imagine that she abuses her power over patients who she takes a personal dislike to (i.e. denying them pain meds or pretending to be too busy for the call bell). Nonetheless, when dealing with a patient who she likes or feels neutrally about, she is genuinely good at what she does, and definitely has her softer moments. She specifically works with the elderly because she is less likely to face physical threats from them, and she is uncomfortable around children because they remind her of her younger, defenceless self.

•She is generally disliked by her co-workers - she's abrasive and domineering and does not like being told what to do.

•She has difficulties with impulse control - she has been a kleptomaniac from a young age (yes, she does steal from her patients and their families), and went through a period of fire-starting in early adolescence (aged about 13 or so). She received some psychiatric treatment for her self-harm as a teenager, which took the form of head-banging and burning herself, but she was combative with the doctors and so her behaviour was labelled as 'attention-seeking'. As an adult, she's mostly stopped her self-harm (she's still a kleptomaniac though).

•Unlike Effie, who was inclined towards promiscuity in her teenage years, Corisande is actually very sexually inexperienced. This comes from both her belief that she is fundamentally undesirable, and her dislike of the vulnerability which comes with sexual situations. She has instead hired sex workers in the past, which enables her to have control.

•I mention in the notes at the bottom of Chapter 14 that Corisande was subject to a grooming attempt by her father, Thyestes Trinket, which went extremely badly - I believe that due to Effie's confession, Corisande will begin re-evaluating that incident. Prior to Effie's revelation, Corisande simply saw it as an incident of love bombing. It will also help her pinpoint the onset of Effie's sexual abuse, seeing as Effie did not manage to tell her how old she was when it started.

•She does love Effie, in her own way, but she does not know how to deal with her. Her resentment of her younger sister has always overpowered their interactions in the past.

•Kind of random, but she likes to feed pigeons lol. She feels strongly about people giving them stuff that isn't bird food. She also likes raccoons. I think that she feels a certain comradeship with animals which her father would have considered 'vermin'.

•She's athletic and was a competitive speed climber when she was in high school. As an adult she still does climbing, and swims. She liked to draw when she was a teenager as a method of venting, but it was very dark stuff which she never showed to anyone.

•She was naturally a tomboy as a child, but I think that she has grown to dislike femininity as both her sister and mother are traditionally feminine and, in Corisande's view, 'allowed' Thyestes to dominate them (internalised misogyny is a helluva drug). In addition, Thyestes mocked Corisande for her interests, as he considered them 'unladylike'. For Corisande, whatever her father does not like is a win on her behalf.

I don't think that this will be the last we see of Corisande - there's too much emotion tangled up between her and Effie for them to just let go of each other after that. But you're right in saying that they're not ready to reunite just yet...both of them are stunted people, and they can't help but fall back into their childhood rivalry when they are around each other. I think that one of the biggest tragedies of their childhoods is that not only did Thyestes abuse them both, in different ways, but he also drove them apart from each other. Had they been given a healthy upbringing, Corisande would have probably just been the 'older-sister-who-is-sometimes-mean-but-looks-out-for-you', rather than the aggressive, vindictive character we know her as.

Corisande is a character I have considered for a POV chapter (her and Alseid are the biggest candidates)...I don't know if that will ever happen but the possibility is there.

[zykamiliah]

the moment shen jiu forgives yue qingyuan is the moment he stops being a hypocrite

With that, he came to the cheerful conclusion that Yue Qingyuan had truly done everything he could; he’d gone above and beyond to fulfill the calls of both kindness and duty. Regardless of how much guilt weighed down his heart, his debt had long since been repaid in full.

where before he was denying that luo binghe's revenge was due to his own actions and abuse, and refused to admit his owns wrongdoings in front of yue qingyuan, getting defensive at every question,

“Shidi,” he said, exhausted, “we’ve already come this far, so why do you still refuse to consider your wrongdoings?” Even if someone had knocked out his teeth, even if he was left swallowing his own blood, Shen Qingqiu had always stubbornly refused to admit his transgressions—especially in front of Yue Qingyuan, in front of whom you could absolutely forget about any confessions. “What ‘wrongdoings’?” Shen Qingqiu asked bitterly. “Zhangmen-shixiong, please tell me, what is Luo Binghe if not a bastard? You just wait. He won’t be satisfied only taking it out on me. If, in the future, some tumultuous storm upsets the cultivation world, then the only thing I will have done wrong was fail to cut him down at the start.”

after he forgives yue qingyuan, he starts speaking honestly, and confesses he did wrong, that he only has himself to blame for what happened. it's as if some part of him finally relaxes when he realizes that yue qingyuan truly does care about him. his dialogue becomes less defensive, he is absolutely frank about his own personality.

“I’ll tell you this: Even if all of this could be redone from the beginning, in the end, the conclusion would remain the same. My heart is full of malice, my insides hatred and resentment. Today, Luo Binghe wishes for me to die horribly, and I only have myself to blame.”

everything he says from this point on is what he truly feels about himself and the world.

“Do you still hold such hatred within yourself?” asked Yue Qingyuan. Shen Qingqiu laughed uproariously. “Only when I see other people unhappy can I be happy myself. What do you think?”

then, he absolves yue qingyuan in his own way

Shen Qingqiu scoffed. “You ask me to kill you here, Sect Leader Yue? Are you unsatisfied with the crimes Luo Binghe’s already charged me with? You think them too few? Besides, who do you think you are? My hatred will be resolved as long as I kill you? I’m far beyond cure; I hate everything. Don’t blame this humble Shen for any disrespect or mockery, but if Sect Leader Yue considers himself that very cure, he thinks too highly of himself!”

and this is true: shen jiu hates everything, he's said so before. and even when he and yue qi where in good terms, he still hated people. after he forgives yue qingyuan (in his mind) this doesn't change the fact that he hates the world, he hates people, he hates men, and that he hates himself. his self-worth is not restored because he realizes yue qingyuan loves him, but it does stop him from constantly trying to pretend he had no part in what befell him.

before, every time yue qingyuan asked him "why are you doing this", he'd blame others: luo binghe for being "who he is", liu qingge for provoking him (when it was exactly the opposite). before he'd try to pretend in front of others that he didn't hate everything and everyone,

Shen Jiu hated far too many people and far too many things. Obviously, people found it hard to say anything good about the character of someone who hated everything. So fortunately, by the time he became Shen Qingqiu, he understood he ought to at least keep that hatred from bubbling to the surface.

which made him an hypocrite. but now, finally, in this prison, with yue qingyuan baring his soul in front of him, literally putting his life in shen jiu's hands, he finally stops that behaviour. he acknowledges his own agency.

“Xiao-Jiu, I—” “Don’t call me that!” Shen Qingqiu snarled.

but he still wants to leave the past behind him, and thus his relationship to himself remains the same: he thinks lowly of himself, he sees himself as a "thing". he doesn't have self-esteem or self-love, and he'll keep rejecting the past, rejecting "Shen Jiu".

and he also wants to protect yue qingyuan from himself.

[gamergirlbonestaskforce141riot]

I have a request for a very general hc for Ghost. I wonder how he demonstrates his care for his subordinates. And I don’t mean Riot or Soap, because we see a lot of good examples of that on your blog) I’m speaking rather of just some unnamed fellow soldier, so no really close ties there. Would Ghost just keep a long polite distance and won’t communicate with them beyond commands? Or maybe he actually does a lot to make their lives just a bit easier, but doesn’t show, it was him, how helped them? Or maybe he even lets himself openly cheer them up and sometimes shares (not too personal) memories with them, just to make them smile? Thank you so much in advance and feel free to ignore this one, if you are comfortable to write only for Riot!

This is actually a really good question, because I myself just play it by ear or plainly assume, but I think writing it down would be nice.

I think Ghost's behaviour is determined by his experiences, both from his childhood and from the hell he's suffered after that.

Childhood - His father was abusive, like, very abusive, including very perverted views about masculinity and expressing feelings and what is and is not a man's job. So expressing feelings or worry about others would feel like a weakness, but on the other hand, he wants to be NOTHING like his father, and it's shown he has a caring nature. He got his adict brother off drugs, he loved his nephew dearly.

Adulthood - He was kidnapped and severely tortured in many ways, which would be enough to strip anyone of their humanity and sanity, but I feel that if he survived was because he is stubborn enough to not just give in. To not become what all those people (his father, Vernon, Roba, ...) wanted him to become or destroy.

In the games it's clear he is a stern, solitary, taciturn individual, but he cares enough to keep talking to Soap, distracting from his wound, guiding him and even cheering him on, so it's clear he cares, even if he's not very physical or vocal about it.

So, NOW ANSWERING YOUR QUESTION (geez I can't be brief it seems, ever)

I think he takes on his shoulders as much as he can, trying to relieve Price of some of his duties. I think that he might not be very vocal or praise the soldiers if they do a good job, instead giving them a simple nod while looking at them directly (which normally would make them piss themselves looking into those dark eyes and the skull mask) or maybe a little 'hmph' while doing so. I think after some time the soldiers under his command start learning the little gestures, the body language, because when someone wears a mask it's difficult to read, so they have to make do.

So a nod when he approves of them, a glare when they're being shits, a firm shake of his head saying NOPE. Or just a glare, I'm sure they freeze.

As for sharing, I think he only shares his awful jokes with them. I don't think he's one to lie about past experiences just to bond, and he's not about to tell anyone not REALLY close to him anything true, so, jokes. Anything to keep their minds off the shit they would be in, in that moment, or to make his soldiers relax.

Maybe from time to time there are mysterious bottles appearing in the common rooms that nobody knows where they came from, but nobody is complaining, and for sure Ghost would deny even knowing what you're talking about, doll.

[tumbleringismycopingmechanism]

(Question comes from this post by @pancake-breakfast . My other answers are linked in my pinned post.)

4. Use at least three of the characters listed below to discuss ways people try to attain comfortableness. Be sure to address the effectiveness of their technique. Characters: Ched, Comfortable Doug, Elk, Gebbrey, General, Glendale, Horse, Sunfish Merguy, Tree Shamans, Wamawink, Whale Shaman, Zulius

Ched:

When Ched was younger he wanted to become a tulip stepping champion. Despite him being actually pretty good at it, he gets rejected by the CentaursTM because he’s a Birdtaur (and then gets treated as a ball after). For the rest of the show we see him trying to heal from this trauma by hating all CentaursTM (and horses) and becoming hypermasculine. He tries to become comfortable two ways: 1) rejecting everyone who reminds him of the ones who treated him poorly (before they can reject him) and 2) leaving the person he was back then as far behind as possible and creating a new persona for himself.

The first point works to a default. It’s good that he removed himself from the toxic situation in which the CentaursTM abused and belittled him. He also doesn’t cut himself off from other people completely and he seems to be quite happy with the herd as his new friends. However, it is unjust of him to be so hostile towards Horse just because she reminds him of the CentaursTM. It’s not even because of her behaviour, it’s just because of looks and thus borderline racist. He invests a lot of time and energy into being mean towards Horse eversince she joins the group and I don’t think someone who spends this much time being angry can be truly comfortable and happy at the same time. If he instead made an effort to see that Horse is nothing like the CentaursTM in any way that matters, I think he might have spent the journey much happier.

Onto the second point: I don’t think changing everything about himself made Ched comfortable either. We see in the final battle that he’s still really fond of (and good at) tulip stepping, so denying himself the fun of doing it for years (possibly decades) must have been hard. While I don’t think he could have competed without going back to the toxic environment of the CentaursTM, he could have still done it in his freetime just for fun. He basically internalised the CentaursTM’s cruel judgement that he couldn’t do tulip stepping just because he was a Birdtaur and instead turned himself into a buff gym-dude. It’s not that this doesn’t seem to bring him some joy as well, but we never see him quite as happy as when he is tulip stepping.

I think to become truly comfortable, Ched would need to learn that what the CentaursTM did was cruel and unjust. He doesn’t have to accept their gatekeeping and can find friends without hiding who he is. In turn, he should try to do better than them and judge a person not by their species, but by who they are.

Comfortable Doug:

When we get introduced to Comfortable Doug he works as a nightguard in the Moletaur jail. At this point in his life he takes his job very serious (e.g. he doesn’t allow for parties in prison) to the point where he even does stuff that’s not in his job description (like acting as a bailiff) but also isn’t overly invested (e.g. doesn’t care in which order the herd goes inside the hole). The biggest comfort he seems to have at this point is that Mary always backs him up and that they „see eye to tiny eye on everything“.

His life changes when he wins Johnny Teatime’s Be Best Competition (hereafter referred to as JTBBC) on accident after getting food poisoning. In The Rift Part 1 he sings that this was when he realized he never did what he wanted or went to find something to make him happy. Winning the sash made him realize that that needed to change and that he didn’t wanna go back to his job as a nightguard in the Moletaur jail where he only ever lived for other people’s wishes.

He says that he has always been called comfortable (because it’s in his name) which could be interpreted as him just never questioning whether he was happy/comfortable or not because everyone else just assumed he was, so he did the same. But now he knows he wasn’t. He tries not to make the same mistake that was done to him – just assuming that everyone is comfortable – and starts asking people whether they are comfortable. However this attempt to do better than people did to him seems kinda superficial since he pretty much just ignores Gebbrey when he’s telling him that he is not actually comfortable. Similarly his final message to Horse in season 1 is to „be comfortable“ which is extremely vague and not really helpful.

In season 2 Doug’s attempt at comfortableness mostly consists of him only doing what he is comfortable doing and nothing beyond that. He seems to have enjoyed JTBBC enough to go back there (according tot he Birdtaurs in S2E2), but we don’t get to see that. What we do see is that he sometimes shows up to be helpful, but as I said never beyond his comfort level. He gives helpful tips about the Coldtaurs and points out the herd forgot Glendale but when asked to dig a tunnel to the Coldtaurs, he refuses. Similarly he is comfortable taking a message from Waterbaby to Rider and from Rider to Horse, but not with helping to free Waterbaby.

Throughout season 2 Comfortable Doug also seems to look for things that help him be more comfortable. For one, he takes a vacation to visit exotic jail cells, maybe to find inspiration or to reclaim some passion that he once might have felt towards his job. He also starts to define himself by being different from all the other Holetaurs; he says he’s the only one who’s curious, with a dynamic mind and refers to himself as beyond physical laws at least twice. With his new attitude seems to come a rise in popularity in the underground, seeing as there is a „Doug 4 Prez“ poster in the hallway when Durpleton looks for Stabby.

In the season finale, we see Comfortable Doug on the battlefield as Flat Dallas. This is interesting because he has spent this season not doing anything that makes him uncomfortable. Yet he claims that war is never comfortable, so here he is back to doing something that makes him uncomfortable. According to the song lyrics he’s „the champion of the little guys“, so he is also back to being the hero of someone else’s story.

While we don’t see what got him to this point, I think this might be him finding a balance between just living for others vs just living for his own comfort. If he was purely acting for comfort and thus avoid the battle, it may have terrible consequences. All the tiny versions would be without a leader in the battlefield and every soldier could make the difference between winning or losing the war. If the Nowhere King wins, then there’s nothing Comfortable Doug can do to ever become comfortable again. So he has to take on this duty, even if it might make him uncomfortable, to guarantee a better future.

Overall I think Comfortable Doug’s attempt at comfort works rather well. He figures out he isn’t comfortable with his life the way it is, tries to figure out ways to remedy that while also trying to learn not to assume other people are comfortable the same way it has been assumed about him all his life, learns to set healthy boundaries but in the end also realizes that sometimes there are things more important than your own comfort.

Elk:

With Elk we see several different attempts at comfort. In the time after his creation he tries to get comfortable just living his day to day life. Even as he reviews this time in his backstory, he remembers that he enjoyed the food. But this attempt is unsuccessful. He grows weary of the loneliness that comes with what he is, half a person and with noone like him. He still loves the Woman and begs his other half to go back to how things used to be.

This is followed by what is probably the most uncomfortable time in his life. After the General tries and fails to kill him, he is locked away in a dungeon cell for ten years, so small he could barely stand and he looks awful when he gets out. He still thinks that the Woman could be what will make him comfortable, mesmerised that she came for him and even willing to get captured again if that means he can stay with her. But she makes it clear that he has to leave and that he should not wait for her. I think it’s because of this moment that we later see him blame her for what he becomes hereafter.

His next attempt at comfortableness is creating the Minotaurs. They are meant as a found family, but this doesn’t work. The Elk creates more and more and more of them, seemingly unaware that he loses more and more of himself in the process. But no matter how many Minotaurs he creates, it does not fill the hole in his soul and slowly he turns into the Nowhere King.

As the Nowhere King, Elk has seemingly accepted that he will never be comfortable, that there is no happy ending for him. „And now, more suffering. It’s all that’s left for us“ he says in the final battle. None of his attempts at comfort have worked out and he is tired of trying. If he cannot be as comfortable as everyone else seemingly is, then at least he can make everyone else as miserable as he is.

His attempt at comfortableness fails, I think, because he never stops to do any introspection. Why does he see the Woman as his only way out of being lonely? Why do the Minotaurs not feel like family? What is the root cause of his unhappiness? Instead of putting in the work to answer these questions for himself, he gives up and takes his frustration out on the world. In his eyes, it has failed to provide him the comfort he asked for, the comfort he deserved. And if he doesn’t get it, then noone else will.

Gebbrey:

Gebbrey spends most of the show being cold. He is in constant discomfort and mentions it pretty much every chance he gets. Most of the time, his discomfort is not even the main point he brings up, but instead that he misses his jacket. To him, the jacket is the only solution to his discomfort. Yet when he gets it back from Glendale, it makes him too hot. So hot in fact that it sets him on fire. He says „Not again“ as this happens, meaning this has happened before. And yet, even as he’s on fire he does not get rid of the jacket. He has idealized this jacket as a solution to his problem to the point where he doesn’t care that it doesn’t work and that it’s actively harming him. Hell, even to a point where he ignored that it already didn’t work in the past. Yet he refuses to look for other options.

Finding another option that could actually satisfy his needs without hurting him would probably take time and effort. He may stumble accross a lot of other options that also don’t work. If you do that for long enough, chances are you start to get hopeless and frustrated. What Gebbrey does instead is pinning all his hopes on an unreachable object. He doesn’t wanna try other things that could warm him up, he wants his jacket specifically. He can ignore the fact that the jacket didn’t work out in the past. Maybe he tells himself it was the circumstances, or maybe he knows that yes, the jacket made him too warm, but being cold now is so much worse, so really, how bad could it be to going back to being too warm?

This mindset is not affective for Gebbrey getting comfortable. He spends all his time in misery being cold. Yes, trying anything but the jacket might take time, but would it really take more time than hoping for something he might never get back? Something that never really served his specific needs to begin with? With this specific jacket he will only ever have the choice between two uncomfortable extremes: too hot or too cold. Gebbrey should learn to let go of that jacket and start looking for something that actually meets his needs.

General:

The General is obsessed with being the ideal human man. As half of the Elktaur he spent a lot of his life being seen as lesser, and instead of realizing that the people who excluded him were cruel and unjust, he decided to turn himself into the perfect human. This includes marrying a Princess and becoming a war hero. But it’s all just an act.

When we first get introduced to the General, he’s making fun of Rider for being nervous. He leads her on for a bit before he reveals his identity to her. Under normal circumstances this would be perceived as being a fun and charasmatic guy, especially since he’s acting very cool about the stuff she said before she realized who he was. (On first watch of the series it even might seem this way to the viewer.) But if you think about it: They’re at war and this just costs valuable time, especially since he knows she’s there to speak to him on important matters.

He then lies not only about his past but about knowing Centaurworld in general. As we learn in later episodes, this is so that his cover won’t blow. Making sure that everyone thinks he’s human (and always has been) is one of the two things he holds onto for his comfort. The second one is making sure that everyone assumes he’s a hero and overall a good guy.

To secure this second one, he has become a general. Not only does he lead this war, he leads it in a way that makes sure he looks good, without actually doing the thing that would be best. He leads an attack at the Nowhere King’s castle – something that was predictably a bad idea – and loses an entire battalion. After that, he would of course look like a bad leader if he tried that again (with probably similar results), so he immediatly decides that the human army will go from offence to defense. Only when Waterbaby holds her speech and he sees his army cheer for her does he change his opinion again, likely to not fall into his men’s disgrace. If the concerns he listed to Rider to justify his decision on going into defense were genuine, he would stand by them and accept that this might make him unpopular. But his opinion swings with the masses.

His need to be seen as the hero is however still trumped by his need tob e seen as a „real human“. He risks being seen openly killing Rider on the battlefield (which would for sure make him look like a bad guy instead of a hero) to maintain his human cover. And he doesn’t end the war – which would most certainly be seen as heroic – because that would immediatly betray his none-humanness. He would need to either go back to being the Elktaur by reuniting himself with his other half or he would need to kill himself, knowing that the Nowhere King could not survive with his other half dead. But both of these would betray his connection, and reduce him back to the status of centaur, which he avoids at all costs.

Speaking of which: Despite having been a centaur and being on the receiving end of distrust and resentment, the General now perpetuates those things himself, claiming that he cannot trust the centaurs. He has rejected everything Centaurworld stands for so hard and for so long that he is completely devoid of empathy – not for his soldiers, not for Rider, not for his other half, not even for the Woman, seeing as he still tries to manipulate her after all that’s happened.

This attempt at comfortableness works for him. He enjoys his new life and what he has become, even if it hurts everyone else and he can’t be truely close with anyone. Not once do we see him doubt that he’s exactly where he wants to be, doing exactly what he wants to do. I doubt that he would realize that this is not a good way to find comfort even once he is revealed to be neither human nor a hero. He would just be angry that he lost everything he fought for. I think it would take him a lot of introspection (that he is unlikely to be willing to do) to figure out another way to become happy.

(Also, isn’t it fucked up that the only being in whose presence he seems to be genuinly happy is a horse that enjoys committing war crimes?)

Glendale:

Glendale (according to herself) steals to feel more comfortable. However, in her backstory she admits that stealing makes her feel both free and nervous. This means she is aware that stealing doesn’t actually help with her anxiety. In fact I think it adds to it because thanks to the stealing she’s constantly suspicious people might wanna take back what she stole and try to arrest her. I think the reason she still does it is that she would feel anxious regardless, but when she steals she also feels free in addition to that (which has to be better than feeling just anxious).

The reason she starts stealing is unclear but I think there are two possibilities based on what we learn in the backstory episode. For one, she claims that her tummy tells her to do it. This could mean a couple of things – Glendale might have an undiagnosed mental illness that manifests as the voice of her tummy. Or maybe the voice comes with the portal tummy magic and she’s the only one who hears / understands it (like Durpleton with his farts). Or maybe it’s not even meant literally and Glendale just has a gut feeling that tells her when / what to steal.

The other possible reason that Glendale starts stealing (and I think this one’s slightly more substancial) is that stolen objects can’t leave her. When she first meets Wammawink she tells her that she used to have parents (but doesn’t anymore) and that everyone just leaves her after a while. But stolen stuff (that she stores in her tummy no less, where it can’t really be taken back from unless she allows for it) can’t leave her.

The other thing we see her use to try and calm her anxiety is breathing in a bag. It’s something Wammawink introduced her to and that she in turn introduces to the Coldtaurs. What I find a bit odd about it is that it doesn’t really seem to help her. She never stops stealing throughout the entire series. I think maybe to completely feel comfortable she should have explored other safe methods that work against her anxiety and gradually understand that they are better for her than stealing. Also maybe she should have reflected on why she feels the need to steal in the first place and do something against the root problem.

Overall I don’t think Glendale’s attempt at comfortableness works very well, because the stealing just adds to her anxiety in the long run. I think she should instead follow her own advice that she gives the Coldtaurs and find healthy coping mechanisms that work for her and don’t hurt others.

Horse:

Horse’s sense of comfort is closely tied to her abilities as a soldier and her relationship with Rider. At the beginning of the show we see her very confident in the former, while the latter has been disturbed by her unwilling travel to Centaurworld. She aims to get back to what she thinks of as her personal comfort situation: fighting side by side with Rider in the human world.

At this point, Horse loves fighting, the „crushing of skulls beneath [her] hoves“, and she misses Rider „like a phantom limb“. Throughout her journey she learns she can be – is in fact – more than just a war horse. She gets more in touch with her emotional side, learns to defend herself with other strategies than just brute force and confrontation, discovers her magic and learns to joke and perform show-stopping musical numbers. These new parts of her however don’t add to her comfort (yet), but stress her out. She worries that with them, her two most defining characteristics are gone.

It’s only when she realizes that they’re not that she starts becoming more accepting of herslef as she is now. With The Rift Part 2 she has demonstrated both that she is still capable of fighting and that Rider still is her closest friend and loves her. Now that she knows her new parts don’t take away from that, she seems a lot more comfortable with them. Still, by the end of the episode she defines herself as „the horse who is going to build an army of Centaurs“. Her need to be seen as a good soldier still trumps her wish to be reunited with Rider.

I doubt that being comfortable has ever been on Horse’s priority list. In the world she lives in, having your comfortable dream life is just not a realistic option and so she never even allows herself to imagine it or strive for it, to the point that at the beginning of the series it seems like she doesn’t even know what she’s fighting for. She has convinced herself that killing is fun and that being a good war horse is what Rider expects of her.

In season 2 we see her struggle with this once again as she feels incapable when assembling an army. While she has accepted her new parts, she still needs to be a soldier so that she can hold onto her past identity. She has such a fixed mindset that being a good soldier would mean being the one who assembles the army on her own without any help that she can’t even register how well she works as a team with the herd and what she contributes, just because she isn’t doing it all by herself. For example, she is the one who strategically thinks of which centaurs would make good allies and which war strategies could prove effective. But her friends are the ones who are better at selling this idea to the specific centaur groups in a way that’ll make them actually agree.

What helps her become more comfortable here is seeing that she’s not the only one who struggles or who didn’t get what she was hoping for, by stepping through the herd’s backstories. But only when she jumps into the Nowhere King’s backstory in the final episode does she fully realize that she doesn’t need to be this old version of herself to be comfortable. For one, suddenly getting her old body back might have helped with this realization – she is horrified by it, not comforted as she might have expected before. But also the circumstances – namely that she thinks she will never be able to get back to her friends – give her a new perspective, and she realizes that living up to the exepectations that you and others may have for yourself isn’t a guarantee for happiness, but finding people who love you as you are might be.

After this realization we see that Horse doesn’t fight in the final battle. She instead stays with Rider. Being the perfect battle horse is no longer important, instead she’s comforting her best friend as she’s in pain. Not even when it’s down to just the Woman against the General and the Nowhere King does she leave Rider’s side now. And after the war is won, she decides her comfortable life is one surrounded by her friends, living together in Centaurworld.

Horse’s attempt at comfortableness is for the most part an unconcious one. She has never stopped to think what comfort would look like to her, let alone tried to persue it. (Unlike Rider, who in the Becky Apples episode remarks that she wishes she could just enjoy riding out with Horse „because we want to, not because we have to“.) She has internalized that she needs to be the perfect soldier and the show depicts her journey of unlearning that, of realizing she can be other things, that she can do things that bring her fun and joy and that she can spend time with loved ones even if it’s not for a battle mission. She only „attempts“ this life as the series‘ finale, so it’s hard to judge if it’s successfull in the long run. But it has a better chance at success than trying to be perfect at something that you only became out of neccessity.

Sunfish Merguy:

Sunfish Merguy’s attempt at comfortableness seems to be to just go with the flow / create as little conflict as possible. We see this right from his introduction, where he says he intentionally calls himself Sunfish Merguy because his real name is too hard to pronounce for others. He seems to have no problem with adapting his name, even prefering it to simply teaching people how to pronounce his name. He’s very friendly to the herd and invites them to play games and ride rides while they’re waiting. According to himself (saying so in Comfortable Doug’s song in S1E9) he is fairly comfortable with his way of living.

However, this chill, go-with-the-flow attitude is harmfull to the people around him. He doesn’t say what the Whaletaur will do, doesn’t try to prevent it once the Whaletaur shows up and can just casually ignore it once it’s happened. All this because it would make him uncomfortable (we see his discomfort as the Whaletaur shows up). And the herd is (understandably) disturbed by this attitude. For his own comfort’s sake he interupted Horse when she was trying to talk about her problems and thus made them worse.

His idea of helping others to become more comfortable is the arcade he’s built. There they can play silly games instead of adressing whatever problem the visitors may have. However, you can’t solve problems by ignoring them and even the most fun games will get dull after a while, if you’re even in a mood to test them to begin with. But talking about problems goes against his fun, relaxed attitude, so when the Whaletaur comes he just gives up and afterwise pretends like nothing happened.

I could also see this avoidant tendencies causing relationship problems for him in the future. We can see in S1E8 that he’s something between friendly and flirty with Wammawink, matching her energy. While I don’t think he’s actively trying to cheat on Jeffica (he is very casual when he mentions that he’s in a relationship in the end and never does anything with Wammawink), he also doesn’t stop Wammawink’s constant flirting. While I think it might be possible that he’s just very bad at reading social clues and thus doesn’t understand that Wammawink is flirting, I think it’s more likely that he just ignores it to not kill the flow. The fact that he doesn’t bring up that Wammawink’s objectification of Mertaurs disturbs him (despite his initial disgusted reaction to her magazine) speaks for this idea. Both Wammawink and Jeffica end up being hurt by this, and both of them „blame“ the other one instead of Sunfish Merguy.

Tree Shamans:

The Tree Shamans try to make people comfortable by giving them what they need, even if they themselves don’t know what that is yet. While I think this is a good approach, I also think it could be handled better.

What I like about the approach is going for needs instead of wants. For example, if someone came who wanted all the riches in the world and they’d just give that to them, eventually that person would just want more and more and more. However if they searched for the need that’s at the root of this want, they can figure out a more permanent solution. (It also prevents harm because many might come to them with a wish to hurt others but I doubt that anyone needs to hurt others.)

The first example I wanna use for this is Wammawink. She comes to the Tree Shamans after her village got destroyed and everyone she knew and loved died. I’m not sure they were actually right in saying that what Wammawink requested wasn’t what she needed. She was still really small and she clearly was in need of company, both to have someone to comfort her but also because meeting their social needs are really important for children (hell, even for adults). Wammawink didn’t just loose her parents, she lost everyone and everything. I doubt that the Tree Shamans could have brought her family back (I doubt anyone in Centaurworld has any ressurection magic), but she would have definitely needed adult guidance and friends (and probably therapy). And the Tree Shamans weren’t even all that compassionate in their refusal, which just makes this all the sadder.

The other example is Ched getting turned into a horse. Yes, he has horse-related trauma that he needed to work on. However, turning him into a horse without consent is not going to do that. For one it clearly gives him body dysmorphia. He struggles even with walking after he is turned. Then there’s also the fact that it changed absolutely nothing; Ched is no more compassionate with Horse after than he was before. He also never seems to understand why he was turned, which defeats the point. What he might have needed was something like therapy.

I think the major problem with the Tree Shamans attempt at helping people become more comfortable is that they may be able to tell what someone needs. But instead of telling the person and working out something together that helps with that, they simply decide that they know best and then don’t even ask for consent before magicking their solution.

Wammawink:

Wammawink suffered a great loss as a child. She loses not only her parents but her entire village in the Great War. As a result of that, her attempt at being comfortable is making sure she will never again lose her loved ones, her found family. Even when she is still a small child she becomes overprotective after her loss, trying to make sure that the Ladybugtaur doesn’t leave her and practicing her protective bubble magic. It’s the same magic she uses when we are first introduced to her, at that point used to keep everyone she loves under a huge protective dome.

This attempt to ensure her trauma doesn’t repeat itself works from her point of view. She is good enough at magic to protect her found family from most of the dangers in Centaurworld. She is under the impression that as long as they don’t fight, they are not in danger, and that their life together under the dome is a perfect paradise. In the backstory episode we see that she even encourages Glendale’s stealing as a (poor) coping mechanism if that means she will stay with her.

However, the herd sees this differently. They are bored with doing the same things every day and jump at the opportunity to be more adventurous when Horse suggests it. The Beartaur episode proves furthermore that Wammawink’s overprotectiveness has left the herd unable to survive on their own. With Wammawink out of the picture they don’t even know how to get food and are incapable of fighting the Beartaur, leading to them leaving Horse to fend for herself. This issue is unfortunately never brought up again in a meaningful way and we don’t see how the herd grows out of Wammawink’s infantilisation, they are just suddenly capable, seemingly out of nowhere.

Beyond her overprotectiveness, Wammawink also tries to make Horse her best friend, she even seems to not only want but need this to happen. She seems disappointed whenever Horse points out that she and Rider have been best friends her entire life and that Wammawink will not be able to take up that position.

Overall I think once again this is an attempt at comfortableness that works to a point. It’s good that Wammawink created her own found family instead of swearing off of love after her loss. I also think it’s positive that she learns to fight / defend so that she wouldn’t feel so helpless if anything bad happened again. But her need to mother everyone and protect them from everything is overbearing to a point where it might have easily cost her everything. Who knows how long the herd would have put up with living the boring life under the dome before they would have finally had enough and demanded to leave? Wammawink’s overprotectiveness also brought them in a situation where they were just as helpless as she used to be (if not more) and that might have cost them their lives one way or another if Wammawink had been knocked out for much longer. Lastly, it’s a surprise that her constant pushing at Horse to become best friends and to value her as much as if not more than Rider didn’t push Horse further away from her.

It seems as though by the end of the series Wammawink has found a more evenly balanced way to treat her found family. They are allowed lives outside of interacting with her and she trusts them to be able to fight for themselves should they need to.

Whale Shaman:

The Whale Shaman tries to give other people comfort by taking away their pain. In theory that sounds really good and very nice oft he Whaletaur to do, however it comes with a whole lot of problems.

For a start, the Whaletaur will only come to see you when your problems have become so severe that you basically sit at the bay crying. Anything that might have been an easy to solve problem is thereby getting worse and worse until you reach a point where you accept the idea of getting swallowed, having your pain absorbed and never returning to your life.

That leads to the next problem. While the Whale Shaman might take away the pain, it thereby also removes your memories and personality. You might forget all the bad stuff, but you also forget all the happy memories until your an empty, unfeeling shell of the person you used to be. And in the end you also die in there, with no chance to ever get your life back on track and possibly (from your loved ones‘ point of view) vanished without a trace and forever missed. Which also opens the possibility that the Whaletaur, by trying to take away the pain, actually creates new one. How many people might have gone there to be swallowed because they thought their loved ones were gone forever and they couldn’t deal with the grieve?

Lastly, the swallowing does not only bring the ones being swallowed just a very shallow, twisted kind of comfort, but it’s also bad for the Whaletaur herself. She has to feel the pain of all those people and is constantly crying because of it.

What the Whaletaur Shaman could do instead is encourage them / help them solve the problem. We see that she vaguely tries this with Horse, although just like the herd she doesn’t really find the right words. I think what the Whaletaur does could be interpreted as giving out very strong antidepressants in the wrong dosage without any additional help to deal with the depression (like therapy, support groups etc.), which is not a good way to actually help or give comfort. We see with Wammawink’s rescue mission that even just acknowledging the pain and the fact that it sucks could be a good first step to make someone feel heared. Brainstorming solutions together could be another great step. This way the Whaletaur could help others get more comfortable with their lives in a more productive way and without having to sacrifice her own peace of mind for it.

Zulius:

Zulius actually seems extremely comfortable in his skin most of the time. The only time he isn’t is in Cattaur Valley. I think that’s because he’s usually being himself, not over- or underperforming anything for the benefit of others, but in Cattaur Valley he suddenly feels the need to conform to their standards. He’s clearly upset the Cattaurs don’t value him as beautiful, that he never won the sash, that not even his efforts were valued and that he’s seen as old by Splendib and the Glitter Cats.

He then overcompensates by wearing an outfit that very much gives „What’s up fellow kids?“-vibes (given that we see in the Durpleton backstory that Zulius is at least a few years older than him and that Durpleton is about 47 at that point, Zulius would at least be in his 50s). For the rest of the episode he seems to both enjoy being Horse’s trainer for the competition but also overly stressed about it and projects the same ideals that hurt him on Horse way too hard (even going so far as to slap her when she doesn’t see the point). He seems to have internalized that just trying / having fun / being yourself isn’t good enough. However when Horse sings that she „just can’t even right now“ he snaps out of it and nods at her in support.

When Comfortable Doug gets awarded the sash he seems to actually get (instead of just trying to convonce himself before) that JTBBC is just arbitrary bullshit. For the rest of the series he goes back to just being himself. He has the most fun and seems the most comfortable when he gets to produce something (the show for the Birdtaurs, the hootenanny). It’s through being his authentic self that he then also gets (back?) together with Splendib.

[radfemverity]

Be very mindful of people who use unrelenting denialism to dismiss a very real pattern, cultural phenomena, or circumstance which you’re trying to point out to them. The chances are they just literally don’t want to know, because the truth of the matter either makes them feel uncomfortable, contradicts their flawed value system, or both.

The denier usually displays a sequence of behaviour that comes in four stages. When confronted with your observation, say, for example you are highlighting the risk that trans-identified men pose to women when placed in their prisons, they will respond in this order:

1. “Nope. That literally never happens. You’re a conspiracy nut/delusional/*insert buzzword here, most likely transphobia*.”

Then, when you present them with multiple clearcut examples, citing mainstream media sources that they cannot so easily discard they way they would with a smaller, alternative media source:

2. “But my point still stands, that this is uncommon. Why are you so focused in on this tiny thing? Your *insert buzzword here* is showing.”

Then, when the issue bubbles in prominence, leaves the niche corner of the internet from whence it came, and becomes more socially acceptable to publicly assert due to the overwhelming evidence:

3. “Okay but I don’t see why you have such a big issue with this? Why don’t you talk more about *insert totally separate issue here as a means to shift the goalpost*? Because by focusing so much on this specific thing, you’re just inciting hatred/promoting ignorance.”

This stage attempts to toe the line between not explicitly acknowledging the existence of the problem, but also not condoning it (because they quietly know that it does exist – that it is very real), instead choosing to insult the character and motivations of the claimant.

Many deniers will stop there, but the more spiteful and maliciously motivated among them will escalate to:

4. “Yeah well they brought it on themselves anyway. They fucking deserve it.”

I have noticed this across all sides of the political spectrum, both sexes, and all age groups, with so, so many different issues, including, but not limited to:

- TRAs denying TIMs’ abuse of women in women’s prisons, domestic abuse shelters and hospital wards

- TRAs denying how ‘gender identity’ has replaced biological sex in the practice of state institutions across the West (eg on passports)

- TRAs denying how self ID laws will be abused by ‘cis’men who do not sincerely consider themselves trans, but will claim to be to gain access to, and film women and girls in, changing rooms and toilets

- Catholics denying priests’ sexual abuse of children in the Church

- Conservative parents denying religiously influenced child abuse within their communities

- Healthcare practitioners and defenders of differing countries’ healthcare systems denying the prevalence of medical misogyny, the pathologising of women and girls, and the dismissal of their symptoms, which results in delayed diagnoses turning terminal and/or causing death

- The ‘progressive’ British left denying the targeted mass-grooming of working class white girls by Muslim, mostly Pakistani, men

- The ‘progressive’ British left denying that the government are buying out fancy private hotels to put up male illegal migrants in

- The political left across most of the Western world denying the recent demographic changes to its countries, and the cultural changes that come with that

- Men of all political orientations denying that women on porn sets are tricked with dodgy contracts, blackmailed, drugged, gangraped, and sex trafficked, and that this is the footage they see on PornHub and wank off to

- People across the world, of all nationalities, ages, sexes, socioeconomic statuses, and political orientations denying the larger-than-officially-acknowledged likelihood of suffering adverse side effects to the various Covid19 vaccinations, or the coercive policies of governments across the West to maximise the number of people who felt compelled to have it

The point of the diverse range of examples above is not to make a value judgement (you may not consider some of those things as ‘issues’, instead believing that they are good. That is your right), but rather 1. to point out just how bloody common this pattern of behaviour is, especially among those who consider themselves politically progressive, and 2. to potentially aid anyone who reads this in pointing it out in future discussions.

We do not live in a transparent political culture. People employ all sorts of backward mental gymnastics to justify their harmful beliefs, just because they make them feel better, and feel like they are supporting a good cause. That’s really all mainstream left wing progressivism is in the Global North: doing what feels good and makes you look good to your peers (this is why radical feminism is seen by the woke lot as right wing. We don’t operate off of that value system. We don’t do what feels nice in the moment, we want actual fucking results). So we need to be able to reply with: “If you are going to support [x] thing, bloody well be honest about the potential consequences that you have absolutely no problem with taking place.” We need to stop giving these people plausible deniability, and allowing them to fall back on “well I couldn’t have possibly known that [y] bad thing would happen if [x] thing was implemented.” Because yes you did.

[thoughtful-dragon]

For me, the main issue with the idea of the radical forgiveness of James Tartt isn’t really the concept (although I don’t really like it and, to be honest, am quite disappointed to find that this is what they meant the whole time), it’s that I don’t think it’s what Jamie needed. Because I don’t think his anger at his dad was the problem.

When we meet Jamie in season 1, he is acting badly in a way that hurt people. He is not – I would argue – doing this because he is angry at his dad, but because he is trying to earn his dad’s approval, or – at least – avoid the emotional abuse that comes from not acting in a way that his dad approves of. This is what he basically says at the curse fire in 1x06:

“I actually fucking hated that. So I made myself so tough that he could never call me soft again.”

So he’s not acting in the negative ways because he’s angry. He’s doing it as a defence. A defence he probably keeps up even if James Tartt isn’t in regular contact/has regular access to him because he will have internalised all the bullshit he’s been telling him.

Then he goes back to City and has a pretty terrible time due to the continued abuse by his dad. And we know that this doesn’t let up no matter what Jamie does, because he cannot get it right for his dad because you can’t get it right for abusers, and because we have seen James Tartt abuse him when City wins and Jamie tells Ted that his dad criticised everything he did, down to how he sat on the bench. Due to this abuse, he does something that he identifies as being: “to piss off my dad.” He goes on a reality dating show. So, arguably, he does that out of anger. But I don’t think we can only ascribe that to anger, because it also has the effect of getting him away from his dad. So, even if it was because of anger, it could still be argued to be partially out of a desire to remove himself from the situation.

Then he comes back to Richmond out of necessity, and works on becoming a better person and earning the forgiveness of the other Richmond players*. He also goes to therapy. Based on the recent episode, I sadly think that he has not been keeping this up in season 3. I don’t think any of his behaviour in S2 can really be ascribed to anger at his dad.

I don’t actually have much to say about Man City (2x08) because I don’t think we learn that much about Jamie’s motivations, apart from the fact that he again gets his dad the tickets in order to get him off his back. He does then punch him, which could definitely be anger. But it’s also – again – defence. He’s defending himself from the continued abuse. Abuse that would have definitely turned physical had James not been removed by Beard. Then, Jamie is not angry, he is devastated and probably a lot of other emotions.

Following this, we do not see any behaviour that can be said to be because of anger. We see Jamie admit he loves someone (arguably inappropriately) and then, in S3, we see him step up to being a leader within the team, deal with a challenge to his ego in what I would say is a largely positive way, and work hard to improve himself. He is supportive, emotional, communicative. He is, in short, clearly becoming the best version of himself. Which is probably because he has no contact with his dad.

Then we have 3x11. At the beginning of this episode, Jamie is clearly in the midst of an emotional crisis. He is deeply uncomfortable with any attention or publicity towards him (wanting to avoid attention for fear that it would attract his dad to do something? It couldn’t be Jamie!) and he is retreating heavily into being not at all what his dad would want by denying his goal/profile etc. But he’s really not broadcasting anger to me.

“I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. And I wash my hair but I don’t use conditioner, ‘cause what’s the fucking point?”

So. This is depression. Obviously. But the fact it’s all happening in the run up to the City game means this is, pretty much, all about seeing his dad. ** Which means not being able to sleep points to a lot of worry.

Then, we have the conversation with his mum. And here, Jamie says:

“I always did what I did, because fuck him.”

Now, I don’t agree with this, but I can see why Jamie says it. Defence might, after all, feel very much like anger.

“And now that I don’t give a shit about him, it’s like…”

I don’t give a shit about him.

Jamie has shaken off the feeling of wanting to please his dad, of showing that he’s not soft. If he was angry at him, he’s not now. Or, he might be, you know, feelings are complicated. But he’s feeling lost (or, y’know, he doesn’t know what direction he’s going in yet) because he is finally shaking off that trauma and expectations.

I also think this reaction can only be explained by Jamie also starting to come to terms with some of the significant trauma that he’s blocked out or not addressed. The example we know about is obviously Amsterdam***. But also there’s been sustained abuse over the years. There are questions over how much Jamie and his dad interacted when he was a kid, but based on him being able to take him to Amsterdam it’s not out of left field to suggest that Jamie’s dad did have periods of access to him, potentially regularly or semi-regularly, and largely without his mum there.

So Jamie isn’t feeling angry. He’s feeling… lost. He’s feeling sad.

Then we get to the side of the pitch after Jamie’s been injured and Jamie’s looking in the stands for his dad. Again, and despite the ‘fuck you’ that he throws out later, to me he’s not broadcasting anger here.

He’s broadcasting fear.

Now, in this conversation, Ted does acknowledge Jamie’s feelings as legitimate and he likens his dad to Freddie Krueger (again: fear). Although Ted goes on to say that ‘hurt people, hurt people’ which is true, but not a line I particularly enjoy as part of the extended metaphor being about James Tartt.**** Then he does say that he would tell his dad ‘fuck you’, but I actually think that Ted asking what he would say to him misses the whole point. He doesn’t want to see him. That’s the whole point. Yes, he’s looking for him, but it’s out of fear and because he believes that he is there. He doesn’t want to have a conversation with him (he’s not ­you, Ted. You are angry at your father and mother and you can never address one of those and you manage to address the other in this episode. Jamie’s problem is not anger, but you don’t know that because you haven’t been involved up until this point).

Jamie doesn’t need to let go of his anger. He needs to address his trauma, rather than drowning in it. And he needs to feel safe in order to do that. And the way for him to feel safe, regardless of what stage of redemption James Tartt is at*****, is to not be near his dad. And also to go to therapy.

*This, incidentally, is the message of the show I thought I was watching. Because they did show people doing terrible things, realising it, apologising and then doing better. They showed this with Rebecca. They showed it with Jamie. They showed it on a smaller scale with Trent and Roy’s interaction in 3x02. Like, Roy needed to let go of the anger, but also Trent needed to apologise in order for Roy to do that.

**It can’t be just about playing City, because Jamie was not showing this in 3X05. And I have to reason that this is because James is now banned from Richmond, or because Jamie somehow knew he wouldn’t be coming, because otherwise this makes no sense. So, if we go with that, playing City and only that is not a source of anxiety. Arguably, going back to the Etihad Stadium might be harder, but… not this hard.

There’s also the fact that Jamie is under more pressure now, as the lynchpin in their strategy, but – again – he’s not shown anxiety around this in other places.

***And, seriously, fuck the writers for this. Fuck them for having it said once. Fuck them for never bringing it up again. Fuck them for having it said in the season where they then have Jamie talk about forgiving him without ever addressing the fact that he was a victim of CSA, but doesn’t remember it.

****I once read an excellent fanfic in which Jamie goes up to Manchester when his Grandad (James’ father) is dying and it helps him to see the cycle of abuse and break out of it. He then does feel sad for his dad in the fact that his grandad was abusive to him and he turned around and was abusive to Jamie. Arguably, he then sort of lets go of his father. If the show wanted to tell that story rather than vaguely imply it, I would be on board. But without that knowledge, this seems half-arsed.

*****Obviously, any hint of redemption is completely bizarre. Because we have seen literally no redeeming qualities from this man in the entire series. We have heard of no redeeming qualities. I saw someone saying that maybe Wembley was a wake-up call for him and, I’m sorry, but what? He was dragged out of the room, yelling at Jamie not to forget where he came from and clearly threatening violence and then, oh yeah, we see him on the night of Wembley and he almost kills Beard. I don’t know, maybe the bloke hitting him around the head reset his personality. But seriously, you can’t expect the audience to fill in that many gaps and not have it be bad writing to make your fucking awful point.