#Child abuse

[theconcealedweapon]

We live in a society where autism is an excuse for a Nazi salute but not an excuse for breathing hard.

[10piece-chicken-mcnug]

If Louis and Lestat were in my lifetime and neighborhood, I’m calling CPS IMMEDIATELY !! They don’t deserve Claudia. When they say “every kid deserves a parent but not every parent deserves a kid” Loustat is what I think of first😭

[sevicia]

omg. hi dante.... i was just running thru ur oc tag for my oc blog, but who is mary and how can i learn everything about her?! mary cheat sheet please, blab as much as you want on this ask, im so curious 🙂‍↕️

HIIIIIII God I'm so happy you asked I love to ramble about her!!!

Prefacing this by saying that in all honestly some things kinda may not make sense because I'm uhmm. Figuring it out<3 Also there's mentions of violence but nothing graphic. Due to the way she is.

OKAAAY so some basic things about her are that she's 24, currently working at a gas station (previously a fine arts student), has no family to speak of, and is dating Agnes (wet guy you may or may not have seen</3). Her "life goal" or biggest desire is to be "one" with somebody in the most literal sense of the word.

A very not brief maybe even unnecessarily long recount of her life so far:

As a kid she was odd, spacey and awkward, and could not grasp "basic" concepts as quickly as her peers did. She often had to be told what was right and what was wrong because her understanding of morality as a whole was just... not there at all. She would stare intensely with a blank expression at things/people she found interesting, and had a pretty flat tone when speaking overall. She never had any pets; her behavior towards animals raised concerns in her parents (+ their friends) since she had a tendency to squeeze, pull or even strangle them whenever she could, all because she thought they were cute and liked feeling their warmth when she held them and as they struggled, kinda like cute aggression maybe. She just really struggled to understand others and have them understand her in return; most people wouldn't even bother trying.

She attended a religious school up until she graduated highschool, and her parents would take her to church very often, but all she'd do was space out until service was over. She didn't really care nor understand what the priests and church members talked about, and her mindset was that she just had to do as she was told and everything would be ok; it didn't matter that she wasn't all the way there.

Around middle school age she managed to make friends (through the power of practicing facial expressions and noting what other kids said and did). This was a bittersweet experience as she got made fun of quite a bit for not really getting why certain jokes or games were funny, but also found friends that did like her and that she liked beyond just tolerating.

At one point they'd planned an outing together to go see a movie, and Mary brought it up to her parents, but they said no. This was the first time in years she'd been excited and actually wanted to do something, so she tried to convince them by telling them that one of her friend's parents would be watching over them at all times (which was actually true! They planned it this way so Mary could come in the first place), but they just wouldn't have it, and the argument ended with her father slapping her after she just wouldn't give up and drop the subject.

Mary had never been hit before, and she'd always had a freakishly high pain tolerance, so really it wasn't the pain from the slap itself that shocked her, but the fact that her dad had hit her at all for something she had figured wouldn't escalate to that point, based on watching her friends' experiences. In her head then she started feeling like a child again, thoughts like "I just have to do as they say" and "what I want doesn't really matter", but with an added layer of "I'm not worth being listened to", and a feeling of dehumanization she couldn't really put into words yet.

In the end, the shock lead to her avoiding her friends completely and only going outside for school and church, basically losing all those years of progress regarding her individuality and her ability to even see herself as an individual at all.

Towards the end of highschool, she was confessed to by the son of her parents' friends from church. He told her to "think about it", and when she told her parents later that day, they told her that it'd be wonderful if they dated, and joked about her still being "such an airhead" to even ask in the first place.

So they start dating, and through his and her parent's pressure she kinda just... molds into whatever he wants. This is why she dyes her hair black and starts dressing in more modest, plain clothes, all the while losing sleep over "this is my life now and forever", a horrifying thought that became all the more real once he proposed to her and she saw no other option but to accept.

Here I just have to mention that those notions of her self not mattering and never being listened to/understood, plus being constantly reduced into something sanitized and non-violent, much less threatening, had all mixed together into wanting just that; to be understood, listened to and accepted as a whole, including every violent and/or sexual thought she'd ever buried within herself after being told they were "unsightly". Basically, what she wants is to be known entirely, inside and out, by someone who'll let her do the same and take her as she is.

While she had no desire to ever pursue the kind of "love" she wanted and couldn't care less about the "sanctity" of marriage, she did know very well that it would trap her legally, physically and mentally into a life she'd hate and would never escape until either of them (or their parents) died.

The wedding was planned to take place early in the year; only a few weeks after her 22nd birthday.

To "celebrate" her birthday, her and uh. that other guy (that I cannot refer to as her boyfriend/fiancé)(I'd rather shoot myself) "decide" go on a camping trip, something only he'd done before and that Mary was fully dreading.

They get there, and the day is pretty much spent on him taking her around the site and talking at her or with other men while she nodded along, barely present enough to know when and where she was. By now her sense of reality had been so shattered due to trying to run away from her own life, she'd stopped caring about anything at all.

And then night comes and they're camping with a view of the lake and he falls asleep but Mary's still awake, now used to not being able to fall asleep until very, very late into the night. She's just sitting outside their tent, and when she looks towards the forest she sees some sort of faint glow that she just... decides to follow for something to do, not caring whether she'd get lost, or murdered, or abducted, or ever make it back to the campsite.

She follows the glow for a while, her brain getting more and more scrambled with every step, and suddenly she's in a clearing and hearing whispers both from inside her head and all around her.

...there is some dialogue of sorts but this is so long already I'll try to be brief here... at least... plus this is where things are kinda loose so yaaay</3

Basically, an odd whisper that she ends up referring to as an angel offers her a gift to help her achieve her desired form of "love": she will be able to heal and reconstruct another person, as long as they're wounded and so is she, by pressing their wounds together and merging their bodies this way; she would, in a sense, be part of them in the most literal sense.

The only caveat is that she would be completely removed from her previous life. As in, everyone that ever knew her would never even know she existed in the first place; she would be 100% wiped from their memories and any records they had of her would be adjusted so that she wouldn't be in their lives anymore in any way.

Obviously she says yes, some flesh-absorbing stuff happens, and when she gets back to the campsite she wakes the guy up, watches him get startled over some stranger standing over him, and promptly bashes his head in with a rock until he stops moving... and then some more.

Now she's finally able to think and act by/for herself, and she kiiinda doesn't know how to do that very well? So it takes her a while to adjust to. She slowly goes back to her habit of staring blankly for extended periods of time, but is now able to smile genuinely and stumble her way through saying "no", though she's still polite to an almost unsettling degree.

She's also finally started to look for someone that she can love and share herself with, and she realizes pretty quickly that her type is gloomy, lonely and pitiful-looking people that flinch at everything, both for cuteness aggression sadism reasons, but also her believing that someone who doesn't value their life much would be a lot more willing to take her in and let themselves be taken as well than someone more lively and strong-willed.

For a while she chases people who fit her type, trying to find "the one", with the final test being her getting them alone and trying to kill them (basically), just to see how little they really value their life. The trick is, if they fight back or hesitate she goes through with it and kills them, but if they let go and give up their life to her, she lets them live.

By the point she meets Agnes she's pretty unapologetic about it all, and has stopped caring much about anyone but whoever she's set her sights on, though still disconnected from reality and society as a whole in many ways. They meet when he stops by her workplace and she's like Ohhhhh he looks so miserable I have GOT to torture him. And she chases him around and scares him a little (a lot) but he makes no effort to run away or even acknowledge it in any way, and is the first one to ever pass her test!

I think that's um. Pretty much it... uhh some fun facts: she's super bad with technology, has a wide creepy and sweet (TO ME!!!) grin on her face more often than not, her apartment's a mess, her favorite artificial flavor is strawberry, she loooves to scratch certain surfaces (mainly Agnes), and is like if The Downward Spiral YES THE WHOLE ALBUM!!! was a girl. And your honor I love her.

[undeadentropy]

Taking this out of tags because I need people to know that if someone actually does respond well to this kind of self flagellation, they are NOT someone worth apologizing to. That is someone who does not have your best interests at heart. Don't beat yourself for an abuser. Get. Out.

Sure, you know how to self-flagellate, but do you know how to apologize? Saying "I'm a stupid idiot" is not the same thing as saying "I did something wrong."

[motherofplatypus]

This is how many bullets they shot on a fucking kid.

This post has been compiled in Record of Genocide.

[shamebats]

"we want to protect the kids!!"

— in a way that will also protect them from their parents & guardians right?

"what"

— if a parent or guardian wanted to abuse their child, would what you're trying to do make it harder for them?

"..."

— *pulls out a chart that shows 76% of abused children were victimized by a parent or legal guardian* will what you're advocating for make it easier for the majority child abusers, which is overwhelmingly parents & guardians, to get away with abuse?

"idk what this has to do with anything we just want to restrict children's freedoms more & give parents more control over them. you know. to protect them from adults who want to abuse them"

Every. Single. Time.

[teaboot]

Adult ProTip, from a security professional: If a kid tells you, "My parents are gonna kill me / kick my ass / kick me out" for something relatively minor, don't respond with shit like "Really? ;) that sounds a little extreme, don't you think sweetie?" because that shit really does happen.

Instead, respond as though whatever threat they are afraid of is fully valid, and offer whatever you can do to help- ask if they believe they are in danger of being hurt in any way, and work accordingly.

If they're overreacting, they'll usually realize and dial it back, self-correct and begin thinking a bit more rationally.

If they're not overreacting, and the danger is real, then they'll need a level-headed adult in their corner, not another condescending authority figure who doesn't believe them.

[fnord888]

Child abuse is a big problem, so it's important that we don't let children communicate with adults except their parents and other official authority figures. Everyone knows the best way to prevent child abuse is to keep children isolated and ensure all their communications are controlled.

[self-loving-vampire]

Problem #1 regarding child abuse is that a lot of people seem to struggle to imagine normal, respectable-looking parents and other authority figures ever doing it despite the statistics so instead they do the stranger danger panic and completely overlook some of the greatest threats.

Problem #2 is that even when people understand, even if in an abstract way, that parents can be abusive they just... don't seem to actually register that as something that can apply to real life. It's just hypothetical to them and doesn't actually guide their ideas of how to prevent child abuse.

Problem #3 is that even after overcoming the above biases a lot of people have a very narrow image of what abusive parenting is where they imagine like... people doing violent things basically out of sadism and without provocation. They don't seem to think it's "real" abuse if the victim did something that "justifies" punitive violence, like disobeying the parents.

In fact, most people think parents have a right to do a whole lot of awful things to their children beyond just hitting them, like violating their privacy, controlling their access to information, and deciding what/when/if they eat, among other things.

[sticky943]

this reminds me of how people typically respond to abusive parenting on the internet, making some unoriginal joke of "lol when the child grows up and turns 18, they're going to put their abusive parents in the nursing home" or "and in 30 years, the parents will wonder why their adult/grown child never sees them again."

it's never "oh my god, get that child out now, throw that parent into the slammer right now" or "somebody save that child right now." i swear that if this were SA, people wouldn't making these thoughtless, complacent nursing home jokes that trivialize child abuse/children's human rights violations as some personal individual matter that is solely the child's responsibility to deal with once they hit 18 (assuming they survive that long and they don't commit su1c1de or their parents don't murder them). but apparently, waiting until a child is 18 to take action is totally the way to go to stop abusive parents in their tracks. yeah, that should go perfectly well, treating children as subhuman until they're 18 /s

Adultcentrism fucking kills, people. The mindset that children are not real people until they're adults -- such as "What do you want to be when you grow up?" or "I'm an adult now, treat me like one and stop treating me like a child/infantilizing me" -- fucking kills. To all the people out there who see abusive parents and don't intervene and instead go "And then their parents will wonder why their child went no contact," FUCK. YOU. YOU COMPLACENT BASTARDS.

people need to think real hard about where the concept of a minor even came from, and what reaching the age of "majority" even means from a legal standpoint, and how the social construction of adulthood and childhood functions to oppress and isolate kids. people always assume there is some nefarious purpose lurking behind somebody saying this, but as a transmasc white birthday boy i can get away with saying it without catching any accusations so i'll be the one to do it. if we want kids to be safe from predation they need to have legal autonomy, privacy, and the ability to seek help from other people who are not their legal "owners" (typically but not always their parents)

[theconcealedweapon]

When you're autistic, it's impossible to miss how much society normalizes child abuse.

I could dedicate my entire life to studying how to interact with people and I'd still never master the social skills that young children are expected to have on command.

Say the wrong thing? That's disrespectful and you're punished. And you don't even have to actually say anything wrong. Pretty much anything you say can be considered "giving lip" if your parent wants some excuse to punish you. But if you say nothing, then you get punished for ignoring. You also have to calculate your response to their mind game quickly because taking too long to respond is considered ignoring. Also, if you're being wrongly accused of something, saying nothing is considered a confession. And even if you somehow manage to say exactly what your parent wants in exactly the correct tone, they'll still punish you for "sarcasm" or "not really meaning it".

[vague-humanoid]

[the-knife-consumer]

Had a dream last night about a gravity falls game where you play as young Stanley having to sneak around and lie to stay out of trouble with Filbrick. It wasn't really a horror game but it had a lot of horror game-like mechanics and there was a general sense of discomfort the entire time.

The only quest I can remember is one where Stanley gets a bad report card while Stanford gets a good one. Filbrick is out doing business until tomorrow so you have until the morning to try and make it look like you got good grades. There's an option to use white out on Stanford's card while he sleeps and write your name instead.

You could also get future readings from mom, who would give hints on what will happen to you next so you can start setting up lies and stealing in advance instead of scrambling to cover yourself last minute. (If you could figure out what the readings were hinting at. They got progressively more vague as the game went on, going from "I hear" and "I see", to "I feel")

You didn't get to see what happened when Filbrick caught him, it just cut to a game over screen. You could be caught and sent to your room three times before this happens (which ends the quest you're on. Because you failed to lie well enough). There is no way to win. The game would just keep going with scenarios until you lost or gave up

There was a vending machine on the board walk that had warped reflections in the glass that corrected itself when you looked at it head-on

[furiousgoldfish]

my mother, right after giving birth: and now... you owe me one. you will spend the rest of your life paying it back. stop crying its annoying me.

[lostmf]

[rainywhispersblog]

When you grow up in an abusive home, you don’t become a people pleaser to please people. You become a people pleaser to keep the potential for more abuse away.