#Frankly I'd start committing crimes if that was the punishment

[karniss-bg3]

So, I don’t mean this in a request way, bc I know those are closed, but I had a daydream where Tav is TERRIFIED of regular spiders of all sizes. They struggled really badly with the phase matriarch and the spiders in the goblin camp. But Kar’niss doesn’t spook them one bit!

So I imagined the group walking down the road and suddenly there’s a tarantula sized spider that crosses the path and Tav screams and dives underneath Kar’niss to be caged under his legs.

And everyone else laughs at the reaction, but Kar’niss is so confused????? Like “True soul, we are a DRIDER, and you are not afraid of us. Why do you hide from a small spider?” “KAR’NISS I TRUST YOU, NOT THAT SPIDER!”

Bonus: to speak to Tav he leans forward with his drow torso and looks at them upside down so he look really silly.

This scenario applies to a good portion of the Kar’niss fandom in general. I can’t count how many “Kar’niss has cured my arachnophobia” posts I’ve seen but I’m not mad about it. I suppose it helps when a humanoid is attached to the creature we find creepy or frightening. They can talk back and communicate their intentions. Spiders are a bit more...unpredictable.

I’ve never considered myself arachnophobic but Kar’niss definitely elevated my interest in spiders ten fold. I feel I have a better understanding of them now than I ever would’ve and I’ve come to appreciate nature’s pest control. I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole of watching jumping spider videos and I’ve become obsessed. I’ve even contemplated getting one as a pet but two things have stopped me from having a fuzzy friend.

1) I have a cat and if the little guy ever escapes she will activate murder mode and that’ll be the end of itsy bitsy’s whole career.

2) Jumping spiders tend to live one to two years on average. I don’t think I am emotionally equipped to handle that loss with such frequency. I’d become a blubbering, inconsolable mess for days on end mourning the eight legged pal I spent years bonding with. No can do.

I could imagine Kar’niss being perplexed by Tav’s fear of spiders for two reasons. One being the aforementioned situation that they are hanging around a drider willy nilly no problem. The second, Kar’niss comes from a society that worships and pampers spiders. To him they are as normal as dogs and cats are to us.

“True Soul, why do you fear the spider but not us?”

“The spider might bite me but you wouldn’t.”

“Erm—how much do you know about driders?”

Cue the bosom buddies to lovers story arc. Kar’niss learns to love himself and Tav discovers that spider bites aren’t as bad as they once thought. *wink wink*

Also the mental image of Tav getting sent to spider leg jail anytime they did something stupid does amuse me. Considering most of the Tav’s I make are classic himbo types they may as well situate their sleeping bag under him and get comfortable. Yet another moment where I wish I learned to draw.

Thanks for the ask!

[sophieinwonderland]

What's your stance on MAPs?

Host:

Sophie doesn't have much of an opinion on the subject. At least not a very informed one (no offense) so I'll take this one since it's a bit more personal to me.

I should probably toss up some trigger warnings for mentions of rape and molestation now. Maybe death too. Just be warned that this is not going to be a light post.

I was raised in the home of my grandfather who was a former child molester. And no, I was never harmed. As far as I know, those days were behind him. And even then, he never had a thing for boys anyways. It's the reason my uncle was spared. At least, as far as we know.

My mom wasn't lucky. She was abused for most of her childhood. Horribly so. Related to the system stuff, one of her therapists tried to convince her that she had DID at one point. She did spend a year going by a different name at school, and had very vivid imaginary friends who stuck around until she was 16. They had a falling out after they were unusually angry at my grandfather for something unrelated. It scared my mom, she told them to leave, and they never came back.

(Mostly. She later told me that she went through a phase in her 20s where she would start seeing images of them in her head and try to block them out, and was even obsessively writing their names down for comfort. But that's getting off-topic.)

That said, I don't think dissociating herself was actually her primary defense mechanism. Instead, what she told me is that it was like she had two dads. One who was kind and loved her, and one who hurt and abused her.

It's why, despite the abuse she endured as a child, she ended up moving us in with him whenever my grandma had a stroke.

I never knew the second side of my grandfather. I mean, sure, he could be a bit of an ass sometimes. But as long as I knew him, I only knew the man who I would stay up late talking to in the kitchen about whatever fantasy books we were reading. He was like a second dad to me. That makes it hard for me to think of him as this horrible child molester.

And at the same time, there's a part of me that knows what he did my mom, and hates him for it, and is glad that he's dead. And I have a hard time reconciling that. Because I do love the man that I knew, but I hate everything he did to her.

But I also know that he did cared about his kids. From what she's said, he tried to stop, and eventually did. And he hated himself for the things he did. He wasn't driven by evil. He was driven by sickness.

And I can't help but wonder things could have been different in an alternate universe.

Would he have done the things that he did if he hadn't been drafted into Vietnam against his will, been fucked up by everything he experienced there, and returned home without any support for his mental health? If mental health was affordable and available to everyone, and the stigma for this disease wasn't so severe that people who have it are afraid of seeking out therapy, would he have ever done this in the first place?

I don't know the answer to that question. Frankly, he was a bad father to his children in a lot of other ways besides just the sexual abuse, so it's possible that nothing would have changed.

But I'd like to think that, if we had a world where people who are attracted to minors felt safe seeking therapy and were able to get help before acting out anything, there would hopefully be less children who have to experience what my mom did.

The same actually goes for a lot of crimes. I mean, we talk about mental health every time someone shoots up a school, but we don't do a damn thing about it to make it easier to get.

We live in a society that likes to punish people for crimes after they're committed, because hurting "bad" people makes us feel good. But we don't like doing what it takes to prevent those crimes from occurring in the first place. We could lower crime rates so much by putting more funding into education in poorer areas, providing affordable mental healthcare, and restructuring prisons to focus more on rehabilitation instead of just punishment.

But we don't do any of that because we don't get the same warm fuzzies from seeing lower crime rates each year as we do from letting someone commit a crime and tossing them away for the next 20 years. It's easier to get voters on board with being tough on crime than it is to get them on board with putting money into a school system or mental health.

My stance (and Sophie agrees) is that I wanted fewer children to be molested like my mom was.

I'm not sure if this was the answer you were looking for. I don't actually know much about the MAP community, and we tend to stay far away from those areas.

Having said that, please, for the love of the gods, do not be like my mom and take your children around child molesters. Even if I wasn't hurt, I'm sure that's an exception to the rule. Kids shouldn't be around abusers. Period.