#I need one of my personal audience stand-ins to do something unhinged about this

[yourgamemasterthewhiterabbit]

Okay listen,

No.

Charles you egotistical fucking dumbass.

I got so mad I didn't finish the episode for 24 hours. I went to watch it twice, remembered why it made me angry and noped back out.

So let's talk about this from an audience perspective, and -maybe- a perspective that's lacking in the text of the shows and movies.

So you have a member of your team who has a violent stalker. Let's start with that.

Let's review here for a second, the crimes of Sabertooth/Creed. Just the ones I remember from various versions of events as they bothered to be presented to us as an audience as it was relevant to the plot. This isn't about only judging one cohesive universe, this is about how the characters exist in the fan's psyche, so don't fucking nitpick me about "Uhm actually in -this- universe it was never confirmed he also did that"... Just listen.

Among the first disagreements they have even functioning as brothers and allies is that Logan keeps having to stop Creed from doing things like unnecessary murder and also rapes.

So naturally they end up disagreeing and eventually Logan leaves. People have every right to step away from their families when their families are toxic or abusive to them or other people. I don't think that "blood is blood" shit flies with any of us here anymore on tumbles dot com... And then the real bullshit starts.

Because in every universe Creed ends up part of plots -often knowingly and willingly- to brainwash or manipulate his brother into joining government programs and the weapon x project and various versions of that. Often working alongside other people who are manipulating someone Logan is close to, violating the consent of his relationships from the outside, and people Creed should absolutely know are sadists doing medical rape. All in the name of trying to force or trick his brother into coming back to the team.

And then, once Logan really manages, past trauma and manipulation and memory loss and memory wipes and psychological torture, to get the fuck away from them and join a team... What Sabertooth does is fucking stalk him all over the planet trying to murder him for the crime of uh... Yeah, leaving and refusing to come back, thus making him feel abandoned.

He had been shown to not just be an active threat to Logan, but also anyone he is close to or even lives around... Which now includes a school of kids and teens.

And everyone goes along with Logan's insistence that this is his fight and he can handle it... Except it shouldn't be his fight and he shouldn't have to handle it alone and really, -can- he? Or does he keep getting kidnapped and brainwashed or experimented on or both or brain damaged so badly that he's effectively died and come back a different person?

The narrative and the characters keep treating it like so long as his body is alive and his rough personality traits stay consistent, it's not really like him being killed because we the audience still get to have him, and his team still gets to have him, and people still get to make use of him in various ways -voluntarily or not- so he isn't really gone... But what the fuck about HIS experience of it? Why is it that even when his mind is completely destroyed in some continuities, people still act like it isn't actually murder?

I can tell you that the internal experience of something like that is very much being a ghost or another person piloting around a body that used to belong to someone else... But the writers don't seem to want to write it that way. They want to keep their main guy and keep putting him in situations.

And so textually and in the narrative, people keep acting like Logan can just handle this and it's his fight, but ALSO acting like every time he gets angry about Sabertooth being around he's just being aggressive for no good reason or isn't being rational, or like he should somehow handle the situation without killing Creed... And like he's being extreme or a bad person if he just offs the guy...

Who again, will not stop stalking him and trying to murder him, or get him tortured and medical raped, and do whatever else to everyone around him all over the damn planet.

And maybe you think I am being a bit sensitive about this, and maybe if you have watched me for a little while you might understand why, but I feel like MAYBE sometimes show runners and writers need it spelled out for them that they will have audience members who have had violent stalkers, who have had manipulative and obsessive family members or ex's, who have had friends and family who refused to have their backs and just keep acting like they should absorb abuse and stay calm and rational about it...

You, writing the x-men of all things, will have audience members who are disabled and have been subjected to things like doctors violating informed consent, being manipulated or forced into or out of reproducing, have been subjected to medical rape or to experiments they didn't agree to because those are things that happen to real people.

You will have audience members who have experienced memory loss and trauma so severe it has changed them fundamentally as people, or caused amnesia. These are not just abstract things that exist only in dramatic fiction. And you will have audience members that for reasons of being men, or being read unconsciously as more masculine, or nothing more elaborate than being older siblings or quieter siblings, or because women/girls are supposed to be more 'emotionally mature', already get the constant messaging that when people are abusive to them, it is their job to shut up and quietly take it without raising a fuss. Or to only respond to it in ways deemed appropriate/rational enough by other people.

It very quickly has gotten to the point where every time I see Sabertooth I want to murder him myself because Logan shouldn't have to. I know I am not alone. It's probably such a pervasive attitude by now that we all realize that scene in the deadpoolXwolverine movie was pure revenge fantasy for the audience, thank you Mr. Reynolds. I'm not a murder fantasy kind of person, or I never was before. Before this year I never got anything out of imagining murdering someone.

And I do agree that Charles should step in and fucking do something about this instead of leaving Logan to defend himself, especially after everyone repeatedly guilts him for ever trying to take time away from the team to himself... [constantly framing it as "abandoning" the team any time he tries to get away for a bit] Because it's a public facing team and it's a pretty good guarantee it means all his enemies and his fucking stalker know where to find him. And sure, you don't have to tell Logan until it's done so it's morally uncomplicated for him, fine.

But -the fuck- Charles, you do that by taking Sabertooth away to some separate-ass location to work with him, or by just fucking killing him. You DO NOT do that by kidnapping Logan's stalker, drugging him and assuming it will be effective past an unknown healing factor, and then bringing him into Logan's home, all without fucking telling him about it, and then try to keep it a fucking secret from him. WHAT THE FUCK CHARLES?!

AND THEN!

Then, the fuck, Logan finds out, and you *hears the dial up rage noises again* the fuck, when he's like "welp, I'm going to do the very reasonable thing of killing my stalker who has been brought into my fucking home by my idiot friends" YOU FUCKING, Charles tells him that if he wants to hurt Sabertooth he's going to have to go -through- him??? Sides with defending his fucking stalker in his own home? I don't care how responsible you'd feel Charles, should have fucking thought of that before bringing him there.

You people are very lucky you are dealing with Logan, and his temper, and not me and mine.

HE can be convinced his anger isn't appropriate no matter how called for it is. HE can be convinced he might not have the best judgement in the situation even though he knows Creed better than anyone, because he trusts you Charles. Logan can be fucking guilted into thinking his rage at the situation makes him animal-like or worse.

And

How fucking dare you perpetuate these ideas to manage him

2. I do not have these problems :)

The fact that it turned out to not be Sabertooth is both immaterial and illustrates another problem. No one thought it was suspicious that Logan didn't immediately smell Sabertooth being in his fucking house. Everyone thought they could sneak one past him and were all in on it.

All of humanity almost died because Charles had the fucking ego to think he could and should just deal with this -in Logan's home- without consulting or involving him, and because all of Logan's friends and found family went along with it and thought they could just hide it from him because they are ALL acting like it's Logan's temper that needs to be kept in check somehow, instead of trusting HIS fucking judgement about HIS fucking violent stalker.

As someone who has had more than one stalker by now, and has had to cut my family out of my life for not keeping my location out of their mouths, and who doesn't have offline friends anymore because I can't trust anyone to respect my boundaries, and who's constantly being treated like my irrationality is the problem and not the people staling or harassing or abusing me... Ask me how that makes me feel.

I mean you probably know the answer, but go on and fucking ask if you need clarification.

The only fucking reason I made it through that fucking episode is because it very quickly became completely not about Sabertooth or whether they should let Logan kill him.

Nevermind that if I was there I would sneak out while they were all arguing about it and kill him myself.

But in the end none of these issues were even resolved or addressed because the episode just took a hard swing into left field. So we just never addressed the completely inappropriate way everyone is acting about this. I did not hear a fucking apology.

I want writers to think harder about what they put male characters through and the messaging they enforce and encourage around it. If you gender swapped the characters, would it still feel okay? You don't have to stop Putting Logan in situations, I couldn't stop you if I wanted to, but consider the message to your audience of how everyone around him treats him about it.

I don't actually care how much of this character dynamic in media pre or post dates the old cartoon, I don't. We could be having these discussions about just the movies he was in or just the comic books, etc... It doesn't actually matter because you are constantly putting that guy through literal hell on repeat and then telling him his anger is inappropriate and that he has no right to take time to himself.

And my point is that you should probably at least be aware that some of your audience is going to find that highly fucking triggering.

Also if anyone touches a hair on Logan's head again I will do something to get on the news and make my mother's statements about me being "a quiet pacifist who wouldn't hurt a fly" seem like horrible and ironic foreshadowing of the worst kind.

Don't look at the timestamps and judge how long it took me to process this enough to be able to articulate it.

And that's not even getting into the other fucking bullshit that's put his way by friends alike that gets a pass because he's seen as a big man who can take it or as the assumed aggressor even when he isn't do not get me fukcing...

I have gotten to episode 67 and I am going to bite everyone's faces off, specifically Charles. I am going to physically fight Charles and then murder Sabertooth, my fucking gods, I'm hearing the dail-up rage noises and I need to go to bed now.