#SHES JUST MORE TRAUMATISED

[daily-linkclick]

im gonna miss xixi every day until forever, lowkey want the og timeline to be restored so that she can live

oughgh... sometimes i delude myself into thinking she can still be alive through qiao ling NOT in the sense that her powers transferred to ql (i actually hate that idea) but in the sense that her soul transferred to ql but not in the intrusive way it's like now ql has a little tianxi ai who she can talk to . for fun

[letsplaythermalnuclearwar]

tbh I think Calypso views herself as Odysseus's rest and reward. like, she's the comfort in a hurt/comfort fic. she's the therapy saga. and honestly, a lot of her actions make sense when you look at it like that.

Odysseus is traumatised and scared and hurting. and she understands that. she's so understanding that she doesn't take it personally when he yells or screams or begs -- trauma makes it hard to regulate emotions, after all. he'll calm down in a little bit.

she's so understanding that she's not even hurt when he rejects her advances. he's been alone for so long that he's scared to intimacy now. but she doesn't let that discourage her. he'll get used to the idea eventually.

she's so understanding that she doesn't give up on him, even when he talks and talks and talks about his wife and son. obviously he wants to go back to them, but what he wants isn't what's good for him. that's fine, he doesn't need to know what's good for him yet. that's what she's for.

she's so understanding that she doesn't even let it upset her too much when Ody stands too close to the edge and stares out at sea below like its calling to him. it's okay. she can catch him if he falls.

sure, they're relationship isn't what she's dreamed about for centuries -- real relationships never are that perfect. her Ody has a lot of healing to do. and she'll make sure she's with him through it all.

[valtsv]

Please in no way shape or form feel obligated to answer this but since I so rarely hear about MEDICAL abuse as opposed to, ya know, the more traditional verbal/physical type (tho I think that they often go hand-in-hand) and I want to compare experiences. Was your mom "always" alternative for EVERYONE or did she make exceptions for herself? For example my mom never got me vaccinated and, like yours, withheld all sorts of medication under the guise of "protecting" me but when she got diagnosed with a chronic illness she started taking whatever the doctors gave her under excuses of her pain being "unbearable" or HER doctor not being a quack like the others, etc. Honestly it's been 4 years since I've had any contact with my mom but what makes me the maddest looking back was her hypocrisy.

my mom is on the opposite end of the spectrum in that regard. she categorically refuses to participate in any medical treatment that conflicts with her personal principles, and claimed she would kill herself if she was faced with no choice but to be vaccinated during covid (needless to say i haven't told her i'm fully vaxxed), and i believe her, because once when she had a fever so high her body seized up and she went into shock she refused to let us take her to hospital and told me she'd never forgive me if i dialled for a doctor. the whole experience needless to say didn't make me trust her opinion more, and i'm aware of how ableist and dangerous her "if your body isn't strong enough to deal with its health issues naturally it's because you're doing something wrong" stance is. i'm really sorry your mom is such a hypocrite though, that's hellishly infuriating.

[anemoyuri]

it’s interesting to see how people in this fandom react to events where teenagers are alone in high-risk situations with no adult supervision. and it’s not even about lazy writing, where the writers are like “well this teens adventure novel, they won’t just go to school.. they need to go on adventures and such!! even if they’re 15”

it’s about time periods.

like my parents in the 70s, when they were teenagers, already went on the hikes to another country with no adult supervision and took pretty heavy for children odd jobs. and the whole independence from the young age was encouraged (take in consideration the fact, that im from Ukraine and in the 70s my country was still a part of USSR).

the farther we go into the past, the more distorted the concept of appropriate age for this character is. like Dikke being 19 yo, barely an adult , was considered being middle aged at medieval times. like yeah, if average life expectancy of that time was 35 at best, she’s 40 for our modern society. and if we consider war time for each country that was mentioned … oh boy, it’s even more distorted after more peaceful times, stress really ages you.

and if we’re talking about Vertin’s team… i’m glad that they act pretty much to their age. they feel like teenagers with too much responsibility on their shoulders, especially Vertin… trauma made her that way.

all of this is just me rambling with no fact checks tho

EDIT: i was corrected on the fact that people in Middle Ages had shorter life expectancy, it’s just that many children at that time died before turning 5 y.o. and that’s why the average life expectancy was skewed. so Dikke would be considered a young lady and NOT middle-aged

[pushing500]

We built a marble sarcophagus for Brandy beside where the toxic wastepacks get stored. It's a lovely little spot, perfect for nostalgic reflections and a nice private cry.

Speaking of crying... Brandy liked to follow Mechi around while he did jobs, so I imagine he feels her loss a bit more strongly than he might have otherwise. We need a way to vent all this pent-up grief! Fortunately, Kwahu knows just how to get one...

A second diabolus is just what the doctor ordered! We need another signal chip anyway so that we can make the boys cool matching mechanitor gear.

A healthy way to vent emotions, I'm sure. Brandy would be so proud of us. Rest in peace, best girl 💔

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[comixandco]

cleo sertori had a fear of swimming since she was a child and nobody considered for a second that getting stranded on a boat in the middle of the sea then falling into a cave system where she had to swim through subterranean water tunnels to the ocean where she had to tread water until a s&r team found them would be traumatic and exacerbate her fear into full aquaphobia

secretly becoming a mermaid helped her get over her fear but to everybody else her being cagey about the pool party and washing the dishes makes 100% sense when they stop for a moment and consider she’s probably terrified

[tinystepsforward]

ngl it makes me want to die a little bit that it's so often trans people who feel that sex is mutable but oppression is always-forever based on asab in ways that allow them to demand that information from other trans people. like it feels fucking bad. it feels bad when it's people holding up someone who posts a lot of selfies as transition goals to a degree they have to clarify what they have or haven't done or what "direction" they're going in, it feels worse when people are out there like "caster semenya is not tma" or whatever the fuck. i am, as always, not a trans woman, but here's a sentiment echoed by many of the trans women around me who log the fuck off, quoted directly from one: "people who draw a clear line where they say that semenya or khelif are tme and then call me tma are just calling me male at this point".

like i get it. i really do. we seek community and shared experiences, and we feel betrayed when people have less in common with us than we thought they did. [*more on this later.] but that's not those people's faults and my god in the case i'm seeing play out on twitter rn this poor person did absolutely nothing to intentionally mislead people, just posted pictures of their actual kid self. who looks a lot like i did, because shockingly enough "we can always tell" doesn't fucking work for trans people either!

on the one hand i move in intersex circles which are unapologetically welcoming in cis "dyadic" people with pcos, because it serves nobody to draw a clear line where mutilation or genetics or some ineffable childhood suffering are what make somebody intersex, especially when most of us (esp in places like nz) have never been karyotyped and are being treated for symptoms without a pinned-down cause anyway. the more of us there are the stronger we are, the more pressure we can exert on a medical profession which doesn't like to consider how common outliers are, how uneasy sex is at all. and then on the other hand there's dyadic trans people on the internet who've yelled me out of spaces because a couple of traumatised incarcerated trans women i worked with as a prison abolitionist assumed i was also a trans woman and i didn't immediately tell them my entire csa-involved history of being sexed in varying ways as an infant and child and/or exactly how big my phallus was at birth or where in my junk config my urethra lives so they could decide i was tme or whatever.

returning to the * for a related but not identical thought: i think presuming shared experiences leads to some fucked shit in general! "oh we all had a radfem phase" or "oh we all were channers" no we fucking weren't and it's particularly obnoxious when me & mine are trying to build trans community locally to organise and resist the growing wave of far-right backlash against our existence, and there's just white people in there on a spectrum from "straight up being antisemitic and trying to get the n-word pass" through "handwringing about how they need to make space for people who aren't politically correct" to "handwringing about how brown people are right to be mad at them but doing shit fuckall". and then the other fucking brown people in the space are on some identity politics shit where they're like "trans joy inherently excludes those of us who could get deported" or "big city white queers are killing us by being visible instead of going stealth bc it stirs up the discourse" or whatever the fuck i've heard pulled out this year. there's a bunch of reasons i primarily organise outside of trans spaces and that's one of them. i've never felt more alone in spaces where people claim we're all the same than being left as the brownest moderator or organiser in a space full of people to whom "this is a safe trans space" apparently means they get to abdicate all other responsibilities not to lapse into presumed shared patterns that are fucking racist or otherwise alienating. i've never felt more alone than surrounded by exclusively trans people who sort people into boxes and assume everyone in those boxes has the transition goals they have. like i was on cypro until it disagreed with me to the point of endocrine crisis and now i'm on t and at both those points people were so fucking presumptive or entitled to my reasons or journey or personal relationship w my body

literally just submitted on (and was invited to consult on) the nz law commission's review of the human rights act and like. it's straight up fucked how many nz trans people fully do not comprehend that any "sex assigned at birth" type definitions fundamentally exclude migrants who have no way of proving it and many intersex people who happen to have been reassigned later or many times or never assigned at all as a baby. we can't make law with this shit and that's why we have to have symmetrical protections for all genders/sexes/expressions/presentations, bc naming and defining a protected class here often leaves the people who already are left out from those shared experiences of marginalisation out in the cold when they face violence

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

I see your tags on the Wocky and Alita art, I would love to hear your thoughts on Alita actually!

I only need one person to show interest in what I have to say for me to talk forever and ever, thank you. HAHA Okay, in seriousness, this won't be as thorough/long as the Klavier post because... there really isn't much to her, but I find it extremely interesting how Alita falls into the same category of witnesses as April May and Dahlia without being — and I mean no offence to her when I say this — stunning? Like, with April and Dahlia, there's a very clear mass appeal to them which most people point out. Contrariwise, Alita's appearance is really only commented on by Trucy, and just glancing at her portrait, you can see that, without her slightly outlandish fashion, she's frankly nothing to write home about.

So why am I discussing this? Surely it's a little reductive to analyse female characters beginning with their appearances? Usually, yes, but that's the thing about this category of witnesses: their pretty faces aren't just pretty faces.

For April and Dahlia, their beauty is part of their arsenal. It functions as both their defence and their weapon of choice; they know how to wield it to bring people under their heel. Alita being ordinarily pretty instead of drop-dead gorgeous deprives her of that weapon and leads you to wonder how she became a mafia heiress to begin with. It also parallels her to Mimi Miney in a way that goes beyond the 'murderous nurse who worked for and killed her awful boss' comparison you get on the surface. Presumably, Alita, like Mimi, only got to where she was because she managed to fool the people around her into believing she was less dangerous than she actually is. Mimi did this by feigning stupidity and inviting people to underestimate her. Alita seems to do this by showing them what they want to see.

When she first meets Apollo and Trucy, Alita stays quiet and spends more time listening to them than she does talking. Once she has a hold on who they are, then she slips into her persona, and I find it interesting how she doesn't even attempt to come across as particularly delicate or lovelorn? Instead she goes for the relatively typical role of a distressed, indulgent loved one earnestly entreating Apollo for help. I'm inclined to say she does this because her read on Apollo makes her realise that he'd likely be exasperated or annoyed by such a person; but it's also almost as if she knows she doesn't have the disposition to pull off that frail, damsel-in-distress archetype and has resigned herself to being ordinary. Like how she looks. The next time she has to reapply her persona, Alita's appearing in court, and again she makes subtle adjustments that best suit her situation. The judge is old, so she takes a chance on expressing her dedication as a wife while balancing her dedication as a righteous citizen, which works. But oddly enough, despite her successes, I don't think Alita is actually good? At donning disguises? Everyone I've seen discuss this case has been able to guess almost immediately that she's the culprit, and maybe we're just prepped by past characters like her that have appeared, but I don't think she's even that convincing in the game.

Both the identities she assumes are risky manoeuvres that happen to fall in her favour, and she's not particularly dedicated to maintaining the front. When she asks Apollo to be Wocky's defence, she admits that marrying him is largely a chance at a more exciting life than some great love story; Plum Kitaki straight up says that there's a darkness in Alita she doesn't like, despite how docile Alita behaves in front of her; and Wocky has moments where he slips up and calls her things like, "imposter" and "fallen angel", implying that at least subconsciously, he knows she's not what she makes herself out to be. Even her general mannerisms don't greatly differ between her actual self and the mask who's blunt her claws — nothing is ever overtly coy or cutesy — and when Apollo brings up the fact she was Wocky's nurse, she drops the facade almost immediately. There's no waffling, no, "Whatever do you mean?"s or, "You're scaring me"s, just the statement, "I don't know what you mean by 'meaning', Mr. Justice!" delivered in a sudden cool, frosted steeliness.

And I think that steel is what really makes her different.

See, the other women are all driven to crime by some defining trait in themselves caused by their circumstances. For Dahlia, it's her desperate need to be free of the Fey clan; for Mimi, it's grief over her sister's unjust death; and for April, it's her fear of Redd White. You don't really get that with Alita. Instead of there being something dark in her life that leads her down this path, she just seems... tired. Tired of being "pretty enough" but not "gorgeous", tired of being the obedient nurse to the corrupt doctor, tired of being ordinary. There's no predatory external force pushing her into a corner, there's no abusive family beliefs pinning her down. There's just an ordinary life, lived dull and ordinarily, and she had had enough. So what does this girl, who's tired and ordinary in every way except the steel that lines her spine, do to get out of this?

She gambles.

Marrying into the mafia was a gamble, seeking Apollo as council was a gamble, shooting Dr. Meraktis was a gamble. Every decision she's made since she met Wocky has been a series of high-stakes gambles that leave her life on the line all so she won't be second-best anymore. This time, she was going to be the one on top. No matter what.

... And I'm sorry for loving evil women, but girlboss?? Girlboss???

I've heard people say they're disappointed that her "breakdown" is just an extension of her usual damage sprite, but it's honestly one of my favourite "breakdowns" in the series ever? Just because it isn't really one? Everything Alita has done up till now has been reckless, calculated risk, of course being convicted for murder is no different than losing in any other aspect of her life. Of course you're not going to get more than her damaged sprite, because this doesn't warrant a more dramatic reaction. She's lived this whole time knowing it could all come crashing down around her, and it finally did.

She made a bad bet. You caught her. Oh well.

The frosted girl of steel, standing tall to the very end. It's kind of sad that, even after all that, she's still seen as only second-best, incomparable to mimi, dahlia or any of the other women who've stood in her place.

[pierregaslays]

:(

[basicallykiyotaka]

Every time I see a Fuyumi x Pro Hero ship I just want to take her by the hand and tell her honey, no

Look, darling, I get it. He's a sexy blonde man who talks smooth and is probably great in bed but I know you and I know him...and I'm telling you not to waste your time.

I know what you're thinking. But you can't. You can't help him. What's going to happen is the relationship is going to be wonderful and then he's going to dump you in a year because nothing you told him sunk in the way you wanted it to and instead of one of you needing a therapist, both of you will need a therapist because you are going to be feeling some codependent feelings you don't need in your life. You think you can get through to him just by being the most wonderful woman he's ever met? Think again.

[spicyicymeloncat]

We do not talk about Skylor enough actually, she has so much untapped potential. She’s like, the only character to be properly raised as a villain.

She was literally stuck on and island and the only people in her life were actual power hungry cultists. With every other character who have evil parents or became villains, they had at least some good, or at least normal influences in their life. With every character that had the potential to become evil(and in some cases, went through with it

Lloyd went to school with albeit bad boys, but they were just children and had been kind in the end, and his father, although evil, always wanted Lloyd to become good. And then Lloyd was adopted by the ninja and taught how to become a hero.

Harumi faced loss but at some point she knew what it meant to be heroic, and even if her living situation with Ninjago royalty wasn’t great, she had people at least attempting to show kindness to her, such as Hutchins.

Vania was raised by villains as well, but that villainy was kept a secret even from her. It seems her relationship with her father might’ve been completely flawless, he even invited her heroes, the ninja, just for her birthday.

My point is that so many characters were raised with major villainous influences but Skylor is unique in that she likely never knew any other options. Unlike every other character, when presented the choice to be good or evil, Skylor wouldn’t have even been able to make an informed choice.

I wish there was more focus on Skylor, learning how everything she knew about her father and the world was a lie. I mean Ik it would be a bit much for the Lego show to show us the incredibly real issues around cults like that, but as a fandom, I feel like we don’t think about Skylor’s trauma in the same way we do with other characters.

[mettywiththenotes]

I need "Eri rewinds the villains conditions" but make it a little complex. I want her to be able to say no, to look at these villains and all they've done and think (ofc from a surface perspective, because she doesn't know the rest, she just knows what she's seen on tv and the panic in the crowds of civilians) that they might use her quirk to their advantage, just like Chisaki did, and hurt people again

I want her to be convinced and reassured (by Aizawa, by her own heroes, by the villains themselves) that they won't do those bad things again, that they've been saved by compassionate heroes who looked underneath the surface and saw what they were really feeling, and I want them to look at this little girl who has so much power and smile and genuinely tell her they won't hurt anyone anymore

"Eri asked to rewind the villains" but make it interesting!

[tinylilvalery]

What's interesting about witnessing the shift in Tom and Shiv's relationship, is that for the first 3 seasons Shiv got to live in comfort of being her father in the relationship. She was in control. She was the emotionally detached one, keeping Tom at a distance from her inner vulnerable self like her father does to her and her siblings, despite Tom always appealing to that side of her, bearing himself and wanting that intimacy. She held all the power, and in holding all the power she felt secure that she wasn't going to be screwed over (like her dad did to her mum) and abandoned (like she felt her mum did to her). She could escape the fucked up divorce her parents had by being the embodiment of power (her father),,, which, like a lot of children of a messy divorce, she wanted to avoid such a thing for herself at all cost, and pride herself on her marriage and choice of partner instead of getting help for the trauma and damage she'd carried since childhood. Shiv was safe. She was secure. Like her dad, she had her own dog to kick to test its loyalty and feel secure and reassured every time that dog came back to her side.

But then the dog did bite back. Tom did betray her. The man she viewed as beneath her, all worshipping, and in her eyes nowhere near as smart as her, outplayed her and betrayed her and won over the approval of the very man that she'd been emulating. And now she's not her father. She's the last person she ever wanted to be. She's her mother. She's the one on the receiving end of Logan through Tom, making the divorce messy and difficult and painful by using the same tactics he did with her mother, something that gets to her easily and makes her extremely upset to the point where she's verging on tears. Tom is the one at Waystar + ATN. Tom is the one saying "uh huh." To her.

She thought that she could escape her mother's fate by being her father. By being cold and distant and emotionally closed off. By being the one who kicked the dog. She let her trauma and fears rule and guide her into making decisions and behaving in harmful ways (to Tom and herself) that she thought would protect her and never let her be hurt. And none of it worked. Because despite it all, she became her mother.

[spitinsideme]

Worst/best movie you've ever watched?

the worst movie that ive ever watxhed was this italian .... movie ? i feel like i cant even classify it as a movue vecause this was like .. weird .. it was called la bonne and i watched it when i was finding as many lesbian movies as possible and this wasnt even .. maybe ir was a bit gay i guess from one of the girls pov ?? i mesn the gayest thing they did is show each other their pussies and then play sexual bdsm style hide and seek ?? i hobestly dont know rhat was crazy it wasnt even gay tjis was like honoerotic undertones that could be read as manipulative and for other reasons that arent rveb gay .. very entertaining in a way

the besr movie ive ever watxhed is like a top three and those top three are carol, carmilla (2019) and my first summer .. mt first summer was jst very adorable and carol has older lesbian women and thats well fucking hot i fucking love that mocie and carmilla 2019 ???? IT WAS A VAMPIRE !!! AND THEY EVEN SHARED A BLOODY KISS LIKE ACTUAL BLOOD !!! wnd that was so hot mygodd .... jesus fucking christ ... thats the best mocie in my opinion i hate the ending si nuch but god it was so hot .. carmilla ..

[obstinatecondolement]

Not to be all "this is an Only Murders in the Building blog now" but apparently since yesterday I have reached a point of no longer being satisfied with being part of a two-person fandom irl with my sister and I need to Discuss things with you all.

Anyway. Currently thinking about how Theo Dimas is a) Greek and b) Deaf—both cultures that are very physically demonstrative—and that he is. Like that.

[zellk]

Feeling bits and pieces of Lana & Rena's story fall into place these past weeks/months since I've started to re-think about them is so satisfying.... I really wanna find something better than the first/old version of their dynamic ! (I don't blame young me, I didn't know any better back then haha) There's still a lot of weird spots and events & changes to figure out (especially their order of arrival) but it's so so fun thinking about them again aaaaa, I missed my messy girls so much