#abuse apologia

[dyspunktional-leviathan]

Our blessed toxic yaoi vs their barbarous abusive shipping

Btw Intermission fandom this is still directly aimed at you and your trademark "character A has total power over character B and constantly nonconsensually harms them But they also get some damage from it all and B is attracted to them so it's not abuse, and if you ship abuse you should die"

I think I'm even done mulling over how I had not talked about this earlier or about making a huge post about it

And so very very much aimed at everyone else this applies to

And to make this clear

I support shipping abuse

Shipping abuse does not affect victims of abuse

Insisting that fictional abuse is not abuse does

[aronarchy]

Libfems. Sigh.

[bonefall]

God I am so tired of Bramble fans who refuse to use critical thinking and believe that brambleclaw and squilf are equally bad. Many also hate on moonkitti's video which they most likely haven't even watched or misconstrued points in it. You can like a character without defending all their actions please I'm begging you

And people will sometimes jump to their defense, saying that people just dogpiled them for liking a character the fandom doesn't like, and while that can happen, sometimes people are actually dogpiling them for ignoring abuse and insulting creators with different opinions

(Some discourse happened on Twitter recently about this but it's something I've seen happen before, I'm not specifically talking about anyone)

I'm going to be honest and drop my feelings.

Never have I ever actually SEEN a Bramblefan "get dogpiled" for liking Bramble.

I come out here on my massive soapbox every couple of weeks and drop whole essays on this guy, I chat casually about how important he is to me as a character, both as someone who was abused in a way similar to Squirrelflight AND as someone who can relate to Bramblestar's situation, and before BB got so large and my attention was easier to divide I even ran an AU called Sweet Nothings which had a "big brother" Bramble take in it.

There is no shortage of Bramblestar-related posts around here, yet, I have never, NEVER gotten shit for when I talk positively about Bramble.

In fact, he's commonly cited as one of the favorite cats to see on this blog from my audience. I get praise for addressing him with nuance, explaining how his actions are abuse while also keeping him human, talking about how his life is a painful cycle of self-doubt that makes him double down on his worst decisions. Every time I post about him, I get an influx of comments centered around how my takes on him are appreciated.

What I DO see is people who make art where they try to bothsides him and Squirrelflight, or say something completely false about his behavior, or straightup post DARVO tactics to defend their fav's honor. When someone makes a comment that goes "uhmm? Bit strange innit?" they call it "harassment." Or when people block them, they call that "receiving hate."

OR when someone makes a vaguepost like "Heyyy, DARVO is an abuse denial tactic where the abuser or their apologists Deny the abuse took place, Attack the accuser, and then Reverse Victim and Offender to claim they were actually the person harmed. Bramblestans are playing this out, step for step, and that's bad!" they call THAT dogpiling.

Meanwhile Moonkitti got death threats and was actually harassed for posting Bramblestar Is Worse. To the point where she is hesitant to ever make another video on the topic.

So y'know what? Hot take? The stans don't actually like Bramblestar. They like the vague idea of a sadboy character who broke free from his dad's legacy so they slurp up the framing of the notorious abuse apologist writers, and they get mad when people who have critically engaged with the books don't see what they desperately crave.

How can you really LIKE a character if you can't engage with their actions? If you need to surround yourself in an unpoppable bubble and can't accept anything he's done in the 20+ years he's been active? How can you truly love a man without all his mistakes?

It's sooo hard to be me, Tumblr User Bonefall, the ONLY one who likes Bramblestar correctly. It's rough out here.

[hussyknee]

Fiction (and sometimes real life) has this tendency to frame a character's stubborn belief in people's goodness in the teeth of all evidence as a virtue. As in, not when the person being judged acts seemingly out of character. It's wise to give aberrant behaviour the benefit of doubt. But consistently apologizing for and ascribing good intent to actions that clearly show a bad character, and then refusing to accept that this person is exactly as bad as the trail of victims they've left behind prove them to be— this is not a mark of goodness and kindness.

Wilful blindness and stupidity don't showcase a generosity of spirit. That's simply the need to cling to your own preconceptions for the sake of your own comfort. It's not kind or fair to defend perpetrators at the expense of the people suffering because of them; and infantilizing and finding excuses for people isn't mercy, it's apologia. ("He was a good boy who fell under bad influence" "Ma'am, he's 28 and sold out his own family to pay his gambling debts.") In both fiction and real life, you should be able to look at the situation and choose to safeguard and defend the victimized and vulnerable first and foremost. To accept that you might be wrong, your faith might be misplaced, and prioritise safety, justice and accountability for all the people who are or might be suffering at your friend or family's hands. Because not doing that— not believing victims, apologizing for and defending abusers, centering the perpetrator's interiority instead of the impacted victim's reality— that's just the default evil of real life.

If you being a pure, loyal little cinnamon roll throws other people under the bus, then you aren't actually a cinnamon roll. You're just complicit, enabling and endangering.

[lovegrowsart]

every time zuko and azula's scapegoat and golden child dynamic is characterised as a "typical sibling rivalry" in this fandom an angel loses its wings fr... am saying this as a younger sister to TWO older brothers no we didn't always get along but lemme tell you there's a fucking difference between giving your siblings shit and literally participating in your father's abuse of your sibling 🙏 if you think their relationship is typical or acceptable then honestly i'm worried abt y'all

[howhow326]

Deny

Audrey's verbal abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect of Chloe for most of her life has either been ignored or recontextualized as a mother punishing an out of control child. André enabling Chloe at every turn and giving her the Rich Person Parenting Style (read: I can do whatever and get whatever I want) has been scrubbed from the show and it's existance denied by the writers.

Attack

Chloe's bullying of Marinette/the whole school is used as evidence that she's irredeemably evil, even though other characters (André) aren't held to the same standard.

Reverse Victim & Offender

Season 4 onwards, Chloe's relationship with her father André is rewritten & recontextualized with her as an abusive 14 year old daughter and him as the put upon abuse victim of both his daughter and wife.

In the scrapped version of Revolution, André disowning Chloe and granting himself sole custody of Zoé is casted as an abuse victim (old man André) breaking free of his abuser (14 year old child Chloe, who was raised by André to be an Evil Rich Person, who was shielded of any negative consequence of her actions by André, etc.).

[elegantwoes]

A friendly reminder that show!Margaery is based on three out of context Sansa moments in AGOT and ACOK where she throws Joffrey off balance with her words, quells his anger, and gets him to act benevolent to the people, and put on steroids till it doesn't make sense whatsoever and contradicts the actual plot of ASOIAF.

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

hot take but people treating tommy like he’s in the wrong for, like, being a victim of abusive actions and Literal Crimes (like, objectively, I don’t want to put words in Tommys mouth or define it for him but Dream's acting in a textbook abusive way rn and “sharing pornography with minors” is literally csa legally) is in large part bc of the normalisation of excusing abusive action in a fictional context here specifically. dream is right in saying c!dream influenced how people reacted to this, but it’s not with inniters- it’s with people using the Exact Same Arguments they used to defend c!Dream’s abuse when actual worse shit turned out to have happened to an actual irl sixteen year old.

[uncanny-tranny]

"The world isn't a safe place, so get used to it!"

Man, as somebody who's survived multiple, long-lasting instances of abuse from a very young age, I was under the impression that the world was, indeed, so safe and conforming to my desires. I'm practically stunned to learn that this is not the case, and I have been severely humbled

(Sarcasm fully intended)

[xryin]

Just because the jedi lived comfortably and cannot solve things all at once

Does not mean they deserve abuse or genocide

And No their attitude towards anakin don't justify anything either

[wisteriasymphony]

I feel like. The fundamental opposite of a lot of ML fans. Like yes I care about the LS but a HUGE part of the show that has been consistently lacking is it's worldbuilding!! Both the side characters and the actual lore! It took way too long to get to it.

This is finally starting to feel like a real full-fledged comic book universe to me- and that was Astruc's intention when he created Ladybug in the first place. Don't forget that the original idea was a teenage girl inheriting a mysterious pair of earrings! Inspired to take up the name Ladybug and fight crime and investigate secret evils lurking in the city after her father is suddenly murdered and she demands justice! And then the networks wouldn't greenlight the show unless he turned it into a kids' romcom. But even the rejected concept bibles had these overarching themes woven in- and comics thrive on very elaborate worldbuilding.

So I'm digging that we're getting to see this coming through now. Do I miss lovesquare shenanigans? Yeah, a little, but I wouldn't trade it. Nodding along like YES here are my classic Batman and Spider-Man vibes.

I do feel bad for those fans who bought into this thinking we were gonna get a kids' romcom the full way through, to be honest. I do love what's going on, and I think for a lot of people who were never super enthralled by the lovesquare and were always in it for the lore, this is a change they don't really mind!

But it does almost feel like a bait-and-switch, doesn't it? If everything about the show used to be so heavily centered around the lovesquare in all its fluffy, saccharine glory?

I do wonder what it would've been like if we had just gotten to jump into the comic book stuff to begin with, though. Whether the show would have gotten as far as it has without the romance, etc. At the very least the willingness to introduce more villains and more lore makes the prospect of 14 seasons a little more bearable, since the scope will seemingly keep increasing.

Still, even though I do feel for my mutuals mourning the lovesquare souring a little post s5 finale, I am also one of those world-first fans, so it is nice that the show is delivering on that front now.

[oneshotprincess]

what i hate most about the millions of 'titans tower au fics' out there is how they only ever end the same few ways: jason snaps out of his 'pit madness' (lol), jason realizes that tim is being abused by his dad or whoever and becomes tim's knight in shining armor, jason just plain never really meant it and all that lil timmy blood over the floors makes him change his mind :((

jason jason jason, it's always about jason changing his mind and never about tim. tim has nothing to do in these fics except get beaten up for the sake of jason's change of heart. in most of these fics, tim never gets to rescue himself, he never gets to win through his own ingenuity, he never gets to prove why he earned robin, he never even gets to snark at jason most of the times. he just gets to wait (or worse, cry!!!) until jason changes his mind and stops hurting him.

like hmm! that sure is smth!

[aliusfrater]

i'm sorry that the last time i was with him i tried to pick a fight. i'm sorry that i spent most of my life angry at him. i mean, for all i know he died thinking that i hate him. [...] i miss him, man and i feel guilty as hell. i used to be mad at him. i—i mean, i used to… i used to hate the guy but now i—i… i get it. he was…just doing the best he could. truth is my dad died before i got to tell him that i understand why he did what he did and i forgive him for what it did to us. i do. and i just—i love him. and dad made up for that how? by being father of the year?

[aronarchy]

I despise the stereotype that female nurses and teachers are mean girls. Each time I hear someone say that, I beg them to consider why these two professions have been labeled this way. I urge them to acknowledge that women in female dominated fields are inherently looked down upon by others within their profession. They have to fight for respect. They have to be assertive and bold in order to ensure that they are not looked down upon by others. Women before them have passed down the message that in order to gain respect, they must show that their worth is not something to be questioned. The repeated stereotype that nurses and teachers are mean girls, is rooted in the fact that these women have had to battle a misogynistic system their entire careers. Nurses and teachers work long hours, go through years of expensive training, and are consistently underpaid and mistreated within their respective fields. If being assertive and standing up for themselves earns them the stereotype of being mean, I ask you to consider why these individuals have to constantly define the respect they deserve within their fields. Instead of punishing the women who are forced to fight back against a misogynistic system that leaves them underpaid and under respected, I ask you to question why women who are assertive and outspoken are labeled unkind and cruel by society.

[notannascribbles]

does anyone remember when miraculous ladybug was about romance

[warrior-cats-rewritten]

Excuse my language.

What is this fucking horseshit?

Tell me you can't take fan criticism without telling me you can't take fan criticism.

"He only wanted to make sure the cat he loved was safe" is that why he's still an arrogant dickhead in TBC?

"Some say His reckless behavior is why Skuclan had to leave the forest for so many generations" we already established that it was human greed and if things are "much simpler" in starclan why would rumors like this float around?

"Even if he had done terrible things" like some of the most horrific acts in the series? "Plenty of cats have done much worse and their Clans have thrived"

Like who? Brokenstar? Who starved his own clan half to death and tried to map-wipe another? Tigerstar? Who almost destroyed all 4 in 1 go? I wouldn't call that thriving, that's bouncing back, but, sure, Firestar's author-possesed corpse. You'd totally say that.

"Starclan doesn't punish living cats."

OH DID THEY STOP DOING THAT?