#abuse apologia

[bonefall]

I haven't read Breezepelt character arc fully, but what in the banana world is the logic of "you're an evil adult, therefore you deserve all the abuse you received as a child"... What??? How do people get those ideas to begin with? Jesus

Most of the time in situations like this, the person just starts with wanting to defend a character they like. 90% of the time this is the abusive man of the week, because due to the nature of WC they liked them as an apprentice and don't like the idea that they're A Bad Guy now. SO they work backwards so their favorite boy is reasonable.

I will say it bluntly; I think the impulse is cowardly and I don't respect it.

Do you relate to a character with flaws that causes them to hurt people? Boohoo. There's no law that says you're only allowed to like perfectly moral characters. Drop the black and white thinking and realize that all people, even people you like or have positive or admirable traits, have the capacity to hurt others.

This is how we get the greatest hits like "Maybe Ashfur trying to murder his ex's kids is her fault actually" and "Perhaps Crowfeather was only an abusive father because the child had bad vibes." You look like a darn fool.

That said, I think the saddest stan behavior I see is when the stan in question was abused themselves, and hasn't unpacked it. It's unfortunately very common.

"Your father getting annoyed that you have inconvenient needs like thirst and hunger is what all dads do!"

"They didn't mean it, so the child is obliged to feel less bad about mistreatment."

"It's not abuse if they only hit you once/on the correct body part/soft enough to not leave a bruise"

"It's normal to feel constant guilt and dread around your parents."

"Abuse is discipline; bad kids deserve to get hit." (Always with the quiet implication; "I know this because I was a bad kid, I made them hurt me.")

It's good to keep in mind this fandom skews young. A lot of them are still repeating the excuses their friends and families made, and that last one is remarkably similar to the Crowfeather claim we're talking about. Child abuse is common, but most people don't want to think badly of their parents.

"A child abuser is an uncaring monster, but my parents are good people who just made some mistakes" -girlie who has not confronted the innate human capacity for harm :X

Sometimes we visit banana world. Other times, we live in banana world.

[uncanny-tranny]

The idea that children are inherently duplicitous, manipulative liars is genuinely doing harm to children and further obfuscates when genuine harm/abuse is occurring because, "what can the adults do, children are demons!"

The idea that children have divine knowledge that transcends adults' own knowledge and they use that knowledge for personal gain is, simply-put, abuse apologism. You are aiding and abetting abusive behaviour from adults, parents/guardians, medical professionals, whomever it might be.

[hussyknee]

[aronarchy]

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/william-gillis-one-giant-red-flag-folded-into-a-book

So much abuse is about trapping and monopolizing the target’s attention, feeling entitled to claim a chunk of their brain. The experience of being abused is often one of being forced into thinking about the abuser constantly, from trying to predict their acts to trying to follow the latest tangle in their proclamations. Abuse strips away agency by stripping away the capacity for the abused to think for yourself, to think about anything else or think at all. If the abuser controls critical needs then everything is devoted to trying to turn yourself into a complex key that can unlock those needs. If the abuser besieges and terrorizes you randomly, you form your brain into a vast prediction net, trying to preempt as best you can every single avenue by which they might strike. Or you huddle up and turn yourself off, turn your brain off, to try and weather through things like an inert object. All of these are about losing your capacity for agency in a way that extends beyond any physical constraints directly imposed upon you. Abuse takes over your brain.

Sometimes the abuser acts so as to not have to think about you, to terrorize you into smallness and confined predictability, but sometimes the abuser is themselves driven by their own ravenous attention on you and the need to make you dedicate that same level of attention to them. This sort of abuser is never more happy than when their provocations force you into direct immediate raw unthought emotional tangles with them. They yell and yell until you finally yell back, and then they grin in glee because they have you. Neither abuser can stand your escape to any degree, which they read as a direct assault on them.

There are many aspects of abuse, but abusers feel entitled to your attention.

I can’t emphasize this enough. Demanding that an ex listen to you, mobilizing The Community to force that ex to give you a monopoly over their brain is an abuser’s wet dream. It’s how thousands of accountability processes have derailed into an abuser continuously retraumatizing their survivor.

Schulman, it must be emphasized, has no argument for why we should be obligated to give away our attention to anyone who wants it. What she has instead is 1) a fixation on pain and suffering of those denied control over the attention of their targets, and 2) the repeated assertion that having no boundaries is “adult” whereas saying no is “childish.” Mature adults talk things out in person, only immature children—or those so traumatized and broken as to be infantile children—would draw a line around their attention and enforce it.

“In another example from other people’s lives, sometimes angry, supremacist, or traumatized people send emails commanding, ‘Do not contact me.’ I want to state here, for the record, that no one is obligated to obey a unidirectional order that has not been discussed. Negotiation is a human responsibility. Little children order their parents around: ‘Mommy, sit there!’ When adults give orders while hiding behind technology, they are behaving illegitimately. These unilateral orders do not have to be obeyed. They need to be discussed.”

It would be trivial to compose a little passage reversing the associations, casting knowing how to draw boundaries and assert one’s independence and agency as the “mature adult” position whereas being caught under the boot of others’ demands to the point where you can’t own your own associations or attention as the “child” experience. But I want to reject the entire adult supremacist frame she’s appealing to.

If the child often stomps their feet and declares “no”—no, I refuse to give uncle a kiss, no, I refuse to get dressed to be your marionette at an event, no, I refuse to listen to your lecturing—perhaps we should see that as an inspiring site of resistance by those most oppressed before they are ground down. Perhaps we should endeavor to be more like children desperately trying to assert their autonomy and consent as agents who get to choose. Certainly the world “adults” have built and perpetuated by beating each new generation into surrender is a clearly sickening and grotesque one.

Even though I personally have made choices to maintain some level of contact, I vehemently support every abused child who walked away from their parents and never answered their calls ever again. Hell, I support children who killed their abusers. You do not owe everyone a path for reconciliation and negotiation. From abusers to even just wingnuts and inane time burglars, the best option is sometimes to just walk away forever. We have limited time on this planet, why spend it trying to repair every single relationship you have so far happened into?

Schulman somehow cannot even fathom goals other than the maintenance of existing relationships.

“Refusing to speak to someone without terms for repair is a strange, childish act of destruction in which nothing can be won.”

Liberation can be won. There’s a world of possibility beyond the confines of one given relationship. Opportunity cost is a real thing that is worth considering. That nothing is gained in one specific relationship by walking away doesn’t mean that a world of possibilities can’t be gained through the absence and negation of that relationship.

[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

[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.

[uncanny-tranny]

When talking about abuse, please be critical of the idea that abusers abuse because of fate, Scary Mental Disorders, their victims being bad/uncooperative, or because they "can't help it."

What may sound like an explanation for abuse to you honestly just sounds like justification and qualifications for abuse.

[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.

[aronarchy]

Libfems. Sigh.

[azelmaandeponine]

Gotta love how the Gravity Falls fandom still has no media literacy and is putting out the worst """character analysis""" videos known to man.

[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

[bigskydreaming]

Imagine if you were a gay or bi man who tried a certain firefighter show because of all the attention it was getting for one of its mains having a later in life bi awakening.....and between seasons you ventured into its fandom in search of material to tide you over til the next one. And you're greeted by a deluge of posts and fics that are just cheerfully homophobic towards one half of the newly out bi character's canon relationship on the basis of 'well he's not the RIGHT gay guy' and pushing the idea that actually its fine to cheat on him because Reasons and he's sexually predacious based on......behind the scenes implications people have divined like they're reading fucking tea leaves.

But don't get it twisted....this fandom, like all fandoms, really cares about representation!

Sorry not sorry, but we really need to kill this idea that fandoms are welcoming and inviting and inherently progressive when they're frequently insular and reductive as fuck. Every single fandom I've been in has had major trends of people doubling down on their own headcanons and fanon interpretations of the characters and willfully enacting trends aimed at running off people who like the 'wrong' characters (usually characters marginalized along one or multiple axes), like the characters in the 'wrong ways' or other bullshit.

Scott is a Bad Friend fics overtaking Teen Wolf fandom was not incidental, it was a FEATURE of the fandom, because the vast majority of that fandom did not want to share its space with anyone who had the nerve to like its main character. Survivors complaining about or criticizing the prevalance of rape fics in a certain fandom has in my experience always led to a reactionary UPTICK in those fics, with gems like 'this character can, will, must be raped' in the tags making it crystal clear that some of these fics exist because how fucking DARE anyone try and push forth a narrative not agreed upon by Fandom Main.

I could cite examples for so many other fandoms, with the commonalities always being that vast majorities in these fandoms are explicitly reacting defensively to being asked to be more mindful of fandom trends revolving around or exacerbating racism, homophobia, transphobia, rape or abuse apologia, ableism, etc....

With the most prolific fucking rallying cry across countless fandoms being "No the fuck we will NOT be doing that," because lolololol.....

Fandom is an inherently progressive space, didn't you hear?

[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?

[bonefall]

So I was looking through an old BlogClan article (made in 2021), and found this line

"We can all understand that Crowfeather never treated Nightcloud and Breezepelt well, but it's her fault for sticking around with him"

Maybe I'm wrong, but that feels like abuse apologia, or something like it, does it not? I apologize if I'm bothering you by the way.

That's like... THE abuse apologia line. That is a holographic out-of-print baseball card of the infamous A. Bewsa Pologia, signed.

Let's make it about physical abuse to make it more obvious; "Yes the husband beats his wife, but it's actually the wife's fault for staying with him." You see how fucked up the sentiment is, now? That applies to emotional abuse, too. "It's THE VICTIM'S FAULT they are being abused."

It comes in lots of other flavors, too. All of these are just the same sentiment rephrased;

"He pissed her off so it's his fault he got beaten"

"If you weren't so awful I wouldn't be so mad at you all the time"

"She should have known that wearing that outfit would have attracted unwanted attention"

"Maybe if you spent more time with me instead of your buddies, I wouldn't want to ruin your friendships"

"You did X so it's okay that I did this hurtful thing to you"

"Maybe if she wasn't so bad at handling finances, he wouldn't have to prevent her from having her own money."

NO ONE "deserves" abuse. It's not YOUR fault that someone else made the choice to control or hurt you. It never was.

Anyway I'm not sure of the article you're mentioning, SO until it's linked I'll just... hope that was a rando commenter and not an author lmaoooo. But I wouldn't be surprised either. They are INCAPABLE of being normal about Nightcloud.

[dyspunktional-leviathan]

ID: A tweet by @/ACLUindiana, pasted onto a background that is a photo from a library, reading:

A person can decide that they don't want to read a certain book.

A person can decide that they don't want their child to read that book.

But a person can't decide that an entire school or an entire town can't read that book.

/End ID

_________

As someone whose mother has banned certain books for it [as in me, my pronouns are it/its], the person who wrote that and everyone who agrees should go fuck themselves.

[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)