#abuse mention /////

[lelet-draws]

True, as much as it’s fun to joke about it, violence against children shouldn’t happen.

It’s normalized in latin america beating your kids with slippers and that type of stuff but it shouldn’t be normal.

Because I feel like kids of color don’t hear it enough: domestic abuse is not a part of your culture. 

A lot of us were raised with the idea that “its normal for wives/children to get hit! it helps them learn– only white folk don’t get beaten when they misbehave”. That’s not true, white people aren’t the only ones who deserve a safe and abuse free environment. Black and brown people can and do have loving families. 

If you’re in a situation where you are enduring abuse and people use your culture to justify it, I want you to know that what they’re telling you are lies.

[tulipscomeinallsortsofcolors]

can we ask about ur family's curse

according to my great grandma it was cast on her grandma by a neighbor with the evil eye - "your daughters will marry their fathers and your sons will become them"

which is really just a fancy way of describing the cycle of abuse and therefore worked very well, generally going into effect before the kid in question turned 21

so my matrilineal family tree winds up a fractured, miserable mess, lots of young marriages and parents falling apart generation after generation, serial toxic marriages with generations of kids scattered across the whole state in foster homes - very nasty stuff

until it gets to me (firstborn in my generation of cousins) and by the time im twenty one i am 1. both daughter and son and neither 2. extremely aspec and queer

which apparently this neighbor did not conceive of when casting her eye and seems to have simply error messaged the curse into oblivion. no one born after me has had this problem. all their romantic relationships are loving (though i would never claim them perfect) and their children adored. fairytale loopholed so hard the damn thing disintegrated. its the funniest magic story i have lmao

[teaboot]

When I was a kid, I regularly lost reading privileges for "having an attitude" and "acting out".

It wasn't as simple as being told not to read during other activities- one of the first times it happened, I remember being six years old, watching my stepfather pull fistfuls of books off my bookshelf and throw them to the floor in a heaping mess while I cried and asked him to stop.

It was weird. Every other adult I knew described me as exceptionally well-behaved, but at home, it was the opposite, and it was blamed on "learning bad habits from that shit you're reading".

Because I couldn't read at home, I spent all my free time at school in the library, reading with my friends.

When I grew up and moved away, I realized that my family life was toxic and abusive, and the "attitudes" I was being punished for were standing up for myself, standing up for my younger siblings, and resisting actual, real-life psychological abuse. Because I'd learned from what I'd read that my family wasn't normal, not like my parents said it was, and in my stories, the heroes were the people who spoke out when it was hard to.

It is insane to me that there are students right now who can't access books. It is insane that books are being outlawed. It is perverse that we are stealing away an entire generation's ability to contextualize their lives, to learn about the world around them, to develop critical thinking skills and express themselves and feel connected to the world or escape from it, whatever and whenever and however they need.

That is not how you raise a compassionate, thoughtful, powerful society.

That's how you process cattle.

It's fucking disgusting.

[autolenaphilia]

This post has been in the back of my mind ever since i saw it last year because it is a mask off moment for a usually more subtle transmisogynist. : I blacked out the account names being accused in the screenshot above, because i don't want to be spreading fake transmisogynistic callouts around even to be criticquing them.

Like "trans women are sexual predators who use their identity as queer women as cover to prey on children and other vulnerable people, and liberals are too afraid of being called transmisogynistic to stop them" is like the basic transmisogynist narrative. It's literally the terf narrative about trans women. This is the real terf rhetoric, not trans women criticizing (trans)misogyny.

Yet it is still so common among ostensibly transfem-accepting liberals/leftists. Like trans women using their identity as a shield against legitimate criticism of their predatory behavior is such a common trope in queer spaces that claim to be against terfs. This is because TME people use hating on terfs as a substitute for dealing with their own transmisogyny.

This is extremely common among people in the callout culture transmisogyny fandom like the screenshotted blogger.They go for this line about "transfems using their identity as a shield against genuine criticism" all the time when their obvious if lightly veiled transmisogyny is pointed out. This is their main argument, their own shield against criticism. And it rings very hollow when these people call out transfem after transfem as sexual predators based on them liking harmless kinks like fauxcest and CNC, literally using old radfem arguments against kink.

What this sort of thing is, is the denial that transmisogyny even exists. A claim that instead of being an especially oppressed class of women, we are actually a privileged group. And terfs here are open about saying it's because we are men and have male privilege. The more subtle kind of transmisogynist, the "trans women are women, terfs dni" crowd, leaves the trans women have male privilege bit unsaid but implied.

And of course it's false. As people are surely aware, being transfem makes you more likely to publicly accused of being a sexual menace. And they are most likely false accusations. Accusations against the privileged and powerful, like cis men, are seldom false. The social power that these men wield make it dangerous for any victim to come forward.

Accusations towards members of marginalized groups like transfems, however, are easy and safe to make, because they don't have that kind of social power or privilege. Their position in any social setting is tenuous, and it's easy to turn the group against them to exile them. Transfems don't have the power to defend themselves even against the flimsiest of accusations, while privileged men can defend themselves even against the most well-documented ones. Transfems are instead more likely to be victims of abuse, and then DARVOed by their abusers, being accused of abuse when they were actually abused.

The fact is that transfems can "scream transmisogyny" but few TME people, including other lgbt people, are not likely to listen.

And this is not a "white girl" problem despite what the screenshotted post implies. This problem is far worse for black transfems suffering from transmisogynynoir, and other non-white transfems. Read writings written by black transfems like Position of Guilt: Black Hot Allostatic Load by Anonsee Storyweaver.

[yardsards]

been toying with the concept of vampirism as like, needing something that you inherently can't provide for yourself. vampirism as dependency- especially in cases of vampires who refuse to (or straightup *cannot* for whatever reason) feed on anyone without consent, who must rely on blood freely given by living humans.

an independent young adult, so eager to move out on her own and see the world by herself, is turned into a vampire. her human parents are willing to feed her, but now she'll be dependent on them. she can't move away, can't stray too far from the family farm by herself, because she can't be too far from her source of blood for too long. she's afraid of what will happen when her parents are too old to give blood to her, if she'll be able to find someone else to depend on. she'll outlive them all eventually, if she's not left to starve.

a sociable vampire with a wide network of human friends who are willing to offer up their blood to her. they're happy to help her, but she still feels like a monster for having to take their blood all the time. she tries to take as little as possible while they beg her please take more, we hate seeing you so hungry all the time, please let us help. 

a vampire trapped in an abusive marriage because he relies on his wife for blood. if he leaves her without an alternate support system to feed him, he'd starve. she isolated him from all his other loved ones who might've been willing to feed him years ago. she holds the fact that she gives him her blood over his head anytime he tries to defend himself.

[tranquil-slaughterhouse]

[anti-terf-posts]

actual feminists: women deserve the right to feel safe, choose to not have children or get married, vote, abortions, pursue their dreams, and feel comfortable in their own skin. rape is a huge problem in our society, and rapists must be prosecuted/condemned for their crimes. Women face an unfair amount of domestic violence compared to men.

terfs: agreed

actual feminists: also, trans rights

terfs: you’re just an evil misogynist, you’re just pretending to be a feminist, you actually hate women >:(

[varpusvaras]

Jason arriving home with a black eye and split lip: hey

Roy: hey. Oof, that looks bad

Jason: yeah, well, you know how it is-

Roy: yeah, Gotham, am I right?

Jason: -Batman doesn't kill you but he hits hard

Roy: 😀 what?

[just-antithings]

Your daily reminder that exclusionists are scum

[biracy]

Last rb also has me thinking on like. People conceive of sexual violence as like The Ultimate Form of violence, which manifests itself in two major ways in writing fiction: denying any possible subtext or allegory of sexual violence even in a story about many many many other kinds of violence, or shoehorning sexual violence into an already deeply violent and abusive dynamic to show how Super Totally Fucked Up it is now. And honestly I think tlt fans are "guilty" of like. both of these? There is a very obvious bloc of tlt fans who pointedly ignore the very obvious themes of sexual violence and misogynistic violence overall in the text (as if forcing the soul of the Earth into the body of a beautiful woman you then lock away forever isn't a metaphor for sexual assault), but I'd also argue there's a smaller, yet still present, subset of fans who like, don't seem to realize that grooming a) can exist outside of the context of sexual abuse and b) is still bad even if no sexual abuse is present. I'm not even necessarily against certain reads of like, Kiriona as her father's cavalier being potentially allegorically incestuous, but also I don't think there would need to be sexual violence there for that dynamic to still be abusive. John is, whether biological or surrogate, the "father" of the two teenagers he manipulates the most, and I think it's important to realize that the weaponization of fatherhood is always bad, even if it never "crosses the line" into explicit sexual violence. There are other kinds of abuse and tlt is full of it. Harrowhark is revolted by John's attempts to act paternally towards her because she has only ever known her own parents as forces of control and violence. Harrowhark's parents attempting to get a 10-year-old to commit ritual suicide is actually just as bad as any hypothetical sexual violence between John and Kiriona. In the same way that sexual assault is not "special" in that it should never be written about ever, it's also not "special" in that it is The Most Violence any story can ever have and you know it's Getting Hardcore Now when abuse "escalates" from physical or psychological to sexual

[themysteriouswaylon]

I really don’t agree with this post TBH. smithers is My special interest so I have a lot to say, thus putting the rest of this under a “read more” label.

because it’s so long, I also put My main points in bold, just in case you aren’t able to/don't want to read everything.

(also, quick disclaimer: reading over this, I’m not sure if I’m coming off as belligerent? a lot of this is autistic infodumping, so I wrote it with getting My point across > social niceties, but I’m not certain on how that has Me coming across. whoops)

“like, they had burns pestering smithers for help early in the episode to the point it was a catalyst for the plot, and yet, when smithers is INCARCERATED burns doesn't notice until he's specifically told?”

perhaps this is a nitpick, but mr. burns wasn’t exactly “pestering” smithers for help; most of what smithers did for him in the opening was off of a checklist and done while mr. burns was either absent (E.G. evicting the children’s hospital, taking out the trash) or seemingly oblivious to her presence (dropping the ducks).

the only point in the episode where I would say burns does anything close to “pestering” smithers for help is when he coughs up his adam’s apple. even the wine-tasting earlier on doesn’t make burns come off as needy or hyperdependent.

now, I will give credit where it’s due and say that how much burns relies on smithers in general—with the latter functioning as his caregiver—would make it strange for him to have not noticed her absence.

“portrait of a lackey on fire” does show burns’ ability to hyperfocus for prolonged periods of time, at the expense of recognizing others’ absence, but since this post’s main argument is that the modern burns/smithers dynamic is broken, I recognize that this is a weak defense for this decision, especially since burns wasn’t shown to be preoccupied with anything in this case.

“without smithers, burns becomes just an evil old rich man. without burns, smithers kind of just exists??? they are both SO important for contextualizing each other and creating respective depth.”

this is gonna sound mean, but this paragraph is a GROSS disservice to both burns and smithers as characters. I cannot understate this enough.

they both have so much going for them outside of each other. sure, I can understand preferring them together (like most people, I absolutely love them as a duo), but to say that they’ve only ever been given development and character in relation to each other is so incongruent with how they’re actually written.

let’s start with mr. burns. for organizational purposes, I’m going to restrict Myself to pointing out just a handful of bullet-pointed complexities of his:

the modern timeline (as early as S24’s “dark knight court,” IIRC) shows that he was abused and neglected as a child; his pervasive need for attention and power comes not just from the evil of being a white male billionaire, but also from the fact that he was ignored and defenseless throughout his formative years. some of his most extreme interpersonal tendencies result from him trying to avoid being put in such a traumatizing position ever again. the fact that his trauma still impacts him today isn’t just speculation, but it’s a major plot point in both “monty burns’ fleeing circus” and “bobby, it’s cold outside.”

mr. burns’ relationship with others as a whole is complicated, not just his dynamic with smithers. the aforementioned need for validation and control plays a strong role in how he relates to others, the former more so in modern seasons and the latter in classic seasons. in the classic seasons, his relationships with marge (as his crush in “marge gets a job”), bart (as his son in “burns’ heir”), and jacqueline (marge’s mom; as his bride in “lady bouvier’s lover”) all hinge on how much control he has over them: he’d do anything for marge…until he finds out she’s not sexually available to him; he welcomes bart with open arms…until he doesn’t feel comfortable choosing him over homer; he…was never good to jacqueline. I’ve heard somebody suggest that he wanted her only to take her from abe, which I feel is absolutely correct, especially considering that S27’s “puffless” has him seducing her and then outright admitting he only did it to spite grampa. (note: I’m not trying to excuse his behavior as “just trauma.” he’s obviously a misogynist and an abuser, unrelated to his childhood) meanwhile, post-classic seasons emphasize his need for approval, which lends itself to a lonelier characterization of burns: “monty can’t buy me love,” “monty burns’ fleeing circus,” “undercover burns,” and “burger kings” are all ultimately episodes about him chasing after the public’s affection, even at the expense of his own comfort. he’s also been portrayed as rather prone to idealization, taking a selfless yet naive perspective on his relationships with gloria (S13’s “a hunka hunka burns in love”), jay G (S28’s “the great phatsby”), homer and friends (S32’s “undercover burns”), and persephone (S35’s “thirst trap”).

lastly (for what I’m saying here), burns deals with a persistent sense of emptiness. although I’d argue this has always made sense for his character (especially with episodes like “rosebud” in mind), this is shown mostly in post-classic episodes, through his various instances of thrill-seeking (“homer vs. dignity,” “dark knight court,” “opposites a-frack”), people-pleasing (“monty can’t buy me love,” “undercover burns,” “burger kings”), suicide attempts (“the fool monty,” “burger kings”), and depression (“monty burns’ fleeing circus,” “bobby, it’s cold outside”).

now, it’s obvious that the trajectory of his character development has changed over time, but at no meaningful point in the series has he truly just been “evil” and nothing else, including in episodes where he’s largely distanced from smithers as a character.

speaking of smithers:

I’d say that love is at the core of smithers’ character, both her ability/willingness to love unconditionally and her long-unmet need to be loved back. this is—of course—shown mostly with mr. burns, but this has also been shown as just a general fact of smithers’ life. she’s consistently looking for an actual partner, even before the most recent seasons: she dated john in S7’s “homer’s phobia,” is shown with a man in a crowd mostly consisting of established couples in S13’s “the bart wants what it wants,” has an off-screen commitment ceremony in S19’s “sex, pies, and idiot scrapes,” tries to get with abe in S24’s “gorgeous grampa,” dates julio in S27’s “the burns cage,” and—most recently—dates michael in S33’s “portrait of a lackey on fire.” although the earlier cases are simply jokes about smithers liking men, the more recent examples, particularly “lackey on fire,”highlight the actual feelings she has regarding romance, not just who these feelings are directed towards: she’s lonely and yearns for unconditional love, someone who’s kind and attentive. this lack of affection is a major source of discontentment in her life, thus her seemingly frequent relationships despite her perpetual singlehood.

smithers is also shown to have low—or at least fragile—self-esteem. although she’s an incredibly resilient person, rejection can bring this more insecure side of her out. for instance, when she’s rejected from a gay club in “flaming moe” for her appearance, she tells moe that “no one wants an executive assistant who only works out six hours a day.” this tendency to generalize rejection (“no one wants,” as opposed to “they don’t want”) is also shown in “lackey on fire,” when she says “if only i’d been born into a litter of puppies, then maybe someone would love me.”

in general, she’s much more emotionally troubled and unstable than her outward temperament would suggest. there are many points in which she’s rather passionate/intense, even in the absence of burns, such as in “lisa vs. malibu stacy” and “american history X-cellent.” like burns, she feels empty, despite her ability to hold herself together most of the time. this can be inferred from her general sense of loneliness, but lines like “i’ve done it, i’m happy” (“the burns cage”) and “for the first time in my life, i feel free” (“bottle episode”) make it clear that she generally lives in a state of dysphoria, that the happiness she experiences is so fleeting that it hardly even matters at all.

although smithers hasn’t gotten as much development as mr. burns has (which I assume is related to the fact that they were grossly limited by censorship early on: “homer’s phobia” was rejected for glorifying homosexuality until new management came along), I really do feel that—with all this in mind—it’s a disservice to say that smithers has no character outside of her relationship with burns.

“along with that, i think smithers' personality has become way too reliant upon his gayness. in the name of "representation," they've brought it into the forefront of his characterization and, in doing so, dropped most of the shit that actually made him unique in the first place.”

this throws Me off a bit, NGL. I’m not saying you’re homophobic—since that’s a bold accusation and, considering tumblr’s userbase, I’d be more surprised than anything if you weren’t LGBT yourself—but how does smithers simply dating men erase her personality?

it’d be one thing if she was totally without agency in episodes like “the burns cage” and “lackey on fire,” but she isn’t. it’d be one thing if none of her defining features remained in these episodes, but they did.

let’s talk about “lackey,” since that’s My favorite of the two. smithers is clearly shown to have multifaceted thoughts, feelings, and beliefs throughout that episode.

act three is a good example of this: when she finds out michael runs a sweatshop, she initially refuses to condemn this as evil. this aligns with her preexisting tendency to idealize the subjects of her affection (E.G. burns), to the point of putting her morals aside and letting their perceived greatness overshadow their obvious cruelty.

this shines through further as she repeatedly tries to find a reasonable explanation for these unconscionable business practices, first going to mr. burns and then to michael himself. another detail worth noting is that she continues to wear the bowtie michael gave her up until they finally break up, further signaling to her unyielding faith in him.

when confronted, michael tells her to ignore it and “be adored.” smithers almost falls for this, as it plays right into her previously (and now currently) unmet emotional needs. the only thing that causes her to reconsider is seeing him abuse their puppy.

although smithers has previously stood alongside mr. burns as he has committed many acts of abuse—including animal abuse—it’s rather obvious that she isn’t comfortable with it. for example, she tries to discourage mr. burns from killing the puppies in “two dozen and one greyhounds,” and the same episode has a deleted scene in which burns notices her glaring at him for his decision to do so.

I wouldn’t say that this scene erases smithers’ complicated morals, but instead just places them in a different context: she hasn’t been emotionally dependent on michael for the past 20 years of her life, she’s not dependent on michael for a paycheck, michael doesn’t depend on her to survive; she can easily leave him. burns, not so much.

as for “bottle episode,” I see it as a particularly poor example of smithers being reduced to her orientation. there’s absolutely no reference to smithers being gay this episode; no attraction to men, no disinterest in women, no femininity. she’s literally just getting involved in a scheme, totally unrelated to who she does and doesn’t want to fuck.

“of course the writers can't see why he would like mr. burns anymore! they just see him as a nondescript spineless gay guy!”

once again, I strongly disagree with the idea that smithers is in any way “nondescript” nowadays. as for her being “spineless,” it’s true that we haven’t gotten any more “who shot mr. burns?”-esque condemnations of burns in recent seasons, but that’s in major part due to his villain decay, not smithers lacking any willingness to diverge from her expected submissiveness.

I feel the aforementioned ending of “lackey on fire” disproves the idea that smithers is nothing but a doormat nowadays. unlike modern burns, michael showed her a new level of cruelty that she didn’t expect from him, thus something to challenge. meanwhile, mr. burns has long passed the peak of his villainy, thus smithers is mostly dealing with more of the same.

“and yet he's also not allowed to be gay FOR mr. burns.”

smithers is still attracted to mr. burns, she’s just more independent nowadays:

“and mr. burns is a pathetic old man, but he's not allowed to need smithers because he has to be one dimensionally evil and capable of performing functional independence.”

there are too many modern jokes about burns needing smithers for bADLs (basic activities of daily living) for Me to count, but it’s certainly still there. it’s just that it’d damage the plot to randomly throw burns into purely smithers-centric episodes or vice versa, thus why we don’t see it as much in spotlight episodes than we do in minor appearances.

“they got the "smithers likes mr. burns" thing down and they don't seem to know anything else about them and i'm just staring at them like there is no world where mr. burns marries a random shady woman who is blatantly using him for his money and smithers is just like Yeah she's cool because she likes Mr. Burns too! No. He would want to kill her and wear her skin”

I largely didn’t like “thirst trap,” but smithers’ acceptance of persephone was actually the highlight of the episode IMO; it’s character development.

smithers doesn’t NEED to constantly be obsessed with mr. burns. she doesn’t need to walk around thinking “if mr. burns marries someone else, i’ll either kill them or myself.” they aren’t trying to erase smithers’ personality, they’re trying to make her happier.

her realization that burns—her employer that she is not in a mutual, monogamous relationship with—is not “hers” is a great way of showing that she’s no longer doomed to suffer through however-many-more decades of pining and unrequited love; mr. burns can find someone he’s genuinely into, and she can find someone who’s genuinely into her.

it’s subtle, but I’m fine with them not spelling it out for the viewer; they can just develop smithers throughout her appearances, without it always needing to be a spotlight episode. I don’t need her to turn to the camera and say “I AM FINE WITH THIS BECAUSE I HAVE GROWN AS A PERSON” for Me to understand what’s going on.

(late addition: I realize I totally forgot to address the “using him for his money” part of the argument. I feel this is a matter of “not overly involving smithers in burns-centric plots,” as I mentioned in regards to mr. burns’ independence.

it’s not difficult for Me to suspend My disbelief here, since smithers got so little screentime and has sometimes been shown to be passive to the point of letting burns get himself in bad situations (E.G. “the old man and the lisa,” “opposites a-frack,” the comic “a brand new burns”), but I can understand that part of the argument, since she’s also been shown to warn mr. burns about threats on other occasions (E.G. “the musk who fell to earth”))

“they don't just like each other, they NEED each other, and that fact is supposed to create an obstacle that defines them intrinsically.”

I disagree with all of the points made here.

firstly, burns and smithers’ relationship has always been more complicated than just “they like each other.” it’s a love-hate relationship on both ends: mr. burns has a soft spot for smithers, but his “soft side” is still so callous that he continues to dehumanize her as simply a source of labor; smithers loves burns, but she also has a repressed resentment for him, shown as recently as “frinkcoin” in 2020 and simpsons illustrated’s “police chief wiggum’s case no. 209” in 1992.

secondly, burns needs smithers, as shown by the failure of his attempts to replace her in “them, robot” and “the burns cage,” but smithers doesn’t need burns. that’s part of what her development is saying, IMO.

she’s spent most of her life thinking she needs burns, but she doesn’t. he berates her, he overworks her, he underpays her, he puts her in danger, he physically abuses her, he sometimes outright scares her (“three eyes on every fish,” “blood feud,” “bottle episode”), but she pushes down all of the anger that it evokes in her and tells herself that he doesn’t really mean it and that she deserves what he does mean.

at this point, the simpsons is trying to give its cast happy endings: moe is getting married, ned has gotten to process the deaths of his wives, carl has a girlfriend and is generally learning more about himself as a person, sideshow bob has given up on killing bart and focuses on his own relationships, CBG and willie are already married, so on and so forth.

smithers growing apart from mr. burns is just another part of that. just like bob with bart, she realizes that her obsession with him is just doing more harm than good, thus has begun to focus more on her own needs and the people around her.

now, am I saying that I believe smithers is ever going to completely separate from mr. burns? no. smithers is a burns-centric character, so her relationship with him is what connects her to the main family. even “bottle episode” only set her and marge up through that smithers-burns-homer connection.

unless they were to branch out and suddenly make her “marge’s friend” rather than “homer’s boss’s assistant,” (which I don’t see happening and honestly wouldn’t want) staying with mr. burns is the only way she can stay in the series.

plus, although there have been some status quo changes, none of them radically change the dynamic of the series. for example, moe getting married hasn’t taken away from his commitment to his tavern, and carl’s personal development hasn’t separated him from lenny or his other friends.

smithers is definitely in for some type of change (I theorize they’ll try to give her a permanent romance in the next few years), but I don’t see there ever being an episode in which she quits her job, or even develops a permanent assertiveness in her interactions with burns (ned temporarily stood up to homer when he got with edna, but that didn’t last; sometimes a character’s submissiveness is too important to fully write out).

however, My point here is that the simpsons doesn’t have some weird vendetta against burnsmithers or its fans, nor is it acting out of a disregard for burns and smithers as characters. they’re just developing her, which isn’t bad just because it doesn’t revolve around your ship.

thinking abt bottle episode now -_- i think it's so exhausting to watch burns and smithers in recent seasons because it feels like the writers are trying to write AROUND their codependency? they can acknowledge it exists on paper, but in practice, they fail to anchor their interactions in a logical understanding of it.

like, they had burns pestering smithers for help early in the episode to the point it was a catalyst for the plot, and yet, when smithers is INCARCERATED burns doesn't notice until he's specifically told? it just feels like the writers don't want to engage with how these two need each other to function, not just from the watsonian perspective but doylian as well.

without smithers, burns becomes just an evil old rich man. without burns, smithers kind of just exists??? they are both SO important for contextualizing each other and creating respective depth.

along with that, i think smithers' personality has become way too reliant upon his gayness. in the name of "representation," they've brought it into the forefront of his characterization and, in doing so, dropped most of the shit that actually made him unique in the first place. of course the writers can't see why he would like mr. burns anymore! they just see him as a nondescript spineless gay guy! i believe his writing is way more homophobic than it was in the early years because it feels like being gay is all he has at this point. and yet he's also not allowed to be gay FOR mr. burns. and mr. burns is a pathetic old man, but he's not allowed to need smithers because he has to be one dimensionally evil and capable of performing functional independence.

their newfound lack of chemistry drastically impedes their ability to be enjoyable and entertaining, and i think the writers know that but don't realize it's their own fault. it seems like they don't have fun writing the two as the unit they're supposed to be, so they go to great lengths to mischaracterize them even further just to keep them from interfering with each other's plotlines. i mean god, take thirst trap for example. i'll just post what i said about that one on discord.

[text: they got the "smithers likes mr. burns" thing down and they don't seem to know anything else about them and i'm just staring at them like there is no world where mr. burns marries a random shady woman who is blatantly using him for his money and smithers is just like Yeah she's cool because she likes Mr. Burns too!

No. He would want to kill her and wear her skin]

more than anything i wish that burns and smithers would be allowed the codependency that defined them in the first place. they don't just like each other, they NEED each other, and that fact is supposed to create an obstacle that defines them intrinsically. that's where their writing begins. can we just go perform a simpsons coup d'état

[reasonsforhope]

I don't know who needs to hear this, but especially with the end of the school year coming up soon, and a bunch of people about to leave high school or about to leave college, I just wanted to say:

Being an adult can be really nice, actually!!!

Like, okay, yeah, life can be fucking stressful sometimes, and there's definitely an annoying amount of paperwork.

But me and just about every single adult I know will agree: I would never choose to go back to being a teenager, even if I somehow could.

Insert obvious disclaimer that nothing is universal. But for people worried about aging or graduating into the next chapter of life, here's some words of reassurance:

When you're a teenager, your brain is extra mean to you. Like, neurologically. All of the changes it's undergoing really, really increase rates of depression/anxiety/etc. A lot of the time, literally just not being a teenager anymore is really good for your mental health

Less than five months out of high school, everyone I knew my age was like "Thank fuck we're no longer in high school." Once you leave high school and adolescence there's really just such a dramatic drop in petty bullshit. Shit that would have been a huge social humiliation or gossip in high school is really often just like, "Hate that for you, man." Boom, done.

When you're a teenager or a brand new adult, you're encountering so many problems for the first time ever. When you're older, you just. Have learned how to handle a lot more things. You know what to do way more often and that builds confidence

When you're an adult, other people generally don't care if you don't do things perfectly, because jobs and life don't work like grades. This was such a trip to learn, honestly? But when you are an adult or have a job the bar for success is usually just "Did you do the thing?" or "Did you do the thing well enough that it works?" or "Did you show up to work for your whole shift and look like you were doing things?"

Similarly, if you're about to graduate college and you're really stressed about it, fyi just about everyone I knew in college ended up very quickly going "wow, 'real life' is way easier." Admittedly I went to a school full of very stressed out perfectionists and the like, so I can't promise this is universal, but there's a very real chance that life will in many ways get easier when you graduate

WAY MORE CONTROL OF YOUR OWN LIFE

Literally I cannot overstate that last point. As an adult, you are (barring certain disabilities or shitty circumstances like abusive family/the criminal justice system/etc.) able to make most of your own decisions. If you want to rearrange your furniture, you can. If you want to eat tater tots at midnight, you can. If you want to get yourself a little treat, you can. You can sign contracts and make your own legal and medical decisions and not need a parent or guardian signature for just about anything ever again

You generally learn how to give fewer fucks

The people around you have also generally learned how to give fewer fucks

Even when things are shitty, being able to choose what kind of shitty a lot of the time can really be worth an awful lot

[aintnopartylikeaprideparty]

as someone who has experienced abuse from someone with a personality disorder, it's actually incredibly easy to not dehumanize everyone with a personality disorder. i've seen people do borderline eugenic rhetoric surrounding people who have npd, aspd, bpd or other personality disorders, and then be like "I'M allowed to say these things because i'm a survivor, and if you disagree you are hurting abuse victims."

and frankly? i'm tired of it. as an abuse survivor i'm here to say that you're NOT allowed to turn into a fucking eugenicist the moment you're hurt by someone with a personality disorder.

does hurting and belittling other people who happen to have the same disorder as your abuser, people that are already suffering and that are already looked down on by society, bring you any healing? does it bring you peace?

Being hurt by someone isn't an excuse to hurt others that you feel justified in lashing out on. you're literally in control of your own actions,

you may claim to be making a safe space for abuse survivors, but i will never feel any solidarity with you, and i ESPECIALLY don't feel safe with you considering i might have a personality disorder.

you are excluding a large amount of abuse survivors in the name of "advocacy". a lot of people with personality disorders developed one or multiple due to heavy abuse. in the aim of creating a safe space, you are excluding the ones who need a safe space the most.

[clairevberry]

vampires as metaphors for temptation/desire is cool and all but what about vampires as a metaphor for cycles of abuse? someone who was abused and exploited a long time ago in the process of becoming a vampire and now is the abuser, someone who turns another into a vampire in desperate desire for companionship and begins to understand why the vampire who turned them did it. a never ending tragic cycle that spans centuries

[rosetyler42]

TW: Trauma, Abuse mentions, discrimination mention

For the twins, probably ancestral trauma. Not only are both Drericka from somewhat abusive households, but Drac's been hunted and hated for being a vampire much of his life by humans. In fact, Mavis' mother was KILLED by an angry mob of humans, which combined with Vlad's teachings caused him to hate and be terrified of humans for DECADES to the point of hiding himself and his daughter away from humanity and the rest of the world in the hotel. Which, even though he's remarried and had new kids...he still has that pain and wanted to make sure the kids knew their ancestry so this does not happen again. On the other side, Ericka comes from a family of monster hunters who've lost members over time, possibly to monsters. She was expected to be a Van Helsing from an early age, to carry on her family's legacy, but she realized hunting and killing and hating monsters was wrong after meeting Drac. The twins of course know their family's complicated history. This contributes to their world views of Lucy being proud of her heritage and Simon's cautiousness.

Another would probably be the stings of discrimination and hate from being both human and monster. (Let alone other marginalizations) I'm sure Van Helsing and Bella aren't the only racists on both sides. Even the rather well-meaning Mike and Linda clearly have some biases and perpetuate microaggressions they need to learn...as does Dracula himself. While not nearly as angsty as Spock or Meteora, they still got some of the classic hybrid issues of not being one or the other. This can cause problems in not fitting in among monsters or humans, but also gives them great empathy for the little guy, makes them more understanding and less judgemental, and gives them a drive to help make things better.

What is the deepest emotional pain your oc carries? How does this wound manifest in their behavior and relationships?

(Please add a TW if needed!)

[teaboot]

genuine question why you making that "humans are adorable" post even though humanity do horrible things such as genocide, racism, discrimination, ableism, sexism, rape, sexual abuse, and more?

i thought you aware on how awful people can be since judging from things you reblog you are aware of ongoing genocide and witnessing autistic children abused for their condition

Every day I choose to believe that every human being is fundamentally the same. That every adult was once a child, that every child had fears and hopes and joys, and every person desires to live happily and free of pain.

This does not absolve them of their cruelties. This does not condone or minimize their transgressions. This simply is to say, "I too could become monstrous: what would it take to push me there, and how could I prevent it, and if I could not prevent it, how could I stop?"

I believe that to be human is to be an animal like any other. I believe that we are not evil. Because if I believed that humanity was evil, fundamentally cruel, and incapable of better, what hope would I have? What purpose? What life could I live, as a plague surrounded by plagues?

I don't believe that people are good because I have not seen evil actions. I believe that people are good because I have to.

Do you understand?

I must believe in humanity. I must believe in kindness. I must believe in good, and change, and positive intent.

Because otherwise, I'd have nothing to live for.

Because otherwise, all I would have is myself, and self-loathing, and decades of existence in all directions, and a hopeless wasteland to spend it in.

I am not an individual naturally inclined towards trust. This takes effort. This is a survival strategy