#again: not woobifying or excusing child abuse

[fuckedupwizard]

no offense, op, but i've been trying to put into words why i don't think this is a good take and it boils down to, basically, it's an oversimplification of what trauma is and what it does to you, in other words this kind of reads like "why do people with PTSD not just act normal? they're not even in that situation anymore."

when you've been that affected (by slavery, abuse, perceived betrayal) your brain is not going to allow you to just 'choose to be happy', ESPECIALLY if this happened during your formative years (in shen jiu's case, he 'got out' at 15 and joined cqms at 16), the stages in which trauma has the most significant affect on a person and the way they think. you need someone else's help to get you out of it. unfortunately, therapy doesn't exist in pidw, and yqy can try his hardest but he has his own issues too which prevent him from saying what sj really needs to hear, and it is true that his own behaviour pushes other people away. you really can't just think your way out of the effect severe trauma has on your brain, though - it takes help and support. it changes your entire way of thinking. yes of course he Could have been nice and made lots of friends, the choice was open to him, but by that point his formative years had already been marked by dehumanization, significant abuse, and (as far as he knew) abandonment and the knowledge that nobody in the world actually cared about him. so like… is it any wonder he didn't? (not a justification for abusing binghe but just, like, very understandable reasoning behind why he was a big ball of iron spikes and rage and misery). it doesn't mean the peak lords or his fellow disciples were wrong for not trying to befriend him because they weren't obliged to be nice to someone who wasn't nice to them. but i find it difficult to blame shen jiu for this given what he went through. like, do you think it would be possible for him, someone who suffered unimaginably and believes himself to be completely alone and incapable of being loved, to just shrug it all off?

i'm not woobifying him, either - as mentioned above this doesn't excuse him perpetuating the cycle of abuse, but it's a normal level of nuance to have and i think regardless of your views on shen jiu, he deserves it as a canonical victim of the aforementioned slavery, abuse, etc. we should hold all characters by these standards. bingge, too, wasn't able to just "become happy" no matter how much power or how many loving wives he had. making bingmei literally took sy transmigrating and providing love and catharsis during his most vulnerable and formative years. it's not that the brain is broken after a certain point but that you're gonna need someone's help not to fall into a deep pit or, if you did, to try climbing out. this is also the entire thesis of tgcf in regards to xie lian and jun wu lol (traumatised person is not going to be able to improve their own life or have healthy relationships with others with no help from anyone else at all - not counting yue qingyuan because while i know he loves shen jiu and tried his best, he couldn't understand that he accidentally contributed to this by allowing shen jiu to believe he never tried to go back for him - and he ASKED! he tried to get yqy to tell him! yqy is just too hindered by his own trauma to do so, which isn't his fault, either - just the tragedy of the narrative).

tl;dr: shen jiu's "chance" was not really a chance at all.

this might just be a tiktok issue but every time i see someone say “shen jiu deserved a chance at happiness!” i explode. he had many. his entire life he could’ve made different decisions, he could’ve just not abused lbh, or spoken to yqy, but he never did. that’s his whole thing. he’s even aware of it, it’s like his WHOLE final speech in the extras. he would NEVER EVER take a chance at being better/happy, he’s far too comfortable in his own misery, he has absolutely no idea what to do without it. and he doesn’t want to find out either. THATS THE WHOLE POINT. it’s what makes him such a good character, because he’s realistic in his principles. he doesn’t just hate the antagonist, he hates literally fucking everything and everyone, especially himself. makes me scream idk lmao

[zvtara-was-never-canon]

I saw this post. Thoughts?

“i love azula but i hate how her stans absolve her of the bullying she put zuko through, even going as far as saying that zuko was the abusive one. in the show, the only glimpses we get of what azula and zuko's relationship pre-banishment are through flashbacks in zuko alone. in these flashbacks, it's clear that ozai pitted against each other and that azula often taunted zuko for being the black sheep of the family. idk how anyone could watch those flashbacks and be like "yeah zuko definitely abused azula". i understand being sympathetic towards azula's struggles with mental health and suffering from golden child syndrome, but that doesn't excuse how she treated her friends or her brother at all. acting like it is very dangerous because in real life, it is common for people to justify their awful behavior by talking about their difficult childhood, mental health struggles, etc. and it's perfectly fine to like characters who are awful people. my favorite arcane character is jinx and although i often make jokes like "hehe jinx did nothing wrong, those pilties had it coming", i acknowledge that many of her actions are unjustifiable, but i still like her because i find her to be a sympathetic character because it's obvious that she has self-esteem issues and suffers from psychosis, bpd, and schizophrenia.

difficult childhood, mental health struggles, etc. and it's perfectly fine to like characters who are awful people. my favorite arcane character is jinx and although i often make jokes like "hehe jinx did nothing wrong, those pilties had it coming", i acknowledge that many of her actions are unjustifiable, but i still like her because i find her to be a sympathetic character because it's obvious that she has self-esteem issues and suffers from psychosis, bpd, and schizophrenia. the same can apply to azula, she's a manipulative character who lacks empathy, but she also suffers from golden child syndrome and mental health issues, both statements can co-exist.”

The tags said: #again i love azula but her stans are insufferable #why are we woobifying a colonizing war criminal? #"she only proposed genocide because she seeks approval from her father and is mentally ill" DO YOU HEAR YOURSELF #azula critical #i guess???

1 - If we're talking only about the original show, then yeah, "Zuko abused Azula" is an absurd statement. His biggest "crime" in canon was not really caring about being her older brother - which is understandable considering all the trauma he was struggling to process and the way Ozai made them fight for his approval, making it nearly impossible for Zuko to trust his sister.

If we're taking the Yang comics into consideration, then I'm sorry to say that "Zuko abused Azula" becomes completely true. He locks her up in an asylum that is only making her worse by abusing her (unnecessary restraining and beatings, which his friends also engage in), takes her on a dangerous mission knowing nothing about her condition, and threatens to throw her off a cliff when it all inevitably backfires on him.

Now, is all of that EXTREMELY out of character for Zuko? Yes, but people keep insisting I take those bullshit comics as canon just 'cause Bryke approved of them (and because it constantly says "Azula bad"), even though they're literally just a result of a former DC comics writer not understanding that not every villain is the joker, and I'm not gonna stop reminding them that said comics RUINED the story and thus NOBODY should take it as canon. I'm a petty bitch.

2 - I wouldn't say that Azula's mental health struggles and desperate need for Ozai's validation are the ONLY reasons why she was cool with imperialism and genocide. That was 90% a result of literal indoctrination that the entire nation has been under for an entire century. Mind you, that doesn't absolve her (or anyone) of responsibility either, but it is dishonest to ignore these factors and go "she was just bad". Much like her brother, Azula needs both a brutal reality check of "You're the bad guy, sweety, get your shit together and stop being awful" and for the people around her to understand "This a traumatized, brainwashed TEENAGER we're dealing with here."

You can hold somebody accountable for their actions without dismissing their reasoning for doing what they did. The entire fandom does it by acknowledging how being abused by Ozai sent Zuko on a downwards spiral in which he was constantly hurting himself and others, WHY is it suddenly impossible to do that when it's Azula's turn? Why is "she's just evil" the only acceptable explanation for all that she did when that directly contradicts canon?

[teamfreewill2pointo]

I'm not picking at you, but I strongly disagree with how you and some other parasocial fans try to depict Jensen's childhood. He has said that he had a great childhood, playing outside all of the time, playing sports, surrounded by his brother and sister and extended family. He has listed his Dad as his hero in many articles. He was allowed to purchase a car prior to turning 16, which many parents would have never allowed, so independence was encouraged. Yes his family was religious, so what? Yes his mother made him eat his vegetables, 99% of Mom's did back in the 80"s, not child abuse. The punishment by the belt grosses me out, but again, in Texas, in the 80"s that was the standard. Jensen mentions spankings in school, which was also the standard then. This man grew up in a family that he is very proud of, as he has said multiple times. Don't demean his childhood because it doesn't fit into your personal box of what a perfect childhood should be. I suspect that Jared's was actually quite similar. They both seem to be well adjusted, happy men who have personally grown with the times. Their parents did OK. Respect.

It's weird that you disagree with me, when I basically said this.

As I said before, I'm from a very similar culture, and my dad was very similar to Jensen's dad, although my dad wasn't as homophobic as Jensen's dad. I am very familiar with how Christian conservatives are raised, because it's how I was raised.

You can think you had a great childhood, love your father, feel loved by your father, and acknowledge that your father had traits of toxic masculinity that had to be unlearned in adulthood.

You can have a wonderful relationship with your parents, and love them, and feel loved by them, but still think that it was wrong for them to beat you with instruments.

You can think your dad was a great dad, but still think that when someone passes out after being knocked in the head, they should be checked out by a doctor.

There are still spankings in schools! People still spank their kids! Jensen and I do not, because we have learned how to be better than our parents. I don't get why so many of y'all are so eager to defend beating children.

Jensen and I have unlearned a lot of the toxic masculinity with which we have been raised. We have learned to be more progressive than our conservative Christian parents. This doesn't mean that we don't love them or feel loved by them. You can love somebody and still think that they screwed up.

It's not black and white. I feel like some of you take this approach to characters and people. You can criticize characters and people without painting them as villains. I can say Alan Ackles should not have beaten any of his children, and that's not making him a villain, or trying to woobify Jensen, especially since Jensen doesn't see it that way!

I think it's so weird how a lot of you are trying to justify or excuse Alan Ackles's behavior. I was beaten by my parents. It wasn't okay. I look back at my childhood fondly and miss my dad every single day. I still love my parents and I feel loved by my parents, just like Jensen.

So why are you coming in here, and accusing me of demeaning his childhood? Why are you making the assumption that I think he should have had a perfect childhood? Why are you defending beating kids?

The reason that all of this matters is because J2 were put in conditions that were physically and emotionally punishing. They had father figures on set who used to yell and throw things and engage in behavior that is abusive, just like hitting people.

Because they grew up in an environment that was abusive, they did not speak up or speak out when put in many of these circumstances because they had no idea how things could be different. That's just how the industry was run. You were put in a room that was set on fire. You were put in a room with a ton of bees and treated as if you were a pansy for not wanting to be in that room. You were made to crawl on glass and cut yourself.

You would wake up at 245am to get on a phone call to air live on the East Coast, then at 4am, do Midwest promotions, etc, going through 4 timezones. Then you would go to set and work 18 hour daysn outside in the rain at night.

[And if you couldn't handle such a punishing schedule and started to have an emotional breakdown because of it, you were yelled at and basically forced to go to work.]

The thing is, to not acknowledge all of what they went through, is to deny what amazing people they are. Jared could have absorbed all of that as just normal and part of the industry, the way that so many other show runners do, but he deliberately set out to create a set culture that is not abusive. Jensen could be one of the many parents who spanks their kids.

They strove to be better. If you ignore or minimize the abuse that they went through, you're not acknowledging how much strength it takes to go down a different path.

[upyourarsenals]

archiving @undryne

WARNINGS Mentions of trauma, nazis, rape, child abuse, animal abuse, apologia of Junko Furuta's killers (do NOT look up the case if you don't know already), downplaying trauma, insulting survivors

The worst example of pro-para discourse so far, this user has been defending rapists in the name of "rehabilitation", spreading misinformation and further staining the proship label. This user has over a thousand followers.

More under the cut. Please be sure you can stomach the content below. Do not harass this user, don't give them further attention. Do not allow people like this in proship/profic spaces.

Acting as if they're doing group therapy by coddling criminals

Spreading misinformation about criminals offending again. The rates are actually much higher

a whole thread putting down survivors, calling them braindead, wishing for rapists to live freely no matter how many times they have offended

pitying rapists who are shunned by society for their crimes (boohoo)

claiming that sex offenders won't reoffend if they aren't triggered to do it (what?)

using and comparing LGBT people being targeted to defend offending paraphiles

severely downplaying rape trauma

defending Junko Furuta's killers and claiming they didn't reoffend, spreading misinformation. They absolutely did reoffend, despite being given protection by the police over their identity in fear of lynchings. They also came from a rich background. There is no excuse to what they did and continue doing.

None of them became productive members of society.

general obsession with defending and woobifying rapists as victims

defending child dolls, which are often based on REAL CHILDREN. there's no ethical way to produce and use these dolls.

bonus: following and RT the creator of the zoosadist symbol and the rapesexual flag, of course

Do not let these people fester online.

EDIT: additions, they have also sent unsolicited nsfw

Heartwarming! All the people you hate are fighting

But seriously, what kind of response is this? Let people hurl abuse at you and just stand there doing nothing?

apologizing and downplaying war crimes

more downplaying and asking to "just move on"

[sokkastyles]

There’s some really bad takes in the tags I saw others point out too on twitter that Zuko is a woobified asshole and narcissistic guy who doesn’t have any empathy like in the beach and only kinda cares ab things similar to his own pain and he’s selfish and wangle was always way more empathetic and understanding especially of Katara and that he is actually a colonizer full of toxic violence & he isn’t a soft person & thats all “made up fanon Zuko” not real Zuko. What are your thoughts?

I have no idea what is going on in the tags but that's...quite a lot, lol.

Let's take this one by one, though.

First of all, I've posted about my thoughts on "woobified asshole" with regards to Zuko before, but I hate the way "woobie" is thrown around as an insult in fandom in general. A woobie is a character that people sympathize with because they suffer. The original concept of a woobie is a character that you want to see comforted, and the term comes from a word for a security blanket. Usually accusations of woobification get thrown around at popular characters who are usually male and usually attractive, and also usually morally complicated in some way, with the implication that the woobified characters is undeserving of such sympathy or that fans only sympathize with them because they are attractive and girls are stupid. I can't think of any reason why it's a problem that a character is woobified that doesn't boil down to misogyny or virtue signaling, and often a combination of both. Otherwise what exactly is the problem here? That people sympathize with Zuko? That they want to see him comforted? He's an abused sixteen year old. The last time I got into discourse about people "woobifying" Zuko, someone literally tried to claim that he shouldn't be treated like a child. Like, excuse me, but Zuko IS a child. One of the most cathartic moments in the series is when the kid literally breaks down in his uncle's arms and people really want to go around sneering about "woobification"? Shut up.

If it's the morality issue, even if Zuko were the worst person in the world I still wouldn't think it was a problem for people to woobify him, but as it is, he has a whole entire redemption arc where he ends the series dedicating the rest of his life to restoring peace to the world. If there's ever a character who deserves a pat on the back, I'd say Zuko is.

narcissistic guy who doesn’t have any empathy like in the beach and only kinda cares ab things similar to his own pain and he’s selfish

I could list everything that Zuko has ever done to disprove this, but I don't actually need to, and such generalizations don't deserve to be taken that seriously anyway. But I do want to remind people that Zuko's establishing character backstory was that he got banished for trying to defend an entire division of soldiers that he had never met nor would ever meet, because it was the right thing to do, because he did not want to see people killed for no reason, and because, as the crown prince, he felt personally responsible to try and use the power he had to help them, as opposed to the powerful adults around him who wanted to use their power for selfish reasons. Zuko stood up to those adults - one of whom was his own terrifying, abusive father - at great cost to himself and his own power and comfort when he didn't need to at all.

After that, Zuko could have completely shut himself off from the rest of the world and only cared about himself, and indeed, he spends a good three years trying to do just that. He does behave selfishly, he grandstands, he throws tantrums, but he also still has that impulse towards empathy and goodness, which he gradually learns to embrace again. His character arc is a triumph of goodness, and anyone who claims to be a voice for morality who is trying to diminish this fact...really isn't making the moral statement they think they are making. What truly good person would rather have more villains in the world than redeemed ones?

As for "The Beach," it is amazing to me that people try to bring up Zuko having an existential crisis and not being a good boyfriend as something to hold against him since the reason he acts like that is because he DOES have empathy and he just can't take being in this shallow world anymore with these people who understand nothing of what he's come to learn in the past three years.

Like, god, Zuko, why don't you pay more attention to your imperialistic girlfriend and making sure she has snacks at a beach party instead of like, worrying about war and poor people, hm??? Or your uncle in prison, or the next time your father might decide to physically harm you. What an asshole. /s

and wangle was always way more empathetic and understanding especially of Katara

I know you mean Aang, but I'm kinda giggling at "wangle," the unsung hero of the story.

way more empathetic and understanding especially of Katara

Oh, you mean like this?

Zuko: She needs this, Aang. This is about getting closure and justice.

Aang: I don't think so. I think it's about getting revenge.

Katara: [Angrily.] Fine, maybe it is! Maybe that's what I need! Maybe that's what he deserves!

Aang: Katara, you sound like Jet.

Which one had more empathy for Katara's pain here, again? Maybe we should ask Katara.

Katara looking at Aang:

Katara looking at Zuko:

I know I'm nitpicking one scene but like, if you really want to play the comparison game, this is a good place to do it, since this episode contrasts Katara's relationship with the two. Otherwise, Katara and Zuko were enemies for much of the series so like, arguing that Aang "had more empathy for her" is kind of pointless and reeks of Nice Guy-ism. You don't get empathy points just for being her friend longer.

he is actually a colonizer full of toxic violence & he isn’t a soft person & thats all “made up fanon Zuko” not real Zuko

I didn't know that the ATLA fandom was so powerful that they were able to manifest a whole two books of this three book series themselves.

I mean, look how this fanon content of Zuko calling out his father and walking away from colonization and imperialism and toxic violence almost looks like the real thing:

And you're right, Zuko being soft was just totally made up by some very dedicated fan artists and fic writers who somehow got their content to air on nickelodeon when Avatar: the Last Airbender vs His Evil Nemesis Colonizer Zuko Who Is Dastardly Trying to Steal His Forever Girl was supposed to be airing.

It's disgusting, really.

[o-wyrmlight]

hello there, i wanna say sorry abt this ask bc normally i really don’t like writing negative asks, but i wanted to know what you thought abt this. there’s a relatively well known user who makes a lot of dark choco and dark cacao content who regularly mocks and berates dark choco while making excuses for dark cacao. obviously this user can think and say whatever they want abt fictional characters, but what really got to me and made me have to avoid their content is how far they go about it, saying things like “if dark choco hates his situation so much he should just leave CoD and go better himself” or calling him a spoiled brat for not considering dark cacao’s trauma more when he was a child, or comparing his trauma to dark cacao’s and minimizing it, saying he doesn’t have a right to be as broken as he is currently. fiction aside its just so beyond victim blamey and gross. they accuse anyone pretty much sympathizes with dark choco of “woobifying” him, as if his fans don’t just, want him to escape his abuse and be happy lol. what makes it worse is that they’re an adult too, i just can’t believe that they confidently put him down all the time like this, even going as far as to imply he was a bad child

Note: I am going to be discussing abuse in a fair amount of detail.

I wonder if this person has ever heard of the Cycle of Abuse. In order, it goes like this:

Rising tensions lead to an explosion. An explosion leads to placation. Placation leads to calmness.

To take Dark Choco's situation as a literal example, let's look at it during the Cookies of Darkness. Dark Choco is confronted by Pomegranate about his loyalty to the Cookies of Darkness. Dark Choco tries to placate her by saying (and trying to convince himself) that he does. Explosion happens when Pomegranate forces him to relive a traumatic memory that breaks his mental and emotional psyche down. Fearing it'll happen afain afterwards--and perhaps almost believing it himself--Dark Choco stares with more conviction that he is loyal.

Enter the honeymoon/calmness phase, which is the phase that makes the abused question whether or not they're overreacting in terms of how they see their situation. It's calm now, they've reconciled and everything seems to be fine. Everything seems to be okay. So surely they're just being... Paranoid. But eventually the rising tensions begin again, and the victim knows what's coming and is willing to do anything in their power to stop it.

I believe that this logic can cleanly define why Dark Choco is staying with the Cookies of Darkness. It's a horrible place that he surrounds himself with, but as far as he knows, it's also the only place that has accepted him with open arms. He feels like it's the last place that he has the option to go to, so he essentially feels trapped into putting up with whatever emotional and psychological abuse they're putting him through. And that's not even touching on what the sword might be putting him through on a daily basis. I'm sure it's a cause of absolute mental fatigue that makes it hard to think clearly.

It really isn't as simple as just 'leaving' the Cookies of Darkness. For better or for worse, the Cookies of Darkness have become his home, the only place he can rely on to be there for him. He doesn't have anywhere else to go, and when Gingerbrave and co offer a place among them, he's already managed to convince himself once again that it's 'not so bad'.

As an aside, we don't actually know what kind of trauma Dark Cacao really went through as a child, so we can't draw any comparisons from that either. This isn't to minimize the trauma that Dark Cacao himself has probably gone through, but it's just. A fact.

Dark Cacao and Dark Choco are just as valid characters as each other. It isn't fair to compare these two with the purpose of demeaning them. What is it about Dark Choco that makes him worse? Is it the fact that he fell victim to a cursed sword? That he nearly killed his father? That he's half-convinced himself that his dream of being a hero is an impossible flight of fancy? That he probably thought for the longest time that he killed his father--his caretaker, his trainer, his idol, whom he wanted to be like--and it tore him to bits and pieces?

People deal with trauma and abuse in different ways. Not everybody is made different. I know that I usually tend to try to avoid the situation when I feel the tensions start to rise up, and Dark Choco himself probably tries to face it head-on and declare it invalid. Or maybe he tries to simply placate the situation in the hopes that it won't spiral into an explosion. Hell if I know.

It's just... So victim blamey. Think about it in real life. If you're a teenager who lives in an abusive household, where the fuck are you supposed to go? You have food. A roof over your head. A warm place to sleep. Where else are you going to find that, when to leave means you will probably be brought right back to them if you're found? Yeesh.

TL;DR: "If Dark Choco hates his situation so much he should leave CoD and better himself" yeah and homeless people should stop being homeless and just buy a house. Glorious insight.

Edit: Sorry for any misspellings or whatever. I wrote this on my phone.

[dreamsclock]

As a C!Dream apologist, I hate when people say we defend his actions in the exile arc or think that L'manburg was the problem all along. WE ANALIZE HIS CHARACTER. THAT'S ALL WE DO.

there’s a weird thing in this fandom where a lot of people boil favourite characters down to agreeing and validating everything they say and everything they do - as if every single character hasn’t done something that can’t be excused or justified.

and i think it comes down to a lot of the fandom’s view on morality - the weird demonisation of the ‘villains’ of the smp, from straight up despising c!dream and his apologists/fans to the vilifcation of c!enderwalk to the way so many split up “l’manbur” from “vilbur” and “revivebur” like they’re not all the same person and treat them entirely differently - a lot of the fandom’s moral compass is pretty black and white, which is unfortunate, because it means they view characters in the same way. characters like c!tommy and c!tubbo tend to be woobified, and all their actions excused away, while characters like c!techno and c!dream are vilified to hell and back without a chance to be forgiven or redeemed for their actions.

it’s unfortunate, because cc!wilbur has made it explicitly clear ALL the characters are incredibly morally grey - and we see this time and time again in the series! but a portion of the fandom - a big portion of the fandom - tend to try and excuse or justify their favourite characters’s actions and words (c!tommy killing c!jack, c!wilbur’s treatment of c!tubbo / c!tommy, c!quackity in ,, everything he’s ever done LMAO /hj), while c!dream / c!doomsday trio apologists, i’ve noticed, tend to view their favourites more critically, acknowledging the bad and good they’ve done, and often view the other characters in the same light.

this isn’t to say “c!doomsday trio apologists = smart, everyone else = dumb” LMAO, because i’ve seen some takes like this FROM doomsday trio apologists about c!tommy and co, which i also don’t agree with. overall, i think it’s important to remember all the characters are flawed and all apologists have different views / opinions on things. some will try to justify every single one of their fave’s actions, some will openly criticise and condemn their fave’s actions but still be apologists for them. every apologist is different - and the open condemnation of c!dream apologists for being “abuse apologists” is exhausting.

it’s honestly why i’ve stopped going on twitter and analysing c!dream so much: i got tired of having to write a disclaimer i didn’t support his actions or child abuse :’) the double standards in this fandom are exhausting and overwhelming and i’m very glad i’ve found this little corner of tumblr where i don’t need to do that ! :D

[rjalker]

The ONLY reason Gabriel is abusing Adrien is because the writers want Adrien to have a Tragic Backstory™ to excuse all of his shitty fucking behavior and misogyny.

They don’t actually fucking want to write a story about abuse, or deal with abuse in anyway.

They’re literally trying to fucking make us sympathize with Gabriel, the abusive fucking father who’s also a gods damned supervillain.

They don’t want to fucking actually deal with the fact that Adrien is being abused, they don’t want to use this as a way to teach children what abuse looks like or how it’s not okay, it’s literally just there to get people to forgive anything Adrien does wrong, because the writers think he can do no wrong.

Adrien is being abused, and Adrien is abusing Marientte.

These two things don’t cancel eachother out, and Adrien being abused is not WHY he is abusing Marinette. And if you fucking argue that Adrien being abused means he has no choice but to abuse MArinette, you need to shut the fuck up for the rest of time and NEVER speak to ANY victim of abuse EVER AGAIN.

Being abused does not make you a bad person. It does not make you abuse other people.

My mom was abused by her mom.

It does not mean she has no choice but to abuse me.

My step-dad was not abused by his parents.

And guess what? He still chose, every single day, for years, to abuse me and my siblings, while doting on his own children.

Being abused does not make you abusive.

Being abused does not make you a bad person.

Being abused does not excuse you abusing others.

Adrien is not being abused because the writers want to actually deal with the damage abuse causes. They don’t want to make sure kids know what abuse looks like, and some ways you can try to deal with it.

They are never going to write an episode where someone calls whatever the fuck the French equivalent of child protective services is.

They’re never going to write an episode where Adrien gets rescued from Gabriel.

They’re never going to write an episode where Adrien gets to talk to a therapist and deal with the shit he’s been put through.

Adrien isn’t being abused because the writers care about Adrien and care about the fact that he’s being abused.

He’s being abused because the writers want him to have a get out of jail free card already baked into his dead-mom-manpain tragic backstory.

The writers do not care about Adrien Agreste. The writers do not care about victims of abuse. The writers would rather woobify an abuser than condemn him for the abuse he subjects his victims to.

If you care about Adrien Agreste, or you care about victims of abuse? You better be fucking completely pissed off at the writers and the way they portray the way Gabriel abuses him, and you better be doubly pissed off at the way they have Adrien abuse Marinette.

To date, there has not been a single child-antagonist in this show that is not being abused by their parents.

Lila is being abused. Chloe is being abused. Fuck, even XY is being abused, and he’s only in like two fucking episodes!

Being abused does not make you a bad person. 

But these writers sure as shit want you to think it does, and if that doesn’t piss you off, you need to rethink the way you think about abuse.

I encourage people to reblog!

[tonya-the-chicken]

I’m not going to change your views but it does feel a bit dismissive when you say it wasn’t that bad because he had rich parents who neglected him but hey they got a maid for him and he probably wasn’t outcasted or bullied so hey it’s not that bad right 🤷‍♀️! I don’t know he definitely didn’t have the worse out of the villains but I don’t know it felt a bit dismissive is all. Although we need to all remember these are fictional characters so have no idea why the other anon needed to get so aggressive! Also the person in the notes I don’t know how to say it but uh the whole the Todoroki’s had a rich father they didn’t have to work a day in their life take is not a good look. Just because someone has parents with money it doesn’t derail the fact that neglect can cause trauma.

Anyways for the real reason I sent this, you wonder why Dabi is so insane. Well take into account the neglect alongside the fact that he burnt to near death up on that hill alone at the age of what 13? That’s got to be extra traumatising, especially for a child that was already not mentally ok. We also don’t know what his circumstances were like after that fire, like was he homeless? Or picked up by someone nefarious? Kind of like AFO(not him exactly but someone nasty) who maybe fed on his brewing anger and hate instead of positive healing. I’m sure we will find out at some point? I don’t think it was just what happened in the Todoroki household or the fire that broke his mind? There had to be other factors after the fire after his “death”!

[[WARNING!!! I love Dabi as a character but I am not a woobifier so if you are too much into him don't read!!!! No complaints taken, y'all will be blocked for being rude I am too old to deal with people unable to interact with me in good faith (anon it's not for you, you are good and I can't understand your point of view I am just not as good as a person and too old for that shit)]]

I don't think I will change my mind either but I feel like the belief that every trauma is equally bad is just... Simply wrong. Like, we can legit compare this stuff and how badly it affects our brain, what do y'all think psychologists research 🤷‍♀️ Like, your therapist won't tell you this because it's not their job to make you understand you not the centre of the Earth (and it won't help because it is a legit trauma response that is very valid but is annoying you're fucking 25 yo). And to say that, neglectful parenthood is probably the worst parenthood style, as far as I know XD I wrote coursework about this (neglectful bitches are having a lot of need to make us the biggest victims (the bitches is me))... It also feels really American to me? Like, are we going to pretend people who got to live in a nice house and were neglect somehow got it as bad as people living in poverty or warzones? Hello? Imagine telling some orphan "I know you have no parents but actually, my trauma of my father not spending enough time with me is just as severe as yours". Bruh couldn't be me sorry... Like, even taking into account the fact that we can have weaker or stronger nervous systems or be more prone to depressive episodes *looks in the mirror and cries* I simply wouldn't find the guts to say my trauma is as severe as idk people who had physically abusive parents or no parents at all or who were disowned for being gay

And like **again** I am not saying that neglect is not traumatic I WAS NEGLECTED THIS IS TRAUMATIZING AS FUCK. I just am living in a country at war and with lots of discrimination problems and I like... Can't say I am the biggest victim. Sorry I can't though there were times when I was a lot more bitchy especially before being in therapy so I understand where you are coming from and I know what I am saying won't resonate with everyone (it's ok go on your own healing journey I believe in you) but this doesn't mean it is garbage and won't help me or someone else... I've already talked once about it but as a person, I am very easily irritated and envious and really not your local Jesus and partially my trauma turned me like this so being more humble about my sufferings helps me not be a complete bitch (believe me or not but people with traumas and mental illnesses are often insufferable *looks in the mirror* not me though I am perfect... BUT IT IS OK TO BE INSUFFERABLE OK??? like, bitch, that's normal. That's normal to stink when you are depressed it's ok to be a bitch when you are hurting. Forgive yourself because I forgive you (when you are not being an abusive asshole but if you apologize and explain yourself I will forgive that too)

The reason why I talk about the fact he is rich is that I've got a disease called leftism and I am a person of several marginalized identities and since this fandom LOVES looking at characters like real humans, I looked at Dabi this way. And if Dabi was a real human, I wouldn't sympathize with him one bit. I would fucking hate him for being the biggest entitled asshole who commits crimes for the reason his Daddy didn't give him attention. Bitch, my Dad didn't give me attention either! But somehow I don't kill people! And I don't even have money!!!! But like... I am not denying that neglectful parents are not a problem. It is. But he is overreacting, bro. He needs to humble down and recognize the fact he is a fucking idiot (he is). He has inherently so much more resources to recover and heal himself than I had... Yes, I am just being jealous at this point but honestly. Making an entire country suffer for you is not a good thing and y'all need to stop using trauma and mental illness as an excuse for people. No! Being abusive to people because of neglect is not valid, is overreacting and you had no reason to do that. I am dismissing your trauma because you are exaggerating it to make me sympathize with your asshole behaviour. I won't judge people with different sets of standards as I judge myself

I bet it would be dismissive and bad if I said it in conversation with someone who is currently struggling with mental health and is not a murderer. But guess what! I don't talk with humans and my friends the same way I talk on my Tumblr about fictional characters 🤷‍♀️ Not to mention I don't have rich friends akabsksbxm

I think with Dabi there's this whole thing where we saw him at 14 (poor baby boy) and 24 (a grown-ass boy) and... Like, I am so sorry for 14 years old Touya not receiving the help he needs (bruh so relatable) but I am not gonna act like 24 years old bitch can't get his ass to a psychiatrist (extremely unrelatable and infuriating). We shouldn't apply the same standards to kids and adults. We can talk all day long about how society is bad and how our parents ruined us but at some points, you gotta take your life into your own hands and do something and be an adult. And it's fucking hard when you're born with a shitty brain that was fucked up by your parents even more in a society where no one gives a fuck but I sincerely don't know another way to live. You will feel bad and want to die but you either keep on recovering or keep on getting worse and at this point getting worse is Dabi's *choice* That's how I live, that's my framework and I am, of course, extremely fortunate in a lot of ways but I just don't know how are you supposed to survive without the notion that grown people are responsible for themselves and their mental health. We can't act like adults are babies

But as a character, Dabi is fucking hot ngl. Like, do I sometimes want to murder my entire family, make them suffer AND commit terrorist attacks? We all do. Dabi is the dark fantasy of us neglectful bitches craving some attention. Gotta kill the president and tell everyone that my Dad sucks. Imagine the entire country hearing your Dad sucks? That's the juice, that's the dream. Trauma makes you vicious. I get the sentiment. Imagine all those fuckers who made you feel like shit pissing their pants and crying? Imagine your Mom being afraid of you the way you used to be afraid of her? People do have the desire for some violent justice but like... Think of bullied kids committing school shootings. But instead of a kid, it's a grown man who graduated school and who also have a rich father

Ok too much about irl stuff and philosophy shit. I know my way of talking is kinda brute so just know the way I treat people is different from that I treat fictional characters, in particular, I don't call real-life humans submissive and breedable... And stuff...

Damn Dabi is kinda good to project your hatred of your parents in bruh, I should write a fanfic about that (would be cathartic)

To the plotline, I am also very interested in what the hell happened with him after burning because... How the hell he wasn't found? I kind of DON'T want him to be groomed at this point because I feel like it won't be as cool as him just more naturally evolving into what he became. Like, surely, he is an asshole but consider this: as a villain, he is morally obligated to be an asshole

I feel like someone hiding him and Touya overstating the gruesomeness of his living conditions to the dude so he feels *bad* for him and hides him and feels sympathy and Touya gets attention but also begins to reassure himself in the fact his Dad needs to be punished... Idk it's a lot of mystery but I feel like more suffering won't deliver the point the way I want it... I mean it CAN be handled this way and initially I thought a lot about Dabi being brainwashed a bit or having his memories altered so it seems worse to him or even him being groomed or lied too but nowadays I am not into it. I mean I believe in Horikoshi and that he will handle him well 🛐

I talk a lot so I will summarize

If we judge him as a real human

14 yo Touya - DID NOTHING WRONG IN HIS LIFE PROTECT HIM

24 yo Dabi - go fuck yourself bitch you older than me and act like a child and kill people, I couldn't care less about your trauma rich boy

If you want me to talk as his psychologist

Yeah, it is painful and sad, I understand him so much and surely, his trauma is valid as is his hatred but probably revenge won't bring him what he wants. And what he wants is love and attention. But he gotta make choices that will lead to his healing. He needs to *want* to heal. And we will step by step go to the healing because it is possible. He is loved and he is enough. AND YOU ALL MOTHERFUCKERS WILL HEAL I BELIEVE IN YOU BESTIES

Also his therapist (behind his back)

You won't believe it but my client is the most infantile attention whore I've ever met

But if we talk about him as a character... Very delicious soup

If you talk with your friends

Please, if your friends are being abusive to you or someone else don't even LET them say how their trauma made them this way. No. Nothing allows you to be an abuser. Call them out and stop them and make them talk to the therapist. Like, surely, there are extreme situations like severe mental illnesses or extreme neglect where we should be more forgiving but babying adults won't do you any good and won't make them recover

Yeah, I guess this is what I forgot to say. When I say "it wasn't that bad" what I mean is that I would be more forgiving to people who had it worse. It's more of a personal measure where I can tolerate stuff from people who had particular traumas or from those who suffered greatly (it's not my place to be a bitch here). I can forgive 14 years old or a poor person for stealing stuff but not the 25-year-old man who got no need for money and is not a kleptomaniac. I would be more forgiving to Shigaraki than to Dabi because Shigaraki was groomed a whole lot. Same for Toga, who is not even an adult or Twice who is a poor orphan. But that doesn't mean I would forgive them completely. All of them are shitty people. It's just that they had fewer resources and possibilities to not be what they became while Dabi had more but he acts like he is extremely hurt and the biggest victim which is like... There will be people like this in your life, please, don't make friends with them, they WILL abuse you

I talked a lot damn. It's adhd I can't shut up

[vanityloves]

🎫 here's a gush pass! feel free to gush about whichever f/o you want, however much you want, then send this ask to 3 other selfshippers!

oh man, thank you jsjsj ive gotten a few of these but ive been too anxious to actually go off ab my f/o but, lets fucking gooooo!

can i talk ab the actual animation of the source material is that allowed?

they gave us this but we ended up with

WHICH LISTEN- I enjoy n love regardless. I just find the contrasts in phases fascinating and funny. I loved his appearance in phases 1 and 2; what a fucking iconic character design. The animation is so endearing and amazing- the thicker lines, the fluidity, the range. Like the first gif that shows the vibrations of the vehicle in his shoulders/shirt? The simplistic art style was nice and even if hes Hard On The Eyes, I'm like 🥴 ok ugly ❤.

Not like the newer mvs are any less quality content - its nice to see the use of thick and thinner lines and there's definitely a different feel to it - more child friendly or easy going? Idk how to explain it. Murdoc as a character is still very, Not Child Friendly, and Im always like :cursed emoji: when someone says that their 14 year old watches their videos like help, his dick is out in at least 3 dif vids (censored ofc but man).

They definitely lost me after the 4th phase though and many people argue that the band/music lost its meaning, which i can honestly agree with (esp when they didnt name officially name 4, 5 and 6. Im p sure ppl refer to 4 as We Are Still Humanz).

I was never an avid/active fan of keeping up with the characters and didnt really think they had any story anyways, i was like "feel good inc is sexy. melancholy hill's a banger" so honestly, finding out that these apes actually have lore was fun.

Murdoc being the given this tragic backstory made my eyes Zoom, and ofc I was like "oh youre funny looking and sad. I want you ♡." In a weird way, I take a lot of comfort that 'we both have shit parents' and 'no one really thought we'd amount to anything'. to be fair, i haven't accomplished anything yet, and even if hes a bunch of pixels who i know doesnt really exist, its kind of motivating bc he never gave up? A literal quote from him being "If there’s a dream in your heart, never let anyone tell you you’ve got no talent. Get out there, embarrass yourself, and prove to the world you’ve got no talent." With how many failures hes faced he never stopped trying to prove himself worthy of attention and fame and love, which is ambitious and kind of intimidating with how much confidnece he has.

Hes a complete bastard of a man and not even close to being a good person. He's definitely complicated but can be boiled down to "just an abusive asshole", which, hey, fair. I hate the way he treats 2D, its so toxic and terrible. Honestly, its inexcusable and he needs to apologize, grow and learn a LOT and god knows he needs therapy.

I think the most tragic thing ab his character is that he basically ended up like his father and to some extent, he acknowledges it. His bad habits and behaviors stem from abuse and neglect which doesnt excuse his actions but, "man hands on misery to man." I feel like theres a haunting part to his whole life - we don't know much about his mother and brother but from assuming things, I know they weren't innocent, clean, or soft spoken, let alone, kind. I think he has a "It runs in the family" mentality and gives into it bc there's no use in running from something so deeply engraved within him.

But as a man of contradiction, hes shown to care, despite "hating everything, including himself". To be short, his father was a failure and a man thats never worked for his own money, so he contradicts that and escapes that part of 'failure running in the family' by forming Gorillaz. I do think theres something way more ab his character in that regard. I think theres a lot that he needs to work on but he's escaped a part of that mindset, and his 'Plastic Beach'. I wonder what theyre gonna do with valley of the pagans thing.

I guess as a band, theyre not gonna show a lot of "behind the scenes" stuff like that. We wont know if he ever gets help, or apologizes, or even feels sorry - its up to us to decide which is a safe game to play on Their Behalf.

People are upset that hes actually cleaned up a bit and is shown to be nicer bc they miss having that disgusting, cruel man which again, I understand. He has always been the antagonist to the entire band. But as someone that likes to see people happier n mellow (or, boring) rather than doing shit and compensating for their depression, its nice to see that type of development (or downgrade, depending on how you see it).

This could be Their (read: jamie and damon) way of being lazy by making him 'mellow out w/ age' or whatever it is. It definitely seems to woobify his character and intentions but well, His Main Goal, Was To Blow Up. And Act Like He Dont Know Nobodaaayyy argargarg and guess what? He's already made it- he's successful, he's rich, he's famous, he's adored. Now what? Maybe this is just his way of taking it easy from here on out - who knows.

Gorillaz definitely took a turn after all the brand deals so it lost its meaning (since one of the phases had a 'fuck capitalism' message) and with that, Murdoc is no longer allowed to be the stank bitch hes was always meant to be, no more obvious sex and drugs, for the new gen 🥴 ironically a lot of songs 'today' are always complained ab being ab sex, drugs, and whatever, but they def needed to step on the breaks when Money/Companies got involved. So here we have The Wigglez 😌💕

ANYWAYS, I LOVE HIM LOTS, HAVING MANY THOUGHTS

[malachi-walker]

Some Really Heavy Thoughts on the Relationship Between Scorpia and Catra

Fair warning, guys: I'm gonna get into some deeply personal stuff involving abuse recovery and past mistakes here. I will not be making excuses for Catra or her treatment of Scorpia, but well... Let's just say there's a reason why their relationship has always me wince. Because it touches on some stuff that is likely relevant to a lot of ex-abuse victims.

This entire meta stems from an epiphany I had while discussing with @johannas-motivational-insults how I have a really hard time writing Scorpia, and me trying to pinpoint what exactly makes me so uncomfortable working with her or looking at her relationship with Catra in detail.

Let me back up a bit. We all love Scorpia. She's a big cuddly sweetheart without a mean bone in her body. She's fantastic, a bright point in the overall suckage that is the Horde, and she gives GREAT hugs. So why does their relationship bother me so much?

Well... It's because I've been there once before in my own life. And it's one of my deepest regrets, so seeing that play out on screen and instinctively knowing where this is going fucking sucks.

Personal stuff under the cut.

We've already covered Scorpia being a good kid. That said, I feel like a lot of people just flanderize her into being this perfect wonderful friend who wholly accepts Catra (and conversely either woobify Catra or make her a horrible monster who doesn't appreciate a good thing) but... the truth is a lot more nuanced than that.

Scorpia doesn't wholly accept Catra because in order to truly accept someone you have to see them for who they really are, warts and all, and Scorpia doesn't. She idealizes Catra and either ignores or downplays her very real flaws and problems, and tries to excuse any actions she commits that don't live up to that constructed image, which is of course what she confronts in s4 (and I’m proud of her for that.) It's not done with any ill intent, but it's still not a good thing in any relationship; romantic, platonic, familial, any kind.

Here's where things get real personal. Also, I wanna specify that I am not forcing myself to talk about this, even though it still hurts in a lot of ways. Though I am probably gonna bring this up with my therapist when I next see her.

I've mentioned before in previous meta that I am an ex-child abuse victim who followed a very similar trajectory to Catra once I got out of that situation. I was angry, I was hurt, and I was ADAMANT that nobody get close to me again and fully prepared to lash out as much as I needed in order to make that happen. Occasionally people would slip through my guard anyway, but on the whole I was very successful at that goal and torpedoed a lot of bridges back in those days.

And as much as it kills me to admit it... I had my own Scorpia too.

Her name was Amy, and I met her in my freshman year of high school after I ended up in a private school for the “gifted and talented” (which ended up being its own mistake, but that's a story for another day.)

To put this entire situation into perspective: at the time I was struggling to process and cope with my abuse, I had just been misdiagnosed with major depression after an entire year of contemplating suicide, and I had been put on a ridiculously high dosage of the antidepressant Wellbutrin--literally the highest dosage they could legally give an adolescent without the risk of seizures--which cranked my rage up to a constant underlying simmer and also gave me horrific fucking nightmares, to the point that for about a year and a half I was consistently only getting two hours of sleep because I was waking up screaming nearly every night. This is not me making excuses for being such a dick, but I do try to keep in mind that younger me was dealing with an absolute shitshow when passing judgment on myself. I was trying to survive a situation that absolutely no one was equipped to handle at all of 14 years old.

And then here comes Amy.

Amy was one of those people who was relentlessly optimistic to an almost suspicious degree (more on that later.) The kind of person who will reply to any statement of "I'm having a bad [x]" with generic look-on-the-bright-side platitudes and a big smile without actually addressing anything you said. She was also one of those people who was aggressively Christian, not in a mean way, but in an "it was her answer for literally everything" way, which given that I was struggling with my own faith at the time was practically a recipe for disaster.

But for whatever reason, this girl latched onto me, no matter how much I tried to get her to do otherwise.

I wanna note that I wasn't wholly devoid of friends at the time; my best friend, Michael (who is still my best friend/bro to this day) had also gotten into the school along with me, but the rest of our friend group hadn't and those relationships drifted apart in the ensuing years, which only served to compound the underlying issues. And I will always be thankful that the guy was able to roll with the punches and stick by me even through my absolute worst, but it was also pretty irritating having to switch between my bro who understands me even if he didn’t always agree to my much tenser interactions with Amy. So back to her.

Basically, this girl just kinda inserts herself into my life, refuses to take a hint or back off, and any time I try to talk about my issues or get her to understand a little and make an actual connection, I'm met with the overwhelming feeling of "You're not really seeing me. You're not listening." So I responded by being a fucking bitch. I would ignore her, make fun of her, treat her like a third wheel, etc. In hindsight, it was a dick move, but at the time it made sense to me. I genuinely felt like it was her fault for never listening to me in the first place, so I justified it by telling myself I was just paying her back in kind.

I lost touch with Amy after I was kicked out of school at the tail end of freshman year due to a Wellbutrin-induced rage episode (nobody got hurt, but my attitude at the time was so consistently extreme that the school administration literally had an inch thick dossier on my behavior and what the other kids thought of me, so that incident was just what they needed to justify kicking me out.) Afterwards, my parents made the decision to relocate to another town since my expulsion meant I would be banned from going back into school for a full year unless we changed systems--and even then I was required to go into a continuation school to prove I had been rehabilitated, but I digress. Point is that I was uprooted from that environment and I didn't bother keeping in touch.

I actually found out years later from a friend who went to that same high school--though we didn't actually become friends until after my expulsion--that the reason why Amy was the way she was is that in the year prior to meeting me, her mother had committed suicide and she had been the one to discover her body. So in hindsight, her entire deal made sense: she was trying to survive in the only way she knew how and cope with a situation no one should ever have to, same as me.

But that didn't mean we were able to connect. The great tragedy of that situation, and the thing I regret the most about it, is that we were just two horribly damaged kids that were utterly incapable of actually seeing each other as we were at the time. And it ultimately wasn't anybody's fault, which ironically makes it even harder to accept.

I regret the way I treated her. I wish I could have made her life a little better, and I still hope and pray she got the help she needed elsewhere.

That's what makes Scorptra so incredibly tragic to me as well. Scorpia is a good-hearted person who does genuinely care for Catra, but she also willfully blinds herself to the things Catra is dealing with and her relentless optimism often just ends up rubbing salt in the wounds. Catra is wrong to treat Scorpia so badly, but I also fully understand those feelings of resentment and anger you develop towards someone when they consistently refuse to see you as you are, because I've been there. And that's also why I've always had a hard time with Scorptra romantically (though if you ship it, good for you! I honestly wish I could), because those issues have always been present in their relationship and made it unsustainable from the very beginning.

Something was always destined to break between them. And that's what makes it so damn hard for me to write Scorpia as a character, because in many ways she reminds me of one of the things I regret the most in my life: how I treated someone else who had the best intentions horribly when I was at my absolute worst. These days I try to be kind to my past self as part of the healing process, but when I think of my actions in that year it is really fucking hard. I don't like to think about it, even though I know I feel like I need to (which is also why this meta exists.)

Neither Scorpia or Catra were at fault for the fact that they couldn't see each other properly: it was just a really bad case of wrong place, wrong time. And that's what makes it hurt.

Also, if you made it this far, I'm sorry this was so depressing. Please have a happy cat and scorpion to hopefully feel a little better. Also huge shoutout to @yesbpdcatra for encouraging me to get this out there. You're the best, fam.

[shadowmaat]

Blame Game

I think one of the biggest grievances I have with woobifying sexy white male villains is that the fans who do it strip those characters of all responsibility for their actions. It isn’t [Villain]’s fault he slaughtered all those people, he was being mind controlled! He was manipulated into it! He was scared! He felt abandoned by the people who were supposed to love him! The excuses go on and on, but at the core of it the issue with woobified villains is, in part, an issue that’s also part of modern America: moderately attractive white men/teens aren’t responsible for their crimes. 

Rape? The girl shouldn’t have been drunk, shouldn’t have been dressed like that, shouldn’t have led him on, etc.

Mass shooting? He was bullied, he was “mentally ill,” he was upset at being turned down by that girl he asked out. It was video games that made him do it. 

Murder? Well, if he was a cop then it was the victim’s fault for acting threatening, running away, being black, not doing what he was told. If it’s a regular person, then again, he’s probably just “mentally ill” or didn’t understand the consequences of his actions, or maybe he was just holding the gun and didn’t know it was loaded and it just went off by accident.

Hell, in some cases you don’t even need to be remotely attractive in order to have your crimes dismissed. Just look at T.rump. ;)

I see a lot of people get righteously angry when shit like that gets reported on the news, but then some of those same people (mostly women and girls) will turn around and use those same kind of excuses for their white male faves, along with genre-specific excuses like mind control or “evil twins” or whatever.

There’s nothing wrong with loving villains- hell, I love a few of them myself- but refusing to acknowledge that they ARE villains, especially when you get to the point of twisting reality like a pretzel and then pretending that your interpretation is the one TRUE canon, that’s... a lot less good. Have all the AUs you want, but admit that they’re AUs. And also maybe try to recognize that excuses like “child abuse” and “mental illness” are NEVER valid reasons for committing atrocities. Not in the real world and not in fiction.

For the record, I 100% believe that if T.rump had been an actual comic book villain instead of a real world figure he would have legions of fangirls headcanoning him as sexy and attractive and totally not guilty. Poor woobiekins is just a victim of jealousy and a campaign of misinformation!

[jilyandbambi]

sybilius replied to your post “I just spent 2 hours reading all of Sharp Objects from cover to cover...”

i never read the book but their relationship in the show is absolutely perfect

In the book, Amma comes off as more sociopathic (I say, as someone without a background in psychology). Her and Amma’s first meeting and first official introduction is much frostier than in the miniseries, and overall her character comes off as a lot more cold-hearted and malicious. Yes, even given the reveal. Even her interactions with Camille read, to me, as less “damaged child with a warped sense of boundaries attempting to forge a bond with the big sister she’s always been curious about,” and more “Genderswapped, Southern-Gothic Ramsay Bolton who’s found a new toy.” It’s less needling Camille in an attempt to get to know her because she’s actually curious and more teasing Camille purely out of maliciousness and jealousy. 

Even Amma’s attempt to make amends with Camille following the scene at the dress shop plays out differently in the show vs. the book, emphasizing why I (a non-psychologist) would say book!Amma as someone exhibiting signs of Antisocial Personality Disorder. In the book, Amma makes peace with Camille by offering her a joint (drugs, something Amma enjoys + takes comfort in), whereas in the miniseries, Amma makes up for the shopping trip by giving Camille a long-sleeved dress (apology rooted in something that will make Camille happy + feel comfortable). 

I point to the differences in these two scenes to say that show!Amma, from the moment of her and Camille’s proper introduction, exhibits a keen desire to know Camille, the person, to forge a bond with her, to become important to her, to be saved by her (”Take me to St. Louis with you”//”Please stay”//”You could practice on me.”//running away during the Calhoun Day play so that Camille--and Camille, specifically, will come and find her//) 

(Side note, it’s my strong opinion, as--and I cannot stress this enough--a non-psychologist that show!Amma isn’t actually a psychopath or a sociopath or has any shades of whatever Adora’s illness is; rather, I think Amma is suffering from a severe case of C-PTSD, as is Camille, and Amma’s crimes (like Camille’s cutting) are a way of reliving/playing out the years-long trauma inflicted on her by Adora--NOT THAT THIS IS AN EXCUSE OR ME WOOBIFYING HER, just character analysis-->but this is another post. Anywho, I bring this up because looking for a “rescuer”-->someone to take you away from the abuse (Amma) or save you from the pain/trauma of reliving it (Camille) is one of the key symptoms of C-PTSD. I think Amma definitely does this with Camille and I think Camille does this again and again, with Jackie (which is part of the reason she’s so betrayed at Jackie’s revelation), with Curry, with Alice (who reminds Camille of the sister who was her ‘anchor’ during the time of the abuse), and finally, with Amma. It’s complicated, and I don’t want this side note to become a post unto itself. Moving on!) 

All this is why I hands down prefer Amma’s characterization and her and Camille’s relationship by extension in the miniseries as opposed to the way it’s presented in the novel. The changes to the character and to the development of the relationship enriches both, taking Camille and Amma from two irreparably  people trying to use the other to, at times, fill a void (Camille) and take apart and discard (Amma) the way the do in the books; to two abuse victims who grow to love one another quite deeply and see in one another the chance to heal and find the safety and unconditional love they’ve always sought. 

The latter, in my opinion, makes the ending of Amma and Camille’s story that much more of a gut-punch. However flawed and unhealthily, show!Amma genuinely loved Camille, wanted to know her, wanted to be a family with her, and Camille wanted the same, just as ardently, which is why it hurts so mcfricken badly when their happy ending gets snatched away from both of them once the truth is revealed. It’s also why, I don’t think, we needed the novel’s epilogue included in the miniseries. 

In the novel, Amma never asks for Camille to take her in (unless I’m missing some scenes). It happens, eventually, but it kind of goes sour from the start. Amma isn’t happy with Camille and Camille takes Amma out of obligation and is just as miserable. There’s no sense of closure, of catharsis, of YES, this is what they deserve that then gets ripped away when the truth comes out. In the book, Camille and Amma aren’t each other’s happy endings, Camille’s happy ending is going to live with the family of choice she’s found with Curry and Eileen. I think they cut this part out of the miniseries because the journey we went on with these characters in this retelling is different. Being together with Amma in St. Louis was what show!Camille wanted and now that she’s lost it, the horror sets in not just because of the twist, but also because the viewer knows there won’t be any coming back from this for Camille (Amma, I think, knows this, too, which is why her “Don’t tell Mama” at the end, to me, sounds regretful, for what both she and Camille are going to lose. In the book, she’s described as smug). 

Paradoxically, though, the changes the miniseries made leave me hopeful for Amma, pre-reveal, I mean. If she, after 13 years of abuse and gaslighting was still able to desire and form any semblance of a genuine connection and emotional attachment suggests to me that show!Amma, at least, wasn’t always a lost cause and could have been saved from herself had Jackie stayed on the wagon or Camille come home sooner. Book!Amma, on the other hand, reads as having always been a little mini-Adora, which makes this iteration much less interesting to me, tbh. 

[the-desolated-quill]

We Need To Talk About James Gunn - Quill’s Scribbles

This could prove to be the most controversial Scribble I’ve ever written on this blog, and the sad thing is it really shouldn’t be, in my opinion.

First off, a couple of disclaimers because I know some people are going to accuse me of ‘bias’. I’ve never been very fond of James Gunn as a filmmaker, it’s true. I thought the first Guardians Of The Galaxy movie was okay at best and I absolutely hated the sequel, but I confess that’s less to do with any inherent flaws in the films themselves and more to do with the fact that I just don’t like Gunn’s style of humour. Oh don’t get me wrong. There are still legitimate problems, which I’ll go into later when they become relevant, but I’m big enough to admit that my dislike for his brand of comedy and storytelling is merely due to my own subjective tastes (the same is true of Taika Waititi and Thor: Ragnarok).

Okay. So. Let’s talk about James Gunn.

As I’m sure most of you know, in July 2018, an alt-right conspiracy theorist called Mike Cernovich unearthed tweets made by Gunn between 2008 and 2012 where he made offensive jokes and remarks about sensitive topics such as rape, child abuse and paedophilia. While James Gunn did apologise and vowed to ‘do better,’ Disney, fearing the public backlash, fired Gunn as director of Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3 and dismissed him from any role in producing and expanding Marvel’s planned ‘Cosmic Universe.’ The result was the public backlash Disney were trying to avoid in the first place. They received a lot of criticism from various entertainers and filmmakers, as well as many media outlets such as Collider and The Independent, the cast of Guardians wrote a letter urging Disney to reconsider their decision with Dave Bautista in particular being very vocal in his criticism, and there was a massive outcry from fans who petitioned for Gunn to be rehired. Guy Lodge, writing for The Guardian, asked the question ‘Was James Gunn the first undeserving victim of Hollywood’s new zero tolerance policy?’ Now I’d argue the answer to that question is a definitive no, but apparently, and surprisingly, that’s not a very popular opinion among liberals. So I’d very much like to challenge them as we explore James Gunn’s moral character and ask ourselves why he’s being defended so passionately.

Before we go any further, I think it would be a good idea for me to show you some of the tweets that we’re talking about, just to remind everyone what we’re dealing with here.

Now I hope we can all agree that this is objectively disgusting. Only an amoral, depraved and utterly moronic individual would find offensive tweets like these even remotely funny. But I should make it clear that, by James Gunn’s own admission, these tweets represent who he was rather than who he is. In his apology, he described himself as a ‘provocateur’ during the early days of his career, making shocking statements for the purposes of ‘satire.’ But it’s okay because he’s a better person who has grown and matured fully and will never do this again. Fair enough, you’d think. He admitted what he did was wrong and apologised profusely. That was a very honourable and decent thing to do.

Except we’ve seen this song and dance before.

In 2012, roundabout when Marvel announced they were making a Guardians Of The Galaxy movie with James Gunn directing, an old blog post of Gunn’s resurfaced entitled ‘The 50 Superheroes You Most Want To Have Sex With.’ The original post has since been deleted, but cached versions still exist here and there around the internet if you know where to look. Here are a few quotes from said blog:

[on natasha romanoff, the highest ~debut] “considering she’s fucked half the guys in the marvel universe, that’s quite a feat”

[on batwoman] “i’m hoping for a dc-marvel crossover so that tony stark can turn her; she could also have sex with nightwing and still be a lesbian”

”Many of the people who voted for the Flash were gay men. I have no idea why this is. But I do know if I was going to get fucked in the butt I too would want it to be by someone who would get it over with quick.”

Needless to say, this was quite offensive and causing bad PR, so James Gunn issued an apology:

“A couple of years ago I wrote a blog that was meant to be satirical and funny. In rereading it over the past day I don’t think it’s funny. The attempted humor in the blog does not represent my actual feelings. However, I can see where statements were poorly worded and offensive to many. I’m sorry and regret making them at all.

People who are familiar with me as evidenced by my Facebook page and other mediums know that I’m an outspoken proponent for the rights of the gay and lesbian community, women and anyone who feels disenfranchised, and it kills me that some other outsider like myself, despite his or her gender or sexuality, might feel hurt or attacked by something I said. We’re all in the same camp, and I want to do my best to make this world a better place for all of us. I’m learning all the time. I promise to be more careful with my words in the future. And I will do my best to be funnier as well. Much love to all – James”

Sound familiar?

Now of course it’s unfair to judge the man based on past actions that he himself apologised for. What matters is the present. Whether or not he has demonstrated to a reasonable standard that his work has grown and matured and that his offensive idiocy is a thing of the past. So let’s look at the Guardians Of The Galaxy movies.

While the first movie received critical acclaim, a few people (particularly fans of the source material) complained about how Gamora was treated. The so called ‘most powerful woman in the galaxy’ was reduced to a love interest, an occasional damsel in distress and there were a few odd occasions where she was objectified and degraded based on her sexual history. The most prominent example of which is when Drax describes her as ‘a green whore.’ The context being that he was ignorant of how offensive he was being despite trying to compliment her and call her a friend, and this was played for laughs in the movie. The second movie has more examples. Gamora’s role still paled in comparison to the role she played in the comics, and a new female character called Mantis was introduced whose power level from the comics was also significantly reduced for the movie and whose character was effectively reduced to be a punchline/punching bag. There’s also a scene involving Drax where he frequently describes her as ugly, saying that "when you're ugly and someone loves you, you know they love you for who you are. Beautiful people never know who to trust." Again this is played for laughs. Except I’d argue that an adult man constantly fixating on a woman’s appearance isn’t even remotely funny. 

Another disturbing aspect of the Guardians 2 was the way it seemed to romanticise and excuse abusive relationships. Obviously there’s Drax and Mantis, but the biggest example is Star Lord and Yondu. The first movie did a reasonably good job establishing what drew Star Lord and Gamora together. They were both trying to escape from abusive father figures. The second film does a complete U-turn, calling Yondu Star Lord’s ‘David Hasselhoff’ and giving him a gratuitous and overly sentimental funeral as though he were a noble hero. While I’m sure the death of Yondu would emotionally impact Star Lord to a certain extent (he did raise the kid after all), to say that he’s like ‘David Hasselhoff’ because he’s a better dad than Ego the Living Planet was seems like a very low bar to clear. By that logic, Hitler was a good person because he didn’t kill as many people as Stalin did. It’s tone deaf, lacking in nuance and just a little bit insulting.

Bearing all this in mind, has James Gunn grown and matured since the period between 2008 and 2012? That’s for you to judge. I’d personally argue he hasn’t. Sure he’s no longer as extreme or provocative as he once was, but that’s not necessarily proof that he’s matured. Rather he’s just gotten better at hiding his immaturity. And in my own subjective opinion, based on his work, I think Disney made the right decision in sacking him. Now let me be clear, I don’t think Disney sacked him in order to take a moral stand as a lot of the problematic elements in the Guardians films have carried over into other MCU films. Gamora is still treated like shit in Avengers: Infinity War, and Thanos, who, like Yondu, was clearly established in the first Guardians movie as an abusive father figure, has been woobified and turned into a kind of sympathetic anti villain who actually cared about his daughter and only killed her because he had no other choice (as opposed to, you know, because he is a maniacal despot who’s a few Oompa Loompas short of a chocolate factory). The reason Gunn was fired was because of bad PR. Disney had dealt with this shit before in 2012 and they weren’t prepared to deal with it again, so they dropped the baggage, as it were. It’s a very common occurrence in Hollywood. Which is what makes the public backlash against this decision so puzzling to me.

I can understand being upset that the director of your favourite franchise has been fired, but can we try to get some perspective here? What happened to Gunn is nothing unique. This kind of thing happens all the time. A filmmaker does something controversial or has been revealed to have done something controversial in the past, the studio sacks them in an attempt to save face and everyone gets on with their lives. The situation with James Gunn is no different. The only reason I can see why people are so passionately against this is because of how these tweets were unearthed in the first place. Because the discoverer of the tweets, Mike Cernovich, is a member of the alt-right, the liberal community seem predisposed to dismiss this out of hand, which I think is incredibly dangerous. Okay, yes, Cernovich is a Nazi and almost certainly didn’t do this out of the goodness of his heart, but even a broken clock is right twice a day. It doesn’t change the fact that the tweets still exist and that they’re still incredibly offensive. And all the things I’ve heard people say in defence of James Gunn sound very similar to things the right would say about the likes of Brett Cavanaugh and Donald Trump. ‘It was x number of years ago.’ ‘It’s not relevant to who he is now.’ ‘He’s changed.’ ‘You can’t judge someone based on their past mistakes.’ I mean... come on guys! Either everyone should be held to the same standard or nobody should be held to standards at all. You can’t just change tact just because the person in question has the same political ideals as you. What are we saying? It’s okay for liberals to hold conservatives accountable for past actions and behaviour, but the right can’t do it to the left because apparently it’s not as funny when they do it? It’s classic ‘them and us’ mentality and it’s got to stop.

So, why am I bringing all this up, you may be asking? This happened over six months ago Quill. Aren’t you a little late to the party? Well a couple of days ago, it was announced that Warner Bros and DC Films had hired James Gunn to write and direct a sequel to Suicide Squad.

Well... sequel isn’t quite the right word. Apparently it’s more along the lines of a reimagining. Titled ‘The Suicide Squad’, the film is going to follow a whole new cast of characters and effectively start from scratch. No doubt this is part of WB and DC’s attempts to salvage the DC Extended Universe after the critical and financial disaster that was Justice League, as well as a response to people’s criticisms of the previous Suicide Squad film.

Writer/director David Ayer’s version of Suicide Squad was... let’s be charitable and call it problematic. Many people criticised the film for being misogynistic, borderline racist due to the one dimensional characterisation, and particular outrage was directed toward Ayer’s attempts to romanticise the relationship between the Joker and Harley Quinn. So it’s quite ironic that WB and DC are relying on James Gunn - James Gunn?!?! - to fix Suicide Squad when similar criticisms have been made toward the Guardians Of The Galaxy movies. That’s like hiring Harvey Weinstein to investigate sexual harassment claims.

And do you know what the funny thing is? We’ve been in this exact same situation before. In February 2017, news media started to report that WB and DC were eyeing Mel Gibson, the Oscar nominated director of Hawksaw Ridge and professional arsehole, to direct Suicide Squad 2. I even wrote a Scribble on it then. I heavily criticised WB and DC for caring more about snagging an Oscar nominated director to bolster their failing franchise than about holding certain ethical standards of decency within the industry. Oh, sure, Gibson has said many sexist, homophobic and antisemitic comments for years and has never at any point showed any hint of remorse for the amount of offence he’s caused, but he just made a good movie about Spider-Man fighting in World War II, so it all balances out, doesn’t it? We’re good, right? We’re cool. Gibson’s cool now. Yeah?

And now here we are seeing this play out again. James Gunn, a man who has said some incredibly offensive things over the years, is being hired by WB and DC to helm a new Suicide Squad movie and conveniently ignoring all the problematic shit surrounding him because he’s the guy that made those sci-fi films about the talking raccoon. People love those films. Let’s get him on board.

I’m getting so sick to death of actors and filmmakers getting away with shit and avoiding the consequences of their actions. James Gunn and his offensive tweets, Mel Gibson and his shitty behaviour, Kevin Hart and his temper tantrum when he was expected to apologise for being a homophobic prick. And the few times there are consequences for said actions, people of influence within the industry end up undermining it. WB and DC hiring James Gunn so soon after he was sacked by Disney, and Ellen fucking Degeneres ringing the Academy and persuading them to let Kevin Hart host the Oscars. Thankfully, and to his genuine credit, Hart turned it down, but seriously, what the actual fuck Ellen?! You’re LGBT, aren’t you? Why are you giving him a free pass? Do you have short term memory loss like the fish you voice in Finding fucking Nemo? Jesus Christ!

Finally, to people saying that Disney treated James Gunn too harshly for the tweets, may I remind you that when ‘The 50 Superheroes You Most Want To Have Sex With’ resurfaced in 2012, Disney still kept him on! He still got to write and direct two Marvel movies before finally getting the sack. And he was in talks to lead production in all future ‘Cosmic’ Marvel movies going forward before the resurfaced tweets made that impossible. Too harshly? I think he got off extremely lightly, frankly. I think he’s grotesquely lucky he’s still got a job at all. Let alone a job where he continues to direct tentpole blockbusters. For someone who was treated ‘too harshly’, he’s sure done alright for himself, hasn’t he? He’s not Oliver Twist begging movie studios to give him a film, cap in hand, ‘please sir, may I have some more?’ His position hasn’t changed one iota. That’s what we should be pissed off at. Not that he’s being unfairly punished. That he’s not being punished enough roughly seven years after the fact.

So what should we take away from all this? That we need to hold everyone accountable for their past actions and behaviour, regardless of whether they share our political beliefs or whether they were involved in films we actually like, and that the industry needs to do a better job of upholding the consequences of said actions. And regardless of whether you thought Disney were right to sack James Gunn, it cannot be denied that WB and DC handing the keys of another profitable franchise over to him so soon after this controversy is an incredibly irresponsible thing to do.

[bodycollects-blog]

since i have people who aren’t just my friends following me here now i figured i should put something on my rules page other than “adora is evil!!!!!!!!” dfhdmsfdkfh there’s just a few things and they’re very short:

adora is a villain. she is a highly abusive mother with munchausen by proxy syndrome. she is not a good person. there is a standing trigger warning here for child abuse, child death, and medical abuse. please be mindful of your own well-being and please do not follow if you will be triggered by this material!

i’m not interested in romanticizing or woobifying adora. i will, however, discuss her psychology, her motives, and her backstory, and i will address the way she herself has been a victim of abuse.

this blog is 18+ only. i would prefer that minors do not follow, and i will not interact with minors here in-character.

i will blend both show and book canon, but in many ways i lean toward the show, as i feel it’s a fuller portrait of events than the novel.

this is a low activity blog that should more or less be considered a sideblog.

i really, really, REALLY want to emphasize how okay it is to not follow me here if you’re a longtime friend or mutual from one of my other blogs. again, i don’t intend to be one of those ~✨uwu serial killers are valid uwu✨~ blogs but i’m going to be talking about disturbing shit in an in-depth way and if that’s too close to home? it’s okay to not want to be around it.

i will endeavor to write about adora and her abuse in a non-romantic, non-sympathetic way, and i will avoid fetishizing, excusing, or handwaving her actions in any respect. the only reason i say “i will endeavor” instead of “i will” is that i want people to feel free to come to me and talk to me and say “this is fucked up” if they feel i am failing in my goals. if you do know me from my other blogs you know (that is, i hope i’ve proven) i am wide open to criticism and discussion of my actions, and i will never, ever, ever be angry if you come to me and say “this is harmful and here’s why.”

[jcmorgenstern]

please rant about the second half of COLS and COHF

this ask opened pandora’s box, consume at your own peril

Basically…my biggest problems with the second half of COLS and COHF as a whole is really just…Jonathan as a character really, truly, utterly, and absolutely makes no sense on a very fundamental level. Like I really don’t say this lightly, I spent almost all of last summer trying to piece together a coherent characterization and eventually came to the conclusion that…there wasn’t one, at least that I could see.

(Readmore for length, heavy criticism of the work (obviously), and mention of canonical attempted rape).

So before I jump right in to providing evidence for that uhh slightly bold claim, I do want to acknowledge that Jonathan in COG totally makes sense, even if certain uhh incestuous aspects of his character do make my eyes roll back into my skull. To me, it always seemed a bit evident that the series was meant to end at COG, and the second half of the trilogy was sort of an ad hoc thing that happened after the series kept building popularity and there was demand from the fandom (and the publisher) for content. If taken alone, Jonathan’s character in COG is relatively self-consistent, and I’ve posted before (also at length….lol) about how Jonathan’s character in COG alone is actually a bit tragic, and it’s not until COLS that he truly makes a villainous turn off a cliff. Though the incest is, from the start, #a bit much, we all know that that’s just how CC novels go and, to some extent, ya just gotta roll with it.

The first half of COLS continues to be pretty exciting from a Sebastian Enthusiast perspective–in fact, for me, it’s really what made me fall in love/hate with the character and his portrayal to begin with. And some of the character work in the first half of COLS is actually pretty good!! We have the moral ambiguity of the Jace/Seb bond, Clary being unable to tell to what degree Sebastian in lying, the slightly random, wild, and jumbled snips of his character coming through (vampire threesome, vampire fetish, wearing Jace’s cologne??, fashion whore, messy bitch, shitty poetry writer?? it’s all free real estate) and then he lays out what could have been such an interesting plot!!

All the mentions of the increasing number of demons coming through to Earth is finally being used after being mentioned ad nausea for three whole books!! We’re set up for an interesting, shades of grey antagonist who thinks the ends justify the means and that sometimes a Wee Murder is needed to end an unjust regime (the Clave) without realizing that removing the Clave violently without any real and just alternative will create a power vacuum that invites even worse outcomes!! And the protagonists have to navigate slightly more complex moral issues than “genocide is bad, really!!”

And then…er, no. Like, really no. The entire book does a complete 180 and says no, all that (questionable) character development was a complete lie, all the human motivations you could possibly ascribe to the villain are bunk, he just wants to destroy the world. And not only that, he tries to rape Clary and….yeah no. (I’ll talk more about that later…I have a lot to say).

And for me that was really a massive disappointment. Like, to be clear: it wasn’t that I wanted Jonathan to be a pure uwu soft boi who did nothing wrong ™, or that he would be anything other than an antagonist. But like….a) rape. no. and b) I did sort of want his motivations OR his goal to sort of make sense and follow any sort of reason but honestly…they don’t.

The rationale CC tries to offer is that Jonathan doesn’t understand the meaning of love and wants to bend the world to his will so that it will love him instead. And like….that works to an extent, but then she also very clumsily attempts to make him a psychopath and…

Look.

If you’ve followed my blog for a while you know my feelings on poorly-written psychopath characters but…I’m gonna be real honest with ya here….a true psychopath is, with a very few fine exceptions like the entire population of high-security prisons, super fucking boring. They’re emotionally shallow, both internally and externally, and are usually driven by very grounded and unemotional goals. Winning a promotion. Attaining a position of power. Becoming a neurosurgeon. Having the best lawn in the zip code. “The psychopath next door” isn’t Hannibal Lecter, it’s your shitty boss or that one prick who calls the HOA on you for having your lawn one (1) millimeter over regulation.

And you know what? I’d take a story about Hannibal Lecter, lawn fascist. I’d maybe even take a story about Jonathan Morgenstern, shitty CEO, though honestly that sounds dangerously close to 50SOG so maybe not. Because if written well, the sensational serial-killer psychopath can be genuinely thrilling in fiction.

But honestly in this case?? It doesn’t work. Not even getting into the issue of “are signs and symptoms of psychopathy diagnostic in a child soldier” issue (pro tip: almost definitely not), why does he want to burn down the world? Why does he want to kill downworlders if he is basically one? How does he react to his father’s ideology? Does he even have a consistent ideology? Why doesn’t he stay at home playing Mario Kart?? If you can’t answer any of these questions, psychopath or no, anything he does is literally just not convincing and falls flat.

And now I’m going to segue into my “demon blood as a metaphor for child abuse” rant, which will hopefully segue into my “the demon army and ending of COHF is bullshit” rant, and maybe round it all up with my “you don’t have to have your villain graphically try to rape his sister to convince your audience of teenagers he’s a Bad Dude” rant.

So! Demon blood. So full disclosure, the scene in question is probably my actual favorite scene in COLS and the series at large, god knows why really, but it was actually pretty well-written as a hook for a thread that was totally dropped and never ever ever mentioned again. I’m talking about the scene where Jonathan asks Clary for a strength rune, and he tells her Valentine whipped him as a child with demon metal. His wounds will never heal, and serve as a reminder of the “perils of obedience” which is, quite possibly, the most chilling and interesting turn of phrase in the entire series.

And if you think about it, “wounds that will never heal but hurt constantly” are a pretty canny metaphor for the emotional abuse that shapes Jonathan and his ability (or lack thereof) to relate to others. Valentine never particularly loved or even cared for Jonathan, and used him as a child solider (drop me another ask if you want to know the rationale behind that one, kind of not a lot of space for that here) in his genocidal crusade, complete with brainwashing and pretty obvious physical and emotional abuse. That stays with him, twists the way he views love and truth, and leaves him with a permanently negative view of self and worldview that he doesn’t seem to put much effort into overcoming. To be clear: being abused doesn’t make you evil. But in the absence of love and support and positive role models to help you unlearn things, anger and pain can twist even good motives into bad actions, and lbr, Jonathan doesn’t have an over-abundance of good motives. The real peril of obedience is never questioning what you’re told.

But of course it’s never mentioned again, so like, fuck me or whatever.

The show does a better job of it, and almost directly links Jonathan being Like That to what Valentine, Jocelyn, and Lilith did to him and…does a pretty good job of not woobifying him or dismissing his pain. Him having demon blood is almost completely uncoupled from him being “evil” (or, more accurately, doing evil or cruel things) and is instead his responsibility. What makes him “incapable of love” is that he was never shown love, and what makes him violent and cruel is that he was only ever taught violence and cruelty.

But in the books demon blood is definitely intended a metaphor for psychopathy. “He had the humanity burned out of him because of his demon blood” “he’s incapable of love because of his demon blood”…you get the picture. But considering she honestly doesn’t really hit psychopathy and (to me) pings in more at ASPD (antisocial personality disorder, the DSM-V approved version of psychopathy, with some MAJOR and important differences in diagnostic criteria) or NPD (narcissistic personality disorder), I sort of…don’t like how demon blood is directly used as a metaphor for mental illness. And once the demon blood is gone…poof! so is his “evil” so uhh yall read between the lines with me on that one.

(If you want a rant on why I think book Jonathan fits better with ASPD or NPD than psychopathy, drop me an ask, but god please consider the consequences. Also, I generally don’t feel comfortable “”diagnosing”” villains for the hell of it, but in this case since the canon itself has already Gone There and I’d be operating mostly off the DSM, I’d feel slightly less shitty about it).

Anyway. So what I deeply, passionately, truly hate about COHF is the ending, when the demon blood is burned out of Poor Green-Eyed Jonathan and There Is Not Enough Good In Him So He McFucking Dies. What fucking enrages me about this is like…the ENTIRE series is about how “blood doesn’t equal morality” EXCEPT in the case of this one guy apparently because fuck him and fuck consistency!! Also on a slightly different tack it completely erases all culpability of him as a person and like….what, “the demon blood made me do it” is now a viable excuse?? what the fuck. no. what the fuck. also what does “not enough good in him” even MEAN in the context of someone who LITERALLY DESCENDED HIS MOTHER’S BIRTH CANAL THAT WAY oh my god its??? so fucking stupid and the philosophical implications ENRaGE me especially like.,,,as a geneticist….we kind of had a wee run-in with that kind of thinking….it was called “eugenics” you may have heard of it….G OD !!!

Also that doesn’t even get into the contradictory nature of Jonathan’s actual characterization (I use the term loosely) itself like…sometimes his dialogue reads almost like Jace’s, but by the end of COHF he literally quotes Jesus Christ (render unto Caesar’s what is Caesar’s), says “FOOLS!!11!!1!” like….literally once a page, I think at some point dips into vaguely Shakespearean English while violently whiplashing into whatever “ ‘You’re insane,’ said Simon. ‘You’re dead,’ said Sebastian” is?? and is overall an editor’s literal worst nightmare. There is NOTHING driving this character other than pure, unrestrained literary chaos, and absolutely nothing he does or says seems to make a hell of a lot of sense and is designed purely #4 the evulz. It’s just so painfully cartoonish that it physically pains me to read it and yet, here I am, holding the physical (hardback) copy that I own, reading it, and physically shuddering jesus CHRIST

(You did uh, definitely ask for a rant, right?)

OH yeah uhh and to round it all off…the “you don’t have to have your villain graphically try to rape his sister to convince your audience of teenagers he’s a Bad Dude” rant:

Look my friends there’s nothing wrong with Clebastian but there is definitely something wrong with rape and lbr: there’s a lot of it written into this character and his relationship with his SISTER and fuckign thanks!! I absolutely hate it. Apparently, when asked why she chose to include the graphic attempted rape scene in COLS, CC apparently said she “wanted to make sure the audience knew he was beyond saving.”

Look.

Look.

When a guy builds a demon army to obliterate the world and everyone in it, I generally get bad vibes. Worse vibes, in fact, than from a guy who tried to rape his sister, though that’s pretty fuCKING bad. The point is, there is absolutely no fucking reason to do that. Seriously, there’s not. And when your entire NYT bestselling fanfic series is based on the incest fetish HP fanfiction, it’s?? proBABly not the best idea to like…include an attempted rape scene between two siblings in a work that already has a lot of UST between presumed or actual siblings because people WILL talk and.,,,can u blame them lol

On a more serious note…female protagonists are so often forced to undergo rape or sexual humiliation as part of a narrative (or worse, for titillation of the viewers–looking at you, GOT and also yeah lbr COLS). Even in the show, which has definitely improved on some weaknesses in the original narrative, Clary is nearly raped by a demon in order to awaken her rune powers. That’s disgusting, honestly, and unnecessary, and you know what? Luke Skywalker didn’t have to face a rape threat to get his powers, and neither should a female counterpart. The show didn’t even ADDRESS this later, or even bring it up at all, and that’s even more upsetting, and part of why I don’t have faith in the WR to bring the concept of a Jonathan-Clary bond in 3b to life in a way that doesn’t make me want to curl up into my epidermis like a chrysalis and never emerge again. (See also: Lilith’s unaddressed sexual assault of Jace, and Camille’s equally unaddressed assault of Simon).

And what bothers me almost more than all this is…it’s not like Jonathan’s creepiness is subtle. He constantly invades Clary’s personal space, makes comments she’s uncomfortable with, puts her in situations she doesn’t like. You could leave it there and I guarantee most of your readership (especially your female/female-aligned readers) will INSTANTLY pick up on the fact that this guy is Bad News and you know what?? Clary isn’t subjected to that bs for….the heck of it?? Not that subtlety is ever the strong point of this series but like…that’s a huge glaring issue and one I can never overlook, and why I’ve honestly chosen to basically Ignore Canon And Do Whatever The Fuck I Want.

In summary: Jonathan was basically shoed in as a) a half-assed foil to Jace and b) a plot device/fix and c) fodder for more incest after Jace and Clary were no longer brother and sister and tbh?? Not entirely here for it.

tldr: jonathan morgenstern is a dumb bitch and no one is valid, more at 9.