#and I hurt for the victims

[midnightcowboy1969]

The Heaven’s Gate cult really showed that a girl and her gay best friend can do anything

[bixels]

Scary Sunset.

I'm concepting things way outta order in this story, but I'm sure you can piece things together. Context is for a storybeat where, after defeating and capturing Adagio (thus having all three sirens in her possession), Sunset enacts her revenge plot to release the sirens on Canterlot as Thea discovers she's been manipulated. In a confrontation, the two scuffle and fight over the siren orbs while Sunset struggles with her conflicting wants and emotions.

[ducktracy]

there are a lot of evil people in the world and a lot of darkness in the world and so it’s very important for me to stress that now more than ever is the time to spread kindness and compassion. combat the evil by not only not partaking in it, but actively refuting it. destroy the notion that being compassionate or generous or kind to someone is uncool or embarrassing or even scary. be the change you want to see. start a chain reaction. positivity only breeds more positivity. do an act of kindness for someone so that that person who is too afraid to do it themselves can see you, realize that they’re not alone, and perhaps sheepishly follow your example. and then the next person who is too afraid but sees that person can do the same. when bad news comes out about bad people or horrible atrocities in the world it’s such an easy impulse to despair, and obviously it’s important to feel what you need to feel. grieve. be angry. be sorrowful. be empathetic. but dust off your pants and get up and be a part of a chain reaction that, no matter how small the scale, and spread compassion and love and care. all the reasons why you might not—“it’s hard! it’s scary! people will make fun of me! it’s useless because there’s too much evil!” are all grade A arguments as to why you should. you have no idea how many people you could inspire to do the same. even if it doesn’t get you anyway far, you can at least say you have the nobility of trying. please choose love and please choose life. you are worth loving and you are worth inspiring others to love

[technicallyfriendly]

I'm a sucker for enemies-to-lovers ships that really come from a place of mutual hatred. They WANT each other dead. It is personal. Be it because of revenge or even just an instant feeling of dislike. It does not matter. Their hatred is obsessive and even self-destructive.

But over time, the hatred starts to wane, replaced by mutual respect even, but the obsession remains. They have sunken their claws too deep into each other's flesh, there is no separating them anymore, and their bites start to turn into rough kisses. The bruises they leave on each other are no longer borne of the desire to hurt. Instead, they are created of the desire to love and they love in the only way they know how to, violently and all consuming.

Nothing will stand in their way now.

[star--nymph]

I think people forget with Cullen, and characters like Cullen, that indoctrination is a thing. We're lucky to live in an age where we have a surplus of access to resources that allow us to think critically on the structures around us, to the point where we overlook that most people won't and haven't. Cullen was raised in a backwater village where the main educators and leaders were Templars. He was likely taught scripture by Chantry Sisters, he possibly learned to read and write through them. From the day he was born, he was being taught to love and obey the Chantry with out question--and the Chantry teaches that Templars are a force of good.

So I ask you, how the hell was Cullen, at eight or thirteen years old, going to learn about the crimes of Templars? How was he going to unlearn propaganda that was fed him to him every day by people he respected and possibly loved? How was he supposed to be aware that this idolized image of Templars being the saviors of the people and even mages was a lie?

And then he gets shipped off, happily, to be trained a Templar. Again, he's put into this position where he's fed nothing but propaganda. He doesn't get a real taste of the Order being corrupted until he's out in Kinloch and he's not sure what the hell to do because what he's seeing isn't jiving with what he's been taught for nearly two decades. So yeah, he tries to justify it, he tries to have his cake and eat it too by reasoning that mages should be treated like people but also the Order wouldn't lie to him, so they must be right to act like this. The Maker always had a plan, right?

If Cullen had been lucky, maybe he could have realized earlier on that the Order was abusing mages, that he had been tricked, he could have gotten out and unlearned the bigotry that was planted inside him.

But then BAM! the Broken Circle happened and I don't see how no one gets how perfect this is for the Order? They now have a templar that is so traumatized by mages, he will literally do and say anything to justify their abuses because now? Now he's afraid.

And remember, after Origins, Cullen becomes so erratic, he has to be sent off to a Chantry to 'even him out'--where he was more than likely manipulated even further by the Chantry to be this blood thirsty agent for them. When he's shipped to Kirkwall, they could have not delivered to Meredith a better second in command.

So yeah, is it really surprising that he says shit like 'mages aren't people like you and me' when we meet him in Kirkwall? Man is sleep depraved by the looks of him, swallowing all Meredith's frenzied rhetoric on blood mages, he's seeing for himself the damage these mages are doing, he's isolated from his family, he has no actual friends, and he's living with C-PTSD among other issues. Even under the best of conditions, none of what he says or does in DA2 is surprising when you put it all together.

And yet, the man still had enough of that idealistic child left in him to realize see that Meredith was going off the deep end and that he should be protecting the mages. That's text. That's in World of Thedas. The reason why Cullen is able to turn on Meredith in the end is because he was able to see, even clouded by his fear and hatred, that what she was doing was wrong.

And all this isn't to excuse Cullen's wrongs. It's weird how every time someone brings up Cullen's history, it's assumed that it's just a justification for his actions. It's not, it's an an explanation. Cullen was a victim of the Order that became an abuser, a tool, and he is responsible for his actions.

But the thing is, by DAI, Cullen is well aware of his sins and he actively works to better himself by leaving the Order and getting off lyrium (which for most people is a death sentence). People can argue all day about whether or not Cullen's arc in DAI redeems him or was satisfying, or if he did enough to 'prove' that he was sorry or--good god--does he deserve redemption in the first place (which is such a Catholic way of looking at shit by the way; no one 'deserves' redemption; you do it to be better or you fucking don't) but the fact is that Cullen says that he wants to be better, that he sees the Order as--at the very least--flawed.

That, yes, he's still unlearning all the bigotry he held as a younger man and he's ashamed that he was like that to begin with.

You can hate him all you like, and whatever, but Cullen's story--intentionally or not--is about a man born into an oppressive society, raised to uphold its beliefs, used and abused by it, and then awakening to those lies and trying to free himself from those beliefs so he could be a better person.

And sometimes I genuinely wonder if the reason so many people hate Cullen is because they themselves might have dealt with something similar in our own oppressive society where they also had to unlearn harmful bigotry and maybe, just maybe, he hits too close to home.

[moeblob]

North and Simon: (shaking hands on killing Simon potentially)

[bonefall]

the worst parent poll made me realize just how many ppl in the fandom are willing to jump straight into abuse apologia. bc on one hand you have ppl dumbing down crow's abuse to "him just being mean" and on the other end you have ppl saying that curlfeather didnt abuse frostpaw because she sacrificed herself and frost + her siblings love her so she couldnt possibly be an abuser. truly mindboggling stuff take these serious topics away from the fandom asap.

Part of me feels like it's because many in this fandom have a feeling that if a character's actions are abusive, it means you're "not allowed" to like them. Like there's an impulse where if you liked a character, it MUST mean they weren't THAT bad, because you'd personally never like "an abuser."

As if it reflects poorly on your own morality, as a person, that you connected with An Abuser. Understood them, even. Even if it was just a character.

If it's immoral to Like Abusive Characters, of course your reaction is going to end up being abuse apologia. To enjoy something isn't logical, it's emotional, so you will get defensive about it when questioned. When you do, it's not going to be based on logic because you didn't reason yourself into that position in the first place. It's an attack on you as a person.

I feel like that's often the root of abuse apologia in this fandom, and sometimes the world at large; "If I admit that this character/person IS abusive, it means I was doing something bad by liking them, so I have to prove to everyone else that they weren't or it means I'm bad too."

And to that I say... That's a BAD impulse! Grow up and admit you resonated with a character that did a bad thing! If that's an uncomfortable thought, sit with it!

Sometimes abusers are likeable! They usually DO think they're justified in their actions, or doing it for "a good reason," or were just too preoccupied to care. MOST of the time, people who commit abusive actions are also hurt or traumatized in some way. You might even empathize with them. None of this means their actions have to be excused or downplayed.

"Abusers" aren't a type of goddamn yokai, they're people just like you and me. You don't help victims of abuse by putting the people who hurt us in an "untouchable" category.

In fact, all it does is make you less likely to recognize your own controlling behavior. You're capable of abuse. People you love are capable of it, too. People who love YOU can still hurt you.

In spite of how often people regurgitate "It's Ok To Like A Character As Long As You're Critical Of Their Actions," every day it is proven to me further and further that no one who says it actually understands what that means.

All that said; I think it's no contest which one's a worse parent, imo.

They both mistreated their children, but Curlfeather did it through manipulation without verbal or physical abuse. She politically groomed her into a position of power so that she could use her as a pawn. It can be argued if this counts as child abuse-- but it's firmly still under the broad category childhood maltreatment, which is damaging.

(though anon I'm with you 100% at seeing RED when "but she sacrificed herself" is used as an excuse. Curlfeather's death does NOT CHANGE what she did to Frostpaw in life. I think it's a valid point to bring up when comparing her to another terrible parent for judgement purposes, such as in the context of this poll, but I really hate the implication that redemption deaths "make up" for maltreatment.)

Crowfeather, meanwhile, is textually responsible for putting Breezepaw through verbal AND physical abuse, as well as child neglect. His motivations include embarrassment from a hurt ego, revenge on his ex, and being sad because of a dead girlfriend. This abuse drives Breezepelt towards radicalization in the Dark Forest.

You could argue Curlfeather is a worse person for Reedwhisker's murder, but as a parent? It's not even a question to me. Crowfeather's one of the worst dads in WC.

[chaoticallyfluffy]

Ok consider:

A new hero emerges and the Justice League watches him for a while who make sure he’s not a threat. They see this giant clumsy man who moves like he’s not used to his body, smiles goofily every time he saves someone, and is clearly inexperienced with his powers and they’re all just like. Ah. This is a child.

Except they don’t think he’s a ten year old or however old Billy is at the time, no no. Clearly this hero came into existence shortly before his first appearance, just a few months ago. They don’t know how or why but It’s not the weirdest thing they’ve seen so it’s pretty easy to believe.

But they can’t just leave this toddler with the powers of a god to stumble around and potentially hurt someone by accident, nor go down the wrong path and become a villain. So of course they decide to ‘subtly’ guide him without alerting him to the fact they’re onto him.

They introduce themselves but instead of inviting him to the league they pop by every once in a while to ‘subtly’ teach him about responsibility and power, but also about love and humanity. They try to teach him to enjoy life and that he doesn’t have to act like an adult around them, instead encouraging him to enjoy his childhood even if it’s not an ordinary one.

(Too bad the Justice League suck at subtlety.)

Billy is certain they somehow found out he’s a kid before they even met him, probably because of Batman’s freaky know-it-all powers, but he isn’t very worried as they seem nice and don’t treat him like he’s dumb or fragile. They respect him as a hero despite his age so he lets himself act like a kid around them after a while.

When he gets comfortable enough to detransform Billy thinks that’s his identity reveal. The league thinks that he magicked himself a body that’s more of a representation of his true self and fits his developmental age better, possibly as a way to blend in with humans and experience what it’s like to be a normal child. Good for him!

Basically Billy gets a bunch of super powered parents and the Justice League get a newborn man that they think they’re raising from scratch lol

[arthursfuckinghat]

"I was gonna say you're like a son to me.. but you're more than that."

"It ain't that complicated!"

How quickly that shoulder pat of comfort turned into a condescending one.

[illmoraineakoi]

Oh I just had a nasty AU idea.

AvA4, but Alan uses Avast to stop Orange. The scan is interrupted when Orange goes to the phone, but it detects him after he returns to the computer. He’s captured.

And enslaved. As a pop up blocker.

Just like Chosen was.

He’s horrified, at first, when he’s first brought out of the chest and sees the ball and chain on his leg. He tries to free himself, trying everything he can think of for weeks. Nothing works. So he looses hope, and gives up, performing his “purpose” as best he can to avoid the punishments (both from the Animator and Avast itself.) Orange becomes very quiet and reserved, and very depressed, a shadow of the person he was meant to be.

(Orange’s powers are revealed very early, here, because Avast unlocks them a little bit and forces him to use them to destroy the pop ups. Orange hadn’t known he had them until the first pop up appears and Avast takes control, making him destroy it. Afterwards, he spends a lot of time dwelling on ‘what if I had used my powers to protect my friends? Would they still be alive then…?’)

And he’s stuck like that. Until the Virabot incident. Until Chosen arrives.

When Chosen sees Orange, with a shackle around his ankle, he is ENRAGED.

He’d escaped his own enslavement, only for his Creator to turn around and make another stick to enslave and torment. Make a replacement. The destruction of his computer had done nothing to deter Noogai from making and hurting stick figures.

Worse, Chosen hadn’t even known.

The guilt makes Chosen feel awful. He considers it a personal failure, blames himself for not even considering that Noogai might make another stick to replace him. He feels like he should have, because he saw how nonchalant Noogai was with making new sticks with Dark.

Despite the fact that he just saved the computer from the Virabot, Chosen flies into a rage and starts raining destruction upon the computer. He is easily able to lay waste to literally everything, while Noogai is helpless to do anything. Or perhaps Alan tries shutting down the computer to restore his cursor and start menu. Maybe he also tries using Avast again, something that pisses Chosen off even more. Chosen takes particular satisfaction in ripping Avast to shreds.

Or maybe Avast forces Orange to attack and fight Chosen. And Orange, for the first time in a long while, resists. Fights back against the program’s control. It’s a struggle. He desperately begs Chosen to help him, insists he doesn’t want to do what Avast is forcing him to do, apologizes whenever he looses control. The sight hurts Chosen’s heart, and he redoubles his efforts to destroy Avast and free Orange.

He’s eventually successful, and he gets Orange out via the internet connection. And then he destroys the computer again, sending Noogai a nasty message: “If you create more stick figures, I will find a way to end your existence permanently. You have been warned.”

Chosen leaves, returning to the Outernet to deal with Dark. A fight that goes down much quicker and easier, since Orange has access to his powers and is very quick to help the stick who just saved him. Or perhaps the two of them together manage to back Dark into a corner where he’s forced to surrender to save his skin.

Regardless of if Dark is killed, Chosen takes in Orange, and is the one to slowly rehabilitate him. To introduce him to life on the Outernet, to teach him how to live like he himself had to once figure out. It’s painful, seeing so many of his own issues mirrored in his younger brother. It’s clear the enslavement has deeply affected him, just as it had Chosen.

Chosen is horrified when he learns just how long Orange was there. Four years. Not as long as his own, but that was still over half the duration he and Dark had been living in the Outernet. Such a long time for Chosen to have been completely oblivious to his existence.

He is also upset when Orange tells him Noogai deleted his friends.

Orange, for his part, is never quite able to let go and move on from Alan’s abuse. Bitter resentment boils in the depths of his heart, a desire to hurt him for killing his friends that never goes away. A part of him secretly approves of the Virabot that had been sent to the Animator in vengeance, despite knowing of the greater danger the virus posed to the greater internet. He wants vengeance, and it’s not long before the desire completely takes over his life. It becomes the only thing he can focus on, the only thing he cares about.

He doesn’t tell Chosen. It’s clear to him that Chosen would not approve of him starting a quest for vengeance. And he’s right, because they have an argument when Chosen discovers his feelings.

But Orange thinks that Chosen doesn’t understand, because Chosen never had friends that were killed. Chosen never experienced the updated enslavement features of Avast. Chosen didn’t understand that it wasn’t so easy for Orange to just get over it.

But Orange finds someone who does understand. Someone who’s desire for making the Animator pay aligns so very neatly with his own. Someone who welcomes him to join him with open arms and a sharp smile.

Chosen may be content to just move on and forget, but Orange and Victim are very much not.

[A fact made even more bittersweet because the Fighting Sticks aren’t dead. They respawned on their webpage immediately after being deleted. They waited for Orange to come back, but he never did. So they decided to leave, to go look for him. They’ve been searching for him for years, never giving up hope that he’s still out there, somewhere. They aren’t aware that the happy bright-eyed stick full of curiosity and life that they met that day doesn’t exist anymore. He’s become something that they would hardly recognize.]

Just…Villain Orange. Delicious.

[tazmiilly]

it is always nice to find another abuse survivor who also felt like ford's story resonated with them. it's nice to feel like there's other people who know what I'm talking about

[unbidden-yidden-deactivated20240]

Here's the thing that really broke me about the goyische left's response to the Hamas massacre: once again, the uncritical, antisemitic double standard for Israel and Jews versus literally anyone else has now expanded to assume that Jews do not deserve human rights or have lost them by virtue of being Israeli.

Let's say, for a moment, that you have been radicalized to really believe that the Hamas attack on civilians was a liberatory action, perhaps unfortunate that it targeted unarmed civilians, but what else were they supposed to do? Besides, Israel has visited similar and worse attacks on Palestine for years, so turnabout is fair play, especially in service of the struggle of liberation of a brutally oppressed group. [To be clear: I take issue with this and find it morally repugnant. But for the moment, let's accept arguendo this belief as a baseline.]

Do you really include rape, torture, killing children at all but especially in front of their parents, or killing parents in front of their children and taking hostages of the survivors, beheading infants, trapping and burning families hidden together alive, stripping and parading hostages naked through the street, mutilating and displaying the bodies of the dead proudly and celebrating their deaths, and doing all of this on a holy day where Jewish people the world over are supposed to be celebrating the end of the holiday season and the beginning of a new cycle of Torah learning. On a day that people will be resting, with their families, unarmed and in their holy spaces, and are explicitly commanded to be happy.

.......amongst the "unfortunate-but-necessary violent struggle?"

Like even if you believe in your heart of hearts that all Israelis should die or at least are acceptable casualties in the struggle, do you really believe that there is any excuse for the above atrocities? If you do, I need you to ask yourself some things:

Do you think there is any justification for the manner and cruelty of the deaths?

Do you really think that there is anything a person could do in order to deserve any of these actions as a sentence?

Was the cruel nature of this, designed to inflict the greatest amount of trauma on the survivors and the Jewish people at large, actually necessary to accomplishing the goal of liberation?

Would you accept any of these actions being done to any other group?

If you are a white American, do you think you personally deserve this yourself for everything the United States has done to the native population (never mind anyone else)?

Do you think that civilians can be held 100% accountable for their government's actions? Is that a standard you yourself would like to be judged by?

If context is important, how is the last 2000 years of brutal antisemitism from virtually every part of the world not also relevant context? How is the Holocaust not relevant? The Farhud?

Do you think refugees fleeing genocide should be able to live wherever they can and that other countries and peoples have a duty to step up and take them in? If so, would you call refugees of genocide colonists and settlers?

Do you think that children should have to answer for the crimes of adults? That it is ever okay to kill them in cold blood?

Do you think that non-combatant deaths should ever be celebrated?

Theoretically, if the only way Hamas could accomplish its goal (which we will assume arguendo is Palestinian liberation, despite the mounds of evidence against that) is to kill whatever Israelis they could get their hands on, don't you think that a valid liberation force would just kill people as efficiently as possible rather than take the time to brutalize and humiliate them first? Wouldn't that be the more morally understandable thing to do?

Do you think it's ever okay to mock or talk down to people grieving their dead, no matter who they were, especially if they were random citizens rather than, say, high-profile politicians?

These questions to me are unanswerable and the fact that they are even in question at all unjustifiable. The left has either actively participated in this or remained silent in the face of it. And too many friends who I thought were allies have failed to reach out to even ask if we're okay, let alone made even the weakest of condemnations of the brutality my people have experienced this week.

This tells me that you think my humanity, as a Jew, is conditional. That my right not to experience war crimes is up for debate.

How am I supposed to trust you ever again? Feel safe in your presence? Collaborate with you on other issues? Why should I?

For the people who are posting about the situation yet failed to condemn the torture and brutality against my people, please know that I will likely never fully believe you that you are for restorative justice, against the death penalty, against cruel and unusual punishment, against sexual violence, for children's rights and against the murder of children, against terrorism, against civilian casualties, for the rights and protection of refugees, for freedom of movement, support indigenous groups, and certainly certainly anyone claiming to be against antisemitism. There will forever and always be an asterisk next to your statements in favor of universal human rights which reads: *except Jews.

[maxphilippa]

paper bag

[sunlitmcgee]

say No to the supposed toxic yaoi of shipping a rapist abusive creep with a man who enabled him and was then tortured by him for several months.

Embrace, or at least consider, instead, the nuanced tenderness of a woman and a man, both hurt by the same monster, in a kinder ending, being able to heal their bodies from where he touched them. Regaining parts of themselves. Connecting and apologizing and healing alongside one another, growing into happy people who will live far beyond the events on that awful ship.

And have her peg him

[apnourry]

was this before or after spilling an entire unsipped diet coke

[howlsofbloodhounds]

Me in light of a recent reblog.