#and his less palatable actions? are never even his own original thought lol

[fideidefenswhore]

It completely makes sense that you forgot it was an internal narrative… mainly because all his opinions of everyone are affirmed by those close to them.

i don’t actually mind iterations of AB where she’s ‘mean’ (…again, whatever the fuck that means in the 16c); but i really do reject portrayals where she’s completely devoid of warmth. unfortunately for me, one of them has remained #1 prestige ‘blueprint’ tudor drama since 2012 😭

[kinetic-elaboration]

February 13: Star Trek Beyond

Some attempted thoughts on Star Trek Beyond.

So first it was bad lol. It is the worst. I thought maybe it would be less the worst than I had previously thought but it really, really is just irredeemably bad.

Trying to keep up with what was actually happening and talk in the group chat was too difficult and I now feel very exhausted lol. And I’m not even sure what I watched.

I liked Jaylah a lot, including her back story, characterization, “house,” traps, and cool mirror tricks.

I also like Kirk in that emergency uniform with the jacket unzipped.

That’s it! That’s all I liked.

In the past I’ve also said I liked the Spock and Bones parts but I honestly wasn’t a fan of them either this time around!

None of the characters felt IC and none of the relationships felt true or were compelling. Which is particularly egregious given that the alleged theme was strength in unity.

The movie was especially lacking in K/S content or even K & S interaction, which obviously didn’t please me. And it’s definitely the worst Kirk characterization I’ve ever seen. There’s no excuse for that either because it’s halfway through the 5YM, which means he should be pretty close to TOS Kirk--yes, he has a different set of experiences, so there’s going to be some variation, but there’s comparatively less excuse for a radically different characterization than in STXI and STID. They should have had Shatner read the script and make notes lol because whatever else you might say about him he KNOWS Captain Kirk.

Like, he (Kirk) lacked humor and charm and, often, confidence. He had moments when he was very smart and moments when he had a commanding presence. But he had just as many moments when he was whiny or bored and his Captain’s log??? I deserve financial compensation for every time I’ve listened to that. Bored of space?? No, this man is bored when he’s stuck on Earth. He stagnates in desk jobs. He is an adventurer and explorer before he’s ANYTHING else; if you don’t get that, you don’t need to be writing Star Trek.

Also, as I have frequently complained, I’m tired of him having no internal conflict or emotional complexity past his father issues. First reboot movie: dealing with his dead father’s memory and his step-father’s abuse. Fine, that makes sense for how they set up the AU. Second reboot movie: entirely motivated by the need for Manly Vengeance upon the person who killed his father figure. And for this redundant story line (in many sense) we had to lose Pike? Third reboot movie: you’d think he’d finally be ready to move on to other conflicts but actually no this time he’s sad about his birthday and having a longer life span than his...you guessed it!! father!! Yet again.

What else has ever motivated him? Legitimate question.

The destruction of the Enterprise was truly horrific. Long, boring, unwarranted, and without any emotional punch. As if it were just any ship! No, she’s a character in her own right and she’s not to be sacrificed like that but please tell me again how Simon Pegg is a true fan who brought the franchise back to its roots?

B said he did like that they split up the crew into unusual units but I have mixed feelings about it. I don’t entirely disagree, but I don’t think they did a lot that was interesting with any of those separated units. Uhura and Sulu are a cool pair (but this would have been a good opportunity to include Sulu’s semi-canonical crush on Uhura but whatever... a different rant) and they almost did some interesting stuff with them. There were glimmers of a caper in that story line and times when I could tell they were straining especially hard to make Uhura, their Sole Female Main--now that they cut out Rand, Chapel, and even Carol Marcus--into something Feminist and Interesting. But it didn’t quite gel for me. Like, Uhura would be having almost interesting dialogue with the villain and holding her own...and then she loses track of her colleague and has to watch that person die, thus undercutting everything she just said about unity and seeming to prove the villain’s point. Is she competent or not?

Bones and Spock are a pair I care about and like but again I think their canonical relationship in TOS is more interesting than STB showed. I personally read them as like...reluctant best friends who originally just had one person in common, and then realized they also like each other too, but they’ll never really say it. They understand each other but pretend not to. They have fun with the barbs they throw at each other. They both deeply love Jim but in different ways. They enjoy their intellectual debates. (That’s one thing that was definitely missing from them here! The intellectual debates!) So again, there was something there but not enough.

And Kirk and Chekov just happened to land near each other; nothing was done with that relationship per se. They really aren’t people who have much of a relationship in TOS so there’s not a lot to work off of but then on the other hand there IS an opportunity to create something new. Maybe I’m being too harsh and too vague but it just didn’t gel for me. The only specific K and C moment I remember was that supremely un-funny joke about Kirk’s aim as he sets off the “wery large bomb.”

But like there are possibilities.. they’re both pretty horny and Chekov is a whiz kid and Kirk is also very smart and has always been smart... Like in other words people Chekov’s age don’t end up on the bridge crew, in either ‘verse, without the Captain’s say, so even though he’s TOS!Spock’s and AOS!Scotty’s protege, Kirk is important to his life. Something with that maybe??

I’m upset that Spock’s individual story line was about whether or not he should go off and make baby Vulcans because, again as I have complained many times before, that was a conflict he faced and resolved in ten minutes two movies ago, and it doesn’t make sense to me for him to bring it up again now just because the Ambassador is dead. Like... the Ambassador told him to stay in Starfleet!! “Ah, yes, I will honor him by doing precisely the opposite of what he wanted me to do.”

Also--if they had made his motivation different or gone into it more, I would have been more into it. Make it about New Vulcan! Say there’s news from New Vulcan that it’s not doing well. Or what if T’Pring got in contact with him? Or what if we used this as an excuse to bring in Sarek?

This is part of a larger point for me which is that STXI set up a really cool AU and STID tried to do something with it--a little hit or miss, but it tried--and instead of pushing even more at the AU and developing it more and doing more with it... STB just ignored it! Was that part of what Paramount was warning about with making it “not too Star Trek-y?” Was it SUPPOSED to be a movie you could watch without having seen the last two? If so they did succeed but like.. .why? They made the supremely ballsy move of blowing up a founding Federation planet two movies ago and now they’ve just forgotten about that and all the reverberations that would necessarily have?

But of course we got a call back to Kirk being a Beastie Boys fan so.... Guess it was Deep all along.

We all three agreed that the core story of this film was potentially interesting but could have been done as a 50-some minute episode of a TV series rather than a whole-ass 2 hour movie. First off, cutting or cutting down the action sequences would have shaved off half an hour easily.

I’m frustrated in large part because there are certain things that are interesting here. I do like the concept of the crew being pulled on to an alien planet by a ship of former Federation crew, from the early days of the Federation/deep space flight, who were presumed missing but are somehow still alive because they have turned into aliens/used alien tech to prolong life, and who have also captured other aliens, like Jaylah, for the main crew to interact with. All of that was cool.

I would even be okay with these old Federation crew being villains but I don’t think that’s necessary or even the most interesting take.

But...first of all, as my mom pointed out, Krall was basically Nero in his illogical motivations: feeling aggrieved because someone who couldn’t help him didn’t help him and then just maniacally wanting revenge. It made more sense to me with Nero in a way. Maybe that was because he was better characterized, maybe it was because his anger was more personal (the loss of his wife), maybe--probably--it was because he was angry at Spock and Spock had actually promised to help, so there was some kernel of logic in his sense of betrayal, even if it was out of proportion etc. Also, Nero’s mania was portrayed as mania--we were all supposed to recognize that the strength of his emotion was warranted but his logic was deeply flawed. I think we were supposed to think Krall had some kinda... real criticism of the Federation, but in fact he doesn’t! He’s wrong! So like if he’d been angry with the Federation for abandoning him but the narrative and the other characters explicitly recognize that he’s wrong--the Federation tried but he was just doing something very dangerous and he recognized that danger on signing on--that might have been more palatable to me.

I’m not sure I’m making sense here entirely or explaining myself as well as I could.

I just don’t entirely get Krall’s beef with the Federation. I don’t get that whole “being a soldier and having conflict makes you strong and having people you can rely on and connections and community makes you weak.” That seems pretty obviously false. It also doesn’t really seem, not that I’m an expert, but particularly in line with military ethos either.

BUT the idea that he had a life that was comfortable to him as a soldier and then the Federation comes in and forms Starfleet and says, actually, we’re going to pull back on the soldiering and up the diplomacy and the exploration and the science--yeah, I could see that. I DO think Starfleet is military but even if you must insist it’s not, it’s clearly based on and formed from the military, and it has certain military functions. So obviously the first people to join or be folded into Starfleet probably were more explicitly military.

So he’s one of those people. Now he’s supposed to be a scientist and a diplomat and an explorer and he doesn’t like that. He’s given this very prestigious and interesting mission and jumps at it. Starfleet warns him, you might go beyond where we can reach, we might not be able to help you. That’s fine. But then when his ship is stranded and he is lost, he gets angry--maybe somewhat irrationally, but understandably--why?? Why did the Federation do this to him? What was even the point? When he put himself in danger before, at least he knew why. But just flying around space for the hell of it, and this is the cost? So that’s what creates his anger.

I thin this could be tied into Kirk’s diplomacy at the beginning--if the scene were written to not be a comedy bit where Kirk looks like an incompetent buffoon and is completely disrespectful the whole time. He’s good at this job and we should say it. But we could emphasize that this IS a diplomatic mission often, just as often as it’s a military or scientific mission. Maybe we could include other bits of their missions, too, to play up the variety of things they do and roles they play.

Another thing I think could be interesting, going back to my point about Spock, Vulcan, and using the first two movies and expanding on the world building... what if Spock wanted to leave Starfleet for better, more well-defined reasons, and we used that? Paralleled the two? Connected the two?

Because I think Vulcan in the AOS verse is very interesting and the movies didn’t do nearly enough with it. First, we have the Romulans showing up way earlier, at least visibly: in TOS, no one knew what they looked like or their connection to Vulcans until Spock is in his late 30s. In AOS, it happens not long after he’s born. So he’s growing up probably with more anti-Vulcan racism floating around the Federation. THEN Vulcan is destroyed. Now it has nothing and it needs to rely on the rest of the Federation, which must be both humbling and frustrating to many Vulcans, on top of the extreme tragedy of losing everything. Most of their population, a lot of their history, their manufacturing, their scientific facilities, their resources, their animals, literally whatever else you can think of that a planet has--all gone. Now all of the survivors have lived some period on an alien planet, by definition, and they’re probably very dependent on the Federation not just to set up the new colony, but to replace all of the resources--natural and Vulcan-made--that they lost. And they’re a founding Federation member, Earth’s first contact. They’re especially important. And now they’re weak, and reliant on others.

So maybe Spock, early on, hears from New Vulcan and they’re not doing well. Maybe we hear from Sarek or T’Pring (...I’d just like to see reboot T’Pring). Maybe it’s not about, or just about, having children, but about being from an important and ancient family, and being seen as a hero for his part in the Narada mission, that makes him want to go and help rebuild their government (taking his mother’s place perhaps? she was on the High Council) or their scientific facilities, or the VSA, or their space travel capabilities--you know Vulcan had space ships of their own, outside of Federation ships. This would be the perfect place to showcase that tension between wanting to be independent--out of pride, out of fear, even--and needing help, because Vulcan could not survive without the Federation, probably less than 10 years out from the original planet’s destruction.

And then you feed it back into Krall.

So I could see like... well the tension, and then Krall comes in, and he's angry that the Federation "abandoned" him, but we actually explicitly address this. Maybe Spock gets to interact with him and say "I get it. You had a life and a mission and a purpose that was comfortable for you. Then the Federation came in and changed everything. A lot of my people are also feeling upset for similar reasons. But here's why actually you're wrong."

So anyway as you can see I’m smarter and more interesting than Simon Pegg.

I also hated, speaking of writers of this movie, the gay Sulu thing and HEAR ME OUT on this. It’s homophobic. His husband doesn’t have a name? Might not be his husband at all? Looks like he could be his nanny or his brother? As B said “at least grab his butt or something.” That was the most sanitized, no-homo depiction of a gay person I’ve ever seen. He’s gay (see, progressives and queers! gay! you like that right!) but DON’T WORRY STRAIGHTS--he’s in a monogamous relationship and has a child, he’ll show nothing but the most platonic physical affection with his male significant other, and the plot point will be so minuscule you’ll need a microscope to detect it. Also, we’ll throw in a no homo joke about two male characters not wanting to hug and we’ll make sure Kirk and Spock interact as little as possible, because we know they give off Big Queer Vibes every time they’re together.

Yes the last point is a little unfair but can you blame me for being angry about all the “look how hip to the times we are” back-patting that went on in 2016 when canonical bisexual Kirk is RIGHT THERE and we could have had ex-boyfriend Gary Mitchell instead of Unnamed Nanny??

Also Sulu is a hella random choice because again, like... he may not have had an s.o. in TOS but nor was there any indication he was gay. So it seems a LITTLE like they picked him because (1) his original actor is gay and gay people can’t play straight people duh so probably Sulu was Gay All Along I mean did you not get vibes???; and/or (2) asexual Asian stereotypes preclude giving Sulu any kind of love interest, male or female, that is actually... sexual, outright romantic, anything.

Anyway I can’t remember if I had any other thoughts, but I’ve said quite enough I think.

I miss Kirk so much... real Kirk... even my version of AOS Kirk who is probably not even characterized that well but at least I worked with love!!!

[yoshesqueblr]

Bayonetta Retrospective: An Update On The Lack Of Updates

I started my latest youtube series almost a year ago, with the intention of revisiting my favourite game with an updated lens. Things have been going slow on the updates lately, and I feel like I need to provide an explanation for a couple of things.

1. The missing updates

I know that people watching my latest series will be very confused at this. About a month ago I made the first four updates of this series private, never again intended to be viewable on my channel. There are many reasons for this, but the main one is that my co-commentator and I had a massive falling out, and I have no wish to be associated with him in any way any more. The finer details of this falling out are already known to anybody who follows me on twitter, but to my larger audience on youtube, they will have little to no clue about this. I will cover the details of this later in this update, but suffice to say those videos will never be coming back.

2. The co-commentator change

Save for a few viewers, I don’t believe there was much surprise at me changing commentators in this series. I originally had every intention of finishing the series with no changes in commentator, but external events prevented that from happening. Again, this is related to the aforementioned falling out I had with my old co-commentator.

It is highly likely that the series will be completed with the current commentator, assuming that they agree to it.

3. The lack of updates

The reasons for a lack of updates has been twofold; the major one being the falling out I had with my co-commentator, and the other being health-related. I have been in and out of hospital regularly since the beginning of this year, and this has obviously been disruptive to any update schedule I might have had.

Things are on the mend now, so look forward to sporadic updates again soon.

4. The falling out

I’m not sure where to begin with this. I have extensively documented the events over the last six months on my twitter. However, twitter is not the best platform for following a story spread over numerous tweets, so I’ll document the details here for posterity.

My old co-commentator and I were dating, from February 2016 to January 2017. I’ll henceforth refer to him as my ex to make things easier. We bonded over our appreciation of shared hobbies and simply became good friends, which then progressed to a relationship. This was a long distance relationship.

Obviously, things did not work out between us, and we broke up mutually in January 2017, towards the end of my stay with him. This was when I had gone over to see him in his country. When we broke up, I told him that we could probably still be friends, but that I would need some space before that could happen, and that I would contact him whenever I was ready for that day. We parted on amicable terms, considering the nature of our breakup.

I could go into detail about the breakup but it’s not really important to the story. Just know that it was very traumatic for me and involved approximately a week of being trapped with someone who I did not want to be around. I think a lot of people can empathise with the concept of grinning and bearing it for the sake of keeping things civil, and in my case, where I was very ill, in a foreign country and was staying with someone who, on one occasion, forced sexual favours out of me.

You may understand then that telling him that we could still be friends was a white lie, and most definitely a foolish move on my part. Throughout our relationship I picked up many clashing personality traits that I did not find palatable and did not want in a friendship. However, throughout my dating history I have always broken up with people more or less on friendly terms, and thus see no issue with extending a possibility of friendship, even if I have little to no intention of following through. Telling him that lie was, as far as I was concerned, standard operating procedure for a mutual breakup, and more than he deserved, in retrospect.

So to recap:

He and I had a pretty epic breakup

I lied to him and told him that friendship could still be on the table

However, I wanted space before that could happen

When I returned home, he contacted me immediately, wanting to know how I was. While this was technically a breach of our agreement, I let this slide as I was obviously very sick when I left, and I could understand that he just wanted to know what was wrong with me. I let him know what I felt comfortable with, and reminded him that I needed to be left alone.

It’s at this point that the dynamic between us started to change. Even though I had made it clear that I wanted to be left alone, he decided that that meant he could still talk to me like he used to. Over the course of a month he contacted me non stop, wanting to know how I was, trying to engage in a conversation with me. This was in spite of the prior agreement we had, on top of never getting a meaningful response from me, other than to remind him that I did not want to talk to him.

This was across many different email accounts, as well as texting my phone, and essentially using any shared media between us to try to get a message to me. Examples of this include changing the name of a shared youtube playlist, or editing a shared google document. I started to block his attempts at contact, including making my twitter account private. I also began to vent about it indirectly.

It was clear to me that at this point that he was harassing me; he knew that I did not want to be contacted by him and yet was trying to contact me however he could. I confronted him via email, telling him that he had ruined any chance of being friends again by repeatedly ignoring my simple request, and to stop harassing or contacting me. After this he seemed to understand, and sent me a last email, telling me to contact him whenever I was ready. This was in February. All’s well that ends well, right?

let’s play a game and count the number of times he says this

btw, that pet name? I told him when we broke up he couldn’t call me that any more. He still uses it every time he contacts me.

Well, as you might be expecting, he didn’t stop contacting me. He felt the need to contact me on skype a few times, and less than three weeks after that “last” email, he sent me another email. It was a “monthly mail checkup”. I was at the end of my rope at this point and was beyond treating him nicely. I essentially told him to fuck off. He seemed under the impression that he had to actively try to win me back, “[b]ecause we both know that you will never come back to me from your own volition and I’m the one who has to shake you up.” (direct quote).

At this point, I just stopped replying. It was obvious he was never going to give up on me and normally the best thing to do in this instance is to lay low and ignore all attempts at contact. At this point I made my twitter private and blocked his account. I’m mentioning twitter because this whole mess contains a hefty dose of twitter drama and is important to some of the later details.

I will make it clear that I was not talking about this harassment from him during this time. To my followers on twitter, everything was normal (sans a distinct lack of updates for the series)

About a month after the last point of contact, I felt that I needed to explain to my followers what was happening with the retrospective; it had been three months since the last update and I had zero intention of working with my ex ever again. I made my twitter account public and explained that the series was on hold, because my ex had been harassing me, and pinned this tweet to my profile. You will notice that there is no direct reference to his harassment in that tweet, only in a reply.

I suppose it shouldn’t have surprised me to receive an email from him after that. The subject?

yeah, not threatening at all

In it, he said that I was lying about/fabricating the harassment accusation, and essentially broke up with me (again? yeah, that confused me too). I tried to explain to him how exactly he was harassing me, but he absolutely refused to see his actions as anything other than a friend reaching out. Repeatedly. Despite knowing that he had been blocked. And knowing that I didn’t want contact with him.

lol memes. “last time I’ll contact you” part two

We exchanged a lot of emails, because he tried to get me to agree to a conversation on skype and I refused. For some reason he thought an IM conversation would be less impulsive than one done via email? Yeah, he wasn’t making much sense to me either. Ultimately, it ended up with him thinking that things were on the mend and trying to give me an ultimatum (reply to me by this time otherwise we’re over). Because I hadn’t already made that clear enough for him?

I happily ignored him and he sent a final parting shot of an email, which I guess was supposed to be scathing but simply came across as aiming in the wrong direction completely. So in case you’ve lost track, he’d broken up/cut ties with me twice by now. I thought things were finally over and blocked him on everything else I could think of and made my twitter private again.

“im cutting ties with you for real this time” part three

Again, on my twitter, I made no direct reference to what had been happening to me.

Not nine days later, he sent me an email from a blocked address. With a quote from a Jackie Chan movie (lmao). I ignored it. A week after that, another email, from two blocked email addresses. A week after that, another email, from six addresses. To top it off, he used a throwaway twitter account to tell me to check my spam.

Oh boy, this one was the doozy. He called me emotionally abusive and all other manner of nasty things, including that I deserved to get sick because it was payback for all the awful things I had done to him. You know, just normal standard stuff you say to a good friend.

To say that email upset me is an understatement. I stayed up all night wondering whether I had truly been abusive to him. After talking about it with friends and strangers (Something Awful link), I came to the conclusion that he was just trying to hurt me to get me to reply to him, and whether it was true or not, what he was doing was much worse. I doubt he’s had the same level of self-reflection on his behaviour.

It was at this point I started looking into legal options, with very little promising results. I started keeping a log of his attempts at contacting me though, in case it ever because useful.

Five days after that abusive email, on the day Bayonetta was released on PC, he sent me another email. He also sent me a question on my (now deactivated) ask.fm account, telling me to check my spam. At no point did he make reference to the abusive shit he hurled at me, he just acted like everything was normal.

In the hours leading up to Bayonetta being released on Steam, I streamed some Angel Slayer because I was hella excited, man! Guess who pops up in the stream chat? Guess who got blocked? Guess who created another account and tried to engage in a conversation with me? Guess who got IP banned? Yeah, shit’s crazy. At this point I start making direct reference to his harassment on twitter.

all in one day. not harassment!

Let’s pause for a moment and take in the view:

From the time I came back from visiting him, he refused to stop contacting me, despite being told multiple times to do so

He sent me an abusive email

He was aware that he was blocked and circumvented it by creating many different accounts

not harassment tho

Two weeks after he sent that nasty tirade, he sent another email, saying that he was ashamed that he had sent it to me, and that he just wanted to be friends again. Not a single apology for what he had sent, but he just expected that things would be okay after that, because HE wanted things to be okay, forget about anything I wanted or said to him.

gonna keep harassing you until you do what I want, not harassment tho

It’s as though he’d heard of the adage that ‘time heals all wounds’ and thinks that two weeks is enough to get over getting an abusive spiel sent to you.

I suspect he started escalating his attempt to talk to me because it was the days leading up to his birthday. He tried asking, pleading, bribing me to talk to him again. I ignored all of it. On top of that he recruited people who he knew who followed me on twitter/had me as an IM friend to tell me to check my emails.

guess who later went and copypasted my conversation with him and gave it to my harasser

Things kept escalating. He remembered my brother’s name and ran a search for him on skype. Because I had stupidly blocked my ex, but not removed him from my friends list, he was able to find the one that was indeed related to me. My ex contacted my brother, on skype, as well as facebook. To this day, I have no idea how he found my brother’s facebook, although it’s not exactly locked down due to the nature of my brother’s work.

pictures make this wall of text less intimidating, right?

My brother told me that my ex had contacted him. Yeah, I freaked out. It was clear to me that my ex had no boundaries and I feared what he would do next. I vented about it on my twitter, which was still locked down to the public at this point.

I won’t lie, I was pretty scared by this point. If he felt that contacting my brother, who he had had no contact with prior to this, was perfectly fine, what was stopping him from trying to come to Australia to find me? What other information did he keep/remember about me? I went through my computer and accounts and increased the security for everything. I also tried to get an outside perspective on the situation as a sanity check.

So I hope you can understand why I was freaking out. A few days after, he left a comment on one of my videos, once again telling me to just look at my brother’s skype messages, it was so easy. Because looking at other people’s private messages is totally acceptable behaviour to this guy.

Not only that, despite me locking down my twitter account he still saw my “meltdown”. Either someone was leaking my tweets or he was following me under another dummy account. Nowhere was safe.

add another to the ‘I won’t contact you again after this message’ counter

Be aware that this mentality of my ex’s is what drives a large part of his behaviour; he considers things that are boundary breaking to a lot of people perfectly normal and acceptable.

An aside, when I was visiting him in January, he snooped through my external hard drive and deleted files of himself that I had saved. Things like photos of him and screenshots. I discovered that he had done this in late March, long after we broke up. Chances are high he snooped through the contents of my laptop as well. I remember the realisation that he had gone through my things and feeling sick to my stomach, because it was such a massive breach of trust. It painted his actions since that meeting in an even worse light, because he knew that he had done this and yet was still seeking a friendship with me.

So yeah, he stalked my brother, something that he doesn’t deny either, although he won’t call it stalking. A few days after that he sent me another email. He had composed a song for me. He also openly acknowledged that he knew it would probably upset me. Whether he meant the contents of the song, or the fact that he had yet again contacted me, I wasn’t sure, but I sure as hell did not listen to that song.

openly acknowledging that it’s going to upset me doesn’t make it any better fyi

This coincides with him uploading a mariachi cover of a Witcher 3 song to his channel. It was hard to tell at this point but you could almost read a coded message in the song title.

very apt, tbqh

I could cover all the detail about him contacting me (there’s a lot of youtube comments), but this is already long enough and I can summarise easily: I was venting to my twitter about the deluded guy harassing me and he was continuing to try to contact me. He even tried to blackmail me, because whew boy, he had decided to tell all of cgg (cuhrayzee games general, used to be a 4chan /vg/ board, now exclusively on discord) about his relationship with me. Bless them, they tried to help him work through it, but they kind of missed the mark when it came to owning up to his behaviour.

I ignored all of this, but it came to a head when he decided to post a PSA about me. Yes, a Public Service Announcement about me, where he told every single excruciating detail about the relationship, as well as tried to justify his harassing behaviour.

I found this out when I was browsing 4chan, a few days after he had posted it. I never read the contents but I knew that he was telling a very skewed version of events. I emailed the website admins to get the PSA removed, because hey, it was just another venue for my ex to harass me, now by blackmailing me by spreading my personal life details to the internet.

Throughout this time, I had not really addressed the issue on my youtube channel. I had been uploading episodes again with a new commentator since April, and while there were some people who missed my old commentator, I did not acknowledge the questions at all. Well, after the PSA got released somebody decided to comment on one of these threads, saying that the reason my ex was no longer on episodes was because we had broken up and I had handled the breakup badly. Which is a pretty laughable interpretation of the events.

I took this opportunity to address the issues head on, and posted the following comments:

I also detailed roughly what had been happening on my twitter account.

Well, a few days after that, my ex found the comments I had made, and replied to it, using yet another youtube account. Unfortunately (or perhaps, fortunately), the OP deleted their comment before I could screenshot the entirety of my ex’s replies, but the gist of it was basically a mix of justification of the stalking of my brother and an attempt at another ultimatum (with yes, yet another promise that this would be the last time he would contact me).

ah yes, my infamous disingenuous harassment flag powers

Anyway, drama aside, I got the PSA removed. My ex found out (through a lovely person who used to follow me on twitter and now does not), and posted the PSA again. I reported it again and it was removed. You would think at this point he would think, ‘huh, I wonder why they’re removing it if there’s nothing wrong with what I wrote,’ but self-reflection does not become this exceptional person.

guess whose exes were all “crazy”? this is in no way a red flag or indicative of a larger issue

After I got the PSA removed a second time, he made his twitter account private, and posted yet another PSA on a different website. It was up for a few days before I found out, because my ex made his twitter public again and I was on the lookout for crazy stuff from him. Once again, I got the offending item removed by the website admins.

third time’s a charm

The fact that he was posting very personal, private information about my life seemed to escape him, and he posted the PSA a fourth time, this time with redacted information. Redacted information like, my online handle, my age, my country of residence. Information that people already know. But not all the unnecessary information about my personal relationship with him.

“no good reason” nuh-uh

I had a pretty epic meltdown on twitter, I will admit it. Lovely people like the ones picture below jumped in on the fray as well.

fresh hot takes from twitter dot com

All in all, I got the PSA removed again, hopefully for the final time. But not before dissecting his warped way of thinking. I thought it was finally over.

Haha no why would you think that. It’s my birthday next week and my ex wanted to wish me a happy birthday, but he decided against sending it close to the date of my birthday, because he knew that it would upset me. Also, he’s still waiting to be friends with me again, but he sure as hell won’t be apologising or anything for his behaviour.

pure logical being, right here, as he likes to call himself

TL;DR: MikeKob is a crazy, deluded, harassing and stalking piece of shit. To put it mildly.

3. The lack of updates (cont)

So, if you read all of that, you might understand why I haven’t had the motivation to continue the series lately. I’m planning to get back into it though, a large part of why I was putting this update off is because the audio recording is almost 2 hours long or something.

[neureaux]

it was nice to finally talk the situation through with somebody that knows me and knows about us. as much as the therapists were helpful in trying to unpick all those chunkier, tough and tangled feelings in the moment, i think that the way i feel about the situation is finally clear and i get why i feel the way i do.

essentially, i had a bunch of really shitty things happen to and around me over the winter, i had an inevitable (but reasonably quiet tbh) breakdown, and he moved his trip forwards as soon as he could and left me as soon as i went into a crisis wellness retreat, which was a gentler, more palatable adjacent to going into hospital to go to Thailand and ‘find himself’, all the while trying to avoid asking too many questions and treating me awkwardly as if holding me away from himself, and expecting me to be okay with it when it was realistically, unheard of in a relationship this long, thoughtless and completely poorly handled - and then expecting to proceed with things as if this were totally normal, as if the conduct would be exactly the same as a situation that’s actually regular, sending me photos of his excursions and telling me stories of his yoga retreats, treating me as if i has done something untoward/wrong/was just being difficult if i didn’t respond in the way he expected, as if responses of excitement and joy were the only appropriate ones from the bed of my treatment room, alone weeks earlier than agreed, pressing me for details about things he agreed to be here to support me through(like the verdict.), between my therapies and revelations and genuine hard work trying to pick up the pieces that 2018 had left me in. i think there were many missteps in the handling of this situation, and it’s been reaffirmed to me that i do actually have a right to ask questions. him trying to force acting like this is normal and pretending to what appears to be me AND himself that this situation and handling it this way is normal doesn’t actually make it normal to the rest of the world. how could you knowingly leave me here by myself even though you knew i was being absolutely smothered and crushed by pressure without so much as a second thought and expect me to have to beg you to stay or make me the bad guy for explaining why that would be strange at the very least(and if i would have, what a total bitch, right? how needy. but if she doesn’t truly press me, no guilt for me!), and just expect that to be okay when it’s such a grand display of disconnection and a lack of consideration for someone that tries so hard to be mindful of you, perfect or not? how could you display so boldly to me how separate our lives actually are at such a critical time, and think that returning briefly for a concert is some sort of consolation for this wildly public dismissal of me as a person? you’re waiting until we have at least one perfect year? do you realise that that means never, because we’re actual human beings and life brings couples ups and downs and it’s normal for literally everyone? how could you even look me in my tearstained face and say that to me? how could you let me pour my heart out, sob into your shoulder, drop me back to the door of a crisis retreat and then get on a plane the next morning? why have you never even considered asking me to visit knowing that i’m hurting like this and am actually able to financially support myself? what actual part of me is so inherently unappealing to you? am i enjoying being at home? what do you think, genius? have you ever even heard a word i’ve ever said? i think the timing was the biggest misstep, but it’s indicative of a bigger issue that needs gradually addressing.

the fact that any person would feel comfortable crossing the globe for months whilst their significant other of many years is in any sort of significant disrepair is bizarre to me, and it’s bizarre to everyone - especially when you witness things coming to a peak and they are at their lowest. no threat to you, just a quiet, broken girl. functionally, people don’t really do that. i would never think of doing this to anyone i love, and many around me share the sentiment but i believe there is a deeply rooted barrier of understanding that exists here, an example of a genuine lack of emotional depth born from becoming accustomed to avoiding ones own emotions and it becoming this thick, obtuse barrier that sucks the empathy and thoughtfulness from a person that becomes most noticeable at crucial times.

i’ve heard all sorts of things in the heat of the moment, that i suspect were used as some strange form of rationale to conclude this course of action to be the right one. many of them untrue, but bourne of a lack of comprehension of what being with a person regularly navigating and managing triggers every day really is. ‘you’re never fine’, ‘you’re always stressed’ etc - so i wonder if his thinking was, ‘she’s always stressed, so what’s the difference if i leave now?’ while still backwards, i don’t think it comes particularly from malice - especially if deep down, he really believed those things to be true. yes, a lot of things have happened, life is stressful sometimes. does that mean i don’t laugh and look for happiness in between? no, lol! even day to day, some days i might manage 5 triggers, some days i’ll have to quietly work through 50. however many, it doesn’t mean i don’t fight for peace and happiness in between and even during, and it doesn’t mean i don’t smile, laugh and share tenderness through pain. if dealing with a person in recovery from trauma is too much, that’s fine - but you don’t get to make their symptoms and their whole recovery journey their fault, especially when they’re an active participant in their recovery and actually work hard at adapting and utilising tools to progress and improve on their recovery process every day. and this winter? this winter, was by all means an enormous anomaly. so many things happened to me back to back, that even i was in shock. i naturally reacted to them eventually as they wore me down, and even then i found time to smile and try to do my best to keep on top of productive things and functions, make arrangements, make and answer the important calls and did my best to cope. so regardless of whether or not it was truly the internal belief that my recovery wasn’t a recovery at all or it wasn’t fast or consistent enough for him, there isn’t a way to rationalise the incredulousness of these actions, and furthermore expressing shock or confusion if i express that i disagree is also bizarre in itself. the long and short of it was that he knew what was going on, could have offered spousal comfort and support and potentially delayed for a while, or even just for the amount of time he originally agreed to, but he decided to do this instead, and leave me heartbroken, embarrassed and emotionally confused, wanting to be held and loved but instead receiving this excruciatingly public, awkward and uncomfortable rejection, nothing to show romantically for the better part of a decade of my romantic life, whilst telling me he loves me. but, i suppose that when you can’t handle your emotions properly, maybe the answer is run from overwhelming situations, even if that situation is a whole human person that would give you her world even as it crumbles.

still, though i have good understanding of the situation at the moment, it doesn’t make it hurt less but it makes it easier to work with. over the next couple of months, i have some space to figure out whether or not this is something i have the capacity and patience to work through, or if this is something that i need to direct my time towards getting over. i think that the part of me that holds on is a very soft, quiet but consistent part of me inside, one full of love that remembers tenderness and knows that it’s not entirely a conscious chain of events as much as a poorly thought out one in a time where the situation was simply too precarious and crucial for poor management to have been an option, a time where i needed a grown man, steadfast, supportive and patient, able to support me not by joining me in poor coping mechanisms and bouncing off my pain to excuse poor behaviour but by being truly present and keeping me responsible and accountable and received something else and i know and understand that part of me. but i don’t yet know if that part will be enough to allow me to continue giving myself to somebody that refuses to learn until the very last minute if ever, that doesn’t really understand me and that i’m sometimes unsure is able to love me in the way that i need to be loved. somebody that expects and expects, but violently rejects expectations in return. part of me wants to try therapy for him like he promised, to wait to see if i can move on from this pain and seek out the person i love to be with, the person i want to actually age with me but i’ve never seen so clearly how stuck he really is emotionally until now. he said for the first time ever recently that he now sees it too, and it gave me a boost of hope. that maybe, him coming to the first step of acceptance will be the road to him trying to regain himself and access to his emotions without them frightening him, even if it’s not with me. but part of me wonders if it was just more empty words to placate me, him figuring out what i want to hear again to get me off his back and in turn, subconsciously make me easier to ignore. i think sometimes i’m a reminder of his issues, because everyone else in his life barely pulls him up on them for some reason despite, from speaking to them, them actually knowing that they’re there. but they don’t see what enabling him does to his life increasingly, and they definitely don’t see what it does to me. and i would be aging with him, not them. i’m really wrestling with it and the way i feel, as the force and magnetism of the love has always kept me coming back, dropping everything to come back to him and dreaming, yearning to be swept off my feet and held tight, safe in love, romance, adventure and secure, steadfast partnership. i often feel like i’m still waiting.