#are not exempt from the harm of them

[thethingything]

we have a dentist appointment tomorrow and on the plus side we're not really anxious about the appointment itself because the dentist was so nice last time and actually took our medical trauma into account.

unfortunately though we do have to have anaesthetic which makes us feel like shit for at least the rest of the day, and no matter how considerate the dentist is, having a medical professional touch us at all does still trigger certain trauma and then I end up having a bunch of panic attacks at some point within the next few days and it's a really shit time. I really don't wanna have to deal with that and the concept of it is making me nauseous

[alastor-x-reader-stories]

"Bite Me" - Alastor x Reader

next

You were a strange addition to the hotel.

A quiet sinner demon with no merit to speak of who just waltzed in without much fuss or fanfare. No blowing up walls, no trying to kill anyone, no entertainment what so ever.

You were so boring, Alastor didn't even want to mess with you.

...

At first.

Then, quiet and unassuming, you slowly established yourself as both over-forgiving and sharply blunt.

It was amusing watching the whiplash on a demon's face when you flip between them so much in a single day.

Once, Angel Dust was high as a kite and practically lobbed a brick at your head. Your response was "No harm done, don't worry about it." later that same day, the spider-fellow draped an arm around Vaggie's shoulder and slung some sort of ridiculous insult. You moved his arm off of her and said "You need to learn to watch what you say or I'm ripping this arm off and shoving it down your throat."

Usually that last threat would lead to some other comment, but the flat way you said it and moved on to a different subject left the spider fellow standing there without much else to say.

How amusing!

Even he was no exemption from your two-faced nature, it seemed. One moment apologizing for accidentally blocking his path, the next informing him that you'd use his antlers as forks if he didn't leave you alone. Silly little threats that were oh-so pathetic when said by such a...underwhelming, individual.

Alastor's favorite of yours was 'I'm going to eat your kidneys'. Then how rude you were to decline the cooking lesson he offered!

Typically your quips and comments were about trivial things, little things that Alastor would purposely do in order to get a reaction.

THIS TIME, THOUGH

He had a particularly annoying run in with Vox one day, trudging back to the hotel with his patience already at its limit. Husk knew better than to comment on it, shying away from him as he prowled through the lobby. Angel Dust was at the bar counter, eyeing Alastor as he strode on through.

"Ya look like shit." He commented passively.

"Thank you ever so much for the keen observation." Alastor said with a smile. Husker flinched, ears dropping. It was only then he noticed you there as well, a forgotten drink in your hand as you gaze lingered on Husk, a frown setting to your lips.

The rest of that particular exchange wasn't of any significance. It wasn't until later when you sought him out in the Hotel's parlor things escalated.

"You need to calm down."

His grin hitched up and he leered down at you. You were more than a foot shorter than him and your big eyes did little to make you look more intimidating.

"I beg your pardon, dear?"

"I said you need to calm down." Your tail swished in agitation. "I get you had a bad day but that's no reason to take it out on other people."

Alastor chuckled "Oh goodness. My apologies, my dear. But you have absolutely no ground to tell me to do anything."

He back you up against the wall, hands planted on either side of you. His antler stretched out and his eyes took on the appearance of dials as he leaned down. Sharp teeth grazed your face, hot breath stung your eyes. Claws carved their way into the wall on either side of you.

"So, my dear, what was it you said? I'm afraid I didn't quite catch it."

"I said you need to calm down."

Alastor's eye twitched, his grin twisting into something so much more unhinged. No hesitation. Were you stupid?

A look at you said yes, but you knew damn well the danger you were in. You were trembling, pupils shaking breath shallow. But you still had the nerve to speak to him that way?

"All right, what if I don't?" He purred, tracing a claw over the side of your face "Go on ahead and let me hear whatever pathetic threat you have."

"I'll bite you." spoken in that flat tone of yours.

Alastor laughed "As amusing as always-"

Pain burst from his shoulder, sharp and sticky as fangs burst through flesh. Perhaps it was shock that had him stumble back, perhaps it was amusement that allowed you to get away from him. You opened your jaw, withdrawing your teeth from his shoulder as skin and cloth clung to the spaces between your bloodied fangs.

You gave him a pointed glare as your wiped some excess blood off of your face and prowled off without so much as giving him a second glance.

He had every right to hunt you down and rip apart your soul right then and there.

Instead he found himself losing his balance, falling onto his rear on the floor. Fingers curled over the fresh and large bite mark on his shoulder. The damn thing nearly covered the entirety of between his collar bone and his arm socket.

He pulled his hand away to stare absently at his own blood.

You must be venomous. That was the only way to explain why his heart was suddenly racing and his face suddenly felt far too warm. His breathing was off, shallow and uneven.

You actually bit him.

Were your threats actually not so empty?

Did you really intend to use his antlers as forks?

He laughed to himself, letting his hand drop back to his side. This was ridiculous! If you meant even half the strange threats you threw at him....then...

Well. He was in danger.

[anshelsgendercrisis]

When someone tells you they’ve been harmed by a group, you believe them. Jews aren’t exempt from causing harm, as we’ve seen in Palestine. Is it really so difficult to believe they’d cause harm in other countries too? Or can you not accept that Jews aren’t uwu little innocent beans who could never hurt a fly?

[nnnnobodyy]

Why do you love NASA

i love you USPS I love you NASA i love you taxpayer funded services that actually contribute positively to society i love you libraries i love you public transport

[always-coffee]

WV Libraries Are Under Attack: How to Help

News came out yesterday that West Virginia House passed House Bill 4654. This would remove “bona fide schools, public libraries, and museums from the list of exemptions from criminal liability relating to distribution and display to a minor of obscene matter. …”

Potentially criminalizing librarians is bad, and it’s straight out of the fascist playbook. “Opponents of the bill said that while the bill does not ban books, the bill would have unintended consequences for public and school libraries, resulting in increases in challenges to even classic books and attempts to criminally charge librarians over books not pornographic in nature, but books that include descriptions of sex. They also said it could result in improper criminal charges against library staff,” Steven Allen Adams writes.

So, the question is: now what? What do we do? Where do we go from here?

If you live in West Virginia, call you state senate reps. You can find them listed here.

It’s okay to keep your message short:

“Hi, I’m [full name] calling from [ZIP code], and I’m a constituent of [Senator Name]. I am calling to voice my opposition to Bill 4654, because this is a dangerous step toward book banning. It could potentially harm librarians and libraries, which is incredibly wrong. Do not back this dangerous bill.

You can also ask how many people have called to voice their opposition to this bill. This may annoy the person on the phone, but they technically have to answer you. They may be evasive anyway. But you can either give them your contact information and tell them you’d like a call back or you can call back again later and ask for the tally.

The thing is, people rarely call in. A handful of calls is considered a lot, and the best thing you can do right now is make yourself a nuisance. Good trouble, etc.

Only call if you live in West Virginia, because they do not count calls from those outside their constituency. I am obviously not an expert, but if you have additional questions, ask them and I’ll try to help. I learned way more about how politics work during the last presidency than I thought humanly possible.

Additional resources:

[psychotrenny]

It's interesting how you'll see people (correctly) point out that being oppressed as a trans women doesn't prevent someone from participating in racism, only to then go on and say incredibly transmisogynstic things about "white trans women" and justify it by the racial oppression they personally face. Like on the surface it's an obviously self-defeating argument; if you've already established "suffering from one form of oppression doesn't absolve participation in another" you can't then immediately go ahead and use the bigotry you suffer to negate the bigotry you perform. But I think the key here is that a lot of people don't see "transmisogyny" as a genuine axis of oppression

Like there's a form of rhetoric that's widespread among progressives that (sometimes explicitly but more often implicitly) presents trans women not a type of woman, but in fact a type of degenerate or delusional man that "we" have a moral duty to tolerate and play along with. The second a trans woman does something sufficiently immoral, that obligation of tolerance vanishes and you're free to treat him (I mean them) as the predatory weirdo he (I mean they) is. And even "the good ones" aren't entitled to full respect and humanity; well-behaved trannies just get fewer reminders of how fake their womanhood is. Like people have trouble grasping that "transmisogyny" is a type of misogyny, a type of bigotry as serious as any other, because they don't see "trans woman" as a type of woman

And yes, all this transmisogynistic talk around "white trans women" rhetorically erases the existence of trans women of colour and in material terms does significantly more harm to them than to actual white transfems. That aspect is very important to talk about. But the primary contradiction here is around transmisogyny itself; even if trans women of colour were magically exempt or non-existent it's still a very harmful and reactionary line of thinking. It's not as though misogyny suddenly becomes good when the targets are white women; why should that change because you've pre-fixed it with a "trans"

[stonebutchery]

it's kind of baffling to me that entire sub-groups of queer folks endured a decade of being singled out and targeted for being asexual, aromantic, bisexual, pansexual, nonbinary, polyamorous, etc. and i have yet to see any substantial apologies from people who were directly responsible for causing genuine harm. i find it completely bizarre that there are so many people who want to sweep their past contributions to widespread lateral aggression toward specific queer groups under the rug like it didn't happen so they can wash their hands of it... there are people who are irreversibly traumatized because of this. there are people who took their lives because of it.

i'm wording the post like despite the fact that exclusionism targeting these groups (and more) continues to persist partly because it was a really frighteningly common trend to harass people just because they were ace, aro, bi, pan, nonbinary, poly, etc... and it's crazy to me that many of the people who were affected by this massive multi-pronged public online bullying campaign against the 'unacceptable types of queers' are the ones still receiving messages like "my url got put on an aphobe blocklist in 2016 because apparently a post i made making fun of asexuals got some teenage asexuals harassed and i still distrust asexuals to this day because of that" ...are you fucking kidding me?

we will never achieve any kind of unity as a queer community while we are insisting upon ignoring the hurt that lateral aggression has caused, and acting like the burden lies on the shoulders of the people who were harmed to forgive the people who harmed them and 'just move on', many of whom are not sorry for what they did! or they don't consider what they did to be wrong! how is that not deeply disturbing and troubling to more of you?

03/06/2024 edit: i’m putting a complete moratorium on this post because i am really sick and tired of having my point not only completely misconstrued and distorted entirely but also weaponized against transfems (particularly in replies i have decided to delete about how “ugh yes, exclusionism, and now transfems are bullying transmascs”) i find that really sickening and i’m demanding that it stop, and i can make it stop by turning off reblogs. so i have.

my objective in writing this post was never to request an apology from people who have been laterally-aggressive exclusionists in the past. i don’t think we’ll ever get more than a handful of apologies from those people, anyway. my point was that it was pretty terrifying to witness and experience a lot of lateral aggression that transferred from the real, in-person world to the deeply online spaces back into the real, in-person world in a really fucked up feedback loop and being a young queer person during this time and having that shape me, snd shape the experiences of my queer friends who have been traumatized by it.

however, it is absolutely unacceptable to me that the issue of transmisogyny is so blatantly overlooked by our entire community. for decades, transfems have experienced oppression and exclusion from transmisogyny-exempt women and queers. their exclusion from political queer liberation movements has caused many of the major schisms within our community we are still having arguments about to this day. if you want collective queer liberation, you must uplift transfems. there is no other option. you don’t get to write off all transfems just because one person who happened to be transfem was mean to you online or something.

i have answered and responded to way too many conspiracy-brained transmisogynist reactionaries to allow this post to keep fucking snowballing with people writing paragraphs in the tags about “transmisandry” or “transandrophobia.” please get your heads out of your asses.

this absolutely is the transmisogyny website, as always, and the place where all basic textual comprehension skills go to die, apparently.

[pa-pa-plasma]

homie, this isn't tiktok, we say die, death, kill, & murder here

imagine being that fucking rich and that fucking careless.

[hightowered]

and you know i gotta say. the vast majority of the people losing their shit this weekend made it very clear that they do not understand the difference between "artists who want a measure of comfort in their lives" and "the billionaires actually being targeted by phrases like eat the rich." that is such a weird thing to be so proud to announce to the whole entire internet.

it's also extremely weird to behave as though any individual is entitled to an artist's work for free. or that the audience should be the final say in determining what an artist creates. there is a major difference between the betrayal of an artist who produces art and then banks on their social capital to engage in harmful, violent, bigoted behavior (like jk rowling) and the "betrayal" of an artist who decides that they should be or need to be compensated for their work. the latter isn't actually a betrayal at all. it's just a shift.

the thing is that the watcher boys didn't invent capitalism, they didn't invent the streaming model, they didn't invent youtube or patreon. they aren't getting 100% of the money from either. their merch doesn't magically appear as if made by elves while they sleep. their videos don't happen out of nowhere and without incurring bills. they have a business which employs people, and sure, you can say they employ too many people, but do they actually? a bunch of randos on the internet don't actually know that. they don't know these job titles, or how necessary it is to have everyone there. it's pure speculation. the entire company exists within a system they did not invent and are trying to stay afloat in said system while a bunch of assholes on the internet berate them for not acquiescing to their every whim at the expense of their artistic integrity, their ability to compensate their staff fairly, and their ability to keep making art.

and jumping from "i want to continue enjoying this artist's work for free" to "i think people should be fired and the remaining employees should be given greater responsibilities and more tasks to complete" is wild to me. there's nothing leftist in that and so trying to leverage leftist jargon to prove some sort of moral superiority is fucking wild, it's disingenuous, and it's sketchy as hell. you're allowed to be disappointed. you're not magically exempt from being told you're being an asshole if you decide your disappointment entitles you to take part in asshole behavior.

"but we don't want something heavily produced and we don't want these shows" then don't watch! that's it! don't watch! you are not being held hostage and forced to engage with this content. you have the choice not to. throwing a tantrum and launching racist vitriol at steven lim and demanding he step down as CEO shows a level of entitlement and childishness that, frankly, i wish they could have ignored, but they're both kinder & more patient than i am.

anyway congratulations to watcher on their new streaming service and their gorgeous new website, congratulations to the boys on a new step in their careers and on achieving something they've made clear they've wanted for ages, thank you to the boys for all their hard work and for sharing their creativity with us. thank you too for taking such a big and genuinely brave step to no longer be beholden to major corporations and advertisers so you can make the art you want to make. thank you to steven lim for taking so many steps back to keep the company running and for doing your best in a shit economy and while being targeted by this kind of nastiness online. and thank you to the entire team at @wearewatcher for continuing to do amazing work despite being treated like shit by the fan community at large on the internet while you're trying to make a living and create art. you all deserve better than you've been shown of late and i hate that such an exciting moment got overshadowed by so many temper tantrums.

because the whole fucking point, the dream, is getting to make the art that matters to them, without being held back. i'm sorry y'all don't want the heavily produced and high quality shit but your preferences as a member of an audience are not the law by which artists should abide. they are artists and they are free to, and deserve to, make the art they want to make.

[renshengs]

beyond evil (2021) occupies a very interesting space in the larger expanse of crime shows. like, it is a Cop Show. it is undeniably a Cop Show even if the two main characters, who are both cops for very different reasons, are handled with significantly greater awareness and intention than usual.

it is also, impressively, a show that pierces the real ugly rot of 1) police corruption and its overlap with capitalism 2) atrocious real-life lawmaking 3) the poor handling of femicide in stories. i cannot express how abruptly shocked i was to discover that i did not hate the way this show was carrying itself, despite its crime drama genre, narrative about two homoerotic cops, and its murder mystery premise featuring a plot about a serial killer with solely female victims. here is a story that understands its purpose and is so clear-eyed about it that i did in fact tentatively suspend all my wariness about Cop Shows to watch it—and what i got was a scathing response to every serial killer and true crime documentary out there. a narrative that said: enough. enough. look at the way grief rots people from the inside out. look at the way loss ruins lives. do not forget the sufferings of the innocent.

far too many crime dramas possess an incredibly dehumanizing analytical tone to them that goes, “what if these poor women died in brutal gruesome tragic ways? anyway, look at these men and their heroic journey for justice!” it’s why i can’t fucking stand to watch them for the sake of my blood pressure. while beyond evil is not exempt from using such gruesomeness as a part of its horror aspect, the women in this show, particularly the women who were murdered, occupy such a heavy weight over the narrative that it is impossible to reduce them to what they’re usually reduced to: numbers in files, or cold cases. and because the purpose of beyond evil is to examine the ways grief and loss bring about destruction to people’s lives and communities, these women cannot be seen as numbers. they need to be vivid and real; the audience needs to feel their loss as deeply and gnawingly as the townspeople do. as we would in real life.

personally i’m still surprised at myself for liking a Cop Show this much—because the law enforcement sympathy is unavoidable in a cop show—but then i’m also shocked at how immediately this show establishes its awareness of police power. i don’t mean it gives a passing nod, like a brief disclaimer. i mean that you watch until the end and you’re like: oh! the entire fucking show is about police power and its consequences! this entire goddamn show is about cops’ potential for harm and how it destroys lives! the main character only ever became a cop out of desperation because he realized it would protect him from suffering further at the hands of the police. because he realized it was the only way for him to get access to both the information and the legal power needed to take his own steps to solve his sister’s murder. it’s not radical—it’s a cop show. but it is novel. a cop whose relationship with his own occupation is bitterly resigned at best and traumatic at worst.

this is far from an original thought, but truly i think what makes beyond evil worth watching is that it is so incredibly careful with itself. its meta awareness of its own genre heightens it to a tier above other crime dramas—it knows and rejects voyeuristic perspectives into the lives of people who’ve suffered real loss and tragedy, and so it makes the loss inescapable. every direction you look, someone’s life has been irrevocably altered by the murders you learn about in the story. it gives you no space to push away the murder—no, you need to sit directly in its field of impact. all the fucking time. you are not watching the town suffer, you’re suffering with the town. the story sucks you in and makes you live alongside the rest of them; it's why the first watch hurts so raw. because the story refuses to let you take a true-crime approach. because it refuses to prioritize the narratives of perpetrators over human lives. you are there, and you are hurting.

man. really, if you're going to watch anything, watch this.

[popponn]

summary: there are parts of him that appears after he starts dating you, and of course these parts are exclusive for you and you only. (aka another relationship hcs with bllk boys, even more smitten edition.)

notes: doing this thing is healing sigh. so, here they are. some paragraphs full of love for them. warning: none, fluff of soft smitten™ boys, established relationship, pro/post canon au, reader's gender unspecified, mention of marriage on reo's part.

characters: isagi, reo, nagi, bachira.

isagi knows this will make him sound like a neighborhood grandpa even though he is not, but he really enjoys afternoon walks with you. he loves holding your hand, walking around the familiar scape, and watching the lighting light every contour of your profile. sunset, moonlight, daylight—he really doesn't care, it's all different but all pretty to him all the same. he usually doesn't talk much during this, either letting the pleasant silence grow on its own or having you fill it with your musings. he will still listen though, so just let him enjoy his downtime with you in his own way. enjoy his company, his soft smiles, and the way he will stare at you as if you are the one who draws the stars in the sky.

reo, after he starts dating you ("with marriage in mind," he will always add at the end), always buys a jacket or a coat based on "how good and cute you will look in it". of course, he still buys you your own set of ridiculously custom-made jackets and coats. but, what use is his outer if it doesn't make you look soft when it got draped on you? is it really good if you don't look good in it? the only ones that got exempted from this rule of his are the ones you bought for him—and even then he will still have a critical eye plus a hand on his chin if he thinks it doesn't suit you. "for future reference" or so he says. though, hey, at the very least reo is good-looking enough that 90% of outfits fit him without much thought, at least? so it's no harm. just let him spoil you, for his sake too.

nagi likes it when you draw on his hands. at first, he really doesn't get it and lets you do it because "stopping you is a hassle". but at some point, it just becomes sort of a ritual and lucky charm for him before matches. so, like a child with an x for a mouth, he will cling to you and demand his lucky charm. then fast forward and at some point if you try to do it to someone else you will get a pouting brat. if you try to draw on your own hand out of boredom while he is beside you, he legit looks so offended. "you have me???" is somehow written in his blank stares. at least, if you doodle on the paper, he will settle with only looking, just don't forget to draw some stars or flowers on him too soon though.

bachira will pull a goddamn concert if you cry just to cheer you up. a bad day so bad you cry the moment you enter your home? don't worry baby, bachira meguru is ready to sing, dance, make you laugh, and dribble a soccer ball all at once. most of the time, you laugh simply because the things he will pull are so unexpected, but bachira will take that happily. he really just doesn't look like seeing you sad and when he once said (repeatedly, actually) that your smile is one of the most precious things to him, he means it. and, if he fails, bachira will still be there as your personal comfort monster! providing from 10 out of 10 cuddles to sweet treats!

[sharkface]

There is a certain black and white attitude towards how situations should be handled rn based on identity or personal aspects and it drives people fucking insane that having an understanding of who oppresses who and why and how is meant to contextualize systemic and interpersonal issues and is not a hard set of rules for who is right or wrong in any given situation based on what they are and not what they did and what it was motivated by.

The state of general discourse on here rn is that people are so caught up in discussing specific scenarios (hypothetical more often than not) that people have stopped thinking of the groups they're talking about as groups consisting of an untold number of individuals with an untold number of unique circumstances and experiences and have just entirely lost their grasp on extremely basic concepts of systemic oppression and intersectionality

[shaunashipman]

buck's bisexuality is about buck, period. he was made bisexual because oliver and tim thought it was right for his character, that it fit his journey. just because 0.03% of the total audience has shipped him with another male character for years does NOT mean he was made bisexual for that ship. oliver himself has stated that buck's bisexuality has nothing to do with eddie or even tommy, it is his own journey.

wanting to "put buck back in the closet" just because he's not getting together with eddie is disgusting and I don't care if you couch it as a joke, saying it's a joke is not a defense for invalidating someone's sexuality and making light of being in the closet.

and being bisexual does not "exempt" you from being biphobic. I can't believe in 2024 I have to say this. wanting buck to cheat on his boyfriend immediately after discovering he is bisexual is biphobic. wanting buck to "get that itch some bisexual ppl get" and crave sex with a woman because he hasn't fucked one in a while is biphobic. wanting buck to have to reassure his partner that he still loves them and only wants them even tho he's "itching" to fuck a woman is biphobic. saying buck hasn't "explored his bisexuality" while he is actively dating a man, obvs implying that he should be sleeping around with ppl of different genders every night, is biphobic

I, as a bisexual, feel harmed and afraid and fucking angry every time I read one of these disgusting "takes" about buck's bisexuality.

[transmutationisms]

a perennial problem with this site's discussions of Sexual Ethics And Morals (TM) is that people who argue that sex / eroticism / kink are not inherently dangerous or pathological will be continually interpreted as claiming that these things are categorically above reproach, ie, are inherently beneficial or healthful simply on the basis of being sexual / erotic / kinky; or at least, this is the position imputed to them, whether the interpretation is genuine or not. the effect is to present discussions of sex and sexuality as though the default social position is one of uncritical sexual positivity, where the 'critic' then feels themself to be making a radical challenge to this laughably oversimplified position by mounting any charge of harm done by any sexual practice.

the trick here is that the pathologisation and criminalisation of sex, kink, and erotics is in fact generally the accepted social position and sexuality is seldom considered to be above any kind of ethical critique; on the contrary it is generally more likely to be presented in medical, judicial, and general social contexts as inherently and intrinsically ethically suspect, deviant, socially contagious, and so forth. it is true that we should not, as communists, 'swing too far in the opposite direction' so to speak, and exempt sexuality from any sort of social criticism we would subject anything else to; frankly though i see no evidence that such a thing is happening (someone being provocative on tiktok does not a materially meaningful social trend make) and i am tired of seeing the same reactionary sexual lines trotted out as though they are new or subversive in some way.

[lumilumimi]

man the Problematic ParentsTM from pjsk are incredibly realistic in that two things are true about their depiction.

1. they have their own trauma, pain, and suffering, that influences the way they raise their children.

and

2. this does not detract from the suffering they then imposed on their children. it is not an excuse, and the MCs are not necessarily required by the narrative to forgive them (though they do seem to, which is understandable since they’re all high schoolers who care deeply about what their parents think of them).

like I think this extends to pretty much all the parents of pjsk. mafumom is probably the example most people automatically think of- she likely has some kind of (potentially very bad) generational trauma. this provides a basis for why she treats mafuyu the way she does. but it isn’t seen (so far) as an excuse- mafuyu running away is depicted as a necessary action in order to preserve herself.

ena’s dad went through incredible struggles as a starving artist. he likely felt extreme shame and anguish as he failed to provide for himself and his wife. but the way he handled this with ena is not necessarily depicted as a good or okay thing- just a thing that has an explanation.

toya’s dad- we don’t know a super lot about him afaik but it’s safe to assume he is a person who is very hard on himself. he strives for perfection in his music and tries to emulate exactly what he thought the composer intended. this behavior likely doesn’t come from nowhere, and has likely been harmful to him. but the way he treated and trained toya is still depicted as toxic and unnecessary.

and this even applies to less ProblematicTM parents like emu’s dad or an’s dad too! when it was revealed that ken had been hiding the truth about nagi from an, an literally was like “I don’t forgive you” and that’s SO POWERFUL! someone can have good intentions and still hurt you, and they still need to be held accountable for that! (and ken did accept responsibility for that- part of what makes him one of the best parents in the game!)

ugh. just… I’m in my twenties and still very much dealing with the repercussions and ripple effects of the way my parents Parented when I was a kid, and seeing the parents depicted very realistically in pjsk is so amazing. like yeah, they’re not cartoon villains being Evil Just Because, but do you have to do what they say? do you have to believe they know what’s best? hell, do you even have to forgive them? no. because regardless of their intentions, or their trauma, they still hurt you. and if they won’t take accountability and try to fix it, they aren’t magically exempt from the consequences of their own actions just by virtue of being a parent.

thank you for coming to my Ted talk