#as a person gaslit before and frequently

[wyrm-with-a-why]

This is just me hating, not directed at anyone in particular ugh I’m just pissed that’s all ignore

“Mega/star antis will be blocked!”

Don’t worry babe I did it for you😜

Idc how great your megatron design is and we say bye bye :3333

[jiangwanyinscatmom]

Thoughts on “How Jiang Cheng treats Jin Ling is normal because that’s just Chinese parenting”?

I was explaining to someone why I considered the way Jiang Cheng talks to Jin Ling to be abusive, and got hit with that.

I have noticed that parents and guardians in xianxia works sometimes speak quite harshly to their children in punishment scenarios specifically (plus there is frequently corporal punishment involved), but Jiang Cheng’s way of talking to Jin Ling feels like it’s on a whole different level. I can’t think of any time he speaks to Jin Ling like a normal adult.

Am I being gaslit here?

This argument in a gif.

First: There is no excuse to say that corporal punishment is a necessity to use against children and has lasting trauma against those that have had it used on them in the form of consistent psychological maladjustment including depression, unhappiness, anxiety, feelings of hopelessness, use of drugs and alcohol and can alter dopaminergic regions of the brain which hinders long term mental well being and inhibits behavioral responses emotionally and cognitively for themselves and social interactions. Up to some themselves beginning to engage in aggressive and physically abusive behaviors themselves.

Two: Verbal abuse is still... abuse. Some have defined it as the production of psychological and social defects in the growth of a minor as a result of behavior such as loud yelling, coarse and rude attitude, inattention, harsh criticism, and denigration of the child's personality. Other examples include name-calling, ridicule, degradation, destruction of personal belongings, threatening the torture or killing of a pet (and doing as such),excessive or extreme unconstructive criticism, inappropriate or excessive demands, withholding communication, and routine labeling or humiliation. 36.3% of children experience emotional abuse globally.

A consistent usage of this is not something to continue to normalize or excuse in parents, guardians and figures of authority of children. Verbal abuse is also not seen as a pressing issue as it is not physical harm enacted and still considered something that cannot be lawfully punishable despite the widespread statistics of its repercussions on the development of children and their adulthood life interactions.

At any rate, the author of the three novels condemns the abuse of children by several adults that engage in this behavior from Shen Jiu abusing his position of teacher and master over Luo Binghe because of jealousy. To Jiang Cheng and Madam Yu for physically and verbally degrading children they are guardians over and said children participating in dangerous antics to be praised for their skill or continued loyalty theyare said to owe. Jun Wu for trying to groom and gaslight another child (Xie Lian) to become another abuser and killer simply because he did not like the way said child interacted with the world with the position he had socially.

We also see from all three of these same works, is that these characters do also begin to physically abuse these same children as well as engage in isolation and negligence of them more than once. Enough that the audience should understand that these adults are not misunderstood AS THE ADULTS WITH CHILDREN UNDER THEIR CARE.

And as I have said before, whatever love may exist in Jiang Cheng for Jin Ling (and he desperately does, that isn't in dispute at any time unless someone who reads this is that stupid to come to the conclusion and say JiangWanyinscatmom is saying Jiang Cheng never cared or loved his nephew at all), does not negate the abuse that he has exhibited from the start of his very introduction when he threatens Jin Ling with abandonment when he says this:

江澄话中带刺，又是一转：“还站着干什么，等着猎物自己撞过来插|你剑上？今天你要是拿不下这大梵山里的东西，今后都不必来找我了！”

Jiang Cheng's words were full of thorns, he turned around and said, "Why are you still standing there, waiting for the prey to bump into you and pierce itself on your sword? If you can't hunt down that creature in Dafan Mountain by today, don't you ever come back to me again!"

[gaslightgatekeepgirlbosscombat]

Quarterfinals, Poll 4

Propaganda under the cut

John Gaius, The Emperor Undying, God

Gaslight: When he resurrected his best friends he took away all their memories and gave them new names. He never reveals to them that he was the one who killed everyone on earth in the first place. He really plays up the "benevolent God" act Gatekeep: As a God, everyone is vying for his Favour and he is the one who gets to decide who gets it. He also doesnt share his knowledge of how to become immortal without killing your best friend. Girlboss: Literally made himself God. Never strayed from his ten thousand year old plan of Revenge. Rules an entire solar system and is colonizing more.

Jod is a frequent gaslight and gatekeep, however he falls more under the girlflop the girlboss. All of his plans go wrong but goddamn if he's not trying. Horrible ideas from an even worse person. Whent above gasligting and just straight up wiped his friends memories. Gatekeeping the knowledge of the universe. Had a child he didn't know about for 18 years and only found out cause she showed up dead(she's fine now(mostly)), girlboss move. Had a threesome with two of the gaslit friends, this would be less gross if he wasn't middle-aged. Gatekeeping the planets(I cannot explain this one). Ressurected humanity but also killed a lot of cows(girlboss). Put the soul of the earth in a woman and then put her in prison(but not before killing half of the amigos). Anticaptalist, bisexual, father. He has babygirl energy

Killed entirety of humanity and the whole solar system save a handful of billionaires and their victims, then resurrected the sun and a select handful of humans, wiped their memories, and established a religion in which he is god for over ten thousand years. Also an ex-tumblrina (probably) and goth twitch streamer (definitely).

Killed almost all of humanity, the sun and the solar system and then resurrected some of them deliberately without their memories and didn’t tell them that he killed them in the first place, and also told them that he was god. Renamed his friends after killing and resurrecting them. Set up imbalanced and toxic power dynamics among his inner circle that led to half of them either killing themselves or being killed by the other in each pair in order for half the group to become immortal saints, something he didn’t tell them wasn’t actually necessary to reach that sort of state. Lied to the surviving friends about why the ghosts of the planets in the solar system were hunting them, he told them they were after all of them because of the way they’d become saints which meant they could never go home, but they were actually only ever after him. Also because of this lie he was able to manipulate them into fighting the ghosts and dying in the process, saying that they would kill him which would destroy the sun, when actually they couldn’t kill him and also the ghosts were after just him so everybody would be fine if they just stopped hanging out with him (this is true in a LOT of senses actually). When he decided to get new immortal saints he specifically asked for the heirs of the houses, who were mostly younger in the 16-22 range and therefore easy to manipulate especially after killing their best friend (again, he knows that isn’t necessary and is asking it of a group of teens/young adults). When one of the people who was successful appears to have done it wrong, he pretends to be a mentor or father figure to her face (knowing that that is something extremely important to her) while having one of his surviving original friends try to kill her without her knowing he was behind that. On the girlboss front, I think he kinda thinks he’s a girlboss more than he actually is one, but he’s so good at the gaslight bit he’ll have you believing that too.

Ianthe Tridentarius

She is trying so hard to be the main character by lying and manipulating her sister, her cavalier, her mentor, her ?love interests? (Spoiler???) And also god. Not sure how it's working out for her but she does love to lie and manipulate

Worstie Ianthe is the DEFINITION of gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss. She is one of a set of necromancer twins that are the heirs to their houses rule. Except wait, only she is a necromancer and she has spent their entire lives doing necromancy for the both of them. She is constantly mean to their cavalier, Naberius, who she occasionally nibbles on like a chew toy, before eventually killing and eating him to ascend to sainthood. She goes to gods spaceship with another woman who ascended to sainthood who she has a crush on, this other woman is like…. Both incredibly mentally unwell and also haunted by at least 211 ghosts. Ianthes method of flirting with her? Gaslighting her about the corpse that keeps moving around and hiding under her bed. For no real reason tbh. She is clearly plotting to overthrow god, and at the moment that consists of her manipulating him while he’s too sad about his long term partners betraying him and subsequently exploding to really care. She dresses in terrible outfits and makes soup by burning onions to the bottom of a pot, putting meat in and some vegetables and then it doesn’t taste like anything so she puts in a few teaspoons of salt so it tastes like a few teaspoons of salt. She had her crush amputate her arm and regrow her a new one out of bone and it’s one of the horniest things I’ve read in my life.

"Gaslight = told her lobotomized (she helped), schizophrenic girlobsession that there was no corpse under their bed, even tho there totally was. Gatekeep = girl did NOT share the secret to god-like ascension. She kept that shit to herself until it was time to eat her boytoy, and by then everyone knew already. Girlboss = she has a non-necromancer twin sister, and literally Everyone thinks they r both necromancers because Ianthe is so good at it. She reverse engineered ascending to the aforementioned ascension without even completing any of the supplementary tasks. She held her own in a fight against a 10k year old lyctor. She becomes the figurehead of her entire empire. "

She uses a man as a chewtoy in the first book, literally gaslights the protagonist of the second book about a corpse, and elder-abuses God when he gets depressed in the third book. Nobody is doing it like her.

Dives headfirst with no regrets while basically laughing and covered in blood into murdering her cavalier once she realizes what the gothic locked room mystery/competition leads to while everyone else is questioning it, helps perform lobotomy on harrow so she doesn't remember the person she loves, manipulates everyone to get to the top

idk just everything about her

her relationship with her sister is incredibly Bad, she fosters codependency and views Corona(the sister) as an extension of herself. This does not stop her from keeping up the con that Corona actually has magic (She doesn't, it was always just Ianthe) for 22ish years and every single person who interacts with them falls for it. She killed a man against his will (most dying for this purpose specifically go willingly) and she consumed him and she will be burning his soul for eternity. She's completely repulsive and still somehow incredibly hot.

she takes advantage of the fact that the main character is prone to hallucinations. at one point she gaslights the mc into believing that the corpse under her bed isn't real just because she can. she reverse engineered a set of very complex trials on her own without anyone realizing she had the skills to complete them normally. she's also babysat god through his drunk and pathetic era.

Artist: @midnightcrows

[lavender-teardroplettes]

Si x Friend headcannons mayhaps🥺👉👈

......ANON I LOVE YOU!!!!!!

God it's been a minute and Si's lore got lumped in with me first trying to make an oc for the game before switching into self insert-

Friend 100% was Si's first crush even if he pushed Si away at first and while keeping in mind that neither of them knew what a crush was at that point.

Even before Friend's family dies, Si's family would hold up appearances and let him hide out at their house occasionally. Si's house was nowhere as clean as Friends no matter how much clutter and other junk were cleaned up, but to both of them, because it was happier together than alone, it was home. After the accident, Si was allowed more in Friend's household and Friend was allowed to travel more frequently between his and SI's place to get what little comfort and sense of normality he could hold onto.

Keagan caused a REALLY big rift in Si and Friend throughout high school until the two of them had their initial falling out. A lot of it was Keagan super hitting on Si, and one of Keagan's friends (blanking on his name atm) not only putting down Si, but putting down Friend at the same time. It was stupid and chalked up to peer pressure and SI not actually having a good support system that he distanced himself from Friend, when in reality they were each other's biggest rocks and something Si regrets betraying before the events of the demo.

The day Si calls Friend to pick him up after breaking up with Keagan and not wanting to ride in a car with a drunk driver was one of the hardest days in Si's life. He finally allowed himself to be vulnerable and rely on the one person he knew he could count on....and oh god was he glad it was still true.

During the events of the demo- I see Si being on the side of still harboring old feelings for Friend, but not wanting to mess up the second chance they have. He assumes Friend is being his usual flirty self since Si had heard about him being more of a playboy, and you expect your friends to change over the years, so he mostly pushes his feelings down and feels like he's the only one stuck in the past.

^ This also causes him to be a little too nice and friendly with people since he's used to his best friend "casually flirting" with him and doesn't think too much of the more subtle approach most people take....like Carter for example.

I don't see Si getting kidnapped to the basement in the way that most do in that sort of route. I see Friend playing on Si's paranoia and convincing him that he can't trust anyone in the way he trusts Friend, and that it would be just like Keagan all over again. Why start all over with someone new when you can be with someone you've known....trusted....loved....your whole life? I see maybe one friend that Si makes outside of Friend possibly dying if they pry too much into Si's disappearance, but I would also like to think that if Si went willingly, Friend would try his best to scare them off instead of risking Si being upset with him more than he already is with the confusion of being gaslit and essentially talked into living in a fancy cell.

Alternatively....we can have two dorks who have been love with each other since there were kids where one person knew all along and the other took longer to realize it until their sense of love and comfort suddenly wasn't there anymore. Si and Friend are both on the demi spectrum iirc, but it takes longer for Friend to realize it and they fall victim to stupid high school bs in between everything. In this case, I see the cat cafe date being canon, with SI wearing a cute outfit just to TRY and shoot his shot again hopefully picking up on Friend's signals in the right way this time. Of course, this still means that Friend is weary of every move Si makes, but it opens up for more measures of security on Si's end. Si'll never know who killed the man who touched his arm or the woman who got to close to him while he was walking, and slowly Friend has more of a grasp on Si's day to day life to make sure he NEVER leaves Friend in the same way his sisters did. To Friend....he has nothing left to hope or LIVE for if he doesn't have Si, and he's not giving an inch of an opening for it to happen again....if he can manage it.

[compassionatereminders]

hi Kat, I wanted to see if you have any advice or kind words for me. I’m going through a breakup, I ended things 2-3 weeks ago. today would have been our 6 year anniversary. I decided to end things bc my ex’s dissociation & overall mental health has declined the past couple years and was affecting us. she went through a bad breakup a couple years back (we were polyamorous) which was the beginning of the decline. it was traumatic for her. I supported her as best as I could, but she says I wasn’t supportive enough (I’m autistic & I provide a lot more tangible support than verbal support). after that, we kept having instances where she would say outright mean things to me, seemingly pick fights over nothing, accuse me of things I wasn’t doing, and generally be really hurtful and not like herself. and it just got worse and worse for 2 years. we both did individual therapy, couples therapy, and both have psychiatrists. but she has an alter that is resentful of me or hates me or something, idk. so she would switch out, say mean things to me, but when we’d talk about it later she would just say I never said that, that didn’t happen, and so on. she said I was gaslighting her while in the same breath telling me that all my memories are wrong. it escalated to a point where my therapist encouraged me to leave, and she’s never made a suggestion like that before so I took it seriously. I left a week ago & I have to move in with a friend. I’ve been in an abusive relationship before where I was gaslit, meanwhile she would flip it around and say I didn’t do that, YOU did and accuse me of gaslighting her. so it’s been really triggering to have this current situation where one person has DID and genuinely doesn’t remember what happened trying to convince me that my memories are wrong all the time. she’ll say something cruel to me, later deny that it ever happened, and a few hours later be back to being sweet and kind and loving. every time I’ve talked about possibly ending the relationship she changes for a few days and is extra sweet, then we go back to the relationship being bad. I’m just really, really sad. I still love her and I didn’t want things to end. I wish we could go back to the relationship we had a few years ago. our mutual friends say she’s talking shit about me, meanwhile I’m over here saying that I love her and wish I could be with her. my therapist and my long-term friends (most of whom know me & my ex well) think that I’m making the right decision and that my ex has steadily treated me worse and worse, especially in the last year. (their opinions aren’t even 100% based on what I’ve told them, some of it is things they’ve witnessed first hand.) I’m just really sad and feel like I’m making a mistake, even though I’m probably not. I’ve had long-term relationships end before and it’s never felt this bad. I’ve always felt like eventually I would be able to move on, but I don’t feel that way this time.

It honestly sounds like you made the right decision by breaking up. One thing is saying "I don't remember that" - but going "I don't remember that, so you must be lying!" is just not an okay conclusion. Especially not if you're aware that you frequently experience amnesia due to DID

[moistvonlipwig]

so i grew up in los angeles (and then lived there again for almost 2 years during covid) and i would be so interested to hear you discuss your experience of it! it is unique place, hard to describe. plenty of good things but "vampiric" is also extraordinarily accurate, i think. personally i will never go back. (living there, not visits!) you come off as very intelligent and intuitive and have such a way with words

haha thank you (i say 5 months later)...so i guess the important thing to keep in mind wrt my experience of los angeles is that i'm from boston and i didn't really...want to move here lol? i'm not gonna get into Why i moved here (and why i probably won't move away unless i get an amazing job/school opportunity somewhere else) but it wasn't a decision i made for my own happiness let us just say. so that obviously influences how i feel about it.

but broadly i guess my experience of los angeles has been:

awful public transport. just dreadful. i mean no transit system is perfect, growing up i felt that the T certainly sucked in many ways, but looking back on it now i'm like wow the T was so good i miss the T!!! because the LA metro is just not good. the bus system (which is what i mainly rely on) is heavily under-scheduled and the rail system operates within such a limited area that it takes forever to get anywhere. i don't have a car and likely never will -- i know how to drive but frankly it terrifies me and i'd rather invest in learning how to get by with public transit, biking, and walking. but LA is very much built for cars. this is one of the aspects i would call vampiric honestly. the car culture of LA sucks the lifeblood out of the other elements of the city. highways dominate the land like parasites. if you don't have a car, you will be bled dry either by the time sink that is the bus system or the costs of ordering frequent ubers.

food really depends on where you are. yes DTLA has lots of great food but the surrounding valleys can be hit-or-miss. in particular it is hard to find good mexican food. when crazy ex-girlfriend's rebecca bunch said that she felt gaslit by a mexican restaurant in the san gabriel valley she wasn't lying. i'm not even talking about 'authenticity' which i think is a really charged & complex topic when it comes to food. i love me some good americanized mexican food like tex-mex or my beloved new mexican cuisine. but cali-mex is just. not good. (cali-mex gothic: everything is covered in Red Sauce. what is Red Sauce? no one knows. can i get this enchilada without Red Sauce? sure, says the waiter. your enchilada arrives. it is slathered in Red Sauce.)

the weather is also kind of hard on me. like to be fair it is convenient to be able to wear shorts year-round and not have to constantly check the weather to see how much i should bundle up. but the lack of seasons kind of makes it seem like time has no meaning. (i'm sure this isn't helped by the fact that i moved here less than a year before the pandemic started which also had a time-distorting effect.) also the summers get SO HOT, like 90 degrees fahrenheit/32 degrees celsius every damn day. and yes it is much less humid than boston thank god. but it's also not exactly a dry heat? like i've spent weeks in northern new mexico in the summer and it is MUCH cooler there with the elevated altitude + actually dry heat. whereas in los angeles it is sea level and it can actually get quite muggy. in the dead of summer it also doesn't really cool off at night because everything is paved over with asphalt which just absorbs the heat during the day. it's may right now as i'm posting this and the weather is actually still pretty nice but i'm dreading june. also the leaves don't really change color in the fall, at least not on the same scale they do in new england, which is so sad because autumn leaves are so pretty. :(

anyway, because the weather never significantly changes, los angeles almost takes on a kind of artificial quality in my eyes? it doesn't quite seem like a real place. and then this isn't helped by the aesthetics of the city & the flora. there are a lot of non-native plants that people have planted here existing alongside native plants which creates a very strange picture, and the buildings seem almost peculiarly generic -- neither the wood & brick of new england nor the adobe blending-into-the-desert of the southwestern u.s. it makes the city & surrounding county seem false and sort of shallow, like a tv set i suppose you could say.

another thing i really don't like that took me a while to realize is the lack of cemeteries. in new england there are cemeteries all over. they are nice places to walk & to drive by. in los angeles there are a couple very small ones scattered throughout the county (as well as some bigger hollywood ones) but in general cemeteries are just not as much of a thing and i miss them so bad.

also the music scene is...really different and not my thing. :[ i enjoy all kinds of music but my favorite genre is folk and a lot of my favorite artists would regularly perform in boston or massachusetts but in l.a. you mostly get pop music. there's also less of an emphasis on live theatre which saddens me. growing up in boston i saw nearly every shakespeare play live due to the thriving theatre scene. there IS theatre here of course it's just not as big.

now that being said of course there are things i like...i like the diversity of people and cultures here. i like that there are mountains in the distance as is good and proper. i admit to still getting a minor thrill out of knowing i am right next to major movie/TV studios -- and related to that, as someone who dreamed for a long time of working in TV (though i'm switching gears now for my own peace of mind & wallet), it's nice to be able to meet other people who work or want to work in that industry. i got out to the picket lines a couple times during the writers' strike and it was really fun.

that said i really cannot abide how angelenos will literally complain that it's cold the moment it drops below 80 degrees fahrenheit/26 degrees celsius like come the fuck on bro 😭 that's some buffy the vampire slayer behavior right there

[skinnymeanfaggot]

im gonna say something and delete it real quick

ive been through a ton of shit and i dont think i deserve most or any of it. i never harassed alex directly to my knowledge i just spread the information and spoke about it. and i did that because i trusted my partner at the time. im not in the wrong for believing someone elses lies.

and then when smitty was called out the most i did was on my private when i was psychotic and panicking i was like well this isnt a big deal right they didnt mean it but i was defending them because at that point my entire life revolved around them and we were unhealthy codependent, i wasnt in my right mind at all and i couldnt think it was the worst time of my life because i couldnt trust my own thoughts and i went back and forth on hating and loving them because i was so unstable. but i never ever went out and said what they did was ok and i support them. i was mass dropped and maligned by so many past friends simply for being their PARTNER at the time. before i even had the chance to do or say anything people were cutting me off. i left twitter because it was so horrible for my mental health at that point, but now i feel so isolated from the warriors and map communities, and i feel like everyone has a really tainted view on me. and theyre like "you fucked up but thats ok!" and im like where did i fuck up? by being mentally ill? by being abused? like ive fucking gaslit myself into thinking ive done some horrible shit but all i did was believe a liar and then get manipulated by them. and because everyone and their fucking mom was abandoning me i clung to the one person in my life who stayed and was also constantly feeding lies to me about how we only needed each other and everyone else was unsafe. so like. im fucking sorry for being put in a shitty situation i guess. idk im just really pissed that people out there think i did anything fucked up because on the alex shit i literally just said and did what everyone else at the time was doing. because EVERYONE believed smitty and everyone said he was bad. i was vocal about it because they were my fucking partner and they frequently lied about how fucked up it was and how bad it felt and i was being MANIPULATED DIRECTLY. like it just sucks. i shouldnt have lost my friends and i shouldnt have had to leave twitter and everyone i know here, youre excluded because youve stuck with me. but if i see any ex friend from that era who cut me off come slithering back im blocking. and im forever forever going to be fucking pissed about how my life was ruined due to someone elses actions

[traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors]

Trigger warning: physical and psychological abuse, violent thoughts.

I'm looking for validation.

Hi, I feel like I'm going insane.

My sibling has been both physically and psychologically abusive over the past several years. I am frequently beaten, pushed, kicked, insulted and gaslit and I have absolutely no proof of it. There are witnesses, but they're all loved ones of them.

It's always the same: I try to get into a casual conversation with them — not out of want, but out of need — and they end up getting mad at me, threatening to hurt me if I don't leave.

I remember once I was looking for my shoes, I couldn't find them anywhere and we tend to share clothes so I had to ask them as a last resource. I said "Hey, have you seen my shoes?", and they stared at me with disgust and didn't reply. I repeated it, and they shouted at me "I know, I heard you! Of course I don't know, they're yours, shut up, leave and stop being a bother to me." and when I don't leave they say stuff like "If you don't leave me alone I'm going to punch you in the stomach, stop pretending to be brave because you cry everytime I beat you up."

And when I tell someone they start saying that I'm just getting them into trouble and that I'm horrible. Not to mention how they lie. Last night they asked to borrow my phone charger and I said "No, I'll need it in a moment". They called me an asshole and left. Then, when I told my mom about a time my sibling mistreated me, they told her that when they asked for my phone charger I was mean and rude, and that I violently told them to leave my room.

I'm so frustrated. They accused me of saying slurs that they said to me, and that I never even said. They put themself in everything I do, they constantly abuse me and then change the roles.

And I have no proof. No one knows what really happened. I will die before anyone knows which one of us is lying.

It feels like I'm being psychologically tortured, I know they know it because they once threatened to lie and change the roles again if I didn't do what they wanted. They always change the roles or say "I never said that!".

There are people who have seen them doing this to me, either beating me up or calling me slurs or both, but those people are my sibling's friends and I'm sure they dislike me.

I feel sick. Everyone believes them, since they have friends and a more charming personality. I'm just a freak that doesn't talk to anyone. I want to end it all and I'm scared that, even then, no one will believe me.

–CD

Hi CD,

I'm so sorry to hear about what's been happening. That's not okay at all and you don't deserve to be put through that.

What I'm hearing reminds me a lot of DARVO, which is when an abuser tries to claim that the victim was in fact the abuser. This is a gaslighting technique as it invalidates the victim's experiences but also projects the abuser's behavior onto the victim, thereby seemingly absolving the abuser of accountability. It's also possible that there may be some reactive abuse going on, which is when an abuser will get a rise out of their victim and then use their reaction to insist that they are really the abuser.

Crying from being beaten up doesn't mean you aren't brave, it means you're human. It makes absolute sense to cry if you're being beaten because it's cruel and unusual.

You don't need to prove that you are being abused and mistreated to be valid as a victim and trauma survivor. You don't owe anyone proof that what happened to you was real, because it is real regardless of their validation. People who gaslight you may insist that your reality is dependent on their perspective, but reality doesn't need their confirmation to exist. You know that what has been happening to you is real and that's most important. I believe you. We believe you.

That being said, if you would like to collect evidence that is completely up to you. If you do want to collect evidence, it might be helpful to take a video or audio recording, discreetly or not, from the moment you begin an interaction with them. Make sure that doing this does not put your life in danger. Even if you do gather evidence, you may still be gaslit. This isn't to say that your experience isn't valid, but that an abuser or enabler will likely be unwilling to support you even if all the cards are in your favor because they are living in a distorted reality. Please remember that you know your truth.

You are not alone. I hope I could help. Please let us know if you need anything.

-Bun

[baiika]

//Sousuke's mistreatment, violence, & eventual desertion has permanently changed Momo to her core

Demeanor Prior to Serving Under Sousuke

Momo is a loving, friendly community member while in the Rukongai. She doesn't seem to have any issues with anyone, including Toushirou, whom the townspeople fear because of his hair. This is most clearly expressed in ch -16.

Momo has two friends who live next door to her, Obaa, & Toushirou named Ayumi & Tatsukichi. Tatsukichi is giving Toushirou a nervous side-eye.

Later in the chapter, Toushirou is buying groceries, & the grocer won't even touch him, opting to put the change on the counter instead of in Toushirou's hands.

Momo demonstrates no fear of or with Toushirou whatsoever, unlike their community. In chapters -16 & -17, she frequently invades his personal space & spends a great deal of time with him.

This provides evidence that Momo prioritizes community & kindness.

It's worth noting that Momo has no issue with Toushirou, or the people who seem to take issue with him, given two of her friends are scared of him. I don't believe she's aware of this because she's autistic, which makes it irrelevant because it's not malicious.

As seen in ch -17, Momo seems scared of getting in trouble. She's late to class & waits outside because she feels her teacher won't be sympathetic.

We also see Momo scold someone out concern, rather than anger, in -17, when the advanced class has a field trip to the World of the Living & Momo tells Renji & Izuru to, more or less, not hit each other & stop messing with their sword.

Demeanor During & After Serving Under Sousuke

Momo's most notable change after Sousuke is how unhinged she becomes. We see her instigate violence, shout at her superiors, & quite literally lose her mind. However, those are superficial, & easy to diagnose, so I'll be addressing the more insidious changes to Momo's demeanor.

This is anecdotal, but I know many very intelligent people, learned people in leadership positions, & something I've noticed is common is they're self-assured. Momo, a lieutenant (position of power), a master of kidou (learned), is not.

She is self-assured before & during her time as a cadet. She's first to go to Shuuhei's aid in -17 during the field trip, despite knowing she'll get in trouble.

But as a lieutenant, she isn't self-assured, & this is especially evident in ch 131. After Momo broke out of jail, she confronted Toushirou, who Sousuke alleges conspires to fuck over the Seireitei. Momo expresses she knows there's something amiss about it, but that it's undoubtedly Sousuke saying it.

Were Momo more self-assured, she could determine something was amiss in Sousuke's letter, but Sousuke gaslit, guilt-tripped, & very likely inflicted violence against her to keep her obedient & pliable to his mechanizations.

Momo is also significantly less kind. This is hard to see since she has all of no screen time after FKT, but in ch 646, we see Momo wants to help Shunsui with his battle against Lille, but Shinji chooses to keep going, which makes Momo upset.

This isn't the same upset she was in the academy when Renji hit Izuru. Her eyebrows are downturned & her lip is curled up, which makes her look angry or frustrated. This isn't the first time we see she's frustrated with Shinji, either. In NBFH, she outright shushes him, & looks very annoyed, judging by how steeply her eyebrows are furrowed.

This isn't to say Momo dislikes Shinji, or they have a bad relationship. I think she likes Shinji plenty, but I think trauma has given her a shorter fuse.

Additionally, Momo never visits anyone in the Rukongai after becoming a lieutenant. She does not seem to have much of a personal life outside of the SWA, which she infrequently attends, to begin with. I think we see her once in the Bootleg (which I don't have scans of orz) & she's obviously unwell. She made cookies shaped like Sousuke's glasses for the SWA, but she has very large bags under her eyes, & when Yachiro breaks a cookie & quotes a line from Sousuke, Momo passes out, whereas Izuru & Renji have rich social lives with their colleagues. She's a very isolated person.

I refuse to believe these drastic changes to her personality are superficial. Sousuke has changed Momo to her core, which are reflected in Momo's zanpakutou by extension.

Changes to Momo's Zanpakutou

In the beginning, Momo's inner world was a lush meadow. The sky was cerulean, the grass was a waist-length ocean that waved in a crisp, everlasting breeze. There's a tree whose fruit are suns. In Momo's inner world, Tobiume is a hermaphroditic caribou whose eyes are suns & whose antlers hang with balls of fire suspended from twine wrapped around the antlers. During this time, Tobiume, although cryptic is dignified & focuses on the benefit of the community.

Momo's kindness is slowly destroyed by Sousuke, & eventually, the Momo she was in the Rukongai, the Momo she was in the academy, is altogether destroyed after Sousuke impales her. She goes mad, & even after recovery, doesn't believe in the goodness of people the same way she did before. She's been irreparably changed & this reflects in her zanpakutou & inner world.

Momo's inner world becomes ash. The grass becomes smoldering embers, the tree no longer bears fruit, the sky is blackened by smoke. Tobiume is emaciated & covered in soot. 

While Momo's shikai remains the same, but her bankai also changes.

Bankai

Momo attains bankai when kidnapped in a drunken stupor. She knows she should be scared for her life, but instead, she's tired of being mistreated, & tired of men hurting her. She fantasizes about becoming a monster able to inflict the kind of pain she's been inflicted with. Tobiume grants Momo her bankai.

Kakushitsu (角質飛梅, horned plum) Tobiume manifests as a caribou skull hanging with fairy lights atop of Momo's skull. There is a fur mounted to the base of its brainpan that covers Momo's neck & back, & ends around her waist. Fireballs are conjured in Momo's palms. She must wear protective gloves in order to prevent her hands from being burned. Kakushitsu Tobiume is similar to Momo's shikai, but the fire becomes hotter, the firing rate is faster, the explosions are more intense, & the fire balls are able to track targets, ignition can be delayed, & they can continue burning on inflammable surfaces.

Momo's bankai itself is lethal, however, when combined with kidou, she's a force to be reckoned with. Momo typically combines her bankai's fireballs with seals to pin the victim in place, & thus ensuring they're unable to escape, or with spells like Daichi Ten'you that create shrapnel to inflict additional damage to bystanders.

Later down the line, I believe Tobiume tells Momo what her bankai would've been before she was so deeply damaged. Her bankai would've become a forest whose trees bore fruits of fire. Momo could use these fruits to raze their enemies or to heal her allies, depending on the kind of fruit she picked. Of course, this is an allegory for Momo acknowledging the happiness she's been deprived of.

[ryuuseini]

I really need to get this off my chest I'm just... I keep being told "learn to love yourself!! You cant expect people to love you if you dont love yourself first!" And "what do you mean everyone leaves you like youre purposely ignoring all the stable relationships you've had just to play the victim" by my family and im fucking sick of it.

To the first point - there are times where people are so deep in their self loathing and hatred, been told again and again they are unworthy of love, that they need someone to lend a hand in teaching how to self love. Because not everyone can do so when the world around them is constantly saying otherwise.

And to their second point - fuck off. Yeah, maybe its not good that I'm grouping people who do care in the same category as the people who don't... but have you considered that like, shit like this is triggering? Having a friend who promised to be there for you legitimately ruining your life; having a friend who said she was your friend and wanted to hang out with you, but each time you made plans she canceled last minute because it was her sister's birthday that day or some shit (only to see she hangs out with everyone else just fine); a person who said that they'll be friends with you and when you're floored by the fact that they waited for you instead of heading straight to class after gym, said "of course, I said I was your friend and I meant it," only for them to randomly ghost you like barely a month after this interaction and just decide to act like you exist simply when they want to, which is never, and you're just wondering what the hell you did to cause that; to the nicest girl in your class telling you, straight up, "of course you don't deserve friends! You just transferred here senior year, we already have cliques and friends we trust, how do you expect to break that?"; to the person who told you that he'll show you you're worthy of being loved, only to proceed to blame you for all of his unexplainable anger; to the friends who you thought had your best interest but talked about you behind your back about how much they hated you, to the point they willingly harassed you because you decided to leave; to the friends that said they'll try to be your friend but got mad when you pointed out that they rejected every single attempt for you to get closer but kept saying "you can join this one server we have" despite me explicitly stating that I Did Not Feel Safe There because someone who had harassed and stalked me was still in that server and there were zero protections offered for me to even feel safe in such an environment, only for them to decide a person who was suffering from such pain deserved no friends and got all of our shared friends to leave me, despite this being a private personal issue between me and them that I handled privately; to being blamed for a grown man's potential heart attack and that being JUSTIFIED by others while you're still a minor; to just... so many other bullshits I genuinely cannot describe, each happening within the relatively short time span of 5 years. Don't you think??? Don't you just think for a second??? That my brain is conditioned to think this way??? And being told "stop trying to play the fucking victim and realize the friends you DO have" is just ignoring the fact that I literally cannot because the pain is far stronger in my mind than the opposite? But you do nothing but help, so whatever.

And then I remember my first high-school. How I was gaslit, not only by my bully... But by the adults who were supposed to help me as well. I didn't feel safe attending any clubs, and the one club I did attend because he wasn't there... most of the people made fun of me anyway, there was no point. He was in every club with me, and instead of working out a thing so I - the kid who frequently felt isolated - could have a chance to socialize, I simply was expected to just not participate. I was suicide baited the day before a huge school trip by a friend of my bully under my bully's name, and when I went to tell the teacher hey, this happened, can you make sure I'm not paired up with this student who was also going to the trip, my bully stuck around to hear that, only to corner me at my locker to lie to me that he did care I got suicide baited (despite the fact I had texts stating that he only cared if the girl who had sent the texts under his name was going to get in trouble, and not the fact that I had been told my life was essentially meaningless) and had a girl who wasn't involved in the situation, who I thought was my friend, back him up and agree with all his points until I cried that I wanted to die and he should just kill me. The trip got canceled for me, but he was still allowed to go on it. We shared classes together and they were working to take me out of my classes to make my health better. One of these classes was my favorite class - the class where the teacher treated me like an actual fucking human being, the class I felt the safest in, the class I would hide in even when the teacher was teaching a different class because I felt fucking safe, the class that I wasn't put in initially for some reason but fought to be in - and they simply chose to take me out of the class instead of punishing him. How the head guidance counselor, to my face, told me "how can you say your bully isn't a friend of yours? He took the time to skip a class because he was concerned about you, how is that NOT something a friend would do?" And how, when I simply couldn't take the abuse anymore, they kicked me out of the school, forcing me to go elsewhere, where I did. And I didn't make any lasting friends and people ignored me 90% of the time, and at that 10% they cared I felt like... I had to pretend that they didn't fucking ghost me 9/10 times... Only for that school to fucking shut down at the end of my junior year, forcing me to go to another high-school my senior year, where I really had no one... Because that girl was right. Everyone already had their friend groups... I couldn't be expected to break that.

I'm just... I'm just not okay.

[gaslightgatekeepgirlbosscombat]

Group F, Round 5

Propaganda under the cut

John Gaius, The Emperor Undying, God

Gaslight: When he resurrected his best friends he took away all their memories and gave them new names. He never reveals to them that he was the one who killed everyone on earth in the first place. He really plays up the "benevolent God" act Gatekeep: As a God, everyone is vying for his Favour and he is the one who gets to decide who gets it. He also doesnt share his knowledge of how to become immortal without killing your best friend. Girlboss: Literally made himself God. Never strayed from his ten thousand year old plan of Revenge. Rules an entire solar system and is colonizing more.

Jod is a frequent gaslight and gatekeep, however he falls more under the girlflop the girlboss. All of his plans go wrong but goddamn if he's not trying. Horrible ideas from an even worse person. Whent above gasligting and just straight up wiped his friends memories. Gatekeeping the knowledge of the universe. Had a child he didn't know about for 18 years and only found out cause she showed up dead(she's fine now(mostly)), girlboss move. Had a threesome with two of the gaslit friends, this would be less gross if he wasn't middle-aged. Gatekeeping the planets(I cannot explain this one). Ressurected humanity but also killed a lot of cows(girlboss). Put the soul of the earth in a woman and then put her in prison(but not before killing half of the amigos). Anticaptalist, bisexual, father. He has babygirl energy

Killed entirety of humanity and the whole solar system save a handful of billionaires and their victims, then resurrected the sun and a select handful of humans, wiped their memories, and established a religion in which he is god for over ten thousand years. Also an ex-tumblrina (probably) and goth twitch streamer (definitely).

Killed almost all of humanity, the sun and the solar system and then resurrected some of them deliberately without their memories and didn’t tell them that he killed them in the first place, and also told them that he was god. Renamed his friends after killing and resurrecting them. Set up imbalanced and toxic power dynamics among his inner circle that led to half of them either killing themselves or being killed by the other in each pair in order for half the group to become immortal saints, something he didn’t tell them wasn’t actually necessary to reach that sort of state. Lied to the surviving friends about why the ghosts of the planets in the solar system were hunting them, he told them they were after all of them because of the way they’d become saints which meant they could never go home, but they were actually only ever after him. Also because of this lie he was able to manipulate them into fighting the ghosts and dying in the process, saying that they would kill him which would destroy the sun, when actually they couldn’t kill him and also the ghosts were after just him so everybody would be fine if they just stopped hanging out with him (this is true in a LOT of senses actually). When he decided to get new immortal saints he specifically asked for the heirs of the houses, who were mostly younger in the 16-22 range and therefore easy to manipulate especially after killing their best friend (again, he knows that isn’t necessary and is asking it of a group of teens/young adults). When one of the people who was successful appears to have done it wrong, he pretends to be a mentor or father figure to her face (knowing that that is something extremely important to her) while having one of his surviving original friends try to kill her without her knowing he was behind that. On the girlboss front, I think he kinda thinks he’s a girlboss more than he actually is one, but he’s so good at the gaslight bit he’ll have you believing that too.

Goncharov

He spends the entire film lying to and manipulating as many people as possible to achieve his ultimate goal (Katya is an obvious example; her having enough of that is a driving force behind their breaking relationship), and also including himself (insisting that he doesn't like Andrey when they're basically about to kiss anytime they're on screen). Also Gaslight Gatekeep Goncharov amiright

[url-is-url]

There are... so many other personality traits that make somebody WAY harder to work with than those. You are SO fucking competent, from the flower shop to the photography, I would kill to replace some of my coworkers with clones of you. Doing giant fucking funeral arrangements and making a workflow that's efficient as hell! Killing it at action photography and finessing the fence links to make it look like a vignette! That's fucking genius!!!

You own it when you fuck up, you ASK CLARIFYING QUESTIONS (when you're not being shamed/gaslit about it...) INSTEAD OF TRYING TO DO THINGS YOURSELF AND FUCKING THEM UP QUIETLY (hello I struggle with this!!!) like??? Those traits alone literally put you in like the 80th percentile of people I've worked with. If you get frustrated easily and wear your heart on your sleeve... who among us hasn't gone into a walk-in fridge or similar hidey hole to scream for ten seconds before going back into the trenches? I work in a hospital pharmacy and I get the most cryptic goddamn mesaages from nursing, there is nothing wrong with needing frequent clarification because frankly people suck ass at clear communication to begin with.

I promise you are not actually difficult to work with.

I do worry sometimes that I won't find a place that is good enough for me to stay. Like... I can be difficult to work with. I'm aware that sometimes I misunderstand things and that I get frustrated with certain tasks and wear my emotions on my sleeve.

Real conscious of these things. I get told them all the time.

But I also don't think humans are meant to be micromanaged.

[thegeminisage]

john abused both dean AND sam, just differently. in this essay i will

prove that the abuse manifested in different ways for each of them because that’s how abuse works in real life. this is based on the fact that john saw dean as mary’s surrogate but once he found out about the deal and sam having demon blood he blamed sam for her death. ok let’s fucking go

dean as mary’s surrogate

there are loads of parallels made between dean and mary in early season spn and late season spn. in season 12 dean directly calls himself sam’s mother, but even earlier than that we see him doing the cooking and child rearing. compare that to all the parallels made between sam and john (both of them losing their blonde woman significant others in a ceiling fire) and it’s clear that dean was meant to more resemble mary. it’s not a stretch to say that if we can see it as viewers this is how john saw it in his actual life. i do think john loves dean for being dean but he loves him more for being mary.

sam as the reason behind mary’s death

i think once john learned that sam had demon blood, some part of him must have always been waiting for the other shoe to drop with sam, not ever fully believing this kid was human, and maybe not even knowing if this kid was HIS. a popular theory back in the day was that YED fathered sam (something they had to actually address in season 4 to stop the speculation), and if WE speculated that hard, surely john must have too. i’m sure he loves sam as an extension of mary, and keeps and raises and protects him BECAUSE he’s mary’s, but similarly (or maybe inverse) to dean, i don’t know if he ever fully gave himself permission to love sam for being sam. in fact, i imagine john harbors a lot of self-loathing for failing to save mary. if we directly parallel john and sam, that means by some extent he would also hate sam.

john trusted dean with far too much, and sam with far too little

dean knew about monsters; sam didn’t. dean had memories of their mother and the night she died, and shared that trauma of watching her die with john; sam didn’t. dean knew when john was supposed to be home and who to call if he wasn’t; sam didn’t. dean was given the money and the guns and the CAR ITSELF; sam wasn’t. dean was taught to drive; SAM WASN’T. 

dean was expected to do everything john was supposed to have been doing in his absence - he was to be a mother and father to sam, he was supposed to protect sam from evil, he was supposed to see to sam’s meals and homework and getting to school on time. and he was put under an EXTRAORDINARY amount of pressure not to screw this up even a little bit, despite the fact that he was only a kid. sam on the other hand was kept on a strict need-to-know basis for his entire life, right up until season 1 when they reunite at last. john didn’t trust sam with ANYTHING, and sam knew it. this contributed to his lifelong anger issues because he didn’t DO anything to warrant that kind of mistrust and probably got gaslit about it a lot of times either by john himself or dean (unknowingly, by parroting/believing the things john said). even in the pilot sam says very casually of his mother “she’s gone,” because her memory doesn’t hold the same place of reverence for him - best guess is that john didn’t talk about her much to sam because he didn’t trust sam with emotional stuff either. in s14 we learn that dean was the one who told sam stories about mary, including her terrible casserole - and their attempt at recreating it infuriated john to the point of him throwing the entire concoction in the trash.

john relied on dean for everything, and refused to rely on sam for anything

canonically dean was the one who comforted john after a bad hunt, looked after and fed his brother when john wasn’t around. dean knew how to use a shotgun; sam didn’t. dean knew who to call in an emergency; sam didn’t. dean knew about monsters; sam didn’t. this was done under the guise of “protection for sammy” but turn it around and it’s also protection FROM sammy. think of how angry john gets when he learns sam has been having psychic visions. he’s not just angry that dean didn’t report it to him, he’s angry that the demon’s plans for sam are coming to pass, and that sam is becoming less human. again, he can’t TRUST sam if sam’s not human, and it proves to john that he was right all along to keep sam in the dark as much as possible.

john gave dean too much freedom, and sam no freedom at all

“watch out for sammy.” sam was under constant supervision by either dean or john; john made sure of it. again, it’s protection FOR sam but also protection FROM him, in case he did something inhuman or evil. dean on the other hand was left alone without any supervision at all for days or even weeks at a time - he resorts to stealing bread and peanut butter and (according to jackles) turning tricks for money. he had to make it work and got up to whatever the fuck he wanted when john wasn’t looking. sam had to LITERALLY run away from home before he got the simple pleasure of eating pizza and having a dog by himself, independently. dean was given too much independence and freedom but sam was kept on such a short leash he had none at all.

john made dean feel unworthy, and he made sam feel unclean

when dean fails to protect sam from the shtriga in the season 1 flashbacks, he says his dad looked at him differently after. he also implies that john physically beat him when sam ran away in flagstaff. whether he meant to or not, john made it abundantly clear that his love for dean was not unconditional; it depended very much on how well dean performed the multitude of tasks john assigned him. dean grew up believing that his only worth was in what he could do for other people. he demonstrates this an an adult over and over and over, from letting his possessed family members beat him up to refusing to take care of his own needs, emotional and otherwise, and snapping at people who try to talk to him about his own feelings.

on the other hand, sam talks in season 8 about how even at a very young age he felt impure and unclean, even before he knew that he had demon blood, even before he knew that there was any such thing as monsters. kids aren’t stupid, and sam picked up on the vibes john was putting off - that john didn’t trust him, might not have loved him, and might not have considered him human or even his own child. without even knowing why, he spent his entire life feeling unclean and inhuman, not worth of being loved by his own family. even dean, who we all know loves sam unconditionally, admits in season 14 that he often took dad’s side on arguments because he had “his own stuff,” further leading to the alienation that was sam’s constant companion growing up. 

AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY:

JOHN’S ABUSE PITTED SAM AND DEAN AGAINST EACH OTHER

john saved dean after their shared trauma of mary’s death.��dean says in season 1 that the reason he stopped talking was that he was scared. iirc john’s journal implies he was mute for over a year, and dean in season 2 says that when he was 6 or 7 his dad took him shooting for the first time. if mary died just before dean’s fifth birthday, the timeline works out to dean talking again because john took him shooting. i believe that dean hero worships his father because after mary’s death, and dealing with the terror that something like that could come in and take his family away by killing them horribly at any time without any warning, john learning to fight back against the darkness - and teaching dean to do the same - is what gave dean his voice again. BOTH of them saw and carried the memory of mary burning on the ceiling for the rest of their lives. “watch out for sammy” and “get the thing that killed mom” were dean’s reasons to get up in the morning, because they were john’s reasons to get up in the morning. these things were LITERALLY his reasons for living. john gave dean a way to fight back against fear and gave him a cause to keep him going. abuse or not, dean never stopped being grateful for that, and he was the only other person in the whole world who understood the unique horror of what john went through that night. even all the way into season 10, he tells other people that john did right by him. it’s borderline brainwashing. part of dean’s self-worth will always be based on how good of a son he was to john.

on the other hand, knowingly or not, john did everything possible to alienate sam. he kept him on a short leash while also keeping him at arm’s distance. he didn’t trust sam with emotional things like the memory of mary, he didn’t trust sam with the truth about monsters and what they did for a living, he didn’t trust sam with his plans, he didn’t trust sam with the truth about demon blood. canon STRONGLY suggests john knew YED bled in sam’s mouth as a baby, but instead of telling sam or even dean about that, sam had to learn about it in a horrible flashback recreated by YED himself. when sam wanted to go to school, john told him no, and when he left anyway, john told him not to come back.

this is an equal but opposite kind of abuse. john totally fucked up BOTH his kids in complete inversions to each other.

which means that, no matter what john did, it caused sam and dean to fight. this isn’t an interpretation. this is straight up canon.

again, dean says in s14 that he frequently took dad’s side in arguments because he had his own stuff to deal with, and he was trying to keep the peace. dean, a victim of emotional (and implied sometimes physical) abuse himself, was not able to shield sam from all of john’s bullshit. he could stop sam from getting hit and having to see john during the worst of his drunken rages, but he couldn’t trick sam into thinking john loved him unconditionally, because john didn’t love either of his kids unconditionally.

when john acted in a way that was not befitting of a parent, sam rightfully took exception, which forced dean (who was ALSO BEING ABUSED, almost brainwashed) to jump to his defense. that led to john getting to do whatever the hell he wanted and sam and dean arguing about the effects. when sam ran away in flagstaff, DEAN was punished, leading dean to resenting sam for that incursion, even though sam was perfectly right to want to get away from an abusive household. when sam did a normal thing wanting to leave for college at age 18, he left, and dean resented him for that because that meant he was alone to bear the brunt of john’s anger. 

sam repeatedly made logical, emotionally healthy choices in attempting to break the family dynamic, but because of JOHN’S BEHAVIOR, not sam’s, those choices wound up causing dean harm. JOHN HIMSELF was the ultimate wedge between sam and dean growing up and beyond.

and let’s not forget the biggest sin - john spent 22 years impressing upon dean that taking care of sammy was EVERYTHING, and then without any explanation at all, he asked dean to kill him, and then he DIED, which meant dean had to carry that weight by himself (because again, he’s been trained not to trust sam with things). like of COURSE sam got angry when he found out - that’s fucking fucked up! once again sam is being treated like a ticking time bomb for absolutely no reason - he didn’t ask to have demon blood or psychic visions or a dead mom or an abusive father. nor did dean ask to be saddled with the upbringing of an entire human at four years old who he then might have to kill. because dean will always feel gratitude towards john, and sam will always feel resentment, and because based on john’s treatment of them BOTH OF THESE FEELINGS ARE JUSTIFIED, john continues to cause fights between sam and dean long after he’s dead and gone, and that will never change.

on a final note: i’d like to bring this around to season 13.

after cas, mary, kelly, and crowley all die (or are presumed dead in mary’s case) in the season 12 finale, season 13 opens with nobody but sam and dean and jack. dean directly blames jack for these deaths. he says so multiple times. he says where jack can hear him that he knows jack is evil and impure and cannot be saved and calls jack a freak. when jack tries repeatedly to kill himself dean says to jack’s face not to bother, because WHEN jack does go bad, dean will be the one to kill him. dean does NOT see jack as castiel’s child - he sees jack as someone who brainwashed cas and kelly both and got them killed. dean does not even see jack as a human person worthy of life. from the get-go, all he wants is to put jack down. jack is born into a world shaped by pain and grief and anger, where people hate him simply for what he is and who died to get him here. 

and again, sam identifies hard with jack. he justifiably protests dean’s treatment of him. jack is a kid and didn’t ask for any of this. jack is terrified of dean. sam reminds dean that john said all these things about sam that dean is saying about jack. john is still causing a rift between his sons over a decade after his death.

eventually, after jack uses his powers and brings back cas from the empty, dean pulls his head out of his ass and admits that he was wrong. he calls jack his kid more than once, and jack refers to dean as one of his dads. but the damage has already been done. jack struggles multiple times with his powers, accidentally hurting people and then wishing himself dead after. he also struggles without them; even when using his powers means using up pieces of his soul, he does it, because dean taught him that he’s only worthy of being loved and trusted if he’s “good.” even when he has NO SOUL, when jack does something bad he panics about it and seeks to undo it at any cost. that’s how deep the damage runs.

i see a lot of people remarking that in the arc of 13.01-13.05, dean became john, and i agree that he did. but dean didn’t do to jack what john did to him. dean did to jack what john did to SAM.

[spn masterpost]

[ghostonly]

Here's a shout out to those in the disabled community who do have difficulty breathing in a mask and wear one anyway or avoid leaving the house to avoid having to wear one

If you come from a background of gaslighting like I do or have been gaslit medically before, being told that wearing a mask doesn't make a difference to how much oxygen you get can be really upsetting if it genuinely does make a difference. Everyone has different oxygen needs and any kind of barrier can impact your oxygen intake. If that wasn't the case, there wouldn't be disabled people with oxygen tanks because they have difficulty getting enough without supplement

For those of us who have asthma, narrow airways, heart conditions, and more, getting enough oxygen can be tricky. We may need more consistent supply than the average person and a slight decrease can show big symptoms that an abled person's body wouldn't display

That doesn't mean you're anti mask. You know better than anyone that not taking covid safety seriously can have a profoundly negative impact on those with compromised immune systems, which may include yourself.

I just want you to know that I see you.

If you're struggling with breathing through a mask, check if the type of mask you're wearing is the best for ease of breathing.

Masks that are wet, sweaty, or covered in skin oils will be harder to breathe through. Bring a dry spare with you and make sure you wash your fabric mask with soap to remove oils

If fabric masks are hard for you to breathe through, try the thinner disposable ones

If wearing a fabric mask seems to always cause asthma, check that you're not washing your mask with something fragrant that might be triggering your asthma, thus making it harder to breathe

If you have a heart condition, make sure you take frequent breaks to sit down when out of the house in a mask

If you have narrow airways that make getting enough oxygen hard, make sure you take your time walking places with a mask on and ask anyone with you to keep a slow pace as well

[sageandred]

I think he did things wrong, but the point of watching character arcs is to see characters make mistakes and sympathize with them if they are written and acted well. I feel bad for Amerie every season and her storylines set her up to be blamed by every student at that school when from where we're all sitting she's not the worst character at that school and it's easy to sympathize with the person she is now for the entire run of the show. The Amerie/Malakai relationship conflict is so good, because in s1 we had a square with Amerie crushing on Dusty->Harper dating him->Amerie getting with Malakai->and Dusty and Harper sleeping with Malakai when he was very traumatized and under the influence too much to make a level-headed decision. There's a lot of mess there, and it's easy to see why they're having such a struggle to get things back on track with a load of feelings and undealt with emotions on the history at hand. Neither of them are really 100% morally sympathetic characters, but somehow come off as some of the most pure hearted and mind you socially disrespected characters at that school. It was always really meant for this-this web of complication and hurting each other-to be what is between them. They're both "bad" and "good" when it comes to the events of their relationship because of both own doings and things out of their control. It's all very interconnected how things happen where they screw up and where things turn bad that were just always going to happen due to the "missed moment, bad timing" lovers scenario they've got going on. When Malakai asks for a casual relationship, it's out of panic for not having a confidence in his feelings surrounding guys and a premature feeling of not wanting to lose Amerie when he doesn't know if his newfound attraction is something worth ruining things over yet. It wasn't premeditated and all the escape room stuff before that was a quick-fire occurence in which he got giddy and blinded over his crush (he did treat Amerie poorly, but it wasn't malicious just not thought out). I'm willing to bet with Amerie and Malakai there is/was residual resentment over the events of last season. Amerie's feelings are respected about the threesome (ofc there would be hurt there), and I think (if not now, then last season) there could've been some residual feelings from Malakai following the assault and the fight/mishap with Amerie sharing the video on accident that they never even talked about. It's also not lost on me how Malakai has a tendency to lash out this season specifically when things are brought up about his sexuality with her..She questions if he is gay (she doesn't know, fair); he gets mad with the recording in the woods where it is played for public consumption that he was "trying to decide if he liked boys." It's a very new thing and it makes sense that it becomes a very sensitive thing for him to hear about the half of him (his sexuality, not identity) that he is quite unsure of himself. Every male in this show some signs of toxic masculinity at the hands of what they're surrounded by and Malakai not being able to talk properly about this is not surprising. I take issue with the word gaslit being used so frequently when people just like...made some typical misguided choices that negatively affected the other person in a relationship; that's why I said that. Not communicating properly especially at like 17 years old is not gaslighting. It just means most people at 17 make some poor mistakes.

Okay listen I know we all love Malakai here and of course so do I but can we at least acknowledge that he did Amerie dirty before their breakup. Like he was struggling with his sexuality and thats totally valid but he did not handle it well and yea he did gaslight Amerie about it, he did give her the world's mixedest signals, he third wheeled her on their own date to the guy he was into, like Amerie isn't perfect by any means but can we at least all understand that he did not treat her okay

[demigodofhoolemere]

Being LDS on this website that’s obsessed with finding fault in different groups of people means you’re subjected — semi-frequently, at complete random, and by random blogs so you can’t follow a pattern back to one person to unfollow — to posts that are like

“Mormonism is a cult because-" *insert a) something the church doesn’t teach, b) a claim about how the church is controlling and forces its members to do things they don’t make you do, like cut off contact with nonmembers or something similarly crazy, or c) completely innocuous thing that’s completely normal for any religion to ask of its adherents*

“Mormons are crazy because-" *insert a) something that has literally never been taught as doctrine ever that was either made up about us or spread by weird members in the past who didn’t know what they were talking about and people held onto that instead of listening to corrections regarding it, or b) something taken wildly out of context or worded in a way to purposefully make it sound nuts and which makes way more sense if you’d actually bother to listen to someone try to explain it*

“Exmo here, yeah the church is horrible because-" *insert a) personal experience with individuals doing xyz that is certainly unfortunate but has nothing to do with the church as a whole or its doctrine, or b) wild claims that you KNOW this person is lying about because you literally grew up in the same faith as they did and were taught the same things and you know they’re spouting some serious garbage about what we supposedly believe but of course everyone is going to trust the person who talks like a cult survivor so there’s nothing you can do about it*

And you sit there having to either ignore it (DIFFICULT) or find the courage to message the person who reblogged it to gently explain why the post is wrong (does not go well half the time).

No, the church does not fit the BITE model for a cult (literally the only few parts of the list you could say it matches are the few that are true of literally any religion and do not scream ‘cult’). No, you do not need a lawyer to get your records removed, anyone offering those services is scamming you for money because you can literally just ask your local leaders to have it done. No, we do not genuinely believe that insane Bigfoot Cain folk story or anything else like it. And frankly, sometimes people who leave just lie. That happens. It does not make me brainwashed to say that someone who left the church and is spreading obvious crap about things we don’t really teach or believe is indeed lying and it’s frustrating to no end that the automatic reaction from so many people is that you must be the crazy one, meanwhile you’re sitting there being gaslit about your own beliefs as they go ‘Mormons teach/believe xyz��� ‘no we don’t’ ‘yes you do’ ‘we literally don’t though’ ‘shut up you’re just brainwashed’ ‘????’. Have you ever seen a divorced person spread bad rumors about their ex that are not true? Yeah.

(And before anyone goes, ‘Hey, she’s trying to invalidate the stories of people who left, that’s clearly a cultist!’, I’m referring strictly to people who make false claims about what we teach that can be easily verified as false. There are bitter people out there who do that. I’m all for listening to people who have had bad experiences with other members in the church, absolutely nothing but sympathy and love towards those who have genuinely been hurt in one way or another, and yes there are cultural things especially in Utah that have needed or still do need shifting. But as always, the same is true of literally any religion or just any group of human beings in general because a lot of the time human beings kind of suck. The church isn’t special for this. It’s just as filled with flawed people who need to repent as any other group of people on the planet and that’s no secret. There’s a reason we’re always encouraged by our leaders to continue to become better and to try to be more Christlike than we often are, and the vast majority of members are absolutely trying to live by that and it’s not fair to judge those millions of people by the ones who don’t behave as they should. You can believe the stories of people who have had bad experiences without making out 16 million other people to be horrible. Everything would be a cult if the qualification for that was to have some bad apples in your midst.)

It doesn’t take much to look at different sources to see if there’s another side to a story or another explanation for something that sounds weird. You don’t even have to look through church websites for it, you can literally just ask members if you know any. In fact PLEASE just ask us because I lose my mind a little more every time I see someone just looking at sources that are total confirmation biases against us. Ask faithful, practicing members if they’re really forced to do xyz or ask them to explain something weird you heard. We’re not exactly secretive or shy about explaining our beliefs (hence the missionaries lol), we’ll do it. Heck, I’ve got anxiety through the roof about answering questions because I’m scared I’ll word something poorly but even I will still do it, I’d rather face my fears and respond imperfectly than let someone go around thinking something that’s not true. As long as you’re asking genuinely out of curiosity to hear our perspective and not trying to just poke at our faith and be a jerk, you’ll get people who are willing to answer you and have a reasonable discussion without trying to convert you or something.

Aaaanyway. If you couldn’t tell, I’ve now seen two different posts from two different people today being negative about my faith, so. I’m tired. If you’re so inclined please pray for my ability to feel close to Christ, have love for people I disagree with, and be patient with nonsense lol. Goodness knows I need help with that sometimes. Especially right now since I apparently had enough frustration in me to write this whole thing lol.