#because it's 'unhealthy' of me to stay away from traumatising environments

[obstinatecondolement]

Having trauma from being misunderstood and disrespected and ridiculed and for any attempt on my part to make those things stop making it worse is like. Not great. Don't like that.

[gothamcitycentral]

Please tell me about you ideas for Poison Ivy episodes in as much detail as physically possible. I want to hear about the traumatised teenager.

I’d be delighted to.

Her debut goes through virtually the same motions as her 2004 counterpart. Her and Barbara mess with some polluting corporations, she gets mutated, starts causing trouble as Poison Ivy, gets busted by Batman and his new self described sidekick, Batgirl, and is shipped off to Arkham. She’s surprisingly calm about everything, mainly because she’s still in awe of how her powers could help the environment.

Then she gets a late night visit from Barbara. Eventually Barb asks if she’s going to hurt people. Pam says she’d only ever hurt someone she had to.

Barbara asks if she’d hurt her.

Pam could hardly take the question seriously.

Barbara lets put a choked, “Yeah”, wipes her eyes, and leaves Arkham.

That was the last visit Pam had. From anybody.

In her next appearance, Ivy’s isolation was getting to her. Her only interaction in the Asylum being which guard was delivering meals. They were never all that charming. The only break from routine being random nonsense from another Arkham patient. The separation from either plant life, the sun, or both seeming at have drained from her physical health. Not that there was anyone to notice. She keeps on replaying her conversation with Barbara over and over again in her head, trying to figure what she said wrong.

Then there’s a mass breakout seemingly caused by the Joker. Then some crocodile man is making sure she gets out.

In some weird, probably unhealthy, attempt to feel better, she’s starts tearing up another corrupt corporation. Which would be fine if it didn’t mean a lot of innocent workers and civilians being hurt. But with so many villains just having escaped, Bruce misses the info on Poison Ivy.

However, Batgirl doesn’t, and since her and Bruce are having communication issues at the moment, she handles it herself.

One fight scene later and Batgirl is held by Ivy’s vines, she realizes there’s only one way she isn’t dead.

She takes of her cowl.

Pam can’t even respond beyond a confused, “Barbara…” before she drops her. Then, she starts realize what she almost did.

She was trying to kill her best friend.

Neither of them can stumble out a reply before they realize Batman had showed up on the scene. Pam gives a last look to Barbara before escaping.

Barbara doesn’t try to stop her.

Her next episode starts with Killer Croc, just, casually picking out items from a small grocery/convenience store. Then he just leaves with them, stopping supervillains isn’t in the single cashier’s job description. He then takes them to a seemingly abandoned green house, where Poison Ivy is staying. The only sign of her habitation being a plant based hammock and a charcoal grill Croc dragged in.

Waylon is trying to be some what comforting, but he can’t do much with Pam refusing to talk to him, so they kinda just sit in silence. Which is easily better than her being alone.

Eventually Pam does start talking, leading to her having a breakdown, cursing her powers that she would have once dreamed of having. Her mutation made her parents abandon her, land her in Arkham, and made her almost kill her best friend. She says she wishes this never happened, that didn’t have wear leaves for clothes. She starts tearing them off, but they just keep regrowing.

Killer Croc stops her by throwing a green hoodie in her face and saying, “Then don’t.”

Pam pulls away the jacket, it has “Legalize It” in bold letters.

It’s oddly calming to wear.

Then she shows up in the Red hood arc. Since Waylon started keeping on eye on Jason he’d been visiting the green house with him. She and Jason get along surprisingly well, and it’s satisfying to have someone to just rant about their anger to someone other than Croc. They’re by all means grateful for his comfort, but sometimes they just want to be mad with someone.

Her next main focus in S3E8, where Batgirl finds Poison Ivy trying to mess with another corporation. She tries to take her in but Pam explains that she isn’t trying to hurt anyone, only stop a toxic dump directly into the rivers outside Gotham. She asks for Barbara’s help, “For old time’s sake.”

She can’t bring herself to refuse.

It’s awkward, admittedly, at first. But by the end of it, Pam asks if Barbara hates her.

She says of course she doesn’t.

Pam asks if they’re still friends.

Barbara says she doesn’t know, but she holds Pam’s hand and says, “But I want to try to be.”

Of course that isn’t her last appearance, but from then on she isn’t the main focus, and she acts as an ally of the Bats.

[tmae3114]

I'll be honest, after seeing how badly in her tunnelvision DF Jaania can be, I'm so curious to see if MQ Jaania would have tunnelvision like this too and how it could affect her in the events of her timeline, if that makes sense.

That's something I've been thinking about too!! We didn't get to see very much of MQ!Jaania so extrapolating possibilities backwards from what we see of DF!Jaania is a pretty fun exercise

...more under the cut because this got away from me and turned into a bit of a character study, focused more on DF!Jaania than MQ!Jaania, but I think I managed to stay on topic!

Personally, a lot of what's going on with Jaania in Book 3 - particularly the tunnel vision - reads very much to me as her being traumatised out of her mind and having a) zero coping mechanisms and b) pretty much no support system. Some of that is due to her own actions - we see her repeatedly reject attempts by others to give her a support system, most noticeably with Kara. I think Jaania needed someone or something to blame for what happened to her - and to Alex - and couldn't take it all having happened over arrogance and jealousy and teenage competition. I think she couldn't handle something so awful, which lasted for so long, happening over something so petty. She needed something bigger to blame and so she turned to magic. Magic itself must be the cause of all her hurt and all the hurt of others because otherwise she'd have to face that what happened, that awful, horrible thing, happened for silly, immature, petty reasons. Because sometimes, horrible, awful things do just happen, caused by things incredibly out of proportion to their outcomes. But for Jaania? If magic is to blame for that, if magic is to blame for all of it, then all she has to do... is make the magic go away. If she can stop magic, she can stop all the hurt, all the suffering! She can make sure nobody ever again suffers the way she suffered! If she can stop magic, she can fix it. She can fix everything. She can fix what happened to her. If she gets rid of magic, sets everything right... she'll be okay again. She has to be.

(I think, honestly, that right now the Sunk Cost Fallacy may be a decent chunk of what's keeping Jaania from even reexamining the path that she's on. All that time, all that effort, all the bad things that have happened on her watch... all of that will be worth it, if she can just fix everything for the future)

Now, that's not how any of this works. And I think we saw the flaws in Jaania's methods and mindset right at the very beginning of this whole mess.

Jaania wants to make sure that what happened to her never happens to anyone else but what was the very first thing she did when she started that plan? she froze Xan, Warlic, and the Hero she repeated the very same thing that happened to her. except, what happened to her was a tragic accident. and her actions were very, very deliberate.

We didn't see any signs of the tunnel vision that we're seeing in Book 3 in the Alexander Saga and I honestly do think that that's because the tunnel vision is a result of Jaania's trauma. It's a coping mechanism. An exceptionally unhealthy one but a coping mechanism nonetheless.

Therefore, I feel like the tunnel vision isn't particularly something we'd see take root in MQ!Jaania because, while she's still living through an intensely traumatising time with the war and everything, she has a solid support system around her in GEARS and she's far more likely to be able to get help for any trauma she goes through. I think any coping mechanisms that MQ!Jaania developed would be healthier than DF!Jaania's just thanks to being in a better environment. But if she did tunnel vision the way that DF!Jaania has, I think it'd be focused on the Shadowscythe

[skinfeeler]

between good posts, miscellaneous aesthetic content, and astounding selfies, sometimes the mask slips and it becomes obvious that i am an extraordinarily troubled person. why? well, there are many reasons. but i can give you a microcosm from the sort of things that are done to me to make me this way, even by other trans women.

this is a vaguepost about me with zero notes. let’s break it down! but before we break it down, let’s take it at face value. the kind of picture she’s painting here insinuates that perhaps i horribly mistreated her and then, in HAL fashion, made sure she was exiled from all the communities we shared using vague accusations and extremely loaded language. something like that.

factually, the opposite happened. we’re all familiar with reversal of accusations done by people who hold power over these they hurt, aren’t we? so here are the disturbing and crude circumstances from which this disgusting screed emerged:

we initially shared an online space together. at some point we started conversing privately. as almost the first thing she said to me, she confided to me that she used to hate women like me: brash. assertive. confident. self-loving. not afraid to take up space or to refuse to put up with mistreatment. the product of a ceaseless struggle against conditioning to let people exploit me, abuse me. one of two directions each trans woman can take, the other one to become fragile and let oneself stay fragile.

she said that once she met me and got to know me, she dropped this worldview and seemed embarrassed she ever held it. in response, i, simply grateful to not have someone reject me for being the wrong kind of trans woman — an etymological baeddel, if you will — told her that i understood, since i know people like me aren’t allowed to exist. i wish i hadn’t.

because she didn’t drop it forever. she only dropped it conditionally.

we had a dalliance of sorts, and eventually it turned out to be deeply unhealthy for both of us, so i broke it off for both our sakes. i told her that it was probably for the best that we ‘stopped talking’, by which i meant to not contact me individually and to refrain from using group environments specifically to solicit me. i hoped that this reduction of contact, while making room to share the same spaces, would be better for both of us than our unhealthy and mutually damaging association.

then soon after day her girlfriend who shared the same space and who i still spoke to told me — as part of a larger diatribe concerning a reciprocally harmful situation — the following.“It’s ridiculous - it’s a completely irresponsible way to handle a sitution with someone you're supposed to share a community with. You completely disposed of her. You forced her out.”

alongside this, a series of quotes from hot allostatic load on her blog, very clearly meant for me.

apparently respect for the dignity of trans women like me ceased the moment i denied someone access to me— respect from her, and the people i thought were close to me but who were apparently still quite willing to suddenly assume the worst when i was simply trying to set boundaries. i wasn’t setting boundaries as a real trans woman may be entitled to, i was forcing people out, i was made the aggressor simply for daring to set boundaries based on a prior judgement that was made the moment people met me and the way i talk, the particular trauma responses i have. what might be praised in a more feminine and mild-mannered (trans) woman was in me, proof of guilt and evil.

it didn’t matter what actually happened, what exactly both of us respectively did to each other. what mattered is how she felt. how she felt aggressed against by the wrong kind of trans women daring to deny her access to her body and person.

other people got involved and other conflicts got aggravated. she kept stoking the fires— other situations, if they were resolvable beforehand, weren’t because of the poison she put in people’s heads about me. through all of this, neither she nor her girlfriend were ever in the slightest genuinely repentant for the way they made it difficult for me to set boundaries.

all of this happened in the acute aftermath of me being raped in an alleyway — an event they had knowledge of — during the few months after. i was so, so carefully trying out if it was even possible for me to be intimate with others. it was, briefly, until i pulled out, until i told people that i felt violated by things that happened.

and all of that, all of my attempts to set boundaries and to protest against violations committed, were not even met with direct answers or where not possible, dignified resignations to that fact and attempts to atone. instead, what happened is that they leveled narratives at their friends and girlfriends until they felt so overwhelmed that people refused to sincerely listen to my side of things and i was put in a position where all i was to do to make amends for my own actions, with everyone else completely protected. i was told people are very upset, that i had made them feel very bad, and this hurt is what ended up mattering, not what they did to me.

it broke me, for some time. i behaved disrespectfully and harmfully to a number of people in the months after. i was in such an aggravated state of trauma from having it be repeatedly proven to me that my body is fair game for anyone’s carnal drives that i was oblivious to the ways that i was exhausting people by trying to play politics in a vain attempt to get some recognition for what happened to me and how it was enabled, facilitated by both perpetrators and others in that space.

and then, eventually, after months of building tension and stress which nobody felt able to resolve, nothing could have happened but that i was forced out of the one space where i was told that the bad kind of trans woman could belong and be treated well, too.

that we could ‘build alternatives’ to the traumatic things that are done to us and then do to ‘each other’ (although really, just to those among us who aren’t deemed worthy of protection).

---

i do not believe she is actually a predator— i am not from an english-speaking country, and my throwaway post in which i said “no sympathy for sex pests who got rejected months ago and still whine about it” was based on an understanding that it meant someone who harmed others in the context of sexual interactions, but not necessarily an actual ‘predator’, insofar that essentialist, individual, reactionary idea of one who does harm actually holds meaning to me. certainly she is not as bad as actual literal alleyway rapists, not that it is fair or reasonable to have it fall to me to reassure anyone of that.

however, she is oblivious to the fact that reacting to people setting boundaries in this way and that projecting transmisogyny on them along the lines she did damages their ability to set boundaries in the future, especially since i was recently raped, which she and everyone else involved knew about. she’s not a predator, but her behavior chipped away at my ability to set boundaries and is completely irreverent of them regardless of context or intent. most consent guides have vile things to say about those who hear that they hurt others, freak out in an emotionally incontinent way and make it everyone else’s problem instead of working towards taking responsibility. unfortunately, she made it so that this behavior ended up being enabled and rewarded, simply because the way in which she was violent is not seen as violence by many in our circles.

i stopped taking progesterone. i refused to be intimate with people. i wanted to be sexless and recoiled at all expressions of attraction from others, experiencing them as a prelude to violation since i couldn’t conceive of people being into me and acting on that in a way that wouldn’t end up humiliating, traumatising, heartbreaking. i didn’t feel like i could exist with other people anymore, and believed that never, ever would i be treated in an equitable way where my hurt matters just as much as theirs.

i don’t want to be sanctified over my own mistakes i just want to get treated as all the other people who made awful, horrible ones— i wasn’t, people refused to level with me about it until they had already made up their minds about me and cut me off first individually, then collectively. i was treated as a perpetrator by default.

even with what i did and my role in all of this, i did not deserve to be treated this way.

---

i didn’t make any actual threats. what i did was the following.

if i don’t stop it from happening, a payload of information about the actions and identities of people who violated my boundaries will be released, with the understanding that this only happens if i don’t periodically reset a timer when it will be uploaded, with the understanding that this will only happen if i die. this gives me some sort of comfort that if i kill myself, i’ll at least get to finally have the voice which people with immense amounts of social capital are preventing me from having, inadvertently or on purpose. if all of this kills me, does she really believe she deserves to get away with it, my voice forever lost?

i also made a post that next time someone forces me into something i don’t want, i won’t freeze up— if it is a physical situation, i know i will fight back and win against someone literally sexually assaulting me, that is what the post was about! that’s not even something she wants (presumably). so to make this out as some threat against her is frankly preposterous, and i can’t really find any way to take it as another cynical attempt to portray me as the wrong kind of tranny: the one without a lithe body and who doesn’t perform a fetishisation of her own (pretended) lack of power over others well enough, with the wrong set of traumatic personality alterations.

---

allow me to end with a few choice screenshots from this person’s blog, and an ask she sent me to circumvent my block on discord.

what’s the deal with people who have a certain access to feminine fragility (cis women, certain kinds of trans women) and comparing people to their abusive fathers?

stop postmodernising about my boundaries. please.

what’s worse? ending something awful for both of us as well within my entitlements, or circumventing a block in order to chastise me for it as a prelude to unleashing the full power of the whisper network? i guess all things are fine when the first is done by a trans woman who can deadlift 1.5x her bodyweight and the second is done by a trans woman who prides herself on being sensitive and who is just so easy to hurt— not like she has plenty of means to passively aggress or cut trans women like me off from their support networks, murder them in a thousand ways which our community sanctifies, which is exactly what she did, both while we knew each other and after.

this, for months and months and months. making me wonder what the next way she will hurt me is going to be.

---

it is a genuine relief to hear that this person never wanted to see me again. because of her behavior, i was under the distinct impression she wanted me back in some sense. you may see why when you look at all these strange attempts to undermine the boundaries she knows i struggle to maintain.

all this talk invoking the concept of radical transformative justice after she did her best to escalate situations to get me exiled simply because i didn’t want to have a personal, individual association with her. it’s not enough for her that she managed to get rid of me, me daring to feel hurt by it is another violation of the values that were supposed to prevent what happened to me from happening, in fact, me feeling hurt is portrayed as worse as what she did to hurt me, and as invalidating any demand i have at all to be treated with any dignity or receive any defense or protection from anyone at all, simply because of the way it made her feel that i dared to be hurt by what she did.

what matters is what happened. what matters is what people did. what matters is what factually happened, not transmisogynistic interpretations of it, forgotten at convenience by the people who were there. what matters is who is decided to be worthy or unworthy of protection, who is actually capable of being hurt instead of considered unrapeable, unviolable, invulnerable and dangerous for it, which frankly, seems what patterns of ‘disposability’ always seem to revolve around. it is disturbing that this language was invoked to ironically, argue the status of my body as public property at pain of isolation.

what matters is power, and statements like “i don’t hate you” are cheap from those who will always have the social capital to hurt me like this so long as the gendered heuristics of the circles we share remain hegemonic.