#being groomed into 'evil' by an older bad guy + a life of abuse and bigotry

[gravedirtandbriarthorns]

I remembered why I was thinking about Naruto in the wee hours of the morning, which is because I finally investigated what Jujutsu Kasien is and turns out it's just "Naruto but everyone is trendy, the power of friendship doesn't work, and every time anyone tries to talk to the demon inside the protagonist it calls them a little bitch and then threatens to do a murder."

[seattlesea]

bad representation in the riordanverse

Racism:

-Gave Hazel and Piper gold and ‘kaleidoscope’/brown-blue-green changing eyes and pretty much went ‘Let’s add some characters of color but they cANT HAVE BROWN EYES THAT’S NOT PRETTY ENOUGH’ as if whitewashing isn’t more than just the skin.

-East Asian characters: Riordan pretty much went 'Here are my East Asian characters- one of them looks like a fat baby on steroids and is super undeveloped, his mother is strict and cold, and all the others are just described as 'Asian' because different countries in Asia don't exist and there's obviously no difference between Japanese, Chinese, and Korean'. His portrayal of East Asian characters went like this: Frank: Chinese, chubby, hates himself, underdeveloped, described to look like a 'Chinese Canadian baby man' and a 'panda' as if that's not stereotyping, and only learned to love himself when he looked hotter.  Drew: Asian, villainized, rude, shallow, vain, and selfish. Ethan: Asian, rude, evil, a traitor, and deceased. Grandma Zhang- rude, strict, cold, traditional, and deceased.

-Hazel: Has gold eyes. Has 'cinnamon brown' hair even though dark brown or black hair would be way more inclusive and realistic. Had a mother portrayed as a rude and selfish witch who sacrificed, used, and trafficked her own child. Was the only character called or described as a witch while African-Americans were usually accused of witchcraft just for their skin color. Was the only character who was cursed. Had a mother who literally practiced voodoo. The only African-American character in the series before ToA who isn't dead (but she also died). Was paired with a sixteen year old guy even though African women are constantly forced with older men and that's blatantly racist stereotyping. 

-Piper: Had 'chocolate brown' and then 'mahogany' hair? Has kaleidoscope eyes. Put a feather in her hair (which is stereotyping)- and it was an eagle feather, which is also wrong because eagles are extremely sacred to First Nation tribes and only spiritual leaders or warriors can wear it or it has to be gifted by an Elder of the tribe, and Riordan basically went 'Feathers are very important and it's racist to make a character wear one at inappropriate times but I'm going to make my character wear one as a cute accessory to make her look cool, pretty, and headstrong and to add to her 'Aesthetic'’ even though Cherokees didn’t wear feathers (which proves he did the bare minimum of research). Constantly oversexualized (56% of First Nation women are sexually harassed and Riordan had the audacity to put Piper in an 'embarrassingly low v-neck' and to have her constantly drooled over by a WHITE MALE and have her sexualized by her 1000+ mother without her knowledge or consent).  It's said that her father was from a reservation in Oklahoma...but there are no reservations in Oklahoma, only cultural centers (which also proves that he did the bare minimum of research).  She's the only First Nations character and she's the only character (besides Nancy Bobofit) depicted as a kleptomaniac (First Nations people are constantly called thieves by racist assholes). “The week before, he’d turned down several million dollars to play Tonto in a remake of The Lone Ranger. Piper was still trying to figure out why. He’d played all kinds of roles—a Latino teacher in a tough L.A. school, a dashing Israeli spy in an action-adventure blockbuster, even a Syrian terrorist in a James Bond movie. And, of course, he would always be known as the King of Sparta. But if the part was Native American—it didn’t matter what kind of role it was—Dad turned it down.” (The Lost Hero, page 165). So her father is fine with playing an extremely racist and stereotypical Middle Eastern role but not a First Nations role. Uses a cornucopia as a weapon (how she got it- cutting it off a half-bull- is disrespectful to her culture as hurting an animal is banned and she used a cornucopia- a symbol of Thanksgiving- as a weapon). Cut her hair, which is basically taboo in First Nations culture.

-Samirah: Had an arranged marriage (at age twelve, and she believed that she was groomed to be married to a rich and respectable family and nothing else). Ripped off her hijab in front of tons of male characters. The only Muslim character. The only Muslim character and she's the only character who married her cousin (you're supposed to break stereotypes, not enforce them).

Thomas Jefferson Jr: Said that he was thankful to the British for not siding with the South during the American Civil War even though they needed the South's cotton (but they didn't side with the North either). AKA a black man and son of a freed slave was thankful to Britain for not openly oppressing him? And at the same time he was named after a racist slave-owner.

Reyna: She's brown and her entire story revolves around her being independent, strong, alone, and self-sufficient but also desperately needing love and support but then Riordan says that she can't get her heart healed AKA she went through an abusive home, killed her father, left her sister, felt alone her whole life, worked a two-person job alone for months, and had to put on a brave face for others throughout all this then was literally told 'Shut up no one wants to hear about your struggles, just suck it up and deal with it’ and have you seen all the shit brown girls have to go through and keep silent about it? 

Extra: -Latino, Puerto Rican, African-American, Chinese-Canadian, East Asian, First Nations, etc. characters and the two most powerful, best, and most skilled characters and who the stories mostly revolve around are two white guys AKA white supremacy.

-"Harriet Tubman, daughter of Hermes, used many mortals on her Underground Railroad for just this reason" and that World War II was caused by a child of Zeus and a child of Hades fighting very blatantly erases the shit those people went through and Riordan just went 'Let's use these racist movements as little easter eggs in my story'.

-Thanatos, who was chained and enslaved, is described with dark skin.

-Riordan writing the characters went a little something like this: Drew: You get common Eastern Asian features like dark hair and eyes because you're arrogant, selfish, conceited, and rude, and because you're an antagonist and you're going to be used to make one of my protagonists- who has unique traits- look good so you're going to have the basic, 'boring' physical traits so the readers know who's the more superior of the two of you. Leo: You get common Latino features like curly dark hair, dark eyes, and light brown skin cause you're the weird, hyperactive unattractive one who's very flirty but constantly gets rejected and you're the only main character without a love interest and the only way you can get a girlfriend is when she's forced to fall in love with you through a curse. Frank: You get common Chinese features like dark hair and eyes cause you're the fat unattractive loser who catches the eye of the African character who already has unique and 'special' traits so you don't have to be super attractive. Reyna: You get common Puerto Rican traits like dark skin, hair, and eyes cause you're the stoic, lonely, intimidating, and cold one who wants all the guys (two white guys for that matter) but none of them want you and they both have girlfriends with traits like blonde hair and gray and kaleidoscope eyes so the readers know who are the more interesting couples.  Piper and Hazel: You two get eurocentric features because you're the main characters I have to set apart from everyone else- including other females whom I'm going to make one of you rivals with- so the readers know who's more superior so I'm giving you unique eye colors that literally cannot be found in humans so I'm going to try to validate it by saying that it's from something mildly associated with your godly parent even though neither of them have those traits. Riordan basically said that the common features are bad and boring and that unique and special features- aka features not found in those ethnicities- are good and cool. Also- if gods don’t have DNA how can their traits be passed down to their demigod children checkmate Riordan.

-Cecil Markowitz is the only Jewish character in PJO and the first thing used to describe him is "That kid, always thinking about the potential payout".

-Lavinia said that she was going to bring her date to her bat mitzvah even though you don't bring dates to bat mitzvahs or bar mitzvahs and she said that it was 'awkward' to tell her rabbi that someone was going to be her date even though you don't explain your guestlist to your rabbi, and they're most likely not even going to be at the party.

-Only three Latino and Puerto Rican characters (Leo, Reyna, and Hylla) and all three came from abusive households.

-Leo said 'Mamacita' as if that's not stereotyping.

-Made Nico ‘pale’ even though he had olive skin and gave him black hair and dark eyes despite Italians usually having light hair and eyes just to add to his ‘Goth Boy Aesthetic’.

-Hazel described Pluto to look like Adolf Hitler.

-Carter Kane said that Elvis took African-American music and made it sound like rock 'n roll and described it as cool- like no it’s cultural appropriation. 

-Leo was abused and Riordan thought that it'd be funny to make all the other characters line up to punch him and then try to make it look funny. 

-Gave almost every single POC character a white name and sometimes gave them white first names and POC surnames, and Reyna and Bianca are the only POC characters with names from their culture/native language and one of them is dead and reborn as someone else and the other’s full name wasn’t revealed until the fourth book in her series and she hates using it.

-Made two POC characters with names from their culture- Samirah and Olujime- go by white nicknames (Sam and Jamie) to make it ‘easier to read’ despite having white characters with the same amount of syllables in their names (like Annabeth) that didn’t go by nicknames.

-Never actually described the characters of color with physical traits from their ethnicities (Reyna, Hylla, and Leo with big eyes, thick eyebrows, brown hair, wide noses, full lips, etc., Piper with almost-oriental eyes, shovel teeth, high cheekbones, black hair, etc., Nico with light or brown hair and eyes, olive skin, a narrow nose, etc., Hazel with a wide nose and lips, dark brown eyes, black or dark brown hair, big eyes, thick eyebrows, etc.).

Anti-LGBTQ+:

-Nico was forcibly outed by Cupid and Riordan and the fandom didn't care and the only thing they thought was 'Aww, he has a crush on Percy! So cute!' AKA romanticizing a forced outing. 

-Riordan said that he didn't want to make Reyna lesbian or bisexual because he thought it'd be stereotypical making her LGBTQ+ because she didn't want men anymore even though she could've been bisexual all along but Riordan casually dismissed the idea of that saying "Having a girl end up with a woman after dating men is a bad stereotype" and basically said that real bi girls don’t exist.

-The Hunters of Artemis were made so Artemis/Diana could protect those girls from men and their behavior towards women but Riordan dismissed lesbian relationships- even though nothing about that was said in real Greek mythology- meaning that he thinks that women need protection from other women just as much as they need protection from men.

-Alex Fierro is the only gender-fluid or transgender character and she/he’s seen as rude, snarky, and sharp and Magnus could magically tell when Alex changed gender.

-Riordan said that he wouldn’t make Reyna a lesbian because of stereotypes despite the reader asking if Reyna was going to get a girlfriend, not come out as lesbian AKA Riordan thinks ‘Girls liking girls’ is automatically ‘lesbian’ and completely dismissed bi, pan, poly, omni, etc. girls.

-Used a self-insert to make fun of wlw readers who saw themself in Reyna and thought she could be a cool character to relate to.

-Enforced LGBTQ+ stereotypes like the cold-hearted Asexual, the flamboyant bi/pan, the snarky gender-fluid, the emo gay, the laid-back and rebellious lesbian who dyed her hair pink and chews a lot of bubblegum, etc.

-Has one-hundred fifty-five characters total minus gods/goddesses, Titans, giants, nymphs, dryads, satyrs, monsters, etc. and only has fifteen confirmed LGBTQ+ characters (do the math, that’s exactly one out of ten regarding OCs).

-Only one character that isn’t cishet.

-Saves most the LGBTQ+ for the side characters or only confirms characters LGBTQ+ once they’ve become a minor character despite being a main character before.

-Only stated that Reyna was Asexual outside of his books and on Twitter as if that’s not exactly what J.K Rowling is doing.

-Used the LGBTQ+ community to make Piper seem like the ‘special snowflake’ and to set her apart from her siblings to make it seem like she’s better than all of them and used Hera/Juno and Aphrodite/Venus as excuses for his homophobic mindset that believes that straight is the default cause “Suddenly, much of what she and I had talked about started to make sense. Not being defined by Aphrodite’s expectations. Or Hera’s ideas of what a perfect couple looked like. Piper finding her own way, not the one people expected of her” in synonymous words is 'The expectations for love and the idea of a perfect couple are a heterosexual relationship, and anyone who 'finds their own way instead of the ones people expect' are different'. ‘Different’ and ‘default’ are antonyms AKA if he thinks that LGBTQ+ people are ‘different’, he thinks that straight is the ‘default’. Remember- an author writes their own personal beliefs.

-Josephine is the only black LGBTQ+ character.

-Reyna is said to be Asexual despite feeling sexual attraction towards Percy cause no one likes someone five minutes after knowing them and it’s anything but sexual attraction.

-Magnus and Alex are the only LGBTQ+ relationship whose growth and development is actually shown in the story (while there was also Apollo and Commodus, Piper and Shel, Will and Nico, Apollo and Hyacinthus, Emmie and Jo, Lavinia and Poison Oak, etc.).

-Riordan never canonically said the name of any sexuality and is clearly uncomfortable with the LGBTQ+ community shown by his little to no writing regarding physical affection and deep emotions in his LGBTQ+ relationships.

-Only added in LGBTQ+ relationships for publicity- Percy Jackson and the Olympians release dates: 2005-2009. 2005-2009: LGBTQ+ support was nearly at an all-time low. No LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or references in the books. The Lost Hero-The Mark of Athena release dates: 2010-2012. 2010-2012: LGBTQ+ support was still very low. Still no LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or references in the books. The House of Hades release date: late 2013. Mid-2013: the giant spike for LGBTQ+ support and allies. One confirmed LGBTQ+ character. The Sword of Summer release date: late 2015. 2015: LGBTQ+ support was good and gay marriage was legalized. A few LGBTQ+ references but no confirmed characters. The Hammer of Thor and The Ship of the Dead release dates: 2016-2017. 2016-2017: LGBTQ+ support was quite high. Two confirmed LGBTQ+ characters and the first canon LGBTQ+ relationship and kiss. The Trials of Apollo release dates: 2016-2020. 2016-2020: LGBTQ+ support was very high. More LGBTQ+ characters confirmed in one book than all the other series combined. Kind of obvious he was just following the public opinion.

-Legit said ‘Reyna can’t like girls cause she has had crushes on guys before’.

Ableism:

-It was heavily implied in The Battle of the Labyrinth that Rachel Dare had schizophrenia/psychosis but it's never brought up again.

-Grover's fake feet made it look like he was disabled from the Mist and it was said that he was bullied because of it but it was never brought up again.

-It was said that Tyson looked like he had down syndrome from the Mist covering his one eye but it was never brought up again. 

-It was stated that every character but Frank has ADHD and dyslexia but never actually showed any symptoms after Percy Jackson and the Olympians and characters like Piper and Leo were even able to read English writing throughout The Lost Hero and the only symptom of ADHD Riordan showed through his characters was ‘a lot of fidgeting’ as if that’s not a blatant stereotype. 

Pedophilia:

-Luke, a twenty-two/twenty-three year old had a crush on Annabeth, a sixteen year old. That's a six-seven year age gap. 

-The only two girls put into relationships with much older men are black (Hazel and Sadie).

-Hazel, a thirteen year old, got together with a sixteen year old guy. Hazel's crush on Frank is normal- a girl having a crush on an older guy, but Frank's crush on Hazel is disgusting- an older guy looking down at a child and thinking about making out with her.

Misogyny:

-Aphrodite's kids are seen as useless, weak, snobby, shallow, vain, and selfish just because they’re feminine. 

-Riordan portrayed Aphrodite’s kids as feminine despite Aphrodite being the goddess of love and beauty, not femininity, as if romance and beauty are reserved for women only. 

-Piper is the only 'tomboy' child of Aphrodite and she's portrayed as tougher, stronger, and better than her feminine siblings (and it's portrayed that way multiple times throughout the story like other characters telling Piper she’s "-tough for a child of Aphrodite").

-Piper immediately stereotyped and disliked every single feminine character like Drew and the rest of the Aphrodite cabin just because they liked makeup and skirts as if that’s not shallow criticism. 

-Feminine characters like Drew, Isabel, Khione, and Medea are used or even created solely as antagonists to make Piper- the tomboy- look better.

-Calypso is the only feminine character and she sucks at everything. 

-Riordan’s take on female characters: Drew: a vain, rude, selfish, snobby, and bitchy mean girl. Silena: a shallow traitor. Reyna: a cold-hearted robot. Piper: internalized misogyny that was never brought up again. Calypso: an island whore. Athena: a rude, aggressive bitch with no emotions. Aphrodite: shallow, vain, conceited, and self-centered. Hera: completely evil with no backstory added into it. Marie: an evil witch who selfishly used and sacrificed her daughter.

-The Hunters of Artemis were blessed by Artemis to protect them from men but Riordan made it only about the men in their lives (again) and portrayed the whole 'losing men' thing like it was a burden and that they're 'giving men up' even though they join the Hunters to leave men. He distorted the original meaning of the Hunters- protecting women- by making it about the Hunters hating and being forced to leave men even though they're asking to have no men in their lives, cause that's the point of it. 

-The Amazons and Hunters of Artemis despise men and literally attack them if they so much as speak as if sexism is reserved for women only.

-Portrayed femininity as weakness (and masculinity as strength, it’s even in the word- tomBOY).

-Constantly pit women against women for the sake of romance and love triangles instead of normalizing women getting along despite liking the same people and let the female’s relationships get controlled and influenced by the men in their lives.

-The men always outpower the women in powers and skills. Riordan’s portrayal of powers and characters- Percy: You’re going to have epic water powers and can even create your own personal hurricanes and even though you’ve only been canonically training for eight months total you’re going to be the best swordfighter despite multiple characters having years more training than you. Jason: You’re going to be able to fly, control lightning, create storms, and electric shock people into another dimension. Leo: You’re going to be able to create and control fire and blow shit up with just a screwdriver. Frank: You’re going to be able to shape-shift into any animal you want, even a whole dragon. Nico: You’re going to be able to control darkness and shadows, literally teleport, and raise a whole army of undead soldiers. Reyna: Powers? Nah, your only ability is to lend strength to others as if that benefits you at all. Annabeth: Powers? Nah. Piper: You’re going to be able to manipulate and seduce people and are literally going to use your body and attractiveness as a weapon and your power is literally called charmspeak. Hazel: You have more powers than all the other characters combined that can literally destroy anyone in less than a second but you’re never going to use them or even remember that you have them cause screw the female character being more powerful than the males. 

-The men always accomplish the most incredible feats and if the females ever do accomplish something great (Reyna healing the riff and defeating Orion while the Hunters and Amazons couldn’t combined, Annabeth going through Tartarus, Hazel learning to control the Mist, etc.) they are never praised or rewarded or all the credit goes to the men. 

-Ares/Mars in real Greek/Roman mythology was the feminist patron of the Amazons who loved his daughter very much and killed a rapist but was portrayed as the dumb, cruel asshole who loved nothing but bloodshed and tried to kill a twelve year-old kid who was trying to help him while Poseidon/Neptune in real Greek/Roman mythology was a greedy, short-tempered, and arrogant asshole who raped almost as much women than Zeus/Jupiter but was portrayed as the kind, caring, and gentle father figure. 

Fatophobia:

-Frank is the only chubby character and he hates himself because of it, was constantly fat-shamed, and only learned to love himself after he got rippling abs, muscles, and looked hotter (because fat = ugly in Riordan’s mind, even though it's not). 

-Clovis was depicted with a pot-belly and Drew described him as 'repulsive'.

-Dionysus/Bacchus is also depicted with a pot-belly and he's portrayed as a useless, rude, lazy, and drunken asshole. 

Lookism:

Basically how Riordan wrote his characters- Percy, Annabeth, Jason, Reyna, Hazel, Piper, and most minor protagonists: You’re all going to be super attractive, have at least one character or more pining for you, have your looks constantly commented on, and some of you will even use your looks as a weapon cause that’s not obvious sexualization cause you’re all the main characters and protagonists that readers need to know are the protagonists. Nico, Leo, and Frank: You three are originally portrayed as unattractive but at some points are described as cute and two of you are insecure about your looks cause you’re scrawny and chubby and one of you hates yourself cause of your body and only learn to love yourself once you magically gain abs cause more muscle obviously equals more attractiveness.  Luke, Silena, Chris, and Ethan: You four are going to be super attractive because you’re traitors but all of you make up for your actions and decide to help the demigods and become protagonists again. Octavian, Bryce, Michael, Titans, giants, etc.: You all are the antagonists so you have to be super ugly with multiple physical imperfections cause you’re not allowed to be attractive since you are against the protagonists and I have to set you guys apart and show the readers who’s the better and more superior character. 

-Frank hated himself cause he was chubby and only loved himself once he got skinnier and gained muscle through magic but even then was called ‘cute like a panda’.

-Leo was described as scrawny and unattractive and was insecure about being short but even then was called ‘cute in a scrawny way’.

-Piper had facial imperfections and even a pimple on her nose but once she got claimed all of those disappeared and they stayed gone even after the blessing washed off despite all the magic being gone and only then was Piper’s looks commented on multiple times. 

-Lester/Apollo hated his appearance cause he had a little flab and acne and his physical imperfections were used as comedy by making fun of it as if insecure readers don’t exist.

-Percy and Annabeth had one canon physical imperfection- a gray streak in their hair- and that magically washed away.

-None of the other characters were described with any physical imperfections like pimples/zits/acne, body hair (despite none of the characters having the care or time to wax or shave), bushy/frizzy or messy hair or eyebrows, big or small hands or noses, blackheads, super thick or thin eyebrows, blemishes, birthmarks, scars, stretch marks, braces, lazy eyes, yellow or chipped teeth, eye bags, glasses, moles, dimples, love handles, flab/fat, visible veins, freckles, etc. unless it added to their ‘aesthetic’ despite none of those being bad and saves it only for the antagonists as if ‘physical imperfections’ = ‘evil’. 

Bias:

-Riordan portrayed the Romans as cold, cruel, ruthless, strict, and overall horrible despite them being the more inclusive camp regarding family and godly parents, have multiple families and rules that ensure their camper’s safety, and hold the nicest characters in the series while the Greeks are portrayed as fun, wild, reckless, silly, and cool despite holding the most prejudiced and rude characters, outcasting and ostracizing characters of certain godly parents just for their parentage, stereotype almost every single cabin, and make some campers without siblings live, sleep, and eat alone. 

-Every Greek traitor (Luke, Silena, Ethan, and Chris) were portrayed as powerful, kind, attractive, and awesome and each made up for their actions but each Roman ‘traitor’ (Octavian, Bryce, and Michael, and only one of them are actually a traitor) were portrayed as unattractive, cruel, ambitious, ruthless, and extremely weak and never actually did anything useful.

-The Greeks were part of the Union and the Romans were part of the Confederacy (adding on to Riordan adding racist movements as fun little easter eggs in his stories).

-Four out of seven of the main Seven are Greek.

-There are at least 70+ Greek characters and less than thirty named Romans.

-The Battle of San Francisco Bay was used for the sole purpose to weaken the Romans and make the Greeks seem stronger than them and while the Greeks went through two whole wars, their camp laid almost completely untouched but the moment the Romans are introduced, half their population is wiped?

Romanticization:

-Romanticized Annabeth judo-flipping Percy AKA romanticized physical abuse/harassment (emotions, angriness, feelings of love and affection, ‘they went through a lot together’, etc. do not excuse hitting someone) despite Annabeth knowing where Percy’s Achilles Heel was and not knowing he lost it and flipping him on his back anyways (if Percy didn’t lose the Achilles Heel, Annabeth would’ve killed him).

-Romanticized Leo killing himself to see Calypso again and to take her off her island AKA a romanticized suicide.

-Romanticized Calypso yelling at and insulting Leo and Annabeth insulting and canonically lowering Percy’s self-esteem AKA romanticized verbal abuse/bullying.

-Romanticized Will trying to help Nico through his loneliness and depression as if that can’t be portrayed as someone just wanting to help another person AKA  romanticized mental illness.

-Romanticized every character kissing another character without asking first and without their consent AKA romanticized sexual harassment.

-Romanticized Piper taking advantage over Jason’s amnesia and mental state and jumping onto him despite knowing there might be a girl he couldn’t remember AKA romanticized manipulation.

-Romanticized Piper and Annabeth’s possessive, overly-jealous, and controlling behavior over Jason and Percy (even before they were canonically dating).

-Romanticized Nico being forced to confess his crush on Percy AKA romanticized a forced outing.

Rick Riordan:

-Refused to apologize for his actions even after being called out by people from the groups he was writing inaccurately and stereotyping (Muslim, Jewish, African, First Nation, lesbian, gay, Puerto Rican, etc.) and tried to make himself look like the victim.

-Claimed he was being ‘bullied’ by readers half his age who were just pointing out his books’ racist flaws.

-Showed time and time again that he is not willing to listen to the voices of minorities.

-Clearly didn’t do his research on ethnicities, sexualities, religions, etc. shown by how he got the simplest things wrong.

-Tried to say that he- a straight white man- was right when people of the actual groups he was writing about (gay, First Nation tribes, etc.) were wrong.

-Used excuses like having a ‘headstrong’ and ‘stubborn’ character who wants to ‘show their culture in their own way’ for his stereotypes. No, Riordan, you want to show the culture that way, not Piper. She’s a fictional character, you’re real. Dumbass.

-Literally said ‘Sorry I put feathers in Piper’s hair, I can’t change what I wrote in the past and I didn’t know that sensitive readers existed’ then continued to write feathers in Piper’s hair in the future books. 

The Fandom:

Note: Not to all of the fandom, obviously

-Draws Piper with light skin, light hair, and kaleidoscope eyes with feathers, hippie bands, and beads (yes, it's canon, but you're allowed to change it if it's blatantly racist, and the bead and hippie band thing was created by the fandom and that's also stereotyping).

-Almost always draw Reyna, Hylla, and Leo with light skin and Caucasian traits (props to the few artists who drew them with the right skin tones).

-Draws Hazel with gold eyes, ‘cinnamon’/light brown hair, and an adult body.

-Sexualizes female characters by drawing them in sexy and revealing clothes and giving them all the same exact sexy, slim, and perfect hour-glass shaped bodies.

-Almost never include physical imperfections, muscle, scars, stretch marks, etc. in drawings.

-Fancasts white actors for characters of color and puts actors/faceclaims of white people or people of different ethnicities in the moodboards or aesthetics for characters of color.

-Participates in cultural appropriation by wearing feathers when cosplaying Piper and wearing a hijab when cosplaying Samirah.

-Supports Riordan, tries to defend him, and condones his clearly racist and bigoted actions just cause they ‘like the books’ (if you are straight, white, and/or cishet, I definitely don’t want to see you trying to defend a fifty-five year-old multi-millionaire who is clearly racist, sexist, homophobic, and transphobic).

-Romanticize physical abuse, verbal abuse, mental illnesses and panic/anxiety attacks, etc.

-Ship pedophilic, manipulative, abusive, and wrong relationships.

-Barely allow others to have their own opinions (looking at you Perachel haters) without yelling at, insulting, cursing out, and/or even threatening them for liking or disliking different things than them including ships, characters, books, plots/faults, and Riordan himself.

-Straightwashes characters like shipping Nico with female characters or setting him up with a female character in fanfics.

-Whitewashes characters like drawing Hazel and Piper with eurocentric features, Reyna, Hylla, and Leo with white skin and Caucasian traits, Nico with white/pale skin, etc.

-Try to excuse and explain abusive, manipulative, possessive, and overall very wrong and toxic behavior.

-Fail to recognize and/or admit the toxic, racist, homophobic, sexist, transphobic, wrong, abusive, etc. faults in the books, ships, and characters just cause they like them.

The Percy Jackson franchise does not add good representation. You can still like the series as long as you don’t condone Riordan’s racist and toxic writing and actions and don’t try to ignore the horrible and stereotypical faults just cause you don’t want to admit that your favorite or childhood story is horrible. 

[ao3-sucks]

An Archive of Someone’s Own: my experiences being groomed in fandom circles on AO3

TW: Childhood sexual abuse, grooming, mentions of incest and rape.

I used to be a big writer of fanfiction. It was the logical choice for me. I loved to write and create bold and immersive worlds, and I craved an audience who would enjoy my work as much as I did. Since my writing wasn’t actually good, I needed a community of other amateurs who wouldn’t mind that, and by tweaking my characters and settings into ones from canonical media, I got the audience I so craved.

I started writing fanfiction online when I was 14, posting initially on FanFiction.net and then moving to AO3 a few months later. As I got back into writing original fiction towards the end of high school, I lost interest in this community, and it’s been a long time since I posted anything much on AO3.

I’ve always struggled with the fact I display a lot of symptoms of CSA, and for the longest time, I couldn’t figure out why. Throughout my teen years, I refused to get changed or bathe when anyone was even vaguely nearby, constantly paranoid about being spied on; I developed a severe touch phobia, and would have frequent panic attacks from something as small as brushing arms with a passerby; I resolutely identified as asexual and refused to get into anything resembling a relationship with others because the very concept disgusted and repulsed me.

Weird, considering I had grown up pretty normal and all of these symptoms had started around my early teens. It was only when I told my friends about my friendship with a 30 year old I had met online that the pieces started falling into place for me.

Child grooming is usually discussed in the context of one adult going out of their way to befriend a child with the goal of lowering their resistance to sexual abuse, through normalisation and friendliness. I’d like to talk about how that worked on the fanfiction website AO3. Since it’s an open website and most communication takes place between anonymous users or accounts in the comments section of a work, there is very little delineation between spaces for adults to discuss whatever dark topics they like and spaces for kids to do the same.

This frequently leads to pretty inappropriate conversations between people of widely varying ages and life experiences, which is how I ended up talking sex as a fourteen year old with people ranging from a couple of years older than me, who were generally okay, to more than twice my age. The 30 year old in question listed on her profile how many pedophilic ships she loved, and she knew my age but pushed me to keep discussing sexual topics with her. Sounds like a red flag, yeah? Well. I was 14, and very stupid.

This 30 year old woman, who I will call Aku (because it’s similar to her screen name and because it’s funny to name her after the bad guy from Samurai Jack) would start conversations with me whenever I posted anything to AO3 and would refuse to take no for an answer when I tried to back out of conversations with her, and since these conversations were public and occurring within comments, I didn’t want to be rude to her since this was taking place on content I was trying to promote.

I told her my age multiple times and she would either pretend she forgot from last time (saying her memory is super bad) or continue as though it was just trivia about me and not a sign she shouldn’t have been pushing me. My primary objection to what she would say to me (since most of it was just her being annoying) was her insistence on sexualising everything I wrote, and her determination to push me into writing pornographic content, which I eventually gave in to.

Yes, she was a terrible person. She emailed me using her personal email address, so I know her full name and place of residence, because she’s an idiot. These emails also contain sexually explicit materials. Nothing much ever happened between us except for these very creepy interactions and the fact we remained online friends for a few years. But here’s the thing: she wasn’t the only person pushing me into creating sexual content. Lots of people would comment on my writing demanding that I show explicit sexual content when I really didn’t want to.

After a while it felt like I couldn’t write a longer, romantic fanfiction without including explicit sexual content. Like my work wasn’t valid without it. Other, more popular writers were usually sexual in their content, and I wanted to be like them and bring in the views, right? So, when I look at my back catalog of works, I can see how my content moved from completely non-sexual to featuring sexual content over time, and the views usually came with. In this way, I was in an environment that was encouraging me on many levels to sexualise my own work, which impacted the way I thought about my creative process.

Here’s another example I remember. When I was a young sprout, I remember reading down someone’s list of fanfiction recommendations and seeing a work called Hug Therapy, which I promptly read. While the work is marked as explicit and containing the Loki/Thor pairing, the use of relationship and rating tags on AO3 is so poorly regulated that it didn’t really mean anything to me to see either of those. People tag hardcore material as non-explicit and tag friendships as relationships, because there’s no motivation to tag properly. Plus, someone I followed here on Tumblr had recommended it to me.

Now, you wouldn’t know from the listing, but while this piece starts out as comedy, it turns out in the end to include rape, incest, and BDSM in very explicit terms. The fact it was tagged as being explicit didn’t slow me down, because the liberal use of these tags could mean that an explicit tag was just there because sexual content was implied or mentioned, which I thought would be the case based on the rest of the listing. Out of curiosity, I recently tried to report this work to the moderators for containing no warnings about incest or rape, and I got this in response:

“Selecting “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings” satisfies a creator’s obligation under the warnings policy. Users who wish to avoid specific elements entirely should not access fanworks marked with “Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings”. Our Terms of Service note: “You understand that using the Archive may expose you to material that is offensive, triggering, erroneous, sexually explicit, indecent, blasphemous, objectionable, grammatically incorrect, or badly spelled. ….. This decision is in accordance with our policy of maximum inclusiveness; we have therefore closed this case and will not be investigating further.”

Which, yeah, I guess. The frustration comes from how ‘Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings’ is an extremely commonly used tag, and most things that it’s used on are totally harmless.

This fanfiction, which I was recommended by a friend, is hugely popular, in the top 60 most read fanfictions in the entire fandom. You wanna hear the kicker? The author, Astolat, is one of the founders of AO3. They’re not just some random author who isn’t following the rules. They’re a creator of the whole website, and they made the rules. This is pretty telling about how seriously the website actually takes protecting their users.

My final example I want to give is one of fetish content. People in fetish communities generally (not always) say that fetishes are probably something one should work up to after the onset of sexual activity, especially potentially harmful stuff like BDSM. In the circles I was running in, if you weren’t sporting a fetish or two (no matter your age) you were a boring bitch.

Maybe this isn’t true of everywhere in the fanfiction community, but I used to feel that bizarre pressure until I got out. Bear in mind that my main time in this community was from ages 14 to 17. I never made my age a secret, either. I told people outright I was that age, I was in high school, I was playing hockey and studying The Great Gatsby when I wasn’t online.

Since I was in the Avengers fandom and I liked Loki and the Asgardians, I was frequently exposed to incestuous content between Loki and Thor, and a lot of it came out of nowhere or was poorly tagged. This was considered the norm, and while I at first felt completely horrified and repulsed, within a year or two I no longer gave a shit. It’s only in the last few years as I’ve begun to unpack everything that I’ve started to get that strong revulsion reaction to incestuous content.

In the circles I was in, it was relentlessly normal. Normal to the point that people who disliked it were usually shouted down. Even to this day, debate rages on in fandom spaces about whether or not content like this normalises this kind of abuse. In my own personal experience, which I don’t usually like to talk about, it absolutely does.

In real life, this normalisation started to have serious consequences for my mental health and interpersonal relationships. In fanfiction, any occasion when you are alone with someone could become sexual, any familial relationship is possibly sexual, and it doesn’t matter if you like it or not. I became incredibly anxious around male family members for fear of being sexually assaulted, and my OCD, which I had been developing since I was a child, turned from thoughts of physical violence to thoughts of graphically sexually assaulted by anyone and everyone around me.

My fear of being touched got to the point where I would have panic attacks if anyone came anywhere close to touching me. I quit sports, fucked up my romantic relationships, and didn’t hug anyone, not even members of my family, for years. All the while, I had bought my first laptop and was consuming more fanfiction than ever before. I struggled with my sexuality growing up, as I am bisexual, and while fanfiction provided LGBT content to help me, the content was frequently so disturbing that I viewed any expression of sexuality as something evil and predatory.

The community on AO3, whether you like it or not, is often sexual, and provides no barriers between the casual user looking for content and extremely intense fetish material. It’s sometimes called the Pornhub of fanfiction, but considering the wide range of people who use it, it’s more like if you opened Youtube and saw niche hardcore fetish videos just on the front page, recommended and trending.

Sure, you have to click a little button to confirm you’re 18 before you can actually read a story, but the tags and descriptions of readily available works can be extremely explicit. Fanfiction also brings you into close contact with fellow readers and the author, and encourages you to become a content creator, which in some ways makes it more dangerous.

I was affected much more strongly by what I saw than most people would be, because I was already treading shaky ground. But I’m also not the only person out there who has been hurt in this way. Most of my friends who grew up in fandom can report the impact that fanfiction culture had on them. One of my friends from high school knew a panoply of porn terms at age 14 or so due to reading fanfiction, and another of my other friends at high school almost exclusively read rape porn because it was her favourite. I didn’t have friends who watched porn; I had friends who read fanfiction. These are just as troubling to me as any other accounts of young people consuming visual porn from a very early age.

It’s frequently cited that fanfiction gives minority groups the opportunity for creative outlet. It was a great place for me to cut my teeth as a content creator, and a source of acceptance and kindness when times were tough. Fanfiction communities have historically been the domain of women and minorities, and create a space for these people to tell their own stories.

It’s largely because of this that fanfiction communities fear censorship and strict moderation, as they have been attacked in the past on homophobic or misogynistic grounds, resulting in mass deletions of works or the shutdown of websites. But there must be some middle ground between total censorship and the kind of free rein that puts vulnerable people in danger, and I strongly encourage the board of AO3 to seek this middle ground out.

But it’s the community itself that needs to shape up; AO3 is, after all, a community-led website built by fans for fans, so the fact that this website has such issues is a reflection of the issues that run deeply within the people who created it. Aku didn’t talk to me with the intention of doing me harm, or so I believe at this time, and she didn’t pursue me as a lone wolf or in isolation.

She was simply a particularly brazen member of a community that was used to having inappropriate conversations with young people and sexualising everything they did. Even people my own age were jokingly pushing me into discussing and consuming extremely sexual content. It was just normal. That’s what I want to say here. Inside the world of fandom on AO3, the grooming of children with sexual content is normal. And that’s scary.

- Mod Daft

[wildcrisis]

The Detriment of a Pro-Hero Society

Also known as: Kids are kind of being brainwashed into being heroes, let’s look into that.

Dedicated to @deafmic for getting me back into this bullshit and inspiring me to finish something I had started noting out about two years ago. By now, I’m sure much of this has been said over time by various people, and it makes me happy to know that there are others out there who like to look deep into the background culture and settings of their favorite manga!

I apologize in advance if you notice an idea of yours here; I haven’t been active in the fandom in two-ish-years, so I may be restating some things you guys already have. I consider this rambling analysis to be free to use and abuse by anyone, no credit necessary! I only get a little bit of time on the weekends to really be on my PC, so if you send me an ask or reply to this, it may take me some time to reply back!

Anywho, onto this mess I’ve made. It’s not very tidy and is more a collection of thoughts than a properly detailed analysis, but I ain’t got all day. Again, this is messy but I don’t really have the energy to make it nice and neat.

Looking for something in specific? You might wanna ctrl+f around these titles, because this is very long and rambling.

Part I: The Beginning of Quirks and their Effect on Society Part II: What Makes a Villain Part III: M O N E Y and F A M E Part IV: Brainwashed Part V: Ignoring Those Who Need Help Part VI: Cycle/Conclusion

Part I: The Beginning of Quirks and their Effect on Society

So, we know through the manga that, as quirks first began to evolve and more and more people obtained them, the world was thrown into chaos. People had obtained power, and power is as power does, and it corrupts.

As people began using their quirks for evil deeds that broke the law, law enforcement around the world was essentially powerless. After all, during the birth of the quirk age, quirks were the minority. The powerful minority. Against that, men with tasers, batons, and guns hardly stood a chance.

However, just as the rise of quirks gave birth to people who would use that power for misdeeds, so did it bring life to those who had the inherent desire to protect others. The beginning of the age of vigilantes, which would lead to the age of Pro Heroes.

Obviously, All for One was very relevant during this time, but we’re not here to talk about him. For once. We’re here to talk about society as a whole.

The world order was too chaotic. We are aware of this due to the monologues of certain characters, and I assume we’ll be learning more as more of the former carriers of One for All become present in Deku. In this beginning, it wasn’t so much “heroes” versus “villains”, more than it was law abiding citizens versus law breakers. It’s likely that precedent hadn’t yet been established for “no quirk use”, as there were hardly enough people who could actually enforce such a law.

As more of society began to develop quirks, the Police Force made a decision to not use their quirks to take down law breakers. They moved to a more leadership position, and took a backseat to those who did use their quirks for good. At first, it was a hard decision to allow such things as Pro Heroes to take on law breakers who were too dangerous for someone to take down without a quirk.

But why, after all this time, have the Police and the Pro Heroes remained separate entities? Why have they never combined, and why do they remain so polarized in how they approach situations?

The answer is simple, yet multi-layered. Heroes and Villains ... they’re popular. They attract attention.

Part II: What Makes a Villain

If you assign a person the label “Villain”, you de-humanize them. They are no longer a “person”, per se, but a monster. Evil, in the eyes of most people. It’s easier, then, to accept their fate of being beaten by a Hero, and being carted off to prison.

This is an important distinction to make. If you remove the labels of Hero and Villain. If you remove their Quirks. Do people still react the same way? Do they cheer and adore the hero, as the hero beats the opponent senseless? Of course not. In a battle of man vs man, in the moment, humans don’t react in such a way.

We can understand why an adult who lived a hard life may turn to a life of crime. But, hardly to we look as to why or how they got there.

In this world where quirks have become the norm, but are constantly evolving, we must wonder; how are quirks judged? How are they defined? How are people treated, for the quirk they possess?

We have many examples of outcasts, and they possess a wide variety of quirks from “extremely destructive” to simply “strange, odd, not okay in society”.

Shigaraki and Overhaul are both examples of terrifying, destructive quirks. Is it any wonder that their lives turned out the way they did? The power of death was etched into their very DNA. We know Shigaraki’s backstory and how he became who he is today. It’s implied that Chisaki was abandoned or ran away as well.

Then, you have the more odd quirks that, on the surface don’t seem nefarious, but when explained in context, would make people feel uncomfortable. Toga, who’s quirk is to drink blood and transform into another person. Twice, who can make copies of any person and used his quirk for an evil deed. Nemoto, who can force anyone to tell the truth, and lived a life where he realized everyone was lying to him.

Even Shinsou Hitoshi, desperate to become a hero, was put down for what his quirk DOES. Brainwashing. That’s a “villain’s quirk”. Fellow children said that to him so casually, and behaved as if they were terrified of him!

Eri, with her quirk that made her father disappear from existence itself ... Had she not been rescued from Overhaul, what would have become of her? Forced to believe her entire existence was a curse, told that she does nothing but harm people -- as she grew older and gained control of her power, would anyone honestly think she would have led a life of goodness, considering how she was raised?

How many people labeled Villains are currently in prison, because they were treated like outcasts from the moment they developed a terrifying quirk? Was there anyone there to help them figure their way through this world, considering what they’d been born with? Are there services for people who have trouble controlling their quirks, which are truly destructive? Even with laws in place saying that you can’t use your quirk publicly, just LIVING with that knowledge that you were born ... with a scary quirk ... a villain’s quirk ... How people treat you because of that, how you look, what your quirk can do -- do you ever have any friends? Any real friends, that aren’t just people who are scared of you?

Is it any wonder, that people like this turn out to be “villains”? Society is GROOMING THEM to BE VILLAINS, simply for who and what they are and are born with.

Part III: M O N E Y and F A M E

Throwing oneself into harms way sure is a dangerous move, that most people would never bother doing. How, then, do you entice more people to become heroes and take on the villains that are popping up all around for obvious reasons?

You make your Heroes popular. You make sure they look stylish. They have cool attitudes. You make them popular among the children. After all, getting fellow adults in on the Pro-Hero train is good and all, but much like a pro-athlete, one can likely only do Hero work for a certain span of time before their body is unable to take the strain. Maybe say, ages 18-40?

Besides, with more and more people being born every day with quirks, the number of people who turn to villainous activity will grow, right? Especially if you’re not actively helping people manage their quirks, because hey, they’re not allowed to use them publicly so what does it matter?

Kids. Kids will watch heroes on TV, and see it just like any other super-hero show or cartoon. They’ll buy the merchandise. People will begin to hemorrhage money over these heroes, because they’re flashy. They’re kind. They save lives.

Now, not to say that Heroes are just there for the paycheck -- not at all. Many people become heroes simply because they do love to help people. Some become heroes because they want to stop bad guys. Sure, there are some who do it to maybe someday live an easier life, or because it pays really well and they have family to support. But, I do believe that most people go into the Pro Hero business with good intentions.

THIS, is part of the reason that Pro Heroes have remained separate from law enforcement. They are now a business. A very wealthy business. It’s not just hero agencies that make money off of the Pro Hero business. It’s toy manufacturers. Comic book stores. Prisons. Hospitals. Roots of Pro Hero society reach into nearly every type of business that there is, whether directly or indirectly.

Nobody wants that money to disappear by folding Heroes back into the police force. No, they want MORE heroes. More heroes, and more people for the heroes to fight.

tldr: heroes = $$$, so keep ‘em coming

Part IV: Brainwashed

There are a lot of factors that go into making society as a whole okay with something. It takes a lot of time, for one. It takes powerful, well spoken people. It takes lots of media attention. Before you know it, everyone is eating up the same exact thing quite willingly ... and it spreads to the next generation. And the next. After that happens, its something that is well integrated into society, like a freckle that’s always been on your arm -- its just “always been that way”.

I’ve mentioned several times that its odd for people to be so okay with one person beating another person senseless. Again, we know that its considered acceptable, because of the labels we’ve put on these individuals based on their actions: Heroes and Villains.

What I wonder is: How long have people been okay with this? Do they not realize that, in a way, this is history repeating itself?

We know why people don’t dig deeper into this. Pro Heroes are popular and people love them. The media has hand fed the Hero lifestyle to children for some time now. There are schools, MORE THAN ONE SCHOOL, that teach your child how to become a pro hero.

Think about that. It’s not just some extra-curricular activity, like sports. These are schools, designed to take in freshly graduated MIDDLE-SCHOOLERS who have not finished their regularly schooling education, who still have growing bodies and minds, and ... crafts them into perfect pro-heroes. AND PARENTS ARE OKAY WITH THIS -- SOMETIMES EVEN MORE THAN OKAY WITH IT.

These schools send young teenagers onto the streets under a pro-heroes wing to witness and be a part of fighting crime. Not organized crime, like a ring of bad guys or something, but ... random crime. Disasters. From a young age, they may encounter situations with actual dead people. Their training is dangerous. Their powers can be dangerous. One wrong move, and a student, someone you worked alongside, had lunch with everyday, is just ... gone.

There exists a police force in society. There are already pro-heroes. Why, then, is society okay with multiple schools that are practically breeding child soldiers? They are teaching kids everything about how to kick ass, how to take down these terrifying people, how to fight, how to save lives ...

Why is no one looking into why villains exist in the first place? Are these kids ever taught de-escalation tactics? To talk their opponents down? Not everyone out there is using their quirk to be evil for the sake of being evil. There’s always a reason, a purpose.

Part V: Ignoring Those Who Need Help

Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.

Hey, Star Wars had some good points!

I’ve discussed before what makes a villain. People who are afraid of what they’re capable of. People who society has turned their back on. People who desperately need help, but there is no one out there willing to give it.

These people will always find each other in the shadows. They begin, at a young age, being terrified of what they are. What they’ve done. What they can do. Maybe they’ve been kicked out of their families. Maybe they’ve killed before, completely on accident.

The average person turns their back on people like this.

These people begin their lives terrified. Constantly being told that their quirks, their past, their family, what ever it is, will make them end up a bad person. Or, maybe they tell them they’re already a bad person. That fears breeds anger and hate. Hate for this society that would rather see them burn, than offer them any help.

A young boy grows up into a man. He had a potentially devastating quirk that he never really got a good hold on, because he was never allowed to practice with it. Everyone is too scared to let him try. Then, one day, something happens -- completely by accident. He causes a scene. A massacre. He hurts people.

Parents are excited to see which of their quirks their baby displays. Instead of being one or the other, or even a fusion of both, the unthinkable occurs. Its a mutation. The toddler hurts a sibling, a parent, a friend. Terrified, the parents abandon the child, for fear of losing their entire family.

A child is told, over and over, that his quirk will never be good for anything other than being evil. This knowledge rests heavy on his shoulders, its repeated to him yearly as he grows. Then, when he acts on what everyone has TOLD HIM FOR YEARS HE WILL DO, they are surprised. As if they hadn’t imprinted the very notion into his mind.

In a way, Overhaul was right about one thing. Hero society is a disease. People look forward to watching Heroes take down Villains and save the day. They don’t think at all about why these people are villains, how they got there, where they came from. They will never admit to potentially being the reason villains exist in the first place.

Part VI: Cycle/Conclusion

Wow, I have rambled a lot. I don’t think I hit every point that I’ve ever thought of for sure. There’s ... a lot of them. And a lot of comparisons I wanted to make to other superhero anime, specifically Tiger and Bunny, which I believe does an excellent job of showing the ups and downs of hero societies.

What I wanted to make clear in all this rambling mess (which, if you read all of it, I am SO SO SORRY), is that the very existence of Pro Heroes and Villains exist solely because of a few factors that exist in a cycle.

Pro Heroes = $$$ -> Schools for more heroes -> ignoring quirk-related-problems -> more villains -> pro heroes beat up villains -> pro heroes =$$$ etc

There is someone, or some organization, that sits above all of this. There has to be. There has to be some more logical explanation as to why this type of Hero v Villain culture has been allowed to exist all of this time, and things have not drifted more back in the direction of police vs lawbreakers. There has to be a reason that its okay for heroes to be so popular. There has to be a reason that children are allowed to be groomed into becoming heroes. There has to be a reason that there isn’t more help out there for people with these types of potentially destructive quirks.

There has to be reasons.

There has to be reasons for how the Hero Commission moves. There has to be reasons for how the police move. There has to be a reason that society is still allowed to go on like this, and that its become culturally acceptable.

If anyone out there can put all my rambling into clearer words and actively wants to, I would love that. Thank you for taking the time to read my mess!

xoxo Wild

[makeste]

more essaying about AFO and whether or not he’s the final villain

so @thequietmanno1 , I finally have some time to sit down and answer your asks so let’s get to it lol. I’ll start with the most recent one.

Gonna put my hat in the ring with you and @addermoray about AFO. I agree that currently he intends to turn everything over to Tomura. That was a good point about his little private insight into what makes a good teacher and how it reflected on his intentions going forward with his student. It makes sense for a successful villain like AFO to have the kind of personality and quick judgement to know when to fold em, or change the game up if your current hand won’t get you a satisfactory result. He’s has literal generations to learn how to be an effective evil overlord, so he must be used to playing a mean game of Xanatos speed chess depending on the situation so he always walks away with an advantage.

Switching from raising Tomura to be his loyal tyke bomb to being his own independent villain and leader may explain why Tomura’s development seemed so incomplete in his first appearance. I know that he needed to experience defeat to begin maturing into someone more competent and capable of handling himself, but at the same time, his attitude during the USJ invasion seemed a little too immature for someone his age- like he wasn’t exactly on the same emotional maturity level his body and mind were at after AFO had finished giving him basic training to prepare him. I guess AFO losing his head and not being able to push Tomura’s development forward in a new direction means Tomura got stuck emotionally for a few years whilst his master semi-recovered, not helped by the fact that AFO’s previous grooming attempts were intentionally preventing him from dealing with the emotional scars of his familial massacre. So he kinda stagnated for a bit until All Might and Deku knocked him off his high horse.

(you know what, I’m gonna put the rest of this under a cut; it’s a very long post lol)

After AFO realised he’d basically permanently lost his dream to take over the world, I can totally see him reacting to that in a very thought-out and methodical - but still very immature - way, not unlike the tantrums his pupil used to pull. Destroying the whole board so it’ll end on his terms. I don’t know if he planned for Tomura’s vision of the future to be one where you can rebuild society however you want and the survivors will be free to act how they please, or if he wanted Tomura to turn Japan into a living hellhole for everyone until there’s nothing left for anyone to work with, both heroes and villains. It could be both, frankly; given his adaptability levels I mentioned earlier, he could be fine with either outcome, so long as the society All Might created is destroyed in the process. In any regard, it’s quite likely that he planned the whole situation under the assumption that he’s going to kick the bucket at some point before he got thrown into Tartarus. But if he learns about Eri’s rewind quirk, I think that’ll prompt another change in priorities for him- though obviously that won’t happen until he’s outside.

I’m not sure if Tomura will kill him himself, unless there’s a drastic change in priorities. Like addermoray said, even if he did give Tomura his quirk, he’d still be grateful for it after his recent liberation, so he won’t kill him for his family’s deaths and whilst AFO still has such a highly useful quirk to pass onto him. His dialogue very much stated that was the eventual plan, so AFO is probably safeish until then. Besides, in either scenario, Tomura feels indebted to AFO for being the only one who noticed him and ‘saved’ him from his abused and ignored lifestyle. Really, I think, if anything, AFO would probably set himself up to kill or be killed by Deku in a final confrontation to further motivate Tomura to become the new Symbol of Chaos and focus his efforts on destroying Deku’s fledgling Symbol. See, going forward, I very much see AFO getting out of prison, but then choosing to leave Tomura running the organisation he’s built up in his absence- which won’t require any management from AFO himself anyway- and focus all his effort on analysing and psychologically manipulating Deku from behind Tomura’s back whilst the latter is focused on his current campaign of societal collapse, like the Joker focusing on breaking Batman’s spirit.

See, the thing I think a lot of people miss about Deku is that he is by far the youngest inheritor of OFA so far. I mean it seems obvious given his age and inexperience with the power that is way beyond what his predecessors had to deal with, but in All Might’s flashback to what I presume is his first meeting with Nana and his own Origin story, it looked like teen Might was a few years older than Deku at the time, and that was before he had to be trained to handle the power. We know that at the very least, he had the quirk and was doing heroics against AFO by 18, but you’ve got to remember that AFO being on the scene and in his prime meant Yagi’s era was more chaotic and dangerous for everyone than Deku’s is, so it’s likely that Yagi was already more prepared for the combative lifestyle that Deku was, even with the fact that he inherited OFA a few years later than him and having had time to sort out his resolution with the power. As opposed to Deku, who basically wanted to be All Might and spent a lot of time getting that hammered out of his skull, and has had issues with sorting out what kind of hero he’s supposed to become through his own merits, given his vague terms of describing his ambition.

Whilst it’s not determined when everyone got the power, we know that the First Wielder was an adult when it first manifested, and given the ages of the other generations that we’ve seen, I think it was implied that they were all chosen after they’d proved themselves capable of using the power against AFO, meaning they all had various heroic and emotional experience before getting OFA. Actually, I’m not certain, but I think it’s implied that Yagi was the youngest chosen before Deku, which, given his quirklessness and youth, makes it more poetic that he was ultimately the one to take him down twice.

That said, Deku is clearly not as prepared for going up against someone like AFO as the other Wielders were, either physically or mentally. All Might ushering an era of peace means that Deku doesn’t have nearly the same level of experience the others did by his age, and his whole 100% power/7 quirks thing is further complications in him becoming a new symbol asap. One aspect of this was time- All Might’s wounds and weakening health were pressuring him to find a successor more than AFO, who already had a handy-dandy prepped tyke-bomb in Tomura available- the perks of planning ahead. So when All Might Found Deku, it was a snap decision, and one he feels justified in, but it also meant Deku was rushed through the basic requirements of being able to Hold OFA without being prepared to actually ‘use’ it. His first smash came whilst he was under fire in the middle of a high-level exam for Christ’s sake, and All Might getting his own teacher taken away from him when he was still in school means he’s never been taught by someone else on how to be a good teacher, or how to recognise when he’s being a bad teacher. Not to mention the whole natural genius thing.

Point is, I don’t think any of the other Wielders made their choices so soon after meeting them, and probably not before they’d given them some advanced preparations for passing the power on to someone who was ready and capable of using it for a good cause. Adding to that, AFO’s got an unexpected advantage over Deku compared to the others- he knows who he is and where to find him. I think it’s heavily implied that past the first wielder, the others had to raise their successors in secret once they’d outed themselves to AFO as the next wielders, so he couldn’t pre-emptively cut the chain of succession, since if AFO knew who the next person was, he’d have ended them before they got a handle on their new power. Being in a more chaotic age- and the implication that they were older and more independent than Deku- meant the successors were capable of avoiding AFO’s gaze when needed, so they made up for their lack of All Might strength with subterfuge and tactical thinking whilst the power grew. Heck, All Might himself had to leave Japan for America so he’d be capable of handling himself and his abilities to the fullest when he returned. Deku doesn’t have that advantage- he’s in a school, with close friends and family, all of whom AFO can use to force him to fight him if needed. But I see him taking his time with this. Deku’s an unknown variable to AFO- he didn’t know about him till the USJ attack was finished, and after that the ball was already rolling on his incarceration scheme, so he didn’t make any moves. But once he’s out, I forsee him using his new lease on life to learn all about the new OFA holder and what makes him tick, as well as subtly messing with him in indirect means.

Given his declining health, and based on the fact he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to waste away in a medical bed, I totally believe there’s going to be a showdown between them at some point, with AFO banking on either killing Deku and ending OFA for good, or further motivating Shigaraki if he falls. Granted, Eri’s quirk may change his mind on this, but again, AFO’s adaptable- I can totally see him having thought that outcome up after learning about Deku, and considering it a good way to go out. Regarding that Showdown, whether in his prime or at the end of his currant lifespan, I totally believe that’s when AFO would bring up any revelations about Tomura’s fall from grace. Like Addermoray said, it wouldn’t affect Shigaraki anymore- but it would affect the previous wielders through Deku, specifically Nana. I can totally see AFO using that family drama and revelations against his deceased nemeses by emotionally compromising Nana, and through that, perhaps disrupting whatever “avatar state” setup Deku goes into when he converses with them before getting down to brass tacks with him whilst he can’t contact them for advice.

In any regard, AFO’s definitely gonna be focused solely on Deku when he gets out- he’s totally done with All Might, having done everything he could to undermine him as a heroic symbol of peace before he was taken out. And leaving him to rot, powerless to help in the rising chaotic times, would be sweet revenge for him, forcing All Might into a similar position he himself was in. Shigaraki will be running whatever Empire he’s building just fine without AFO, and even if he intends to replace him eventually, AFO will probably consider Deku the more pressing engagement now that he’s got some room to think and work on his own terms. Running an evil empire is probably very taxing work, and very time consuming, which is probably why he didn’t take the OFA wielders as seriously as he should have until All Might’s time. So now he’ll be free to relax and get to know Deku before he attempts to utterly break him. Whichever way that turns out, I do think there will be some genuine Villain respect on his behalf towards Deku- there’s a lot of points those two have in common, so I think he’ll see a little of himself and his brother in this newest successor.

--- 

okay, a lot of different points here, so I’ll try to break them down and address them one by one. these aren’t necessarily in order either:

(1) good points about AFO probably shifting gears on Tomura after receiving his injury. clearly that would have thrown a wrench into his plans, regardless of what said plans actually were.

(2) about Deku being the youngest inheritor of OFA “by far” -- I have doubts that this is the case. young Toshinori was wearing a middle school uniform in the anime flashback when he spoke with Nana about wanting to become society’s pillar, so that would put him at the same age Deku was in chapter one, if not younger. moreover, you have to consider that young All Might was very much in the same boat Deku was as far as wanting to attend U.A. despite being quirkless. so it’s very likely that Nana pulled something similar to what he himself later did with Deku. otherwise it’s hard to envision how he could have passed the U.A. entrance exam. so I’d say chances are good All Might was the same age as Deku was when he inherited OFA, if not younger.

(3) I think Deku is actually more prepared than the other wielders in some ways, even as he lags behind in others. consider, first of all, the fact that he managed to pull off something none of the other wielders even knew about, much less came close to achieving, with the SIXQUIRKS. so there’s that. and then the other advantage that I think he has over the past wielders is that the other OFA users appear to have been loners, by and large. most likely for the reasons you laid out -- they had to lie low so as to prevent AFO -- who at the time was at his full power -- from taking them out, along with their loved ones. by contrast, Deku is exposed, so in that regard he’s much more vulnerable. but he also has a great advantage that none of the other wielders so far have had -- he’s not alone. it’s not just the bad guy who knows his secret. his teacher knows. his rival knows. he’s not fighting this battle alone. and that’s going to be critical moving forward. AFO may find it more difficult to break him than he anticipates. and frankly, his emotional naivete may prove to be as much of an advantage as it is a weakness, if not more so. he has resilience and optimism and those are critical strengths.

(4) I think we have different ideas as far as Horikoshi’s endgame plans for the series. the main thing I keep coming back to is Horikoshi’s pacing. this is a remarkably fast-paced story as far as the shounen genre typically goes. the one time he intentionally dragged an arc out, (a) he got bored his own damn self, and (b) despite his best efforts he couldn’t make it longer than 40 chapters. compare that to your average arc in Naruto or One Piece. compare that to fucking Dressrosa arc, or the damn Soul Society arc in Bleach. my point is, Horikoshi knows how to be concise. and a key thing is that he’s said in interviews that he doesn’t intend for the story to drag out forever. he’s a perfectionist, and he knows he doesn’t have infinite energy or infinite ideas, and I think he’d like to end things while he’s still on top. he also knows how he wants to end the story, and he’s mindful of making sure he’s constantly driving the plot forward. in this interview, he mentions he originally wanted the story to end around volume 30 (we’re currently in what will become volume 25), but he’s acknowledged he’s still got a lot of stuff he needs to set up, so the original target is clearly way off. but still, I think it’s a safe bet this series won’t be dragged out as long as others.

so that being said, when we consider future developments in the story, I think we need to take into account how much time there is left in the story. there isn’t time for characters to be slow and crafty in their schemes. we’re at a point where just about all the pieces needed for endgame have to be in place already, or at least established. we can’t expect new plot twists to keep being introduced. so while I like the idea of AFO playing the long game when it comes to Deku, I’m not sure how likely that actually is to happen. proper mind fuckery takes some time to pull off. I think it’s more likely we’ll see an accelerated version of that, if anything, with their relationship being crafted in the span of just one or two arcs rather than it being a more drawn out thing.

(5) so basically, here’s a quick rundown of where I personally see the story going 

Tomura completes his Rise to Power and starts to make good on his vow to end the world

the pros and police struggle and take heavy losses in several high-profile incidents, resulting in further instability to a society already beginning to show its cracks. things begin to look kind of bleak

Deku -- now under intense pressure to unlock the rest of his new powers as quickly as possible -- is of course somehow intricately tied to every single one of these incidents, and continues to grow stronger while somehow escaping through the skin of his teeth

rinse and repeat as things build to a head

AFO breaks out of prison and joins the League in an attack on U.A.

he steals Eri’s quirk and is restored to power. meanwhile, Tomura kills All Might, but also learns of AFO’s manipulations in the process. he has conflicted feelings about this

Deku meets the Obi-Wanned All Might in the Avatar State, and unlocks the rest of his powers, preparing for the final showdown

there is a final showdown. it’s fucking epic. in the end Tomura delivers the killing blow to AFO in a move that surprises him as much as anyone

that’s the cliff notes version, more or less. pretty straightforward, but I think the purpose of a story shouldn’t be to surprise and shock so much as it should be to move and excite and thrill the audience, and reward them for their investment in the story and the characters. and this is a classic hero’s journey outline, and it’s a classic for a reason.

anyway, to bring this all back around on track and conclude things, the story could probably work both ways -- with either Tomura as the final villain, or AFO. but based on the pieces we have so far, I think AFO being the final villain is the more logical and satisfying story. and I just really like the thought of him being done in by all these pawns he overlooked and underestimated. Deku, who barely seems to be an afterthought in his planning thus far; and Tomura, whom he’s manipulated to be this devastating agent of chaos and destruction, but whom he arrogantly continues to think of as being his. if he dies in prison, and Tomura does become the final villain, and is only redeemed at the end of the story, when he either dies or goes into exile or whatever -- that’s not satisfying. it disregards all of the worldbuilding being done to explore the mythology of OFA and AFO. it leaves us frustrated as we’re forced to side against a villain we now empathize with. it’s too fucking dark. so for now I’ll continue to root for AFO being the final villain. because it’s something I want, just as much as it is something I think things are leaning toward.

[kinitstuffblr]

I wanna talk about my OCs

The ones I used in my youngest RPs onward into my adulthood RPs with friends

in a brutally honest summary encompassing basically their entire careers as products of my imagination

HERE WE GO 

WHO WANTS TO HEAR ABOUT --- BUFF DADDY ACHERON!!!

ACHERON (pronounced: Ack-er-ahn) He/Him 

Character I compared his aesthetic to: Sephiroth

Do I still?: Hell naw the closest thing I think I’d ever compare him to now is that dude from the Witcher games 

Looks like: Ridiculously tall, ridiculously beefy.  Any crowd he’s in, he’s probably got a foot on.  His torso is dorito-shaped.  The muscles in his arms are about the size of your average watermelon.  He’s pale af, but naturally.  His eyes are yellow, pupils round.  His hair is straight and white, not even like what you’d think would be a platinum blonde, a straight up white with occasional silver.  Length probably started at what I guess his fucking ankles when I first imagined him? But sensibly he’d have kept it at mid-back at the longest in his younger days (out of laziness, grooming is not something he thinks about) and as he got older he wore it shorter.  His brow is stern, his jaw is hard, his nose has been broken multiple times.  Everything about him, even at his most put-together, is ROUGH.  His beard situation varied from beardless as a youngun, light stubble at mid-age, and full (not far enough to start trailing down from his chin but a decent scruff all around his face) in his later years.  He’s riddled with scars, but not showy ones.  More like ‘got shot with an arrow and it stuck in the skin for a while during battle; didn’t bother to remove it until at home having a bath and then just ripped it out and slapped some paste on it’ scars.  He generally doesn’t get scratched or slashed, long-distance attacks are the ones that get him because he doesn’t pay attention to much beyond whatever he’s directly attacking. 

His Tropes (by my definition): Evil-to-Good, War Hungry Brute but also Family Man, Overprotective Dad, Fantasy-Character meets Slice-of-Life

Original Conception to First Growth:

He was suppose to be a bad guy.  That’s it.  He was a demon warlord and the father of a character I was much more invested in and I wanted to throw in an abusive father that wanted to enslave his children for their powers.  Eventually he became more developed when I introduced the son’s mother (a concubine who’s sole purpose was breeding) and she died by another of his son’s hand while trying to protect the first son.  At this point Acheron reacted badly, revealing he had some sense of affection for the woman (she hadn’t been subservient and never let him intimidate her, which he later realized he was attracted to on a level beyond physical) and her death resulted in his abandonment of his post which resulted in his execution later on when he was captured again (in future iterations, he disappeared rather than died, but necromancy in this universe almost always exists so being returned to life was the way he initially returned.)  After his return, he met another woman who initially he mistook for a concubine based on her looks.  She also was not subservient, and actively challenged him and refused to let him intimidate her despite her being human, and eventually he fell in love with her.  To stay with her, he had to earn permission, so-to-speak, from the kingdom that had previously employed him which he’d abandoned, and it meant forfeiting a lot of power while also struggling not to endanger her, his new big glowing weak point.(She had her own mess of power, so her vulnerability can be challenged, but I’m focusing on buff daddy right now.)  Through his relationship with her he became a caregiver/father-figure to several underprivileged children of varying age ranges (mostly focused in, I think, the age range of 5 to 10, but not limited to that.)  He learned what it meant to watch a child grow in a non-militant environment for the first time, eventually becoming ashamed of the past he left behind and fiercely protective of his new family.

Plot points and Traits that came out later:

- As a King, asked newfound human lover to become his Queen in the underworld

- Semi-secretly is deeply emotionally invested in a couple very close male colleagues, whom he calls his brothers

- Orphaned amnesiac; Is a half-breed between opposing races; was excessively racist but learned later not to judge creatures based on their kind

- Fragile masculinity is one of his biggest flaws and makes him the butt of many jokes

- Terrified, utterly terrified, of spiders.  Later revealed as a result of being thrown into a spider pit as a child (Big spoods. Monster spoods)

- Has a power that allows him to kill almost effortlessly from a distance, but rarely uses it in favor of direct combat using his greatsword.  A glutton for battle and eager to one day be bested by a more powerful opponent.  

- Was literally bred to have his overwhelming power by his father as part of a sort of power-farming community; thinks his father is a coward because the few times they’ve met and fought each other, his father’s ended up running away 

- Acheron has lived his whole life as a demon warlord, and despite obviously sharing his father’s build, arrogance, and lust for battle, his father isn’t demonic (his mother was) and constantly praises himself for giving Acheron the traits that led him to be successful in life (making it all the more infuriating to Acheron when the man gives up and runs when he starts to lose in battle)

- Given name was Archer; had an older brother named Sabre

That’s all for now.  If anyone’s interested I can talk about him or the others more.  I’ll probably post something like this again when I’m feeling nostalgic!

[aimmyarrowshigh]

@reliand @marysuewhipple -- I was midway through this response when you blocked, but let’s just bear this out after all, because you genuinely an actually seem to be confused on some of your canon and you might, like, want to know, for real, in a not-mean way.

Wow, you really bought into your own fanon and forgot that it literally is FANon, didn’t you.

No one knows what happened after Luke was knocked unconscious except for Kylo and the other students that left with him (presumably who became the Knights of Ren).

We literally see what happened in TFA. Remember? Kylo, and his knights, surrounded by the dead bodies of the other students in the mud. Kylo kills one of them. We saw that happen. We watched him kill them. That was on screen. That was canon.

I mean, you act like he is just plain evil and started training with Luke as an adult[.]

I can’t speak for Dan @raptorific​, but I have never said that Ben’s training STARTED as an adult -- just that his decision to end his training with Luke and his choice to become Kylo Ren happened as an adult. He started training with Luke at ten, as far as canon has said, but canon has also presented two different timelines for Ben’s training with the Jedi because of the changes made to canon between TFA and TLJ.

Granted: in the Road To TFA materials, Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo became Kylo Ren at age 15; in the Road To TLJ materials, starting with Bloodline, this was changed to age 23 -- whether this change is because of actual canon-bearing narrative choices or just because Adam can’t play 15 because he’s 34, IDK, and it ultimately doesn’t matter.

The current canonical age that Ben Solo slaughtered all of his classmates except any who became the KoR -- and we only know for sure that they lived long enough to assist in the massacre, because we’ve only seen them in that singular flashback -- is 23. An adult.

An adult man who man the choice to kill all of his classmates.

That is what is canon.

First, Ben has had Snoke preying on him since he was in his mother’s womb. Keeping him up for days on end as a toddler, and getting into his head nonstop. Snoke has been grooming this kid from day one…

You guys straight-up invented this.

It is not even ALLUDED TO in any actual canon materials. Leia senses the Dark side of the Force while she’s pregnant, but guess what? EVERY Force-sensitive person is equally affected by the Dark side and the Light side. Their choices are what “choose their side.”

She does not sense Snoke, at least as far as any current canon has said, and Pablo Hidalgo -- I know you guys hate him, but he’s still the guardian of the SW bible -- has said that it has not been stated, or alluded, in canon. Will it turn out to be true? Maybe. It’s certainly a popular enough fanon that I could see LF throwing up their hands and surrendering to it.

But guess what else?

Even if Snoke were grooming Ben from the day Han’s sperm met Leia’s egg, it would not excuse Ben’s adult, agential choices.

Actual canon, in the films -- because Kylo and Ben have not appeared older than toddler-age in real-time in the extended canon materials yet -- makes it explicit that Kylo Ren’s actions are his own. He has a choice every time.

At Tuanul, Phasma asks him what to do with/to the villagers. It is Kylo’s directive to kill them all. Not Phasm’as. Not Snoke’s.

When Kylo Ren attacks and kidnaps Rey, he says -- in a defense TO SNOKE, so it clearly was NOT Snoke’s choice -- that it was his choice to take The Girl because she had seen the map rather than continue to search for The Droid. He’s chastised for this choice, sure. But he still made it.

When Kylo Ren murders Han, it is because Han is giving him the option to come home and come back to the Light. Kylo Ren does not want to be saved. He does not want to be loved. He was given the challenge by Snoke to kill Han because Ben Solo’s “greatest test” would be to kill the father he had loved and who loved him -- arguably, with that language, the person Ben Solo had loved most in the world.

Kylo Ren makes the choice to kill Ben Solo once and for all by choosing to reject Han’s offer of continuing love, welcome, belonging, and Light. The choice to remain Kylo Ren, NOT Ben Solo, was 100% Kylo’s agential choice. Snoke needed him to make that choice of his own free will for the Dark side to actually embrace it. He wasn’t controlling Kylo’s hands.

He wasn’t some kind of Kilgrave, Imperius Curse mind-controller. He was your average, run of the mill charismatic sociopath who radicalizes sensitive, smart, gifted, young men from loving families every goddamn day.

That is the metaphor that JJA set up. On purpose. As a writer, who is not an idiot, who wrote things on purpose in the script that he wrote with very unsubtle metaphors that he made on purpose.

The SW villains have always been mirrors of political and social threats in the era of their trilogy’s writing. The OT cast the Empire visually as Nazis, and included the Holocaust-analog event of the genocide of Alderaan, but the villain Lucas was critiquing, particularly through ESB and ROTJ, was the U.S.’ military-industrial complex and the war on Vietnam. (“Back in a 1973 note on “Star Wars,” Lucas made clear which side he was rooting for in the Vietnam War: 'A large technological empire going after a small group of freedom fighters.’”) In 1981, Lucas literally said in a press conference that Palpatine was based on Nixon; he’s held since that his inspiration for the series was less A Space Opera than “How do democracies turn into dictatorships?” Discussion of exactly how racist it is that he considers the ewoks to be based on the Viet Cong is for a totally other post...

This was also super unsubtle if slightly contemporized with the PT, when Palpatine became less Nixon and more Bush, working to create a global economic crisis that would precipitate a war against his own long-hated enemies. At the same time, it’s been pretty widely believed that part of what muddles the PT’s storytelling is Lucas’ dual focus on criticizing the Catholic church, who at the time that the PT was being written and filmed -- late ‘90s through mid-2000s -- was finally being publicly held to account for centuries of corruption and abuse that had been downplayed as just being part of the status quo because of the Church’s obsession with ritual and dogma. While a worthy thing to criticize, trying to go for moral ambiguity and “both sides are bad from a certain point of view” while also trying to adhere to Campbell’s schema while ALSO trying to make people sympathize for a character that the entire audience already knew grows up to be a mass-murdering cyborg was... a lot to tackle. Lucas arguably failed a lot of his intentions with his execution in the PT, but he still HAD intentions, and again: they weren’t subtle. ROTS literally ends with Anakin cribbing one of Bush’s jingoistic declarations post-9/11: “You’re either with me, or you’re my enemy.” In some ways, the most successful criticism Lucas made through the PT was that this kind of dichotomous sociopolitical dialogue eventually causes you to get three of your limbs chopped off as you backflip into lava to your own downfall -- and yet, it doesn’t cause you to die -- it just makes you come back stronger and angrier than before. Which leads us to the ST.

Although Lucas has nothing to do with the ST, it’s honestly rude to the Storygroup, JJ, Kasdan, and even RiJo to pretend like it isn’t following the same edict to use the fantastical setting of a Galaxy Far Far Away to level harsh, and super overt, criticism of the sociopolitical power structures of the real world contemporaneous to the trilogy’s release.

Snoke -- the gold bathrobe-wearing charismatic fascist megalomaniac who smooth-talked his way into a figurehead position of power despite functionally having others do all of the actual work of both “governance” and violence.

Hux -- the far-right neo-Conservative political schemer who actually WAS raised from bith to idealize the explicit, intentional SW-universe analog for Nazism and thus became a powerful and Dapper Haired neo-Nazi leader.

And Kylo Ren, the violent angry entitled man who sees the kind of power his life position (wealthy, male, Force-sensitive AKA educated and gifted) would have garnered in previous generations but doesn’t today in a Star Wars Analog For Democratic And Increasingly Diverse Landscape*) and is enraged by it, so thus turns to the rhetoric of the megalomaniac and the Neo-Nazi to find afocus for that anger beyond, idk, trying to fucking just be better.

SUPER UNSUBTLE METAPHORS FOR THE POLITICS OF MODERN AMERICA.

* See: Bloodline, and the differences in policy/goals of the Centrists and the Populists; as the Populists have more Senatorial power at the time directly preceding the destruction of Luke’s school and the chief schism between them and the Centrists is that the Populists believe in giving more planets and more sentient species equal rights to vote and self-determine governance, and the Centrists -- many of whom are secretly funding the First Order, not unlike how many Republican senators and congressmen IRL have turned out to have very strong ties to the Klan, the NRA, the TWP, the Proud Boys, various neo-Nazi groups, and alt-right supremacist organizations and militias, fwiw.

THIS PARALLEL WAS NOT AN ACCIDENT.

All of the insistence y’all make to it being Just A Kids’ Movie This Shit Is Just ~Ess Jaw Dubbayoo~ Reaching!!!! is a) something you have to know, truly, is just borne of wanting to stan for Kylo, and honestly, it’d be less irksome if you just... stanned for him without trying to rewrite canon and insult everyone else? and b) Insulting, both to fellow fans and to the SWST writers.

While TFA was written long before The Election, it was still written within the modern sociopolitical landscape. Trump already was out there leading the idiot Birther movement. Sarah Palin was a thing. Alex Jones and Glenn Beck and Fox & Friends had 24/7 airtime. Antisemitic hate crimes were on a steep rise both in America and overseas, and homophobic and Islamophobic hate crimes were still happening far, far too regularly. Police brutality and the unlawful extrajudicial lynchings of Black men and boys by Klan-affiliated police officers and unjust Thin Blue Line that protected their murderers was already (finally) a daily headline. Standoffs between the government and far-right fringe militia groups lasted months; conflicts between armed militias and civilians over access to statehouses and public spaces was on the rise. Mass shootings by angry disaffected young white men were happening every fucking day. Gam/e/r/g/ate was a thing, exposing the depths to which angry entitled young men could sink if they felt like their stranglehold on All Media Things was threatened. The writing for 2016 was on the wall long before the campaigns on either side officially began.

And you know who probably was not an unaware dumdum just scootin’ along without a clue of what was in the air?

Two Jewish men, one of whom was the son of a man who won two Emmys for a docudrama about the Nuremberg trials -- gee, wonder where JJ came up with the imagery for Hux’s Hosnian rally on Starkiller, though? -- and the other of whom does interviews of Holocaust survivors for the HMH.

Denying that is both to assert that JJA/Kasdan don’t have the right, as Jewish writers, to react to the world authentically, and to assume that they are too stupid to know what they wrote. You gotta stop pretending like everyone who fucking sees what they wrote into the ST on fucking purpose is either lying or crazy. Seriously. Stop it.

~*Antis*~ don’t en-masse see these parallels and metaphors just because wE tHiNk EvErYoNe We DoN’t LiKe iS A NaZi!!! It’s because that’s what they’re fucking overtly intended to be.

And guess what? Hitler was in the ear of the Hitler Youth from infancy, too.

It 0% absolves anything they fucking did.

SW is not subtle. The only thing LESS subtle than SW is Harry Potter, and they’re both the same fucking story. With the same fucking villains. The difference is that JKR is white and goyishe and you can tell. (As you can, tbh, in TLJ being written by RiJo. RiJo goyishe as hell and it, uh, shows. A lot.)

For all of RiJo’s faults and lazy writing, he ultimately did not undo the metaphors that JJ/Kasdan set up. He handled it in maybe the most circuitous and sloppily written way possible, but honestly, the longer since TLJ came out, the more it becomes clearer that RiJo really wasn’t trying to make Kylo seem heroic, or trying to subvert TFA’s storyline insofar as giving Kylo depth that belied his character’s setup. He was showing the audience just how easy it is to be hooked into a narrative like the one that suckered in Ben Solo, and that he tries to use to sucker in Rey -- and nearly succeeds.

In TFA, it couldn’t have been more overt if he were straight-up just constantly watching snuff film porn or something, but in TLJ, Rian’s cues -- which I STILL will always maintain are poorly executed -- are less “out on the street in Charleston with a tiki torch in hand” than “on Twitter sealioning female journalists until they delete their account, and then retreating back into anonymity on /pol.” It’s still Kylo Ren as the toxic masculine underbelly of rage, violence, and entitlement that is part of the current sociopolitical nightmare hole, even though he’s actively trying to seem like an empathetic #normie. Every single frame of Kylo Ren in TLJ, especially after Snoke makes him remove his helmet, is in service to the Dark and to all of the real-world metaphors of toxic masculine rage that Kylo represents.

Because when given the choice between being free and usurping Snoke’s power, Kylo chose to the power. That is Dark.

It isn’t even Dark inherently because he First Order are an explicit Neo-Nazi parallel, although they are -- and FWIW you don’t get to be antisemitic by rejecting JJ Abrams’ and Lawrence Kasdan’s right, as Jewish artists, to create fantastical metaphors for their Jewish pain and name them as such [“The original name for the First Order was the Neo-Empire,” etc.] in the name of ~protecting Jewish feelings~ when the entire schema was created by Jews and the fact that y’all are excited to claim that theyre are “six Jewish reylos” is... just yikes; I gotta say, as a Jewish ~anti~, there are more than six of us -- it’s Dark because it is the self-serving choice at the expense of the Galaxy.

And, truly, at the expense of what Ben Solo would have known was moral and ethical. Ben Solo was raised by Han and Leia. He was educated by Luke. He grew up with three parental/guardian figures, plus Uncle Lando and Uncle Chewie, who ADORED him and doted on him. He canonically had happiness and friendship in his childhood (per Bloodline). He isn’t a sociopath devoid of empathy; I’ll give you that, because it’s true. He knows exactly how much he is hurting people, both emotionally and physically, with his actions. And he chooses those actions anyway, because they further his goal of becoming the literal Master of the Universe.

Kylo Ren considers his own desires to be of higher value and priority than the well-being of the Galaxy or his own sense of morals/ethics, and that is a Dark choice. (See also: Anakin killing Mace Windu.)

(Cue Palps cackling about “POWAAAAA!”)

Being brainwashed by a fascist lunatic to murder for them does not absolve you from that murder.

Are you out campaigning for the release of Manson’s girls, too? Because they were brainwashed. Psychologically, medically, truly brainwashed to the point where they were unable to perceive the fact that Manson’s beliefs and orders were objectively fucking batshit and evil. But they still were responsible for their actions. They committed the murders. They are in prison for them because of the choices they made.

How about Allison Mack sex trafficking and branding women for NXIVM? Is she an innocent lamb-flower who could not possibly have made any other choices because her charismatic leader was in her ear for years and years? I’m sure that in her trial, her lawyers will make the same exact arguments about her relationship with Renier than y’all make about Kylo and Snoke, but uh, it ultimately doesn’t fucking matter. Allison Mack is the one who slowly and torturously branded her victims with a goddamn laser-pointer. That was her choice. That was her action. She will be held accountable for her choice.

...and his parents didn’t know what to do with him. They have a super force sensitive child, who has a presence constantly poking at him, and he’s highly emotional…

This just literally isn’t canon.

All of Ben Solo as a child’s appearances in canon have shown him as a happy, playful, mischievous child who knows that he is loved and is responsibe to the emotional cues of his parents and others. He is exactly as upset by things that would upset any child as... any other child. He doesn’t have a Presence Constantly Poking At Him in canon. You guys invented that, and it isn’t backed up by his largest pre-Kylo canon appearance, which is Last Shot. Ben, in Last Shot, is loved and knows it, and he loves back. He is happy. He is a normal, good-natured child. He babbles, he plays, he cuddles, he goes outside and gets muddy with his friends and beams and laughs. He has toys and watches cartoons.

He cries a) when he gets woken up, which is when all babies cry and frankly everyone else wants to cry when they get woken up lbr; b) when he doesn’t get to do exactly what he wants to do, and, tbh, it could be interpreted as foreshadowing of the way that Kylo Ren uses the display of emotion to manipulate people into letting him do what he wants in both TFA and TLJ. Or it could just be him being, you know, a normal toddler.

I will give you: he IS highly Force-sensitive. SO IS LEIA. Leia is the granddaughter of the Living Force for fuck’s assing sake. You really think that Luke and Leia are LESS Force-sensitive than Ben??? Being highly Force-sensitive doesn’t, and literally in canon did not, turn Ben into a hyperemotive mess as a child. He’s just, you know, two years old.

“But Kylo Ren is hyperemotional, so what happened HUH!?” you cry.

Well -- for one, the main emotion that he canonically shows as Kylo Ren is anger. He is an angry man, and he acts like an angry man, because he is in a social environment -- by his own choice as a 23-year-old thru 30-year-old -- that encourages violent expressions of male anger. He punches walls. He chokes subordinates. He destroys property. He yells at people. He SCREAMS at people. He is angry, because he feels entitled to more than he has, always more, more power, more respect, more control over others, and he has been encouraged to believe that acting on that anger will help him get what he feels he is owed.

That ain’t special. And it’s hardly even a scifi metaphor. That’s just how violent, angry men ARE.

“But he cries so much!” He cries once in the movies. Once when he is about to kill the father he still loves, because he craves the power he sees as his due more than he cares about anything or anyone.

The other time that it looks as though he might cry -- in the elevator after Snoke’s mocking and the Force lightning -- he instead does what violent, angry men DO when they live in a culture or subculture that glorifies male violence and disrespects all other emotions: subverts actual emotional processing or catharsis by turning it into an act of violence. He destroys his mask, the symbol of his obeisance to Snoke. RiJo even confirmed that was the moment he started to plan Snoke’s murder more concretely. His reaction to feeling sadness, or rejection, or guilt, or WHATEVER, in the face of his killing Han not actually getting Snoke to give him more control and power and leadership, was to PLAN A MURDER.

(AKA: It wasn’t to save Rey; Rey was only there because, using Snoke’s playbook of manipulation, Kylo got her to believe what he wanted her to believe and come to the First Order because Kylo couldn’t kill Snoke alone, and Snoke had to die for Kylo to get what he wanted: ULTIMAAAATE POWWWWAAAA.)

(And FWIW, I’m not saying Snoke’s murder was unwarranted, I’m just saying that it was borne of the same exact cocktail of toxic hypermasculinity that caused Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo to kill Luke’s students and flee to Snoke in the first place. Kylo Ren’s sole motivation, in canon, is the pursuit of total power over others, which he feels is his due because he happened to be born to the family he was and with the genetic makeup [Force sensitivity] that he has.)

[B]ut his parents are also war heroes and they’re trying to build a government and just rebuild in general after a war, so they can’t be there for their son. They’re not the best parents, okay. They leave him in the care of a kitchen droid instead of one suited for care giving. (Also, this kitchen droid tries to murder him as a toddler due to a…let’s call it a computer virus or malfunction. so that’s extremely terrifying).

They literally left him with BX for like 20 minutes because his actual nanny droid had to run an errand.

This argument is so tired and it also kind of proves that you don’t even actually read/watch canon, you take all of your beliefs and cues from what Reylo BNFs with vested interests in keeping y’all brainwashed to believe that Bennyboo is a Pure Sweet Angel Baby Who Never Did Anything Wrong so that they can maintain the social capital of having lots of followers.

Gee, I wonder if that’s similar to anyone we’ve been talking about?

That said, this argument is also exhausting because it places blame on working parents for being working parents, and that’s misogynistic bullshit. Han was Ben’s primary caregiver. In canon. T-2 is really only ever in full-on Nanny Mode during Last Shot, when Han has to leave the house for more than a day or so.

Otherwise, it’s literally canon that Han is a stay-at-home parent whose full-time vocation is caring for Ben until Ben leaves for Luke’s school. After that, he STILL is a full-time househusband, but does some charity ship-racing on the side to raise money for galactic orphanages. He does mentorships for junior pilots, too, and once one of them -- Greer Sonnel -- starts to seem like she has a terminal chronic illness that will keep her from flying, Han helps to place her in a safer job opportunity rather than have to go back to her impoverished home planet. MAN, what a BAD GUY who HATES KIDS and is BAD AT CARING FOR THEM.

Not even the nanny droid -- they kept T-2, who had programming for obstetrics and pediatrics, around because he was a protocol droid just like Threepio but with the benefit of specialized programming that would help them better care for Ben, from early on in Leia’s pregnancy at least through when Ben left for Luke’s school. God forbid parents have specialized, knowledgable help raising their child!  

It is only after Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo destroys Luke’s school and becomes Kylo Ren that Han leaves, and that’s alluded to in canon -- although I’ll give you that it isn’t confirmed at this juncture in either Road to TFA or Road to TLJ material/timeline -- to search for Luke, search for Ben, and/or help raise and gather capital for the burgeoning Resistance. He isn’t a deadbeat who’s never around for his son. His son’s disappearance is the only thing that could make Han leave the domestic home and life that he’d wanted since before he even met Leia.

Second, his powers are erratic and POWERFUL and when he’s like a preteen or something he hears his parents discussing him behind closed doors…like he’s some sort of monster.

And what, exactly, did Ben do before they said this?

We don’t know.

We have had hints in both Road to TFA and Road to TLJ canon that something Ben Solo did, at age 10, was sufficiently powerful and Dark enough that Leia and Han did the best thing they could as parents to a child who did a Dark thing: get them help from a source who has the training and knowledge to help them in ways the parents themselves cannot.

That is not bad parenting. That was the right thing to do.

We don’t know what Ben did that caused his parents to worry about how Dark his behavior, in that act at least, had been, but parents admitting that they are out of their depth and getting their child help from a professional is not neglect, or a lack of love, or a lack of empathy. I get it; being forced to get help, when you view your own actions as justified, is scary and painful and embarrassing. When I was teaching, I had an eight-year-old male student who had been expelled from public school after breaking another kid’s arm and was in a specialized school for students with violent behavioral issues because he had kind-of-accidentally killed his toddler cousin by hitting him over the head with a chair when he was angry. I’m 100% sure that his parents talked about that event, amongst themselves, behind closed doors, with horror and the kind of language that would be immensely hurtful to this boy if he overheard it. That’s a human reaction. A monstrous thing happened, hard to comprehend, and like... parents are allowed to react like humans about complicated emotions of trauma or shock or horror, even though they are parents. But then they did the exactly right thing for their profoundly violent son by getting him professional help. That specialized school was not fun. The boy definitely saw it as, and talked about it as, a punishment. But it wasn’t a punishment. It was loving him enough to try to save him from himself.

Sending Ben to Luke’s school was not a punishment or some way to ~throw him away. Ben DID need help, objectively, although we haven’t yet been told exactly what the final straw was. I believe, IIRC, that the Road to TFA referred to whatever he did as a “great family tragedy,” but I don’t 100% remember -- I only recall that was part of why most people assumed that the incident occurring right around the time of Rey’s birth would ultimately be significant, and who knows, it may yet be. We don’t know. There’s no canon about it.

Also --

You guys act like Luke was some mean, scary stranger who hated Ben on sight, but Luke was Ben’s uncle. Leia and Han adored him, and he adored them, and he loved Ben. We don’t have any canon about Luke’s feelings towards whatever child!Ben did to warrant the intervention, but even in TLJ, there’s no actual objective statements of Luke hating Ben, or even Kylo.

The only person who asserts that Luke hates/hated Ben Solo is Kylo.

And frankly: he needs to believe that. Just like he needs to believe that killing Han will cause Snoke to finally respect him and give him more control/power/leadership. These are things that, honestly, he’s gotta KNOW are not true, but has to create the believe of their truth to continue acting as Kylo Ren.

So this belief, and those actions as Kylo?

Are agential, active choices. As an adult man.

Further:

Re: the moment with Luke in the hut, any interpretation that doesn’t take into account the filmmaking and CANONICAL choice to present it twice, once in Kylo’s POV and once in Luke’s POV, is missing the point of its being shown at all.

Kylo has already begun his manipulation of Rey in service to the eventual murder of Snoke and usurpation of the throne when he tells Rey about that night. He knows that Rey is frustrated with Luke on her own merits, so she will be receptive to a telling of that story that frames Luke as all of the things that Rey is already annoyed with Luke for being: stubborn, afraid of the Force, afraid of the Dark, quick to anger, irresponsible, whatever.

In the flashback from Kylo’s POV, he is telling Rey the story, so it is being presented to her for the purpose of garnering her sympathy in order to manipulate her. It isn’t even necessarily how Kylo remembers that moment when he’s just remembering it to himself, late at night, or whatever! We have never been privy to what’s actually in Kylo’s mind about that night. While you guys are using that as evidence that his mind was good and guileless and sweet, it’s equally (or more) likely that he was so Dark that night bcause he was, just like with Rey, already planning his next Dark act. In both TFA with Han and TLJ with Rey, Kylo’s choices in Dark actions tend to rely on someone else -- someone Light -- falling alongside him because he is a skillful manipulator of empathy.

Han steps closer and takes the lightsaber, blade-end pointed at himself, because he believes that Kylo Ren is choosing the Light and will come home.

Rey mails herself to the First Order, becoming a pawn in the takeover of Snoke’s throne, for the exact same reason.

When Kylo is telling Rey about the night that he destroyed Luke’s school and killed the other students, he is relying on the same tactic -- using someone’s own goodness and Lightness against them.

Han, on the bridge, even as he was dying, believed the best in his son and believed 100% that if given the choice, Kylo Ren would be Ben again, and that he wanted the Light and just felt like he couldn’t have it anymore.

So when he’s manipulating Rey with the story about that night with Luke, in Kylo’s POV, we can visually see from the filmmaking choices that he is telling it in a way tailored to her belief in inherent goodness. Rey, until after the throne room, believes that people are ultimately and innately good and Light -- it’s stated basically outright iirc in her Survival Guide -- and Kylo knows that because he mind-raped her and saw her thought processes and viewpoints and knows, exactly, how to mold his story to ply her. When we see that night with Luke as Kylo tells it to Rey to get her to come to the First Order, he tells it in a way that casts his choice to flee to the Dark as being borne of fear and confusion, not desire. (And y’all reylos buy that??? Okay.)

But if Rey herself weren’t being so muddled by her own confusion and sadness, honestly, TLJ itself presents her with enough evidence that wasn’t true: she knows Leia and Han loved him, and he tells her that he didn’t hate Han. And yet, he stayed. He stayed in the First Order for six years after that night. He didn’t destroy Luke’s school by accident out of shock and fear and pain in a whirlwind of Dark energy that he couldn’t control, and then, you know, feel bad and atone and try to make amends and acknowledge his bad deed and accept consequences and try to redeem himself.

He destroyed the school and fled to the First Order and stayed. He destroyed the school and kept on destroying.

But he IS a skillful manipulator, and he also knows that Rey most likely assumes that he wants to come home because, he’s seen in her mind AND she’s reaffirmed, that all she wants is a loving home and parents. If he tells about that night in the hut in a way that casts himself as the victim, his hand forced so that he doesn’t feel he can come home, she’ll believe it (despite literally having seen him in front of her face reject the invitation to come home with his dad, but whatever Rian).

So that’s how he tells it: Luke, fallen to the Dark side, his face twisted into something demonic in his fear and hatred, and Ben, still innately Light inside, only acting in the Dark basically by accident. THAT IS KYLO REN MASTERPIECE THEATER PUPPET STORYTIME, AS HE ACTIVELY MANIPULATES REY TO LEAVE LUKE AND COME HELP HIM KILL SNOKE.

It is, in the world of the story, and in the narrative through-line of TLJ, not the truth.

Personally, as with a lot of the things that Kylo claims to believe, I don’t think even he believes it’s the truth. It is what a convenient truth would be in that moment to further his progress towards his goal of supremacy. He KNOWS that he was steeped in the Dark side (by choice, as an adult) when Luke entered his hut that night. Even though you’re trying to insist that he was an innocent lamb that night, even your own pro-Ben Solo arguments rely on the idea of his being fully and totally steeped in Darkness by then -- don’t you think he was 23 years and 9 space months into being groomed by Snoke by that night? If Snoke really had been grooming him for so long, then by default Ben Solo was already Dark by then, and the Dark has no power unless you choose to act on it.

And to that end: what, exactly, if not kill all of the other students, destroy Luke’s school, and help to destabilize the New Republic in favor of the neo-conservative fascist junta of the First Order, was Snoke grooming him to do or be?

If you believe that Snoke was grooming Ben Solo to the level that ALL of his Dark actions were really Snoke, and not Kylo Ren actually making agential active choices to further his own agenda, then what was Snoke’s plan for him before that night? Because unless his plan for Ben Solo involved the destruction of Luke’s school... wouldn’t Kylo be starting out his tenure under Snoke’s tutelage with Snoke HELLA PISSED at him for doing something so rash and stupid?

So yeah, granted, it IS only an assumption that the Ben “Jedi Killer” Solo actually consciously and actively planned the destruction of the school and the murder of any classmates who refused to join him... but it’s an assumption based on all of his actions since that night. He has made zero efforts towards self-aware atonement or culpability, and if he truly did not mean to destroy the school and kill other students, one would think that someone who ultimately wants the Light and to be Saved Ben Solo Again would, idk, feel bad about it. Not try to blame someone else as a tactic to get a partner in another murder.

And you might hate the comparison to a school shooter, but that was as unsubtle in Ben’s destruction of Luke’s school as the comparisons to Neo-Nazis are in Hux’s rally in TFA.

He is an angry and entitled man, already steeped in Darkness and resentful that he doesn’t have all of the power that he feels is his natural due, and he scapegoats the adults in his life for making him get professional help that he didn’t want and was angered by because one of its tenets (if Luke was adhering to at least basic Jedi teachings) was that no one person should have that much power.

When he is caught continuing to act/think/speak/etc. in Dark ways -- like, IDK, someone’s loving parents trying to disconnect their internet access because they were so deeply entrenched in alt-right conspiracy theory that they were functionally insane and had become frighteningly violent -- his reaction is extreme violence (like stabbing to death the father trying to protect you from your own delusional conspiracy-driven subculture) in service to leaving his life for a literal, in-world neo-conservative fascist slave-owning militia planning a political coup through the equivalent of an atomic bomb in the capitol. Again: the parallel that JJA and Kasdan wrote and created for Kylo is not an accident, nor is it subtle. We’re MEANT to see him as a toxic masculinity-driven, entitled, violent white man, and we’re meant to view his slaughter of his classmates as having been driven by his rage and his quest for the power he feels is his due.

That is a school shooter. Trying to pull the “you can’t compare this overt fantastical metaphor to a real-life bad thing to the bad thing it’s meant to be because that would mean acknowledging the bad thing!!!!” card is really tired.

Like. There is no realistic, actual, canon-based scenario in which Ben Solo, by the night of the hut, DIDN’T have plans for violence against any who would not join him.

Remember? Star Wars has already cribbed-and-canonized the reactionary mindset once: you’re either with me, or you’re my enemy.

[cwombw]

isn’t life great?

below cut.

void-Yesterday at 11:25 PM

wtf do you even have to say to me

ArchaicArcade-Yesterday at 11:26 PM

I just, if youre this upset with riley for doing then we need to talk about this so you understand

void-Yesterday at 11:27 PM

im ALLOWED to be hurt that he thinks i can NEVER be trusted AGAIN for no apparent reasonif you cant recognize that then WOW

ArchaicArcade-Yesterday at 11:27 PM

He doesn't think thatHe blocked people he's know for years

void-Yesterday at 11:27 PM

then WHY the MCFUCK did he block me and why are you saying i should just shut up about it and get over iti cared about him damnit i say him as my own fucking childyoure not who i thought you were lmfao

ArchaicArcade-Yesterday at 11:28 PM

He's just really scared right now, youre allowed to be upset but try to underastand

void-Yesterday at 11:28 PM

im done tbh?i blocked him back.its what he wants anyway

ArchaicArcade-Yesterday at 11:29 PM

if you feel that's what you want. he's just scared and hiding from everything

void-Yesterday at 11:29 PM

and yet hes still in dandys friendchat.

ArchaicArcade-Yesterday at 11:30 PM

He left active chats right off the bat and then got scred people would hate him and stoped

void-Yesterday at 11:30 PM

whatever then.too bad star came home im this close to self harmingim  going to talk to her and hope shecan calm me down from a meltdown

ArchaicArcade-Yesterday at 11:31 PM

I just, he's literally dying rn, please try to understandAnd please stay safe

void-Yesterday at 11:31 PM

you also need to understand that others are having similar reactions due to his actions just now

ArchaicArcade-Yesterday at 11:33 PM

youre having a heart problem? you were so upset you had a heart attack last night? I'm sorry but I dont think this is comperable

void-Yesterday at 11:33 PM

i meant the goddamn breakdown thing

ArchaicArcade-Yesterday at 11:34 PM

I'm sorry i misunderstoodHe jsut doesnt want anyone to see him die

void-Yesterday at 11:39 PM

i f he wants to push everybody away and ruin every good friendship he had and also ruin the dnd kin thing, fine. im not going to open my arms to him anymore.i dont hate him.but the wanting nothing to do eith each other thing is mutual now.

ArchaicArcade-Yesterday at 11:40 PM

i hope you understand that i stand with him on this. he just doesnt want to hurt people if he actually dies

void-Yesterday at 11:41 PM

if he actually diesso if he doesnt, what. hes gonna be like "heyyy.. fingerguns sorry that i ruined all my friendships, amde people hate me, and made people panic" i dont play ehadgames like that and i refuse to do that with him.plus, idk. iunno. maybe it should be our choice if we want to stick with him even if hes on his death bed?by doing this its hurting more than watching hiom die

ArchaicArcade-Yesterday at 11:43 PM

He's in the hospital and they said things arent looking good. he's terrifiyed and I think you should remember hes only 16. he's just scared as any dying kid would be

void-Yesterday at 11:44 PM

.. so wait. let me get this straight . he decided to. block. every single one of his online friends, out of fear of hurting them. but he didnt try to distance himself from his irl ones, even though it should be thje same fear that drove him to block everybody online in the first place.iwhatnothis boils down to paranoia and distrustwhy exactly, does he  let his irl friends care for him but wont let his online ones do the same

ArchaicArcade-Yesterday at 11:45 PM

It;s easier to block people you don't know in personI just, I cant do this. hes a scared kin and that's all there is to it

void-Yesterday at 11:46 PM

okim dropping itfeel free to block mefigure you want nothing to do with me anymore eitherJune 8, 2018

ArchaicArcade-Today at 12:01 AM

no it's just I need a bit

ArchaicArcade-Today at 8:34 AM

I'm sorry to say this but I've know Riley way longer and well, I choose him over you. I feel terrible but I need to side with my best friend here

void-Today at 11:56 AM

there shouldnt even be a side but okay. i had a feeling y'all weren't telling the truth. because i forgot last night but now i remember that he certainly did not block everybody he was friends with online and the chat in gov kin is evident as such, since people there could still message him.

you all have fun lying now. but i want you both to remember that i would have gone above and beyond for the both of you because i trusted you, cared about you, and loved you.thanks for ripping away a part of my life.

--

s/o-Today at 7:48 AM

Fuck meRiley is the rat talking to lou

s/o-Today at 11:01 AM

Let me know if you are okay.

void-Today at 11:59 AM

.....wow.

s/o-Today at 11:59 AM

He shared our entire dm

s/o-Today at 12:00 PM

God me too

void-Today at 12:01 PM

you know i have a feeling all their friends were in on it and he didnt even have a heart attack last night

--

s/o- you know I never had a grudge against you, and I wasn't in a good place either when you were in my life. please leave me out of your mouth and i'll continue leaving you out of mine. Don't dis GAK either, it's a quiet kin family. -Lex's "live in" partner.

s/o- also I'm carful about the ages of the people I talk too, and that "flirting with a minor thing" not sure who that was at all? I'm sure it had something to do with the nonsense in KK. Anyway last message I will send unless you choose to respond. Yesterday at 4:53 AM

agenderdad420/mysterypeaches the minor was jeremie diioscuri and the offending behavior was via discord in a mutuals server that he had created Yesterday at 2:26 PM s/o- Now i know what you are talking about. I was mislead about his age. But I also never flirted with him. I sent him an NSFW meme once and his little friends started making wild accusations of me. And I do feel bad for offending him, but I didn't know he was a minor.

s/o- That is also how I personally got kicked from KK. I kicked Alex from KK the previous night because it was behaving destructively Today at 7:44 AM

agenderdad420/mysterypeaches thats not an accusation thats straight up telling the truth

s/o- Talking about trans stuff? I was literally complaing about tucking. I also really feel stabbed in the back right now. You think you know someone

agenderdad420/mysterypeaches you... knew who? look idk what you deem appropriate to talk to minors about but maybe it differs for us

s/o- i don't think a trans vent between two trans people is inappropriate if he was squicked by that he could've told me lol. not go sharing a private convo with you. (and i'm not blaming you for that)

agenderdad420/mystery peaches i will say that there is often an inherent power dynamic between older and younger members that maybe made him more uncomfortable

s/o- you know i can take the blame if I fucked up. I hope you know that I've changed a ton since KK. and since I your drama with Lex started. All I want is to be a good person and contribute something to my fellow kinnies.\

agenderdad420/mysterypeaches honestly i havent really kept up w either you or alex since that point, but i dont doubt you can take accountability for your actions.

agenderdad420/mysterypeaches i just hope that there is change that goes along w acknowledgement and perhaps there has been

s/o- I don't speak for lex. But i just want peace Today at 9:21 AM

agenderdad420 fair

--

s/o - Today at 7:49 AM Apparently riley is the one talking to the person who made my callout Do you have a problem with me arcade? 

ArchaicArcade - Today at 8:07 AM no 

s/o - Today at 8:16 AM I guess i squicked him with something i said 

ArchaicArcade - Today at 8:17 AM i guess 

s/o - Today at 8:19 AM My brain: hes sick because of you 

s/o - Today at 12:02 PM I know you have your reasons  for what you guys are doing. But I hope Riley knows how deep he cut me. I would've given you both the moon.

--

not only have these people caused me to have a severe anxiety attack, they caused my partner the same, as well as many others who weren’t even a part of this.

they have caused me to feel suicidal and paranoid, to want to self harm

as for agenderdad420/mysterypeaches, they have sent me anon hate before, accused me of being racist for my neopronouns (all while saying they’re not against neopronouns, lol), and blew up at me for dropping them after they told me they didn’t like that i was trying to set boundaries for my borderline behaviors with them, and that i was confiding in them everything that was going on with me at the time (which was heavily toxic and depressing towards me) they have used language against me that is ableist and abuse apologetic in nature and their claims otherwise are blatant lies.

i had previously published the majority of the anon hate before deleting it from my blog after a while due to discomfort of having drama on my blog.

they have taken to stalking me to find out more past drama about me, as well as taking false anecdotes from others who claim my s/o has been inappropriate with minors to the point of grooming them, which is 1000000000000000% untrue and taken greatly out of context and skewed into something that never happened.

talking about trans issues isn’t grooming, sending a nsfw meme to a person who my s/o believed to be an adult isn’t grooming.

these people are pure evil and have been planning this for a long time from what i’ve gathered.

they are dangerous and unpleasant and will apparently stop at nothing to obtain their goal, whatever it actually is. as evident as one of them faked a heart attack and may have faked an entire condition.

update 7/17/2018

after speaking to rileys sister who he abused for a good part of their life, as well as ruined it and made their mom send them to live with their aunt, i’ve since learned that this is serial abusive behavior and he has also physically beat his younger siblings, is a pathological liar, and everything i’ve thus learned about him 100% fits his m/o.

he can try all he wants to pretend that he got better and has improved but all i see if that he got better methods.

faking a heart attack in order to call my gf a pedophile for talking about trans issues is fucking despicable.

another thing i’ve discovered is that he did in fact assault the person who he says assaulted him 

and the fact he freaked out over a poorly written callout like that, no offense to the victim is kinda funny and really telling. if he was innocent then why bother mentioning anything? i dont think that many people saw it.

i’ve also learned that archaicarcade, aka julien/julian (and plenty of other past names) also has a past of fucking people over very quickly into friendships and relationships and changing their name and other information in order to hide their past.

in fact.. riley hangs out with a lot of weird people, including somebody who was brainwashed by their older brother to be transphobic, and julien, whos relationship with the minors he surrounds himself with is suspect at best.

he also keeps company with a jehovah’s witness, which i shouldn’t have to explain how problematic that is.

my current thoughts about this is that riley while not innocent at all may be being groomed by julien is who also grooming others with help from his other adult buddies they all hang with. i have no sympathy for riley though after what occurred, whatsoever.

just 10-20 minutes ago somebody on a sockpuppet from wilson, north carolina sent me hate after checking out this callout post for riley, this is the screenshot i took

i’ve since blocked and reported the sockpuppet, even if this doesnt belong to riley, its clearly from one of his brainwashed supporters. amazing that a month later they still want to start shit. but this? this is pathetic.

look riley and co. i, my gf, my bf, my other bf, and all my friends know the truth. you’re fucking liars and fakes and abusive and groom people. do the universe a favor and go to long term therapy or maybe just never go online ever again with any device, anytime, anywhere, ever. and in fact hole yoruself up in your homes and never speak to anybody ever again because you clearly can’t help yourselves from finding new targets to fuck with.

emotional terrorism at its finest.

[getfuckedstayfucked]

callout post for aineedhelp dumbposting majimaguro

@dumbposting @majimaguro since you've been harassing my friends I figured I'd lay this out for you in no uncertain terms. Kyle, if you read this, scroll down to the bottom where there's a screenshot of Charlie literally telling you to die.

Hi Charlie. I deadass had to make a tumblr for this bullshit because your lying has really gotten excessive. I mean really? Telling people you’re 23? Telling people that you were groomed by us? Telling people we forced you to ditch your friends when all you’d do is complain to us about how uncomfortable x person would make you with their requests for sexual roleplay, or their aggressive demeanor, or their shipping wants? Telling people you were abused by us when you clearly have done this more than twice to different friend groups and when one group falls apart you move on to the next and start your predatory cycle all over again???

I can see you do this for every friend group you make, no matter who it is, where they are. You know how I see this? Because you are saying that we did what you told us your old friends were doing - Jasper, Robin, and Merc. You’ve moved the narrative that THEY were sexually abusive groomers/manipulators over to us since your new group of friends doesn’t know about them outside of the parts those new friends (your dear friends who never hurt you ever even though you consistently complain about said new friends behind their backs!) play and now, suddenly, WE were sexually abusive groomers/manipulators because you milked the attention and pity you could get out of us over the awful things you said about Jasper, Robin, and Merc, and in the process you eventually abused the two people who had the patience to stick out that behaviour SO MUCH and for SO LONG that you alienated them. Once they were over how you treated them, then suddenly, they were the bad guys. And you wouldn’t stop rocking the boat because you needed to have your endless little baby tantrum. Now that you’ve pulled the trigger, you can’t unshoot that bullet.

Newsflash? When these people told you THEIR BOUNDARIES - something that amazingly seems to only be valid when you do it - you got pissed at them. When people told you THEY COULDN’T HANDLE SOMETHING - like, oh, you know, detailed descriptions of severe animal trauma/death, or being told repetitively and graphically that you were going to kill yourself/how you were going to do it, they were suddenly awful. Well, you know what? That is textbook manipulation, to use a phrase you seem so fond of. Guilting people for having boundaries and making them feel bad for drawing lines because they want to have a healthy relationship with their friends isn’t bad, you just don’t like it because it means you can no longer do what you want or treat people like crap without repercussions. 

You are a cruel person. You don’t care about anybody but yourself. You are a self-serving, self-driven, emotionless asshole that knows how to twist situations to be in your favor because your favorite tactic is to divide people up from one another so they have less and less outside views of what your treatment is actually like. It takes a lot of practice to be able to do something like you do for so long and so aggressively so I imagine you’ve been doing this for years. You hook someone - or multiple someones - in by being nice and personable and funny and relatable, then you destroy your friend groups by pitting people against one another and when you’ve isolated the people you’re obsessing over, you flip the switch and start to abuse them in private.

And you know what? You are not the victim in this narrative. You are just another abusive jerk who knows you can get that attention from someone somewhere as long as you twist the narrative to fit your ‘I’ve been abused my friends all treat me horribly’ angle. And you know what? I’m sick of you. I’m sick of how you treat my friends, I’m sick of how you treat people in general. You make me sick and if you’re proud of that, that’s not a badge of honor or pride. That means that you are exactly like your father. 

You don’t get to be out here and be like ‘oh no! it was me who was hurt by these people!’ when you're the one harassing them with your nasty, miserable anon hate even though they’ve blocked you time and time again. 

Steven showed me the conversation where you exploded at him for saying he needed a moment, because apparently it’s fucked up to not be able to handle graphic depictions of an animal’s death, and somehow saying that he couldn’t handle that in that moment was a personal attack and he was betraying you by being an unsupportive friend? People have triggers, hunty, you aren’t god’s gift to this earth and you aren’t the only person to have those! HE tried to set his boundaries and what did you do? You shit all over them. You only care about boundaries if they’re your own and if anybody else has one they try to set with you they’re suddenly awful and someone to be tossed aside. 

And you know what else? You forcing Sam to deal with your maladjusted stalking all the time because you’re out here harassing him via tumblr dot com isn't cute. You’re entirely, creepily obsessed with him and irrationally upset that he stood up for himself and got tired of you treating him like your own personal emotional punching-bag. You are a pathetic, vengeful little person who has no life and nothing to do but troll the internet for victims and people you can trick into giving you sympathy until you inevitably wring them dry too and then you abandon them because they won’t give you what you want anymore.

Go fuck yourself. Get fucked, stay fucked. You complained to us and cried to us about Merc and Jasper and Robin and how they either wouldn’t stop bothering you for sexual RP or wouldn’t stop guilting you or pushing you in that direction, or how Robin wouldn’t stop trying to force you to say what she wanted you to say, and now you’re LITERALLY saying that about Steve and Sam? You are not. The fucking. Victim. Here. You are the orchestrator to an amazingly convoluted drama that rotates around you and you alone and I’m sick of this and I’m sick of you and I’m sick of having to hear about the lies you’re posting about my friends.

By the way? You aren’t 23. You are 27 by now! De-aging yourself to seem younger and more vulnerable only works when people don’t know you’re actually older - which, by the way, is SUPER creepy of you to do because it gets you closer to a younger demographic and endears you to them because oh! wow! You’re young and abused just like them! Do you know how fucked up it is to position yourself closer to younger, less experienced, vulnerable people like that? Do you know how fucked up it is to try and net those poor kids with your sob stories and how these ‘bad oldew peopow abewsed yew uwu’ even though that wasn’t the case? It puts you in a position of power and it gives you the reigns in any interactions you have with anybody younger than you and that is creepy and disgusting and you are creepy and disgusting for doing it, especially since your tumblr is filled with a mixture of sfw and 18+ content with zero 18+ follower requirement.

And you know what-- in the same vein, you use your being autistic as a sob story point to make it sound like one more way that you’ve been taken advantage of, but in reality you’re actually the one out here taking advantage of those around you and you’re being ableist while you do it? Wow. Wowiee wow wow.

You infantilize autistic people and say in the process that, in a blanket statement, ALL autistic people can’t fend for themselves or see anything coming at them from a mile away. On top of that, you shit on other autistic people’s special interests? Do you have any idea how many autistic people are out there with special interests focused around kid’s shows, or cartoons in general, or anime, or fandoms? No? Well, here’s a clue: there’s a lot of us (and yes, I am autistic, and yes, I do have special interests involving anime and fandoms, and no, I’m not a predator and I am DEFINITELY not the one out here creepily de-aging themselves to endear themselves to younger people like you are) with special interests ranging from anything from MLP to mushrooms to My Hero Academia (which is, for the record, one of Steve’s special interests, which you shit on him for, you ableist fuck) to Stephen King’s IT and you don’t get to say it’s predatory to have special interests in these areas!!!!!

You are not only perpetuating stereotypes about autistic people but you’re encouraging them because these stereotypes suit you and your current narrative! You’re using the same exact arguments that neurotypicals use! And you know what ELSE? Way to suggest that autistic people who have special interests that aren’t ‘adult’ are predators, too, you nasty little weasel. That’s the kind of narrative that gets autistic people killed!!! How selfish ARE you?

But wait, we really, really aren’t done here. I would really like to address your obsession with accusing people of being groomers and/or predators. 

YOU LITERALLY ROLEPLAYED EDDIE KASPBRACK. YOU ROLEPLAYED HIM AS AGE SIXTEEN AND YOU HAVE DONE SO IN A SEXUAL AND SEXUAL-ADJACENT MANNER. YOU SMUT ROLEPLAYED SEXUAL CONTENT ON A CHARACTER THAT WAS SIXTEEN. YOU ALSO ROLEPLAY AS SHERRY BIRKIN FROM RESIDENT EVIL. SHE IS TEN. YOU CAN’T SAY SHIT. YOU. CAN’T. SAY. SHIT. YOU WROTE SMUT AS UNDERAGE CHARACTERS WHILE USING REAL LIFE UNDERAGE FACECLAIMS AND NOW YOU’RE OUT HERE SAYING THAT SIMPLY WATCHING THESE SHOWS AND BEING INTO THESE FANDOMS IS PEDOPHILIC? I don’t think so. I really, really do not think so.

Saying stuff like ‘reblogging anime posts or gifs or art is child porn’ also belittles and undermines actual CSA/pedophilia victims which is one more tally on the list of fucked up shit you’ve done. Way to be one of those people out there who do their best to divert valuable time and resources that could be spent on actual CSA victims instead of fictional fucking people.

This is a two-way street. You rant about how this is a 13+ site and how adults are responsible for kids in their spaces WHEN THEY HAVE ALREADY GONE TO REASONABLE LENGTHS TO PREVENT MINORS FROM GETTING AT THEIR CONTENT, but you’re always going on about getting high and doing drugs and talking about onlyfans which is AN ADULT SUBSCRIPTION WEBSITE GEARED TOWARDS PEOPLE WHO MAKE PORN OR FETISH CONTENT. You have absolutely ZERO 18+ content warning or follower requirement on your blog! Which is made creepier by the fact that you’ve de-aged yourself by a whole four years, you’re making yourself out to be some kind of abused child who was manipulated by older people, and you’re trying to speak for children. It’s wack. 

For the record, being mentally ill is not an excuse for any of this at all whatsoever. If you hurt someone and you are mentally ill that is still on you. It is on you to learn to live with mental illness and not hurt those around you. When your shitty actions give someone else trauma, that is your fault, and it does have an effect on them, and it does hurt them. Fuck off with that 'no accountability' bullshit you're peddling. That's not how life works. Your actions have affected those around you and it takes a massive amount of willful ignorance to go around acting like you don't fucking know that already, especially considering that other people’s mental illnesses hurt you-- unless you were lying to us about that, too. 

Get some fucking help and get out of our collective DMs........ Or don’t and get high like you always do instead of accepting responsibility for your actions, Mr. 'I'm lucid enough to be able to blame my mental illness for my own behaviour when that bs wouldn't even hold up in court'. Whatever.

I’m done with your shit.

Here's some receipts. Kyle, whoever you are, I suggest you run the fuck away before they start doing to you what they've done to Steve and Sam. Good luck having a friend who non-jokingly says they wish you would die because that is extraordinarily fucked up. 

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Some tea about how you were fed up with the people treating you like shit instead of you being forced to ditch these people 

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[snip-snap-the-bat]

I feel like being a bitch and defending Snape on this fine Friday night so here we go;

Accepted rejection the first time and never asked her out again, (unlike a certain guy who sexually assaulted her at the time best friend in an attempt to blackmail her into dating him)

Threatened to give Neville's toad a potion because Neville wasn't paying attention in class and could of very easily killed his classmates and himself. When you're working with dangerous substances you have to pay attention, (did you learn nothing from chemistry?)

He was groomed into joining the death eaters after facing severe trauma, and as soon as he realised how bad things were, backed the fuck out.

Again, deeply traumatized. Trauma victims often pick whoever is nicest to them. The 'light' side constantly abused him and refused him help. It's also fair to assume Eileen was light, and people often aim for the opposite of their abusers (or enablers).

Was Neville's most prominent fear. He want afraid of Snape, he was afraid of authority in the same way Hermione was afraid of bad grades. McGonagall isn't an abuser, is she?

Victims are naturally averse to their abusers family, even if they are innocent children. And while he did go too far occasionally, his still saved Harry's life several times.

Where did James get any character development? Besides his bullying and straight up abuse, the only canon we got about him was his death, which while noble, any half decent person would try and protect their infant child. Something else to mention is Snape will always protect Harry but James would of never protected Snape's child.

Again, trauma. His priority was Lily because he cared about her. Personally, if my ex best friend married my abuser, I wouldn't be too fussed about saving the guy either.

Where? That one time he called Lily a mudblood while he was being sexually assaulted? Need I remind you that he is literally a human raised half blood?

He created dark spells to protect himself from the Marauders, and there's no proof he ever actually used them (despite one attempt on James while being sexually assaulted). Please give me one canon statement from the books where he used a spell off his own free will on a muggle or a muggleborn.

Lupin nearly killed three students and also protected a suspected murderer, after almost killing Severus as a student (albeit wasnt his fault, but point stands). Severus has trauma regarding him and then he almost killed students, he should of been in that position. And Lupin was already a known werewolf! He literally talked about never finding work because of his condition. (I'm fairly sure he also resigned rather than being fired, but I could be incorrect there).

There is no canon evidence that indicates this. He knew Lily was at risk so if he had known he would of done his damn hardest to protect her from him.

I'm afraid you'll have to blame his parents for that one.

She insulted him and it was accidental magic. I don't see you calling Harry evil for almost killing aunt Marge, no? And he was several years older than Snape. Let's not forget that it's canon she met James as well, and he didn't seem to make anything better. (And I'm not sure if this is canon or not, but I'm fairly sure Lily was reduced to tears. James can't of been that great).

James continued to attack students behind Lilys back, lying to her. He attempted to blackmail her. Severus left her alone and devoted his entire life to protecting her son, a child be couldn't bare to look at half of the time.

Come back next time with some canon arguments, okay sweetie?

Bad things Snape has done and why I fucking hate his guts

* Obsessed with a girl who clearly just wanted to be friends and felt entitled to her feelings

* Threatened to curse Neville’s toad which was the only thing that showed his family was proud of him

* Was so salty about Lily not getting with him that he endangered her whole family and worked with the dark lord

* Unlike Draco, had a choice between going on with a normal life and being evil and chose,, evil ((I still hate Draco I’m just pointing this out))

* Is Neville’s biggest fear despite his parents being tortured to insanity

* Abused a child because he looked like his highschool bully

* Stayed a bad person while James got his shit together and got character development

* Tried to get James and Harry killed so he could be with Lily

* Literally discriminates against people for their blood type like damn alright salty

* Created dark spells and used them on muggleborns

* Outed Lupin as a werewolf twice

* Knew Sirius was innocent and Peter wasn’t and let him rot in Azkaban

* Was born

* Dropped a tree branch on petunia, a child, which is why I understand her hatred of wizards because he was the only one she knew

* The difference between James and Snape: James became the best version of himself for Lily, Snape became the worst.

[rey-is-ace-rey-is-aro]

You know, since these people want to draw real life comparisons to Kylo Ren and this whole Rian debacle: these people are the exact same reason characters like kylo ren happened. 

Kylo ren isn’t some breitbart author or some milo yinnapolus whatever character, he’s your little brother. He’s your angry cousin or that awkward kid in school who was groomed by the older generation (snoke) and found solace and acceptance in bigotry and hatred where he didn’t find it in leftist ideals. 

You know snape?? The abused kid who was hurt and abused by all the Good Guys that you guys hate so much? A character who turned to hatred and bigotry because the popular Good Guys treated him like shit and home treated him like shit and he was angry and the only people who cared enough to accept him or treat him like a person was “facists” and nationalist racists who indoctrinated him into their society because he felt like he had no other choice? Yeah. 

So when these people are like “it’s HARMFUL to relate to these characters and HARMFUL to want to redeem these characters or find anything good in them” I want you to know that This Exact Mindset was what made these characters who they were. 

“There’s too much vader in him” “I’m the halfblood prince” no. Neither of these things were true about either of these characters but they were led to believe it was. They were TOLD they were the embodiment of evil when in reality they were scared young boys lured to evil despite their inner goodness. The Good Guys told them they were evil and they believed it. 

And just so you know? This is exactly what’s creating nationalists and fascists today. Prey on the young boys society rejects because of supposed badness in them. I’m not telling you to love the Proud Boys or the KKK, I’m telling you to love the little boy who’s being consumed by them. 

 If to OG trilogy was about the fear of becoming robots slaves to society and the prequels about the disillusionment of the republic we thought we were building and the rise of fascism, the sequels are about fascism and the indoctrination of young boys into something they don’t want to be. 

[bewareofchris]

Triath-anon: exactly, the female characters in sass are just so amazing. I have so many questions about Phyllis? Like, where do I even start? I get that she had a really bad life and that (miscarriages and cheating husband), but why is she so evil to everyone except Altair? Why was she so mean to Federico? What would Lucy have thought of her if they had met? Why did she dominate Altair's life so much that he did not consider his father as a real parent? I could probably go on. (1)

+ If Lucy had met Phyllis, she would have thought the same thing she thought when she hadn’t met her.  Phyllis was basically the devil.  The reverse is not true though, I think Phyllis would have really appreciated Lucy on a few different, important levels: 1. Lucy did not let her parents/her gender determine her position and path in life.  2.  Lucy takes care of Desmond but she’s still the clear dominant half of the relationship, and if either of them needed to have bread-winning jobs, it would be Lucy, not Desmond.  3. Lucy would be/is a good Mother to her child.  (And that is very important to Phyllis.)

there’s more:

+ It is important to remember that all Phyllis wanted was a child.  In regards to why she’s evil to everyone except Altair (and if you consider she purposefully let his Father die after she had already stolen his child from him, you could make the case she was evil to him as well) that’s a bit complicated. 

+  See, Phyllis had older, almost fully grown brothers that died during the flu epidemic.  Those older sons were her Father’s beloved heirs, the ones that were set to inherit the name/family/everything.  When they died, her Father kind of flipped his shit but also was a miserable, old fat man.  He remarried a very young, pretty girl and impregnated her (and she probably enjoyed 0 things about being married to him, except maybe the money) and as he was an old, fat man, he either didn’t or could not try twice.  So he ended up with Phyllis.  Now he didn’t want a female because he needed an heir and he wanted his sons back.

+ I’m not saying Phyllis was hated by her father but he simultaneously prepared her for a life she couldn’t inherit and kept her from learning what she needed to know to inherit said life.  He didn’t educate her about anything important but he kept her with him so she always saw how he handled business.  Being an old, miserable, fat guy he was basically hateful to everyone.  

+ Phyllis was the sole heir to an enormous fortune, she always got everything she wanted.  She even got Calvin, which she shouldn’t have.

+  so lets talk about what kind of pervert Calvin is.  Phyllis fell in love with Calvin on the spot because he was a handsome guy and she was a stupid kid.  And she decided that since she wanted him, she was going to get him.  Now she was an easy target because she was LITERALLY A CHILD and Calvin wanted her Daddy’s money.  (He even went to war to get it.)  But Calvin is like one step removed from being an actual god-damn pedophile.  

+ It’s not shown in Peach because Mrs. Finch wouldn’t have been there to see it, but Calvin definitely took his time about grooming/reinforcing Phyllis’ childish infatuation with him so he could marry her.  He led her right along to the idea that they would be so happy together, he promised he loved her and since he started doing this WHILE SHE WAS A CHILD, and since he went off to war and almost died and came home a war hero (to pick up grooming her where he left off), Phyllis was entirely 100% stupidly devoted to him.  She had to have him.

+  Calvin, however, was down to fuck whatever teenage lady he could get his hands on.  He was fucking around on Phyllis long before he started knocking women up.  In fact, he probably has a lot of children scattered across the globe, just check the cities he was in for traumatized/conned teenager ladies and you’ll find his children. 

+ Fuck Calvin

+ Back to Phyllis, remembering that all she wanted was a child, and remembering she’d just survived a childhood of being raised as an heir apparent with no actual throne to inherit (and no actual education either), and survived motherfucking Calvin, the fact that she keeps having miscarriages and is constantly belittled by having grief over the lost babies by her husband (who she thought loved her) is EXTREMELY DAMAGING.

+ In fact, Phyllis figured out what kind of thing Calvin was but she protected him because she’d been raised around the idea that he was hers and she was his.  This could have carried on indefinitely if his love children hadn’t shown up.

+ because our pal, Phyllis is entirely made up of sheer power of will.  Phyllis had never been told she couldn’t have something she wanted and she had never wanted something she didn’t get (except a child).  Unlike Altair who ended up being a rather fragile ego sort of man, Phyllis really was that kind of person that is 100% capable and 100% determined and nobody saw that about her except Mrs. Finch and those two rabid lawyers, Walters and Ferdinand.

+  So, Phyllis figures out she’d been had, (in a lot of ways) and cannot rationalize the things that Calvin had done/continued to do any longer.  She had to deal with the idea that she’d been conned, used and allowed it to happen to others.  This was a pivotal moment in Phyllis life because she could have either become a great force of good in the world: full of kindness and giving, taking the shit lot she drew but overcoming it and making sure it didn’t happen to others.

+  ok, yes but Phyllis was furious and she was powerless.  From the very first moment she finally decided she couldn’t sit quietly and watch these things happen until the day she died, Phyllis could not tolerate any form of weakness in anyone for any reason.  Not herself, not the children, not anyone.  For an itemized list of why she hates everyone:

1. William Miles: he was a whiny, troublesome child that looked like his father.  He had a child just because he heard he’d get money out of it.  (AND THAT USELESS MOTHERFUCKER THEN HURT HIS SON)1a. anyone who supported/sided with William over Desmond.  This one is obvious.  Anyone who sides against the welfare of a child basically deserves to die (in Phyllis’ very skewed, biased opinion).2. Mama Maria: she was a leech, and she was a (obnoxiously) strict Mother.3. Edward’s Mother (who has a name now): impulse control issues/no self-esteem.4. Edward: he loved his mother, and I know that seems like a stupid reason but Edward is the only child besides ALtair that would have given Phyllis what she wanted.  Except Edward loved his Mother despite the fact that she abused/neglected him and Phyllis couldn’t have ever truly had him as her child.  He already had a Mother.5.  Federico: well, he’s a shit.  He was an insolent child that was raised to put a smile on his face but he bullied his brother, he tattled on people and he thought he was better than everyone around him.  Federico took a beating when he was owed one though, and Phyllis did admire that about him.  

+  (I mean, Phyllis didn’t like anyone, but the time she got Altair I don’t think she was capable of empathy or attachment.  I think she loved Altair as best she could but that doesn’t mean it would have counted as love by any other person’s definition.)

+  Now, Altair’s unique position made him perfect for Phyllis.  He had no Mother.  This was vastly more important than any other factor in how he ended up being Phyllis’ child.  She also did like Maud; (she genuinely did like Maud, enough to try to send her away to protect her.)  He did have a biological father standing around looking all shell-shocked and ill-prepared.  Since Phyllis had, at that time, faced off against all kinds of megalomaniacs and slapped dictators in the face and taken over her own company, and developed a habit of regularly belittling and psychologically torturing her husband (who she arguably kept as a prisoner for the last, long years of his life) taking care of one man caught in the throes of very sudden grief was no big.  

+  I mean, Phyllis probably should have just hired a dude to shank Omar but then the adoption process might have been a little bit muddied.

+  The main point here is, Phyllis spent her entire life wanting a child.  She had a lot of them and none of the worked for her because every single child that she took in/tried to care for ALREADY HAD A MOTHER.  Enter Altair, a perfect infant, with absolutely no mother to speak of.

+ Omar never stood a chance.  If he hadn’t died of natural causes, Phyllis probably would have actively killed or deported him.  He was never even a slight thought.  As to why he allowed it, he probably wasn’t given a choice.  Or his choice was, at best, to go along or lose all connection with his child.  For that matter, since Phyllis was always nice to and nice around Maud, Altair’s own mother probably asked Omar to trust Phyllis.

+ THINK ABOUT THAT ONE A MINUTE.

+ But Altair genuinely loved his Grandmother.  And she tried to be fair, as far as she was capable of being at that point in her life, and the only way she could do that was to make sure he didn’t call her Mother.  I mean she let his Dad die, but she preserved the idea that his (deceased) Mother deserved his love and respect.

+  seriously, fuck Calvin.