#brainwashing victims

[star--nymph]

I think people forget with Cullen, and characters like Cullen, that indoctrination is a thing. We're lucky to live in an age where we have a surplus of access to resources that allow us to think critically on the structures around us, to the point where we overlook that most people won't and haven't. Cullen was raised in a backwater village where the main educators and leaders were Templars. He was likely taught scripture by Chantry Sisters, he possibly learned to read and write through them. From the day he was born, he was being taught to love and obey the Chantry with out question--and the Chantry teaches that Templars are a force of good.

So I ask you, how the hell was Cullen, at eight or thirteen years old, going to learn about the crimes of Templars? How was he going to unlearn propaganda that was fed him to him every day by people he respected and possibly loved? How was he supposed to be aware that this idolized image of Templars being the saviors of the people and even mages was a lie?

And then he gets shipped off, happily, to be trained a Templar. Again, he's put into this position where he's fed nothing but propaganda. He doesn't get a real taste of the Order being corrupted until he's out in Kinloch and he's not sure what the hell to do because what he's seeing isn't jiving with what he's been taught for nearly two decades. So yeah, he tries to justify it, he tries to have his cake and eat it too by reasoning that mages should be treated like people but also the Order wouldn't lie to him, so they must be right to act like this. The Maker always had a plan, right?

If Cullen had been lucky, maybe he could have realized earlier on that the Order was abusing mages, that he had been tricked, he could have gotten out and unlearned the bigotry that was planted inside him.

But then BAM! the Broken Circle happened and I don't see how no one gets how perfect this is for the Order? They now have a templar that is so traumatized by mages, he will literally do and say anything to justify their abuses because now? Now he's afraid.

And remember, after Origins, Cullen becomes so erratic, he has to be sent off to a Chantry to 'even him out'--where he was more than likely manipulated even further by the Chantry to be this blood thirsty agent for them. When he's shipped to Kirkwall, they could have not delivered to Meredith a better second in command.

So yeah, is it really surprising that he says shit like 'mages aren't people like you and me' when we meet him in Kirkwall? Man is sleep depraved by the looks of him, swallowing all Meredith's frenzied rhetoric on blood mages, he's seeing for himself the damage these mages are doing, he's isolated from his family, he has no actual friends, and he's living with C-PTSD among other issues. Even under the best of conditions, none of what he says or does in DA2 is surprising when you put it all together.

And yet, the man still had enough of that idealistic child left in him to realize see that Meredith was going off the deep end and that he should be protecting the mages. That's text. That's in World of Thedas. The reason why Cullen is able to turn on Meredith in the end is because he was able to see, even clouded by his fear and hatred, that what she was doing was wrong.

And all this isn't to excuse Cullen's wrongs. It's weird how every time someone brings up Cullen's history, it's assumed that it's just a justification for his actions. It's not, it's an an explanation. Cullen was a victim of the Order that became an abuser, a tool, and he is responsible for his actions.

But the thing is, by DAI, Cullen is well aware of his sins and he actively works to better himself by leaving the Order and getting off lyrium (which for most people is a death sentence). People can argue all day about whether or not Cullen's arc in DAI redeems him or was satisfying, or if he did enough to 'prove' that he was sorry or--good god--does he deserve redemption in the first place (which is such a Catholic way of looking at shit by the way; no one 'deserves' redemption; you do it to be better or you fucking don't) but the fact is that Cullen says that he wants to be better, that he sees the Order as--at the very least--flawed.

That, yes, he's still unlearning all the bigotry he held as a younger man and he's ashamed that he was like that to begin with.

You can hate him all you like, and whatever, but Cullen's story--intentionally or not--is about a man born into an oppressive society, raised to uphold its beliefs, used and abused by it, and then awakening to those lies and trying to free himself from those beliefs so he could be a better person.

And sometimes I genuinely wonder if the reason so many people hate Cullen is because they themselves might have dealt with something similar in our own oppressive society where they also had to unlearn harmful bigotry and maybe, just maybe, he hits too close to home.

[just-null]

i am OBSESSED with that one yandere hantengu clone art! but i do wonder, did you change their appearance a bit to make them look alike but at the same time not? this is hard to explain, but i observed the clones nose shape, sekidos hair being more different than the others, and facial structures making them each being different. very sorry if this doesn’t make sense it’s hard explaining what i noticed (T ^ T)

I think I understand what you mean, don't worry! you did wonderfully!

and basically, yes and no!

Some things were probably accidental (like facial structure), but the purposeful tweaks were their eyes and hair yeah!

I wanted the viewer to be able to tell the difference between them without being explicitly told who's who.

[design yapping under the cut]

I've heard that depending on what expression you're making often, it changes how you rest your face, and I wanted that to translate into how i drew them!

that and if you look REALLY closely, there are some subtle differences between them all in the anime/manga, so i accentuated those and added my own spin to it too.

So, if i were to draw the four making a neutral expression, it'd look something like this!

And that would HOPEFULLY be enough to give you an idea about who's who while also keeping their faces EXTREMELY similar yet a little different at the same time

but knowing me....... i'd probably still make it super obvious.......

I changed their nose because Hantengu had a sharp nose, and I thought it'd be hot cool to see them with one! I have no excuse for the eye bags and dimples.. they look like they have the type of hot guy aura to have those traits............... orz

i try not to forget small details but i probably do sometimes making them look different //slams head against wall

[mistress-light]

Final Fantasy XVI - PC • Anabella Rosfield Lesage

[fallout-hoe]

Coursers are not a lost cause! I’m still sad at the fact you can’t get X6-88 to leave the Institute and explore his own identity because there are glimpses of him “acting out” like during the affinity talks he speaks with more emotion because he feels safe around you (unless you tell him to stop it lmao). You can’t tell me that he wholeheartedly believes he’s just a machine made to serve and even if he does, I know that boy still wants to be respected by Father and the scientists (I like to think the people there annoy him lol). When he finally idolizes the player, I bet he could care less about the Institute and their goals, but Bethesda didn’t want to expand on it

[aithusarosekiller]

keep your jegulily shit the FUCK out of the jily tag. nobody wants to see your pro-fascist mental illness. YOU ARE NOT WELCOME IN OUR SPACE FUCK OFF

I didn't want to reply to this but...

Lesson in etiquette: being aggressive and accusatory will NEVER get anyone to listen to you :) If you were polite I may have listened but now you're just throwing around LARGE accusations and extremely immature language that demonises real issues such as mental illness and bigotry, which will never make anybody like you or trust you.

I tag jily because jily is in the content! They are 1/3 of the ship so tagging them is logical and reasonable. If you don't like it you can block me or block the jegulily tag :) you don't EVER have an excuse to hide your face and come onto somebody else's account spitting vitriol and hatred over fake characters from a CHILDRENS BOOK

Next: stop equating fictional characters to real issues because it's disgusting and you're minimising real loss of life and suffering so you can make a point. I don't blame you for hiding your name because that's a pretty gross thing to do! People who have lost loved ones to events like the holocaust have begged you lot to stop equating their real trauma to made up characters so you can feel better than other people. And mental illness is also a real issue that you are making out to be trivial and laughable. You sound like so many real bigots I know when you imply that someone you don't like existing must mean mental illness. If only you put this much energy into real issues! Your priorities are clear.

(A little off topic but it's also pretty interesting how it's never the Jegulus fans that get angry at me for correctly tagging content, yet people always portray them as the evil ones?)

[stormyromance]

i’m sorry but I’ll never be out here saying that absolutely no women are complicit in patriarchy. Yeah some women like the ones in Afghanistan are pure victims, but a lot of us in a more privileged position have education and choices and still choose complicity and ignorance.

[katyspersonal]

Lrb dear god, this reminded me of that time when Alfred-chan got sooooo mad at my post explaining why fans should respect bisexual headcanons for Maria and Malenia instead of pretending like they're canonically lesbians and that they get oppressed and erased by mxf ships with them. They kept vagueing that post for like a MONTH in their blog including in tags under reblogs of Maria fanart, passively-aggressively changed their url to character+sexuality to "spite" me and then even made a sockpuppet account to start shit with me in the comments.

They deactivated when me and Val completely obliterated their "you cultivate lesbiphobic following by telling people why they should respect all sexuality headcanons instead of acting cultish or assuming their experiences and stereotypes equal canon confirmation" garbage with actual facts and logic tho but I screenshotted everything fjthfgfj (I learned to document everything the hard way after they've changed the she/they pronouns to they/they pronouns ONLY to accuse me of misgendering, so thank you for making me wiser I guess 😎). Even more vile, as they, a white person, larped as an Arab in that sockpuppet to hold even MORE "privilege" against me in discussion gjtjfh Because for them race, gender or sexuality are just badges of honor and dishonor, they don't see these as traits of actual human beings. And Dr Eugene X, who worked with them and weaponized her race to accuse everyone who disagreed with her of racism, didn't bat an eye at such a terrible act too?? As usual, rules are not for their friends, lol

It is not even the worst thing Alfred did, and yet all of this just, just, JUST because I wrote a point on why bisexual headcanon people did nothing wrong and there is no ground to claim something is canon when it isn't. 🤦‍♂️ Like, they were soooo convinced that I hated lesbian headcanons and that I'd feel angry if they called Lady Maria a lesbian, when what I was angry at is this exact toxic behavior in the fandom. No matter how much you like a headcanon, don't be a bitch about it. Maria doesn't """belong""" to any gender or sexuality, she belongs to anyone who likes her and is invested in her complexity as a character!!!

Yet, apparently, common Malenia simps / Finlay shippers are no better than common Maria simps / Mariadeline shippers. Just, wild how after shit like this, many people have the guts to claim that it is "sexist redditbros" who are the biggest problem of creators in the fandom. 🤦‍♂️ They'd actually blush if they encountered what such self-proclaimed "feminists" do to their own (!!!) over headcanons. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

[logansgaar]

Watching Isaiah Bradley's mind control play out in CABNW: this is literally why Bucky kept him a goddamn secret even from Steve, after Isaiah had to fake his death to escape and live in some semblance of peace, and publicizing him without asking his permission first was a fucking dangerous thing to do to the poor man's safety what the hell were the tfawts writers thinking

[bambimeadows]

How will I write Adler now they’ve actually gave him a conceivable personality and I don’t have to make one up for him, they stole my job! 🙂‍↕️ They’ve made the way I wrote him seem boring, I’ll be damned.

[cyberphuck]

Must… hold in… Neil Gaiman situation… opinions…

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

I still think it's so weird how Miranda Vanderbilt of Monster Prom fame was characterised in the True Calling ending as a spoiled brat who needs a serf timeout, and actually especially the serfs? Like obviously one of Miranda's big things is that she's nobility and therefore she never has to work a day in her life and she can simply sit back and relax meawhile her serfs break their backs doing everything for her (or else they die gruesomely), but also the extent of what the serfs do for her is subtly alarming as well. Miranda literally does not eat???? And she explains that when she was younger she wanted to do certain activities but then she realised that having serfs do them was much easier and so she didn't after all, lol. But I mean... Miranda, who tries to join the water polo team and is always trying to organise clubs and events and assasinations? Shying away from an activity she wanted to do in favour of others doing it for her? Enthusiastic and energetic go-getter Miranda???

Like, okay. The nature of Monster Prom is very contradictory, and there's always that chance that if Miri organised her Pony Club (if I recall???) or did end up doing water polo she would actually have her club organising serfs and water polo serfs do all the work for her, after all Serf Party has Miri relying on serfs actually preparing the party, but a part of me was always wondering if Miranda was told that these activities were all too bothersome, and really, it would just be much much easier if she didn't do them at all. Why, having her serfs do these activities for her is just as fun and doesn't require nearly as much effort! So Miranda should really just sit back, and watch, and not wrack her brain at all with all of these frivolous distracting activities. She needs to remember that the purpose of a princess is to be saved by a prince and to be married off. She has no other purpose. She can't be distracted by the temptations of life or else she won't fill her true calling, will she?

Or you know maybe the merkingdom monarchy is actually very really normal and Miranda was a spoiled lazy brat the whole time and her well-meaning parents simply were powerless to ever take her serfs away from her before it was too late, that also sounds like a very interesting and very sensible conclusion to come to with everything

[makiruz]

TERFs do not believe in consent, they believe that there are good choices and bad choices; if a woman does something they consider "bad" even if it literally harms no one, then she was forced into it by patriarchy; if she says that she likes it, she was brainwashed into thinking she likes it, deep down she hates it; only the "good" choices are made freely and with full consent

The bad choices can be anything from wanting to be homemaker, engaging in kink, wearing femme clothing, being promiscuous, getting unnecessary cosmetic surgery, having sex with men, etc, etc

This btw extends to trans men, who they believe to be self-hating women; but not to trans women who they believe to be evil men out to rape women

[livinces]

The most secondhand-embarrassment-inducing movie scene to me is in X-Men: The Last Stand when John (an doctrinated teenager trying to get higher in his terrorist leader's Good Graces) says he would've killed Charles if he had the chance, and that shit backfires so fast and Erik puts him in his place. 😭

[deservedgrace]

there was a video going around a while ago on tiktok where this guy was basically saying "well of course slavery wasn't good but it brought people to christ so the ends justify the means" and i saw comments that were like this is so crazy, this is the wildest thing i've ever heard, etc. and i NEED people to understand that this is not a fringe belief in christianity. he said the quiet part out loud but this is how many xtians feel, that the ends justify the means, and actually he was more politically correct about it than my xtian school was. and this is such a prime example of why hell doctrine is so toxic and more broadly how evangelicalism rips away your empathy because people believe that slavery is justified if it saved people from going to hell.

[lord-squiggletits]

unpopular opinions meme: anything on Earthspark?

(Haven't watched Season 1 part two yet so take this with a grain of salt)

I avoid looking at fandom tags generally since I tend to not like a lot of popular takes in general, but people's takes about Optimus being brainwashed/shadowplayed/replaced by a clone in Earthspark really annoy me because it demonstrates a couple troublesome things about self-professed Optimus fans (or anyone really interested in OP in general):

People can't handle the fact that Optimus might make mistakes

Because of this, they then rush to remove agency from him (to make the bad things that happen not his fault)

In doing this, they completely erase, downplay, or even lambast as flaws the very traits that make Optimus who he is.

To take this from the top, Optimus "freedom is the right of all sentient beings" is, and has always been, a person who cares deeply about the rights of other species. This is a trait he's had in EVERY continuity: he values all lives, even small and fleeting ones, as equal to Cybertronian life, and he strives to protect uninvolved aliens from the horrific consequences of the Autobot-Decepticon war. This is one of his primary traits. This is a GOOD TRAIT OF HIS and it's LITERALLY ONE OF THE FUNDAMENTAL PARTS OF HIS PERSONALITY.

In Earthspark, we specifically hear Optimus say "we are guests on this planet" with regards to living peacefully alongside humans. GHOST is a suspicious organization and not only do we see this as the viewers, OPTIMUS HIMSELF acknowledges this by choosing to hide the Terrans from GHOST and openly saying that he doesn't know if GHOST is trustworthy, but it's currently the best option they have and he's trying to find another way.

Earthspark Optimus has no shortage of nuance. He's not a dunce; he acknowledges on multiple occasions that he doesn't completely trust GHOST, that he's willing to hide things from them, and that he would do something else to live peacefully with humans if he knew of a way to do so.

But the fandom seems to get one whiff of anything "problematic" happening due to Optimus (not just Optimus, literally every Autobot and even Megatron collaborates with them too, but for some reason blame for working with GHOST only ever falls on Optimus) and they immediately jump to this bizarre headcanon they have that Optimus is a total idiot and couldn't possibly be aware of any negative consequences of working with GHOST. People seem to think that if anything bad happens because of Optimus working with GHOST, it HAS to be because he was literally brainwashed into working with them.

Optimus believing in the rights of all sentient beings? Optimus being willing to make compromises for the sake of other species besides his own? Optimus knowing that he's making morally gray choices/questionable allies and doing it anyways because he thinks it's his best option? Nope. Nope, clearly he has to be brainwashed or a clone or something.

It's really frustrating because people jump to this black-and-white view of Earthspark's plot where they're like, "GHOST is evil and this clearly means that Optimus is an idiot for even attempting to work with them." But like. What else is he supposed to do? Just let the Decepticons run around stealing from humans, damaging their property, and killing them? Is Optimus supposed to grab a random piece of human land and go "this is mine now, me and all my people are gonna live here now." That would be literal colonialism, and keep in mind that humans had nothing to do with the war to start with-- Earth is just the unfortunate planet that the war happened to land on, dragging humans into a Cybertronian conflict.

It's just.... so fucking frustrating as an Optimus fan lmao. It's gotten to the point that I don't even look at Optimus content made by other Optimus fans because too many of them have this idea that Optimus can't be a normal person who makes bad choices (knowingly or unknowingly), he has to be an eternal paragon of goodness and this means that in order for him to be Good (TM), he can't be responsible for anything Bad And Evil, which means that if anything Bad happens (inevitable in any plot involving conflict, drama, or conspiracy), we have to swoop and take away Optimus' culpability for the situation. Because having Optimus be responsible for bad things happening would make him Not The Perfect Good Guy, and if Optimus isn't The Perfect Good Guy then we don't care about him and we hate/ignore him (which is exactly what people do with IDW OP btw: throwing out a perfectly good/interesting character who's no more bad or good than anyone else in the story because Optimus Has To Be Good).

Another example of people taking away Optimus' agency is the all-too-common TFP/Aligned headcanon in which people like to say that the Matrix literally turned Orion into a different person, Optimus, therefore none of the decisions OP made as Prime were "actually him" and it was just Primus imposing his will on him or something. Really annoying! Ideas like this don't make Optimus any more interesting, they just make him a helpless victim to forces outside of his control who manipulate his every action!

TLDR: Earthspark Optimus is fine actually, people just refuse to take his perspective and instead default to "Optimus is stupid/brainwashed for working with GHOST" instead of coming to the rational conclusion that maybe OP is doing the best he can in a bad situation.

[furiousgoldfish]

There's been a 'there's no good or evil, we're all complex human beings' sentiment going around, and I want to talk about it.

In a neutral, compatible-with-human-life, and non dangerous environment, this would be just a bland neutral statement, don't make humans something they're not, don't use extreme words for actions, see nuance in everything, etc. And in that case I wouldn't have a problem with it. But, when it starts being thrown in the face of victims of abuse, it's no longer neutral or bland, it's policing victim's tone and words when they're trying to express their own experience of trauma.

In a world without abuse, there would be no need to label some people evil, or make them irredeemable. Those who think we live in that world are sadly misinformed. Listening to the community of traumatized people, it becomes obvious that there are individuals who are not only evil, but trying to reach the extreme of it. If you tried to hold yourself together while listening to some of the stories, you couldn't. Because they're speaking about the inhumane, about torturing infants and babies, about isolating and brainwashing of preschool children to the point where they develop dissociative disorders, torturing and sabotaging kids and teenagers for decades until these people are psychologically wounded to the point where they can no longer exist without being in constant terror.

Once abuse reaches the point where the victim is trapped in trauma, re-living it over and over again and wishing they weren't alive to feel it, then evil is the only word we can use for this. There is no humanity, no nuance or complexity about it. It is evil. It is unforgivable. There is no redemption, no forgiveness and no words extreme enough for it. It's monstrous and unforgivable.

And the thing is, most of that abuse doesn't even stop. When you're talking to the community of the traumatized, a big part of them is still being subjected to this abuse. They're forced to listen to orders under a threat of torture, death and abandonment, they're forced to endure humiliation and dehumanization daily, without ability to defend themselves, because they would only be putting themselves in worse danger. Hope of escape is so slim that most are not even hoping to survive the ordeal. A lot of them doesn't believe they can escape, because the hope of that itself has been taken away from them. Most of these people are struggling daily with the suicidal thoughts because the pain is too much to handle, worse than annihilation would be.

If you come to a place where people are struggling for their life against the abusers, and your first concern is to correct the terms they're using and tone-police them, I don't have any trust in your intentions. You're aligning yourself with the abuser at this point, because it's exactly what the abuser wants; for the victims to be shut down, to be policed about their words, to be silenced, to be told to minimize and humanize the abusive actions, to see 'nuance' in their torturers. To not trust their own instinct about what the abusers are.

Anyone hearing about the abuse should have it in their priority to stop the abuse and to aid the victims. What abusers are being called doesn't even matter. Victims are allowed to use any term they want, they can invent new terms. They can say absolutely anything for the rest of their life and it won't even be enough. The aftermath of abuse is destructive to the point where victims will have a big chunk of their life torn apart with it, spent only re-living the torture and feeling the pain of it over and over again. Doing that to someone is nothing short of evil.