#but then again should we fear being perceived at all when who we are is a collage of people and things we love and have taken in to shape

[warrioreowynofrohan]

LOTR Newsletter - September 19

So, what’s happening in the summer before Frodo’s departure?

On June 20th, Sauron attacks Osgiliath; at around the same time, he sends Orcs to attack Thranduil, and Gollum escapes.

From Unfinished Tales, "The Hunt for the Ring":

Now Sauron learning of the capture of Gollum by the chiefs of his enemies was in great haste and fear. Yet all his ordinary spies and emissaries could bring him no tidings. And this was due largely to the vigilance of the Dúnedain and to the treachery of Saruman, whose own servants either waylaid or misled the servants of Sauron. Of this Sauron became aware, but his arm was not yet long enough to reach Saruman in Isengard. Therefore he hid his knowledge of Saruman’s double-dealing and concealed his wrath, biding his time, and preparing for the great war in which he planned to sweep all his enemies into the western sea. At length he resolved that no others would serve him in this case but his mightiest servants, the Ringwraiths, who had no will but his own, being each utterly subservient to the ring that had enslaved him, which Sauron held.   Now few could withstand even one of these fell creatures, and (as Sauron deemed) none could withstand them when gathered together under their terrible captain, the Lord of Morgul. Yet this weakness they had for Sauron’s present purpose: so great was the terror that went with them (even invisible and unclad) that their coming forth might soon be perceived and their mission be guessed by the Wise. So it was that Sauron prepared two strokes – in which many after saw the beginnings of the War of the Ring. They were made together. The Orcs assailed the realm of Thranduil, with orders to recapture Gollum; and the Lord of Morgul was sent forth openly to battle against Gondor. These things were done towards the end of June 3018. Thus Sauron tested the strength and preparedness of Denethor, and found them to be more than he had hoped. That troubled him little, since he had used little force in the assault, and his chief purpose was that the coming forth of the Nazgûl should appear only as part of his policy of war against Gondor. Therefore when Osgiliath was taken and the bridge broken Sauron stayed the assault, and the Nazgûl were ordered to begin the search for the Ring.

Elsewhere the same chapter says:

In the panic of the first assault, when the Witch-king was allowed to reveal himself briefly in his full terror, the Nazgûl crossed the bridge at night and dispersed northwards. Without belittling the valour of Gondor, which indeed Sauron found greater far than he had hoped, it is clear that Boromir and Faramir were able to drive back the enemy and destroy the bridge, only because the attack had now served its main purpose.

And here is Boromir's description of the battle from "The Council of Elrond":

“But this very year, in the days of June, sudden war came upon us out of Mordor, and we were swept away. We were outnumbered, for Mordor has allied itself with the Easterlings and cruel Haradrim; but it was not by numbers we were defeated. A power was there that we have not felt before. “Some said that it could be seen, like a great black horseman, a dark shadow under the moon. Wherever he came a madness filled our foes, but fear fell on our boldest, so that horse and man gave way and fled. Only a remnant of our eastern force came back, destroying the last bridge that still stood amid the ruins of Osgiliath. “I was in the company that held the bridge, until it was cast down behind us. Four only were saved by swimming: my brother and myself and two others…. “…on the eve of the sudden assault a dream came to my brother in a troubled sleep; and afterwards a like dream came oft to him again, and once to me. In that dream I thought the eastern sky grew dark and there was a growing thunder, but in the West a pale light lingered, and out of it I heard a voice, remote but clear, crying: [He then describes the riddle/poem Seek for the sword that was broken]”

(Something I hadn't considered before: Who do you think sent the dream? My guess is one of the Valar, probably Irmo (Lórien).)

A little after, on July 4, Boromir sets out for Minas Tirith, though Faramir was clearly preferred by the sender of the dream.

At the end of June, Gandalf has a sense of foreboding, but does not yet know of the attack; this is what causes him to say tell Frodo, "I am going down beyond the southern borders to get some news, if I can." (He has not heard of the escape of Gollum, as he learns that from Gwaihir during his escape from Orthanc.) As he later tells the Council of Elrond:

“At the end of June I was in the Shire, but a cloud of anxiety was on my mind, and I rode to the southern borders of the little land; for I had a foreboding of some danger, still hidden from me but drawing near. There messages reached me telling me of war and defeat in Gondor, and when I heard of the Black Shadow a chill smote my heart. But I found nothing save a few fugitives from the South; yet it seemed to me that on them sat a fear of which they would not speak. I turned then east and north and journeyed along the Greenway; and not far from Bree I came upon a traveller sitting on a bank beside the road with his grazing horse beside him. It was Radagast the Brown...”

Radagast tells Gandalf that the Nine Ringwraiths have crossed to the west side of the Anduin River in secret, as riders in black, and are riding west, and looking for a land called "Shire". He says Gandalf that Saruman says for Gandalf to come to him immediately if he wants help.

Gandalf tells the Council of Elrond:

“I could not follow him then and there. I had ridden very far already that day, and I was as weary as my horse; and I needed to consider matters. I stayed the night in Bree, and decided that I had no time to return to the Shire. Never did I make a greater mistake! “However, I wrote a message to Frodo, and trusted to my friend the innkeeper to send it to him. I rode away at dawn.”

This is one of the most pivotal moments determining how things go in The Lord of the Rings! If Gandalf had taken one day to ride back to the Shire and warn Frodo to depart immediately, or if Butterbur had remembered to send the letter, then Frodo would have set out in early July, not late September, and reached Rivendell by the road before the end of summer, long before the Ringwraiths reached the Shire. Instead, Gandalf reaches Isengard and is taken captive by Saruman on July 10th, and remains captive until September 18th. Gandalf says:

“Fear was ever in my heart for my friends in the Shire; but still I had some hope. I hoped that Frodo had set forth at once, as my letter had urged, and that he had reached Rivendell before the deadly pursuit began. And both my fear and my hope proved ill-founded. For my hope was founded on a fat man in Bree; and my fear was founded on the cunning of Sauron. But fat men who sell ale have many calls to answer; and the power of Sauron is still less than fear makes it. But in the circle of Isengard, trapped and alone, it was not easy to think that the hunters before whom all have fled or fallen would falter in the Shire far away.”

So why did they falter? And if the Ringwraiths were out of Mordor by late June, why did it take them 3 months to get to the Shire? This is one of the big things that "The Hunt for the Ring" explains.

The Ringwraiths did not know where the Shire was! Gollum, obsessed with the Ring, had managed to lie even to Sauron under torture, and pretend that he thought the Shire was in Wilderland (between the Misty Mountains and Mirkwood), in the area of the Gladden Fields where he had dwelt in his youth. The Ringwraiths went there first, and moving in secret, they only got north of Rohan (The Field of Celebrant) by July 22nd, and then spent much of the summer searching further north to the Gladden Fields and beyond. From "The Hunt for the Ring":

Version A About the twenty-second of July they [the six Ringwraiths of Minas Morgul] met their companions, the Nazgûl of Dol Guldur, in the Field of Celebrant. There they learned that Gollum had eluded both the Orcs that recaptured him, and the Elves that pursued him, and had vanished. [Footnote: He had indeed in his terror of the Nazgûl dared to hide in Moria.]  They were also told by Khamûl that no dwelling of Halflings could be discovered in the Vales of Anduin, and that the villages of the Stoors by the Gladden had long been deserted. But the Lord of Morgul, seeing no better counsel, determined still to seek northward, hoping maybe to come upon Gollum as well as to discover the Shire. That this would prove to be not far from the hated land of Lórien seemed to him not unlikely, if it was not indeed within the fences of Galadriel. But the power of the White Ring he would not defy, nor enter yet into Lórien. Passing therefore between Lórien and the Mountains the Nine rode ever on into the North; and terror went before them and lingered behind them; but they did not find what they sought nor learn any news that availed them. At length they returned; but the summer was now far waned. Version B The account of the vain journey of the Nazgûl up the Vales of Anduin is much the same in version B as that printed in full above (A), but with the difference that in B the Stoor settlements were not entirely deserted at that time; and such of the Stoors as dwelt there were slain or driven away by the Nazgûl. In all the texts the precise dates are slightly at variance both with each other and with those given in the Tale of Years; these differences are here neglected.

By early September, Sauron is very worried and angry indeed; if he was in a Bond movie or the like, he'd be saying "Why am I surrounded by idiots!?"

The wrath and fear of Sauron was mounting. When they [the Ringwraiths] came back to the Wold September had come; and there they met messengers from Barad-dûr conveying threats from their Master that filled even the Morgul-lord with dismay. For Sauron had now learned of the words of prophecy heard in Gondor, and the going forth of Boromir [July 4], of Saruman’s deeds, and the capture of Gandalf [July 10]. From these things he concluded indeed that neither Saruman nor any other the Wise had possession yet of the Ring, but that Saruman at least knew where it might be hidden. Speed alone would now serve, and secrecy must be abandoned. The Ringwraiths were therefore ordered to go straight to Isengard. They rode through Rohan in haste, and the terror of their passing was so great that many folk fled from the land and went wildly away north and west, believing that war out of the East was coming on the heels of the black horses.

So in short, the Nazgul spent most of July and August on a wild-goose-chase thanks to bad information from Gollum. He's a resilient little guy, you got to give him that.

[pompompurin1028]

I want to be perceived, but you know what? I also am scared of being perceived

[mikajunie]

rediscovering shame and giving yourself compassion (how to deal with shame as someone with ADHD)

this is directed towards my fellow ADHDers who have trouble with reoccuring shame while leads to hindered productivity.

signs that your productivity is hindered by shame (compiled by my own experiences):

you feel negative physical symptoms when you think about your responsibilities

you find ways to avoid the responsibilities

every time you make progress, you feel like you don't ever wanna touch it again

when you present your progress, you feel ashamed of yourself because it's not finished (on time & according to ur standards).

you feel like you are a constant failure. you never win, despite achieving good things here and there.

you are a walking ball of anxiety

you have a fear of being perceived

there's probably more, but eh those are just from my own experiences

below i will write down what y'all should remember, what you can do to help yourself, etc. this is compiled from dr k, my own journaling time, and my firsthand experience from having shame 24/7

some things u gotta remember

shame is what exists in the gap between your ideal self and where you are currently.

your ideal self doesn't have to be unrealistic, it can be yourself when you were at your peak or someone who is very similar to you.

shame brings negative thoughts, because it makes you see progress as a negative thing.

instead of being happy that u made progress, u grumble to urself and ask "why didnt i just do it sooner? im so stupid". it's a reminder of your failures, so u avoid progress altogether.

shame can become a part of you, to the point where you feel uneasy or vulnerable if you dont feel ashamed at yourself

shame doesn't do anything to ADHDers in the long run except self-loathing and hindered productivity.

what should u do?

basically self-therapy, but instead of stopping at why, i try to solve my shame one-by-one.

examine past moments where you felt a LOT of shame. this can go back to elementary. the stronger the emotions, the better. now, write them down. you're probably cringing, but that is good. feel all the cringiness running through ur veins.

why did you feel shame? why did it happen? what did you feel?

reframe your thoughts. instead of immediately running away from it, accept it and justify it. give it compassion. give it a hug. was it your 7 year old self? hug yourself. it's okay to fuck up and do silly things sometimes, and it's okay to have ADHD. it's not our fault.

remember that ADHD is a lifelong nerudivergency, you can't just push it away. coping mechanisms and tools help, but give yourself some grace when you screw up. it's our first time living anyway.

calm your body down. make sure your physical body is doing okay.

now... think of one thing you want to do but can't because of shame and do these steps carefully. think of the reasons why you might be ashamed, and reframe your thoughts.

WARNING!! TAKE IT ONE PRESENT ACTION AT A TIME. don't do this for every action you want to take, let your body slowly learn that it's okay to make progress despite the shame you feel, and you are allowed to feel compassion for yourself.

train your body to accept compassion slowly. life is tough with ADHD but it's even tougher knowing that shame will get in your way. give yourself a break, it's fine to fuck up, we all go through different things anyway. even if it's not fine, you will learn and make those mistakes a lil bit lesser in the future.

ok hope this helps.

[acoraxia]

What are your thoughts on shadowpeach?

Fandom wise? I do not care for it.

Canon wise? I believe in men committing crimes while forming the most toxic, unhealthy attachments to one person could lead to such a dysfunctional relationship that it, eventually, turns into a functional one. And also they’re trans and aspec.

Disclaimer: this is all my opinion and people can do whatever they want, i simply have my gripes with some of the fandom stuff. this is just me explaining what i like and dislike about shadowpeach.

I think the most common thing people fall into when it comes to ships—or shipping in general—is how to domesticate these two characters without fully addressing their flaws, personalities, behavior, and their overall choices throughout the original media/show they come from. 

Macaque and SWK both suffer equally through this mischaracterization: Macaque is often painted as this shy or “edgy” character with little to no ties to his actual character in canon and, more often than not, he is perceived as this “dad” type of character when, in fact, he should not be allowed near children for I fear he will bully them nonstop until they sit there in the corner feeling disheartened and miserable about themselves; Sun Wukong is often portrayed as this dumb himbo with little-to-no means of understanding social cues, not understanding emotions in a way that’s very frustrating, and be this yearning, pining idiot who’s still longing for his childhood crush when he did not hesitate to punch this guy in the face multiple times throughout the show. So when they are paired up together it’s this weird mash of people believing Macaque is the better dad with more understanding of human behavior and Wukong is his dumb, doting husband who’s doing his best and cannot stand up for himself when confronted about things.

The amount of times people choose to make Macaque sympathetic by having Sun Wukong’s family side with Macaque when it comes to Wukong’s actions/choices is so vast I could not count them all on one hand. The common trope of having Princess Iron Fan (Sun Wukong’s sister-in-law) become Macaque’s sworn sister is so disheartening to see for someone who read through Journey To The West and thought of how silly the overall family dynamic of the Demon Bull Family and Sun Wukong’s troops was. Removing Iron Fan as Sun Wukong’s literal sister just to have someone backup Macaque and sympathize with him is funny and a bit silly. 

That being said… the canon version of Shadowpeach and its possibilities are, in fact, very delicious.

Canon wise this is what we know about Sun Wukong and Macaque’s history together: 

Sun Wukong and Macaque meet

The brotherhood is formed after Azure meets Sun Wukong, Macaque tags along with Wukong (note: Macaque is not addressed as “brother” by the characters, only Wukong is)

Macaque tries to warn Wukong about how dealing with Heaven might be a bad idea

They share a peach under a tree; Wukong reassures Macaque this plan will work

Wukong carries on with Azure’s plan anyway (yes, azure lion’s plan, not wukong’s)

The brotherhood is defeated and Wukong gets trapped under a mountain

Presumably no one comes to visit Wukong, only Macaque

During his final visit, Wukong is angry that Macaque is free and can’t see the fact that Wukong was trying to do everything for them and his kingdom

Macaque snaps back at Wukong and calls him an obsessive demon before leaving

They have another fallout and fight

Wukong ends up killing Macaque in the aftermath

500~ years later, Macaque and Wukong fight again with Wukong being more apathetic towards their reunion than Macaque is

Macaque obsesses over Wukong continuously (coughs)

Macaque is biased in his retellings of his and Wukong’s relationship (see: all of shadowplay and the scrolls memories)

They fight (again) throughout S3

They somewhat reconcile by the end of S4

We will address the fact Sun Wukong was groomed into going to war by this former celestial warrior instead of having it be because of his own want to protect his family and friends after Heaven refused to pay him the respect he wanted when he first joined their ranks later. Right now we focus on the fact that Sun Wukong is canonically a person people easily fall in love with (platonically) and have a tendency to want to stay close to regardless of what his future actions will be like and Macaque is sequentially obsessed with him throughout the show.

“The hero and the warrior were like the Sun and the Moon. Their light, a protective glow, shining upon the world. Together, there was nothing that could stop the two of them. Either in the Celestial Realms or on Earth. As time went on, the hero attained power beyond comprehension. As the hero's light grew, so too did his shadow. And soon, the warrior was cast in that shadow. In the darkness, the warrior was forgotten by the hero.”

Fun fact: Macaque is never going to be on par with Sun Wukong’s power and he works best as support than he does a duo-attacker along side Wukong. Wukong is on his own power level and Macaque, while being able of holding his own against enemies, could be stomped to death by Xiaoijiao is he crossed the line.

Macaque’s obsession with Sun Wukong comes from the inability to move on from the past; Macaque wanting things to go back as they were is a subtle theme going through the show — he keeps latching on to biased memories and avoiding the actual problems that caused their relationship to fall apart and it isn’t until Season 3’s big confrontation with Long Xiaojiao’s Samadhi Fire ritual. He realizes he abandoned Wukong during a time of need and proceeds to flee, abandoning him again. 

Macaque has issues. More often than not people call out on Sun Wukong for abandoning Xiaotian or the Monkie Kid Crew all while ignoring the fact Sun Wukong does not purposefully leave Qi Xiaotian, he tries his hardest to make it back in time and is visibly scared/horrified when LBD attacks in his absence. Sun Wukong tries his hardest to comfort Xiaotian while Macaque tries to torment him. 

Regardless, Sun Wukong and Macaque’s relationship is unique to most media’s portrayal of friends turned enemies. Because Wukong does not see Macaque as a threat up until he teams up with Lady Bone Demon — he is only scary by association, not by anything he has done up until that point. You can tell with the way Wukong mocks him and calls him something akin to a puppet during their interaction in Season 3 when Macaque trapped him and Nezha in the ice. 

And even then Macaque doesn’t even bother trying to engage with Wukong in a friendly manner because kindness is for losers HA i’m not apologizing for anything, bye Sun Wukong, you big old LOSER [proceeds to possibly live on the streets and stay homeless until wukong allows him to return to ffm under certain house rules]

You’ll notice that Sun Wukong barely has any opinions on Macaque.

This is because Macaque is favored by the narrative more than Sun Wukong is so we have very little context as to how Sun Wukong genuinely feels towards Macaque. 

Sun Wukong sees Macaque as an annoyance, a bother, a threat, a coward, an imposter and then, finally, an ally. 

But all we get from that is Wukong handing Macaque a peach-flavored ice cream pop as a parallel to him sharing a peach with his old friend back when they were young monkeys before he was trapped under a mountain for 500 years as a result of his abuser’s power hold on him that forced him to fight heaven as a way to “make the world a better place”. 

We love to see it.

Macaque and Wukong’s relationship goes from mutual interest and a supportive friendship established years prior to the original building of the brotherhood to a very weird, uncategorized type of dynamic. The only way to characterize Sun Wukong’s “affection” towards Macaque is, possibly, the same way most people would characterize Macaque to be towards Wukong. Y’know the slightly judgmental actions and eye rolls and scoffs of affection most people write about Macaque when Wukong does something stupid? Yeah.

“But Macaque said “this guy” when Wukong was presenting his plan to defeat Azure—“ yeah have you considered Wukong does a lot of masking in the presence of the entire Monkie Kid Crew and Macaque has a tendency to present himself as this cool persona when in fact he’s just a homeless monkey who’s been crashing on his ex’s couch for the past weeks since the ending of Season 3? 

“OK…. but why QPR Shadowpeach?”

Sun Wukong throughout the course of Journey to the West and all its past and future iterations have always had him be uninterested in both men and women. There are multiple instances where he’s capable of courting women and he instead backs away or does not pay it any mind; aside from this he’s heavily implied to only care about familial love and friendships. He does not see his pilgrim brothers as anything more than family and he views Tripitaka as a mentor rather than someone whom he was chained to. And Azure was his idol and he was groomed by him, and everyone else was viewed to him as a troop — or, y’know, a family.

This and the fact that— both Sun Wukong and Macaque are over a thousand years old. Why on earth would they have a normal type of relationship? Giving them a checklist of what passes on as romantic and platonic when to them the line is so blurred it’s barely existent to them is amusing. 

Sun Wukong and Macaque having their own weird relationship where it changes from frustrated best friends to partners to angry middle aged demons to the tired traumatized immortals who sometimes cuddle while still beating each other up is so deliciously interesting and unhealthy to the point where it is healthy. 

Also Celestial bodies are not the same as mortal bodies; canonically Sun Wukong has transformed into women before and people have addressed him with female-leaning pronouns before. my personal headcanon of sun wukong being genderfluid lves on and now we can have sapphic shadowpeach with transfem macaque.

also im still feverish so if this doesnt make sense then too bad damn im sorry

[sunshine-jesse]

Ashley Graves Did Something Wrong

TCOAL plays a lot of fun games with the ways it makes you perceive events. From the title screen itself, to various pieces of official art, it primes you to accept certain narratives surrounding the game. Namely, the one that Ashley is very not good. She is, in fact, very bad! And it's pretty easy to see why- many of her actions fit neatly into the mold of an abuser. She's controlling, she tries to deflect blame, gaslights Andrew into making him take the blame for things she pushed him to do to begin with, and harasses other women to ruin his relationships with them.

It's all so easy, and makes so much sense. Case closed.

Right? Well, no. But actually yes! But actually, it's not that simple.

Y'see, as I said, the game establishes this framing from the get-go. It introduces us to our, uh, heroes and tells us in no uncertain terms that Ashley is bad and Andrew is a non-entity. It sets this framing intentionally so that many players will engage in a little quirk of human psychology called…

Confirmation bias!

I'm sure we all know what that is, right? Well, for those who don't, it's when we start with a bias towards something- or an idea of how things SHOULD be- and view every piece of evidence as confirmation that said bias is correct. The game, very blatantly, does this with Ashley's actions by priming us to see them as part of an abuse dynamic, with her as the primary abuser. And, indeed, it's not too hard to dig into Andrew's behavior and figure out that he, too, is fucked up and awful and come to the conclusion that their relationship was mutually fucked up and abusive. I did that in my last two essays, so I won't cover that ground again here. With this, it's easy to think that they bring out the worst in each other and that any relationship they have would be toxic, fucked up, dark, and every other word or phrase that describes the same idea, whether it makes them happy or not.

… But what if I told you that this, too, was an intentional misdirection?

So. Let us, for a moment, completely remove the framing that their relationship is toxic. Let us remove the framing that their relationship is abnormal or aberrant. Let's even remove the framing that either one of them is responsible for the harm of the other. I'm not arguing that any of this is not the case. Please, for the love of god, do not think that I am, if only so you can take the rest of what I have to say seriously. What I'm doing is trying to examine the two of them free of as many preconceptions as I can, using nothing but textual evidence and inference to figure out why Andrew and Ashley treat each other the way they do.

I will later examine why they MIStreat each other too, but first comes the reasons they treat each other well.

I'm going to start with Andrew, because, despite being the more complex of the two, it's actually pretty easy to figure out why he treats Ashley the way he does based on what he says. Let's go all the way back to the earliest known incident between the two in the story, where the two of them were at their most, uh, "pure," for lack of a better word: The cupcake scene.

Leyley was supposedly a problem child. She was neglected by her parents, disliked by her friends, and had nobody else but Andrew to rely on. She got nothing- absolutely nothing- from anyone else. And so, Andrew decided to celebrate her birthday, by buying her the cupcakes she wanted, by giving her what she lacked from others. By providing for her, and taking care of her. All he wanted was to make her happy, more than anything else. And, as Nina learned the hard way, at the expense of everyone else.

He doesn't lack empathy, per se. Andy just loves Leyley more than he loves anyone else by such a wide margin that his desire to provide for her overrides his fear of consequences… until those consequences threaten to separate the two of them.

That is a very Gender Roles thing to do. More on that later.

So. Ashley. Everyone's favorite disaster. Why does she treat Andrew the way she does? What does she provide for him? Well, isn't it obvious? She, too, wants to provide for him. Remember, she wanted the lemon cupcake because she thought it's what HE wanted. She also does most of the chores around the house. She prepares food, cleans the house, and does their laundry. She also provides for his non-sexual physical needs by offering him comfort whenever he needs it. It makes her feel useful. Wanted. Needed.

Ah, another very Gender Roles thing to do. See where I'm going with this?

The two neatly fit into a standard husband/wife relationship in a lot of ways. It's THE platonic ideal of such a relationship, actually! They make each other happy and provide WHAT THEY THINK the other really wants. It's really cute and perfect! As long as you ignore all the bad.

ignore all the bad …ignore all the bad… But we obviously shouldn't ignore all the bad. That would be ridiculous.

What I want to do is, instead, examine where the bad comes from, and why it's there. With the abuser/abused dynamic in mind, it's pretty easy to come to the conclusion that a mutual desire for control and power over the other is the sole determining factor. It's arguably the Central Theme of the game, and maybe a big part of what Nemlei is trying to convey. But, like, why should it end there? Why should that be where the analysis ends? There's a reason for everything.

They don't want to control each other for its own sake. They don't want to control each other solely to cover their own insecurities.

So why?

Ashley, first. She's obviously an insecure little monster, having never received the validation that she needs to really come into her own as a person. She keeps seeking it. Keeps trying to provide for Andrew. Keeps trying to make herself useful. Now, let's look at her calls towards Julia:

"DO YOU THINK YOU'RE BETTER THAN ME!? Just because you can fuck him and I can't?"

Ah, wait, hold on a minute.

"You think that's love?! Are you fucking delusional?? Cumdumpsters like you are just that."

Where does that wording come from?

"He will never love you. Not like he loves me. I am the only one. I am everything."

She doesn't need validation just for the sake of her insecurities. She needs it because she needs Andrew to be happy, and in her mind, she's the only one who can provide it. She knows him better than anyone else. She can see how happy she seems to make him, and that nobody else can do what she does. She knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she makes Andrew more comfortable than anyone. She knows how important physical affection is to him. She can feel it. She doesn't lack empathy towards his plight or feelings; she has more of it than anyone, actually!

But Andrew, crucially, never seems to provide her any validation for this, even though she knows better. That's why she's so insecure.

"But wait," you might say, "didn't he, literally, fucking kill for her?"

Yes. But he always tries to place the blame on Ashley or use her as a scapegoat, when he was the one who pulled the trigger. He never accepts even the smallest amount of responsibility. And if a man can't even take responsibility for the violence he inflicts on others, what does that say about him? What does it say about how much he actually cares? oh. more gender roles. huh.

In Ashley's mind, that validation isn't validation because he didn't do it to prove he cared about her. He did it to shut her up. And… he never says anything to the contrary. He refuses to. All his validation is depressingly, overbearingly conditional.

His words always come with a caveat. They're always said in spite of something. They lack warmth. They lack kindness. They lack affection. She is never, ever given a key to lock the door to her insecurities…

…even though Andrew obviously has that key. He just refuses to give it to her.

But why?

Society! :D

There is something so fundamentally, obviously wrong with the way Andrew feels towards Ashley. She is a tar soul. A pariah. So horrid that her parents don't want her, so obviously bad that even demons don't want her. And yet Andrew, in spite of everything, still wants her. He wants to take care of her, when society tells him not to bother. He wants to protect her from other men, and even from herself. It manifests as jealousy because…

He, too, thinks the only one qualified to provide for Ashley is himself, because he was the only one who ever had. Violence comes so naturally to him that he takes it for granted. He kills for her, threatens to physically assault her when he thinks she's putting herself in danger.

It's so second nature to him that he thinks it should obviously be enough. But it isn't. His violence is so second nature as to be passive. It's non-committal. And what Ashley wants is committment.

But because of how society views Ashley, and how the world would view a romantic relationship between them, he can't truly commit to her. He can't give her the validation she really needs, because everything and everyone has told him that it's wrong. That she's wrong. And all his parents ever taught him is to be afraid of how others will react to that wrongness.

hey look, a man fearing the commitment a woman wants from him! more gender stereotypes!! I wonder what this game is trying to say!!!

Maybe I'm crazy or something. Maybe I'm just looking into it too deep. But I don't really care. I don't care if this is the intended reading, and neither should you. The fact of the matter is that most of the things that define them as toxic are not their fault. Most of the reasons they mistreat each other come from without, rather than within. The only reason they can't love each other is because the world tells them not to. Because it expects them to fill certain roles, to be certain people.

But Ashley can only ever be herself.

Maybe someone who's an actual expert on this subject matter could weigh in and give a true feminist reading. But me? I'm just here to point out patterns. I'm just here to point out facts. And one of those facts is that, to the world around her, Ashley did something wrong: She was born.

The Steam reviews of this game are fucking funny, but a lot of them say one thing that couldn't be further from the truth:

"I can fix her!"

No, you can't. She's only 'broken' in the context of her environment.

But in the words of another analyst:

It's madness to expect tar to behave like water.

So cut them some slack! They might finally succeed in a world that wanted nothing more than for them to fail. It's not our right to take that away from them.

[bbcphile]

CPTSD and Mysterious Lotus Casebook Part II: Di Feisheng, Violence, and Emotional Regulation

In last week’s meta, I wrote about complex CPTSD, its stereotypes, and how DFS and LLH each show different aspects of CPTSD symptoms.

This week’s post focuses on DFS and self regulation, including emotional regulation. As I mentioned before, it’s common for tv shows and films to have characters who have survived child abuse or traumatic combat situations be affected by out of control, violent outbursts. What I find fascinating about DFS, however, is that, while the jianghu and even Li Lianhua initially see him as someone who resorts to violence at the slightest provocation, that’s not at all who he is according to what we see on screen. While he does lash out with violence, he is more in control of his actions, expression of emotions, and violent impulses than just about anyone in the show.

Emotional Regulation

Emotional regulation is a challenge with complex PTSD for a number of reasons, including: 

Traditional flashbacks (re-experiencing the traumatic memories as though it is happening again)

Emotional flashbacks (experiencing all the emotions from the trauma as intensely as if it were happening again, including grief, rage, betrayal, fear, etc.)

Body memories (experiencing the physical sensations of the trauma like it’s happening again)

Hypervigilance (being constantly on the lookout for threats to defend against them and keep yourself safe) and its resultant irritability and overstimulation

Intrusive thoughts (seeing images or thinking thoughts related to the trauma that you can’t block out)

Nightmares (of the trauma), or insomnia from avoiding nightmares and the resulting exhaustion and irritability from sleep deprivation 

As a result, anything that reminds someone of the trauma can be a trigger that could set off any or all of these reactions. That means, for DFS, that being betrayed by someone he trusted, or being poisoned and made powerless, or being attacked by someone with more power than him, or confronting his abuser is never about experiencing just that event in isolation: it almost always brings up the feelings of the earlier, even more traumatic times similar things have happened. Also, it’s not just events or people’s actions that can be triggers: smells, colors, textures, sounds, tastes, shapes, terrain, enclosed spaces, decor style—anything can trigger this sort of re-experiencing. As you might imagine, responding appropriately to people and situations can be difficult when your brain is constantly telling you that you are in danger or actively being harmed!

How do people deal with being bombarded by emotions, memories, and sensations of the worst times of their lives? The version media shows most often is a traditional “fight” response, where people lash out at others, either preemptively to avoid being hurt or in retaliation for a real or perceived hurt, although lots of survivors of CPTSD turn this fight response inwards in what I’ve started calling “lashing in,” where, like Li Lianhua, they direct the anger and hatred that should go toward the perpetrators of abuse toward themselves instead.  (There’s also the “flight” response—avoiding and running away from things that remind you of the trauma or throwing yourself into distractions by being a workaholic—or the “freeze” response of dissociation, or the “fawn” response of trying to appease and placate someone harming you, but more on those another day.)

DFS, Violence, and Emotional Regulation

I want to emphasize that I’m not saying DFS isn’t violent: Di Feisheng does lash out, verbally and physically! (And for a great image set of the number of people he chokes, check out this post by @difeisheng.) What I find fascinating about DFS is the way he is such an interesting twist on the idea of lashing out;  he’s not hurting others during a flashback or nightmare, or harming others as an outlet for his anger, or killing first and asking questions later to stay safe. He’s using violence but in a deliberate, controlled way, and as a last resort. And this is even more impressive given all the potential things that might trigger him.

Leaving Seclusion

His first appearance as an adult in the show’s present highlights this beautifully: his first act when he breaks free from seclusion is to tell Jiao Liqiao and Yao Mo not to kill the people who have intruded on his hideout, which is the reason FDB and LLH live past episode 5. This is wild to me, because it would be easy for someone who has been on the run from the Di Fortress his entire life and clearly fears being recaptured to say they deserve death for trespassing or because they could be Di Fortress spies. Or, since he spent a decade recovering from injuries liable to make him feel helpless, he could have used it as a chance to fight them as a way of proving to himself that he is still strong and capable and unlikely to be recaptured. Instead, he tells JLQ and Xue Gong to stand down and uses his qinggong to leave the scene, not even interrogating them to find out more. So, even though being unexpectedly interrupted while he’s still weaker than he used to be would activate his hypervigilance and increase the likelihood of him lashing out, he doesn’t. Anything he’s feeling stays internal and not on his face, such that he looks and acts unaffected. And since it’s one of his earliest appearances, it’s proof that this pattern is present from the start. It’s not just Li Lianhua’s influence or DFS’ time without memories as a-Fei soothing his bad temper or rage or uncontrolled violence: he was never out of control to begin with.  

Asura Grass

DFS’ restraint comes into play again when he finds out that Li Lianhua blocked his meridians with Asura grass, interfering with his ability to access his qi. I am feral about this moment. DFS has spent his entire life trying to be as strong as possible so he would never be helpless again and regularly has nightmares/flashbacks of his childhood in the Di Fortress in which he didn’t have the strength, training, or skills to defend himself properly, and to times he was helpless and couldn’t control his own body because of the mind control bug that had been put into him against his will. His nightmares show that he remembers the pain it caused when the Di Fortress head rang the bell, and that the bug writhed in his neck while triggering that pain. In poisoning him with the Asura grass, something that literally moves and grows inside him to make him weaker and unable to fully defend himself, LLH could have unknowingly reenacted that trauma from Di Fortress. The fact that it happens immediately after two positive things–he had regained the strength he’d lost so he’d be feeling safer and freer than he had for the last decade, and the fact that he’d just found LXY alive after mourning him and losing interest in martial arts beyond wanting the security his skills provide–would have made this betrayal hurt even more: it’s the sort of thing that crushes hope and makes you think you’ll always be trapped. That it came from someone he cared for (as a rival, as an aspirational figure, as his equal, as a romantic prospect, etc.) and still mostly trusted could have itself been a trigger because of the early days at Di Fortress when he learned the hard way that his options were kill or be killed, and trust and kindness didn’t fit into that world.  Despite the fact that LLH’s using Asura grass on him would be an incredibly painful combination of triggers and terrible timing, DFS stays mind-boggling in control of his external reactions. When he realizes his meridians are blocked, his face falls and his fingers twitch slightly (they are usually either held completely still in a studied, neutral rounded position or in a fist if he’s really mad about something and doesn’t mind showing it externally), and he starts to take a step towards LLH. But before he’s moved much at all, LLH tells him to stay where he is and not come closer. 

And he stops. 

He’s having Big Feelings about it (and who wouldn’t? Especially since part of his trauma is being immobilized when trying to get back at the person who harmed him!), as the Throat Bob of Feeling (his biggest emotional tell) shows, but he stops and hears LLH out. 

He escalates things later by putting his sword to LLH’s throat and telling him he’ll torture him to get the cure, but it’s more a warning than an actual threat; the fabric of LLH’s robes is between the blade and his skin so not even the flesh will be nicked. And once he learns that LLH is doing this not to harm him but because he wants his help–before he even knows what LLH wants his help with–he removes his dao from LLH’s neck and asks for more details. (There’s so much to say about how he wields words in this conversation, too, but it’s already getting too long!) This interaction shows that, for him, physical violence is to counter an active threat, even if he’s mad and hurting, and that his default even during times of extreme stress is to stay calm, despite how incredibly hard that would be for anyone.

DFS and FDB

This could be an entire meta on its own, but since it’s more obvious than some of the other points, all I’ll say here is that Fang Duobing and Di Feisheng argue and fight all the time, but Di Feisheng almost never instigates it: DFS usually tries to ignore FDB and walk away to avoid the conflict entirely, and once FDB throws the first punch, DFS’s goal is to get out of the fight, not to hurt him. Look at how FDB is actually trying to choke DFS when they’re wrestling and DFS is more bracing against his shoulder, as @difeisheng has said, or even at the rest of the fight choreography where each of DFS’ strikes is to force FDB to let go of him and to leave the room. 

(Note: FDB tries to strangle DFS first, whereas DFS is mainly trying to brace himself against his arms and keep him at arm’s length.

Even in the ep 13 fight, when Di Feisheng eventually poisons Fang Duobing with gang qi, he gives him several verbal warnings to draw his sword first, because he doesn’t want to fight someone who is unarmed. He’s also not trying to kill FDB; he’s trying to hurt him just enough that LLH is forced to ask for his help and agree to live. (More on this in the yin leaves meta I will eventually write.) So, again, it’s controlled violence in service of a larger goal, not vengeful, uncontrolled lashing out. 

DFS and the Limits of Emotional Regulation

There are 3 main times when DFS’ control over his anger/hurt/violence is shaken or in jeopardy: 1. when he finds out Li Lianhua was poisoned and is dying; 2. when he wakes up in pain and with no memories in the corpse seller’s place; and 3. when he wakes up from a nightmare/flashback–still without memories–in a bed with LLH hovering over him. For each, I’ll explain possible reasons the event could be so triggering to clarify why he struggled with emotional regulation. (Also, keep in mind that being triggered can happen even if the person in question doesn’t consciously know what triggered them or why, so while he might be aware of some or all of the connections between the present event and his past experiences, he wouldn’t need to be consciously aware of any of them for them to affect him emotionally and make it harder for him to control his response.)

Fight over Bicha

The scene where DFS learns that LXY was poisoned for their donghai battle and thought it was on DFS’ order is fascinating, because it is the most angry and volatile we see DFS at any point in the show as an adult: he yells, repeatedly, his voice shaking with emotion, and he chokes Li Lianhua twice. Given how tightly controlled he is the rest of the time—including when he confronts his abusers and any of the times he is captured or tortured (I’ll talk about the latter two in a dissociation meta later)—that means that whatever he is feeling must be overpowering to shake his iron control. So before we get into analyzing the way that he is still showing restraint, even here, we need to address why this realization would be such a trigger for him.

Although DFS claims he’s angry and upset about the realization because he wants to be the best in a fair fight and his previous fake victory made him seem like a joke, it seems highly likely he’s not telling the full story, since that’s not really a thing he does. (For a full listing of things he lies about or deliberately omits/withholds, check out this post.) In fact, it seems very likely his reaction happened because of just how many triggers this scenario managed to hit. For example, at Di Fortress, he was forced into fights he didn’t want to participate in, where the odds were stacked against him because he was a child forced to fight people older and more experienced than he was, so as an adult, he wants to fight people who are at his level, and not people weaker than he is, because he doesn’t want to continue the cycle. This is why he isn’t interested in fighting other people on the martial arts list, why he barely expends any power at all on fighting the Sigu sect members, etc. He knows what it feels like to be on the other side of that, and in the same way that he wants to free the children in the Di Fortress so they don’t have to suffer as he did, so he wants to never be the cause of someone suffering under an imbalance of power. Also, since every escape attempt from Di Fortress and every attack against his abusive master was rigged against him—because the mind control bug could stop him in his tracks—he likewise doesn’t want to deprive someone of their agency like that. We also know that Di Feisheng and Li Xiangyi signed a peace treaty for five years, where they promised not to attack each other; that promise not to attack each other was exactly what he kept trying to form with the other prisoners in Di Fortress, but he couldn’t find anyone to agree and just got stabbed for his efforts.

Li Xiangyi breaking the peace treaty would have shattered that dream (and probably his heart a bit, too), but even that wouldn’t hurt as much as finding out, all at the same time, that: 

1. He had thought he was the best in the world at martial arts which to him meant safety and security from Di Fortress, and he just found out it was based on a lie; 

2. His now second-in-command, JLQ, had poisoned LXY (which violated the peace treaty), a betrayal that would reactivate his already very prevalent trust issues; 

3. He had fought and almost killed someone in a rigged fight when he tries to be deliberate about his kills and violence so as not to perpetuate the abuse he suffered from; 

4. JLQ had essentially tried to turn him into the butcher the head of Di Fortress wanted him to be, and he hadn’t known it for a decade; 

5. LXY had spent a decade thinking DFS endorsed the sort of abuses he abhorred;

6. LXY is now dying and mostly powerless because of what was done in his name and because he didn’t notice the poisoning kicking in, and LXY refuses to fight for his life or to give DFS a chance to save him and essentially undo the harm that has been done. To DFS, LXY is making him complicit in his death yet again, which would mean being again responsible for the death of someone he wants to live, just like he was as a child. 

Oh, and he’s facing all this with his meridians blocked and without access to his qi, which means he’s most likely feeling perpetually hypervigilant and helpless, which would mean everything is likely to feel like even more of a threat and emotional regulation is even harder.

In short, it is a clusterfuck of epic proportions. And this is all assuming that he mainly thought of LXY as purely a rival he respected: if you read DFS as already loving LXY (whether he realizes it consciously or not), you can see why it would be even worse.

And of course, all of Li Lianhua’s suggestions that DFS pretend he didn’t hear or move on and fight someone else are not addressing the main issues, because he doesn’t know them. But if DFS wasn’t about to tell LXY that someone was framing the Jinyuan alliance for the murder of SGD a decade ago, he’s certainly not about to tell him his deepest secret–that due to a mind control bug, one ring of a bell can render him absolutely helpless, which is why fair fights and being strong enough to defeat any enemy are incredibly important to him–so of course, to LLH, it’s just about DFS wanting to prove he’s the best as part of an ego trip, even though that’s not it at all. And of course LLH’s dismissiveness is going to make everything worse for DFS.

With all that in mind, let’s look at his body language and actions to see how he handles things when he is incredibly close to losing it. Although he does lash out, his first choice, as always, isn’t violence: he gathers info via eavesdropping–rather than bursting in during a fit of rage as soon as he learns the truth–and when he confronts LLH, he yells at him first, telling him what he overheard. It’s only when LLH tries to avoid the subject by snarking at him about eavesdropping instead of telling him the truth that DFS grabs LLH by the neck and shoves him against a pillar. 

The moment in the entire show he is at his angriest is when he yells “It matters!” after LLH says it doesn’t matter who won or lost.

This is what DFS looks like when he’s losing control: his arm shakes for an instant before he locks the muscles to keep in place, and he puts a tad more pressure than he meant to on LLH’s neck before he realizes it and pulls back again. He’s been incredibly truthful here, in a way: the fact that he didn’t win because Li Lianhua was poisoned matters tremendously to him. He’s just not saying why and letting LLH believe the worst of him, which is another of his common strategies.

In case there’s any doubt that DFS’s choking of LLH is more designed to warn than to harm and is overall incredibly controlled apart from that moment, just look at his grip: Li Lianhua can talk and breathe normally and even turn his head the first time, so this move designed to show that DFS is mad, hurt, and serious about the conversation rather than actually trying to hurt or punish LLH or cut off his air. He also lets go completely while trying to convince LLH to let him cure him. He only grips Li Lianhua’s neck again when LLH refuses to accept help and only applies any real force when Li Lianhua essentially calls his bluff about killing people from Baichuan Court (or rather, tells his own bluff–a lie that he doesn’t care what happens to them). 

Even there, since he’s making threats he doesn’t mean, he’s very much trying to play into the villain role LLH saw/sees him as (the person who murdered SGD, broke a peace treaty, and poisoned him), but he’s not doing it to harm LLH or “just” force him to have a second duel: he’s doing it to try to convince him to live, to give him something to fight (him) for: the safety of other people DFS thinks LLH cares about most. 

After all, most of the conversation isn’t about a second duel at all: it’s about DFS trying to convince LLH to let him find a cure. No wonder he has the Throat Bob of Feeling twice when LLH explains that he’s dying and doesn’t have much time left.

With that in mind, the fact that DFS uses the traditional Di family choking move again when LLH refuses to agree to let DFS try to cure him is a fascinating metaphor for how DFS approaches violence when it comes to LXY: he’s using a move designed to cause harm, but with the intent to convince LLH to accept help. In other words, he’s using a technique designed to kill to try to force Li Lianhua to live.

a-Fei and Hypervigilance

Even when DFS wakes up with amnesia, only remembering “kill or be killed” and some of his worst trauma memories, and would be most likely to act on pure instinct, he still exercises restraint. When he finds himself first at the corpse seller’s and later at Lotus Tower, not knowing how he got to either place, it would be the work of a moment to snap the neck of the man trying to sell him to be married to a dead woman without his consent, or to stab the hair stick (or knife? I can’t tell which) from the nightstand through Li Lianhua’s throat. But even then, when he’d have every reason to assume his life is in jeopardy and he needs to kill first, he doesn’t. In both cases, he pauses, gathers information, and listens, and lets go. (And yes, he collapses in the first of these two instances instead of actively making the choice to let go, but he’s already loosened his grip to listen to Li Lianhua, and when he sees the corpse seller the next day, he doesn’t try to harm him, or even exhibit any animosity at all toward him, showing again that once the threat is passed, so too has his desire for violence.) Even when he’s under threat or having a flashback and all he knows is killing, he doesn’t kill. 

DFS and Violence against Abusers

Even when he does intend to harm–particularly with his two abusers, the head of Di Fortress and Jiao Liqiao (who he kills, even though it goes against his policy of not killing women)–his emotions and actions are tightly controlled: while he does choke them and destroy their meridians, and tell them why he’s getting revenge, his voice, strength, and facial expressions are almost superhumanly regulated. 

Confronting an abuser is incredibly difficult, because it usually triggers the feelings of fear and helplessness that were experienced during the abuse. It might be hard to imagine DFS feeling fear or helplessness because he doesn’t explicitly show it as an adult much, but the fact that he still has nightmares/flashbacks of being immobilized and hurt by the head of Di Fortress means that even though he’s an adult who is at the top of the jianghu, he’s still regularly re-experiencing the terror of being helpless and at his mercy for decades, and his fear of helplessness has motivated almost every action of his since. That means that he would be struggling during that confrontation, fighting off literal and emotional flashbacks and/or dissociation, and trying to convince his brain that he’s no longer a helpless child about to be punished or killed. And, generally speaking, once you’ve confronted one abuser, future confrontations with different abusers trigger all the feelings from the confrontation with the earlier abuser, especially if the aftermath of the confrontation was traumatic (which, given that it’s when JLQ incapacitated, captured, and tortured him, it definitely was). So, when confronting JLQ, he’s probably reexperiencing that fear and helplessness on top of everything else.  And, given how often we see him show nothing, even while being tortured, the cracks in his facade here speak to just how deeply the confrontations are affecting him. 

He doesn’t even raise his voice, and the only hints of the toll the confrontations are taking on him are tiny, almost invisible facial movements, which you can see in the gifs below:

When the head of Di Fortress offers to make him the new master and in charge of abusing others, the muscles of one cheek and under the opposite eye start twitching.

(and zoomed in if you need a close up!)

2. When JLQ taunts him after he broke free from her prison by saying “Do you want to escape?” his jaw works from side to side as he forces himself to not react.

3. When he chokes JLQ after she says she’ll kill LLH for being the reason DFS doesn’t love her, it takes him two tries to speak before his voice works (look at his lips forming the opening word twice before working the third time.)

So, clearly, the lapses in his control aren’t violent outbursts; they speak to something far more nuanced than that, namely, the emotional turmoil confronting an abuser brings up.

[Also, compare this to LLH’s reaction when he finds out SGD tricked their shifu into sacrificing himself for him. He’s flooded by his emotions, which affects his fighting style, and it triggers a Bicha flare. Note: I’m NOT criticizing LLH here. His reaction makes perfect sense and I’m not saying DFS’ approach is better. I am saying that it’s unusual to have the hero be the one who lashes out and has less emotional control and to have the person the jianghu sees as the temper-tantrum prone villain be the one who keeps his emotions in a chokehold.]

So many shows have confrontation scenes with an abuser be either profoundly triumphant events or violent revenge fantasies where the character almost loses control beating up the person who harmed them. These scenes are fascinating not just because DFS doesn’t rejoice or lose control, but because of the way DFS’ microexpressions show how hard the confrontations are for him. These are not the actions of someone who is controlled by rage or violent impulses. They’re the actions of someone who has spent so much of his life with his body controlled by the non-existent mercy of others that he refuses to let anything, including his emotions and memories, wrestle his hard-won control of his body away from him. Of someone who knows what it’s like to suffer, powerless, at the violent hands of others, and tries to make sure that the violence he commits with his own hands is well-reasoned and justified. Of someone who is hypervigilant not only to external threats but to the threat he himself could be.

In other words, the extreme amount of control he exercises over himself and the way he is hypervigilant to the threat that he could pose and the way he goes out of his way to not abuse power over others the way he was abused is itself a manifestation of his complex CPTSD.

The portrayal of his cPTSD is particularly interesting when you realize that the out of control, hyperviolent danger to society villain stereotype is exactly who the jianghu thinks Di Feisheng is for most of the show. But the reality is that Di Feisheng has more self-control than the rest of the lotus trio (certainly more than Fang Duobing does), even when he’s being violent. And, just as the jianghu’s legends have very little basis in reality and do damage to the characters, so does the caricature of a hyperviolent traumatized villain have almost nothing in common with the real experiences and symptoms of cPTSD and actively harm survivors. And I’m thrilled that this show is giving us new narratives about trauma to challenge that stereotype. 

As for how he holds on to that type of control over himself, given that struggles with emotional regulation are part of having complex ptsd? The short answer is a combination of compartmentalization, dissociation, habit, and grounding techniques (including meditation). 

Stay tuned for a post on these coping mechanisms and the evidence from the show that he uses them.

[orcasoul]

Oh Mama! A continuation of Oh Baby

Summery: As the birth draws closer you reflect on all the ways Pedro has been there for you throughout your pregnancy.

Warnings: Swearing, verbal abuse (not by our sweet man), protective Pedro, fluff, use of Y/N.

Italics indicate in ward thinking and flashbacks.

This is a continuation of Oh Baby which was meant to be a one shot but after a request for a part 2 I've decided to write this and a part 3 which will be called Oh Daddy, which will focus on Pedro being the amazing dad and partner we all know he would be :)

Miserable! that's how you feel. Miserable, bloated, heavy. No matter how much you shift or turn, finding a good sleeping position is next to impossible. It also doesn't help that you're in the middle of a sweltering heatwave. The aircon is on but it might as well be non existent with the hot flashes that keep plaguing your body.

You look to your left and feel a little twinge of jealousy as you watch Pedro sleep soundly in the dim lamp light. Why the fuck should he get to sleep while I can't! You know it's just the hormones making you feel irritable and bitter but right now you want nothing more than to shake him awake and tell him to stay awake with you.

But no matter how irritable your last month of pregnancy is making you there's no way you be that spiteful. As you watch Pedro sleep, his plush lips slightly parted, letting slow, rhythmic breathes escape, you begin to reminisce all the ways he's been there for you, supporting you and caring for you since you'd told him you're pregnant.

Neither one of you had planned for this baby, but life doesn't always go according to our own plans. It has it's own agenda and all you can do is follow the path it lays before you and do your very best. After your initial fear of telling Pedro about the baby- and that awful resulting anxiety induced nightmare - you both seemed to easily slip into your natural roles. You; the nurturing and tender mother and Pedro; the protective and comforting father and partner.

For someone who once said he's never gonna be a dad, he sure seemed happy and content these past 7 months and that happiness has bubbled over into excitement now that the birth will be any day. Pedro stirs in his sleep a little, causing a couple of stray curls to fall onto his forehead. You gently brush them back up off his face, taking care not to wake him.

You guess he could actually do with the rest after weeks of being at your every beck and call, sometimes even going out at stupid 'o' clock to buy whatever your insatiable cravings demanded. You shift for the thousandth time, onto your side and put a pillow between your knees to provide some - but not much - relief. You continue to watch him sleep, feeling his breath fan your face, his shoulders slowly rising and falling and you feel the baby kick you again.

The little Bun - as you both lovingly refer to it since you've both agreed to not find out the sex and be surprised - has been quite active today. Tears fill your eyes and suddenly you feel like the luckiest woman in the world, as you place your hand tenderly on your bump and stare at the face of the man you love. This is what it's all about, you perceive, growing a beautiful new life with the perfect man. And boy, has he been just that for the past several months.

Your mind starts to wander back to all the moments where Pedro has gone above and beyond for you both....

The third month of your pregnancy is when your morning sickness really ramped up. Until that point you had only felt slightly nauseous but then it hit you like a ton of bricks. The first time you threw up actually startled Pedro. The poor guy almost had a heart attack when you leapt up from bed, accidentally dragging the quilt and him across the bed. You would have felt bad about waking him if you weren't too busy spewing your guts up into the toilet.

"What the fuck?!" is what you heard from the bedroom as you heaved and retched. "Baby?... You Okay?" Pedro asked quietly from behind you in the doorway to the on suite. "Yeah I'm-" blargh!- "I'm... good," you finally reply in a shaky voice as you wipe your mouth with one hand while the other holds your hair back. And so it went on for months. Pedro was always beside you (when he wasn't away filming or doing interviews) rubbing soothing strokes along your back, whispering comforting words and waiting with a glass of water in hand.

The more frequent the episodes became, the more he started to worry about you. You hated seeing him so worried as much as he hated seeing you be sick, so one time you'd decided to make light of the situation. After chucking up for what felt like the millionth time you called Pedro to the bathroom. He came rushing to you but before he could say a word you cried "Hold my hairrrrr!!" in your best whiny Dieter voice. Pedro burst out laughing as he clearly hadn't been expecting that of all things.

"That's a good one," he chuckled as he did indeed hold your hair. "How long have you been waiting to do that?" You look up at him and giggle but it's cut short by another bought of retching, which of course Pedro helped you through with words of encouragement. "Just be glad I don't have to shit, too," you mumble into the toilet bowl causing another burst of laughter to erupt from him.

You smile quietly to yourself at the memory while smoothing over the arc of your bump. You can't believe that a woman can naturally grow so big and not burst, which takes you back to the time you'd gotten upset over your sudden weight gain....

After coming home from a much needed shopping trip for maternity clothes and larger everyday clothes you slump onto the settee to rest your aching feet while Pedro puts the kettle on. You miss coffee but it's better for the baby if you stick to tea for a while. It was just as good and definitely helped to relax you. Once the drinks were finished Pedro took the cups to the kitchen and started to prepare for dinner. "I'm gonna go put the clothes away," you called to him in the kitchen, to which he replied, "Don't be too long. Food will be ready soon."

Staring into your wardrobe, a lump forms in your throat and tears burn behind your eyes as you take in the sight of some of your favourite and much smaller clothes. The more items you remove, to be replaced with the new and larger (two sizes larger to be precise) clothes, the more you feel the dam about to burst. Fighting it is no good, what with the hormones and all, and in a matter of seconds you're a blubbering mess on the bedroom floor.

"Y/N...," Pedro calls up the stairs, "Food's ready." You quickly choke back your sobs as best you can and try not to sound like someone who's just been in the middle of a complete breakdown. "O-kay," you faltered unintentionally. Great, maybe he didn't notice. Oh, but he did notice. His hasty footsteps were a dead giveaway of that fact. Pedro appeared in the bedroom moments later, his brows pinched and deep chestnut eyes full of compassion. "Sweetheart? What's wrong?" he asked dolefully as he slowly lowered himself to the floor next to you, both of you surrounded by your old clothes.

You look up at him through red, puffy eyes. "I'm so f... fat!," you bawled while gripping one of your favourite tops. "I feel like a whale!" Pedro lets out an endearing huff. "What?... It's true!" Bwahhaha!... "Shhh..." Pedro coos into your ear as he takes you in his strong arms. "That's the most ridiculous thing you've ever said. You're not fat and you certainly don't look like a whale," he asserted as he holds your flushed and tear streaked face in his hands and looks directly into your eyes. "You're growing a brand new life in there," he says as he places a hand on your belly. "Of course your body will change and it's a good change."

"I just... can't see how you co...could be attracted to me right now," you wept while looking down. "What?!" Pedro asked incredulously. "Do you have any idea what it does to me seeing you carry and care for my baby?" Pedro wipes your tears away and you look up to meet his eyes once more. "You've never been more beautiful than you are right now, darling. Don't you forget that, okay?" Through calmer breathes you whisper "Okay."

Just as you got semi comfortable you realise you're now quite thirsty. With an annoyed eye roll and a huff, you roll onto your back and push yourself up to reach over for the glass of water on your nightstand. Maybe you moved a little too fast because as you put the glass down you suddenly feel a little light headed. It passed in literally a few seconds. This is nothing compared to the dizzy spells you had to endure a few months ago....

You woke with a start when your phone rang. It might as well have been a bloody foghorn with how it pierced the peace and quiet of the living room. It's Pedro. You haven't seen each other for a few weeks due to his filming commitments but you talk everyday. Swiping the answer button you groggily mumble, "Hello." Hey sweetheart," Pedro began cheerfully, "Thought I'd call you on your lunch break... You okay? You sound funny." "Yeah..." you answer sluggishly, "I'm fine." You know he'll never buy it. "What's wrong?" Pedro asks in an assertive but gentle tone. "Nothing...," you try to placate him.

"...They just sent me home from work because I was having dizzy spells." "Did you call the doctor?" Pedro interjects quickly, his voice laced with concern. You can almost feel his anxiety through the phone. "Not yet. I just needed to lay down for a bit. I'm actually feeling a bit better." Okay, that may have been a white lie but the last thing you want is to cause Pedro any unnecessary worry. But of course he's worried. "Why didn't you call me straight away?" Pedro pressed perturbedly. "I just didn't want to worry you," You answer with a hint of guilt.

"I'm coming home-" "Ped, you can't. You have an interview today-" "They'll understand," he insisted, firmly. "I'm on the next flight home." You know when he speaks in such a final tone that his mind is made up. "Okay," you relent, feeling like a burden, but you know he'd worry like hell if he didn't come back to you right now. Turns out you had low iron levels and low blood pressure. Pedro made you stay off work and re-scheduled his interview with Vanity Fair. He never left your side for the next couple of weeks while you recovered.

Your eyelids feel like they're made of lead but sleep still eludes you. Silently pushing up on your elbows, you peer over Pedro's shoulder at the alarm clock. 2:38 am. You lay back down on your side and your shuffling must have disturbed Pedro because now his arm has found it's way across your side, hand splayed on your back slowly pulling you into his broad body, tucking your head under his chin. He sighs in his sleep and his breathing evens out again as he settles back into slumber. Being wrapped up in the arms of the man you love is absolute heaven for you.

You lay a hand against his chest feeling the calm and slow movements of his thorax. With his arm draped over you it's impossible to not feel safe and protected. It feels like nothing in the world can ever hurt you and your child. Pedro's action's assured you of that when an overly enthusiastic fan verbally abused you one evening....

"The black Audi A6, please." Pedro handed the ticket to the valet as you both stepped out of the restaurant. After two weeks apart this date night is just what you both needed. The morning sickness had finally stopped by your seventh month and you'd been looking forward to this night all week. The clingy, thigh length, black maternity dress you'd bought especially for tonight hugged your bump and the curve of your hips perfectly. You actually felt attractive for the first time in months.

While waiting for the car you slip your hand into Pedro's and place a soft kiss on his shoulder. "Thank you for tonight. It's been perfect," you smiled warmly. Pedro let go of your hand to place his own at your waist, pulling you closer into his chest. "You deserve it, baby," he whispered as his lips brush your hairline. "And by the way," he adds while looking up and down your body, "You look incredible!" Even after all this time together he's still able to make you blush like a teenager. Before you can reply an excited squeal ruptures the still night air. "On my god! Pedro Pascal!" A young woman cries, unable to contain her elation.

She rushes over to you both with two more companions who are equally excited to meet Hollywood's hottest celebrity. The two girls and man couldn't have been older than their mid twenties. "Hi," Pedro smiled and tightened his grip on your waist. He's always been protective of you and now that you're having his baby that protective side has increased exponentially. "Can we have a photo, please!" The other girl asked with a huge grin. "Of course you can," Pedro chirped but didn't release his hold on you. You gently squeeze his hand while peeling it off your hip, a silent 'it's okay' and you excuse yourself to stand several feet away.

You're used to fans approaching, and you love to see how much Pedro's supporters adore him, and that his mere presence whips people up into a frenzy. You smile proudly in adoration, stroking your baby bump as you watch how much of a natural he is with his fans. "Thank you!" "We're huge fans!" "You're amazing!" "We love you!" The words are spilling out of their mouths at the same time, all talking over one another. "Aw, thank you so much, guys. That means a lot," Pedro replies, his beaming smile stretching from one cheek to the other.

While the women are still fussing, the man looks your way and then down to your rounded stomach. "Aww, baby Pascal," he burst vehemently. Suddenly he rushed at you, hands outstretched and a determined look on his face, "Can I feel?" The intensity from this stranger sent you into automatic defence mode for your baby. You step back, instinctively covering your belly just as he's about to grab you, permission or not! "Don't touch me!" you cautioned him, nervously. Pedro's head snapped from the women to your direction at the sound of your alarmed voice.

"Gee's Okay!" the man snapped at you irately. "I only wanted to feel. No need to be such a bitch about it!" He spat the word bitch out like he had a bad taste in his mouth causing your eyes to widen. "The fuck did you just say to her?!!" Pedro exploded as he stood between you and this entitled piece of shit. "Whoa... easy man-" the man stuttered in defence but Pedro cut him off. "You have no right to touch anyone against their will, especially a pregnant woman. And who the fuck do you think you are calling her a bitch because she said no?!" The man stared dumfounded. Pedro leaned in to the man's personal space, seething, "You'd better walk away while you still can!"

You've never seen Pedro this angry, literally shaking with rage, chest to chest with the guy, who looks like he's about to piss himself. His friends pull him away, scolding him in hushed tones and offering apologies to you both. "Baby?..." you soothed while stroking up and down Pedro's arm. He turns to you, chest heaving and still shaking but the moment he locks eyes with you his gaze softens, frown lines un-creasing and muscles relaxing. He wraps his arms around you, kissing the top of your head, languidly. "You're okay, darling. I won't ever let anything happen to you two." And he means that. You can feel the conviction of his declaration as if it were a physical manifestation.

You hadn't even realised you had fallen asleep until you were being jostled awake by a deep, concerned voice. "Y/N... Y/N, wake up." "Hmmm?" you groaned sleepily as you came to, feeling like you could smother Pedro with his pillow for waking you now! "You've got to be fucking kidding me!" annoyance and exhaustion seeped through your words. "Baby, I literally just dropped off!" "The bed's wet!" Pedro quickly replied. "What the?..." It was more of a realisation than a question as you looked down to see your shorts and the mattress completely soaked. "My water's have broken!" you gasp, looking wide eyed into Pedro's equally wide eyes. It's time....

Oh Daddy A Conclusion

[raayllum]

Hey Raayllum. I was just curious to know as to why you believe Rayla hurt herself, considering she's been wronged and abandoned by everyone in her life. Do you think that Rayla doesn't let Callum love her? It really bothers me that nobody ever defends her besides Callum.

Like I understand, Amaya was defending her nephew, but I think she was being completely judgemental towards Rayla. I'm just saying. It was unfair.

To start I'm gonna talk about Rayla, but I wanna clarify before the read more that I don't think Amaya was being unfair at all or overly judgemental; that said, we'll work our way there.

I think Rayla struggles to do exactly what she says so in the show: she struggles to share her burdens. She struggles to let herself be vulnerable / be 'weak'. Which given "your heart wasn't hard enough to do whatever it takes" + growing up in a 'one strike and you're out' community system could not have helped the issues she already had as a young child to begin with: "I wasn't fast enough, I wasn't strong enough" (Bloodmoon Huntress).

Most of the time even when she's telling people what's wrong, it's still under the lens of "this is the price I'm paying and even though it hurts I'm totally fine with it, actually, you don't need to help me." She's not asking for solutions, she's updating them on the choices/prices she's already decided to pay.

Whether because of her own perceived mistakes, or because of other people's choices, or because there's something Much More Important than her own personal wellbeing to ever possibly prioritize, of course.

She wants / wanted to "be strong alone" (and sometimes had to be) and she has a very hard time forgiving herself / giving herself the same compassion she shows other people.

That said, we shouldn't say she's making no progress. 5x04 is the first time in the entire show she 1) seeks someone out to talk about her own problems and 2) talks about her own problems because she wants to, not just because she feels guilty, or because she's having a breakdown. That's huge, and shows she's beginning to learn to accept the grace given to her - there's just a long way to go.

She's bad at being nice to herself, too. Why should her pain, or what she puts herself through, matter? She can shoulder it alone. It's fine. Until it isn't. And, luckily, until she doesn't have to.

But again, thankfully, she's starting to improve.

With that in mind, as said, I don't think Amaya was being unfair at all. She barely knows Rayla, she's a lot closer to Callum, and she saw his heartbreak up close. Then she sees Callum and Rayla show up together, out of nowhere, when Amaya didn't even know Rayla had come back into his life. Of course she has her guard up (nor does Amaya ever say she was right to hurt Rayla back at the Banther Lodge because Rayla ended up hurting her nephew; her issues with Rayla are now completely removed from her being an elf, and she's also being hyperbolic).

Rayla did hurt Callum; she did abandon him, and she did break his heart. She had 'good reasons' for doing so, or at least good intentions. She was scared of losing him. She wanted to protect him from what she saw as her burdens. She "couldn't bear to put him in danger" just over her (because, for a lot of the reasons stated above, she doesn't think she's worth that; regardless). But she was still wrong to leave. That said, Rayla was wrong to leave not only because it hurt Callum, but also because it hurt herself, and Amaya is the first person we've seen directly acknowledge it (although Callum does so in the background that will likely be taken to the forefront in S6).

Amaya, who's had a 4 season long arc about developing more empathy and seeing herself in others ("We gain nothing if we throw away the chance to learn and grow"), is also able to recognize what's going on, because she's been through it herself. And she identifies it all for what it is: a hyper independent trauma response because of grief and fear.

R: You think I meant to hurt Callum? That's the last thing I wanted! A: You abandoned him. You broke his heart. R: I was trying to protect him! I left without him because I couldn't bear to put him in danger. I knew I had to be strong alone. A: [Sighs] You know who you sound like? R: Who?! A: Me.

R: Oh... Thanks, I think? A: When I was growing up, my big sister Sarai was the smartest, strongest, bravest person I knew. When she died, I felt lost and weak without her. I hated feeling that way, so I learned to be strong alone. Stoic, strong, and lonely. R: That... does sound like me sometimes. A: But the last two years have changed everything. Meeting Janai, falling in love. I am stronger now than I have ever been, because we are stronger together. And I realized that was the real truth of me and Sarai, too. Love and trust grow a kind of strength that is much bigger than we each possess. To have that kind of strength, it is not enough to love someone. You have to trust them to share the burdens you carry.

Amaya and Rayla once had a spat in the Banther Lodge because Rayla asserted that she was alone (which I think Rayla truly believed, anyone, running off with two boys she barely knows) and Amaya called her a liar. Now, Amaya reminds her that the choice to be strong alone is a choice, and she can make new ones; she can let trust coexist with the endurance of her love to make something that's stronger together, and Rayla takes her up on it.

Like Amaya says in 4x06, "All I ask is that your justice is compassionate." Amaya calls Rayla out, and then she offers actual help so that the pattern doesn't persist, so that she's less likely to hurt Callum in that way again. You can't fix people's emotional problems or relationships for them; you can only keep giving them chances, if you want to.

Thankfully, Callum and Rayla both want to - so they do.

[nothorses]

Question about your points on the post about TERFs vs TIRFs you made bc it has me questioning a lot of the stuffI've been taught:

Why is it TERF ideology to think that women are oppressed by the patriarchy? Why is it TERF ideology to be intimidated by men if you’ve been a victim of sexual violence at the hands of men? Women (both trans and Cis) face so much violence all over the world, why is it radical feminism to acknowledge that?

I’m genuinely curious because I want to deconstruct any harmful biases but it feels incredibly harmful to dismiss violence against women under the guise of “talking about this is all radfem ideology”.

I'm glad you're asking these questions, and I'm glad you're being critical about that post!

You're absolutely right that it would be harmful to "dismiss violence against women under the guise of “talking about this is all radfem ideology”- and I don't want anyone to take that whole list as A New Set Of Rules without thinking any further about it.

The point of that list was not to say "all of this is Bad", but rather to lay out some logical through-lines and how these ideas all work together to reach harmful conclusions.

Any radicalization pipeline relies on a kind of "rabbithole", or as @psychoticallytrans recently called it, "milk before meat". The idea is that you're given the "easy" stuff first, the stuff that is or feels right, and then those ideas steadily lead into more and more extreme ideas.

Women are oppressed by the patriarchy, and pretty much every branch of feminism is going to agree with you there; that's not a radfem-only idea. What distinguishes radfems from the rest is that they believe "the patriarchy" is embodied by every single living man; every man is The Patriarchy, and every man oppresses every woman. No woman can oppress a man, no woman can harm a man... etc.

You can see where we lose the plot here: is the patriarchy a system, or is it every single man? Who, then, do we count as men? How old is a man? What about other intersecting forms of oppression?

One of my go-to questions to ask, when taking a critical look at some of these ideas, is: under this ideology, are white women oppressed by black men? How? Can white women do harm to black men? How would this ideology answer these questions, and how would they (do they) deal with the archetype of the "Karen"; a white woman using her white womanhood to enact violence on black men through state institutions of white supremacy, like law enforcement? (Hint: radfems tend to complain that "Karen" is strictly a misogynistic insult.)

To answer your other two questions:

Why is it TERF ideology to be intimidated by men if you’ve been a victim of sexual violence at the hands of men?

(For context:)

Short answer: it isn't.

Long answer: My point here was to outline the way that the "inherent woman trauma and justified fear of all men" is weaponized against trans women, first and foremost, but there's more nuance here as well.

There is a difference between a traumatic response that you cannot control and need time to heal from, and a fear being actively encouraged as "justified" and "accurate" by those around you. There is a difference between exercising practical caution (even if you shouldn't have to), and fueling paranoia and a fear of the outside world. There is a difference between grappling with your own personal healing process after a traumatic event, and generalizing a traumatic response to the entire world & everyone in it.

Some people's trauma after a sexual assault latches onto the gender of the person who hurt them. That is understandable. Some people, knowing they are perceived as women, take extra precautions to ensure their safety from potential sexual assault and harassment at the hands of, predominately, cis and straight men. That is understandable. But when that translates to "you should fear all men at all times because any of them can and will rape you given any opportunity to do so", we have a problem.

Again, we should be asking: does this ideology make room for other forms of oppression? Can white women oppress black men? How does this interact with the racist stereotype of the sexually aggressive and dangerous black man? How does this ideology deal with the history of white women accusing black men of sexual assault in order to sic white men and police on them & enact state violence, as well as reinforce white supremacy? (And more! What about trans women and trans lesbians, in particular? Are trans men seen as sexual aggressors instead, if not them? Is either remotely accurate to reality?)

Women (both trans and Cis) face so much violence all over the world, why is it radical feminism to acknowledge that?

This is mostly answered by the above, but again, the short answer here is that it isn't radical feminism to acknowledge misogyny or misogynistic violence.

What is radical feminism is that idea that this violence is enacted by individual men, and not patriarchy as a system of oppression. What is radical feminism is the idea that misogyny is the ultimate form of oppression, and that others only "intersect" in niche circumstances (if at all) that do not need to be included in the majority of these conversations.

In radical feminism, black women's oppression is its own conversation, trans women's oppression is its own conversations, and we can handwave things like "Karens" by saying that's about racism; we don't need to make room for it in feminist theory. When trans-inclusive radfems say "if men could get pregnant", and trans men say "we can", they can respond "you know what we meant"- because they don't believe they need to make space for transphobia in feminist theory.

Another good test: when radfems talk about sexual assault as a woman-specific issue, and transmascs point out that statistically, we face higher rates of sexual assault than cis or trans women (or any other demographic), TERFs will say that's because it's "sex-based oppression" & ignore that our rates are higher, because there's no room for transphobia in their feminism. Trans-inclusive radfems will deny that it's true or important in the first place, because men can't be "more oppressed" than women.

It's not radical feminism to acknowledge misogyny and patriarchy. It is radical feminism to ignore everything else.

[shakeyloner]

Here is a college paper I wrote about BoJack Horseman having BPD for my psychological disorders class about the depictions of mental and mood disorders.

The teacher was an actual clinical psychologist and I got a 100, with the average being an 86% so take that as you will.

A Critique of the Depiction of Borderline Personality Disorder

Of Character “Bojack Horseman” in Netflix’s “Bojack Horseman”

PSYCH-433

By: (You Don’t get to know)

4/3/2024

“BoJack, just stop. You are all the things that are wrong with you. It’s not the alcohol, or the drugs, or any of the shitty things that happened to you in your career, or when you were a kid. It’s you. Alright? It’s you.” (“BoJack Horseman” Episode 310). Although this is something you should never say to someone with any mental illness, it seems to encapsulate what Borderline Personality Disorder and BoJack Horseman’s apparent struggle with it throughout the series. Although an animated“comedy”show about an anthropomorphic horse who was a past star in a 90s sitcom, now living life as a washed-up star may not sound like the greatest representation of Borderline Personality Disorder, throughout the six-season story, we are able to see how BoJack’s relationships can be affected by it, along with items in his past that could have brought it about.

Let’s start with how BoJack fits the DSM description of BPD, and how he might not. The requirements within the DSM require to show 5 (or more) symptoms of 9 presented. These include: Extreme reactions to abandonment, whether real or perceived; a pattern of intense and stormy relationships with family, friends, and loved ones, ranging from idealization to extreme dislike; Impulsive and often dangerous behaviors; Recurring suicidal behaviors or threats, or self harming behavior. Intense and highly changeable moods, Chronic feelings of emptiness; inappropriate or intense anger, and stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms. BoJack checks lots of these boxes, so let’s go through each one, and give an example if it applies.

BoJack is incredibly afraid of abandonment. It is shown several times throughout the series that he is scared when people he knows leaves, such as his half-sister Hollyhock, who after trying to distance herself from him tells him that he is forcing himself into her life, as he becomes a professor at the college she attends. However, nothing is more apparent of his fear of abandonment than his relationship with his roommate Todd. He constantly puts him down, as to keep him to stay at his house indefinitely. This is most apparent when Todd presents his Rock-Opera. BoJack, as his friend, tells him, “That was, and I don’t say this lightly, worse than a hundred September 11ths”. However, once the Rock Opera seems like it might be picked up, and Todd might become successful and leave his house, BoJack sabotages Todd’s chances by getting him addicted to a video game he played as a teenager, which makes Todd fail his pitches to possible producers.

BoJack’s stormy relationships are about half of the show and I could likely fill three pages of just this. He has an on-again off-again relationship with his Agent, Princess Carolynn. His relationship with his roommate, Todd, is often broken based on the consequences of his actions, along with those of his friend and ghost-writer Diane. A romantic relationship with a co-star turned rocky when he nearly choked her to death, as she wanted to leave him, and wanted him to stop with substance abuse. Finally, his relationship with what could be considered best friend, Herb Kazzaz, ended with them not speaking for twenty years after Bojack “stabbed him in the back” while not defending him from media heat. Herb was a comedian who helped start BoJack’s successful career, being a writer for the show he starred in, and despite being his best friend, when the media found out that Herb was gay, leading to his removal from the show, BoJack did nothing to stand up for him, because it believed it would affect his professional career.

He has a terrible sense of self, constantly asking himself, “Am I a good person?”, flipping from wanting to be a star and do more shows to rejecting offers, and leaving projects mid-shoot. In season 1, he approaches his friend Diane, asking, “I need you to tell me that I’m a good person. I know that I can be selfish and narcissistic and self-destructive, but underneath all that, deep down, I’m a good person, and I need you to tell me that I’m good, Diane… Tell me, please Diane, tell me that I’m good…”. Along with that, after catching his life-long dream role, of Secretariat, he leaves the film, mid-production to do something else.

His impulsive and dangerous behaviors are one of the most evident. He goes through several “benders” throughout the show, ranging from alcohol to prescription and hard street drugs. He is known as an alcoholic to his friends and even attends rehab (multiple times), which actually lines up with studies. “In men, borderline personality disorder is more likely to co-occur with disorders such as substance abuse” Along with this he has poor spending habits, such as buying a boat, and an entire restaurant when heated.

He has few, though some recurring suicidal behaviors and threats. This is evident through him driving with his eyes closed accelerating on the highway while letting the wheel go, and when he tells a current girlfriend that unless she tells him that she loves him, he’s going to hang himself, albeit in the form of autoerotic asphyxiation. This may be one of the symptoms he shows the least of, however, because although he is depressed throughout much of the show, suicide is never really his answer to it, rather filling his life with drugs and alcohol.

He does have very changeable moods as well. This is often seen through anger, which I will also cover number 8 with this, that he will be fine one minute, then filled with rage the next, such as yelling at someone over muffins in a grocery store, or going on rants when someone puts pressure on him or he doesn’t get what he wants. Very rarely does this turn into physical anger or abuse, most of the time resulting in him taking drugs.

His feelings of emptiness and boredom seem to create tons of his problems. He has the need to fill his life with something, but he doesn’t know what. He sometimes wants to get back into filming shows, but fails to go through with that, and fills his life with whatever he can. He has rewatched his own sitcom several times to deal with this boredom, and his emptiness can be described through his quote, “you’re going to do everything in your power to fill that hole with friends and your career and meaningless sex, but the hole doesn’t get filled. And one day, you’re going to look around and you’re going to realize that everybody loves you, but nobody likes you, and that is the loneliest feeling in the world.” (“Bojack Horseman” 305).

Finally, are stress-related paranoid thoughts or severe dissociative symptoms. This is the entirety of episode 511, “The Show-Stopper”. The entire episode shows BoJack’s inability to discern reality from the TV Show that he is filming. He believes that someone in the real world is out to get him, despite it being a part of the show, and the show continues to flip between parallels of BoJack’s personal life, to the show, highlighting him losing touch with what is real and what is not.

Finally, all of this can be attributed to past trauma and relationship to his parents. His father would constantly avoid him, and when he was around, would verbally abuse him, and was even shown getting him drunk. This is after BoJack walked in on him having an affair with his secretary. Finally, he was very absent from BoJack’s life, reflected in the episode “The View From Halfway Down”. While dreaming about a dinner with important people from his life, his father is absent, and is instead represented by the racehorse “Secretariat”, who BoJack idolized as a child, showing he might have turned to the racehorse as a father figure more than his actual biological father. Even more, his mother, though we aren’t given too much, has also shown BPD symptoms, including heavy drinking, mood swings, and the idea of abandonment, when her mother sort of “left” after receiving a lobotomy. This could point to the biological risk factor of BPD, though his environmental factors are much more readily apparent.

The show, given a whole six seasons, gives great room to show how Bojack Horseman displays Borderline Personality Disorder. Although he is oftentimes depressed, and even empty, I feel the show could more highlight this part of the disorder. It is an animated comedy, it isn’t meant to be a perfect one-to-one, and a person not doing anything doesn’t make for a great show, This could be however because his sadness is often too quickly “resolved” through his anger, or his substance abuse. His self image is also up for scrutiny, because although in the earlier seasons he has a very mixed idea of who he is, he begins to settle down later in the series. Finally, his self-harming behaviors. Although he does self-sabotage through things like drinking and substance abuse, things such as cutting or any others are not as apparent. This is also the case when it comes to suicide, only appearing a handful of times throughout the show. Again, this could be attributed to the fact it’s supposed to be a comedic show, and a whole six seasons about a constantly suicidal person doesn’t sound that entertaining. Overall, given that it’s put into Netflix’s comedy section, “Bojack Horseman” does a great job depicting mental disorders, not just in how they affect a person, but also the people around them.

References

Bob-Waksberg, Raphael. (Executive Producer). (2014-2020). BoJack Horseman [TV series]. Torante Television; Netflix.

Borderline personality disorder. (2011). National Institute of Mental Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health.

[scretladyspider]

“why do young people now hate sex? We did it all the time!”

have you considered that your friends could’ve been lying to look ‘cool’ because not wanting/not having sex meant (and often still means) people (like you) would make fun of and socially ostracize them for being ‘prudes’?

You raised generations to think their bodies and libido were sins. But now you’re up in arms that more people are openly admitting that they aren’t interested. Isn’t that what people like you wanted, for younger people to not commit sexual ‘sins’? Are you mad if it worked? what?

This same line of thinking gave us the dichotomy that men and masculine people are supposed to have lots of sex with women and feminine people, but women and feminine people should be ‘pure’ and ‘virginal’

(btw there’s nothing wrong with being a virgin, its neutral, it just means you haven’t had sex. there is something wrong with acting like people who have or haven’t had sex, based on their perceived gender, are more or less worthy than other people. AKA the way purity culture treats virginity.)

Uhm. Which is it? Or does that actually not make any sense when held up to scrutiny?

Maybe Gen Z and younger millennials just aren’t telling you about their sex lives. Or maybe you’re not including anything outside of your narrow heteronormative idea of what sex can be. Or maybe young people are having sex but those who aren’t are now talking about it openly.

Maybe Gen Z and younger millennials aren’t having as much sex and are happy about that. Maybe it’s sex positive, actually, to be able to say “no thank you” without fear of embarrassment from one’s peers. Maybe it’s sex positive to accept if fewer young people are sexually active.

And maybe it’s none of your business and you’re just weirdly obsessive and controlling other people’s bodies and sexuality. Maybe you’re just making everyone uncomfortable, the way you were once made uncomfortable by the social expectations of your elders.

And again… people do lie to fit in. Not out of malice, but because humans are social animals. You’re telling me no one you know ever lied about getting with someone, or didn’t make something up to try and look cool? Come on. We both know that’s just not true.

You can do better than to pass your trauma along to the next generation. If younger people are pressuring each other less about sex, that’s good. Nothings wrong with that. It’s good to let people safely say “no thanks, I’m good”. To me, that sounds like progress, not prudish.

hi you can support me writing about stuff like this on patreon if you’d like. I’m Elle, I am a demisexual/gray ace panromantic agender disabled writer creator person, I make/write a lot of stuff like this on social media. If you like stuff like this, please consider following me here and on other platforms, and/or support me directly to help me keep the lights on. here’s where you can find all my stuff. Thanks! Have an ace day!

[skyeblue8]

𝐋𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐎𝐥𝐲𝐦𝐩𝐮𝐬 𝐯𝐬. 𝐇𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐮𝐯𝐚 𝐁𝐨𝐬𝐬 (𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐩𝐚𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐬)

Whether or not you're all familiar with the Webcomic, Lore Olympus is an award-winning comic created by Rachel Smythe that's essentially about a modern retelling of the Hades and Persephone myth with various other Gods and references in it, and what not. And, assuming you have a critical eye when it comes to writing, it's has become wildly disliked and even hated by a lot of critics and former fans due to the butchering of myths and gods (and a religion), unlikeable characters, poor character design, poorer handling of sensitive topics like SA and racism, and overall the author's inability to listen and take critism that would've helped her improve.

The reason I bring this up at all is because I have the nagging fear that Helluva Boss and, by extension, Hazbin Hotel, are going to be doomed to fall into the same pit of failure as Lore Olympus is, mainly due to a nagging pattern that I've noticed between the two:

The Writers. The two are relatively close in age and, in my opinion, immaturity in writing as evidenced by the various plot inconsistencies, character treatment and development, and poor world-building established in both media. On top of that, however, both have a significantly bad reception to criticism of their work in any way, shape, or form. We've seen this before in how Viv herself states that she's been told that she can't take criticism well since she was 17.

Now, it's one thing to have these claims as a teenager, it's another to have them as a fully grown adult and not learn to mature past this issue by now. The number one issue with ignoring criticism for so long, especially in your very popular work, is that eventually, it's going to show. Sooner or later, many of your fans, regardless of how they felt about your work prior, are gonna notice small flaws that gradually become bigger and more glaring the longer they are ignored.

Time and time again, this issue has arisen in Rachel Smythe's work, both in design:

As well as writing...

Speaking of which, I'm beginning to see a similarity in their writing issues in the fact that, evidently, neither creator had/has any set plan for how their stories are gonna be told. Readers of LO have seen that from the frequent additions of various, random plots with the previously established plots having not been concluded in a meaningful or tactful way, and we see this with Vivzie and Season 2.

Going off this, both Vivzie and Smythe show blatant favoritism towards their main characters or love interests that prevent other characters from having their own development (i.e., Millie), as well as keeps the main couple from having any sort of flaws that the audience would perceive as truly bad, thus removing any nuance to them.

We see this in Persephone and her character:

And we see the same with Stolas and Blitzo, mainly in regards to Stolas' past and situation with Stella, as well as Blitzø's own past as we're made to constantly feel bad for him despite him not being the victim. It's made worse since we've yet to know what he did to every single person he's wronged, but, for that, I'm willing to give the benefit of the doubt until we see more of Season 2.

Lastly, and probably the most glaring thing for me, both Smythe and Vivize take inspiration from real-world religions (RS –> Greek Polytheism; Vivzie –> Christianity/Demonology). These religions are both widespread in their popularity and, thus, are important to millions around the world. Because of this, both should surely have a sense of obligation to not bastardize the stories and characters they referenced in their work and/or should make their likeness relatively similar to their original works so others who know of it are familiar with the characters.

Both creators have failed to do so at some point in time and have gone so far as to push the blame on their audience rather than admit fault and work to improve.

Viv with Beelezbub

And Smythe with Persephone and the other gods/Goddesses:

Worst yet, both use social media as a means of weaponizing their fanbase against those who have a few critiques about each work of media. Now, what I can say for Viv is that the severity of these issues hasn't fully hit her yet, whereas Smythe, despite her awards, is feeling the brunt of her poor writing choices from former fans and readers. While Helluva Boss is more new and doesn't hold as much overwhelming significance to me, I've been with Hazbin Hotel since the beginning before the pilot even aired.

It's because of this that my greatest concern is that if Viv doesn't start seeing through these issues within Helluva Boss and, really, herself, then both shows may be doomed to fail, without Hazbin airing in its entirety. Worse yet, it would be a major blow for fellow indie creators who look up to her as an inspiration, so I really hope she doesn't reach RS's level of infamy in her work. 🙏

*PS: For a better Lore Olympus's viewing experience, I recommend this:

[crazycurly-77]

Memory Loss - Chapter 4

After a short night you sat on your desk the next morning and analyzed a case for another NCIS team. As always you sipped at your coffee and looked at Gibbs’ desk which was standing opposite from you. 

Unfortunately it was the third day in a row unoccupied and you all hoped that would change soon. 

Yes, he could be a real bastard, but on the other hand he could be someone to talk to about everything and who would stand by your side, no matter what. 

It was odd and very weird that he wasn't there. Tony tried his best to hold the team together. Sure, he enjoyed giving orders, but he tried to lighten the mood, too. 

But….he was not Gibbs. 

And that you all perceived. 

The team worked away and tried to act as if everything was normal, but it was really hard and the tension of not knowing what would happen and whether your boss would recover increased with every hour that you anxiously waited for news from him. 

In the afternoon there was suddenly a lot of commotion and then Ducky was nearly storming into the bullpen. He was very excited calling “he's awake!!! The doctor said we should come to the hospital, so come on, let's go!” 

Shouts of joy like “Yes!”, “Yeah!”, “Wonderful!”, “He made it!” were heard in the whole bureau. All were excited and the mood full of tension changed to one full of joy. 

You all were very happy that he woke up, but in this general happiness there was also a certain fear. Would he be the same as before the accident? You were on your way to find out. 

Arriving at the hospital, doctor Miller was already waiting for you. “Hello and thanks for coming” he greeted the whole bunch. 

“As for the health status of Mr. Gibbs…his injuries are healing well and he woke up an hour ago. In order not to overwhelm him, I suggest we visit him all together so we can check if he knows everything and everyone or if there is some partial or whole memory loss. Afterwards, please only visit him individually for the time being in order to protect him.”

You all nodded your consent and then went to the impatient Patient. 

Coming into Gibbs’ sick room he sat in his bed and looked annoyed. “Doctor, when can I go? I have work to do and I'm fine.” “Mr. Gibbs, I'm happy that you are feeling fine, but we need to run several tests before you can go. So, please answer some questions.”

Gibbs huffed out but he had to go through this. If he liked it or not. Then doctor Miller asked him certain things about himself and his colleagues. 

“What's your name?” 

“Leroy Jethro Gibbs” 

“Where do you come from?” 

“Stillwater” 

“What are you doing for a living?” 

“I'm the team leader of the MCRT of the NCIS.”

“Good” the medic said, nodded and made some notes. 

“What happened?” Gibbs then wanted to know. 

“A bomb went off and you were hit very hard on the head by a heavy weight. You were out for 3 days.” replied doctor Miller. 

Gibbs only nodded contemplating what he was told. Then the doc asked him “do you recognize any of the people in this room besides me?” 

“Sure. Timothy McGee, our probie. Anthony DiNozzo, my second in command. Jenny Shepard, director of the NCIS and my former partner in different missions.” Then he paused, thought briefly and said “Doctor Donald Mallard, my brother. Abby Sciuto, my daughter.”

You all give each other surprised and questioning looks and doctor Miller took some notes. 

You yourself were standing right next to his bed and thought he had forgotten about you. It would hit you hard, but after all, you had only been on his team for almost a year. 

But never underestimate Leroy Jethro Gibbs. He hasn't forgotten you, but the exact opposite. 

From his sitting position he looked up at you and his face lit up. 

He took your hands in his and said softly “my love, I'm sorry for worrying you. You must have been out of your mind because of that. But besides a few bruises I'm okay, be assured. It's wonderful seeing you again, I love you. But you already know that.”

He chuckled and then cupped your cheek with one hand, pulled you to him and kissed you softly. 

You didn't know what possessed him, but it was wonderful feeling his lips on yours. And yes, you answered his kiss as softly as he was kissing you. 

Breaking the kiss for air you heard the others gasp. 

At this moment the doc asked “do you know who she is?” Gibbs stared at him for a moment and then, looking lovingly into your eyes, replied “of course I know. That's Y/N Gibbs, my wife.”

(To be continued...)

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Here you will find the other chapters of this story and the other stories I've written to date.

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Tags: @ilovemark1951, @hobby27

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[eggingtontoast]

Please tell me more about how you view Jeri!! I know you’ve talked a bit about her before, but I’d love to know more!!

Oh fuck oh shit oh sweet jesus-

Oh dear god Storm my dear friend you already *know* how I am about Jeri but I'll lay it all out here as well, and I'm collecting stuff from my Campfire Confession Document as well as stuff I've thrown into the BRP discord server.

I will add a disclaimer that I headcanon Jeri as a queer woman, so if that isn't your thing, that's perfectly okay! I will also discuss themes of trauma, abuse, and sexual themes.

NOW HERE WE GO:

Let's talk about themes.

Jeri is a character who only shows up in one Nightmare Time 2 episode, but we can glean a pretty good amount of stuff regarding her character and season that with a healthy dose of headcanon!

Jeri’s main theme is suppression.

That much is evident, she’s hiding the fact that she had premarital sex and a child out of wedlock, something that goes directly against what her church wants. She’s held onto this secret for several years, and, seeing as Lumberaxe/Lil Jerrie is roughly 20, decades.

Her actions in Abstinence Camp also get stopped, be it calling for the police and Boy Jerry stopping her, or her being talked over/ talked for. Jeri doesn't really get to speak for herself, not until she's alone with Grace after having chased her down in the woods. Jeri is a follower, not a leader, when she is around Boy Jerry. She gets little bits and pieces to provide input, but other than that she's pushed aside by Boy Jerry. She doesn't get to speak her mind without judgement!

Therefore, Jeri is afraid.

Jeri’s secondary theme is anxiety.

No seriously, look at her. When faced with the possibility of Steph being pregnant, Jeri starts to spiral and project her own fears onto her. 

This isn't to say that she's purely anxious, but that anxiety and fear are a huge motivator for her and the actions she takes. She goes along with whatever Boy Jerry says because he pokes at her insecurities with having a child out of wedlock, for having sex in the first place, etc.

Let's consider where Jeri comes from.

There's not a lot that canonically mentioned in Abstinence Camp, but it's enough to make a mountain out of a mole hill.

Jeri presents the idea of teen pregnancy to Steph in a way that very much feels like she speaks from experience. We can glean from this that Jeri herself was disowned by her family for having premarital sex and getting pregnant. She's most likely from the same church as the Chasitys, so it's possible that she was raised similarly to Grace or even how Mark and Karen were as kids. In this sense, Jeri's family and church were her main pillars of support, and by getting pregnant when she was younger she lost one of those pillars.

Jeri is someone who is very much a person of trauma. With the way she was raised, she was taught to believe a skewed sense of purity, and with being disowned by those who should love and care for her, and that event weighing on her mind so much to project onto Steph? She has trauma.

Particularly about sex, and probably has a more than healthy dose of fear and anxiety surrounding it, desire, and how she is perceived as a woman. She had a child out of wedlock, was not prepared for it at all, and grapples with the shame of it by leaning on her religion and doing her best to teach other how not to be like her. How not to fall to temptation and sin. She thinks of herself as a shameful, filthy creature, because of how she had sex and got pregnant. To Jeri, she had succumbed to a desire she should have been stronger to refuse, and that to her is one of her greatest shames and secrets.

She feels shame toward herself and her more carnal desires because in her eyes she messed up, and doesn't want to make that same mistake again. Getting pregnant was considered her fault, and that sentiment is shared by Boy Jerry, and possibly her family. Not to mention, that Boy Jerry seems to use her guilt over this as a way to keep her on a short leash and control her, whilst denying any part he's taken in it unless it's useful to him somehow.

This is where I come out and say I'm not the biggest fan of Boy Jerry, haha!

Let's talk about gender and how Jeri's called Girl Jeri.

In our modern day society gender is a hot topic. Be it from gender roles, which are still reinforced to this day, to the ways we transcend from such restrictions. In a setting such as an abstinence camp, campers are segregated by a binary gender system, and as such so are the counselors.

Boys and Girls. Boy Jerry and Girl Jeri. Sure, the nicknames are to maintain a fun and friendly atmosphere for the campers, but I argue that this could also be used to maintain the status quo narrative that Boy Jerry set for both himself and Jeri. They're just fun, quirky, camp directors, nothing weird here! They tell the campers at the start of camp that they can use the nicknames too, but even when both Boy Jerry and Jeri are alone together, they call each other by those nicknames, almost like a reminder to not spill the beans.

We can see in the NMT2 episode that Jerry, while unhinged when under pressure, is methodical albeit frustrated when he finds the dead bodies of the campers. He's exasperated, whereas when Jeri comes across Gabe's dead body, she is shocked and immediately is taken aback. This could be evidence enough that Jerry was the one to present the idea of burying the bodies? But they do come out of the trees together with shovels, so this could just be me picking at straws.

Let's talk about gender roles though. In these religious settings it's not uncommon for the people in it to look toward the idea of man and woman, where the man brings home the bread and the woman looks after the house. We could argue that Jeri does more to maintain the illusion of nothing wrong ever happening at the camp, but that this was Boy Jerry's idea all along. In the NMT2 episode there's a scene where Jerry tells Jeri this line:

"I don't think you've thought this through, Girl Jeri. [...] No, they're gonna poke around. And they're gonna find everything. You ready for that? For the whole town to know what you did, dirty girl?"

Like I've mentioned before, Boy Jerry blames Jeri for getting pregnant with Lil Jerrie. This type of sentiment isn't uncommon, blaming a woman for getting pregnant while not bothering to put any of that blame on the man who impregnated her. In the scene with the quote Boy Jerry is using their shared beliefs to control Jeri and maintain their status quo, keeping her under his grasp to keep himself above her. I bring all of this up because I see her being called Girl Jeri as an extension of that want for control. Hell, it could be even worse. Jerry calling himself Boy Jerry to soften his own actions, whilst calling Jeri, Girl Jeri to belittle her. If Lil Jerrie is around 20, the Jerries are possibly around their 40s.

Jeri's a grown woman. She's a grown woman being called a girl, being treated like a girl, do I have to explain how that can be insulting? I don't think so. We can see from how Boy Jerry talks to her that he calls the shots, and he wants her to listen to him and not put up a fight on how he wants things done. I'm sure there's a part of him that does care about Jeri on some level, but when it comes to the potential of people finding out about Lil Jerrie/Lumberaxe, about the number of dead kids on their hands? He's going to strong arm Jeri into doing what he wants. Jeri is a doormat to Boy Jerry, and he will stomp on her to clean his own boots.

So who is Jeri?

Jeri is traumatized. She is belittled and talked down to. She is forced into a skewed sense of what it means to be a woman, and she is stifled by it. Jeri is a victim, a murder accomplice, a camp director, and a mother. She is fearful, and puts up a front of cheeriness for the sake of the campers she looks after. She carries so much love in her heart for these kids, and she wants to teach them and guide them and impart as much good as she can into each summer at camp. She is scared, because she knows what will happen if any of them "fall from grace" like she did years ago. Jeri looks at each dead camper like a version of herself, and she cannot handle the guilt that comes with each shovelful of dirt she lays over their bodies. And worst of all?

She thinks it's all her fault.

[anxious-critter]

A Few Days Ago There Was A Small Discussion On Twitter About A YouTuber Who Claimed That Rayman Fans Should Be Disappointed With His CLH Version. ~

I Think It's Very Presumptuous For People To Say That Ramon In CLH Is Disrespectful To The Original When Both Characters Are Literally The Same Person Who Ended Up Going Through Different Lifes Experiences.

Let's Do A Little Character Analysis? ;)

First Of All Just Letting You Know That My Area Of Study Is In The Phenomenology Of Perception, So We'll See How The Way Ramon Perceives The World Around Him Has Shaped Who He Is.

I Also Think It's Important To Highlight That This Analysis Should Not Be Aimed At Real People, So Please Don't Derail. ��⁠_⁠ಠ

We Start With The Fact That Ramon Moved Into Dolph's Reality At A Very Young Age, He Probably Grew Up Isolated And Rejected From Society With The feeling Of Being The Only One Of His Kind And He Remained The Aloof "Weirdo" Even When Eden Arose.

He Became The Funny Charismatic Creature, A Mascot For Eden, Even With The Spotlight On Himself He Continued To Be Dehumanized By Those Around Him.

Observing His Home We Can Notice How Empty It Is, The Furniture Is Small Because Of His Height Which Makes The Apartment Seem Even Bigger, With The Exception Of The Tv, This Not Only Demonstrates The Way He Feels Among Humans [Such A Small Being In A World That Doesn't Welcome Him Very Well], But Also In The Way That "Being On Tv" Occupies A Large Part Of His Life.

And We Also Have All This Mess, This Not Only Indicates That He Doesn't Want Cleaners In His Apartment, This Also Ends Up Demonstrating His Mental State... A Complete Mess.

He Really Cares About Children, Especially Hybrid Children Because He Sees Himself In Them, He Genuinely Believed He Was An Inspiration To Them But In The End He Was Just A Puppet Being Used By Those Who Practice Everything He So Abhors.

Suffering Speciesism From Red And Being Censored When Trying To Defend Himself Was Also A Trigger For Him And That's Why He Got So Drunk That Night. Money, Fame, Eden, None Of This Prevented Him From Suffering Discrimination Again. Things Don't Get Better For Minorities, In The End.

About Substance Abuse, People Will Try To Deal With Their Traumas And Loneliness In Many Different Ways And Substance Abuse Ends Up Being One Of Them, Basically An Escape Route From His Own Mind. It's Not Pleasant To See, But It Unfortunately Happens.

Knowing That Things Are Not As He Thinks And That He Was Being A Part Of This Was Too Much For Him, He Never Wanted Something Like This After All And As If It Wasn't Enough To Be Replaced Soon After, They Were Never Interested In Who He Was On The Inside, They Just Wanted A Friendly And Face To Spread Their Lies.

Rayman Using Weapons Is Nothing New And Knowing That Ramon Doesn't Have Powers [Or Doesn't Know How To Use Them] Using Guns Ended Up Being The Safest Way For Him, Killing The Council Was Not Just An Act Of Revenge, It Was Also An Act Of Despair, Fear, Guilt And Anger.

So On One Side We Have Rayman, Who Grew Up In A Healthy Environment With Loved Ones Around Him And On The Other Side We Have Ramon, Who Has Spent His Entire Life Trying To Fit In And Begging, Begging For Mercy, Begging For A Job, Begging For Acceptance...

In The End, They End Up Being The Same, But They Have Gone Through Different Life Experiences And Different Ways Of Dealing With Life's Difficulties, In The End, The Way We Perceive The World Around Us Ends Up Shaping Who We Are.

This Turned Out To Be Simpler Than I Intended, But Thanks For Reading. (⁠ ⁠ꈍ⁠ᴗ⁠ꈍ⁠)

MY FIRST TEXT HERE YAY!!! ＼⁠(⁠◎⁠o⁠◎⁠)⁠／

[donnapalude]

i was also thinking that one of the many reasons a lot of s3/s4/post-series silverflint fics don't work for me (even assuming that they could get together) is that the power-struggle silver feels as fundamental to their relationship is often really under-represented in their sexual dynamic. and i don't mean that they should be kinkier.

i just mean that silver spends basically every second that we see of him assessing (whether consciously or not) who between him and flint has the upper hand and re-interpreting even their warmest interactions under this lense, waiting for one of them to assert definitive dominance by killing the other. there is no part of their story in which he is not considering any sign of weakness by either of them as a somewhat calculated risk at best and defeat at worst, in a struggle that he feels inevitable and that, even when they are friends, always mantains undertones of waryness. it's not really on purpose, it's clearly a panic-induced defense mechanism and i have theories about why it's there. but the fact remains that flint is evidently not on the same wave-length wrt this: although prideful in general, he sees partial surrender as a normal part of a romantic relationship, not as a danger and clearly also not as humiliation. translating this into sex looks very thorny to me. if a lot of groundwork is not laid down to disentrench silver from this mentality, it seems very likely that he would also read sex as a binary outcome between domination and submission. by which again i don't refer to the kinkiness of it, but to the fact that his fear of being subjugated is such that he would infer real stakes of victory and defeat hinge on what goes on in the bedroom. and that flint, not feeling like this at all, would probably perceive this with unease. it's not unsolvable, it just triggers my disbelief when i read stories about them immediately finding their groove wrt their respective sexual roles, without any complicated process of deconstruction happening regarding their relationship to power.