#call out the abuse and belittlement of women by men every day. you know. the things intrinsic to our society because of

[rpfofficial]

all r-dfem blogs on here are always posting 3 things: a) most vitriolic disgusting display of shaming people for how they look which almost always implicitly or explicitly aligns with some kind of eugenics or racism, b) how everyone who isnt them or disagrees with them is stupid or misguided or has no hope left for them, and c) how lonely and isolated they feel all the time . I wonder when they will join the dots

[fuedalreesespieces]

inukag week - day 5: personal space

the meaning of touch

read on ao3!

tw: non graphic verbal/physical abuse; implied sexual content

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His mother stood by the misty bridge like a troubled wraith, shrouded in cool fog and the humid atmosphere of midsummer.�� 

Inuyasha eavesdropped from the entry hall of their home, half-hidden in the shadows. He was supposed to be in their shared chamber, sleeping after a long evening of tepid play, but he’d found himself restless and unable to. Instead he’d watched through one attentive eye as his mother brushed out the tangles in her dark hair, the air heavy with the acrid stench of anxiety. She behaved as though there were an unwelcome specter lingering at her back, driving coldness into her stiff shoulder blades and making her elegant posture break in ways he had never seen before.  

Inuyasha crept closer down the bridge that separated their home from the shore. From the fog emerged an old woman, dressed in rather plain robes. Her lustrous hair was piled high, twin strands cusping her lower jaw. The grooves in her face were numerous, eroded by the years, and thus her deep frown looked much more severe than it ought to. She held herself high, chin sharply jutting out, and Izayoi’s own rose to match.  

“Mother,” she greeted.  

The woman said nothing in response. She made no move to cross the threshold onto the bridge, halting at the grassy shore. Her eyes perused the house with distaste. “How many days has it last been since I visited you, Izayoi?”  

“I believe thirteen moons.”  

“Thirteen moons...” she murmured. A fan beat a steady wind against her clammy skin. “What an insufferable evening.”  

“The lake is cool,” Izayoi remarked mechanically. “The heat never becomes unbearable here.”  

“I’m glad of it. We did not visit often when you were a child, but I recall...the still lake was such a beautiful sight. Do you remember?”  

“It was quite some time ago, mother.”  

“How halcyon it was,” she continued, her eyes closing as she descended into an unseen dream. “The sun high in the sky, casting fragments of light against the serene blue. The water seemed to roll out from the horizon like a bolt of fine silk. Sometimes we would not permit ourselves to enter for fear of ruining its sanctity, even though those were our waters to wade in. There was a scared nature...” her words drifted. “How halcyon it was.”  

“Indeed,” said Izayoi. Inuyasha couldn’t see her face, only the tip of her finger digging into her waist, drawing circles through the layers of fabric. She did the same thing for him at night, when she gently bade him to forget the smothering heat of summer and slumber.  

“But I can’t see a thing now. All this fog. I can hardly glimpse the water itself. So thick. How do you bare it?”  

“There has always been fog at this time of year,” Izayoi responded tiredly.  

“Ah, but it was quite some time ago,” she echoed. “You fail to recognize an omen when it presents itself, but I do not. At least one of us remembers when you were my daughter.”  

“Mother-”  

“Thirteen moons? Thirteen moons you waste away with that creature you call a son?”  

Izayoi drew in a breath. “If this is all you came for, to belittle me in my own house- ”  

“Your what?” her mother snapped. “House? What house? You forget you own nothing. Every blade of grass, every plank of wood, every drop of water in this lake belongs to your father. Our family, which you have forsaken tenthfold. The sole thing of value in your possession, you gave away to the first youkai to slip in your bed. And now you are nothing. Where has he gone, after he’s ruined you?”  

“Toga has passed,” Izayoi said with chilling calm. “He died in battle. You know this.”  

“Dead,” her mother parroted. “And thank the kami for it, if that is the truth. But is it so? The journey home from war is long and tedious, and no matter what barren wastelands men find themselves trekking, there will always be women other than their wives. Women to help them forget. Do you believe he thinks of you?” Her eyes narrowed into slits. “Stupid girl.”  

Inuyasha couldn’t help it – part of him surged forward on impulse. He managed to stop himself before he got too close, but his clumsy steps on the bridge’s creaking staves quickly drew the attention of the two women.  

“Inuyasha!” Izayoi cried. “What are you doing up?”  

“I - I was thirsty,” he mumbled. He could manage no more than a lie when he saw her face. She looked how she did when she was holding back tears in front of him, her face contorting in an effort to keep the tears at bay, desperate for a moment of recluse.   

“Inuyasha?” her mother repeated. She laughed, and the roosting birds scattered from their trees. “How fitting. Let me get a look at it.”  

Her gaze felt inescapable. The wooden rails of the bridge closed in on either side of him, and he became so miniscule that she could have plucked him off like an insect. Her eyes drank in his darker toned skin, a contrast to Izayoi’s pale complexion, and the clawed tips of his fingers. They drew a path up his neck, where they briefly met his own citrine-colored pupils, and continued until they came to rest on his crop of unruly white hair and the twitching ears nestled there. She watched his ears for a long time, the wrinkles in her face shifting like ripples in water. Her words had abandoned her.  

“Inuyasha,” his mother whispered. “Go inside. I shall join you in a moment.”  

He didn’t argue with her. She looked so hurt, so inexplicably worn down, and all the radiance from that morning had drained into the darkness of the lake.   

Inuyasha returned to their rooms and tried to sleep – he tried, but he couldn’t dim his awareness any more than he could make himself disappear. He heard the woman who was his grandmother choke on her words, the woman who had been so wickedly verbose struggling to find a term that would best describe him. And when she found she could not, she released an long, harrowing sigh, and he heard her steps retreat further away.  

I nearly pity you , she finally said. That you should have to look at it every day.   

The most he was able to get out of his mother was that his obaa-san visited at her leisure – whether to lecture her daughter or convince her of something, Inuyasha couldn’t tell. Izayoi refused to speak any longer about it, and in the days following his grandmother’s visit, spent long hours sitting by the edge of the lake with him nestled in the folds of her robes, staring at the opaque surface as though discerning how long the drop would take.  

Inuyasha stared deep at the water too, but he cared nothing for what lay underneath, only the glassy reflection that observed him in return. Later, he learned what word his grandmother had been searching for: hanyo.  

. . .

 Inuyasha had grown accustomed to various stares throughout his adolescence. The jawless gapes, like fish plucked from water; the shrunken pupils and stiff mouths; the frustratingly vacant eyes of his brother. At first they’d been like individual pricks to his skin, irritating and omnipresent, but he determined they were preferable to what people did when their disgust overrode their fear.  

The first person to hit him had been Sesshomaru. He hadn’t even touched Inuyasha, claiming it was beneath him – instead he had flogged him with his poison whip after Inuyasha trailed behind him longer than he deemed tolerable.   

“I shan’t repeat myself, hanyo ,” he said, his voice serene in the face of Inuyasha’s torrent of sobs. The strike had cut through his cheek, splitting apart his skin like rotting linen seams. The pain was unlike anything he had ever known. “Stay out of my sight. Look elsewhere for charity.”  

Inuyasha couldn’t name the second person to hit him, nor the third. Faceless villagers, whose long, thick fingers he recalled far better than their names. They had caught him stealing fruit from their orchards and dragged him in front of the others. It had been a spectacle. They had tried to pry the Fire-Rat off him when they realized it protected him from being burnt.  

He came to expect being beaten – it was the secondary response, the realization that this hanyo might have been half-youkai, but he was also a child and therefore easier to put down. And when he was no longer a child, he was less youkai and more an angry shell of a person, spiteful towards everyone, even the memory of his mother.   

Why? He thought. Why didn’t you warn me this was going to be the reality someday? Had she thought she would live forever with him in that blasted haven over the lake, and he would never have to confront the world and its hatred?  

Thoughts like those dissolved quick as they came. He couldn’t be angry with her when she had suffered more than he ever had. It was difficult to remember his mother when all his emotions ran a vicious circuit: hurt was quickly followed by anger, and he could no longer recall the memory of his mother without getting furious at everything that had happened – his father’s untimely death, her family, whom blamed Izayoi for their destitution, her mother who visited only to mock her, Izayoi’s slow descent into sickness and her miserable passing. So he resolved not to think at all.  

. . .

 

We are alike, you and I.  

Inuyasha sat in the boughs of a flowering cherry blossom tree, thoughts consumed by the woman at its feet. She sat underneath the tree, her bow and arrow laying in the grass. Village children flanked her on all sides, a small army, and their idle chatter was swept up to his ears by the drifting wind. Their discarded laundry baskets laid abandoned by the riverside.  

Do I look human to you, Inuyasha? Kikyo had asked. She talked as though he were supposed to regard her as a statue, but the question hadn’t made a single bit of sense to him. Humanity wasn’t a state of living, it was an identity that depended solely on your ascendants. If he had been taught anything in his life, it was this.   

Still, she was different than the other humans he had come across. Perhaps it was her occupation as a miko that made her so unafraid of him, a fact that kept him irate even now. Fear was the only reliable source he could draw power from. If people feared him, they left him alone, and there was no trouble in that. It was the best outcome.   

But Kikyo neither feared him nor left him alone. Her questions frustrated him because he didn’t know one human who would bother to ask a half-human what they thought constituted humanity. He waited for her to drop her absurd niceties and shoot him, but she never did.   

She talked like she had no company, and that was something else he didn’t understand. Perhaps she couldn’t divulge her secrets to the innocent children who deserted their chores each evening to be at her side, but he knew for certain she had a sister with whom to express her feelings to. Why she came to him was something inscrutable, but he would admit that he enjoyed listening to her talk. It had been a long time since he had heard the voice of another so calm, and even longer since he had shared an opinion.  

 He began to feel disappointed when she had to leave, which was pathetic on its own – as if he hadn’t lived just fine without her conversations. But pathetic as it was, he craved them, even if that meant divvying his attention between her voice and the bow slung behind her back.   

Inuyasha wondered if she hurried to meet him in the way he did. If she thought about him during her mundane duties. Sometimes he could feel her stare on him, inquisitive and probing, and hear her heartbeat grow irregular. Irregular described his feelings, too, especially when Kikyo began to broach the topic of the jewel and her new intended use for it. Kikyo had smiled as she explained it to him, a rosy, uncharacteristic blush lining her cheeks. We would be free , she said, and hope shined in her dark eyes like oil on water.  

To think someone wanted a future with him. It was the closest to happiness he had felt in years, the thought of being promised to someone else. Did this make him her husband? She had not said. He’d only spied glimpses of domestic life, men who kissed their wives before leaving for the morning, hugged them in times of crisis. He and Kikyo had never even touched fingers before.   

We are alike, you and I , she’d once said.   

If we were alike , he thought, you wouldn’t have to sit so far away from me.   

But maybe this was love – sitting with an ocean between them.  

. . .

The memories came in pieces, sluggishly assembling themselves in his mind. He remembered being strung up and bitten, being freed by fervent, gingerly hands. Kagome .   

His neck was wet and throbbing, slick with blood, and his skin burned, as though he were resting on coals. He had tasted poison before, but only in his half-demon state, and even then he’d had to swallow the sting and pretend it wasn’t painful. Now he had neither the strength nor the inhibition to make an effort at anything.  

A wet cloth pressed gently against his head. His eyes opened, sticky with sweat and trying to adjust to the dimness of the room they were sequestered in. The first thing he registered was Kagome leaning over him, her hair falling past her shoulder like a dark curtain separating them from the others.   

“Sorry,” she whispered, clutching the handkerchief to her chest. “Did I wake you?”  

“No,” he croaked. At the sight of her, everything returned to him in a swift, painful recollection: the indignant orphan girl and the disguised spider-youkai, Inuyasha’s eventual capture, and Kagome, climbing the web of stony limbs to rescue him, Tessaiga in hand. She’d approached him with the courage he had come to associate with her, but she had also been crying, and that had baffled him so much that he’d turned the scene over and over in his lethargic thoughts like a heated stone.  

“I’ve been thinking,” he said slowly, without any of the hesitation that came with full consciousness, “why...were you crying for me?”  

Kagome stared at him. Hers was the earnest, genuine sort that he had to fashion a name for because he had never seen anything like it. “Because...I thought you were going to die.”  

Because I thought you were going to die. A statement that wouldn’t have been damning to anyone but her.  

He remembered her frantic climb towards him, hours earlier when he’d tried to fight the spider-monk despite having been drained of his youki . She’d yelled at him for telling her to run away even though it was the most rational decision of them all. It was the instinct of survival he thought fueled everyone, just as it fueled him, but she crouched among the poison webs and remained by his side. Kindness was her instinct and she kept it like an oath.  

I will not leave here without you, she told him, and it was a demand despite the tears building in her eyes.  

“Your lap...” he murmured. His throat felt filled with ash. “Will you lend me your lap?”  

Kagome blinked owlishly. Her response was more a question. “Uh...sure.” She carefully adjusted his head. “There...is that better?”  

“Yes.” She was pleasantly warm. If he had been resting on a bed of coals earlier, she was the soothing crackle of flames from a distance. He hardly noticed the approaching sun or the tingle of radiance at his feet. A comforting scent perfumed the air – the aroma of fresh lavender, mild yet sweet.  

His eyes fluttered shut from exhaustion. “You smell good.”  

Kagome made a sound of disbelief. “But...” her voice trailed off, “you said you hated my scent.”  

He blamed the next words to come out of is mouth on delirium: “Well...I was lying.”  

Sleep claimed him before he could hear her response. The morning after, as their boat went downstream, he pretended not to recall a thing, even as he saw the questions behind Kagome’s eyes. He had practically flayed himself open that night and she had been there to see it, and he knew if she asked, he would have no viable answers for his vulnerability.  

He didn’t know if she thought often of that night, but he did. Every time she made a choice to stand at his side, he was reminded of her fearlessness and it compelled him to be a little more forward with her. She was always so forward with him , after all – wrapping her arms around his shoulders, leaning her head against his, laying close to him, speaking her mind.  

People whispered about her, and others were not so discreet. Inuyasha would turn to her, expecting her to defend herself in the way she defended him, but her eyes were always closed, a quaint smile on her face. Either she didn’t hear or she didn’t care. She was so much better at it than he.  

. . .

He was an idiot to think that things would be smooth sailing from here on out, but it was difficult to feel anything other than stupid bliss. Kagome was here , she was in his arms, and everything bad that had ever happened to him was null and void.  

Except that it wasn’t, and it took Kagome to realize it. A few weeks into her return, she moved in with him, and became that much harder to keep away from her. She slept beside him each night, her soothing scent exuding through the sheets. Their shoulders touched and their hands found each other easily in the dark.  

The kissing was new – or rather, in his case, the act of reciprocation. Kagome kissed his cheek before departing to Kaede’s for her miko training; nipped his nose just to see the face he would make. He returned her kisses with equal enthusiasm, his lips brushing over her smooth knuckles and forehead. It was an action that came with ease after years of dreaming of it.  

One evening, she found his way into his lap while they kissed. He felt something building in him, an intensity that propelled his hands down her shoulders and to her waist. Her own hands were pressed against his chest, until they too grew restless. There was a shock of cold as he felt the panels of his kosode split apart.  

I pity you, that you should have to look at it every day.  

His grip on Kagome’s waist tightened. Cloth pooled at the crooks of his elbows. Her lithe fingers trailed down his chest.  

Look at him. Found him in the fields, digging at our food. The smell of ash from a burning torch. Let’s teach him a lesson, eh?   

The irori fire crackled and popped. The scent of it was nauseating.  

“Inuyasha?”  

His vision focused. Kagome was hardly a breath away, but her expression was concerned. The tails of her mussed hair fell down her back in loose curls. “Are you okay?”  

“Ah...” he swallowed. “Sorry.”  

“Did I do something?”  

“No,” he said hurriedly, breathless from their previous actions. “No, I just – I just...” He refrained from cursing at his own ineptitude. “I dunno...I just froze. I’m sorry. We can – we can try again, if ya want.”  

She squeezed his hand. “If you aren’t in the mood, you can always tell me.”  

But I am , he wanted to say. The mood was all he had been in for the past few weeks. Now that he’d finally been given a chance to act on his feelings, memories that had laid shriveled up inside him were resurfacing.   

Why? Why now, when he was the happiest he’d ever been?   

Kagome accepted his sudden silence, sinking into his chest. After a few moments, he wrapped his arms around her, and she snuggled closer, releasing a quiet sigh. He held her until her breathing evened out, carrying her to their futon to settle her gingerly upon the thick animal pelts they’d hunted and sewn together into blankets.   

He closed the panels of his kosode , and his bare chest disappeared beneath the fabric. She had touched it before, back during their questing days, but only when he was heavily injured. Even then he had argued against it.  

Inuyasha decided that he’d simply been nervous and amended that tomorrow he would do better. If he could sleep beside her, hold her, and kiss her, then what followed shouldn’t have made him act like this. He should be able to return her gestures as assuredly as she gave them. He would get over himself soon. 

... 

“Kagome,” he breathed out. “Kagome...a minute.”  

She peered up at him with an coquettish expression, her lips ghosting over his collarbone. Rain fell outside, and the air was damp and heavy with inescapable humidity. The occasional flash of lightning illuminated his wife’s body in strokes of startling white. “Mm?”  

“I need...” he rose, suddenly finding it difficult to inhale. “A minute.”  

I pity you, that you should look at it every day.  

He pivoted towards the other wall, where he could see the dead ashes of the fire that had long gone out. His heart raced. He felt the urge to draw his protective garbs over his skin, covering them up from sight.   

“Inuyasha?” Kagome said his name tentatively.   

Grab him. He’s tryin’ to run away.  

“I’m alright,” he reassured. His head was spinning. “‘Jus give me a second.”  

Thunder shook the earth. A cold, shallow wind brushed against his bare skin. Behind him, Kagome moved positions in the blankets. Earlier her sleeping robe had hung at her shoulders, and now it sank even lower, barely covering the slope of her breasts. She’d been flustered and embarrassed, but he had kissed her firmly and told her she was beautiful, and she had opened up further. Yet here he was.  

What the hell is wrong with you?  

His wife came to sit beside him. She looked anxious, and he internally cursed for the nth time. “I just...I want to know if I did something that made you uncomfortable.”  

“’Gome...”   

“I don’t want you to feel pressured,” she murmured. “Please talk to me.”  

Lightning flashed. The air was electric, and so was the sight of her, dark hair tumbling down her back, the curve of her waist under the silk kosode. “I...I want to,” he said. “I want to be with you. I just keep...”  

“Freezing?” she suggested.  

“Yeah,” he mumbled. “I’m not gonna let it happen again, I swear-”  

She held up a hand. “Inuyasha, that’s not something you can ignore.”  

“But-”  

She shook her head. “Come here.” She gestured to the blankets next to her. Hesitantly, he brought himself over to where she sat among the furs.   

After a stretch of silence, she asked, “Can you describe it for me?”  

Kagome drew circles in his arm, tickling his skin, warm against the growing cold. “I remember things.”  

“What sorts of things?”  

“’Jus things...from when I was younger. I don’t like to think about ‘em. But I remember anyway.” He breathed a stiff, humorless laugh. “It was years ago. Don’t see why it started matterin’ now.”  

She paused. “What exactly do you remember?”  

“I...” His voice broke. The details were blurry, and for years he’d purposefully suppressed them so they would be difficult to recall. “A lotta things, I guess. Mostly the way people acted towards me. They got physical sometimes, before I knew how to protect myself. And when they didn’t, they just said things.” Lighting flashed again, followed by a sound that resembled a mountain cracking in half. “Like I said...it was a long time ago.”  

“It wasn’t that long ago,” said Kagome. Her voice was quiet. “We fought Naraku three years ago, and I still have nightmares about him. Even if it was long ago, some experiences effect us for a while afterwards. Especially cruel ones.”  

He couldn’t meet her eyes, but he could feel her fingers weaving between his limp ones. “In my time, there was a girl I knew whose father was arrested for beating her when she was a child. She didn’t like when people touched her – she would get really angry and constantly looked around her. Sometimes she’d faint. Those were the reactions her body had because of the things that happened to her...and these are yours.”  

But I’m not scared of you. I want to touch you. Why does it all hinge on shit that happened years ago, said and done by people who are all probably in the grave by now? Why do they get a say in my life long after they tried to ruin it?  

“Inuyasha?”  

“Sorry, ‘Gome,” he managed. His pounding head laid heavy in his hands. He hadn’t felt this disoriented since a battle, and he hated how that was the first and most accessible comparison his mind conjured.   

Kagome embraced him, her hug fiercely tight. He slowly wrapped his arms around her, breathing in her scent. “Don’t ever apologize for something like this.”  

They stayed like that until the sweat on his back cooled and the rain had slowed to a lethargic rhythm. Its sound reminded him of the machine in Kagome’s room, its hands shifting every second to show the change in time. He’d broken one of them by accident, but the larger one on her wall, the one that didn’t shriek, was still ominous in its silence.   

“We’ll take it step by step,” Kagome said, parting from where she sat against his chest.  “We don’t have to go fast. If there’s ever a time where you start to feel uncomfortable, you tell me and we’ll stop immediately. Does that sound okay?”  

 “But what about you?”  

“What about me?”  

“Are ya...are ya okay with waiting?”  

Her eyes shone. “Oh, Inuyasha.” The way she said his name, an achingly familiar combination of sweetness and exasperation, made a fraction of the stress weighing over him fade. “I didn’t come back solely for this. I came back because I wanted to see you . I’m not waiting for you to be with me in that way, I’m waiting for you to be comfortable so we can both enjoy it. And if we never do it, that’s okay, too.”   

He didn’t know what to say to that.  

She did, though. Somehow she never ran out of the right things to say. “I get pretty happy just waking up to your face, you know. That’s all I ever wanted.”  

. . .

It took much longer than he ever could have imagined. He’d hoped he could just close his eyes and will the fear away, but as Kagome had had to remind him several times, it simply didn’t work that way. This couldn’t be cut down with a sword or sealed away with a sutra. It was the tedium of winnowing on a hot afternoon, separating grains and knowing the work would last ages. The effort was often chased by heavy guilt that he was failing his wife in some way, despite her constant reassurance otherwise.  

The severe dichotomy of their intimacy was frustrating. He could be in the midst of enjoying Kagome’s ministrations, then suddenly experience intense discomfort following a particular memory. Some days were better than others, though, and he found that the best ones were when he focused on his wife – unraveling her in and out without removing so much as his kosode .   

After their first few attempts, when they’d redress and lay together by the fire, Kagome urged him to talk about the specific memories he saw. He’d been vague, partly because he didn’t know how to discuss something he’d vowed to never dwell on, but mostly because he was pulling at dregs. He didn’t remember many of the things that had happened, just a few vivid snippets that threw a hot spoke into their sexual ventures.   

And when he did remember something, it was like choking out a gourd. Kagome was always encouraging, but when she sensed it was too difficult, she offered to leave the room and allow him some privacy.   

Stay , he’d said. I want you to stay here.  

Kagome’s patience awed him. When he couldn’t bring himself to talk, she would tell him something about her day, a mundane but safe topic. Her soothing voice was like a frail beam of light through the fog that settled between them, leading him back into her arms, slowly but surely. Sometimes she got him to laugh with silly anecdotes, and their conversations would grow miscellaneous until they fell asleep.  

It won’t be like climbing a hill , she’d told him. It won’t just be a burst of effort to the peak. It’s more like...a rocky path, maybe. There are smooth parts and rough parts, but the longer you spend on it, the more ways you learn to navigate it.  

She had been right, in a way. Their first time together had been a thing of dreams, and he’d enjoyed it as much as she had, but when they tried again the next day, the discomfort returned tenthfold.  

Kagome found him by the riverbank near their hut, where the village women met in hordes to do the washing. “Inuyasha?”  

He responded with a toneless grunt. She sat down next to him, dressed in her thin kosode, barefoot against the wet grass. The river was clear and smooth as a jade mirror. He hadn’t seen himself in a while, not in a reflection so still. He looked haunted, like his mother had all those years ago, the weight of her actions hanging over her when his grandmother visited.  

“Why’d you come out here?” he asked.  

Her eyes flickered towards him. “Do you want me to leave?”  

“...No,” he said. “‘s just...I thought it’d be fine now. It’s happenin’ again .”  

“It’s not something that’ll go away just ‘cause you succeed once,” she said gently. “Yesterday...” Her cheeks flushed. “Yesterday was wonderful . But it might not be something you can do every day, at least for a while. You might not even want to for weeks.”  

He couldn’t imagine that, given how much he had enjoyed yesterday, but now she had reminded him that going downhill was indeed a possibility. He fell backwards into the grass and tried not to think about the memory that had brought him out of it earlier, but started talking anyway: “My grandmother was such a bitch.”  

Kagome couldn’t help it – she snorted. “W-what?”  

“My grandmother,” he repeated. “On my ma’s side. She’d come over once a year. Just to say shitty things to my mother. Call her an embarrassment, say she had brought their family down...really, though, she wanted to say all that shit to me , but my mother hid me away during her visits. Told me to sleep. I should’a listened when I had the chance.”  

Kagome frowned. He could tell she was angry but didn’t want him to think it was directed at him – her clenched fists gave it away, though. “They were just looking for a scapegoat,” she muttered. “Someone to blame for everything. Anyone but themselves.”  

“They were already losin’ money when I was born – my mother was supposed to be promised to some prince to keep ‘em out of poverty, but then she met my old man.” His ears twitched as a flock of birds flew from the trees. “My grandmother saw me on one of her visits. She was a chatty woman...never shut up. But when she saw me she didn’t say anything except that she pitied my ma.”  

He paused, mouth dry. “Her face was...it was like crumpled paper. She wasn’t even pissed like everyone else, just sad. It was probably the first time she acted sad for my mother, even though she would’a swore my mother was goin’ straight to hell.”  

“She’s going to hell.” Kagome muttered. At his shocked look, she amended, “your grandmother, I mean.”  

He choked out a laugh. “ Geez , Kagome.”  

“We were both thinking it.”  

“I dunno if the village miko should be the one to say it out loud.”  

“I think that gives me more authority to say it, actually,” she teased. “I have a feeling.”  

“Oh?” he drawled. His hands traced line of her cheekbone, and her mouth widened into a grin as he drew her into a kiss.  

When they parted, she rested her head against his chest, her luminous hair splayed over his bare skin. “So...she is actually dead, right?”  

He scoffed. “’S been fifty-three years, and she was already old. If she’s still alive, she’s kami-blessed.”  

“Ah, so she was youkai all along.”  

They shared a laugh, laying together at the river’s edge, and he felt the coil in his stomach unfurl, relief spreading through him like a balm.  

. . .

“Inuyasha...”  

“No.”  

“ Inuyasha. ”  

“No. Go back ta sleep.”  

“Let me go!” Kagome squirmed in his arms, but he held her waist steadfastly. “I have to see Kaede early!”  

“She’ll be fine,” he grumbled. “Stay.”  

“I’ll S-I-T-you,” she deadpanned.  

“Not like this ya won’t.”  

“You’d be surprised what I can try when I’m annoyed enough,” she said dryly. “As much as I’d like to sleep here for another five minutes, I’m not about to fall into your trap again.”  

He yawned, one arm locked around her waist, and blinked the sleep from his eyes. His long, white hair draped over his toned back and shoulders, falling in loose, lazy circles against his skin. “What trap?”  

She blushed. “ That trap.”  

“No idea what you’re talkin’ about. Sleep.”  

Kagome sighed, sinking under the blankets. “Five minutes, then.”  

“Five minutes.”  

He intended to keep her there for at least half the day, but she didn’t need to know that. He just wanted to hold her for a while.

[wild-wombytch]

I learned from "Punk Santa", the punk who gave me the CDs today -and who happened to have known my father- that someone I knew died last week. I'm not taking it really well.

(under the cut because it's a long vent of many many messy thoughts and also tw moid, you don't have to read about men, and tw child abuse and death)

It's fucked up because I'm aware I'm likely idolising him and that maybe if I saw him again before he died I would now find him as awful as the next man...but he was oddly extremely dear and important to me, because he was the one normal and not creepy adult I had when I grew up. By being normal he was the anomaly of my world. The one kind man I ever knew growing up, way before my middle-school teachers. He saw me with my curly hair and patiently listened to me enthusiastically talk about insects and horses and videogames for hours, asking questions and stuff, joking, encouraging me to express my views and emotions, explaining things to me wisely, defending me when my father belittled me and made me cry and scolding drunk other guests who would have inappropriate vocabulary or discussions around me. He was younger than my parents but much more responsible and caring than my father ever was. He was Yugoslav. The man born in a country that didn't exist anymore. He had six younger sisters he raised with his single mother. He was into drugs and shits but that's why he never had a partner that I ever heard of, because he said he knew he was a walking problem and his life sucked and didn't want to drag someone into this. He never said he was feminist like all these libfem men, he just respected women. Or at least he seemed so to me as a little girl who grew up with the worse examples of men around, including men pissing with the toilet door open. Even my mother said she wished she saw him again and that he was a green flag. One of my doggo who died two months before my father was the baby of his dog. I remember playing with her pups in the backyard of this man. I was the one who taught them how to respond to whistling.

One day, to cheer me up after some verbal abuse from my father that made me cry, I don't remember the exact context, but he said jokingly he'd marry me (in a very non-creepy way, that wasn't serious at all). I believe it was after some shit my father told me about being so gross or temperamental as a person that nobody would ever want me or some shit (when I was like. Five).

We stopped seeing him after he called out my father on his bullshits in my and my mother's defence, because my father likely "blacklisted" him from his circles then. We never really knew the whole story. Maybe it was also sickening to him to be powerless about the situation my mother and I were in. He was genuinely sorry for us.

I don't know. I missed him. I've been thinking about him this year and for months I was frantically searching for him, asking every gutter punk about him, asking an acquaintance if by any chance the guy with the same name he mention could be him...I really believed it was a question of time before our paths crossed again. I dreamt about him and me going to a travel together 2-3 weeks ago, with him listening to my enthusiastic talk about horses and being happy to catch up after I was confronted with weird monsters...I never dreamt about him before. I should've known.

It's hurting maybe more than losing a family member in a way. Apparently he was sick or something like that and didn't go get treatment. He died alone. Not long after his dog, who birthed the one I had. I don't even know this man's family name. His exact age. His birthday.

I feel sick. It's not my fault or responsibility, yet I can't help but wonder...what if I met "Punk Santa" three weeks ago? He knew about this man, he could've told me where he lived. I could've seen him one last time. Maybe kick his ass to go to the hospital. Maybe he wouldn't have died. He was at most in his early fifty. He had so many years before him. I can't believe it was his time yet. I missed him by one week and now I'll never see him again. I quite literally do not care about anyone who was around me when I grew up, if they die painfully (except "Punk Santa", grandpa's cool), in all honesty, they probably deserve it, but this man...I don't know if it's because I'm not in a great place psychologically but it's really messing me up. My actual self doesn't feel much connection with my past self due to the severe depersonalisation, derealisation and ptsd I experience, so I'm numb, but when I think of the little girl who is still somewhere inside of me, she's absolutely devastated and heartbroken and suddenly I can't stop crying. And there is this obvious fracture inside of me where all of these emotions mix up and are so hard to identify and deal with. It's unfair. Of all those awful men, he was the one who least deserved it.

I don't know why, but I needed to see him again. My soul needed it. One week...it's cruel. Very cruel. What even happened there? I can't stop thinking about this man and the little girl inside of me. Caring and looking out for each others and failing. It's like a tragedy from a fictional story except it's real.

I don't know, maybe I'm too sappy and probably cringe right now...I'm a big mess. It's like another bridge to my past violently collapsed and with it a pillar that saw my construction as a person.

And I'm hurt that I was invited to exactly one wedding in my whole life, yet I buried almost all the people I ever cared about. My maternal grandparents when I was four and six. My maternal great uncle when I was 14. My father when I was newly 19. My favourite paternal uncle a few months later. My dog who's been with me since I was 6-7. Now this kind man.

Now I just have two uncles, my mother, my paternal grandmother who I die to see but can't due to lack of transportation. Two brothers who don't care about me despite how much I try to heal our relationships, fucked by our father. Aside from my brothers, my left family is aging fast and badly and won't stay around for long. When they're gone, I'm alone. Completely, utterly alone. And homeless. But mostly alone.

I live with death. I die more everyday I live. I see it as fair and transformative, usually. I'm not afraid if it. Sometimes I seek it. Sometimes I feel less alone in its arms. I look at it in the eyes and accept it as a part of nature. Raw, indiscriminate, merciful. I don't see it as cruel, except this one time. This was unfair. Why?

And I'm tired. It's like trying and failing to wash again and again a cloth that keeps getting bloodied like the kannerez noz. My infinite task that I'm trapped with is grieving others and swallowing the pain. It hurts that I know more of death than joy. It hurts that I simply know that my life won't be super awful but also won't ever know major joys. I'll just keep burying people. Put band aids emotionally. Move on. Wait and see who's next. I'll continue reading the death records carefully every time I open a newspaper. Sometimes I'll recognise a name vaguely and wonder who it was to me. Sometimes it will be strangers and I will imagine their lives based on the informations.

...I don't even know what happened to the body of that man. I hope his sisters took care of it well. I wish I could've attended the funeral if there was one. Maybe it would've helped. But right now...it's awful.

[princesscolumbia]

Damn shame they've deactivated, they make EXTREMELY good points. My boifriend is either just starting their transition or will be before the end of the year (life keeping us from communicating directly until late next month, so not sure where they are on that timeline just yet) and I worry that they're going to encounter all these problems and more.

From the trans-femme angle, I comPLETELY understand OPs point. I've gotten to the point where I'm no longer triggered by pink and can even wear it in limited quantities, but to get there I needed to go through a very torturous round of self-induced exposure therapy. I had a few flashbacks to being abused (emotionally and psychologically for sure, likely physically, too) by my stepmother when she discovered that she could humiliate me. She was what we now call a TERF, and she recognized in me signs that I was trans and actively worked to alienate me from anything that could help me understand what I was while using it to belittle me. I wanted to be my sister's sister, so she got my sister all the girly toys I wanted and got me all the stereotypical masculine toys you could imagine. I was too young and too ignorant to know why seeing my sister get a whole truckload of toys she didn't even want and I shouldn't want but did anyway.

The final straw for me, the thing that traumatized me so badly I'd get flashbacks in my 40s just wearing pink, was she got me a guy's suit; slacks, penny-loafers, button down shirt, cardigan, and even matching socks. They were, every single last article of clothing, all pink AF. And not even a subtle pink, we're talking Barbie pink. No mistaking this outfit for "salmon" whatsoever.

I was made to wear them for post-Christmas (yes, this thing was a "christmas present") pictures and after that stuck them in the darkest recesses of the back of my closet. My step-mother asked why I didn't want to wear the "nice suit" she got me. I told her it was an outfit for girls and it'd get me teased at best and beat up at worst. She replied, and this is burned into my memory, "...but that's a man's suit. Nobody could possibly mistake it for girl's clothes."

I knew she was lying. I knew it so firmly that I swore that someday I'd find a way to prove her wrong. (This was back when I was young and stupid enough to believe evidence could make someone change their mind or at least recant their statement...hahahahahaha 😢) Much drama and a stint in the foster system later, and I had my chance to prove it.

While in the foster home (nice enough folks, a bit homophobic but I think that was just because it was the 80s and not because they'd ever met a queer person, even with my not-as-subtle-as-I-thought-I-was-being gender issues, they treated me well), the high school I was attending had Spirit Week, and it was A Thing That Happened that schools condoned horrible parodies of transgender/drag that constituted a teenager's understanding of the concept by having a "crossdresser day." I grabbed the set of clothes from my stepmother's place (social services thought weekly visitation was a good idea for Reasons™️ which are for another post) and snuck them to school and changed in the bathroom. I figured if step-mother was right, I'd just be mistaken for being a little overdressed. If I was right, I'd be pegged as a "crossdresser" in a New York minute.

I didn't make it 5 steps from the stall I changed in before someone complimented me on my outfit for the day's theme. Nobody thought they were men's clothes. There weren't even second thoughts. When the school photographer gathered everyone who'd participated to get a group photo, they knew it would be printed in black and white in the yearbook and STILL nobody would question how girly the outfit was.

I think that was when I realized that my stepmother was actually trying to get me hurt or killed, as long as it could be done publicly and out of her sight, she didn't care.

Decades later when I started transitioning and wearing women's clothes, I decided to be daring and buy an all-pink suit. I got a queezy feeling, but was convinced if I just sucked it up and wore it I'd be okay. My step-mother was either dead or dying of cancer and I had fully embraced my true self, what could go wrong?

Halfway through my shift I needed to get off the phones and use one of the "stress rooms" most call centers have these days.

Nowadays I will wear pink. (The pants I'm currently wearing as I type this are a remarkably bold shade of pink, in fact.) But I can't wear a lot of it or I still get the shakes.

Why do I have to explain to some people that I have trauma involving the color pink before they’ll stop poking me about why I don’t like it

[cosmicclownboy]

hi- why don't you like Maria?

Oh lord.

Where do I even begin with Maria.

Season 1

Makes a joke about Alex's secret relationship being with Wyatt and finding it funny- (Wyatt who is an abusive racist dude who commits hate crimes and bear in mind she knows Alex was abused for being gay) IT'S GROSS.

Speaks about Alex's secret relationship guy being his home to Alex and literally feels his hopefulness because it is part of her alien ability and continues to pursue Michael in s2.

Maria (straight) outs Michael to Liz. That's not okay on any level.

When Liz tells Maria to speak to Alex before doing anything she ignores the advice and does what she wants.

She's really smug about Michael picking/pursuing her like she won.

Season 2

Pursues Michael at a funeral in front of Alex without talking to him.

Makes Michael's loved ones husband funeral about a relationship status

Slut shames a random woman who makes out with Michael when they were never exclusive

Enters a relationship with Michael where he has to be exclusive but she doesn't because she doesn't believe he could be faithful. That's reeks of harmful biphobia stereotypes.

Ignores Alex the whole time UNTIL she needs something.

When she appears at Alex's door she says they are even. AKA comparing Alex not telling her a secret that wasn't his to share to her pursuing the love of his life in front of him without any empathy and ignoring the whole time.

Bitches to Alex about Liz and wanting fuck all to do with her. Alex has to remind her Liz has a dead boyfriend and is struggling cause Maria only has Maria vision and lacks empathy for her 'best friends'.

Uses her mom's laptop to get the scope on Alex/Michael's relationship which reads 100% manipulative. She even says Michael is pushing you away and then proceeds to encourage the narrative where Michael pushes Alex away because she suddenly wants Michael. And of course Alex is supportive she recognises he lacks self worth and rolls over him.

Beginning of 2x06 she tries to set up Forlex to get Alex away from Michael. Once again manipulative.

Tries to make Alex feel guilty for being gay in 206 because when she was a kid she idealised being with him and had to come up with a whole new plan. He grew up in an abusive household you know that....It's not okay to say that. You know how much internalised homophobia he has.

When saying he's had good relationships provides only examples of relationships with women......................HE IS GAY.

Asks him if he would change being gay.......jfc.

Alex tearfully saying he dissociates with women because he clearly forced himself to out of internalised phobia, Maria takes it to mean she has a chance. She thinks she's the exception since a touch starved abuse victim liked to be touched by her in high school. That doesn't = consent.

When Alex, a whole ass Airforce Captain tells her it's unsafe to stay at the creepo's place she acts all I am feminist about it and this results in Alex being stabbed and Michael getting whacked on the head.

Earlier in the episode she whinges to Alex about Michael kissing another woman in front of her and how cruel it was and then proceeds to kiss Michael in front of Alex KNOWING how he feels for Michael.

In THAT scene it's clear she notices Michael's emotions towards Alex and is insecure about it. She uses Malex's feelings for each other to her advantage. She's chasing the fantasy of getting with Alex. These are two highly traumatised queer men who struggle to say no because they spent their lives in abusive environments.

Neither Michael or Alex were in a position to consent to sex that night Michael is concussed from a whack on the head . Alex has lost a lot of blood and is completely out of it. And neither would ever initiate that situation. Not to mention the assumption Michael would be down because he's bi is so harmful as a stereotype.

"I think she’s cool with her decision. She wanted some answers, so subconsciously there was an emotional comfort she needed. But she also had a little bit of an agenda. She needed some decisions made about the status of their relationships, so she thought, “Let’s throw everything against the wall and see where it lands.” I think she was just wondering if they made any progress on that front. She said it was OK for their feelings to be out in the open, but let’s just voice them for what they are. As we saw, Michael stepped up and was like, “No, I still love you and I’m with you.” Secretly, that’s what Maria was hoping for. By suggesting a threesome, she’s was basically telling Michael, “Make your choice… and I hope it’s me.” this is what Heather said about the scene. So not only was it coercive and such but she used her best friend like that with no care or empathy whatsoever. It's disgraceful.

The next day both Michael and Alex are confused by what the fuck happened. Alex due to his C-PTSD completely dissociates from the situation and Michael attempts to laugh it off despite him being hella confused. The only person who isn't confused is Maria who is listening to them from inside.

When Michael comes in she turns on the tears just in case he does want Alex afterwards. Bear in mind she is a psychic who can feel everything and she assumed Michael was going to go after Alex. Doesn't that say it all. SHE KNOWS MICHAEL IS IN LOVE WITH ALEX AND VICE VERSA. She does not care, because at the end of the day this is what she wants. She wants to win. She wants to treat Michael like this trophy that she can show off to people I got the great Michael Guerin not a relationship guy to date me.

When Michael wants to have emotional conversations she shuts it down for sex. The entirety of the relationship it has to be her way or the high way. She also recognises fairly on his abandonment issues and plays upon it, reads manipulative.

When Michael who has lost his mom and brother in the span of a few months asks Maria to be more careful about her abilities she doesn't listen. And ultimately breaks up with Michael when she can't get what she wants from him which is a yes man who will do what she says and isn't the idealised Michael she wants.

Season 3

Shits on Michael any chance she gets. She's so mean to him and he goes out of his way to look out for her.

Is dismissive of her own health despite the fact that everybody goes out of their way to help her. Liz is in California working on a way to help her. Kyle is risking his job.etc

Is fine with Liz, her best friend losing the love of her life to get a vision to prevent a murder. A vision she's only invested in because apparently in it she blames herself.

Is fine with Max or Kyle dealing with the guilt of her death had Michael not saved her.

Shoves Michael and belittles him because he's stronger then her. Infers he just sits on his ass and does nothing therefore does not care about anything....rude. There's also a weird superiority complex that her power is more important then Michaels or any of pod squad for that matter.

Creates a situation that is so bad that Kyle risks his doctors licence to give her adrenaline. Just take an ice bath or something there are a 1000 ways to give yourself adrenaline without risking your life and risking others.

Doesn't thank or acknowledge what Liz is doing for her honey has spent a FULL YEAR of her life trying to help and your just like yeah I'll let her soulmate die for my visions.

Emotionally guilts Isobel for not hanging out with her despite the fact she's hated her for two seasons and now has just randomly decided she wants to know......okay

This idea that Maria is suddenly lonely when she's the second of the main cast (first being Kyle) to have scenes with all the mains by Monday. Literally everyone is there at her beck and call but Maria is lonely??? IT DOESN'T ADD UP. Everyone's up her arse 9/10 how is she lonely everyone expresses concern and care for her ALL THE DAMN TIME. She's also narratively never had scenes that give the connotation that she is lonely. Michael has scenes that connotate he is lonely. Max and Alex do too. Maria has yet to have scenes that give the connotation of feeling lonely or depressed.

Maria comparing the alien siblings to her and feeling left out when she acts superior to them and they are literally siblings. Literally every character is somewhat left out with Pod Squad they've lived their lives assuming it's just them three against the world it's not a personal attack.

Maria is 1/8 alien at best so diluted genetically it doesn't show up and somehow she believes she has the capability of the aliens who are 100%. Say you have French DNA you don't expect to speak French suddenly.

This whole Maria never does wrong narrative and it's empowering that she's doing all of this just feels like a crock of shit tbh.

She reads like a 2000's movie mean girl.

All of my bullet points are why I don't like h Maria and it's not biased because I'm a so and so fan. Narratively she just wins up doing shitty things to Michael and Alex the most.

[lady-of-lyon]

So, I made one post a while back about how awesomely feminist the show Wild Kratts was, with how its two main female characters were women of color in engineering and deserving roles of power, female villains who weren’t motivated by spite or quest for youth, etc, but today I wanted to talk about something slightly different, that I’ve wanted to cover for a while now, because I also think it’s very good - and that’s how the show portrays masculinity, in a way that’s really positive!

First, we have our two main characters, Chris and Martin Kratt. Keep in mind these two are basically self-inserts - and there are plenty of creators, especially males, who have used self-insert characters in really scummy ways - all I have to say is Powerpuff Girls reboot and you know exactly what I’m talking about. Even if they weren’t literal self-inserts, male characters, superheroes especially, oftentimes serve the male power fantasy, being just the strong, stoic, all-powerful person so many boys are told they’re supposed to be. I could get into a whole discussion about how the male power fantasy is present even when males are not (ever look through a fashion magazine and wonder why there are so few men? Sure, part of it is that the industry thrives off exploiting women’s insecurities, and men aren’t as concerned for their appearance, but another part of it is so that the guy, looking through it, can feel like he has no competition for these women - there’s a reason so many comedians have jokes about fashion magazines being their sexual awakening as kids. It’s really scummy) but that’s not what this is about. So, the bros had every opportunity to do just that - make themselves these traditional heroes who aren’t actually really good role models, like batman or what have you. It’s certainly not uncommon for celebrity cartoons to do stuff like that. But Martin and Chris chose a different approach. They’re pretty strong standouts for positive masculinity. They’re openly affectionate - both with eachother as brothers, and with their friends. They cry, sometimes over little things - most of the time when big superheroes cry, it’s ‘cause they lost the girl they loved or their mentor or something like that, only in the big, most agonizing moments do they shed a tear. But here, Chris or Martin will cry just because they’ve had a bad day, or because they’re overwhelmed and overjoyed that someone named a mantis after them! In a lot of shows or movies when a guy cries over something little, it’s usually played for laughs, or to emasculate him, but here it’s casual without being unreasonable or overdone. The brothers cry just ad much, maybe even more (haven’t gone back and counted or anything) as the girls do. Not to mention, it’s a very nice depiction of a loving, healthy sibling relationship. As the youngest sibling myself, it’s refreshing to see a pair who don’t abuse eachother with noogies or cruel and snarky remarks. When they do fight, it’s never a screaming match, and also because they had a conflict of interest or disagreed over a fact, not because, say, one of them stole the other’s shirt or is neglecting the other’s feelings. Kids, being very impressionable, get exposed to a lot of abusive sibling relationships played as normal in media, and start thinking this is how siblings are and should act. For instance, my sister (who is now my best friend and has gotten over all these bad habits over time) when she was younger watched a lot of Kim Possible, a show that is great, but has a bad family dynamic with Kim and her little siblings. The “tweebs” as she calls them are always irresponsible, destructive, and making Kim annoyed to no end. My older brother was one of the most polite, reserved, kind little kids, but she still treated him like he was a brat and a nuisance, because that’s what shows like Kim Possible taught her little brothers were. Additionally, I was always treated like a spoiled crybaby who just wanted attention and got away with everything - I was not any of those things, ever, but that’s what shows teach you little sisters are. Sure, Wild Kratts has a smidge of that, with Chris seemingly being the stereotype of the know-it-all little sibling, but instead of being constantly looked town upon for being too “perfect” like with Hailey Long in American Dragon, Martin often praises his brother for his abilities. Sure, Martin gets annoyed when Chris tries to correct him on things, like in the episode Wolf Hawks, but everyone else does too, so it feels more like a take-down of mansplaining than a sibling spat.

I talked too in the feminist post about how refreshing it is that Chris and Martin more or less willingly put themselves under the authority of Koki and Aviva, two women of color. I don’t think it’s possible to say any one character is the “leader,” they all work as a evenly balanced team, but it’s safe to say that Koki and Aviva make the more responsible decisions. The bros try to get out of their calls a few times, but the show plays it more like they’re being irresponsible, and less like they’re renegade cool dudes who don’t take nothing from nobody, especially not two girls. They are pretty much always punished via karma for their reckless choices, most especially in To Touch a Hummingbird, where their arrogant attitudes blow up in their faces rather spectacularly. We also never see the narrative most present in sitcoms, where the male leads mess up and go out of their way to cover it up and ultimately gets away with it - after all, you have to root for them, right, because sure they messed up and had no consequences, but aren’t they just so lovable? No, here Martin and Chris always have to fix their wrongdoing, and it’s always deserved when they get comeuppance. Another aspect of the show I like is that, many times, when the bros get captured or are in peril, they are saved by the women - and most refreshing of all, there’s never a moment of “wink wink nudge nudge wow I can’t believe I had to be rescued by a GIRL” or even “wow you saved me you’re pretty good honey guess I shouldn’t have underestimated you, you go girl!” No, when the girls save them, it’s just - you know, relief? Because they were saved? It’s never a scenario played as an exception, or any more dire than when the bros need to rescue eachother. The bros are genuinely happy to have them as teammates. The show even did the standard “boys vs girls” episode in the form of When Fish Fly - but instead of being actually girls vs. boys, it’s engineers vs. adventurers. There’s nothing really gendered about it - the girls happen to be engineers, and the boys happen to be adventurers. And the episode doesn’t end with the boys being “wow gosh darn I shouldn’t have doubted you girls are better at everything,” it’s a mutual agreement that both parties have hard jobs. Basically, the bros are very naturally respectful of women. That plays more into their feminist narrative too, but either way, it’s refreshing.

Then, we have Jimmy! Jimmy, the lovable gamerboy pizza man. At first glance Jimmy seems like the stereotypical cowardly, pathetic, emasculated loser. He’s frightened of most things, as of yet has no power suit, and he BAKES for crying out loud! But none of these things are framed as terribly bad traits. Sure, we laugh when he screams and runs from an animal, but though it happens over and over, the crew doesn’t get sick of it. They don’t berate him or belittle him because he’s so gosh darn cowardly. There’s a great scene in Rattlesnake Crystal where Jimmy has to deliver something to the bros alone, in the middle of a spooky desert. He is terrified the whole time, sprinting off after he delivers the goods. When Martin and Chris run into him, they don’t laugh at him for being spooked, they just greet and then bid fair well to their friend. To them, this is just Jimmy, and there’s nothing wrong with it. Jimmy isn’t coddled, but he is reassured many times that he’s a valuable member of the team. I love that little message, that you’re just as important of a person even if you can’t do as much or have greater limits. When his friends do try to get him over his fears, it’s not because they have to, that the day will somehow be ruined by Jimmy’s incompetence p, but because they’re his friends, and want him to experience fun and wonderful things that he would otherwise miss out on. But what Jimmy CAN do is just as important! Jimmy is a gamer, which in a lot of shows, is portrayed as a lazy, useless, mindless hobby. But here, because he plays video games, it makes him essential for piloting the ship and teleporting important items. There’s always the joke that video games improves your hand/eye coordination, but recent studies have shown it has much better effects. It can make you much better at keeping track of multiple moving objects and processing technical but variable information- two traits which, fittingly enough, are really really important for air traffic controllers and airplane pilots! He also demonstrates a lot more courage behind the wheel of the Tortuga, which makes sense - in an impersonal setting, he would have more sense of calm and control and courage, because it’s so similar to a video game world. It’s not all too different with how I feel more emboldened to pick fights with people on the internet, but get crazy anxious if a real person so much as looks at me. So Jimmy’s love of video games isn’t because he’s irresponsible, it has real benefits. A quick last point - Jimmy also eats a lot, but they thankfully don’t make him fat or greedy or anything like that. He never takes food from people, he actually bakes, and shares it with others! Having the baker be a boy is a lovely touch.

I might do another post about the toxic masculinity of the two villains, (or four villains, I guess, if I wanna discuss the minions) but I’ve got other work to do, and this post is long enough already, so I’ll get around to it later. I’ll sum it up with this - Wild Kratts is a show that teaches boys it’s not only ok to be kind, but essential. The brothers protect defenseless animals, advocate for things “icky” and “weird,” like bugs or snakes or worms - not because they’re boys, and boys like icky things, but because they genuinely see the beauty in all life, and are encouraging us to slow down and do the same. The Wild Kratts are heroes who save the world not by being the strongest or smartest or coolest, but by looking after those who are exploited and vulnerable, who are essential to the world, even if they can’t always do everything. In Wild Kratts the only weaknesses a man can have isn’t what he can’t do, but what he does do that he shouldn’t have. Sure, it’s a cute show about two funny guys who have cool powers, but it’s also a show about accountability, compassion, respect and trust. The show says “boys will be boys” in all the right ways - Martin is a lovable goof with a heart of gold, but he still has to get his act together when he messes up, and he’s still creative and smart and openly sensitive. Chris is a bit of a know-it-all show-off, but he can also mess up as much as his brother, and is still bold, brave, adventurous, and can put his money where his mouth is. Jimmy is a cowardly, napping, eating machine video-gamer, but he’s still a valued member of the team, has incredible skills and talents, and will always help his friends, even if he is really, really scared. It is so important to have role models like these, in a world dominated by unhealthy machismo. The Wild Kratts are heroes who save the world - both animated, and real.

All they need now is a canon queer character, and I’ll stan them forever! My money’s on Aviva!!

[nerds-escape]

Hi I am now in an anti-Snape mood so...here we go.

Quick preface before we begin: I will be talking about abuse and some other topics, I’ll put trigger warnings at the beginning of everything

NOTE: This is based off my experience as a person who was abused by both friends and family as well as a disabled person and a person who has been sexually harassed and something I don’t even know the term for it was somewhere in between sexual harassment and sexual assault.

“He was Abused as a Child”

TW: Abuse

I know it’s mentioned a lot but just because Snape was abused doesn’t mean he was destined to be a bad person, in fact, when someone says that, it makes it a lot harder for people to come to terms with what has happened. As a person who was manipulated and belittled my entire life I would like to say: I have been told I am a good person so I think I’m a good person, really it’s kind of subjective. But if you want to know some things so you can judge for yourself (a lot of these things had to be put on hold because of the pandemic which is why I’m using past tense):

I taught mentally and physically disabled kids how to swim

I had good grades

I work four jobs so I can pay to go to Uni

I have a hard time setting boundaries which means whenever someone ask me to do something, I do it out of fear of disappointing them (not a good thing but a thing none the less)

I was captain of the swim team

I was in a club that the soul purpose was to raise money for a children’s hospital

I spend a lot of my time volunteering

I know this sounds like I’m patting my own back but I just want you to understand who I am as a person. I like to think I’m a good person but it’s up to you if you believe that or not.

I have lost my autonomy due to my trauma. Every other word coming out of my mouth is sorry because I have been trained to believe everything is my fault. It took me years of therapy and talking with friends to figure that out.

The other day I asked my coworker if I could go to the bathroom because everything in my life I have had to tiptoe around and get express permission on including going to the restroom at times.

Obviously everyone reacts to abuse and trauma differently but having a villain and saying that they are bad because of the abuse they faced is just not it.

Source:

I don’t really know why you need sources on my abuse but here are some sources on trauma and how it can effect kids

https://www.ptsd.va.gov/understand/isitptsd/common_reactions.asp

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK207191/

https://www.kempe.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/The_Battered_Child_Syndrome.pdf

“The Marauders Sexually Assaulted/Harassed Snape”

TW: sexual assault/harassment

AMAB sexual assault and harassment is a real thing that needs to be talked about more, and something that shouldn’t be used to win an argument.

Snape Stans can’t seem to decide if this is sexual assault or sexual harassment. At most it is sexual harassment, this isn’t to say that sexual harassment is something to scoff at, this is to ask: pick one because saying these two are the same things is wildly misleading so stop using these words interchangeably.

Stop using male victims and survivors as trophies for your arguments. Did you know that 1 out of every 10 rape survivors are men? This is a real issue so don’t use it as a defense because guess what? It also makes makes men of sexual abuse seem like they are villains. 

Pantsing was just a thing that happened when I was in grade school. Does that make it okay? No. But pantsing is mainly considered “schoolyard fun” especially when it’s between two people of the same sex. Again. Does this make it okay? No. Do I believe what James did was okay? No. But you can not tell me that if you got pantsed and your best friend was there to comfort you, would you call them a slur? I wouldn’t.

Sources: https://wlv.openrepository.com/bitstream/handle/2436/96284/Duncan_PhDthesis.pdf?sequence=2&isAllowed=y

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantsing

Yes I am using Wikipedia as a source because they have some good sources attached.

“He was Abused by Muggles and that’s why he Hated Them”

Okay and? He knew good muggles. I was abused by men. Does that mean I want all men dead? No. I have been abused by women. Does that mean I want all women dead? No! I could go on for a while of people who have abused me and I can tell you right now I don’t want any of those groups of people dead because guess what: those groups did nothing.

“Sirius Tried to Kill Him”

Yeah, no.

Nobody forced Snape to go there. Was it fucked up for Sirius to do that? Yeah. Like really fucked up but Snape didn’t have to go. He knew what he was getting himself into. He suspected Lupin to be a werewolf. He didn’t have to go to the shrieking shack.

I genuinely don’t think that Sirius thought this one through. To him Moony wasn’t a vicious creature, he had fun playing with Padfoot and he never hurt Padfoot so to Sirius it didn’t even cross his mind that he might be putting Snape in a dangerous situation.

That’s one theory, there are many theories and we don’t know why Sirius did it all we know is that Prongs saved Snape’s life. And Snape hated James for that. Which to be fair if someone saved my life I would probably be pissed off too but that’s besides the point.

“Snape Loved Lily”

No. Snape has the same energy as the guy who I blocked on Instagram after I repeatedly told him to stop something and then made four accounts just to keep texting me and went as far as to find and harass my friends. Same Energy.

“Their patroni match UwU” shut up. No. James’s patronus was a stag a stags mate is a doe, Lily’s was a doe. Snape’s was a doe as well. Now listen I’m down for two dope ass lesbian does but as we know because J*R that was not the case. That was an obsession. If you think that’s what love it like you are going to have very toxic relationships in your life and quite honestly lowkey concerned for you and/or your future, current, and/or past partners.

“He’s a good teacher he was keeping up the act”

No! Teachers abusing students is a real thing, what’s ever worse (as if that’s already bad enough) school was Harry’s safe haven. Now you could say the same for Snape, sure but Snape could defend himself against the Marauders. Choose your fighter: Eleven year old Harry who just learned that magic was a thing and that his parents didn’t die in a car crash vs Thirty-One year old Snape, a teacher. Let me tell you as a person who was bullied by her peers, when my sixth grade math teacher called me stupid, it had a lot greater of an impact than a student pushing me into the lockers.

Teachers are supposed to teach regardless of if they want to fuck your mom or not. It wasn’t only Harry that he was terrible to either.

Also see this entire article to disprove your point:

https://www.learningforjustice.org/magazine/fall-2014/abuse-of-power

Sources:

https://isiarticles.com/bundles/Article/pre/pdf/130622.pdf

Also refer to the article above as well.

I am done with my source arguments here is just a fun tidbit

My abusers favorite character is Snape and and he said he fully understands Snape...

Anyways I will be sending this to all people who try to argue with me about Snape.

[realdealrealtalk]

Grand Army

 I am in love with this show. I’ve heard people say it’s a Netflix euphoria which I kind of agree to disagree with, GA is more muted and realistic in a way. Not to say Euphoria isn’t real but the show is very dramatic in a sense. GA would actually happen in everyday life. Nothing was insane except for the bomb threat but honestly I’ve had a shooting threat called into my school multiple times so this is just the NY version of that. Anyway onto the characters:

Dom- amazing, beautiful, talented, hardworking, absolutely flawless 10/10

Joey- in the beginning she was a performative activist and self absorbed. She labeled herself an ally of POC then hung out with George and Luke who call their only brown friend every variation of racial jokes. She had an active hand in Owen’s suspension, how can you claim your for POC then act oblivious to how your influence as a white woman could impact a black mans’ future. After the meeting with the principal, she had the nerve to turn to Dom saying how she felt “really bad” about what happened. Moving past this, what happened to Joey was evil. She was assaulted/betrayed by the people she trusted the most in the world. She is stronger than any character I’ve ever seen. I was so proud of her for standing up to her abusers and confronting them. I’m so proud she started dancing again and I hope she gets the healing/justice she deserves. 8.5/10

Leila- I think her storyline/character is very complex and deserves an in depth review. I could make a whole post about only her. She was trash for blaming Joey because she was getting attention from Geo and Leila wasn’t. You never blame the girl and Leila should know better. However, I’m not going to pretend that George’s abuse of Leila was her fault. He is two years older than her and using her for sexual favors, it’s disgusting. Her treatment of Rachel throughout this entire thing was absolutely so selfish. It was Rachel’s sister’s day and all she could talk about was “he’s not texting me back”. I understand she is a freshmen and this happens a lot because high school is new and exciting but she needs to understand that her actions have consequences. Her battle with her identity as an minority adopted by white parents is so strong and I hope she comes to understand who she truly is. She called out her mom for her treatment of Asian women *chefs kiss* and started to think about where she comes from. HOWEVER, when she told the Asian girl in her class to “speak f*cking english”? How on earth can you struggle with knowing yourself/place as a minority then tell other minorities a racist phrase that is used to belittle their struggles? The white writers in charge of the show really shone through there. 6/10

Jayson-he went through a very big change during these nine episodes and I am proud of his progression. He never saw how he and Owen were different until Owen was sent away and it shook his entire world, which I thought was kinda wild because did he really not see the class disadvantages between he and Owen just because they are both darkskin black men? He did the right thing in the end and I hope it works out for him. 8/10

Siddhatha- I think he is a decent person overall. He did put a FRESHMAN on the “bomb p*ssy” list just cause he didn’t want his sister to be on it but one wrong doesn’t cancel out another. He did associate with the d-bags on the swim team but I believe it’s just cause they were his relay. I, personally, have to be friendly with T*ump supporters on my team and it freaking sucks so I get what he’s going through. His struggle with his identity was definitely one we’ve seen before, with a beard girlfriend, a forceful coming out, and unsupportive parents but he had a happy ending and I really love that for him. Him and Victor are the cutest and I hope freaking Orolov gets what he deserves. 9/10

Luke- I am the biggest clown there is. I was walking around saying, “Aww, I love Luke, I want him and Joey to be together, I’m only on the first episode but I hope nothing bad happens!!!”, like a freaking idiot. But yeah, he disgusts me and I hope he and the other three rot. He really had the nerve to tell Joey SHE should be apologizing to THEM?! LIke, wtf? No, actually, what the f*ck? -1000000000000000000000000000000000000/10

George- He is absolutely disgusting for using Leila the way he did. He deserves the worst for what he did to Joey and I hope he gets what is coming to him. -1000000000000000000000000000000000000/10 

Tim- He can suck d*ck and rot for all I care,I didn’t like him from the beginning. It’s always the “nice guys”, the “feminists” who turn out to be the worst slut-shamers in history. He really got mad at Joey for being touchy-feely with Geo and Luke like she hasn’t always been this way, that’s how she shows her love and he knows that so wtf is his problem?! Oh yeah, raging misogyny. He sat there and WATCHED as Joey was being r*ped and then SLUT-SHAMED HER to the police? Let’s not forget he had THE BALLS to tell Luke and Geo they did rape her AFTER Joey left, then did coke/ whatever off his phone and begged Joey to talk to him. Absolute trash -100000000000/10

Anna- How dare you not believe your friend whom you’ve known for however many years then call her a liar and turn your back on her when she needed you the most. She’s a feminist until it comes down to her compliant, misogynistic brother then she’s right back to slut-shaming with the boys. Joey borrowed HER UNDERWEAR becuase her’s were RIPPED with BLOOD STAINS and Anna said nothing? When she asked if she needed a tampon and Joey said no HOW DID HER “BESTFRIEND” NOT CARE ENOUGH TO EVEN ASK QUESTIONS?! Same as her brother, she disgusts me and I hope she rots -100000000000/10 

Grace- how tf are you going to turn on the girl who literally fished a c*ndom out of you? Like wtf? Not only is she a slut-shamer (quite hypocritical looking back) she’s a racist!! She refused to call Leila by her name or even show her a shred of dignity just because Leila, a BABY FRESHMAN, was getting attention from George . Trash -1000000/10 

Orlov- He released Meera’s nudes and outed SId, he can choke. -1000000000/10 

Meera- I’m in love with this woman. Didn’t take bs from anyone and was only ever supportive. Called everyone out on their bs and stayed a true feminist icon while at it. 10000000000000000/10 

Let me know if you want more!! 

[path-of-my-childhood]

Taylor Swift: Pop Star of the Year

By: Jonathan Dean for The Sunday Times Date: December 27th 2020

Rather than hunker down, the singer put out two albums in 2020 and won over new audiences. She’s the pop star of the year.

Taylor Swift met Paul McCartney in the autumn for a big interview in Rolling Stone. The two would have headlined Glastonbury this summer. Who knows if they will do that next year. Anyway, both recorded albums in lockdown, working from home like the rest of us. When they spoke, though, Swift had a secret. As well as Folklore, released in July, she had a follow-up record in the pipeline — Evermore, which was released this month.

Swift noted that the former Beatle was still so full of joy. “Well, we’re just so lucky, aren’t we?” he said. “We’re really lucky,” Swift replied. “I can’t believe it’s my job.” And she is right. Being a pop star is an extraordinary way to earn the living she does. But rather than accepting luxury and letting this tough year tumble on, Swift is also keenly aware what music means. Sad songs soothe, happy songs make us dance, but as fans of most artists waited for something — anything — this year, this 31-year-old released two albums that broke chart records, were critically adored and introduced her to people who once thought that she wasn’t for them.

“I’m so exhausted!” she said to the American chat show host Jimmy Kimmel, laughing, a few weeks ago, when asked if she had a third new album planned. “I have nothing left.” In addition to Folklore and Evermore, she filmed a TV special and even started rerecording her back catalogue, after a volatile dispute over who owns her work. By October I’d just about cobbled together my first sourdough loaf.

A decade ago Swift moved firmly into the limelight thanks to a squabble with Kanye West entirely of the rapper’s own making. In 2009, when Swift — then a nascent country music star — won the best female video award at the VMAs, West stormed on stage, grabbed her microphone and said that Beyoncé should have won. Swift was 19 — West was 32 — and she looked scared. This wasn’t just about her biggest moment yet being stolen, but also about her position in the pop hierarchy being questioned, very publicly, from the off. She stood there as that man bullied her. Apparently she left the stage in tears.

Years later West released Famous, with its infamous lyric “I feel like me and Taylor might still have sex/ Why? I made that bitch famous.” The alt-folk singer Father John Misty also wrote about sleeping with her. Every time that sort of thing happened, a powerful man in Swift’s industry was reducing a successful, talented, younger female to the level of a sex object. It was back-in-your-box belittling — as it was when a TV host groped her. (She successfully sued him.) While Swift herself would retort to West, as her music became less country, more slick pop, such retorts felt forced and gave the rapper too much of her oxygen. A nod to him on Folklore comes with the “Clowns to the West” line, but it is a sideshow now, not a headline.

Not that Swift’s life is entirely her own. She’s been one of the world’s bestselling female artists for a decade, coupled with curiosities such as a well-orchestrated relationship with Tom Hiddleston that kept her in the spotlight. Like many twentysomethings, Swift spent her youth apolitically, only to receive flak for staying silent during the 2016 US election. This year she endorsed Joe Biden, but what if she had wanted to stay quiet? Would the media have let her? She is under so much scrutiny that, after she made an innocuous hand gesture in a recent TV interview, similar to one women make to draw attention to domestic abuse, this headline ran: “Some people think Taylor Swift is secretly asking for help in her latest interview.”

Like many at the start of the pandemic she felt listless. The world we were used to was a wasteland, and we could only find the energy to watch Normal People. Swift’s ennui, though, was, well, swift. Stuck in LA, she emailed Aaron Dessner of the beloved beardy indie band the National to see if he fancied writing with her. No fool, Dessner said yes and, mere weeks later, the duo — with help from Swift’s regular collaborator Jack Antonoff as well as Justin Vernon, from the beloved beardy indie band Bon Iver — released Folklore. The gang just carried on working and, five months later, gave us Evermore.

Creativity is not on tap. Indeed, this year is not one for judging what others may or not have achieved. However, the silence of many big pop stars is striking because they know that even a single would make someone’s day; distract for a while.

Everyone needed to adjust to working from home, but Swift was one of the only musicians who did and, by eschewing the arena pop of recent albums for something more subdued, organic and folky, she gave the sense that she was letting fans in more than ever. She was at home, like us. This is who she is, and the first single from these sessions was so cosy, it was even called Cardigan.

“I just thought, ‘There are no rules any more,’” she told McCartney. “Because I used to put all these parameters on myself, like, ‘How will this song sound in a stadium?’ If you take away the parameters, what do you make? I guess Folklore.”

Maybe it is tedious, for a deft writer with a career of varied, brilliant songs — Love Story, I Knew You Were Trouble, Blank Space — to find respect from some people only when artists who appeal to middle-aged men start to work with her. On the other hand, pop has never been particularly welcoming to many until it sounds like something you are used to and, with delicate acoustics and gossamer-like piano, Swift’s two new albums recall, sonically, Nick Drake or Kate Bush. Thematically, lyrics seem to come from anywhere. Daphne du Maurier, for one. Even the Lake District and its poets.

Some songs are personal. She is dating British actor Joe Alwyn, and on one track she sings, “I want to give you a child.” Make of that what you will. But these records’ highlights are not about herself, but others. “There was a point,” she told Zane Lowe on Apple Music, “that I had got to as a writer, [where I was only writing] diaristic songs. That felt unsustainable.” Instead, she does what the best writers do and mixes subjective with objective. The Last American Dynasty is a terrific piece of writing about the socialite Rebekah Harkness, who lived in a Rhode Island house that Swift bought and was, by all accounts, a bit scandalous. Swift tells her story almost with envy. Imagine, she seems to say, that freedom.

“In my anxieties,” she said in Rolling Stone, “I can often control how I am as a person and how normal I act. But I cannot control if there are 20 photographers outside in the bushes and if they follow our car and interrupt our lives.”

Then there is Epiphany. The first verse is about her grandfather, who fought in the Second World War; the second about frontline workers in hospitals now. Sung in a high register, it is suitably choral. Marjorie, on Evermore, is even better. It is about her grandmother, an opera singer who died in 2003. “What died didn’t stay dead” is the repeated line, and it is eerie, gorgeous. Swift sings how she thinks Marjorie is singing to her, at which point some vocals from the latter’s recordings waft in. Touching, but the real power is in Swift writing about vague memories of a relative who died when she was young. “I complained the whole way there,” she sings. “I should’ve asked you questions.”

In person she is warm like this, and funny. When Kimmel told her there were far more swearwords on Folklore and Evermore than previous records, she replied: “It’s just been that kind of year.” She is also odder than people realise. In the way pop stars should be. Obsessed by numerology, she wrote, on the eve of her birthday when announcing Evermore: “Ever since I was 13, I’ve been excited about turning 31 because it’s my lucky number backwards.” When I turned 31 I just wished to be 13 again, with all that youth, but then, maybe, she is just joking. “Yes, so until I turn 113 or 131, this will be the highlight of my life,” she said. “The numerology thing? I sort of force it to happen.”

Swift, of course, is far from the first pop star to become public property, or have a close bond with fans. This year, however, she was one of the few to show that such adoration is not one-way. She is, simply, a fan of her fans — from planting secrets in her artwork and lyrics, to recording two albums of new music as a balm for them when real life became too deafening.

“One good thing about music,” sang Bob Marley. “When it hits you, you feel no pain.” The 80.6 million who streamed Folklore on its first day will attest to that idea. So will the four million who bought it. Swift is pop star of the year, no doubt — leaving her peers in her wake, on their sofas, rewatching The Sopranos.

[mimipagemusic]

An open letter to Lorin Ashton (Bassnectar) from Mimi Page:  A call for true accountability, responsibility, and healing action on behalf of the music industry.

Dear Lorin,

You have willingly and openly invited healing on your part with anyone you have hurt in your past. While I am aware you are calling every past sexual partner you’ve had, you haven’t bothered to consider the trauma your actions have caused to your female colleagues. You haven’t reached out to me once. I am taking this opportunity to respond to your offer of healing by “calling you in” in this open letter. I am a relatively private person and would have preferred to call you and read my letter to you directly. The truth is, I don’t trust you. You have claimed to care about the healing of those you’ve harmed, but the recordings released prove that you manipulate and gaslight whoever confronts you. I  privately confronted you about “Butterfly” back in 2016, so I’ve directly experienced your manipulative behavior. Because you have harmed so many people in your personal and professional life, my hope is that this open letter will bring forth clarity and healing to anyone who reads it. Healing to me, to you, to the young women you have sexually and emotionally abused, to the creative collaborators you have taken advantage of creatively and financially, to the professional team members you’ve betrayed and let down, and to the dedicated fan base you’ve mislead and abandoned.

While I am processing my own feelings of anger, confusion, and disgust, I am also writing you from a place of love. Tough love, that stands for healing, integrity, and transformative justice. Principles you claimed to stand for as a leader in the music industry. This situation is devastating on so many levels because you’ve also created a lot of good in this world. You have inspired millions of people and played a pivotal role in our culture. You’ve provided a platform for so many independent artists to be heard, myself included. I am forever grateful to you for that. But with the platform you helped me build, I am now speaking out on it. My hope is that deep inside your soul, you can listen, learn, and take accountability with an open heart. My own heart is broken, but it is also open. So with this open letter, I will address the evidence of both your “romantic” victims and my own negative experience with you, from my own perspective. If you can take true accountability and healing action with our best interests in mind instead of your own, then I believe you can still be a catalyst for the true change and healing we need in not only the music industry, but in our world. 

My personal reasons for coming forward:

In response to your sexual abuse allegations, you have publicly denied “the rumors” yet claim to welcome responsibility and accountability. You have admitted to the possibility of hurting others, yet you have not clarified what pain you have actually caused. You have claimed your own romantic relationships were “positive, consensual, legal, and loving.” You have claimed you are an “ally of women” offering free therapy to “true survivors of sexual abuse.” As an action, you have chosen to step away from your musical career and abandon your non-profit organization without further clarity or closure with all of us. As a survivor of childhood sexual abuse at ages 5, 13, and 16, I have lived with the PTSD that comes with experiencing both Pedophilia and Ephebophilia. I have spent many years in therapy unpacking my own trauma, healing it, and learning what true sexual health is. As a “true survivor” responding to your statement, you have absolutely no right to define what a “true survivor” is. To do so gaslights the women coming forward about the abuse you inflicted, and manipulates the public into doubting their truth. This creates victim shaming and I won’t stand for that. 

The legal definition of a child is ages 0-17. Rachel was 17 when you groomed and pursued your sexual relationship with her. The definition of Ephebophilia is an adult who is sexually attracted to adolescents between the ages of 15-19. Ephebophilia is not a sexual preference, it is a sexual perversion. While the argument stands that some teenagers welcome a relationship with an adult partner, many survivors realize they were psychologically damaged by that relationship once they mature in their mid 20s. Clarity and healing takes time, I speak from experience. There’s a reason that by law, teenagers are still considered children. While it’s completely healthy for teenagers to date other teenagers, they have no business being sexually groomed and manipulated by adults, especially those with power and influence. Ephebophilia has been glamorized and normalized in the music industry for generations and it needs to finally change. Countless rockstars like you have gotten away with this illegal and psychologically damaging activity with their underage fans. Many of them are still massively successful to this day. As an artist who has built your brand and activism on the principles of compassion, equality, and integrity, why are you grooming and dating your teenage fans? According to your victim Lauren’s statement, you explained why you don’t date women your own age. You told her you aren’t interested in older women because “they have too much baggage.” Lorin, it is men like you that create this “baggage” for women. And because of this, perhaps it is you who actually needs the therapy you are offering your victims. There is something very wrong with the way you view and interact with our world.

As a female artist and collaborator of yours for over 8 years, I wish I could speak up in defense of your character and your treatment of women through the reflection of own relationship and your treatment of me. I can not do this. While I hate seeing your career destroyed, I can’t help but honor the karma. I have carried your baggage for far too long. You have leveraged your power and your fame over me during every creative negotiation we have ever had. Always manipulating me into taking less of a writing percentage than my actual creative contribution because you claimed your platform, “the bassnectar factor” as you called it, would benefit me as a “smaller artist.” You hid behind a public mask of humility and activism when in private you lead with entitlement and greed. As a collaborator of yours, I am also a survivor of you. Not of your sexual abuse, but your psychological manipulation and financial abuse. You have taken advantage of my vulnerability and creativity since I was in my early 20s. You used your charm to manipulate me into thinking you cared about me while you stole my creative credit and royalties. You used your fame and influence to manipulate me into feeling grateful for the benefits I did receive from working with you, gaslighting my own reality and pain. You strategically belittled me creatively and financially in order to assert your dominance and control in ways where I was brainwashed into continuing to work with you. You have said some incredibly inappropriate and hurtful things to me over the years which negatively affected my self esteem to the degree that I almost quit music. Like so many others, I put you on a pedestal and looked up to you before I experienced your darkness. Even when I experienced your darkness, it was like I was under a spell. I have been conflicted for years and your name has been brought up in my own therapy sessions many times. You are a master manipulator, and I believe that is your greatest talent. In light of these allegations from both your victims and collaborators, so much becomes clear. The spell you cast not only on me, but the world, has been broken.

Your undeniable abuse towards women:

The evidence and statements being released by women who you say have been your “consensual, legal, and loving partners” provides contrary evidence to the innocence you claimed in your public statement. In an audio recording with Rachel, you verbally admit to her statutory rape when she was 17. She explains to you that at age 17, she “had no idea who she was.” She expressed that she was impressionable and that a relationship with someone your age with such an extreme power dynamic was beyond inappropriate for her. You validate this by agreeing with her and regretting your actions. You then offer to take accountability directly with her, but ask if that accountability means being “raped and beat up in a Tennessee jail.” This type of response to someone you’ve harmed is not called accountability, Lorin. This response is called gaslighting and manipulation, and it is equally abusive. It subliminally asks your victim to doubt the severity of her own experience and put your well being above her own.

In an email correspondence that Rachel shared during her senior year in high school, you congratulate her good grades on a school paper. You then request she spend 4-5 hours writing you an essay for your own pleasure. In a second email, you admit “she is overloaded with school work” but confess you are “so curious about what goes on outside of school in her social life.” You then tell her she “so rarely reaches out” and you “want to hear her voice.” Rachel wasn’t a groupie who pursued you as so many of your defenders claim. You groomed, pursued, and manipulated her. This isn’t the behavior of a mentor, a teacher, or a caring friend. You were an adult celebrity taking advantage of your teenage fan. This is called predatory behavior. You were a grown man in your mid 30s who chose to groom and sleep with an underage teenager, knowing full well how old she was at the time. In seeking the truth for myself, I spoke at great lengths with Rachel over the phone and heard her entire story. I also spoke to Lauren and have heard hers. While I was disgusted by the trauma you inflicted on these women, I was equally inspired by their grace, wisdom, and bravery to stand up to you. 

Rachel (age 17), Lauren (age 21), and another young woman have claimed you put thousands of dollars in cash in their purses and backpacks after their sexual encounters with you. They all have clarified that they did not ask for this money, were surprised and confused by it, and had to hide it from their parents and friends as they were sworn to secrecy by you. According to them, you were paranoid and made them communicate with you through encrypted apps so that your communication was hidden. In Lauren’s public statement, she claims she was “sexually groomed and manipulated” by you as your fan. According to her story, she was hand selected via Instagram and won a meet and greet with you. After thanking you on Twitter, you provided her your private email and asked her to continue communicating with you. When telling you her age, you said you were “surprised” because she “looked younger than 21.” You then requested she travel alone to visit your home. When telling you she wanted to inform her parents so they knew where she was, your response was that her parents “had no business knowing the details of her personal life”. If she was to inform them of her travel, she was to lie about your identity and say she was “dating a teacher named Gabe.” While demanding her sexual exclusivity with you, you refused to be sexually exclusive with her. You also requested she consider you a “life coach” as you would help guide some of her “biggest decisions.” Some of your advice included informing her that “every man she would ever meet would only want to have sex with her and would do anything to get it.” You offered to “protect her” from this. This is not a loving relationship Lorin, this is a manipulative, controlling, and psychologically abusive relationship. There are many other women you have harmed who have privately come forward but are too afraid to publicly share their stories. Several of them have stated that they were under the age of 18 when they had sexual relations with you. The amount of young women you’ve harmed is mind blowing, and they are all your “true victims.” In order to take true accountability, you have to be willing to own up to your actions and take legal responsibility for what you have actually done. 

Our professional relationship:

I’ve spent the past few days going through my own emails and memories with you, trying to find clarity and understanding of who you really are and how you could have harmed so many people in the ways that you have. While going back to my early correspondence with you, I was disturbed to find the same style of inappropriate communication with me. Our relationship has always remained professional and I’ve considered you more of a dysfunctional “big brother” type throughout the years. An email you sent me back in 2012 reminded me that this wasn’t always the case. I had completely blocked out this email because it made me feel so uncomfortable at the time. I now remember that I chose to shelve this away in my psyche because I was conflicted with how excited I was to get the chance to work with you.

(Email Context: I had just sent you my vocal hook for our song “Butterfly")

As a female artist who has endured the gender inequality in this industry, I am used to putting my head down and tolerating inappropriate jokes and conversations with men as long as it never escalated to a place where I felt unsafe. Fortunately our collaboration was remote, and I was in the safety of my own home studio when I read this. Your email response to my creativity was not only disrespectful, it was completely inappropriate.  It’s alarming you felt entitled to speak to me in this way, being that I was a professional collaborator and I barely knew you at the time. I responded to your email with a “haha thank you” but I wasn’t laughing. I was extremely uncomfortable and afraid to tell you how I felt because of your power and celebrity. I wanted to work with you and was afraid I would jeopardize that so I put the opportunity to work with you above my own comfort. I regret doing this. I am only sharing this email now as it corroborates the evidence of your language and inappropriate communication with the other women who have come forward and shared their own email correspondence with you. They are being attacked and doubted for sharing their truth, and I won’t stand for that. I’ve spent the majority of my time these past few weeks processing this horrific situation. I’ve had a lot of tears and a lot of sleepless nights, as I know so many others have. In the process, I had an epiphany. Your email of wanting to “fuck my voice” was actually a metaphor, foreshadowing our future dynamic as collaborators. You did end up “fucking my voice,” not as an artist but as a human being. While my voice in our collaborations soared throughout stadiums and radio stations around the world, my actual voice was silenced. 

In 2012 when we negotiated our splits for “Butterfly”, you manipulated me into believing that music didn’t make money anymore because of music piracy. As a young artist that was new to the industry, you told me that touring was the main source of income for artists, and buying me out of 100% of my share of the master royalties of “Butterfly” would be in my best interest. I spent 3 months alone in my apartment writing and creating “Butterfly” for you. Your offer was to pay me $1,000 for each month I worked on the song. You convinced me that because music didn’t make money, "Butterfly” may make nothing. A $3,000 buyout would ensure that I would be protected and taken care of financially. I had requested an equal split of the writing and publishing of “Butterfly” because I had clearly created the majority of the song. You took that opportunity to lecture me on what “equal” actually was working with an artist of your caliber. That because of your administrative fees and expenses due to your platform, a 50/50 split of writing and publishing wasn’t fair to you. Regardless of my creative contribution, 33% was the number I actually deserved. As the main composer and co-producer of our song, you knew I wrote and created the majority of the creative content in “Butterfly.” Not only did I write and perform the vocals and piano, I composed, produced, and sound-designed the synths and ethereal pads. You never gave me credit for this. Not in the liner notes, and not in the press. You took full credit of the production of our song, allowing me to be viewed as a vocal feature with a piano performance. When your album Vava Voom came out, I saw that every male producer who collaborated with you had an “and” producer credit. I was young and naive at the time, I didn’t know what a producer credit was and you knew this. As a self-proclaimed feminist and someone promising to protect me in this industry, you knew better. You should have done better.

Watching our song "Butterfly” find it’s wings was a dream, but also a complete nightmare. It became the staple of your live show, to the degree that Butterfly confetti fell from the sky. I had fans tattoo butterflies and my song lyrics on their bodies. “Butterfly” was ranked the #4 best song of your entire catalog by Billboard. It was in rotation in terrestrial and satellite radio, licensed to network TV shows, films and video games, and was even featured in an art instillation at the Disney museum. While I did get my 33% cut of my writing and publishing, I watched you absorb 100% of every sale and stream. I saw how many sales “Butterfly” sold in the mechanical royalty statements from Amorphous Music, your own record label. That small $3,000 “buyout” you gave me under the pretense you were “helping me” covered 2 months of my rent. Had you given me an equal share of my writing and publishing and literally any percentage of the master royalty of “Butterfly”, it would have drastically changed my life. Had you given me the creative credit I deserved on our song, doors would have been a lot easier for me to open as a female producer and composer in this male dominated industry. I continued to work with you over the years because I was brainwashed into believing this was how the music industry worked. I was brainwashed into feeling “grateful” for the opportunities I received and the success I did generate from your platform. I convinced myself that I was less than you, and I had to pay my dues like everyone else in order to earn my worth as your creative equal. This equality never came. While I continued to fight for a small share of my writing and publishing on every song we did, you still refused to offer me a percentage of the master royalty. To this day you still collect 100% of the master royalties on every one of our collaborations. 

I tried justifying our creative dynamic by your invitations to perform live with you. While it was only 3 times, those performances were, and will forever be, some of the most beautiful and magical moments of my life. What was odd to me was the way you financially treated me when I performed live with you. At Lighting in a Bottle I performed for free and got changed in a port-o-potty. After my performance you thanked me and handed me a bottle of wine as compensation. At Red Rocks and Bridgestone Arena you offered me $1,000 as an appearance fee. A fee that I had to deduct the airfare of my manager, my wardrobe, and all my food and traveling expenses from. I’m not sure how much income you take home after each one of your sold-out stadium shows, but I’m sure you could have afforded to treat me a little better. At the end of the day, I actually ended up paying out of my own pocket to perform with you. With what’s come to light, I now understand that you’ve had huge expenses paying out thousands of dollars to these young women, several underage, with the hopes of buying their silence and loyalty. As your female collaborator, I can verify that you are no feminist. You are a hypocrite, and the way you have treated me as an artist is absolutely disgusting.

In 2016 I was unaware of the extent of your corruption behind the scenes, but I found the courage to confront you about my own situation. I texted you that I was uncomfortable about our business dynamic with “Butterfly” and we hopped on a call to discuss it. We had a long conversation about my feelings, and you validated my belief that you were wrong and that you should have given me producer credit. You agreed that my deal wasn’t fair and said that you wanted to make it up to me. While I was grateful for this, the end of our conversation ended up haunting me for years. When talking about “fairness,” you lectured me on the difference between us as artists. You told me that if I were to release a song of ours by myself, that it wouldn’t sell nearly as many copies as it would if you released it. That your “Bassnectar factor” was the  reason for the success of Butterfly, not the creative content of the song. I agreed that you clearly had the bigger platform, but argued that my creative contribution to your art not only rewarded you financially, it helped define your brand in a new way. That the majority of your music is intense and aggressive, and my feminine, ethereal, and peaceful aesthetic helped diversify your musical catalog. I opened up and told you that if you had treated me equally and hadn’t taken 100% of my master royalty, my life would look very different because of the success of our song. That I have bills to pay just like any other person, and that my husband also battles multiple sclerosis which is a hardship we privately face. Your response to me was cold, and cruel. You told me that the music business is really hard. That many of your friends are extremely talented like me, and that you tell them all the same thing. That if it’s too hard for me to keep going financially in this business, that I pursue music as a hobby and find something else for work. Even so, you would find a way to make “Butterfly” up to me. You would get with your team and figure out a way to make me “happy.” Lorin, I can’t tell you how painful this conversation was, it crushed my soul. Writing one of my favorite songs with you and watching it receive commercial success while you took 100% of my royalties was one trauma. Seeing my worth through your eyes was another, it damaged my self-esteem. For a while, I did contemplate quitting music. If it weren’t for the love and support of my family, friends, fanbase, and my own inner work in therapy, I probably would have quit music. 

A week later you got back to me after discussing my request with your team. You indicated that you couldn’t renegotiate the terms of Butterfly, that the deal of that song was over and done with. What you did offer was a deal for a new song. This song would be credited as “Bassnectar and Mimi Page” so I would receive a producer credit. I would also receive 25% of my royalties across the board. I asked you why I wouldn’t receive 50% if I actually write an equal share, or even 33% like you offered me in Butterfly. You refused to negotiate and stated that’s the offer that was on the table. You then sweetened the deal by offering me an advance of $10,000 of this song, with no deadline to create it. At the time I not only needed the money, I foolishly believed that you actually wanted to create another song with me. Over the past 5 years I’ve sent you so many creative ideas for this song, and your response to me has always been the same. You were “too busy" to work with me. The only song we created together since then was “Was Will Be,” a last minute topline request with another small publishing cut and no master royalty. As always, this collaboration was attached with more empty promises to write our “actual song” with no followthrough. With what’s come to light in the accusations against you, it’s alarming to see where so much of your time has actually gone. Like your female victims, I can’t help but look at that $10k you gave me as hush money for my own silence against the issues I confronted you with. Watching other legal cases appear by other artists over the years brought me a lot of clarity on how you’ve been taking advantage of not only me, but other artists this entire time. I never spoke out publicly about my dynamic with you because I valued the peace and healing of the fans who enjoyed our collaborations. Now that you have destroyed not only your reputation but the trust and peace of your community, I am choosing to share my story now. Not just on behalf of me, but all the artists you have taken advantage of and ripped off throughout your career. There are so many.

After speaking with several of your victims, I’ve been horrified to learn that “Butterfly” was the song that lead many of them to the actual discovery of you as an artist. That the beautiful and euphoric qualities of “Butterfly” didn’t only function as a catalyst for peace and healing like I intended. Many of these women were mislead into believing those gentle, peaceful, and ethereal vibrations actually came from you because you took full credit for the song. My most grotesque epiphany of all, is that you never did care about me or actually value my talent and wellbeing as an artist. Instead, you used my artistry as bait for the facade you projected to the world, ultimately luring more young women to you. As a survivor of sexual abuse, music has always been my saving grace and escape from the horrors of my own reality. I can’t tell you how traumatizing it is for me to be associated with you after realizing what you’ve done. I am deeply disturbed and depressed in regards to our creative relationship. I am grateful that our songs have brought peace and healing to so many, and I will forever stand by the love and light that I personally contributed to it. I won’t let you take that away from me. Had you lived your life with the actual care and integrity that you claimed to lead with, we could have created so many more beautiful songs together. Instead, you chose the darker path and in the process, took advantage of my talent, my time, and my respect for you. 

Our last and final collaboration was on your new album “All Colors,” and this was the final straw for me ever working with you again. During a pandemic that is killing people, destroying our economy, and shutting down our industry, you sent me an email “checking in”. Like always, your emails have tons of smiley faces indicating you “love me.” You reminded me that we “still need to do our song” but asked for a “little favor” on your new album. You wanted me to replace a vocal sample of another girl singing “dreaming of you.” No writing, no harmonies, no creative contribution, not even the consideration of me knowing what I was contributing to as you wouldn’t let me listen to the song. Just “a little favor” of singing and recording for you, for free. I almost said no, and I wish I had. The only reason I didn’t, was because you had just offered me a spot to perform my own acoustic set on the main stage at your festival Deja Voom. A gesture that shocked me and actually meant a lot to me. After years of you blowing me off creatively and taking advantage of me financially, that was a gesture that felt like it validated my worth to you. I will humbly admit that deep down, I have always wanted you to care about my art and creativity. So, like always, I did the mental gymnastics in my head and justified the reasons why I should do your little favor and I did it. I did it against the wishes of my own manager and attorney, that’s how strong your influence has been over me. After I sent you my vocal file, I also took the opportunity to tell you that we experienced a food shortage during this pandemic and I learned how to garden in hopes that I could feed not only myself, but my neighbors. This must have struck a chord, because you changed your mind about asking me for free work and you sent me this email:

It’s almost August and I’ve yet to receive your $250 for pumpkin seeds. In regards to my creative contribution on your new album, I found my vocal sample on the end track you called “Optimism.” I wasn’t credited as a featured vocalist, and I checked the liner notes and there was no reference that I even sang on the song. After 8 years of working together, you didn’t even give me a shoutout on social media, telling our mutual fans about my contribution being that they loved our past collaborations so much. After all these years, and the massive amount of income you have earned off the back of my own creativity, this is what you have reduced my talent to. During the horrific times we are living in, your expectation of an independent artist giving you free work is absolutely despicable, and $250 for pumpkin seeds is ridiculous. It is clear the amount of healing I have needed to do in regards to reclaiming my self esteem. I am saddened by the dynamic I allowed myself to participate in with you for so many years. I have been battling a lot of shame for this. Thanks to several of your colleagues who have experienced similar dynamics with you, I have found a lot of healing. I am saddened to see this is a trend with so many of your collaborators, but I’m also grateful to be in their company as we all try to find the light in this darkness. I am now shifting my perspective and looking at all of us as hard workers who believed in the original vision you claimed to have for humanity. We took your creative and financial abuse because we are all  trying to survive in this dark and difficult industry and shine our light within it. One day I hope the industry changes, and hopefully this entire situation will be a catalyst for it in some sort of way. 

It is painful, but also healing to write this letter to you. I feel like a giant weight is being lifted from my soul. It is healing to see corruption being outed on a mass scale in our society, and ironic that you were one of those activists that spent so much time outing that corruption. For years you’ve used Twitter as a platform to call out the corruption of political leaders. Now that you are the subject of your own corruption, you’ve gone silent and disappeared. I will remind you we are experiencing a pandemic and the state of the world is in a very dark and fragile place. Your fans no longer have a safe space to turn to and this hurts their mental health. A lot of your fans are getting bullied for following you, having your tattoos, and being a part of your community. While you take your millions and “go off the grid” I won’t stand for your hypocrisy. I have received over a hundred emails from fans expressing their own private traumas and being survivors of sexual abuse themselves. How damaging it has been to discover they have been mislead by you all these years. You have accumulated your wealth and lifestyle from the money and dedicated support of your fanbase. You have built the diversity of your brand off the backs of collaborators like me, Dylan, and so many others. You owe us way more than an apology. The time you have spent manipulating and abusing your teenage fans could have been better spent creating with the artists who have contributed so much to you and your community. How you’ve treated Dylan (ill-Gates), an artist who inspired and nurtured your own talent, is utterly repulsive. The sad reality is, your behavior isn’t just a reflection of the darkness within your own psyche, it’s a reflection of the power-hungry, abusive, and narcissistic behavior in the music industry. We need a deep healing and change in perception with the ways business is run inside the music industry. We need a safer space for artists to create and fans to experience our art. Music is sacred, it brings healing and unity to our world. We need to make an example of the mess you have created and transmute it for positive change.

As you walk away from your musical career, you also walk away with not only my royalties, but all your collaborators royalties as your future financial stream. I wouldn’t label your career cancellation as “unemployment,” I would label any future income as theft from those of us you collect from. As a collaborator of multiple songs, the only control I have to help save the integrity of my songs and heal this community is a promise to donate my own small writing and publishing percentages to non-profits that support sexual abuse survivors. After learning that you have spent thousands of dollars to silence your own victims, you need to rectify this behavior with all of us. You manipulated our bad business deals by using your fame to convince us the “exposure” we would receive would benefit us. While it did in the past, it is now traumatizing us. As a survivor of sexual abuse and an actual ally of women, I find it unacceptable for you to have committed criminal behavior with my royalties being a source of your income. I don’t find it acceptable that you continue generating any future income from my creativity moving forward. I want my royalties back and I want to use my royalties for goodness. I’d love to partner with a non-profit or even start my own with the royalties you’ve taken from me and will continue to take from me. I’d love to incorporate your past collaborators, ambassadors, and fans in whatever healing endeavors I pursue from these royalties. My goal would be to focus on sound healing and meditation for survivors of sexual abuse and use the symbol of the Butterfly as the emblem. This would redefine my song and represent that we actually transformed some of this darkness into beauty. This is one idea I have of how you can take accountability and healing action directly with me, on behalf of everyone in your community.

The abusive dynamics in the music industry have existed for far too long, we can use this experience to help stop it. While you were a part of this problem, I hold space for your healing and redemption. You can take true accountability for your actions and use this experience as a catalyst for massive change. The only way we can create actual change in this world is by living by example and being the change we need to see. Lorin, please step up. Stand in your integrity and take true responsibility and accountability for your actions no matter what the cost to you. At the times you caused harm to others, you didn’t consider the cost to them. Own up now to what you did, publicly admit it, and take the healing actions required to make true amends. Use your wealth and platform for the goodness you originally intended, it’s not too late.

                        Sincerely,

                                Mimi Page

[smol-jinyoungie96]

The Devil Judge - Episode 6

Hi again! I just finished watching Episode 6 and man I was not prepared for any of it.

At all.

From the first time since they introduced Elijah to the storyline, she is portrayed as a teenager who despises her uncle for allegedly killing her father, but the a few episodes later they shows her softer side,She might hate Yohan but at the end of the day he is the only living family she has.

So the possibilities are that she masks her worries for Yohan behind the anger because sometimes, years worth of anger and pain might overpower any other emotions we have.

It is genuinely endearing to see that despite her openly showing her hatred towards him, she also pays close attention to him. For an example she knows that he doesn’t have a love life, or that he never stays out overnight. These are little things that she observes but never shows.

When Ga On and Elijah are talking, something that occurred to me is that she is just a child.

She’s 16.

The storyline makes us think about all the suffering for Ga On and Yohan but even Elijah carries a lot of it. All she has left is Yohan, but she has to live every single day wondering if he truly killed her father or not. She doesn’t have anyone she can talk to and that’s a lot on her plate to carry it all into her adulthood.

Elijah says “Yohan ruins everything that is close to him”

My guess is that he doesn’t do it in an intentional, destructive way but because everything that he has seen since childhood is violence, deceit, abuse, selfishness and destruction. May be pushing people away is his way of keeping them safe because I highly doubt that he received the help and the closure he needed when he was a child.

The child actors are so so so good! Their acting and the way they let out emotions through their eyes was amazing!

In the beginning, when Kang Yohan makes Sun Ah jump, for a split second it makes the viewers think that he has been a manipulator since an early age, but then as the story progresses,

he catches her stealing multiple times and interestingly, he hears her telling the caretaker that she is worried about him because he is leaving the basement a lot and that she is worried about him when she, was the one who suggested that he go out when his father was not around,

Imagine being in an abusive household, getting another child who is roughly your age trying to see it you could connect with only for her to start playing games.

He didn’t trust her then and he doesn’t trust her now, she never gave him a reason to.

I don’t think her interest in him is on a romantic light at all, it is more of an obsessive love.

Yohan saying “threats are useless, because I have nothing I wish to protect” is really just a bad move from his side.

So he doesn’t have Elijah? He doesn’t have an annoying little pest living in his house who resembles his brother?

Him saying that will only motivate her to dig deep to find what matter to him.

When he asks her what she wants and she says that she doesn’t care who he goes after as long as he stays away from the SR Foundation, it made me think that she is not stupid.

She is cunning and she just knows that telling Yohan to stay away from the foundation will only make him do the exact opposite. So there is a chance that it could be a trap?

Why did she take the cross chain from Yohan? Two possibilities, either it’s because she still likes it, or because she knows that it IS precious to Yohan, if she has it, she also has a reason to make him come back to her.

Coming to Elijah’s growing attachment to Kim Ga On,

he cares for her like a father would to his daughter, he cooks for her, he makes an effort to spend time with her, he covered her while she is sleeping etc.

No matter how much she tried to push him away, he is still there, he is becoming a constant in her life.

I’m not saying that Yohan doesn’t care for her.

Nobody cares for her more than he does probably but Yohan doesn’t openly show it.

When you’re a child, sometimes the thing you need the most is a solid presence of an adult and what she doesn’t get through Yohan, she gets through Ga On and well.. he also looks exactly like her father.

So it makes sense that she is showing a sort of a possessive attachment towards Ga On as if she is afraid that she will lose the one constant in her life.

It was wrong for Ga On to take Elijah out to meet Soo Hyun without asking Yohan first and it was also wrong of Yohan to chuck him to the wall like a ragdoll and to accuse him of taking Elijah to see a cop.

It’s obvious why Yohan is worried about his niece after everything that went down with Jung Sun Ah, but i feel like he shouldn’t have hinted towards going after Soo Hyun just to make a point.

Because for Ga On, Soo Hyun is all he has. He is already too neck deep into the Lion’s den and having the spotlight on Soo Hyun is a trigger for him.

The scene with Minister Cha and the other two women.

That was definitely Elite vs. Elite.

They are all at the same social status but when the times call for it, Minister Cha has the ability to make them drop to their knees.

The interaction between Jung Sun Ah and Minister Cha initially began with insults being thrown, belittling Sun Ah but now it has developed to a place where they help each other.

Minister Cha helps Sun Ah with the Foundation work and in return, Sun Ah helps her with taking revenge on Yohan.

Terrifyingly interesting.

Jung Sun Ah knows that Kim Ga On means something to Yohan, her first target is Ga On himself.

When it comes to Ga On, Min Jung Ho is a father figure, she already had a plan in mind when she made that biker lady trick Ga On.

When he asks Min Jung Ho, even he says that he suspects Kang Yohan and Yohan already threatened Soo Hyun so in his mind, the gears will start to work because he knows from experience that Kang Yohan really doesn’t mind going berserk when he wants someone out of his way.

Then the attention comes to Oh Jin Joo. Sun Ah is smart for this. The way she slowly poisons Jin Joo’s mind with that whole conversation about only men’s pictures being on the wall, for a moment is feels like she is encouraging Jin Joo to be ambitious but later! When the two associate judges are together, you just know that Sun Ah already got inside Jin Joo’s head when she goes “does he look down on me or something?”

Oh Jin Joo idolizes Yohan. So for her to slowly turn against him..

So technically her plan is to turn the baby associates against Yohan.

Bad lady

Coming back to Ga On struggling, he keeps seeing things that makes him rethink his intuitions when it comes to Yohan.

First it was the children playing with the ruler and now it’s a group of weird cult going around flogging people because “According to Kang Yohan, he will accept people’s wishes and flog terrible human beings”

So once again, the public adapting barbaric punishments from what they see in court, does make Ga On rethink about his choices.

Soo Hyun’s Attack

Obviously Yohan is keeping tabs on both Soo Hyun and Ga On, but then again, the drama really has their way of making the viewers think hard, For an instance,

The phone conversation Yohan has, the guy says “there is a chance she might know about the transfer”

Indicating that, to viewers again it makes us think that Kang Yohan really may have had something to do with the bribing or that they might actually go after Soo Hyun, but we all know that Yohan would never and it was pretty obvious who it was with the gloved hand,

So in conclusion,

biker lady attacks Soo Hyun, takes the passbook, gives it to Sun Ah who then plots with Minister Cha but unfortunately,

The threat Yohan made against Soo Hyun is too fresh in Ga On’s mind so obviously he suspect him first,

They highlighted that god damn German scissor too many times in Episode 6 and of course it is the same scissor Yohan stabs literal inches away from Bambi’s face.

Which was really an intricate scene, Jinyoung and Jisung as actors played it so beautifully. The unhinged anger and the disappointment in Yohan and the way Ga On realized that the man behind him is actually genuinely dangerous.

You can see the exact moment when that fear and realization sinks in Ga On.

That Yohan could hurt him badly if he wanted to.

Ga On functions on emotions when he’s not being a judge, so if he had actually taken a breather before provoking his boss with violent tendencies, he might have realized that Kang Yohan is just too smart to do something like that so out in the open.

There’s no doubt that Yohan really lets Ga On get away with a lot of shit he does.

But for some reason, the way he warned Ga On to never again attack him, felt like his first and last warning to me.

I absolutely LOVED the way Minister Cha thought that Yohan would crumble in front of her but my man just tells her to do whatever she wants… she should know that he wouldn’t be Kang Yohan if he didn’t wasn’t hundreds of steps ahead of them.

Something that I admired in the last scene is despite how annoyed or how mad Oh Jin Joo and Kim Ga On are at Yohan, when things get heated professionally, the two baby associates were so worried about him and they were completely ready to stand by his side even when they didn’t know any actual detail. Proud of my babies 🥺

But then, Kang Yohan accepting the allegations and Dr. Safety’s random appearance right at that moment seemed a little sus.

Almost too well timed.

Kang Yohan confidently asking the public to judge him because he knows that the public is on his side especially now that the reason for the money transfer is out in the open.

Kang Yohan’s decision of counterattacking the the Dream House Project right when the public take his side was a very smart move.

It was Minister Cha who tried to drag him through the mud but in turn he targets every single one of them socialites.

The last part felt like he was actually declaring war. The drama isn’t about poor vs. rich. It’s all about the internal works of the powerful class and I can’t wait to see how intense everything is going to be.

Lastly, the preview for Episode 7.

Why on earth did Yohan decide to bring out Ga On’s parents’ death and their case to the media?

Why take him to the jail?

Why rip open wounds from 13 years ago?

I know it’s stupid to jump in to theories and conclusions before we watch the episode because he always has a reason for everything he does,

But it made me think for a second was it because he wants to push Ga On to the limit until he breaks to the point where he has to solely rely on Yohan?

Because i get that Min Jung Ho is the parental figure in Ga On’s life but if Ga On were to ask him intense questions about his parents case, Min Jung Ho wouldn’t be completely honest with him, probably for Ga On’s safety but also there might be somethings that needs to stay hidden,

But Kang Yohan isn’t like that. He would be blunt and brutally honest if Ga On started asking him questions about his parents.

If Ga On were to rely on Yohan, that would also mean that Yohan would have control over him, either to use him as a pawn or to control Bambi enough to keep him safe and out of being targeted.

Lastly, am I the only one who is suspicious of Min Jung Ho?

If you made it this far again, thank you for reading my stress rant.

Now i’ll go back to silently stressing about next week because i have nothing better to do.

[trikruheart]

Bellamy Is The Abusive One, Not Octavia: A Rant/Meta

There’s two main “reasons” that people give when they claim that Octavia is abusive. That she beats up Bellamy after Lincoln’s murder, and that she has him put in The Fighting Pits.

Let’s start with the old discourse; Bellamy did get Lincoln killed, not Octavia. Bellamy is the person who got Pike into power, the person who stood by him even after seeing + being told multiple times by people he supposedly cares about that Pike was instituting facism and going to get everyone killed. Bellamy knowingly decided to be a Nazi even though he had other options and was aware of them. And, no, Nazi is not an exaggeration, Bellamy was 100% willing to wipe out an entire race just for being that race including putting them in concentration camp-like conditions to die.

Octavia is not at fault just because she didn’t accept Bellamy’s last minute “help”, he had given her absolutely no reason to trust him so it’s not her fault she didn’t. If my brother was fhe right-hand man of a fascist leader then I wouldn’t have trusted him that after he belittled my concerns several times and stopped me from escaping, he’ll get my boyfriend out of the camp he put him in to begin with. Octavia had no obligation to trust Bellamy after he did everything in his power to destroy her trust.

So, yes, Octavia beats up Bellamy. If I had just saw and heard the love of my life be murdered at the hands of the man that my own brother knowingly put in power then I probably would beat him up to. Especially if my brother had already been abusing me my whole life.

Side note: Let me also just point out that Bellamy was never adequately redeemed for that whole being a Nazi thing, everyone just pretended it never happened. Octavia herself even calls him out “You didn’t turn on Pike because you thought what he was doing to the grounders was wrong.” and he AGREES. Bellamy 👏 never 👏 earned 👏 redemption, because men in this show don’t need to be held accountable for their actions while women (mainly Octavia and Clarke) have to supplicate themselves to men and be dragged through the dirt mercilessly for every wrong breath they take.

The Fighting Pit issue is an even weaker example because Octavia didn’t put Bellamy in there because she was angry or wanted to (although she had every right to be) she did it because Bellamy publicly broke several laws and she would have completely undermined her own authority (and given special treatment, making her a poor leader) if she let him get away with treason, child endangerment, murder, and attempted assassination. Bellamy getting put in the fighting pit was a consequence of his own actions, one that he was well aware of. Octavia wasn’t being abusive, she was being a fair leader.

Now that that BS is out of the way, here’s a list of why Bellamy is abusive to Octavia:

1.) Bellamy has had all of the power in their relationship from day one. Octavia was literally trapped in a room and only able to interact with two people for sixteen years, Bellamy came and went as he pleased. Octavia was essentially a captive, she couldn’t have possibly been more powerless during the entire time their relationship was developing. Then when they get on the ground, Bellamy is almost instantly put in a position of power which he uses to isolate and control Octavia. There’s also the age difference, I think a lot of people forget that Bellamy is way older than all the other Skaikru. Bellamy is 23 at the start of the show and everyone else is under 18 (except Raven is 18). So, we’re talking about a barely 17-year-old girl, one who grew up extremely isolated so is even more immature than most kids her age, and a 23-year-old man who lived most of his life relatively normally.

The power difference entirely favors Bellamy. Octavia has no power over him at all pre-Blodreina (which we’ll get to that) so the idea that she could possibly abuse Bellamy is pretty absurd. Abuse is a habitual pattern of controlling and belittling behavior by someone with more (actual or perceived) power over another, Octavia had no power over Bellamy at all; Bellamy had an insane amount of power over her that he constantly abuses to isolate and control her.

2.) Bellamy supposedly goes to the ground to “protect” Octavia but his means of doing so are abusive and controlling. In season 1 alone; Bellamy uses physical intimidation and manhandling against Octavia several times, he terrorizes a harmless teenager (remember how he’s a grown ass adult? Yikes...) to keep him away from Octavia who was enjoying his company, then he tortures a man in front of her while she begs him to stop because he doesn’t care about her opinions (more in 4) and he’s the leader of The 100 so he can.

3.) The whole “my sister, my responsibility” thing that everyone thinks is so cute? Yeah, that’s emotional abuse. A figure of authority repeating to a child that they are a burden for existing is disgusting and so, so harmful. That phrase is a reinforcement of the more vicious things Bellamy has said “Mom was floated for having you, she’s dead because you’re alive!” and “My life ended the day you were born!”

4.) Bellamy is constantly belittling, dismissing, and patronizing all of Octavia’s opinions and identity.

“You turned this place into a story from your childhood. I mean, the red queen? It’s a joke.”

I’m not saying that Blodreina was a positive identity for Octavia, but it was something she was forced (remember, she didn’t seek power like Bellamy and Clarke did) to become to survive. Octavia was a mentally ill teenage girl with very limited exposure to the world who has never had any power in her entire life, and suddenly she was responsible for saving the human race. How fucking dare Bellamy mock her for basing her leadership off of stories WHAT THE HELL ELSE WOULD SHE BASE IT OF OFF???

Bellamy had a job and a life on The Arc, Octavia never left her room and had no way of seeing the outside world except through stories. She has literally no reference for ruling, or anything else, except those stories and her brief time with the Grounders. Fuck you and your privilege, Bellamy.

On top of that, Octavia actually did save the human race. That “joke” kept humanity alive.

“It is time to stop playing Grounder before you get yourself hurt.”

Yes, how dare she identify with the only people who have ever accepted her and treated her like a human being. How about you stop “playing” Nazi before you get us everyone killed. Seriously, Octavia is not allowed to disagree with Bellamy without him grabbing her arm and talking down to her like she’s a toddler throwing a tantrum.

5.) As soon as Octavia is in a position of power, one she didn’t even ask for, Bellamy’s abuse gets progressively crueler because he’s trying to regain control. He starts actively using Octavia’s mental illness against her and literally suicide baits her several times.

There is NO excuse. None at all. To tell someone who is severely mentally ill, traumatized, and an active suicide risk that “I wish you were dead” and “you’re already dead”. Trying to push someone to suicide and using someone’s mental illness to hurt them, let alone your own sister, is one of the most evil things you can do. The fact that so much of the fandom ignores this genuinely makes me sick.

Bellamy chooses those words because he knows that is what will hurt Octavia the most and he wants to hurt her. Bellamy has heard Octavia say that she’s already dead when she’s at her lowest points, he knows that those are the words that haunt her and drive her to want to kill herself, and that’s why he uses them as a weapon. Notice that he says them multiple times and at very purposeful times, this is not something he yelled once when he was angry; we see him calmly make the choice to say these things to her several times when he is losing control and wants to break her back down to the helpless little girl who was always happy to see him because of her Stockholm Syndrome.

6.) I think trying to MURDER Octavia THREE FUCKING TIMES deserves its own point. Bellamy poisons Octavia, he suicide baits her and let’s her go through with it (someone else stops her, Bellamy makes no move to), and then he leaves her to die with a lovely extra “My sister is dead” for the road.

7.) Octavia spends most of season 6 groveling and trying to “earn” back Bellamy’s love and we see clearly that “earning” Bellamy’s love means being utterly powerless and subservient. Bellamy loved Octavia when she was a captive little girl but suddenly he can’t produce an ounce of human decency towards her? And don’t give me some “but she’s Blodreina” like Mr. Nazi has any room to judge Octavia for becoming a dictator out of desperation when she didn’t know what else to do and she was forced in a very, very difficult leadership position that she never wanted and all of humanity relied on.

My point is basically that Bellamy’s love is conditional, he holds it over Octavia’s head like a fucking dog treat. He wants “his sister” back but what does that mean? He wants back the scared little girl who couldn’t leave one room and was entirely dependent on him. It’s Octavia having autonomy that Bellamy hates, not her being “evil” because Bellamy is 500x as evil as Octavia and I will die on that hill. You’re telling me that Bellamy of all people is soooo upset that his sister was forced to kill some people in the context of war and keeping humanity alive? As if Bellamy isn’t a mass murderer who has killed way more people for way less. Give me a fucking break. “Octavia is dead” because Bellamy’s victim is dead and he can’t handle that.

But, please, do tell me again how two isolated incidents over six years apart from each other that are both the direct consequences of Bellamy’s autonomous choices make Octavia “eMoTiOnAllY AbUsIvE tO pOoR WitTlE BeLl”.

[igirisuhito]

Hi! I’m bidoofgodofdestruction. I want to say that I’m so sorry for having spread false rumors about your fic without reading it. That was wrong of me and stupidly transphobic. You don’t have to forgive me, or even respond to this, but I’m sorry to you for making accusations. Have a good day.

Hi Bidoof. First of all, I'd like to thank you for the opportunity to freely talk about some issues near and dear to my heart. I want to expand on how problematic these kinds of actions are. Why am I making an example of you in particular? Well, to put it simply; you annoy me. 

(Just so you know: Bidoof's “unpleasant run-in” with me was me telling her that she shouldn't judge writers for what they write. You can see my exact post linked here) Is there anything wrong with venting on your blog about a fic you weren’t fond of? No, not really. Begging people to send you asks to feel better? Annoying, but, whatever. Putting said vents in the fucking TAGS? Yeah uh, don’t do that. I would have preferred it if you directly messaged me to voice your qualms on my “Tags” (no, she didn’t even read the fic!) but you can’t, because you have me blocked. Actually, I even have you blocked, hence why you had to send this anonymously. Instead you yell out into your little echo chamber to get the approval from like minded followers on how gross my “Tags” are. If said followers hadn't said anything, you wouldn't have felt any remorse. You blocked someone trying to explain to you that you cannot judge the fic by its tags alone. Shout out to Nanacka, by the way. Absolutely lovely artist. 

Judging a book by it’s cover aside, I wanna talk about why this exact kind of thing is so problematic. How looking at LGBT content with a significantly more critical eye is killing content for LGBT people. 

You guys remember Dream Daddy right? The game that people criticised so harshly, not because of the plot line or the story or the art, but because of the way it portrayed it's little gay universe? Receiving criticism over being unrealistic, or appealing to female masses, even having uncompleted work in the coding dragged out and judged. That criticism then extended to fanartists, and eventually hype died out for the game because people were afraid of making content for it. 

Who would want to make an MLM dating game after seeing a reception like THAT? Have you noticed how every other queer visual novel-esque dating game that has come out since gives you the option of a cishet relationship? And how most of them don't receive the same criticisms Dream Daddy did? 

There's also the issue with calling things "gross and fetishistic". With criticising content because it may cater to fujoshis. You see, the inherent TERF rhetoric with calling women consuming queer media "gross and undesirable" aside, some of us gay men just want that? Sometimes as a mentally ill gay man, I want to read about an unhealthy relationship between my two favorite characters. This doesn't mean I like them any less. I'm exploring something I wouldn't want to explore in my real life. These aren’t real people, this is a fantasy I can explore through fiction, experiences I can connect to.

I have healthy relationships in my personal life, and I have had many that weren’t. The ability to explore these themes in a safe place, to be able to self analyse, is a critical skill and I think something everybody should indulge in. It has helped me to learn how to identify abusive behaviour before it has grown out of control. Being able to see characters I relate to go through similar things to what I have is important to me, and in my opinion, vital to good representation. Not everyone goes through trauma gracefully.

Like, do you know how much fanfic involves gay men having sex without any prior preparation? Yes, it can lead to misconceptions, but doesn't that more point to flaws in our education system? It is not my duty to teach the underaged child reading my fanfiction, written for adults, that perhaps they should wear a condom. 

I've gone way off topic. I just, never expected this to be the fic that got me squinted at, you know? A fic about two boys with vastly different sexual experiences fumbling around each other trying to figure things out. This is severely wholesome. 

You may think you are being a good ally, defending the rights of a transgender character. Their right not to be lewded or fetishised or used as a plot device. But in doing so, you risk belittling the experiences of trans people who relate to said character. Or shit, in this case, even, the trans author who wrote said character based off their own experiences! But you wouldn't know that, right? You didn't even fucking read it. You read the content warnings and drew your own conclusions.

Which brings me back to Bidoof, and her desire to constantly dictate what she sees in fandom. She defends it by saying "oh this is my comfort ship you're ruining my comfort ship". That's ridiculous for a multitude of reasons, people are comforted by vastly different things. You are comforted by your favourite couple holding hands, I am comforted by my favourite couple tearing each other apart in a toxic relationship I am so glad I would never be a part of. We are different people with different tastes, you cannot control fandom. 

And girl, leave Red the fuck aloooone omg. Don't think we don't see your vagueposts when you put them in the fucking TAGS!! You vagued about her in a server that she was in and then were shocked when she saw it. Everytime you say these things, they get back to the person. Every single time. My friends reached out to me about this, mutuals/acquaintances reached out to me, even people I've never spoken to reached out to me. 

I've seen you vaguepost about a 14 year old in a server she shared with you. In my eyes, knowing you are an adult, that's detestable behaviour. You're a hypocrite and a bully, acting as though you're doing the right thing because people have the "wrong opinions" telling people to "act normal". Seriously you can't see for a second how blatantly horrible that sounds? 

I'm just going to say, please don't send Bidoof hate. That's not going to solve anything. My fic is fine, I will survive, and I'm grateful to have actually seen her apologise, even if I do not forgive her. I'm honestly more angry over the fact she thinks it's fine to continue to be such a bully, or that she's justified in doing so.

Sorry to have made you "ill" with my wholesome trans porn. Don't worry, you won't have to see any of my "nasty" stuff in the tags from now on. 

[boogiewrites]

Rosie & the Road Less Traveled

Characters: Declan Harp x Rosie Anderson (OFC)

Summary: Declan Harp 1970s Hippy/Roadtrip AU Rosie has made a bold decision and decided to leave her monotonous life. She sets out to create her own with a group of misfits traveling  across America, post-Vietnam during the 1970s. She breaks out of her shy and insecure, sheltered shelf to have an adventure where she learns the realities of life outside her former cookie-cutter existence. She experiences, a year of sex, drugs, and rock and roll as the group of ex-soldiers and free spirits change her worldview and show her another way. She meets the charming but damaged Declan who takes her under his wing. Will a budding romance for this blossoming Rose prove to be her gift from the universe for making the hard decision to be her own woman? 

Warnings/Tags: Talk of emotional abuse by family. 

Click on my screen name then go to Mobile Masterlist in my bio for my other works and chapters. Please leave a like, reblog or comment if you enjoyed this! It makes me want to write more of what you want if you let me know!

Rosie awoke in the same pink and frill filled bedroom she had every day of her life so far. She could smell the same coffee she wasn’t allowed to have. The scent filled up their Better Homes and Gardens modeled modest family home settled in a suburb full of pastel houses with the same pastel cars in their driveway. It was polished and performative, just like Rosie’s mother who was standing in her doorway looking like a copy of June Cleaver.

“You’ll be late for John to pick you up! Don’t keep a man waiting! A wife must be preemptive and pretty dear.” She exits as quickly as she’d entered. Rosie is left looking to her favorite childhood toy and only friend, Booger Bear, with a sigh before starting her day. Not much had changed in Rose Anderson’s life since she was a child. She was raised by older parents, very strict and traditional. Which would explain why they’d agreed to her engagement so fervently. She was 24 and unmarried and being a spinster was not an option according to them. So she was having yet another huge life decision made for her by someone else. She couldn’t remember the last time she had held her own opinion or made up her own mind. She had fear instilled within her from a young age that she was less than and this was used to keep her under control. Being different as she was with her ghostly white skin and pale blonde hair, her albinism stood out among her peers. She wore glasses and a constantly apologetic look on her face. Her childlike treatment was clear on her face as her features were baby round. A button nose and large light blue eyes with cheeks that always had a flush to them showed her softness unwillingly. She truly did look like a baby animal, naive, and easy prey.

This was a common theme among the treatment she’d had from men so far in her life. She didn’t expect any different. Her mother had cried tears of relief when George had asked for her hand. She would finally be able to tell her bridge club that her daughter had at least something normal going on about her. The cruel and belittling words she’d heard her whole life only made sense to continue hearing from this new person that would now be in charge of her she was told. If nothing had changed in her life up to this point, why would it ever?

The fact that George never showed didn’t surprise her. So when she went into town to run wedding errands on her own she wasn’t surprised. Wasn’t the first time, wouldn’t be the last. He usually disappears at night and not in the morning so that was unusual but she went through her day with the same polite smile she always did. A smile that said sorry for existing. She called her home from the library, offering to see if her mother needed anything for supper. She hadn’t but she had heard from George’s mother, and she hadn’t seen him either. So it was now Rosie’s job to find him, as they’d be married soon.

She sat defeated on a bench to rest as the sun started to set. She’d asked at the stores on the square and no one had seen him. Luckily for her, she’d sat down in front of the Beauty Parlour and it being a small town, everyone knows everyone, one of the ladies there knew who sweet little odd Rosie was and took pity on her.

“I know it’s not my place to say so baby but that man of yours is no count. You know that right?”

“I’m sorry ma'am?”

“You were in town all day today alone, doin' your dress and all that right? For the wedding?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“And he’s been across county lines getting drunk as a skunk.” She shakes her head. “Again.”

“Oh.” Rosie sighs and looks to the ground. “Do you know where he is?” She asks reluctantly.

“No where no sweet thing like you needs to be goin'.”

“I need to get him home. His mother’s worried.”

“She should be. Ain't your mama worried about you out here alone?”

“She said I have to do real women’s work and take care of George as best I can. He’s mine now and I better start acting like it and go… find him.”

The kind woman sighs and feels bad for the poor thing. But it wasn’t an uncommon story. “He’s out at the bar past the county line. Neon sign, bikes out front, can’t miss it. It’s on the right.” She says with a groan.

“Up 25E?” She asks already getting to her feet.

“Yes, baby now be careful. I’m only telling you this because someone’s gotta help you out, honey. Maybe it’s time you helped yourself huh?”

“I’m doing what any good wife and daughter would do ma'am.”

“Life’s not about being good for other people. You have to think about what’s good for you. What do you want? Do you want to marry George?”

“Ma'am what a silly question.”

“That’s not the enthusiastic YES I should be hearing from a bride to be is it?”

Rosie doesn’t know how to reply and just looks worried for a moment with her wide eyes.

“Go before it gets darker baby. Be careful. Take care of yourself.” She says as Rosie scurries across the square to the car.

She did love getting to drive around. Something she’d not been allowed to do until recently. So a trip out of town on a lovely evening was something that got her very excited.

She had held onto that moment of happiness as she drove out of town. A perfect evening with a chill after the sun went down. She could hear frogs and crickets as she left the roads full of cookie-cutter homes and drove into a more forested area.

She had a comfortable smile on her face until the trees cleared for a patch and showed a roadhouse. This had to be the place. She pulled in with a mix match of very nice and very beat down cars. Some buses and small caravans lined along the perimeter. She could hear music coming from inside the metal and wood walls. There were men three times her size all around. They were an odd mix of trendy sleazy men with feathered hair and grizzly biker men and they were all chain-smoking. Everyone looked as confused as she did as she entered the building. If she was polite and direct there was no reason these gentlemen had to give her any trouble. She’d heard about these sorts from her mother. Bikers, greasers, all sinners, and a dirty lot to associate with.

But Rosie had always seen glimpses of people in the magazines. The intense men on their bikes with a scantily clad woman who looked both elated and aroused clutched to his back as they rode through the great American Route 66. They looked like they were having fun, she thought. She thought they looked free and those were things she longed to know how they felt. But there was no room for these things in her life. So although she should be afraid to be around these people, she was actually quite excited. She fantasized with already blushed shy cheeks about striking up a conversation with one of them and finding out what they were really like.

“You lost sweetheart?” The man in glasses with his arms crossed at the door asks her.

“I’m here to fetch my husband- my fiancé.” She corrects herself.

“You with a man that comes to a place like this?”

“His name is George. He is a fan of a strong drink and a cigar. And apparently, his frequenting of this place is something everyone in the town knew about but me.” she admits freely as she wasn’t one to have any reason to hide bits of herself. Everyone could be a friend in her eyes. She entered every interaction with a genuine curiosity it was honestly a bit hard to be rude to her.

“Ah.” He nods and understands. “Go on in, sweetheart” he holds open the door for her and watches her stand and take it all in for a moment. He chuckles and then sighs, “Poor little thing.” he mutters.

Through an old western saloon style inner door she enters with a delighted smile. “How charming!” She says to herself. She walked into a rather large room full of gambling tables. A bar on one end and a stage on the other. Panning over to meet the stage last, she’s hit with a thump of bass in her chest by way of her feet. It rumbled into the floor as she tentatively approached. She’d never seen live music before. She supposed choir and church and talent shows didn’t really count. There were electric guitars and men with no shirts and girls without bras and she was enthralled. She had heard a few rock songs by way of sneaking into a poor reception radio station when she was left alone in the car. She loved it. But it was something only classless people were apart of. Or so she was told. But these people looked the same as those in the magazines. A very tall and dark man played the instrument causing her to experience a very pleasant vibration through her body. He was shirtless and sweating and had a large tattoo on his arm. A chain from his worn dark jeans that bounced with every pluck of his long fingers. Next to him a smaller man, pale and singing with delightfully large blonde curly hair. He sang beautifully she thought. He wore a shirt unbuttoned and tucked into pants so tight she could see a bulge that ripped her from her fantasy of being as cool and free as they were. She turns around quickly and moves towards the bar.

She finds George in his work clothes, the navy not being blotched by black oils and spills told her he also hadn’t been to work. She wears her disappointment in her face clearly for a moment before trying to put on that mask her mother taught her to wear. Never show him that you’re upset. Anger is unseemly on a lady. But this did make her angry. Her red face made it obvious she was holding in red hot emotion. Her smile was hollow and her eyes gave her away.

“Hello, George. I believe it’s time we got home.” She says with a hand to his shoulder.

“How’d you find me here?” He asks with a dramatic turn on his bar stool, and he was in true skunk form.

“A person in town suggested it. Your mother is worried about you. Can we please go home?”

“You can. I’m staying here.”

“Please George I have to get you home. Both our parents expect me to take care of you and that’s what I’m doing.”

“What if I don’t want you to take care of me? Huh? What if I don’t want anything to do with you?”

Her throat felt tight. She was not accustomed to being spoken to in such a way since she was bullied when she was young. The eyes she could feel on her from a growing audience he was causing made her feel all tingly and nervous. He looked at her with disgust and the shame she usually felt was quickly turning into anger in this new over-stimulating environment.

“Do you think I want to be here?”

“Huh?”

“Do you think I wanted to run all the errands myself today for my own wedding? And make excuses for your absence all day and have people look at me with pity. Because they knew you were here. Again from the looks of you.”

“Well, I’m only here because of YOU.” He spits back.

“Me?” She squeaks with growing confidence that makes her take a deep breath and steady herself. “I have been nothing but an ideal fiancé from the beginning of this. YOU asked for this. Not me.”

“I didn’t ask for it! You did!”

They both looked at each other confused. “I was told you asked for my hand.”

“Hell no my parents told me I had to say yes to your parents offer or they’d cut me off and send me to the army.”

They both blink at each other for a moment. “This is…” she takes a shaker breath. “I’m in an arranged marriage.” She whispers and feels a betrayal deep in her chest. She’d been lied to. Her parents lied, her fiancé lied, the whole town and only one person has the decency to tell her where George was. It hurt like a knife might she thought as her hands held fast to her stomach.

“Are you like...retarded too? Ugh geez. Of course, it is! Why would I want to be with a freak like you?”

It’s as if he’d culminated every fear she’d ever had into a single sentence. All her thoughts of not fitting in, of something being wrong with her. She’d been right all along. “Well, I don’t want to be with a mean drunk like you!” She says back with a face that showed her first real emotion in years.

“I am not a drunk.”

“Yes you are! The whole town gossips about it behind your back. Your parents threaten to send you off if you don’t start acting like an adult. You try to take advantage of ME when I’ve never been anything but nice to you! You are MEAN and you are a DRUNK!”

He moves fast and grabs hold of her arms tightly. Enough to make her cry out and wince. “You listen here you little freak of nature. If you’re gonna be with me you’re gonna respect me as a good wife would.”

“Is there a problem here?” The same tall man from the stage asks, towering over George.

“Buzz off bud. This is between me and my girl.”

“It’s not when you talk to her like that, loud enough for whole damn bar to hear and then put your hands on her.

“Why don’t you go and fuck your cousin, you dirty ass hippies.”

The man meets eyes with Rosie and he immediately knew he had to help her. She looked defeated, but a shine of hope that someone, anyone would ever help her out. He knew one of their kind when he saw that look. Just like the group of outcasts he’d gathered over the years since returning home.

“You’re a…” he glances to Rosie who beams innocence in such a way a man like him is forced to protect it. “Jerk.” He decides instead of saying words that might make the victim feel embarrassed.

“He’s an… asshole.” She spits out and feels a wave of rush over her as she curses.

George flinches to hit her and that was enough for the tall stranger. “Alright, you’re killing the vibe, man.” He wraps his neck in a headlock and drags him out of the bar with a shocked Rosie froze for a moment.

“‘Ello there, love.” The singer from before came in. With gentle hands to her shoulders. “You alright? Hurt?”

“N-no.” She stutters.

“Ya sure you’ve gone all rosy in the face.” He fans her with his hand.

“I always am.” She excuses quickly. “Sorry..I-“

“No apologies, let’s get you into the fresh air eh? Don’t worry I’m with the big guy what dragged off that unpleasant twat you were dealing with.”

“Okay.” She says breathily and a little dazed. “Thank you.”

——-

“Well, he’s gone.” The tall one says proudly, clapping his hands.

Rosie stands and looks at the spot where her car had sat. Now empty. “Did he take that yellow car?” She points to the space.

“Yeah, he headed right for it, had the keys.”

She nods and sighs. “I’m afraid that was my car he took.” She looks down the ground to figure out her next move from here, now stranded.

“Oh shit. Oh no, I’m sorry.” The tall man says putting his hands to his mouth. “Ah. Well fuck, honey I really screwed you there didn’t I “

She blinks with her large pale blue eyes at him with tears withheld. A cherub round face that struck a deep nerve as she tried to hide her upset. “You didn’t mean it. You were trying to help.” She says with a slow nod and inhales.

“Bad luck innit.” The other rubs her back comfortingly and she didn’t mind it. He seemed like such a nice man. They both were.

“Can you get a ride home? Call your parents or… something? Or did he just... steal your car?” He towers over her but she doesn’t feel afraid. He rubs his head in thought as he bit his lip.

“I’ll have to call my mother. He’ll go home to his mother I presume.” She nods. “I can retrieve my car tomorrow. Unless he crashes it.” She sighs. “He was terribly drunk.” Her shoulders sink in disappointment.

“Look, we’ll get ya home...what’s your name love?”

“Rose.”

“Oh, that’s a beautiful name innit? For a beautiful girl.” He holds no ill will as he says it and the compliment hits her hard in her emotionally unstable state. Tears well up for someone, a man, a nice man to be so kind to her to say such a nice thing. “Oh no, don’t cry. We'll get you a cab home. It’s no trouble love. Don’t worry ya pretty little head about it eh?”

“You’re so nice.” The tears fall fat over her flushed cheeks.

“Now there’s a good girl.” He brings her in for a hug. “Go call her a car, mate.” He nods away the other fellow.

“I’m so sorry. I’m not usually like this. I’ve had such a bad day.”

“Now let’s sit down here and you can tell Danny all about it now little Rosie.” He shoos some men off a nearby bench to sit her down.

“That your name?” She sniffles

“It is. I’m Danny and that big man was Declan. You’ll be safe with us. Don’t worry. We are protectors of the oppressed.” He chuckles as he puts an arm on her shoulder as she hides her face from the eyes watching.

“Oppressed?”

“Yeah. You know, women… people that are... various beautiful shades of brown, black yellow..." he spoke dramatically with an outstretched hand that captivated her " … homosexuals. You know how it goes, the bad ones yeah? The rebels, the outcasts,  lost children who come across our path.”

“You’re making us sound like a cult man. Don’t scare her.” Declan laughs and stands guard at her other side. “Taxi’ll be here within the hour.” He gives her a warm smile that crinkles around his eyes. Half of it coverd in a beard that was pointed and a bit fuzzy. His hair was like a dark lions mane around his face and shoulders.

Rosie contemplated as she looked up at him and wondered if she’d ever seen a man so tall before.

“He only looks scary,” Danny assures her. “Declan this is Rosie.”

“Pretty name for a pretty girl.” He gives a gentle nod down at her.

“Almost exactly what I told her.” Danny beams.

“Hey Rosie, I’m Declan. Nice to meet you.” He spoke softly and gently as if she might startle if he spoke too loudly at her. “We’re in a band. We travel around. Play music and just...living life y’know. Being free with the life we’ve got.” He spoke proudly as he explained. “We’ve heard a lot of stories. So you aren’t going to tell us anything we’ll judge you for.” He laughs.

“We’ve all done far worse than whatever spot you’ve got yourself in angel.” Danny joins in the laugh.

“I’m sorry to cry I’m just feeling a bit overwhelmed.” She wipes her cheeks. “As I was telling Danny I’ve had a very bad day.”

“Tells us about it then love. Let the evil out.” He motions with his hands as if he were vomiting and it makes her have a soft little giggle. “There she is.” He pushes her chin up gently. “Go on then…”

Her blubbering story hurt them both as she told of isolation and now betrayal and forced marriage to a terrible man. They’d seen it and heard it before, many in their group had a similar past.

“You deserve so much better Rosie love,” Danny says with a broadly shaking head. “You are clearly such a bright and lovely girl with a pure heart and you deserve the same given back to you.”

“I do!” She whines.

“You can change it all. You’ve got the power. They tell us we don’t. That we can’t. But it’s because they’re afraid of us. Afraid that if we knew what power we had as a collective, as they’ve made us all feel so isolated you see? You can have whatever sort of life you want Rosie. You just have to take it.” Dany speaks intently to her with unwavering eye contact.

“Take it?” she sniffles.

“Make the hard choices. You want things to stay like this forever or you want to take a chance and be your own person?” Declan asks with high brows. He had the tougher approach and Danny handled the whimsy of things, it suited their personalities.

“Like...refuse to marry him?”

“Not just that. You can refuse to stay with your parents.”

Rosie laughs as if he’s joking.

“I’m serious. You could go and live anywhere you wanted. Did you even know that?”

“No. I thought….”

“You can make your own choices Rosie,” Declan says as he sees the cab arrive. “You could see the world. Meet anyone. Do anything. ”

“That… sounds too good to be true.” she looks down at the ground as they walk her towards the car.

“It’s what we did,” Declan turns to face her. “We didn’t like our lives so we just...changed them. I wanted music and freedom and to be around people who understood me.”

“We eventually found each other. And our little family has grown ever since.” Danny holds his home like an adoring mum seeing away their daughter on the bus.

“Family?”

“We’re just a bunch of misfits that are trying to find our place in this crazy world.” Danny shrugs. “Some of us play music and some just follow us in the summertime to escape their lives. Some just like life on the road. We’ve got all sorts. Certainly had a few girls with stories like yours.”

“Really?” she rubs her cheeks.

“We aren’t saying you have to join us. We’re just saying you can make your own choices... have whatever sort of life you want. That’s all. You seemed like you could use the help.”

“I could.” she lets out a heavy, thoughtful sigh. “Thank you. Both. You were very helpful. I can’t really repay you.”

“Start making YOURSELF happy Rosie. That’ll be payment enough. You deserve it, pet.” Danny waves her goodbye.

“Don’t let the man get you down little Rosie.” Declan Nods her way as she gets in the cab to head home.

—————

The cab drive home was the most peace she was going to know for the next 24 hours. It started with the cops being at her house when she got there. George had been arrested after being taken to the hospital for injuries from wrecking her car. He was being held and charged and poor Rosie thought she might pass out.

George’s mother paced and shouted in their house late into the night. Wailing about her “poor” son. What did she do to him to make him behave in such a way? Denial was not just a river she'd read about in the encyclopedias she'd gotten for Christmas.

Her own mother joined in, what did she do? How was she going to fix this? Why didn’t she have the money to bail him out? She raised her better than this.

Rosie sat and took it. But each biting remark only made that funny feeling in her stomach grow as each verbally slapped her over and over.

“Did you ever consider you’re yelling at the wrong person?” She finally says back quietly.

“For god's sake girl don’t mumble and slouch! It’s ugly!”

She had been told she was pretty tonight and told she could be and do whatever she wanted. Things she’d never heard before. There were people out there that wouldn’t treat her like this. This isn’t what she wanted. She wouldn’t survive a life like this, it would hollow her out into a shell of who she really was.

“I said, Did you ever consider you’re yelling at the wrong person?” Her brow was now creased and a rare sight it was. “Did you ever consider your son is a drunk? A hateful loser who has been breastfed too long by his mother?!” She sass’s with balled fists in the meanest and most insulting thing she’d ever said came out of her mouth confidently. “And you! I don’t have any money because you won’t let me work! You won’t let me leave! Or even LIVE!” She throws her arms up in the air. “You’re being bullies when I’m the ONLY one that tried to DO something and HELP him. And this is what I get? No. No more. I don’t have to put up with this...this… BOLOGNA!” She yells and stomps to her room, slamming the door and leaving a room of shocked faces behind. Her father in the kitchen almost choked on the beer he was trying to secretly down to deal with the situation. It was beer and not even liquor what was he becoming?

Rosie falls to her bed and cries and hits the pillows as her door is quickly bombarded with screeches on the other side. Demands of her to come out and apologize and she just kept shouting “NO!” Over and over to their requests. She took all of her suitcases and laid them on the bed, the voices on the other side growing tired and falling quieter and they tried to listen to what she was doing. She threw her life into those cases. All her favorite things, things she might need, she stuffed them full and sat on them to get them to shut. She angrily pens a letter. Telling them she was tired of being oppressed and lied to and she was going to make herself happy and never see them again. She still signed it with a heart.

She gets out of her bedroom window and makes her way to the car with the dented fender and busted windows the cops had returned to them. She throws in her bags and whispers a prayer it will start. Someone was looking out for her. She could see the sources of the yelling running out of the house behind her as she headed out of the subdivision. She’d never felt more alive.

She practically drifted into the gravel parking lot at the roadhouse and held tears of joy from her escape and the fact that the buses and vans were still in sight. The bus was headed out of the parking lot. She leaves the car with the keys in the ignition and straps her bags and suitcases up and runs as fast as her feet will carry her toward the van left in the line.

“WAIT!” She shouts and pants. “PLEASE WAIT!!” She lets out a scream she didn’t know she had in her. Her lungs burned and her blood pumped faster than it ever had as the van door rolled open. “I’m coming with you!”

“Is that?” Declan snorts out an amused sound

“Well fuck me it’s that little girl again.” Danny muses as he looks out the door. “Slow down mate, we got a castaway.”

“Being. Chased. Keep going.”

“Chased?” Danny laughs. “By who?” The thought of someone being in pursuit of this tiny white field mouse amused him to no end.

“I RAN AWAY!” she laughs as she throws her bags to the filled van and is ran full force as the van gets to the highway and she’s yanked inside. The door slams shut behind her and she’s left wheezing and trying to fix her dress and hair.

“Come now little bird, have a seat.” Danny pulls her down on the bean bag he’s sat on.

“I. Ran.” She pants out and Danny and Declan laugh but the other eyes in the van are looking at her confused.

“From the cops?” Someone asks concerned

“No.” She clears her throat and takes a deep breath as she calms down. “From my house.”

“Was it as bad as you thought it was gonna be?” Danny pushes back her hair.

“Worse.” She lets out a nervous laugh. “I can... I can come with you guys right?” She says with puppy eyes.

“Welcome to our merry little crew Rosie bug.” Danny beams.

“I ran away too.” Another girl with long beautiful wavy hair says from her spot in the open-backed van, now crowded full. “Husband? Parents?”

“Both.” Rosie nods and they share a sympathetic nod of understanding.

“I’m glad you came Rosie.” the girl's eyes showed strong empathy and it made Rosie certain she'd made the right decision.

“I am too.” She finally catches her breath. “So…” she primps for a moment to gather herself. “Where are we off to first?”

@vale0413 @littledeadgirlwalking @jaegeeeeer @phillipkopusimagines-and-stuff @mjolnir96 @xmother-mortemx @this-isnt-madness  @thors-hair-extensions @divadinag @s-h-e-w-r-i-t-e-s​

[basicsofislam]

ISLAM 101: Muslim Culture and Character: Morals And Manners: TEASING AND MOCKING

The Qur’an commands that people should not make fun of, embarrass, or ridicule one another, nor call each other by unbecoming nicknames. This is an important principle if there are to be good relations among people in a community.

O you who believe! Let not some people among you deride another people, it may be that the latter are better than the former; nor let some women deride other women, it may be that the latter are better than the former. Nor defame one another (and provoke the same for yourselves in retaliation), nor insult one another with nicknames (that your brothers and sisters dislike). Evil is using names with vile meaning after (those so addressed have accepted) the faith (– doing so is like replacing a mark of faith with a mark of transgression). Whoever (does that and then) does not turn to God in repen- tance, (giving up doing so), those are indeed wrongdoers. (Hujurat 49:11)

Here I will address the issues in this verse, using Elmalili Hamdi Yazir as a source, but attempting to simplify his ideas. After the verse opens with a call to believers to conscientiously treat each other well, it inspires believers to do so with the great- est sincerity, indicating that this will make it possible for many more nations and people to perceive and accept the beauty of Islam. Then, this verse goes on from generally fostering brother- hood to teaching people the adab of how to treat each other, both face to face and when apart. There were several events that occa- sioned the revelation of this verse:

1. According to a narration from Dahhaq, several people from the tribe of Banu Tamim teased and mocked Companions like Bilal al-Habashi, Habbab, Ammar, Suhayb, Abu Dharr, Salim, and Mawla Hudayfa.

2. Aisha said she used to tease Zaynab bint Huzayma al-Hila- liyya for being short. Likewise she and Hafsa talked be- tween themselves about how short Umm Salama was.

3. Ibn Abbas relates that Safiyya bint Huyayy once came to the Messenger and said, “The women call me ‘Jew, daughter of a Jew’ to tease me.” The Messenger replied, “Why do you not reply, ‘My father was Aaron, my uncle was Moses, and my husband is Muhammad’?”

4. Thabit ibn Qays was partially deaf and therefore when he was near the Prophet, other people would let him through the crowd so he could come closer to hear. One day he came and started going through the others, saying, “Move, make room.” One man did not pay attention, and Thabit became offended and asked, “Who is this?” The man told him his name. The other retorted, “No, you are the son of the woman who—” attributing him to a woman known for indecency. The man was embarrassed, and when this verse was revealed, Thabit never talked about nobleness by birth again.

5. Ikrima, the son of Abu Jahl (Islam’s most determined en- emy), became Muslim, but he was called “Son of the Pharaoh of the community of believers.” This upset him and he told the Prophet about it.41

According to Qurtubi, to mock someone means that one is looking down on them, insulting them, putting them down, and talking about their faults in order to ridicule them. Razi says from a community point of view, mocking another person means “showing one’s believing brother or sister less than their deserved respect and honor, approaching them in an uncomplimentary way.” In the above verse the words qawm (tribe) and nisa (wom- en) are used, which in Arabic denotes the men and the women of the community. There are other linguistic clues as well which prove this. The concept of the community is important in this verse in several ways:

1. It serves as a reminder that Islam is not a religion solely for private practice, but is meant to be lived as a community.

2. It shows that mocking others can cause serious problems and individuals must cease to practice such behavior.

3. The verse also implies that this action or habit on the part of one individual becomes like a sickness that affects the whole community, as a person who mocks others will al- ways have some hangers-on laughing at the jokes and try- ing to become their friend by doing the same. If any ques- tion remains as to why such actions are forbidden, every believer should be concerned about the final reason: It may be that, in God’s sight, the one who is mocked is ac- tually better than the one who is mocking. For we can on- ly know the outer appearance of others; God alone knows their hearts. We are not capable of knowing what level of value a person has in front of God. Therefore, no one has the right to belittle, look down on, or make fun of anoth- er person because of some outward appearance or action; this may be misleading. If the person we mock is greatly loved by God and we show them disrespect, then surely we will have wronged our own soul as well as that of the person. In other words, making fun of others is wrong in two ways: First, if a Muslim mocks another believer, they are mocking themselves, since we are all like one body. Second, if a person does something shameful, it brings shame most of all on their own soul. Thus, the verse can be paraphrased like this: “Do not mock, embarrass, or be- little believers; for to do so is to mock, embarrass, and be- little yourself.” Or, if we look at it from the second aspect, “When you make a fool of someone or demean them, the result is that you have made a fool of yourself and besmirched your own name.” In other words, the first meaning is more to do with brotherhood, while the second meaning pertains to the honor and dignity of our individual soul.

A nickname is given either to honor someone or to bring them down in some way. The verse uses the word nabz to refer to epithets with derogatory meanings; these are forbidden. On the other hand, it is permissible to give or use positive epithets. According to Kashshaf, the Prophet said, “One of the rights of a believer over his believing brother is to be called by the name he loves most.” This is why giving a beautiful epithet is Sunna, in ac- cordance with the Prophet’s example. Some of the Companions had such kunya, or respectful but intimate names. Most societies have such epithets. But any kind of derogatory term of abuse should be avoided. Calling someone by a derogatory name is fisq, or deviant, immoral behavior, so a person doing this is considered to be ignoring the ethics of Islam. This is a very serious situation for anyone to find themselves in. Knowing that this brings serious punishment and a state that is less than true practice and belief, one should actively and carefully avoid calling other people names or mocking them.42

MAKING A MOCKERY OF FAITH

Another related topic addressed in the Qur’an is a type of hypoc- risy. This occurs when people act one way while with believers, but make fun of the believers when they are not with them, thus showing their hidden identity. Just as believers should not make fun of one another, they should also exercise common sense and avoid making themselves the butt of others’ jokes by speaking of their beliefs among people who may mock them once they leave. In Sura Baqara it is written:

When they meet those who believe, they declare (hypocritically), “We believe”; but when they are alone in secret with their (apparently human) satans (to whom they hasten in need to renew their unbelief and their pledge to them for fear of losing their support), they say, “Assuredly we are with you; we only mock (those others).” (Since what they do only means demanding straying and ridicule,) God returns their mockery, leaving them to wander blindly on in their rebellion. Such are the ones who have bought straying in exchange for guidance, but their trade has brought no profit, and they have no way out to escape it. (Baqara 2:14–16)

There is no question about how despicable this kind of behav- ior is morally; such people cannot be called believers. They show a friendly, fawning face toward believers while they are with them, but only so that they can hide their true, malicious intentions. Then when they get together with the evildoing mischief-makers, they say, “We are truly with you and were only acting; trust us.” The more they swear their allegiance, the more they are actually confirming their treachery, pitting themselves against the believers with their fellow conspirators. Such an action is against basic de- cency and morality, as these people are mocking and devaluing be- lief itself; thus, it is easy to understand why such an attitude is one of the markers of unbelief (kufr).

To ridicule someone, even in jest, means to violate their hon- or and dignity. Most people who make fun of believers do not have the courage to insult them; if they do, then insult reflects badly on the person uttering it, not on the one they are insulting. But when people insult believers, God and the whole universe will hold them in contempt, whether they realize it or not, even if they think that their action is concealed. Without a doubt it must be the greatest burden to have such a thing on one’s conscience.43

[frocio]

what's the five hours long speech about why you hate rwby king

ok so I guess I should tackle these. before reading know that there’s going to be spoilers up until forum 4 to 5 I guess? don’t remember where I got while watching the show.

while I think that hbomberguy’s video covers a really great chunk of the issues I have with RWBY, he specifically states he made all his analysis about volumes 1-3, and I’ve had the misfortune to watch a bit more after that (I think about until half volume 5? legit don’t remember)

the parts I don’t see the need to focus on, because hbomberguy already mentioned them in his incredibly detailed video, that truly make me despise RWBY, are the following:

1. the whole taking a story about four female characters and making it all about the male sidekicks, often the author’s self inserts;

2. the fact that the writers of RWBY really want to drive home the fact that they’re attracted to their SEVENTEEN TO FIFTEEN years old characters, while being grown men, describing them as their ideal women, and calling them pretty, hot and attractive literally all the fucking time;

3. making their main antagonists an oppressed race that’s oppressed because they’re half-animals (because you know. minorities are animals. that’s always a good metaphor /s) so they can say it’s a commetary about race until it isn’t;

4. the show being generally bad about timing, exposition, animation, dubbing, character establishing and development, worldbuilding, and all the problems deriving from what should be the BASE of showrunning.

so let’s pretend I’ve copied word for word everything hbomberguy already said about this all and let’s jump to what i personally ALSO despise about RWBY!

5. disrespect for abuse victims: as cited in the video as well, at some point you find out Weiss has lived all her life with an abusive father. Yang Xiao Long loses her arm while figthing against Adam, leader of the White Fang. Both Yang and Ruby have lost their mother - Yang was abandoned by her biological mother, then adopter by Ruby’s mom, who died in combat I think? Jaune, bad characterization aside, is implied to have PTSD after Phyrra’s death because he feels guilty about it or something. Canonically, Yang has PTSD as well. RWBY is not afraid to touch on heavy subjects, so:

How does the show deal with that?

Every time Weiss has a conflict, a man tells her to fuck off (a teacher, her brother, her own dad, Ruby’s uncle, Ozpin, I can go on!) just because “she’s the annoying one” and we should take that as a joke. I can sorta get it, even if I don’t like it. But there’s also a time where she gets slapped in her face by her own sister for no real reason just because she disagrees with her, and three seconds later they hug it out like it’s nothing. It’s framed as if Weiss should be grateful to most of these people (everyone but her brother and dad, really, because they were depicted as villains) for belittling and even hitting her, because they’re doing her a favor. Aren’t you glad your sister slapped some sense into you? Now you can use your powers better!

When Yang is depressed because she has become an amputee and needs to recover from losing an arm, her dad tells her, and I’m not joking, something along the lines of her deserving to lose an arm because she can’t get over it. And Yang somehow laughs at this “supposed joke” and suddenly she doesn’t have PTSD anymore? ok???

Jaune gets some armor frym Phyrra (how? she vanished in thin air. armor and all) and fuses it into his sword. BAM now he’s not as depressed?

6. how much trauma is too much trauma?

this is probably subjective, and it ties heavily with the point above, but I just want to point out a few details.

Yang and Ruby both lost their mother(s). Phyrra was chosen to sacrifice herself to save the world, and then died anyway a tragic death for no reason by getting shot in the heart. Penny was cut to pieces in front of a worldwide audience. Yang also got her arm cut. Blake, victim of an abusive relationship in the past, gets stabbed and beheaded (it’s almost immediately revealed it’s a clone of hers, but you still see her head get cut off) by her ex boyfriend. Weiss is slapped at least twice onscreen, it’s mentioned how she’s been abused her entire life. VELVET IS VICTIM OF THE RWBY EQUIVALENT OF A HATE CRIME AND IT’S PLAYED OFF FOR LAFFS??

And then.........one guy gets shot in the leg once, but not really shot because his legs are prosthetics so he’s just pretending to be hurt? and that’s the worse you’ll see happen to a guy onscreen while 17 years old girls keep getting THAT treatment? Not really into that.

7. is it still queerbaiting if it’s 2020?

Maybe this point is outdated, but let me take this out. Let me free myself from this burden. RT has milked the shit out of Bumblebee as a ship as long as they could (and maybe they’re still doing it! I have no clue if they’re canon or not and I really don’t care! Don’t tell me if they are! I don’t want to find out! I’d rather die than know!) to keep the attentions of lgbt fans because let’s be real, nothing else in the show is good enough. When Bumblebee came out as a soundtrack, I listened to it for days. I think it’s the height of their queerbaiting strategies for the time. Truly a masterpiece.

8. Vic Mignogna 

Because of course I’m going there!

Vic Mignogna has been accused for about a decade now of sexual assault, harassment, and even pedophilia. Oldest charges go back to 2008, and are not exactly hard to find. RT has since cut contacts with him, but had him for over two seasons and only kicked him out when shit really started to hit the fan and tweets became viral about him (1, 2, 3). Glad that they kicked him out, don’t get me wrong, but he shoulnd’t have been there in the first place.

epilogue:

I’m sure I could talk about more stuff, like the fact that the minorities in the show are mostly white and treated like villains, and it’s okay to kill them because “they’re rude about being oppressed” or whatever, or how there was a picture circulating a few years ago of one of the guys from RT having a fucking magnet on his fridge with the t slur on it (don’t have receipts for it, and I wouldn’t even know how to search, so it’s not included in the list above), or how I got queerbaited for two years from RWBY and that’s why I’m so pissed at it, but really just. Watch hbombersguy’s video about it. He tackles most of the issues and, just like me, didn’t bother checking out this flaming pile of garbage more than I already did.

but the songs are still bangers