#do i want anyone to be traumatized or homeless or hurt or addicted? no!!

[mars-ipan]

i think i’ve talked about it already but i fucking hate when people misconstrue my hatred for the military as hatred for soldiers/veterans. a huge part of my hatred for the military as an institution is the way they fuck over and exploit their soldiers and then abandon their veterans. like that is 50% if not more of why i hate the military

[doberbutts]

I’ve always said that if I ever have kids I want to adopt, and specifically adopt someone who’s older in the system because the older they are the more likely they are to age out.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding the thread but. Is that still a good thing to want to do?

The thread and conversation is not saying that fostering and adopting is necessarily a bad thing. It's saying that the system in which we do these things sucks, does not take into account the very real problems it has and has had, and that for every feel-good story related to fostering and adoption there are dozens of kids and now-adults with lingering trauma regarding their housing situation.

If adoption is something you're serious about, then by all means, there are so many kids in the system that need a way out. But- and this is a big "but"- you need to go into it prepared. Most of these kids have some sort of trauma, because the system is inherently traumatic. Do you know how to parent someone through their trauma? Can you make that commitment? Can you take this as seriously as if it was a child of your own blood, and commit to forever in the same way?

If you want to adopt, you need to take that commitment as seriously as if you had birthed the child yourself. And if you want to adopt older kids, you need to be prepared to parent someone through their trauma, because they need you to be able to help them out of that dark place. People don't want to adopt them because they don't want to deal with the trauma, but the honest truth is that if no one helps them how will they avoid the incredibly high rates of homelessness, human trafficking, sexual assault, and jailtime waiting for them when they age out?

You're not getting a brand new "fresh slate" baby when you adopt an older kid at risk for aging out. You're getting a whole ass person who is old enough to be deeply harmed by everything that has led up to this point and who has had the system prove to them over and over that they can trust no one and they have no one there to help them. Kids who bounce from foster to foster with little more than an hour's warning and a trash bag to throw all their stuff in before getting dumped at someone else's door. Kids who may still remember, miss, even want to return to their birth family. Kids who may have been hurt by their birth family from the start and now have no trust in anyone. Kids who may be well behind in school due to bouncing from district to district. Kids who've never actually made a friend. Teenagers who still wet the bed. Eight-year-olds acting out their sexual assaults on others because they don't know how else to cope. Preteen girls who can't stand to be in the same room as your husband or father or grandfather without a screaming tantrum. High school students who can't read or write because no one cared enough to teach them how.

These are often kids who have been failed by everyone else they've seen. Don't be just another person who's failed them too.

My sister was 13 when my parents took custody of her. My sister was raised by an addict mom who chose drugs over her, who chose her pimp boyfriend over her, who chose to look the other way when said pimp boyfriend started noticing her daughter was "becoming a woman". My sister spent her first year with my parents having screaming fights with them because she wanted to go home. Not because "home" with her birth mother was better, but because that is what deeply traumatized kids do. Better the devil you know. It didn't matter that it wasn't her or her mother's choice- the state took her away, not my parents. My parents just ensured she had a soft landing. It took a long time for her to trust them enough to call them her family- keep in mind that my dad is her uncle by blood.

And she is considered one of the "lucky" ones, who went straight from separation to an adoptive family who committed to forever immediately. I don't think getting trafficked and beaten and starved and neglected for 13 years is particularly "lucky", nor do I think it leaves behind a non-traumatized kid. But if that's considered lucky, then what happens to the unlucky ones?

[kramaku]

I've heard people say that Izuku is too naive and annoying with his will to save Shigaraki. Let me tell you he's not. (Manga spoilers)

First, he will never ever try to befriend Shigaraki or even just forgive him for all the atrocities he has done like Izuku did for Lady Nagant. He knows that Shigaraki is a monster that needs to be stopped at all costs, so no he won't use "the power of friendship."

Second, when Izuku says he wants to save Shigaraki, he's talking about his soul, not his body. The heroes have already decided that All for one is such a powerful villain who tortured and killed thousands, probably millions of people, that he needs to be killed. Pulling him in prison like they did last time won't do so you think they'll simply keep Shigaraki, who is stronger than All For One, locked up? No way. Shigaraki needs to be killed too. There's no doubt about that. Now, Izuku saw a crying child (Tenko) in the vestiges and will try to extend him a hand, to save his heart before he dies.

Before talking about what I mean by that, let me analyze Shigaraki- no, Tenko's trauma a little.

Tenko killed his entire family with his quirk. After that, he ended up as a homeless starved sleepless kid who needed help but didn't get any. Until All For One arrived and saved him. Tenko was so traumatized by the events that he even lost his memories, but he did remember one thing: feelings. The anger he felt when he was abused, and that feeling of pleasure and peace he felt when he finally got rid of his dad. All for one being the manipulator that he is, he understood that Tenko's brain voluntarily suppressed his memories not to feel guilty toward himself and told him to direct the anger he had for his dad towards the society of heroes, who is apparently all faked and hypocrite, full or selfish people, people who abandon their families. Tenko here is putting the blame of his trauma on the heroes (like Nana bc she abandoned her son, who abused his own son, Tenko, because he wanted to be a hero) because blaming others is always easier than blaming yourself. Now, All for one also told him to become stronger, encouraged him to kill the people that hurt him, and so AFO fed Tenko's addiction for destruction. Since he's so obsessed with the rage that keeps growing, he never feels any positive emotion which is very self destructive for a brain, so as a coping mechanism, he searches for that satisfaction he felt when he killed his dad (since it was mixed with rage, it's a pleasure that became compatible with his anger), killing again and again: his quirk became his own source of serotonin. (that's also why he often smiles while decaying)

Shigaraki doesnt have plans for the future. He doesn't care what will happen of society or anyone, even himself. He even said the league can just do whatever they want.. he just wants to destroy. He only lives in the present moment for that feeling only.

What he needs is someone (Izuku) to tell him that heroes aren't all "bad" (nana had her reasons so she's not really a bad person :/) but more at the source of the problem, that he didn't deserve any of the abuse and that it's not his fault his family died. The accident wasn't the heroes fault, it wasnt his own fault, it was nobody's fault (okay it was AFO's fault since he actually transferred decay to a quirkless Tenko but the awakening of a violent quirk could've totally happened naturally and Tenko wouldn't have the blame either).

Tenko doesn't have to feel guilty about that accident. He needs to hear that.

Now I dont know how things will go on, and even how Izuku may possibly adress Shigaraki's trauma, but in my opinion the best death Shigaraki could have would be after Izuku managed to save the sad, scared, guilt rotten child in the vestiges, as Shigaraki would finally feel at ease, relaxed, kinda comforted. No anger for a very long time, I imagine his death to be very peaceful. He could even chose to be the one to kill himself actually with decay, the quirk that started it all and would end it all. He would give up on life because he had been so filled with anger for so long that he'd just feel like there's no point in living anymore if he doesn't destroy. He'd just feel like an empty shell. His peaceful death would kinda remind me of a certain demon's towards the end of demon slayer, if you read the manga you know who I'm talking about.

So yeah, I really want Izuku to reach Tenko. I'm sure he will. But he'll definitely put an end to Shigaraki's destruction at the same time.

thanks for reading, I love mha so much

[pennylogue]

tma post canon au idea that i came up with IMMEDIATELY after listening to 200 while chatting with @rinnaden:

you know all that fan content of monster jon? i had this image of martin stabbing jon and just...tape spurting out. jon unraveling and wrapping around the two of them and carrying them along the web, to one of the fear’s new worlds. they wake up in the parking lot behind a convenience store that stands where the magnus archive once stood. 

(possibly when one of the cashiers calls the cops on the two bloody, dirty, likely homeless men sleeping in a parking spot.)

so they’re in a new world. but the entities are still here, so i’m thinking that jon does have some access to the eye. like obviously not apocalypse powers, and the eye’s hold is new and weak here, so we’re talking early days. (either that or jon letting martin stab him counted as a rejection of the eye and he’s wholly himself, which would be a huge pain but quite interesting in itself.

point is, dumb thing that the eye is, it doesn’t hold grudges against either of them for...you know...everything...so jon’s able to figure out how to get them some papers and ids and etc.

so now the question is--the entities are here. nobody but them knows about them...

do they do anything?

martin, at this point, is ready to torch the entire world if it gives jon one less thing to sacrifice himself for, and maybe jon is willing to go along with that for a while out everything that happened...but massive guilt complexes don’t just disappear. jon definitely is gonna feel some responsibility for everything that happened. and this new world is pretty much defenseless. surely, they should try to help this world?

what i’m picturing is sort of a long, fun fic where jon and martin go on lots of adventures and get wrapped up in conspiracies as they try to help this world get ahead of the entity problem, via finding the entities’ new seats of power and destroying them, trying to convince avatars to stay away, spreading misinformation about any ideas for rituals.

SO! GREAT THINGS ABOUT THIS AU:

conveniently hooks into martin and jon’s main conflict at the end of canon, as well as tma themes of knowledge as power and (re: season 5) what you do with your privilege. martin and jon know things about what’s coming that no one else in this world does. if they play this right, they might be able to help a lot. or hurt a lot. what should they do? do they have a responsibility to help? they both would probably go back and forth on this a lot...

and like, is it even a good idea to help? for all they know, helping might just accelerate the process of someone figuring out a ritual.

martin and jon, two codependent and traumatized wrecks, having to adjust to living in a normal world. for bonus fun, no one around them could possibly understand or comprehend what they went through, and there’s almost no one they could tell without being thought crazy. ain’t that fun. setting up new lives in an entire nother dimension is a story in itself.

culture shock! a different dimension! how is it different? did the fears not appearing cause any huge historical differences that jon and martin would be surprised by?

they...would probably find out about a certain podcast eventually. that would be a thing. (...this could totally be a self insert au couldn’t it.)

jon hungers. powers = need snack. i don’t even know where to go with this because i’ve seen so many takes on it and i love all of them, and i still don’t know if it’s an addiction or a hunger or both. maybe he even feeds in an entirely new way, because he’s not part of the web anymore?

cryptid dimension traveler aesthetics! i take your “traumatized jon or martin going back in time and being all mysterious and supernatural and all-knowing” and raise you “mysterious shady boyfriends who know way too much about this stuff, how do they know, what do they know, can we trust them”. like the fact that the only beings to have swapped dimensions are a bunch of fear entities and two men that hitched a ride from their dimension...might not make jon and martin too endearing.

like ahhhh those secret keeping dynamics are fun. and even if they do tell the people they’re working with about their dimension, there’s still their role in the end of the world, as well as the release of the entities, etc.

and of course, who are they working with? do they try to meet up with this world’s jon and martin, or run into them? any of the other canon characters? like i feel like they’d eventually run into everyone, but i feel like at first it would be lots of ocs, plus maybe some canon avatars?

like you could do suchhhh good angst with how different this dimension jon and martin might be. or sasha. or tim. or melanie. or daisy and basira. or everyone, really--what’s real elias up to, huh? 

like, this is an entirely new dimension. the fears could manifest in an entirely new ways, wouldn’t that be fun? since humanity is already sapient, maybe there’s a lot more “deal-striking” involved. the fears have to approach humans a little more blatantly, etc. maybe they’d go for big leaders. try to induce war, disaster, just generally the kind of atmosphere that would be welcoming for fear. 

jon and martin sneaking into black tie events to infiltrate powerful people and figure out who’s most susceptible to becoming an avatar and “convincing” them not to. jon and martin covertly hiring sasha to spread misinformation online and doxx potential new avatars. those who don’t crave power, but just kind of fall into it, they can help. anyone sets up an archive, they burn the fucker to the ground. anything like leitners appear--i’m thinking it would be more digital, since this is the digital era, they try to head it off and discredit it.

you could literally just. do a crossover with this. of almost any fandom you wanted. this also erases the hard part of creating ocs. but honestly there’s lots of shows that have societies that deal with supernatural problems that would probably very much appreciate the opportunity to work with jon and martin. honestly it would be a lot easier than not doing a crossover.

and meanwhile you got that excellent background of them re-adjusting and making new friends and trying to learn to breathe in a world on the brink of apocalypse, because life just be like that.

[frecklesandstardust]

Let’s Talk About Klaus

Hi, friends. The Umbrella Academy’s second season came out recently. I finished it about twelve hours after. And I have feelings. We need to talk about Klaus. 

Now, here is my disclaimer. From the very first moment I saw him, Klaus was my favorite, but please read to the end before yelling about how Klaus-stans refuse to see his negative qualities. Thank you <3 (Also, this will involve spoilers for Season 2 and probably be an essay, so be prepared.)

Okay, first of all. Let’s look at Season 1 Klaus. 

He’s an asshole. Just like all of his siblings. They were raised by a narcissistic egomaniac and given hero complexes from pretty much the second they were born. Obviously they all lack empathy and healthy coping mechanisms. We can all agree on that. 

However, Klaus is also kind. So unbelievably kind. He makes crass jokes and looks out for himself first, but he is also so caring. 

When we first see him, he is encouraging people in rehab. He has a rapport with the EMT who brings him back to life. He hugs Allison as soon as he sees her at the mansion and seems genuinely concerned about her and her life. When the giant portal opens, he grabs a fire extinguisher and runs to the front to try and protect his siblings. Siblings who essentially ignored and belittled him for years. 

Fast forward and we see him helping Diego and Five and Luther. We see him caring, sincerely caring about his siblings. He breaks a snowglobe over his head to help Five get the answers he needs. He follows Luther to a rave and dies trying to save his life, even though he’s riddled with PTSD and freshly sober. We see him try so fucking hard to not give out any information about Five when he’s being literally tortured by assassins. He saves Diego from Hazel and Cha-Cha at the hotel, even though he could have stayed safe in the car. He risked his life to save a brother who didn’t even notice he had been kidnapped. 

We watch him die. We watch him get locked in a museum by his father figure and tortured by his abilities. We watch him be traumatized over and over again by ghosts that look just as gruesome as the day they died. We watch him be hurt and kidnapped. We watch him get thrust into a literal war, where he lost his soulmate after staying and fighting for ten months because he was just that in love with Dave. 

Out of every character, Klaus clearly has the most trauma. This isn't even including the fact that he was homeless for years and alluded to non-consensual sexual situations. Ergo, trading sex for a place to sleep and things like that. I am personally of the belief that Reggie was the reason Klaus broke his jaw, which Diego talks about in S1, but that’s my own opinion. 

Looking at all of that, Klaus has PTSD out the whazoo. Like, he is filled to the brim with trauma and no one cares enough to ask or help him. Five sees him after Dave dies and only cares about the briefcase. Diego hears that he lost someone and has the absolute audacity to call Klaus “lucky” because at least he can see them whenever he wants. Not one of his siblings understands Klaus’s powers and that’s terrifying because he had to deal with screaming, tormented ghosts completely by himself. Imagine that. Powers that you can’t control eating you alive and the only thing that helps dim the noise is drugs. 

And your family doesn’t care enough to ask. They just write you off as a useless junkie. 

Now, like I mentioned earlier, Klaus is not an innocent quote unquote soft boi. He is inherently selfish. But, he had to be. He had to be selfish in order to survive. He was on the streets. Alone. If he wasn’t selfish, he would have been dead ten times over. 

He stole things. He lied. He hurt people. He was an asshole. Just like they all were. 

But he was never cruel. 

His relationship with Ben in the first season was pretty awesome. We get to see the snark and the familiarity and the bond between them. And it makes sense, to some extent, why Ben is constantly trying to get Klaus to be better. If Klaus hasn’t seen his siblings for years, neither has Ben. I genuinely think Ben wanted to believe that they had changed. He wanted his siblings to be good, decent people. 

That’s why he told Klaus to go after Luther. Why he told him that his family would notice he was missing when he get kidnapped by Cha-Cha and Hazel. 

But it does not excuse the fact that Ben never apologized. He was wrong and he never said sorry for it. He inadvertently got Klaus killed and he never admitted that he made a mistake. 

He was there for so much of Klaus’s trauma and he just brushed it off. We never see Ben try to be there for Klaus or try to help him come to terms with everything. Ben can see the other ghosts. He knows that they’re terrifying and that Klaus’s powers are completely haywire. Why doesn’t he acknowledge that? 

Let’s move on to Season 2. 

For some reason, all of Klaus’s character development has been tossed out the window. He is a wildcard with no plot line to follow. He says random things and seems to act as comedic relief for the most part, except it rarely works.

For starters, his powers are completely gone, for the most part. We see him in a brief opening scene absolutely kicking ass with his ghost army. But, after that, we don’t see any ghost except Ben. We don’t see him learning to control his powers or talking to ghosts. We don’t even hear about his powers. It’s like they’ve been erased. 

That kind of trauma doesn’t go away. Especially when we find out he has been sober for three years. 

I’ve seen some people argue that he traded addictions. Swapped the drugs for the cult and the adoration that came with it. I don’t agree to that for a few reasons. 

First, he is very clearly uncomfortable with the cult touching him. And we see in the flashback that it happened completely by accident. Klaus was, again, trying to survive. Was it selfish? Yeah. Did he use that old woman to shamelessly find a place in a world he’s not supposed to exist in? Yeah! But, like I stated earlier, Klaus knows how to survive. He knows what to do to get by. All he is doing is trying to survive. Ben can scream all he wants about fairness, but he wasn’t offering up any options to get Klaus a place to sleep and a way to survive in the past. 

Second, we don’t know how the cult came about exactly. We don’t know what started it. We don’t know how it spiraled from whatever it started as into a cult. And Klaus hates it. He spends the entire season trying to get away from everyone. He used it as a means to survive and then wanted space. His entire plan was to get to 1963 and save Dave--probably from the start of 1960, to be honest. But to get to Dave, he had to survive. He had to get to a place where saving Dave was possible. He can’t save him if he’s dead or homeless. 

Third, Klaus very openly is touch-starved and desperate for attention. He spent his childhood being overlooked and his adulthood being treated like a disease. He just wants someone to take him seriously and care about him. The cult does. They love him for who he is, for his weird humor and mannerisms. They believe him when he talks. He’s never had that before, not since Dave. 

He finally has a group of people that genuinely care about what he has to say. Even if it’s all bullshit! They still listen to him. So, of course he sticks around. Of course he lets it grow. He thinks everyone he loves is dead! He’s holding onto the only thing he can. It just happens to be a cult. 

Next point: Ben. 

Ooh boy, this is gonna be a long one.

Ben is also not a soft boi. One tender scene with Vanya does not undo an entire season of cruelty and callousness. 

Before we get into that, let’s talk about the point everyone brings up: Klaus didn’t tell anyone Ben was there! 

Why should he? They never believed him the first thousand times he tried to tell them. What makes it any different fifty years in the past? 

But aside from that, I have two theories. 

One, I’m curious as to if he was subconsciously trying to punish Ben. Ben essentially got him killed at the rave with Luther. He also never apologized, as I mentioned earlier. He blows Klaus off, just like the rest of his siblings, even though, out of anyone, Ben should know better. From the very beginning of S2, Ben is saying some pretty nasty stuff to Klaus. Low blows that shouldn’t be brought up. If that’s been happening for 3+ years, it’s possible that Klaus internally is punishing Ben for being just like the others. 

Second, he’s scared of losing Ben. It’s been 17 years of only having Ben by his side. Constantly. And we know Klaus has watched the love of his life bleed out right in front of him. That’s PTSD. And PTSD doesn’t exactly involve healthy coping methods. So, it’s entirely possible that Klaus doesn’t saying anything about Ben being there because he is scared to lose him to his siblings. If Ben is corporeal, if they know Ben is there, what’s stopping Ben from leaving to go spend all his time with someone else? Someone that isn’t Klaus? Klaus could be trying to protect himself from losing another person. 

Does that make it okay for Klaus to hide the fact that Ben is there? No. But does it kind of make sense? Yeah. Ben deserved to reconnect with his family, but Klaus is traumatized beyond belief and clearly isn’t in the right state to make sound and logical decisions all the time. If we can forgive Five for murdering the Commission Board in cold blood and Vanya for blowing up the world twice, we can forgive Klaus for keeping Ben’s existence to himself (especially since he tried to tell them in S1 and was immediately written off as an attention whore.)

Now, let’s talk about the possession, aka my least favorite thing about the entire season. 

Ben possessing Klaus is assault. End of story. Non-negotiable. It’s not funny. It’s not cute. It’s not “payback.” It’s assault. 

We know that Klaus is terrified by his powers. We know that he has trauma in his past, involving non-consensual experiences. So does Ben. Worse, Ben was there for a lot of it. 

Ben flat out ignored Klaus’s discomfort for his own selfish gain. He was so hellbent on possessing Klaus that he ignored the fact that Klaus was terrified to go to sleep because he knew Ben would possess him without consent. 

And let’s acknowledge the fact that Klaus doesn’t owe Ben anything. He has no obligation to let himself be possessed. Ben is dead. And that’s horrible. It’s unfair and Ben did not deserve to die. But he. is. dead. The dead do not get free access to the bodies of the living just because they want to feel things again. 

Ben completely disregarded Klaus’s feelings because he had a crush on a girl who didn’t even know he existed. Klaus, who willingly accepted possession the second he realized it was important to Ben. Klaus, who laid out strict ground rules, showing he was clearly terrified of the idea, but still did it anyway because he loves his brother and harbors guilt for conjuring him the day of Ben’s funeral. Klaus, who had just been brushed off after failing to stop Dave from enlisting.

Ben possesses him and almost immediately starts to make out with a girl who thinks he is Klaus. That is sexual assault. If I have a twin sister and that twin sister sleeps with my husband, who believes she is me, then she has raped him. That is rape. 

Ben doing anything physical with that girl, who clearly showed that she was interested in Klaus, is sexual assault. She did not consent to sleep with Ben. She consented to sleep with Klaus, who was trying his best to break the possession and stop the entire thing from happening. 

And Ben fought him on it. We see them struggle in Klaus’s body for the next several minutes. Ben doesn’t care that Klaus is clearly uncomfortable, that Klaus wants him out. He selfishly wants to stay in control because of his own desires. He ignores Klaus’s rules and does what he wants without considering the consequences. 

This is the third time that Ben has used possession to control Klaus. We see it when they are fighting earlier in the season at the cult mansion. We see it again at the dinner with Reginald. We see Klaus essentially have a seizure (and we see none of his family members ask if he is okay. They just roll their eyes.) We see Klaus literally vomit once he forces Ben out of him in that alley with Five and Luther. Still, no one asks if he is okay. 

Worse than that, Ben says that he no regrets. And then reiterates the statement! Ben assaulted his brother and does not give a flying fuck. That’s crueler than anything Klaus has ever done. I would argue that it’s the cruelest thing any of the Hargreeves have done, to be honest. 

It doesn’t matter how much of an asshole Klaus is or how selfish or how flamboyant. His consent still matters. His boundaries are just as important. 

Overall, this season just gave Klaus more trauma while still leaving his PTSD and mental illness completely unaddressed. They essentially removed his powers and took away his bond with Ben. Like, in the first season, Ben is almost always with Klaus. That is Klaus’s power, after all. In the second season, Klaus’s entire arc is without Ben. All of his missions are without Ben present. 

There is absolutely no fucking way that Klaus wouldn't bring Ben with him to get tacos with Vanya and Allison. He loves Ben, more than anyone. We see that constantly in the first season, outside of a few mishaps. 

I love Ben. I genuinely love Ben and his story in the first season. But in S2, they took him and twisted him into a callous thing with no respect for consent or his brother. If those three years with Klaus in 1960 were anywhere near as bad as what we see in 1963, I can see why Klaus wouldn’t want Ben around his family. 

I was supposed to love Ben and cry for him. And don’t get me wrong, I did. I cried a lot in the last episode. But that scene with Vanya? Where he tells her she’s not a monster and that they should have done better and that they could help her control her powers? That’s the exact same damn speech he should have told Klaus. Vanya’s destruction was always outward. It always cost millions of people their lives. Klaus’s was inward. So why does Vanya deserve the help and love and support while Klaus gets tossed aside?

They both needed a family and only one of them got it this season. Sure, Allison and Klaus had some great scenes together. But she didn’t ask if he was okay when Ben possessed him at dinner. She didn’t check on him. 

Klaus deserved better. He deserved to work through is trauma and to have a family that takes care of him and supports him and helps him figure out how to deal with the ghosts. He deserved to control his own body and to say no when Ben wanted to possess him. He deserved a goddamn hug. 

Klaus was inherently selfish. However, he also gave up everything. He sacrificed his entire relationship with Dave to try and save his life. If he had succeeded, if Dave had never enlisted, they never would have met. They never would have fallen in love. Dave would never remember being with him. He nearly gave that up to protect the love of his life. 

Klaus is not perfect. He’s an asshole at best sometimes. But he’s also kind and compassionate and loves harder than every other character on that show. He deserved better. 

This has turned into a massive essay, but the bottom line is that S2 let Klaus and Ben down. So many things were handled poorly--from consent to mental illness. It could have been great. It could have been an opportunity to fix a lot of the mistakes made in the first season. Ben and Klaus could have talked everything out and figured out the ghosts and the war and the trauma together. They were never given that chance. 

There were so many good parts of this season, but the bad parts were so bad that it tainted the rest. I know the writers could have done better. They did it with Luther and Allison! They made their characters great this season and showcased some amazing relationships between the siblings. I’m confused as to how they let Klaus and Ben fall through the cracks so heavily. 

[thisiswhatwereupagainst]

TL;DR Went into Captain Britain and Excalibur just to read Meggan, expected to hate Brian, found out they both were bad to each other and are both very injured, traumatized characters grappling with gender norms in their own way, and I have a lot of sympathy and love for them BOTH now even if they definitely are not a good couple at this point. So, I am keenly interested in Meggan Puceanu as a character and a concept. Just learning some very basic things about her prompted THIS META POST three years ago. And that was before I really plunked down and decided to read all her stuff in order. And while I have yet to read ALL of it by a longshot. But I’ve gotten through about 20 issues now, from her first appearances in “The Mighty World of Marvel” in 1984, to meeting and joining up with Brian Braddock/Captain Britain in the second series of Captain Britain in 1985, to the first five issues of Excalibur in 1985. So yeah, keep in mind reading this, I am only up to Excalibur #5. And I know I probably should wait before writing all this stuff, read more, see if my interpretations hold true. But I have so many thoughts and I just can’t wait that long! So please read on with the understanding I may be proven completely wrong in these perceptions later. That said.... I had some basic knowledge of Brian and Meggan’s dynamic. I knew that she was completely emotionally dependent on him, that her every emotion hinged on his approval and attention, that a lot of her very identity was based around pleasing him as his girlfriend. I also knew he’d been a real dick to her, and that his descent into alcoholism had made him an even bigger dick. So, I was really prepared to dislike him. And while I do still dislike the power imbalance that their relationship was founded on, I ended up having very different feelings about Brian himself than I expected---I thought I was going to encounter a shitty macho man himbo asshole who treated Meggan like shit just because. Seriously, look at THIS and THIS and THIS! What a JERK! I was all prepped to despise this guy and yell about toxic masculinity and how Meggan deserved better. Instead, what I found was someone who was as broken and in pain as Meggan herself, but who got far less sympathy for it than she did, both from other characters and from fans. The first big shock that I got was that Brian had been raped twice by female villains in the second Captain Britain series, before Excalibur began. I had actually read about this a couple years ago on TV Tropes, but seeing it was something else. I wrote a longer post about it HERE As noted in the post, Brian never told anyone about either of these incidences as far as I know, nor getting any kind of therapy or treatment. He also started drinking after this happened. And as of Excalibur beginning, Betsy is dead (or so he believes) and he’s grappling a lot with that too. I think it was unethical of him not to rebuff Meggan when she first came on to him, for reasons I’ll discuss later in this post, but also makes sense for his character, not because he’s an unethical person but because he’s actually very passive and seems to just accept whatever is demanded by him of others; he talks about this with Courtney, how he has no choice in being Captain Britain, how it was imposed on him, asking if he’s a coward for just wanting a little of his own life and she unsympathetically says it’s “obscene” how he “can’t be bothered” to “take charge” of his own life (Excalibur #3). It’s a very unusual flaw for a male character. In his own way, he’s at the mercy of what others demand him to be as much as Meggan is with her powers, and I find that really interesting. I already knew that Meggan is very much a reflection of the demands placed on women by society, literally twisting her own emotions and physical forms to coincide with what is considered beautiful and what others desire, whereas Brian, it turns out, is himself a reflection of the demands placed on men---he has to be a warrior, whether he likes it or not (and he doesn’t, it’s part of his backstory that he doesn’t see himself that way at all), he has to be the hero and take care of the girl and he feels he has to just go with it when Meggan decides he’s her man and she needs him. And Meggan is more flawed than I expected. She’s oftentimes shockingly selfish in her obsession with Brian. For instance, when his ex Courtney is kidnapped by the sadistic murderous Arcade, Brian is understandably upset, and this troubles Meggan because she thinks that his being upset means he still cares for Courtney. The selfishness there is staggering; a woman’s life is in danger and Meggan’s first concern is her own love life, and she assumes that the only reason Brian could care about said woman’s life being in danger is if he’s in love with her. Or when Brian’s drinking is first brought up by the rest of the team, Meggan says it hurts her that he turns to those bottles instead of to her (Excalibur #3). So, her problem isn’t that Brian is obviously becoming addicted to alcohol, it’s that SHE isn’t the one that he turns to. She’s got a lot of moments like this. That said, I LIKE this about Meggan. It makes me like her MORE. It makes her WAY more realistic and flawed and human than the archetypical frail damsel who is just an accessory to her man that I was expecting. She’s clingy, she’s possessive, she’s downright nasty and hostile over him a lot! She may not think of herself as a real person, but the writers treat her as one, complete with flaws. Her dependency isn’t treated as a good or romantic thing either, it’s not held up as a female virtue like I was expecting; Brian is actually bothered by it, he confides in Kurt that he doesn’t think he can handle how she relies on him for everything, how he actually PREFERS Courtney because unlike Meggan, Courtney is her own woman-- “She doesn’t seem to NEED me as completely and desperately as Meggan seems to. Sometimes I feel I’m the total and absolute focus of Meggan’s life. It’s a responsibility I don’t think I’m capable of handling.” And Brian is right, this ISN’T a good thing to do in a relationship, Meggan is putting a lot of unfair emotional weight on his shoulders, and he’s already got a lot to bear from his own trauma and loss. In fact, one could even argue that her behavior would be seen as toxic if the genders were reversed. She’s still very sympathetic, of course, because this is coming from a place of real insecurity and need and probably her powers too, but it’s more three-dimensional and complicated than what I originally expected. But I like that. Because again, it’s more realistic, both in terms of Meggan’s behavior and in Brian’s reaction to it---he doesn’t WANT a woman being totally dependent on him and thinking the sun shines out his ass and needing him for everything, he wants another human being. That’s not what I expected a Bad Macho Man Stereotype to be saying! But in fact, Brian says another thing he prefers about Courtney is “she’s her own woman” and  “I can talk to her, Kurt.” (Excalibur #5) Brian is a man who wants to be able to have someone he can be VULNERABLE with, to talk with as an equal about his fears and anxieties---which he does with Courtney, as mentioned---and he can’t do that with Meggan because of the pedestal she puts him on and her needing so much care herself. He says as much himself to Kurt. He also recognizes that he himself probably isn’t equipped to deal with Meggan’s issues, she needs much more help than he can give. This isn’t an idealized thing at all, this is a realistic depiction of two very emotionally injured people in a very messed up dynamic that is bad for BOTH of them, hurting them BOTH. Up til actually reading it, I was expecting it to be one-sided, with Meggan being the only one suffering, but it’s not! And Meggan being like this, of being obsessed with Captain Britain and behaving in a very “cliche” way over him, makes a TON of sense for her, she’s not just obsessed with him for no reason like a typical “just the hero’s girlfriend” character. Meggan grew up being kept secret in her family’s camper-trailer for her then-monstrous appearance, til during the Jasper’s Warp when reality shifted into a world that was putting superhumans, including herself, into concentration camps. While she was in the camps, Captain Britain was a legend as a liberator and freedom fighter who was fighting back against the regime for the sake of people like her. And when reality returned to normal, Meggan was one of the few people who remembered that it had ever changed; she remembered the camps, and she remembered Captain Britain. Even though she’d never even seen him at that point, she clung to him as her one hope. Then the real Captain Britain found her when she was homeless and living in an abandoned warehouse, and he lets her live with him in his mansion because she has nowhere else, which is probably more kindness than she’s ever been shown in her life, and from someone she idolized. Which, as I said way earlier in this essay, does make their relationship an inherently unethical one because of their power imbalance, as he’s got a lot of power over her in terms of being the one providing her with a home, food, clothing, etc., not to mention her emotional dependency that’s obvious well before she makes a move on him. So we’re already starting on really problematic territory. But it makes SENSE for her. Add to that Meggan was raised on television in a VERY literal sense. Again, she was locked up in her camper trailer all day every day her whole life, and so she spent most of her time just watching TV. It’s shown that this has given her SOME UNREALISTIC IDEAS ABOUT HOW TO BEHAVE so I think that absorbing the media’s depictions of how women are “supposed” to behave towards their men is actually pretty realistic. She’s not doing this because the writers think this is just how women are----NONE of the other female characters act at all like she does!---but because SHE thinks it’s what’s normal and expected, and she’s probably very much imprinted on the media’s fantasy fairytale depiction of relationships. Given how she grew up as an ugly monster and seeing herself as such, I can very much see her as latching on the idea of “beautiful sweet woman who is valued for her beauty and being with the lead man and has no identity apart from that” that’s prevalent in media, which she would take for a reflection of reality, a reality that she thought her whole life would be denied to her. So all her behavior has a good in-character reason; she could even be read as a criticism of trying to enact gendered media stereotypes in real life and how they can’t actually work in the complexity of the real world, and how damaging they are to those who absorb them. What’s also funny is that despite appearing to be the standard “strong man, pretty woman” couple, especially with Brian becoming emotionally distant and cruelly pushing her away whilst she’s very emotional and obsessed with pleasing him, is they actually subvert this paradigm as much as they play it straight. The Juggernaut WIPES THE FLOOR with Brian at one point, and then Meggan shows up, shapeshifts into a GIANT MUSCULAR VERSION OF HERSELF, and comes to his rescue with Rachel and Kitty! That’s right, a buff lady and two other ladies save the dude in distress! And then afterwards, she acts like SHE was the one in danger, resuming her default petite form and jumping into his big manly arms while he asks if she’s alright and she says “Always in your arms!” ---it’s hilarious! (Excalibur #3) And of course, speaking of subverting gender stereotypes, there’s Brian’s desire to have a partner he can be vulnerable with, which is really astounding to me----he’s very much grappling with the expectations of toxic masculinity in a way that’s harming him as much as Meggan. Not just in relation to Meggan, but also, as mentioned before, in relation to not having control of his own life as Captain Britain, and being responsible for others. In particular, he’s messed up over Betsy’s (seeming) death, and over not having protected her, as a man would be expected to protect his sister. In the panel right before the “changeling cow!” scene I linked earlier, THIS IS WHAT HE SAYS. He doesn’t see himself as any good if he doesn’t meet impossible standards. And while Meggan reacts to pain by getting teary, Brian consistently reacts to his pain (or trying to hide it) by getting ANGRY, which is consistent with how women vs men are socialized. Which is not to say it’s anything but VISCERALLY HORRIBLE when he lashes out at Meggan, especially given how dependent she is on him, and she absolutely SHOULD have dumped his ass then, but it’s also a lot more three-dimensional than the emotionally abusive drunken bad boyfriend stereotype I was expecting.  I know I’m a broken record on this, but I am just so shocked at how sympathetic I ended up being to a guy I was so prepared to hate and was so cruel to a character (Meggan) that I was already very sympathetic to and invested in. Instead, I’m invested in them BOTH now and want to see them BOTH heal from this, and from each other. So, basically, I was really ready to be mad about Meggan’s lack of agency and her dependence on Brian. And these are things that happen. But the writers are clearly AWARE of it, and treat them as issues to be addressed and overcome. Meggan and Brian come off not as the cliche male and female stereotypes they first appeared, and that I expected, but very critical examinations and sometimes subversions of them, and both are shown as being hurt by the expectations of their gender, and being hurt by each other as they enact those expectations. It’s not totally perfect, not by a long shot, but it’s very interesting and a lot more nuanced than I expected some straight white guys in the 80s to be writing, it’s definitely a far cry from the typical idealized relationship between a hero and a leading lady, and I’m pretty impressed with it. And I’m looking forward to reading more.

[lady-razorblade]

Put It Down

PUT IT DOWN

I sat outside in that tiny RV in the back yard carving my name into my skin with that knife and I swear I heard you say put it down.

Out of fear I took that rag from him each time it was offered and inhaled until my mind was completely altered and there you were again, put it down .

There was that party in the woods and everyone was drunk and getting high and damn it seemed like so much fun so I swallowed those pills and thought I was cool like the bigger kids and then I heard, please put it down.

At school I would take speed like nobody's business thinking If I take this and don't eat athletics will be a cinch, but my addiction to this caused my best friend to loose her life in front of me and I know it was you who begged me to put it down.

I would drink bottles of alcohol like it was nothing and I would do shots with friends because I took pride that I could take more shots then them but I heard your silent pleas saying I love you, put it down now.

I went to that party at 16 years old and I drank until I could barely stand up straight, then I took sixteen minithins so i wouldn't fall asleep, I partied that night with 3 guys I had known for a while and thought were my friends and one of them had some oxy, and because of what went down that night I am certain you were shaking some since into me and begging and pleading for me to stop and put it down.

I was 21 and found out I was pregnant, guess what, I put it down and I am sure you thought that would be the end of that but it wasn't.

My daughter was born and those same friends I always hung out with came back and you can probably guess but this time it got even worse. I bet a million that first time you wanted to slap that straw from my hand and tell me to put it down but I didn't.

I got paid and I was just so addicted I spent over 800 a week on this drug of choice and I know you had to be angry by this point and telling me a firm put it down now.

Clubbing was my get away I would pop those pills that made the music flow through me, I would dance for hours on end, every touch to my skin lit me up, but I lost 3 friends within a month from these pills and I am well aware you were saving me and saying put it down.

Then the doctors gave me Xanax, Seroquell and Gabapentin and said here take these and it will heal your traumatized brain. I was supposed to trust them right so I took the pills. You probably were sad because you knew what I didn't know and now I accept the fact I shouldn't have took those pills, you told me to put them down.

My teeth are in horrible shape because I was bulimic for years and also because I passed out and crushed my front teeth in the concrete floor. The dentists always give me a couple of strong pain relievers. Then when they run out I have to buy more off the streets because I began hurting so badly that I would rather take my life so I know you have pleaded with me numerous times to please just put it down. Someday I will listen.

I took those pills and overdosed and you must have known so you sent someone to my life at that moment in time who would save me. Your way of telling me to put it down.

All 4 time times I tried to commit suicide you refused to allow me and I never understood the reason but there you were guarding my life saying put it down.

My neighbor didn't have my drug of choice but he did have heroin, he swore I would love this high it was so much better than any other. I just wanted to be numb so i let him stick a needle in my arm while you were crying for me to please this time put it down.

Then I decided to get clean so I confessed to a couple friends online that I had been using meth hard for 2 years now and I wanted my life back, I hated what the drug was turning me into and making me do, I had lost myself and I went to rehab, but after just 15 days I had a severe panic attack and could not be calmed down I signed myself out and I heard you scream out, I looked at that phone and new you wanted me to put it down but I was not strong enough.

I relapsed a lot at first, I started thinking I wasn't strong enough to stop, I was not worth the effort anyway, no one calls or writes to see if you are okay because no one really cares if you're not. I cept messaging 2 people I honestly thought cared but now I accept that I write about dumb shit and I have worn out my welcome with them so they never even read my messages anymore and it was a breaking point. I needed to talk to one of them that night because i trusted them but those voices cept saying don't even bother they don't give a damn about you. You are not even a passing thought, you could die and they wouldn't care, you could disappear and they wouldn't recieve a message from you for years and they would never even realize it's true, I looked at my phone with tears streaming down my face and I turned it off and put it down.

Now I was homeless and sleeping in a box behind walmart and I was seeing and hearing things I thought were after me and I was so scared and the voices cept telling me how no one could ever love me, that I am just too ugly, that i will never be more than a junkie who was never wanted or loved by anyone in this world, how better off my kids would be and that if I take my entire bottle of seroquell I would just fall asleep and never wake up and no one would even miss me. So I did. You said Kristi I love you, please put it down. It is not your time to come home now. When I didn't listen I remember the feeling like I was going to vomit. and then there was nothing. Since I woke up you haven't left my side. you have been holding my hand and guiding my life.

Thank you for never giving up on me when I was down God, I know you were there the entire time. I pray that I get it right this time and stay strong so you never have to say put it down once more.

[dantecampanas]

hello all, i’m pepper and i have never been on time for anything, ever, in my life dsjksdkj, but i am literally so much later than usual though, i am so sorry y’all but to make up for my tardiness under the cut is some stuff about this mess, dante. it’s messed up ride so i hope you enjoy? also, like this if you want to plot and i’ll literally come sprinting okay. 

BIO ; tl;dr basically craig kielburger, but make it dark 

to start here is Dante’s pinterest board.

and here is a song that reminds me of him so much it may as well be his anthem but also this other song because i wrote his app to it basically, it reminds me a lot of him, more the vibe than the actual lyrics but still. 

okay so Dante’s family is kind of inspired by the Quinns (from ‘You’ on Netflix), the Castillos (from How to Get Away with Murder) and like Henry Goulding’s family in Crazy Rich Asians. 

Dante Isaac Campana was brought into the world in Madrid, Spain with a silver spoon dangling out of his mouth. You’d never guess from looking at him, what with his hobo chic style and generally unkempt appearance but it’s the truth. He came in this world out of a well paid surrogate as the second child of the famous Sofia and Gabriel Campana, and he wanted for nothing because for it. His parents made sure of that.

Gabriel was a CEO and Sofia was a wildly successful author, and from the moment Dante could breathe his parents had his whole life set up for him. After all they wanted their son to be successful and they planned to make sure of it. A hefty trust fund in his name, to be accessible at the age of eighteen. A place in the family business that he would fill the moment he finished university. They even had an arrangement for who Dante would marry eventually, before he was even old enough to understand what the concept of marriage was. It was all planned out for Dante without the slightest bit of input from Dante himself, and Dante was just supposed to accept that. The funny thing is, at first, he did.

After all he was young, and he had no reason not to. He loved his parents deeply, passionately, but honestly, that was how Dante loved anything. One of his very first memories of his life is of his grandmother. They used to feed the ducks together when he was a child. Dante would throw whole loaves of bread into the water and his grandmother would always laugh and laugh until there were tears building at the corners of her wrinkled eyes. And one day, the day of the memory in question, Dante remembers her sitting him on her knee, smoothing back his wild curls and telling him that he was born with a heart too big for his body. A heart too big for this family. Dante was too young to know what it meant at the time, but it stuck with him. And by the time he was old enough to understand it, he knew she was right. 

The truth is the Campanas were cold. Dante for the most part was an anomaly. Because while his parents probably did love him in return, they had an odd way of showing it. Cold hands pressed to warm cheeks, thin smiles of approval that didn’t quite reach their eyes. Never the words ‘i love you’, or ‘i’m proud of you’, or ‘i believe in you’, but instead the heavy feeling of expectation. If you wanted love, you had to earn it. If you wanted them to be proud of you, you had to do something to make them proud. Not be a person to make them proud, no. You had to do something. 

So when Dante was twelve years old he did. Not on purpose mind you. Dante wasn’t even thinking of his parents in his pursuit, only of others. You see, when Dante was twelve years old he, mostly accidentally, started a non profit. I say accidentally because that wasn’t really what Dante was setting out to do. Honestly, it all started when he met a homeless teenager not much older than him, sat beside them on the little street corner they begged on, and was struck by the overwhelming, gnawing need to help. To make things better. To protect them, because no one else was doing it. It started with Dante rallying up the children at his private school, and later those children’s parents, and later those children’s grandparents. Or maybe it really started when Dante climbed up on the stage one school assembly, took the mic from their principal’s hands and gave an impromptu speech on the cause. No, to be honest, it really started when someone recorded that speech and put it on YouTube. Because the moment that speech went viral, so did Dante and his charity. 

Even today if you look up Dante Campana you will be assaulted by a myriad of articles and photos of young Dante giving impassioned lectures to interviewers, to audiences, to millions of people over livestream. It was just something that Dante was passionate about that became much bigger than he intended, but he didn’t mind. He was helping people. He used the money that the charity brought in to build youth shelters, and food banks, and rehabilitation centers, all for homeless kids. It was everything he wanted.

And for once, his parents were proud. They loved him. They didn’t say it, but Dante knew it from the way they looked at him. Like he was their pride and joy. (Later, he would look back on that look. It would strike him as disturbingly too close to how one might look at a shiny new trophy, and he would never be able to look at his parents the same way again.)

Dante only became aware of how conditional his parents love for them was when his elder sister started to slip under the pressure they put on her shoulders. Anya Campana was about sixteen at the time, and Dante, three years her younger, had to watch as his sister crumbled. Anya had always cared too much about what their parents thought of her, about impressing them and making them proud. It didn’t help that her parents made it clear that they would not accept anything less than excellence from her, their first born. Anya was supposed to be their champion. The head of the family once their father was gone. The pressure of it all drove Anya to the edge. At first the edge was just adderall. Later cocaine, just to take the edge off, just to make things easier. To help her focus. Dante remembers catching her in the act. Remembers her crying. Remembers being shocked still, and just staring and staring as his perfect sister literally fell apart at his feet. 

It wasn’t long until the weight of their parents expectations had drove Anya to a full on addiction, all in the pursuit of their favour. But of course, when Dante’s parents found out about Anya’s problem, they had no sympathy for her. Only disappointment. That ‘slip up’ cost Anya her role. She could no longer be the head of the family if her resolve was that weak; instead the position would fall to Dante, and Anya would be sent quietly, and shamefully, to rehab. it was an eye opening experience for Dante, honestly. To see just how replaceable their parents saw them.  

The Campanas brand of cold was also fake. Plastic. Sure, they smiled in the public eye and the relationship between the siblings at least was genuine, but the truth was Gabriel was cheating on Sofia when he thought no one was looking (Dante was. A story for another time), and Sofia had openly slapped each of her children across the face at least once, usually when she got a bit too much wine in her. The older Dante got the more and more he felt his love for his parents becoming more of an obligation than anything tangible. Something cold and plastic itself. And he despised it. 

When Dante was fifteen, just after Anya’s second stint in rehab, he and his sister were spending the day together to catch up. All they wanted to do was get ice cream together, talk a bit. But those plans were foiled when a black indistinct car rolled up beside them, and before Anya and Dante could even put up much of a fight, they were both blindfolded and tied up in the back of the car. It honestly shouldn’t have been as surprising as it was considering the Campanas were easily the wealthiest family in Spain. But the kidnapping was traumatic and shocking to Dante, especially because of course all these men wanted was money. 

Their kidnappers called his father with every intention to get said money within the day. They asked him for one billion dollars for each child, which was a lot of money, but not an amount that the Campanas didn’t have, or couldn’t get access to if need be. But it was then that Dante got the second big shock of his life. His father refused to pay. Dante remembers his blood running cold at the statement heard over the speaker. He remembers his sister crying. He remembers the kidnapper shoving the phone into his face, demanding he beg his father otherwise. To convince him to love him enough to pay for his life. Dante remembers crying so much it hurt. Before that day he didn’t know that was possible. 

The kidnappers gave their father a deadline. He had a full twenty four hours to get the money, or they would be killing one of his children. Their father agreed, and so Dante and Anya were left in the hands of their kidnappers for a full day. Dante still hasn’t properly talked to anyone about what happened during that time, and he’s not even sure he can. Honestly, looking back, the memories of it all are all a blur. Like even his hindsight is blurred with his tears. 

The hour came and their father was called. He was asked for the money and told that if he didn’t pay it, his daughter would be shot. Once again, he refused. Dante can remember the gut wrenching sound Anya made at the news. It was at the chilling mid point between a sob and a scream. He can remember crying himself, but trying to comfort her as much as he could with his arms tied behind his back. And because he was touching her, he can remember the exact moment Anya flinched from the gunshot fired into her stomach. He can remember the warmth of her blood over his skin. 

Dante can’t remember much after that. It’s like his mind filmed that day with a fish eye lens and half a roll of film. All blur, until it cuts out. More blur, and then it cuts out. The next thing he properly remembers is being in a hospital bed for shock. He remembers seeing his parents there. And he remembers being filled with a hatred more consuming than anything he ever felt before. Apparently he lunged at his father in a moment of rage. He doesn’t remember it, but enough doctors attested to it for Dante to find himself with a semi permanent place in mandated therapy. Well, due to that specific moment and, you know. The circumstances. 

Dante learned that day that to his father, he and his sister were of different value. Dante was worth more than Anya. He didn’t mess up as much, or quite as publicly, and with everything with his charity, the media loved him. He was smart, and charismatic, and maybe he was a bit sensitive, but he could grow out of that. If they lost Anya, so what? They had Dante. He would lead the family to greatness. 

And Dante did. After an abundance of therapy of course, well, during an abundance of therapy. Despite it all, somehow Dante didn’t buckle under the pressure. He took some time off from school, but once he got back to it his grades were the same as ever. He spent some time away from his charity, but once he was ready, he threw himself back into it with a single minded focus. He made a foundation for Anya, his sister. His world. And then he moved on. Came back stronger. At least in the public eye. 

Privately, Dante was furious, and disgusted, and grieving. His sister, his confidante and likely one of the two people in his life to love him unconditionally, was gone. And she was never coming back. And Dante would never, ever be the same. He remembers attending Anya’s funeral. Seeing everyone cloaked in the colour she always hated, crying over her and telling lies about how much they adored her. He remembers his mother saying how proud she was of her daughter. He remembers his father saying how much he loved her. And he remembers feeling nothing. He remembers getting up on stage, drunk, and numb, and he remembers looking hard at them all. He vaguely remembers telling them all to fuck themselves, but after that? The film cuts out. 

Dante spent a lot of time leaning on his friends then. Hiding from the sharks that were the paparazzi. Dante’s pain was like a healing wound, and they were drawn to it like the animals they were. Picked at to see if they could get him to bleed again. How are you coping, Dante? Will you be testifying in the court case, Dante? How much do you miss Anya, Dante? There is footage of Dante ripping a paparazzo's camera straight out of their hands and throwing it at them. Or at least there was. His father got rid of it before it could truly make it to the press, and the paparazzo, well, he walked away with three new stitches in his eyebrow and a significantly heavier wallet. Dante, for his part, walked away empty. 

The truth was, now Dante was plastic. The bleeding heart that he once was now sadly hollow. He played the part though. And he played it well. To the world Dante was the golden boy. Any mistakes or slip ups were covered up neatly by his father, or his mother, or both. And the legend of Dante Campana, child philanthropist, and hero lived on. Y’see, Dante’s mother wrote a book about the whole experience, and took some creative liberties. In the novel, Dante tried to save his sister. Fought his captors. Held her hand as she bled out. As sick as it is, Dante read it, hoping it might jog some of his memories from the whole incident. It didn’t, but it could have been true for all Dante knew. Didn’t make him hate his mother any less for profiting off of the whole thing. 

Eventually, Dante graduated. Accepted a position at Ashcroft University. And then he was handpicked for the Imperium Society. And that’s where he met Lady Macbeth. 

And It was like for the first time in three years, Dante was living his life in colour again. He fell, and he fell hard, almost immediately upon meeting them, which was as much of a surprise to him as it was anyone else. Yes, Dante had dated before, and had crushes but he didn’t necessarily believe in love. Not after his parents lousy display of the whole thing. But he met them and that changed. He was consumed by love. Driven by it. He would do anything for them, absolutely anything. And he made that very clear very quickly, and never wavered. Not once. 

In the time that Dante loved them he was brought back to some semblance of his old self. He found his passion again. He found his happiness again. And he knew it was because of them. They brought him back to himself. They made him better. And the gratitude, and codependency, and love all stirred itself into a poisonous mess that was more adoration, or rather idolization, than love. What he felt for her was something all consuming and probably not entirely healthy, but something that Dante dedicated himself to, like a religion. 

Which is why when they told him about the issue with Octavia Dante was so incensed about it. For the most part, despite previous outbursts, Dante was kind. A peacekeeper. A joker. A lover. But when it came to those he loved, after everything with Anya, Dante was painfully protective. He promised himself long ago that no one coming after those he loved would get away with it. Not again. 

That said, when Dante went to meet with Octavia he did his best to be calm. To be levelheaded, and understanding, and kind. But Dante’s reputation must have preceded him, because Octavia didn’t seem to see any reason why she should listen to him. Dante was the artist. The charity guy. The hippie. He was about as threatening as a puppy, or at least his public image was. Her words were sharp, and her disposition was cold, and Dante wouldn’t have cared, he truly wouldn’t have cared if the words she spat were just directed at him. But the moment Lady Macbeth was brought into things, Dante snapped, Othello’s presence be damned.

The film cut out. 

The next thing Dante remembers is the aftermath. The water bottle he’d bought to reuse, to spare the plastic, to save the environment, to save the world, now ironically covered in blood. His hands slick with it for the second time in his life. Othello’s understandable panic. The shock was thick as fog once again, and the next thing Dante knows he’s at Lady Macbeth’s door, eyes hollow and hands shaking around the water bottle as he fully realizes what he’s done. 

He never meant to. It was an accident. He lost control. All he wanted to do was protect them. 

But somehow instead they ended up protecting him. And leaving him for Othello. A large part of Dante knows that he deserves nothing less. That what he did is a crime that deserves a much larger punishment, one that Lysander unfairly took on for him. But his heart is heavy with guilt, and now heartbreak on top of it all. 

As if watching Lysander go to prison for his misdeeds and witnessing Lady Macbeth and Othello in their honeymoon phase all wasn’t enough torture, well, then there was Octavia’s ghost. Which was truly the most painful torture at all. Every time she visits Dante just ends up with breaking down. Terrified, guilty and asking for her forgiveness. He’s pretty sure it’s not helping in the slightest though, and he can’t blame her for being angry. She has every right to be, and honestly Dante is quickly reaching the breaking point. He’s seriously considering just turning himself in to appease her, and to make things right for Lysander, and he would do so in a heartbeat if there wasn’t the risk of Lady Macbeth going down with him. So Dante is at a stand still. Miserable, and in pain, but doing his best not to show it to keep up appearances. Luckily it’s an act he’s been putting on for a good portion of his life, so he’s good at it. But he’s crumbling at the edges, and he’s not sure how much longer it’ll take for everyone to notice. 

To cope Dante has been indulging in a lot of his sister’s old habits. Drinking. Drugs. The same mechanisms he used to cope with her death, but quit once he met Lady Macbeth. Now, without them, he’s just using leaning on them in an attempt to make things easier.

PERSONALITY ;  god who knows dkjsdjksd dante is very fresh and new so he’s a bit of a mess in my brain and he will definitely develop into something new passed this point but

PASSIONATE! god he’s so passionate, like dante just feels everything on 10 one hundred percent of the time, especially since lady macbeth came into his life. The type to get teary eyed over a dead bird, but also the type to like stay up five days straight working on a project because he can’t get it out of his mind. 

despite this used to think romantic love was a straight up myth lmao because of his parents relationship, so we love a contradictory king. a bleeding heart but also a philophobe, and now a murderer, wow what a resume. lady macbeth changed that a lot for him, so for like a WHILE dante like became the poetry writing, love is the answer, romantic which had to be a drastic change for anyone who knew him before 

nurturing honestly? but only with people he actually cares about like juliet or lady macbeth.

but also impulsive, as we can see, like dante doesn’t tend to really think before he makes any decisions. he just does things man 

thinks he’s funny! sometimes he is tbh. a bit of a good natured goofball generally. willing to do pretty much anything to cheer someone up

a big ol’ flirt just naturally, like he’s honestly very charming, but like so was ted bundy yk. also bi, but like all my muses are, so sdkjsdkj are we surprised at all, i don’t think so. 

very touchy feely tbh because he’s a tactile person.

a live and let live kinda guy like actually,,, so close to a hippie it’s not even funny. 

a bit promiscuous more so before lady macbeth came into his life and he became entirely enamored, and now a bit because he’s heartbroken and just looking for any sort of connection.

the most generous person when it comes to money and kindness. the type to sit down with a homeless person and end up giving them his jacket, five hundred dollars, and a new outlook on life as he leads them to one of his youth centers. Has actually thrown himself into his charity a lot more since Octavia’s death. Is kind of viewing the whole thing as penance. 

the type to hold a grudge until the day he dies, but also the type of person who can’t NOT help someone who needs help you know. like he hates his parents but if his mother called him tomorrow like i want to see you one last time before i die, he would fly out to spain to see her.

very liberal. literally can’t talk to conservatives without wanting to physically fight them. has definitely gone to protests and gotten arrested for punching a nazi, but his father probably covered it up. 

HEADCANNONS ; alright now onto the fun stuff

fun fact, was actually brought into the world via surrogate because his parents had a lot of trouble conceiving, like both of them were pretty much impotent. so he’s not technically blood related to either of his parents, neither was anya. 

deaf in his left ear and has been all his life. it’s kind of difficult for him to hear a specific person talking in a crowd of too many people, especially if you’re standing on his left so he might straight up text you instead. also if you’re standing on his left side in general, he might turn to face you to better hear you. can speak multiple different sign languages including asl, bsl, auslan, and of course catalan. 

has delightful spanish accent but speaks fluent english because of all the networking he grew up doing with his parents, also you know, very expensive private school. also is fluent in french, italian, romanian and portuguese, like just the romance languages honestly. he’s traveled a lot though so he can get by in a few other languages, which basically means he can hold a stilted conversation and ask where the bathroom is. 

Despite his charity being his life and occupation kind of, at heart Dante is an artist. Like his art is everything to him and his is actually quite popular. He gets a lot of offers from people wanting to buy it but he can never part with anything he’s made so he always refuses the offers, no matter how much money the customer is bidding. It’s not like Dante needs the money anyways, so he has refused offers on grounds of menial things such as ‘i didn’t like the vibes he was giving off’ or ‘he looked like a republican’ or even, once ‘pretty sure i saw that guy in a dream once. god, he sucked.’ So most of his art decorates his dorm room instead, and he’ll even give some to friends for free. Dante actually wanted to become a full time artist once he graduated, along with keeping up with his charity but considering how picky he is about who actually buys his art,  he’ll literally make no money, which is okay because again, he’s rich. Now though, he’s considering just pouring himself into his charity and forgetting about his art because, you know, penance dkjdf.

Actually learned to cook from his family chef, and is really, really good at it, like professional level good at it. He hasn’t really had time to get any actual professional training but he really wants to. He has absolutely snuck into culinary school very briefly before just to sit in on a few classes. Just pretended he went there and made a bunch of friends and he learned a lot of stuff, and even taught some culinary students a few things. He was eventually discovered, but then he made friends with the professor, and now he just comes by whenever he wants or has the time. That’s the kind of guy Dante is. 

Honestly pretty good at anything having to do with his hands, like if he had a label it’d probably be the artisan. Dante is the type of person who knows nothing about like mechanics but can like fix something if you put it in front of him. Likes to make furniture as a hobby, so hit your boy up if you want a sexy chair. Also makes sculptures and does a bit of pottery, like he’s a jack of all trades when it comes to tactile things only. 

Intelligent in the way that he just has a lot of pretty well informed opinions like if you want a fun fact don’t go to Dante but if you want a good insightful conversation he’s your man. Not like… clever at all though, like he doesn’t have a manipulative or conniving bone in his body, and it’s really hard for him to tell when he’s being manipulated or taken advantage of. He thinks with his heart rather than his brain honestly. Like if you’ve ever heard the story of the foolish traveler... that’s Dante’s fool ass. If you haven’t here it is. 

A big defender of the environment. He was planning on launching a charity for that too, and honestly he’s probably throwing himself into that project to stop thinking about all this.  

Has a bunch of tattoos, usually of his own art or other art that’s moved him. I imagine him with at least one sleeve that’s beautiful, and he’s probably starting another. Is seriously considering a neck tat. His parents would hate it and that just makes him love it more.

If you watch jenna marbles i want you to know that Dante is Julian in the kitchen and Julian in the kitchen only, but somehow everything he makes end up coming out near perfect anyways. 

surprisingly has a green thumb? can revive almost any plant with relative ease.

never learnt how to ride a bike tbh, but does ride a motorcycle so?

Has taken to religion like a mad man ever since Octavia’s death, like he’s suddenly at church once a week. He tells everybody that it’s for his art, and that he just wants to study the stained glass, but really he’s praying for Octavia’s forgiveness. He’s pretty sure it’s not working in the slightest though. 

Kind of salty that Octavia of all people is haunting him but he hasn’t seen his sister’s ghost once. Actually kind of believes in the supernatural and karma and all that, so he wasn’t too shocked by the whole Octavia coming to him in the night thing. Always thought that he could feel his sister watching over him so, now at least he has that confirmed. 

suffers from black outs, but i feel like that was obvious in my little bio sksdjkjsd straight up has stretches of time that he has no recollection of. it tends to happen when he gets really angry or in really traumatizing situations but honestly people close to dante probably know that he’s just lost stretches of time like you could mention something from his childhood or even a few weeks ago (actually especially a few weeks ago) and dante would just be like... i don’t remember that. honestly has been feeling like he’s kinda going crazy since his sister died, so literally since he was like fifteen oof. 

has been painting some pretty dark stuff lately like since the whole octavia thing, like just in tone and color. probably a bit reminiscent of the stuff he painted after anya for those who knew him then, but if you met him after lady macbeth then this is a drastic change because his art got very beautiful and full of life then you know. 

[in-tua-deep]

Thinking some more about the sort of training that the siblings would have gone through,,, Going to put this under a read more since it’s gon get LONG

LUTHER: Luther is deceptively the easiest one with the simplest and more straightforward power in my opinion? His powers are super strength and durability. So of course there would be general strength training, weights, etc. But endurance would have been a fucker. Having Luther hold massive weights for long periods of time until Luther physically couldn’t anymore. You can’t tell me that old Reggie would have been a good spotter, especially for the sort of weights Luther would have been on, so either Grace is stronger than she looks and helped out (possible) or Reggie just had Luther train without a spotter (depressingly likely). How often did Luther get hurt during his straining? Strain muscles? Drop weight or other objects on himself when he couldn’t hold it up anymore under the disappointed eyes of his father? Of course, I’m sure there would be shotput esque training. Luther hurls a bad guy out of a bank window, after all. He’s no Diego but I’m sure Reggie would have thrown in some throwing accuracy training for efficiency. And of course his power of durability - which I am actually afraid to theorize about? Are his bones more durable? I’m going to have to assume his muscles and bones are more durable due to the weights and shit he’s capable of lifting. Does he bruise? What sort of force is required to injure him? These are questions I am sure Reginald Hargreeves has written somewhere in that notebook of his but I am afraid to know how he found them out. DIEGO: Diego obviously has the power to throw things with incredible accuracy, curving them mid air and capable of manipulating their path. I’ve seen some things floating around regarding him being forced to practice with someone, usually Grace, as the target and having to throw the knives as close to her as possible. Which is, of course, unbelievably shitty considering how much Diego obviously cares for Grace. His training would probably also involve strength training? Though not to the same extent of Luther. But logically the stronger he is the more force he can put behind an object and the larger an object he would be able to throw to manipulate.  I can also see Diego having to do it blindfolded, having to rely on his memory of a room to throw knives at targets and having to do that repeatedly until he could bullseye every one to Reginald’s satisfaction. This would help him out in situations like when Luther was in his room and he tossed a knife through the crack in the door, relying on his memory of the room’s obstacles to curve the knives around to (almost) hit his brother. Also testing the general extent of his ability? Does he have to put the motion behind the knife himself in order to manipulate it (a la throwing) or would be be able to, say, drop a knife off a building where it isn’t him but gravity exerting the force on it?  I know in the comics(?) Diego has the ability to hold his breath pretty much forever but honestly the idea of Reginald Hargreeves testing and training that is really depressing for me and all I can think is him putting Diego in a water tank like he’s a glorified aquarium pet and then I get mad. ALLISON: Oh man, Allison’s power would be rough to train because it’s more about figuring out the limits of it than it is about training it to get stronger. On a related note, how did they even find out about her power which has a specific set of trigger words? Were they all just being little kids and teasing each other and it just happened? What was her first rumor? Okay anyway. SO because I think Reginald would have absolutely and expressly forbidden Allison from rumoring him (and I dread to think about what must have been the one time it did happen, because you know kids and pushing boundaries), I think Reginald either a) brought in strangers to have Allison use her powers on/took Allison out to have her use her powers (the former more likely bc controlled environment, at least at first) or b) have her test her powers on her siblings (depressingly likely). Personally I think both happened, I think she probably started out rumoring her siblings (it would have been fun at first, a game, like Simon Says) making one of the others do jumping jacks or dance. Then mood altering things (I heard a rumor you’re really happy today! I heard a rumor you think Klaus’s prank is stupid. I heard a rumor you want to play with me!) where she starts changing opinions and Reginald wants to see how long they last for, if she rumors for someone to forget something, will they ever be able to recover the memory? Do her powers have a time limit? Then, of course, she rumors Vanya into thinking she’s ordinary. Then I think for Actually Dangerous Things Reginald wouldn’t have wanted to damage the goods, so to speak, and would have started importing people for Allison to rumor. I feel like Reggie is That kind of asshole, so they were probably people no one would miss. Addicts, homeless people, criminals, etc. And then he’d have Allison rumor them to do things. He’d want to test to see if basic human survival instinct would overrule Allison’s rumors, right? Or maybe rumoring someone into doing something they’re so against they reject Allison’s rumors? Violence is something she was clearly comfortable of using her rumors for as a child. The first time we see her as a kid use her powers in the bank robbery, she smiles and tells the guy to shoot his friend in the foot. She doesn’t even blink at hurting someone, or using someone as a vehicle to hurt someone. And then in general, testing whether she would have to be face to face with someone to rumor them. Can she rumor people over intercoms? Over the phone? If she had a megaphone, would she be able to project her voice further to affect someone who wouldn’t be able to hear her without it? Can she rumor deaf individuals? If someone can’t understand the rumor (language barrier) will it still work? If someone is blocking out her voice with noise cancelling headphones, would it still work? Can Allison rumor people in other languages? If so, would sign language fall under that? I have a Lot of Questions, hello. KLAUS: My poor boy, my son. Okay, so clearly his ability is speaking with the dead and summoning spirits which really makes me question why the fuck Klaus was out running about on missions when his powers aren’t very offensively capable (barring when he manifests Ben to help out, which he Very Much Could Not Do when Ben was alive and kicking or literally anytime before that moment). Like, what the fuck Reggie? Was he the eternal lookout? Anyway, from what we can see in the show, Reggie’s focus seemed to be for Klaus to get over his fear of ghosts in order to access his abilities more. To be fair, Klaus’s power is a fucking difficult one to train for anyone without the powers. Klaus could deny until the cows come home that any spirits were present without Reggie being any the wiser, even if there were actually spirits present. Which is probably why fucking Reggie ended up tossing Klaus into the mausoleum and locking him in there, because he assumed that spirits would manifest in there for Klaus to see since it’s a house of the dead. Who let this man have children, again? Because surprise surprise, tossing children in with their greatest fear without any assistance or help and expecting them to get over it in fact traumatizes them even more! Before that though I think Reginald would take Klaus places and demand he commune with the dead and relay information to him. Or specifically take Klaus to like, a grave or something and try and make him purposefully conjure up a specific spirit idk. It probably wouldn’t work too well since, you know, Klaus is scared of the dead, but Reggie wouldn’t have cared. Hey, maybe he asked Klaus to summon up the people Allison presumably killed either via rumoring them to kill themself or rumoring someone else to kill them, two training with one stone amiright. Yeah, fuck Reginald Hargreeves for fucking up my son so badly. I wonder how many times Klaus fed him absolute bullshit answers or looking up murder stories and pretended to summon their victims and gave Reggie details that could be backed up just to get the old man off his back FIVE: Okay I have a lot of feelings about Five’s training bc,, he’s my fav sorry not sorry. First of all: his jumps. How far he can go, how many jumps he can make, whether distance is also a factor with how many jumps he can make (can he make fewer jumps if he increases the distance he is jumping). I definitely imagine that Reginald ordered Five to chain jump until he couldn’t anymore, and then tried to get Five to push through the block to jump even more. Did Five have set limits, or would training actually increase his spatial jump stamina? I also discussed in a fic about Five’s limits regarding movement and jumping. I think that ‘spatial jumps’ implies movement, and so if Five was immobilized and tied down I don’t think he’d be able to use his jumps to escape. Though if, say, it was just his hands tied together I think he’d still be able to move forward and jump he’d just take the restraints with him tbh. So I think as training, Reginald would probably try and figure out the limits of what conditions Five would be able to jump in. Can Five jump spatially in materials other than air? Aka, would Five be able to jump if he was in a body of water? Can he jump INTO objects other than air such as water? I’m assuming he has something that prevents him from jumping into solid objects and splicing himself (god or at least I hope he does) but would that extend to liquids etc.? Then I believe he was also trained in precision micro-jumps. Essentially, when having an object thrown at him he would be able to jump just a little bit to the side or in front of the object to avoid it hitting him without jumping across the room or something. Handy in tight quarters. In a fic I theorized that Reginald would essentially swing a cane at him to have Five jump to the other side of the cane before it hit him, and I stand by that. Then in general other testing, what can Five bring with him when he spatially jumps? What is the limitation of his ability? The size of an object? The mass? Composition? Five’s clothes clearly travel with him, but the only time we see him attempt to take a person with him that I can remember is when he tries to time travel with them, not spatially jump. Was he tested with animals before an attempt to jump with a human occurred? Could he jump with say, a hamster in his pocket? Does he have to be aware of what he’s taking with him or if something was slipping in his pocket would it travel with? Does he have to know where he’s jumping in order to do it? Does not knowing risk him splicing with a solid object? Would be be able to jump from a locked room into an unfamiliar second room, without seeing what or who might be inside? I have QUESTIONS. BEN: I feel like Ben’s power would just be straight up difficult to train tbh. Work on those core muscles man, get a regiment going. It caNNOT be easy to keep upright with a bunch of flailing tentacles coming from your person, I can barely keep my balance when one (1) small child attempts to climb my person. That shit has to be HEAVY unless there’s somehow no weight due to being otherworldly or something idk. They seem solid enough when they’re stabbing people, so I’m going to assume they have some heft to them. Ben must have abs of steel and the balance of the literal fae god damn.  So yeah I figure the only way to train that is?? To just do it? In a closed environment? Maybe getting rid of some of the people from Allison’s training? Try and control the other dimensional tentacles Ben and kill these people in a specific order or something! If you can order them to pick up that couch and throw it across the room then you get a treat! Literally I do not know. Presumably it is a very difficult power to control at least at first since Ben goes in a separate room to kill those bank guys without any of his siblings following him. They just wait until he’s done. Then as he trains he gets some more control until he dies? Bc he doesn’t kill any of his siblings at the theater there’s that, though idk if that’s because he’s dead or what - can Klaus aim Ben’s powers at people? Can he make Ben only corporeal to the bad guys to kill them and make him just go through the rest of them? But yeah idk how Ben trains smh VANYA: we see the tuning fork thing in the show, which presumably was pretty much the only training Reggie really managed to think of for Vanya to control her powers? I don’t know when their powers manifested but I’m assuming he didn’t know what they were from birth or anything. Allison’s at the very least requires speech. Diego’s requires throwing things which I’m pretty sure is a developmental milestone, being able to throw things. Can you even imagine a teleporting baby? Fucking anarchy for those poor nannies. So I’m choosing to assume they didn’t get their powers until they were at the very least toddlers with the vague ability to reason with them, because can you fucking IMAGINE Vanya weaponizing crying baby screams?? Grace would have been created a whole lot earlier lemme tell you that. Overall after he makes Allison fuck her up, Vanya seems to participate in training as an observer and recorder. He seems to care about her intellectual prowess at least and?? I don’t know, maybe was trying to fashion her into a sort of handler/trainer for the rest of her siblings? Maybe he gave her some of his data on the other siblings’ training to analyze. Maybe that’s what they were so angry about being in the book, idk. At least she had her violin as an escape amiright. That’s all I got for now lads, I haven’t read the comics or even looked at them so you know, I have no idea what that’s about, and I referenced exactly nothing besides the Wikipedia page idk how accurate that is so if there’s an answer to one of these questions hmu!!

[anastasiaskarsgard]

Link to my masterlist for earlier chapters or other stuff I've written

His Queen

Part 3

Bri ripped open the letter, amazed it was handwritten and in cursive! Knowing Roman, he had an assistant write it, but she felt a warmth in her chest knowing he’d truly loved her all along.

To My Queen, Briana Godfrey,

(Admit it! That sounds way better than Tucker, have the lawyers change it.)

Oh, and before I get into it, I wrote this myself. No assistants, so fuck you for thinking it.

Bri smiled a sad smile at how they still knew how the other thought.

I have to start off by saying thank you for reading this letter. That means you're at the white tower. I don't deserve you. I've turned into everything I never wanted to become. Everything you made me believe I could escape. You are the light to my darkness and I'm so sorry I disappointed you. I don’t have a lot of time, but I needed a plan in case I fail. You’re the only person I trust with my company, my money, my daughter, my legacy, my heart, all of it. I am an absolute crack head level blood addict, and I couldn’t trust myself when we got overly emotional to keep my head. Because I love you so much, you can make me so upset, and That last fight we got into, I scared myself. I don’t blame you for slapping me, but to hold back from returning the blow, I literally broke my own hand... but this is not what this letter is about.

Peter and my sick half-sister Annie have stolen my daughter. Peter is hell-bent on destroying me because he killed Destiny's trash fiance, and lied about it, so she blamed me and attacked me and I hurt her bad enough to foresee issues with peter, so I broke her neck to avoid problems figuring it was showing her some mercy since she was heartbroken. Annie was there and when I refused to carry on an incestuous relationship with her, she turned on me and told Peter about Destiny. So he came after me and fucking shot me, we fought and I won, but didn't cut his head off so I knew he’d be fine. Well, he calls me and has my kid and won't turn her over, and says he's going to kill me so even though I doubt it, Nadia needs someone to raise her, and if I'm killed it's not my whore of a sister Annie. I need you to find Nadia and take her home and raise her as she deserves. She’s such a sweet baby and she adores you.

Find Shelley and she can help you maybe. She’s in love with this weird old poet and chooses to live at the old steel mill. Calls it Rooster Poop. Can’t make this shit up.

The entire security team is trying to find Nadia, so contact them and see where they’re at with it.

you are the love of my life and I refused to ever say so, even though we both knew it was true. I would bullshit and say it’s cuz I was saving you from myself, but I’m not that fucking noble. You scared me more than anything ever scared me in my life. God, it's great to admit I love you. Like I need to make up a new word for how I feel for you cuz love isn’t strong enough.

there’s a pretty poem I saw that reminded me of you;

I’d still choose you.

In a hundred lifetimes,

in a hundred worlds,

in any version of reality,

I’d find you and I’d choose you.

Even though I knew you were going to break my heart again and again.

I’d still choose you.

It’s crazy how happy I am writing you a letter, even with every aspect of my life in shambles, you’re my light.

You get everything. Fuck all of them. You were right about everything. If I survive this shit, I am winning you back if it takes 100 years and I have to spend every cent. This is literally a reset.

I tried to forget your baby girl but I never could. No amount of drugs, money, blood, or bullshit could ever distract me from the constant ache in my heart for only you. You’re the only pussy I ever wanna see again. I ran thru a fantastic amount of pussy after you left and none of them made me forget you for even a moment. I pictured you or I could not get off. It was pathetic. I hope I get to see you again and rip up this fucking letter.

I looked back over this and there’s a reason I have other people write shit up for me. A few requests to seriously consider:

-->Blitzky should take over for Pryce. Not only is he a genius, he's a good guy. He's a bit soft, so you may have to be the bad guy.

-->Get a new nanny. The current one looks good on paper but she's an idiot.

--> Live in the white tower. It's secure and safe and you can make as many floors as you like home.

--> if an animal killed me, it's Peter and he's still a wolf. He’ll be white. Kill him, cut off his head and burn him up in the incinerator.

--> if Annie comes around at all, kill her. She's very manupulative and acts religious and nice. She's crazy and not to be trusted.

-->try and convince Shelley to live in the mansion and have her little homeless community there. She doesn't care about money but she cares about people, so offer it as a safe haven. Make sure it stays stocked in necessities like toilet paper, soap, cleaning materials, etc and write it all off as a charity contribution. Make the whole endeavor a big tax write off, but don't tell Shelley that part. Just tell her it was my dying wish she had a home.

--> the loser she's with has legal problems. Have the legal department solve them so he's got no reason to desert her.

-->if Peters mom comes sniffing around, don't tell her a damn thing. I doubt she will tho, she's a wanted fugitive.

--> don't trust any gypsies.

--> Nadia is very intelligent. She can read minds, influence dreams, and kill anyone or anything just by looking at them. She's dangerous and shouldn't be allowed around animals or people until she can understand the concept of death and consequences. There's no way to control her, I have found.

--> I promised a homeless man I ate that id pay for his sons school. Anonymously pay for Mathew Shandwicks classes, books and dorm at Penn State for all 4 years. His father traded his life without a single complaint so it's imperative you keep my word.

-->make sure Nadia isn't a spoiled brat like me. Teach her about her mother and her father and all the good things about us. Leave out we were related if you can swing it. Just say we were young and loved each other very much. I enclosed a pack of photos of me and Letha for her.

I wonder what you’re wearing... That reminds me; if I’m really dead, you have to be in mourning at least two years. That means all black suits and dresses that cover you up, black nails, big black hats like you just left a Catalina Yacht Mixer or you’re going to a royal wedding. I even got you black lab coats just in case.Don’t half ass this. It’s important.

Also I want “Fuck you” by the Archives played at my funeral, if it comes to that.

Hopefully, you never see this letter because I got everything fixed here, and went and found you and you ran into my arms and we lived happily ever after, and I have a whole lifetime with you... But just in case...

All my love,

Roman Godfrey

P.s. - since you're a genius, hopefully you can fix me or bring me back. I hope you still love me even 10% as much as I love you, because then nothing can stop us.

Brianna stared at the page as her tears fell on it swirling the ink in designs and spirals. She knew he’d always loved her, but it was bittersweet seeing him finally admit it. She took the photos out of the envelope and looked through them.

Looking through the pictures was heart-wrenching. There had to be a way to fix all this! She tried to remember everything she’d learned about Upirs from that dreadful Russian women and Pryce. Luckily they’d been a bit of an obsession for her that she delved into when Roman pulled his shit. Being obsessed with Upirs had distracted her from obsessing over the real issue.

Just as she started to wonder when Mueller and Edwards would be back, as if by magic, the elevator doors opened. They had brought Dr. Blitzkey with them as well.

“Oh my gosh! You’re alive! I’m so happy to see you’re ok and still here!” Bri said as she ran up and embraced Blitzky. “Where is Roman? I need to see him.”

Blitzky looked at the ground nervously before meeting your eyes. “It’s not fixable.”

“No matter. I just NEED to see him. Please?” She begged.

“Okay. He has several severe traumatic injuries so please prepare yourself for that.”

“What happened to him?”

“Some Type of animal attacked him in the old mansion and pushed him out the upper story window, fracturing his spine and neck which most likely left him paralyzed and vulnerable. His throat and heart were then ripped out.”

“Peter.” Bri said darkly. He was going to pay for his betrayal. She would make sure of that.

“I mean that’s the most logical conclusion but after all Roman did for that little degenerate, ” Blitzky muttered.

Bri nodded solemnly.

“Hate to interrupt your happy little party but we have several forms that need immediate attention, to get this shit show back on the road,” Edwards interjected.

“They’ll have to wait till after I see Roman. You lead the way Blitzkey, you two stay here.” She said firmly stepping into the elevator with the doctor. Both lawyers looked furious but did as they were told since they were honestly intimidated by this young woman that had all this piled on her, and seemed unfazed.

As soon as the doors closed she sank to her knees and screamed. The tears came flooding out of her eyes as her body was wracked by sobs. It’s like she’d been hit by a truck. The realization that Roman was really gone finally sinking in.

Blitzky didn’t know what he should do. He was a genius, but completely clueless when it came to social and interpersonal skills. He hesitantly patted Bri on the head like a golden retriever, unsure how long was comforting so he just kept doing it. “You’re strong.”

Bri glanced up at Blitzky through her foggy tears and couldn't help but agree. She WAS strong.

The elevator opened to their floor as she looked down at the floor.

“Well” Blitzkey peeped, unsure of what to do, “this is it.”

“We have to fix him Blitzkey. There’s got to be a way.” she said rising to her feet, as if the little display he just witnessed never happened.

“You’re the boss.” Blitzky said as cheerful as he could muster.

“I’m giving you Pryce’s position. I trust you.”

“Thank you! I wasn't sure if maybe you'd want to take charge.... What will you do? Take over for Roman?”

“Until I can bring him back, I guess I’ll have to. I will bring him back Blitzkey.... If I have to make a deal with the Devil himself.” Bri stated adamantly before setting off down the hall like a woman possessed.

[kittyit]

on lying

introduction

i need to write an essay about compulsive liars. the main reason is because i am a recovered one.

first, let me establish a few things. this essay is about and for female people, my feelings are simple about male compulsive liars - run, and don’t look back. but this isn’t to say the same advice can’t apply to female liars. i will be expressing a sympathetic view towards female liars in this essay because my own feelings toward female liars are partially sympathetic, but certainly not without exception. i just want to be clear that if your life has been fucked up by, or if you’ve been controlled and abused by a liar, you are under no obligation to feel any sympathy towards liars. the same for if it hasn’t been and you just dislike liars for any reason! i know i hold these views for a specific reason and my analysis comes through a specific lens. please don’t think i am excusing the damage liars do by talking about some of the inner workings that result in the lies. there will be a section of how to spot liars that may be helpful if you want to just skip the rest.

so with that groundwork laid, the first complication is that i separate liars into two types of categories. the first is the kind of liar i am recovered from being, the kind i call a compulsive/habitual liar and exaggerator. the second is a sociopath or narcissist. this is tricky because i believe that lying all the time results in a certain loss of empathy for what it means to be lied to. the lack of empathy that would normally separate sociopaths/narcissists from non-sociopaths/narcissists is blurred. there are two categories i name within compulsive/habitual liars & exaggerators, and there is more on this in the section how to spot a liar.

this is a very difficult and intimate essay to write and i hope it helps at least a few women. if you have clarifying questions or want to discuss this further, feel free to message me. what it was like to be a liar

"the liar fears the void." adrienne rich, on lies, secrets and silence (read here)

i’m completely sure of the first time i lied or why, but i think it was this: as a child, i witnessed another child being struck by a car and killed. i believe this witness of traumatic death and the response i got for sharing about it is the root of my lying. i remember being at a children’s church event where the event had been discussed, most likely to ask for prayer for me, and i was cornered by two older boys and grilled about the experience. they wanted to know the details, but above all, they wanted to know if it was cool to see someone die. it hadn’t been, and they weren’t impressed by the details. they recounted for me more gory examples they’d seen on tv and left me sitting on the ground, stunned. there was no big decision from a little girl to stop being vulnerable by telling the truth, but that’s exactly what happened. i had gotten the message that what happened to me was not a good enough story, and i would carry that into adulthood.

i tell this intimate story to present one of the core concepts of my understanding of compulsive/habitual liars & exaggerators: they lie because they believe the truth is not worth telling - “nobody would care about me if i told the truth.”

i started telling exaggerated, gory versions of the story to other kids. the reactions were much more intense. this resulted in intense, conflicting emotions; it was much more satisfying to have a reaction that mirrored the intensity of what i felt, but it was also compounded by the pain of feeling like what i went through wasn’t good enough and the knowledge that i was lying. this is another core concept - liars are unable to feel/receive the genuine empathy/sympathy they are being given because it is being given to a false, constructed personality & a falsified trauma history. this compounds the feeling that “nobody would care about the truth if i told it.” this results in someone who cannot move forward in their trauma healing even with support, even with the appearance of moving forward, because not only are the actual wounds not being addressed, the liar is stuck in a self-perpetuating cycle of minimizing their own actual experiences by presenting exaggerated narratives with the same core.

so, with these seeds of becoming a liar planted, i discovered the internet, and that’s where things started to well and truly get out of control. at a very early age i had grasped the basics of catfishing and encountered (although i didn’t realize it then) different online communities that were full of liars. it was like a battlefield of who was having the worst life. i spent a lot of my preteen and teen years on livejournal in toxic communities, trying to keep up with all the lies. i believe this is when lying transformed from a defensive mechanism into both a compulsion and a method of control.

by lying, i could control two things one conscious, one unconscious. it was obvious to me i could control how people thought of me, but i didn’t understand i was also controlling how i thought of my own life and trauma. things had extended well past the root trauma of witnessing vehicular manslaughter and had extended to varied childhood sexual trauma and physical and emotional abuse. the false narratives i threw up around the actual experiences and the reactions they got made me believe “a lie is better than the truth”.

things grew from there and began flavoring my relationships with people i wanted a friendship with in earnest, not just brief or shallow encounters with strangers online. it became more and more compulsive and habitual to lie and exaggerate. i started using the lying to avoid accountability in situations where i’d done something wrong - for example, in fleeing a situation, i left a room a friend had let me stay in for free during a period of homelessness incredibly filthy and damaged, but in the retelling it became that he’d kicked me out because of my “bad mental health” and i became the blameless victim. while there were instances of him being cruel to me about mental health struggles during this time, the fact remained that i did not hold up my end of the deal he offered (cleaning in exchange for staying there) and fucked up his home before running away from the situation. to avoid dealing with the shame of my responsibility, i simply lied it away.

many liars become functionally addicted to avoiding accountability, blame and shame. when the process of rewriting a narrative has already been established, it’s a pretty easy & natural leap from making your trauma seem more “worthwhile” to making your SELF seem more “worthwhile”, all the time while having the internal experience of your experiences and self being seen as utterly worthless without the lies. one pattern that was the most difficult to shake was the habit of exaggerating. i think of exaggerating in this context as the process of intensifying a real experience. i'll share an example i find particularly shameful - i had a pattern of being given upsetting looks or being laughed at in public and, when reporting those incidents, exaggerating them into outright, blatant street harassment, being pointed at, or approached. never mind that i HAD sometimes experienced outright and blatant street harassment, being pointed at, or approached, it needed to be every time something happened for me to feel comfortable reporting how fucked up it made me feel.

the longer you lie, the more distorted your thinking about the truth is. by the time i got around to recovery, i genuinely believed that the things i had gone through were insignificant because of how they looked in comparison to the lies. i also believed no one could love me knowing that i’d lied. i was also totally incapable of trusting anyone else because of my untrustworthiness. i'd also begun lying about insignificant things in a compulsive way. the habit of controlling the narrative had gotten so far out of hand that i was unable to reliably report something as simple as how many pieces of toast i had that morning or what color a cat i saw was. the positioning of lying as safety and telling the truth as vulnerability was completely in control of my life and my ability to communicate with other people.

i did not start recovering from a lifetime of lying until about 4 years ago, about a year into my current relationship, and a year before i joined the gender critical & radical feminist community. how to spot a liar

i said in the introduction that i believe this is an essential discussion in our community of women, and i hold that belief whole-heartedly. within the category of compulsive/habitual liar & exaggerator, i think of there being two more subcategories: controlling liars & passive liars. i think that my names for these categories are not ideal but i'm not sure what else to call them. i know that one category named as "controlling" seems to imply that there is a way you can lie about that is not wrong, hurtful and harmful, but that is not my belief. the difference between the two is how the lies are used.

passive liars lie when asked about or offering stories about their life, whether on a larger scale (life stories) or a day to day basis. they lie in conversation. the control they exert is over the narrative. controlling liars do all the same things, but extend to using the controlled narrative to control other people. i understand that some people consider and categorize lying itself as an inherently abusive act, and i would never deny the trauma that can come from finding out you've been lied to. the difference between a controlling liar and a passive liar is an active process of abuse and control instead of the more "passive" effects of lying that come with all lies.  

i am mainly writing this section of the essay to try to raise awareness on the tactics and processes used by controlling liars so that potential victims of them can spot them. controlling liars wreak havoc in communities and many abusers are controlling liars. they are frequent and often skilled utilizers of emotionally controlling a situation, gaslighting, and many forms of manipulation. however, by saying that they're skilled, i don't want to imply that any given controlling liar could successfully con and control any person. controlling liars thrive in communities of traumatized, hurting, loving women. women who have been hurt and believe other women about being hurt are perfect targets for controlling liars. controlling liars are discerning in who they select to groom and eventually control, abuse and target women who are naive, compassionate, and/or generous.

one of the first things a liar (controlling or passive) often does when entering a relationship is testing their possible victim. this generally involves dropping a very intense, painful story of trauma in the lap of the person they're lying to and seeing how they react. i find that many passive liars do this in a much more subtle way, but controlling liars will lead with it. they are looking for big responses, an outpouring of sympathy. if they get it, they will often share several more traumatic events in succession, sometimes slowly increasing the severity or unlikeliness of these events. they are counting on empathy, compassion, and guilt (of doubting a woman's trauma) to keep your skepticism and analytical mind in check. it's very difficult to talk about this part of the process because it is undeniable that many super traumatized women do not have well-made boundaries of where and when and how much it is appropriate to share trauma - just because someone dumps a ton of trauma on you with very little warning doesn't necessarily mean they're a liar. and as i tried to establish in the first section, it also doesn't mean she's not traumatized even if she is lying.

if someone is doing this trauma dump on you and you suspect she's lying or exaggerating, there is no need to tell her that. i recommend strongly against it because of the damage that could to do to a woman who isn't lying. one thing i would suggest for handling this type of situation is setting a boundary within it. controlling liars (and really, any kind of abuser), hate boundaries. saying something like, i really feel for you but i don't want to talk about this right now, or other boundary-setting and then watching her reaction both in the short and long term can be very helpful. controlling liars will often react to boundaries with anger and hurt that lingers throughout the whole relationship, attacking you for setting the boundary (how dare you, you don't know what i've been through, etc.), by threatening suicide or other extreme declarations of worthlessness (i guess i'll just kill myself, nobody can help me, i'm beyond saving) or by guilting you in other ways (i thought you were actually going to care about me but you're just like everyone else, etc.)

controlling liars can be extremely sympathetic and kind at first. if you are mutually talking about your traumas, they will often share very comparable situations to your own. it can feel amazing to meet someone who you feel like understands you so well and has such parallel experiences (meeting someone like this for real is a life-changing experience!). there is often an outpouring of details and information on both sides. this is extremely dangerous for the woman who is talking to the controlling liar. the liar's victim doesn't realize that the authentic connection is one way and that the information they have shared is now a liability.

one very important thing to understand about controlling liars is that they are often very easily able to display emotion that reads as authentic or even IS authentic. as i said in the introduction of this essay, the kind of liars i'm talking about have a traumatic core to their lies. there is genuine pain inside a liar, but i can't stress enough how THIS IS NOT YOUR CONCERN when dealing with any liar, controlling or passive. liars choose to lie, and controlling liars choose to use those lies to control and abuse people. but i point this out because especially in real life, it is very hard to keep up an analytical or critical lens when someone is sobbing in front of you or displaying other distressing behaviors. the presence of genuine emotion does not mean the absence of lies.

controlling liars escalate their behavior within the relationships, beginning to use their false trauma narratives to justify cruel and abusive behavior. of course, people also use TRUE trauma narratives to justify their abusive and cruel behavior, but the unique and flexible nature of being a compulsive liar adds specific control tactics. there are a few red flags for these controlling behaviors. one is if someone's trauma (or illness) constantly one-ups yours. this constant one-upping can be subtle or extreme. many liars (from both categories) like to position themselves as the most hurt/damaged/suffering of all, as this gets them the maximum amount of pity, allows them to feel generous by assuring you that your lesser trauma is "still bad" and/or always having a leg up on you if it comes down to a pissing contests.

when you have upset or hurt a controlling liar or you are trying to confront them about something they've done to hurt you, they will immediately begin constructing a narrative to you in which they are absolved and you are not being properly respectful of their illness/trauma. this is often when the sharing that you've participated in earlier will come into play. controlling liars have no qualms about using the things you've shared against you in a variety of ways. they may express a previous abuser was right about you being an awful person (etc.), compare the details of your trauma and their trauma narrative, and just generally do everything they can to gain control in the situation and get you feeling guilty and apologetic.

another red flag of controlling liars is using new, undisclosed details of their trauma as a control tactic, whether it's derailing a situation to put the focus back on them, generating hype and sympathy if they feel like your interest is waning, or just further testing the limits of your loyalty and what they can make you believe. their stories get bigger and bigger, bit by bit. this is also part of how a controlling liar can slow boil you, starting with more reasonable stories but revealing more and more as time goes on and you're acclimated, so a story that would raise eyebrows if given at first just becomes natural, because you love this person and believe her incredible story of suffering and pain.

the last thing that controlling liars are very prone to is isolating (like most abusers) but also triangulating. triangulating is used for a few different things within the language of psychology (here's a writeup on its use in trauma informed therapy and two about its use in discussing narcissistic abuse) so i'm just going to explain what i am specifically using it for here. triangulating is a manipulation process used by controlling liars (and many other kinds of abusers) in which 3 people are involved. sometimes the controlling liar goes back and forth between two people, telling each that the other is mistreating the liar. this way they gain double sympathy and always have one of the people to fall back on if the other one gets out of the cycle. this can be used as a grooming tactic from leaping from one relationship to the next - a controlling liar says they are being abused and positions the person they're grooming as a savior, making it possible to begin abusing the savior as soon as the time/sympathy/support in their current relationship has run out.

i cannot emphasize enough that controlling liars prey on loving, compassionate, traumatized women. it's so horrible to me that having a kind and believing heart can be such a liability in a group full of women who are hurting and isolated by patriarchy, but i have watched controlling liars burn down the lives around them several times within this community, and countless times in other close-knit communities i've been in. once a controlling liar has you, it is incredibly difficult to extricate yourself from the situation, so i'm hoping this guide provides a framework for staying thoughtful and critical even in very emotionally intense situations with other women who are sick and/or hurting.

for more information on big name controlling liars, i would highly suggest these two documentaries: The Woman Who Wasn’t There and TalhotBlond. it's hard to find examples of controlling liars because the lines between them and sociopaths/narcissists are blurred. i think all sociopaths/narcissists are controlling liars, but i don't know if all controlling liars are sociopaths/narcissists, even if their actions are sociopath and/or narcissistic.  i think that maybe the distinction isn't all that meaningful except within the context of addressing compulsive lying as a whole. how to stop being a liar

while the last section was addressing the tactics and details of dealing with controlling liars, this section is addressing passive liars directly. it is a very good sign if you read this far that you can, and should, stop lying. here are some of the steps i took.

the very, very first thing i had to do was face the harm of lying, both the harm to myself but especially the harm to other people. for a long time i didn’t really think about my lying and exaggerating that much. i just did it. i felt permanently, inescapably alone. no one except another liar knows how alone you are with your lies, and i’m telling you, i know. i was in a prison completely of my own making telling people who genuinely cared about me a bunch of fake shit to selfishly try to protect myself. it is selfish to burden people with false stories. it turns something that can be intimate, healing, and beautiful into a farce. on the side of it being harmful to myself, there was a reason i felt alone - because i was. if nobody knows the real you and what you've actually been through, the real you is incapable of accepting love, understanding your own experiences, and ultimately moving forward in the long, hard process of healing trauma.

it comforted me that i wasn't a controlling liar, and for a long time i'd felt superior about not using my lies to control people in the ways i've described above. this was a bullshit thing to feel superior about. facing that my lies still had the ability to control and hurt was one of the hardest things i've ever done in my life. i was lucky enough to have a loving, supportive partner and supportive and understanding friends. once i'd told the people i was closest with that i was a liar and had misrepresented a lot of things from my past, the processing of stopping lying and untangling lies from truth began.

one thing i didn't expect to deal with was a surprising amount of confusion about what was false and what was fact. the combination of lying from an extremely early age with the distorted, cracked, and gapped memories of a traumatized child and young adult who often abused drugs that affected memories meant that this process was painstaking and confusing. the shame was intense - to admit the reality of situations in which i'd lied about to disguise the actions i'd taken and the blame i'd shared was so difficult. to be vulnerable about the things that had actually happened to me instead of the narratives i'd hidden them behind was terrifying on a level i can't describe. the worst was realizing some things i'd told myself were lies weren't lies at all.

i feel frustrated because writing these few short lines can't tell you, my fellow liar, what it would be like if you decided to confess you're a liar and try to stop lying today, right now. it feels fucked up. you will have to face not only the breaking down of the internal walls that have kept your secrets safe for all these years but also the reality that you are not a trustworthy person and that people may not respond to you as a trustworthy person after you tell them that you're a liar. when i was lying, i was found to be extremely trustworthy, and giving that up hurt so badly, but i'm both pleading with you and challenging you to do it.

i can't describe to you how incredible it feels to tell the truth. the truth will genuinely set you free. knowing that what you're saying is true and that you fought hard to say it is one of the most fulfilling feelings i know of. working hard to speak and act with integrity and regaining trust from some people feels amazing too. i have made more progress in these few years that i've been recovering from compulsive lying than i did during the rest of my life. i have friendships in which i've never lied now. there are people who only know true things about me. when i feel the compulsion to lie, i've gotten to a point where 99% of the time i can simply say, "i feel like lying about this but, (telling the truth)." when i do tell a lie, i try to admit to it as quickly as possible, within the day, and apologize and explain why, and 99% of these lies are strange, inconsequential lies that might be categorized as "harmless" by some people. i don't know if i can categorize them as harmless, because of what they mean for the way i've acted in my own life.

it's hard to tell you how to stop lying in a list of steps or bullet points but i'll try to sum it up

- face the harm you've done and decide that it matters - tell the people you've lied to that you've done so - understand and accept that people may be angry with you, not want to speak to you, or hate you - do the internal work of facing the truths behind your lies - take responsibility for the things you're responsible for - call yourself out when you want to lie - stop lying & start telling the truth

if you didn't read that adrienne rich essay before, read it now. i was lucky enough to be recommended it pretty early on in my radical feminist journey. i'll leave you with this excerpt

"Truthfulness, honor, is not something which springs ablaze of itself; it has to be created between people.

The possibilities that exist between two people, or among a group of people, are a kind of alchemy. They are the most interesting thing in life. The liar is someone who keeps losing sight of these possibilities... The possibility of life between us."

the indescribable joys of genuine connection, integrity, and honesty await you. thanks for reading.

[darkouter]

some thots™ on cecil’s past (foster care, troubled youth, rehab)

i.  he was in foster care and it was.  very hard.  he was in from a very, very young age (toddler years) and knows basically nothing about his biological parents.  he has no desire to know them.  he harbored a deep animosity for them for most of his young life until he got into rehab and started to shape up.  he understands now that there were probably reasonable circumstances for him being tossed into the system, but he still felt abandoned during his childhood, and it made him act out.

ii.  because he was such a little shit, he went through several homes, and tended to self-sabotage his chances of being happy.  he has been in four previous homes.  it started with simply being a fussy kid because of the lack of care and attention he got in the system giving him a bad temperament.  after his first guardians returned him, though, it became a fear of abandonment, so he would shut out people in order to not be hurt by them.  it was a self-fulfilling prophecy; he was always convinced he would be kicked out again, so he wouldn’t try, and he would be fairly mean if he felt his home situation was becoming unstable.  by his third foster family he kept a bag with him at all times of his necessities, fully expecting to be thrown back into foster care at any moment.  the process of taking a child back from a family is fairly traumatizing, as it’s abrupt, and there is rarely a chance that one can pack up their belongings.  he never bothered to settle in from that point onward.  

iii.  if not for arthur’s immediate taking to cecil, empathizing with him, and arthur and miriam’s backgrounds in psychiatry and nursing in a psych ward respectively, they probably wouldn’t have been able to handle cecil.  but taking him on felt like a duty to them because he had been failed so many times, and living with them was it’s own sort of therapy.

iv.  of course, they weren’t perfect, and he still had a wild, destructive streak.  severe anger problems, a chip on his shoulder, and generally acting a hooligan, he got into tons of trouble.  he got into constant fights and nearly ended up in a juvenile detention centre.  he went to therapy, but was not very cooperative.  he eventually began dabbling in drugs, leading to his eventual heroin addiction.

v.  it was moving out of home to london that really sealed his doom when it came to his addiction, as he surrounded himself with a majority crowd of people who were heavy users.  he’s dealt with homelessness, inability to hold a stable job, multiple arrests for possession, arrests for theft attempts in order to fund his habit, a variety of forms of abuse, and several deaths around him and personal near-death experiences (both from ODing, dangerous people, and suicide attempts).  as one might expect, he suffers from severe trauma and has ptsd.  if you think he’s a mess currently, you have no idea what he was like before.  honestly, it’s a wonder how he functions.

vi.  he didn’t know he contracted hiv, and he’s terrified that during his period of ignorance to it he might have passed it on.  he’s extremely ashamed of it.  he feels worse because part of him hopes that the people who took advantage of him sexually DID catch it, and he hopes they rot away from it, and those hateful thoughts makes him feel pretty vile.  he has difficulties reconciling these emotions.

vii.  he tried rehab a few times, but it didn’t stick until adelaide reconnected with him and became his support.  she helped separate him from the influence of his surroundings, having him move in with her.  she got him to do inpatient care, and he escaped heroin, but his methadone abuse started here.  he hasn’t touched heroin since this final rehab stay.

viii.  he attended university alongside her!  study buddies.  she went into physics.  he’s horrified and proud.  he has a PsyD, which took ~9 years to get, which is faster than normal.  he really kicked his ass into gear once adelaide helped him out, tending to take 14 credit hours a semester, including summers, and attending a program that helped him get his doctorate and masters studies done concurrently..  he felt he had to make up for a lot of lost time.

ix.  moving to america was one of the hardest things for him because of leaving adelaide, but he needed a fresh start.  they call each other almost daily.  he’s open to her more than anyone else.  he still tends to omit details of when things are going shitty for him because he doesn’t want to disappoint her or make her worry.

x.  i need to revamp his timeline completely, but he’s ~38.  yes david tennant is his fc despite being a decade older.  dude has lived rough lmao shit ages you

[cheguevaraismydaddy666]

seeing my old friend group that abandoned me when i became addicted use the same drugs now just.....idek anymore.....like, i was a dirty junkie, but NOW it's cool if they do it? WHY????? the same people that shamed me and distanced themselves from me when i was using, post stuff glorifying doing lines etc now. when i do it, i'm too much, weird.......but when they do it, it's just fun! they're just partying! it actually makes me sick. i used to end up in the hospital from using all the time. i could very well be dead right now. and they all knew. and nobody cared. nobody even asked if i was fine. also, nobody texted me when they knew i was in rehab. not even when my fucking girlfriend died. nothing. addiction, everything that comes with it like sex work, death, homelessness etc is gross and weird and worth leaving someone over, someone you considered a 'friend' during the hardest and most traumatizing part of their life, but they can use hard drugs! haha, christiane f uwu....(*gag*) my friend, one of the only people that i consider my friend, used to call my other friend and me junks. was disgusted by how broken our life and bodies and minds were because of drugs. now she does the same drugs. posts about it. NOW it's fine? didn't even tried to reach me when i was battling drug induced psychosis. was homeless. had no one but my mom and my 'junk' friend. fuck this shit. like that heartbreaking tik tok sound that goes like "why is being japanese special on her and bad on me?WHY?" ...yeah idk, that's how i feel lol. it hurts. why am i always worse than everyone else....i struggled to survive and everybody left. i was closer to death than to life. i now suffer from ptsd from my sex work, and when they do it it's cool. i honestly can't believe it. well, i can. my ex tried to force himself on me (in my underwear). i told our friend group. nobody really cared that much. told me to talk to him about it. done. few months later he does the exact same thing to someone else from our friend group. the exact same thing. suddenly he was kicked out. called an abuser. well, he sucks so i'm glad he got what he deserved, but WHY TF wasn't it abuse when he did it to me? why did everyone stay friends with him when it happened to me? WHY? my 'friends' didn't care if i was abused. if i was traumatized. if i was DYING. just seeing it confirmed that it's really just.....me. i am the reason they didn't care about things that would've mattered the WORLD if it happened to ANYBODY else. ouch. seriously ouch. i wanna die. i wanna kill myself. i wanna kill THEM. i wanna make them pay for seeing me as worthless. entirely worthless. god, my old school shooter fantasy goes BRRRRRR. i wish i was dead. i can't even talk to anyone about this. i have no one backing me up anymore. well, i guess 'anymore' is the wrong word here. they never fucking did. good thing i'm starving, otherwise i'd have to completly butcher my entire body. the pain of knowing that i am never good enough. not even good enough to not get abused. i don't know why i'm surprised.... i was HOMELESS and nobody took me in. nobody even asked if i was fine. but i saw THEIR big, happy sleepovers on their stories. ouch. big fucking ouch. oh god kill me. please i wanna leave my existence behind. it's too pathetic and humiliating....i can't take it anymore. god, i'm so lonely. and hurt. and rejected. i feel like my heart is gonna burst, in a bad way. 2023 there's gonna be assisted suicide in canada for patients suffering from bpd. honestly i'm gonna go for that lol. i'm serious. and if i have to live there for months or years before i can do that. idk, maybe you need to be a canadian citizen. i'll do whatever i have to do. my anti depressants,which i was originally wanted to kill myself with,apparently make you hallucinate,panic when you overdose on them. also pain. and it just MIGHT work. so fuck this shit. fuck it. heroin+benzos. just a lot. make me pass out, then stop breathing. that's similar to how my gf died. well, then i can finally be with her again. i can't stand being alive any longer.

[maximuswolf]

How do I tell my family that being raised religious traumatized me? via /r/atheism

How do I tell my family that being raised religious traumatized me?

There are some days that I’m alright. Other days, I’m a complete mess. I was raised from birth in the Catholic Church, meaning I was baptized and circumcised as an infant, Confirmed before age 10, and made to confess my sins in the rite of Reconciliation before age 13. Sunday Mass was mandatory, Mom and I said four prayers before bed each night. Even my illustrated children’s books portrayed Jesus walking on water and Jonah living in a whale.

I was a decent Christian. I participated in choir as a kid, and eventually became Worship Leader for a protestant church, and later, their audio engineer. I wasn’t lukewarm, I had what I considered a real relationship with God. Many of my closest friends attended and participated in the same services. I was proud to service the church, and the community of people whom I loved. But nobody can remain a teenager forever.

My early twenties hit hard. Out in the real world, I anxiously awaited those prophetic moments where my faith could shine. I worked a few jobs, mainly an EMT in the back of an ambulance handling fucked up emergencies, and worked nights running audio for a nightclub where I was the only religious guy in the building. In the back of an ambulance, people would confide in me how much they craved death. Late at night working the club, I saw addicts and homeless people start every kind of altercation under the sun. Despite my growing depression, the only time I was memorably caught off-guard was when a co-worker of mine at the club asked, off-handed, why the fuck I believed there was some kind of greater plan at work here. While I was cognizant that I was being asked for my Peter 3:15- “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you” I was woefully unprepared to answer the question. I stuttered and gave no answer. For twenty years of indoctrination and Christian upbringing, nobody had ever given me a good reason to support the idea that the Bible was true.

I delved into every resource that was available to me, looking for answers. I went to the church first. Attended more confession, more private bible studies, brought my questions to the priests, etc. Only then did I begin exploring the religious debate scene. I listened to Christopher Hitchens, Dawkins, Dillahunty, Harris and others. I compiled an enormous notebook of the debate landscape, as closely as I was able to assess it. And ultimately, the curtain fell, and my religion lay naked before me: The Bible was but one of many, many religious texts which was assailed by rationality, logic and facts, and defended only by logical fallacies, cherry picking of information, and the frantic insistence that we utilize faith by many millions of sycophantic believers such as myself. My depression worsened. I prayed for healing, to no avail. My friends told me to pray harder. I bought a gun and tried to summon the courage to end my life. It brought me many tears, and no solutions or endings.

I have come to the unavoidable conclusion that I have been psychologically abused, lied to, and gaslighted for the better part of twenty years, by the people that I trusted and loved. I understand that nobody had ill intent towards me, but nonetheless I am battered and broken, and my deconversion has left a dozen of my most valued friendships in ruin, never to be reclaimed. It negatively affects my performance at work, and my productivity at home. Worst of all, I don’t think I’ve even communicated half of this effectively to any of my family. I still feel love, but it is tempered by the pain of so many hard lessons. The only thing I’ve been able to manage is to hold everybody at arm’s length, tolerate religious holidays and pretend like they don’t hurt me, and generally withdraw from most contact with family.

I feel broken inside, and I don’t want to address it with them because it could force them to make a decision between me, or the religion they’ve held their entire lives. But even now, they express their sadness at how I don’t call them, and how they miss me. They don't know I’m torn apart in a deep way, and yet still lost for the words that might communicate all of this to the people who love me, and who also inflicted this torment upon me. I’m afraid that I’ll have to tell them that I love them, but that for the sake of my health and sanity, I have to minimize contact with them.

Please, if you’ve experienced what I’m going through, give me advice, or maybe just tell me it's going to be alright.

Submitted January 29, 2021 at 07:10PM by greenmachine8885 via reddit https://ift.tt/3t9siuN

[metawitches]

  In The Lost Sister, El continues her journey of self discovery with a trip to Chicago to find her psychic sister, 008/Kali. The sisters lost each other when Brenner separated them after Terry’s aborted rescue attempt. The episode is a stand alone featuring El’s storyline by itself.

We watch El learn about herself and face decisions about what kind of person she wants to be. She’s been physically lost since she left the lab, and a lost soul for her entire life. Kali is the same. They help each other begin to be found in ways that could only happen with each other.

As the episode begins, El is still wearing the blindfold and psychically communicating with her mother. She’s been there since the end of episode 5, so you would think she’d have gotten more than the repeating story of how Terry lost her mind, but she hasn’t.

El describes the visions to Becky over lunch, focussing on the other little girl behind the door with the rainbow. Becky suggests that El look through Terry’s files of missing children that she thought might be like El. El finds an article about Kali with a photo. El puts the blindfold back on and sits in front of the staticky TV, but she can’t find Kali.

Later that night, as she’s lying on a cot in her bedroom, she looks at the article, then thinks back to the image from Terry’s memory. That does the trick. She’s suddenly in the negative psychic space, observing Kali standing in front of a fire in a metal barrel.

She pops out of psychic space and rushes to tell Becky what she’s just seen. When she gets downstairs, El overhears Becky on the phone. She’s called the number on Hopper’s card from a year ago and is leaving a message with Florence.

El steals the cash from Terry’s purse and hops on a bus to Chicago. I appreciate that the writers and producers listened to my complaint from a couple of episodes ago and changed the story to put El on a bus, instead of hitchhiking again. Good to know that I have that kind of influence. 😘😘😜😜

El’s getting her mojo back, as evidenced by the choice of one of Bon Jovi’s best songs as her theme song for this section, Runaway, and bringing back the insult “mouthbreather” when an insensitive stranger bumps into her and keeps going.

She walks for a long time, into the worst part of town, worse even that the part of town where the pawn shops are. She finds the modern shantytown where the homeless drug addicts and mentally ill hang out, but keeps going. Finally, she reaches the abandoned building where Kali’s gang is hiding out.

They aren’t happy to see her, one pulling a knife and another mocking her overalls. (F*ck them, the overalls are cute, in style for the period, and a million times better than that horrible dress.) They become truly threatening when El shows them Kali’s picture, wanting to know how El found her, since Kali is in hiding.

Suddenly the guy who’s holding the switchblade knife in El’s face appears to have dozens of spiders running up his arm. He becomes frantic. Kali descends the nearby staircase like the queen that she is and tells him to stop torturing little girls.

The gang members give Kali the article and tell her that El knows about her. Kali asks how she knows about her and El says, “Mama, in her dream circle.” Then El pulls the knife to herself and away from Mohawk guy with her mind. Smug, she hands it to Kali.

Now she’s got Kali’s attention. Kali asks her name. El tells her it’s Jane. Kali looks for the number on El’s wrist, and El does the same with Kali. 008 and 011 are revealed. They call each other sister and  embrace.

El tells Kali her story. Kali feels that Hopper is being naive. They will always be monsters to the scientists in the lab. The lab will never willingly set them free.

She also thinks it’s wrong for Hopper to stop El from using her powers. Her powers make her special. El asks about Kali’s power. Kali can make anyone see, or not see, whatever she wants. She creates a butterfly in her hand to illustrate. El asks if Kali is real and she says that she is. El touches her face to be sure.

Kali gets El settled into bed and tells El how happy she is that El found her. She feels like an empty hole in her life has been filled. She thinks that Terry somehow knew that they belonged together, and that this is El’s true home.

Once EL’s asleep Kali talks to the gang, and tells them how powerful El is. She wants to “do one” the next day, using El’s finding skills. The others worry that it’s too soon after the Pittsburgh job, but Kali overrules them.

El “visits” Hopper and hears the first part of the apology message that he left her. She’s startled awake by Kali before the end.

Kali introduces El to the gang: Axel, the spider hater, Dottie, the newest member, Mick, the eyes and protector, and Funshine, the warrior. They don’t have numbers or powers, but they are all freaks and outcasts. Kali saved them from hard times. Now they fight back against the people who hurt them.

El questions what the gang is doing, if the people they’re hunting really deserve death. The gang implies that she’s too sensitive to handle killing people. She tells them that she’s killed people before, when they were hurting her. Kali tells her that these are all bad people, too. Her group is just making the first move this time.

Kali takes El outside to work on her powers. She explains that she used to be like El, holding everything inside until her pain festered and spread. It wasn’t until she let it out that she began to heal.

They get to an old railyard. Kali tells El to draw one of the abandoned cars to them. El tries, but can’t. Kali counsels her to draw on her anger for strength. To remember all of the things that have been done to her, all of the things that have been taken from her, and use that energy. She brings the train car flying toward them.

Kali shows El their Most Wanted board and asks if El recognizes any of them. She sees the man who administered the ECT to Terry. Kali says that he hurt more than Terry, and remembers him using a cattle prod on her.

The gang has a hard time finding people like Ray because they know they’re being hunted. But with El, maybe tracking won’t be an issue any more.

It isn’t. She finds Ray quickly. They plan the trip for later that day, even though they will have to use the van that police are looking for in relation to their last job in Pittsburgh. They switch the plates and hope it’s enough.

Before they go, El gets a bitchin’ make over to match the rest of the punker, urban warrior gang.

As they leave the hideout, a cop notices the van.

They stop at a convenience store to stock up on money and supplies. Kali supplies an illusion distraction for the cashier in the form of a flooded bathroom. The cashier comes back before expected and pulls a gun on the gang. Kali tries to talk him out of violence, but El steps in and throws him against a wall. They make a run for it.

Ray is at home watching Punky Brewster. The gang sneaks in wearing creepy masks. Dottie and Axel rob the place while Funshine stands guard. Kali and El confront Ray.

He quickly cracks, and uses Brenner as a bargaining chip.

Ray: I just did what he told me to do. He told me she was sick.

Kali: You had a choice, Ray, and you chose to follow a man who was evil.

Ray: Wait, wait. I can help. I can help you find him.

Kali: Find who?

Ray: Brenner. I can take you to him.

El: Papa is gone.

Ray: No. he’s alive.

Kali: Do not lie to us Ray.

Ray: I’m not lying. He trusts me. I’ll take you to him.

Kali: If he is alive, Jane will find him, just as she found you.

El begins to slowly strangle Ray, using her powers. She notices a photo of him with his two young daughters just as Dottie and Axel find them on the phone with the police in their bedroom.

Kali orders El to keep going, but El stops. She doesn’t want to take a parent away from another child. Kali reminds El that Ray didn’t show any mercy to Terry. Kali pulls out a gun and prepares to shoot Ray, but El uses her powers to take the gun away.

The police arrive outside. The gang races for the van and takes off just in time. Kali is angry with El for taking the gun away. She tells El that she can show mercy if she chooses, but she’s never to take Kali’s choice away. A reminder that Kali may seem to have it together, but she’s just as traumatized and abused as El.

Back at the hideout,  Kali sits down for a private chat with El. She used to be like El. She’s hard on El because she doesn’t want El to make the same mistakes that she did. El replies that there were kids in the house.

Kali: Does that excuse that man’s sins? Were we not also children? I remember the day I came to the rainbow room and you were gone. So when my gifts were strong enough, I used them to escape. I ran. I ran away as far as I could and it was there, far away, that I found a place to hide. A family, a home. Just like you and your policeman. But, they couldn’t help me. So eventually I lost them too. So I decided to be smart. To stop hiding. To use my gifts against those who hurt us. You are now faced with the same choice, Jane. Go back into hiding and hope they don’t find you, or fight. And face him again.

El: Face who?

Kali: The man who calls himself our father.

Jane: Papa. Is. Dead.

BrennerIllusion: That man tonight disagreed.

El: You’re not real.

BrennerIllusion: All this time, you haven’t looked for me. Why? Because you thought I was dead, or because you were afraid of what you might find?

El: Go away.

BrennerIllusion: You have to confront your pain. You have a wound, Eleven. A terrible wound. And it’s festering. Do you remember what that means? Festering. It means a rot. And it will grow. Spread.

El: Get out of my head.

BrennerIllusion: And eventually, it will kill you.

El: (yelling) Get out of my head! (Bursts into tears.)

The lights flicker and the Brenner illusion disappears.

Kali: This isn’t prison, Jane. You are always free to return to your policeman or stay and avenge your mother. Let us heal our wounds, together.

Meanwhile, the SWAT teams are assembling outside for an assault on the hideout.

El clutches the shirt she borrowed from Mike, and thinks back to her favorite memories of Mike and Hopper. She enters psychic space, and sees Hopper in the lab realizing that the firemen are in the boneyard. Then she sees Mike run up and try to warn the Owens and Hopper that the firemen are walking into a trap. She runs to her image of Mike, but he dissolves when she touches him, as people in psychic space always do. I’m waiting for her to meet her psychic match and see what happens when they interact.

El is drawn back into this reality by police breaking down the hideout door. Kali gathers up the gang and makes them invisible while the police search the hideout. As soon as the police are past them, they run for the van, getting stuck in a barrage of bullets outside until Kali raises an illusionary metal wall between the police and the van.

El hesitates while everyone else gets into the van. She remembers seeing both Mike and Hopper in the lab and in danger. (Can’t leave the idiots alone for a minute.) She knows that she has to go back.

Axel yells that they have to hurry, the illusion is going to wear off. Kali begs El to stay, saying that Terry sent El to her for a reason. They belong together. Her friends can’t save her. Jane says she knows, but she can save them. She turns and runs down an alley as the wall illusion disappears and the police start firing at the van.

Kali calls for El/Jane as she runs away. The van gets away safely, but Kali is devastated at the loss of more family. We get a gorgeous reflection effect of Kali sitting back in the van, and tearfully looking at her own reflection in the van window in the dark, as El’s reflection comes into focus next to it. Kali’s reflection fades, and we gradually see that El is once again on a bus.

A woman sitting across from El decides that she needs some company and moves next to her. She asks where El is going. El replies that she’s going to see friends. She’s going home. She’s made her choice about who she is and where she belongs.

We are sung out by Icicle Works’ Birds Fly (Whisper to a Scream).

    This time on her own is an important step for El’s character, but it’s still curious that it’s not interwoven with another story thread. The decision to give this subplot this much time and attention means one of three things: 1-It’s a backdoor pilot for a spinoff starring Kali and her gang, possibly also including El after Stranger Things ends in two seasons; 2- the Duffers went on a rambling side track with limited immediate relevance to the main story just for the heck of it, which seems unlikely; 3- there are elements to this episode that are important to the story now and/or in the future, even if we can’t currently see what they are.

My policy with episodes like this is to treat everything as a potential clue for the future. The Duffers put too much care into their writing to suddenly go off on a narrative lark that won’t have more ramifications further down the line, even if it takes 2 seasons to pan out.

Kali was indeed a dark mother, as her name implies. She was the first person in El/Jane’s life, with the possible exception of Mike, to see her true self, to see all of her, and to accept everything that she sees. She’s the only one to tell El the truth about their lives and force El to accept it, both the good and the bad. Mike didn’t have enough experience of the world to understand the whole truth. Hopper wouldn’t accept that she could take care of herself, or that she might have to be underground, and on the run, for the rest of her life. Kali brings the final push that El needs to grow into her true self, to accept that she’s a good person with the power to potentially be a monster or to potentially help people. The decision is El’s.

But, like all dark mothers, she doesn’t make the growth easy. She is a warrior, and El is needs to be a warrior too. El needs to face and pass the tests that will prove her growth and worthiness.

There is a neon hamsa, an open hand with an eye in the middle, in El’s bedroom in the hideout. The hamsa is a Middle Eastern symbol of protection and good luck. The words Spiritual Advisor are written in neon on the hamsa sign. Kali is an important person in El’s journey, teaching her to take care of herself as well as others, and to think of herself as special and wanted rather than as a monster and a science experiment.

  The hamsa makes Kali’s important role in El’s life clear. El will undoubtedly need guidance again, and a helping hand with psychic powers.

El’s psychic powers are getting stronger. When we met her, she needed the sensory deprivation tank or a radio to enter psychic space. Now she’s able to find random strangers over long distances with nothing but a photo and a blind fold. If she feels a close connection to someone, as with Hopper and Mike, she doesn’t even need that. She just needs to trigger deep thoughts and memories of them.

I don’t remember seeing El use her finding/tracking ability in the real world at all last season. I believe we only saw her use it to find people so that she could spy on them, and to find Will and Barb in the Upside Down. Or did she also locate people so that the FBI could send goons to arrest them?

Kali states one of the major themes of the season. Healing isn’t possible with repression and lies. The truth and the pain have to be faced and dealt with for healing to be possible. Otherwise the system/organism will fester, becoming worse over time, whether it’s Hopper becoming an alcoholic and pill addict to numb the pain of the loss of his daughter; the town rotting from underneath like a festering wound that’s scabbed over, because for decades it’s avoided facing the cancer that is Hawkins Lab; or Barb’s parents giving up everything they own to find her, rather than admit that she’s likely dead.

El has faced some of her pain, but not all of it. She’s realized that Hopper, Mike, and her friends in Hawkins are her family, even when they disappoint her. She knows that family means a give and take relationship, with each person giving what they are good at and capable of, and taking what they need in return. She knows that mistakes will be made.

But, Kali is right. She hasn’t faced the abusive bond that she had with her papa. Kali was old enough when she was taken to remember her birth family and original life. She was never prey to Brenner’s twisted love the way that El was. Before she escaped, El had never known any other life or parent but the lab and Papa.

Brenner was the first person to hold El when she was born. He continued to be the one to hold her when she needed someone. Even very abusive parents and their kids still love each other. The two aren’t mutually exclusive, and we saw that bond constantly between El and Brenner in season 1.

El’s not going to be whole until she deals with her feelings toward him, the loss of the safety and home that the lab provided, and all of the other feelings that she wishes she didn’t have. Plus, of course, the anger about what was taken from her and done to her.

El hasn’t checked to see if Brenner is alive, or looked for his body (she found Barb’s body, so that’s possible), because she’s afraid of what she’d find. She’d have to directly confront things she’s not ready to face, possibly even Brenner himself. She’s not ready for that. She may even be able to feel his consciousness somewhere in the back of her head.

Becky is still one of the sheeple after all. Did she believe anything El said, or was she just humoring El until she could get El out of the room long enough to call someone? Becky told El that El could stay with her, with the condition that El tell Becky her story sometime soon, but it didn’t have to be now. Turning around and calling the authorities on the first night is tantamount to a betrayal, and Becky would understand that if she believed any of Terry’s story, never mind what she knows of El’s. Maybe she doesn’t believe that El is really Jane.

El is probably remembering when Benny called the authorities, and ended up dead. Leaving Becky and Terry is as much for their protection as it is for her own. Maybe they won’t think that the girl in question was El if she’s not there.

After El leaves, Terry switches her TV to Action News 8, with the 8 filling up the screen. This was her plan all along. She’s more lucid than she appears, as I’ve theorized all along, but she’s like an oracle who speaks in riddle and prophecy. Until now, she hasn’t had anyone who could interpret her properly.

How did Terry find the stories of all of the kids in the files? You couldn’t do an internet search back then. Did El inherit her finding ability from Terry? If so, Terry’s seems more well-developed, since she can hunt for types of people, while El can only hunt for specific people.

Or was Terry looking up the backstories on children she’d seen with her own eyes? There were a lot of doors in that hall. Were children behind all of them? Where are those children now? Why did Brenner take those particular children? Did they already have powers, or did he know something about their genetics? Are they all the children of his former test subjects?

With Kali in the world, there will now always be the question of Real/Not Real? They had El/Jane ask Kali if she was real for a reason, then show us NotRealBrenner later for a reason. A powerful illusionist can start a war based on illusions, or stage a bloodless coup. She would have been able to walk right out of the lab by making herself invisible, perhaps with the help of a distraction off to the side. She and El may have been separated because they were learning to combine their powers, which would make them a formidable team.

At least there is a time limit on her illusions of 1 1/2 minutes. Enough to accomplish something, but not enough to use illusion to make someone a hostage in their own fake life.

I believe that Ray is telling the truth and Brenner is alive. The scene at the end of season 1 in the junior high hall happened fast, the demogorgon died soon after, and we never saw his body. No Body=No Death. Did the demogorgon even have time to eat him or take him to the Upside Down and make him an incubator? It’s believable that he was hurt but got himself to safety somehow, unnoticed in the chaos of that night. Especially if he has psychic powers of his own and could psychically call for help.

If you examine the articles that are readable from Terry’s file, it’s clear that Terry was collecting stories of strange child disappearances. Stories strange enough that there was probably a mutant inhuman psychic involved, unless Brenner himself has powers that strong.

  These are the headlines from the file that I could catch-

Cleveland Teen Girl Missing in Indiana

Part of the article is readable as El flips through. The girl was a 16 year old honors student and basketball team captain, in Indiana for a basketball conference championship game. “After leading her team to victory, the girl disappeared somewhere between the Indiana junior high gymnasium and the bus waiting to take her and the rest of the team [back to] Ohio…

That sounds like Brenner either used Kali to help take this girl, he has a similar ability himself, or he has another mutant psychic who he’s manipulated into cooperating.

Another Girl Lost

From County Hospital (Photo of Toddler age boy)

end of word Schoolyard

Pawtucket Mother and Daughter Missing

Baby Boy Missing from County Hospital- Frank Williams, Memphis

A baby boy went missing during a nursing staff shift change. The nurse who took him had been out sick for the week before, and was found dead in her home, with no signs of the baby, when police went to investigate.

San Diego, State Police

Vanished! Indian Girl Missing in London (Kali is at least 6 in the photo)

Couldn’t tell how she went missing in London, but neighbors insist that she’s a stubborn girl who’ll surely be seen again.

Brenner was somehow taking children from very public places. It seems unlikely that he’d be able to convince all of those people that he’d have the right to take the children, or that he’d be able to buy off all of the witnesses. Psychic abilities have to be involved in the abductions.

Here are the clearest screen caps Metamaiden could get of the readable pages in the files. No doubt someone out there will have better images, but these are a start.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

    I’ll write more about El’s journey and growth across the entire season in my end of season post. For now, let’s look at El, Kali and their relationship to each other. Kali is a mirror of what could have happened to El if she hadn’t found the particular boys that she did, when she did in season 1. El started out with the same kind of troubles that Kali did: She had no knowledge of the world or how to survive in it, and had to rely on her power and the kindness of strangers. The first person El found was Benny, but he couldn’t protect her, and she was quickly on the run again.

Kali’s escape, as far as we know, was an individual event that didn’t make the news or stir up the town at all, unlike El’s, which was related to a major event at the lab that couldn’t be completely hidden, and that involved one of the boys. So Kali would be seen as a runaway, while El was able to be believed as part of a larger conspiracy that her rescuers had a stake in.

Even though it was covered up, Kali’s escape wasn’t actually without conflict, as she herself tells us. There was the body that was mentioned on the news the night Will’s fake body was found in S1 Ep4. The reporter said another body had been found drowned in the quarry 7 years ago. It’s never been mentioned again, and Hopper didn’t know about it, since he didn’t think there had been any unusual deaths in the town in decades. That would have been while he was still in the big city. Was that death due to Kali’s escape? Did the lab successfully cover it up, or was it Kali who dumped the body?

The lab and the Upside Down conspired to make El’s second situation temporary as well. She ended up wandering in the woods, with the lab under reorganization. Kali ended up on the city streets far away, with the lab still run by Brenner. Hawkins was too dangerous to stay in or near for very long.

At the end of season 1, El had another patron waiting for her, a father figure who’d lost his own daughter and needed a reason to pull himself out of his crippling grief, depression and addiction. Hopper also had the guilt of betraying El to Brenner to work off, though it doesn’t seem like anyone alive but him knows about it.

So EL had a safe, warm home with a parent, but she was a prisoner. Kali was on the streets, but she was free. Both were still angry and lost inside, not knowing who they were, without purpose in their lives, without biological family or roots to fall back on. The Lost Sister has layers of meaning for both sisters.

Kali assembled a gang of angry outcasts like herself, and they began to work through their anger by feeding on it, making revenge and street justice their careers. It’s a dangerous game, and she can’t get too close to anyone in her gang, because the truth of her past is still too dangerous to share. Her life is still empty in many ways.

El, on the other hand, spent a year clinging to hope and the word “soon’, trying to believe Hopper when he told her that she’d be able to live openly in the world before long. When she reached her limit, he was still caught up in his own emotional issues. He couldn’t see that her issues are real and serious. She can’t just decide to be okay with sitting alone in the cabin with her trauma, and anger, and the need to live her own life, all day, every day. She needs more or she will go crazy, for reals.

It’s scary to me how often I need to write this ⬆️ ⬆️ in recaps. Stop holding women hostage, guys, even when you think it’s for our own good..

So El leaves the cabin and visits Terry. She learns about Kali, and goes to find her. They discover each other and finally they each have someone with shared experiences. It’s like coming home. El and Kali feel an immediate bond.

But, while they share some profound things in common, they are also different people, possibly with different goals and priorities. Kali is a good person, who’s been doing the best she can with her lot in life. But she’s ruled by her hurt and anger. El doesn’t know what she wants yet, but she’s hesitant about killing that isn’t done in the heat of the moment, or to defend a friend in need.

Kali gives El choices every step of the way, unlike everyone else in her entire life. Everyone else has told her what to do, what to think, what to wear, where to go, and what she should see as right and wrong. Even Mike. Many judged her by things that were outside of her control: her past in the lab, her powers, her looks.

El loves being with Kali, but she has reservations about Kali’s lifestyle. Seeing Kali’s choices and being in her world clarifies things for El. She realizes what’s important to her. What she’s willing to sacrifice, and who she’s willing to sacrifice it for. Seeing the images of Brenner trying to manipulate her, combined with images Hopper and Mike in trouble, solidifies her resolution.

El has a family. She has ways of her own to save them. They need her and she needs them. That’s where she belongs. She’ll work things out with Hopper. Get him to understand that she can’t be a prisoner anymore. He can’t physically contain her if she doesn’t let him, anyway. It’s time to go home.

Kali watches El run away and feels like she’s losing one of the few true bright spots in her life. She misses El, and the human connection that El brought her, already. She wonders what El could have in Hawkins that would make her willing to risk sacrificing her freedom for these people.

Kali’s still angry, and doesn’t know if she could get to the point of living the almost normal life that El hopes to have waiting for her. She wonders whether it would be worth following El to Hawkins and trying it out, or whether she should follow and take out her anger on the original source of her pain, the lab itself.

For tonight she needs to focus on escaping the police and finding someplace safe to sleep.

Whisper to a Scream lyrics. That faithless daughter line is interesting.

Some things take forever But with building bricks of trust and love Mountains can be moved

Love come, down upon us ’til you flow like water Burning, with the hope of insight Feathered, look they’re covered with a bright elation Stolen, in the sight of love

We are, we are, we are but your children Finding our way around indecision We are, we are, we are ever helpless Take us forever, a whisper to a scream

Birds fly, in the eye of the faithless daughter Broken, at the bitter end Wasted, sacrifice for a new nirvana Night time, sends us on our way

We are, we are, we are but your children Finding our way around indecision We are, we are, we are ever helpless Take us forever, a whisper to a scream

We are, we are, we are but your children Finding our way around indecision We are, we are, we are ever helpless Take us forever, a whisper to a scream

Stranger Things Season 2 Chapter Seven: The Lost Sister Recap In The Lost Sister, El continues her journey of self discovery with a trip to Chicago to find her psychic sister, 008/Kali.

[stehayneedsahug]

It’s so heartbreaking to see people talking about how Ste isn’t the same Ste anymore and how he’s changed so much since Stendan, but I do feel like it was a natural progression. If you watched Ste’s storyline before Brendan he was angry and tumultuous and violent, he had created a hard shell to deal with his upbringing and life, he lashed out easily because he never could handle his emotions in a very healthy way. 

His kids softened his heart a bit and made him want to be a better person, but he still struggled a lot with his emotions and pain even after anger management had helped him to lash out less he still carried so much guilt and held onto his tough exterior.

Let’s have a recap of the shit Ste’s been through shall we? (this will be long):

He ran with a tough crowd as a teen and was a hothead and a bully, we learn later he used to be locked in his room all night with nothing but troll dolls to play with while his mom was drunk, he was neglected and beat by both his step dad and occasionally his mom. He was also verbally and emotionally abused by them. He went to young offenders and came back not wanting to live at home, it was bad enough there that being homeless or living in the boiler room at school was preferable. He wanted to be able to stay with Amy and have a purpose to his life so badly that he took on the responsibility of being a dad to Leah. He had a long way to go though, and he was a poor teen dad used to violence and he became what he knew when he started to hurt Amy, deal drugs and con people for money...he wanted to be better though and by some miracle he had a breakthrough and was starting to be a better person. Amy couldn’t handle motherhood when Lucas was born and Ste did his best as a single dad for a while, in spite of his own problems and people he thought he could trust trying to drug him and steal his babies (which was crazy, wtf). Honestly though, a key part of understanding Ste as he currently is, is seeing how he used to be.

He met Brendan and was drawn to him like a moth to the flame. He saw a wild man who demanded respect. In a way Brendan scared him from the start, because he saw the violence he was capable of and he saw the illegal things he was involved in and the lines he would cross. Ste saw himself in Brendan and also was addicted to the obsession Brendan had for him, the neglect and abuse in his own childhood made him used to bearing the violence but Brendan’s attachment to him had to be addictive when all he wanted was to belong and be understood. Brendan also took care of him and loved him like no one in Ste’s life had really don’t before, even though it was tainted by Brendan’s own issues in such a devastating way. 

Doug was Ste trying to keep control of the progress he’d been making at being a healthy and responsible man and father. Doug (and sort of Noah before that went to shit) was a chance for Ste to break free of that continuous violence surrounding him in his life and do what he knew intellectually would be the safe, healthy relationship choice for him. He didn’t know how to be alone but Doug offered love and his chance to breathe and figure himself out more and be ‘normal’. Also, Ste is really bad at rejecting any kind of love and Doug pursued him. But he loved Brendan and when Brendan started to change for the better and they had a chance to be on the same page and love each other it was like his dream come true. 

Losing Brendan broke Ste in an irreparable way, because it was about more than only missing Brendan in his life. He had finally started to believe in love conquering the violence and the pain in his life. He had felt understood and cherished without having to pretend his past away or pretend to be someone else because Brendan understood the dark sides to him and he wanted to be there helping Brendan through his own trauma. But when Brendan went to prison and cut him off from seeing him, it played on all of Ste’s insecurities because their love wasn’t enough for Brendan to stay for him, the violence caught up to them after all, Ste was abandoned by not only Brendan but also Cheryl and Amy and his kids still weren’t back in his life. It was like the dream he let himself believe he would be able to have came crashing down around him and everyone around him had an ‘i told you so’ ready. 

So Ste turned hard again. Instead of just going along with Amy or Doug saying being with Brendan was a mistake he held onto his love for him but it turned into bitterness and anger toward everyone else because they couldn’t understand, and toward himself for thinking he could have it all. He put back on his hard shell and tried to do anything he could to get the club and feel like Brendan was still with him, he basically embraced violence and drug-dealing at first as a ‘fuck you’ to being normal again because he’d always felt like that was a facad for him anyway, and because he didn’t want to just act like nothing had happened and didn’t want people to think he was too good for Brendan because he didn’t feel like he was...to him they were the same...so why try to be good if it all just ends in misery anyway. 

Then on top of all his pain over losing one of the only people he felt could truly understand him and love him for all his flaws, Ste had to face his mother pressuring him to help her kill herself. She never loved him selflessly once in her whole life and she ignored him when she wasn’t hurting him or letting him be hurt. Even her confession that she’d want him to crawl into bed as a kid with her when he thought she was sleeping was cold and devastating because all Ste needed was her to see him and acknowledge him and she was using his most cherished moment with her (out of pretty much none to chose from) to manipulate him into doing something that could get him put in jail and/or permanently emotionally scar him further. When Ste did it, he felt more empty, because the anger he’d always felt for her and the abuse he suffered from her made him question whether he actually did what she wanted him to do or if he secretly somehow wanted to kill her himself. That would majorly majorly fuck with anyone’s head and it came at a time when he was already feeling so alone and on edge. He was so done at that point and worn down, he even thought jail would be a rest in a way and that he’d deserve it...he gave up. 

Then Doug and Tony rallied around him and helped him find the strength to keep trying. Doug made him remember his kids and how he’d wanted so badly to be a good father to them and how going to jail and giving up would leave them without a dad like his own dad did. Doug was a way out from the bottom and part of Ste loved Doug even if it wasn’t the same kind of love he had for Brendan...he loved the reliability of Doug and the normalcy and security of Doug. He was at his lowest so he clung to Doug, and once again he was back to pretending for the sake of his kids and for the sake of trying again to find some even footing in his life and become the normal, responsible, happy family man he’d so wanted to have as a dad when he was growing up. 

Then Doug died. Doug died and once again Ste was left bereft. Because even though he’d left Doug before and even though he wasn’t necessarily the love of his life, Doug was one of very very few people Ste trusted and knew loved him. Doug had always represented safety and the ‘right’, secure path to Ste and now he was gone in such an unfair way. So now Ste was once again alone in a sudden and traumatic way, his home was gone on top of it, and Amy and the kids still weren’t around. He was drinking heavily in the deli with some matches maybe suicidal when lo and behold, here’s Danny telling him he’s his dad. 

So Ste goes to live with his dad with all this baggage of having almost no one in his life and having all this pain in his head that he hasn’t really gotten a chance to deal with and he has these new sisters and this surreal family suddenly and I’m sure he feels so separate from them, but he’s so thirsty for acceptance and a place and a distraction from all of the pain and loss he’s been going through it’s like something good is finally happening to him and it’s another chance to pretend that this is his life, that these people have been his family all along and that this is where he belongs. 

But then even this happy family starts to crumble around him...he has a front row seat to their drama and he sees that his dad isn’t some knight in shining armor, that his dad is hurting this family that ste wishes were the perfect family he’d been searching for by cheating with John Paul and once again Ste is face to face with someone hurting others by hiding their sexuality and this time it’s his dad. Leela repeatedly reminds him he doesn’t really fit in with them. Ste leaves because he can’t handle the fakeness of them playing happy families when Danny is cheating and lying and Ste already didn’t feel like he belonged and now he’s asked to lie for him. His relationship with his dad further deteriorates when Danny starts to be insecure and jealous of Ste’s relationship with John Paul and he is so quick to throw Ste away. He is about to leave without telling him after everything and when a hurt Ste accidentally let slip to Cameron that they were leaving, Danny’s last words to him were basically disowning him. So the family Ste had fantasized about all of his life turned to shit and Leela and Danny both blamed Ste for it to his face, Danny didn’t get the chance to take it back, Leela did, but that sticks with you especially when Ste already was feeling like everything he touches falls apart and everything bad that happens to him is his fault.

Oh hey, meanwhile, John Paul and him do some coke casually in the Deli. So alongside all of this pain simmering under the surface for Ste now here he is introduced to an escape. So now when things get hard he gets this craving to escape and forget and now he knows something that will work better than just alcohol and starts to struggle with drugs. He’s putting bandaids on open wounds all over the place and drugs are just one more way to get through the day. It’s self-destruction and addiction and he probably feels like taking drugs is the right mix of hurting himself and forgetting his pain all at once....like what it used to feel like to go back to Brendan in the days when he knew he’d probably get sex and a black eye out of it. He probably feels like he needs the drugs to feel normal, because his normal is anything but painless and happy and when things are going too well he doesn’t trust it and the drugs keep him grounded in the self-disgust he’s too used to, and when things turn bad it’s his fault for not fixing it or knowing how to deal or knowing it was coming and the drugs help him forget with a mix of reminding him of his place.

John Paul is now one of the only people who understand him. John Paul knew Brendan and Doug, he knew his past. They hated each other but after Doug died they both feel pulled toward each other because they feel so alone and their worlds have been orbiting around each other like destiny wants them to make it. John Paul’s mess with Danny leaves him feeling vulnerable and Ste is one of the only people who knew what happened there. They bond over the messes their relationships have been and then they further bond over the traumas they help each other through. John Paul saves Ste from drowning in the bathtub after Danny’s death. He tries to support him while he deals with his addiction. Ste tries to help John Paul in his recovery from being raped. John Paul tries to be there for Ste through his HIV diagnoses. 

Though they tried to make it work, their relationship was fraught with baggage and communication problems between them. Ste felt restless being taken care of and guilty for not being stronger in resisting the drugs, for blacking out and sleeping with Sinead, for being high and sleeping with Connor. Ste felt helpless in trying to be there for John Paul through the trial and crumbled hard under the pressure and let John Paul down. In my opinion, Ste felt like John Paul was too good for him and that was a source of a lot of the strain between them. John Paul struggled with empathy and with loving Ste and supporting him without ending up patronizing him. 

There was this love and respect between them but it was tainted by the walls they both put up, Ste to hide his darkest sides (he didn’t hide them well), and John Paul to hide his vulnerable sides. They drifted apart and then suddenly Ste is left with this pressure to take care of Sinead because she’s pregnant from a night Ste doesn’t even remember. He loves her as a friend and he loves being a father and so it’s too easy for him to start to fall for that idea that Sinead keeps pushing of a ‘normal’ family, mom, dad, kid, he could maybe have it all. And he takes that easy way out instead of really dealing with whatever is wrong between him and John Paul, and he starts to basically fall back into old habits with Rae or with Amy....he reverts back to trying to be the father he wishes he could be because maybe that will be enough this time around to make him a better person and keep him off the drugs and the self-destructive behavior. A baby gave him a purpose again. 

His relationship with John Paul simmered out and they both let it go. In my opinion, they were always almost right for each other, but the timing and life just kept getting in the way and Ste was insecure with someone he saw as so steady and intelligent and ‘good’ and John Paul was overwhelmed and frustrated with how Ste kept self-destructing and hurting both of them so they just kind of lost each other. 

Harry came along and again, Ste has never been good at resisting when someone expresses love for him or tries to woo him. He was drawn to how much Harry wanted him and when Sinead left, Harry was a distraction Ste needed and the fun he craved and for a while their relationship was secret and dangerous and after being in such a serious and heavy relationship with John Paul, Ste was going with the flow and trying to just not care about his troubles for a while.

When Tony found out and had such an extreme reaction, Ste felt the weight of responsibility for coming between Harry and Tony, he felt rejected by a man who is one of very few who have been there for him and everything was just kind of a whirlwind with Harry being kicked out by Tony and then Ste being kicked out and blamed for Tegan’s drugs and they were homeless together and it was kind of like Ste was just spiraling out of control again. It was like Ste was back to being that kid living in the boiler room and trying to find a job and a place for him and Amy. Harry was insistent and persistent about staying with Ste and even though the guilt was eating at Ste for being the cause of Harry’s homelessness, Ste was in over his head and didn’t really understand the pressure Harry was under for school (since he never finished it) and didn’t really understand how desperate Harry was getting to help Ste. When Ste found out that Harry had slept with James for money, the guilt of it crushed him. He couldn’t handle being that bad influence that he knew everyone thought he was and he was hating himself for ruining Harry’s relationship with Tony and mourning for his own relationship with Tony and hurting for losing his kids once again when Amy found out how they’d been living. It was easy for Cameron to convince him to take chrystal meth and once Ste started being addicted to that, he was scared again. At least when he was clean and homeless with Harry he could pretend it was some adventure and ignore his problems with sex and scamming for food or a place to stay. Now he was back into drugs he felt everything he’d worked on with John Paul slipping away again and so he ended up taking Harry back, yearning for that connection with Harry and with Tony to help pull him through his newest addiction. 

Now Ste went through the work to get clean again and tried to be a better person and rebuild his life again for his kids when of course his world starts to unravel again when he gets blackouts as a result of everything catching up to him. He risks losing his kids in custody battles and Leah knows about his past too now and the most important part of his life is crumbling away from him in a way that feels more out of reach than it maybe ever did because it’s legal now. John Paul comes back to him for support and it’s like they pick up where they left off, helping each other through their trauma, John Paul comforting Ste over his kids and his blackouts and Ste comforting John Paul over Finn possibly returning to the village and they just have all of this unresolved love for each other that will probably never go away because of all that they have been through together. It just makes sense that they would slip, neither of them are exactly great at relationships. 

And now here we are, Ste is still with Harry because he can’t be alone and Harry and Tony have supported him through in such hard times but I don’t think it’s really love. It’s more of the same where Ste is just so needy for family and for someone to be there that he can’t end it when Harry keeps being there for him like so many others weren’t or couldn’t be. But now Amy is gone and his kids think he killed her and I just don’t know how he will ever really get back from this. He’s going to be even more traumatized now....even with all of their problems, Amy was his rock through so much and his partner through life.

So yeah, this was basically a summary of Ste, but I just don’t blame the guy for making some shitty mistakes, for being needy and a mess and self-destructive and lost....he is going through life with no blueprint and he keeps having hardship after hardship thrown at him. I expect if Ste gets out of prison for him to be doing whatever he can to avoid prison again, but I expect him to be so depressed and feel so alone and helpless that I will not be surprised for him to have so much more pain (self-inflicted and otherwise) ahead. It is a soap after all, and when it’s a character with so much baggage like he has, he’s going to relapse and struggle and stumble along the way to becoming the man he wants to be....that doesn’t mean that he isn’t developing as a character, it just isn’t that simple at all. 

Ste’s progression into the hardened, hurt, lost guy that he is now didn’t just suddenly come out of nowhere. It was the result of growing up needing to fend for himself, craving any kind of love wherever he could get it, struggling with becoming what he hates (his dad), struggling through abuse, feeling abandoned and out of control, regressing to old coping mechanisms after losing brendan, self-medicating, trying to find normalcy and faking it till you make it, falling apart again, struggling with becoming what he hates again (his mom basically), dealing with guilt and loss, and basically being tossed around by life and trying to cope. He isn’t the same Ste as Brendan era, but he shouldn’t be anyway because too much has happened.