#gremble talks about that gd affair

[abeautifulblog]

Hi!! I just reread all of ABDitN for like the 10th time because I got my friend hooked on it, and a thought then occurred to me when I went on to replay the game: You've talked before about Joseph and the allusion to his having a bondage kink before. I think that a facet of the Robert/Joseph History might be that Robert did a scene (or multiple) with Joseph, mild stuff, consensually, and Joseph did exactly 0 aftercare. Would that mesh with your interpretation of the characters?

Hello! Okay, how to even organize my answer, because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this and discussing it with my housemate, and it goes in a lot of different directions. (No joke, I have a file that is 7k words of meta called “robert being fucked up about sex.doc”, because he has that many issues. And yes, one of the lines in it reads, “zero aftercare.”)

I’ll share the whole thing once Beautiful Day the hookup AU is posted (there are some things in it that are spoilers) – in the mean time, I’m gonna toss this answer behind a cut, because I have a feeling it’s going to get long.

So, first off, I’m 99% certain they only fucked once, or had only one sex-session anyway. Joseph is on record saying that the affair “began and ended on the same day,” and I believe him when he makes a statement that is concrete and falsifiable, something that he could defend as some form of the truth if pressed to do so.

As for Joseph having a bondage kink, I’m of two minds on that. On one hand, it’s a clear extension of his predilection for control, but on the other, it adds structure and ritual to the sex  – and for some kinksters that’s part of the appeal, but for Joseph, I think structure-and-ritual would put several checks in the cons column.

For one, it leaves a metaphorical paper trail – “LOCAL YOUTH MINISTER HAS FETISH FOR ROPE BONDAGE” makes a pithy soundbite, a secret that’s far easier to spill than Robert helplessly trying to articulate what Joseph did that made him feel so violated. “Joseph’s into rope bondage” is the sort of deliciously scandalous rumor that you could drop into just about any ear in Maple Bay and be guaranteed that it’s going to get around, whether or not the people repeating it even believe it – it’s just too juicy not to share.

Structured bondage also creates a target for the uneasy feelings Joseph leaves his jilted lovers with, something for them to point the finger at when they’re trying to understand what happened. It’s an explanation (though perhaps the wrong one) for why it felt wrong, and would make it easier to blame Joseph instead of blaming themselves. Joseph doesn’t want you to have a framework for understanding what happened to you.

It also makes it much easier to paint him as the villain in the court of public opinion. Rope bondage is pretty tame from where I’m sitting, but I suspect for the general public (particularly the WASPy church-going general public), any sort of kink is proof that someone is dangerously degenerate. (Can we trust someone like that around children??) As is stands now, the Joseph-dadsona-Mary triumvirate is engineered to distribute blame equally between the three of them, but if Joseph were outed as kinky, he’d get all of it.

And lastly, doing an actual bondage scene requires the other person’s consent – when there are actualfax ropes involved, they know what’s going on, and if that’s not their thing, they could potentially nope out of it. (And, depending on how off-putting they found the request, they might have no compunctions about blowing that secret wide open.) Far more reliable to skip the ropes and mindfuck ‘em without it.

So, all that said, I’m inclined to think that he doesn’t structure it like a scene, or use props, or do anything that would overtly alert his partners that he’s dipping into bdsm territory. (Spoiler, there’s no safeword for fucking Joseph.) He gets off on control, yes, but his interest really seems to lie in what he can make people do without realizing they’re being controlled, what they think they’re doing for him of their own volition.

(On the flip side: there are plenty of abusers who style themselves as doms because of the leeway it gives them to misbehave – they’ve got subs flocking to them in droves, and can target the ones who are inexperienced and unable to recognize when consensual bdsm tips over into straight-up abuse.)

I’m not into it myself, but I got my start in leatherworking doing fetish gear, so I’ve been hanging out on the fringes of the kink scene for many years now. And on the whole, it’s perfectly sane and perfectly healthy – people with complementary kinks hooking up for sex that is mutually satisfactory and enthusiastically consensual. But it does require more forethought than vanilla sex – discussing boundaries ahead of time, setting a safeword in case things get out of hand, and choosing a dom who isn’t going to take advantage in the heat of the moment, because I’m given to understand that subspace is a very vulnerable place to be.

And aftercare is essential after an intense scene – to ease the sub back down gently from that high, to draw a clear line between that-was-play and this-is-reality, to shore up their feelings of safety, self-esteem, and being loved.

But given how Joseph thrives on keeping you off-balance, I don’t expect that aftercare is one of the services he provides.

(As for Robert’s side of things, that’s… a whole ‘nother story. There’s a section in the aforementioned .doc file to the effect of “Robert: subby or not??” because on one hand, he comes across so strong and take-charge when it comes to sex that he’s practically a dom, but on the other, I find myself coming back to the conviction, time and again, that Robert is desperate to do whatever his loved ones tell him to do. It’s wound up being fundamental to my characterization of him, even though I didn’t set out to write him that way. And it has more to do with insecurity than kink, but that’s still going to be a factor in any relationship he’s in.)

So – yeah. I think Robert consented to the sex, with no idea what he was in for. I think Joseph got off on seeing how far he could push him, knowing full well that Robert wasn’t enjoying it but also knowing that Robert wasn’t going to stop him. I think it involved a lot of subtle, unsettling talking (because that was a theme that emerged strongly in the story, as early as the first Zara shirt chapter, that Joseph’s voice itself is triggering to Robert in a way that the sight of Joseph is not). And when it was over, Joseph rolled over and went to sleep and left Robert spinning, trying to understand what just happened, why he’s feeling like crap, trying to convince himself that it was good, or at least, that it’ll be good next time.

Because it’s kind of astonishing how long someone acting bad faith can string along someone acting in good faith.

And then Joseph dumps him. Which at the time was devastating for Robert, because he is a man who puts all his emotional eggs in one basket, and I think the immediate post-Joseph aftermath was the absolute nadir of Robert’s life, and he literally would not have survived it if Mary hadn’t intervened and chosen that moment to befriend him.

(In a sense, keeping Robert alive is one of her many fuck-yous to Joseph – because god knows his secret would be safer if Robert would just drink himself to death already.)

I can’t remember if it’s a line that appears in the fic or not, but ultimately Robert says that the best thing Joseph ever did for him was cut him loose.

[abeautifulblog]

But does tying a boat to a dock really require a whole BOOK about those knots? Especially considering how many years he’s been at this? You’d think he’d have that part down by now. XD

In general I agree though, it’s why I never took that book as 100% proof positive that he’s into bondage -- because there is also a legit use for knots in boating, and we know he’s a nerd for his penis-compensating status symbol.

Even now I’m kind of on the fence about the kink angle, because Joseph’s whole thing is about manipulation rather than overt physical control. That at no point was there anything stopping you from backing out, at no point was he forcing you into anything, so you really can’t get to the end and then claim that you didn’t want it.

(This is, in my headcanon, one of the things that’s still fucking Robert up -- that he is ninety-nine percent sure that Joseph knew he wasn’t enjoying the experience, and kept pushing him further anyway, and was getting off on flexing that control -- but he��ll never, ever know for certain. Because Robert never said no, never said stop, was never in a position where he couldn’t say stop, and he knows that if Joseph were ever confronted about it he would be ~shocked!~ to hear that Robert had felt that way, etc.

If Robert knew for a fact that it had been intentional and malicious -- that this was a narrative with a clear and knowing villain -- he could get over it eventually. It would still suck, but he’d at least know how to process it. If he knew for a fact that it had been an honest mistake -- that Joseph was well-intentioned but just doesn’t read social cues well -- he could process that too. But the not-knowing is what’s killing him; not knowing whether Joseph was manipulating him, or to what degree; not knowing whether he (Robert) was wronged/abused/exploited; not knowing whether he has the right to be angry about what happened. He doesn’t know how to feel about any of it, and his brain has been chasing its own tail for years on that subject without bringing him any closer to getting closure.

I don’t think I ever spell it out that explicitly in the fic (Beautiful Day or the hookup AU), but that’s the headcanon I’m working from when I write all of Robert’s interactions with Joseph. That he doesn’t even get the luxury of pure and uncomplicated anger, because there’s always that sliver of doubt that says maybe it was on him instead.)

[abeautifulblog]

So the way Joseph spins the affair, when he's telling it to the Dadsona, is depicting himself as the well-intentioned-but-troubled family man, and Robert as the instigator, volatile and aggressively sexual. That Robert caught him in a moment of weakness and Joseph couldn't help succumbing to temptation, even though he knew it was wrong and berated himself for doing it. That Robert was the one who took advantage of him.

And it just occurred to me that that's probably the same way Joseph spun it to Robert when he dumped him.

[abeautifulblog]

Robert’s tics

[discussion of rape ensuing]

So it’s always been Robert’s tics that made me read his relationship with Joseph as something seriously fucked up, even more than Joseph’s clear dishonesty. Because Joseph proves himself to be a lying, cheating scumbag, but without Robert I wouldn’t have said that he was an abusive one.

And for a long time, all I could point to was the confrontation with Robert at the marina, and then the subsequent conversation with Joseph, and the staggering discrepancy in how strongly they feel about it. Because in my experience, it is suspect as fuck when one party is carrying that much anger and the other is brushing it off as nothing.

(And also because -- for reasons I couldn’t articulate -- Robert reminded me very, very strongly of an ex-boyfriend who’d been raped. But that’s not exactly evidence you can present in court.)

Then the other day I was reading from the website of a male rape resource center, and I came across this--

An experience of sexual abuse or sexual assault can impact sexual relationships in the following ways:

Increased confusion during sexual and emotional intimacy.

Discomfort with touch in certain areas of the body.

Limiting the type of sexual activity considered okay or enjoyable.

Requiring certain circumstances to be in place. For example, lights on or off when sex occurs.

Feeling distress, shame or guilt about a sexual response, interest or fantasy.

Excessive interest and validation of manhood through sex.

Engaging in sexually compulsive behavior.

‘Checking out,’ disengaging emotionally.

Difficulty trusting sexual partners.

Experiencing panic attacks, disassociation or flashbacks during sexual activity.

Difficulties in sexual relationships, confusing sex with love, care-giving, abuse, pain, with being powerless or being powerful.

--and there we go, that’s where my impression was coming from: because Robert’s a walking goddamn checklist of sexual-abuse symptoms. At least half of those are canon, and the rest wound up in the fic (or the hookup AU) because they’re the clear extension of his behavior that we see in the game. Not to mention the guilt, self-loathing, and anger that also tend to go hand-in-hand with sexual abuse -- sound familiar?

So yeah, that’s why I attribute to Joseph a lot of stuff we don’t see any direct evidence for in canon -- because Robert reads as traumatized, and there’s a really obvious culprit for it.

[abeautifulblog]

I don't know if I missed a post about this before, but I would love to hear your thoughts on the blue sweater. It was personally one of the things that screamed out just how manipulative Joseph is and continues to be even after ending an affair. I have so much more to say about it as a symbol, but it won't fit here.

I’ve used the sweater as evidence in other arguments before, but no, I’ve never done a post dedicated to it. The implication is pretty unambiguous though �� putting your lover in your clothes is always a maneuver that says mine.

And it’s fine to get a kick out of that – whether it’s a private thrill because you know the shirt they’re wearing is yours, even if no one else does, or whether you’re proud that they’re flaunting your colors for everyone to see. (For instance, the football player’s girlfriend wearing his letter jacket around the school.) And it’s fine to get a kick out of being the one wearing the clothes too, to be like, uh-huh, that’s right, I’m spoken for. It’s not usually a sign of an abusive dynamic.

So I’m not sure why Robert-in-the-sweater is so much more disturbing than cheerleader-in-the-letter-jacket, but oh god, it is.

In part, it’s that Joseph’s aesthetic is so very, very far from anything that Robert would ever choose to wear himself – it doesn’t feel like something that Robert would have wanted to to do, if Joseph hadn’t wanted him to do it. It’s got an icky, talented-Mr-Ripley feel to it, like Joseph is remaking Robert in his image – and then very publicly demonstrating that Robert’s eager to let him do it. Same as putting his tattoo on Robert out in the open instead of somewhere concealed.

(Imagine for just a moment what Val would have said, if she’d been there – if she’d seen this married man dressing her dad up like a stranger, that her dad had gotten a tattoo for him.)

The rest of the cul-de-sac seems to be blithely unaware of the tension between Robert and Joseph, and the cause for it, so I do think that from the outside it looked like nothing more than “Joseph’s stepping up to be a friend and an emotional support to Robert because he just lost his wife.” They wouldn’t have necessarily read too much into the sweater – but Robert knows what he’s signaling, and Joseph knows, and the message wouldn’t have been lost on Mary either.

(And then Joseph proceeds to keep the photo of it on his sex yacht like a goddamn trophy.)

I dunno. I still feel like I haven’t put my finger on the root of the issue, but I’m hungry, so I’m gonna go ahead and wrap this up.

In any case, the sweater and the tattoo (and the fact that Robert now responds to Joseph like someone who’s seen behind the mask) are why I think that Joseph’s relationship with Robert had a very, very different character from his relationship with the Dadsona – one in which he was flexing his control far more, because Robert was not equipped to set boundaries or enforce them.

[abeautifulblog]

Joseph’s long cons

Actually it’s that scene at the party that convinces me that Joseph is good at biding his time and playing the long game. He didn’t win this round; you picked someone else, you and your beau are in the starry-eyed honeymoon phase now, whatever.

But relationships don’t always last forever -- people break up (people die), and there’s a good chance that at some point you’ll be single again. Aggressively single and looking for a rebound, perhaps, or maybe heartbrokenly single and in need of a shoulder to cry on. Which is why he keeps that door open, makes sure that your impression of him is “Joseph, what a nice guy, so lonely though, I feel sorry for him stuck in that marriage. =/” So that even if you’re not down to fuck now, you might reconsider if the circumstances change.

I suspect that’s what he did to Robert, since I can’t see Robert having been interested in Joseph when he and Marilyn first moved to the neighborhood. Robert loved his wife, he wanted to be a good husband, and he’s bad at the abstract business of being emotionally available, but he's good at concrete, actionable directives, and “don’t cheat on your wife” is about as concrete as they come. So he wasn’t paying any attention to the creepy closeted dude next door -- not until Marilyn was dead, and Joseph was the only one stepping up to offer him solace, and Robert thought, damn, maybe I was wrong about him.

(Incidentally, that’s the point that Robert’s talking around at the end of Gene’s version of the Zara shirt chapter -- yes, he knows full well that Gene’s only got eyes for him, now, but he’s afraid that if/when all this goes tits-up, Gene’s going to be an easy mark for Joseph’s brand of “comfort.”)

[abeautifulblog]

i don't mean to rile you up or anything & I'm not pro-Joseph either but you seem to blame Robert's not so redeeming qualities on Joseph but haven't Robert been like that ever since he was with Marilyn ?

Ah, no, I gotcha – and I think Joseph is responsible for Robert’s trust issues, and exacerbated his self-esteem issues (re: that he thinks the only thing he’s good for is fucking), but the rest of Robert’s “not so redeeming qualities,” as you say, have nothing to do with Joseph and everything to do with decades of undiagnosed bipolar disorder. Or rather – that Robert’s depression/substance abuse/etc didn’t originate with Joseph, but Joseph’s mindfuckery sure as shit didn’t help.

For instance, I believe that Robert’s weirdness about sex, that he thinks that’s all he’s good for, has its roots way earlier. (Indeed, my zero-evidence headcanon for his upbringing has it starting while he’s in high school.) I suspect that during his rocky marriage to Marilyn, sex was the only thing Robert felt he could do right for her, when he was so bad at everything else. Then along comes Joseph, who drives home that idea in spectacular fashion, and since then Robert’s only proceeded to make it worse with all his meaningless hookups – seeming to get continual confirmation that all people want from him is sex, sex that is completely divorced from intimacy. “Ghosts in the Attic” is almost 0% about Joseph, it’s about grindr.

(Nothing wrong with grindr, btw, so long as you have realistic expectations for it – it’s a good app when you’re horny, but a staggeringly bad idea when you’re lonely.)

It’s hard to disentangle which of Robert’s problems are Joseph’s “fault,” because the fact is that mental illnesses make people much more vulnerable to abuse, and then abuse makes mental illnesses so much worse. Robert’s been manic-depressive, prone to substance abuse, with low self esteem all along; Joseph-related PTSD is just a cherry on top.

[abeautifulblog]

I think the thing that makes me angry about Robert/Joseph shipping is that, regardless of what happened between them in the past, Robert is utterly unambiguous about how much he hates the fuck out of Joseph now. So putting them in a relationship means either (1) presuming that you know what Robert “really” wants, and it is somehow the exact opposite of everything he’s actually told you, or (2) that you know he wants nothing to do with Joseph, but you don’t care what he wants.

Either way, it’s gross as fuck. Please Do Not. Game over.

[abeautifulblog]

Creepy.

As.

Fuck.

*

This. Combined with the tattoo. Combined with how Robert will fold if you ask him for anything. Combined with the subtle but persistent way that Joseph exerts control over you.

Makes me think that Robert was way, way out of his depth in that affair.

[abeautifulblog]

Say, do you reckon that with Joseph and his marks, is he always the dumper or has he ever been the dumpee? Aside from Gene making it very clear from the start that it was going nowhere? And has he ever been ditched in truly spectacular fashion?

(content warning for discussions of very dubious consent, because Joseph)

Well… up until yacht night there’s no real “dumping” that anyone could do to him, because he plays it all up like innocent friendship. He stays within the bounds of plausible deniability, so if anyone ever responded to his subtext with text and straight-up told him, “I’m not down for this, you’re married,” he could act convincingly shocked that someone had misinterpreted (!!) his overtures of friendship.

But on the flip side, that means you never actually give him the green light for a romantic relationship until you’re already stranded out on the open ocean, where no one can hear you scream, and so I expect he does, occasionally, get people to that point only for them to say, “No, that’s not what I’m after, that’s not why I’m here.”

(No one bats a thousand, not even Joseph, and in fact that’s what happened offstage in “This House” – that he had someone out on his yacht, he started to go in for the metaphorical kill, and the guy was like, “No, I’m not doing this with you, take me back to shore.” Hence, why he comes home early and runs into Robert.)

But I think that happens less often than his marks would like it to, because the thing about yacht night is that Joseph’s engineered a situation that makes it incredibly difficult to say no. Even without all the “oh noes we’re stranded out here!” bullshit, you are still alone with him in a place that you literally cannot extricate yourself from. That if you say no to his advances, you’re still stuck with him out there, still stuck relying on him to get you back to civilization.

And women tend to be much more sensitive to the physical threat that men pose – and aware of how badly men can respond to a no – but even if you’re not afraid of Joseph, refusing him is still going to make it awkward as fuck. Because it’s not as simple as just saying “Umm, sorry, I think I’m going home now” and walking out the door – it’s going to be an excruciatingly awkward conversation where you have to explain that you must have given him the wrong impression, probably followed by another long awkward conversation to insist that, No really, I want you to take me back to shore, and then a long, awkward, silent trip home. And if you’re out of gas, that means you’re spending an excruciatingly awkward night with him on that yacht.

Or you could just, y’know… go along with it. Even if you don’t really want to. It’s easier (safer) than making a big uncomfortable scene, right? You can just… let him do his thing. It shouldn’t take too long. It won’t be terrible. I mean, eventually you’ll have to tell him that you’re not interested, but maybe you can do that later, right? When you’re in a place where you can beat a quicker retreat afterward. Maybe he’ll be satisfied with a blowjob and after that he’ll be willing to go back to drinking instead.

(And this is why people who like Joseph, and people who don’t, have such wildly different takeaways from that third date. Because if you’re all hot to trot for him, then you’re gonna fuckin’ love it, of course you are. But if you have any misgivings at all, then getting on that yacht feels like walking into a trap. That you’re not certain whether you want to have sex with this man, but you’re aware that with each step you take, you’re putting yourself deeper in a position where that choice might be out of your control.)

And then even if you wanted to dump him after yacht night, he beats you to it.

So no – before yacht night, there’s no way for him to get dumped, worst that can happen is he fails the ability-check when he rolls to seduce. On yacht night, I think it’s very rare for him to strike out. And after yacht night, he doesn’t keep anyone around long enough for them to be the one to dump him.

(Although my housemate and I have discussed how hilarious it would be if Joseph did his routine on someone who turned out to be too crazy to accept getting dumped, in the stalker-y, I LOOOOOVE YOU I’M NOT LEAVING I KNOW WE WERE MEANT TO BE TOGETHER FOREVER :D :D :D :D sort of way.)

[abeautifulblog]

My aesthetic: Joseph striking out

So I'd mentioned before that I think Joseph has almost definitely tried his luck with every dad on the block -- he certainly doesn't seem to have learned any sort of lesson, re: shitting where you eat, from the disaster with Robert, because he wastes no time coming onto the Dadsona when you roll up in the neighborhood. But I also think that -- for a variety of reasons -- he didn't actually manage to score with anyone on the cul-de-sac but Robert. So let's talk about some of those reasons.

(Again, this is setting aside the possibility that anyone just went "Nope, you're married, that ain't right" -- which any of the dads could well have done, because they're all decent human beings, but Joseph is very good at playing like his marriage is over, therefore it's not REEEEALLY cheating, right?)

Damien -- Already talked about this one in a previous post, but in short, Joseph is all about reshaping people please him, and Damien -- trans and dedicated goth -- has spent his whole gd life dealing with that shit, with people who want him to do what makes them happy rather than what makes him happy. I think it's fair to say that Damien is the dad with the most solid sense of self in the game -- the upshot of having had to work so hard for it. Joseph's schtick isn't going to hold the slightest bit of appeal for him.

Brian -- This is the one dad where I think Joseph would nope out first. Because Brian's whole thing is one-up-man-ship, and we find out later that it's his slightly clueless way of trying to impress you, but initially it feels like he's belittling *your* accomplishments -- and hoo boy, self-loving-sociopath Joseph is not going to be about that. Joseph is the guy who interrupts your conversation with Damien to make you tell him how great his party is. The guy who takes center stage so everyone can fawn over his mad grilling skills. The guy who brags in his dad-grindr profile about being "#1 youth minister five years running" and how he crushes his kids at Candy Land. The guy who expects you to be so impressed with his yacht that you fall right into bed with him. He is going to be aggravated as fuck that Brian, instead of being appropriately overawed by Joseph’s accomplishments and ~honored~ by his interest, blithely does everything Joseph does, and does it better.

(Not to mention that most of Brian's bragging is about his kid -- and none of Joseph's is. Joseph takes no apparent pride in his children, we only ever see him being chagrined by the twins and their creepy games, and that is not something that would sit well with Brian.)

Mat -- It comes down to Rosa. That he's still mourning her, and more to the point, he's still mourning her. He's lonely, but he doesn't want just someone, anyone who can make him feel less lonely (which is I think the key difference between his grief and Robert’s), he misses Rosa, specifically. Joseph probably stepped up to comfort Mat and give him a shoulder to lean on after Rosa's death, but there's a good chance Mat didn't even notice his ulterior motives, and if he did, that Joseph wouldn't have held any appeal when all he really wants is his wife back.

Craig -- Craig's on record as being very choosy in his romantic relationships for the sake of his daughters -- I believe it's on his very first date that he says he doesn't want to bring a stranger into their lives. And yeah, some of the softball moms are off-puttingly aggressive in their come-ons (*cough* JANET), but they can't all be. Craig has to have met some single women (or men) that he gets along with and who would have been happy to be a good co-parent for his kids -- but he's turned down all comers, including the single moms who stand to offer his kids a lot more than Joseph does. Even if Joseph were legitimately single, he would have been just one more in the crowd.

Hugo -- Hugo seems like the one who would be most receptive to Joseph under other circumstances. They're both actively involved in the community; Ernest goes to Joseph's church so it's safe to assume that Hugo does too, meaning they'd be religiously compatible; Hugo is newly single and the dad who seems most interested in dating and meeting new people. But he is also very conscious of his position of authority; that he's a high school teacher who needs to set a good example for his students and his son, and I think as soon as Joseph's flirting started to cross the line past "could plausibly just be friendliness," Hugo would explicitly shut it down, and give his reasons why. Like, "Maybe this is something we could explore after you and Mary are separated, but you and I both have responsibilities that make it something I refuse to pursue now."

Incidentally: my housemate and I agree that Joseph probably fucked Hugo's ex, before or during the breakup. Hugo doesn't know about it, but it happened.

*

And then poor Robert. He never stood a chance.

Ironically, I think Joseph now regrets the affair with Robert. Not because he has any remorse over how badly he fucked Robert up, but because Robert's very instability -- the instability that made him such an easy mark in the first place -- now makes him incredibly difficult to predict and control.

Robert fell for the initial seduction, but he didn't fall for the "oh you were my one-time mistake, I regret this so much, please never tell anyone" line afterward -- he thinks Joseph is an utter shitbag now. He stands to blow Joseph's secret wide open, and he's certainly not keeping his mouth shut to spare Joseph's reputation. He's already notoriously weird, so the social pressure to "not rock the boat" isn't something that's going to keep Robert in line. He's already halfway a pariah in the community, so it's not like he has that much to lose if he decides to tank his reputation the rest of the way and drag Joseph down with him. And he's unstable enough that just because he hasn't done it yet is no guarantee that he won't do it at any moment.

(Yeah -- you should be afraid, motherfucker.)

I think Robert keeps the secret (1) because he's ashamed of his own role in it -- at having helped Joseph cheat on Mary, at having fallen for it -- and (2) because he's not certain anyone would believe him if he did tell them.

[abeautifulblog]

Do you have any Dream Daddy fanfic recs? I've been following just your fic for so long Gene'll probably become the One True Dadsona for me, but I'd like to expand my knowledge of the wide open world of DDADDS fanfics and the Dadsonas that inhabit it.

Oh man, oh man – my friend, I got nuthin for you. The entire reason I was compelled to write a fic of my own was because I could not deal with anything else in fandom.

For starters, Joseph/Robert is the most popular ship and it makes me want to scream, and douse the entire fandom in gasoline. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: at best, you’re siccing a manipulative serial adulterer on a man who’s mentally ill and grieving, and at worst, you’re shipping Robert with his rapist.

Usually I am live-and-let-ship, but that one disgusts me on such a visceral level, and causes a weird amount of cognitive dissonance because it’s so completely at odds with my own ddads worldview, that I have to put the fandom down and walk away for a while before I can get back in the right headspace for writing A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. So, for the sake of my sanity and in the interests of finishing this fic, I try to avoid reminding myself that there are people jerking off to Robert’s trauma.

I’m much more chill about shipping Robert with literally anyone else – Robert/Damien could be cute (plus Damien would be encouraging him to try some much-needed therapy), and personally I think Craig could do Robert a lot of good, and any Dadsona who’s going to be Robert’s supportive boyfriend gets my stamp of approval. But that said… I kind of have an OTP, so while I’m cool with people writing that other stuff, I’m not really interested in reading it.

The other thing that kept me from ever delving much into ddads fandom was that I couldn’t even get past the summaries of a lot of these Robert fics without going, you do not understand alcoholism. And not to put too fine a point on it, but I do. Which is fine, people are allowed to write about things that they haven’t personally experienced, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone just so they can write with more authenticity, but it does mean that I can’t read their fics, because that’s going to throw me right out of the story.

…So in conclusion, I am completely useless for fic recs, but I do invite my followers to contribute any of their favorites in the comments, or promote their own. Because I wouldn’t mind reading more ddads fic, I just haven’t been able to find any that (A) are good and meaty and interesting, and (B) do not involve Robert, because I’m kind of particular about him. >_>

[abeautifulblog]

My contribution to the discourse.

[abeautifulblog]

Hey I'm really curious what was your first impression of the dads?I mean the first time you saw their character designs/before the gameplay and how much did that impression change trought the game? ((sorry my english is no bueno;also for fic recommendations "I can see that you are lonesome just like me" was interesting,it's a souless hookup route fic with a depressed dadsonareally angsty))

First impressions, hrrrrrm. That’s weirdly difficult to answer, because my first impression of the dads lineup was “Who’s the tired guy with the whiskey? I want to marry him.” (Yeah, I know my type when I see it.) And then I played it and responded to Robert even more strongly than I’d expected, but that’s a story for another time.

I remember thinking Mat was really cute – his social awkwardness was genuinely endearing, in a way that can be hard to hit the mark with, neither contrived nor cringey, but music really isn’t my jam. I like listening to it, but I don’t know how to bond with people over it. I wished they’d explored the Rosa angle more, and let him and the Dadsona bond over loss and recovery, it would have given his character more depth.

Brian’s competitiveness put me off from the start, and it was months before I played a single one of his dates. When I finally did play them, I was grudgingly charmed.

I would have liked Hugo better if not for his love of canonized straight-white-douche writers. Fuck a lot of Hemingway, srsly. You want to know why your son is so angry with the world, Hugo? Because you named him after Hemingway.

I liked Damien well enough, but I’ve kind of… outgrown my own goth phase? I felt awkwardly like I was faking it when I was out with him, lying about being into his interests, which is not a nice thing to do to people. It’s a shame, because I like his hair – I really like long hair on guys.

CRAIG took me by surprise – objectively he’s the hottest dad in the lineup (obvs) but he’s styled like such a sports-bro, and that is soooooo not my type that I hadn’t been expecting to have much use for him. But then he’s just such a darling, filled with the purest of bro love for you, and if Robert hadn’t been there I would have wound up being ride-or-die for Craig. Luckily, Craig’s in your corner whether you romance him or not, so I get to have my cake and eat it too. :D

Now Joseph, I took at face value on my first playthrough, and even though I’m very turned off by Christianity, his sense of humor about his faith made it tolerable and I actually found him very charming. (I played it only a few days after the game had released, so I had not been exposed to any discourse on the subject, didn’t even hear about the cult ending until after I was long done.) On my first playthrough I did everybody’s first two dates, then the third dates in turn, Robert, Craig, Damien, Joseph. So I’d gotten to see Mary in enough other situations (something that people who ONLY play Joseph’s route miss) to know that she’s not just some harpy who lives to make him miserable. I believed him when he presented himself as a man in a desperately unhappy marriage, trying to make things work and keep up a happy face in public, but unable to pass up the opportunity for an emotional connection (and some dick) that the Dadsona offers. (I was also very drunk by the time I finished his route, so my critical thinking skills were not at their peak.)

And I’m not sure when my opinion started to change, but there are just… a lot of dissonant factors in his route. A lot of red flags. Robert and Mary both trying to warn you off him, choking on their venom for him. His creepy-ass kids who do not want to spend time with their dad. How he lives in this pastel-colored wonderland that just ignores everything around him, and refuses to even acknowledge the anger rolling off Robert and Mary. That there is literally no way to get him to stay with you in the end, which strongly implies that it’s not you – honey, it’s him. He’d never had any intention to stay.

I don’t think you’re being genuine about everything, I thought. Followed by:

I don’t think you’re being genuine about ANYTHING.

And that’s why I headcanon him as an actualfax sociopath and not just a selfish asshole, because of how calculated his performance has to be to sustain that kind of deception. Because of how insidiously good he is at it, and as I’ve replayed it, the amount of extremely subtle manipulation/controlling/conditioning he’s doing to you over the course of his route.

[abeautifulblog]

So let's talk about consent in Dream Daddy

Namely -- how crucially it features into Robert's romance. (And in contrast: how utterly absent it is from Joseph's.)

Robert is, hands down, the dad who comes on hardest and strongest -- are we gonna do this or not? -- and admittedly, if you have trouble saying no to anything, you might have wound up going along with that, even when all the meta-text is telling you not to.

But you're allowed to say no to him -- and moreover, it turns out that he is really, really good at taking a no. There is never even the slightest amount of pressure from him, subtle or unsubtle, direct or indirect. He puts on the brakes the moment you show hesitation, he waits for a solid yes or no from you, and then he respects your answer without arguing.

The moments I’m talking about specifically:

1) When you’re walking back from the bar and he propositions you on the street. 2) Or if you got as far as going upstairs with him, but then have second thoughts. 3) When he's kissing you on his couch on the third date, but you pick up on the unsubtle hints that he’s upset about something and ask him to stop.

#2 is my favorite, actually, because it would have been so easy for the devs to give him a different response. At this point, you are just some fucking rando he picked up in a bar. You went home with him, knowing full well what he was inviting you up for. And then at critical moment you suddenly get cold feet? Honestly, most grindr hookups would feel justified in being annoyed with that. But Robert just says, Do you want to stop? Not "Oh come on," not "What's the matter?" You are a rando from a bar, whom he knows nothing about, who is currently ten feet away from his bed, but he stops in a fucking heartbeat when you ask him to wait, because your consent is more important than his hard-on. He doesn’t even make you feel guilty or awkward for noping out of it. (Dadsona: "I'm sorry..." Robert: "Nah. It's cool.")

And that, actually, is a large factor in why I interpret the Robert-Joseph thing as having been -- perhaps not outright rape -- but definitely pushing the boundaries of what is consensual and what is not. That it was a relationship that ran roughshod over Robert's consent, boundaries, and comfort zones.

Because in my experience, the people who are that scrupulously, painfully careful of consent are the people who know firsthand what it is to have your consent ignored.

[abeautifulblog]

Why do you think Joseph chose Mary as his wife when you imply that Joseph has pretty much always been like this, even before he married her? Mary may be willing to keep up the bullshit, but she certainly isn't adverse to giving Joseph trouble for it-- surely there must have been more women out there who wouldn't be so aggressive, or do you think Mary's attitude is purely the result of all the years of dealing with Joseph? Was she just the first to come along and joseph was like 'eh it'll do'?

I think when he married her she was much more inexperienced, and she seemed like someone who would be easy to control. Time has since proven that she’s stronger than either of them thought she was, but she was forged in fire, she wasn’t always the way she is now.

My headcanon for Mary is that she was also raised in a highly religious household.

Exhibit A: the gold cross necklace she wears. I think any faith she ever had in organized religion (I decline to speculate on her private beliefs) has been long since burned out by Joseph’s hypocrisy – we see her hostility to religious posturing (“Get a load of these freaks”) at the bake sale – so it seems unlikely that she’s wearing it as an expression of her own religious affiliation. More plausible that it has sentimental value – not from Joseph, or it would be on their living room floor like the necklace you find on the first Joseph date – but a gift from a mother or grandmother.

Exhibit B: her career choice, or lack thereof. She’s a full-time housewife doing the church-and-PTA-leadership thing as if she’s never been groomed to do anything else. (Note that her work at the animal shelter is something she volunteers for, not something she’s getting paid for.) Sure, maybe she dropped a career when she married Joseph – though if she had the ability to support herself, I think she would have taken it and run by now – and sure, it’s not just highly religious women who choose to become stay-at-home moms – but it does raise the odds.

(I find that a lot of DD headcanons are about weighing probabilities – that in the absence of solid information one way or the other, all you can do is take the body of circumstantial evidence and ask yourself “What’s the most plausible explanation that fits the data we’ve got?”)

So she comes from a religious household, the kind that endorses a lot of really toxic ideas about the woman’s role in a marriage and in society, is raised in the faith and grows up having no reason to disbelieve those things. She’s taught that her entire purpose in life is to support her husband and raise their kids, and is groomed to be… pretty much exactly the sort of wife that Joseph would like to have, meek and obedient and not going to rock the boat.

I bet Joseph was The Catch of their social circle – handsome and slightly ~bad boy~ enough for the girls their age to swoon, while also wholesome and respectable enough (He’s going to become a youth minister! What an upstanding young man!) for the adults to give their wholehearted approval. So when he looks out across the adoring masses and picks Mary, I bet everyone told her that she was so lucky!, that you should make sure that one doesn’t get away! Which means if she had any misgivings while they were dating, there’s no one who would have taken them seriously. No, you’re just a nervous, inexperienced girl. No, he really is perfect, you’re lucky to have him. No, you should be trying harder to please him, do you want him to marry someone else instead??

Basically, they would have convinced her to ignore her instincts.

Joseph could have chosen anyone, and at the time, Mary would have seemed like exactly what he wanted – I don’t think he would have picked her if he’d had any idea of the force that she was going to become later.

(And that was undoubtedly a long and extremely painful process, the scales falling off her eyes, finding herself and relearning how to trust herself after Joseph’s mind games, and that is not a story I’m ever going to write.)