#i also remember reading a case study about these two children who suffered extreme abuse from their mother and how they were fairing after

[council-of-beetroot]

I'm currently reading Frankenstein in my uni novels and Film class and I'm so glad that I'm not the only one

I was thinking ooh someone created through hubris by a man who believes they can emulate G-D and therefore create much more, but their creator and the world denies them the love and compassion G-D shows to humanity, they learn to believe that perhaps the distain, apathy, and rejection, are justified, they aren't human. they are much more perhaps. And they also decide fuck humanity for being assholes.

And then I was like omg this is so like sephi <3

Sephiroth was denied his humanity so consistently that the moment he saw a sliver of a possibility to justify his separation from it in a way that put him above humanity instead of below, he took it, and decided to become humanity's victimizer instead of it's victim

[fat-acceptance-is-bs]

The fetishizing of obesity and why it’s dangerous

lots of tw for abuse, death and other sensitive subjects

As of this wonderful year that is 2022, porn addiction is higher than ever and has been getting worse at an extremely fast pace.

Did you know that the majority of children in the west is exposed to pornography at the age between 9 to 13. And that porn addiction is now found in children as young as 8 years old if not younger. A terrifying yet extremely true and gruesome reality.

And due to younger and younger audiences watching whatever x rated media, it is now shaping a more and more distorted image of sexuality and has damning and lasting effects that in most cases can��t be reversed.

There’s a lot on this topic I could speak on ,but I want to focus on how pornography and the fetishizing of obesity is putting peoples life in danger.

Relationships

I am sure many of you have watched 600 lbs life. And seen the struggles of their life’s as they go through major surgeries and work to lose weight to save their own lives.

But have you noticed how the people in relationships ( mostly women ) are being met with hostility from their partners. And being sabotaged and ridiculed in their journey. Some even threatening to leave because they want their partner to stay the way they are. And does not care about the fact that they are going to die if they don’t. All because their attraction and lusts are more important THAN their own partners life.

You can look at these enablers and think they are selfish, as they are by the way. But is more sinister than that. Why do you think it is that way? Studies has shown that pornography is at large responsible for men and women to look at their partners as objects for their own pleasure than for what they are, people with feelings thoughts and dreams.

They rather have their partner suffer so they can get their rocks off and due to many people in that situation having low self esteem they will go along with the abuse from their partners. Even if they understand that the person is slowly killing them.

I remember a episode where the woman had gone through surgery to remove either skin or a lymphoma. And the husband instead of taking care of her, pushes her to have sex and ends up splitting open the surgery wound risking her life! And the worst part, he did not seem to care. Luckily she left him later on. But isn’t that sick? Risking your own partners life for what? A 5 second dopamine rush. Disgusting.

If you have a partner that doesn’t want you to loose weight or sabotage you every time. even though you are suffering because of your weight. LEAVE! They don’t love you, they are fetishizing you and only look at you as a object to satisfy their own needs.

Feederism

From urban dictionary.

""An underground sexual fetish which involves one partner (the feeder) feeding the other, both to obtain sexual arousal and to encourage weight gain in the feedee. Feederism can vary in nature, from a consensual act between two people who mutually appreciate a larger body type, to non-consensual abuse, which may involve force-feeding and bondage and is undertaken with the intention of fattening up the feedee to the point of immobility and total dependence. The weight gained can also vary froma few pounds to hundreds, whilst some feeder relationships are not undertaken with the purpose of weight gain at all but for the enjoyment of food in an intimate context. ""

I also did my own research around the web on blogs and posts on Reddit made by feeders and feedee’s. And read some alarming stuff.

Quotes from various posts

“Such a turn on what it’s done to you , you’re such a fat pig look at that big fat soft belly gosh what a dream 🤤🤤😍💦 just keep getting fatter and fatter”

Good girl. Keep eating. A few more weeks and you'll be a true bbw. You're a good fuckpig already but once your fat rolls completely obscure your thong you'll be perfect

I am totally fine with dying from a heart attack but my fear is I'd end up having a stroke

I Just want a enabler that will not even THINK about stopping when I am full as fuck, or when I moan in pain, or when I say “no more.” I want to be broken, and I want YOU to break me

I could bring up more but I will spare you. And my own sanity.

At first glance it doesn’t seem like the end of the world right? A weird fetish but nothing more. But then change the words to be other methods of self harming. Then suddenly those subreddits would be banned. Instagram accounts wouldn’t be open for everyone to see. Even mainstream porns sites wouldn’t allow it.

But it’s allowed, and it’s disgusting! Promoting self harm openly is suddenly a ok when it comes to this. I don’t understand.

But the worst part of this is that people actually do die. And most of them is not consenting. Most of the stories and articles I read the person that passed away was force fed without consent. Tied down, some drowning due to the feeder not stopping even after being repeated to stop. People are being abused and in worst case killed and it’s being labeled a fetish.

I red a story on Reddit about a man that killed hes wife for he’s own sexual pleasure. He manipulated her, threatened her and abused her into doing what he wanted her to do. Made her gain over 300 pounds and even then forced her to be immobile even though she could still walk. Made her food more and more calorie dense because he was terrified she would lose weight. Started to force feed her with a tube even though she didn’t want to. And eventually she was bedridden. But he wanted to continue. Even got a bed that could withstand 1100 lbs. But sadly she passed away from a heart attack. And he felt GREAT about it the day she died. Like he’s achieved something from her dying. He said in he’s post he had a manic grin as he’s wife had to be lifted out with the help of the fire department. HE WAS HAPPY THE DAY SHE PASSED AWAY. He did not feel sad until the day after.

She wasn’t a person to him anymore, and this is not even an isolated incident. This isn’t a fetish it’s abuse. To self or to others and I’m tired of being labeled a kink shamer because I don’t agree and I will never support this behavior.

People die and nobody is taking it seriously.

Self image

I remember a while back it struck me as really odd that the most up front thing is the “I’m beautiful, I’m hot, everyone want to fuck me” attitude in the BP and HES movement.

Like why is that other people need to find you attractive so important? Why is bragging about getting laid and using it as an argument so normal. In other words, why do they sexualize themselves so much. There is so much more to a person than being attractive but it seems like the most important thing now. And then I understood. They fetishize themselves and I’m not sure if they even know it. And that is not healthy for anyone.

It’s not empowering. It’s a false sense of it. But all that is being put out only leads to more people objectifying them. It’s terribly sad. Seeing comment sections filled with people treating them as nothing but a sexual object. And I blame pornography for this.

It’s not their fault for doing it. But it is their fault for not even considering it being the case. They blame people that are being critical of them for putting them down or whatever. But being attractive isn’t a human right. Being desired isn’t a human right and it’s not even important!

I’m so tired that all human value no matter who you are boils down to attractiveness.

We have let the industry taint everything. A misogynistic industry has morphed all self worth into being hot and fuckable. And if you aren’t, you are less than human. And by putting yourself out there as entertainment for fetish crazed people you are feeding into it. You are not empowering anyone. You are objectifying yourself and others.

Silver lining

Surprisingly there is a silver lining in this shit show that is the world. More and more younger people are looking at the industry with a critical eye. And many people are seeing the distraction pornography has caused. And maybe one day sexuality will go back to its pure form and not be linked with destructive behavior as the norm.

Conclusion

Extreme fetishizing is killing and harming people all over the world. It’s harming anyone no matter who you are or what age you are. Pornography promotes destruction behaviors to one self and others. All I want to say is that you are more than a fetish. You are more than your looks and you are worthy. Never do anything or feel pressured to take part in any sexual activity you don’t want to do. Stick to your boundaries because they are there to protect you. You are worth more than a dopamine rush for someone else.

Thank you for reading my long ramble. Been a while so I hope it was at least readable.

Edit: the Reddit post I was referring to

[bratz-kitten]

Nikola Stojanovic’s degree theory 

— you can learn more about his theory here and here. he was the maker of this theory, i’m simply passing the knowledge i’ve researched on him in a more simplified way!!! trigger warning for mentions of death and violence for the 11º, the 15º, the 18º and the 22º degrees 

according to nikola’s research, each degree is connected to the sign it rules: 

aries degrees — 1º, 13º, 25º - taking action, fighting spirit, not giving oneself up to fate, struggle, war, can indicate abuse, labor, diligence, leadership, beginnings, etc

taurus degrees — 2º, 14º, 26º - money, food, the earth, stability, luxuries, voice, singing, etc

gemini degrees — 3º, 15º, 27º - communication, gadgets like televisions or phones, self-expression, books, siblings, neighbourhood, etc

cancer degrees — 4º, 16º, 28º - home, nurture, traditions, loyalty, faith, mother, water, etc

leo degrees — 5º, 17º, 29º - attention, life, fame, light, children, creativity, self-expression, monarchs, entertainment, strength, hair, etc

virgo degrees — 6º, 18º - to diminish, to make smaller, improvement, health, work, routine, pets, to be of service, etc

libra degrees — 7º, 19º - fairness, law, business, partnerships, fashion, beauty, charm, luxury items, music, art, etc

scorpio degrees — 8º, 20º - the 8º specifically is connected to death, wealth, to take from others, manifestation, secrets, insurance, sex, jealousy, pregnancy, etc

sagittarius degrees — 9º, 21º - abundance, expansion, wisdom, college, travelling, to explore, etc

capricorn degrees — 10º, 22º - to take control, public attention, coldness, fear, depression, rationality, ambition, father, etc

aquarius degrees — 11º, 23º - divorce, surprises, high places, high tech, new technology, humanitarianism, organizations, friends, networking, etc

pisces degrees — 12º, 24º - sleeping, drugs, alcohol, lethargy, the unconcious + our psyche, emotional dejections, feet, madness, shadows, unclear, endings, etc

0º represents the basic characteristic of the sign - it acts in its purest form. for example, if you have the 0º in aries sun, aries here acts in its most potent, pure way. 

that way, if you, for example, have your ascendant in pisces at the 13º, you’ll express aries characteristics + all that is connected to taking action, to fight. now, knowing this, this theory can manifest itself in different ways. 

i’m going to give an example that he talked about in his website that i found simple to understand yet powerful. when nikola was discussing with another astrologer, he wanted to talk about his degree theory, so he took a look at the birth chart of the wife of the other astrologer, and after a minute of analyzing it, he said as follows: “Your wife called a carpenter to the house and ordered a larger bed to be made. When the carpenter had finished the job, you went to bed and realized that the work was not properly done. One measure was right – the bed was long enough - but the other one wasn't – the bed wasn't wide enough, it was still narrow”. the look the other astrologer gave him told him that his brief analysis was absolutely correct.

his reasoning behind it was that the wife’s 12th house (which rules sleeping, beds, bedrooms) cusp began at the 21º of aries, and the ruler of that house, mars, was at the 6º in virgo. aries simbolizes to create and the 21º, a sagittarius degree, simbolizes to enlarge. so, his wife wanted to create (aries) a larger (sagittarius/jupiter) bed (the 12th house). because mars, the ruler of the 12th house, was placed in virgo (someone who renders services, a worker), she called the carpenter to the house. her mars was, however, in virgo at the 6º which is a virgo degree (virgo simbolizes diminishing, making smaller), which meant the measure of the bed had to be smaller than needed. therefore, the cusp of the 12th house (the bed) at the 21º (sagittarius - larger, longer) signifies that the bed was both long enough (enlarged), and mars in virgo at a virgo degree (6º) meant that it was not wide enough (it was narrow). nikola established connections between degrees, the signs, the planets and the houses where they fell and the aspects that they made in order to make this kind of predictions. 

he also found a few degrees to be connected to significant things. 

THE 2º DEGREE - SUPREME POWER 

nikola, through the research of the birth charts of many people throughout history, observed how those who contained planets, houses and aspects (+lunar nodes, arabic parts, vertex and of course, the four cardinal points: the IC, MC, AC and DC) in the 2º degree were those who made remarkable achievements, who wielded extreme power and were highly respected. he got to this conclusion by analyzing the birth chart of queen victoria - other rulers at the time had more powerful aspects than she did, but allas, they weren’t the ones to almost rule the entire world - it was her, so he began noticing the pattern between power and the 2º. literal jesus himself had his mercury in pisces in the 2º. i myself have four degrees at 2º, so it’s nice to know my dreams of starting a revolution, overthrowing the government and achieving world domination are supported by the astros

THE 5º DEGREE - EROTICISM 

this degree is connected to beauty, desire, sex appeal, receiving sexual attention. many sex icons like marilyn monroe, jean harlow and mata hari had it present in their birth chart. nikola talks about this being the best degree in his eyes. considering that it’s a leo degree, it’s all about living, having fun and enjoying life. 

THE 11º DEGREE - DIVORCE / SUICIDE 

both the 11º and 23º degrees of aquarius indicate divorce, but, according to nikola, the 11º is connected to suicide.

THE 15º DEGREE - CAR ACCIDENTS 

this degree, when connected to scorpio + the 8th house, can indicate car accidents.  

THE 18º DEGREE - PURE EVIL 

simbolizes a bad destiny. to nikola, this is the worst degree you can have. it can indicate rare deseases, tragic accidents. he says there’s no good about this degree but i absolutely disagree. not to be a hopeless optimist or to pretend to possess half the knowledge that he does but i think it’s pretentious to assume that a degree is literally all bad and that there’s nothing we can do about it — that takes away from our free will and our inner strength. Many, many people have this degree present in their charts (i believe nikola had it himself), it’s all about facing hardships but, well, that’s life.

THE 22º DEGREE - TO KILL OR BE KILLED 

nikola has found this degree in the birth charts of murderers + people that were murdered. his significance of “to kill or be killed” is quite literal. now, i want to remind you that this is the worst case scenario and that this degree can manifest itself in many diferent ways - just like the 18º and the 8º. the death can be figurative. for example, donald trump’s chart: he has his sun in 22º, and his mercury in 8º - and I’m afraid he’s quite alive at his old age and kicking it, even if he’s suffered a public destruction. @saintzjenx in her degree theory post talked about how this placement can also indicate abandonment. i agree, i have my sun at 22º in the 10th house (the house of the father) and my father was very emotionally absent + physically as well (his work has him working at other cities during the entire week) 

THE 29º DEGREE - CLAIRVOYANCE/PROGNOSTICISM 

the 29º indicates someone with clairvoyant potential, someone who makes accurate predictions, with great intuition. it’s to note that nikola himself had a 29º in his chart, and that he became known for the predictions he made using the degree theory (for example, he predicted that america would have its first black president ten years before barack obama was elected). but he does like to say that he has absolutely no intuition, though - what prompted him to study the degrees was his virgo rising, acording to him, his need to study and put his brain to work. still, he observed how many clairvoyants had this degree. other astrologers talk about this being a degree that means destruction (and when you analyze trump’s birth chart and how he has his ascendant and his 11th house at the 29º, you can very much argue about the truth behind that theory) but all in all, nikola talks about this degree as benefic. 

in case you’re feeling bad, remember i have the to kill or be killed 22º, plus the 8º of death, plus the 11º of suicide, plus the 23º of divorce, plus two of the 18º of pure evil! let’s suffer together besties. on the upside i have four of the 2º so we riding to eternal glory! 

but now seriously, i know some of this is very hard bc obviously life isn’t all fun and games but. remember that we all have free will, life isn’t determined and having a lot of these in your chart doesn’t mean impending doom!! i have them and i’m very much kicking it and i’m not intending to stop. it’s all about acceptance, learning how to work with even the worst degrees in order to make the best out of them. plus, the degrees can manifest themselves in a lot of different ways and a lot more matters than just them being present - like the signs that they’re in, the aspects with which they make and how harsh they are, the house where they fall etc etc. 

please do take your time to read through his website + to watch the interviews nikola did on youtube!! he was an amazing astrologer whose theory greatly impacted the way astrology is studied today. he’s fun to learn from, too, which is a plus

[champagnecall]

OKAY I was encouraged to post this so I’m gonna <3 

This is just a pretty in detail character study of my portrayal of Hifumi following the latest drama track nobody has to read it or anything! It’s going under a read more due to content warnings for abuse mentions, depression, panic attacks, and suicidal ideation so please be careful when reading !!!

So in the latest drama track we got to see Hifumi’s abuser - who we met in a previous limited edition drama track, though wasn’t 100% confirmed to be his abuser - up close and personal. I’m going to focus mostly on the Hifumi aspects of this track - but I’ll be mentioning the other two members of Matenrō as well due to the relation they have to how Honobono got to Hifumi.

Before this track released we knew very little about how Hifumi functioned with his trauma. We know that he developed his gynophobia in high school - at the very least eleven years before the canon point in the series - and that at twenty years old he became a host to try and get over his phobia.

Becoming a host is what pushed him into creating his host persona via auto-suggestion, as it has been canonically stated that he does not have Dissociative Identity Disorder. The manga artist has drawn a panel with Hifumi’s personalities and their titles - being “Host” ( also commonly called GIGOLO off his MC Name ), “Hifumin”, and “Open Up”. But prior to this drawing, the three personalities were often just split into “Host” “Hifumin” “Phobia”.

So Hifumi has a strong motif of thirds being played into his character. His name is composed of the kanji for 1-2-3 and GIGOLO is actually a pun on that, being “Shi-gi-ro” or more simply...4-5-6. 

This is a sort of both clever and self deprecating play on Hifumi’s part. He has a lot of issues that were very subtly hinted at throughout canon up until this drama track, being that he dislikes who he is without his jacket because he views himself as weak because of his phobia. He doesn’t want to be afraid of women - he wants to interact with them freely - but he doesn’t have control over the events that traumatized him nor does he fully understand why what happened to him happened.

In this track, though, and both of the new songs on this album Hifumi is in, he outright says these things.

“When in despair there is always a desire to be saved / Black darkness and iron bars, a shortage of adrenaline / The world I see is different than what everyone else sees”

“D-Doppo.. I-It’s hopeless... I’m a weak human being.., I... I couldn’t do anything...!”

“I have a phobia that makes my mentality like that of tofu / But when I put on my suit, that of course changes it all”

“Standing aloof, dropping down to sit, even when I’m emotionally unstable / Don’t turn away, get the evidence with your words / But even though the day might be cold and I can’t lend it to you yet, / One day I’d like to gently place this suit jacket over you”

Not to mention, previous lyrics of his combined with what we have now...

“Are you going to stay by my side / Even after knowing my past? / Drunkeness arriving on champagne / Stopping your mouth / Our eyes meeting at length by chance / Can you see the real me?”

“If my spell comes undone / I won't be able to see you again”

“Sorry for being born with all this / With nervousness and panic / My heart won't stop beating fast, my kitten / It'll be fine, come here I'll be all yours until morning”

“Now, sexy girl / Smash my sense of values to pieces / 10,000,000 yen /  100,000,000 yen / 1,000,000,000 yen / 10,000,000,000 yen / I'll give you something that you can't buy with money”

“A spirit that's different from the others / Drawing eyes from all around town / But I don't do relationships / Somewhere, sometime, I want to meet you I want to take off my jacket / So we could love each other mutually / A battle with my past self / I'll end it with a victory... my sorrow”

“With my magic, I'll make your pain disappear / Don't stop the party / I'll stay like this, I won't leave you”

“No pain, no suffering, no worries / I'll make them all disappear, come closer / From heart to body to pores / I'll let you do as you like, so come here / It'll be fine, come closer / I'll envelop everything / And one day, I want to be enveloped too”

Hifumi is a character who tends to objectify himself due to his career. He speaks about people smashing away his sense of values, listing off prices people can purchase his attention for, saying that he’ll let people do whatever they want to him. He sees his host personality as someone who is better than who he is on his own - someone of a greater value, which leads into that pun with 123 being his actual name and 456 being his MC Name and the name people tend to use for his host persona.

When facing Honobono again for the first time since she initially traumatized him - he crumbles out of this persona. The personality he learned to shift into through extreme auto-suggestion as a protective mechanism breaks.

At first, Hifumi is able to hold himself together, despite being on the verge of a panic attack. It’s mentioned that he looks pale, the listener can hear his labored breathing and his hesitation, but his defensive mechanism is working...

Until the following exchange:

Honobono: I came here to see a friend, do I need a reason?

Hifumi: Were friends, if you’re mistaken. All those things you did... 

Honobono: “Those things”? What were they? They were so long ago that I can’t remember~ Ah! Now I sort of remember! But there’s so many things that I can’t grasp too well. Was it about your mother? Or about your sister’s case? Ah right, right! Or maybe even about your case at school!

It’s here Hifumi’s breathing becomes extremely labored until he actually starts screaming. It’s implied he falls over, as the sound of shattering glass alongside a thud follows his screaming all behind the sound of Honobono’s laughter.

Hifumi’s voice changes depending on the personality he’s fronting - going from “Boku” for “Host” and “Orecchi” for “Hifumin” ( more recently we discovered he very rarely uses “Ore” when he lets just his true personality “Open Up” front )

So it’s here that was a shock where Hifumi says “Boku wa...” and then immediately shifts the tone of his voice to his natural one and cries out “Orecchi wa...” signaling that for the first time we’ve ever witnessed it in canon...Hifumi’s suit failed to protect him from his phobia and his protective personality melted away, despite the suit jacket he wears in order to shift personalities still being worn by him.

Whatever Honobono did to him, his mother, and his sister - it was enough to give him a panic attack so bad that the defensive mechanism he developed and has been routinely using nine years prior to this point was broken away from him. Hifumi spends nearly the rest of the drama track - which is around 9~11 minutes - in a screaming, crying panic attack where he sounds like he’s in genuine physical pain, even as all of his pain is just psychological here.

We don’t know what she did to him in high school - and this mention of his mother and his older sister was the first time Hifumi’s family had ever been brought up. But whatever these events were, it was enough to drive him into the most severe panic attack we have ever seen him have - making it all the more extreme that it’s happening in the personality he developed in order to protect himself from his phobia and his anxiety.

It’s here that Doppo is able to enter - which Honobono had purposely tried to keep him occupied by pulling some strings to get him fired - and says the following:

WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT HIM?! He went through SO much hell during that time! DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH HE HAD TO DO TO OVERCOME THESE PROBLEMS? LIKE YOU WOULD KNOW ANYTHING!!

Hifumi has all too casually dropped a few comments that lead to one assuming that he had mentally hit rock bottom with his depression and anxiety that came out of his phobia developing. He has a line about how even if living is the harder answer in the end, it’s the option you have to chose. Lines about “sinking into the sea of despair”, never really showing fear about the prospect of dying / being killed ( he always puts himself in harms way for other people - pushing away a stalker that was charging Doppo with a knife even if it meant he could get stabbed again ( he had already been stabbed by her on his arm because he moved just enough out of the way when she tried to kill him ), catching the same stalker when she tried to commit suicide and falling out of the window in her attempt with her and turning them over midair so he’d be the one to hit the ground instead, and putting himself in front of Honobono and Doppo when she was threatening him ).

Hifumi also has a lot of lines, however, about valuing his life. He sees his life as something that’s important, he stands up for other people; he pushes people to see the value in their own lives as well.

All of these things combined have led a lot of people, including myself, to believe that in that period between the event that triggered his gynophobia and when he developed his host personality that he did go through a period where he was suicidal - and canonically we know that at the very least, he was severely depressed during this period. 

I still don’t have any head canons or theories on what I think happened to him and his family - but I have a lot of things relating to that that I’m going to continue on with below because it plays heavily into my portrayal of Hifumi.

I think that he was extremely close with his mother and his older sister, and likely had an absent father. I feel like his sister was probably a few years older than him and helped to raise him in part, since his mother would have needed to work to take care of both of her children. I think he probably learned a lot of the things he still enjoys today - sewing, cooking, knitting, etc... - from his mother and his sister both due to an interest in it and a desire to help out around the house.

Whatever happened to his mother and his sister I feel like had to have such a massive impact on him, for the mention of them alongside whatever Honobono did to him in high school being enough to trigger the most severe panic attack he’s had to date, as well as feeding into the roots of his gynophobia. Thus, I really do think he was incredibly close with them.

Hifumi is also someone who seems to struggle a lot with his identity. He’s split his personality into thirds and rarely lets people in to see the real him - someone he isn’t really sure who they are anymore - being that the only time we see that real version of him is in the privacy of his own home around Jakurai and Doppo.

A lot of people agree with me on the fact that he seems to radiate some kind of Gender energy which is nice to see! I do genuinely think Hifumi is a character who struggles with his gender identity. I’m not sure what identity I think fits him, but I’m not sure he really knows either since I feel like his phobia is kind of drawing him back from exploring that properly. Same with his sexuality - given that he has been seen freely flirting with men but vocalizing his desire to freely do the same with women.

Hifumi is a character with a lot of layers but in the end I think he just really struggles with that sense of “self”. He doesn’t know who he is anymore because in all of his struggles to get over his hurt - he left himself behind and walked out as a stranger to his own mind. He’s great at hiding the fact that he struggles with this - that he struggles at all - but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t hurt. I think he’s very much a “if I ignore my problems they won’t bother me” kind of person but he can’t...hide that from the people that really and truly know him either.

He can’t hide it from himself, either, even if he doesn’t know who he’s looking for inside himself anymore.

[adhd-wifi]

Wei WuXian, Trauma, & ADHD (Part One???)

What’s up y’all I’m here with another ADHD-Wei Ying post, featuring his trauma this time. In case anyone is wondering, here’s the first one. Full disclosure, I have not formally studied psychology and mental illnesses, speaking only from my own experiences plus what I’ve researched to understand my own conditions and otherwise. Specifically, I will be talking about ADHD and its relationship with PTSD, but not as much about the latter as I know less about it.

As usual, this is long and rambly and contains a bunch of spoilers, so it’s under the cut we go. :P

== Line Break ==

Wei WuXian grew up with a strong sense of loyalty towards the Jiang Sect, especially Jiang FengMian, believing that he owed them for giving him a home, a happy life, and the chance to become a cultivator, but never truly considering himself a proper family member, mostly due to Yu ZiYuan as her abuse towards him often targeted the fact that he wasn’t a “true” son to her and JFM. She also often compared Jiang Cheng to him, and JFM never bothered to address that problem and continued to favour WWX. As a result, WWX, who didn’t see JFM’s flaws due to gratitude and being spoilt by the man, ended up blaming himself for YZY’s abuse of himself and JC, and this led to him growing up internalizing the idea that he was a “burden”. 

This is a common response in children with ADHD, since ADHD causes difficulty with emotional control and children in general tend to blame themselves when they are put into such a situation, so an ADHD-WWX would take this to quite an extreme (more on that later). Of course, we must also remember that he had been alone on the streets as a child for months, and there are surely factors of trauma involved in there. But I’ll also get into that later when I talk about this trauma as a whole. 

Moving on, after Lotus Pier fell, we know WWX’s sense of guilt and debt to the Jiang Sect increased severely, and then he went through three more extremely traumatic experiences, namely; the golden core transfer, being thrown into the Burial Mounds, then actively taking part in a literal war. This was basically the most traumatic period of his entire life, and he was incredibly driven by a terrifying desire for revenge against the Wen Sect, which JC encouraged. 

WWX maintained his sanity (for the most part) throughout all this. Of course, we do see him change drastically, his happy and positive personality almost completely gone, but for the most part, he seems…”alright”. Now, it’s important to note that WWX not EXPLICITLY showing signs of trauma is in fact fairly common, as people suffering from PTSD do often repress things and pretend things are okay, so take this theory I have with a grain of salt. 

That theory is because he’s “alright” because he’s used to the trauma symptoms already. To elaborate, ADHD and PTSD (assuming this is what he ended up with), actually have a lot of overlap, to the point that even today there are multiple cases of misdiagnosis between the two, especially in terms of childhood trauma. In my theory, I’m guessing that WWX honestly thinks “he’s fine, because the symptoms he’s experiencing are basically things he’s already lived with throughout his life, and they just “got worse” because he lost his golden core”. 

Of course, this begs the question: “What if he just has PTSD (as a child) and not ADHD then? He does have trauma from being on the streets and abuse with the Jiangs.” 

It’s certainly possible, and I will admit that part of the reason I so badly want to think that WWX has ADHD is because I have it and I relate to him, but it really isn’t the only reason. I do see signs of ADHD that aren’t inherently related to PTSD (they could be, as everyone reacts and responds to trauma differently, but it’s not likely). Said signs which I mostly copy-pasted from my previous ADHD Wei Ying post are: 

Came up with a wild and unorthodox solution for a difficult question despite already knowing the “proper” solutions (Literally just his head being full of thoughts and ideas that aren’t necessarily anxiety-based)

His idea of organisation is a chaotic mess to everyone else (Inability to recognise mess rather than the inability to keep things organised)

Obsessed with spicy food because everything else is is too bland (Sensory issues)

Locked himself in a cave to work on inventions while forgetting to eat and sleep (Hyperfixative behaviour)

Somehow remembered a short, nameless tune Lan Zhan played for him once despite there being several factors that should’ve led to him forgetting, all because that tune was a special moment between him and Lan Zhan 

Now, I want to talk about one specific trait that is a symptom of both ADHD and PTSD-related trauma responses, which is the fact that WWX reacts explosively when he’s angered, though he never reacts like that for his own sake. Let’s examine the two scenes when he punched Jin ZiXuan for insulting/hurting Jiang YanLi. 

In the first incident at the Cloud Recesses, he punched JZX and fought him badly enough to get himself expelled and caused JFM and the Jin-Thot himself to directly speak to Lan QiRen about it, but WWX is shown to have gotten over it fairly quickly, even playing with ants during his punishment and being proud of punching the peacock. In the second incident, which we know as the war camp soup incident, WWX again punched JZX but instead of fighting him, he angrily leads JYL away while making it clear that he thinks JZX doesn’t deserve her. We also know that WWX remained angry for quite a bit afterwards. 

While it’s obvious the second incident is much more severe than the first, with JYL actually present and brought to tears because of JZX, and also the stress factor of them being in the middle of war, it’s still also very obvious that WWX’s explosive anger response has very significantly worsened. The main difference here is the fact that remained angry afterwards, meaning he’s lingering on the incident longer, while he got over the first incident easily. This alone leads me to believe that the first incident was more of an explosive ADHD response, while the latter was the result of both trauma and ADHD. 

So anyways, this post got longer than expected and I’m honestly still not done. For now, I’ll leave this post as “Basically why I think Wei WuXian has both ADHD and PTSD”, and MAYBE post a part two about the specifics and comparisons of the two conditions. 

I would love to discuss this further with anyone who may have better knowledge of PTSD and trauma responses, because I do find Wei WuXian’s relationship with his mental health a really strong point of his character. So if you do had knowledge in that field, please let me know if I made any mistakes and feel free to ramble on right back at me. 

Thanks for reading!

[senttotheshadowrealm]

Imelda Rivera: A Character Study

Big rant under the cut. Just some venting I’ve been holding in for almost a year. Do note if you choose to read on that this is my opinion. If you like her, that’s totally fine with me. I just had to put this out there.

As it is now out there, I really don’t like Imelda Rivera. But I’d like to explain why. A lot may jump to a conclusion that I don’t like her because I’m a butt-hurt Hector fangirl, and while that certainly doesn’t help, it also has nothing to do with why I originally didn’t like her. But let’s break it down piece by piece:

1. Imelda’s attitude towards Hector

It’s completely uncalled for. Now I understand that she was hurt, but what she does is so extreme and so crazy, I refuse to let that be an excuse. As @disgrxced-luminxry pointed out, it seemed that she completely banished a man she supposedly loved because he had different wants than her. It would be a different story if it actually did unfold the way the beginning of the movie presented it. It said “One day, he left with his guitar...and never returned.” Yes, this makes what Hector did sound very one-sided and selfish, but remember that Miguel is telling this story. He only knows it the way his family, and therefore Imelda, told it. She didn’t mention the oodles of letters that he continued to send home for Coco, which I have no doubt that she opened and gave to her daughter. After all, Coco was only three. This tells me that Hector was writing frequently to her and most likely sending whatever little money he could to them. He was still trying to support his family and keep his dreams. This pissed her off. She said it herself.

“I wanted to put down roots....He..wanted to play for the world...we both made sacrifices to get what we wanted...,” In her mind, because Hector didn’t just stop pursuing his dream and do what she wanted, he choose music over his family. The letters sent home prove otherwise. She choose to exile him because of his different opinion. That’s called fascism, folks.

And knowing that he, at the very least sent a bunch of letters home, why did Imelda just...not seem to give a fuck when they just stopped coming? Giving her the benefit of the doubt, let’s say she didn’t really think he abandoned them until after the letters stopped. Why was she not curious at all? This is a man you supposedly love. Why did she not press into what happened to him? I refuse to still believe it was hurt if she didn’t in fact believe he abandoned them yet. AND to compound this, we recently got confirmation that the white guitar that is so pivotal to the film was actually a gift to Hector from Imelda. When?...IDK. Apparently before Imelda made the decision that she was done with music. But music ban or no, she had to have seen Ernesto pictured with that guitar somewhere between 1921 and the 1970s when she most likely passed. Did that raise no questions? Seems to me like she just didn’t care what happened...She just was still pissed that he had a different opinion than her own.

Now let’s jump to the next time these two interact, after they’ve both passed away. Or at least attempted to interact. Imelda once says herself in the move:

“How many times must a turn you away!?” This was not the first time Hector had tried to explain what happened. She just didn’t want to hear it. She could tell how young he was when he died, given his hair is still pitch black while hers has grey streaking. She wasn’t interested in what he had to say. But I’m sure she was quick to tell him how awful he was. What a horrific person he was, just as she did in the scene we actually did see. But this isn’t the first time Imelda is abusive. 

When Hector finally does get to say what happened, she responds with, “AND SO WHAT IF IT’S TRUE!?” Actually it matters a lot. I don’t know if she was just back-peddling because she realized how ignorant she had been, but it’s still plenty cold-hearted to say to someone who was murdered trying to come home to you.

Finally, can I mention how super horrible it is that she NEVER, not even ONCE, showed any remorse for almost making Hector suffer the Final Death? And, sure, she didn’t understand the consequences of the music ban when she did it, but once she found out, after her own death, she STILL is able to say to Hector’s face:

“I wanted to forget you. I wanted Coco to forget you too, but...” She knows that’s the equivalent of telling someone you wanted them dead. This line is actually what made me really not like her...But speaking of Coco...

2. Emotional/Mental abuse of Coco

Yup. Yes she did. More obvious in the book though. There is a particular flashback scene where Coco as a young woman wants to dance but has to go to a secluded place so her mother can’t see her doing it. Mind you that Imelda also refuses to make shoes for dancers because music. But that aside, she even forbids her daughter from doing something she loves because she disagrees with it. So Coco gets injured dancing in the middle of nowhere so Imelda won’t see her. Imelda uses the fact that she got hurt to push that dancing and music is evil and that she was making her daughters upset. This makes Coco give up dancing for good. Imelda has taught her that showing support for your family must be to give up what you love. 

Even bigger so, Imelda forced Coco to not talk about her father. She couldn’t with the music ban. This decision didn’t only affect Imelda when it was put in place. It affected a little girl too. A little girl who was already so confused as to what happened to her father. How much that must have hurt her...She clearly loved her father, she kept all of his letters and even the picture Imelda ripped out. She clung to the memory of her father, which Imelda tried so hard to force out of her over the years. She, “wanted Coco to forget him too, but...” But...she didn’t. She wouldn’t. And thank God she didn’t.

3. Legacy on the Family and Miguel

This point isn’t as important to me as the others, but Imelda’s legacy left quite an imprint on the family. As you recall, the story told at the beginning of the movie is Imelda’s version of events. “Hector up and left. The end.” This is the story Imelda told her granddaughters, poisoning them against a man they never meant. Elena then went on to pass down this misinformation to her children and even to her children’s children. Thankfully, Miguel shared his great grandmother’s fight and ambition. If he hadn’t run off to pursue his dreams, he would never have found out the truth. And it’s not only Miguel who suffered from the music ban. As we see at the end of the movie, Abel and Rosa are playing instruments too. Lord knows, they might have had the same struggles Miguel had, enjoying music in private, they just weren’t strong enough to bring it up like Miguel was. 

What does matter A LOT to me is that Imelda was ready to let Miguel die in the Land of the Dead before she let him play music. This is so sickening to me that I can’t dwell too long on it with stooping to calling her more names. I’m trying to avoid that here. It’s really fucked up. That’s all I’ll say.

4. Vs. Ernesto

This is a more personal point. When I first put it out there that I was an Ernector shipper, I got A LOT of comments with people saying: “But Ernesto MURDERED Hector...How could you support that?” Allow me to explain. I don’t believe for even one moment that they actually loved each other. I more so like the tension between the two. I also like Ernesto having super confusing feelings toward his best friend that in 1920s Mexico is so taboo that it just makes it more inciting. Ultimately, I like Ernector because it’s fun. The problem with Imector is...it’s canon. It happened and is currently happening. But people seem to ignore that Imelda is not that much different from Ernesto, both in personality and action. 

Both of them over-reacted when Hector tried to change their plans with plans of his own. They both moved to get rid of him. Ernesto was successful. Imelda was not. That’s really the only difference. 

In conclusion, I don’t like Imelda because she took her hurt and spread it to everyone around her. People could have died or disappeared because of her bitter, spiteful attitude. Others suffered mentally and emotionally because of her words. In Hector’s case, he was both. I actually believe that her continued belittling lead him to have such low self-esteem that actually caused him to forgive her in the end. She taught him that he was garbage over nearly 40 years of him begging to her for her to toss him aside. 

But if you still like her after reading this, that’s perfectly fine too. She was strong in opening up her own business after all. Actions of a character can mean different things to different people. I just wanted to put my thoughts out there :3

[songketalliance]

Abuse is Violence: A Prisoner At Home

“I know it wasn’t a good thing to do, but that was the extent of my desperation: I thought that it was clearly better if he was not around in our lives.”

As told by Anonymous

This article is part of Abuse is Violence, a monthly column dedicated to experiences of domestic abuses in Brunei.

When people hear or read the term "domestic abuse", it is most likely that the first mental association they would think of is physical abuse. The kind I face every day, however, is emotional and mental abuse.

I am the second youngest of six siblings. We are all well-mannered, our grades are usually the best ones in class, and I can confidently say that we are all good sons and daughters that any parent can be proud of. At least, that’s what Ithink.

Our father has a different opinion.

My father is what I would call an extreme negative thinker as he never really focuses on the good side of his family. Regardless of our excellent grades or how much teachers praise our behaviour, he can never seem to be satisfied with us.

He would often sit in his chair in front of a blank TV screen to think about any mistakes we’ve made. I know this because every time he does it, we collectively understand he’s about to pick on my siblings and me, or my mother, or both. He would sit there, occasionally sighing, and then eventually for no good reason explode and the whole house would descend into chaos.

I remember once I was helping my mother carry the groceries, and the bag slipped form my hand causing the soy sauce bottle made of glass to fall and break. When my father saw this, he reacted as if the world had ended. He screamed at me, calling me “stupid” and “cuai (inept)”. And whenever he sits in front of the TV, he brings this incident up, along with other mistakes I’ve made, even though it’s been two years since it happened. That’s just a minor example of how he usually is, and it’s not even the worse one. His verbal abuse extends to threats of violence too, and we’ve all learnt to tread carefully in case he actually goes through with any of them.

It seems to me as if getting angry and screaming at his own children is kind of his hobby –a detrimental and toxic one. Throughout my life, I've heard of a lot of insults from my dad. A few of his favourites include “buduh (stupid)”, “cuai (inept)”, with his all-time favourite being “pembawa sial (bringer of misfortune)”!

It’s difficult to accurately describe the range and intensity of my emotions at being told all my life that I am not able to be the kind of person my dad wants in a child, everything I do in life is wrong and stupid, and the reason for him being unhappy is because I bring misfortune.

The control and manipulation my father extends over our lives started when we were younger. We were discouraged from having friends, told that friends would entice us to do bad things. It was a fearful time growing up, worrying about the possibility of my father finding out we had friends. He also only let us to go to the convenience store and school, telling us that if we went elsewhere, and with friends at that, we would be doing unsightly things.

As we got older, he seemed to become more accepting of us having friends, though our movements, including going to the school library to study, are still heavily restricted.

Over the years, I realised his tactics to cut us off from socialising were so we would not create bonds with other people that could help us when we need it. He never allowed us to attend any of the family functions and would tell stories to our relatives that shed him as a victim where his family rebels against his wishes and never wants to see our relatives. My relatives already see me as a bad son, and they’ve never been interested in my side of the story, so we can’t seek help from them even if we wanted to.

My mother tries to defend us when my father gets into his “moods”, but they just end up fighting with each other. Finance-wise, she has always been the one to provide us with food, buying the groceries with her own money even though her salary is not much at all. It’s very rare to see my father chip in to help with the house finances; rather, he would usually ask for money from my mother and my sister who just started working, even though most of his monthly income is spent on himself.

My mother is the most wonderful woman in our life and the only reason why we’ve stayed in the family so far. My father has just made us all, and probably my mother in particular, feel so hopeless and useless that it is difficult to explain why we haven’t reported my father to the authorities for abuse.

As I grow older, I realise how hard it is to find someone who can empathise with our situation. It seems that every time I tell my close friends or even teachers about my family problems, they either don’t believe me and think I’m just exaggerating to get attention, or they just say, "it’s because he cares."

So, we suffer silently, because no one around us will listen, and we are too afraid to make a move.

I know for sure that all of us hates my father. I clearly remember that I used to pray and hope that he will die in an accident. I know it wasn’t a good thing to do, but that was the extent of my desperation: I thought that it was clearly better if he was not around in our lives. We can't trust him anymore. Even if he is nice to us on some days, it means that he wants something from us.

In lots of ways, we’ve given up on him already. We had always hoped that he will change someday, that some miracle will happen to make him realize how precious his family is, or that he will start to appreciate us, but my siblings and I have already given up on him. We just can’t believe that he will ever change.

It has come to a point where I’ve decided that as soon as I finish my Masters or PhD, I’m going to try and live alone. I’m sure my father won’t like it and he will try his best to keep me in our home (or should I say “prison”). The only dilemma I have is that I don’t want to leave my mother alone with my father. If he does try to physically hurt her or any of my siblings, I’ve resolved to take action, be it defending against him or even calling the police. I’ve grown beyond the passive child who waits for my father to somehow change.

As told by Anonymous

Songket Alliance encourages you to report abuse that you or your loved ones are experiencing. Please contact:

Jabatan Pembangunan Masyarakat: 141

Women and Children’s Abuse Unit, Royal Brunei Police Force: 2232001 (ext: 007)

Psychological help are also available in government hospitals and major health centres.

To contribute to Abuse is Violence, e-mai us at hi@songketalliance.com. Anonymity will be provided.

[scripttorture]

I have a character who was never held as a child, never given any physical affection and was kept in a lab and experimented on (needles, etc.) for the first six years of his life. He was trained as a weapon of sorts as well. years later he still trusts almost no-one, what would I have to do to make a romantic relationship realistic? (Sorry if this makes no sense) тнαик уσυ!!（*＾3＾）

OK so I’ve consulted with members of the Script Family who know a lot more about childhood developmentthan I do and there’s a good chance that your character wouldn’t live intoadulthood.

 Insufficient touch at an early age is linked to a host of conditions andimpairments in human children. The mechanism is more thoroughly studied in rats(for rather obvious ethical reasons) but the essential conclusion is this:gentle, caring touch is essential for childhood development.

 There’sa short academic review paper on the subject here which covers humans and rats(and worms but that’s not relevant to your story). There’s a moreaccessible piece in Scientific American here. Basedon these papers I think whatever you decide you need to remove the ‘lack oftouch’ as an element in your story.

 You want this to be realistic so I think the most helpful thing I can dois start suggesting alternatives rather than try to go into depth aboutchildhood development (an area where my knowledge is patchy at best).

 I have issues with the motif of children being raised as ‘weapons’. I’vespent too much time reading about (and seen too many) child soldiers to feeleasy treating it as pure fantasy (the way I gather most audiences from richstable countries do).  

 I’m saying that as statement of bias- from what you’ve described I don’tthink it’s an element you ‘have’ to change but I think you need to think aboutwhich of these background elements you’ve included is most important to yourstory.

 Basically what I think you need to decide is which of these things is most important to the story:

 1)     The character was raised as aweapon and is an effective fighter

2)     The character was used as asubject in unethical experiments

3)     The character was tortured

 The reason you can’t realistically include all of those elementstogether is because they all reduce the efficiency of each other.

 A character who is tortured willbe a less effective fighter and torture would add another unaccounted forvariable into a scientific study which would basically make any data gathereduseless.

 A character who is used as an experimental subject couldn’t be effectively trained as a fighter without alsodisrupting the experiments.

 The best way to achieve point 1) is to raise the character in a loving, caring environment (includinghaving positive reinforcement, caring parental figures and touch). Thecharacter’s kind, caring, lovingparental figures would then teach the child about war, weapons and fighting inmuch the same way a normal parent would introduce teaching a child to read.They would lavish praise on him and teach him that he is part of somethingbigger, a glorious cause.

 And if they did it ‘right’ he would grow up mentally healthy, welltrained and perfectly willing to kill for them.

 I’vewritten about scenarios like this before and you might find this ask helpful.

 The best way to achieve point 2) is to get rid of any notion thatthe character is being trained for anything and remember that in this scenario any torture is secondary.

 Serious scientists do not setout to cause animal experimental models more pain. If your character is beingtreated like an experimental animal then that means any pain he experienceswill be secondary to what thescientists are interested in.

 Let me give you an example: the case of Elsie Lacks.

 Elsie was committed to a mental ward as a child in America during the50s. Elsie was mentally handicapped (the diagnosis of the time was ‘idiocy’)she was epileptic and deaf. She was also black.

 Elsie was used in at least two, and possibly more, medical experiments.There’s no evidence the hospital sought consent and given her age andcapacities Elsie may not have been capable of giving it. One involved insertingmetal probes into patient’s brains. The other drained the fluid from apatient’s skull so the brain could be x-rayed, a procedure that causes dizziness,vomiting, seizures and headaches for months while the skull refills with fluidand can also cause permanent brain damage and paralysis. Elsie died aftermaking herself vomit for six months. By the end she was bringing up clottedblood. She was 15.

 The pain Elsie suffered was notthe point.

 The people who did this to her did notgo out of their way to cause her greater suffering. They treated her like anobject, another part of the test. They acted in a manner that was systematic, reproducible,recorded and wrong.

 Torture is not reproducible. It is rarely recorded. It is notsystematic. And it always treats pain, cruelty and neglect as the point rather than as a secondaryfactor.

 Which brings me to scenario 3).

 Torture and abuse doesn’t mesh well with science. It’s usually conductedimpulsively with little regard for any controlling factors.

 Torturers usually use multiple techniques and they will generallycombine techniques. They often misjudge how much damage they’ve caused whichcommonly results in serious injury or the victim’s death.

 This doesn’t mean they always leave scars. Some techniques, what I referto as ‘clean’ torture, don’t leave obvious external marks. This can maketorture incredibly hard to detect and prove.

 Deaths from clean torture techniques are often attributed to accidentsor an underlying health condition in the victim (for instance a sudden heartattack, stroke or organ failure).

 The pattern of abuse is generally that torturers use a lot of techniquesvery quickly, over a period of perhaps the first three days. After that theytend to start to lose interest in the particular victim and start concentratingtheir efforts on other individuals.

 In the longer term (ie months) what you tend to see is an irregularcycle of intense abuse, followed by longer periods when the victim ismore-or-less ignored.

 How to approach the question ofyour character having a romantic relationship as an adult depends on which ofthese three points is important to you in the story.

 In scenario 1) where the character is primarily a soldier/weapon I’dtreat it as if he’d escaped from a cult. Difficulty trusting his partner andhaving to take the relationship incredibly slowly both seem reasonable. Therelationship would probably also bring up a lot of self-doubt for thecharacter. His partner would probably contradict everything he was taught aboutpeople outside the organisation that raised him. He might find himself thinkingabout his childhood a lot and recognising ‘new’ things that were wrong orpoisonous about it.

 He might find innocent things his partner did reminded him of his ‘family’and ‘training’.

 You mightfind this BBC article, which interviews a woman who left a US cult, helpful forwriting that sort of scenario.

 In scenarios 2) and 3) your character would, realistically, have a lotof serious mental health problems. Youcan find out more about the common symptoms of torture here, these symptomswould also apply to someone used in unethical experimentation.

 We can’t predict which individual would develop which symptoms and notall victims experience all symptoms.

 From a writing perspective that means picking symptoms from the list andshowing them consistently impacting your character’s life. I advise pickingsymptoms based on what you feel fits the character and the story, for suchprolonged abuse at such a young age I’d say around 5 severe symptoms is a goodball-park figure but don’t be afraid to use more than that.

 The issues the character would encounter with a romantic relationshipwould be dependent on his symptoms. But generally speaking I’d expect him to finda romantic relationship, or indeed anylong term relationship extremely difficult. Perhaps cripplingly difficult.

 Healthy relationships are hardwork. It isn’t unrealistic for a character with such severe mental healthproblems to be in a long term relationship butthere are a lot of good reasons why a person in his position might choose not to be in a relationship.

 There is nothing wrong with a character putting his health first. And….essentiallyif this is the character’s first romantic relationship and he went through sucha prolonged and traumatic experience as a child I think he’d have to put his health before therelationship.

 I don’t mean he’d have to break off the relationship. I mean that hispartner would probably have to accept things like:

           ‘I know you spentmonths planning this holiday for us together but I’m going to have to cancel atthe last minute while in the airport because going through security is givingme a panic attack.’

           ‘I know you wanted us togo out for your birthday but my anxiety is awful today and I can’t leave thehouse.’

           ‘I know we were havinga lovely meal, but I’ve just been triggered and I’m now going to spend half anhour having a flashback in the restaurant bathroom.’

 Not everyone is accepting of these knock-on effects of mental healthproblems. Not everyone is OK with having to suddenly drop everything going onin their day because their partner is feeling suicidal.

 Even people who are acceptingof their partner’s health problems will make mistakes. They will almostcertainly accidentally trigger things, say things that feed into mental healthproblems or do small things that make the issue worse.

 There’s a lot in this scenario that I strongly advise you to re-thinkand re-write if you want something even close to realism. Until you make adecision about what sort of background you’d like the character to have I can’tgive more detail on how it would affect his future romantic relationships.

 Nonetheless I hope it helps you with your story and if you decide youwould like to make the character’s background more realistic I’d be happy tohelp with any further questions you have about how that would affect his adultlife and relationships. :)

Disclaimer

[rowanwhittington]

Research Links

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/jehovahs-witnesses-religion-christianity-religious-group-what-it-a7214966.html

The article recounts points made by a former Jehovah’s Witness on a Reddit post where users could ask him about his time in the religious group in Poland, which he describes as a cult that “tries to control emotions, thought, information and behaviour of a person.” He mentions the extreme lengths members will go to ostracise those who have choose to leave, with one man’s announcement that he’s losing his faith leading to so much pressure from the group that “he jumped into a river and killed himself.” Those who do manage to leave are “disfellowshipped”, whereupon members cannot talk or interact with them from that point on. From the perspective of my project I found this interesting as it is common practice in cults, particularly those based on religious or spiritual texts, that members who leave are banned from socialising with those within the group after. This makes it an extremely hard decision to leave; one that can tear apart families and friendships. Unfortunately, this also means that a lot of women suffering physical and sexual abuse within these cults will stay in them due to the social and religious pressures of the group. 

In regards to women, he states “she should be submissive to her husband, who is the head of their family and it is he who makes all the important decisions”, “women cannot teach in the congregation, they cannot deliver talks or say public prayers. When they conduct a private Bible study or say a prayer with another person, while a man is around, she has to wear a scarf on her head as a sign of being submissive.” The woman is “a complement for a man.”

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-44613932

In an interview with BBC Scotland, former member of the Children of God, Verity Carter, explains what it was like growing up in the cult in 1980s Scotland. The cult was founded by David Berg in the 60s, with one of his mantras being that “God was love and love was sex, so there should be no limits, regardless of age or relationship.” Verity says this this “actively encouraged sexual activities among minors as young as two or three years old.” A point I found interesting was that it was worst for those who had been born into it, as many of the adults didn’t see how extreme the behaviours had become due to it happening “a step at a time.” She also says “there was sexual abuse for myself from the age of four, not just from my dad who got convicted, but from various other members of the cult, some related, some not,” and that “I was punished a lot because I was never able to stop asking questions.” 

I definitely want to look further into the Children of God, now known as The Family International, as they are one of the cults that lead to me choosing this project. I have previously watched a documentary about them and remembered how it was essentially founded on sexual abuse and how the cult is still able to thrive today despite this. 

https://www.marieclaire.co.uk/opinion/children-of-god-586410

Christina Babin, an ex-Children of God member tells of her childhood growing up in the cult in America. 

“There was no limit to how far the adults in charge would go.”

“Such abuse was followed up by hugs.”

“I learned to cope by taking whatever ownership I could. I remember staring at an adult abusing a friend and thinking, ‘I’ll remember this.’”

“It was about physically preparing us to be an army for God.”

“Female cult members had to go out and have sex with men to convert them. In truth, this was prostitution and the cult took the profits.” - in relation to ‘flirty fishing’.

“A letter arrived from the Children of God leader, ‘Moses David’, encouraging adults to teach children how to have sex, claiming it was healthy and good. And so the sexual abuse began. I was violated in this was from the age of 12 too many times than I care to remember, but sex was encouraged with children who were far younger.”

“For a year and a half, I never stepped outside the gate of our compound, which was surrounded by armed guards. In effect, like the other children there, I was a slave.”

“I had taught myself to read but had no education, no idea how to speak to anyone and was scared after a lifetime of propaganda.”

https://www.thelily.com/i-narrowly-escaped-life-in-a-misogynist-cult-heres-how-i-fight-against-everything-i-was-taught-as-i-raise-three-daughters/?

Brianna Bell grew up split between her father and ‘The Truth’, and her freethinking independent mother. 

“With hunters of us gathered we could have easily been mistaken for a ‘Little House on the Prairie’ fan club, right down to the old fashioned was that we spoke. The women dressed in modest homemade dresses and wore their hair back in severe buns, and the men wore vintage trousers with pressed shirts and suspenders.”

“I grew up valuing purity and virginity. Today, it’s left me with feelings of shame.”

“We drove home in tense silence - because the radio was the work of the devil.”

“Former members spoke out against the rampant sexual and emotional abuse within the church, particularly the abuse of young girls and women.”

“It felt like my mother sacrificed a piece of herself to free me from this life.” 

“While I narrowly escaped being raised in a cult that wouldn’t have allowed me to cut my hair, my mother’s side of the family required women to be meek and subservient.”

“It was challenging to be surrounded by people who thought women weren’t as valuable as men, because I was raised solely by a woman.”

“My first baby was a girl, and I felt a pang of sadness when I found out. I wasn't going to have a firstborn boy, and something felt wrong about that.”

“As soon as I became a mother I had started paying more attention to the imbalance between men and women.”

“My efforts to be a ‘good girl’ and please men would never amount to enough.”

“What I found most troubling wasn’t the sexism of my surroundings, but the deeply rooted misogyny inside me.”

https://www.history.com/news/charles-manson-girl-account

An interview with Dianne Lake, who spend time with the Manson Family as a teen. 

“’People were smoking pot in on the street. There was all this free love. And I’m lost. Because the counterculture did not have a place for a sexually active 14 year old. I was jailbait.’”

“Lake was introduced to Manson and quickly became the 33 year olds lover and acolyte.”

“’We might have had a desire to have Charlie to ourselves - I know I did. But that was secondary... We were there to serve Charlie, and we formed a sisterhood.’”

“’LSD was given out like a sacrament. We took turns taking each other’s clothes off, in a circle... He orchestrated all of it. He even arranged the partners.’”

“’Charlie asked me to cut the umbilical chord with my teeth.’”

https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/cults-are-terrifying-they-re-even-worse-women-ncna862051

“In a cult, the ability to decide if and when to have a child, perhaps the most basic decision in a woman’s life - is taken over by the leader as a demonstration of the leader’s control and in an attempt to undermine the attachment between mother and child. The goal is to focus all feeling of attachment on the leader or group, and on them alone.”

“Women’s sexual lives, their lives as mothers and their ability to control their own reproductive choices are all untended within cultic organisations.”

“Former members from both Scientology and the New York based political cult the Newman Tendency have reported women being forced to terminate pregnancies so as not to interfere with their duties to the organisations.”

“Cults such as Children of God controlled reproduction by forbidding any form of birth control whatsoever.”

“Many groups separate mothers and children for long periods of time, or raise them communally.”

“Thousands of cases are being exposed of child abuse and sexual abuse of women in the JWs [Jehovahs Witnesses], where the organisation refused to take judicial action against the accused unless victims could comply with its ‘two witness rule’ - a horrific rule that states that abuse could not be proven unless the victim could provide two eyewitnesses to the same abusive event.” 

“In the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints, young women were married off to older men who already had up to 60 or 80 wives. [...] Meanwhile the ‘extra’ boys left over as a result of these plural marriages were booted out of the cult and left on the edge of the highway in the Arizona desert to fend for themselves.”

“The Children of God simply pimped women as prostitutes for ‘the Lord’.”

“This type of sexual abuse is often sold as way to become closer to the spirits or to god; it’s represented to adherents as not really ‘sex’ at all, but as a form os spiritual practice.”

“At a certain point, it becomes easier to simply give in, stop thinking and accept the new norms.”

https://qz.com/1739043/the-resurgence-of-the-witch-as-a-symbol-of-feminist-empowerment/

http://www.womanthouartgod.com/sexandreligionwmb.php

[killingthebuddha]

I first began my extrication from the Jehovah’s Witnesses some twenty-seven years ago, at eighteen, when I had a practically dissociative flash of insight while delivering a sermon in a Kingdom Hall (“church” for the uninitiated), in Duluth, Georgia, circa 1990. While talking, gesticulating, pontificating, onstage, to a sea of white-haired congregants three and four times my age, I suddenly thought something like: what the heck do I know about life, death, the universe, wisdom, God? The answer was clear. Not much, if anything at all. I was a bookish virgin, in a boxy cream blazer, behind a podium, with a brand new driver’s license, in my Velcro wallet, a microphone at my mouth, staring at the sermon notes I’d written a half hour before, penned in probably fifteen minutes. (I was fast, and I was good. I was really good.) 

The sermon was certainly about remaining separate from Satan’s secular world, surviving Armageddon, Jehovah God’s holy war, and inheriting everlasting life on Earth after Jehovah destroyed all His enemies—the vast majority of humanity, neighbors, colleagues, kids in my class. I know this because, to some extent, virtually every sermon, every meeting, every prayer, every Witness conversation was, on some level, about or informed by that very same subject. Not long after my dissociative sermon, I stopped attending the handful of weekly, required Kingdom Hall meetings. And yet despite that first step, I remained surrounded by Witnesses, family, friends, and co-workers, even as I was becoming increasingly interested in the secular world. Before long, I stumbled onto and became obsessed with the novels of Don DeLillo (I was a reader, a dangerous habit), which subtly challenged the notion of apocalyptic revelation, and I began going religiously to the local Atlanta hardcore shows. Both had debilitating effects on my faith, and broke cracks in the wall. They let in light. Before long, I began playing drums (badly) in a band peopled by mostly drifting Witness. We covered Bad Religion with not one drop of self-awareness or irony. And but a few years later, I got married at too young an age (young marriage is encouraged in the community), to a Witness young woman, and we moved far away to Southern California, where we quickly found ourselves without a rudder. We did not worship. We did not talk about God. Nor did we talk about Armageddon. We did not pray. And, frankly, it was a profound relief. That said, I was filled with questions: about God, and the Bible, but mostly about child indoctrination. One night my (then) wife said we’d been brainwashed. I got angry. I yelled. She then demanded I look up the word in the dictionary. I did, and the definition read like a close description of what had happened to both of us all our lives. I remember next going into our “music room,” and putting on (probably) a Minutemen record, lying on our long black sofa, and staring at the ceiling for a very long time. In retrospect, it seems my wife and I almost certainly went to California in order to leave our communities, to run away. I have known several ex-Witnesses who’ve made similarly extreme geographical moves, physically extracting themselves from their surroundings, as if pulling ailing flowers from unhealthy soil. Sadly, I did not properly say goodbye to many of my friends, or my family. In some cases, I did not say goodbye at all. 

One cost of deliberately cutting ties from your bedrock, from your beginnings, is the blur, fade, and repression of whole blocks of memory. Neuroscientists now say we relentlessly make, remake, and rewrite our memories, including traumatic ones, by actively engaging with them. We remember, shape, reshape, and rewrite our memories every day. In my case, and to my detriment, according to my psychiatrist, anyway, I have most likely protectively ignored the memories of my Witness life. I prefer not to revisit the past, as I find it an intellectually disabling and morally troubling landscape. I am not nostalgic. Often, when visiting family back in Georgia, I am casually asked if I recall a specific, possibly even formative event, person, or place, from childhood. My answer is often no. I do not want to remember, and that strategy has mostly worked in my life. Mostly. If I’m honest, I was a resentful young man for many years. I resented the community who loved me, and raised me, because this same community taught me college was Satanic (a distressing 63% of Witnesses have no more than a high school diploma), that a lexicon of death and destruction was appropriate for young children, that all sex—unless within the bounds of heterosexual marriage—was wrong, that a life of the mind was selfish and unsound, and that one should never question authority, never investigate history, and always surrender one’s will to Jehovah. In truth, I wasted a good portion of my years and energy on that anger, and ran from my past as best I could.

There are flitting memories, however, that I can’t outrun because the dominion of the senses sends us reeling whenever it wants. For instance, when I think of SundayWatchtowerstudies, a forty-five-minute-long article-based Q&A session between a seated congregation and an Elder onstage, I see in my mind’s eye eager hands raising to answer simple questions provided at the bottom of the Watchtowerpages, answers prepped beforehand, often recited at the Hall by children. I hear the tinny clunk of dropped quarters on a hard wooden surface, as I sat guarding the Kingdom Hall Contribution Boxes. Occasionally, the citric air of flower shops strangely sends me back to the humid, piquant bouquet of a Jehovah’s Witness convention center’s cavernous restroom and the orange-floral-scented cakes dotting their urinals. I remember the sea of seekers in the seats, praying together, singing together, applauding together at every mention of Jehovah striking down evildoers, atheists, Muslims, and Jews, all non-Witness Christians, homosexuals, and countless others, for countless reasons, and my body recoils like a child’s about to be struck with a belt.  

The Witness convention has proven an especially anxious source of memories for me. I can still hear the drone of homely hymns, the rote clapping, the amplified and echoing voice of the Elder onstage, and his, to me, rather creepychildlike tone, and the opening and closing prayers for Armageddon, in Jesus’ name, amen. Perhaps most palpable are the memories of so-called apostate protestors, especially in the 1970s and 1980s, men and women of all ages with handmade signs, marching, shouting in unison, and making themselves heard. Their signs displayed announcements like: The Jehovah’s Witnesses are a Dangerous Cult; The Jehovah’s Witnesses Have a Pedophilia Problem; Jehovah’s Witnesses are Anti-Education; The Watchtower Corporation Took Away My Family; The Watchtower Society Has Blood on its Hands. They were passionate, loud, fearlessly critical, respectful, but angry as hell. I have great respect for their mission, now, for their dedication, their suffering. But I was a kid, then. They terrified me. After all, the Organization (the Witness term for the Watchtower body, corporate, social, and religious, in its entirety) repeatedly told us, especially children, the protestors were demonic. They were Satan the Devil’s material foot soldiers, “apostates,” and no force on earth was more evil.   

*

On November 13th, 2018, the network A&E, and Leah Remini, aired a two-hour investigative documentary television special on Jehovah’s Witnesses, which preceded the season three premiere of Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath. I found out about it because another ex-Witness contacted me through Facebook, asking if I’d seen the show. I hadn’t heard of it. I should also say, this ex-Witness asked that I please not reveal details about our conversation, to anyone. I won’t. Leaving the Witnesses can be a delicate, protracted affair. Not everyone can quietly disappear, like I did. Some fear the Organization’s punishing response for dissent: public disfellowshipping (akin to Scientology’s “declaration of a suppressive person”), which demands absolute shunning on behalf of family members and friends; or public reproval, a milder form of open shaming that doesn’t require full official shunning on behalf of the congregation. I was lucky, and was never publicly shunned, although I have been told I was privately shunned by several Witnesses: for listening to “Satanic” music, for “associating with worldly people,” for having short hair that “looked gay,” for spending un-chaperoned time with my fiancé. That said because I simply, abruptly disappeared, either they had no official recourse for public shunning (I was out of jurisdiction, so to speak), or they simply forgot about me. Perhaps it was a mix of both. Some dissenters voluntarily disassociate themselves, in person, by phone. Some do it legally, by attorney-drawn letter. Some refuse to recognize the Organization’s authority and just never return. Others precariously question the Witness system, while remaining embedded within their communities, as outsiders. Some are afraid to leave, and never do. Many do not know how to leave, especially those born to the Witness life, as they are largely unprepared for the outside world. I have known Witnesses who were leaving for years. Some exit because they fear for the mental health of their children. Some leave because they want to go to college, or want their children to go to college, or want their children to engage in extracurricular activities, like school sports (all explicitly forbidden by the Witnesses, certainly the case when I was a member), or perhaps they have awakened to the Organization’s inherent misogyny, anti-Semitism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, homophobia, sex abuse problems, suicide problems, or the apocalyptic death drive central to their theology, taught to children as early as possible. My sister’s departure from the Organization, for example, for the safety and health of her family, involved a five-year plan. All of which begs the questions: Why stay at all? Why join? I can only mostly speculate. I know this much, when I was a Witness, ensconced, protected from the “world,” for many years I did not think of death. It did not exist, not realistically. We called it “sleep.” To quote Harold Bloom and his study of American-born religious movements, The American Religion: “When death becomes the center, then religion begins.” If this is true, then one might imagine the more orthodox, the more separatist, the more punishing a religion becomes, the more unhealthy its relationship to the reality of death. I believe the future Witness, to a great extent, joins, remains, thrives, as an act of deep investment, a commitment to the mythic narrative that death, in the end, will not come for them, or for their children.   

Regardless, for me, after I left, I suffered apocalyptic nightmares for decades, and I have subsequently come to learn, from friends, from therapy, that such dreams are quite common to adults raised in apocalyptic cults. I can’t help but quote Bloom again, here, on the Jehovah’s Witnesses and their “intellectually weak, spiritually empty” literature, which reminds him “why very small children cannot be left alone with wounded and suffering household pets.” To Kate, my wife (my first wife and I divorced), not a Witness, not a fan of Witnesses, and decidedly not religious, all of this stinks of the sinister, the malicious.When she and I finally sat down on our sofa to watch the show, one week after it aired, not five minutes passed before I was completely, emotionally overwhelmed. I began to weep. Kate paused the show. I took a long sip of wine, got up, and paced about the room until I regained my composure. 

It took me some time to realize why. I was not sad. I was not mad. I was weirdly, tearfully ecstatic about seeing adults like me, who, unlike me, now had a powerful voice helping them tell their stories. We let the show play on. The ex-Witnesses being interviewed had been variously disfellowshipped and disenchanted, but all of them openly spoke of the wreckage done to their families by the Jehovah’s Witnesses. There were stories of suicides—in one family’s case, there were two; stories of public and prolonged shunning of daughters and sons, even grandchildren; of the secretive bureaucratic practices, wholly and currently conceived of by eight men, always men, known as The Governing Body; the rampant misogyny; the lethal blood transfusion controversies; spousal abuse problems; the Witnesses’ well-publicized sex abuse problem, and the unabashedly shameful Organizational response of blaming the victim. If there were not two witnesses to the abuse (a rule anachronistically based on an ancient biblical text; the verse before inconveniently demands the execution of sinners by stoning), the Organization’s institutional decision has been, apparently, to remove abusers from one congregation, only to quietly appoint them in another. 

As a young boy of fourteen, after discovering a peeper’s hole in the bathroom wall of a trusted Witness minister’s apartment, a friend and I told the friend’s mother. We were disturbed not only because we knew we’d almost certainly been watched, but also because this minister was known for entertaining the young boys from our Kingdom Hall. The minister always had the latest video games, and provided lots and lots of soda. We’d seen him holding and caring for the youngest boys, four, five, and six years old. So we told my friend’s mother. I can see the kitchen table, the grim light, and her frizzy, red hair. I remember her dropping her chin, and saying: No, no, not again… She then confessed he’d been found guilty of child molestation before, it was public knowledge, and he’d been moved to a different Hall. Mine. This disturbing practice is accompanied by yet more subtly insidious and debilitating behavior. Much like other religious groups, the Witnesses privilege jargon, but in many cases the lifelong use of specialized language approximates institutionalized brainwashing. I have known several ex-Witnesses who continued to use the phrase “The Truth”—the inside term Witnesses use for their religion—when referring to the Witnesses, long after leaving. An ironic phrase, since, in practice, Jehovah’s Witnesses demonstrate little use for facts. There is anti-social conditioning, like the tragic impractical life training that leaves one ill prepared for the secular world, and mostly prepared for apocalypse and a sequestered life of door-to-door preaching. After dating for some time, Kate was palpably unnerved that I had not gone to college, and that I had already been married and separated in my early twenties. Not to mention much of my time before her had been desperately spent on drugs, alcohol, writing terrible short stories, and working mostly incidental, menial jobs. I was a dishwasher at a pizzeria, that summer we met. I didn’t even have a bank account. Why save? We were dying. 

Such characteristics are common, obvious, and actively studied by cult deprogrammers across the globe because, well, the Witnesses are global. Founded in the 1870s by Charles Taze Russell as a publishing arm for his personal eschatological readings of the Bible, The Watchtower Society has now published well over two hundred million Bibles in more than 160 languages, and has become, by far, the largest magazine publisher in the world, a corporation largely funded by donations from its over eight million members in some two-hundred-forty countries. Their actual net worth is protected, but conservatively estimated in the low billions. They are vast. To quote author and activist Lloyd Evans, one of the ex-Witnesses interviewed on Remini’s show: “Take Scientology, add eight million members, and you’ve got Jehovah’s Witnesses.” The Witnesses have successfully, thus far, avoided effective public scrutiny, unlike Scientology, partly due, I think, to their politically neutral and affable public image. Also unlike Scientology, the Witness persona is not especially glamorous. There are no bright lights. They privilege modesty, long skirts, “heck” instead of “hell,” all this despite the fact that, like the Mormons, they routinely grant offices of leadership to strapping young men, which seems in retrospect a rather deliberate strategy for enlisting young women into fantasies of early marriage, as the gay men remain Witness bachelors and quietly enjoy the show. It should be said, here, too, friends of mine, ex-Witnesses included, have reported widely on the “down low” gay aesthetic and subculture of the Organization. Ex-Bethelites (workers in the Watchtower headquarters) infamously talk of clandestine gay sex, straight sex, and adulterous sex in bathrooms, stairwells, and basements. This is predictable. Sex in the Witness world is pathologized, repressed, and buried. According to Pew Research Center, Jehovah’s Witnesses have a decidedly low retention rate when compared to other religious groups in the U.S.; of U.S. adults raised as Jehovah’s Witnesses, some 66% “no longer identify with the group.” I would not be surprised if this had largely to do with their puritanical stance on sex. This has not, however, stopped the Witnesses’ historic growth.

To provide scale, according to some reports the Witnesses are two-hundred-and-fifty times larger than The Church of Scientology, and yet despite the several upsetting similarities, they remain the “nice people knocking on doors,” to paraphrase Remini’s initial impression. And yet, like Scientology, the Witnesses openly encourage fear, disgust, even cruelty for those who leave and dare criticize the Organization. Apostates. As a boy, the word alone, especially when spoken, froze me with terror and awe. No more, of course. Though, it’s likely I’ll pay a price for writing this essay. Which is strange, I admit. Some might wonder why I have not paid that price by now. Frankly, I have been lucky. I keep my mouth mostly shut. My criticisms have been subtle and respectful, even timid. I invented a new religion in my first novel to save myself from explicitly writing about Witnesses. My parents have been patient. As for other family members, I have effectively removed myself from them already. In some cases, they have removed me. Nevertheless, I’m sure some family members and friends will call me apostate, now. They will cut me off. Some already have. And I’m at peace with that, finally. But it has taken years. Among the footage on Remini’s show were photos of those late twentieth century “apostates,” men and woman protesting with signs in front of Kingdom Halls, and Jehovah’s Witness convention centers. I watched them and thought of other protestors I’d seen as a boy, in front of Bethel, Watchtower World Headquarters, once in Brooklyn, now located upstate in Patterson, Wallkill, and Warwick, New York. I paused the show, sipped my wine, took a breath, and said: Those people with the signs, protesting. I used to be scared of them. Kate said: Those people are heroes, every last one.

*

Ironically, the Jehovah’s Witnesses were born from protest, and their theology is inextricably defined by apostasy. Aside from the plain fact that they are fundamentally an American Protestant Christian movement, as a millenarian restorational nontrinitarian group they were born not only as a deliberate protest to Catholicism, but in vigorous protest to traditional Protestantism. God was not triune—and, more, Jesus was not God. Jehovah is God. There is no other. Famously, at least according to Witness lore, at the turn of the twentieth century, the Witnesses fiercely protested, in public, in a highly coordinated fashion, with signs, and loud voices, against religion itself. Signs boldly read: Religion is a Snare and Racket. They were not Catholics. They were not traditional Protestants. They were not even traditional Christians. The Witnesses, at least at the time of my leaving, continue to proudly own this history. This is rare, as the average Witness knows little of their story. Organizational history is rarely talked about at Kingdom Hall meetings, and when it is, in my experience, and the experience of more recent dissenters, it is cherry-picked for exegetical gloss. The image of early Witness protest, however, the Witness apostasy from traditional Christianity (apostasy merely means to set one self apart from a group; the original Greek means “to stand away from”) is owned, employed, cherished in their rhetoric. It is a defining personality trait.       

More interesting to me, though, is the Organization’s penchant for protesting its own legacy and historical practices. Most notable and well known are the dozen or so dates of failed apocalypse intimately tied to the developmental history of the Organization, or directly prophesied by The Watchtowerin print, by Elders from the Kingdom Hall stage. I certainly recall, as a child, the announcements of a world coming to its end in 1980. I recall, as a young man, promises of Christian apocalypse come 2000. Unfortunately, Jehovah’s Witnesses generally do not know much about this long trend, which stretches back to the late 19thcentury. They certainly do not talk about it, as these aborted endings have caused fissures and mass departures in membership. In most cases, the Witnesses smilingly deny the prophecies completely, I have witnessed this, as they offer a biblical explanation, creatively interpreting Proverbs 4:18—“But the path of the righteous is like the bright morning light that grows brighter and brighter until full daylight.” Apparently, the days of failed prophecy were darker times, and we’re in full light, now. I’m told they don’t make predictions anymore. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Organization soon claims they never made prophecies at all, as they willfully, disturbingly, once again, disown their own history, and their present story: that of a fascinating, and unique American invention, unwholesomely marked by secrecy, and thus riddled with the problems secrecy engenders: deception, betrayal, contention, and abuse. 

I should say here I have come to learn in my short forty-five years that ignoring one’s story is a seriously dangerous move. My psychiatrist will back me up. It seems, I ignored the apocalyptic beliefs, biases, and perspectives imprinted on me from infancy, and ignored my resentment for having them. I ignored my anger—until, one day, it boiled over. In early 2016, after an overwhelming breakdown, I was hospitalized, and thus began my struggle with a mental illness that has predictably dovetailed with an examination of my own history. The mind will have its way. I wonder if now is the time for Jehovah’s Witnesses to face their story. I know for a fact Remini’s show had lots of people shaking with concern. I received notes from old friends, colleagues, and neighbors who watched the show. They were shocked. On other hand, I’ve heard loyal Witnesses called it lies, lies, all lies. What more would you expect from apostates? Then again, perhaps daylight is here, finally here. In world no longer conducive to secrecy, it’s hard to imagine otherwise. The Internet knows, shows all. I am confident that social media, the ubiquity of online information, and our access to that information, will eventually light every dark corner of the Witnesses’ considerable Organization. I hope so—for their health, my family’s, and mine. I know this much: Remini’s show awakened something within me, and as a result I feel compelled to publicly, officially separate myself from any organization, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, that knowingly endangers its most vulnerable members, which I sets me squarely, proudly in a rich, and complicated, historical tradition of protest. 

[automatonvice]

Final Essay

Contreltophobia Incarnate

Contreltophobia, or agraphobia, is defined as the phobia of sexual abuse. Generally, phobias are seen as extremes of a fear, taken to a point of sensitivity where they cannot be explained. But, sexual abuse, as well as the ideals similar to it such as rape, can easily be understood as producing a strong and understandable fear, and even more so for females. Video games hold the interesting aspect of being able to simulate and represent realistic fears and create a unique type of immersion for the viewer through pure interaction. The RPG video game trilogy LISA contains almost three different generations in a family that the viewers gets to know, beginning with the more abstract and experimental origin story of Lisa, a child very obviously sexual abused by her father, and followed by two games set in a post apocalyptic world containing no females but one, a young girl named Buddy. It is mostly in this strikingly contemporary and perverted wasteland that LISA begins to reveal culturally implanted fears and paranoia of women through its extreme circumstances of abuse.

Due to warnings from parents or the increasingly common cases appearing in public news, women from a young age begin to fear the mere possibility of being taken advantage of and raped. Patricia D. Rozee, author of "Fear of Rape" from the Women's Studies Encyclopedia, found that women fear rape more than any other violent offense, such as physical non-sexual assault, armed robbery, and even murder. Rozee’s studies indicate that this intense fear of rape appears in the early years of girls’ development, between about ages 2 and 12. She also reports that women participating in the studies claim to remember hearing parental warnings about stranger danger at very young ages (Rozee Fear of Rape). LISA: THE FIRST can be described as having this fear as a major core concept. Lisa, the main character of LISA: THE FIRST, physically appears to be a young girl, and one who very clearly characterizes a child used and abused by her guardian. The choice to make Lisa so young not only emphasizes the lack of power, especially mentally, that one has as a victim of such a situation, but she also comes to represent the “worst case scenario” or parental horror story. As with all successful educational media, it is that which is the most shocking and intense which leaves the most lasting mark in one’s memory. Lisa takes on many of the warning signs of a child put in a similar situation in the real world. Key symptoms and signs of sexually abused children is that they often look distracted/distant, have nightmares, think of their self or body as repulsive, attempt suicide, have inadequate personal hygiene, and/or attempt running away from home (Stop It Now!). Lisa has long mangled hair, worn clothes (Image 1), experiences many feverish and symbolic nightmares (Image 1 and 2), which the viewer also gets to experience through her eyes, and does not speak throughout any of her game. The viewer sees her home through an exaggerated perspective, where it is implied that she is drugged regularly by her father, so the home is covered in vomit stains (Image 3). Lisa spends the entirety of the game attempting to run away from her home, and her father, who covers the landscape in many shapes and forms, such as spiders, cultists, and most often as horribly deformed monsters (Image 3 and 4). There’s even a recurring phallic looking character named Tricky Rick (Image 5) who, when Lisa tries to bypass, tells her "Did you really think that would work? I'll never leave you. You have to swallow me, get over it". The later game, LISA: THE PAINFUL, reveals that Lisa asks her brother to maim her face through cuts so that she may become unpleasant to look at as a last ditch attempt to have her father leave her alone. Her suicide on the title screen of the third game (Image 6) implies her unsuccess with that theory as well as her final, and brutal, escape. Lisa represents the most extreme case of sexual abuse, from start to finish, along with all of the nuts and bolts and quirks of one suffering from such a home life. LISA: THE PAINFUL plays with the subject of men who casually speak of rape, which on the exterior may seem hard to miss in our current world, but is more likely than you think. A canadian college in recent years has finally received backlash over a popular student orientation chant: Y is for your sister. O is for oh-so-tight. U is for underage. N is for no consent. G is for grab that ass (The Canadian Press). Completely lacking in any moral story or educational purpose, this chant solely became a way for male students to joke or relate over non consensual sex, even including underage as part of it. LISA: THE PAINFUL, the second game of the trilogy, portrays a male population with a widespread desire to take advantage of the single remaining female on earth, Buddy. Men of LISA: THE PAINFUL also casually refer to rape by spouting lines such as “You can lead a horse to water, and then do whatever you want to it!”(Image 7) in regard to Buddy. To cement this, the enemy, Bolo, even has a pretty clear attack move called “Grope”. Buddy frequently meets men seeking to take advantage of her sexually, despite her alarmingly young age. The society of the post apocalyptic world emphasizes a lack of intelligence, and therefore connects this open pedophilic ideology, rape, and similar perverse ideas as that of unintelligent people and of a degraded culture. Again, the games aim to give the worst possible scenario, as all apocalyptic tales tend to. LISA builds a world of regret to try to get viewers to read into the warning signs and into what makes this world so horrible as to get them to avoid it happening in the real world.

The LISA trilogy also contains a perforating theme of objectification and monetization of sex and females. This can be seen today in brideprice and dowry practices in some cultures. Arranged marriages still exist in many societies where the woman has a minimal say in her future. In  the apocalyptic world of the second game, where there are barely women to defend their rights, and men have degraded in moral and intelligence, it is not surprising to see this concept implemented into the game. For instance, when Buddy stumbles upon a wandering gang led by Bolo, he states, “When it comes to a king's buffet. There's no shame in eating table scraps. Especially when the scraps are this tasty. Haaaaaaaaa! Okay. Enough goofin'. Grab that pristine meat!". The entire concept of the second game is that everyone in the country of Olathe is trying to find Buddy, either for their own, mostly sexual, personal gain, or to sell her to the highest bidder, and as the only woman alive, she is quite literally the most valuable and rare item in the world at the moment. Sex with women is yearned for intensely and obsessively, and as one NPC describes in a particularly deserted map area, "Everyone left to go after that girl. I used to be like that... Chasing women... One woman actually... Sneaky cheating bitch”. Even when remembering the time where women were abundant, most of the men continuously regard their past partners and women in general in the most negative connotation. Women also become a legitimate commodity in Olathe. Paper and metal completely falls through as a form of currency, and pornographic magazines take their place (Image 8). As the only source of images of women, magazines, or mags as they come to be called in the game, become the next best thing. More interesting is how protective Olathians are of their mags, as they are very rarely picked up through simple looting. Most mags collected come from looting corpses of people who have recently died or you have beaten, a sort of selfishness and viewing of women as their own personal property becomes a core part of the game series, paralleling real world human trafficking and trading of daughters for marriage in the past and present. Physical or even printed, women become the most wanted commodity of the apocalypse with no females.

The LISA trilogy uses comedy, a simple 8-bit RPG style game to bravely tread into sensitive content and controversial topics. LISA: THE FIRST contains no plot and no storyline. It is purely imagery and limited and repetitive text, and yet it tells a story because of its directness. LISA: THE PAINFUL and LISA: THE JOYFUL use more complex game concepts like a very developed story, backstories, characters, and in game items and dialogue to increase the immersion of the viewer as well as making a more relatable environment. Viewers are able to bond to the characters, such as Buddy and even learn more about the incredibly mute Lisa through the second game. Viewers learn to associate Buddy and Lisa with unfair circumstance and come to resent those who take advantage of them or view them as lesser. The dire circumstances transfer the same ideals into the real world and it is the emotional connections that viewers get from media that goes on to follow them into their daily lives. LISA uses the video game convoy to tell the story of the abuse degradation of moral through the gradual viewing of women as only sexual objects, and the isolation and inner scarring of a child sexually abused and educates its viewers through this content.

Works Cited

LISA. Dingaling Productions, LLC. 2014. Video game.

Rozee, Patricia (n.d.). Fear Of Rape. Greenwood Electronic Media.

http://gem.greenwood.com/wse/wsePrint.jsp?id=id222

“Tip Sheet: Warning Signs of Possible Sexual Abuse In A Child's Behaviors.” Stop It Now!,

Klingberg, www.stopitnow.org/ohc-content/tip-sheet-7.

The Canadian Press. “Saint Mary's University under Fire for Frosh-Week Chant Championing

Non-Consensual Sex with Underage Girls.” National Post, 25 Jan. 2015,

nationalpost.com/news/canada/halifax-university-under-fire-for-frosh-week-chant-cham

Ioning-non-consensual-sex-with-underage-girls.