#i feel like i need to justify everything i do

[perpetuallyfive]

God, I'm so happy with what they did with Maddie Nolen.

I'm sure there will be plenty of people mad because obviously there was a weird backlash over a character who has sex with one half a ship, so I'm sure some people worry this will lead those people to feel justified in their initial response.

But ignoring people who can't emotionally regulate for a second, because those childish impulses aren't worth dictating the fun things a narrative can do: Maddie is SO INTERESTING as a character and she fills in a lot of the questions people seemed to have about the rest of the season.

Consider for a moment that it wasn't Caitlyn who convinced Vi to be an Enforcer. It was Maddie.

I know that some people took this line to be about Zaunites, a sort of obvious connection to the very racist idea of "one of the good ones," but since Maddie is talking about Marcus and his betrayal of the Enforcers just before this, I'm pretty sure her framing here is something else. The point she's making is specifically targeted at Vi's own beliefs and weaknesses, her desire to protect. That seems clear to me now with all we know about Maddie's capacity for manipulation.

She's not saying, "You're good, for a poor."

She's saying, "Wow, I agree with you, the Enforcers are really bad; it's so upsetting. I think you might be the only one who can change it, but only if you join us." This is what convinces Vi to do something she never thought she would.

Well, this and the fact that Caitlyn believes in her so much which, again, is information she gets fed to her directly from Maddie. It even seems like Maddie seeks her out just to say this, which on first viewing felt oddly convenient. Wow, Vi just happens to meet this naive girl who just happens to say exactly what she needs to hear to do something so out of character.

Except obviously none of it was coincidence. Everyone already knew how much Vi meant to Caitlyn and getting Caitlyn under control would require either controlling Vi or removing her from the equation. This was a push in that direction.

Then there's her more obvious role as the spy in Caitlyn's bed, there to reassure her that the Noxians are only trying to keep all of them safe. Then when Caitlyn expresses larger doubts, she's immediately ready to lay out an alternative. You could just give up, Maddie seems to whisper gently in her ear. Just reestablish things as they were before.

But she knows Caitlyn isn't going to go for that. She's not going to go back to the council as it was, because it's only going to remind her of the empty place her mother left behind. Maddie knows that Caitlyn isn't going to take this offer, which is precisely why she suggests it. She frames quitting as the only clear alternative to going along with everything Ambessa wants because she knows that Caitlyn will refuse, which leads her right back into alignment with Ambessa. She makes continued obedience into an active choice that Caitlyn affirms she's making.

Even Maddie's comments that suggest direct opposition to Ambessa — "you're our leader... I follow you" — are designed to frame herself and her true leader in direct opposition, just as Ambessa's own warning about entanglements is there to further that point. They both make a point of reminding Caitlyn that they are her true ally, isolating her further from anyone who isn't the devil and (other) devil on her shoulders.

This way Maddie and Ambessa can both tug at Caitlyn, pulling in what feels to her like opposite directions, all so that she lands precisely where they wanted her all along but with the illusion of active agency.

And look, I'm not saying my read on her is gospel, because I think they intentionally gave us enough room to really speculate and wonder about her, someone who could have been just a background nothing character but ends up being such a huge part of the second season. That's so interesting!

I especially love that she comes across as really naive and innocent, just some poor little thing swept up in the fervor, when in reality she's a true believer who has been manipulating things to go her way from the start.

[megaderping]

I feel like when people emphasize Akechi's murders, they often act like his motivation only boils down to "daddy issues" or they really make light of the impacts societal discrimination can have on a person. "But Futaba didn't end up like Akechi," I've seen people say, but the thing is, Akechi is meant to show the worst case scenario. Someone without anyone left to uplift him, to ground him, and to give him a reason to be better. Futaba had Sojiro, though that hardly justifies her mother's death, nor the horrible mistreatment from her relatives or what Shido put her through by framing Wakaba's death as a suicide. Futaba was in a very dark place, and she needed a helping hand. The Phantom Thieves saved her. But Akechi didn't have that helping hand when he needed it most. He lost his mother at a very young age, endured the foster system, never finding a new forever home, and at his absolute lowest point, was granted power he didn't understand with no one to guide him, and wanted to get close to Shido to one day backstab him and give him a taste of his own medicine. The murders came later, when Shido "instructed him." And given the way Shido yells at Akechi about what happens to people who cross him, and given what he did to Futaba (the men in suits), his cleaner, and how many people he had on his side, on top of Sojiro making it very clear how cutthroat Shido was to his enemies... Akechi was screwed no matter what. His face, his name, all of it could be used to ruin him in the real world. Alone, he would not have been enough to go through Shido's Palace, given how much trouble the Phantom Thieves had as a group. Plus, y'know, this:

Something so many people ignore when they talk about Akechi and his murders and ignore everything else the narrative tries to say about him.

What P5 tries to say about Akechi is so important to its core themes. That, if Akechi hadn't been a victim of so much injustice, he might have never gone to such lengths. That doesn't undo the damage he's done, but it's so important to understanding why the game approaches him with sympathy rather than writing him off as pure evil. Because it didn't have to be this way. If he had just met Joker sooner, if he had just had somebody. Akechi represents what can happen to vulnerable children who are failed by systems meant to uphold justice and other ideals, and how those who have nothing, who have only ever been hurt, are far more likely to lash out in turn. Persona 5 places so much importance on the suffering of children and the ways society needs to improve for the sake of children. That, I think, is one of the key reasons Akechi is framed as a victim. He is a warning, a cry to do better.

[candy-cloud-system]

Guess who’s back speaking their shit ! This guyyyyyy ! . Allow me to write a long ass paragraph explaining everything about why I am NOT going to take back what I said.

First off. Comparing anything I said in that paragraph to racism is wild. Not ONCE did I mention race, and it was a completely irrelevant and honestly just false comparison. Hating someone for being downright ableist is SO much different than being racist. And I can guarantee you, I will never hate anyone for their skin color or race. That is something they are born with, and cannot change. And the diversity of human beings is single handedly the most beautiful thing to me.

Now. A more accurate comparison, if you will, would be saying something along the lines of this: imagine you broke your leg because of someone else’s actions, and it causes you a lot of discomfort, pain, and changes the way you have to function. Often you get frustrated with things you’re unable to do the same as someone without a broken leg, or even get super angry at the person who was the cause of your broken leg, sometimes finding yourself daydreaming about how much better your current state would be if you hadn’t been around them or left the situation sooner. Now imagine the next day you see someone else with a cast on their leg, and you think “oh! Someone who may have a similar experience and understand my struggles!” Just for them to tell you their leg was never broken before and they simply “wanted” to have a broken leg.

Imagine the pure frustration that would give. All the thoughts of everything and all the pain and regret and rage you face daily now being mimicked by someone who woke up and decided to claim they had it simply because they wanted to. THATS what it’s like seeing an endo.

I will say this now. Plural means the exact same thing as a system. There is NO difference. There is no such thing as “systems have trauma, but if they say they’re just plural then they aren’t claiming to have a disorder!” Because that’s bullshit.

Endos cause a lot of harm to our communities, even if they aren’t aware. The misuse of terms and stealing of terms from cultural practices, invading our spaces sometimes with purpose to harm us, convincing actual systems their repressed trauma or even remembered trauma doesn’t exist or wasn’t bad, and wide spread misinformation highly effects people like me who have to live with the actual disorder.

I’ve seen a lot of systems (myself included) who are uncomfortable calling themselves plural. Although it is a correct, and sometimes more used in medical settings term for systems; the association of the word with endos who think slamming another label on themself justifies blatant ableism has made that term unbearably difficult to use on ourselves. I’ve seen the same with the words headmates, host, fictives, and other system terms.

“Tulpa Systems” are stealing a cultural term, AND misusing it at that. Tulpamancy is a term from Tibetan Buddhism. Original concepts of it found in the Buddhist Niramāņakāya, and later came into traditions of Mysticism. It is NOT when a 14 year old on tiktok decides they want a serious mental health condition and “creates an alter” for themself. Tulpas are part of a culture. And are spiritual practices.

Invading spaces that aren’t made for you can be very harmful. Even if unintentional or seemingly “harmless” those spaces are MADE for certain people. Those certain people need places they feel comfortable being themselves with other people like them. That’s very important. Something I’ll compare it to is this; I get very uncomfortable when an abled body person gets in the school elevator with me. The elevators at my school are made specifically for disabled individuals and those who cannot walk up stairs. It with the exception of escorts, when someone who is perfectly able bodied gets on, it creates a tension for me. They’re invading a space made for me and people like me, simply because they wanted to. I feel it’s unfair to me, because I’m not able to fit in comfortably in their spaces, I cannot walk up stairs with ease, yet they can, the elevator is a space where I can feel comfortable and capable with the abilities I have, and I feel very uncomfortable when that’s invaded by others. And it’s the same with system spaces. I’ve ranted to my friends countless times about how I never feel comfortable in the online system community. My spaces get invaded constantly by people who think they have a right to steal what should be a safe space for trauma survivors. I have grown accustomed to the reality that I will never have a space online that I will be completely safe from ableism in this community do to endos. Even in real life I have faced people in the eyes who faked my disorder just because they thought it was cool. They faked and copied my real struggles, lied about experiences and made me miserable. And I feel like i don’t even have to speak about the endos who come into spaces to harm us. We can all tell that’s fucked up.

CDDs are a trauma response. And something it does, and it’s whole point, is to hide your trauma. A lot of people with CDDs will not remember what happened. It’s what makes it so tricky to cope with and heal from. I’ve had a very close friend of mine ignore their plurality and not take steps to heal due to them being convinced they didn’t have trauma or wasn’t enough trauma and they were an endo. That is so incredibly harmful. I cannot stress that enough. Telling people they can have a CDD without trauma, even putting that option of being plural without trauma is SO harmful. Because young people who may realize they have a CDD and not be educated on them will brush it off as being an endo, spread that misinformation, and most dangerously; not be able to take the proper steps to heal. Lucky for me, I understood that it was a trauma related disorder, so I was able to get into therapy, get on medication to help myself combat my depression, and find coping skills that were healthy for me to work on growing and coping with my CDD and other disorders. Convincing someone their CDD isn’t serious, or that it’s not trauma related takes that away from them. It takes away the realization of the need to heal, it takes away the chance for them to cope with serious trauma. And it can even worsen it. People with trauma who categorize themself as endo or are categorized by others as endo may be even more effected, feeling like trauma is now a competition or that they aren’t enough to have a CDD that they may actually be struggling with and wanting help for. I hope you understand how harmful that is.

The spread of misinformation is WILD. One of the first things usually brought to me by my friends at school who don’t know much about DID is usually some misinformation they saw from an endo. And of course I don’t mind educating them properly at all, but it honestly hurts me a bit to see some of the crazy things I’ve seen them believe because of how much misinformation people spread on the internet about this disorder.

CDDs aren’t fun, they aren’t quirky. They’re serious trauma stemmed disorders formed to help someone survive. It’s not “having silly characters I like in my head”. It��s NEEDING them to keep you alive and as stable as possible when in horrible conditions whenever you are in the most vulnerable stage of your life.

Blah blah. Internet rant. Blah blah. I can already feel the comments calling me a loser and telling me to blow up or something 💀 like ima lowkey be mean for a sec but do y’all ever shut up? Learn to literally educate yourself instead of believing a 13 year old who wants the entire cast of Hazbin Hotel in their head cus they think it’s quirky (no shade to actual systems with hazbin alters)

Get ur ableist asses outta here fr 💀💀💀💀😭😭😭 making my life hell

Tw: syscourse ,

Endos DNI with this post.

Hot take; I shouldn’t have to be terrified to read / like posts. I should have to read the tags to make sure it’s not posted by an endo trying to infiltrate our spaces. I shouldn’t have to fear that the thing I’m gonna read is going to send me into a spiral because it’s gonna be some stupid ass shit about how “traumagenic systems are losers” or whatever the other stuff endos say about us is.

WE SHOULD NOT HAVE TO HAVE AN ALTER WHO SITS OVER MY SHOULDER EVERY TIME I OPEN THIS APP THAT CAN PULL ME AWAY INCASE SOMETHING GETS BAD.

THAT SHOULD NOT BE A THING I, A TRAUMATIZED SYSTEM, SHOULD HAVE TO DEAL WITH WHEN LOOKING FOR COMFORT OR SILLY CONTENT TO CHEER ME UP REGARDING THE TRAUMA FORMED DISORDER THAT WILL FOREVER MAKE MY LIFE DIFFICULT.

“Endos don’t hurt anyone🥺🥺🥺”

yes they fucking do.

- Sharkbite

[jewishvitya]

This is something I keep coming back to when I see people talk about Israeli propaganda being bad, because I so often see the "did they really think it would work? Did they really think it would convince anyone?"

Israel relies on the idea that antisemitic violence justifies anything and everything we do. Proving this to us while we're stuck in an echo-chamber that keeps reinforcing itself is very useful to keep Israelis feeling like either we have every right to be as violent as we feel the need to be, or for people who still feel bad about that violence, that we have no other choice.

And I keep saying this because I keep seeing it. "They'll believe our enemies over us" is a sentiment that keeps coming up whenever any state propaganda is revealed as a lie, or questioned or challenged at all. And it gets mixed up with genuine antisemitism, making everything very hard to untangle.

Anyway, my point is, Israeli propaganda doesn't need to be good to be useful.

[dykedvonte]

I saw your earlier post and you mentioned how people say things like "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" and you're so right cuz it drives me insane the way people want to hate Curly as much as Jimmy so they start saying really concerning stuff. Like is that not just victim blaming? Is saying "Curly is a grown ass man" not just rephrasing "why didn't she fight back?" It feels like the fandom think they can just say vile shit because his abuse wasn't physical (at first, and don't even get me started on anyone saying he deserved to be abused as if any kind of abuse can be justified) and he's a guy. Makes me wonder if people would bother seeing Curly as another victim if he was a woman or if discussion would be equally as insufferable because he's still not the "perfect victim" compared to Anya

It's crazy the way people say "I would've fixed everything unlike Curly" and then continue brushing off a victim and saying they deserved it. Even Curly acknowledged Anya's suffering even if he failed to help her in the end, and yet the fandom acts like this without any self-awareness (sorry for ranting like this but I'm just very tired of the fandom recently)

What worse about those comments and the sentiments is it’s often used when people are discussing him as a victim. Like acknowledging the abuse he also faced with Jimmy and that it shouldn’t matter or have an effect because he needed to “man up” and deal with it due to his position.

He needed to deal with it more effectively yes, but it is really victim blamey in the sense he should’ve just been able to. I talked about if Curly was a girl people would probably still judge her on the basis of being more experienced and accomplished and also needing to know better. The problem is that every is trying to treat what Anya and Curly went through on a comparative level. The game does not try to do that but instead tries to have their abuse parallel each other and be metaphorical, along with show the subtle and explicit ways abusers treat their victims.

People see how Jimmy and Curly parallel each other and create the idea “they deserved each other” in some weird ironic penance stance on both their parts. It’s just so odd because the game clearly shows that not a single person was deserving of their situation and especially the treatment under Jimmy at any point for any reason. The game centers around everyone paying for callous actions he commits and refuses to take responsibility for and yet the conversation center around one of his most tormented victims being questioned on how deserving he was of it/how it shouldn’t have effected him that badly.

I know you can be mad at Curly but making it out that if he was a real good man than he just would’ve had the balls to stand up to what was likely years of emotional and mental degradation still perpetuates the idea if a victim really didn’t like the treatment they would’ve just fought back harder or not put themselves into that position in the first place.

It goes back to the idea that there’s always a way to stop it and it’s on you if it happens. It’s again taking focus off the perpetrator and putting it on other aspects than the ever present source. Idk man but it’s like people are trying to make so many slightly different think pieces on MW that some just loop back to harmful rhetoric we were just moving away from.

[thestarseersystem]

Honestly, out of the term "syskid" vs "little", I prefer little because our littles are more similar to an "inner child" than to actual children.

They know of kink, they understand suicide, they know of dark and mature topics, and while yes, some seem like actual children, I can assure you that we are bodily adults, and wish to be treated with the respect and authority that adults have.

I don't want to keep reiterating this. But we're not kid safe, child safe, despite having little alters.

And finding a safe space for them is not the same as having a space for bodily children.

And yes, some systems are different, some systems want their syskids/littles to be treated like actual children, seen like actual children, be in a space for actual children.

But we've been hypersexual since we were 5 years old, and stuff like kink is comforting and is a safe space for us. It's been the only space to be openly small for a long time. In our childhood it was not safe to be a child, so child spaces with child boundaries can feel triggering.

Being a little is more similar to regressing than it is to become a child.

So I will tell you, don't treat us like children, despite the innerworld age. Until it's free and safe for us to be complete children, we don't want you to trigger our regression in any way. Be kind to systems like me, they have no choice.

We want as much choice and freedom and power that we can get. We need adult boundaries more than we need comfort.

[bat2pony]

There are a few flaws in your argument but I appreciate your thoughts!

I would like to state that yes I am aware the school does teach young adults and adults, but it ALSO teaches children. Otherwise, why would Cozy Glow be there? I don't know the exact ages of the new mane 6 (gallus, smolder, silver stream, yona, osealus and sandbar) but I always interpreted them between ages 14-17. I could be wrong, but I always viewed them as children. They need to have their parents/guardians contacted in order to go home which speaks volumes to this.

And just to remind you, Starlight was unaware that stopping the mane 6 from ever meeting destroyed the world. She had no idea. Her goal was to make Twilight feel the same way she felt when Sunburst left her: alone. She wanted Twilight to understand what it felt like to have everything taken away from her. Is this justified? Absolutely not, it was a horrible thing to do. But it was fixed because Twilight showed Starlight what the future looked like without the Mane 6, which is where Starlight's redemption arc began because she realized she destroyed the world.

And this debate was not about Cozy Glow but I absolutely agree. I am astounded that such a young foal was stuck in Tartarus. She could very well be viewed as a troubled child who simply needs to be steered down a better path, and I would have loved to see this happen with her character. If anything, Cozy Glow deserves redemption above Chancellor Neigh Say. I also think there's more potential with her character if they did that.

I just finished season 8 of FiM.

Chancellor Neigh Say shouldn't have been redeemed.

[snails-in-spaceships]

[kaleidoscope1967eyes]

im really trying to be accepting of myself, but being acespec is yet another damper on my ability to interact with people

[mellotronmkll]

Think I've finally mastered she's an angel on accordion I'm so happy

[florbelles]

finished hera & started lady macbeth and we have got to start blaming women for shit again for real

[lorephobic]

this is the funniest thing that sits and rots in my drafts because its been four months atp and i still have not thought of a single headcanon for these two

[sskk-manifesto]

(´･ᴗ･ ` )

[blissfulrain12]

Sometimes I feel like the Mouthwashing fandom needs to be studied because despite how much discussion of abuse/rape culture there is the fandom is still steeped in it. There's so much to say and I struggle with getting it all out. Op you've said so much of what I've been thinking.

There's just so much the fandom isn't just failing to grasp but perpetuating. It kinda hurts and worries me how many people are so quick to dismiss the emotional abuse Curly goes through. And just the fandom's reluctance to engage with Curly's abuse in and of itself without it being just a metaphor for Anya. The fandom's reluctance to look at Anya outside of being a perfect victim "who did everything right". Just like Curly, Anya was in a position of power as the Nurse/sole medical officer and she failed to protect the vulnerable person under her care. And the fandom can't deal with this because then they'd have to confront that they're still struggling with the separation between morality/likability and victimhood.

The inherent misogyny/patriarchy/abuse/rape culture in the insistance that the male victim should "grow a backbone" and violently confront his abuser despite his abuse to protect the female victim while insisting that it's perfectly justifiable for the female victim to leave the male victim in the hands of the same abuser because of her abuse drives me up a wall! There's something really gross about the chant of "don't baby/cuddle" the male abuse victim. There's something really gross about the way fandom reduces Anya down to this angelic character.

The dismissal of the aspects of capitalism is also heartbreaking. The reluctance to see how little options that company left them. The reluctance to even question if maybe no one person should have that much responsibility on them. Especially when they're just blue collar workers. This isn't Star Trek. They're hauling ineffective Mouthwash on a skeleton crew for a company that doesn't trust them with access to artificial sweetner.

This game has so much to say about so many things and the insistence to not engage in like 2/3rds of it because to do so is to confront our own complicity in these systems is a disservice. I think people really need to let go of "good" and "bad" person labels cause it's not helpful in actual getting into the heart of these subjects. And it's definitely not helpful if we want to grow beyond the systems and attitudes that harm victims.

You ever just see a Mouthwashing take that makes you want to bang your head into a wall? I literally just saw someone claim Curly couldn't have been emotionally abused by Jimmy before the crash because he was in a higher position of power than Jimmy.

-Shrimp Anon

The mouthwashing fandom has shown me that people genuinely do believe that certain types of abuse are not as detrimental as other types especially when they deem those immune/resistant, ergo, believing one is objectively worse no matter how it affects the person nor the intersections of power, history and dynamics at play.

Get ready cause this is a yap session:

Cause like it's heavily implied that Curly and Jimmy's friendship was toxic and abusive, pointedly in the direction of how Jimmy uses Curly's belief/comfort in him. Curly wasn't forced to enable Jimmy but he was emotional and mentally on edge around him in almost every scene in some way. Mental and emotional abuse are not contingent on what positions you have at work. Yeah, he's Jimmy's boss but he was Jimmy's friend first and it's like getting into Psych discussion to talk about how social power tends to overshadow any perceived organizational power in the human mind. People are concerned about their jobs ofc but they tend to hang onto and put more value/investment into their personal relationships, hence why there tends to be laws and restrictions around mixing the two.

I always see the sentiments that "Curly is a grown ass man", "Curly is bigger than Jimmy", "Curly is Jimmy's boss", "He just needed a backbone" as criticisms of Curly and while I do agree that on the surface level all of these to be true and viable ways Curly could've taken more control of the situation, I often look at the parallels of Anya and Curly as victims of Jimmy pre/post crash.

The way Jimmy talks to Anya post crash is how he talked to Curly in the pre-crash segments. It's hard to pin-point mainly because we know he hates and wants nothing to do with Anya compared to his contrary but similarly handled obsessions with Curly. It's a weird sort of "honey-moon" effect of abuse Jimmy does in terms of emotional and mental victimization. He is always horrid to Anya, always talking down or questioning her abilities and thoughts in a situation, this of course includes the harassment and assault. However, he has a moment of attempted gentleness/conditioning when he question her about the mouthwash when she's contemplating drinking it at the table. The key difference is he has no personal investment in Jimmy outside wanting nothing to do with him, meaning there is no sort of romanticized version of him that he can condition her off of. He knows this, hence, why he always reverts to trying to make her to scared to oppose him.

This sort of give and take of "kindness" doesn't work on her because she knows he is just doing it to take more from her than whatever he could possibly give but it reflects even the "softer" scenes between him and Curly where he always rewords or rephrases Curly's sentiments and concerns to sound more shallow. He is feigning a deeper understanding by reworking Curly's emotions into something bad and needing to be hidden. Everything is laced with envy and resentment, an outburst just around the corner, I mean he even slams the table in the birthday party scene, a tactic in emotional manipulation to set the victim on edge and cloud their ability to respond. Even if Curly knows Jimmy won't get physical in that moment, the physical actions is intended to make him back down in the confrontation in case it does. This is something that is just not person specific. It ingrains itself into how you interact with the world and life and it shows in major and minor ways with Curly.

Post-crash, the abusive nature is more in tandem to the physical victimization Anya went through and the stripping of voice and autonomy we see take place. Like the parasite in HFIM, Jimmy speaks for Curly most of the time and puts words in his mouth, similarly to how he takes Anya's plans as his own. He very commonly, with the both of them mind you, supplements the worst aspects of himself into them; pettiness, selfishness, lack of understanding... And tries to cover himself with their best qualities; kindness, planning, initiative, etc...

These parallel are just to say that positional power has little to do with if a person can be abused and how it can even be flipped to further the abuse. There is no doubt that Curly could've picked up on Jimmy's envy of his position hence another reason he never confronted him as a Captain but as a friend as doing so would immediately put Jimmy in a space to be confrontational/combative.

I think the disdain some people have when they talk about the heavily implied if not implicitly stated emotional/mental abuse Curly experienced being Jimmy's friend is when treating it as an excuse to why he didn't do more. I can understand that completely because it is not an excuse to why he didn't do more but is a very real reason people in his position in these scenarios can experience whether in the context of a work or social environment. However, I also think the way people talk about it really does demonstrate a bigger problem when talking about abuse when somehow who is/was abused is either part of the issue or enabled it.

Harkening back to the sentiments about Curly's inaction regarding Jimmy, I think the exact phrases I used/have seen show how there is an inherent belief that it is easier to overpower the effects of emotional/mental abuse that go in tandem with the perception of Curly as someone who should be able to. There is not an age you suddenly stop being susceptible to abuse nor a set point or low where you realize how it has affected you. You don't suddenly know to stand up or put a face on to face your abuser nor admit that you inadvertently enabled them to subjugate someone else to the same treatment. Maybe it's my psych brain but their is this growing belief that direct action is somehow easy or always the best method with the game shows you instances where it is not always the case. In real life that rings true too. He should have done more, but it's not impossible to see why he struggled to find a way or didn't even if it makes us mad.

It's not easy to suddenly gain a "back-bone". You don't immediately want to resort to aggression, especially if it mirrors the type you were a victim to. You don't want to believe you allowed yourself to be treated this bad, let it get that bad or allowed something bad to happen to someone else. It is easy to be in denial, to retreat to your thoughts or make excuses to avoid the painful truth. It's frustrating but in a way we know is relatable. It why we both hate and love Curly for it. We know we'd be better, we think we'd be better, we like to think we wouldn't falter in the same ways but it's always easier to say that from the outside looking in. It's easy to see what he was doing wrong because we are seeing it, not him, but the game really does make you picture what you would do if this was your raw reality and it's why this debate about Curly seems so never ending/contradictory. We can all say what we'd do but bottom line is that's much different when you're in the moment with all the emotions and human feelings attached.

I personally think Mouthwashing tackles the themes of rape culture, enabling, toxic masculinity, types of abuse and patriarchy in ways that are meant to deconstruct the typical straightforward views we mostly have of these concepts and how little subtilities of them are just as, if not more, detrimental than the overt/obvious parts. The game deals with the idea of little details and bigger picture in a way to show that sometimes the bigger picture is not the issue but the little details that make it up. It's why I have a personal dislike of depictions of Jimmy as the typical horrible person who would of course do something like this because the game is about noticing the little warning signs, the foreshadowing and foresight.

It's why I dislike the typical discussion of "bro code" and "boys will be boys" for the game because the game makes a point to avoid the standard depictions of such. It is about the type of men who still enable despite not condoning, agreeing or even perpetuating harmful beliefs because they can't see the little details or the ways it seeps into their everyday. The severity is not obvious to them as it was not obvious to Curly, Swansea or even Daisuke the way it was to a woman like Anya. There are little details about Jimmy that should ring alarms but if you are too naive like Daisuke, too distant like Swansea or too conditioned like Curly, they are just off markers.

There is 100% more constructive/concise ways to say "Curly was a victim of Jimmy's abuse on an emotional and mental aspect that clouded his judgements and perceptions in the scenario" while also critiquing on the side of "Curly still had a responsibility to protect Anya as a crew mate and Captain that he failed to do due to biases and stigma's he failed to surpass" without the weird condemnation people give him about should've knowing better than to let himself be manipulated by a person he considered a close, if not family/best-friend and had his own reasons to trust initially. Also stop being weird about victims of abuse in general with this fandom, like sorry not everyone has a like social epiphany the moment someone's nasty to them. People are treating it like you immediately know when you are in a toxic relationship immediately or comprehend when a person is actively dangerous and either it's your fault for not knowing how to leave/cut them off or you deserve it. Like the hypocrisy of people believing how certain fans treat the story reflect their irl views but not their own is crazy.

End statement is: I honestly don't even know man, I've been writing this too long and just like no man on that ship was perfect or really helped Anya when it mattered and I feel like pitting them against each other in discussion on who did the least or most or how it was justified sucks cause in the end Anya always did the most and best thing for herself.

[dewgongs]

ughh why do i have to have njghtmares about them

[bylertruther]

i don't like season three when viewing it as a continuation of seasons one and two, but i do very much like season three when viewing it as the prequel to seasons four and five... hmmmmm.