#i mean have you ever considered that these two must have massive ptsd issues

[jamiragondrawstuff]

A fanart of Yosuke from @mousewife-stash 's Persona 4 shadow-fusion AU. Because they are one and the same.

I saw something on Pinterest that was of Ed and Al and said "I'm glad I don't look like what I've been through." So I turned it around and used it for this.

[sharingshane-blog]

Why I am a Leftist

I thought I would spend some time discussing some of my socio-economic beliefs and how I came to where I am today.  My battles with poverty, disability, chronic illness, and discrimination (being genderqueer and bisexual) have largely informed my current beliefs about how society should function.  Just like anybody else, my environment and struggles have shaped who I am and what I believe today.

I have been registered in every party with the exception of the libertarian party.  Currently I have no affiliation.  I have become increasingly more frustrated with the socio-economic and political climate of today, and it is not due to how divisive people are after the orange was elected in 2016.  That divisiveness was always there, and it was always meant to be there.  The so-called problems in this current system are not really problems at all.  They are simply injustices, but those injustices were meant to be there.  The United States was never founded as a land of freedom and democracy.  Hell, only about one-third of the population in the American colonies actually wanted to break away from England.  The vast majority were either ambivalent or actively opposed separation.  The Constitution was drafted and ratified by a legislature that consisted solely of white, cisgender, heterosexual, wealthy, privileged men.  Some were rapists such Thomas Jefferson.  Some were frauds such as George Washington.  Some were narcissists such as Benjamin Franklin.  All of them were racists.  They all possessed power and influence in their given states.  The America today is exactly what America was always meant to be, a place where those privileged few controls and uses the rest of the population for their own personal gain.  It is an oligarchy disguised as democracy and exploitation at its finest.  I am completely pessimistic about the future of America unless the entire system is uprooted and we begin again from scratch.  Anyone who believes that the system can be fixed are unfortunately sorely deceived.  

I came to this understanding during my one-year hiatus from college in 2017.  During this time, I was working at Panera Bread as a cashier. As the year progressed, the job became more difficult.  I was unable to work full-time because of my health.  I was in intensive therapy for the first half of 2017 spending about 10 hours doing that and 20 hours working each week.  It was emotionally exhausting and my chronic fatigue was weighing heavily on me.  During the course of the year my anxiety and PTSD became more intense.  Near the end of my intensive treatment, I began to develop these disassociative episodes or stupors when I was triggered or overwhelmed. It happened to me once while I was driving causing me to have car accident and total my car.  They began happening more at work and I would have to be sent home.  During these episodes, I cannot respond to most external stimuli and am largely unresponsive.  I am unable to speak or speak very little.  I lose track of reality.  I cannot feel different parts of my body particularly my arms and legs.  There became an increase fear that they may be seizures.  Sometimes it appears I am having a stroke.  So far there is no evidence of either.  I developed more chronic pain.  It is highly suspected that I have endometriosis although I haven’t had the opportunity to have the surgical procedure to confirm the diagnosis. There is more, but I will not get into that now.

During this time, I realized how little my health seemed to matter to my employers.  They could make some accommodations for me, but in the end, it was their priority to make sure that business ran smoothly.  If my health got in the way too much, then I could face the chopping block.  I watched as two other fellow coworkers got fired for taking too many sick days. Both have debilitating chronic conditions that could become life-threatening if not treated.  Of course, it would be outright discrimination to fire them based solely on their health conditions.  So, they took another route.  I was terrified of losing my job.  I pushed myself as hard as I could and would neglect my health in the process. It became clearer; however, that I could not maintain the work.  My managers began cutting hours.  I was already not making enough to satisfy basic necessities and now I was making even less.  I was forced to have to live with my parents which was an unhealthy situation for me (which I will refrain from explaining why for the time being).  I felt like a burden on everyone which took a toll on my mental health.  I attempted to return to school after my hiatus while still working my job at Panera and living with my parents.  This proved to be too much for me to handle.  I quit college and moved in with a friend.  I came out as transgender and my hours were cut more at work.  I was eventually forced to quit.  I caught my manager complaining about my health issues behind my back to other coworkers.  This is actually a HIPPA violation, and I could potentially press charges.  In the end though, I am poor.  I do not have the financial and emotional resources to fight her.

Be patient.  I promise you this is all relevant.

In all this, I tried to develop a better way to organize the business in order to make the employees feel less like they are part of a massive machine and more like individual human beings.  I felt as though I was part of that machine, and if I became too weak, the machine would break.  Another thing I realized was that I was easily replaceable.  There is not much incentive for employers to work with me when they could easily switch me out for a stronger part.  No matter how nice they seemed, their primary duty is business.  If they are not successful at it, they will lose their position of power.  The system requires them to be exploitive towards the lower-wage workers.  I could not develop a system in my mind that would fix this unless capitalism as a whole was completely abolished.  If we remove CEO’s and had the workers run the industries democratically, that would fix the problem.  However, this would require a complete uproot of the system today.  I became more familiar with the term class-consciousness.

I am a hard worker and a fighter.  However, I am human and limited.  Because of my disabilities, employers consider me to be a malfunctioned part. I cannot lift heavy things or be on my feet for too long without feeling like I’m about to collapse.  I have now been reduced to a cane.  There is nothing that I can do to change this.  The phrase, “pick yourself up by the bootstraps,” did not work for me.  It did not matter how much effort into the system, I was stuck.  It would have to take sheer luck and a willingness to exploit others to rise up in the ranks.  The latter goes against my moral compass.  I realized that I could never bring myself to ever be a manager.  I cannot ethically justify being in such a position where I have to treat money with greater importance than the human beings that would work under me.

However, in order to create a society in which people are treated as human beings, and true equality is obtained; it would mean that those on the top would have to relinquish their power and wealth.  There is this narrative in which people believe that it is perfectly natural and necessary for there to power figures; otherwise, society would turn to chaos. It is true that we make decisions on our self-interest, but that is why an anarcho-communist society could honestly work.  It is in the workers’ best interest to distrust power figures, to have control over industry, to regain their humanity, to maintain industry and do their part in society, and to be a part of a society.  It will not happen without a fight though.  Millionaires and billionaires will not relinquish their power easily.  The system was created to keep those people at the top.  Racism, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia have been perpetuated to pin those on the bottom against one another, to keep them from uniting. The police were established to enforce this narrative and protect capitalist interests.  In the North, they were established to protect the transportation of goods and keep poor workers, largely immigrants, from collectivizing and prevent them from having a voice.  In the South, the police were derived from overseers with the intent to preserve slavery. The police system is not broken. It is running exactly how it was intended to run.  The narrative that there must always be people on the top and those on the bottom was a common defense of African-American slavery.  It is an idea with the sole intent to keep people oppressed.

Helen Keller, the famous activist who fought for the rights of those disabled, understood that equality for those disabled could never be obtained in a capitalist society. Disabled people will always be seen as inferior.  Safety was secondary; so, businesses can maintain their quotas increasing the possibility of accidents causing workers to become disabled.  It is not commonly known that she became a socialist herself and became a member of the Industrial Workers of the World, an organization which believed that that the workers must run industry.  It is a workers’ union dedicated to democracy and solidarity. Their core belief is that you have nothing in common with your boss.

Bernie Sanders is not a true socialist.  He is a social democrat, and lately he has had to tame his speech in order to maintain his power and influence.  He believes in a highly regulated capitalist system.  Socialists believe in abolishing capitalism altogether.  

I am an actual socialist.  I do not believe the system is flawed.  I believe the system works exactly how it is supposed to function and it is disgusting. This ended up being a loner post than I had planned it to be, but I do have much to say on the subject.  It is something I am passionate about even though I will probably not see this come to fruition.  I hope this was insightful to how I have come to my beliefs which I hold today.

[theschizoidblog]

On the road to enlightenment

Blog 8: 01/09/2021

It's been a long time since my last blogpost and I'll be honest and say that I haven't had particular inspiration to write for a very long time. Not just for this blogpost, but also for fanfiction or other stories. I haven't touched a pen in ages, and that's very atypical for me.

In the past that was usually a bad sign. Being unable to write sometimes equated to being unable to feel anything. It was usually a sign that I was in a very bad place, going through the motions, and often utterly depressed. However, I feel like this time it's different.

I went through EMDR therapy and have no longer had any PTSD attacks and my self-worth has steadily grown since then. While there are still things for me to work on, I'm feeling more self-assured, assertive and even content in life. Today's blogpost is to focus a bit on what brought me there, and what I still need to work on.

An Ambitious Title

Let's just say that "On the road to Enlightenment" is... well... quite pretentious a title indeed. But I do think it's accurate.

What I mean with the term enlightenment is very broad. It's the ability to have bad things slide off of you like butter off a hot knife, to have a sense of inner peace, to be like a tree unyielding to the wind, just swaying along...  It means accepting your own position in life, and understanding what you can change of circumstances around you, and which battles can not be won. It means trying to be a little better every day, no matter the odds against you, but also being okay with it if the process is slow or sometimes comes to a standstill. It's being your own best friend and your biggest supporter.

So even if I singlehandedly can not solve poverty or global warming or a pandemic, I can take my responsibility and help in the ways that I can control. And I can let go of what is out of my hands.

And most importantly: I understand that I am still the person who controls myself, even despite past traumas or my own character, it would be foolish to say growth is impossible.

So in that way, I do think I’m on the road to enlightenment. But I’m not fully there yet. And maybe that mountain is further away from me than I believe right now, but I’m feeling hopeful I can reach it.

Improvements I noticed

Less inclined to jump into drama

The past year, there are a few things that I've somehow let go.

In the past, I could get really into stupid arguments online. Someone said a dumb thing, and I would be there to refute it. And it wouldn't make me feel better. It would just be a stupid way to get a little dopamine boost, until the asshole would respond with his own little dopamine boost, until we'd shredded each other to a pulp online. And a day later the process would begin anew, with another idiot of the day in another random spot on Facebook.

I still read a lot of things that sometimes have me start a sentence to refute whatever idiotic statement they posted, but nowadays, after a few words, I press backspace until no words are left, and I move on.

I bet it seems like a logical thing to do to some of you - not everyone gets dragged into useless discussions like that, but for me it was a miserable way to pass the time sometimes, and it would utterly drain me and even keep the focus from my job.

Instead, I did join more fandom groups with memes, and now if I do need a little dopamine boost, I prefer to check some of those memes, and pass on the best ones to some of my friends, brightening their days too. That's a small way to spread positivity instead of rewarding negative behaviour with attention. And doing that constantly is like a breath of fresh air. It's much chiller than before.

PTSD? Gone!

After EMDR therapy I also noticed that I no longer get triggered by my old trauma or situations similar to it. In my EMDR post I explained more about how it worked, and shortly after writing that post, we also wrapped up the EMDR therapy, and I noticed during situations that would otherwise have triggered me, I felt a little anxious, but only for a few seconds, and then I became aware of the anxiousness, I was able to remain confident in myself, and it never escalated to the point of tears or anger or a fight or flight response.

Mindfulness = happiness?

While we haven't dealt with mindfulness in therapy yet (we probably will soonish), I do feel like I'm getting better at counting my blessings, also thanks to my lovely cat Vincent. He's an absolute joy and I love having him around, he makes me incredibly happy and is such a smart boy. I do really think he’s responsible for so much of my progress.

It's a massive improvement, because I started therapy with the 'feeling' that I hadn't felt anything in ages. Nothing but anger, at least. To experience positive feelings, even if they might still be flattened in degree compared to what neurotypicals feel, is great.

Because two years ago, when I went into therapy, I only felt angry or tired, nothing else. I'm still tired sometimes, but not angry, definitely not angry, I'm feeling calm and instead of anger I feel determination, which is sometimes anger channeled into something useful. I could really get used to that.

Self-confidence

If you would have asked me a few years ago if I were self-confident, I would have hesitated, then probably said yes. But the fact I would have hesitated, says enough about how it really was. I'm feeling more assertive now, and at work I dare to offer my thoughts and frustrations more than I ever did before. Many schizoids can probably relate that they avoid conflict at work. We do not like that attention for ourselves.

But let's give a dumb example - suppose a radio is on at work, and it disturbs you from performing well... a schizoid might remain silent to keep the peace, and then suffer in silence.

Nowadays, I would no longer keep silent. I would talk about the issue. I would also accept if there would be no solution to my problem, but I would advocate better for myself and voice my frustration honestly. I'm no longer covering up frustration in honey, because that doesn't work. I have learned to be more direct, even though I'm not sure how I learned it during therapy - I suppose it might be a result from the EMDR therapy (and from getting older, probably.)

Ongoing Struggles

Focus and flow

One of my biggest issues to this day remains executive dysfunction. I can get paralyzed at the thought of completing certain tasks. I'm still not certain where this comes from. I've asked my therapist if she thinks it might be ADD or something of the sort, but she has not given it  a straight answer, to my frustration.

I still receive help in the household from my mother, and I wonder if this is going to be a permanent thing and if I need to get a household help for the rest of my life, or if this is still something I can grow out of, as I'm slowly nearing the age of 40.

I can't find focus for household tasks and certain other things, and can't always find flow for work or certain hobbies either.

With flow I mean the feeling of "being in the zone". Even when doing some of my favourite things, like gaming, I can still feel out of the zone, and get bored of it, or restless.

That's actually a relatively new thing for me. I never got bored. Like, ever. And now I'm finding myself bored more easily than before.

I do sometimes find flow too, in work or hobbies, but it's not a permanent thing. Finding better focus and better flow is certainly going to be a task for the future.

No ambition

I still have no ambition whatsoever. And I'm not even sure if that's such a bad thing or not. But the thought of changing jobs, changing apartments or changing most of anything is too exhausting to even consider. And so I remain at a standstill.

Sometimes I also think 'oh wouldn't it be nice to do more Twitch streaming?' but then I never find the energy for it, and I'm like 'you have work, that's enough, you don't need to spend your energy on streaming, you're not social enough for it anyway.'

And then I wonder why I want to Twitch stream in the first place and I can't even answer the question. Because others do it and make money that way? Because I like gaming in my free time? I truthfully have no idea.

I've also lost all ambition to write. While I didn't write with the idea of getting money out of it, it was still something I did regularly, and I haven't written anything decent in many many months. It was one of the only things I liked to do regularly and it has fallen away somehow, and that does worry me a little.

But maybe the question is whether ambition is a must in a person’s life? Is it a must in a schizoid’s life, or is a life without ambition still a good life, and a person without ambition still a good person? 

Conclusion

So while I've come a way already in my therapy, some big hurdles are still ahead, mostly the executive dysfunction. Does it come from something schizoid-related or could it be due to some perfectionist trait or ADD?

I also regret this is one bit we can't tackle with EMDR - because EMDR worked very well for me, I'm kind of sad not every bit of my personality can be improved upon with that type of therapy.

I'm at that point in therapy where I'm grateful for the help I've received so far, and I'm able to name several things that have greatly improved, but I'm also a little afraid that the next thing to tackle can not be tackled or improved upon at all anymore, like I’ve reached the limit of my therapist’s expertise or my own ability to change. 

The executive dysfunction has been with me since I was a teen and I honestly don't know how it can go away. I hope that in a year from now I can give an update where I'm like "oh, good news everyone, it's gone, and here's how I did it!"

Until then, feel free to come into my inbox with any questions you might have (about anything) and I'll be certain to leave a response for you on my blog or in private!

[dreamsinger-rose]

Review - Trolls

First off, if you’d like to see other stuff I’ve written, on Fanfiction.net I am Dreamsinger. On Amazon, my usually-very-comprehensive reviews are under Gemseeker.

For my first post I thought I’d start with a review I wrote about a movie I fell in love with recently - Dreamworks’ Trolls. I posted a shorter version of this review on Amazon. I couldn’t post the whole thing - apparently it was too long! LOL.  Feel free to make a comment - or multiple ones, seeing as how I go through quite a few different points that may be easier to discuss separately. I’m looking forward to hearing what you all have to say :) 

Funny, clever and heartwarming. Characters you care about- one has PTSD. Catchy music, gorgeous colorful animation

This is a funny, funny movie. Make no doubt about that. But there are a lot of touching, subtle messages in this movie as well. Don't get me wrong, you can look at it two ways - on the surface it's a comical, musical adventure about a pair of not-quite-friends who team up to rescue a group of trolls kidnapped by a monster called a bergen who wants to eat them. Kind of generic, right?

But as a story writer with an interest in psychology, I see a lot more going on, if you only care to notice. Without going too much into spoiler territory, here's what stood out to me and made Trolls a beloved favorite of mine.

The troll world is fantastically unique, a place where the laws of science, particularly physics and biology, are very different from our world. For example, trolls use their hair for all sorts of things; it moves and stretches at will. There are certain trolls whose bodies produce cupcakes (that are apparently edible); others produce sparkly glitter that is used in various creative and/or defensive ways. Oddly enough, I don't find this offensive; what appear to be fart jokes aren't, not quite. Also, trolls' skin and hair colors can change rather dramatically. This fact becomes hugely significant later.

Troll culture has some rather unique points – clothing is apparently optional. The glitter-trolls don't wear clothes, but there are no embarrassing bits displayed, so I’m fine with that. There is a charming custom called Hug Time, where every hour, trolls are supposed to participate in group hugs. Trolls actively teach their children that everyone deserves to be happy - that it's important to care about others and live in harmony. They also have this tragic backstory that is not gone into much in the movie; namely, that older trolls must have had friends and loved ones eaten by the bergens in the past, which makes me wonder if they have something of the mentality of oppressed people, who feel a strong need to stick together.

The animation is absolutely gorgeous, with brilliant colors that appeal to the artist in me. But even more so, what struck me the first time I saw Trolls was that none of the characters -not one- fit what we think of as traditional beauty. There are no "beautiful people" here, just regular people who work and laugh and go on dates and -successfully- fall in love. That's a powerful message. Think about it.

What I love most about Trolls is how so many of the characters learn from each other and grow into better people. The troll princess, Poppy, is cheerful, fun-loving and well-meaning at the beginning, but when disaster strikes, she takes on the responsibility of rescuing her friends, despite knowing nothing about the world outside her village. I admire her leadership and positive thinking – she is a great role model for the other characters. Her funny, upbeat song "Get Back Up Again" is one I've used myself to get through tough times...

In conflicts with other characters that could easily have ended badly, Poppy demonstrates a lot of compassion and forgiveness, as well as the ability to just "roll with it". Those are valuable people skills, and really impressed me. She isn't perfect, though - she can be pushy, manipulative and irritating. Poppy is the personification of hope, which is all the more heartbreaking when she finally breaks down and ends up being the one who needs help herself. She also demonstrates resiliency, and is able to bounce back and make good decisions despite all that happens to her.

The character Bridget (her name means "strength", by the way) is a simple, caring bergen who could easily have been the star of a Cinderella-type story all by herself. A scullery maid hopelessly in love and despairing of ever having the courage to tell him, she begins to change when she meets the trolls. By the end of the film you feel so proud of her for stepping up and doing what she feels is the right, no matter what it costs her. From her, we learn self-confidence, self-sacrifice and courage. A truly admirable, and likable, character. Her voice actress' singing is phenomenal. She can do everything from tremulous love songs to disco funk.

My favorite character, hands down, is Branch. "I don't sing, and I don't relax. This is the way I am, and I like it!" He's easily the most complicated person I've seen in an animated film in a long, long time. While he is prone to outbursts of temper and paranoia that the other trolls find tiresome, (truly, he is hilarious in these scenes!) Branch is also very caring, more than he wants to admit, even to himself. As the only gray troll in the village, his color is more significant than we realize at first. He has a dark past that is hinted at almost from the start, and a lot of emotional issues (related to guilt, of all things), to overcome. I admit it; my heart goes out to him.

I love his character design. He wears a vest that reminds me of gingerbread house trim, all rows of overlapping half-circles or semi-arches, worn with a pair of endearingly clumsily-sewn shorts. One of the other characters even comments on his vest, which makes me wonder if it was a gift from someone special… Branch is also the first young character I've ever seen with crow's-feet, premature stress-induced wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, something that gives his face a remarkable amount of character.

Despite his problems, Branch is portrayed as a strong character, who is methodical, resourceful and intelligent, good at mechanical engineering, physically capable and agile. He demonstrates a certain wry sense of humor at times. He is all the more brave for facing his fears out of love for a certain someone. A small spoiler that I think most of us would guess anyway, seeing as how he is voiced by Justin Timberlake: Branch's song True Colors is one of the sweetest, most charming songs I've ever heard. (I bought the Trolls music right afterward.)

The voice talent, as I've said above, is excellent. Every song is sung with so many fine nuances (Poppy's voice trembles, Branch has the most delicate, sensitive tone I think I've ever heard). I like how Poppy's voice goes husky when she's feeling emotional. I love how Branch's voice cracks when he's nervous or upset. I find the fact that three of the other trolls have different accents from the rest fascinating, making me speculate on whether there is more than one troll village out there.

There are very few areas of which I'm critical; one being the use of a few religious terms like "Oh, my God" and "angel", but as they are used in a non-religious way I can accept that. There is no swearing and aside from the glitter/cupcake jokes, no actual toilet humor, which is often the reason I won't buy an otherwise decent movie.

One area that I wish had been explained, even briefly, is how bergens justified eating trolls, seeing as how they can talk with them. Did they think they were just some kind of silly animal that happened to be able to speak/sing? It makes it harder to sympathize with the bergens, even after we see how miserably depressed they all are.

"Happiness isn't something you put inside you; it's already there. Sometimes you just need someone to help you find it." -A quote from Poppy with massively significant undertones, so subtle I didn't see it until I'd seen the movie several times. Bergens have what they consider a good reason to eat trolls –they believe it makes a bergen "truly happy". Sounds kind of addictive, doesn't it? Is that reason all the current bergens believe themselves to be miserable (BTW, why do they have a roller rink/pizza parlor if they're so unhappy?), even those bergens who have never eaten a troll? Because most of them were addicted and even twenty years later still long for what they perceived as “true happiness”?

Don't forget to check out the bonus content. There's a series of clips called Troll To Troll, where Poppy and Branch engage in amusing dialog that helped me understand Branch's character better. While he's often described as a grumpy loner in other reviews, the Branch in the clips seemed to be more social and less angry, with his biggest emotional problems relating to anxiety, not hostility.

Final notes: There's a reference in one of the songs called "Sunshine Day" from the Brady Bunch. 

Although Poppy is portrayed as the main character, Branch and Bridget are really the true protagonists. They grow and change more than anyone else.

Overall, I believe that Dreamworks did a fantastic job on Trolls. I feel that a lot of the people who worked on it have some background in psychology, (or suffer from anxiety or depression or know people who do) since many of their films have a strong emphasis on emotions, and Trolls is one of the best movies they have ever produced. (Thank you, Dreamworks!)

Be sure to check out the Trolls holiday special, and the cartoon series based on the movie, too. There’s also a two-minute short called Trolla-Palooza Tour, where we get to see Branch play the electric guitar.

There’s lots more I could go into, especially now that the TV series is out (still not sure if it counts as canon or not) so please comment/reblog, and thanks for reading this massive post ^_^

[bewareofchris]

My entire dash is posting Tony discourse so here’s mine:

+ I didn’t like Cap in Avengers.  I didn’t like Cap in Captain America (whatever his first movie was).  I thought he was boring.  However, Cap is 100% all about getting shit done and he understands that means people dies and maybe he dies and maybe we all die but the man has already literally committed suicide to save people.  It’s not even a little bit shocking that he wouldn’t like Tony when they first met.  Tony rolls onto the scene brash and arrogant as he usually does.  These are things I like about Tony, he’s confrontational and he’s a trouble maker and YES he also is a genius and he has recently dedicated his life to trying to better the world and that’s are admirable but their core personalities still aren’t people that would get along without effort.  This doesn’t make either of them villains.

+ For that matter, they were supposed to have reached a point of mutual respect for their very different but equally important skill sets.  That was the point of the whole final battle (In The Avengers).

+ There’s no telling how many missions they did together as Avengers, or how much time they spent hanging out together.  We don’t get to see them getting along because the MCU doesn’t show us that.  We only get to see them when they’re at odds; maybe that’s because in the MCU Tony and Steve aren’t pals or maybe that’s because Age of Ultron was predominantly a clusterfuck.

+ Tony doesn’t like Steve (at first, over all) IN PART because his Father did like Steve.  If the MCU spent anymore time giving Tony unresolved father issues it would have to move its genre to Lifetime.  It’s entirely possible that Steve doesn’t like Tony because of Howard too.  Either he feels like Tony is too unlike his father or he feels Tony is very like his father and being around him reminds him of the fact that literally everyone and everything he knew is dead.  I mean take your pick

+ it was abundantly clear in Iron Man 3 that Tony needed Actually Medical Attention.  Whether or not Tony’s friends noticed/understood the symptoms and ignored them/encouraged him to get help remains up to the viewer to decide.  Since the story line of that movie wasn’t “Let’s get Tony to Counselling!!!!” it wasn’t relevant enough to put into the movie.  This doesn’t mean Pepper/Rhodey/Happy didn’t notice or try.  It just means it didn’t show up in the movie so you can argue whether anyone cared canonically or not.  (Except Bruce, who fell asleep while Tony told a story.)  But the end of that movie heavily leaned toward “Tony’s All Better Now!!”

+ I spent all of Iron Man 3 literally screaming about how stupid it was that none of the other avengers are there.  WHY WOULDN’T THEY BE THERE.  WHY WOULDN’T TONY CALL THEM.  WHY WOULDN’T THEY CARE.  Because the writers, that’s why.  Or because the contracts for the actors.  Or some other not-actually-related-to-the-characters/plot reason.

+ BUT THEN THEY DID AGE OF ULTRON, THE CLUSTERFUCK.  I’m speaking here from a purely story-teller’s POV when I say that the only reason that Tony thought up and bullied Bruce into helping him make this World-Killing Machine was the Writers had no No Better Ideas.  They were like: well we only have a few of these guys left and only one or two of them are smart enough to do a thing and we made Hank Pym old and irrelevant so fuck him I guess Tony who was Mostly Better in the last movie has to relapse into crazy-face shenanigans.  I don’t think Tony was wrong or bad to want to create something that helped the world, or that would have acted like a shield.  I think Tony shouldn’t have done it alone.  Or in secret.  Or without telling anyone.  Which is what he appears to do in Age of Ultron (the clusterfuck)

+ I tell my kid like 100 times a month: “If you’re hiding it from people, you know it’s wrong,” when she gets into stuff she shouldn’t and takes things that aren’t hers an tries to smuggle candy to school.

+  Tony is a dick.  I love him but he’ a dick.  Steve’s a dick too.  But we can’t all go around pretending that Tony isn’t a dick.  

+  Or that Tony has trust issues and literally has never shared his toys ever.  I could list examples of Tony hiding his creations and refusing to share them but I think we’ve all seen the movies.

+  None of this makes Tony a bad guy.  Tony just makes choices based on his own personality and his own experiences and his own fears.  Which is EXTREMELY HUMAN.  

+  Cap is not a glorious savior of mankind who is without fault and always right.  He is, however, the Hero Type.  He is portrayed as righteous (which gets annoying) and also Right (sometimes by accident).  My sole beef with people attacking Cap is that they always try to drag Bucky into it.  I’m bias because I love Cap/Bucky as friends, boyfriends, roommates, whatever I don’t care.  But even in MCU Canon, Steve is willing to risk his own life/give up everything to save Bucky.  They established that in Winter Soldier.  He was like: sure go ahead Bucky literally beat me to death that’s fine I’m here for you.  For Steve, Bucky is that cinnamon roll too pure for this world and he must be protected at literally all cost.

+  This brings us slowly around to the shitstorm that is Civil War.  Civil War’s entire plot is stupid.  I’m just going to say that outright.  They never actually established the Avengers as a fully-functioning tight-knit group of friends/co-workers/fellow-heroes.  You know that Sam and Natasha like Steve well enough to work with him/do dangerous and stupid things with him.  They trust him and respect him and you know that because you’ve seen it actually happen on screen.

+ Civil War starts out doing a huge disservice to Tony.  From a story-telling point of view, at NO TIME is Tony’s story line presented fairly.  While he is not the villain (there almost isn’t a villain in this, what’s his face with the sibera plan was too pathetic to count) he is CLEARLY the Antagonist(ic plot device).  They show him trying to cope with his life by spending way too much money on Virtual Reality Toys.  They make sure we know that he still hasn’t properly dealt with his parent’s death.  They set up that he’s exhausted, more or less.  His girlfriend (who was a major step for him considering what a massive fuck he was prior to Iron Man 2/3) has left him, he’s struggling with his PTSD (one could argue stems all the way back from when he was attacked/kidnapped/tortured/etc), he’s struggling with the loss of his parents (and if his parents, you could also so he’s struggling with Obadiah who we all forget because he’s a bitch but its heavily insinuated he was a Father figure prior to that time He attacked Tony and then Tony had to kill him).  Let’s just say it’s no surprise Tony is Struggling.  Civil War takes a man who just needs to get some sleep, a quiet place to think and possibly intense medical intervention and sets him up with the world’s stupidest idea ever.

+  I’m not knocking the Accords, but if i have to read one more post about how Steve Was Very Wrong for not signing them, I might start screaming.  I’m not here to talk about whether or not Steve was Wrong.  But it’s no surprise Steve didn’t sign.  Steve who lied on multiple enlistment forms.  Steve who defied direct orders from the military.  Steve who was a USO performer and an honorary Captain who did Very Fucking Dumb Shit that happened to Turn Out Ok because he was the Hero and for literally no other reason.  Steve who rolled up to Hydra-Shield with like 2.5 friends and thought he was going to save the day (AND HE DID, BECAUSE HE’S A HERO AND IT’S INSANE THAT IT WORKED).  There’s no surprise that Steve doesn’t want to sign a sheet of paper that says he has to follow orders given to him by someone higher up.  It’s just not his personality.  He trusts himself, he always has, in literally every situation he trusts himself and his own judgement over everything and everyone else.  That’s good/bad depending on how you want to look at it, but that’s all it is.

+  Incidentally, Tony usually thinks the same:

+  So lets assume that Tony agreed with the Accords on the basic principles they stand for.  That he was like: you’re right we need these, we need to have accountability.  Because while he’s a jackass and all he did go through that huge moment in the first movie where he discovered he was accidentally supplying terrorists and he flipped his shit.  Tony does NOT want his Legacy to be War and Death.  I respect this.

+  Civil War does not set up Tony to be viewed without bias.  They set him up to be an obstacle that Steve has to overcome.  The language they use is passive-aggressive and desperate.  I’m not saying that Tony is, but (In my case) it’s not even about Tony wanting the Accords for the Good of the World.  He wants the Accords to protect his friends.  And he’s willing to bully/beg to get them.  So everyone signs, Tony gets his Accountability because the Avengers are World-Wide Property now, and he also gets to keep his friends.  For me, personally, the Accords are a steaming pile of shit.  And at no point did I even understand why Tony wanted them.  Or why Natasha signed them.  Rhodey?  Yes.  Rhodey is a Military Man.  Rhodey makes complete sense.

+  a few other disservices that Civil War does to Tony: They have him “imprison” Wanda “for her own safety” but then have Steve & Friends break her out (and then Steve frees all the other Avengers from jail).  They have him COMPLETELY IGNORE evidence that some shit is not right and instead have him focused on begging Steve to join the Accords.  This is my biggest beef.  If Steve/Tony were ever friends, then Steve should have gone to Tony and said: “look this doesn’t seem right to me.”  At which point Tony the Literal Genius and Dude who Created a Flying Suit to Right the Wrongs should have said, “yes it does seem fishy”  Even if Steve didn’t sign the Accords there’s 0 reasons that Tony couldn’t have still seen that something was up and put into motion a plan to do something about it.  There should be no reason (assuming Steve/Tony have actual respect for one another and have worked together before) that Steve shouldn’t have trusted Tony to do that.  

+ I’m not talking about Steve going after Bucky before anyone else could.  There’s no universe were Steve wouldn’t have gone after Bucky once he knew where he was and that he was in danger.  I mean all the shit after that.

+ Tony gets his BFF paralyzed, he enlists an ACTUAL CHILD, and puts half the Avengers in jail.  (I mean not him himself actually but that’s how the movie is set up.)  And then after all that, and after a whole movie of him ranting about this is the only way, Tony goes to Siberia.  Tony does the EXACT THING that all the others were trying to do DESPITE HOW THEY WERE JUST PUT IN JAIL in DIRECT CONFLICT of the ACCORDS.  I don’t care if you’re in love with Tony Stark or not, that shit is ridiculous.  I mean, that is the Single Reason that I walked out of this movie furious at Tony Stark.  It completely eclipsed every shred of sympathy I had for the man.  It made everything that happened before completely meaningless.  

+  But that’s what the story demands.  This whole movie (like Avengers, like Age of Ultron) seems to only care about pitting the heroes against one another.  Like, AT ALL COSTS.  If Loki had met up with What-his-Fuck (siberia guy) before Avengers, that little horned asshole would be running the planet because Civil War is x50 as masterful at manipulating Tony vs Steve as any other movie.  

+  I’m just going to say this: Siberia’s guy plan is bullshit.  That video being queued up for Tony to see is ridiculous.  Steve having never told Tony about his parents was shitty

+ (but a side note here, how many of you would be lining up at your friend’s house to tell them the practically useless news that your semi-frozen brainwashed best friend forever had actually murdered Friend 1′s parents while under the influence of Hydra when you have 0 reason to think that this information will EVER BE RELEVANT.)

+  Steve “Values the Truth, but also disobeys orders and keeps secrets, and chooses his one BFF over all his new friends” Rogers didn’t tell Tony “I’m so emotionally vulnerable and lonely, confused and yet nobody seems to notice” Stark about how his parents really died.  It was set up in the movie to be a Huge Deal and it was meant to Punch You in the Guts.  You can feel about that however you want to feel but at the end of the day, for me, shitty choice with shitty consequences or not, it was definitely a believable choice.

+ The big fight at the end of the movie was fantastic.  It was all kinds of pretty colors.  But as aforementioned in basically every Cap movie ever, Steve is never going to chose someone over Bucky.  Not the world, not Tony, not Himself.  Bucky > all other things.

+  The final, most lasting insult to Tony in Civil War is that it makes Cap the hero.  Cap saves the Avengers, Cap saves his friend, Cap sends that letter.  You can say what you want about the letter, about whether it was a real apology or not.  I thought it was.  Some don’t.  

+  Tony’s story line deserved better.  Tony deserved better.  This movie set him up to be seen as a selfish, thoughtless, desperation-driven asshole while it made all those same qualities seem heroic on Cap.

[julystorms]

The Great Fandom Debate: Episode 29, Nanaba’s Death

Considering that April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, it seems grotesquely fitting to talk about the anime-only reveal of Nanaba’s history as a survivor of it.

I’ve seen a lot of talk about the lines Nanaba speaks in her death throes. I’d like to add my two cents because I feel that I bring a valuable and relevant perspective to this discussion.

Here are the lines:

“Ahhh! No! No! Father, stop! Father! I’m sorry! I’m sorry, I won’t do it again! Father—no!” **

They are cried out as she’s being torn apart by titans. She’s already lost most of her right leg; her femoral artery is hemorrhaging blood. Even assuming the artery contracts to try and slow the flow of blood, she’ll lose consciousness in <40 seconds and she’ll die from blood loss in less than three minutes.

A few people have commented across various posts and reblogs claiming that they interpret these lines as Nanaba recognizing her father as one of the titans attacking her, or that she’s hallucinating and she’s apologizing to her father for having joined the military. I’ve also seen people try to claim she was calling out to a priest or to God.

However, in context these interpretations don’t work. Firstly, Nanaba, using polite language, is calling out to her familial father (お父さん)—though he could be either a step-father, biological father, or adoptive father. Secondly, if Nanaba’s family was from Ragako Village, she would have gone south with Mike and/or it would have come up in the Rooftop Conversation scene. It didn’t.

Finally, you can’t take chunks of what she says and interpret them separately. They come together. Everything she says is aimed at her father. Not just, “I’m sorry.” Not just, “I won’t do it again.” She says both of those things to him. She also begs him to stop. She cries out, “No! No!”

This is not a person apologizing to their father for joining the military.

This is a person in the middle of an overwhelming PTSD Flashback. She thinks she’s with her father. She believes she’s done something wrong and is being punished for it. She’s trying to get the punishment to stop by apologizing and promising not to commit the offense again.

Nanaba is not a person who did something wrong once and got hit for it. This kind of PTSD reaction is undoubtedly the result of something bigger. These lines exist to show us that Nanaba is a survivor of child abuse.

We’re not fully privy to the type(s) of abuse inflicted upon her (though there was undoubtedly a physical component). We’re not made aware of how long it went on for, either (it could have still been ongoing at the time of her death—via letters, on furlough). We don’t get the details. All we know is that Nanaba’s experiences with her father were so traumatic that the pain of her leg being ripped off triggered a PTSD flashback.

For a more detailed look: a broken femur is one of the most painful things you can experience, yet Nanaba’s femur being snapped off triggers a PTSD flashback to her father beating her. Rating this as just physical pain, it’s obvious here which event is more painful. Yet we know what pain Nanaba sees as worse, as the bigger evil; we know what experience she associates massive amounts of pain with and the aggressor of that painful experience. It’s her father.

Most people have accepted that Nanaba is a survivor of child abuse and they all have a lot of interesting things to say. I saw many comments and reblog additions by happy and angry people, not all of whom will receive credit with their mentions here (to protect those who may wish to remain anonymous). However, I’d still like to discuss and add my own opinions to this discussion because I believe there’s a lot to be said about this character and about the backstory that has been added for her.

First, my own thoughts. I’ve been writing Nanaba for a long time. I RP’d her for a while. I had a backstory chosen for her years ago, and had mentally, at least, fleshed out her character. To give you an idea of perspective: I’m coming at this as someone who has liked this character for a very long time.

I always wrote her as a fairly confident person, but then the “Shelter from the Rain” story came out and revealed that Nanaba feels that she is a burden to her teammates, which led me to believe she has some issues with feeling that she needs to be better/that she’s not trying hard enough. Lately I’ve been writing privately with @trash-god to try and get a really deep in-depth feel for Nanaba’s character, since I’d like Nanaba to be a big part of a story I’m planning.

This reveal didn’t ruin her character for me. It didn’t alienate me. It left me feeling a little shell-shocked, a little hollow, and …uncomfortably close to her. I have a lot of fears regarding this reveal. I’m afraid people will remember Nanaba primarily as an abuse victim instead of for her actions or her personality: her resolve, her smile, the way she fought, how she took control of the situation, her belief that once you’ve signed up as a soldier you must fulfill your duty no matter how dangerous it is.

And some of the things people are saying… Honestly, reading those things makes me feel like I’m slowly crumbling.

This reveal was manipulative. It existed to make an already tragic death worse. It’s…angst fodder. It will never matter or mean anything.

It says nothing about who she was as a person.

It’s there to shock the audience, and in that it did succeed. A lot of people were shaken. I’m still shaken. I’ve watched that scene now over 20 times. I can’t stop thinking about it. I was shaken to my core over just a few lines.

It’s not the implication of child abuse that bothers me so much as the way it’s portrayed, the perspective we’re given it from.

Abuse like that…

It needs to matter. It doesn’t float in a void. The reveal made it her character instead of allowing it to be a part of her history. We were given a woman’s most private fear, something I doubt she shared with just anyone, and we saw her completely overwhelmed by it—living it, even. She shared her last moments with the person who hurt her most while she was still alive. She couldn’t escape it, couldn’t overcome it—not even as she died.

I refuse to blame Nanaba for succumbing to a PTSD flashback because she can’t help it. It happened against her will. She was terrified and in a lot of pain and those feelings are things she associates with her father. This is a reality that survivors of abuse and trauma live with, often for the rest of their lives. Nanaba can’t control her PTSD any more than any of the rest of us can.

That said, I don’t like the message it sends to victims and survivors of abuse—that they won’t be able to move past it, that it will come back to them in the end, that there’s no escaping it.

That kind of abuse…in an environment like the military… Look, it would have had an impact on Nanaba. You can’t say she was able to hide something so traumatic from everyone: from her teammates, from her supervisor, from her friends, from the person who bunked with her. If pain is a trigger, she’s probably been triggered before—where? An expedition? Training? And then there’s the fact that her father was an Authority Figure who abused her. How did she feel about the people who had power over her in training? Did anyone ever try to abuse their power over her in any way? How does she feel about Mike who is not just an authority figure but a very tall very imposing-looking man? Was there anything to overcome in regards to his presence as her immediate supervisor? What about Erwin as the head of the entire Survey Corps?

I’d also like to address the gendered stink surrounding this. I’ve accepted it as part of Nanaba’s backstory (let’s not pretend this defines her, all right?), but I think it’s really, really important for everyone to acknowledge that the writers made a conscious choice to give this to Nanaba. Not to Henning who has no real personality at all, and not to Gelgar who was suffering head trauma at the time of his death.

We know that Gelgar already had a death scene planned out. It was in the manga. He wanted a drink, didn’t want to go out sober, and was thrown into a situation of cruel irony where he got his bottle of liquor but…it was empty. Nanaba was left a little high and dry in the manga: she died silently—but I liked it because it was something I associated with her line to Mike about not wanting the cadets to see her feeling discouraged. It was something I felt connected to, because man, I really identified with her line about not showing weakness to a bunch of kids she doesn’t know well. I thought (and wrote!) that she forced herself not to cry out at her death to keep from panicking the cadets whose helplessness she felt partially responsible for.

Nanaba didn’t need anything added to her death or to her character—and she certainly didn’t need something added more than Henning (who got the least attention of all the vets at Utgard) did. I realize that Henning died instantly and so was not a good candidate for cramming in a history like this, but I want you all to think about the fact that none of our male characters have a traumatic past of this nature given this little amount of attention. Those same lines could have gone to Gelgar and had a massive impact on the audience. Here’s a fairly strong character who has shown a lot of fear, who wanted a drink, who hit his head hard enough that he lost almost all his remaining strength… And who could have cried out just the same. It would have no doubt leant another angle to his desire for alcohol, to his fear of the titans and his coping mechanisms. To a home life that we know nothing about.

But no. These lines went to Nanaba.

Just like sex/human trafficking went to Mikasa.

Just like an abusive/manipulative mother and father went to Historia.

Just like poverty went to Sasha.

Abuse went to Ymir.

An implication of rape via abuse of military power went to Hitch.

Don’t fucking tell me this shit isn’t gendered in this series. Don’t. Don’t even try. This is trauma used for flavor text. Spice. Aimed specifically at female characters. Tidbits of shit that don’t mean anything overall and never come up again/seem to impact the characters or their relationships to others. Bullshit like that.

The writers weren’t thinking any deeper than “how can we make her death sadder?” And the answer was: “Her life was painful, too.”

You can say Levi had a pretty bad past, but we get chapters devoted to it. We get a two-volume spin-off dedicated to telling that story. We see his personality page after page, chapter after chapter, extra information interviews/stories/et cetera, one after another.

We don’t get that about these female characters.

We never will.

And look. Speaking as a person with a lot of mental issues and hang-ups brought on by various factors I’m not comfortable making public knowledge, I know how they affect my life. My daily life. Including the parts people close to me can and do and will inevitably pick up on. I know how hard it is to try to exist as a “regular” person in a world that is not meant for me. I see red when I see trauma dumped into a series like this just so it can exist as…a cute little…accessory.

That’s not what it is. It’s not a fun bit of trivia. It’s not something that tells us what kind of a person she was. It just exists to make an already terrible death harder to watch. Not because we see Nanaba is rooted in the middle of a PTSD flashback and not mentally present in the situation, but because that is literally all we know of her life. So her life becomes abuse to the audience and so does her death.

This isn’t character development because nothing develops. We’re not shown her working to overcome a history of abuse. We’re not given scenes other characters being gentle to her in ways to help her get through her daily life/cope with this trauma. There’s no progress (or lack thereof) with which to compare to even make a claim that we’re seeing development. For an example: Mikasa learning to let/trust Eren look after himself is development. The fact that she was almost sold into sex/human trafficking is not.

One last comment on this subject: I think the presentation of the scene of Nanaba’s death is especially disturbing in that it manages to victimize her in a distinctly gendered way. The imagery of this scene evokes thoughts of assault, in particular of a sexual nature. I don’t know how much of this was intended and how much of it was accidental. I don’t know if we’re meant to think that Nanaba suffered that kind of abuse at the hands of her father, or because of him (prostituted to other men, for example), or if it’s just a product of how the scene was laid out in the manga. (If one titan had a hold on her and had been chewing on her leg or shoulder and she was crying out in that same way, it would not have given me the same visceral reaction or mental image/connotation.)

There is hope for those who want to look closely at Nanaba’s character, but I refuse to believe the writer(s) looked this closely themselves or even intended it, so I’m just going to stop everyone at the door and say: this is MY interpretation and NOT something I give WIT or Isayama credit for having created intentionally.

In the context of Nanaba’s history as a survivor of abuse by a prominent authority figure, one she had to call “father” (not “dad”) and speak politely to, I think her relationship to Mike is extremely important. Let me explain.

Nanaba calls Gelgar by his first name: no honorifics. The implication is that they are close, or at least view each other as equals (he returns this favor by calling her by her first name without any honorifics). Hell, Lynne talks to Gelgar that way, too.

But Mike is an authority figure—one whom Gelgar (who is in general a casual speaker) refers to respectfully (he calls him Mike-san). Nanaba, on the other hand, just calls him Mike…and not only when she’s alone. Before the rooftop scene, she calls Mike by his first name with no honorific in front of Thomas. Mike is by far her superior, one of the highest-ranked members of the Survey Corps.

For someone who was forced to call her dad “father” and speak politely to him, I think that she calls another Big Imposing Authority Figure by his first name means a lot.

I’ve mentioned this a long time ago, of course, but in light of this new context it carries much more weight. It could be a sign that she’s not weighed down anymore in her everyday life by her shit old man.

Unfortunately we don’t get to see this develop. We don’t know what Mike and Nanaba’s relationship really was, though this implies a certain closeness that isn’t implied between her and anyone else. And we will never know what obstacles she’s overcome to get to a point where she could not only call Mike by his first name, but that she could also feel comfortable going to him when she felt afraid and in need of comfort.

But I like to think it was a long journey--one they went through very carefully together.

(And I’m going to write about it.)

Shipping aside, it’s a hopeful thought. That Nanaba was not saddled with constant fear of her father every single day of her life, and that she did take what she wanted and fought for it--not just toward the end of her life, but all the way through.

Now for the things various people said about this reveal and my opinions on them:

“wonderful character development”

It’s not character development.

“it makes her memorable”

I guess in the same way I’m memorable because I don’t have teeth? Fuck off.

“her character had no hook except ‘badass woman’ in the manga”

People don’t have ‘hooks’ all right. Like from a literary standpoint I get what this is saying but it irritates me. Nanaba was a long-time veteran of a high-casualty military branch who still lost hope when she thought Rose was breached, when she thought the world was about to end. But she was talked into fighting and she did so until the very end—and gave her life to protect the helpless cadets she felt partially responsible for. “Victim of abuse” isn’t a hook. It isn’t her character.

“a cool little detail” because it shows that “even characters you don’t see much have depth to them” and “she has a backstory even if we didn’t see it or a buildup”

It’s not a “cool” “little” detail anymore than my trauma is a “cool” “little” detail of my life. Please be careful about your phrasing. That said, just like IRL everyone we see has a backstory and depth we are not necessarily privy to. It could have still been written in a way that wasn’t jarring and unnecessarily heavy-handed.

“it doesn’t add anything to her or the situation”

I won’t say it doesn’t add “anything” since information about a character in general is something, but…it doesn’t affect the situation so it’s unnecessary.

“an attempt to make her look pathetic and pitiful like Mike during his death scene”

I kind of agree. Mike’s death seemed to seek to humble a hulking giant of a dude by making him break into tears. Nanaba’s death preyed on her gender in a much more harmful way, I think. (As the “Goodnight, Sweet Dreams” story for Mike shows us that he has some PTSD that evokes tears already.)

“so on the nose” / “cheap” / “silly in its attempt to be serious and dark”

I agree with the first two but I don’t think it’s “silly” in its attempt to be serious and dark. Child abuse isn’t silly; I can’t even pretend it’s silly. It’s way darker and more serious than this series can deal with, though; it was just a cheap shot at tragic dark angst.

“no problem with the detail itself” but “pushed and unnecessary to understand her actions”

Agreed completely.

“we don’t have to know much about a character to enjoy them” / “can’t come to terms with what she said even though she never interested [them] as a character”

I agree. I’ve loved Nanaba for a long time, way before this reveal. That said, it was a very triggering thing to have suddenly thrust in your face and I know a lot of others in fandom were made very uncomfortable by it, so I’m sorry that so many people have had to deal with it.

“time spent trying to understand the character might feel thrown away?”

I don’t feel this way, but I understand why people do and I think it’s a perfectly valid way to feel. I feel frustrated, personally, by the fact that I wrote a story featuring domestic violence and Nanaba was in it and in light of this new information I feel I should go back and edit it and tell the entire story for Nanaba, too, instead of the gentle light-hearted story that was told from her perspective. A part of me feels like I’ve been telling her story wrong all these years for having failed to include it. But of course���how could I have known? I was purposefully avoiding the “she has short hair she must have been hurt by a man” stereotype.

“could have been woven in better from a narrative perspective like a realistic flashback in 26 to give her an actual little arc” 

Man oh man, I’d have really felt something if we’d gotten a hint of it in 26: her voicing her own fear, mentioning her father…or Mike mentioning her father in response to her fear-reaction re: Wall Rose (assuming he knows about her trauma and would seek to create a parallel, which is: you fought that, now you have to fight this, too. You won’t lose, you’re not lost. Not if you don’t give up). (To clarify, though, I think Mike would understand that sometimes there might not be much of her able to fight, and that’s okay.) This could be a little extra sad if we assume that she might be worried Mike is dead. Not that she needs him to stand tall, but his role as her encourager and pillar could be really important to her character, and part of her being triggered could be that she feels she’s lost it. But that’s looking way too deep at something the writers would have never bothered to attempt…

“doesn’t mean it’s sexist or shock value if it’s realistic for the world”

Our world’s pretty damn sexist but it doesn’t mean that a guy telling me I have “no business” in my field and “should be home barefoot and pregnant” isn’t a sexist comment. By definition any kind of material inserted into fiction without narrative build-up that happens to be shocking for some reason is…basically just…shock value.

“no indication of her having been abused”

I want to talk about this a little more, because I feel like…abuse isn’t something you always see. Even physical abuse. But narratively speaking it shouldn’t be inserted as a random detail of her life without any buildup. It was a poor choice. Again: shock value.

“doesn’t mean being abused is being weak”

Agreed completely. I don’t want fandom to send this message to people, either. The crime of abuse is on the abuser, not the victim. You’re not weak for doing what you have to do to survive.

“it’s not about experiencing abuse, but how it was handled”

Agreed completely. It could have been done well, but it wasn’t. End of story.

“makes nanaba weak” / “won’t be known for her bravery but as the girl who was abused” / “final moments leave big impressions” / “it’s not sexist though” / “i’d feel the same even if those lines were given to another character.”

It doesn’t make her weak. I understand the fear that she’ll be known as a victim of abuse over her actual personality traits, but I want to talk about this sexist thing you say here, where you think you’d feel the same even if the lines were given to another character. I just want to ask you if you’d refer to Gelgar, given those same lines, as “a boy” and not “a man” or “a guy” or “a veteran.” Nanaba is an adult woman, 30+ years old I’d guess. She has not been a girl for a long time, but since this reveal that word’s been thrown around a lot. Please. Stop that.

“the sexist/misogynistic messages aren’t intentional i don’t think, but they still exist”

Yeah, see below.

“latent sexism is hard to explain unless you analyze discourse and conversation because we’ve been taught it’s normal. The fact that a woman screaming in her death throes begging her father to leave her alone/promising not to misbehave again is normal enough that we consider it character development is what makes it sexism. That there was a CHOICE to give this to a female character is too.” @teetanjaeger​ [here]

This is a great post and I want everyone to read it.

“abuse used as a tragedy amplifier”

That’s exactly what it is.

“a history of abuse (and from the sound of it, horrible ongoing abuse) is canon now. we can’t pretend it doesn’t matter.” / “it won’t be explored or developed.” / “filler to amp up the sads.” @momtaku​

Yes, yes, and yes. That said, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with refusing to accept the anime in this instance as canon—especially if it makes you feel more comfortable.

“a lazy addition” / “cliché”

It’s definitely lazy but I don’t know if it’s cliché. I’ve never seen this kind of death in any other series that I can recall off-hand, but then again…I’m pretty selective about my reading material.

“it’s saying people are still cruel inside the walls”

HAHAHA FUCK THIS BULLSHIT. Look, I get what you’re sayin’ pal, but this is a horse that has been beat to death 3001310 times over in this series. We get it. It doesn’t need to keep being stated. The extent of Nanaba’s abuse comes to this and ONLY this: “How can we somehow make her death worse than it already is?” It’s got nothing to do with spreading more of this message we’ve already seen ten tons of.

“gratuitous and unnecessary. Girl is getting her limbs torn off by titans after losing three of her friends in battle right in front of her—that’s tragic and horrifying enough. Did we really need the implied past abuse angle thrown in there at the last second to make it even more tragic and shocking?” “some backstory or even ONE mention might have made more sense but like with Mike’s death it feels like WIT is just hamming up these deaths to make them as horrible as possible.” “grossed out” “imagery of assault, gendered violence, victimization of Nanaba.” @drinkyourfuckingmilk​ [here]

Completely agreed, especially at the imagery of assault bit. I still feel gross.

“is there sexual abuse implied in this?”

That’s up to interpretation but considering the above imagery we’re given, I think a case could be made for saying it is.

“no issue with a history of abuse” “no issue with a character who rises above it or a character who falls back into that dark place” “issue is with something serious like child abuse being treated as tragedy wank fodder” “can’t rule out the nature of her abuse/if it was sexually motivated” “all of her accomplishments now relate to that abuse, something she had no control over” “her father now colors her presentation” “she’ll never get out from under his shadow” (see: petra’s dad who made fandom see her in terms of her marriageability to a man) “didn’t need to give nanaba’s filthy father more power over her” “at the moment of her death he still had power over her” “she didn’t escape him and that’s grotesque even if we’d known about her situation all alone” “especially terrible for those who relate to her” “I’m sorry there are people using your struggle for tragedy points” @lindowyn​ [here]

Another good post. I agree. Petra’s seen by a lot of fandom the way her dad talked about her: marriageability. It’s awful. I’m afraid for how they’ll portray and talk about Nanaba in the coming years. That said, not everyone gets a full recovery or can throw off the mantle of their abuse entirely. It’s doesn’t make Nanaba weak or “less than” for what her final moments were. But damn if I hate the message it’s sending to people, especially considering how many teens read this series.

“i don’t think it was added to reinforce that strong female characters are built by and will revert to their weakness in an abused state”

I agree, but unfortunately it’s a message that seems to still be getting across. :/ It’s an unfortunate accident.

“they gave her final moments to her abuser”

Yes they did.

“it seems that people who don’t have an experience with abuse aren’t able to understand the viewpoints of those who do”

I think this is the case, especially with the younger fans. Experience goes a long way re: sympathy and empathy…

“they didn’t add this scene because they want to explore child abuse and/or nanaba’s past abuse”

They absolutely did not; you’re right. I think they’d have actually tried a little if they wanted to show us a character who had that as part of their backstory, but I know what they were doing by adding it in—just trying to get a reaction from the audience. :/

If your name is not here and you want it to be associated with your comment...let me know.

TL;DR: I’m not mad at the backstory but I’m pissed about how it was handled, and the way the fandom is arguing about it and treating it makes me feel sick. There’s a lot to discuss here. I’ve accepted that this is part of her backstory. But I don’t want fandom to make it her character and I don’t want people calling her “weak” over it, either. 

I still really love Nanaba. She’s one of my favorite characters in this series. Maybe even my favorite. (How does one pick?)

If you have any questions, concerns, thoughts, or you’d like clarification or to engage me in discussion, please feel free to send me a message.

**Edited as of 20 May 2017: Nanaba’s English Dub dialogue for this scene is as follows: “Dad, no! No, stop it! Please, I’m sorry Daddy, I’ll be a good girl from now on--I promise! Ahhh! No, Daddy, no!!”