#i never thought about how even if childe

[tthelady]

I definitely recommend giving this thread a read. It's genuinely very interesting and touches on several aspects of Childe's mental state

[ducktracy]

there are a lot of evil people in the world and a lot of darkness in the world and so it’s very important for me to stress that now more than ever is the time to spread kindness and compassion. combat the evil by not only not partaking in it, but actively refuting it. destroy the notion that being compassionate or generous or kind to someone is uncool or embarrassing or even scary. be the change you want to see. start a chain reaction. positivity only breeds more positivity. do an act of kindness for someone so that that person who is too afraid to do it themselves can see you, realize that they’re not alone, and perhaps sheepishly follow your example. and then the next person who is too afraid but sees that person can do the same. when bad news comes out about bad people or horrible atrocities in the world it’s such an easy impulse to despair, and obviously it’s important to feel what you need to feel. grieve. be angry. be sorrowful. be empathetic. but dust off your pants and get up and be a part of a chain reaction that, no matter how small the scale, and spread compassion and love and care. all the reasons why you might not—“it’s hard! it’s scary! people will make fun of me! it’s useless because there’s too much evil!” are all grade A arguments as to why you should. you have no idea how many people you could inspire to do the same. even if it doesn’t get you anyway far, you can at least say you have the nobility of trying. please choose love and please choose life. you are worth loving and you are worth inspiring others to love

[maddymoreau]

Thinking about how Diavolo’s feelings transcend time and how in the Nightbringer UR+ card Demon Lord’s Castle Tour this conversation happens.

When asked, “Do you wish to see your father?”

Diavolo responds:

“I suppose I do . . .” isn’t the typical reaction to how a child would feel about wanting to see their parent. Especially when said parent has essentially been in a coma for a year.

Along with how Diavolo describe his father.

It makes more sense why when you learn in Lesson 56 how Diavolo was treated by him growing up.

Diavolo can tell when others are lying but is unable to understand his father’s intentions.

Diavolo mentions that he lived a very sheltered life growing up. That from a young age his father never allowed him a chance to talk to anyone outside the castle.

His childhood friend was Mephistopheles. A demon literally RAISED to be his friend. Putting a barrier between the two because Mephistopheles would put Diavolo on a pedestal.

The isolating childhood he experienced riddled with his strict father constantly scolding him.

Despite everything MC is so important to him he wants to see his father again so we can meet.

[skunkes]

[mikakuna]

the way that nobody noticing, for who knows how many years, that jason broke out of his coffin implies that jason's grave was rarely, if at all, visited, and when it was, nobody in that family of brilliant detectives stayed long enough to notice something was off

[theheirofthesharingan]

“Tell me, father, which to ask forgiveness for: what I am, or what I’m not?

Tell me, mother, which should I regret: what I became, or what I didn’t?”

- source

[starscr0ss]

im thinking about celestia and the abyss being literal opposites (chaos and order) and im thinking about childe and lumine being sort of embodiments of that, just not in the way we think. after the latest natlan quest its clear to us what the fatui intends and what they want- i think the tsaritsa more than anything loves humanity, which is why she directly opposes celestia who are known for bringing down different civilizations. childe, as Her weapon and Her blade is an extenction of that: he's a blade forged by the abyss, bathed in Her holyness, meant to strike down those who sin. lumine (talking solely about traveler lumine) is the literal sister of the prince of the abyss, she has clear ties to it and at this point in the story still is hesitant about fully opposing him (i love angst). her entire story revolves around chaose and disrupting celestia's (and the fatui's) order. isnt that fun

i think what childe longs for the most is control- control of himself, his life, his powers, his story, his fate. i think what lumine wants the most is freedom, which is just another phacet of chaos

anyways. you see it. the themes are theming

[kacievvbbbb]

Look I like Roger enough, I understand what he represents and I generally don’t think he was a bad dude. I do however think he was shit at interpersonal relationships because, what the fuck. Whitebeards crew is infinitely more well adjusted and I’d say he arguably had the more traumatic death.

Like what even, what kind of planning leads a 53 year old man to sire a child knowing he is dying of an incurable illness and is about to turn himself in to be excuted by the marines where he will cause so much chaos it is literally still turning the world on its head 22 years later. He knew he was going to cause so much of a stir that he literally disbanded his crew and told them to spread far and wide to keep them safe. Because he knew the marines would hunt them far and wide But yet he still brought a baby into the world. Babe. What the fuck? What even is that? What was the thought process. I sincerely hope it was an accident and not a deliberate attempt to bring about a new era.

Because if so babe I need to see the recipe or I’m afraid we can never let you cook again

[hijinxinprogress]

Coffee addict Never sleeps Tim drake ❌ 

Solving cases in his sleep off 87 energy drinks Tim Drake ✅

The coffee addict never sleeps perpetually tired Tim Drake thing is a widely accepted headcanon however that was elementary school tim but after he stayed up for a week straight subsisting entirely on coffee to decipher the bat weekly patrol schedule and how it aligns with rogue attacks/Arkham breakouts, he crashed then when he woke up it was fucking wednesday so he missed his chance to commemorate his discovery with pictures of Robin and he decided that shit would never happen again and made himself an ‘efficient’ sleep schedule so he could run around doing fuck shit, add to his robin shrine, and stay on honor roll bc he was even more pissed to see the gotham gazette had pictures of Robin with an on site interview credited to Vicki Vale (listen bowl cut tim had a one sided beef with vicki vale that included tim judging who gets better pics of the bats but she isn’t even aware that she’s competing with a whole ass child 😭 he’s sitting at the table with a mug of orange juice and looks at the newspaper snorts and goes ‘fucking amateur I could do better’) 

Regularly unsupervised tiny businessman in training Tim ‘Ten hours of uninterrupted sleep?? That’s so inefficient not to mention fucking stupid’ Drake is so pissed he missed getting shots of Robin dropkicking a rogue from 6 six stories up (for absolutely no reason dick just thinks it’s fun) that he just takes at least 3 hour naps every eight hours 😭 he refuses to spend almost half a day sleeping ‘for no reason when he could be doing something productive’ 

And he still does this as a bat but it’s just easier to tell if he didn’t take his nap bc he has less than zero impulse control and he’s just fucking done with everything like the gcpd is terrified bc tim’s saying shit like ‘This guys a fucking moron, I could’ve done this in half the time without killing anyone fucking loser doesn’t he know if you keep them alive you can prolong the torture?’ and ‘you’re like all hysterical and for what 🤨 ‘you blew up 83% of Bristol waah’ stfu and fucking rebuild it?? It’s only rich mfs that live there, it’s just a matter of them opening their fucking wallets’ once a new recruit made the mistake of asking if robin had adult supervision regularly and Tim responded with ‘well if you’re gonna snitch to cps like a little bitch then yeah’ and that cop did snitch so tim fucking doxxed him

Yj has just accepted that sometimes they will find tim in an air vent, on the roof, in one of their closets, or something just fucking knocked out then an alarm will go off and he’ll just get up like nothing happened but for the first couple of months they were probably concerned bc ‘I’ve never seen you sleep?? wtf are you on man’ and Tim’s confused bc ‘I slept next to you this morning wdym??’ and that’s how yj discovers tim sleeps with his eyes open

But one of the worst things about Tim’s ‘time efficient sleep schedule’ nonsense is that it fucking works he’s one of the most well rested and coherent bats even after back to back Arkham breakouts however the absolute worst thing about his sleep schedule is the likelihood of going into the cave and seeing tim staring in a daze but wide eyed yet somehow never blinking at the batcomputer with 57 tabs open on top of being unresponsive and thinking he has a fucking concussion or he’s been replaced but he’s just doing case work while muttering nonsense in his fucking sleep for some reason

[monstersinthecosmos]

I read your answer, where did you say "Pandora is his actual type and Armand was his pet"

But how could Armand be just a pet for him? He is one of only three of his turned children. Marius speaks of him as the greatest love (along with Pandora). Although I see some hypocrisy in this. Marius loves no one as much as Pandora. But certainly more than just a pet

Well !

Babe the thing is that, I said what I said and it’s okay if you don’t agree!!! And I’m gonna take this opportunity to double down. (Assuming that you’re asking in good faith and not to pick on me for my analysis lmao please this fandom has traumatized me too much.)

(((TLDR the text never treats Armand like he’s Marius’s equal but also I never said that being a pet was a bad thing.)))

I want to start by talking about the concept of MAKER in VC and how canon tells us that vampires exist outside of human social constructs, including traditional family roles right? Like for example, the moment Gabrielle is turned, she ceases to be Lestat’s mother. 

But with Marius I think a lot about how he’s crafted a persona for himself, and tries to operate in a very rigid set of rules. And part of this is like, how determined he is to live by stoicism even when he’s a mess on the inside, but I also think about in TVL when he says that thing about how it’s easier to just knock a glass on the floor, and how he goes out of his way to appear more human and retain human gestures. 

So like, in the way a MAKER is kinda like, a parent/lover/companion/something too big for our tiny human minds to comprehend. We still get a Marius who is determined to be a father & mentor, and I think a lot about how his need for stoicism and humanity is probably also expressed with his need to be the paterfamilias. 

I’ve been also thinking a lot lately about Bad Fathers in Media—specifically people like Tony Soprano, Logan Roy, Roderick Usher—and how the toxic patriarchy affects their relationships with their sons. Tony Soprano in particular is one who resonates with me a lot when I think about Marius—Tony often indulges in anger because he enjoys being feared (he thinks it’s respect but it’s usually fear), and that’s a bit different on a material level from Marius “anger is too pathetic” de Romanus but they’re both sort of obsessed with the idea of stoicism and trying to be a ~ strong silent type ~ on the outside, even when they’re actually quite messy and emotional underneath.

But wait — put a pin in this for a second. We’ll come back to this, and the concept of fathers and sons. I want to pause real quick to swerve to clarify:

Armand being a pet isn’t a bad thing.

It wasn’t “pet (derogatory) 😒” —  it’s “pet (adorable creature that I care for) 🥰”.

Here’s the thing about MARIMAND if you will (I hate all the VC ship names oh my god theyre all hideous lmao) but like OKAY OKAY. THE THING IS. WHAT ARE WE HERE FOR IF WE’RE NOT INTO THE FUCKEDUPEDNESS ? 

Like I’m not telling anyone how to enjoy a ship, please have fun ! Do you! But to ME? That inter-species friction and 1,517 year age gap is like WHAT THE DYNAMIC IS ABOUT, THAT’S THE FLAVOR BABY!!! Anne Rice herself even said the book was about “a boy’s love for a monster” !!

WHAT’S THE POINT OF MONSTERFUCKER EROTICA IF HE’S NOT A MONSTER LOL

And YEAH I get that not everyone wants to read TVA as a monsterfucker story. That’s okay! It also reads as a savior fantasy. But I enjoy the messiness of it—I LIKE that Marius is an apex predator & ghoulish ancient thing. I like that it’s problematic. I LOVE that Marius really does love him, though, amidst all these other themes. I find it SO compelling.

But I never once said that Marius doesn’t love him. Of course Marius loves him. What I said is that he loves Armand the way we love a pet. I would fucking die for my cats. I regularly burst into tears looking at my cats because I love them so much. But they’re fucking cats lmao.

I never for one minute forget that Marius isn’t human. He’s operating on a whole different wavelength with different points of references and ethics and life experiences. Like, people get so hung up on Armand being 17 and IT WOULD BE JUST AS BAD IF HE WAS 18 OR 25 OR 30 LOL. A frail little human cannot comprehend !!!!!

What’s interesting with Marius’s fledglings though is that he tends not to treat them as equals. Like I think you could read TVA thinking: Once Marius turns him, they’ll be real partners. But no, they stick to their mentor/mentee, dom/sub, father/son roles. We don’t have tons of examples in canon of other maker/fledgling relationships but it’s not a coincidence that Roman Patriarch Marius maintains status over his fledglings. Even once Armand is a vampire, he’s still not Marius’s equal, and Marius’s age and power are still held over him. 

BUT LIKE.

That’s weird, right?

I MEAN THE DARK GIFT IS DIFFERENT FOR EVERYONE but it’s interesting to me that Lestat & Gabrielle’s relationship completely dissolves once she’s a vampire, but Marius & Armand’s doesn’t.

(Sidebar that like, I think there’s also ways to acknowledge that if we think their relationship is good that it’s OKAY for them to maintain these roles because Armand WANTS to be his sub but let me focus on my point here. We should also make time to talk about diegetic BDSM and whether or not it’s appropriate to use a D/s framework for this discussion if the roles are baked into the text and not a choice for the characters and not a game they are agreeing to but that’s for another post.)

So back to the thing about fathers.

I’ve been thinking a lot about bad father characters, specifically Logan Roy and Tony Soprano (also bad mother Margaret Chenowith) and the impossible standards they give their children. Logan and Tony are both men who are disappointed in their sons for being soft, because they were able to provide better lives for their children. They both spoil their sons with all the material wealth that they did not have in their own lives. For Logan we see how badly he resents his kids—Kendall even accuses him of being jealous of what they have—and for Tony he seems to be at a loss on how to parse his feelings. Part of him literally hates AJ for being such a whimsical little fuckup, and at the same time he wants to protect that part of AJ and doesn’t even WANT AJ to follow in his footsteps. Still, he hates to see that AJ is spoiled with no work ethic, and doesn’t know how to set an example for him.

Everything in Venice is designed to spoil Armand with all the things Marius didn’t get—it’s such a specific & deliberate opposite of how Marius was turned. And I think him seeing Armand as a pet puts a little bit of distance between the hurt he’d feel if he thought of Armand as a true son, or even an equal. He doesn’t have to resent Armand for having it easier than he did, but also doesn’t have to feel extremely betrayed by Armand fitting in with the cult. Like, let’s never 4get that by the time Marius catches up with Armand, Armand is right at home and thriving with them. A CULT? THE THING THAT KILLED ME????? Marius has no idea what the fuck they did to him, he just knows that Armand settled in just fine and has discarded everything that Marius tried to teach him. 

I think these roles are appropriately all muddled because it’s VC—like we said, the No Social Constructs series—so like, how do we compare the words SON and PET and FLEDGLING and SUB, I’m not sure. But my point is that he’s never seen or treated Armand as an equal, and perhaps never even a full adult person. 

ARE THESE IDEAS CONFLICTING? A little. But that’s okay. Am I incoherent and ill-equipped to tackle this analysis or is it because Marius is not a consistent person and never quite lives up to the ideal he’s trying to be? Does he want Armand to be his pet but secretly has feelings? Does he fail at being a father figure? Is he brushing off his Big Big Emotions so that he doesn’t have to admit how wrecked and destroyed he is and how badly his feelings were hurt? Idk man. I’m sure you can send me another anon to tell me I’m wrong. 

I wonder sometimes if like, keeping Armand at this lower status (like a pet) actually protects Armand from Marius’s ire and disappointment. Marius is sort of a father, but sort of not. He’s crafted a role for himself that is never all the way sincere, and it allows him some space to protect his own feelings of betrayal and disappointment when it comes to Armand. Marius is also classically bad at following his own rules, and never quite sticks the landing on the people he’s trying to be. 

I can imagine a version of events where Armand does gain some ground with Marius, maybe pays his dues and matures into someone that Marius trusts and respects, but that’s not the version of events we get in canon. Marius turns Armand, Armand remains his pupil, they visit Kiev and Marius is jealous of Armand’s father, they make it all the way to the raid without Marius ever confiding about The Parents. Even in the present day, during a dispute, Marius tells Armand he has the savage & ignorant soul of a child. Even in the present day, Marius won’t stop calling him Amadeo!!!! 

And like!!!!! It feels like Marius is more upset about Santino wronging him by ruining his home and taking his toys than he is about what Santino did to ARMAND. It’s more about Marius’s own feelings and possessions than it is about Armand’s own feelings and experience of what happened. AN ARMAND FRIDGING, IF YOU WILL. 

Anyway.

By never seeing Armand as a complete person, Marius never has to feel threatened by him. We see this in toxic parents a lot. Like, I want you to be good, but I’m insecure if you’re better than me. Or I can never fully respect your feelings because I always see you as a child and not a fully grown adult. And the truth is that Marius is actually quite threatened by Armand, on the inside. He is very hurt. He cares what Armand thinks of him. He’s relieved at the end of BCtu when he assumes that Armand wants to open his heart again. 

So idk like. I think the books end with a little bit of a hope for them; we see a lot of growth and self-acceptance from Marius in the last book and it’s reasonable to assume that he and Armand might have a long chat and nice long cry and work it out. I don’t think it’s completely set in stone, but it’s nice to think about! A nice happy ending. And I wonder if this is when Marius finally takes Armand seriously and listens to what he has to say without demeaning him! 

Am I gonna add 2000 more words to this point by tying it what the whole like “I fear him because I could love him again” thing in TVA means? No I’m not. But like. Again! It’s okay to be a pet, I think Armand liked being his pet. :) 

[im-smart-i-swear]

can you remember being born? were you born at all

[mariailoveyou-guerin]

they are off their meds again meaning misogynior is in full force for the yt mlm yaoi fethis community like im so tired when can they stop existing so we and woman especially blackwoman can be free from them for good

and watch the losers jump on me like I will care and start probing my point by being racist an misogynistic

[shannonsketches]

like why did they change where Vegeta was when Cell announced the cell games in the anime

why did they make this vegeta starting shit with yamcha instead of chillin in the lab with his family? why did they take Bulma out of the lab? Why'd they say she was Out while Dr Brief was repairing 16? Why did they change Bulma working on advanced robotics to running in late with her baby?

it's the same scene except: - Bulma's actively at work being a scientist - Vegeta's not being rude to her (or anyone else!) - Vegeta waits for Trunks instead of leaving the room - Cell interrupted the airwaves, which means Trunks and Vegeta were just hanging out with Bulma and Dr B while they were working

Those are all Great Character Details!! That the anime rails against!!

[yurious-george]

4'33'', by John Cage, is commonly remembered as 4 and a half minutes of silence. But contrary to popular belief, the song is not actually meant to be the sound of silence, but the sound of quiet. Ambient noises contribute to - and consist of - the performance. True silence does not exist. If one tilts their head right, the whole world sings. and, with that said, a playlist.

yeah, this one's a doozy. hi, cubewatermelon and co. miss me?

rhetorical question. don't answer that.

A few nitty-gritty things out of the way, first. this is specifically intended for the 2018 mod team for the sleepless domain fans discord server, primarily cubewatermelon/mary cagle. Folks who knew me are welcome to look on, but I'm not going to do much to catch people up to speed. hi, everyone! hope you're well!

I also might be a bit disjointed or biased in my recollection. For reasons that will be made clear extremely soon, I can't put my childhood on a linear timeline. I can only express myself, and hope I don't mess it up horribly this time.

Noooowww to the big stuff. re: stalking; i genuinely didn't mean to stalk anyone, and when they told me to back off, i backed off. I am not willing to discuss this further. not being able to conceptualize other people's emotions or the consequences of my actions has caused some problems for me

that's an autism thing btw. im autistic i dont think i told anyone that

And now, the special guest you've all been waiting for: a big round of applause for the elephant in the room! In accordance with the WMA Declaration of Tokyo, the deliberate overprescription of psychotropic medication is a form of pharmacological torture. Most victims of pharmacological torture and experimentation are children, because it is nigh-impossible to sue for brain damage when there is no fully-formed adult brain for comparison prior to the abuse.

Torture is a strong word, but I don't have another word to use. psychiatric abuse usually describes mistreatment in psychiatric wards; pharmacological abuse describes a patient who takes advantage of a prescription; medical abuse is when a doctor (usually physically) abuses their patient. Being able to understand what happened to you is a form of agency, and I don't even have the words. I identify as a torture victim; this may change.

This high dose was precedented and legal, but the vaginal stretching of intersex infants is also legal. much involuntary psychiatric & psychotropic treatment (such as restraints and solitary confinement) are legal, and child marriage is legal. abuse is not abnormal: it is profoundly normal. Because something is normal, legal, and precedented does not prevent it from being torture.

and when your mother hands you a poison apple and says "here, eat this; it will be good for you; i hope someday you'll forgive me" you have to eat it, because you are eight years old and you don't get to argue with your mother. despite all this, I don't blame my aunt for refilling the high dose. when I said the dose was hurting me, she listened. (thank you, auntie. i wouldn't have gotten out without you.)

And this brings us to you. oh, you four. (five? i forget myself!)

I'd like to establish some context. I was used to things getting taken from me. friend groups in particular: I didn't expect to keep any friends, because I constantly expected to have to pack up and move on. I moved a lot in my childhood, and in Africa, i was constantly told that at some undetermined point in the near future, i'd have to go back to the states. living with my aunt was a temporary thing, i was expected to eventually move back in with my parents at some undetermined point in the future. I relied heavily on online friends because they were people I could have anywhere, so online communities were my only lifeline - not to mention, i was basically in solitary confinement while in Kenya.

Most of all, I was terrified of my mental health/actions being exposed, examined, found lacking, and ultimately excluded. (this is why i was so afraid of psychiatric wards.) When you decided something had to be done about me - cutting me off from the server so i had to speak with you - It was either comply with your demands to communicate (which I could not, and did not understand why) or lose the community. I was so, so afraid of you i wanted to die when you all confronted me, and of course i couldn't say that, because only manipulative people would say "your attempt to solve this problem makes me want to seriously hurt myself."

But then I got called manipulative anyway <3 yay <3

Seriously: I wasn't trying to manipulate anyone, and i have no idea how you can manipulate someone without intention. (ah, that felt good to say!) Between medication spellbinding, alexithymia, and prior abuse, all my thoughts were so disordered i genuinely couldn't explain myself most of the time. Looking back, I have no childhood memory where I was fully lucid. I leaned into a manic persona because it was the only way I had any agency at all. I was something beyond both reason and self-recognition, and I willingly tried to brute-force my way through an extreme trauma response to please you. And you still hit me with my worst nightmare. that's why i was mad at you lol

I was so, so afraid, all the time, and I didn't even have the tools to understand I was afraid. How could someone as confident and impulsive as me be so fearful all the time? Was that manic persona freedom? Or was it a longer leash?

(Forgive my impulse toward rhetoric. I shouldn't ask questions you can't answer.)

I also couldn't say how badly i was hurting, because that would be venting, but you also accused me of venting when I was just talking about my day? or what was on my mind? I didn't understand that very well. autism moment, don't bother explaining it now. I also couldn't burden people with my actual mental health problems, because making strangers deal with that would be toxic! I resent you for setting up a system where it seemed safest not to speak and then punishing me for my inability to communicate. I resent every system that set me up for failure and punished me for failing, including yours.

And yet - I know that was not your intent! I can see in retrospect how hard you tried to be kind using the tools you had. The people with power over me, who genuinely did not want to do me harm and gave me multiple second chances, still upheld and facilitated the systems that tortured me; a miniature parody of the psychiatric system. (talk therapy and communication are useless if you struggle with self-awareness.) The same is true for the source: No person in my psychiatric treatment wanted me to suffer, and yet, here I am: a torture victim without a torturer. (except my parents, sort of.)

The logical conclusion, then: the system only intends to heal those who are already compliant, or prioritize compliance. The rest of us are treated to induce compliance, and if we still cannot, we are sequestered away. My medicine made me sick, and my prescribers made money off of keeping me sick - off of my torture. This is not a conspiracy: it is my lived experience.

However, even if i could communicate perfectly, we still would have had massive communication issues. Like - you know that one page where ben and steffi talk about dating, and ben says he thought steffi was gay? and steffi gets super defensive and it escalates into a screaming fight? I found that offensive, because a character getting that offput by the concept of not liking men (or a man) is kind of lesbophobic! But I understood that it would be a pain to redraw/write the page so they they fight about something else, don't fight, or some other solution, so i didn't need it to be fixed - just wanted to point out that was a reasonable interpretation, and one to be aware of in the future. but somehow my concerns got interpreted as a phrasing issue…? like, Ms. Cagle rewrote the page to say "weren't into guys" instead of "gay"..? You were very polite about it, Ms! But I found this interaction so baffling I didn't even try to correct it. that… wasn't what i said…

frankly we should bring back mildly homophobic steffi. twas narratively appropriate (<- different essay for a different time)

but yeah the whole communication operation was doomed from the start. rip!

The issue was always my inability to communicate, but my meds made it nigh-impossible to understand what I was feeling, and when I did, expressing myself could get me institutionalized. My suffering was inevitable but always, somehow, my fault. Awesome! *disintegrates into a pile of sand*

I cannot deny I was a girl like a box of matches waiting to be struck. You had no choice but to do as you did. But is it really what you ought to have done? (On this, I have no answer. I hope you have one that satisfies you.)

(that was genuine, by the by. i've spent a lot of time pondering this mess, and I still haven't found the "right" answer. I don't think there is one - though action or inaction, there is no version of this story where I don't suffer. I can only hope it was worth it. wait, hold on *adds the omelas child to my Kin List*)

Nor can I deny making my previous open letter in a small attempt to 'get back' at you - i'm not above that. lord knows i'm not innocent. but i really was trying to channel that rage into something productive. unfortunately i was doomed to fail because i didn't know what i meant. if you showed me that letter now, you'd hear a lot of "what? I don't know why I said that" "i have no idea why i would complain about something so minor" etc. You can disregard all that. This is what I was trying to say. the obsession, the trauma, the projection: all of it. So much of my obsession was talking around an issue i couldn't identify.

(meguka image) I know now

I knew I would be traumatized by this whole situation. I saw it coming and i could do nothing to stop it. But Gear was crucial to deciphering all this - in fact, suddenly thinking about her last year prompted me to really dissect my medical situation and realize i was tortured. I couldn't have done it without her. cassie & maggie, against the world.

Gear scans surprisingly well as a victim of long-term torture, actually. I don't think you meant to do that but good job!

speaking of her - i still don't think she's consistently suicidal. she's a real cockroach of a character, and I love her for it! But sometimes, i want to die and i want to live mean the same thing, because they both mean i need to get out of here. Imo, her thought processes and desires frequently contradict themselves, like mine did. and making your favs kill themselves in increasingly gruesome ways is really fun catharsis!

But please don't take this to mean I consider myself - or Gear - blameless. I love her because she's not blameless, because she's cruel for fun, because she'd rather be wicked than helpless. Like knows like. What I mean to say is, as of 2018, there is a black space between little Margret and Gear, and I saw all the signs of something very, very bad happening in that space. I know because I shared that space. what I mean to say is, teenage girls don't go out of their minds over nothing. Everything I made here is just an expression of what I heard in the narrative's silences.

and thus my biggest apprehension around revisiting the comic. knowing the author and I have such fundamentally different experiences with mental health - what if the signs of torture i picked up on weren't intended, or i completely made them up? what if, in the parts i haven't read yet, there's information that uproots my entire interpretation, or berates her for refusing mental health services that hurt me profoundly? how do you reconcile that a character so crucial to deciphering yourself may not be anything like you at all? I Don't Know. Shitpost, probably

You're welcome to share those shitposts and whatnot by the way. Creating this let me put down years of hurt, and i hope it relieves you, too. I don't need to go back on the server, or forgiveness, or anything besides understanding. consider this a peace offering. the terms are yours.

Despite writing nearly 10k words, I still probably missed something or was callous or whatever. Self-expression and self-understanding are… new to me. My apology may be understated, but please take it as I meant it, with utmost sincerity. My askbox is open, and I'm more than happy to discuss antipsych resources, KB, What The Hell Is Wrong With Gear, artistic choices made in this comic, etc. I'm even down to reconnect on discord! Maybe. Uh, I'm conflicted. I reserve my right to not want to talk, be slow in responding, and so on, as should you. we've no obligations and all the time in the world. Let neither of us hurt ourselves in meeting because it's the "right" thing to do. I'm not blaming anyone or trying to start drama. If it would give you the most peace of mind to completely ignore this, please do so.

or, translated: as of right now, I'm not ready for any information about KB after steffi reunites with her dad, or difficult emotional reunions. I would really like to hear from everyone, and I'd appreciate casual well-wishes. I don't want things to be the same, I want them to be peaceful. Baby steps, cassie, baby steps. (very large and fearful prey animal tries not to run into oncoming traffic)

mostly, making this was for me. Perhaps I've said too much, but after spending so long unable to express myself freely, my art was cathartic and necessary. I'm no one's martyr or innocent, I'm just a torture victim trying to make sense of it all. I want to articulate some thoughts I couldn't figure out how to say before and make some silly things that make people laugh. Most of all, I'm happy in ways I never thought I could be, and I would like to share that joy with old acquaintances and other fans of a story I adored.

What I mean to say is: The train's about to leave the station, and there's an empty seat beside me. The train will still leave whether or not you board; but I would be honored not to go it alone!

Thank you to everyone who stuck by me even after the drama. Ethel, Felipe, Chris - even though we've fallen out of contact, your kindness and patience meant more than i can say. special thank you to @stars-in-a-jam-jar, the first person i confessed everything to after the smoke cleared, and someone i consider myself close with no matter how long we fall out of contact. My close online friends, @shafpanda, @theoandmoon, @dvanaestmrva, my honorary cousin @my-name-is-jimmy, and everyone else I confided in about my torture. and, of course, my partners @transloo and @teenyjellyfishy, and my little sibling, @aroacenezhaanddainsleif, the three people I love most in the world. Thank you, all. it is an honor to love you, and be loved by you.

[wormieapple]

i am once again thinking about emma

[soullessjack]

anyone who’s ever said that liking jack is “basically pedophilia” because he’s “mentally a child” owes the autistic community every single coin in their bank account and a free kick in the teeth. what the actual fuck is wrong with you guys 👍👍