#i’m literally just a survivor of trauma using fiction to cope

[freakishhorror]

“incest is an irl traumatic thing! shipping it in fiction-“ i have experienced and am a victim of incest . shut the fuck up and stop talking over survivors trying to cope !!!!

[toomuchdivergentformyneuro]

♬⃝ Introduction Post ♬⃝

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Hi there, Neurodivergent! I’m Rhysand (pronounced Reese-Sund), also called Rhys (pronounced Reese). I’m a Queer, Nonhuman, and Reality Shifting Neurodivergent. This blog was made for my Neurodivergency, my special interests and my hyperfixations, and everything else to do with my neurodivergency. There will be positive posts, silly posts, relatable posts, negative posts, and more here.

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About Me

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Neurodivergency

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I’m undiagnosed AuDHD (Autism + ADHD), ARFID (Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder), APD (Auditory Processing Disorder), SPD (Sensory Processing Disorder), and Pure O OCD (“Purely Obsessional” Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), medically recognized (but undiagnosed) PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and SAD (Social Anxiety Disorder), and diagnosed MDD (Major Depressive Disorder) and GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder).

I’m also undiagnosed BDD (Body Dysmorphic Disorder), Trichotillomania (hair pulling/picking disorder), Excoriation Disorder (skin picking disorder), and Misophonia.

I’m undiagnosed PMDD (Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder) and/or PME (Premenstrual Exacerbation), and hopefully soon can be diagnosed.

Questioning POTS, HSD or EDS/hEDS. (NOT claiming to have this or self-diagnosed as of yet, I am still doing research, but I do have lots of signs that point to these things.)

My special interests are Wings Of Fire, Harry Potter, Dragons in general, and Neurodivergency.

I have no current hyperfixations that I’ve noticed, and I’m extremely low on dopamine because of it. /silly /srs

I have verbal shutdowns, shutdowns and meltdowns in general, I mask without realizing it a lot, and I’m usually in burnout. I also have severe imposter syndrome that I deal with literally 24/7.

Tone tags are very much appreciated when talking to me, so PLEASE use them! If you aren’t sure what they are or what they mean or how to use them, please just ask and I will happily let you know! <3 /gen

I used to cope by using maladaptive daydreaming, so I relate a lot to maladaptive daydreamers a lot.

I struggle with violent and horrible intrusive thoughts (due to my OCD) and have for years now since I was a kid.

I have lots of trauma, both remembered and not remembered, so beware.

I’m a SI and SH survivor and in recovery.

Little banner my friend ( @/lavenderkittycat ) made me:

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Queerness

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I’m a bit of a gender hoarder, but I don’t use that as my label. I usually call myself a Genderfluid Genderflux Non-Binary TransGuy, but just think of me as a mash of all the genders I experience.

Currently, I don’t know what gender I’m feeling.

I use He/It/They/Xe/Ne/Ze/Love/Wolf/Star/Moon/🌙/Sun pronouns + any/all neopronouns, nounself pronouns, xenopronouns, and emojiself pronouns. Basically, everything EXCEPT She/Her.

I’m AroAce, Aromantic and Myrsexual (Neuroasexual, Nebulasexual, Dreadsexual, Acorsexual, Apothisexual, Falsaesthsexual, Bellussexual, Rosesexual, Requiesexual, Placiosexual, and Merosexual), and I’m Homoalterous, Omniqueerplatonic, Panexteramo, Pansensual, and Panaesthetic.

I’m Ambiamorous with no preference.

I’m also a Lesboy and T4T-leaning.

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Nonhumanity

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I’m a Polytherian, Otherkin, Otherfix, Otherhearted, and a Fictionflicker.

I have a Vancouver Coastal Sea Wolf Theriotype, a Red Fox Theriotype, Nurse Shark Theriotype, Snow Leopard, Norwegian Forest Cat, Maned Wolf Theriotype, Coyote Theriotype, Side-Striped Jackal Theriotype, and a Canada Lynx Theriotype.

I have a Fiction Kintype (Dark Fey, Forest Type, from the Maleficent movies), a Dragon Kintype (SeaWing/SilkWing hybrid), another Dragon Kintype (Night-Light Fury hybrid), Angel, Silver Fox, Avian (humanoid with wings and tail) and a Raccoon.

I’ve had Fictotypes for Hylian, an OC species of mine, Orphinki, Sable, and Owl (all).

I have a Whale Shark Hearttype.

I’m transspecies, humanfluid, pseudohuman, sunnonhuman, and voidpunk.

I fluctuate between Nonhuman and Human, although am always on some level both, just other times are stronger for one and the other not so much, but I refer to myself overall as just Nonhuman. My soul is a combination of human and nonhuman.

All of my Nonhumanity is due to a combination of Past Lives, Fate, and Neurodivergency. I believe I was all my ‘types in past lives, and only found out about it in this life due to my neurodivergency.

I’ve been awakened for only a few months now. I want gear, but I don’t have any right now. I’m making my own wings currently, and I hope to have them done soon if my ADHD brain will allow me.

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Reality Shifting

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I’m a Reality Shifter, which means I move my consciousness from one reality into another one.

I do believe in the multiverse.

I’ve known about reality shifting since around 2020 or 2021, and started my journey then.

I spent a lot of my time trying to shift, even though I didn’t have the proper mindset or knowledge to shift.

I took a huge break after trying for only a month or so, only trying to shift occasionally.

I’ve come back to it in 2024 after finding shiftblr, having more knowledge, a better mindset, and more motivation.

I’ve shifted once to a parallel reality, where I relived/redid a day.

I have way too many DRs to count, and I’m thinking about permashifting to my Better CR DR.

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Links

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@rhysandshiftingthespectrum - My account for my experience with Neurodivergent Reality Shifting, pretty active on there

@neurodivergentshiftingcultureis - My ask account for Neurodivergent Shifting Culture, pretty active on there

@theverynothumankai - My main Nonhuman account for everything Nonhuman, active

@malakaitheyappingwolf - My account for my Vancouver Coastal Sea Wolf theriotype, active

My Tagging System

My Queer Labels

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Other

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I’m taken by my amazing boyfriend ( @itssiryapsalot ), and he’s also neurodivergent, nonhuman, queer, and a reality shifter! (And a lot more, too!)

I’m Agnostic, slightly spiritual, and very respectful and interested in others’ religions. (Although, I do have negative experiences/trauma with Christian and God/Jesus Christ focused religions, and if your blog is heavy with that, I would prefer if you didn’t interact with me! Thank you!)

I’m celiac, have a dairy intolerance, have a dust allergy, pollen allergies, and probably some more that we aren’t too sure about yet! Basically, my nose is constantly stuffy and I have to be careful what I eat.

I have a few hobbies that I’m learning to be involved in again, because they make me happy and I’ve kinda lost touch with them. They are: drawing, writing, painting, coloring, reading, and more.

I stand with Palestine.

I’m pro non-offending p@raph!les and etc., who are in recovery/getting help.

I love receiving and answering asks, so always feel free/unafraid to send one in for infodumping, questions, or anything else! <3 /gen /pos

Let it be known that any and all kinds of neurodivergents are welcome here. Diagnosed, undiagnosed, self-diagnosed (with lots of research, of course). Autistic, ADHD, ANY kind of personality disorder, ANY cluster A disorders, ANY cluster B disorders, ANY cluster C disorders, ANY other unspecified personality disorders, ANY kind of any disorder, those with anxiety, those with depression, ANY AND ALL OF YA!

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DNI

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(I’ve just copied this from my other account’s DNI list and pasted it here, so that’s why there isn’t much/any difference to it.)

Any queerphobes (including those against intersex, mspec lesbians and gays, lesboys, turigirls, gaybians, etc., just basically any contradictory label), Radqueers, TERFs, SWERFs, racists, sexists, proshippers, those who sexualize age-regressors and pet-regressors, ableists (including those who demonize personality disorders), those against physical alterhumans, those against furries, offending MAPs and P@raph!les + supporters, pro-ED, pro-SH, pro-SI, those who romanticize any sort of mental illness, neurodivergency, and/or disability, anti-shifters, those against permashifters, respawners, and race-changers, those against endogenic/non-traumagenic/etc. or mixed origins or unknown origins systems, those against people who self-diagnose after research/with research, those against Palestine, those who’s blogs are Christian or God/Jesus Christ themed heavy (nothing against y’all, just have trauma with it), those who directly send NSFW stuff towards me, those who can’t respect boundaries, JK Rowling supporters, and just about anybody else that makes me uncomfortable. I will block incredibly freely, so beware.

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[target-core]

since you made that post, I’d love to share some of my own personal experience enjoying billford fluff, as survivor of an abusive relationship (though this is absolutely not me speaking for every survivor btw) if you don’t mind!! just because I think it’s an interesting perspective to bring to the table and I don’t want to repeat what the other asks have already said (and you seem curious and I love sharing thoughts about this)

tbob means absolutely everything to me but, in my head, it's already more or less reached the pinnacle of showing the darkest parts of their relationship and, to me, nothing else can fully compete with that. plus, when I'm in fandom spaces, I often use it to unwind and relax, and I just do not have the time or energy to use that space to engage with fictional versions of traumatic events that I have already been through, in excruciating detail. not only because I'm in a headspace where I just can't handle being triggered atm (unlike reading tbob, where I know what to expect and have coping skills already prepared) but also, personally, the concept can seem boring to me sometimes. I've already lived through this and spent years processing the meaning of it. I don't need to see fictional characters I love do the exact same thing repeatedly. especially since my own experience with my own suffering tends to be very mundane and tedious, and that’s part of why it’s miserable (no one ever talks about how boring pain is god .. but that’s a topic for a different conversation that has barely anything to do with this).

but obviously, I still want to engage with fandom spaces, even if I tend to avoid certain aspects of it (not even necessarily by default, it's just a pattern I've noticed with myself). so what can I engage with instead??? well I love these character dearly, devoid of whatever awful things they may or may not have done (looking at you especially bill, you motherfucker). I love their weird and nerdy personalities, I love their relatable backstories, I love how you can explore other themes through them (such as neurodivergency and trauma as a mental condition, rather than as an experience), and I love also how they can actually be really romantic, in a twisted weird way. I mean, merging bodies and minds, calling someone your “muse,” or even just the idea of a demon falling in love with a scientist who’s studying him just feels objectively romantic to me, in a strange and eerie way. not to mention (as I think someone else has said), not all abusive relationships are 100% bad all the time. in fact, that can be why they are so difficult to leave, because when you love someone you want to cling to the good. and I don’t think the good should ever be dismissed or invalidated, no matter how awful the bad is or how much it outweighs the good. plus also, if we’re going back to comparing billford to my own abusive relationship, those two really aren’t a perfect 1:1 comparison. not only because they’re fictional characters living in a world with magic and we aren’t, but also because they’re more like amalgamations of ideas than they are real people. and I love exploring those ideas on their own merits, regardless of the abuse.

so now that I think about it, I don’t even know if “fluff” is an adequate enough descriptor of what I like .. or if it is fluff, it still has some level of darkness or weirdness to it too, even if it’s small. I guess it’s more like I just enjoy the lighter, more whimsical aspects of billford that have more nuance to it .. but also billford is just so inherently incredibly dark that this feels fluffy by comparison. but also that’s literally just my own limited perspective (and I’m not even always consistent with it .. like I said this is just a pattern I’ve noticed with myself). I definitely don’t think it’s the only way to enjoy the ship and I absolutely 10000% get why other people might not feel the same and would want to explore the darker, more abusive aspects to them (technically I also do, just not via fandom). I’m never going to begrudge anyone who wants that and I hope this isn’t interpreted as a dunk on people who do <3333 I just love these stupid characters and their relationship so much and I think talking about this sort of thing is really really fun and interesting

anyways I’ve written probably way too much (and if I don’t stop now then I never will) so if you’ve gotten this far then thank you!! hope you have a wonderful day or night or whatever time it is where you are

Thank you so much for your ask !! :) please don’t apologize for them being too long, I really don’t mind

I have been in abusive relationship(s… lol🥲) myself, and I think with Billford I kind of do the opposite of escapism where I latch onto the darker parts and keep thinking about how it connects to my life over and over and over.. I’m gonna be real, I think the way I engage with them is actually kind of unhealthy LOL but it does make for interesting art and analysis in my head, so I guess it isn’t all that bad..?

I don’t mean to imply their relationship is all darkness. I think there’s levity to be found too… and as you said, abusive relationships aren’t bad all the time. There is genuinely cute stuff that happens between them, even though I tend to view those moments more cynically. I think for those nicer parts, I can’t enjoy them as much *because* I view them so cynically, because I project onto them. It feels too real for me to think of those moments as genuine because it opens up the possibility of a world where things could’ve been better. It’s hard for me to explain, I apologize if I don’t make any sense.

I really really do not want my original post to be viewed as a dunk either. Different interpretations are the spice of life!!! It’s all awesome. I enjoy seeing them in anything. I was more just genuinely curious on why the common interpretation is lighter than what’s presented. I feel like that might’ve not come across as well as I intended, and I’m sorry about that.

Thank you again for your ask!

[thinking-about-fiction]

Literally. It's so embarrassing. And it's not just harassment as in online bullying these people recently doxxed a recent r*pe survivor over false allegations over fiction and she lost her job and income. These self named "antis" celebrated. Someone posted a su!cide note (unconfirmed if they died or not) because of how much antis bullied them an there was a 30,000 note post going around on here celebrating their possible death, saying they hoped more died. They go into the inboxes of CSA victims to tell them they deserved their abuse. I myself have been dogpiled by over a dozen at a time (some get hundreds at a time so I'm lucky) and told "well you ship that nasty ship, you must have enjoyed being abused! I hope it happens again!" There's so much disgusting shit they've said. There's a blog on Tumblr called @anti-receipts that shows just how disgusting the things they say are, saying victims lie about their abuse, deserved it, etc is their favorite thing to say. All over fiction. It's horrifying. they call everyone who disagrees with them a proshipper and assume we're all into all horrible things but that's not true, proship does not mean problematic. Most of us have severe triggers and most of us are survivors. And I don't even label myself proship. I just label myself not an anti, because I would never say the disgusting things they do over fiction.

Whoa. I haven't been part of online fandom for very long so I didn't know it was that bad. That's horrible.

I don't know if I would call myself a proshipper or not. I just think that people don't deserve to get bullied over fiction. I am not personally a trauma victim, but if somebody is, and consuming that specific content is their way to cope, then that is completely valid and I am glad they found a coping mechanism.

Even if they are not a trauma victim, enjoying content in fiction does not mean condoning it in real life.

Maybe somebody loves watching dramas with lots of cheating, or murder mysteries where a friend or family member was the murderer. That doesn't mean they condone it in real life. That's just what intrigues them in fiction. Fiction allows you to consume things with no consequences (well, it's supposed to be with no consequences).

Anyway, I am in no way comfortable with ships involving abuse, rape, incest, pedophilia, or inappropriate age gaps. But if someone ships such a thing, I am not going to yell at them. I'm not their mom. I'm not the ship police.

Plus I know what it's like to be yelled at online (though it was for something completely different, and I kinda deserved it). It sucks. It hurts. If you aren't used to it, it can feel like the worst thing ever.

Doxxing is a whole other level though. And death threats and suicide notes too.

People who do this, answer me this.

Do you really want someone to lose their job or die over what they enjoy in fiction???????

Think about it. An actual life. Someone with a family and friends. Gone/ruined because they ship something problematic in fiction. That whole group of family and friends are now devastated, or the family is now poor. Children could starve guys. The children you were just trying to "protect".

People who don't care about actual lives and livelihood genuinely scare me.

[sazandorable]

About moderating and banning content on AO3!

Okay so! I haven’t had the spoons to do this for a while but I cracked and ranted about it on twitter which is... not... conducive to long rants, so!

This is a h u g e discussion part of the l o n g history that led to the creation of AO3, which older, more informed, and more articulate people have talked about at length and can be found around if you look (I reblog some of it in my AO3 and fandom history tags for the curious). So I won’t go into that here, nor into the practical reasons why it’s not even possible to put that system in place anyway.

Arbitrarily, or the purpose of this post, because it’s the biggest topic I’ve seen brought up lately, I’ll be talking about fic depicting underage characters in se*ual situations, but honestly I could hold the exact same conversation on literally any controversial content.

This is about why you, specifically, if you are a content creator and especially if you are marginalised and especially if you are queer and especially especially if you are sensitive to fiction depicting certain things... do not, actually, want a banning system on AO3.

What? Of course we do. There’s a lot of p*do shit on AO3 and p*do shit is gross. No one should condone that, wtf? It would be easy to do — just periodically delete the entire Underage tag!

What will happen if that is done is that people will re-upload and continue to write it, they’ll just stop tagging and you will run into it with zero warning nor ability to filter it out. Again, this is not a theoretical — we know this is what happens. When I was a teen, adult content (all adult content) was not allowed on FF.NET; it was everywhere regardless, and without tags. The exact same thing happened on tumblr when adult content was banned as well. It’s not a matter of “staff not handling it well” — it just doesn’t work.

To keep safe the people who need to be able to exclude that tag, that tag needs to exist and be used.

Well, shucks. A reporting system then?

A reporting system would operate in one of two ways:

-an algorithm, which would delete a lot of stuff we wouldn’t want it to delete.

-humans, which is... the bigger problem.

An algorithm sounds great. We do want it to delete everything.

Okay. What about the daddy k*nk fics between consenting adult characters? What about the fics featuring characters that are children in the canon but are adults in the fic? What about the fics about teenagers exploring their se*uality together, written by adults about the experiences they remember having or wish they could have had? What about the thousands of SasuNaru and Drarry and other shounen and YA fics that will get written, by teens or by people who remember being teens? What about the se*ually explicit fic written by teens who are se*ually active in real life? What about the fics about CSA as trauma, about healing from it? What about the fics written by survivors of CSA to cope about their trauma? What about the fics that clearly show that it’s evil and traumatic? What about the super dark, harrowing, but beautiful and artistic that I’m glad I read even though it fucked me up for days? What about the ones that were really shitty but also horribly hot?

Well, some of these are still not okay, but maybe some might be. It depends on how it’s written. We’ll have humans moderating content and deciding, then.

Okay.

The thing is, I don’t know which of the things I just listed were okay for you to be depicted in fiction and which were too much. Odds are I don’t agree with you. Odds are if I asked 10 people randomly picked off the street, not everyone would agree.

Odds are, even if AO3 arbitrarily decided on which of those are allowed and which are not, you would not agree with their choice, and you would still be unhappy with the decision. (Or you would be happy, but your friends wouldn’t.)

Odds are, different AO3 content moderators might not agree on whether a given fic qualifies or not — is it artistic enough? Does it show enough that these actions are evil and wrong? Can the author prove they’re a teenager? Can the author prove they are a CSA victim? Can the author prove that this is to help them cope with their trauma? The author seem to be functioning alright, they mustn’t really be traumatised!

You know what I mean! There’s absolute, objectively gross shit out there that is not artistic and should not be published.

I agree that there’s vile stuff out there that makes me sick and that I think is very clearly just ped*philic trash. But there is no way to, 1) stop those from getting published anyway, 2) take those down and preserve the safety of everything else.

If we start forbidding some things, there’s two ways to go about it.

One single, clear, arbitrary rule — for instance, absolutely no adult content featuring characters under 18 (leaving aside the fact that this would not even work for the reason cited above). So we lose all the stuff from teenagers, all the coming of age stories about adolescence, all the stuff from CSA survivors; people who need to write it can’t publish it anymore, and people who need to read it can’t anymore either (and as a cool bonus, they’re told it’s wrong and made to feel bad about it). Depending on whether the rules applies to characters that are under 18 in the canon, we lose entire fandoms.

Or, subjective moderation by humans, according to what they estimate to be gross.

Let’s assume all moderators can agree on what’s gross or not.

If there is a system in place to ban some underage works because “gross shit”, then that means other gross stuff can be taken down on account of being gross and harmful.

Yeah! Gross stuff should be taken down! Come on, surely everyone agrees on what’s gross and harmful.

Ah.

But the problem is.

Here is a list of things I have seen — with my eyes seen — called harmful to be depicted in fiction:

Murder

Non-con

Inc*st

Cannibalism

Torture

Self-harm

Mental illness

Drugs

Racism

K*nk

Non-negotiated k*nk, but healthy k*nk is ok

Spanking k*nk

BDSM where the woman is a bottom, but woman top is ok

Healthy depictions of BDSM

Unhealthy depictions of BDSM

Queer people doing bad things

Abusive relationships

Rival/Enemies to lovers

Redemption stories

A happy relationship between a 17 yo and an 18 yo

A happy relationship between a 20 yo and a 60 yo

A happy relationship between a boss and their employee, or a college teacher and a student

A happy relationship between a 14 yo boy and an older teenage boy, because that’s reminiscent of older men preying on younger gay boys IRL

Se*ual content featuring a character whose age is unclear in canon and some people headcanon them as being underage, some as being a young adult

Loving, consensual fluff between characters that are evil villains, because it romanticises them and their actions

Dark content shipping female characters

Fluffy content shipping female characters, because it’s misogynistic to act like lesbians are only soft all the time

Consensual s*x featuring a canonically asexual character, because it implies that all aces can and should still have se*

Fics about the same canonically asexual character hating s*x, because that erases the experience of s*x-positive aces

Shipping a character who is perceived by some fans as queer-coded with a character of a different s*x

The tendency to ship a black character with white characters

Fluffy drunk s*x, because that’s not actually consensual

Sleep s*x, because that’s not actually consensual

Trans characters not experiencing dysphoria, because that idealises the trans experience

Consensual s*x between adults that are not married

LGBT+ content, because kids shouldn’t see that.

I guarantee you: you, I, and 10 random people plucked from the street will not agree on what, in that list, is and isn’t okay to publish and consume fiction of.

So why should your taste be the one followed? Why should it be the taste of mods you don’t know? Why should anyone get to dictate? What if the mods think your OTP is gross and your NOTP is fine?

This is the slippery slope argument.

Yes, it is the slippery slope argument. Because we know it happens. Because we’ve been there, because I’ve seen it happen myself twice already and I’m not even thirty. Because we know people do complain loudly about all of these things.

And because the second there is a banning system in place, assholes will use the system to abuse it and get stuff they just don’t like taken down using the “it is gross” argument, and one day you’ll wake up and the beautiful fic that helped you come to terms with your abuse/trauma/identity/orientation/k*nk for feet will be taken down and wonderful vulnerable creative people will have been harassed out of fandom because they argued with 1 person who didn’t like their foot k*nk fic that happened to also feature, for instance, a CSA trauma backstory.

Again: not exaggerating. Not theoretical. It happens, we know it happens, AO3 was created literally because it happens.

I still fucking hate that stuff.

That is completely fine and normal. No one likes everything. Me too! Most of the dark stuff is niche and the creators know only few people will like it the same way they do.

(For the record, I get grossed out and triggered by fics about an asexual character who does not like s*x having s*x with their partner to make them happy. Deep in my gut everything screams that that’s fucked up, terrifying and harmful, how can people write that. But I recognise that there are people who love and need that, and I leave those people and their content alone.

OTOH, I read a lot of otherwise dark shit and I enjoy it in the same way I enjoyed, say, Hannibal, in the same way some people enjoy true crime documentaries, horror movies or r*pe fantasy k*nk. It helps me explore stuff that I like to see in fiction, in a safe, controlled way. I’m also asexual, 90% s*x-repulsed IRL, and, obviously, I would never abuse a child. For that matter, I wouldn’t kill and eat people, either, nor would I do 90% of the tamer k*nky stuff I read.

Of course, Hannibal was fucked up and lots of people probably think Hannibal was gross and should not have been aired — but as exemplified by the fact that it was created, aired and watched, lots of people thought it was fine, interesting and even fun to watch.)

You can and should curate your experience and protect yourself. The AO3 website now allows you to exclude certain tags, and people have developed tools to help with that such as plugins that save your filters or hide fics that contain certain words.

But no, it isn’t going to, and it shouldn’t, get banned.

[hoarder-of-stories-27]

Same OCD anon as a while ago: I’m SO sorry you’re getting harassed over “using it as an excuse” to like dark stuff. You never did that and it’s bullshit to conflate your mental illness with tastes in fiction. Sometimes you can enjoy shit in fiction that OCD separately manifests as intrusive thoughts *when it’s about real life*, that in no way reflect attraction. Intrusive thoughts are the antithesis of being drawn to something because you like it; your brain latches onto it because the idea of committing real CSA is abhorrent. Why people cannot separate that from sexual fantasies/kinks is beyond me. It says nothing bad about you as a person or a P-OCD sufferer that in another part of your life you like/write in certain genres. I know you know this already, but here is a reminder if you needed it: nothing is wrong with you. You aren’t experiencing or responding to mental illness “incorrectly”. And as a writer who is very careful and courteous with warnings and who sets better boundaries than many, you’re doing your absolute best to keep people safe from things that might upset them but that do no harm by simply existing, or by your creating them.

(context)

Thank you so much for this. ;-; I really, really appreciate it.

I do actually use underage fiction as a way to cope with my P-OCD. Those two things are linked. I write stuff tagged with "underage" specifically because I struggle with P-OCD (and also more directly because of my system's CSA trauma) - intentionally engaging with fictional versions of the things that I have intrusive thoughts about really helps me. It's a way to take back power.

But - and this is the important thing - if I weren't using that genre of fiction to cope, that would still be okay. People who just enjoy fictional underage, just for fun? They're fine. That's fine.

I do understand when people go "I'm using dark fiction to COPE, leave me alone" when they're being actively harassed, but... personally, I try not to imply that my various issues are why it's ethical for me to engage with dark (or otherwise about-things-that-would-be-wrong-in-real-life, lol, I do write a lot of fluffy dead dove) fiction. At most, I'll point out someone's hypocrisy in prioritizing fictional abuse victims over a real abuse survivor.

... also, that specific tweet? The one those people from yesterday's entry were upset about? The one about noncon and transphobia? That was not me coping. :'D That was completely just me having a kink. My P-OCD didn't come into play at all. Technically the tweet was connected to my system's CSA trauma, I guess, since I'm pretty sure my biastophilia (noncon kink) is from that, but... the point of that tweet was literally just to be horny about whumping Xie Lian. I wasn't using my P-OCD as an "excuse" for that, because no one needs an excuse to have fun imagining fictional people getting hurt.

*points at the warnings thing*!! I'm glad you think I do well with that. Putting clear warnings on your fictional depictions of things happening to fictional characters is all you need to do to engage with fiction ethically. I would add on to the "these things do no harm by simply existing or being created" with - they are actively positive in many cases.

As a personal example of dark fiction being actively positive - like I said, when I engage with fictional noncon, it's completely just a kink thing. That wasn't always the case. It used to be that I couldn't handle rape being mentioned, fictional or not. Carefully engaging with properly tagged fictional noncon got me from there to here. Rape is no longer one of my triggers at all. As a CSA survivor. So that's pretty cool. And that's because of dark fiction.

Thank you again for this ask. Sorry for rambling. :'D I really appreciate you, and I hope you're doing well.

[helion-ism]

I wanted to write about something that is very important to me: the way people perceive nesta and elain in this fandom (I know that a lot of people have valid reasons to criticise them and I’m not doing this to say they are perfect because how boring would that be.) and an important part of that is nesta‘s trauma vs elain‘s trauma

I think it’s self-explanatory when I say that obviously everybody deals with trauma differently, in fiction and in real life, but I got intrigued by how different elain and nesta seem to be dealing with that, so I looked it up and found something very interesting so this is kinda a long post

nesta

there is something called emotional dysregulation, where trauma survivors have difficulty regulation emotions like anger, anxiety, sadness and shame (even more so when the trauma occured at a young age). one of the methods these trauma survivors use to attempt to regain emotional control is “self-medication” or rather substance abuse, even though it is more likely to further emotional dysregulation. others are disordered eating, compulsive behaviour (like overworking), denial of emotions, and so on. (though there are more positive behaviours to regain emotional control such as physical activity) 

traumatic stress leads to two extremes: you either feel too much or too little. I think with nesta it is pretty much clear that nesta has always been the kind of person who feels too much, it’s why feyre painted those flames on her drawer, because she was always burning. what did feyre say about her in acomaf?

“I think Nesta feels everything— sees too much; sees and feels it all. And she burns with it. Keeping that wall up helps from being overwhelmed, from caring too greatly.”

a big part of nesta’s personality is who she was as a teenager and young woman, before she got made. she blamed her father for what happened to their family, she was furious with him and wanted to make him suffer. she got consumed by it, which is why in the end it was feyre who had to provide for the family. (I’m gonna be real honest here, how were so many of you guys reading the books and blaming nesta and elain for making feyre go out and hunt when her father was literally right there lol. like ... why blame the parent when the sisters are right there, huh?) being thrown into poverty, when she lived a comfortable life and was always made to believe she’d marry a prince or lord some day, it must not have been easy for her as she was the oldest but still a child. you guys, she was a kid. how can that not leave a lasting impression on her? and how can anyone blame her for that?

what do we see in acofas after the war ended? nesta fucks strangers and drinks a lot, maybe too much, doesn’t eat enough, to cope with what happened to her. so why does she do it? do distract herself from her memories, from her nightmares, from every sound that reminds her of what happened when she was thrown into the cauldron and what happened during the war. she spins out of control with her body to stop feeling too much and start numbing the pain (which I assume is why she drinks so much, it’s a great way of making you forget your problems and sleeping with strangers is a way of numbing any emotions too). 

in acosf, we see her choose a family, we see her find gwyn and emerie and we see her accept cassian as a friend (and more), but we also see her start training with him, we see her challenge herself to go down those stairs and eventually, she does not only get physically stronger, gains weight, but she also becomes more confident internally. I feel like a big part of nesta was always to come off as cold and unapproachable, but this is not at all how we see her with gwyn and emerie, and cassian notices too:

With Gwyn … he wondered whether Nesta liked the girl because with her, she was simply Nesta. Perhaps she felt that way around Emerie, too.

obviously, I feel like this is not something that one can overcome within just one book and there’s more for nesta to learn. do I think she’s completely healed? no, but when is one ever? she has started to heal and that’s good enough for me. but I’m just so annoyed when I see people call nesta abusive and other things when they’re not even trying to understand her. 

elain

in acosf nesta says elain just needed time to adjust to the world and person she’s become, but is that it? I don’t think so, not when it is so clear to me that she has not in fact adjusted to this new life.

initially, in acowar, elain is the complete opposite to nesta. which makes me believe she’s dealing with her trauma by numbing, a biological process where emotions are detached from thoughts and behaviours. elain is basically described to be this shell, doing nothing but sitting in her room and craving sunshine. I think she was mainly in a state of shock until things started changing a little bit. (and she was also probably overwhelmed because of her seer abilities)

elain has been sheltered her entire life, first by her family, especially father & nesta and feyre who never once blamed elain for anything but rather focused on nesta, then she met graysen & got engaged and their relationship was apparently very strong (she seems to have loved him and also she gave her virginity to him), and then she went to the night court where she‘s basically been underestimated and coddled the entire time AND she lets them do it most of the time 

“But I wonder if everyone has spent so long assuming Elainis sweet and innocent that she felt she had to be that way or else she'd disappoint you all.” 

that’s what rhys says about her, like he knows there is more to her when even feyre and nesta don’t seem to see it, but this has changed in acosf, not only from rhys’ pov, but also during chapter 58 when nesta tells elain to fuck off

Elain blinked. Nesta blinked back, horror lurching through her. And then Elain burst out laughing. Howling, half-sobbing laughs that sent her bending over at the waist, gasping for breath. Nesta just stared, torn between questions and wanting to throw herself into the icy Sidra. “I— I’m so sorry—” Elain held up a hand, wiping her eyes with the other. “You’ve never said such a thing to me!” She laughed again. “I think that’s a good sign, isn’t it?“

look at her reaction when somebody is finally saying something to her but not sugar-coating it. she laughs. there’s no way of knowing what elain really feels all the time, but you have to admit, this reaction hints that that’s something elain has wanted for a long time. like she’s surprised that nesta is so bold and harsh with her, she says that nesta has never spoken to her in such a way and she’s not actually offended by it. to me it seems like she’s tired of everyone treating her like a child and maybe that scene was somewhat of a revelation to her. 

she’s been so passive for a majority of the series that fans have started calling her useless and plain, but man, I just disgree. as I said, there is valid criticism to be found everywhere (like the way she treats nesta in acosf, but in the end, I don’t really blame her for it when I think she’s still dealing with her own problems). but elain has started to make use of her agency when she helped kill the king of hybern or decided to give azriel back that necklace (for whatever reason, we don’t know yet) even though it seems like she’s still primarily passive most of the time.

so this leads me to hope that things will improve greatly for elain in the following books, especially in her own book. 

basically we have two opposites here in how people deal with trauma. elain is passive and quiet, I believe she still suffers a lot, there might be more to her abilities and that might be a part of why she’s changed her behaviour so drastically to lucien since acowar and all that. but a huge factor is also the way people treat her and implicitly force her to just continue with this coping mechanism. she’s a people pleaser and if that’s what people expect her to do ... then that’s what she’ll do until something eventually happens.

nesta is very wild and bold in her behaviour. we’ve seen her regain control over her emotions in acosf and we’ve seen her accept her new body, her new self. when cassian told her that there is nothing broken to be fixed and that she has to start forgiving herself too, I think that was a gamechanger for her. because when nesta started to forgive herself and deal with her own guilt and shame, that’s when she could truly begin healing. and I love that for her. 

[inevitably-johnlocked]

can we adress how toxic some of these self/harm and suicide fics are?? as someone who has struggled with these issues, treating them as just a way for the two characters to get together, or one character to be the savior who cures someone of their problems? I'm so frickin over it. continuing to put your partner in limbo by threatening this behavior when they don't give you enough attention is a symptom of something major. This is not something i like seeing romanticized. at all.

[CONTENT WARNING FOR ENTIRE POST: heavy discussions of trauma, suicide, self harm, depression, political issue mentions, and eating disorders. Please proceed with care. I am not cutting the post because I think the message is important, so scroll past until my icon disappears <3 Stay safe, My Lovelies.]

Hey Nonny

Okay, I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt here because you mention you DO have struggles with these issues, so I’m going to state right up front here and say I AM NOT DISREGARDING YOUR PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AT ALL. Your view of this topic is valid, and it’s not something I am ever going to say is wrong for you. 

I would like to offer an olive branch, here, Nonny, and give you an alternative take on this, because I’m concerned that perhaps you are still coping with your own struggles and in return, you unwittingly and unintentionally are coming off as unsympathetic to other people’s coping mechanisms.

I KNOW how hard it is to see another view when yours is the only one that seems right, especially after a tragedy or after dealing with heavy things. But all I am asking is for you to temporarily extend some empathy as I discuss my thoughts in this post, and I apologize in advance if I come off as dickish, because, again, it’s hard to see past your own feelings, and I tend to give a “firm but understanding” approach to asks like this. It’s NOT meant to call you our personally. Just asking for an open mind.

I will tackle this ask in a similar fashion to this post here, which talks about shipping vs fetishization so CW for that, as well as like this post here, where we discuss pet peeves. My assumption here is that Nonny is unsure about what “romanticizing” actually entails, and how much this ask is basically Gatekeeping Fiction 101, a thing that’s been going on since the beginning of storytelling. The ask is perceived by me to be emotionally unaware of how unsympathetic it actually sounds, and in turn can unintentionally upset people who engage in these stories.

First thing’s first, Nonny, and I said it before, I GET IT. I understand what you’re going for here, why you feel it’s toxic, and why you think it shouldn’t exist. Here’s the thing, though: what you’re ACTUALLY calling for here is censorship and gatekeeping because YOU PERSONALLY take issue with something, want the fandom specially curated just for you, because it PERSONALLY OFFENDS YOU. And that, it itself, is what’s really toxic, here. Just because YOU are offended, does not mean that it’s not helpful to SOMEONE ELSE, and it’s selfish to make such a demand of people.

Let me explain.

As I mention in the link above re: shipping, many people read and write fics to cope with the reality of their own experiences. Nonny, your experience is NOT the same as someone else’s. Your pain is NOT universal, and you DON’T KNOW what that author has been through; for all you know, they spent 6 months in-hospital after attempting suicide, and they are now simply processing their trauma through storytelling. 

Or, “continuing to put your partner in limbo by threatening this behavior when they don't give you enough attention” ? It’s a VERY REAL THING that ACTUALLY happens in real life, and perhaps it happened to that author, or they want to write an alternate ending to their pain.

Or, “one character to be the saviour who cures someone of their problems?” is something a suicide survivor WISHES someone did for them. Because they feel alone in the world and don’t want to be alone anymore.

These stories are simply escapism for people, either to learn about or share what these mental illnesses do to people, or are the “fantasies” of survivors, of their ideal outcome to their own tragedies. Coping with guilt over the loss of someone they feel they could have saved. The brutal truth about realty.

And sometimes, it is because some people need a good cry and a feel-good happy ending, because real life? Well, it rarely has those happy endings and so few opportunities to let us cry, and sometimes life is just easier when we view it through the eyes of fictional characters. Do you not want someone to save you sometimes Nonny? And I mean metaphorically here, too. Someone to just take all of your hellish burdens off those shoulders for one day. Someone who will come in to save you from yourself. I know I do.

And, well, sometimes, Nonny, it makes people feel less alone in this socially distanced world.

They’re not glorifying that issue Nonny. They’re telling their story.

Here are some thoughts:

Romanticization: Some trendy teen outlet selling a shirt with “mentally diseased” written across it.

NOT Romanticization: A character in a story coming to terms with a diagnosis of mental illness and learning ways to adapt. Their partner is involved 100% and they learn together.

Romanticization: Sherlock merchandise being sold with “I’m a high functioning sociopath” (not mention ableist as all heck)

NOT Romanticization: A character self-harms because of depression, and character B helps the character through their pain and together they get proper therapy and treatment.

Romanticization: Calling yourself “OMG I’m so bipolar!” because it’s trendy.

NOT Romanticization: A clinically depressed author, who survived a suicide attempt, wanting to tell their story through characters the world is already familiar with, and one that a touchy subject can be expressed and understood by other people, because they’re not ready to write the “real” book. Fandom is a safety net for them.

See what I mean Nonny? We don’t KNOW what kind of pain these authors have PERSONALLY been through, and to censor them from having their voices heard and their stories told is just not on for me.

And let me be clear: YES OF COURSE romanticization happens EVERYWHERE. I am not denying that. But your ask is coming off like EVERY STORY EVER WRITTEN is glorification of something. By your logic:

Disabled people shouldn’t write about their disabilities because they’re romanticising themselves.

The authors with medical degrees shouldn’t write realistic med-fics because some where in the world, ONE person MAY HAVE had a similar experience as Character A and B.

Someone broke their foot in ballet so they shouldn’t write a story about a ballet dancer who broke their hip because it may offend ONE ballerina SOMEWHERE in space and time who got sideline at the prime of their career? 

Stories about LGBT+ people shouldn’t be written because homophobes think it’s icky.

We shouldn’t write about wizards because it offends high school catholic pastors (an actual thing that happened)? 

How about cancer stories because kids die of cancer all the time? 

Non-fiction autobiographies about holocaust survivors is not okay.

Science books offend flat earthers, so we shouldn’t write those.

Books about the Big Bang and a 4.5 billion-year-old earth offends creationists, so burn those.

A now-adult child rape victim writing their survival stories to help get their often-in-power abusers behind bars are taboo.

True crime stories from detectives on those cases shouldn’t be told because they weren’t the victim.

Non-fiction in general because someone somewhere may have had that one singular thing happen to them.

How about coping with grief over a parent’s sudden death because I personally might find offense in that since that was a horridly traumatic experience in my life?

Do you see how progressively out of touch this argument is? (the answer to all of these: authors should be allowed to write them, because stories make us human). Your argument leads down the very dangerous path to censorship of books, the internet, and history... to have people only read and learn what someone else dictates, leading to... well.

I’m not trying to be a dick here, Nonny, I’m really not. But I think you’re really missing the entire point of fiction and story telling. I feel you’re failing in the empathy game here, and failing to understand what romanticizing really actually is. 

Whenever I get asks like this, I always feel like the Nonnies don’t really know much about pre-Ao3. I come from “early internet” fandom age, and I’m talking before tags existed. Back when I had to go buy a book at Coles and guess what was in it based on a cover description. No “amazon reviews”. No “harmful content warning” stickers. You just picked up that book, and sometimes you get a sweet story about a friends exploring an alien landscape, and other times WHOOOPS ACCIDENTAL ALIEN SEX I DIDN’T SIGN UP FOR. And sometimes, it ended with a dark story about death, and the reality of coping with it.

Twenty years ago, books on the shelves at bookstores and libraries were the only place you could do your reading and they certainly do NOT have tags on them... Modern tagging of stories are a REALLY recent thing introduced probably no less than 15 years ago and was perfected by Ao3 (which was started in 2009). 

These days, there is no excuse if you only consume fanfiction on Ao3. Fics are tagged with proper possible-trigger tags 90% of the time. They have a VERY METICULOUS filtering system. You aren’t being forced to read the fics, you don’t have to read the fics, so use those tag filters, they exist for a reason.

So, with that in mind, I genuinely DON’T GET this attitude about people wanting everything sugar coated and saccharine by default. Especially when you can LITERALLY CURATE YOUR OWN CONTENT. Life isn’t sugar coated. And fiction shouldn’t have to be either. People tag fics with triggers for a reason.

As they used to say back in my early internet days: Don’t like it? Don’t read it. Don’t comment, skip, next story.

And to put this ALL into perspective, so that you don’t think I’m talking out of my ass, I’m going to reveal something here: Do you know what fics I can’t read, Nonny, because they trigger me? Eating disorders. That’s self harm, Nonny, in a very different way. But you know what? I know that those fics DO help other ED people so I’m not going to sit her and tell people NOT to rec or write them. And some of those authors who write those stories are processing their own ED through those stories, healing in their own way. And you know what I do when I see one of those fics? I don’t read them, move on, next story.

I’m sorry if you perceive this as me being harsh with you here, Nonny, and you DON’T have to agree with me and you can block me and never talk to me again, and I’ll understand. As I stated at the beginning, I’m offering an alternative perspective, and helping you to see that some people take comfort in these types of stories.

I think what this all boils down to Nonny, after all of this, and rereading your question a final time to see if I missed covering anything, is that (and feel free to shit on me if I am wrong here) I’m getting the impression – as an unprofessional outsider looking in – that you’re still struggling with your inner demons, whether you realize it or not. The tone and brashness of your ask has me believing this... It feels like it was written after a trigger-moment and you needed to vent AT someone because you are alone, and that hurts my heart so much. I truly hope you find peace in your mind, soon, and I hope you have someone to talk to professionally, or at least a friend. (tw under link, suicidal ideation discussion and links to phone numbers that can help you). I only wish the best for you, my Nonny.

Anyway. I welcome other people to chime in here, respectfully, and let me know if I have the wrong take here. Because I genuinely don’t think I do, but I am not a professional, so my entire thing that took me 3 hours to write here is probably moot. I’m especially interested (on anon in my asks if you’re not comfy with revealing yourselves) on thoughts from other people who have survived the original topics here, as well as any therapists and authors as well.

Take care of yourself Nonny. And please curate your own content for your mental health. Ao3 has an “exclusionary tag system” as well, please use it. *hugs*

[tomdutch]

I just wanna try and explain this from a phychological perspective.some people, to deal with the trauma in their life, write about it. and that's okay.

they share this writing because they know that there are people out there that can relate to the trauma and use the writing as a way of coping.

in fact, many therapists use writing as a way to help their patients. whether it be about rape or attempted murder it still works the same.

it's not sexualising abuse or rape or incest or whatever, it's dealing with trauma. people deal with that in their own way and if you don't like their way then that's okay but just dont send hate to the accounts. just block them.

you deserve to feel safe in your own in the same way they deserve to feel safe on theirs. have a good day.

i know many therapists use writing as a way to help, my own therapist gave me this advice. you know what she didn’t tell me to do though? to write it about an underage character and post it online and tag it as smut for the entire world to read and masturbate to. it is quite literally something that is meant only for you and your health professional to know about. the minute you post it for an audience to enjoy, it is no longer a therapeutic tool, it’s you sexualizing something for others to get off to, others who you have no way of checking are also victims and survivors and not just freaks and perverts, like it almost always is. also literally nobody writes out their trauma graphically in porno format like smut??? nobody writes AUs of their trauma with fictional characters in a format meant to jerk off to and to find sexual and hot???

exhibit a of that: the person i called out yesterday is not writing it to cope, they’ve made so many posts about how much the enjoy writing incest and rape and pedophilia and how it turns them on.... y’all are absolutely sick and depraved.

and frankly why don’t YOU just block me and get the fuck away from me instead of invading my space and trying to convince me that the most traumatic event of my life is something that’s totally normal to jerk off to. while you’re at it please jump in front of a train <3 like in what world do you think it’s ok for me to say “i am feeling so unsafe and triggered by ppl telling me they’re getting off to rape as a rape and pedophilia survivor” and for you to respond with a long ass ask like “ACTUALLY it’s perfectly ok bc i’m decontextualizing and misconstruing medical advice given to survivors of rape and pedophilia”

this is the last ask i respond to about this. anybody else who’s got twisted disgusting INHUMANE shit to say will simply get blocked and reported for harassment.

[treestargarden]

wonder egg priority, episode 6, “punch-drunk day” analysis under the cut

tw: child sexual abuse, grooming, suicide mention, rape denial

the haters

these guys are freaky. akka claims they are created from the envy and spite the seeno evils feel against ai and the other girls for being “heroic.” i have a feeling these are meant to be metaphorically either people who want to obstruct healing or the thoughts in survivors heads that obstruct the healing. like a person vs self or person vs person plot device for conflict. 

akka says “you have done too much in this world that makes you noticeable.” ai and the other girls have been successful in their egg worlds that the enemies have “evolved” or leveled up to obstruct their success. its kinda of like the concept in therapy where it gets worse before it gets better, right? 

for instance, i can remember when i first started being honest about my childhood trauma with a previous therapist. i was definitely making leaps and bounds in recovery, but i hit a rough spot in the middle of my treatment where i didn’t sleep for days because i actually had several nightmares about a) dying and b) the person killing me was revealed. after getting through this tough time, i stopped having as many nightmares, but it was definitely an obstacle in my healing. i felt like... my assailant was reaching into my psyche and literally ripping my progress away. 

in a way, that’s what the haters are like. they see that ai and co. are getting progressively better with their wonder eggs, so the seeno evils have evolved to try to obstruct that progress. 

yae

yae opens up to ai, admitting she killed herself, because she sees too much. ai immediately compares this to the movie “the sixth sense,” to which yae admits frustration that nobody believes her (it isn’t a fantasy, so why would it be compared to a piece of fiction). 

yae’s killer manifests in a very similar fashion; ai is unable to sense the killer at all until its too late. but it isn’t until ai is directly attacked by the killer that she believes yae’s frustration, hurt, and trauma--she immediately recognizes the issue as similar to her own with mr. sawaki (which will be addressed next). the metaphor with this wonder egg girl is that when it comes to traumas or hurts that have happened to individuals, many people outside of those events tend to question the sanity (putting yae in a mental hospital) or disregard the survivor’s claims (momoe claiming mr. sawaki is a good person, simply because they are related). in some cases, survivors are only believed by survivors of the same prepetrator (why ai finally understands the hurt yae feels /after/ she is attacked by the invisible killer). 

what’s interesting about yae’s character is she is often seen finicking with her prayer beads (they look like jade). at one point, closer to the end of ai’s fight with the invisible wonder killer, yae throws her prayer beads at ai. as ai reaches out for the beads, the killer is visible. this can easily portray that sometimes our comforts (or coping mechanisms) are what makes our healing harder (i’ll go into more detail when i talk about mr. sawaki). BUT that these... “items” illustrating coping can be used by another person to aid in our own healing!

what i mean is that... consider yae’s beads as the cause of her seeing too much. because nobody else has her specific prayer beads, nobody else can see the things she has been traumatized by. but when she “offers” her beads to ai, ai can use them to see yae’s wonder killer! once she she’s the wonder killer, ai can kill them and save yae. 

essentially, what causes a survivor pain can be utilized by another person to assist a survivor in healing. 

mr. sawaki

god this part gets complicated. 

so momoe constantly tells ai mr. sawaki is a good man and that ai has it all wrong! they are constantly denying ai’s grief and pain and trauma. this is very similar to yae’s experience--people denying yae’s trauma existed in the first place, that she was crazy, or seeing what wasn’t actually there. 

if we recall, ai never specifically had a relationship with mr. sawaki other than him being the school counselor. there was a small scene in this episode, though, when he complimented ai’s eyes. i posit it was probably during an “art session” early on with ai. 

i felt... wronged... by neiru’s accusation that ai had a crush on mr. sawaki when she admitted she didn’t want her mom to date him. abusers can be charming, especially when they have been grooming a child. and it can be... confusing feeling soft towards a person even if you know what they are doing to you feels wrong. i’m not sure what else to say to this effect, so i’ll move onto my next point about ai and mr. sawaki. 

it was... really out of left field that ai decided to go back to school, even more out of left field that she decided to tell mr. sawaki about her decision. but then i gave the episode another watch before writing this all out. remember what i said about yae giving her bracelet that was causing her own hurt to ai so that ai could help yae?

basically, up to this point, ai’s coping mechanism has been to stay home from school. to avoid seeing mr. sawaki. but now that its a possibility that he will be dating ai’s mother, its a lot more... likely that ai would be seeing mr. sawaki more often at home than she would at school. he would visit her home once a week, but if he was dating ai’s mother... it could easily turn into more frequent visits for longer and more uncomfortable periods. 

ai probably recognizes this possibility, and so she decided to go back to school, where, yes, mr. sawaki works, but she may a) not have to see him the entire time or b) there will be people around when she does see him so it would be “safer.” 

its also possible that at school, she won’t be as isolated as she was at home, and can begin looking for help in other ways, too. i’m very interested to see where this goes. 

akka and ura-akka as game masters

so obviously the writers are familiar with madoka magica, right?

jokes aside, akka and ura-akka are very analagous to games masters. they aren’t competing themselves, but they do have a hand in the game. they provide the girls with a game to revive (so they say) their dead friends. they have the power to provide the girls with tips, “power-ups,” and other such tools while in their wonder egg worlds. 

basically, the 2 act as gods controlling the environment the girls interact with in the wonder egg worlds. its already been established that the akkas can shapeshift (very beginning when ai meets akka as a beetle). the mannequins are a... simple form they take on that is both human (in form) and inhuman (not alive). both familiar and unfamiliar. they create the wonder worlds based on each girls’ specifici experiences (familiar) and add fantasy and horror elements such as the bosses, the seeno evils, now the haters (unfamiliar). 

the akkas are definitely neutral in this scenario; constantly upping the ante for the girls, but also providing feedback and tools when they feel they need it. the akkas don’t necessarily wanna see the girls win, but they also don’t want to see the girls lose. basically, they just wanna see how far they can tests the girls’ wits, attitudes, problem-solving, persistance, etc. i’m not so sure, personally, the girls will get their friends back, i think its just a convenient lie to see how far they can push humans. 

[shrimpmandan]

Okay even though I’m for all intents and purposes pro-ship can I just talk about how fucking obnoxious some pro-shippers are.

I get it. A lot of us are abuse victims in some way so we interact with morbid fiction to cope and process with it. But a lot of antis are abuse victims as well, and deserve to have their limits and triggers respected. Not everyone copes by looking at incest porn, okay? For many victims, things of that nature can be *extremely* triggering, so they opt to just block all pro-shippers or request them to not interact as to not risk seeing that content. And y’know what I see? Pro-shippers being like “LMAOOO THE FANPOL IS WORRIED ABOUT ME RUINING THEIR FANDOM EXPERIENCE”. Literally they’re just curating their experience, you fucking twat. Respecting abuse survivors means respecting ones different from yourself and this goes for both sides.

The reason I’m pro-ship isn’t to ‘stick it to the antis’ or whatever. I’m pro-ship because I understand that some people cope with fiction, and I do as well. I struggled for years with feeling like a terrible person because of this fact, which I’ve only recently come to terms with that because of the pro-ship community being so positive and welcoming. I also think, overall, we should focus our hatred towards actual abusers and not... drawings. Getting mad at a cartoon or piece of fanfiction is literally not helping anyone in this situation. We could be spending our energy, I dunno, spreading abuse awareness? Providing support to each other? Donating to or spreading the word about abuse-related charities? There is nothing beneficial about calling people freaks over fictional media.

All I want is to not be treated like I’m on-par with my abusers for how I cope. That is it. I see many antis get concerned that this is unhealthy, but for me this has had no major negative effects on my mental health really. I’m in a healthy relationship and all that looking at that content does is give me a dopamine boost. I feel like ships have helped me process my trauma, before I was even aware that I had it at all.

Just respect each other for fucks sake. Respect other people’s coping mechanisms AND other people’s triggers. Don’t harass people you insufferable cunts. I hate this discourse with my whole heart. It shouldn’t BE discourse at all. Don’t call me a “disgusting freak”, and don’t intentionally trigger ‘fanpol’, okay? Okay.

[bigskydreaming]

how do you think the batfam might react if they find out about Mirage and Tarantula?

Tbh, I’m kinda all plum tuckered out on the Batfam finding out about Mirage and Tarantula against Dick’s most fervent wishes that nobody ever find out about that ever. I’ve talked about this a little in the past, but a survivor having the chance to CONTROL when and where they disclose about what happened to them and to whom, is like......soooo much more important for a lot of us than fic about this stuff tends to like....allow it to be. Its one of the most pivotal and powerful ways many survivors even just START to actually recover and come to terms with what happened, by choosing when and how people find out on THEIR terms, taking back control of their own life and their own agency one major choice at a time. And having that choice taken away from Dick too, with him usually not only having ZERO say in who finds out and when but with it more often than not happening in direct opposition to what he wants in that regard....

So like.....personally, I would just really like to see some more variety here. Some more narratives where people finding out happens because Dick’s READY to tell people, because he’s already done a good deal of healing on his own, been to therapy or like....he’s the one who survived this, so let him SURVIVE it and like.....give him a chance to be viewed as a SURVIVOR by his family and not just a victim when they do ultimately find out. Because he doesn’t need them to save him or patch him up, all he really truly needs is them to support him, and they can do that just as well if he’s already made inroads towards his own recovery by the time they find out or he tells them, rather than it just be like...what we so often end up seeing in fic. Where its like treated as matter-of-fact and a given that Dick’s just flat out self-destructing from this no matter how long its been since it happened, and he’s just refused to deal with it or even try to and he’s been running away from facing it ever since it happened, until....enter the family in fic, as they’re like, no, you gotta face it, and you haven’t been able to do that on your own and that’s why its a good thing we found out even though you really didn’t want us to or not yet or not like this, because you’re not handling it, you’re not coping, so you need people like us to like.....show/tell you how to do it right.

You know what I mean? I don’t think its intentional, but there’s a looooot of tendency in fic to like......just take it for granted that despite the fact that Dick has survived so many traumas and been one of the key figures in helping so many other people survive and process their own traumas as well, there’s just this kinda default assumption that in regards to this he’s just flat out broken and always will be....at least so long as he’s just trying (and failing) to handle it on his own, and that’s where the family comes in, even if Dick would really rather they didn’t, or at least not yet anyway.

And its not that Dick can’t benefit from his family and friends finding out so that they can support him and push back against the things he’s come to believe about himself as a result of internalizing his feelings that those situations were really his fault, etc.....its that there’s only so much he can benefit from their support when he only gets it because of...essentially, another kinda violation that compounds the pre-existing ones, as he’s denied the opportunity and the control/agency to be the one to decide who finds out about this and when and why. 

Like, there’s never gonna be an “Ideal Way” for it to go down, but the one thing that IMO is guaranteed to never be ideal and yet so often seems the only way we ever see this happening in fic is like....Dick yet again having no real say or decision in how his life is upended yet again, since this reveal would inevitably change so much about his dynamics with his family one way or another. 

And the thing is, at the end of the day, nothing about this narrative or how it plays out in fic is set in stone or an inevitability or like...the one true or right way for it to happen.....and yet....it only EVER seems to happen that one specific way: aka, against Dick’s expressed desire to have them find out while he’s still actively either trying to repress it/deny it ever happened or just he’s not denying it happened but he’s not remotely ready to face other people KNOWING.

Because like.....he’s not a real person. He’s a fictional character. And just like every other narrative he’s written into or the ways he’s depicted in both canon and fanfic....no matter how much we talk about characters being in character or mischaracterized, at the end of the day, the reality is there is no Core/Immutable TRUE choice that Dick would make in any given narrative or situation....

Because like every other character, he will only ever make the choices or behave in the ways that like....a writer chooses to write him.

So like much of my complaints/criticisms/whines-in-need-of-some-complementary-cheese about trends around and about him in stories.....

The problem I have isn’t with any one single specific way people choose to write him behaving or reacting in regards to this or any other narrative situation....

It lies more in just......how often there seems to ONLY be ONE way, singular, in which he’s ever shown reacting to this or behaving in regards to this, just like is true of the only like ‘one dynamic/backstory’ we tend to see in regards to Dick and Jason’s relationship in the early years before Jason’s death. Or the ONE way people seem to view the aftermath of the Forever Evil and Spyral situation, or the ONE way that people focus on the Tim and Damian and Robin/Red Robin situation playing out.

Its not that like, there’s NO room for any of these takes or narratives surrounding Dick’s side of things.....

Its that there only ever really seems to be ONE take on any of these extremely complicated and messy events and points in his stories and life, and like....one ONLY. And that’s it. That’s all there is to it, everything for the most part tends to be just a hundred, a thousand minutely diverging variations of what amounts to the one big “True Dick Grayson Reaction/Choice” where its just taken as a given that this is how it would happen here, when it comes to each and every one of these major story arcs/plot points. Fics mostly just seem to differ in execution while the core decisions or behavior driving the story action or acting as a catalyst for the confrontation/conversation a fic seems aimed at showcasing.....like, there’s this underlying sameness to so many of them. Where its treated like a given that There Can Only Be One when it comes to ways Dick might react or behave in regards to a certain event or choice.....that his characterization is so formulaic, so like....rigid and allowing for little to no flexibility in how he’s written because in the eyes of so many in fandom his true characterization is so immutable, so....predetermined that there just isn’t ROOM in his character concept for him to end up making any other choices than the ones its taken for granted he’d make.

So I guess ultimately, much like with every other similarly framed point or event in Dick’s life and stories, my ideal preference here is just more VARIETY. Writers actually flexing their creative muscles and stretching to EXPLORE new ways of Dick reacting to various things and new ways of other characters reacting to Dick. Mixing up dynamics more, subverting the expectations that are SO expected in so many things pertaining to him that like, we often can predict exactly where Dick’s character is going to go next in a fic or what his next move or words are going to be, and there’s a certain point at which something crosses the line from someone’s characterization being spot-on and someone’s characterization being......limited. Confining.

Personally, and this is 100% at the root of my frequent criticisms of Dick in fanon and why I won’t just let it go, lol, is that I’m never remotely surprised to hear fans of other characters say that they find Dick’s character dull or one-note or two-dimensional or just not as compelling as the other characters, not as......packed with potential to be taken in a hundred different directions or to react to things in surprising yet surprisingly-still-fitting ways that readers don’t see coming but don’t feel is like, out of left field when viewed in hindsight either.

Why should it surprise people that so many readers and fans view Dick this way when......he’s so often WRITTEN this way, only ever falling into extremely predictable patterns and sticking to a lane that’s clearly defined as not just HIS lane but like....the ONLY lane most people can - or at least are willing to - imagine for him.

It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. People find fanon Dick to be dull and uninspired because like.....he’s pretty much oftentimes written TO be those things, particularly in comparison to his more ‘vibrant’ fandom favored brothers. Nobody’s ever going to find themselves pleasantly surprised by a depiction of Dick Grayson when Dick Grayson’s depictions are so frequently limited to being just exactly what most people expect and not a single thing besides that.

So to bring this back around to your initial ask, I think the Batfam’s reaction to finding out, much like is true of any situation if tackled creatively enough.....can be literally anything a writer wants it to be. I would hope most of us would want that reaction to be supportive, lol, but even more than that just in general, for me, personally, I would love to see more where they’re supportive, yes, but that support is expressed not by them taking CHARGE of the situation, but by them, y’know....SUPPORTING. Standing back, waiting for DICK to tell them what he actually needs from them, wants their support to look like or take shape as, because he is in fact a grown man who is extremely capable in his own right and prides himself on being tremendously self-sufficient, and personally, I wish writers would just STOP TAKING THAT TRAIT AWAY FROM HIM. Or worse yet, like....punishing him for it.

It honestly does seem to me like there’s this unspoken undercurrent in so many fandom posts and fanfics where you can kinda just FEEL an author or poster like.....wanting so badly to just come out and say that in their opinion, Dick’s precious autonomy is actually his own worst enemy, and if he’d just stop being so stubborn and insisting on doing things his way or on his own all the time, he probably wouldn’t end up enduring half as much of the traumatic shit he does.

Which, I mean.....kinda inevitably leads directly into the victim-blaming we SO, SO often see with his character, where fans and other characters are both equally in a hurry to blame himself for anything and everything from Having Amnesia Wrong to being tortured, killed and then emotionally and physically browbeaten into making a Bad Decision He Should Feel Badly About but also Totally Responsible For Cuz No One MADE Him Do It, etc, etc. 

It all spills forth from and feeds back into this endlessly repeating loop that people have kinda penned him into with intent, because what better way to imply that Dick should always just do what his friends and family want him to do and tell him to do instead of like, kicking up a fuss and making a conflict out of it.......than by showing without telling that "see what happens when Dick DOESN’T just let his family tell him what to do and go along with their ‘suggestions’/what they want gracefully?” This. This is what happens. Poor guy ends up traumatized YET AGAIN because he insists on making his own choices and those choices as we can all clearly see are so often the wrong choices, so really, stepping back from the driver’s seat of his own life and letting his family take the wheel is only in Dick’s best interests as much as anyone else’s.

After all, whether its Bruce firing Dick or Dick ‘staying away for years’ or not being the best/ideal brother for Jason right there on the page in no uncertain terms or giving Jason carte blanche to do whatever he wants upon his return or making Damian Robin without asking Tim first and not believing Tim when he said he was sure Bruce was still alive or not just refusing to go along with Bruce’s plan to keep everyone believing he was dead after Forever Evil but at the same time also not just caving to Bruce’s wishes and instead fighting Bruce on that so hard that poor Bruce HAD to get physically violent with him to get Dick to do what was right until it wasn’t right later when everyone else hated him for it, as well as not just deciding he was instantly and fully 100% on board with believing these total strangers when they told him, as Ric Grayson, just who he was now and what his life as a superhero was like and how he should have no problem just seamlessly stepping back into the roles and shoes he according to their claims usually fills effortlessly and thus has no reason to object to now, despite having literally no memories or internalized awareness of the decade and a half of life experiences that serve as the foundation all of that was built upon.....

I mean, when you think about it, 100% of Dick’s conflicts with his family (and coincidentally, also 100% of the source of most other fans’ gripes about him) come from one thing only: him making up his own mind about what to do or feel or think instead of just automatically prioritizing whatever one of his family wants him to do or feel or think about any given situation.

So wouldn’t everyone just be so much happier and pleasant if he would just stop being a silly goose and give up making such a big deal about his vaunted independence and personal agency?

BUT I DIGRESS.

LOL, no, but you get what I mean. So going back to topic for the second time, hopefully with a bit more staying power this time.....I think there’s absolutely no reason whatsoever that the Batfam can’t be realistically and believably written as being every bit as supportive of Dick when they find out about Tarantula and Mirage as Dick is supportive of them at other times and in other ways.

So really, its just a matter of WANT, and personal prioritizations of what that support might or should look like.

And for me, personally, on this topic and pretty much every other potential Dick Grayson-centric story topic, but ESPECIALLY on this topic......I personally would just like to see more of the Batfam being supportive of Dick while he’s dealing with a trauma, but with that support taking the form of them stepping BACK and like....waiting and listening for him to tell them what HE needs from them, what HE wants from them, what form their support can take that will be of most use to him according to HIS wants, aims and attempts at recovery. Instead of them - as they so often seem written as - stepping invasively INTO his space without so much as pausing to see if they’re welcome, or like, if they’re just making things worse or potentially just retraumatizing him by barging in all bull in a china shop even while still having only the vaguest clue what the situation even is at this point, which makes their certainty they have a better idea of what Dick needs and should be doing right now than he does himself, like.....pure, unbridled arrogance and nothing else. Hubris.

(Y’know, kinda like how I make a big deal about Jason punching Dick upon his return from Spyral, because its almost like its not even just that Punching Your Family Is Bad And People Should Stop Making Jason Do It, but there’s also the pesky little implications of how Dick might perceive that no matter how calmly he took it......given that like.....he was literally beaten by his father into doing the thing that pissed off and hurt the rest of his family just as Dick had always expected it would.....and now here he was literally getting beaten by his brother for......caving to doing the thing Dick always knew would piss off and hurt the rest of them and thus he only submitted to doing after being physically and emotionally beaten into it by his father. Of course I harp on Jason punching Dick there, it was him punishing Dick for doing not what Dick wanted, but what he had to be essentially punished by Bruce into agreeing to do it in the first place. It wasn’t just gross as fuck victim blaming and heaping further physical violence on a guy who’s been decked by four out of five family members as is, it was literal on the page proof that Dick simply can not win where either the other characters or most of their fans are concerned, because he was literally damned if he did, damned if he didn’t in that situation, and sure enough, he managed to end up damned by everyone around and still without so much as a single “how are YOU doing btw, given everything you’ve been through, are you okay?”)

So just....my plea, my wishlist, my Big-Asks-R-Us inventory manifesto:

Can we get even just a few more fics where Dick’s insistence on his own independence is viewed not as a character FLAW to be excised or failing that, punished for at any possible opportunity, but as something UNDERSTANDABLE, something VALIDATED by his family for Dick even wanting it in the first place, let alone NEEDING it as much as he does, not because he doesn’t love his family or want to be around them, but because wanting to be his own person at the same time is in no way actually in opposition to that and it never was.

And in that vein and in light of that, I would happily give away my non-existent imaginary kingdom and crown for even just a few fics where the Batfam only end up called upon or tasked with supporting Dick about Mirage or Tarantula because he voluntarily GOES to them and says hey, there’s something that happened a long time ago that I never told anyone because I wasn’t ready to, but I feel like I am now, I need to and its time. 

Or like, fics where maybe he’s still not quite ready to tell them voluntarily yet,  reely and of his own volition, but then on a case they come across a rape survivor in considerable distress and empathizing with them and what they’re feeling, opening up about his own past experiences and offering his own story as a talisman for this victim to cling to as a sign it’ll get better for them eventually too, they can heal from this and one day call themselves a survivor instead of just a victim the same as he does......like, that’s still the most natural thing in the world to Dick, the most Him thing he could possibly do in a situation where the tool most relevant to the task before him is pulled straight out of his own treasure chest of trauma, it not even fazing him in the slightest that his family is there with them right now too and that means they’re going to know now, it won’t be a secret anymore......because Dick Grayson does things he’s not happy about all the time, things he doesn’t necessarily like, that aren’t ideal or his first choice, but when it comes down to Do The Thing and thus maybe help someone, or Don’t Do The Thing and instead turn around and consign himself to a thousand years of solitary confinement in the world’s stankest oubliette cuz its what he deserves, says his Brain all Judgingly.....like. I’m just saying. When the choice is clear, so is the resulting Dick Grayson decision: He does the thing, consequences be damned, and just deals with whatever those may be later. Which in this case would be oh crap, my family all knows now, ugh, they’re gonna want to TALK about it now, booooooooooooooo. But also, oh well. I had to Do The Thing.

And like, the thing there is, it might not be his FIRST choice, but unlike scenarios where he just flat out gets no choice in the matter whatsover as his agency is just reviolated all over again by Tarantula or Slade or someone else taking the choice away from him and just telling people what happened to further fuck with his head and retraumatize him.....

THIS STILL LETS HIM HAVE A CHOICE.

And like. There’s just so, SO many ways you can play with that or places you can take that because the more you ALLOW characters to have a choice, to MAKE choices that are beyond just the one singular most obvious or expected choice, the one so predictable there’s barely an actual choice to be made at all when steering a character like Dick towards that....

MORE choices equals MORE avenues of exploration you open up in your story. More roads less traveled, more surprise reveals or unexpected epiphanies, more new ground to unearth and feelings to uncover rather than just more of the same already extensively traveled plot of land and story and reactions/aftermath already so done to death even Jason Todd would consider them low-hanging fruit not worth making a “but I died” jojke about.

Just....MORE. In general. Across the board. In every possible permutation. New. Different. As yet unexplored. Still capable of surprising. Stretch. Reach. Dig deeper. Find the story direction that makes you laugh nervously and say wtf self, where did that even come from, am I Wild One for even daring to contemplate that such a thing could be written? 

And then go, why yes, YES THE FUCK I AM THAT WILD ONE, and plot twist, I LIKE IT!

Or, y’know. Alternatively, people can continue to write how once upon a time, there was this guy named Dick, and he was kinda a dick, see, so this one time when bad things happened to him it was like, do we even care, or should we just like....cut to his family and see how this is affecting them and therein just maybe we might find an actual story worth telling? Ahh yes, good, that’s the ticket. So anyway, once upon a time, there were these guys named Jason and Tim and you will never believe what happened to them on the day their walking dildo of an older brother tripped and skinned his knee. Now buckle up, cuz THIS is quite the story!

[daz4i]

non-con and r/pe fics are not ~problematic~ content you fucking tool, neither is child p/rn, which ao3 ALLOWS to run rampant on their site. this is also the site that has been in beta for YEARS and doesn’t have the most basic feature aka a block button because it would be ‘too complicated’ to add. shut the fuck up and sit down south park fan

yknow i was originally planning to not answer this bc of the way you’ve “presented” your point, but i do wanna clear what i said while ignoring your needless aggressiveness even tho it’s clear you’re not looking for a real discussion but just looking for an outlet to your anger. you probably won’t read my answer anyway but maybe if any of my followers share the same views, it’s good for me to explain lol. i actually put effort into it rather than throwing insults so it’s long, therefore under the cut

i feel like you’re purposely misinterperting me, once again probably just for the sake of being angry, but ok. yeah it’s more than problematic content, but man when i’m typing tags half asleep what else am i supposed to call it. fine, the writers are the ones who are ~problematic~, phrasing issue, does this part even really matter...? 

this fucked up content (is that better phrasing for you?) makes roughly 1% of the content on the site, from what i’ve heard (obviously i could be wrong, because it’s also really hard for people to measure considering the nature of a proper tagging system, aka if a fic has mentioned rape in it as in a character’s trauma people should tag it, but then is the data analyzer supposed to count it as rape content? probably not. anyway, i kinda went off topic), so i wouldn’t call that “run rampant”

either way, ao3 lets people host this content because of what i mentioned - you can’t actually monitor it unless you have real people running fic by fic to check, which is literally impossible, especially when your team is made of volunteers

and. as i’ve said in my tags. it beats the original purpose of ao3, which is to allow whatever fan content people want to make, due to fandom history

and like, this may seem obvious to you, but how can they choose exactly what counts as content that’s supposed to be blocked? when you say cp, do you mean fics abt highschooler anime characters? this probably counts, but what if the person who wrote the fic is 16 y/o for example? is it just as bad? what if the characters in the fic are aged up? where do you draw the line? (don’t bring up that one “don’t make sexual illustration or written content of minors” law, it’s about real minors, people on tumblr have a tendency to misinterpert that one and think it means cartoon characters) and how do you enforce these rules about stuff like rape? as i said, do you just delete every content that mentions it? what if someone’s venting their experience through a fic and does it in a proper way that doesn’t romanticize it? is it still not allowed? there’s too many “if”s and “but”s for this stuff, and if you try to enforce any rules about them you’ll end up censoring harmless content and survivors coping with their trauma through fiction, and as i said, this beats ao3′s original point which is to allow people to post the content they want with no censorship like previous fan content sites and hosts tried to. this is literally what ao3 was made for. 

ao3 has a proper tagging system and now a blacklisting system just so you won’t have to deal with this type of content that you don’t want to see. and yeah, if people don’t use it right it’s a problem, but it’s a them problem, not ao3′s problem. honestly, you don’t even have to use ao3 at all and you can easily avoid all of this if you want. 

as for the beta thing, i mean, okay? i don’t know enough about web design to see the problem with the site being in beta for years, esp considering they’re still adding features and tweaks. dunno what you might need a block feature on a fic site for (i mean, mean comments? i guess? bc if you don’t wanna see a certain author in search results you can blacklist them after all) but k, legit criticism, but don’t forget they’re also a team of volunteers and have life outside of this site too, obviously it won’t evolve as fast as sites made by people who work at it and get paid to do it. 

anyway, tldr, this shit is unfortunately all or nothing because of the nature of fandom spaces and content blocking, and ao3 would rather go with all (as in all content is allowed). if you disagree with their approach then don’t use the site, idk what to tell you. no one’s forcing you to go on it or look at fucked up content. 

i probably won’t want to further discuss this, esp not with you if you’re gonna approach it like that bc as i said it’s obvious you’re not going to have a proper discussion, and also i think i said my opinion here and hope it’s clear enough? if you disagree with me aight, if i bother you cool just unfollow me. don’t be a dick

[love-takes-work]

The episode that hits you the hardest

There are many Steven Universe episodes that are basically designed to put your emotions through the spin cycle and hang you up to dry. We've all been there during one episode or another--excited, dismayed, inspired, devastated, blown away. But some of us have an episode that kicks us hard in the gut for personal reasons. An episode that's not just emotional, but intimately catastrophic for us. What's yours?

For me, that episode is "Cry for Help."

The character I relate to the most in the show, by far, is Garnet. A lot of people who love her say it's because she's ~so cool~ and aspirational with her self confidence (and believe me, I think that too) and because her relationship is inspiring, but for me, it's because I've never seen a fictional character get stability so right.

She may be on the stoic side and very much the strong and silent type, but she's not stable due to being unfeeling. She's definitely a squishy bundle of feelings under there. But she's utterly in control, knows her strengths and limitations, isn't ever self-deprecating about her talents, and understands herself in a complete and clear way. She can still be surprised or hurt. Being stable isn't about being numb.

Nearly all of the problems Garnet has to handle belong to someone else, and she rarely struggles with herself.

Characters like her and people like me find themselves, willingly and not so willingly, throwing life preservers and providing lifelines to people who are not stable. Many factors figure into why--you do it because you can, or because you know something about their problem, or because you love the person--but if you're a Garnet in a world of insecure Amethysts, inexperienced Stevens, and desperate Pearls, you've probably saved a person or two.

In "Cry for Help," we see Garnet exploited for her strength and stability--betrayed by Pearl, her literal oldest friend in the world--and we see how it (pretty much literally) tears her apart.

It's HARD to rattle someone as stable as Garnet so she shakes apart into her component pieces. It is very very hard to do that to someone with their feet so solidly on the ground. And when it happens, sometimes the pain that comes from it is so intense that you're not sure who you are anymore.

Let me elaborate in the context of the show. The Crystal Gems decide to destroy the partially rebuilt Communication Hub because Peridot's been using it to send messages to the enemy. But they can't destroy it the way they did last time because the Fusion chosen to handle the job, Sugilite, compromised everyone's safety. Garnet fusing with Amethyst is a no-go.

Garnet's handling of breaking that news to Amethyst left a few things to be desired, but ultimately, Pearl was so grateful and joyous to be chosen instead that it's hard not to be excited.

And even though Sardonyx was formed for a functional reason, it was also SO MUCH FUN!

They destroyed the Hub together and both personally enjoyed themselves. Even though Pearl was the most demonstrative about how much fun she had, you can see how caught up Garnet was in the joy. She loves fusion too, and she loves Pearl too, and she loves being Sardonyx too.

"Why don't we do that more often?" says Pearl.

Garnet and Pearl have an incredible history. They've known each other for over 5,500 years. They were allies and soldiers in a lengthy war, they endured hideous traumas together, and they are the only survivors of the final battle. They understand each other like no one else can. Surely they can trust one another.

Garnet found out she couldn't trust Pearl. It turned out Pearl enjoyed the fusion experience so much that she lied about similar threats to tempt Garnet into fusing with her again, and Garnet allowed herself to get distracted, never seeing the possibility of her oldest friend hurting her in such a personal way.

She was devastated. First it came out first as boiling, earsplitting anger.

And then it cooled to icy, silent rage.

What did Garnet say in the moment it happened? Almost all of her lines are about Pearl's actions derailing the mission.

"That's why I couldn't see us finding Peridot." "You've been fixing the Hub." "Peridot's out there somewhere and Pearl's been distracting us with NOTHING!"

She pretends the important thing is how she compromised the mission. But she also says another thing.

"You tricked me."

In this moment, everyone understands why she was furious to be misled. But I don't think the others recognized the depth of this wound because Garnet is very good at concealing her vulnerability. She doesn't want her team to think its leader has the capacity to be personally hurt in a way that limits her usefulness in a crisis. She's supposed to be strong and never let the others doubt her competence. And her confidence has never been a lie--she has never had to put on a face when it comes to that. But in this moment? She slammed all the doors shut. She had been sliced open with a very sharp knife and had to turn quickly so no one would see her guts. (Not the first time she’s done that, either.)

Because of the way she focused on the mission's importance, Pearl bumbled her way through antagonist-trapping attempts for multiple episodes trying to get back in Garnet's favor. And that was probably even more painful for Garnet--that Pearl fundamentally did not understand why a betrayal of this nature was so devastating. She had JUST been through a fusion-related trauma discovering the fusion experiments in the Kindergarten; the sanctity of consent in fusion had just been highlighted for her, in opposition to an extreme example of its violation, and then she gets personally subjected to false pretenses for fusion that negate her reasons for consent.

Pearl made up emergencies to steal Garnet's time and energy, and made her feel foolish for trusting her. She misrepresented the issue because she desired an intimate experience, and tricked Garnet into providing it under those false circumstances. Most importantly, she compromised the integrity of her body and mind using fusion--something Garnet is passionate about, something Garnet fought to defend and define, something at the core of Garnet's identity. Pearl perverted something sacred to Garnet and then she doesn't even realize how wrong it was. It must have been so awful for Garnet to discover that Pearl can lie as easily as she breathes just to get something she wants--something Garnet probably would have been willing to give to her if it had been requested in honesty!--and that she isn't really free to tell her how much it hurt because her longstanding trust had been used against her.

And that's the thing about relating to a character as strongly as I relate to Garnet. When you're the strong one but you're HURT, you still can't let yourself lash out at someone like Pearl. You could crush someone whose daily existence is so tortured and fragile. You know you won't do it. You'd be the bad guy if you stood there on your pedestal of stability and told them how much they've disappointed you, how much they've disgusted you, how much revulsion you feel at the breach of trust. Pearl and Garnet have both experienced trauma, but Garnet doesn't define herself by it--she has coping mechanisms Pearl lacks, and even at the peak of her anger she knows it would not be right to unleash all of that on a traumatized person who barely knows how to cope with her own destructive, damaged thoughts. 

Garnet is the victim in this situation, but she's still got to think about how her brittle friend will handle the process of healing from what SHE did to them both. The silent treatment was horrible for Pearl--it made her frantic and drove her to additional terrible decisions--but it was the kindest thing Garnet could do while still simmering under the surface, smoldering with her own unhealed bruises.

Garnet took herself away to handle the internal conflict Pearl's breach caused in her. She went away with Steven and Greg, who wouldn't really be as affected by watching her breakdown as the others would, and even though that breakdown wasn't strictly controlled or ideal either, it was a choice she made during a personal crisis. Garnet fell apart. 

I recognize this technique. Some people--myself included--can choose where and when to process emotions (including freakouts and breakdowns), but can first and foremost decide to hold it together when it's important. I could give you six examples from within the last two years when I had to do stuff like that. I'm not better than anybody else because I can. I have effective coping mechanisms. Many people don't have a choice about whether they freak out or if they get triggered. I'm fortunate. I use it to TAKE CARE OF THINGS IN THE MOMENT that I might have some nightmares about later, but I'm not going to fall apart NOW. I need to be able to do that for people who don't have the option. That's one of the things Garnet does well, too. That's why we've only seen her come apart unwillingly if she was lethally damaged or fundamentally shaken to the core.

When Garnet reconciled with Pearl at the end of "Friend Ship," she spoke very little about her own pain. She knew that making Pearl feel even guiltier about her betrayal was not going to be constructive. She already felt bad. She didn't go on at length about how hurt she was--she just said "I fell apart over this." "Ruby and Sapphire were in turmoil over how you deceived me." "I came undone." Most of what she said was focused on helping Pearl understand why her loneliness, her insecurity, and her weakness are not excuses to steal someone else's strength away from them without their permission. 

"You lied to me. You need to learn that there are consequences to your actions." 

"It's not easy being in control. I have weaknesses too. But I choose not to let them consume me." 

"I struggle to stay strong because I know the impact I have on everyone. Please understand, Pearl. You have an impact too."

Garnet knew all along that everything she said and did--even in a crisis--would be an example for everyone else. She's rarely allowed to have selfish moments where she gives in to whimsy, sacrifices responsibilities for self care, compromises others' comfort for her needs. She was caught in the crossfire of Pearl's desperation and was betrayed intimately, but even after all was said and done, she still had to counsel Pearl through the consequences she pulled down on herself. 

Even after all this, she does still care deeply for Pearl, and I'm sure it's painful to watch her struggle. But Garnet still had to be the one to answer "how can I make you forgive me?" with an explanation of why she can't. And you believe Pearl when she speaks about how useless she feels on her own. She's not manipulating Garnet or lying about how ineffectual and incompetent she feels. The problem is, she's still making all of that Garnet's problem. And Garnet accepts the responsibility of solving it.

She wants to be mad. The Ruby in Garnet is happy to state loudly that she DESERVES to be mad. Shouldn't she be allowed to stew, to rage, to feel? She was treated unforgivably and then had to tolerate Pearl doing backflips in the wrong direction to coax an undeserved resolution out of her. But she also wants to be practical. The fatalistic Sapphire in Garnet is ready to move on because she sees the big picture and knows her emotions aren't that critical when they're fighting to save the planet.

I went through a protracted "battle" like this recently. I had to solve a problem that was way bigger than me that started before I was born. I had to spend a lot of time, money, and energy learning things I never wanted to know and handling issues I wasn't even supposed to know about. And along the way I was treated horribly by several people, most notably the main person I was trying to protect. Sometimes it seemed like they were doing everything in their power to sabotage my efforts to help them, but I was patient and supportive, even when they were very rude, even when they refused to help accomplish the small things they could handle on their own, even when they treated ME like I was the source of their pain despite being the one trying to stop it. 

One of my allies said it was baffling that I kept helping at all considering how I was treated. They were gobsmacked how I still offered respect and kindness to someone who was inadvertently causing me so much stress. And I always said the same thing: I do it because I can, because if I don't the consequences (which I will ALSO have to handle) will be worse, and because everyone else is in way worse shape than I am. 

Yes, maybe I contain a little Ruby raging about how unfair this is and how personally hurt I am, but that's what texting my friends is for. I also contain a little Sapphire telling me I have to get A if I don't want B to happen, and I chose the uphill battle that let me achieve A. Ruby and Sapphire are both right. I deserved to be furious. I also needed to get the job done, and I did.

Ultimately Garnet learned that Pearl is a damaged person acting out of desperation, and even though the betrayal was personal and not okay in any way, it was rooted in loneliness and sorrow that Garnet does not experience. Stable people often help unstable people when they care about them. They shouldn't have to sacrifice themselves to do so, but they are usually able to figure out where the line is for how much they can reasonably give of themselves. Sometimes, when stable people still care about the people who hurt them, we feel like we've lost the rights to our feelings. That voicing those thoughts will just make it worse. That we will be the cruel one if we react incorrectly to being wronged. We solve it on our own. We go away and get a grip and come back ready to fight.

But seeing that, boy. Seeing the fresh wound in "Cry for Help" and knowing how that feels, when you're reeling and wondering how you're going to build yourself back up (while pretending nobody knocked you down), feeling so raw and punctured by someone you REALLY don't want to stop trusting . . . you wonder, if another person can do that to me, am I really that stable?

Or, conversely, would I even be stable if I didn't care about anyone strongly enough that their betrayal could be my undoing?

"Jailbreak" is my favorite episode, but "Cry for Help" eats me alive every time I watch it.

[puremchanzo]

Don’t know what to do

Hi

I know I’ve been gone for a while but it’s for a few reasons.

I’ve been doing a lot of personal growth lately and i don’t really have the same, er, opinions I used to have when I first started this blog. I’m not as concerned about what other people ship (as long as it’s not literally illegal) because simply, I have better priorities about what I should be putting my mental energy into. And I feel like that might upset people since I’m not really an “anti” anymore since I feel like putting so much effort into the lives of people I’ll never meet.

So I’ve kinda abandoned this blog, because I didn’t want to upset people. I still believe that shipping minors and adults is NOT okay. But, other than that, I don’t think that limiting what people will write in fiction will actually solve any problems.

Please continue to hold people accountable for being racist or homophobic, but I don’t believe that we should hate people for coping with thoughts and feelings they can’t control.

Because I’ve been sexually assaulted, twice, and I feel that pushing down the thoughts I have as immoral or that I’m a bad survivor, is counterintuitive to self growth in healing. So no, I DONT think it’s okay to call survivors “freaks” by indulging in media that some would consider bad, because as long as they aren’t hurting themselves or others, and keeping their content flagged and protected from those who don’t want to see, I don’t care. Because I struggle with intrusive thoughts, a lot, and that’s what most of these people are going through.

And while some say that it’s not a good way to cope, well, you don’t know that. You don’t know the person, because everyone is an individual. Unless you are a liscensed therapist, you have no right to tell strangers online how to cope with trauma. And some people just like to explore certain topics, as long as they are respectful, why care?

I had this change of heart recently when I realized I worried so much about the actions of others, I never thought about how it all affected me, at th end of the day. And it wasn’t good. I was hupervigilant, overly stressed, constantly worried, etc. it wasn’t good. And when I stopped caring and tried to look at things from their perspective, I didn’t mind as much. Because at the end of the day, fandom is a place to enjoy and escape reality, this shitty shitty fucking world, and who am I to tell others how to enjoy things. (As long as it’s not illegal).

So, with that, if you want to unfollow me that’s fine, if you have anymore questions for me, ask them! But please send me asks like “are you a freak now?” Because no, I’m not, I’m just a human dealing with my trauma without bringing other people down anymore. I still love mchanzo, but I kinda abandoned the fandom due to how toxic some people are. And I realize a lot of minors follow me, and I apologize if I let you down, and to my old friends as well. But I feel like I can’t just leave/be on hiatus without explaining why. And I hope this post can give you insight.

I might return in the future, but for now I’m officially on a hiatus