#it's very similar with abuse where like

[cruelsister-moved2]

^(above is sc of someone else's post) I don't want to be mean to this person but that's really not what people mean when they say that... the point is that for example cults will target people in a vulnerable situation, and different cults will have different target audiences. you will at some point in your life be in the kind of state that makes you vulnerable to cult abuse (grieving, tough break-up, experiencing or escaped abuse, living alone in a foreign country, financial instability, serious illness, etc) and there will be a cult out there that fits well with you and makes you feel good enough that it doesn't trigger cult cliché alarm bells.

it's usually addressing things like a very narrow public perception of what a cult is, so people don't recognise warning signs because the cult is christian, or left-wing, or versed in therapyspeak, or run by women, or completely non-religious. you think of cults as something that happens to other people (non-christians, drug users, hippies, gullible boomers, new-agers). obviously the entire point is that education about cults helps people to resist cults; the issue is that believing you're just innately not someone who would fall prey to a cult will stop you from being vigilant and put you in danger.

[absurdly-overpowered-astronaut]

you know something that has bothered me about persona 5 ever since I played it is how they don’t address Yusuke’s attitude towards art.

He idealises the artistic process to the point its clearly self destructive (ie doesn’t eat , doesn’t have any money ect) and more concerning the idea of the true artist. The artist who is divorced from all worldly needs and pleasures the artists who has cut themselves off completely from society all in the name of their unbending artistic vision.

The best example I can think of off the top of my head is when he comes over to Ren’s house he gets them to watch art documentaries with him and if I’m remembering correctly the guy in the documentary left his family and completely cut himself off from society for the sake of his craft and yusuke considers this aspirational.

The problem is this attitude isn’t actually all that helpful. Any work done while depriving yourself is never the best work you could have made whether that be of sleep , food , social interaction , joy ect and art devoiced from society lacks meaning the best art isn’t completely removed from the human experience it reflects and comments it on it

but more so then this mindset being destructive and a tired idea I have distain for it feels like such a clear extension of Madarame’s abuse. We see Madarame also holds this mindset so Yusuke must have gotten it from him and it seems to disproportionately benefit Madarame and reminds me of abusive behaviour.

if yusuke doesn’t value and understand money or the worldly pleasures it can afford him then he won’t be bothered by Madarame receiving all the money from his works and it makes him more dependent on Madarame / the school he goes to because he can’t for example take the train , afford food or housing and it somewhat limits him socially making it harder to go out with friends.

“Social abuse is behaviour that is aimed at cutting you off from other relationships. This can be your family, friends, your workplace or a community you belong to.

The abusive person may:

-try to stop you from seeing other people or going to social activities

-try to stop you from going out

-make it difficult for you to use your car, other forms of transport or mobility aids” (in this case train)

“Types of financial and economic abuse

The abusive person may:

-take full control of all the finances, spending and decisions about money so that you are financially dependent on them”

if yusuke thinks that the only compensation a “true artist” needs is the artistic fulfilment of completing a work then he won’t be bothered by Madarame taking the credit

if yusuke thinks he needs to cut himself off from the world and others then he will be less likely to realise that what madarame is doing is wrong but also that he is completely dependent on madarame.

“Abusive partners will often try to isolate their victim, i.e. limit their access to those close to them in order to weaken them psychologically. The victim ends up cut off from the relationships that fuel their inner strength, provide validation and support, and could help them to see their situation more clearly.”

(I’m using an example from an article about abuse in romantic relationships but the point still applies)

if yusuke is single mindedly focused on the creation of art that benefits Madarame more because the more art the more compensation he receives

“An abuser may deliberately deprive the victim of sleep, with the aim of making them more vulnerable. The abuser may startle her awake just as she's about to fall asleep, refuse to let her sleep to settle an argument (often deliberately started at bedtime), or wake her up incessantly during the night” “The victim then loses a lot of stamina and finds themselves greatly weakened, both psychologically and physically.”

the idea that only other creative souls will understand your work creates a us vs them conflict and allows the abuser to easily reflect with “they just don’t understand”

It introduces this dynamic that wanting anything that doesn’t contribute to the art is bad and makes you a worse artist a worse person. Its assigning morality and success to the behaviour that madarame wants to incentivise and disincentivise he wants yusuke to make more art but he doesn’t want to yusuke to become disconnect or independent so the sentiment that to be a true artist you must let go of worldly possessions once again loops back round to reinforcing abuse

even though he is out of the abusive environment he still hasn’t unlearned/been confronted on this mind set.

[volfoss]

it is beyond infuriating how anne rice seems to insist on marius being a positive force in anyone's life ever. like she can't fully commit to exploring the fact he groomed armand and has repeatedly taken away his consent for what marius thinks is best (take the end of TVA as an example) and just kind of flatly puts it in the narrative. there's not really much interest in how these horrific events make marius come across as the worst because EVERYONE loves him. for gods sake, lestat learns from armand exactly what marius did to him in TVL and then proceeds to go find marius and be super friendly to him in the same fucking book. even armand and pandora, two of the people who have MORE than enough right to hate him, do not. it doesnt feel like shes trying to explore the toxicity of the abusive dynamic he traps them in, it just is there. and like yeah ofc the toxic vampire romance series but i think that this should be handled with more care. and it is not ever really framed in a way that she is interested in exploring how marius should easily be one of the most horrific characters in this series because it kind of feels like sa/rape/grooming/other things of that sort are just put there to further plot and not to really get the respect that they deserve in a medium.

[justanotherghostwriter]

.

[cabeswaterdrowned]

remembering on my circa 2017 booklr I used to tell people to read Gemma Doyle by describing it as trc but with an all girls boarding school / all girl group in a historical setting… I was trying to do the lord’s work she deserved tumblr fame

[hecksupremechips]

Honestly though I think it’s really a bad sign when I look at Shin Tsukimi and literally feel like he’s a self insert 😩

[mars-ipan]

this post is not going to be very well planned out so i’d like you all to be niceys to me if i bungle the wording but i feel like the moment people understand that certain forms of bigotry stem from hatred for certain groups but can affect people not belonging to those groups and hurt them just the same is the moment a lot of our conversations about diversity, oppression, and how to combat marginalization stop going so hard in circles and start being productive

[musical-chick-13]

Again, always very confusing to me when people suffering from The Obsessive Compulsives are Antis™, like these people will not protect you. They believe thought crimes are real. They inherently hate you and WILL throw you to the wolves if they ever come to know about anything related to your intrusive thoughts or the """""weird""""" things they ask you to do in therapy to manage/cope with them.

[rosecreates]

Raven and Astarion are basically just "Charlatan to Charlatan communication" without either realizing it because neither of them are very open about their pasts at first and in the scenario where Astarion enacts his simple plan on Raven he has no idea he is breaking Rule 0: Don't try to con another conman (or conwoman in this case).

Raven knows exactly what he's doing but she just doesn't tell him she knows until later because the game is fun.

Both of them thought this would stay a game but then they both catch feelings lmao. Absolute losers (affectionate).

[vaugarde]

me when star allies is so so so close to being a fantastic game with amazing characters like zan being the eldest who takes the brunt of hyness and her religion’s cruelty or hyness being someone driven to insanity over his religion and devotion and the darker tone of the ending is so interesting and the gameplay is wholesome and the dream friends are so awesome but its english translation is so botched and it shrugs off hyness’s actions with “oh he got carried away its fine teehee he and the sisters are on best terms afterwards despite him abusing them since childhood” and the main story is not fun to replay bc its so easy and i cant blame people for saying its mediocre because not everyone is as invested in coming up with a story from the lore but its agonizing bc the game was so close to being a knockout

[secretlythatsme]

i don't particularly mind danny damian twin aus but i'm still surprised that became the norm when danny and tim are so much more alike? like, black hair blue eyes, absent neglectful parents, creepy older men obsessed with them, usually depicted as lankier teens, both of them becoming obsessed with helping/saving people as a result of being neglected, feeling like if they can't help then they're useless, etc.

like danny and damian being twins or siblings isn't Bad but you also have to do so much more work to actually,,, make it work. and i feel like people only like it more because it's angstier and allows them to make danny cooler rather than it makes more sense. but with how many danny fans focus on bad fenton parents or at least neglectful fenton parents, i just thought they would enjoy danny and tim being twins more.

[seapigeonn]

I watched Festen last night and really liked it! The last movie I watched before it was actually The Banshees of Inisherin a bit back, which I think, while not being actually all that similar movies at all, have some interesting overlap that’s pretty cool. Like, the whole aspect of abuse being an open secret within a large group of people/a community, but the abuser being not only well pretty charismatic and well liked in the group, but also being an authority figure with a lot of power in it. How that leads to that abuse kind of… being ignored and pushed back on by the community, it’s too icky to talk about so everyone just… does nothing. How often this kind of like… collective inaction from authority figures traps children in horrific situations that they can’t escape.

[arandomeroacher]

people calling Wuthering Heights a romance has me tweaking, genuinely.

[unproduciblesmackdown]

skinamarble hornets, i was like i hope my favorite skinamascene has been uplomarinked on youtube....reminds me of that season one marble hornets entry that's the First House Visit and how i saw it described somewhere as like "absolutely nothing happens, & it's terrifying" & it reminds me of the torment of watching as the series was released & Every Time something came out, no matter what happened in like setting, atmosphere, plot, scares, there'd be someone going "ugh another Nothing entry" over the most crucial &/or enjoyable shit so long as it didn't feature [& he's cookin hot dogs on the stove???] & didn't feature it like every other minute for good measure. as though a format that is predictable, like the promise of the same kind of scene in the same intervals of timing, would actually be scary or at all interesting. shoutout to these the entries, or even intervals of time within entries, where "absolutely nothing happens" and it's called suspense in knowing it Could, tension in an unsafe, uneasy, unsettling situation in the meantime, & then also potential followup recontextualization that only creates more tension for later similar material. ("absolutely nothing" happens (of course, actually, things happen, but) in the skinamarink scene save for the literal last few seconds when the "jumpscare" is a very brief change in audio & visuals which is neither actually that loud nor like showing anything scary(tm) (technically a la marble hornets i think people say you can like see an arm extend for a nanosecond but i never catch it if so lol) but rather hits at all because of 8 minutes of suspense & tension & Nothing Happening But It Could) (also bravely standing up like "it's fine that skinamarink has some jumpscares, including the obvious few even jumpier than this" like who cares if it's "easy" necessarily & also that Knowing such startlement can happen ramps up the tension even when it didn't, but it could've. like so)

[thatdemiboymess]

Trying to explain the symptoms of your mental illness to the person responsible for that particular mental illness (it is C-PTSD) without straight up saying or even implicating "yeah, I can't do dishes when other people are around without having a panic attack because of how you used to come up behind me while I was doing dishes and would hit me" is...so fucking difficult. And it is additionally vexing to be told afterwards "maybe you just had low blood sugar." I want to maul.

[karinyosa]

if i ever played jesus he would be the slimiest most decrepit doesn’t shower or sleep neurotic unwell emotional roller coaster dissociated from the human form motherfucker ever and if i ever played judas he would be a smarmy twink.