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fox-steward · 4 years ago

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hi, not sure if this blog is active bc im on mobile but you seem v knowledgeable so i hope you are. i have a question if thats ok. ive been id'ing as ftm trans/nb for about 6 years now but havent rlly been able to come out to many ppl or transition at all so im still largely presenting as female. i wouldnt rlly call myself gender critical or anything like that, but i know transitioning is a long & difficult process and im wondering if there is a way to alleviate my dysphoria without going (1/2)

“thru all that. i dont want to transition only to realize that i dont feel better and there was an easier way. in other words, id like to rule out any possibility that im not trans before medically investing in being trans. any chance you have any advice for me? (2/2)”

hey there—still active, if sporadic.

when it comes to healing from dysphoria, there’s no cure-all, no hidden path to healing that you’ve simply yet to uncover. just as there’s no way to guarantee transition will make you happy, there’s no opposite guarantee either. i can only share some of the stuff that has worked for me and some of the hardships i uncovered about living as trans, which i hope you find helpful.

what helps me?

get clear with yourself about what you believe about gender, ideologically. i personally feel, if my beliefs do not stand up to critical thought, if they cannot be supported by rational arguments, then those beliefs are not worth holding on to and i need to let them go. this is what happened to me WRT transness, gender, and all that.

start small—what is gender? is gender innate? do we have gendered souls? how could we have gendered souls if gender is a social construct? okay, so we can’t have gendered souls, so what is gender, if not innate? is gender the social expectations and norms attached to the two sexes? is it possible to break those roles and expectations? does breaking those roles and expectations change anyone’s sex? no—males can behave in typically feminine ways and females in typically masculine ways and that does nothing to change their sex. so what would conceivably make someone (or myself) trans? inhabiting the social roles and expectations of the gender associated with the opposite sex. since we already established that gender isn’t innate and we don’t have gendered souls, there’s no merit in the “born in the wrong body” narrative; it is not possible to be born in the wrong body. we each get one body, no matter how we change it. but if i wasn’t born in the wrong body, why do i feel so uncomfortable with mine, especially with the sexed aspects of it? if you’re female, the likely culprit is misogyny. you don’t actually have to hate women on a conscious level to be suffering from internalized misogyny. we live in a misogynistic world, it saturates everything. if you’re female, it affects almost every factor of how you move through this world—how people treat you, what opportunities you’re given, which behaviors are encouraged for you and which are discouraged, etc. if you are inclined to prefer masculinity—for whatever reason—society will encourage this in males and discourage it in females. having your way of being subtly discouraged all the time can easily lead to feeling disconnected from your body, perhaps even hating it, especially since you know that your way of being would be ENCOURAGED if only your body were male. and that’s when many of us encounter trans ideology that tells us we CAN be male—in fact, we actually were all along! all we have to do is change our bodies drastically with lifelong medication and surgery, all we have to do is trade money and time and health to convincingly imitate the opposite sex—THEN society will finally recognize that our way of being is okay—because we were actually masculine MEN all along, it was simply our female bodies obscuring that. does this feel like a good or healthy trade to you? it doesn’t to me, but i can’t make these decisions for you.

there IS an important caveat, a shortcut that bypasses this bad trade entirely—and that’s realizing that your way of being is ALREADY okay. masculine females and feminine males are healthy and good. it’s not always easy to comfortably BE that way in a society that does not embrace masculinity in women and femininity in men, but the solution is not to change your self, it’s to change the society. and the only way you can do that is by carving out that path—BE a masculine female/woman and you’ll show little girls today that there’s a place for them in this world.

i did try out the trade for myself, however, and i learned a few things you might find useful—maybe these lessons i learned can save you the time and money and pain i’ve already spent.

1) you never actually change sex. you’re always chasing the aesthetic imitation of the opposite sex with transition, but never becoming the opposite sex. in this and so many other ways, transition never ends.

2) passing is conditional. when your sense of self is predicated upon others seeing you a certain way, it can be taken from you in a second. i could be treated like one of the guys for a year, until one of them finds out i was born female. now that he knows, he cannot unknow. now my experience is tied to how he sees me—does he see me as a woman now that he knows? is he comfortable with me in the locker room? it was stressful and uncomfortable for others to have this level of control over my experience of the world and of myself. it’s also out of my control whether he decides to lend manhood to me now—will he use male pronouns with me? will he call me a woman? will he out me to the others? will he sexualize me or sexually assault me based on my female body?

3) as stated above, transition never ends. no matter how well you pass, transition always requires maintenance. you’ll need bloodwork as long as you’re on hormones—that’s time and money you wouldn’t have otherwise spent. you’ll need supplies for your hormone shots—time and money you wouldn’t have spent. there will be instances where you need to disclose your trans status, thus repeating the coming out process infinitely—doctors or EMTs, new intimate partners, friends. this process is exhausting and othering, it’s an ever-present reminder of the fact that you’re trans.

4) medical transition is expensive in terms of money and heath. taking hormones is always a risk. there’s potential for: cardiovascular risk associated with testosterone, vaginal atrophy and sexual side effects, changes to mood (some for the better, some worse), not liking how hormones change your body. then there’s the financial aspect. in the USA at least, this costs money—money for doctor’s visits, money for the hormones themselves, money for the supplies to administer them. there’s risk in any surgery—risk of death or serious complication, loss of function and sensation, improper healing, chronic pain. and of course, the monetary cost associated with surgery. removing the uterus can have lifelong consequences—early onset dimentia, lifelong need for synthetic hormones, osteoporosis.

5) there is no “actually trans.” there’s no meaningful distinction between “true trans” people and others. trans people transition and identify as trans. their dysphoria isn’t any different than mine was. there’s no method for parsing “real dysphoria” from something else. transness is an ideology. i liken it to religion. there are no “real christians” and fake christians, there are only people who believe and those who don’t. that’s the salient difference between myself (detransitioner) and trans people—belief. and if something requires me to believe in it to be real...well that’s a good indication it probably isn’t.

good luck out there. these are heavy questions and weighty struggles. there’s no harm in focusing on other aspects of your life when you’re having trouble answering Big Gender Questions. rooting for you.

#detrans #detransition #radfem #radical feminism #transgender #ftm #non binary #just talkin #gender #asked #answered #anon

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narrowtriangle33-blog · 3 years ago

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White people called out.

"It just amazes me how white people never have anything to say when you see “them” being accused of murders and other strange crimes, but if a Black man gets arrested or shot by police; they just have all kinds of opinions don’t they?"

"Fact: White men commit 66.9% of assaults on family members and children, 47% of murders , 73.3% of sex offenses, 65% of forcible rape, 63% of aggravated assault, 69% of burglary, 75.4% of vandalism, 59% of violent crime, 78% of arson, 63% of auto theft , 58% of suspicion, 68.7% of fraud etc… Also 88% of Serial Killers and Serial Rapists are white males." {source: FBI}

"Now does this mean that this ostensible data of crime rates among whites is accepted? Absolutely not!

The U.S. media wants you to think Blacks are doing all the crime. While you are focused on the action on TV, their corporate bedfellows will rob your 401K, stock options and bank accounts blind.

Here’s a crude illustration I have created to make it clear on the crime in America.

Say you have 100 people…

60% are White people 15% are Latino people 12% are Black people 8% are Asian people 5% are Jewish people ___________ 100 people

Are all of the Black people committing crime? No. Lets say HALF, which is highly exaggerated, are committing crime…take that number for the other ethnicities, too.

IF HALF OF EACH ETHNICITY WAS A CRIMINAL REGARDLESS OF CRIME COMMITTED…

30% White criminals 7.5% Latino criminals 6% Black criminals 4% Asian criminals 2.5% Jewish criminals _______________ 50 criminals

Even if only about 1 in 8 White people committed crime, it is still more in numbers than half of each individual non-White ethnic populations…

IF 1/4th OF EACH ETHNICITY WAS A CRIMINAL…

15 White criminals out of 60 Whites 4 Latino criminals out of 16 Latinos 3 Black criminals out of 12 Blacks 2 Asian criminals out of 8 Asians 1 Jewish criminals out of 5 Jews __________________ about 25 criminals out of 100 people

Conclusion: Logically speaking, there will always be 3 times more White criminals…or 60% of all criminals are White…but then not all things are equal. One could argue that Latinos are 4 times more and Blacks are 5 times more likely to be ARRESTED by police…its not always what has been done, but what can be proven. Its a general belief that cops, regardless of their own personal racial lines, are prejudiced.

It would be interesting to find out what is the racial makeup, in terms of %, compose the police forces of the United States."

"But, if you go on FBI Table 43A you will see back in 2013-2014 as the data will show that almost 10 million white males have been arrested to 3 o 4 million black males roughly. White people out number every other race in every crime category you can think of. But you know they always have an excuse for why they out number every race in crime statistic is that they make up 72 % of the American population. I can’t tell you how many times I shot this argument down. But here I go once again.

According to the Bureau of Census, in 1996, 73% of the 264. 6 million who live in the U. S. are White. However, according to the MacMillan Almanac, most Puerto Ricans are automatically defined as White by the U. S. Census. Furthermore, any Latin who claims to be White is counted White by the Census Bureau, and all babies born to White women are defined as White, regardless of the father’s race, unless the mother makes a request that her baby be classified as non-White. If a half-Black man and a White woman have 10 children, they are all counted as one big White family. Therefore, the number of American Whites is extremely less than 72% Then to add to that Consumer Report came out with stat that 80% of the smart phones sold in America are owned by black people. This means that if you are 70% of the population and black people being 13 we should not in any instance out pace you in purchasing power. The question you should ask yourself is this, how many traditional white people make up that 70% yall claim to have outside of the other races who are not white who check white on the US Census? You are not counting the biracial, Hispanics, and Latins who also mark white on the census. So please white blonde blue eye people do not make up that whole 70% to claim that is the reason you commit more crime.

How are you 63 of the population and black people allegedly being 13% but yet we have 80% of the smart phones in this country? That means if you out number us by 6 times we should not out pace you in purchasing power for anything. 13% can not equate to 80% ownership if the so called dominant race represents 60 percent of the country. Even when you look at the Nielson Report’ on who watches more TV according to the popular hit show ”Empire” it reported that African Americans watch more TV then any other race in the country. Again this would not be possible if we only (black people) make up 13% of the country. We would not have a hit show for our small dismal 13% of the country’s demographic. So this should tell you that there are way more black people in this country then previously conceived.

But wait didn’t they just arrest 36 white people for food stamp fraud in New York a month ago? Nationally, most of the people who receive benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program are white. According to 2013 data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers the program, 40.2 percent of SNAP recipients are white, 25.7 percent are black, 10.3 percent are Hispanic, 2.1 percent are Asian and 1.2 percent are Native American. This was reported in the Huffington post. White people are on more government assistance then any race. Again’ this is another indication that even though you make up a small percent of the country you still dominate the welfare benefits. Remember when Rick Santorum was running a couple of years ago and he said black people make up 80% of the welfare programs in Florida? Well the next day Scott Pelley of CBS News came out and said on prime time television that that was a lie and say actually that white people make up 90% of the government programs toward those who are unemployed."

"Somewhere in the deep recesses of the white mind, white people have convinced themselves that they are the innocent victims being terrorized by the Dark-skinned Negro. Somewhere in their minds, their crimes against humanity and against the entire planet have been replaced by a selective amnesia where they have forgotten the most important factor in this equation: Race was their idea. Race was their construct. Race was their political tool for wealth. They are deathly afraid of the repercussions for their crimes against the Original Human. They fixate on our would-be revenge because they know intrinsically what awaits them in the near future. They feel their impending doom lurking beneath their nice houses, new cars and full-time jobs with 2-week vacations. Nothing they do or say now in the name of “righteousness” will make their karma less devastating. And they know this.They sense this.This is what drives them to buy gun, after gun, after gun. Fear is caused by wrongdoing.This is why they cannot be in peace. They are deathly afraid not of us, but of their own extinction caused by their own actions."

#dear white people #white people twitter #white ppl #white priveledge #share #do it for the greater good #spread the message #spread this #raise awareness #raiseawareness #help post #help plez #help please

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seyaryminamoto · 4 years ago

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Seyaryyy, it's been a "long" time since I asked you something spoilery about Gladiator =D.

... So, I was writing a pretty lengthy and detailed answer, switched to another tab for a second, and when I came back, my answer was gone and the tab had refreshed! :’D FUN.

... Okay. I’ll try to be a little more concise this time around. As the questions are pretty spoilery, I’ll hide them under the cut too :’D

My question will be about Zhaozula of course. That marriage will happen and things won't be so nice in part 3 in general.

But you mentioned that she won't be on bad terms with her husband all along.

So, will she try to find comfort on him with everything going on? Like accepting it and trying to make the best? Is he going to kinda fall for her or something like that?

And is Rei going to play an important role in part 3??

Sorry if it's too spoilery but as you know, this marriage is something I totally look forward to. I'm waiting for it since the 2nd reviews party.=')

Your wording of what I said about Azula not always being on bad terms with Zhao makes me think I either didn’t explain myself properly, or details of my plans have changed gradually since then...? Either thing is entirely possible, I must admit.

A quick search reveals that I said, 5 years ago, when you asked if they’d get ever along...:

Yeah, surprisingly, but prior to the whole marriage mess they will get along a little better, and will have to work together to resolve a particular problem. Zhao likes the idea of being some sort of mentor to Azula in regards of the Gladiator Business. Azula doesn’t like his behavior much when he gets like that, makes her feel underestimated, but she’s going to make the most of the advantages Zhao offers either way... so yeah, she will work with him when she deems it convenient or necessary. They won’t be BFFs, but Azula will grow to tolerate the man a lot more in the forseeable future.

All this is referring to Part 2 alone, I have to admit. While yes, a lot of my plans have changed and Zhao ended up being a lot more complex than I originally thought he’d be (so not everything in this answer applies 100% to what’s really in the story these days), back when I answerd this question I was referring to Part 2 alone, hence the brief clarification that “prior to the whole marriage mess” they’d get along better. This answer applies exclusively to things that would happen before they’re arranged to marry, not after (a lot of these developments are things we’ve already seen happen throughout Part 2).

Anyways, Azula has been in good terms with Zhao for a while now, since chapter 138 or so, and while there’s ups and downs, their relationship is honestly at its best through Part 2, by far. At the end of Part 2 it will start decaying again, and throughout Part 3 it will only continue to do so.

Without giving too much away, I can say Zhao will try to be generous with Azula in Part 3, to give her as much space as she needs, he will want to be patient so she can adapt to their new situation. And while being as nice as he can be, in such a not-nice-at-all situation, he won’t realize he’s playing into her schemes exactly as she needs him to. By the time he takes notice of this, it’s too late for him to do anything about it: the damage is done, and he isn’t pleased in the least that Azula manipulated him at will.

This will result in Zhao reacting rather adversely towards Azula, and their relationship goes downhill since then. Azula won’t really make any other moves against Zhao after this, won’t even try to manipulate him again, but Zhao won’t see her as someone who needs help anymore. Rather, he sees her as a threat and danger to himself, and every small move she makes, he assumes she’s making it to screw him over somehow, even if that’s not the case.

So... while I’m afraid you won’t really be happy with this answer, their relationship is really at its best right now, before the marriage arrangement even comes to anyone’s mind. Zhao will also take to doing certain things in Part 3 that I honestly don’t think you’ll be happy with... but it’s stuff that ties in with what little we know about his personal life at the moment, so I hope it won’t feel out of place since it’s what I’ve always planned. Either way, I can sum this up by saying Zhao tries his best for Azula at first, until he feels she took advantage of his kindness to turn him into a mindless puppet she was stringing about for her own benefit. After he reaches that conclusion, there’s really no amending this relationship anymore.

Hence, no, Azula never really is in a position where she would seek comfort in Zhao in any sense, for, at the point where he’s at his nicest, she’s at her darkest, and doesn’t want his kindness and consideration. By the time she starts to recover, she has already made her big move and Zhao becomes a lot more hostile towards her, so there’s no attempt to find comfort later on either.

If Azula hadn’t come up with that scheme, there could be a chance Zhao would develop some sort of emotional attachment towards her... but he really doesn’t see her as a romantic interest for himself, even if he can certainly admire her looks, but he’s really not that romantic a man in Gladiator. He outright told Sokka, back when he realized Sokka had feelings for Azula, that he should move on and find other people because he’s young and will get over it...

“...there are other women, you know. I realize you may think she's the only one worth loving, if I were your age I would think the same, but part of growing up is accepting you can find the right girl at the right time, rather than to obsess with the same one forever.”

That was a slightly sneaky way of me to show what Zhao’s personal views of romance are. While there’s obviously a potentially romantic way to develop characters like these, by giving them a significant relationship with someone who will teach them to let go of their skepticism about true love and whatnot, that’s not what will happen with Zhao, especially because of what Azula’s schemes result in.

And the truth is, Azula’s schemes are the only reason why she agrees to the marriage arrangement at all, so... there’s really no possible happy outcome for this relationship in Gladiator. The whole thing is born in the worst of circumstances, between two people who are between reluctant and outright unwilling to be with each other, no matter if they were on good terms shortly before these developments happened... so I’m afraid it won’t be quite what you may have hoped it was. Sorry if my wording was confusing before, or if my plans have changed too much, but there really won’t be much in the way of positive development for that marriage, once it happens.

And now, as for Rei...

... Truthfully, I don’t want to spoil this, but Rei is going to become one of the first good things to happen to Azula in Part 3. The bond between them is seriously heartwarming for me, and I know it sounds weird that Azula will get along so well with Rei when I’m basically saying her relationship with Rei’s father will be a downwards spiral... but Rei, goes without saying, isn’t her father. What Azula already knows about her, at the earliest point in time in Part 3, is enough to establish an initially small bond that will grow tighter as the story progresses.

Rei has had a very complicated life so far. She will serve to show a glimpse of Zhao’s nicest side... yet her very existence is also a highlight of some of Zhao’s nastier flaws. He has been quite kind to Rei and he’s very protective of her, yet... he’s also not kind enough, if that makes sense? He has always been distant with Rei, he’s not exactly a man who knows how to be a father (I mean... she’s serving as a maid at his household? That’s not quite what most people would do with their children, even if they are illegitimate, ESPECIALLY their only child...), so their relationship is already complicated: once Azula is factored in, it gets even more complicated :’D

I don’t really want to give away a lot about Rei, but she is veeeery important in Part 3. I will admit, her role in the story changed gradually -- I always conceived her as Zhao’s illegitimate child, but back when she first showed up (chapter 138) I honestly had no idea what her ultimate role would be. I actually ended up regretting briefly the idea of featuring her as Zhao’s illegitimate child since I thought it’d cause unnecessary drama, and I damn near backtracked on it, to feature her as just his maid and nothing more during Hahn’s Gambit... but then I pondered what Part 3 could look like if Rei, as Zhao’s illegitimate daughter, was part of the equation. And, boy... the result was magical. Thus, instead of backtracking, I went full-speed ahead with making Rei his illegitimate daughter... and here we are!

I seriously look forward to writing Azula and Rei’s relationship, it’s one of the things I’m most excited about in Part 3. While Azula’s relationship with Zhao will be very complicated and not in a cute way (at least, not for me? could be you’ll enjoy it anyhow, I don’t know xD), her relationship and dynamics with Rei are just wonderful to me. I’ve tried to contain my hype about her character, but people on Twitter have known me to suddenly scream “REEEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!” in completely out-of-context tweets just because she gives me too many feels whenever I think about her x’DDDDD I figure that will speak for itself regarding how much her character means to me (and to the story).

I hope this is a comprehensive enough answer for both your questions!

#kigozula #gladiator spoilers #regarding a certain... complicated sort of family #I hate Part 3 because on one hand there's so much I'm apprehensive about #AND YET #there's some stuff I'm DYING to write #... and Rei is one of them #*gross sobbing*#reeeeeeeeeeeeeeiiiii....#submission

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peshcel · 4 years ago

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Riddle Me This: A Tom Riddle Character Study

[Also posted on Reddit, if you want to comment/share your thoughts!]

Riddle Me This: A Tom Riddle Character Study

*Warnings: some profanity, spoilers, and puns.

‘Twas but a regular Saturday eve when a question of utmost importance grabbed hold of me: ‘Voldemort, why such a You-Know-What?’

You see, while Voldemort appears to be a very classic villain, Tom has proven to be an enigma wrapped in a Riddle (hehe). So, equipped with what I remembered from my BSc in Social Psychology, I also called upon my therapist friend with an MSc in Forensic Psychology to explore what would drive someone like Tom Riddle to become Lord Voldemort.

In this gone-awry Reddit comment, I will drag you along for a deep dive into how our little Dark Lord grew up and discuss concepts like power, control, sense of self, and terror management – all up to the point where Tom Marvolo Riddle introduces his clever anagram ‘Immortal Love Rodd’ ‘I am Lord Voldemort.’

Join me on this character study journey of about 5,500 words (15-30 min) where I try to figure out how Voldemort came to be.

Oh, and be sure to share your thoughts at the end of the ride!

Baby Lord Voldemort: A Pensive Pensieve Trip

“Voldemort is my past, present, and future.”

Long before we found out Snake-face Voldemort had barely a soul left, we thought he was the purest form of evil out there. He had done despicable things before his supposed death and had now resurfaced as a gross face on the back of someone’s head, hell-bent on killing this little kid. As we gradually learned, Voldemort was once Tom Riddle: a charming, brilliant, orphaned Wizard with the potential to go on and do great things. But, we also learned many little tidbits about the circumstances before his birth, about how he grew up and how he portrayed himself at Hogwarts, which has given us just enough to come up with our own theories about his personality and how he was shaped.

So, before we continue, let me quickly arm you with some abnormal psych. terminology. Both Riddle and Voldemort really match the three personality traits of (malignant) narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy, aptly known as ‘The Dark Triad’.

Plucked straight from the Wiki, summarized for your convenience:

Narcissism

is characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy.

Malignant narcissism

is when narcissism is combined with antisocial behaviors; the evil side of narcissism. (I stumbled upon

A Study in Evil: Voldemort, the Malignant Narcissist

after writing all of this, but I highly recommend giving it a read if you want a deep dive.)

Machiavellianism

is characterized by manipulation and exploitation of others, an absence of morality, unemotional callousness, and a higher level of self-interest.

Psychopathy

is characterized by continuous antisocial behavior, impulsivity, selfishness, callous and unemotional traits (CU), and remorselessness. (Better distinguished as ‘primary psychopathy’.)

*Sidenote: the term ‘sociopath’ is quite often used in pop culture, sometimes even interchangeably with ‘psychopath’. The actual diagnostic term is ‘antisocial personality disorder’, as described by the DSM-5. However, there is a difference between sociopathy and psychopathy, a whole slew of them actually. Important to note is that a ‘sociopath’ refers to a person with antisocial tendencies that are ascribed to social or environmental factors, whereas psychopathic traits are thought to be more innate, i.e. genetic causes (x).

We are given facts in the book that suggest psychopathic, antisocial, and (malignant) narcissistic traits are evident in Tom Riddle from early childhood. Using all that information, I want to take you on a ride to see how all these tidbits together shaped Tom Riddle and how that would lead him to become Lord Voldemort (not to be confused with ‘going Full Voldemort’).

The Interplay of Nature and Nurture, and Magic

Psychopathy is believed to be a complex interworking of mostly nature but also nurture, let’s unpack this in regards to Riddle.

Tom Riddle is born to a Pure-blood mother, Merope Gaunt, and a Muggle father, Tom Riddle Sr. When we are first introduced to the Gaunts, Salazar Slytherin’s last descendants, we meet a violent father and son, and a daughter who takes the brunt of it. We are told that the entire Gaunt line has a history of inbreeding and that they are known to produce individuals with violent and unstable personalities. They live in dire conditions but are incredibly proud people and sneer at the mere existence of Muggles. Merope grows up poor and abused, traumatized, ridiculed for her lack of magic that seems to be more the result of the abuse than the cause for it. Not far from their shack in Little Hangleton lives Tom Riddle Sr.: rich, handsome, somewhat of a prat, and the object of Merope’s affections. Being no great beauty and with little to offer, she “hoodwinks” Tom Riddle Sr. and escapes her dreadful life with her family. Merope is soon with child after their marriage and decides to release Tom Riddle Sr. of whatever spell he’s under, but he leaves her immediately.

Let’s consider the circumstances surrounding the conception of Tom Riddle. J.K. Rowling said that Voldemort could not understand love as he was conceived in a ‘loveless union’. However, she also stated that had Merope decided to live and raise Tom, his life would’ve turned out differently by knowing ‘love’. We could understand the tidbits shared by J.K. to mean that a child born into a loveless union would perhaps grow up in a loveless household, would have no good examples of what love is and would not know or be shown love. While Dumbledore hints that he suspects Merope used a Love Potion to “hoodwink” Tom Riddle Sr., we only know that magic was used. I always understood said ‘loveless union’ to be a magical violation – violation in every sense of the word – and that Tom’s incapability to love was due to magic that tried to correct a balance, i.e. the Laws of Magic™ were violated. Now, I’m no Magical Theorist, but this could mean that actual Magic™ is at play in addition to a genetic predisposition to explain Tom’s psychopathic traits.

Apart from these genetic and magical factors, we could also consider the environmental factors that influenced the biological development of Tom. Merope was left destitute and depressed when Riddle Sr. abandoned her while pregnant. In the dead of winter, with a lot of stressors and suppressed magic, she gave birth to Tom at the orphanage and then died. While we don’t know how her pregnancy developed, this being all guesswork, the prenatal stressors and perhaps a complicated birth due to her suppressed magic could have influenced Tom’s brain development. Brain development or deviating brain structures are linked to psychopathy (x). Simply said, the parts of the brain responsible for empathy and guilt or fear and anxiety don’t work the same for psychopaths, e.g. they don’t experience fear or other affects the way others might. In a psychopathic child, for example, this could mean that they would be hard to socialize because they don’t fear punishment even though they might know that it is a consequence of their behavior. It’s also what makes them great liars (psychopaths can ace a lie detector test like no other). It can also mean being more prone to boredom and seeking thrills as a result (low arousal theory). We could even view all of this in light of ‘Magic™ development’ instead of the Muggle term ‘brain development’.

In addition to taking into account these hereditary, biological and prenatal factors, we'd be remiss not to look at the effect of nurture. Now, we don’t actually know that much about Tom’s early childhood except for what we learn during Dumbledore’s visit to Wool’s Orphanage in 1938. We find out that Tom steals from people, has no qualms about hurting animals, scares and bullies other children, and is a consummate liar ‒ all while having/showing no remorse. Mrs. Cole, the matron of the orphanage, refers to Tom as being a funny boy and odd, that he was a “funny baby, too” and “hardly ever cried”. It is conceivable that the caretakers gave him less attention in response to his lack of showing his needs through crying and that he was picked up and held less often. It could also be a chicken-or-egg situation: perhaps he didn’t cry because he learned his cries would not be responded to, etc. Even if we leave magic out of the equation as to why they would find him ‘funny’, it is likely that he showed general ‘abnormal’ responses and behaviors not appropriate for his developmental stage that were unsettling to others. It is easy to assume that this would lead to people distancing themselves from him and alienating him further. Regardless of cause-effect, there are clear signs here that Tom grows up maladjusted and that his attachment style falls somewhere along the dismissive-avoidant. I think we can assume that the lack of developing a relationship with at least one primary caregiver would really put a damper on having any semblance of a ‘normal’ social and emotional development.

There seems to be a clear interplay here of genetic, biological (magical) and environmental factors as the perfect foundation for dysfunctional personality traits to really come to fruition.

Power & Control: A Narcissistic Trip

“There is no good and evil. There is only power, and those too weak to seek it.”

Strap in as we first take a little detour for a quick exploration of narcissism. As previously stated, we clearly see signs of malignant narcissism in young Tom, characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy, combined with antisocial behaviors. What is particularly applicable in Tom’s case is Kohut’s theory of narcissism.

The Little Narcissist

In psychoanalytic theory, primary narcissism in children is part of their development.

It is normal for children to develop self-love and object-love, as Kohut puts it. Entertaining notions of greatness, magical thinking, feeling omnipotent and omniscient and believing to have a certain immunity to the consequences of their actions is all part of this development. It is quite innocent, but it can become pathological. According to Kohut, children are normally gently disillusioned of these grand notions, in a nontraumatic manner, by maturing and becoming part of society. Pathological narcissism, however, develops when the child basically has defective narcissistic structures of the self by having this process disrupted.

This defective structure fits Tom Riddle to a T. In addition, Kohut’s theory of object-love really applies here as well. According to Kohut, either a child has a ‘mother’ to confirm their grandiosity, or they seek an adult to create an ‘idealized parent image’. This means they will seek an adult, someone powerful they can look up to, so they can bask in their reflected glory. For Tom, having neither someone to confirm his grandiosity nor someone to look up to means he creates his own powerful parent. We notice this when Tom explicitly asks Dumbledore about his father being a Wizard, since his mother obviously could not have been; she wouldn’t have died if she was. One can imagine his (narcissistic) rage when this image was shattered later on. His five-year search for the Chamber of Secrets to confirm he’s the Heir of Slytherin is a direct result of Tom’s continued search for a sense of self.

The Narcissist’s Plight: Need for Control

One of our main human motivational processes is the desire for control. Actually, it is perceived control that really helps our general sense of well-being. This need exists and is deeply embedded in all of us. However, when people are tried and tested, feel threatened or powerless, a lack of agency can kickstart all kinds of coping mechanisms to maintain the sense of self. So, simply put: the less perceived control you have, the greater the need.

When we speak of power, we speak of control. If there is anyone who is desperate for control it’s the narcissist. The narcissist is believed to have such low self-esteem and fragile ego that it will, subconsciously, protect itself from being injured at all costs. Controlling your circumstances and those around you is a means of guarding and protecting the ego. Anything less just won’t do. A threat to that control, that power, is a perceived threat to the sense of self.

Power is a concept that really tickles Riddle/Voldemort’s Niffler as we pretty much learn from the get-go. Consider again, for a moment, where and how Tom grew up. His ability to control came from his magic. Seeing as how Tom grew up in an orphanage, not a penny to his name and very few resources, I think that Tom learned early on that everything could so easily be taken away from him ‒ by someone bigger, older, someone who had more power. While Tom could ‘control’ his circumstances to some degree with his magic, he was still a child. He seemed to have an innate understanding of his powerlessness, i.e. lack of control. Perhaps less helpless than other children, but still a child dependent on others. Not only that, but he was dependent on people he deemed lesser than him, less intelligent, less special. Something a narcissist like Tom would deeply resent. The thing here is that viewing others as beneath you or believing oneself to be superior to others is an ego defense to deal with insecurity, shame, rejection, etc. Tom develops this ego defense but also gets confirmation of his grandiosity through having magical power that actually does set him apart.

Rejection is another big theme in the life of a narcissist; one that Tom was very familiar with. He was unwanted and fully made aware of it: his mother ‘left’ him by dying, his father never came for him, he was not chosen for adoption, and there were many other children vying for attention. Attention that Tom did not receive but perhaps believed he was owed. Originating from a sense of entitlement, someone like Tom would come to view any sort of rejection as a slight (for he is smarter, better, etc.). While Tom might not have even wanted such attention or even had a particular need to belong – considering he didn’t view anyone as a peer/equal – the fact that it was not automatically given to him was probably construed as insulting.

Control Through Controlling Others

Mrs. Cole told Dumbledore that Tom scared the other children and that it was hard to catch him at any bullying or other malicious acts. With the ability to control his magic at such a young age, along with being highly intelligent, he was quick to figure out how to use this to his advantage. He could fly under the radar when needed, manipulate those in power, and use his skills to control others through fear ‒ ultimately to protect himself and what little he had, but also relishing how he could lord his power over others, establishing his superiority and showing them all how special he was. I believe that Tom honed the art of manipulation at a young age as he couldn’t fathom other ways of tying people to him, of forming relationships ‒ unless there was fear or a sense of owing. His magic gave him the additional tools to control those that didn’t have it.

Then, a defining moment: Tom meets Dumbledore. Using the same control tactics he has probably used with everyone around, Tom tries to command Dumble to do/say certain things. If you squint, you could even say that Tom was able to put a magical compulsion in his commands. Dumbledore, being who he is, is unmoved and even gently puts Tom in his place, which in Tom’s eyes would be considered a slight.

When Tom learns there is a word for his abilities, he is very eager to show off and be acknowledged for it by someone he could potentially identify with, someone who can show him the path to more knowledge, more power, someone ‘worthy’. For the first time, he encounters someone he wants to impress; he does this by boasting about his abilities. How telling it is that our Little Lord says that he “can make bad things happen to people who annoy me,” – not “mean to me” as the movie had us believe.

Here, Tom seems to have accidentally truly revealed himself – perhaps for the first time, definitely the last time. Out of childlike excitement and eagerness, he has shown his hand, which he immediately regrets when it is not followed by recognition and/or approval from Dumbledore. Dumbledore, quickly catching on to the power dynamics, asks Tom to address him as ‘sir’ or ‘professor’ and immediately establishes his authority. Tom accepts it begrudgingly, “expression hardened”, as he needs Dumbledore to tell him more. Upon Tom’s demand, Dumbledore’s power is then quickly, and casually, displayed when he uses the Flame-Freezing charm on Tom’s wardrobe. If I’m being honest, I always found Dumbledore’s ‘casual’ display of power to be very loaded and quite problematic, ‘destroying’ something of Tom’s where he had stashed his very few possessions. Yet, Tom quickly goes from outrage to “expression greedy” when he realizes Dumbledore was just showing his power and using it to impress, i.e. instill fear (Tom immediately asks Dumbledore where he can get “one of them [wands]”).

When Dumbledore uses his ‘power’ to then confront Tom with his stealing and bullying, Tom reluctantly concedes that he cannot manipulate Dumbledore and doesn’t deny his actions, knowing that ‘being truthful’ is how he can appease and steer Dumbledore. He even accepts the humiliation of having to return the stolen items and apologize to others.

Honestly, the whole interaction between them is so significant, so amazing and so telling of Tom’s typical interpersonal dynamics and relationships. It’s no wonder he starts to despise and avoid Dumbledore. Tom had made himself the master of his little universe, believing that no other has his special type of power. Not only did Tom lose his cool during the conversation, he showed weakness by being vulnerable. As Tom learns when he joins the Wizarding World, Dumbledore is even more powerful than he thought and holds strong political power to boot. Someone like Dumbledore, for example, is not just threatening because of his power but because he can see behind Tom’s mask.

Control in the Wizarding World

The interaction with Dumbledore seems to set the tone for Tom’s understanding of ‘power’ in the Wizarding World. It is something he further internalizes when he arrives at Hogwarts and gets sorted into Slytherin, a House of mainly Pure-bloods. I wholeheartedly believe that this little Snake immediately understood the blood status dynamics at school and the hierarchy within Slytherin House; things beyond his control. It is not a stretch to believe that the Slytherins, in particular, bullied him, ostracised him—rejected him—for his lack of Wizarding name, lack of status and money, and tried to show and put him in his place, thus fueling his rage. So at the age of 11, Tom had the mental acuity to realize he needed other tactics to become influential, to wield his power.

Seeing power and status being inherently awarded to Pure-bloods, the very ones who reject him, his own search for a claim to power/his superiority starts off with an obsessive in-depth exploration of his heritage. It is natural to assume that, along with this quest, Tom educated himself on social politics and how to improve himself. He was able to show humility and regard for others, be inhibited and not boastful. We learn from Dumbledore that Tom at Hogwarts showed signs of covert narcissism: no outward signs of arrogance or aggression, seemed polite, quiet, and thirsty for knowledge. He had already learned how to control certain impulses, ingratiate himself, how to hide in plain sight. He just continued to perfect it; he became above reproach by being the perfect student in the eyes of the adults, while fooling his fellow students and building his own following (feeding his ego along the way). He played into Slytherin politics and managed to establish himself as something to behold and to be frightened of, especially when he learned of being a descendent of Salazar Slytherin – a legit claim to power. He now had proof of something he had always believed: I am above them.

Loss of Control and Terror Management

Throughout his time at Hogwarts, Tom managed to perfect his control over others. Despite all his received praise and accolades, his ego remained fragile. I think the fact that he could not escape his blood status, his class – made especially salient when he had to return to the orphanage during the summer – really fueled his obsession to confirm he’s the Heir, i.e. to strengthen his sense of self.

Apart from the orphanage, Tom spends the rest of his formative years at Hogwarts, where he is, at most, considered a Half-blood if not a Muggle-born – i.e. lesser than. His fragile ego and sense of self is constantly challenged if not outright attacked. What’s even more confronting is that he also still has to return to the orphanage during summer break in the years 1938-1945 until he is of age. A place where he cannot use his magic; where he cannot sow the merits of his efforts at Hogwarts; a place where he has little to no control. He has to go back to being an orphan, in an orphanage, among Muggles. This having to return to Hogwarts is even more interesting to note when you consider there is both a Muggle war (WW2) and a Wizarding war (Grindelwald) happening.

That’s why we should also place all of this in the context of when this all took place. Tom experiences both WW2 and the Grindelwald days while he’s a teenager and still at Hogwarts. While he was safe at Hogwarts during most of the year and the winter holidays, he still had to return during the summer. Let me quickly add here that Grindelwald never attacked Britain, but Muggle London was dealing with (the threat of) bombings during those years, with heavy losses in terms of homes, businesses, and lives. Tom just about avoided The Blitz (Sep 7, 1940 – May 11, 1941) and the evacuation of children of Sep 1, 1939 (although, how he managed that, don’t ask). It’s safe to say that times were incredibly tough and unsafe in those days.

So on that note, let me introduce you to Terror Management Theory (TMT). It basically means that when faced with ‘terror’, i.e. one’s own mortality, the anxiety that goes with it can make people do some really effed up things. People will start chasing ways to boost their self-esteem, their self-worth, and for ways to confirm that their life has meaning and that they certainly are not insignificant or disposable. That they matter. Mind you, this all takes place without people even realizing that this is driving them. This theory rears its head when we speak of racism as well. In trying to elevate their sense of self, people can attach great importance to the group they identify with. They will then seek out ways to confirm their group is superior to others (well, well, well).

This theory seems to also fit Tom’s strange, half-assed Heir of Slytherin shenanigans. Same as what happened in the interaction with Dumbledore, Tom’s glee at finding out he’s indeed special makes him impulsive and greedy, disregarding the consequences and acting out of his ‘careful’ character. He has new power within his grasp, new thrills to seek and uncover. In his excitement, he is reckless and gets Myrtle Warren killed. While the rest of his attacks seem very planned and controlled, perhaps to impress his new Knights but most likely to see how far he could push boundaries, it also shows that he either doesn't think or doesn’t care about potential consequences. He is arrogant and unfearing. He could never get caught. Tom only starts caring when his actions become disadvantageous to himself; Hogwarts would close if the attacks continued, meaning he would lose all that he had skilfully and carefully cultivated.

In short, the need for control can drive one to go to really terrible lengths. Straight up tomfoolery, if you will. And if anyone went to great lengths, it was Tom Riddle’s becoming of Lord Voldemort.

Becoming Lord Voldemort: The Narcissistic Psychopathic Wizard’s Guide to Ultimate Power

“What I was, even I do not know … I, who have gone further than anybody along the path that leads to immortality. You know my goal – to conquer death.”

Before we found out the little tidbits about Tom Riddle, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named’s motives seemed straightforward: Pure-bloods must reign supreme. Knowing what we know now, it would be too simplistic to state that Lord Voldemort was purely driven by hatred for an imagined inferior Other. Namely because at the core of hatred lies fear. A need for control and the deep-seated fear of losing said control would be something Tom would and could never admit to. It would mean acknowledging that something (i.e. fear) had control over him, in effect a weakness.

He is a Half-blood orphan with nothing to his name, a nobody. He has a smidgen of hope when he discovers he is a descendent of Salazar through the Gaunts, but any notion of tangible rewards associated with that is shattered when he finds the Gaunts fallen from grace into obscurity. There is fear of forever being a nobody, unremarkable; entering the world with nothing and leaving the world with nothing ‒ all the while knowing that he is obviously destined for greatness (hello narcissist, my old friend).

He derived his new sense of self from being a descendant of the great Salazar Slytherin, who ‘rightfully’ detested those of lesser blood. As is typical for the malignant narcissist, Tom really has a ‘transparent’ defense mechanism to protect his fragile ego: projection. His hatred of his own lack of pure blood leads him to distance himself from it, denying whatever undermines his belief of being something special and extraordinary or not being worthy of the name. Distancing himself from that what makes him common and unworthy, he literally takes on a new name and kills off the Riddles. By going to extreme lengths, he can distance himself and 'eradicate' that what he despises most about himself. He is not like those 'filthy' Muggles: the ones he was forced to be dependent on, those lesser beings that deprived him of what he was owed; the ones that left his mother for dead, etc.

His 'great' blood is obviously the reason for his 'greatness', his destiny. Not only was this thought fed by the Pure-bloods around him, but it is the rhetoric that gives him a supply of Pure-bloods fanning at his feet. A thrill in of itself to see the privileged worship him.

Riddle's actions seem to have always been very self-serving. He never preached what Grindelwald did; it was never for the ‘greater good’. It is quite evident in the vagueness of Voldemort’s politics regarding purity. It was simply a means to an end; just a way to see how far he could go in amassing power. The ‘mission & vision’ he proposed was probably one of the few things that Pure-bloods could get behind and would go to great lengths to achieve/protect. For Tom, it was a way of opening doors. Not only financially and socially, but also in terms of access to knowledge hoarded and guarded by Pure-bloods. Becoming and remaining uncontested in every sense of the word would mean being in control. No longer dependent on what others are willing to ‘grant’ him. No one would ever be able to challenge Him, take anything from Him, ever again: the ultimate power.

Control of the Uncontrollable

So let’s turn our attention back to power: what would be ultimate power for a Wizard? Something a Wizard has never done and somewhere a Wizard has never gone before: beyond the veils of Death; surpassing mortal constructs ‒ and defeating something as terribly common as 'death'. I think this seed, this fear, was planted in Tom’s mind from a very young age. We see it when he asks Dumbledore whether his father was a wizard, for his mother couldn’t have been “or she wouldn’t have died”. Aptly enough, this fear of death or anxiety induced by the thought of one's one mortality stems from low self-esteem, which a narcissist has in abundance.

It’s also interesting to go back to a psychopath’s psychophysiology. Psychopaths are believed to have low arousal compared to others and are prone to boredom. They could go to lengths to find a ‘thrill’. Discovering the limits, pushing boundaries and going beyond that would be completely on-brand for a Wizard with psychopathic tendencies. Maybe I’ve read too many fanfictions, but a common thought seems to be that the Dark Arts are highly addictive, so someone like Tom would keep pushing it and pushing it, until he could go where no one has gone before. Thus begins his slow decline a la: ‘A Horcrux, you say? Hold my butterbeer, imma make 7.’

It’s intriguing that he went for dependence on external objects to safeguard his continued survival. Objects that he either entrusted his most loyal followers with or hid in locations that had meaning to only him. He even had a magical living creature be the container. As we saw over the course of the series, it really wasn’t all that foolproof. But that’s the arrogance of Tom Riddle; he believed that while not many Wizards would even go down the path of creating a Horcrux, none would even conceive creating seven. What’s more, how would anyone even have the smarts to figure out his pattern, his way of thinking – preposterous. If only he had known about the Hallows sooner. Alas.

Granted, there were other ways of circumventing mortality. But ‘cheating’ death by becoming a vampire, for example, would mean being a slave to one's own bloodlust and limitations, dependent on others still to sustain you, i.e. no control, still killable. Another obvious avenue would be using the Philosopher’s Stone as Flamel did, but it would not be anything new. Stealing it or copying it would mean nothing to him. He would be ‘immortal’ but weak and feeble, dependent on a stone, also still killable. So it seems that it’s not necessarily immortality in and of itself, but controlling how and when you die.

Conclusion: Spiraling out of Control

To summarize the why, Tom Riddle was a narcissistic psychopath with a high IQ, immense magical ability, a chip on his shoulder and something to prove ‒ and a need to be acknowledged for it. The potent mix of nature, magic, and nurture seemed to have really worked their, ehm, magic (sorry). Tom’s ‘abnormal’ behaviors in his childhood were strong predicting factors for the potential to entertain notions of one day being a Dark Lord. However, the odds seem like they were already in that favor before he was even born when we consider his genetic makeup along with the circumstances surrounding his conception and his birth. The Muggle environment he grew up in and the Magical world he was then introduced appear to be the ‘umami’ flavoring for the mix to inevitably lead him down his self-destructive path.

Tom’s actions and behaviors all seem to boil down to an excessive need for control and the deep-seated fear of losing it. Growing up with Muggles, he used all his talents to exert his control over those weaker, sans Magique. In his peak Riddle days, Tom was quick to figure out he could control people by using his glib charm, his looks, and his extreme intelligence to manipulate everything to his liking. He was able to trick people into ‘wanting’ to give him the things he desires, making people believe that he’s ‘giving’ them something in return. With his psychopathy and narcissism fully taking the wheel, it seems that he no longer cared – or saw the need – to pretend to cater to the wishes of others. Fear became his main tool in the peak Voldemort days; the only thing he deigned to ‘give’ others was allowing them to stay alive, avoid punishment, or allowing them to unleash their darkest fantasies. In chasing evermore control, power, he ends up spiraling. His actions shift from sly, cunning, covert manipulative behaviors to more impulsive, erratic and desperate behaviors, all stemming from a loss of control, of his carefully cultivated power. His mask, literally and figuratively, disappears.

It’s impossible to look past the incredible symbolism and irony of the Horcruxes. In his belief that eliminating and eradicating his weaknesses would make him untouchable, that very pursuit ended up being his undoing. With the killing off of the last vestiges of ‘normality’, he seemed to be completely driven by his impulses (or his Id, as Freud would say). If we add ‘death terror’ to this, it would explain why it went as far as Going Full Voldemort and becoming a mass murderer blindly obsessed with a prophecy that merely hinted at his potential defeat.

Rowling said that Voldemort's boggart would be his own corpse, and I think that makes sense ‒ for Voldemort, that is. His corpse would signify the fact that he could die and thus be defeated, the ultimate loss in the ultimate battle for ultimate power (say ‘ultimate’ one more time!). I think Tom Riddle's boggart would've been a poor man's grave; not only did he die (ugh, lame), but he died with nothing to show for it.

With all that being said, being a psychopath does not evil make. However, Tom Riddle’s dire need for a sense of self, immersion in the Dark Arts, and the mutilation of his soul are what really made him turn into an unmitigated You-Know-What. The destruction of his soul left a shell of a man driven by dark base emotions: Full Voldemort.

The end.

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bigskydreaming · 5 years ago

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Uh.....if you mash together pre-Reboot and New 52 continuities the way we all just tend to do anyway, you know who would have just as much to say about Bruce resuscitating the Joker after Dick killed him in Last Laugh?

Duke. Who does the math and realizes, wait, the fucking clown was actually DEAD, like, game over, the world rid of the problem that is him and the shit he does....and Bruce...actively cancelled this out, whereas if he’d stopped his OWN kneejerk reactions long enough to realize that reviving the Joker wouldn’t erase what Dick had done or lessen Dick’s awareness that he’d crossed that line, literally all it would accomplish is to have all of that remain true WHILE bringing the Joker back into the world and thus creating more potential victims of his in the future?

Victims like....Duke’s parents.

Aka can someone please drag Bruce Wayne’s butt to therapy because his complete inability to bend or budge on the specific issue of killing has

1) caused his eldest son no shortage of severely debilitating emotional issues all stemming from his deep-seated fear of losing his father’s love due to situations like with the Joker and with Blockbuster

2) caused and perpetuated his continued estrangement from his second son, whose actual literal death was so devastating to Bruce he was in real danger of getting himself killed before Tim came along and yet upon his actual return from the grave, still took backseat to Bruce’s fixation on a rule he set FOR HIMSELF long ago, because it was always made fairly clear that Jason could have been persuaded to change his methods in regards to fighting all other crimes if Bruce could find a way to make an exception in regards to the Joker, who has hurt all of their family so often and so severely, and that’s not even getting into the shit with the Penguin in RHATO

3) contributed to his third son’s feelings of estrangement and not being deserving of a place in Bruce’s family, in the aftermath of Tim’s entirely understandable DESIRE to see his father’s murderer dead, without even Tim actually acting on it before earning Bruce’s judgment, and with a likely extension and continuation of this divide being evident in how opposed Tim is to going to Bruce for help whenever Ra’s pops up again to be all “I’m outside ur house in the bushes spying on u thru the window, will u join me in remaking the world in our - sorry that’s a lie, I meant my - image, plz check y/n,” because again quite understandably, Tim fears being caught in the middle of Ra’s and Bruce’s ideological war because he’s afraid of Bruce deciding its because Tim is more open to what Ra’s says than he actually is, and the conflicts that could arise from that

4) almost destroyed any chance of a healthy and loving relationship between he and his youngest son before they even got a chance to start one, due to his own issues with a past Damian had literally no ability to opt out of, even if he had been given alternative viewpoints to the morality of killing, as taught to him by the League - Damian was a ten year old child who could not be expected to have the resources to leave the League and their expectations for him, without help, even if he had previously been able to conceive of a way of life other than the one laid out for him from birth

5) I don’t even know where to start with Cass and the whole shit with Deathstroke and like....I just. Yeah

6) As noted at the start of the post, had Bruce simply not intervened to resuscitate the Joker, like didn’t even need to kill him himself, like if he had simply NOT BROUGHT HIM BACK TO LIFE (like and people wonder why Dick was so convinced Bruce would judge him for not stepping between Blockbuster and a bullet to save that villain’s life when not even a year prior, Bruce had established the precedent that apparently in his mind, if there was even a possibility of resuscitating an already dead villain with a body count like the Joker’s, that was apparently what needed to be done)....but like....no Joker after the Last Laugh, no Jokerized Thomases a few years later....not to mention how that could have altered the chain of events that unfolded with Jason’s return and attempt to get Bruce to kill someone who would now already be dead.

Like....Bruce. Buddy. Pal. This vow you made - again, for YOURSELF - to never kill in any scenario, because YOU were afraid that YOU wouldn’t be able to stop yourself from doing it again, and again and again...it might have been born from a place of good intentions, but the stringent, utterly inflexible way you apply it to your own family, with zero allowance for context, let alone exceptions, is actively hurting them in any number of ways, AND HAS BEEN FOR YEARS.

You need to get some nuance. Nobody’s saying YOU yourself have to go out and start gunning people down, but there have to be room for more opinions on this than just yours...especially when it comes to the choices OTHER people make on this matter, for born of THEIR moral compasses. Your moral compass has allowed you to give yourself a pass on some pretty fucked up things, so you need to just NOT, with the whole treating it as the be all and end all of Right and Wrong.

I mean in my professional opinion, of course.

Also also also, I would just like to point out that another factor that in my mind, makes the Last Laugh story and the fact that Dick DID in fact cross that line once and kill someone, even if they were later revived.....

This is important, and potentially central to SO MANY of the internal conflicts within the Batfamily, most of them between Bruce and various of his children....

BECAUSE IT DISPROVES BRUCE’S FEAR OF THE SLIPPERY SLOPE IN REGARDS TO KILLING BEING LIKE...A UNIVERSAL LIKELIHOOD, RATHER THAN JUST A PERSONAL FEAR BASED ON HIS OWN SELF-AWARENESS.

Bruce’s entire thesis about never killing even once, even with someone like a Joker, is because he believes once you start down that road, you’re never going to stop....with him frequently shown as seeing Jason and his actions as proof of that basic premise....because ultimately, like with the Penguin, its like even when Jason has gone a long time without killing anyone, Bruce is convinced that its only a matter of time before he breaks his promises or finds another ‘exception’ he feels he can justify....because again, Bruce so often fixates on this idea that there IS no stopping. With it being very easy to see how this also extends at times to concerns about Damian and the possibility of him killing again, given his own past.

But when you take Last Laugh into account.....and acknowledge the fact that Dick has killed as a bigger deal than the comics or most fics have ever really allowed it to be....

Suddenly you have to take into account that yes, Dick has killed once...

AND ONLY ONCE.

Years and years and years ago....and never done it since.

And that’s a potential GAME-CHANGER for so very freaking many of the conflicts that keep their entire family so divided....because so many of them are sprung from this one central source.....which is based on this one specific fear Bruce has for himself and has since applied to all of his children as well....

To such an extent that when one of his children crossed this line for the first time....BRUCE HAD TO UNDO IT.

Even though Bruce said at the time he resuscitated the Joker so that Dick could live with himself, not have to live with having killed a man and what that might do to him.....Dick still had to live with himself, still had to live with having killed a man! It very much informed his character moving forward, was a central part of his fears in situations even tangentially similar, like with Blockbuster. Bringing back the Joker didn’t actually change ANYTHING for Dick, other than....render all that kinda meaningless, because he had to work through the emotional issues of having killed a villain....who didn’t even stay dead, and continued to kill and ruin lives.

Nope, I maintain in actuality, Bruce resuscitated the Joker so that HE could live with what Dick had done, not have to live with one of his sons having broken the vow that was so important to Bruce himself, and what that might do to him, Bruce...and his relationship with Dick, or even just his ability to continue to have a relationship with Dick. He was driven to ‘reverse’ what Dick had done, IMO, so that HE didn’t have to face it, could in time pretend that it hadn’t really happened, it didn’t count, his world order was still intact.

And that’s a level of denial that’s actually pretty damn characteristic for Bruce in a lot of ways.....and IMO, the real source of so much of his conflict with his children.

Because then once Jason came along and already had eight heads in a duffel bag by the time Bruce realized who the Red Hood really was.....it was too late for Bruce to do anything about it, to stop reality from crashing straight through every barrier Bruce tried to throw in the way to keep from having to face the moral quandary of one of his children (that he so often saw himself in) taking the step that he’d so definitively feared ever taking.

Its not that Bruce was able to ‘forgive’ Dick for killing the Joker that one time, and not the times Jason has killed, because Bruce loves Dick more.

Its because Bruce DIDN’T forgive Dick for it. HE DID HIS BEST TO PRETEND IT NEVER EVEN HAPPENED.

And the reason that didn’t happen with Jason....was because it was never even an option. By the time Bruce was confronting his son as JASON.....instead of a mysterious masked vigilante....there was zero possibility of reframing this in his mind or undoing any of it like he tried to do when he resuscitated the Joker.

Bruce’s vow is all well and good for him....but the thing he’s never faced, because he’s afraid to face it, afraid it could permanently destroy his connections with his family....is that he doesn’t get to make that choice for his children. That it doesn’t make them terrible people to feel differently about the importance of not even allowing a man as destructive as the Joker to die, in large part based on their having entirely different life experiences than Bruce himself, that lead them to feel differently on specific matters like this one.

And I think the most effective starting place for that dialogue, that confrontation, realization....is for BRUCE to face what Dick did all those years ago, AND the fact that in Dick’s case, history has NOT repeated itself since.....that Dick truly did kill a man, kill the Joker, in every way that mattered....and HE’S STILL DICK GRAYSON. The person he was didn’t change, not fundamentally, not in the ways that matter so much to Bruce on every other level. Killing the Joker didn’t make Dick a killer, other than in the specific context of that specific situation.

And that to me, is such an important conversation to have within the construct of the Batfamily and their interconnected conflicts, a confrontation that could actually force Bruce to start shifting his perspective in regards to his CHILDREN’S choices, not necessarily his own....and with that ultimately spreading into each of the individual conflicts Bruce has with his various kids, and allowing for some actual PROGRESS to be made on those fronts, instead of it always just being the same old fight, with them all endlessly running in circles.

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rem289 · 5 years ago

Text

Q: Why are you writing this post?

A: Because during the Christmas holidays I started to receive attention from the Zootopia fandom which led me to re-discover some concepts that I thought I had made clear, and since this didn’t turn out to be true, I am forced to reiterate them.

Q: What happened?

A: I discovered that someone had reposted, obviously without my consent, an old comic of Aoimotion and mine on reddit, a site I don't like and on which I had already said not to publish my actually and old contents. This repost "reminded" this fandom of my existence, and after this event some people came to ask us questions such as "when Nick and Judy would reappear in our work?" and the like.

You can imagine how much it bothered me, so I went to reddit and wrote to immediately delete the content. Unfortunately, doing this I couldn’t help but notice how the post had become a place to waste insinuations and insults aimed at me and Aoimotion. In particular, the comments of three users stood out: @ggctuk , @owningsuperset7 and @hammytotherescue

Q: Why did these users get your attention?

A: ggctuk, which I have no idea who they are, have proclaimed themselves as the narrative voice of the events that have taken place between us and the fandom, providing a lot of incomplete and, in the worst case, completely wrong information, about why we left the fandom and about the alleged "abusive behaviors" we had against translators.

Owningsuperset7 spoke about us (like he does every time the occasion presents itself to him), defining us ungrateful towards the fandom "that had fed us". But "fed" in what sense? It seems to me that we have been those who have definitely "eaten" very little… or likes can be monetized, just like the views on youtube, and I didn't know it? Did they break the keyboard in order to put those likes on our works? If it’s so, I'm sorry, but I certainly wasn't the one who pointed the gun at their head to follow my work. Always remember that paying attention to a work is always and only a reader’s choice. No creator has power over these phenomena, we just create and publish, the rest is always an unknown factor. So expressing yourself as a seduced and abandoned lover on an old and free work doesn’t make you a victim, it only makes you ridiculous. Anyway, I know the subject, who had already decided in the past to talk on DeviantArt before I blocked him, and I decided not to tell him anything in that moment, also because, what can you say to a person who clearly has problems that go beyond fandom? Sometimes ignoring is the kindest choice you can make.

Hammytotherescue instead claimed that he and I were friends in the past, before the duo formed by me and aoimotion became toxic. Since I had no memory of this person and I hate when someone alludes to relationships with me that don't exist, I wrote to him privately on Tumblr asking him if he could kindly refresh my memory about this "friendship" he was bragging about.

Q: How did it end?

A: The conversation, which I report below because I, unlike him, have nothing to be ashamed of, is as follows:

As you can see, Hammy never replied to my last message . But in reality the story was not over. A few days ago, in fact, I discover that the user in question "vented" in the post of reddit, not under my comment (so that I received notification of his reply) but in response to another comment that had been left to me. Showing, as always, the incredible maturity of these people.

After reading this comment, I decided to act by reporting the user on reddit, but the answer I received can be summarized as: "since you are a content creator, you deserve insults regardless." In short, a response as useful and smart as the people who gave it to me. So don’t worry Hammy, you won't be banned from reddit because the only braincell shared by you users agrees that defining a toxic and manipulative person is, to quote one of the wise moderators I talked to, "a fairly typical level of criticism". All is well that ends well.

Q: You mentioned "concepts to reiterate". What would they be?

A: Let's start by denying what ggctuk wrote in that reddit's post, given how much popularity his comments have gained.

My split from this fandom started because I simply lost interest in Nick and Judy and preferred to do something else, something of my own. Black Jack gave us the opportunity to invent many original characters and they was those I wanted to work on. We have never worked for ulterior motives other than having fun together. When we recognized that we no longer have anything to give to this universe, we declared it openly and closed this chapter of our "artistic life". This split could take place in a peaceful and calm way, I would have taken my own path and you yours, since it was obvious, since BJ times, that you had very little interest in our original contents. You also reiterated this between the lines of these last comments, so really, I make a terrible effort to understand your logic of contents belonging to your fandom. It's not your fault, don't worry. You have been spoiled by this entrenched habit of creating any anthropomorphic animal and attributing it to your precious and super-nutritive fandom. Once you labeled this attitude at heresy, now everything is fine as long as it helps you keeping this universe going, honestly, I just pity you. However it seems that your obsession with me prevents you from accepting the fact that my life would have continued even without this fandom and that I would have lived very well even without the amount of likes that fanarts could give me. Indeed my life would be even more beautiful if I didn't have to waste time like I am doing now.

Both me and aoimotion together gave you a lot, and in the end we simply got it back. Jack is a prime example: yes, he is a character born from the scratches of Zootopia's artwork, but thanks to our work he has evolved to the point of becoming a completely original character. This fandom has not been able to accept it and until the end has tried to claim him as its own, and even now it can’t accept that we have instead taken him back, and even less can you bear that we are successfully using him in our original works, which is why you insist so much on his "Disney" origin, as if this defines his identity, and for months you have made fun of us saying that we were claiming something that belongs to Disney as our own. Unfortunately, beyond a doodle and a hint of a hypothetical background, Disney has absolutely nothing. Whatever weight you have attributed to "Jack Savage" is only thanks to our work, Disney has nothing to do with your mania and it has nothing to do with everything we've built up over the years. Still, you took our job and stuck it over the "Disney" label, and that was even when Black Jack was long gone, so don’t use that excuse anymore. You even tried to attribute Cynthia to the Disney universe by calling her "Skye", since you are so desperate to keep your fantasies going, and when you had nothing more to say, you said that my art style was "clearly inspired by Disney". Did you think I could condone such an attitude? I suppose these statements derive above all from the certainly very poor culture that you have of the world outside the fandom (or fandoms), however there are artists who WORKED for Disney, who TEACHED drawing techniques at the Disney Academy and who work at own productions with that style, without anyone attributing anything to the major. If you don't believe me, try using the web for something constructive, like doing some in-depth research on the subject.

As for the matter of our alleged abuses on translators, I will only say two things: the translations started because of my naivety, and we prohibited them because the translators abused their role and went out of control, acting as if the comics belonged to them and / or as if there was a special relationship of complicity between me and them. I'm sorry I gave false hopes to these people, unfortunately I didn't have time to realize the misunderstandings that were being created and how our work was being used. There is a clear difference between the fan content and the original content, so now more than even, less our work passes into the hands of others, the better it is for us.

Now let’s analyzing the brilliant messages of Hammy, both on Tumblr and on reddit:

In both cases, what I see is a desperate need to cling to Rem's "pretty" facade while simultaneously demolishing the person behind Aoimotion. These insinuations suggest that the only possible Rem to conceive for your narrow minds is the kind and lovely one, and everything I say and do that does not fall within this definition is the work of aoimotion.

I will never go into detail about the dynamics between me and her, because frankly it’s not your business and I don’t want to give you further ground to cultivate your absurd speculations and your degenerated ideas. If you have decided to treat us as two two-dimensional characters of some fourth category fan fiction born from your fragile minds and then feel disappointed or offended by my attitude or a severe response I can give you, you cannot help but blame yourself and not who is my friend .

But you have to get it into your heads that when you talk about us in a personal way, you refer only on the basis of two web profiles. You don't know us personally and above all you don't know me. Being an extremely reserved person, I always decided to use social networks to share my artistic side or my interests related to entertainment, nothing more, nothing less. "Rem289" has always been only a blog, a showcase on the web, I’ve never attributed a real emotional and above all personal value to it, even before Zootopia. For the rest I prefer to live my personal life off the web. Unfortunately, you have been so careless as to decide to hit my personal sphere, my friendships and my affections. So no, Aoi didn’t take over between you and me, but the person behind Rem289 took over and you paid the consequences.

Still on the subject of aoimotion, it seems that the moment this comment was written on DA has remained particularly impressed: https://www.deviantart.com/comments/1/765376682/4647911119

This great insult, which among other things is attributed to her as if I didn’t think the same (if not worse) about you, has become the new reason why aoimotion is ugly and bad and is the reason why she deserves to be insulted and disparaged at the slightest opportunity, even during a conversation with me in which she’s not involved in any way.

Now, since this term seems to me rather dated to be used as a matter of indignation during your debates, and since I still find it rather ”soft” to use to outline my intolerance towards you, in order to give you another thing to think over, I will give you an attribute which seems more correct to me: you are sick. Confronting you is like talking to someone who has been brainwashed. You are a broken record that always says the same things over and over again. I can't even feel sorry for you, what I feel is just a great sense of unease. (Of course there are people that still participate in this fandom and are perfectly normal, but those are exceptions and they already know we think good of them.)

And it’s precisely your illness that prompted me to dissociate myself so violently from the fandom. Not aoimotion, as you have been saying for months between an insult and another that you address to her because perhaps you are too afraid of me to address them directly to me, which is rather contradictory since I should be the sweet and pretty one of the duo. After all, it's better to treat me like a poor brainless fool who lets herself be manipulated rather than admit that I also have my own ideas and that, you don’t say, you don't like them.

Q: In any case, you have no right to deprive your fans of old content they love so much, you just want to be spiteful! Why did all your old WildeHopps comics disappear from the web?

A: The decision to delete the contents created by me relating to the fandom from my web platforms or those shared with my partner was not born in the least out of spite or "punishment" towards the members of the fandom. It was a decision made to dissociate my name and my current work from fandom, because unfortunately it created difficulties for my image and real difficulties for readers to understand (you can go on and say that if people think your work is still Zootopia-related is not a big deal, but I assure you it is). All that came after, are only and exclusively speculations built on purpose to find the most sinister reasons of why it happened. Publishing content is only an accessory part of the job itself, a percentage of the process. Deciding to publish, not publish or cancel a publication is at the pure expense of the author, and no consumer has the right to impose his will on the creator. I understand that they are perhaps too complex concepts for you, since it’s clear that you are used to measuring the value of things based on the likes they receive, but this current of thought also exists and I hope it will be useful to you someday, in the remote possibility that decide to take moments of deep reflection (which would be more and more useful than tapping your fingers on the keyboard).

(Little curiosity: in the last few weeks we have forwarded about twenty reports to various sites to remove our old contents posted there without our permission. Not only all twenty reports have been accepted, but the contents have all been removed in less than 12 hours from the date of reporting. This is to remind you that if we don’t want our content on the web, we have them removed and it’s the reposters who pay for it, not us.)

Q: Well, however you can't force us not to talk badly about you or aoimotion, in fact, you can't stop us from believing that she's been manipulating you for years. Almost certainly it’s she who is writing this post without your knowledge, isn't it?

A: The people of the web are notoriously lazy and are therefore often uninformed and constipated in developing their own concepts. They spit sentences without even knowing what they’re talking about, they choose "comfortable" truths, such as the fact of attributing to aoimotion every not nice word that comes from me, and when this phenomenon is reflected on real persons, unfortunately it’s quite difficult to manage.

We are attributed with labels, words, concepts, faults, relationships that don’t belong to us and that are difficult to get away from. A simple comment or a wrong statement towards a person can spread like wildfire and end up marking them for life. Needless to say, these conditions often prevent these same people from continuing with their activities, which instead are healthy, in a serene and peaceful way. Even now, instead of drawing, I’m writing this latest post to defend me and my partner from your sick slanders. Those who allow themselves the luxury of damaging the "active personalities" of the web are people who fully enjoy anonymity behind a screen, and often people who have the matter of regulating them (like the reddits moderators, who are a joke at best) limit themselves to considering certain behaviors "ordinary” in the creator / consumer relationship. The mere fact of normalizing certain behaviors doesn’t smooth out the rules of civilized life, makes these "authorities" complicit and therefore only adds a problem. It’s more than evident that some people are not yet able to distinguish the boundary that exists between objective opinion and direct and personal insult, but from people who lose sleep at night because they have been defined as “lunatic” I don’t expect anything less. Who knows what you will do now that I have called you sick.

I conclude with a message to the interested party:

@hammytotherescue: I don't know how old you are, however, judging by what you write and how you write it and how you act, I deduce that you should not be more than 14-15 years old. Unfortunately I regret to tell you that the fact you are a minor doesn’t mean that you don’t have to take responsibility for your actions, and if you still have doubts about understanding where you have gone wrong I advise you to ask your parents for advice. I gave you the opportunity to confront me but you ran away to cry on a public platform. Hasn't anyone taught you that real life doesn't work like that? If, on the other hand, you are an adult, I sincerely feel sorry for you, I say this from the bottom of my heart.

I know how comfortable it is to hide behind a group or in this case a fandom to vent one's dislikes towards the individual. This time you and your friends have received the same treatment, you have not caught generic appellations addressed to the fandom but I decided to speak to you personally. My only advice is to use this experience to learn how it behaves on the web, and when you have learned it, you could teach it to all your friends, perhaps starting with @owningsuperset7.

For @ggctuk: I hope you will appreciate my effort in writing this long post, as so the next time you talk about us again, you can use it as a reference to explain how things went 🤗

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imagine-loki · 5 years ago

Text

Pride and Prejudice

TITLE: Pride and Prejudice CHAPTER NO./ONE SHOT: Chapter 25 AUTHOR: wolfpawn

ORIGINAL IMAGINE: Imagine Loki was raised on Jotunheim as Laufey’s son after the war, but an agreement was then made that he would wed Odin’s daughter so Odin could secure the alliance of Jotunheim through the marriage. Loki, in turn, was raised to be king of Jotunheim, but how he views Asgard is far different from how Odin’s daughter is raised leading to a clash of cultures as well as uncertainty between the pair of betrothed youths. RATING: Mature NOTES/WARNINGS: Forced Marriage, not all fun and games. My first real step back into the Loki scene in over a year.

Tags - @skulliebythesea @asimovethroughthisworld @blackcherry26-blog @we-shadowhunter2901

Loki could not focus on everything that was being said after that. All he could focus on was the new information that Thor was a Berserker. At that moment, he realised that more than ever, alliances or simply not being against Asgard was all that mattered. He thought there would be a way to overcome Thor in a battle before on the basis of his frenzied approach, the fact the Aesir seemed to be without tact when fighting, a Berserker was not something you could factor for. They were something different entirely. They were not without thought, they simply were able to do so much more than others, they were without fatigue. While the Jotnar would naturally tire, Thor would feel as though a five-hour battle was merely warming up. He was never more grateful for his father’s changing demeanour from the battle king before to the more pacifist nature now than at that moment. He recalled his father forcing him away from his plan to fight against Odin’s decision to end the alliance after everything with Ella. he did not know if his father was privy to Thor’s true nature and had said nothing or if it was good self-preservation that stopped Laufey from allowing him to go ahead with his foolhardy plan, but at that moment he was grateful for it.

When he felt a hand on his arm, he knew by its temperature that it was Ella, looking at her, still slightly startled, he noted concern in her eyes. With a small nod of his head, he looked to see Thor looked at him in confusion and the others with similar looks on their faces before the blonde Aesir and his allies turned and left, leaving the Jotnar and Ella by themselves.

“Arden, could you please alert the others to what we have just learned so we all are aware of the situation?”

“Of course, Princess.”

“Helbindi, I don’t have any request or right to tell you what you wish to do with your time, I merely ask you not allow yourself to be isolated by Nigel, for your own well being.” Ella smiled. “Loki and I will return to our rooms to discuss matters more, if you have no need of him at present.”

Helbindi looked at his brother for a moment while Loki gave a single nod in return. “If you need me, Brother.”

“Thank you, ‘Bind.”

Helbindi left, Ella and Loki watching him as he did. “We need to speak in private.” Loki looked over at her. “You seem to be missing some key information.”

They returned to their rooms in silence, not giving too much attention to any on their journey. When they arrived, Loki sat against a desk while Ella locked the door, specifically ensuring none could hear their interactions with a spell as she did. “You never knew?”

“Of what?”

“Thor. Is that why you thought you could fight all of this?” She asked curiously.

“Berserkers are not real. A myth.” He dismissed, not believing his own words

“In battle, my brother’s eyes glaze over, they are akin to some wild beast, he does not speak, only roars, nothing he sounds makes any recognisable words and none can get him to see sense. It is terrifying to witness. I tried with my seidr to assist once, to settle him, but his mind is blank of anything but the fight at those times. I can assure you, if there were myths before, there is none with regards to my brother. He is without reason and somehow, his strength increases ten-fold at such times. It is why my father must balance the line of coming down hard on him and understanding my brother is trying very hard to control it. The time I put into my seidr as I grew up, he has had to invest in controlling a part of his very self too, just not as I do.” She explained. “I would have thought you had known this, I apologise for shocking you with it.”

“Is it hereditary?” Loki did not know why he asked. There were, of yet, no concerns of Ella being with child, in the months since her illness, they had not even considered such things and she would be showing by now if she had conceived before her illness but that did not stop the worries for the future.

“No one knows. My parents tried to find out, but they could not find any history of it in the family. We simply do not know. There is little reason to suggest any child I would give you would have such traits. Berserkers are sometimes believed to be made more than they are born.”

Loki could not contest her words, he did not know anything on the subject matter to say otherwise. He could only worry privately on the matter until such time as he could discuss it with someone more knowledgeable than himself on the matter. It concerned him if there could be a genetic link. He felt angered if such had been kept from him willfully. Looking at Ella’s features, it was clear she had no intention of lying to him. “Why are you so honest?”

“This marriage has little else going for it, honesty is one of the cornerstones of a good marriage, if we can get that much right, maybe we stand a chance.”

“Most would not share your point of view.”

“Most are idiots out for personal gain, everything you do, everything I do, is for the betterment of those who must depend on our decisions. If we bicker amongst us, how can you tend to your people to the best of your ability? By preventing there from being many issues with me to toy with your mind and time so you can use it better elsewhere.”

Again, as with so many times, Loki found himself startled by her answer. He said nothing in response. There was little to say to her words. She did everything she did for Jotunheim, as she always did. When he walked to the balcony doors, they glowed green for a moment, then opened as she broke their seal that allowed them privacy and said nothing more as she went to read something rather than concern herself with Loki’s thoughts as he went to the balcony.

“What in the realms?”

Worried, Ella rushed to where Loki had been for the past half an hour on the balcony. He was standing close to it, looking over the gardens of the palace. “Is everything alright?” She asked, looking at his appalled face.

“That man is trying to eat that woman.” He indicated to the gardens below, causing Ella’s attention to be brought there. She scanned them to see if there had been such a happening taking place but only saw two youths, not much younger than herself kissing in the small maze that was being grown. She looked again to where Loki was pointing and realised he was referencing the pair. On her figuring out what he referenced as ‘eating’ she laughed slightly. “What is so funny?” Loki demanded indignantly.

“Your interpretation of their actions. I never realised you did not know what kissing was. Do you not have that on Jotunheim?”

“Kissing?”

“How did I never notice?” She admonished her lack of noting such. “Kissing, yes. Kissing is the act of pressing one’s lips to a partner’s as a sign of affection, or if done differently, as a form of greeting.” He looked at her blankly. Ella took a moment to think. “Do you recall last night, how some people pressed their cheek to another’s and made odd noises?” He nodded, having taken note of the peculiar ritual. “That is a kiss too. It’s an affectionate greeting.”

“You are joking?”

“Why would I?”

“Show me.”

“What?”

“Show me how they do it, please.” He recalled his manners after everything.

Ella turned to face him fully and leant up and kissed his cheek. Pulling back after, she studied his face.

“That is a terribly odd thing to do.”

That only caused her to laugh. “I suppose when you never knew of it before now, it would be. There is also another greeting, done by a man to a woman. He takes her hand.” Loki took hers. “No, you lift it like this.” She showed him how to place his under hers. “And you raise it to your lips and gently press them to the back of it. It is not as common these days, but some people love that manner of greeting if they are old fashioned, the Light Elves think it the greatest greeting.” She explained.

Loki took her words and saved them to memory, hoping that they were true, though he had little reason to doubt such, so that he could use such information in the future. “What is that form of it?” He pointed to the pair below, who had ceased their actions as another came closer to where they were.

“That,” Ella smiled wistfully as she spoke. “That is an entirely different matter altogether.”

“How so?”

“That is a lover’s kiss. One shared only by those with immense feelings for one another. There are different versions of that kiss also, but the type those young people partook in, that is very much amorous and lust-filled. They would rather have full privacy and be tearing off one another’s clothes, were the situation to arise.”

Loki frowned. “It seems almost animalistic.”

“Is not the act of sex? It is base instinct really, the kissing merely is an addition of such.”

“That is nothing like sex.”

“I do not think them overly dissimilar, personally.” Ella shrugged. “You are not used to it, so of course, to you, it is a foreign concept. Both seem incredibly alike to me.” She walked back inside, seeing there was nothing to be concerned about outside. She had barely reentered the living area and retrieved the book she had been reading when Loki rejoined her.

“How do you know the sensation of both?” He asked as soon as she looked at him.

“Because I have laid with you as my husband, which you are entirely aware of, but I have also know the sensation of kissing from another.”

Loki’s eyes widened. “In that fashion?” he pointed out the balcony door.

“Not in such a sloppy manner, but yes, in that fashion.”

“A lover’s kiss?”

“Yes,” she repeated.

“With whom?”

“Why does that matter?” She challenged. “I never once requested information on any of those who decided to share your time with before I came to Jotunheim, it was not my place to question what occurred before me, and the same can be said for your questions of me.”

“Liuilf?” Ella cocked her head slightly, wondering how Loki could even have heard his name. “That guard.” She nodded. “Did you care for him?”

“Of course. I would not have allowed the kiss otherwise. But I had a duty, as I told him, hence why I never allowed it further. Like you, Loki, I am willing to forego love for Jotunheim.”

Loki swallowed at her admission. He was startled that she would confess her feelings for another, a love for another. He had been so focused on the loss of his right to love another, he never thought if there was a chance that she too had suffered such. “You...loved him?”

“Is that so hard to believe? I am capable of love, all Aesir are, contrary to your opinion.” She scoffed. “What is it you wish to achieve from this conversation, may I ask? You clearly are not pleased with what you are hearing and I do not wish to discuss it either, so what is the point of this, I am curious?” Loki did not answer. “It is somewhat rich that you feel insulted by my caring for another from before you when you literally avoided my company to go to another and give out to her about me.”

Loki winced, knowing it was every word of the truth. Part of him was curious as to how she knew it, but he said nothing of that. “I’m sorry.”

“I have not even looked at another since the day I arrived here, I am not at risk of doing so any time soon. We agreed to try this, and I think even you have to agree, I am stubborn enough to go through with this.” She smiled.

Loki could not help to chuckle slightly in return at her comment. “I think you would do it out of spite and nothing more.”

“What?”

“Keep to the agreement.”

“I am the most stubborn creature you will ever meet. Though, you may come second.”

Loki scoffed at her remark and shook his head before frowning. “So, what does that form of this ‘kissing’ work?”

“Well, essentially, it includes placing your lips to a partner’s lips and pressing them together. When it gets more heated, tongues get involved.” She explained.

Loki frowned, not certain if he understood the meaning but not wishing to ask for a demonstration, not liking the idea of anyone else’s tongue in his mouth. His face told his horror at the idea, causing Ella to laugh.

“Here.” She walked forward, but immediately Loki took a step back. Ella laughed again. “No, I am not going to kiss you.” She promised. She walked forward again and though he leant back slightly, Loki did not step back. She used her seidr has she had before, showing him plays she had watched as a youth where the actors kissed as reference. When she pulled back again, he looked just as appalled as before though with a little more comprehension in his face also. “That is kissing.”

“It seems vile.”

“To you. To those of whom are more used to it and who consent to being kissed, it is a pleasant and yearned for experience,” She explained with a sad smile.

Loki watched as she brought her book to a far nook of the room and faced the wall, not engaging with him further, the idea of her kissing another as he had been shown in his head making him feel annoyed, though he knew her pressing her lips to another’s was nothing in comparison to his life before she came along.

#loki #others #submission #Submitted fic #chapter 25 #wolfpawn #pride and prejudice

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wolfpawn · 5 years ago

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Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 25

Story Summary - Based on an idea I had that I submitted to Imagine Loki. Imagine Loki was raised on Jotunheim as Laufey’s son after the war, but an agreement was then made that he would wed Odin’s daughter so Odin could secure the alliance of Jotunheim through the marriage. Loki, in turn, was raised to be king of Jotunheim, but how he views Asgard is far different from how Odin’s daughter is raised leading to a clash of cultures as well as uncertainty between the pair of betrothed youths.

Chapter Summary - Loki is forced to come to terms with something he never expected in Thor's revelation before he is forced to learn of something he never heard of before, kissing, and Ella's knowledge of the act.

Previous Chapter

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“Arden, could you please alert the others to what we have just learned so we all are aware of the situation?”

“Of course, Princess.”

Helbindi looked at his brother for a moment while Loki gave a single nod in return. “If you need me, Brother.”

“Thank you, ‘Bind.”

Helbindi left, Ella and Loki watching him as he did. “We need to speak in private.” Loki looked over at her. “You seem to be missing some key information.”

“Of what?”

“Thor. Is that why you thought you could fight all of this?” She asked curiously.

“Berserkers are not real. A myth.” He dismissed, not believing his own words

“This marriage has little else going for it, honesty is one of the cornerstones of a good marriage, if we can get that much right, maybe we stand a chance.”

“Most would not share your point of view.”

“What in the realms?”

“Your interpretation of their actions. I never realised you did not know what kissing was. Do you not have that on Jotunheim?”

“Kissing?”

“You are joking?”

“Why would I?”

“Show me.”

“What?”

“Show me how they do it, please.” He recalled his manners after everything.

Ella turned to face him fully and leant up and kissed his cheek. Pulling back after, she studied his face.

“That is a terribly odd thing to do.”

“That,” Ella smiled wistfully as she spoke. “That is an entirely different matter altogether.”

“How so?”

Loki frowned. “It seems almost animalistic.”

“Is not the act of sex? It is base instinct really, the kissing merely is an addition of such.”

“That is nothing like sex.”

“How do you know the sensation of both?” He asked as soon as she looked at him.

“Because I have laid with you as my husband, which you are entirely aware of, but I have also know the sensation of kissing from another.”

Loki’s eyes widened. “In that fashion?” he pointed out the balcony door.

“Not in such a sloppy manner, but yes, in that fashion.”

“A lover’s kiss?”

“Yes,” she repeated.

“With whom?”

“Liuilf?” Ella cocked her head slightly, wondering how Loki could even have heard his name. “That guard.” She nodded. “Did you care for him?”

“Of course. I would not have allowed the kiss otherwise. But I had a duty, as I told him, hence why I never allowed it further. Like you, Loki, I am willing to forego love for Jotunheim.”

Loki winced, knowing it was every word of the truth. Part of him was curious as to how she knew it, but he said nothing of that. “I’m sorry.”

Loki could not help to chuckle slightly in return at her comment. “I think you would do it out of spite and nothing more.”

“What?”

“Keep to the agreement.”

“I am the most stubborn creature you will ever meet. Though, you may come second.”

Loki scoffed at her remark and shook his head before frowning. “So, what does that form of this ‘kissing’ work?”

“Well, essentially, it includes placing your lips to a partner’s lips and pressing them together. When it gets more heated, tongues get involved.” She explained.

“It seems vile.”

“To you. To those of whom are more used to it and who consent to being kissed, it is a pleasant and yearned for experience,” She explained with a sad smile.

#loki fic #Pride and Prejudice #wolfpawn

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 5 years ago

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Psycho Analysis: Liev Schreiber Birthday Special - Sabretooth, Kingpin, and The Storm King

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Liev Schreiber is quite an actor, one that I think it is sadly easy to overlook despite his talent at portraying villains or other morally dubious characters. From his integral role in the Scream movies to his later numerous villainous roles, he manages to show himself as a rather skilled and versatile actor, particularly in regards to the latter; Schreiber is easily able to slip into playing a villain and deliver a fantastic performance… most of the time anyway.

The date I’m posting this on (October 4, 2019) is his birthday, so we’re going to take a look at three of his biggest villain roles to date:

Sabretooth from X-Men Origins

The Storm King from My Little Pony: The Movie

Kingpin from Into the Spider-Verse

The first is a great villain trapped in an awful movie; the second is an awful villain inside a fun and enjoyable movie; and the third is a great villain in an outstanding movie.

Motivation/Goals: Sabretooth is, in short, a psychopath. The guy lives for the thrill of battle, and is never satisfied unless he has someone to kill. He’s a predator, using the numerous wars he and his half-brother Logan fought in throughout history to sate his appetite, but it was never enough. Vietnam is when he really lost it, and soon after that his relationship with Logan became tarnished, leading to their numerous conflicts throughout the film. It’s rather simple, yet it’s effective. This is what we want from Sabretooth after all, a bloodthirsty, murderous psychopath who crosses every line imaginable and who just really wants to make Logan as miserable as possible.

The Storm King is kind of approaching dominating Equestria as if it were a business venture, complete with merchandise. Beyond that, he’s a bit of a one-note evil overlord, with none of the complex motivations and characterizations of the other antagonist of the film, Tempest Shadow. He’s just here for some quick laughs and to be the final boss in the third act.

Kingpin has my favorite motivation out of the entire lot: once when he was battling with Spider-Man, his wife and child walked in, and in fear and horror they fled, driving off only to be struck by a truck and killed. Kingpin then shoveled as much money as he could and hired the likes of Doc Ock and Green Goblin to help create a giant dimensional portal all so he could be reunited with his family. It’s such a tragic motive that adds layers of depth to Kingpin, and ultimately makes him an interesting foil for Miles, who decides to continue fighting so he can live up to those he loses (Peter and his uncle) while Kingpin cannot accept his loss or his responsibility and so decides to damn everyone else in his desperate struggle to undo the damage he himself caused.

Personality: Sabretooth is easily the most simple of the villains, in that he is just a completely unrepentant monster who revels in the fact he is a vicious, remorseless killer. Normally a villain like that would be boring and generic… but this is Sabretooth. This is what we want out of him. Add in his brotherly banter with Wolverine and his single-minded desire to ruin Logan’s life at every turn, and he just ends up being a really fun and engaging take on the character, with Schreiber injecting just the right amount of soft-spoken sadism and menace to make Victor Creed pants-crappingly terrifying.

Kingpin is a sleazy, scummy mob boss. He’s another seemingly simple character, but his design really helps show what kind of guy he is without telling us. This iteration of Wilson Fisk really plays up him being a mountain of a man, with him being a hulking behemoth with a very bulky design. Despite being a normal human, he looks like the kind of guy who could kill a superhuman with his bare hands. Despite all this, he does have sympathetic (but, and this can’t be stressed enough, not redeeming) qualities, such as his love for his family and his single-minded desire to be reunited with them. Of course, this desire is what leads to most of the troubles in the film, so he does show the dangers of that sort of careless and reckless pursuit of a goal is a bad thing, no matter how noble it seems.

Final Fate: The Storm King is the only character out of these three with a clear-cut fate, and it goes a long way to redeeming how bland the character is due to how out-of-place and dark it seems in the world of Friendship is Magic. In short, he is turned to stone, and his statue is allowed to drop to the ground, where he shatters into pieces. By all accounts, he is dead, a fate that seems to befall all terrible Friendship is Magic villains (cough Sombra cough).

Kingpin is the most open-ended, as after Miles stops him and in true Spider-Man fashion strings him up for the police. This does open up the door for Kingpin to appear again, which is a plus. The final showdown beforehand is a lot more interesting. The beatdown he gets from Miles, where Miles gets up from the pummeling that killed Peter and delivering a confident “Hey” like his uncle taught him right on Kingpin’s shoulder, sending him flying back to shut down his dimensional portal really is an awesome moment for the film and Miles in general.

Sabretooth… it really is impossible to say. He apparently makes it out of this film alive, but Schreiber’s Sabretooth is so disconnected from the one who appears later in the timeline (mostly on the token that Schreiber’s take is actually good and memorable) that it’s impossible what to say happened to him. Further muddying the waters is the numerous canon retcons to the timeline as shown in films like Days of Future Past, which altered the timeline in baffling ways such as causing people to be born earlier than they would have been, and then there’s the deleted idea for his cameo in Logan… Really, there’s no telling what exactly Happened to Victor Creed, as the X-Men series is such an utter mess.

Best Scene: Sabretooth has a few, such as the awesome opening montage where he and his brother fight through multiple wars, but perhaps the best part is when he and Wolverine team up to kill that awful thing pretending to be Deadpool. The real Deadpool would beat them to the punch much later in Deadpool 2, but hey, at least he knew what had to be done when he had the chance.

Kingpin’s is almost definitely the scene where he kills Peter, which shows him going through a shocking amount of emotion, but there’s also the flashback to his family’s demise or even that moment on the train where he becomes a lifetime achiever in the Pontoffel Pock Awards by screwing up in every conceivable reality imaginable and disturbing an entire multiverse worth of his family in his quest to murder Miles. Few people screw up on that epic of a scale.

The Storm King… I don’t know. He’s kinda scary in his final battle? Maybe when he plays with the sun and the moon? Nothing really stands out for him super well, because quite frankly he is massively overshadowed by Tempest Shadow, who has the honor of getting the villain song of the movie. And let me be completely frank: if you are a villain in a musical, and you don’t get a song, you suck. Period.

Best Quote: For Sabretooth, it has to be this quote that really sums up who he is: “I'm not your friend. I'm an animal, who dreamed he was a man. But the dream is over. And the beast is awake. And I will come for you without mercy, because it's my nature.”

Kingpin is a little trickier, because Wilson Fisk is a man of actions, rather than words; I feel like he doesn’t have too many great quips, but he has a plethora of awesome actions. However, I DO enjoy his intro, where Schreiber just kills it with the delivery and establishes Fisk right off the bat as one hell of a crime boss: “Doo-be do. Doo-be do. Yub-yub, doo-bee do, doo-bee-do. Watch out! Here comes the Spider-Man! You like my new toy? Cost me a fortune, but hey, can't take it with you, right? You came all this way. Watch the test. It's a hell of a frickin' light show, you're gonna love this.”

For Storm King… well, this is kind of a funny line: “Here's the deal. I'm in the middle of a big rebrand here. "The Storm King" is tracking, well, as "intensely intimidating", but you know what? I need to back it up. You know what I need to back it up with? A STORM! THAT WOULD BE GREAT! You promised me magic that could control the elements, and right now, I'm holding a what? A branch. A twig. Bleh!” Kind of a reach, but I think he does have some decent comedic moments here and there, and his initial, er, phone call with Tempest is charming enough.

Final Thoughts & Score: These guys are really all over the place, but I think they really showcase Schreiber’s talents very well, as well as how to use him effectively.

Sabretooth is easily the best villain out of this bunch. While X-Men Origins: Wolverine is a terrible, bloated mess of a film, Sabretooth is one of the few redeeming factors, with Schreiber turning in a wonderfully terrifying performance as Logan’s arch-enemy. It’s frankly insulting they never had him come back to the franchise, because he was certainly far more deserving of a comeback than someone like Jennifer Lawrence. At least with Schreiber it was clear he cared about the character, which is more than can be said for whoever played the original Sabretooth (a character who is not even worth a Psycho Analysis; there’s just nothing to talk about there).

Really, the only major issues with Sabretooth are the fact that he’s in the bottom of the barrel when it comes to the X-Men franchise and the writing doesn’t do him many favors, but Schreiber is just acting his butt off to the point where it doesn’t matter, he’s selling it, he’s giving us the Sabretooth even the “better” first X-Men movie couldn’t deliver, and he seriously earns that 9/10. It should come as no shock that his take on Victor Creed is the one thing besides Ryan Reynolds fans truly love about the film.

Contrast the Storm King, who is just a depressing waste of potential. The prequel comics set him up to be something far more fascinating than what we get in the movie; he goes from a silly yet cunning overlord to a comical goober who barely gets any screentime, accomplishes half of his evil actions offscreen, and just leaves very little impression on the audience. Not helping is that he is by and large one of the biggest idiots ever seen in the Friendship is Magic franchise, backstabbing his own loyal followers for no good reason and basically playing with his hand revealed. It’s pretty telling that his henchwoman Tempest Shadow is the one who gets the villain song of the film (which, as I’ve pointed out, is a sign that he really, really sucks as a villain) and who is far more memorable, enjoyable, and interesting.

All that being said, I do appreciate the sentiment of the character, and I do like that Schreiber did it so his kids could watch something with him in it that wouldn’t make them scared out of their minds, and I don’t necessarily think Storm King is one of the most horrible villains ever or anything – he’s just boring and a waste of potential. I’d say he just barely makes it to a 3/10, and that’s mostly because he does have some amusing moments and how bad he is is offset by Tempest Shadow being such a fantastic antagonist; if she wasn’t in the movie, he’d easily be a low 2 and a lot less forgivable. That does seem kind of weird, but I think with a villain like Storm King where he’s just a simple goofball being played by a talented actor isn’t so bad as long as there’s an actual, serious antagonist. It doesn’t exactly make him any better but it keeps him from sinking to the rating of soomeone like Jared Leto’s Joker.

Kingpin is, quite simply, fantastic. I love his design, I love his motivation, I love how he just commands the scene when he walks into the room. This guy is just peak villain design, story-wise and design-wise. Some have taken umbrage with the fact that Kingpin is the one who got to kill Peter rather than a more personal foe like Norman Osborn, but frankly I like that they took a unique approach and decided to utilize a more unexpected foe of Spidey’s.

I think what’s best about Kingpin is just how they manage to make him a rather tragic and pitiable figure despite all the evil he does. Normally it would be a tall order to make the man who murders Peter Parker a tragic figure, but somehow the film manages, showing him to be a bitter, broken man desperately clinging to the tiny hope he could ever see his family again by destroying the dimensional barriers, no matter the cost. And if someone tries to tell him otherwise? Kill ‘em. Obviously this doesn’t excuse his actions, and the movie thankfully never pretends to, but I like that they made this Kingpin such a rich character in his own right, continuing the trend of Kingpin always being given a fantastic performance. Much like Sabretooth, Schreiber really earns the 9/10 with this fantastic vocal performance and just how impactful and even proactive Kingpin is in the story. He gets two major deaths to his name after all.

Liev Schreiber is such a fascinating actor, one who I think is so often overlooked and ignored. While he certainly is typecast as villains fairly often, I think it’s safe to say he excels at those kinds of roles, and he always manages to inject something unique into his roles. You wouldn’t confuse any of these three villains for each other after all.

#Psycho Analysis #Liev Schreiber #Sabretooth #X-Men #X-Men Origins: Wolverine #My Little Pony #Friendship is Magic #The Storm King #Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse #Kingpin

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katsidhe · 6 years ago

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Why isn’t Sam insane? 2/3: Mitigating Factors

Welcome to Part Two of my TED talk about Sam’s Sanity :D Refreshments are available in the lobby.

(Click Here for Part One, and the ask that prompted this.)

This isn’t a topic that can be covered neatly in a few hundred words, or a few thousand. I’m just gonna touch on a few things here: Sam’s coping methods, the amount of time he spent in Hell, and Cas’s polarizing fix in 7.17.

What are the mitigating factors keeping Sam on his feet?

In brief:

Lucifer’s diligence in keeping Sam recognizably Sam (see post 1);

The muffling effect of switching dimensions and timelines;

Death’s wall, however temporary;

A year of soullessness;

Cas’s s7 intervention;

Sam’s heavy-duty coping mechanisms and frankly alarming degree of compartmentalization, which is aided and abetted by all the previous factors (see post 3).

Sam’s a very internal type of guy, which is damn PERILOUS for someone who’s been through things as extreme and awful as he has. Luckily (?), Sam’s basically been built on dissonance, on hiding and separating and fracturing various spheres of his life and pieces of himself. He’s always been good at compartmentalization. Even so...why is he able to rope off his Cage trauma so effectively for several months in s7, into more or less one handy Hallucifer package?

Part of this is because his time in the Cage is already packaged differently. First by the nature of the memories themselves— they’re generally a bunch of mind-bendingly awful, time-dilated memories that took place in an inhuman dimension, in sort-of an alternate timeline while his soulless self was getting up to an entirely separate set of Earthly shenanigans. The Cage doesn’t slot neatly into Sam’s personal sense of human time and continuity. Second, both sets of memories were cordoned off and separated from him by Death’s wall for a number of months, before being set loose all at once in 6.22. That’s another factor making things easier. Third, his recent experience with the empathic disconnect and extreme pragmatism of his soullessness acts as, frankly, a really effective way to steel himself for an inundation of horror. Soulless!Sam himself was born from trauma and had been coping with what parts of the Cage he remembered; he’s basically given Sam a head start on that legwork.

But the trauma’s still there! Sam’s unique methods for compartmentalization still need to do the heavy lifting.

I have a lot more thoughts about that but this post got long; look out for a part three to come!

How long was Sam in the Cage?

Let’s talk timelines. I don’t think Sam spent millennia in the Cage. This is something I see discussed a lot. I know the calculation many people use for that conclusion comes from the time in s6 when a crack in Sam’s wall leaks out a few weeks’ worth of memories in a few minutes...but that evidence makes no sense, why in the world would traumatic sudden recall be 1:1 with how Hell time actually, physically operates?? It’s not like Sam literally went to Hell for a few minutes; he just got a bunch of stressful memories dumped on him all at once, that’s what “a few weeks” is meant to quantify: volume. There’s no reason to think the timeline would match up with the real physics of the place. Admittedly, it’s not a stupid idea to postulate that Hell works on the logic of “deeper” = more time dilation, but there’s no canon basis for this. Not to mention that I think six thousand years is several bridges too far even for the mitigating factors in play. Sam could conceivably still be functioning, but I think he’d be much less recognizable. ~120-180 years, while still absurdly long, is at least on the same order of magnitude of a human lifespan.

How much did Cas’s fix in “The Born-Again Identity” actually accomplish?

We know Cas shifting the burden in 7.17 didn’t solve everything. Sam still remembers the Cage; he’s obviously still very impacted by it even when it’s not the narrative focus; S8 Sam is quite different from s5 Sam. I view Cas’s bandaid fix as an analogue for getting Sam on the right meds/a short stay at a crisis facility that gets him back on his feet: the underlying problem is still very much present, but it’s not as acute and dangerous (no more hallucinations and no more literal psychosis), and Sam has been given tools (in the form of some type of mental muffling/emotional distance) to cope. I go back and forth on exactly what I think it is Cas DID. There was obviously a supernatural element to the way Sam’s illness was manifesting, in the sense that Sam couldn’t be sedated. Plus, it was a “transferable” condition. I sometimes am of the opinion that Cas extracted an infected fraction of Lucifer’s grace, but I’m not married to the idea... especially because I am firmly convinced that Hallucifer was 100% a construct of Sam’s creation, and I don’t like to muddy those waters too much.

I did think 7.17 was a disappointingly cheap ploy back in 2011; that’s when I started watching the show, and Sam’s struggles were a big draw for me. When it aired, I feared 7.17 would be used as an excuse to never address Sam’n’Lucifer again. But instead I was shown to be happily incorrect: Sam’s ongoing Luciferian issues have since been addressed in multiple ways, large and small (especially in s11-14), so I’m mostly satisfied with the fallout of 7.17.

#i speaks #sam and the cage #sam and lucifer #sam and trauma #7.17 #sam and coping mechanisms #sam and compartmentalization #sam and mental illness #I'm being very productive at work this week. veeeeery productive.#I Love This Topic

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howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 5 years ago

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The number one complaint among men in the FFWPU

▲ The Moon family in August 1991.

If a man thinks he owns his wife’s vagina then he’s a rapist. His wife’s sexual organs are hers and hers alone, to give or not to give according to her own will. And that is why the number one complaint among UC men is that their wives do not want to have sex with them.

RE: Richard Panzer defends Moon on who the owner of a women’s body is … as in, sexual organs, as Moon refers to those women’s body parts.

From the mouth of Sun Myung Moon: “American women think of their organs as belonging to them. As a result, they act freely and do whatever they want with them. This is also the case for the men. But you are only the caretaker of your sexual organ. In other words, the caretakers are passing themselves off as the owners.

I ask the women: When did you meet the owner of your sexual organ? The owner is your husband. And you men: Do yours belong to you? Then what is marriage? Through marriage men and women are to find the owners of their sexual organs…If man and woman are meant to marry among themselves, how can there be gays or lesbians? They will cease to exist. In less than a century, they will be gone in one generation. In light of this, should you get married or not? Why get married? Because this is the way it is, you need to get married. You must absolutely get married.” (162-50, 1987.3.22) CSG 1750-51

Notice in the quote above that Moon never mentions love as a motive for a man and a woman to marry. I think that says everything about the man!

If Moon really believed the statement he made about a woman’s sexual organ belonging to her husband, then why did he put his sexual organ into the sexual organs of married women who joined his church in Korea?

Moon is a sexual thief, just like Lucifer was.

According to Moon, he gave Hak Ja Han’s sexual organ (you know, his penis) to another woman, named Annie Choi – the mother of Sam Park, born in 1966. So, according to his own interpretation of the ownership of a person’s sexual organ, Moon is a thief because he gave to Annie Choi that which he claimed belonged only to his wife, Hak Ja Han, as her personal property.

How do UC members keep making excuses for this messed up megalomaniac? Do members ever stop to listen to their own warped reasoning where Moon is concerned? Do they have any idea how insane their justifications sound to reasonable people who don’t have a dog in any fight to defend Moon?

Do husbands believe their wives, who were given to them by Moon like pieces of property, without love even being a consideration, gave their bodies to them because the wives believed the husbands were the true owners of their bodies? Are the husbands seriously that blind and heartless?

Women in the UC are taught that they cannot have a family without Moon’s permission. They want a family so they let Moon give their bodies to men they don’t know or love.

Moon makes sure men and women of the church are sexually deprived as long as he can – and keeps the prospect of a family from them, dangled like a bait. Members often work hard, channelling their pent up sexual energies into building him an empire. Young-whi Kim explained, in New York a couple of years ago, that is why Moon held back on giving the “Blessing” to members from the mid 1960s onwards.

There is also the pyramid scheme of members not being able to even get matched, and then married – to a total stranger – unless they bring three new recruits (archangels to protect their blessing) into the church.

Then Moon controls the couple’s sex life through the three day ceremony. The first sexual experience of a couple is never forgotten. Moon witnesses the act through the photo of himself that he demands is always in the bedroom. Are the wives firstly “brides of Christ,” – brides of Moon? Moon told one husband “She belongs to me.” Three in the bed? Sex in the UC is always under the shadow of Moon.

Members are taught to believe the act of sex will get them in on God’s good side, and hopefully into heaven itself. It is about ritual and duty … and the “cleansing of original sin”.

I know that the majority of the women in the UC are not married to the man they love, but to the man they were conned into marrying. I know way too many “sisters” in the church for whom sex is not something they want because it is devoid of real love. I know way too many children in the UC who were not conceived in the love between a real husband and a real wife.

Some couples have grown to love each other, but they are in the minority. Duty and fear of losing the “salvation” Moon offered, and fear of damnation in the spirit world, can be strong factors in keeping couples together who would otherwise divorce.

Other couples have decided to stay together, sometimes for the love of their children, although they would never have chosen each other.

Then the UC seeks to gain and maintain control over the “blessed children” encouraging them to go to church and workshops, where they are taught to fear “falling” and any thoughts of sex. The children are often told that their own parents failed – and that they should only respect “True Parents”. The UC wants them as the next generation of witnessers and fundraisers to sustain their Korean empire.

Moon said to second generation members in Korea in the mid 1990s: “Your parents are like used tampons”.

This was translated into English as: “Your parents have not completely fulfilled”.

Nice, real nice.

[expanded from a post on WIOTM.]

_______________________________________

Linda Feher wrote this a year or two ago:

I myself remember laughing with all the women in attendance at East Garden one morning when SMM asked us who we loved more, him or our own husbands. We all laughed and screamed “YOU FATHER!” Then he told us it was our job to bring our husbands money to him. He said we women were responsible to bring back to him – “the True Adam” – God’s money. He said we were like heavenly thieves for God because we had our hands firmly on our husbands wallets and that as Eve it was our responsibility to bring what belonged to God back to God … meaning HIMSELF.

… Isn’t it more of an Archangel type personality to want all the women to love you more then they love their own husbands. Isn’t it more Archangelic to demand that the women who love you more than they love their own husbands bring their husband’s money to you? …

After I wrote [an earlier] piece about the nature of an Archangel, meaning Moon, I couldn’t help but wonder if all you men out there really think the purpose of the messiah is to emasculate all of you. Bow to Moon. Let him tell you how to live. Let him tell you have no right to fall in love of your own free will. Let him tell you who to love, who to make a family with – who to have sex with. Let him tell your wives to leave you so that they can do his bidding. Remember the three years separation period and then the 40 days separation period, and then how to have sex the first three times? Remember all the mission demands, like IOWC where all the wives had to leave their husbands and even their children for three years? Let him tell your wives to take your money and give it to him?

Really if any other man was doing such things and you saw it from the outside in, instead of the inside out, what in God’s name would you think of this kind of crap? Really? Do you think so very little of yourselves that you actually enjoy handing over your balls at the door when you joined the UC? Cain and Abel? Moon is Abel and all other men of the world are Cain? It totally emasculating.

Isn’t emasculation what the Archangel did to Adam in the garden?

In your hearts you know it is.

My husband is a man in his own right. He never accepted the emasculation of Moon and his church. He was always considered a real Cain because he wouldn’t conform. And that got him the respect of your [former] LLM minister, In Jin Moon. That’s real world stuff, that’s not some UC sycophantic wishful thinking where you worship the Moons and they treat you like servants. The men who are the worst sycophants are the ones who manoeuvre into Abel/leadership positions so they can then emasculate the Cains under them, just like Moon did to them.

You may think Jesus is the wimp and Moon is the True Adam. But one of them gave his life for mankind and the other does nothing but take and take and take.

Example: The Moon’s are Billionaires. You know that. So why couldn’t they pay for the 40 year celebration party in the US when all the old members were the honorees? Why did members have to pay for such an honorary party? Celebrating 40 years of sacrificial service – and the rich Moons couldn’t foot the bill? Why in God’s name didn’t they? They’re takers. Always have been, always will be. One Adam gives, the other takes away. One of them is really a wolf in sheep’s clothing. One of them is actually archangelic in nature. You decide who you really want to emulate.

_______________________________________

Richard Barlow wrote: “We have to kick Moon out of our beds (wives should not regard their husbands as pathetic ‘restored archangels’ or poor substitutes for the ultimate ‘alpha male’, the ‘universal bridegroom’ who thought all women in the world rightfully belonged to him).”

Karen Alleyne Taylor: “Richard, I’ve had personal experience that confirms exactly what you say. Three months after Steve and I were matched, one week before the wedding at Madison Square Garden, we were both sitting in front of Mr Moon as he launched into what would be a 12 hour speech marathon in his mansion home of East Garden.

Both Steve and I were present earlier that morning at Belvedere when Mr Moon confessed an incident that occurred while receiving a massage from widowed 36 couple wife Mrs Lee, following a long day of tuna fishing in Gloucester earlier that year. He told the crowd at Belvedere he had dozed off and thinking he was in bed with Hak reached up to fondle her breasts. The next morning, both he and Hak Ja Han apologised to Mrs Lee for that innocent mistake. “Oh, Father, I was massaging your arm, it was a reflex action!” Ho, ho ho. All of us gullible, starry eyed kids laughed in shock at our idol, and loved his humble honesty. He told us he had a pure mind that did not regard women as sexual conquests.

Only a short time later at East Garden he began a 12 hour speech/meeting with Ocean Church members and American CARP leaders by comparing Koreans, Japanese and Americans to parts of the body. He then continued and recalled his confession at Belvedere, assuring us of his mighty powers of self control and his pure mind completely free of sexual thoughts towards women. I was sitting right at his feet, as I had been the week before at the rented home in Provincetown when he spoke to many newly wedded Ocean Church couples at the conclusion of the tuna season. He knew me from touring the Good Go boat factory in Long Island City where I was a small parts fabricator and gelcoater. He knew me from a surprise visit he made to Master Marine members following the Reagan election when he played with my hair and suddenly yanked me by my jacket until our noses touched. Perhaps this is why he felt comfortable to do what he did next.

Suddenly, as quick as lightning, he reached down and cupped my right breast, giving it a good squeeze, as if he was testing a ripe piece of fruit. I remember feeling as if time was frozen, and so many thoughts rushed into my mind. Finally, I thought he was just stirring up the stuffed shirts again, I knew he had a good sense of humor and I thought, what a joke. I saw the faces of shock, and eyes popping out and I laughed.

He looked over to Steve, who sat only a short distance away and said to him in English, “She belongs to me first”. He looked pointedly at him while Bo Hi Pak translated, “if you don’t like it you can leave the room”. Steve shook his head and said, “It’s ok, Father” or words to that effect. Over the years I wondered what that was all about, I wanted to understand the significance. Now I do understand, the reality has been unlocked for me, thanks to courageous women like Nansook Hong and Annie Choi.

Richard, you wrote, “And there is yet more stuff to come out about the Rev which has been held back for legal reasons, but which, if and when it emerges, will shock even those whose faith has remained intact despite all the previous revelations.”

I look forward to that stuff. I prefer to hear the bitter truth rather than embrace seductive lies.”

_____________________________________

The Fall of the House of Moon – New Republic

Sun Myung Moon’s secret love child – Mother Jones

Sam Park reveals Moon’s hidden history

The six ‘wives’ of Sun Myung Moon

Kim Myung-hee, the third wife of Sun Myung Moon

#Sun Myung Moon #abuse #exploitation #Six wives of Moon

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ofstassi · 6 years ago

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*james charles vc* good morning kitty girls ! i’m violet & after a few months of being highkey Stressed over coll*ge she ( me ) is Finally back from the dead :) this is a mess so i apologize for what u guys are About to witness, but be sure to click that like button & subscribe if you wanna see more videos ! but seriously plot with me ple ase ok anyways

a SCARLETT LEITHOLD lookalike was strolling down broadway street in their orange prada leather flame wedge heels. anastasia “stassi” deniro just had a birthday bash for her twenty-second birthday. she has been living in new york city for twenty two years. i hear she tends to be gregarious at parties, but also kind of covetous.

FULL NAME: anastasia ( resurrection ) lucille ( french origin of light ) sage ( wise one ) deniro. NICKNAME(S): annie, stassi, stas, stasia, anything her close friends & family can come up with, she’ll love. AGE: twenty two. DATE OF BIRTH: september 21th, 1996. ASTROLOGY SIGN: virgo. GENDER: female. PRONOUNS: she / her / hers. SEXUAL ORIENTATION: bisexual. LANGUAGES SPOKEN: english, french, italian, greek, some spanish. OCCUPATION: actress, 2019 miss universe contender. BIOLOGICAL PARENTS: aldo nathaniel arthur deniro & scarlett baccouche-deniro. SIBLINGS: aurora deniro ( twenty-six ) & atlas deniro ( twenty-one ). PET(S): gracie ( shihtzu ) & baby ( toy french bulldog ). CHILDREN: none. RELIGION: roman catholic. DRINK / DRUGS / SEX: yes / no / yes. HEIGHT: 5′10. RIGHT/LEFT HANDED: ambidextrous. TATTOOS: none ( at the moment ). POSITIVE TRAITS: gregarious, perceptive, audacious, quick-witted. NEGATIVE TRAITS: covetous, controlling, obstinate, snarky. NOTABLE HABITS: tying her hair up in a bun when she’s focused, fleeing the country when conflict within herself arises, unable to hide her facial expressions. NECESSITIES: green tea latte, lucky pen, lavender, 2 diamond-encrusted cartier bracelets ( gifted by her father ). LIKES: fighting, pastel blues, macarons, traveling, architecture, knowing all the answers. DISLIKES: small spaces, losing, anything orange flavored, the smell of gasoline. NET WORTH: 18 million.

𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚛𝚘𝚍𝚞𝚌𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚗𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚜𝚒𝚊 𝚍𝚎𝚗𝚒𝚛𝚘.

the story of the deniros was easily depicted as nothing short of a classic fairytale ; nathaniel was next in line to run his family’s long-standing business worth more than you could put into words, while scarlett baccouche, the daughter of two british politicians was also a woman in power many learned to fear. given their elite statuses, it was no surprise to anyone when they had enrolled into columbia university, one of the most prestigous colleges in the country ; though the story of how they’d become enamored with one another had started with a hatred that had only melted the forthcoming years. it was what one would consider a true love story as they graduated, professed their vows, & conceived their first well-anticipated child, aurora deniro. it only took a couple years for the deniros to calculate the birth of their next child, & to settle down & begin their empire ; or as most would put it, a family.

on october 21st, 1996, anastasia lucille sage deniro was born. she was the second, yet not the last child to arrive, meaning her place in the home was that she was a middle child. it had its perks, obviously —— not reigning the full responsibilities of what it meant to be the first & oldest child, or not being taken seriously as most younger siblings struggle with. see, from the very beginning of her life, stassi was well aware of the fact that she wasn’t a child, and she didn’t want to be treated as such ; the female figures in her life such as aurora & her mother ( even their maid, diana had landed a fond place in stassi’s heart ) were the girl’s inspiration growing up, & thanks to their strict upbringing, they were raised with class & were put on a pedestal that expected nothing less than perfection.

stassi was five years old when she had asked —— or more so, begged her parents to compete in pageants ( only the most prestigious ones, of course ). while her mother didn’t take much convincing as her & little stassi had grown to share many loved interests such as acting, her father was apprehensive about the decision. but because the main factor besides beauty for pageants were intelligence, he agreed, though it resulted in him piling that much more pressure upon her for schoolwork & of course, to win so it wouldn’t disgrace the deniro family name. whatever child worked hard, stassi worked 100 times harder, thanks to her brilliant work ethic ; she managed to skillfully juggle her schoolwork alongside the additional business classes her parents had given their three children, the acting classes, her private ballet & jazz lessons 7 days a week for the talent portion, & the countless hours of tailoring her custom-made outfits ( with her input, of course ) it wasn’t a shocker to anyone when she was crowned little miss new york.

by sixteen, the pressure had only multiplied as she grew older, striving for nothing but the best. she was preparing for the miss world competetion rounding up another win at nationals. high school was supposed to be the best years of your life, yet she turned down any youthful opportunity as a means to please her parents. that is, until a fellow classmate introduced her to adderall ; the tiny, magical pill that enhances your focus, granting you more hours of the day to pass your tests with flying colors & maintain your social life, because who needed sleep ? flash forward to her senior year, where her life was crafted to perfection —— she held the title of miss world that year, got accepted into columbia on a full scholarship ( not that she needed it ), had the perfect jock boyfriend on her arm & friends that were on top of the hierarchy with her, class valedictorian: the only thing was she became reliant on her pills.

it was prom night when the realization had dawned on her that the bubble encompassing her perfect life was made of glass. when it came to the deniros, the extent of her social life was partly a double life. while she wasn’t nearly as bad as her brother, she wasn’t exactly an angel, either ; stuffing silk pillows under her duvet to cast the illusion of a sleeping stassi if diana or her older sister, aurora, would check up on her that night, adorning an innocent white lace dress to her parents only to hike it further up the moment she met up with her peers. she learned it was a skill of hers, keeping secrets.

popping pills had managed to become one, too, which is why after winning prom queen & attempting to get belligerently wasted, she hadn’t even felt the effects of the alcohol in her system. stassi woke up in a secluded hospital room with her parents beside her, along with a nurse. her blood work revealed that she’d gotten severe alcohol poisoning & had she not passed out, a few more drinks & she would’ve overdosed from the mix of adderall.

due to the fact that this was anastasia’s first slip-up, as disappointed as they were, the anger had faded just as soon as it arrived. & given the recent events with atlas’s friend along with her acceptance to columbia, rehab wasn’t a suggestion —— it was her only option. she’d go to a private rehabilitation center during the summer while her parents covered it up on her records & the deniro family would have to convince everybody that she was just visiting her grandparents in spain: it was a family secret that stassi had to take to the grave.

now, she’s twenty-two years old, currently enrolled in columbia as a business major for the sake of maintaining her role in her parent’s good graces, despite the fact that she’s not interested in helping take over the family business while she’s training for the 2019 miss universe pageant. for the past two summers, when she wasn’t in spain, she was in paris for some time to herself, where she met an owner of a small boutique where there were items such as trinkets, custom-made dresses, etc.

somehow, it inspired stassi to create her own boutique/shop in multiple cities but new york first, especially when she carries the knowledge on how to turn a business into an empire: her own empire. it may be a small one now, but it was a break from the constant approval seeking that was practically instilled in her ; and at least it was hers. she even went to spain over winter break to hint the ideas to her grandparents, just now returning to the city & avoiding her parents so she can delay telling them that she isn’t interested in running the family company alongside her siblings like they dreamed of. after all, it was her parents’ approval that mattered most.

𝚙𝚎𝚛𝚜𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚝𝚢 𝚏𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚜 & 𝚏𝚞𝚗 𝚏𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚜.

ok hi i’m keeping this long & short

because stassi’s a pageant girl, she was bound to cross paths with honey boo boo when her reality tv show was kicking off, & now she’s stassi’s sworn enemy even to this day

ik they aren’t even in the same age group but fun fact stassi fought children & she still does tbh i hate her

she’s basically an angel in front of her parents but like ?? really different to her friends/people she hates ??

definitely doesn’t have a filter, she doesn’t cuss that much bc “it’s not ladylike :)” but she for sure speaks her mind & she can actually be really mean without meaning to be

she snaps really easily too omg i just imagine her being all cute & smiley & doing a complete 180 the next

she’s definitely stronger than she looks just know that

fully obsessed with dogs like next level obsessed she needs help

also a really big perfectionist if you couldn’t tell ?? please imagine her penthouse being all white & spotless & i know she arranges shit in other people’s houses out of habit

she’s basically monica geller, caroline from tvd & louise from bob’s burgers all wrapped up in one person

it’s honestly such a cursed combination i’m telling u guys she really is the spawn of satan

she’s a momma’s girl though 💗 she loves her dad ofc don’t get me wrong but they get along better when he just buys her gifts skdjsks

also !! i loosely based her off of one of my rly old charas emmie & i have a pinterest for her here if you wanna see what she’s kinda sorta like

i’ll probably make my own for stassi but u know for context

also stassi’s aesthetic 100000%

i’m still fleshin’ her out, so it’s a whole mess but i’m so excited to develop her & i hope you guys don’t hate her guts yet ! i promise she’s nicer than i described, but i do have some plot ideas ( i’m just too lazy to list them help me ), so pls plot with me i’ll do all the work i promise

#wealthyhq:intro #I JUST REALIZED I DDIDNT TAG IT

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