#looking forward to those post-mistified threads

[nicawlette]

NICOLETTE'S NO GOOD VERY BAD DAY — MISTIFIED TIMELINE

Nicolette run's into a sentient data imprint of Eiden's ( @kleinstar ) teenage self and attempts to help him... call out of his part time jobs. Things are probably mostly casual here, if not a bit strange.

The sleek, marble walls of the Akademiya take shape around her. It's here that she finds Zhilan ( @archaictold ) being roughly confronted by a sentient data imprint of his father. She becomes immediately hostile, and mildly triggered by the familiarity of the situation. She learns some deeper truths about her usually chipper friend, here.

Approaching emotional exhaustion, but holding it together through repression, she's briefly held at sword point by a sentient data imprint of Kasen Kanesada ( @taroudachi ). This interaction may be the last bit of hope she gets that the worst is over. It isn't.

Finding Break ( @schleckermaul ) in the mist, she witnesses fragments his past as Kevin Regnard and is further subjected to visions of his trauma, including the loss of his eye, as she tries to keep him mentally stable. She inevitably reflects his deteriorating state and is confronted with the guilty memory of killing her abuser's son— the mistake that sealed her terrible fate.

Once Nicolette is alone again, she comes face-to-face with a sentient data imprint of her childhood abuser. She last saw her uncle as a teenager after she'd mistakenly killed his son in his place. Though she knows deep down he's unlikely to still be alive, nor in the city, Nicolette's mental state is already hanging by a thread, and with no one around to keep her calm, it shatters completely.

She falls deeper into her own trauma, and uses her abilities to try and fight back against what isn't real until she's lost so much blood she cannot keep going. It's likely that she loses consciousness here, but I'm not sure yet where she wakes up. Unless someone would like to thread this! She is having a very bad time, here!

[grannygremlinaudio]

So I avoided a thread about the whole Argento/Bennett business on one of the boards I frequent...

  Not just because I dread the peanut gallery, but also because, to be honest, I was not quite sure I have all the relevant  information and know what to think about it all; certainly not with enough certainty to crack wise about it on the internet (I’d like to think I have learned my lesson about that).

Weeks later I find myself absentmindedly clicking on that thread in the new posts page.  The conversation had evolved into sufficiently general territory on the whole theme (vs Argento /Bennet specifically), with some rather categorical and, IMHO, dangerous statements so, sproing, there I went again.

So I wrote this, and I am still not commenting on the Argento/Bennet thing specifically, but rather the arguments (in one particular direction obviously, that it’s a crock) and general assertions being made:

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Quote from: PersonA

If there's any 17-year-old male who wouldn't jump at the opportunity to bed an attractive woman a few years older, I don't think I've ever met him.  That heavily colors my opinion of this situation.

Sorry bud, but that is the daftest statement I have ever heard.  Also, a large part of the problem of why male survivors have such a hard time coming forward for help nevermind justice. It's a self-fiullfilling prophecy, and PersonC (as a lawyer well versed in the rules of logic/rhetoric), can tell you exactly what logical phallusy [sic] that is.  

Not everyone, for various reasons, is ready for sex at 17, even if they think they want it, it can turn out to be problematic afterwards.

I'm also a bit mistified that PersonD [who gave the example of his own son loosing his virginity at about that age to a 40 year old woman and being totally fine] seems to think that if his son did have any issues (not saying he does, mind, just if) that daddy would be the first to know.  I doubt most of us told our dads shit, especially if it made us look less strong or manly to do so.

Quote from: PersonE

Were the gender roles reversed how would we all feel about this?

Ding Ding Ding!

[referring to PersonF, unquoted, who went on and on about how much of a responsible adult he was at the age of 17] I also think a few of us have some very thick rose-colored glasses on when remembering how mature we were at the age of 17.  It is also quite daft to assume everyone's experience is going to be the same as those colored memories.  Great, nothing bad or weird (sexually) happened to you at that age (or, as an obvious example, even younger, which made you not ready for it just yet at 17, cuz you, being the manly man you were expected to be, didn't tell nobody and so hadn't worked through it yet) so it was all great and you were great, but that doesn't mean it was like that for everyone else, or that you were actually that great at all in the first place actually. 

Quote from PersonG

Everything seems to be suffocated under a blanket of new prudery these days while at the same time porn is omnipresent.

It's not prudishness, it's an attempt to develop a more universal baseline level of empathy.  And no, the copious simulated rape/incest/Teen porn catagories that top the most popular lists on your favorite porn aggregator site are not helping.

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I now look forward to the offensive defense.  I know there are people who agree with me on the board, but they mostly can’t stand to be yelled at, or to make a scene, which I understand.