#my mother ends up being the one to become a tumblrina

[itstimeforstarwars]

My mother has a tumblr account now because she found a historical medicine blog she wanted to read, and tumblr has made it so you can't browse blogs without an account anymore. I now live in fear.

[ultraericthered]

Re: Lusamine Is The New Cyrus

So there’s this one triggered Tumblrina whose response to my post was to go “bawww, you’re comparing a child abuser with an abused child, that’s disgusting!!!!” And I just.....huh?

1.I love Cyrus as character/antagonist, and I love Lusamine as a character/antagonist too. I compared the two villains based on the way in which they were handled in their debut games, how the majority of players seemed to interpret their characters based on that handling, and how the games’ third versions handled them different in order to clarify the misinterpretations. How the fuck do you pull “comparing a child abuser to an abused child” from that? Oh right, because Lusamine was even involved, and she can only ever be defined by her abusive parenting. That’s her whole character, just a one-dimensional, cardboard cutout of an evil child abuser! How is it that “BUT CHILD ABUSE!” is such a knee-jerk response to seeing or reading anything about Lusamine, even things that do not so much as mention her abusive parenting? I could just as easily use “BUT UNIVERSAL OMINCIDE!” for anything having to do with Cyrus. But I don’t, ‘cause I understand that characters are more than just their deeds.

2 Cyrus is a fucking 27 year old man. He’s not “an abused child” at the point in his life where he was leading Team Galactic and was the villain of the Gen IV games, and having been abused as a child doesn’t detract from his sins or absolve him of responsibility for his actions. It’s the same thing with Guzma. Guzma’s a 20-something year old man who’d have no problem with beating up children if he felt the need to, thinks nothing of Pokemon abuse (even though he doesn’t partake in it himself), and threatens the grunts on his team with physical violence to the point where they hide from him because they’re afraid of invoking his wrath. Yet people downplay his sins and act as if all his actions are excused because he was abused as a child by his awful father. (And I know it’s not like Guzma doesn’t care about the people on his team - he does. But he often took them for granted and saw a need to keep them in line through intimidation because he didn’t grasp the depths of the loyalty and familial love they had for him, making the “scary, physically violent tough guy” front and approach to leading them needless. The revised ending in USUM demonstrates this beautifully in the scene where we see him disband Team Skull, expecting all the grunts to leave him and go their separate ways, but they all show him that they’ll continue to follow him anyway, even if no longer as Team Skull, because they all like, respect, and appreciate him and the family he’s kept together more than he’d realized, which moves him to tears.) I have to wonder if we’d learned that Lusamine was abused in some way by her father and/or mother as a child, people would start going easier on her despite her still being a scummy person as an adult.

3. At least one version of Cyrus was a child abuser. In the manga Diamond and Pearl Adventure, Cyrus raised a little orphan girl named Mitsumi (though he was apparently old enough to be her big brother when he started doing so) and he conditioned her into becoming a cold, merciless, immoral, apathetic fighting machine of a person who’d live only to battle, and who’d only battle to win and crush her opponents, all so that she be could used like a living weapon by him for Team Galactic. He taught her that friendship was an illusion and that she was all alone in the world - no one would ever help her, so she needed to take what she needed, beliefs based in his own jaded worldview. This isn’t that far part from Ghetsis and N levels of sick and wrong abusive parenting/guardianship of a child, and Cyrus went through with this despite having been abused as a child himself (possibly - that backstory never comes up in this manga). Yet despite this, Cyrus still finds redemption here, and gets the support and forgiveness of his victim, especially after he tells he that he’s let her go and that she doesn’t have to be loyal to him and Team Galactic anymore - she’s free to live her own life and make her own decisions to shape her own destiny. This is similar to the outcome for Lusamine and her two kids in USUM. So within the Pokemon franchise, child abuse is unquestionably a horrible sin, but it’s also a horrible sin that one can come back from if they choose to make that effort. (Ghetsis chooses to stay unrepentant for his abuse of N and all the other vile stuff he’s done, refusing to ever consider a perspective and view in which he’d done wrong and was thus something less than perfect, and that’s what puts him far beyond redemption. DPA Cyrus and USUM Lusamine aren’t like that, making them redeemable.)

I get that the “Dolores Umbridge effect” applies for Lusamine. I really, really do. She’s unquestionably a child abuser, was written as a chillingly believable, realistic child abuser, and so her brand of villainy hits a lot closer to home than other Pokemon villains. I can’t count all the times I’ve read “Lusamine reminds me of my own mother” as a reason given for hating her. But idiots like this who cannot stand for characters who are canonically abusive being analyzed or talked about in any capacity in which the abuse isn’t THE focal point to be used to hate on the character and espouse willing denial that they have any redeeming features, and who deem any and all fans of the character as being “apologists” (Use that word by it’s right definition, dumbass. And also learn what “dysfunctional” means before you use more unfitting words like “abuse” and :abusive” in relation to Anime!Lusamine) really need some help in the areas of objectivity and maturity, as opposed to letting their emotional biases cloud their sense of understanding and rationality. If they even have such a thing, that is.

[smokeybrand]

Brand New Age of X

What Jonathan Hickman is doing with the X-Men is f*cking incredible. This sh*t is seriously some of the best comic writing i have ever had the pleasure of reading, in years. It’s been literal years. Look, if you know me, then you know i shill hard for Marvel but, even i have to admit, a lot of the content they were dropping in the 2010s has been wildly sub-par. I’m all for inclusion and representation but i always believe it has to be in service to the plot, to the character. Marvel got away from that and just started injecting brown people into situations that were poorly written. This effectively alienated these characters from a wider audience almost immediately. Kamala Khan and America Chavez immediately come to mind. I actually really like Miss America and thought she carried a great potential as a queer, Puerto Rican, woman who is a legitimate powerhouse but then the identity politics and agenda pushing absolutely ruined her character. The same sh*t happened to Carol Danvers when she got her big Captain Marvel push. It's like you have to abandon everything that might be seen as “problematic” to curry favor with a loud ass vocal minority, when that sh*t isn't even necessary. You don't have to ruin these charters while courting the Manbuns and Tumblrinas. It’s horrible writing and cripples any narrative you try to craft. Hickman does not fall into these traps. He has a story he wants to tell and he tells it exactly how he wants to, politics be damned.

Hickman is a pretty prolific creator, he does both art and writing but his claim to fame was that Fantastic Four run where the Future Foundation was introduced. I never gave a damn about the Richards family outside of Doom and Valeria but his narrative really drew me in. Dude has worked that magic again with his take on the X-Men. This whole Krakoa situation is so goddamn excellent, it's bewildering to think that these titles are being released by the same company which farted out that Empyre mess. Comics, as a whole, is a floundering ass industry, for a lot of reason, but poor writing is definitely the main one. This sh*t is collapsing in on itself and it's all because the content is whack. I sh*t on how hard DC wanks their Bat-Family but Marvel is guilty of uninspired profit chasing, too. Trends come and go but good, well written, well drawn, content innately carries universal appeal. You're never going to please everyone, especially in this age of outrage and triggers so why try? Just write great stories. Write great characters. Tell the narrative you want to tell and let the chips fall where they may. If it's good, it'll be well received. If it's trash, you'll definitely hear about it. Don't pander to one audience like they're the gatekeepers to all things profitable. The second you do that, everything you want to accomplish goes right out the window. Their understanding of what is “good” is too narrow, too constrictive, too shackling. That shortsightedness is always so frustrating because, again, if you write dope sh*t, the audience will come.

Take the Thor comics. Odinson's books have been excellent, ever since Gorr graced those pages. They have everything the Twatter clan looks for in their media; Representation, inclusion, and visibility. The difference in how the Thor titles go about that and, say, f*cking Disney Star Wars, is completely different. All of that sh*t the Blue Checkmarks demand is organic to the plot in the Thor books. Nothing is forced or shoved down your throat. You never feel some kind of way about what you're reading, no one is preaching to you, but those very real, very necessary, aspects are present. All of the the gender politics and PC rhetoric is in service to the characters, it doesn't define them. In a book about an extraterrestrial, half-elder god, who wields a magically enchanted hammer which commands lightning from the heavens, you have some of the most captivating examples of how to write humanity and that sh*t is astounding to me. Moreso, those books are telling good stories, overall. It's not hard to do both. The current run of Cosmic High Father Thor just threw a whole ass curve ball with some brand new Mjolnir mischief. On the other end of the scale, we have f*cking Knull. I hate Knull. Knull is Marvel's answer to The Batman Who Laughs and represents everything that is wrong with modern comics, just like it's DC counterpart. Was there potential? Sure. Was that potential realized? F*ck No. Was his power wank earned. Double f*ck no. Lousy writing is lousy and I hate it. I f*cking hate Knull and everything it represents.

Hickman has meticulously rafted a narrative closer to that tasty, compelling, richness in the Thor books, rather than whatever stupidity is going on in the Venom series, and i am here for all of it. When i heard what this cat planned to do with the X-Men, especially coming off that weird ass Time-Displaced Young X-Men nonsense and the abysmal Age of X-Man mistake, i was a little hesitant. I understood the degree of dude’s talent and the unbridled creativity he has, but i never expected things to unfold as dope as they have. House of X and Powers of X were goddamn strokes of genius. These books immediately recontextualized what it meant to be a mutant and how far these people would go to be whole. Watching Xavier go full f*cking Magneto was insane and revealing that Moira MacTaggert is a secret mutant that can go back in time, was mad surprising. I love how her plan came together and how Krakoa came to be. Moira Mactaggert, Moira Kinross as she was originally named, Mother Akkaba as she used during her stint as Apocalypse's right-hand as she struggled to preserve her people, or Moira X as she eventually claimed for herself after Krakoa triumphed, is easily the greatest McGuffin in comics and the way Hickman used her to uproot everything w know about the X-lore was inspired. Her ten lives, the futures we glimpses, were outstanding experiences to behold. I love how the Council effectively threatened the entire world into recognizing their sovereignty or outright bribed the rest of the world with mutant cocaine. I love that i gt to see my favorite characters, living side-by-side, hero and villain, with a strong bond in who they are. More than anything, i love that this entire arc has proven Apocalypse right.

En Sabah Nur is my favorite mutant in all of Marvel. He’s easily my third favorite, all-time, Marvel character after Spider-Man and Doom. Admittedly, Apoc is probably tied with fellow Muties, Magik and Talon. I've loved Illyana since her New Mutants days way back in the 80s and Laura immediately wormed her way into my favor with her appearance on that X-Men Evolution cartoon. For those that don’t know, Talon was the actual X-Codename given to Laura Kinney when she first made her way to the X-Mansion. Most people don’t know that They just refer to her as her Weapon+ designation of X-23. That was a tangent, I'm sorry you had to see it, back to my point. Apocalypse is a straight up dog. He’s lived for centuries, wields ludicrous amounts of power, and has championed Mutantkind for centuries. To see him relish what Xavier, Lensherr, and MacTaggert have built is a real joy. This was Apocalypse's dream for his people. This is what Apocalypse wanted to create. Krakoa is everything Apocalypse has fought for. Mostly. There have been revelations recently. I have budding fascination for where Hickman is next taking my dear Children of the Atom.

The first volume of X of Swords dropped today and it’s f*cking incredible. I’ve been on the fence about this sh*t because all of the preview solicits were kind f bunk. That preview art was corny as sh*t. Pretty sure i saw an Old One in the corner but none of it really gripped me. It looked poor. It looked like that old Ultimate Spider-Man, Mark Bagley art. I hate that dude’s style so I immediately checked out, though, admittedly, there were some very cool designs presented. I was instantly smitten with the draft of the original Death because of my Anubis fetish so there was at least that for me to limply anticipate. Imagine my surprise when this book dropped, the art delivered by Pepe Larraz was exceptional, and the narrative was not only outstanding as f*ck, by the entire arc is Apocalypse centered. We’re introduced to Apoc’s whole ass family in this run. His bloodline, His descendants. Dude has kids. He had a wife. He has a grandchild! There are Mutants, out in the wild, who are blood kin to Apocalypse and have, I assume, undergone the same augmentations as the rest of his Horsemen. What kind of powerhouse f*cking monsters did these people become? That, on it's own, blows my entire f*cking mind, but then we have all of the reveals about Arakko, itself. This sh*t is how you write great comics. This is how you subvert expectation. This is how you install intrigue and keep your fan base coming back for more.

Hickman's X-books are absolutely unassailable in my book. I love where he’s taking these characters. I love that Marvel let’s him play with the entire Mutant roster. I love that he’s using these toys to build some of the best stories in comics since Marvel’s last, great, narrative run. My Spider-Books are letting me down at the moment but if we keep getting sh*t as dope as the X-titles, i think it’ll be fine. I mean, Thor continues to be the best thing coming out of the House of Ideas, but Hickman is giving those stories a run for their money with his own. Hell, even Daredevil seems to be coming with some of that narrative heat as of late. His book feels far more gritty than it has in probably decades. Old Matty Murdock feels like he’s found that Frank Miller spark again but that remains to be seen. What i know for sure is that i am fully on board with whatever Hickman plans next for the world of X.

[ser-yolomere-of-swagalore]

Man, I’m honestly so exhausted with all of this family-related drama. It’s gone well past the point where it was a “look at how fucked up my family is isn’t in wild” point of conversation and has just turned into something genuinely exhausting, and yes, people are most likely sick of me moaning and complaining about it, but I’m honestly just so tired. This whole crap with my sister-- helping look after her kid, putting up with her abuse, seeing the effect it has on my brother and my mam-- has just gotten so out of hand so long and drawn out and ridiculous that I really just don’t want anything to do with it any more. I love Liah, I really do. I’ve helped raise her for over a year and in that time I’ve learned how rewarding it can be to help raise kids, and it’s made me realize that I definitely do want kids one day, but this responsibility and the drama that comes along with it was something I never asked for. I took it up out of sheer necessity. My mother is 51 years old, with a bad back and a heel spur, and she just doesn’t have the energy to look after a growing, five-year-old girl any more, and so I’ve left to do a lot of what a traditional parent does. I get up with her in the mornings my mum doesn’t have to be up already, I get her ready, I bring her to school, I pick her up, I entertain her while mum is working, feed her, dress her, put her to bed, read her bedtime stories, do her homework with her... the list goes on. And like I said, it’s not like these are the parts that I resent; Liah is so loving and such a funny little kid, and I love her so damn much. These are valuable, bonding experiences that I have with her and every time she tells me she loves me or any time she laughs whenever we’re playing our games or we share one of our little jokes is so lovely that it does make it all feel as though it’s all worthwhile. But, the perpetual, constant effort and the time and the energy that doing stuff like this takes on top of knowing that the whole reason I’m even doing this is because my sister just isn’t capable and to a large part unwilling to is making me increasingly bitter and angry. Then we have the periodic battles with Sean over custody and access, the stuff that my sister does all of the time seeking attention or otherwise just doing what she wants to do without regard to the consequences or other people’s feelings, seeing my mam getting so stressed out and anxious as much as I am, seeing the lies and the horrible things that my sister has said affecting my brother, the anxieties that I have over my own future, over Liah’s future, the impacts it has on my mam’s health... it’s just so enraging. To think that my sister can so casually, so effortless relinquish the responsibility of raising the child she gave birth to, but then turn around and claim me and my mam are X, Y, and Z, cause more drama and more worry and more anxiety, just because she misses her and has decided she wants to be a half-decent mother for five minutes.  I remember when I last met with my aunt and uncle from the states (two of my absolute favourite people in the world, and people who I should try and keep in contact with more) and we were in Brother Hubbards in town, and I talked to them a little bit about what was going on with my sister, the pressure I felt like I was under, and they were so wonderful and understanding. They’ve always been incredibly supportive and encouraging (they see potential in me somewhere, I suppose, or perhaps they just feel sorry for me knowing what’s going on-- god that sounds pathetic) and when I gave them all the details they said that my sister was a vortex, and that I was getting slowly dragged into what she was doing to herself. If I didn’t pull myself out of it I’d end up trapped in it indefinitely, but what does pulling myself out of it even mean? Leaving my mam here alone to deal with all of this? Leaving Liah when she’s already so attached to me and end up hurting the both of us, but perhaps her moreso because she’s already lost her dad and her mam? I don’t want to do that. I don’t think I’d be able to happy knowing that I’ve just jumped so much responsibility and left it all with my mam, and knowing that Liah would miss me. And besides, how am I supposed to get out anyway? That kind of idea requires mobility, which requires money, not something I have a whole lot of. Hopefully, when I do get a job (THAT I WAS SUPPOSED TO GET TWO MONTHS AGO HELLO COSTA???) I’ll be able to save up and maybe just get an apartment somewhere? Maybe that would be enough to erect some very much needed distance? Or would I just get dragged into it no matter how far I go? I honestly don’t know at this stage, and don’t know if I’ll even be able to do that if the opportunity does come around.  I mean, I’m sitting at home with Liah, watching Tangled with her, and as much as I’m trying to put on a happy and funny face for her, I’m also waiting for the guards to come because Sean decided that he wasn’t going to pick Liah up like he was supposed to last weekend and moved it to this weekend instead, even though the court order says it’s only every two weeks. He came, I had to argue with him at the door, he said that we breaking a court order for the third time(???) and then went to my aunt Mandy’s, because my sister, on the phone, told him that’s where she often brings her when she’s in work, then he gave Mandy shit when she’s nothing to do with this, said he was bringing the guards to her house too, then my mam got a call off the guards... etc., etc. So right now I don’t know if he’s going to turn up still, with the guards and my loud, unpredicated, batshit insane sister and demand to see her. I’m here, on my own, with Liah, trying to keep her entertained and pay attention to her cute little commentaries on Rapunzel's hair or respond to her silly little faces, but in reality I’m anxious as fuck worrying about what I’m going to do should that happen.  I never asked for any of this. I never did anything in all of this to warrant this. I wasn’t the one who had a child and got with a man who turned out to be a domineering, imperious asshat with the emotional intelligence of a laminated sheet who decided, all of a sudden, that he was Liah’s father. I should be working and saving up for my master’s degree and planning my future rather than rushing home to look after my niece and entertain her. I should be texting friends on my days off and asking if they’re free for a few pints or if they want to head out somewhere and hangout. Instead, I’m sitting here with my niece on my lap, looking out the window like a paranoid schizophrenic every time a car goes by thinking it’s either Sean and the guards and planning about what I’m going to say or do-- I can only imagine what my neighbours think every time I peek my goofy looking head out the window to check if it’s him. I’m incredibly anxious, feeling almost as though I’m on the verge of an anxiety attack (I probably sound like a right Tumblrina atm but that is something I’ve actually started having since all this started), and even when there’s nothing immediately wrong there are still these underlying issues and worries-- how long is this going to go on? Am I even doing a good job doing what I’m doing or am I only making things worse? Is this what my whole life is going to revolve around now? Liah is only 5, how long am I going to have to be an informal parent / steward / guardian for her? Until she’s 18? What impact is that going to have on my future? Despite being unemployed I feel as though I have so little time to myself any more. I can’t really read uninterrupted because I feel guilty about just plopping Liah in front of a television screen for two long and not interacting with her, and the same applies to playing games or even just hanging around on the internet for too long.  And people are probably wondering; well, why not just let Sean look after Liah? He’s clearly quite willing to considering he’s going through so much trouble himself to even just get access. And the truth is that we’re uncomfortable with Sean. Beside me and my mam’s own personal distaste for his character (he’s, as I said, imperious, demanding, condescending, disdainful, etc.) he’s also got a weird personal history that we feel is pretty suspect. I mean, the guy has sort of casually slipped into a number of family’s lives and taken on a very, well, “affectionate” attitude towards these people’s kids. I think he seems himself as a form of surrogate father for these people’s kids, and that makes me... uncomfortable. Why does he feel the need to become so close to these kids? He’s done so against the wishes of at least one family, as people have cut off contact with him for telling them how to raise their kids when he’s not even related to them and their parents are doing a perfectly fine job. Then there’s the duplicity, the willingness to listen to Michelle’s bullshit when he probably knows full well that she’s spouting lies because it provides an excellent starting point for legal invectives in court, the fact that he insists on Liah calling him Daddy when we’ve already expressed we’re uncomfortable with that, the fact that he sent messages to Liah’s father’s biological family implicating that Michelle attacked his mother... it’s just a whole load of bullshit, and we’re not happy with it. But, unfortunately, the courts ruled that he’s entitled to loco parentis because, when Michelle got involved with him, he spent enough time around Liah to be entitled to it. Now, the judge the last time we were in court said that we it up to him and had he been there at the ruling where he had been given it, he wouldn’t have given it at all, but unfortunately due to either a case of the judge’s oversight or simply because it appeared at the time that he was a good man worthy of it, he was awarded it. So that’s what we have to deal with. His constant butting into our lives because he was awarded loco parentis and visitation rights. Plus, Liah does love him. Misguidedly so, but she’s five, you obviously can’t blame her for that. And it’s painful to think about how heartbroken she would be were it a case she wouldn’t see him again-- although we do believe it’d be better in the long run. 

So that’s really it at the moment, anyway. I’m so fed up but I don’t know what to do.