#stop fucking crucifying them for being flawed

[kai-atlantis]

Ngl everytime I hop on tumblr, it's just people criticising other people as if they are perfect themselves; it's criticizing people's personalities and their communication styles and leaving zero room for situational mistakes or issues and simply labeling them "bad"; it's being okay with several topics but then going on several rants on why you *don't actually like them* and it leaves you feeling confused whiplash; it's people making posts on how other people are wrong or all the flaws one can have, and leaving zero room for the entire human being on the other side of your rant, being told the way they feel and their side are not relevant because they have other flaws at fault.

The reason we're all anxious and weren't decades ago? It's not just the internet. It's that everyone is constantly, constantly judging and criticising each other online. Constant. Criticism. No wonder we're all fucking anxious. If you hate someone online and crucify them for literally making any sort of mistake or saying something off or odd you don't understand (yet you claim to love and support neurodivergents), you cannot refuse that you may have some part in the toxic online critical culture. You're not an exception. I understand this post is critical as well, but holy hell, tumblr is not a fun place for me anymore.

[nqueso-emergency]

Sorry this is a long one

I had to rewrite this a few times because controversial(?) & I'm not truly NOT trying to bash his character buttt THEY say Tommy is a "copy" of Eddie right, and I'm like sure fightfighter, army vet, same hobbies yadda yadda... and the agreement being why would Buck choose Tommy over Eddie *cough* (besides the lack of attraction and delusion that Eddie isn't queer 👀) Okay sure let's just pretend Eddie likes men for this scenario so we have an "even playing filled"

Why in the world would Buck choose a guy who's constantly on the struggle bus because his refrain to show any emotional depth and regression and inability to respect and commit to a relationship due to his difficulties processing his wife's death, someone who's quite frankly selfish and repeatedly disregards or doesn't think of negative... or well any consequences tbh that heavily impact really really important core relationships...

Over a guy who seemingly has his shit together and is confidently attracted to Buck??? 🤔 Y'all (not us lol) are saying that out of these 2 guys (only one who canonically likes men BTW 🤐) Firefighter, army vet, cool hobbies, attractive blah blah even though BOTH had hardships growing up and adulthood and had major flaws, there's ONE who's able to change for the better, be stable, unconditionally supportive, validates others feelings, thinks about how you'd feel and how consequences would effect your relationship, is fantastic with kids and openly shows his attraction towards Buck... and then you got a guy who disregards and invalidates and disrespects his child and best friend, who constantly uses you to mediate and parent(?) your child because you have troubles connecting with him, who seemingly likes doing everything the most difficult way because they don't think or want to admit they're struggling and yet they still think shit won't blow up even though it always does and you know a lying sneaky little cheater because of his obsession with his dead wife...

Out of those 2 options... Y'all would STILL choose Eddie??! 😭😭😭

Y'all got the rose tinted glasses on baby 🚩🚨🚩🚨 WEE WOO FORREAL 😅 I'm genuinely concerned for some of y'all... I know apples and fucking potatoes of whatever but cmon one of these men chose to deal with trauma in a healthy manner, acknowledge and accept their wrongs also apologizing and righting them, choosing to stop repeatedly creating negativity and discomfort not only for others but also themselves, is openly expressive and who actually likes MEN! Seriously people are saying "carbon copy" but clearly there's a better model 🤦🏾‍♀️

I'm gonna get crucified for this.

You're not wrong

[rodeoxqueen]

High Enough

Eustass Kid/Reader Summary: All in all, Eustass is a wild animal lost in the worship of you. He will destroy the world and crucify the damned and the innocent. He is soon-to-be-everyone’s executioner but in these sheets, he is yours and yours only. 

All in all, Eustass is a wild animal lost in the worship of you. He will destroy the world and crucify the damned and the innocent. He is soon-to-be-everyone’s executioner but in these sheets, he is yours and yours only. 

Eustass Kid is the devil but you’ll bring him to his knees as he kisses up your leg, throwing you onto the bed to defile. 

Your wrists are captured in his flesh hand and even then, he’s the one wrapped around your fingers. 

He hates that since he’s lost his arm, there is less of him to worship you with. But he is still a man who would do anything to make you smile. 

Yet now, he wants to see you moan his name and throw your head back in terrible terrible pleasure that wrecks your body. 

He’s thrusting into your pussy and within the hell he has raised, it feels like heaven to him. Red-stained lips messily pressed against yours, he only kisses with teeth and tongue. 

There is a semblance of sympathy in him, briefly stopping when he’s hit your cervix and a loud moan crossed with pain leaves your pretty mouth. 

“You’re so fuckin’ pretty when you’re all dumb over my cock.” He smirks, continuing his ministrations on your body. 

You are so fucking pretty to him, bruises on your hips and waist from how hard he grips them, and red hand prints where he spanked your ass until tears came out of your eyes. 

“Oh baby~” You moan. 

He flips you over onto your back and cages you with his formidable body, all scarred and damaged from the years of being a murderous pirate. 

Yellow eyes flit to all of you, and he can’t find a single flaw. You’re laying on the bed, all submissive and hands gripping the sheets of the bed, looking up at him with those doe eyes. 

He can’t resist as he enters your body again, thick cock stretching you out again. 

You’re all his and he’ll burn down the entire world to prove it. He’s high enough off you to want nothing more. 

Your name is like a sweet in his mouth that dissolves and makes him want to say it more and more. 

He’s pressed so close to your body and you simply kiss him gently, still pinned under him. 

Why would you kiss a monster, unless you loved him like a man. 

“Shit.” Eustass is close and he’s dying to make you cum first, hips snapping aggressively. He’s lost in pleasure and euphoria as you loudly cry his name over and over again, eyes teary. 

You tighten around him and he finally cums inside of you, filling you up. 

He lets out a long groan, hand pulling at your hair and breathing against your neck. 

Freed from his grip on your wrists, you caress his back and face as he practically collapses onto the bed next to you. 

In the post-coitus, you look so angelic despite your messed-up hair and red-tinted skin, evidence of the devilish tango you both just did. 

“C’mere.” He pulls you to him with his one arm and keeps you close to his chest. 

You stretch yourself to get closer to his face, and peck his cheek. His face turns pink as he scoffs. 

He might have to marry you one of these days. 

[multitrackdrifting]

You can crucify me for saying this but I genuinely believe that FF14 players have this inherent problem with assessing writing because some people legitimately don't know who wrote what (down to the specific writer, not just "The Lead Writer"), and automatically assume that anyone that isn't Ishikawa just sucks at writing. There are definite and clear writing shortcomings in the story that do not relate to DRK questline/SHB, but the way that people talk about her parasocially is no different from believing that FMA is the only good shounen in existence because you refuse to engage with the medium because you think it consists solely of Fairy Tale and SAO and you're not interested while also being completely ignorant of the ability to accept "yes, even FMA has flaws, and I still love it for what it dose well" because your very identity is constructed upon this insanely unrealistic notion that everything you do and engage with has to be justified. Some critiques are easy to levy simply because they are ones laid against something that you don't like, while you unintentionally make yourself ignorant of the flaws in the things that you do like.

People just don't like hearing this shit cause it makes them look bad when they're actually confronted for showing legitimately parasocial behaviour. And before you get at me, I actually like the things I'm using as examples (i.e. Shadowbringers, FMA) but the fans of said thinsg make it fucking embarassing with how unserious people critique them sometimes. Sometimes a take just leaves containment of a small circle and nobody even stops to assess it seriously to see if it's just straight up bullshit that passes the aesthetics test and nothing more

[percqbeths]

can we please stop being anti-annabeth solely for not being a cliched female love interest i am so tired of people painting her as manipulative, harmful, toxic, or anything of that nature solely because of some of her natures. annabeth chase is a character who

grew up in a household that made her feel constantly unwanted and a burden, so much so that she fleed

didn't know what a stable relationship looked like–arguably yes she could have seen silena and charlie but they were also teens who were new to it all. she had no one guiding her.

ran away from her home early on and found safety in two people–one of which sacrificed themselves for her and the other betrayed her

has a fatal flaw that causes her to fully believe she could always do everything better than anyone else

constantly seeked approval and praise from a mother who was never there

annabeth chase is all those things. now let me debunk what people believe she is:

"annabeth is toxic." — no, she is not. she is a survivor of a traumatic childhood and doesn't always know how to go about her emotions. camp half blood, for as friendly as it is, trains warriors. she wasn't raised with parent figures teaching her how to communicate her thoughts, in FACT, the only parental relationship she had was parents making her feel unwanted and dramatic (ie her stepmother telling her she's scaring her brothers), so as a result she doesn't KNOW how to talk. if she ever came off as rude or negative it was solely just her lack of being able to talk it out.

"annabeth is abusive." — once again, no. the judo flip scene came from her genuine irritation and the heaviness in her chest of being without percy for so long. it wasn't out of harm, they sparred together all the time, and he laughed it off. also remember annabeth didn't know percy lost his curse of achille's, so in her eyes she didn't think he would feel pain from that flip. so all she did was just tell him i'm so mad at you for being taken away from me and also let out her inner turmoil. she did not expect him to get hurt.

"annabeth shouldn't call him seaweed brain its harmful." – seaweed brain and wise girl are their childhood nicknames to one another. its not harmful–YOU GUYS implying that the nickname implies him being stupid or it hurting him is actually far more harmful. the nicknames hold nostalgia for the both of them: it holds the fact that despite everything they're best friends, that they've come so far from where they started and how even though they disliked one another they fell in love. it's not a harmful nickname, it just shows how much she loves him.

the annabeth/rachel dynamic – i'm sorry, but why the fuck are we crucifying a teenage girl for being jealous? i genuinely do not fucking understand why people r getting so angry at annabeth for being jealous of rachel when she was literally in love with percy and one of his only friends for THE LONGEST time before rachel came along. feelings and romance aside, as a friend (who has been abandoned in the past for others, like thalia did w the hunters) i would feel really jealous as well. the whole botl dynamic is just childhood pettiness and jealousy at its finest, and then in tlo annabeth admits she let percy have a summer with rachel DESPITE her wanting to be with him–how is that bad? she's a teenage girl in love with her best friend who's met a new girl, one who's mortal and comes with far less baggage and who he can just relax with–her feelings of jealousy were completely valid throughout the series, stop hating on her for them. and then as for the whole tartarus "keeping percy on his toes" thing–that was playful. and a joke. and annabeth and rachel are literally friends at this point. calm the fuck down.

while i am on this subject of annabeth chase slander, can we please k*ll the jokes that imply annabeth is a tr*mp supporter, a racist, or a homophobe? if ur a poc and u enjoy those jokes i won't gatekeep u from making them but please remember that a lot of those jokes have hella heavy implications and are very out of pocket. people hate on her because of that page in moa where she says she hates the fact that she's blonde, but i raise u this:

annabeth chase is highly insecure as a character. THE ONLY THING SHE IS SECURE IN IS HER BRAINS, SO OBVIOUSLY THE IDEA THAT PEOPLE MAY THINK SHE'S INFERIOR OR DITZY BECAUSE OF HER HAIR COLOR WOULD MAKE HER FEEL INSECURE! it's VALID of her and y'all literally took it and turned her into a racist who'd spit on me and call me a terrorist and i just–i don't get it.

also just because i think annabeth slander should end doesn't mean i don't think y'all need to stop attacking other female characters as well specifically hazel and piper because y'all seem to just constantly attack these female characters and i am so tired of it.

thank u for coming to my ted talk 😁

[lucyskywalker]

I may be a Arya stan; but Dany is my second favorite character, so I am here to defend her and I got fucking tired of this hipocrisy. Warning: If there are mistakes on it, I'm sorry, because Im not a specialisty on Dany's arc. This is just me wanting to get some frustration out of my chest.

I'm getting tired to open Twitter, Quora and Reddit with all the ASoIaF "intelectuals" calling Dany a tyrant, when it is clear that they don't even know what the word means. Calling her a slaver. Calling her a monster. Also, there are uncountable that points out she would be nothing without Viserys. You guys know who I'm talking about, right? The one who abused his little sister emocionally, phisically and sexually. Sold his little sister as a slave/let clear that would not raise a hand if all the khalaser raped her, because he needed an army. This Viserys is the only one Im talking about.

"Poor Viserys. He didn't deserve it."

"Poor slaver, mad Danielle destroyed the economy."

"Poor masters crucified. They only have grown in this community. They are not wrong. This fucking white savior is."

Those people have the audacity to say it, and after that, the same profiles change all Sansa's storyline, says Sansa deserves the dragons, what she could do with dragons, and I'm damm sure they are the ones who writes and read fanfics where they put their dear redhead on Dany's place.

The audacity of some people is something infuriating. You know what? Dany is NOT a fucking TYRANT, much less a slaver. How can you point it out, when Dany was a SLAVE herself?! She was SOLD to the dothraki! Why this needs to be said?!

Because she liked the dothraki?

Dany was a pre-teen that was mentally, phisically and sexually abused during her all life, and this is OBVIOUSLY include her childhood.

She just started liking the dothraki after she accepts and takes "control" of her sexual life; or better, just accepts being raped by Drogo as a part of her life, in exchange of it she is respected by the whole khalasar and is gifted with "love" and "care". This is disgusting. It is more disgusting people calling her a bitch because of it! DAENERYS WAS THIRTEEN YEARS OLD! GIVE A THIRTEEN YEARS OLD CHILD WHO WAS ALWAYS ABUSED AND HARESSAD BY HER OWN BROTHER A BIT OF CARE AND " SICK LOVE" THIS CHILD WILL LOVE THEM BACK! THIS IS THE BASIC OF PSICHOLOGY WHEN YOU DEAL WITH AN ABUSE SURVIVOR! THIS IS WHY VICTIMS OF ABUSIVE RELATIONSHIPS TENDS TO DEFEND THEIR ABUSERS! THAT'S THE REASON DANY STILL REMEMBERS OF DROGO AND VISERYS FOUNDLY EVEN IN ADWD!

The dragons? Dany LOVES her dragons! The mother of dragons is not only a nicknam, much less a title. For Dany they are her children! But she is afraid, she was afraid because she finally saw her loved children were dangerous creatures to others. This is why she locks them. It hurts her, but the safety of her people comes first. She choose to make this sacrifice.

Also for all the crazy people who says Dany would be nothing without her dragons and it was given to her, I say "shut up". Dany was presented with eggs. Who've read Fire & Blood or payed a fucking attention in ASoIaF knows that having dragon eggs means nothing! The eggs were stone! Dead to everyone! In centuries, since the Dance with Dragons there were no dragons. Targaryens loose their life trying to hatch them. Dany is special. She entered into the fire, without knowing she would survive, and the dragons hatched. She was the first kalheesi ever to lead a khalasar. The khalasar just follow the strong ones.

About the tyranny? I can write a fucking whole essay about her called "tyranny". Dany is harsh, this is true. She is vengeful. But you know what more she is? Daenerys is just!

She was an outsider who saw a whole community that enslaved people, children, men and women, and saw that it was fucking wrong!

More than that. Dany saw it was wrong, but she also saw she could change it. She had the power to make it better. So she did.

In centuries, westerosi people and anothers have seen slavery, some despised but didn't do anything to change the situation. Dany was the only one in centuries to see it by what it was and try to change the disgusting slaver culture in slaver's bay.

She could have taken only the unsullied and sailed to Westeros, but no. She choose to stay and make things right. She decided to fight for freedom.

More than that, as queen of Meereen she tries her best to be the best ruler she can be. She wants her people to love her, and she works for it intead of being passive as someone we know damm well. She hears her councillors. Would a tyrant do that? No. Aerys was a tyrant. He would kill anyone who speaks against his will. Dany is not that person. She is not her father. This is her writing. She is a Targaryen through and through, but a tyrant? Never. This is thesis of her arc ass it can be stated by Barristan Selmy who served the Mad King.

Was it wrong to end slavery? I don't think so. Dany tought it was only ending slavery, but she finally saw the political consequence of it, and what I love about her? She is not running away from it. She is facing the consequences bravely. She decided to marry again to please the meereen people and the called "sons of the harpy", because she wanted peace! She wanted her people to stop suffering. This was her wish. More than the iron throne.

The iron throne? Is it wrong for her to want justice and blood from the ones she believes betrayed a good King? To want what is hers by birthright? Because this is what Daenerys knew about her father. Aerys was a good king, betrayed by the Lannister, Baratheon and Starks because the usurpers wanted the throne. Viserys told it to her since she was a young child. It was a fact. How is Dany supposed to know every damn thing? Just recently she is learning the truth of how mad Aerys was.

Also, if people get mad if Dany rides Drogon in the next book, I say fuck you. It's a war she is fighting. Her enemies would be glad to see her head on a spike. If Dany fights back, I will congrelute her.

Dany is incredible complex, with flaws and a lot of redeem qualities. Her arc is awesome to read. If you can't stand that war, death, and that there are no perfect hero, you are at the wrong fandom. ASoIaF is not for you. Get out of here.

And for the stansas and jonsas, because these disgusting people who claim those things can just be part of darling redhead. What your "favorite" have done untill now in the books? Betrayed her family? Survived? Killing her cousin what you claim she is too dumb for noticing? Wow. How spacial. It is easy to "love" such a great incredible cough* passive classicist*cough character. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

I know damm well who I stan.

I stan Daenerys of House Targaryen

I stan Arya of House Stark.

I accept their flaws and qualities equally. And I love them for being such incredible grey complexes characters.

For the ones that still say "poor Viserys", and "poor slavers" and "poor masters", I just say one thing:

[redspiderling]

At this point it seems like people are even trying to veil their misogyny. EXTREMELY famous men have done and said so much worse than Scarlett (though I do not defend her in some of her past indiscretions) she is crucified and made to be a joke while men in far worse positions are forgiven after a few years or hell, a few months! It’s frankly exhausting...

Hey anon,

Here’s the thing anon, this is all part of the female experience. We are all made to fit into little boxes so that others can take appart our existence and explain it, or dismiss it, with a couple of words at most. When we leave the fictional world of media behind, we realise people are much more complex than that and that’s the only cure for this type of frustration but hey, I get it, I do.

It’s especially hard for women to be viewed as human beings with merit and flaws and hangups, and not as cardboard-cutouts of roles we make for them, “the preacher feminist”, “the whore”, and on and on. 

For Scarlett specifically, it’s easy to look at her and see a millionaire white woman, aka ultimate privilege. And that is an image that sells, both for glamour/ultimate lifestyle/late-capitalism dream when it suits the cause (ahem, and the targeted audience), and for taking her down a notch when necessary (again, for the targeted audience). Which is why it’s what you see on the internet most of the time. 

But if you take a closer look, perhaps you’ll see a woman who has been working, as in earning money for her family, since the age of 6, and who grew up on food stamps. A woman who has been through some tough stuff and might have some hangups. 

And here’s the thing anon, when I look in the mirror I also see a woman with hangups and issues to work through, I don’t see myself as some sort of “morality police” because that never works well, so I prefer not to judge other women, especially when they’re obviously good people just going through life figuring it out like the rest of us. I prefer to work on making myself better.

I am also aware that if I had a camera following me around, they’d definitely catch me in a couple of weak moments where I say things I don’t think through, or don’t express myself correctly, and I’d make plenty of bad headlines. Because that’s what the press does you know, find the best angle to sell a story.

We need to stop letting media outlets take up such a huge space in our lives, and in the way we view the world. It’s not black and white, and it’s easy to lose sight of humanity in that hipper-sensationalised space. 

The only way to save yourself for that type of exhaustion, is if you ignore the people/sources who choose to reduce people to caricatures of themselves. Because that will never change, it is what it is. 

I will say though that while I liked Scarlett’s work as an actress before the MCU, I wasn’t a fan until I saw the amount of hate she receives, which made me look closer and see a completely different human being than the one projected on a superficial level. So there’s that at least.

Oh, one last thing, Scarlett doesn’t need anybody to defend her, or speak for her, she’s perfectly capable of doing that herself, and has done so her entire life. There was no morality police protecting her when she was asked to do nude scenes when she was 17, and there certainly isn’t one to protect her now. 

She's been told her acting is wooden for years, voted as best boobs multiple times, never considered for serious roles because she was too hot and when she took the eye-candy roles she was belittled as talentless. She also almost got herself into a car accident years ago, because she was driving and panicked when she saw a billboard ad of herself where her breasts were enormous.

Do you think that woman gives a fuck about what people say about her? No. She doesn’t. She’s perfectly capable of making her own mind and bettering herself without the aid of nameless strangers looking for a way to use/abuse her words and her name for a good sell and patronisingly proclaim she needs to “educate herself”. 

It’s really not the first time she’s gone through that, it’s just that this time the sell has a different form.

Also, uh, I get the frustration with the tree jokes. I’d say the fact that she has actually literally been a USB drive in one of her films tops acting out a tree character, but I actually enjoyed her subtle dig at that more.

[theoneforgameofthrones]

Daenerys Targareyan: The Path Towards Madness.

Okay let's begin.

Intro: I read book 1. And then, I binge watched seasons 1-6 after season 6 finale. By that time, I knew all the major theories like L+R=J, dark!dany, targ!tyrion etc.

So, I was paying extra attention and these are some of the obvious moments where I felt they showed Dany's mad side show. Some points, you may find valid. Some points you may find silly and over-reaching. In any case, this is what *I* felt.

Feel free to have discussions. Appreciate positive critisism. However, just yelling/abusing will not be tolerated.

1. Lack of Empathy

Her obvious lack of empathy when her brother was killed.

I did not expect her to save him. I did not expect her to mourn him. I did not even expect her to cry for him. I did, however, expect a reaction, any sort of reaction, when someone close (despite him being an abusive asshole) dies that suddenly and that violently.

2. Her facial expression during Drogo's speech.

"I will kill the men in iron suits and tear down their stone houses! I will rape their women, take their children as slaves and bring their broken gods back to Vaes Dothrak!"

3. During her Breaker of Chains phase, she conviniently seemed to forget that she used to practice not only slavery, but also pillaging while she was with her khalesar.

Master Illeryoi owned slaves. Her brother owned slaves. She was gifted slaves to teach her how to please the Khal.

Her husband was a war-lord and her khalesar constantly raided and pillaged villages. They killed men. They raped women. Remaining alive women were taken as sex slaves and later sold. That was their way of life. She saved Mirri Maz Duur and several other women from the fate of gang rape and murder but they were still dragged along side the khalasar as slaves. In books, the reason MMD was not sold was so that she can assist Dany during childbirth.

4. The burning of Mirri Maz Duur (MMD)

This is going to make sense to a lot of people. But confuse the fuck out of many. But let's see.

In colonized countries, we have a term called "Savior's Complex". It is where a colonizer raids a country, steal its riches, impose extreme taxing, destory most of its heritage and then expect praise for bringing something (could be education, technology, architecture).

Dany takes the complex another step above. She not only expects gratitude from an enslaved MMD while dragging her along with her khalesar with sole purpose of assistance with childbirth, she also expects her to save the life of her husband. The war-lord whose khalesar raided her home, pillaged her village, killed her countrymen, raped/killed her countrywomen, dragged remaining alive women along with the khalesar to be sold later. Despite all this, Dany expects gratitude from MMD for her life. This flawed logic however is thrown back in her face.

"So, tell me again exactly what it was that you saved?"

"Your life."

"Why don't you take a look at your Khal? Then you will see exactly what life is worth, when all the rest has gone."

This is an old age tale of revenge. Khal raided her village. She took revenge on them for destroying her temple. Dany burned her for it.

What completely bamboozled me in this fandom was how much people hated MMD for what she did while completely making Dany the victim in this scenario while forgetting that MMD was the orginal victim who was not only an enslaved prisoner of war, but also gang-raped victim of her khalesar's doing.

5. Ser Barriston's words.

Ser Barriston in Mereen, tells her to treat injustice with mercy. She replies that she will treat injustice with justice.

Another quote by Ser Barriston: "He gave people the people the justice he thought they deserved."

Justice and what people in power percieve as justice is often very different.

6. Daenerys' justice for the crucified slave children

She did that by choosing 163 random Great Masters and crucifying them to avenge the 163 slave children. This seems like justice. But is it, really? They never recieved trial. They were never proven guilty. Like Hizdahr Loraq said, some of the masters were not in favor of crucifying children and tried very hard to stop it. Who knows how many other good masters she crucified?

This is a direct parallel to Ser Barriston's words about Mad King Aerys: "He gave people the people the justice he thought they deserved."

7. She stopped slavery only when it benefitted her.

Some of you, while reading point 6, may have thought, "They were SLAVERS! So what?!".

Well, while choosing 163 masters, Dany decided that all Masters are her enemies. She decided that all of them deserved punishment. She decided that they were guilty just for engaging in slavery while conviniently forgetting that if that were the case, she should be the one in the first cross.

8. She burnt Great Masters without even investigating who were behind the Sons of Harpy's attack.

After Ser Barriston's death, we again get to see more of her twisted sense of justice. By her own words, "Who is innocent? Maybe all of you are, maybe none of you are. Maybe, I should let the dragons decide."

It is not supposed to be called justice if you punish (and a cruel punishment, at that) without even caring whether they are innocent or not.

9. "You are a conquerer. Not a ruler."

Time and time again Dany proves this to be true. She conquered Yunkai and left immeidetely. The slavers took back the city in no time. She closed off the fighting pits and refused to open them despite being told that participants will be free men who enter willingly. This is where ruling comes in. Any place she conquered and freed, she failed to put something else to keep up the economy. She collapsed the economy so bad that slaves were selling themselves again.

10. Wrongful imprisonment.

Dany finds that Drogon has harmed children. The correct response is to either train or punish the dragons. She, however, imprisons the two dragons who werent at fault while Drogon ran free. Does that mean she is not responsible for whatever terror or death Drogon caused to wherever he flew off to? What exactly does imprisoning Rhaegar and Viseryion get her?

What kind of justice is it where the accused is free while the innocent get prisoned for association. Again, feeds into the twisted justice train.

11. Twisted Justice. Hipocrisy. Again.

While many men were fed to dragons, Hizdahr Loraq was imporisoned. He begged for mercy in terror.She also decides that she will show her respect for Meereen by marrying a member of one of its great families. For a woman who was forced into marriage and "sold like a broodmare", she sure didn't feel any moral dilemma in making a terrifed man betroth her. His death though, proved that he was not at all involved with Sons of Harpy and he was imprisoned for nothing.

12. Burning POW's

Burning Tarly's (father and son) was a direct paralell to her father burning Ned's father and brother alive. You cannot hide behind "It was a war. She gave them a choice." No matter what defenses one can attempt to give her, killing (forget burning) POW is a war crime. So is forcing prisoners against their own side of war.

13. Defending cruelty in path of justice

She killed Tarly's and defended that decision, by saying that was necessary.

When Hizdahr asks her how many men will have died to achieve her goal, she says "They would have died for a greater cause." She is talking about destroying cities and sure, that must be for a greater purpose.

When Tyrion reminds her that about what her father planned to do when she said she wnated to burn Mereen to the ground.. her response was "This is different,". How, exactly?

"The easiest way to defend cruelty is to say that it is part of the destiny."

14. The insinct to burn down cities.

By s8e01, she has wanted to burn down cities thrice. Meereen - once. King's Landing - twice. Both times, she had to be talked out of it by her advisors. The fact that her first instinct when her plans were failing was to burn down cities. Direct parallel to Aerys wanting to destroy king's landing because he thought there were traitors everywhere. The fact is that a person can surrond themselves with good counsel. But it is not necessary that the counsel is always heeded. Which is what happened to Aerys. He was going incresingly mad for months and his counsel members hid the fact from the outside world because they thought they could control the madness. We all know what happened in the end.

Since s7, Dany has been becoming increasingly paranoid about Tyrion's loyalty and increasingly more frustrated with every loss. How long before she decides not to listen to them anymore?

15. The entire collonialist/white savior imagary presented in Essos.

It is amazing how most of the fandom either ignores it or is just unaware of it.

Though this point doesnt parallel anything to the show, i just found it extremely cringy. I am sure members of most colonized countries would. I cant even beging to describe how cringy that mysha scene was.

16. The typical white priviledge mentality.

She wants to inherit her ancestor's throne and power. But she doesnt want to repent for her ansestor's sins and betrayal.

17. Wrong sense of entitlement

She truly believes that she is entitled to the North's fealty. She asks Jon Snow not to judge her based on her ancestors and in the same breath asks him to hold up the vows of his ancestors.

But, whatever vow the Starks made to the Targareans was broken the moment Aerys decided to burn the Starks. The fealty was made on promise of protection. Technically, any member of the houses that Aerys burnt, is no longer accountable to the vow.

Still, she expects everyone to uphold their fealty but refusing to accpet that her father broke that fealty when he decided to burn the vassels (whom he promised to protect) alive.

18. Savior Complex

Some parts of Dany reminds me of how missionaries work.

"Will your God punish me for not praying to him if I did not know about him?"

"No."

"Then why did you tell me about him?"

I believe one thing about Daenerys Targareyan. That she truly wants to help people. That she truly wants to save people. But her problem is, she wants to be the one to save people. She doesnt seem to understand that some people dont require saving.

She talks about freeing the world of tyrants and in the same breath refuses to give North the independence that they demand in solidarity. How is that not the definition of tyranny?

This is Westeros. I am not expecting a democracy and free elections. If she wants to be a conquerer, then she can be one. If she wants to bring to bring together the 7k, she can. What she cannot do is talk about destiny, talk about a wheel, talk about breaking the wheel, and and then do the exact same thing her ansestors did years go by spinning the wheel so that she is on top.

19. She was smiling when she saw that her dragons terrified people of Winterfell.

20. "They eat whatever they want"

Is that really the correct way to respond to people are already scared/cowering over the arrival of dragons? To people who have never seen such beasts before? Did she forget that few seasons ago "whatever they want" that Drogon ate were children?

21. Jaime's trial

She made Jaime stand trial and was heavily leaning towards punish him despite the fact that she knew what her father had planned and what Jaime Lannister had done. She openly spoke in favor of the Mad King in front of Northern Lords. When Tyrion intervened, she publically breated him and questioned his loyalty. Further adds to the Mad King's paranoia and unwillingness to listen to counsel.

22. Jaime Lannister

Not only has he tried to kill her, he has also questioned her intentions twice. The only living person who knows about Mad King more than anyone is perhaps Jaime Lannister. When he questions Tyrion, "Is she really different? Are you sure?" in a sceptical tone. If he doesnt trust her or thinks she had the Targ madness, then I am willing to bet that she probably does.

23. Her decling human connections

the show seems adament in making her seem alone. Like a stranger in her own home land. In an episode full of emotional reconnections, tenderness, friendships and relationships, she is shown all alone. In later episodes, she is incresingly shown alientated: Theon coming to fight for the starks despite being her bannerman, death of the Jorah, Tyrion's withdrawal.

24. jorah was her mercy.

She had shown jorah mercy despite his betrayal. She cared for him and most importantly, completely trusted and listened to him. When she felt no remorse about berating Tyrion and strongarming Sansa, jorah urges her to forgive tyrion and to try and make amends with LAdy of Winterfell. And, she listened to him. He is the only advisor she fully trusts and listens to without having to worry about wavering loyalties. And jorah's death is going to be the acorn in Ice Age that started the avalanche.

<<2 episodes left. will add more after next one airs.>>

This is not to say that she was an evil character. She was a good person with good intentions and bad execution with a twisted sense of justice and destiny. But, the journey to hell is paved with good intensions. Dany was a character who had the potential to be great. But she was always headed to doom. She is a good person whose downfall will be due to pride, ambition and obsession with destiny. She will chose her fate with a sound mind but a flawed personality. Her story will not be heroic, but tragic. Not because of what she was, but because of how she could have been.

[grim-faux]

15 - The Dark

For some reason I didn’t feel the rush of exhilaration I had hoped to achieve in reaching the exit.  My mind might’ve been numbed by what I’d been through to allow such a mood, emotionally drained by the experience and horrors of what I had seen.  It was such an empty sensation, completely robbing me what of I felt was deserved. Closure. But as with all matters tangled in Mount Massive’s mockery, I was to be disappointed.

I hesitated, straining to pick out the odd sounds beneath the heavy rain.  A flash of light clarified the grounds momentarily and I burned the image into memory.  Overgrown grass obscured most of the pathways, a net of greasy branches stretched over the sky.  I moved into the cold rain and the dark, stepping carefully down the slippery stone steps.  Lightening flashed, and I thought something skittered past overhead.  Impossible, given the image wasn’t the best on the visor between the green tint and the heavy rain, there was nothing out here.  As the flash fades, I could only see the brick path and the overgrown grass before me.  I was the only living thing out here. Or nearly so.

A beam of light cut through the downpour and the glossy branches, sweeping over the yard.  There light was too bright on that side to confirm it, but it had to be ‘Father’ Martin.  He’s the only person I knew of that used a torch.  Pretty sure.  He was signaling me from across the yard. I think if I had the chance, I’d like to strangle him.  Get him caught in an elevator, or cut his fingers off with a pair of giant shears.  The camera was getting low on power, had to move it. Strange sounds echoed in the wind, snapping branches or something large crashing through the gaunt bushes along the cobblestone path.  Sometimes I thought it was following me, but the rustle would soften at a distance or maybe the rain was picking up force.  I ducked down when I thought Chris appeared, but it was only my imagination forming shapes in the NVs haze.  No one was out here with me, just Murkoff staff cut up and sitting drenched on benches, staring with glazed eyes at the storm.  Did they come out here to die, or did someone leave them like this?   I was soaked before I reached the fountain.  So much for getting dry, at least rain was clean.  That sound again, something shrieking in the night and I thought there was a form overhead, in the branches as they crackled.  I tried to follow it with the camera, but my nerves gave and I whimpered as I knelt to crawl along toward the only visible light.  It no longer signaled me.  How long had Martin been out in this weather waiting for me?  Not long enough. Leaves scuttling along the ground spooked me, the way they played at the edge of the visor.  I stopped in the downpour to get up, and fought to wrangle my breathing under control.  My chest ached with my heart thudding in my chest, the wind picked up and I shivered into the soggy embrace of my coat.  There was nothing out here but dead people and a psycho guy that fancied himself a priest. I remained wary though as I moved up the steps, beneath a broken lamp blazing in the inky night.  I had to change the batteries in the camera, a tricky choir in the rain.  I crouched low and tucked the camera under my coat and popped out the old battery, then slapped in the new one.  My camera was keeping me more alive at this point, rather than provide the evidence at my psycho evaluation.  I had some difficulty slipping the strap back over my hand, my knuckle was a little swollen and I needed to loosen it in order to get it over.  Once it was done I wouldn’t need to worry over it for a while.  Probably. No one was waiting for me when I reached the top of the steps.  Only the words scrawled in blood on the wall across from me how alive are you At my feet on the damp cobblestone and in a diluted puddle of blood, rested a file in a plain folder.  Inside was a notepad tinged by the soaking rain, but enough of the note was illegible. “I don’t even know your name. But I’ve come to think of you as one of my blood, my Paul, I hope you don’t mind. And I hope you don’t indulge the vanity of self-pity, the fear that your suffering is more than others’. We all must endure this, and you are nearly done. There’s no way to heaven but by the cross. And every man needs another to help drive the nails in. I am here for you. I am waiting up ahead.” This actually would have been really comforting, except at the end where he mentions the cross.  If he thinks he’s crucifying ME, I’ll be more than happy to disappoint.  I’ll die before he gets ahold of me again.  Fuck them all.  I’m not going through all of this to wind up as some sacrifice! I tossed the folder down and cautiously crept up the steps at the right to a wire fence, the door and frame wrapped with thick chains and padlocked tight.  Stepping back, I examined the gate standing between me and presumed freedom. In favorable circumstances I’d fly over a chain linked fence.  What was it to me?  An insult to my dexterity?  Right now, too many factors worked against me to attempt the climb.  The weather was bad, barbed wire at the top, don’t mention my fingers, and I was bleeding again.  It didn’t look like there was much for me on the other side either, it this just led into another yard. Damn, where do you have to go to get out of this place? I judged the fountain to be a center piece of the yard, if that assessment was correct I would locate other pathways leading from it across the grounds.  That would keep me from getting too lost, I was incredibly disoriented with the weather and all-consuming black.  As I made the return trip, a light glittered in the distance between tree trunks and mist.  I kept my attention locked on it while trying not to deviate from the path, it was tempting to tear across the yard if only to find the source. Overhead the branches groaned and snapped, I ducked down as that noise returned, sounding like pellets in a pipe and shrieking with the crashing thunder.  I dove off into the tall grass and kept low, listening and searching for what might be there.  A shape slipped through the treetops, but the night blazed with green brilliance, blinding me through the NV.  I turned my head down and realized my knees and shins were soaked in the icy mud, but I didn’t care.  I didn’t want to move and alert whatever was out there to my location and have it come down on me screaming mad.  I didn’t want to see it, I didn’t want to know what was there. It was just getting to me, the weather and this feeling of isolation in the yard.  It made me feel like something was out there stalking me, and only me.  I needed to get into some shelter and dry off.  Or just get out of this drumming rain for a bit. I shuffled along ducking beneath the low twigs and pressing through soaked brush.  I’m certain the path was at my back but I didn’t want to find it just yet, I needed to stay hidden in the undergrowth until it felt safe.  I’m not sure what I was hiding from but I needed to stay hidden from it.  Recollections of the sewers, people shrieking behind the metal gates as an unseen force punished them.  I exhaled a sharp breath and pressed my left hand over my face.  Don’t go back.  Try not to think about it.  I murmured something strange, a comforting sort of sound to reinforce my resolve. I’ll get out of this.  But I have to keep moving. Another gate appeared in my path, and I ran my hand carefully over the chain linked fence. A stone wall was built on the other side, crates stacked on the floor.  There was a door in the wall. The gate was locked with chains— The timber above snapped and fell onto my head, and that screech rang in my ear as though it were right beside me.  I whirled away tearing through grass and sharp brush towards the stone fountain, not stopping until a light in a doorway appeared somewhere on my left.  I flew to it not hesitating before I slammed into the door at full force, and flung it shut with a loud CRACK!  I stood quivering under the light, dust swirled in the warm beam as I panted, gazed fixed on that door.  The storm howled beyond the weathered wood, sounding eerily like human sobs.  What the fuck had that been? Power in the nightvision needed to be changed out.  Already?  I just changed the battery.  Something was going on here.  Much of the same that clung to this place, a lot I didn’t understand and what I did get still made no sense. I switched out the battery and looked at the small tool shed I had crashed into.  Some basic things, a few shelves with paint cans, some pliers and wire cutters, and propane cans stacked by the door.  There were a few hooks, and one had a silver key dangling on it.  It had to be a key to somewhere, maybe one of the gates?  I had to go back out there and search them all down.  It could be done, but it would be time consuming. Before heading out I gave my camera a quick evaluation, to make sure it was still in satisfactory working order.  I rubbed off some of my bloodstains that had clotted on its side and checked some of the footage, in a dull state.  It began to frighten me how little I reacted to my own terror in the night, as though I didn’t care five minutes previously I’d been racing across the yard in a panic.  I did forget my initial goal was to confirm the camera was still operational despite its abuse, but I’d fallen into a repetition of cycling through all its functions and struggling to adjust the color settings, despite the mechanical flaw caused by being thrown out of a fuckin window.  I eventually gave up and stared at the visor as it recorded the floor of the shed. Time to go. The handle turned loosely in my hand and I pulled the door back, while keeping my shoulder by one side in case I needed to shove it close.  I didn’t have my camera up yet so all I could make out was the oily yard with its slumped shapes glimmering under the flash of electricity.  The sky was a muddy expanse stretching over the tree tops, it seemed lower than the sky should be, barely brushing above the canopy of jagged timber.  There was nothing hostile, nothing visible I wouldn’t come to expect with the relentless storm.  Complete silence but for the thick water and rumble of thunder.   It was eerie, after I had raced across the yard accustomed to the bizarre sounds, and suddenly there were none.  For a moment, I was startled by a black shape hovering near the fountain, but in a flash of light it was gone.  Just the guard slouched on the bench, on the other side of the yard.  It was him I had seen, very dead and immobile, nothing could change my mind. I returned to the gate beneath the light, where ‘Father’ Martin had left his message.  I took the padlock but found I was wrong in my assumption.  The key was thick, more along the lines of a skeleton key, and the padlock used the more modern thin keys.  Damnit. I climbed down the wall and walked along one side of the yard hunting for a door, or gate that would use the key.  There had to be some sort around here, Martin left the key in the shed for me, the mystic bastard.  Couldn’t just leave doors open, has to lock me in and leave me to the mercy of his ‘disciples.’  This place was probably Satan’s holiday house.   A light on the other side of the yard caught the visor, and I started in that direction in a casual jog.  It sounded like a shape was shredding through the canopy overhead, I hunched down as I hastened my pace through a sharp gale of wind and rain.  I doubt the light would deter it but the dark didn’t seem to do much either.  I shoved the key into the lock breathing a small sigh of relief when the latched clicked.  My hand fumbled with the slick knob, scraping my finger in the process as I forced it open and threw it shut after me.  I moved away from the door and fought back the trembles that clutched my body, just couldn’t get myself under control.  Beyond the wire door I thought there was a dark mass swimming through the storm, but a boom of thunder killed out any sound there might’ve been. Focused and still, I waited for nothing.  The water made a soft pit-pat sound as it dripped from the edges of my soaked coat and chin, insects buzzed overhead driven wild by the intense light.  The gentle atmosphere somehow overpowered the nightmare of the storm and what it concealed.  I allowed myself one whimper as I let the tremors take me, tensing my muscles to block out some of the cold.  There was something out there and it was following me.  I don’t know how to explain it.  I don’t want to explain it.  The very notion I couldn’t comprehend this terrified me.  What the fuck was it and what did it want? My mind kept flashing back to the sewers, the wails and sobs of people dying.  The sounds.  Those sort that couldn’t be replicated.  They were the kind of sound a person made the moment death took them, and would never be repeated by that individual.  Death throes. I changed out what was once a battery at half-life, and put one with full power in.  That should last me.  Maybe. It looked like some sort of greenhouse, or was once one until the asylum came to be in the early nineties.  I moved away from the wall to distract myself with this place, this façade of reprieve.  No plants were kept in here, just some pallets and materials for the grounds.  Windows along the upper walls flashed with peculiar outlines, like faces watching through still portraits and the unsettling sensation that I was not alone and had never been alone in this place.  Just nerves, I told myself.  I was cold, soaked, and the lightening hid shapes as it revealed me to those same shapes I hid from. I gave a loud sneeze and bit my tongue.  Perfect. Briskly, I moved out of the light, into the shadow of the doorway at the other end.  I raised my camera and gave the crossing corridor a look over, before I stumbled out into someone.  Smelt like people came in here to piss as though the yard was too good for them.  In this weather, it might’ve been. Looked like most of the material for reinforcing the doors had been hauled from this storeroom, it must’ve been stocked with lumber before the nightmare began.  Two by fours and plywood were leaned against one side of the wall, and on the other was a shelf with a hammer and some dried out potted plants.  Pieces of splintered wood lay across the stone path, and nails had been scattered to the sides.  A radio had been abandoned on a shelf out here, but the batteries were not the right ones for my camera. I turned to check what the other side might offer, and stepped through a doorframe into a spare shed.  At the far end the exit awaited, nearly missed as I scanned the entrance, skittish as I was.  I was spooked by the icy dots of rain that hit my face, only to realize there was a large hole in the roof above.  I shut my eyes and exhaled trying to calm myself.  Just the rain, it was just the rain.  Though I was freezing, I didn’t bother to move out from under it, as I looked over the room. Thin boards lined the walls and some propane tanks were left stacked at the furthest corner.  Shelves were dotted with eroded paint cans, and more tools to reinforce doors without restraint.  Good to know all that hard work and sweat had paid off in the end.  I could just imagine Murkoff freaking out, terrified by the things they created and not understanding any of it.  Just trying to get barricades built, doors sealed, and then curl up in the darkest corner while they listened to their colleagues, abandoned outside, get pummeled by the big fucker.  And he seemed like such an interesting man. Slowly, I turned the handle of the door and pulled it open a crack to scope out.  Tall brick walls extended from the building on either side, effectively boxing the path in.  I heard a noise like… screeching.  Nails on a chalkboard, or something?  Thick bars stretched from the wall into the dark, at the current range of the NV I couldn’t see how far. A form in the dark.  I’m not sure how to describe it, it was an outline at first, then it took a shape.  It was insubstantial and had no face, just what looked like a head perched on a rib cage as it fluctuated and shrieked and… headed RIGHT TOWARDS ME! It was right at my face before I slammed the door and braced my shoulder against the icy steel.  A strangled cry came from my throat as my ribs crunched under the force.  I didn’t see that, what was it?  That was impossible, it didn’t walk, I didn’t see its feet!  It didn’t have feet, it— The door shuddered but it was too dark to see, what I could make out was through the visor quivering just beside my face.  It… materialized, and crawled ‘through’ the crack under the door.  I only caught glimpses of the fog, I was too lost in fortifying a barrier on something that was slipping beneath it like in a cartoon.  This isn’t possible, not possible!  This isn’t natural what’s going on here!  Was that its head?  Was it looking at me?! When it grabbed at my feet I charged out of there, crashing into the metal gate under the light before I recalled how doors worked.  I fled across the yard stumbling through grass, bushes, and finally toppling over a bench I didn’t see in the black veil of night.  Somehow in my madness I fell to my good shoulder and skid across the stone path, terrible wails surrounded me in the gloom as the lightening blazed and the world came into momentary clarity.  I envisioned the patients surrounding me, Chris Walker in the distance stalking through the yard.  A shapeless form howled as it hovered over me, reaching out a twisted branch to crush my head.   Strange sounds curled around me, and I knew was making them.  I tried to block it out as I twisted to rise but something was wrong, I rolled sideways and fell down again before my legs could carry my weight.  Once I was mobile, I raced the rest of the way to a bright light shimmering in the distance like a salvaging beacon.  It only occurred to me as I flew up the steps that it was the same Asylum that I had recently escaped.  It was the last thought in my head as I barreled through the nearest door, into the dark and dry safety of this horrible place. I didn’t get a chance to fling it shut, my instincts screamed – flee, flee, escape, HIDE!   I crammed my body into the furthest corner between the bookcase and a desk.  There I cringed, panting, shivering, wide eyed, and waiting for the thing to find me.  I just couldn’t understand what I saw.  Couldn’t comprehend it.  I wasn’t into the supernatural, I’ve never see shapes or heard voices…. Up until I came to this crazy place.  How could I have been charging all over this messed up Asylum, and only now out in the yard I come across something vaguely supernatural.  It didn’t make sense.  I felt like I just lost my mind.  I was fuckin insane.  Completely bonkers. “God help me, I think I’ve seen the Walrider.” My ears are ringing.  That shrieking snarl, when I was face to face with it….  I don’t know what happened.  There was a flash, I thought it was the lightening, but it felt like I suffered a sharp blow to the head.  I thought I’d seen into its face, o god, inside its skull… I didn’t feel right.  Not bad, I didn’t feel good either, but not bad, but something….something doesn’t feel right.  Like I lost something, or forgot something.  Just my nerves, I’m shook up and cold, and probably not in the best of health with all the blood loss. I wipe some of it from my hands, but with the heavy rain the clots can’t hold.  Couldn’t stop here, had to push on.  Find that proverbial light out of this hell hole.  No ‘illusion’ of MKULTRA would stop me. My legs felt soupy as I made the long trek back to the gate, the only route I knew that might offer a way out.  Or lead someplace dry.  It took some time to find the gate, I left the door wide open and became confused when I saw the smaller shed through the rain.  After further searching, in which time I’m certain I was more lost than I should have been, I did find the greenhouse.  I shut the door behind me and listened, primed to bolt if I saw it, or heard that unnatural call it generated.  I couldn’t fabricate the exact noise in my head, only that it was inhuman and terrifying. The metal door was untouched, and still in one piece.  It had been crawling ‘under’ the crack.  How the hell? As before, I opened the door slowly and strained to hear.  Noises did come, illusions my mind conjured of screams as the thunder rolled, or the rustle of leaves beside the metal bars flipped about.  I felt like I was losing my mind.  Give me naked thugs, deformed giants, freak doctors with huge scissors - give me a ghost, massive nope factor right there. I slid through the door and shut it behind me.  On the ground swirled dark splotches in clear puddles, another one of Martin’s markers for me.  I had this insane thought that maybe it was hiding in the blood.  What was I thinking anymore? A soft hiss issued from the other side of the bars, and I threw myself against the set to the left when I thought it was coming back.  I saw nothing, no vague outline, nothing.  Just the blaze in the sky, sometimes I thought there was a corpse sitting in the distance, washed by rain, or was it the black outline of a tree framed by light?  I couldn’t tell anymore.  If I kept moving, everything would be all right.  If I waited, it would find me. I turned the corner and stepped off the stone path into thick grass, with about an inch of water coating the soil.  The mud clung to my shoes and weighted my feet, I wobbled but managed not to fall over.  It was a challenge staying on my feet as it was, I didn’t need to fall to my hands and stuff mud into the wounds. A lamp blazed down into some sort of storage yard, from when Murkoff remolded the place for reopening.  A lot of materials they couldn’t get rid of such as concert barriers and pallets were sorted and stacked.  I ducked back from the halo of light when the brittle timber above snapped and dropped into the grass, not far from where I hid.  I raised the camera and kept low listening as the sounds moved off, a soft tinkling of metal pellets echoed from the distance.  The same sounds I heard in the sewers, when I thought I saw shadows. Beside the lamp was a ladder fixed against the brick wall.  I fastened the camera in its hoister and started up, keeping a tight grip each step I pulled up.  The heavy downpour coupled with my muddy shoes made the exercise a difficult one, I nearly lost my footing twice before I had a suitable rhythm down.  Overhead, jagged bolts crossed over the black sky, blinding me briefly but I held my climb steady.  I’ve done this hundreds of time, the weather just complicated the task. The ladder ended abruptly, or it seemed to when I couldn’t see how far I had to climb.  I crawled onto the roof of the greenhouse, or whatever the building was and fumbled for my camera.  I bit the edge of my lip when I tried to force my hand through the strap and wound up jamming my finger on the thick material instead.  Carefully, I slid my fingers under the loop and gripped the camera tightly in my hand, trying to ease out the knot of pain rolling in my knuckle.  I tasted blood but I think it was worth it, distracting myself momentarily from everything else. I used my left hand to steady myself as I stood and stepped up the remainder of the slant, onto the flat surface of the roof.  It was comprised of wooden shingles roughed by hours of sun and harsh winters, easy to keep traction on even with the thick runoff.  I focused on the visor of the camera as I stepped along, the power is more than half done with.  A flicker of light reveals the shattered portion of the roof, for which I gather a short dash before I make the leap.  In a surge of brightness that follows, I nearly stagger back from a shape below my line of sight, but it’s solid and thin and not the thing in the dark. A man sits on the roof of the greenhouses entrance.  I must’ve looked like a lunatic to him, running everywhere in the dark and hiding in the glass.  Or, was he watching it too?  He’s emaciated and stares into the unyielding storm, silent and still, aside from the brief movement of his hand scratching at his chin.  Beside him sits a small walkie-talkie. I shuffle to the low section of the roof, eyes fixed on him should he realize my presence.  I kneel low and reach beside him to pick up the small device without disturbing his watch.  My camera is already dimming, I toss the depleted battery aside and put in the one I’ve just picked up.  It’s dead as well, which would explain why he’s not listening for chatter.  I toss that battery as well and put in one of my own. Half dead, but it’ll do. I pull myself back up to the roof and resume my way.  The path comes to an end, above the curl work of barbed wire topping a fence below.  As I glance around, I’m certain someone has screamed out there in the yard, but I can’t decide which way only that it sounded painful.  On my left there’s a decorative ledge running along the Asylum’s wall, the opposite of which direction I’m almost certain that shrill originated.  I step back and get up some speed before leaping.  When I hit, my shoes skid over the water coating the slick cement, but I keep on my feet.  Another roof was not far from the ledge to the left, I walk over to it keeping the camera firm in my grip as I leapt to the soaked wood without issue.  In the branches I pick up the crackle and rustle of something, but I can never see a definite shape.  I pause to crouch down and film open air and the rain, until the echoes have either faded or my mind ceased to fabricate them.   I push myself back to my feet and continue, barely three steps before I reach a piece of plywood lain down bridging the roof to some scaffolding.  More evidence of Murkoff’s attempted repairs before everything went to shit.  Some boards are set over the short space, which I cross as I constantly search the ground and the canopy.  It feels like the sounds are following me.  I’m almost elated by the notion, despite the pulsing in my veins.  Did I want to see it again?  I don’t think so.  But I was curious.  The initial shock had worn away, and every scuttling noise I thought was the thing in the dark terrified me.  But it also teased my inquisitive nature.  I teetered on a delicate and dangerous line, if I drew to near the sun it would burn me.  But I couldn’t help myself.  I wanted to forget why it frightened me, and learn why I should be frightened by it.  My heart thumped with the acuity, just a glimpse of the shadow to know I wasn’t losing my mind. I step from the short structure of scaffolding, onto a flat cement ledge.  There’s no other direction to take, the ground below I can barely find without the zoom.  To my right is a thin gutter line, a possible path I’m not comfortable to attempt in the fierce weather.  But I could manage it.  I set my heels against the wall and shuffle out testing my stability, the edge ends just beneath my toes but I press my back against the cold brick and chance it.  I have my camera crammed under my chin at an awkward angle to avoid bumping the wall with my elbow.  I can barely keep my balance, and see enough just through the visor this way. As I slipped around a sharp corner, my leg nearly gives out and I slip a bit but catch myself by pushing off the wall a fraction.  I sway in the open air as the wind tugs at my drenched coat, if I budge I will fall and snap my leg, or something worse.  It will be painful.  I let my body sway until my back gently touches the brick wall, then I continue, shuffling slower this time.  The small path ends on a large cement ledge, I drop to my knees to catch my breath.  A set of planks awaits a few feet from where I lean over, appearing very sinister in the flash of light and the crack of thunder that follows. The noises around me have calmed somewhat, and it’s just the rain and I.  This doesn’t comfort me, though it should.  I feel unsettled, like the eye of the storm.  Using my camera I search for my next heading and zoom in on a slanted roof a short distance, beyond those unassuming planks.  I return to my feet and secure the camera in my grip, I take a short dash before I leap.   When I hit, my foot slips over the rain cascading off the rough planks and I topple sideways.  I clutch the camera to my chest and jam my elbow against the slant, twisting around to force my body parallel with the edge.  I shove my feet against the friction and hold, until I’ve stopped completely.  The night feels cold and silent, except for the rain drumming on my face generating its soft prattle.  Water gathers at my side where I’ve blocked it, filling my coat and jeans with the frigid liquid.  I’m so cold. After a minute I collect my senses and inch away from the edge of the roof, until I can flip over and get up on my hand and knees, and crawl to the top. When I make it to the other side, I’m dismayed to find no other path to take.  This should be good news, but I preferred being someplace high where I couldn’t be reached.  I examined the distance to the floor from the roof before I put my camera away, then lower myself from the edge of the roof by my hands.  A light shining from a pole above cut through the dark, offering some visibility before I dropped to the cobblestone floor.  Some crates had been left beneath the roof, as though to protect them from the elements.  Steps lead a few feet down towards a dead guard, and a steel door I bet would be locked.   I made my trip down to confirm this belief, and to get out of the rain for a bit.  At times it felt colder sheltered from the constant pummel than wandering through it.  The guard has nothing worthwhile on his person, not even a candy bar.  Not that I want one, but I was thinking about it.  Up a set of steps on the opposite side, sat some neglected sawhorses and another collection of pallets.  Otherwise, another dead end.  I climbed over the short wall, down to where the ledge sheltered the small walkway and where the guard sat.  I could see a path to take if it led anywhere worthwhile, a stack of pallets across from me was fixed beside a dumpster, both positioned under a cut out in the fence.  The sounds came again, rattles in the pipes or a frail cylinder cast by the strong wind.  I shrank into my coat but didn’t bother to raise the camera or seek out the source, I’m not certain at that particular moment what I was thinking, other than I needed to move. I raised my right hand to my face and blew in my palm, to get some of the chill from my fingers.  It wasn’t very effective, but the warmth did ease the pain a little.  That same sensation came over me, the jolt to my head or some kind of vertigo.  I shut my eyes and let the feeling pass, I kept repeating in my head ‘keep moving, keep moving’ but I wasn’t ready.  I just wanted to stand out of the rain and stare at nothing, maybe wait for the storm to pass, but I know by the time it did, it would be too late for me.  The wind slid under the ledge and I gave in, crossing to the pallets and climbing up to the fence.  I couldn’t fathom who might have cut the wire, a few pairs of wire cutters and a chainsaw had been missing from the toolshed.  I was screwed if Chris Walker was out here with the chainsaw. I was still so fuckin lost.  You’d think I’d be able to find my way around outside, without the walls and abundance of locked doors, but no.  I was somewhere, maybe in the backgrounds of the Asylum.  I couldn’t locate a feasible way out of this place, had to keep heading around searching for one of the locked gates to the front.  There had been a few I looked at before finding that shattered gate, but there was the staff parking I had viewed on the one side. “Have to get out….” I stopped as I turned the corner.  On the ground lay a patient, by a steel door pinned with boards.  I gave the handle a rattle and it clanked hollowly on the other side, but the screws in the stone kept it from budging.  The patient seemed wounded or sick, I gave him his distance as I moved around to the only route visible.  Fence on one side, fuckin big building on the other.   When I reached my jeep I was going to crank up the heat, tear off my coat, and just get my skin warm.  And comfortable warm, not hot, not inferno, not hell hot, just warm.  I was beginning to loose feeling in my fingers and toes, I was soaked to the bone, and I just didn’t feel right.  My head was still ringing from when the thing screamed at me, it might’ve damaged my eardrums.  My hearing seemed fine, just that humming I couldn’t stand.  Felt like it was in my nerves. There was another door, up some steps on the right.  Same as the previous, locked solid.  Don’t know why I bothered checking, force of habit.  I did want to get some place dry for a bit, but anyplace in Mount Massive I’d soon come to regret.  Miserable place this was, would never wish it on my worst enemy because, I’m not that kind of guy. Trager’s too good for my enemies. The lightning blazed and I spied another tall fence ahead, with a patient plastered to it shuffling against its side.  I observed him through the visor as I approached, he seemed near oblivious to me.  “I can see his ghost.” What was it they were so fixated to find out here?  When I was close enough to see him clearly, I found that he had been coddling the gate for so long his face was a bloody mess and his nose was missing. It reminded me of lizards in the pet store, if they wanted to get out they’d rub their nose on the bars until their lip had worn away.  Pitiful to see a human like this, out here in the rain. For a span I recorded beyond the fence, to pick up what it was he saw or to confirm my doubts, I wasn’t sure.  Sometimes I thought there was something, a glimmer and shift in the lens, the film was always clear and never faltered.  I could hardly remember what it was I thought waited out there, only that it could stare back, and this made me uneasy.  The patient mumbled something as he moved closer to me, and I only recalled that we were standing completely exposed to the storm. Well, I realized I was standing in the rain.  I didn’t bother the other man as he sought to see his delusions. The fence ended at a wall, to which brick stairs led to a higher patio.  Across from the steps two benches were poised, on one sat a man in a straightjacket and chemical scarring marred his face.  His eyes glistened in the NV when he noticed me.  I turned to climb the steps, halfway up he called after me, “Be as one of us.” I hurried to the upper level through an open gate, one of the first in a long while.  Blood and gore was in my immediate path, I continued in that direction passing various guards and doctors of Murkoff, in a splattered display of death.  It looked like they had fallen out from somewhere, their bodies twisted and guts spilling out and glass everywhere.  Had they been thrown out of a window?  Or had they found their own way out? The door across from the dead had a plate reading Prison Block and the doors had been boarded up.  The most opportune way out for some of them, I suppose.  I located another open area in the fence, a few pallets stacked to give a clear step up over the sharp edge.  A bolt streaked across the sky illuminating the immediate area, but below the light could not reach but for the thin tree limbs reaching high. Before I risked getting lost in that lower area, I returned to where the gate entered the patio space, and took the path that had been open on my left.  It was a large area beneath an eve, where I could get some time away from the storm.  A few old drums, possibly gasoline like the ones in basement, had been discarded here.  The walls had tall, thin windows cloaked by tattered curtains, I could make out no sign of cracks of wear to indicate anyone might have tried to escape this way.  Bags of trash had been discarded by a large dumpster, and before it stood a man in a straightjacket struggling to get out. The dumpster, after the stagnant decay that had been shoved into my sinuses, smelled wonderful in the cold storm.  But the linger of rot was here, and blood had pooled at the patients feet. “Bleed for me.” It was time to leave. I climbed the pallets and braced myself for the fall before I let myself down, the soft earth compressed under my weight, but the jolt still traveled up my ribs.  I stepped away grunting and stretching to get the soreness from my muscles, I was moving through the tall grass before I had my camera up. The front grounds had really been let go, but this was beyond neglect.  Thick bushes grew everywhere catching my pants and whacking my fingers as I navigated what seemed to be the clearest path, but everything was overgrown.  The grass was up to my chest, and large concrete blocks dotted the yard, hidden until I was directly upon them.  A thin vapor spilled from them, maybe from the lower levels of the Asylum, the basement?  I turned my camera to examine the interior and found thick metal bars, and a warm draft that lifted from within. I’m sure the yard might have been open to the better behaved patients during good days, but when Murkoff took over the patients never had ‘field’ days.  They only needed to keep the front lawn looking decent for appearances, and let everything else go to hell.  There were even pallets and large propane tanks stacked along the wall.  Even for an asylum, this place must have looked nice when things were kept neat.  But Mount Massive was shut down for scandal, so there was no telling if this place ever had ‘nice days.’ The grass began to thin out as I neared a small pool of water in the middle of the yard, with a charming little bridge built over it.  Large stones had been set to boarder the small pound, but even in the dark I could identify the thick grime that grew along the waters edges.  If not for the rain cloaking the miasma of still water, I imagined it wouldn’t be all that lovely. Labored breathing pressed through the drone of rain, alerting me to duck down or be seen.  There was no guarantee I wouldn’t be seen.  A blaze of lightning followed threatening to reveal my location out of spite, and in it I saw the shape of the big fucker as he wandered the yard.  It would’ve been too good if he didn’t show up.  I knew something was wrong. Without hitch he continued on his way, pausing to glance over his shoulder as I paced through the water gently.  It wasn’t very deep, but he would pick out the odd sound given the contrast to the persistent shower.  I paused with the bridge between us, the big fucker looked in the other direction and began that way.  I breathed out a soft whine, even as the sky lit up with another blaze.  The big fuckers back was still to me, I was safe for now. I checked the camera as the light dimmed.  Another battery went in, my last one, a full one.  I had no idea how much further I had to go out here, but for the time I needed to see. There was no indication of where to go, but for some light up at the top of a stack of pallets and propane tanks.  Chris couldn’t climb after me, he could fall after me, but he was a shit climber.  At least, he’s never jumped up after me, yet.  For all I knew he could fly. As quietly as I could muster, I sprint over to the stack and pulled myself up.  I heard no sound from the big guy, he must still be enjoying the weather.  I slipped up to the high ledge, another one of those tall thin windows greeted me, but of escape there was no evidence.  I wasn’t too keen on going into the Prison Block anyway.   A small rain trail led along the wall to the left.  The water wasn’t washing over it quite so hard, but I had to take the awkward angle with my camera again to keep from losing my balance.  I’d prefer to put my camera away and not risk dropping it, but it was more disorientating being unable to see where my feet were and the wall pressed into my back. I passed over a fence topped with coiled barbed wire and came to another sharp corner, on the edge of the building.  Rather repeat my earlier slip, I stuffed the camera in its pack and carefully lowered myself sideways.  Little by little in the dark, until my right hand touched the ledge.  I made sure I had my hand on it before I pivoted, and dropped, snapping my left hand onto the edge as well, and let my weight settle on my arms.  A small grunt snapped from my throat as my ribs sang in pain, but I wasn’t falling backwards this time.  I strafed along the wall, turning the corner easily and kept going until I felt the path at my hands end. I pulled the camera free and checked what was under me.  Just the floor, it was a distance from my feet but not far enough to break my legs.  I let myself drop and turned, wary of my surroundings and what may be lurking.  The sky blazed causing me to cringe down, in the resulting flare I thought there were shapes closing in but through the visor I saw nothing too hostile.  Nothing alive at any rate. There was a small gazebo near the center of the yard, with steps leading up to it.  The aged wood creaked underfoot as I moved around the center, benches were situated around a small garden area full of black dirt and twigs, at one point it was probably filled with flowers or a hedge.  What looked like a doctor was laying on one bench, his coat tinged with dampness and his back to me.  I didn’t bother with the body and kept moving.  I crossed over and crept down the steps, back into the tall grass and into the dismal rain. Overhead twigs crackled and fell, I crouched low scanning the lens along but couldn’t locate the cause.  It could have been the limbs heavy with water after a long drought, they sometimes snapped during a heavy rainfall, but that seemed like such a pissy excuse.  I wiped the water from my face and cringed at the sensation of my missing finger, I was not getting used to that any time soon.  I picked myself up and continued, slowly as I listened for more movement, my camera scanning the dark sky as lightning flared.  It seemed to have moved off for now, if there was ever anything there.  Maybe I was just as cuckoo as the patients, and seeing things in the dark.  Suggestion was a powerful tool. There was nothing to guide me, no remarkable land marks that I could identify aside from the gazebo.  The stone paths were so overgrown with weeds, it was impossible to distinguish them from the tall grass.  I just kept going, relying on the fence that surrounded this area to direct my way.  Maybe I’d find a place where patients had escaped from.  Or maybe they already had, there was the break in the fence I first came through, that led to the open window.  Wasn’t there a document that referred to them as ‘environmental contamination?’  It still sounded wrong. It seemed to take an hour or almost to get around the yard, stopping every so often at shapes in the visor, static in the camera, sounds in the woods.  Not animal sounds, but the strange chatter and wail of the thing I could not describe.  Lurking somewhere and watching me clearly as I staggered through the unforgiving foliage.  At some point I did find my way around, into an area I thought led into the woods, but instead a patient was staring back at me from a cobblestone path.  It startled me, and I staggered away. I knew my hands were bleeding again but I couldn’t bear to turn the camera and view the damage.  My blood felt as thin and cold as the rain, but I’m certain it was my blood.  It had a differing consistency than to water streaming over my skin, but I refused to check. Finally, at long last I spotted a light source.  I could hardly believe it but I moved towards it, my battery was getting low and I couldn’t be stumbling blindly around in the dark.  The harsh brush tore at my shoulders and hands as I made my way towards what looked like a wall, or walls on either side topped with chain wire fence.  A set of steps led down into a lower area, maybe another basement.  There was evidence to indicate this as a possibility but I doubted it.  I didn’t care where the stairs led either, I just needed the reassurance of a firm direction.  The sky blazed with a wild flash, blinding me momentarily before I saw a pair of eyes glimmer in the dark. Shit!   I spun away racing back along the fence as Chris gave a howl of rage, initiating the chase.  Where had he come from?  Was that a gate to the connecting yard?  I didn’t care to know, my concentration was absorbed in not buckling under my terror.  Branches slashed at my torn fingers in my frenzied escape, it sounded as though he was close behind me.  I turned my head to check, running right into a tree that knocked me down and slapped the camera from my loose grip. “You got nothing left to live for.”  He was right on top of me.  Where was my camera? The tall grass had hid the bright visor, but not well enough.  I snatched it up as the big fucker came crashing into my vicinity, the chains clinked very close to my face in what might’ve been a grab attempt.  I lunged just out of his path and saw, in a beam of lightning the gazebo.  He can’t climb!  He can’t climb!   I was just beyond his reach as I clambered up the rail and flopped over the side, I groaned as my ribs pulsed with pain but it bought me a moment.  He shoved his arm through the gaps in the rail, but the chain caught on the rotten boards preventing him from grabbing my scalp as I lay stunned.  But I wasn’t safe yet.  With a nasally snarl, Chris charged around toward the steps.  I lifted my camera and watched through the NV feed as he set his dead gaze on me. I rolled to my feet, and threw myself over the rail to sprint in the direction I thought that light had been.  Chris swung himself over the rail, I know this because I felt the ground tremble when he came down.  I kept on my feet locating the steps and shot down them, taking the corner on my right and stumbled down more steps and nearly toppled forward.  The deep rumble of the big fucker echoed on the confining walls, he would be on me in the next instant. At the corridors end was what looked like a wall, its appearance draining the remainder of my blood… until I caught sight of the lower side.  The cement had been chiseled out and rebar ripped back.  I knelt down and crawled through, as Chris gave his disapproving roar at my neck.  I hadn’t stopped yet to flaunt it, I was on my toes running up the narrow corridor back into the storm.  An open and better kept yard greeted me at the top of the slop, but I didn’t stop to admire it.   Across the yard a large set of double doors waited, boarded tightly with planks and plywood, tall glass framed the sides spilling comforting light onto the grass.  I still raced into them and tried the handle, confirming this was not for show.  The plate beside the door read Female Ward, though I wasn’t sure of this.  I knew there were female patients involved with MKULTRA and the sleep therapy, but it wasn’t clear to me if they were involved with Project Walrider. It was asking too much that I would never find out.  But due to the wandering patients and contamination, I think I should have seen women by now.  Or… could I not recognize them as being female?  My head ached from the revelation, I needed to get out of the rain.  I was borderline hypothermia, I had to get dry. If I couldn’t find my way out of this yard soon, I didn’t doubt the big fucker would find his way to me.  I walked along the fence that stretched from the building, and found an opening into another yard.  A fountain sat in the center surrounded by benches, the strong stench of copper from it overpowered the open air.  I had turned the NV off, but the camera was still running, it always was.  I stared at the garden piece full of blood, so much I couldn’t be sure if there ever was water in it to begin with.  The heavy rain drops hit the surface, but the thick black clots held tight.  I immediately felt sick and took a moment to sit down at a bench, off to the side. “So much blood in the water I can smell it.  Like putting a penny in your mouth when you were a kid.  The whispers are making more sense, I’m looking for static.  It’s like an itch.” I stuffed the pen and notepad back in my pocket, and stood to resume the search of the lawn.  Some fresh air would help, put some distance between this grotesque red pool, and myself.  Get it off my mind if only for a second. Steep hills lead up to high fences and what must have been the brick walls of the outer courtyards, polished and slick with rain and higher than the Tower of Babel.  Was there no way out of this place?  Did the world outside cease to exist? Stupid thoughts.  Miles, you idiot.  Keep it together, I’m gonna make it out of this.  Just takes time.  Stay alive, and find that way out. I returned to the fountain.  Bodies bled out, in all manners of decay, on this side the wind picked up enough to give me a whisper of the spoil that seeped from the corpses.  A still functioning lamp spilled light on the poisoned well.  I didn’t feel safe standing in the open like this.  But I turned the camera anyway to sounds in the trees overhead, and the odd outline of something at the roof.  Or was it another of Murkoff, ready to end it all and escape this hell? I walked along the wall of the building to get out of the rain for a moment.  Stacks of pallets had been neglected here, like much of all Murkoff’s tools, as its people.  The light above reflected off glass, but one window failed to cast its sheen.  I jogged over and examined it from the ground, before I hauled myself up the precarious stack of pallets to the high window. That sickening-familiar scent of old moldering wood, rank dust, and the trace of sweet humid rot swept over me as I entered through the shattered frame.  The new reek of scorched, sodden wood saturated the air.  At the edges of the NV I could catch glimpses of walls tinged in charcoal, where the fire had reached forth to spread. Damn it, how did this happen?  Like a tar pit, the more I fought the harder I stick. There was nothing on my left, just glassed in walls around some office or lobby.  Thinking on it, that might be the barred entrance of the Female Ward.  The dust within was thick enough I could view it settling over a neglected wheelchair, tipped sideways.  It was a depressing sight.  I turned to my right, clinging to the lamps outside the windows to offer some guidance as I shut off the NV for a short while.  I was ready to raise it if something caught my attention, or if that haunting wail returned.  I shivered as a light pierced through collapsed beams, slanted across my path.  I looked up to what must’ve been an upper floor and its doorway before the fire spread, all of it black charcoal and some of it cinder now.  Steam was still rising from some of the white ash of the timber causing the air to fog thickly, but the light cut through blinding me briefly. It was Father Martin, nested in a doorframe of the second floor, flashing his light to signal me.  This was getting old. “You saw the Walrider, didn’t you?”  He gave pause as I moved closer, presumably into his line of sight.  I adjusted my collar ready to cover my nose with it, but postponed the action to glance around and turn my gaze back up to him.  I tilt my head, only vaguely interested in what he had to preach.  “You’re beginning to understand, but not yet.”  He gestured his finger upward, dramatically.  “Even Abraham had to cast his eyes to the ground.  But soon, soon.  This way.  Revelation is at hand.”  With his speech concluded, he spun away and disappeared beyond the gate. Okay, thanks.  How was I supposed to get up there?

[bigskydreaming]

Why does nobody talk about Tim being sexist in Robin and literally kicking Steph in the stomach in Red Robin? I see so many Ohh but this One thing a poc Robin did that majes them the Worst of the Worst but for him it's silence? I really don't like the fandom's biases, it's very blatantly elitist and racist, willful ignorance isn't easy to hide.

Yeah, I mean, tbh the reason I don’t mention stuff like that is just like....at the end of the day, ALL the issues that are ever raised about these characters essentially just come from writer bias.....they’re inserted into the narrative or a characterization by canon writers who just flat out don’t even realize that what they’re depicting is gross fucking behavior. So its like, never there because it HAS to be, y’know? These characters don’t HAVE to be portrayed these ways. And that’s pretty much WHY I focus so much on the fandom side of things - because none of us have any influence on canon writers and where or when they insert these things into the narrative or fail to recognize the problem....but when it comes to fandom, there is really no excuse for why that stuff can’t be pointed out and acknowledged for the problem that it is.

And for my part, like, I’m just so focused on pointing out where the fandom narrative has become extremely skewed in regards to Dick because....it really is just all the double standards and hypocrisy that bug me, you know? I honestly do not need Dick to be everyone’s favorite character, or hailed as the best Robin, or anything, I just like....want people to stop writing him as this petty resentful asshole just because they think oh we need to give him flaws to make him more real when like, I honestly can not for the life of me think of another character I ever hear people saying “we need to GIVE him flaws to make him more real” y’know? 

The guy has existed for 80 years, he’s got enough material to be REAL, you’re not giving him flaws or overemphasizing his flaws because he’s just two dimensional without them, like, there’s just no material to write him as a well-rounded character without that....you’re just doing it because you WANT to. Like, that’s all it comes down to, its that simple, but so many people just flat out refuse to own that.....and IMO, it so often is BECAUSE of how quickly we tend to default to using comparisons as our basis for judging how ‘good’ or not a character is, if that makes sense?

So like, for me, I don’t focus on talking about Tim’s flaws or Jason’s flaws beyond the obvious references like “it drives me batshit how people can view Jason TRYING TO KILL TIM as something Tim more easily can forgive than like....Dick giving the mantle he himself created to Damian in an effort to....keep Bruce’s last son from running back to Murderville, Population Him.”

And that’s purely because.....they’re just not my focus characters, and I don’t really feel a need to go into them in depth the same way I do with Dick, and like....at the end of the day.....pointing out things they do that are worse, don’t actually do anything to improve Dick’s standing, you know? Like, to me, it shouldn’t be about oh Dick is a good character because he’s a better person than Tim, see, he’s never done anything like THAT (cites this or this or that)....that’s just not that productive to me, and more importantly, its one of those there but for the grace of God things, you know? With every character who hasn’t ever done something another character has, its usually just....honestly a matter of luck that they never got saddled with a writer who thought “oh this character doing this horrible thing to that one is a brilliant idea, lol,” quoth a dumbfuck who wouldn’t know good characterization if it kicked him in the face.

Again like, I’ll make a big deal about blatant double standards, like....I rant endlessly about making Dick punch Jason or Tim in fic or having Jason or Tim or Bruce punch Dick in fics without it being seen as a big deal, because.....Dick’s been punched in canon by all those characters without it being seen as a big deal and never done the same in return, so that’s a HUGE, glaring double standard where its like “why do so many of you think its cool to paint the one guy who actually RECEIVES this kind of treatment like...flipped entirely around to be the perpetrator”....like, that I’ll never stop being pissed about because its like....a direct one to one comparison, y’know? Its two almost parallel examples of mostly the same situation, so its pretty clear cut when people are regarding one as ‘nothing to be upset about’ and the other as ‘we must write him doing this all the time and never fail to crucify him for it in the comments as though like, this is just who he is.”

And with things like times Bruce has been abusive in canon, I don’t overlook or ignore those and focus on them a lot because like....they happened, I’m not focused on them as a way to make Bruce look bad, I’m focused on them because they HAPPENED, period, and I want to explore that for personal reasons that relate to why I project onto Dick Grayson so much.

But beyond that, when it reaches the point of like.....’people shouldn’t claim Dick is terrible for doing stuff like this, when Tim is over HERE doing stuff like THIS”......that’s when I kinda bow out and circle back around to focusing on more direct comparisons, you know? Because those just feel more productive. At the end of the day ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are pretty subjective (I mean, obviously not talking about the difference between hey this character is genocidal and this character is not), and given how interpretative comics are in general, and how many writers most characters go through....like, ultimately there’s just no real ‘ground’ to be gained by arguing that certain characters are ‘just as bad’ or ‘even worse’ than others, IMO. If that makes sense?

So since I’m not really just...trying to yell just for the sake of yelling and I really do want at least some people to kinda....hopefully end up more aware of stuff like “hey yeah, it IS weird that we’re always talking about Dick’s temper tantrums when its usually everyone AROUND him that’s breaking shit when they’re mad”....aka, that thing where the EXACT SPECIFIC thing held against Dick is actually way more commonly perpetrated by characters nobody blinks twice at for doing that stuff......like, that’s kinda where I start and stop my focus. Specific, done in one examples that are directly comparable to an equivalent thing in another characters’ narratives or trends in how they’re perceived or treated by fandom.

The wider net, while I don’t fault others for being annoyed that fandom so completely glosses over pretty sizable displays of poor behavior in certain other characters, like.....its just not for me, personally.

[aren-hai]

Clarence, Sheryl, and Avocato

Another rant because these are fun. This time featuring the holy trifecta of fucked up parents!

Ok so, I can hear y'all already, “But Avocato is a good dad! He died for his son! He did all the things for his boy! You even said so!” Shut up I did. I did say those things because Avocato is one of my favorite characters, but he is objectively not the best parent. (Especially when compared to Nightfall or Gary)

List of Crimes!

Never verbally told Lil’Cato he loved him (Actions speak louder than words but kids need to hear that!)

Aggressively strict parenting (“Fourteen years of pure calisthenics!)((And also this could just be me, Super strict parenting just, isn’t for me. But I know it’s not necessarily abuse? It's complicated I mostly added this one to make the list bigger))

And the biggest one, Almost killed his son. Yes he didn’t, but Lil’Cato will always fucking remember the moments where his dad pointed a gun at him, and considered. It should have never been an option. And again I hear you, “But he was working for Lord Commander! He had no choice! He was emotionally fucked up!” 

This is all true! But he shouldn’t have put Lil’Cato in that scenario in the first place. Obviously, we don’t know why he worked with Lord Commander for so long, but the second he found out that filicide was necessary, he should have grabbed his son and ran for the hills.

All this being said, however. He isn’t the worst parent in Final Space. 

Even though he did consider killing his son, he didn’t. And very quickly tried to give Lord Commander a pink slip via shooting the jerk in the face. He then dedicates the literal rest of his life to saving his son. No, that doesn’t make up for the neglect and trauma, but it’s a lot better then what the other characters on this list do.

Sheryl! Oh Sheryl, you polarizing force you. Some people love you and will defend your actions to the death, others will actually go on terrifying rants about what they would do to you, given the chance. I’ve already ranted about some of your failings, but also how the show kinda wrote you to be hated.

List of Crimes!

Didn’t (and doesn’t!) love Gary

Abusive

Neglectful (Oooooh boy, literally leaving his life, and only coming back when John died. She didn’t comfort the grieving Gary at all, only staying around long enough to drunkenly mope, and then leaving again)

Also, like everyone on this list, tries to kill her child! 

Ok, now here’s where it gets fun. Sheryl does try to commit filicide, but she does it while Gary is an adult. Avocato and Clarence both do it when their children are still children. Young and dependant and trusting. Sheryl does it while Gary is a grown ass adult.

This is an important distinction? All of it’s gonna be traumatizing, but Gary had already lived a large bit of his life not knowing/hating his mom. Her trying to stab him (especially when he saw it coming.) is going to be way less traumatic than when Avocato held Lil’ Cato at gunpoint. Or when Clarence blindsided Fox.

Again! Not absolving her of her mistakes! She left Gary at his lowest moment, and only came back in his life after he sought her out, and then used him in a con. She is the world's shittiest mom, but I really hope to see her grow and be a better person and care for Gary. A) Because Gary deserves to be happy and a parental figure could go a really long way in that regard. B) Because Sheryl herself deserves it. We don’t know enough about her past to crucify her, all we know is that she is a flawed person who made massive mistakes, but who isn't? Olan made a beautiful world with amazing characters that aren’t black and white! Characters with depth and reasons behind their actions, characters who might have great intentions and still cause harm! (Quinn, Nightfall, and Avocato all sacrificing themselves RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR LOVED ONES. I GET IT, YOU HAD NO CHOICE, BUT LOOK AT THEM (Gary, Ash, and Lil’ Cato) THEY HAVE TRAUMA NOW).

And with all that talk about the characters being fully fleshed out people who are beautiful, let's talk about my least favorite character of all time. Clarence

This… Might get a bit character bashy, which I hate. Blackkat is right, if you can’t write a character without bashing them, you shouldn’t write them at all. Which I fully believed in, until I started writing and realised “Oh my God Clarence ticks off every irredeemable box I have I hate him so much.”

So, I’ll try to be unbiased? That being said, I am heavily biased and want Clarence to die.

So why do I hate Clarence? Why is he so much worse than the other characters on this list, on the show? Why do I think Hushfluffles/Tom deserves more mercy than this little goblin?

List of Crimes!

Abusive

Dismissive of his children

Betrayal

And the most successful attempt at Filicide we get to see so far.

He betrays the group, steals the keys and is going to ‘team-up’ with Sheryl. (I mean I’m not straight but I get it, Sheryl is a badass fighter, cool bandit, and if you don’t care for morals she’s an all-around interesting gal)

Fox is going to let him go, Fox wants him to stop, but he also won’t hurt his father.

Clarence in turn, tazes him, shorting out his biomechanical life support and sending him falling into the metal wall.

Later we find out that Clarence didn’t intend to kill Fox, that he only wanted the keys and was lashing out because his kids found a new family to love. And they didn’t love him as much.

Look I’m running out of steam but Clarence is selfish and self-serving (1) He’s greedy (2) And he actively hurts his family (3) Not just a passive, I’m sorry for the trauma when I almost killed you, let me make it up. Or the, hey I abandoned you shortly after birth because I never really planned on loving anyone, let alone you. Sheryl and Avocato fucked up bad, but they try to make up for it (Sheryl we only see being ‘good’ for about 5 minutes, but still) Clarence only apologizes once he realizes he has nothing left, all because of his own greed.

“I abandoned everything I had in the world for you! You can’t leave me with nothing!

“Aw yeah, but you see, you left yourself with nothing.”

[whitediamondfairy]

Person on the web: I love Character A.

Me: Okay, I like A too, and then there's B who --

Person on the web: So I hate Character B, constantly accuse B fans of being (insert insult of choice) for liking them, excuse A's flaws while crucifying B for theirs, insist that B is the worst thing ever and refusing to see them in any other way while getting hissy if someone looks at ~my precious~ A wrong...

Me: But I like B too --

Person on the web: FUCK B!!! FUCK B!!!!

Me: Stop embarrassing us A fans like this, you twit. [block]

[savnofilter]

okay so im just gonna my tingz and whatever since people can believe what theyd like.

whoop its more drama. 😅

so if you hadnt already seen it, great if you havent great. ahh im literally shaking oops but this is serious so i'll only what i have to say, and she blocked and deleted all my apologies and explanations.

i wasnt going to post anything because i replied and had said my words and left it at, if you dont want to like me thats fine, i'll live.

i one, would like to say that she even removed it so like rip me. uhhh i would make a video really to talk it because im bad at words and me typing it makes it worse ahahah.

essentially it was just a bunch of screenshots of me being mean so yeah that was it. er um wooph this is too much for me, the only account i can properly say was that i can say i was harsh was that christmas thing with someone who i havent spoken with in months and its that i said i hate people who celebrate it mad early. and yeah i can harsh because ive already explained that sometimes im blunt about it and when im in a bad mood i dont care.

on the other accounts let me say which i dont remember cause she had all the screenshots and i deleted all the chats because it was turning my already sour mood, even more sour.

so she said i didnt greet her properly which i even talked to you once before so idek what she was trying to get at there. 😅 ahh i asked who she was because i had been having on and off issues with a writer and that was already in the server. she suddenly added her to the discord after it being open for many months so naturally that added suspicion and i also have a great deal of knowing when something was up so yuh... call my instincts right cause it was in the messages that were sent to me. 😅

ahhh (ignore my many ah's when i get anxious it just happens ahahah) but those were taken out of context and like were set up to make me look bad. and even just in the whole post, the whole reason why they talked to me was to venge for something to bring me down LMAO.

just like before ive cooled down tremendously so im done from my mental breakdown to properly say this:

1) i didnt know it was even a slur. i just thought it meant dumb and it was only yesterday i had found out that it was bad.

now i'll say this again because people like being on this sav hate train to even read my words LMAO, im sorry for the words i said.

literally the person that i used it on doesnt even fucking like me so the fact thatd they were rude to me and then get shocked that im rude. i even said that day i had not been fine, i was not well. and if you got your secret santa friend you could also get screenshots saying that i said at the point in time i did not care what i said to people because i was planning on killing myself so i didnt care what i was going to say because you know id be dead.

2) may i say again, i had suspicions of other party friend talking about me because she even messaged me on many times and even brought up one situation that i took piss poor shit in handling. 😂

and may i mention she (christmas person) left because she didnt speak up about other issues that couldve been talked out with and decided to leave.

not only that i thought we were talking about our opinions on celebrating christmas so stop trying to feed word into me mouth m8.

AND ALSO, YOU KEEP SAYING THAT I HAVE A PROBLEM WITH CELEBRATING CHRISTMAS LIKE THAT WASNT EVEN THE THING. 😂

and also the conversation had lack of communication so everything was jumbled up, and i didnt even know she was actually leaving the server i thought she was going "tata" for a bit and i was going to talk to her, i eventually did but we do not speak anymore.

3) the main reason why she spoke to me was to basically catch me red handed LMAO. and she got what she wanted. 👏🏽i literally had people message me, asking why she was even asking for peoples ages.

one how do you even know i was referencing you?! i... but anyways... again you want to make me out to be a bad person lmao. i have bad moments just like everybody else. but because i like to be nice and uplift people i cant make mistakes? like what flawed logic is that?

how am i supposed to grow if i dont make mistakes and learn from them. it woudve been a whole different story if i used it multiple times and didnt give a fuck. and no, its not every day that im a "dumb fucking cunt" to people.

4) you legit deleted my responses and apologies. 😂 and people are just jumping on this and dont even

know me.

ever talked to me.

not even in the server.

so now the "brought to tumblr" again i was just sharing my damn sadness dude. your call-out post makes no sense. trying to make it sound like im out here trying to ruin peoples days is not even close to the truth... i myself hate making people feel bad about themselves.

im not some sociopath, and youre mad because i was bummed i realized that someone that i thought was amazing doesnt like me??? like youre telling me that you snapping at me everytime we talked im just supposed to take it? i just...

and ive said it on my blog, im not in the best place. youre gonna get me off on my off days. i even said that me even interacting is not even a good idea but i choose to make the conscious decision to even talk to people just makes me feel even worse because someone was mean to me first.

you cant take me being my worst and saying its my fucking whole. you dont care about me wanting to "fIx My WaYs" you just want to fucking embarrass me and have people hate me.

if youre trying to show character, youre doing a terrible job at it.

i tried adding you as a friend to even talk to you but you had even BLOCKED ME on discord. you dont care. at all. stop pretending youre some knight, if all i was even trying to talk it out to you and youre response is "youre mean you suck" like what the fuck...

you and your friends and your followers my "followers" who havent asked for my side just show how much you guys really want to pUrIfY this erotica for anime community,,

and also you were a massive prick to my friend because she was sharing her own thoughts so i dont even know why youre trying to act like youre an angel. unless you can tell me that you have never been wrong, i will just crucify myself on the cross and apologize to jesus for being such a sinner.

the more i type, the more i get spiteful so i will stop myself here. have a wonderful night/day/whenever you see it dude or never see it cause you blocked me lol.

EDIT: also i never even hinted that it was you so it just confirms this was only for malicious purposes... and i now just feel like you made it because you feel like i shouldnt have feelings either.

~

apologies if its all over the place, i wrote this in a state of panic to a slow burn of being mellowing out.

[sabrina-spellman]

this isn't a question but more an appreciation message cuz I very much appreciate that you recognize these are imperfect, grey area characters and that they do things that are questionable and make mistakes. I get frustrated because some want to paint these characters into clear categories of complete moral correct/incorrectness (while conveniently ignoring contradictory info) which just simply isn't the case. Furthermore that's so dull and boring. thank you for being reasonable. bless.

Honestly thank you for this. It’s just so annoying because they’re able to extend this basic level of understanding to others but somehow not to one character like?? They are all flawed and make mistakes especially in the first fucking episode lmao give them a chance. I’m S2’s beginning Martino was saying homophobic and ableist things and flat out was using Emma (emphasis on using since y’all can’t stop running with that word right now), did he end the season the same way? Are we crucifying him for that? No because he’s a teenager whose still growing and changing. So why not give that to Edo as well? Literally one of the major points of Season two is to show us that we can’t put people into categories of moral absolution, there are shades of gray to everything. It supposed to show us the flaw in Noora’s white feminism and that things aren’t as clear cut as we want them to be (throwback to Sana’s amazing talk with Noora). Skam has been on for years and I’m so surprised that the same people saying this shit three years ago still haven’t learned that yet.

[aura-alora]

Why Dany turning “mad” is so disappointing

Full disclaimer, I quit half-way through episode 4 and have only seen episode 5 through spoilers.

Like a lot of ‘holier-than-thou’ fans of the show are all like, “if you didn’t see this coming you haven’t being paying attention” and I get it. I really do. If you look at GoT with a “Dany is a villain lens” you’ll see a lot of ‘evidence’ for it.

But it’s such a disappointing “twist” to me because Dany was the first time we saw the classic Buldingsroman with a female character. She was framed as a hero, a conqueror, a warrior. And she wasn’t afraid to own her sexuality. She wasn’t afraid to own her femininity. In fact, she used it to her advantage, to gain power over the Khal (a la Cersei, ‘your greatest weapon is between your legs’) and become a respected leader in her own right.

And she was flawed. She made bad decisions. She lost her temper. She let her emotions get the better of her. But that was what made her human. She was not this perfect Mary-Sue who got everything she wanted just because of her name. She started the series penniless, sold like a brood-mare by her brother (who also abused her incessantly--”you don’t want to wake the dragon”), she was raped, not even treated as a person; mounted like dog takes his bitch. And she turned it around. She took what was hers with ‘fire and blood’. She adapted to the Dothraki when she needed to, she adapted to Quarth as she needed to and once she took Mereen--she didn’t have to adapt anymore. She was strong enough on her own. And I’m not talking about physical strength. She had AMAZING mental fortitude. She survived Khal Drogo, and instead of breaking, she grew stronger. She walked through the desert with nothing but a few woman and children, even less horses and no blood riders and they all almost died. She humbled herself in Quaarth, and got manipulated--almost losing her children in the process--but she learned. And she rose up. And she fought back.

She destroyed the slavers, she freed the slaves. Yeah, maybe she could be considered cruel in how she dealt with the ‘masters’--but that’s what made her human. She was ANGRY. Not one of us can say if we saw that someone crucified CHILDREN just to send a message we wouldn’t be angry too. 

Most people feel that it’s JUSTIFIED to want the Nazis to be punished right? Remember the Nuremberg Trials? Did anyone say the Allies were cruel for executing people who were already beaten? Not in any history book I’ve read, that’s for sure. Did anyone say Alexander the Great was ‘power-hungry’ when he took over half of Europe? None that I can find...in fact, they called him great. And arguably he killed hundreds of thousands in his wars of conquest that weren’t even needed, really. But he gets to be known as a powerful conqueror who never lost a battle and only stopped cos his soldiers were tired.

But put Dany in this same position and suddenly she’s a bad guy. Suddenly she’s a “mad Queen”. And it just rubs me the wrong way. Here we FINALLY have a woman, doing all the things that the stereo-typical male hero usually does, and this is how her story ends. She’s a villain. She’s hysterical. Because God forbid a woman is THE hero at the end of it all. 

Please tell me if you can think of any other female HERO that got half the depth that Dany has. That literally CARRIED an entire arc, just like Jon or Robb or Ned did. And she wasn’t just fighting for herself, but for all the people that followed her. She was a leader, and people loved her. I CRAVE THAT SHIT. It’s literally the stories I loved to read growing up, but for once with a female character getting shit done instead of a male. (I mean the only other character like Dany I can think of is Ciri, and her story is a subset of Gerald’s and it’s not really *her* story...I guess Katniss also counts, but I kind of felt like Katniss was a blank slate cos of PTSD).

And yea, she makes bad decisions. And yea, she is cold sometimes. But so were other characters. Jon looked at man literally crying for his life to be spared and took it anyway. Arya literally baked people into pies and mass-murdered an entire family like  BLOODY SOCIOPATH. But they get to be heroes because the story makes it so. And yes there are a lot of strong female characters in GOT, but none like Dany. None that actually emerge as LEADERS. 

I think maybe what would’ve made the whole thing more palatable was if Dany still did the whole thing, but she was portrayed as morally justified (in her own mind)--kind of like the US with the ‘A-bomb’. Many historians argue that without the US dropping the A-bomb, many more lives would have been lost in a needless and drawn out war with the Japanese. Whether they are right or wrong doesn’t really matter, it depends on perspective. But here it’s like they’re slapping you in the face with “This action is bad and there is no justification for it” after literally justifying almost every one of her actions up until this point. It’s a non-sequitur. And IMO goes totally against the idea that there are no inherently ‘good’ or ‘bad’ people, just people who are driven by circumstance. Like many would argue Stalin was a ‘bad person’, but fact remains that he build the USSR from nothing to an economical powerhouse during the Cold War and many Russians still consider him one of the greatest leaders they’ve ever had. (“Mad King” comparisons aside lol) Why couldn’t Dany get that? Why couldn’t she be “evil”, but still bring stability to the realm? 

Why did it have to be her and not Jon (Gary Stu) Snow? We’ve had Jon’s story a million times, in a million different ways. Aragorn, Artemis Fowl, Percy Jackson, Harry Potter, Geralt etc. How many times have we had a story like Dany’s? I’m just so dissatisfied that we finally get a woman doing all these stereo-typical male beats, just to have her end tragically because of reasons. Just for her to be another mad Targaryen. Just for her to repeat the cycle of her ancestors. What a fantastical waste of a character. I’m pretty sure at this point even Dany has given up on being a hero, which is tragic. After sacrificing half her army for Westeros. After sacrificing her best friend, her closest advisor, her two CHILDREN for Westeros. I wish the story ended with her just fucking off to rule Essos and leaving Westeros to fall to bloody pieces since apparently they don’t need her there. But I know it won’t, because heaven forbid Dany actually makes the smart decision to abandon all these fuckwits who don’t appreciate her and go back to the people who do. 

I’m currently writing my own story, and one of the positives of this whole experience is that I’m gonna make damn sure I don’t do my female characters this dirty. Yeah, some of them are villains. But I’m gonna be sure that even though they are villains, you should be able to see that they think they are the heroes in their story. 

[everydayanth]

The Liam Neeson Thing...

Okay guys, this is gonna get complex and personal right quick. But it’s been bothering me and I’m working on posting more without thinking about it for two weeks until nobody cares anymore.

So here goes.

Context matters. Context is important and it can be complicated, but it freakin’ matters. 

In my opinion, Liam Neeson’s flaw was that he thought a rapist would be the kind of person to also attack him. 

Here’s the thing guys, if you’ve never heard someone you love confess to you that they have been irrevocably hurt by a person, you need to take a step back for a minute. 

That moment, talking about it, it’s extremely vulnerable, so this is a bit hard for me, but in a moment of chaos and torment, a person you love and care deeply for is breaking apart in front of you and there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it. There’s not a damn thing you can do but hold them and cry with them and hurt for them and try to help and figure out the right thing to say. 

And when they’re tucked safe in bed and you’re researching what you can do for them or laying awake thinking about what you could possibly say, the amount of guilt and hurt and anger hits you in the chest, it fills you so wholly that you just need to find a way to let it out. It’s a dangerous rage, it’s immature and unhealthy and so so so painful. 

We don’t talk about emotions in America. We just don’t. So of course we want to put this emotion into a context we discuss, and idea we understand. 

But it’s not an -ism, it’s an emotion. 

If you don’t think when my sister told me about our cousin assaulting her that I didn’t wander around my ghetto ass neighborhood waiting for some big white guy to try to hurt me, well, you’d be wrong. Our brain makes patterns, my cousin didn’t live in our city, but I knew he was a big white guy with a shitty pencil beard, my brain classified that as a pattern. Every time I talked to a big white guy, I had to check myself, yeah. But when my brain registered a human who looked like my cousin, my heart rate ran up and I would will them to attack me. I wanted to fight because I didn’t know what else to do with all that pain, all that helpless emotion. But I could wander around places where someone was bound to get hurt anyway and invite the fight to me. 

Neeson was wandering around areas inviting a fight. INVITING, not instigating. It is a common reaction of revenge and feeling hurt, and we’re shoving this idea into something familiar - outrage, racism, etc., anything so we don’t have to actually talk about emotions. 

He was looking for a “black bastard,” poor choice of words, I agree, but he was hoping that guy, the one who hurt his friend, would challenge him, and it would just happen to be the same guy and he could get his anger out. It’s not healthy, but if they man who hurt his friend had been white and he’d wandered around lower class white neighborhoods inviting a fight, would it have been racism? 

This had an opportunity to be a conversation about what the fuck you do around a friend who confesses they were raped and hurt to you. After all the #MeToo (or in the midst of it), how do you be a friend to your loved ones who feel ready to confess to you? What do you do to manage that amount of disgust you feel at the world, that rage and hate and hurt and horror that there’s not a single damn thing you can do? 

This could have been a conversation about grief and friendship and growth and complex emotions. But we made it about the race of a rapist instead. 

That’s how much we don’t want to talk about feelings. 

We would focus on a man talking for the first time about the anger of helplessness in the face of a friend’s pain and come out in outrage. 

Here’s the reality guys, racism is forming a series of patterns based on skin color that aren’t true. They can be based off stereotypes or influenced by false representation in sensational news. Racism is NOT fighting your brain’s reality in order to form a more balanced understanding of the world. I was assaulted by a bunch of black kids at a playground when I was 14, it was terrifying and it’s a long and complex story but the short of it is very simple: I lived in a black neighborhood and this was not my only experience with black kids. I went to school with middle class black kids and I hung out with other black kids, this was NOT my only experience, and therefore, my brain was capable of nixing the pattern before it was created. Black kids weren’t dangerous, those kids were just assholes. 

Racism is if Neeson went to those places and started fights. I can’t know whether he did or not, but it’s if he went around and accused every black man of being a rapist, in his head or otherwise. I didn’t have a lot of experience with big white guys, so it took me much longer not to feel nervous around them than it did to write off my brain’s pattern about the black kids. Emotions and how our brains work are important details for us to know, and it’s the real reason diversity matters, it keeps our patterns in context. Neeson coming out of the situation horrified at himself shows growth of emotion, the dismissal of the pattern, recognizing that it is false without acting on it, understanding the power of agency is an illusion because he would never find that particular man. 

Comparing this to the policing issues isn’t the same, because of their place in society, their home culture society, and the results of their opinions. A police officer has a responsibility to the public to understand their emotions and their racial biases, an actor is responsible for displaying emotion. We can’t hold these people to the same accountability, that would be ridiculous, for a police officer, emotions need to be stable and understood and should involve a LOT more psychology training. For an actor... they entertain us with their emotions. They need to be self aware and reflective in order to project our experiences in stories. We still expect race car drivers to follow the speed limits and we understand that doctors have to call in sick sometimes, the world isn’t fair and occupation doesn’t dismiss personal biases or professional demeanor, but context matters. A doctor calling in sick after handling small pox in a lab requires observation and questions, an actor talking about rage and looking for a fight when he was younger and confessing horror at that version of himself while promoting a film about revenge kind of seems like part of the job, of doing the job well.  

And it’s not racist because it was not instigated by the color of skin as perceived by an individual to be less or more - he was inviting a fight with a black man on the word of his friend. That was wrong, and so was me doing it with large white men (also because I am not that large of a white woman, so that wasn’t going to end well for me), but he even said in a follow up interview that they could have killed him. The interviewer says she thinks of the innocent black man that could have been killed and Neeson responds “Or he could have killed me.” BUT HE WASN’T INSTIGATING FIGHTS, he was INVITING them! He wasn’t looking for an innocent man, he was waiting for someone to try to hurt him so he could release the extreme emotions. These are different. These are SO different. 

This conversation can go back to what it could have been. Race of the rapist aside, what do you do when a person you love confides in you that they have been hurt and scared and they are breaking apart in front of you? How do you process your emotions and heartbreak? What can you do or say? How can you feel like you’re helping? Is that selfish? Why do we need to feel like we’re helping? How do you manage your own trauma so you don’t loop theirs in with yours? How do you self reflect so that you stop your brain forming false patterns when you’re filled with so much hurt and pain? How do you not become a villain of the world, hating everyone for always telling you you are helpless? How do you find control in yourself when you’re imploding and be responsible and mature with emotions? How do you talk about it in a society that wants to be angry? How do you not hate them for focusing on your reaction to a rapist rather than being angry with an individual for being an asshole and RAPING your friend?

How do we return to a conversation about emotions and how, unchecked, they can lead to pain and anger and rage, and eventually, if we don’t have a moment of clarity and rationality, if we are not balanced in the world, they can become biases that develop into ignorance and racism? How do we focus on context so that we don’t become arrogant and disconnected, classists by nature because we interact with such a small and similar world? How do we connect and talk about the human experience when society turns away from us in favor of what is familiar? How do we have a logical discussion about emotion when we can’t even talk about meaning and intent? How do we accuse someone of racism when, had the rapist been white, the conversation might have focused on the context of emotion and pain and hurt and the process of healing - it was the outraged audience that pointed at the race as important, as the meaningful factor, how do we look at that hypocrisy and not feel utterly defeated?

How do we scream at the world that we need help, we all need help, without crucifying ourselves? I have no idea, this post is terrifying and I have no idea what to expect. Maybe nothing would be good? To return to not a single note or like or comment, to be unheard and dismissed and navigated around might be good because I want to talk about this reality but it. Is. Terrifying. 

And maybe it’s all a projection. Maybe I’m the racist and I want to defend someone I relate to. But it feels more right that we as a society don’t talk about emotions, we lock them up like these secret things we’re terrified other people will discover. I’m working on vulnerability lately, and what better place to talk about all the shit that’s ever happened to me than the freakin’ internet! I’m just a person and from my experiences, I think I understand what Neeson meant. But that could equally be a self-aggrandizing reality that doesn’t exist. Perhaps he’s just a racist, a professional actor with a successful career who took this exact moment to reveal his true colors, what a sneaky man! 

But more probably, the logic says, he’s a professional actor with a successful career who took this moment to discuss the emotions he’s had to reflect on and relive for the past year or so in order to play a role in a film that he hopes will entertain and reflect something of the human experience. He more probably took the moment to discuss a human experience and we did not listen because it’s more popular not to listen or because we could not relate or because we just want to be angry and sometimes pulling weeds is so exhausting we raze the whole garden instead. We did not talk about the moment he was horrified with himself because we don’t want to talk about growth or greys, we want the world to stabilize so we can see the bad guys clearly. 

We really ought to know by now that there are no clear bad guys. 

And we know Neeson likes to play in those lines. What is good? What is bad? They aren’t a duality, they are a false dichotomy, created by whatever world you grew up in, whatever experiences you had, whatever your society or culture told you, whatever education you discovered, and whatever philosophy you’ve come to believe. But in a moment of vulnerable confession, in all that grey reality, your friend tells you about a bad guy and they become singularly bad. They don’t exist beyond that. And that’s what is horrifying. That you stop seeing humanity as grey and suddenly it becomes good or bad, that’s the scary part about revenge and inviting fights, it encourages a black-and-white view of the world that says the rapist is ONLY bad and your friend is ONLY good. 

A bit ironic that, in trying to talk about that tunnel-vision-rage, Neeson found himself the target of it.

It’s raw, that anger. It’s part of all the hurt that has happened to you and then you couldn’t even protect your friend or family. Why did you go through all that pain if you couldn’t grow enough to save them? That guilt is a liar, you didn’t hurt them, the asshole did, and you need that to be true or else you were also the cause of all your own pain as well. So you look for the assholes because then at least you could be useful, you could protect them from one asshole by taking the hit. We need to talk about that kind of hurt, about sacrificing the self for revenge because you can’t find worth anymore. We need to talk about existential nihilism that hides inside outrage because you can’t find meaning anymore. We need to talk about emotions and how to talk about them so we can be better friends, better people, so when we look for guidance on talking to friends about their hurt, we find advice on how to not be overwhelmed by rage and guilt and disgust and anger and violence. 

That’s the conversation we could have had. That’s the world we could have started to create. But outrage culture is racist and racism gets attention and we all just want to be heard because we don’t know how to talk about our emotions. Interesting how it keeps going around like that.