#this issue in particular is so emotionally brutal what the hell

[gravelsong]

Hey Daniel Warren Johnson are you okay. What the fuck.

[bigskydreaming]

And just FYI, I’m not TRYING to be emotionally manipulative or guilt trip people or anything here, but just speaking brutally honestly - my disengagement from Batfandom over the past couple months and how little I’ve been active in it has absolutely everything to do with just being TIRED of this fandom’s stance not just on rape fics, but the enabling of them. I mean, yeah, personally I gravitate towards Dick Grayson’s character as a rape survivor, so its super not happy fun times constantly sharing the fandom with people who are far more interested in perpetuating him as a rape victim, emphasis on his repeated sexual victimization in fics where his placement as a character-to-be-violated is the literal DRAW for readers.

(And ever notice how its the character MOST acknowledged as a rape survivor, SPECIFICALLY.....who is also the one people are MOST interested in writing as a further rape victim.....I’m not even talking about in the context of canon events, but specifically creating further scenarios in which he’s raped by characters who never raped him in canon, in numbers FAR greater than people create these scenarios for other characters. Oh, its not limited to just him, obviously, I’m aware these fics exist for all the characters, and in large numbers, but does it not strike anyone as like.....particularly odious, that the clear frontrunner for this particular form of sexual victimization-as-a-draw in fics just so happens to be the character most noted as a survivor already? Just saying, the fact that this particular character and this particular status seems to draw in people not just interested in him BECAUSE it makes him a survivor....but equally, people interested in him BECAUSE of his having been made a victim.....is....umm. Its umm. Let’s just call it umm.)

But what gets to me even more than that is just the willful refusal in a fandom that CHOOSES to keep the subject of rape front and central to so much of its works....to allow for ANY critical discussion of rape itself whatsoever. You’ll pull out all the stops in examining the trauma of rape in some fics, sure, but this fandom absolutely will not allow critical examination of the ISSUE of rape itself.

And that’s abso-fucking-lutely because of how much this fandom has COMMODIFIED rape and incest and pedophilia, and how much it fuels the engines of fandom content production. Its commercialized in this fandom in particular, and its so high-prized a commodity in terms of fic content, that even most people who don’t have any particular interest in these types of fic content themselves deem it too costly to speak up on the matter, because they’re afraid to lose followers who DO like it.

And THAT’S what gets to me.

Those of you who will be like I’m not taking a side here, but absolutely take a side as you’ll freely reblog posts about fandom purity and censorship but not a single point to the contrary. When you only air one side of an argument, guess what? You’ve picked a side. Whether or not you agree with it or every bit of it doesn’t matter, you’re still signal boosting it while refusing to examine or boost any point said against it. I reblog stuff all the time that I don’t agree with every single line of or point made in....but the point is I agree with ENOUGH of it that I’d rather boost it for others’ consideration rather than pass by it because it doesn’t one hundred percent accurately reflect everything I believe and only that. (And yet funnily enough, I’m the ideological puritan, remember?)

You can’t be like, I’m going to continue to encourage shutting down every critical mention of fandom problems in this or other regards while refusing to do anything or even signal boost people attempting to critically examine or just encouraging others to be more critical about this stuff......and think that like, you’re not still being an active part of the fandom ecosystem there that keeps this fandom environment being as everpresent as it is.

If it feels like you’re in this picture and you don’t like it, maybe its cuz you’re in this picture and getting pissed at the picture-takers doesn’t ever do anything to change that or your discomfort with being in the fucking picture here.

I can get literally anything I say in this fandom reblogged EXCEPT for so much as even a single thing I say on this particular subject, and you can try and blame that on my temper or aggression or hostility or word choice but I’ve been making these posts for years in this fandom at this point, and in all that time, I’ve done so in a variety of ways and the fact that still none of them, not a single one, no matter WHAT tone its in, has EVER gotten more than a handful of notes from my Batfam followers and only ever catch on because of my older TW followers or people who follow me BECAUSE of my stances on this and other subjects.....like. (Its funny how few people seem to mind my attitude or posting style when I’m talking about Dick’s treatment by the Batfam or DC itself or when in my asks trying to point and aim me at other characters’ fans like a bonafide attack dog, lolol, I’m just saying).

I’ve talked to people in this fandom about this very subject of how being critical of rape fics is NOT the same as being anti-sex or in search of moral purity, and I know damn well they understand my point there because they even acknowledged it themselves and said okay, I understand the nuance you’re making there.....and then they turn around and keep reblogging all those fandom purity posts even after admitting they GET now that its not actually an accurate representation of the issues and thus a false flag to raise and pass around.....and yet they keep participating in passing it around, with not a word to the contrary. 

And hell, it doesn’t even need to be my posts that get around....its not like I see anyone reblogging anyone else’s critical posts on this particular subject either, even while reblogging the stuff mocking such posts or stances.

I’m just saying. I’m very keenly aware of all that, and its exhausting.

This isn’t a dramatic omg I’m running away from fandom post, I’m not going anywhere, I still have plenty of things to say and write about Dick Grayson and I’m ultimately here for me and not anyone else so I’ll continue to do so, but like.....its just a its been depressing as hell to be in this particular fandom lately, and wearying, and just thought some of you might like to know that in case you feel like doing anything about it ever, to maybe make it a little more inviting and engaging to those of us who AREN’T here to see the rapists keep raping the characters we identify with and gravitate towards as survivors.

(And if your go-to response here or first thought is “some people write it to cope” - great, what I’m saying here is that’s not true for everyone, and whatever the experience of writing it does for them in that regard does not actually change my position on what the experience of seeing it shared and proliferated publicly in such huge quantities without allowing for any kind of criticism of this (which is actually a separate matter entirely) does for others. And that this ENVIRONMENT is actually COUNTER to other survivors’ coping, so you can’t claim that your stance on this subject is based on what’s best for survivors’ coping when its ACTUALLY based on what’s best for the coping of survivors who also happen to feed the fandom further sexy rape fic content......and uh, just FYI for anyone who isn’t a survivor themselves, whomever this might apply to - that’s literally just commodifying and exploiting the survivorship of those whose coping mechanisms happen to serve your personal self-interests and if you don’t get how that’s gross as hell, like, I don’t even know what to tell you there.)

[electricbluebutterflies]

22 for Garcy?

This has been in the drafts for... years, probably, but here we are, I still love these two and I am emotionally messy enough to be writing them again. Usual ignore-the-ending / post-everything ‘verse, PG-ish, also on ao3.

“It’s not heavy.  I’m stronger than I look.”

Technically speaking, Lucy has never had a domestic arrangement.

Sure, the years spent with the team have to count forsomething, but that was both involuntary and didn’t involve a consistent romanticelement until close to the end. Could’ve happened sooner, and she got to spendsix months trying to convince everyone else in her life that it wasn’t,but… even then, it was different. Doesn’t really count as living with a partnerif what you’re actually doing is hiding in their spaces and occasionallyaccepting affection.

But it’s over now, and they won, and now she gets to see ifthere are any actual skeletons in her mother’s house (there’s already speculationand possibly a betting pool in the group chat about what weird things she’sgoing to find), and she is not doing that alone.

There is a certain irony in this, in dragging home a partnerwho is almost everything she was probably taught to avoid but wasn’t perceptiveenough to be aware of. Flynn is older than her by just enough to matter even withher comfortably in her mid-thirties, has been through brutal hell and does notsee a point in pretending otherwise, only charming when he wants something, andthen there’s the whole physical structure of him to deal with. The man isdefinitely someone else’s nightmare come to life, and sometimes Lucy thinksthat might be part of the appeal, the romantic cliché of trying to tame thedangerous a little.

Not that she’s done any taming so much as made sure she’shis favorite person, but y’know. Details.

Point is, she needs to clean out the house and sell anythingof value before trying to get rid of the house itself – the curse of being theclosest surviving family member, and no she does not know how everything stayeduntouched for a year and a half but there are questions Lucy does not ask inthis life – and having the assistance of someone more physically capable thanshe is might be an asset for moving hundred-odd-year-old furniture. At least,that was how she phrased it when suggesting the idea last week when plans werebeing laid and it became apparent he had none. At the time, their hesitantromantic involvement wasn’t even worth mentioning as a reason he should go withher.

It’s not… it’s not like anything else she’s ever done, sheknows that. There have been really good kisses but not more than that becausethin walls and caution and uncertainty if her IUD has expired, and a warmprotectiveness to it, and she’s not sure where they go from there. She wasn’tsleeping alone once they came back here and he followed her upstairs withoutquestions, but they haven’t turned in new directions and if they end up justbeing rather tactile roommates she could live with that. She’s not going topush through that tangle of unresolved issues.

But right now, as she paces the formal dining room shethinks her mother may have used twice in her lifetime and her partnerleans against the wall and watches her, she wants more. And isn’t that alwayswhere it goes to hell. If there’s one thing Lucy has learned from the nearly-three-yeardetour her life took, it is that she should not want things because the momentshe realizes she does is the moment it goes horribly wrong. She should not wantthis other person, even with his near-feral sense of loyalty, to break her patterns.She should not want to keep him. It will end badly, she is sure.

“Would it make you feel better to break any of that?” Flynnasks, breaking silence and gesturing towards the decorative china cabinet.

“Worth too much,” Lucy shrugs. “Wouldn’t help anything.”

The problem with this whole cleanout project is there is noeasy place to start. Taking on the more public parts of the house first makessense because she’s less likely to find anything odd down here but thatdoesn’t mean she won’t, and that just builds a sense of dread as she works herway up the spiral. Today is the first day they’re even trying; the previousthree days have been an attempt at reacclimating to a quieter life, completewith a near-traumatic trip to a supermarket. Perhaps this self-isolation isn’ta great idea for their respective personalities, but…

“What about that statue? What is that?”

Lucy glances at said statue, and honestly hell if she knows.It looks vaguely Greek but probably isn’t, and she is reminded that she doesget her lack of consistent aesthetic sensibilities from that side of thefamily, and… screw it, might as well find out what it is. She takes a few stepsover and tries to lift the thing, and-

“Don’t… let me do that.”

Oh she should’ve known this would activate her partner’sinstincts. Damn him.

“It’s not heavy,” she points out. “I’m stronger than I look,and… I think this may have actually been intended as a lawn ornament.” And nota good quality one either, to the extent Lucy feels capable of judging suchthings. Suspiciously lightweight and might break if she dropped it, which shehas no plan to do but-

“Do we want to keep it?”

She sets the object down and looks at it as if she evencares. “Not really?”

“Is there anything in this room you do like?”

“No?” She feels scared to say that out loud, like she’s temptingghosts to come out of the walls. “I don’t… I don’t know what we even need. But allof this can go.”

“Alright.”

They’re both quiet for a few moments, standing there closebut not touching and uncertain. Being able to make so many choices in successionis honestly terrifying, Lucy is realizing, and she’s not sure she likesthe control. See, this is why she couldn’t do this project on her own, becausenothing would ever get done. Even with help she’s not sure they’ll getanywhere, but-

“There are boxes out in the front hallway, if you could getthose for me?”

And then she is alone, and she can’t remember the last timethat happened. Even if only for a minute, it feels wrong. She’s gottentoo used to living on top of other people, the chaos of it all, becoming somekind of family because that was the only way forward. Now she could go dayswithout seeing another human being, if she wanted. She gets to choose that too,and she’s not sure-

A hand on her shoulder brings her out of her spiral, tetheringher as always. She isn’t alone, not in any way that counts. The two damagedones clinging together like they did on the bad nights when she was in theworst of her unraveling and he was quiet and kind like she should’ve seenbefore she made her mistakes and-

“We don’t have to do this all at once,” he murmurs. “Or atany speed.”

“I have nothing else,” she counters. “And you’re…”

“Here with you,” he says before she can come up with somemore bitey phrase. “As long as you’ll let me be.”

She breaks.

See, the thing is, Lucy had always expected to do thisproject alone. When she’d been younger and oblivious to the amount of evilweirdness her bloodline was tangled up in, she’d assumed the timing would be alittle different, but she knew the score. She was the good responsible daughter,the one who would get the short straw when something happened. And as she’d gottenolder, and made consistently questionable romantic choices none of which lookedlike a future…

The reality of the situation as it has actually happened,the fact that she does have someone on her side, is too much to acceptright now.

She lets herself be held because words are not going tohappen right now, lets him pet her hair and be a comfort because she is notsure what else to do. How does one tell a partner, a potential-but-not-quitelover, that there was never any plan for this part? That she, prone toover-planning as an anxiety workaround, never thought she’d bring anyone hometo deal with this particular curse of eldest daughters? She’s not sure she can.She’s not sure she can avoid it either.

“I’ll deal with it,” he says after a while. “If that’seasier. Take everything to that antique dealer you were mentioning and-“

“I can’t ask that of you.”

“You’re not asking. I’m volunteering.”

Lucy takes a moment to envision how that would go down, Flynn’shistorically unpredictable people skills meeting the nightmarish world ofpretentious assholes who try to under-pay for antique furniture. It sounds likea disaster waiting to happen at best.

“I’ll let you maneuver everything into the truck,” shecounters. “But I’m doing the talking when we get there.”

“They’ll try to take advantage of you.”

“I’m not leaving you outside like a dog I’m just… notletting you threaten anyone you don’t have to.”

He hums low against her body, contemplating. “I can livewith that.”

“Good because I’m not giving you a choice here.”

He brushes his lips against her forehead, and for a momentshe can believe they’ll get through this intact. “Whatever you want.”

[skybird13]

*sigh* Okay...

I’ve been debating on whether or not to make this post. Not because it doesn’t need to be made, but because I’m not sure I’m emotionally up for it. But at the end of the day, staying quiet is exactly what got us into this mess, and curling into a sad little ball isn’t going to change what happened, and this particular shit needs to be called out and acknowledged. 

I was asked to address something posted by Eddy Rivas, one of the writers of RWBY, on Reddit yesterday. It was a shortlived post because apparently he or someone who read it realized what a monumentally bad idea it was, but sadly for him, my fellow cockroach gays are pissed as hell and we have screenshot capabilities. I don’t care that he removed/edited the post. This was still his instinctive response to the absolute pain caused by him and the rest of CRWBY as a result of volume 7 episode 12:

I am so damn tired and so hurt. But I am going to do my best to address this in a civil and reasonable way. 

The Problem With Judgment Calls

First of all, to an extent, I understand the predicament Eddy describes. I really do. I get that being on the creative end of a popular web series is very different from being on the fandom end, and conventional wisdom dictates that creators should do their best to make sure the two don’t mix past a certain point. That necessary separation probably does make these kinds of judgment calls difficult. 

The problem is that several members of CRWBY (including writers, animators both former and current, social media managers, and the marketing team specifically) violated that boundary more than once long before episode 12 aired. There were so many things that factored into Fair Game gaining traction as quickly as it did, and many of those things came from the deliberate way that many members of CRWBY interacted with the fandom outside of the show itself. From the official RWBY Twitter account to the suggestive tweets made by a former animator, to the Twitter and Tumblr posts made by a current animator, this ship was heavily and unambiguously encouraged and leaned on multiple times over the course of this volume. 

Sure, you can make the claim that you can’t control the animators (especially if they no longer work for you), or that the creators and the marketing team are two separate entities and that the actions of one do not necessarily reflect the intentions of the other (both things also stated by Eddy Rivas in a series of Tweets). And perhaps some of that is accurate. It points towards a fundamental lack of oversight and cohesiveness in the organization that is Rooster Teeth, and that should absolutely be addressed moving forward, but quite frankly, in this case, it doesn’t even matter.

The fact of the matter, Mr. Rivas, is that the boundary was violated. Multiple times. On your end. These types of judgment calls are not a one size fits all, and the moment active members of CRWBY took action to encourage something you knew was going to cause pain, it should have been addressed. I’m not putting that on you personally, because as a writer I realize you probably don’t have that type of authority, but someone there should have put a stop to it. There is the matter of the personal responsibility shirked by the two animators who contributed to this mess, and frankly, they should have known better, but this does not excuse CRWBY’s collective silence.

The fact of the matter is that due to the actions taken by CRWBY both in and outside of the show (including the things you could and could not control) you absolutely reached a point where that boundary should have been purposefully crossed in order to mitigate damage. It doesn’t matter what got you or us there. It doesn’t matter whether or not it was intentionally done (it was, let’s not kid ourselves). Things built up, hopes were raised as a direct result of your actions, and you all reached a point where you were morally obligated to say something. Do I suggest a single individual should have taken this on? No. I understand the legal ramifications of that. But CRWBY as a whole and RT as the production studio absolutely should have stepped forward. Would that have fully removed the pain and the disappointment? No. But you wouldn’t be facing the backlash you are right now if you had. 

The Problem with One-Size-Fits-All

Closely related to the previous point is the fact that you, Mr. Rivas, seem to be under the impression that a single judgment call policy should and can apply to all situations equally. That’s not the case. We’re not talking about other ships here, hypothetical, canonical, realistic, unrealistic, or otherwise. We’re talking about this ship. 

The Fair Game ship was the first and only indication we had in seven volumes of RWBY that a prominent mlm relationship might be coming in to play. You have no other relationships of this nature in the show. You don’t even have other male characters who might be able to qualify as gay or bisexual who play major roles. Add on to that the fact that you planned to have one of these characters die in the most brutal and graphic death scene we have gotten to date in RWBY, and no. I’m sorry. That flimsy defense doesn’t stand. This ship was unique, it appealed to a very underserved segment of your fandom, and it should have been treated with the levity it deserved. 

You make the argument that saying something about this ship but not others wasn’t plausible. The issue with that, sir, is one of trust. Up to this point, I and a lot of people I know trusted you, which means you can get away with building up relationships without ever coming out to confirm or deny them offscreen. As long as you understand the narrative promises you’re making as a storyteller to your audience, and understand the importance of fulfilling them through narrative payoff at some point in the story, we’re usually pretty willing to follow you and watch it unfold. This is how writing works. You have to be aware of the promises you’re making and you have to be able to follow through on them in satisfying ways. This goes double if you plan to fulfill them in unexpected ways (note the word fulfilled still applies). If you don’t do that, trust is broken and you have a problem. 

Fair Game is unique in that you knew from the beginning that trust was going to not only be violated but brutally so. CRWBY made promises with Clover and Qrow that they never intended to keep, and that is one of the core issues here. If you want to cling to the excuse that it was all unintentional (again, one I do not buy), that only means you absolutely should have said something to that effect long before we ever got to this point. It would have given nothing about the plot away to let us know that wasn’t the intended direction and it would have calmed down the excitement that built up so quickly around the ship. It certainly would have prevented a lot of people from being emotionally and psychologically damaged as a result of having that trust destroyed. 

Not saying something about relationships that may or may not happen is VERY different from not saying something about a ship that you know is not going to happen because you plan to brutalize and murder one of the characters on screen in spite of the narrative promises made. Particularly when the ship in question would have offered rep to people who thus far in the show ( when we’re over halfway through the series) still have none. 

No rep to be found here...

I’m not sure I should even have to address this but apparently, it needs to be said. It will be short because it’s a pretty damn simple answer.

You want to know “how well [saying no rep to be found here would] have gone over?”  A hell of a lot better than the queerbaiting fest you have victimized us all to for the last three months.  Would you still have had disappointed fans on your hands? Absolutely. But the psychological and emotional damage you all caused in episode 12 could have been so easily avoided, and that should have taken precedence over whatever tension you wanted to maintain between these characters in the show. 

This should not have been a difficult decision, and quite frankly, the fact that you don’t understand this is a little alarming. 

We Are Not a Shopping Montage

Alright. Here is where my civility is going to deteriorate noticeably, so fair warning.

You had the audacity to compare the emotional trauma of hundreds of LGBTQ fans to the disappointment of not getting a fucking shopping montage??? You even acknowledge that on an emotional level these two things are nowhere near being the same thing, and you still tried to justify your actions and the actions of CRWBY with it? That emotional fallout is the thing that matters here. 

But there’s even more to it than that.

The hopes for a shopping montage came from a single Tweet from the official RWBY Twitter (if I remember right) about a montage scene being in volume 7. That was it. That was all fans had to go off of. This absolutely was a case of imaginations running wild and people hoping for a scene that, quite frankly, in light of the show’s trajectory since volume 3, wasn’t a reasonable expectation to begin with. CRWBY was in no way complicit in or responsible for this expectation that I know of, and even if you were.... It. Was. A. Shopping. Montage.

And you dare to compare that with the intentional queer coding of Qrow and Clover’s relationship in the writing, the animation choices, the character design for Clover, and the behavior of CRWBY on social media, only for Clover to die horrifically and for Qrow to be absolutely destroyed emotionally and mentally on-screen??? You dare to relate the disappointment of people who didn’t get a pointless shopping scene with the trauma of watching a loved character’s murder and another loved character’s emotional/mental destruction??? Really? That seemed like an appropriate thing to say?

I don’t even know what else to say to this except absolute world-shattering shame on you, sir. How dare you?

And then to top all of this off, instead of apologizing, instead of showing some contrition, you tried to delete this post and pretend you never said it. Did you hope we wouldn’t notice? That we wouldn’t react if you tried to take it down? Were you even the one who realized what you said or did you need it pointed out to you?

You should not be a writer, sir. You sure as hell should not be a creator of content that engages with people on an emotional level because you clearly have no respect for it and no understanding of the responsibility you bear because of it. 

What is wrong with you?

Tagging @fairgame-is-endgame​ who asked me to say something on this absolute bullshit. 

[diyunho]

The Joker x Reader - “ What Death Tastes Like” Part 5

Scarecrow’s daughter might be only 22, yet the terminal lung cancer she was diagnosed with six months ago didn’t discriminate against her age; the young woman didn’t show worrisome symptoms until it was too late. Y/N always had a fascination for the much older King of Gotham and despite the consequences, maybe it’s finally time to do something about it.

Part 1    Part 2   Part 3     Part 4

The Joker feels his face covered in soft kisses and although generally speaking he loves being pampered, this particular instance awakens his self-defense mechanism.

“What time is it?” J mutters.

“Let me see,” you stretch for your phone. “12:03 am.”

“I should go,” he lifts his head up from the pillow and you pull him back in your arms, yawning.

“Stay for a little bit longer, ok?”

“Why?”

“I wish to hold on to my birthday present for a few more minutes,” Y/N pleads with the man she senses doesn’t want to be there anymore. “Don’t worry, I’m aware it was a casual affair,” your sad smile prompts a completely out of context answer:

“If you noticed I fell asleep, you should have woken me up!” The King of Gotham complains.

“I fell asleep also,” you snuggle to him and since J is suddenly quiet you whisper. “It was amazing.”

He keeps staring which makes you wonder what the hell is going on in his mind right now.

“At least for me,” you underline after you grasp he won’t comment on the subject; you didn’t have a clue he’ll convert the night you spent together into awkwardness for no reason. “Get out of my tent!” you snap at his behavior, irritated. “Get out!” you shove him and The Clown Prince of Crime doesn’t budge.

“Why are you mad?” he finally addresses the annoyed Y/N.

“Because you’re a jerk!”

“Come again?!” The Joker frowns and Scarecrow’s daughter has a clever response; she doesn’t share his genes for nothing.

“I would but I guess you’re not a big fan of us having sex a second time!!!”

“Wow!” J bitterly scoffs. “You sure can twist a guy’s words, huh? If you really must pry into my personal life, I’ll have you know that I’m not used with small talk afterwards, understand?”

While you wonder if he’s bluffing, you can’t help offer the benefit of doubt served with a side of insolence.

“Well, maybe if you would give it a try with someone that actually cares, you’d have stuff to discuss.”

“Miss Crane, what makes you think Mara doesn’t like me?”

The Joker expects a feisty reply to his audacious remark yet he receives a piece of sturdy logic instead:

“If she was crazy in love, she wouldn’t agree and with this on and off relationship you two have.”

J is obviously displeased at your statement thus Y/N has to unleash her creativity in order to push him comprehend what she’s aiming at.

“The problem is you don’t approach anything important, you only shut down everyone. Even Emma believes she’s not yours.”

The King of Gotham was preparing to lash out but your latest sentence totally catches him off guard.

“What do you mean?!”

“You never talk about her mother granted she keeps asking so Emma presumes you probably stole her from an individual you consider your enemy and raised her as revenge.”

“Huh?!” The Joker gets on his elbow, appalled. “She is my daughter!”

“I say that to her when she panics, unfortunately random people do look similar…,” you twirl a strand of his green hair around your fingers. “Steering clear from issues we’re uncomfortable with doesn’t necessarily result in a positive outcome,” Y/N concludes and her partner is not excited at all.

“Are you psychoanalyzing me?!”

“I’m a Crane,” you peck his lips. “It’s in our blood.”

A lot of thoughts rushing behind those blue eyes and you’re confident his patience is running low; add a short fuse to the combo and according to your flawless instinct J will bite soon.

“Take me for example,” you attempt to cram in the main point of your dialogue before it happens. “I don’t care you’re older, I fancy your company nevertheless: you’re super handsome plus emotionally unattractive…”

“I’m what?!” The Joker interrupts.

“Umm… emotionally unattractive?” you hesitantly repeat while watching him jump off the pillows and start to collect his clothes in the semi darkness.

“Serves me right for sleeping with somebody half my age!” he growls at the young woman realizing she upset him with her rant.

“So you’re 46?” you struggle to joke at his affirmation.

“Listen here, Miss Crane!” J dresses in a hurry, angry at your stunt. “If you imagine you figured me out, you didn’t!! Nobody fucks with me!” he violently kicks the mattress and you can’t avoid it:

“I think I just did. Literally.”

The hate in his demeanor makes you regret opening up; your goal was to imply you like him no matter what yet the aftermath is way off what you intended.

“I apologize, OK?” you sigh and reach your hand for his.

“I hope you perish!” he strikes your fingers with such brutality it stings. “You’re dying anyway but hopefully the Cromyxillium kills you faster!” The Joker unzips the tent and leaves a shocked Y/N breathless at his hurtful tirade.

“That’s all you got? Stupid old man…” you whimper and cuddle under the thin blanket with his cushion.

Grief is not the correct term to describe what you experience for the moment: a perfect birthday turned into exactly the opposite in a blink of an eye simply because The Joker proved once more he has no concept on how to handle dynamite; fire suits him better.

***************

Next morning, 10:14am

“Are you hot or cold?” your father inquires since your intravenous therapy commenced 10 minutes ago.

“No,” you gaze at the IV bag and Jonathan lingers by your bed, reminding his offspring about their plan.

“We’ll do 3 hours on, 3 hours off; I’ll monitor your vitals and if you feel strange alert me immediately, deal?”

You nod a yes and his perseverance in aiding you with your terminal cancer evokes a sincere confession:

“Daddy…Thank you for trying to save me…I’m sorry I’m a burden…”

“A burden?!” Scarecrow mumbles.

There are a million facts you should evoke, yet the predominant one keeps hunting you.

“You buried yourself in the lab because of me…and Evelyn left…”

“Evelyn and I broke up for various motives,” your parent grumbles. “Saying I immersed myself into working because of you hints that I was forced into it against my will which is not true. I did everything out of love… I can’t bear the idea of losing you,” he kisses your temple; you wrap your free arm around his neck, squeezing him tight.

“You’re the best dad; I’m lucky you’re my father. If I die… you think mom is waiting for me?...”

Jonathan Crane has the weird sensation he’s choking; his wife died after you were born due to leukemia, now their daughter is fighting for survival: she’s plainly the last fortress separating him from utter madness.

“I couldn’t save your mother, but I’ll be damned if I let you die kid,” he caresses your cheek. “She can wait; I bet she’s not eager to take you with her,” Scarecrow reassures his daughter. “Rest honey.”

“I will…” you consent and Emma barging in the bedroom with her duffle bag switches your attention.

“I’m here, I’m here!” she exclaims. “Traffic was horrible, bad accident on the freeway!”

**************

11 am

“Are you comfortable?” Emma checks with her friend, not entirely certain how to bring up a very delicate topic clouding her usually bubbly disposition.

“Of course,” you smile and she wiggles in her recliner. “Are you?” you wink at her visible restlessness as you attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

“Y/N…,” she taps the fluffy carpet with her feet. “Mmmm… last night after we returned from the river I dropped by to see how you’re doing and… I came to your tent…,” Emma pauses seeing the stupefied expression on your face. “I…I found my father sleeping in there with you…”

You lick your lips and strain to keep your calm even if your heart is pounding out of your chest.

“Did my dad take advantage of you?” she lowers her voice and you can tell she’s torn apart by the horrible notion.

“He didn’t,” you shake your head.

“Dumb girl…” Emma admonishes without any trace of resentment; what else can she articulate in these circumstances regardless?  

“I can’t believe I’m inquiring… Did you use protection?”

“No…It just happened…”

“Oh my God!” the concerned judgement pressures you to continue:

“It didn’t end well so it’s fair to assume we’re not in any danger of me becoming your stepmom,” your tone diminishes and she leans over to scold when The Joker passes by the opened door without bothering to peek inside your bedroom; you didn’t spot him but Emma did.

“I’ll be back!” she hisses and you’re confused at her desire to leave you.

“Hey, where are you going?”

She ignores your question and races after The King of Gotham, catching up with him at the end of the long corridor.

“Dad!” Emma shouts and he turns around.

“Yeah?”

“What are you doing?!” she interrogates the clueless Joker.

“I’m meeting Crane. Is he downstairs?”

“In his lab compounding the next batch of Cromyxillium for Y/N,” she fumes at J’s impertinence. “Didn’t you forget something?”

He seems puzzled and Emma is not tricked by his deceiving performance.

“My best friend is in her quarters, uncertain if she’ll survive the cancer treatment. Are you pretending she doesn’t exist?”

“Meaning?” The Joker sneers.

“I know you slept with her!” the accusation follows instantly. “Don’t deny it! How could you take advantage of her?!”

The Clown Prince of Crime straightens his shoulders, aware he can’t negotiate his innocence out of this complicated riddle.

“I did not take advantage of her! How dare you accuse me of such low move?”

“You didn’t?” Emma closes the gap between them. “You know she has a crush on you and she’s vulnerable; what type of man would prey on that?!”

J is not thrilled with the innuendos and cuts her off:

“She basically begged for some and I obliged out of pity!”

Emma slaps him and The Joker gasps, enraged she had the audacity:

“Do that again and I’ll neglect you’re my daughter!” he growls and the serious threat doesn’t faze her.

“Hurt her more and I’ll forget you’re my father! If you are indeed my father,” she emphasizes while stomping away towards the kitchen.

“I am your father!” J simmers at her impeccable strategy: Emma is retreating to a different corner of the house giving him the opportunity to choose.

Who the heck knows if she’s actually his?

One thing is undeniable though: they share the same despicable temper.

****************

You discern The Joker in the doorway and your body stiffens; you stare at the TV screen wishing he’ll disappear.

“Where’s Crane?” J analyzes Y/N’s IV pole.

You don’t engage so his crankiness emerges.

“I suppose you didn’t flatlined yet!”

“Nope,” you grunt at the provocative declaration that served its goal: you did reply to The Clown’s rubbish.

“Where’s Crane?”

“I heard you the first time and I’m not sure why you focus your energy on a useless interrogation. You know where my father is!”

“Where?” The Joker’s vile attitude can’t compromise for less than instigating his fling.

“Please take your stuff that’s firm now but will get saggy in maximum 20 years and vanish!” the poisonous remark makes him groan.

“What stuff?!”

You check him out glaring at his mid-section before dismissing his presence.

“That’s the rudest fucking criticism ever!” The Joker barks and Y/N crabbily indicates:

“It’s not criticism, it’s reality! Gravity’s a bitch! Mara won’t mind, won’t she? After all, you two share a very special bond: on today, off tomorrow, hookup next week, take a break next month. Such dreamy relationship!”

“Do you have more derogatory references to my private life?!” J grinds his teeth ready to unleash several atrocities your way.

“No, too busy dying…” you show him the needle in your arm. “I don’t feel the pain from the medication burning my veins; I’m used with my sickness, with the ups and downs. What I do feel is the pain of being taken for granted.”

The Joker is not a fan of the insinuated context.  

“You said no strings attached!” he stresses the lack of commitment consented the previous evening.

“You’re the one that came to me; I thought it meant you were accepting to be the center of my universe.”

J ogles the ceiling of Y/N’s bedroom and assembles a couple of harsh disclosures in his brain when her entitled smirk halts the project.

“You’re buying it, aren’t you?” you chuckle at his astonishment. “I’m just messing with you Mister Joker; who in their right mind would make you the center of their universe?! You have 10 seconds to leave, otherwise I’ll scream and security will come!” you shelter your head with the quilt so you don’t have to see his mug anymore.

No outpour of vexation from his part which is cool: means he bailed.

The blanket is slowly pulled until your eyes emerge; J hovers your face, pissed at the unwelcomed clash.

“I’m checking if you kicked the bucket; corpses are usually covered thus my dilemma.”

“Go away!” you advise. “Or I’ll scream!”

You inhale preparing to yell: The Joker didn’t predict you’d defy him and he swiftly kisses you in order to stop the sounds.

The door is cracked and Emma witnesses the scene, reckoning bizarre elements:

Her father holds grudges and was mad at Y/N earlier due to whatever happened yesterday; nevertheless he still kissed her.

On the other hand, you were definitely miserable after your escapade, yet you didn’t reject him.

Emma may not be informed about the entire story, but one detail is crystal clear: the future is far from being simple.

 Also read: MASTERLIST

[sleepyarthur]

What the hell did Arthur do to Rockstar for them to warrant such brutality???

A really long, winding rant because I think about this daily.

They’ve outfitted Arthur with this tragic backstory of growing up without a mother and having to deal with an abusive father. He was orphaned at a young age and had to fend for himself in the cruel 19th century landscape until Dutch and Hosea took him in.

He grew madly in love with a woman and they get engaged only for their close-knit bond to be broken apart by their differing lifestyles and neither would give up theirs for the other. Meanwhile, poor, heartbroken Arthur had to learn his significant other, the love of his very life, was going off to be married to another man, causing his long, saddening dive into crippling self-esteem issues.

Arthur had a son with a woman from whom he realized how much fatherhood and a quaint family life was the peak of happiness for him, only for them to be ripped from his very hands in an unnecessarily violent manner leading him to forever think that there was no good that will ever come to him and Rockstar AGREED like they were the devil themselves.

He was made to watch Sean, Lenny and Hosea die right in front of him, when they were among the people he was closest within the gang. There was no time for him to mourn for their deaths because he’s suddenly being sent off for another job right after.

Arthur was forced to discover he was sick all alone, and he kept it a secret to everyone else, enduring so much torment and emotional turmoil deep within him until he gets those much needed conversations with Charles, Mary-Beth, Sister Calderon and even damn Uncle of all people.

The only thing left that Arthur loved and still held dear was his gang, but Rockstar made him watch it fall apart with his very eyes. All his promises of keeping everyone especially the girls safe were broken, and he had to see the happiest members of the gang wallow in misery. He was so sad seeing everyone fighting and arguing with each other and just missed the times where they were all laughing and sharing tales over bottles of whiskey.

All of that was happening while Arthur’s condition worsened. The disease was already sapping all the strength he had left. His throat must have been burning every single second. He was coughing up so much blood. It was getting harder and harder for him to breathe or even prop himself  up on his own two feet. He couldn’t enjoy food, or get himself drunk which was his only escape for the horrible reality in front of him.

This man was SUFFERING physically, mentally and emotionally ALL AT THE SAME TIME, watching the gang and his own health waste away into nothingness in sheer, indescribable agony. Apparently Rockstar decided to drop another BIG bombshell on our poor cowboy even if he was already in so much pain by making him read a letter from Mary that completely shut down any hope for a future he so ACHINGLY wanted and might as well have killed him then and there. This man was already suffering enough but no, they had to tear up his already broken and battered heart into a million tiny pieces because, I dunno, they said ‘fuck this genuinely sweet and lovable individual in particular’. He then had to witness a poor and misguided Eagle Flies sacrifice his life when he was already dying making it meaningless, and likely causing him to blame himself for dooming their tribe. He witnessed his own father figure betray him LIKE THEY NEVER KNEW EACH OTHER FOR SO MANY YEARS.

And the final nail in the coffin, you may ask? He gave up the little time he had left just so John could live the life he always wanted but could never have, and we all know what happens after. Worst off, John doesn’t even honor his memory with his own family when it was Arthur that saved them all in the first place! John at least got to live in bliss even for just a while, but Arthur was basically treading through bottomless pits of despair from the get go until the end of his life.

God, I don’t know if I wanna thank Rockstar or whoever wrote the whole scenario for making me invoke so much feelings for this cowboah, or if I should pry Arthur from their cold, dead hands and keep him safe and tucked away from all that shit he had to face. He didn’t deserve any of that crap. Arthur is long overdue for a big old hug, a shoulder he could lean and cry on from all that torture he was given, and a loving person he can be comfortable to spend the rest of his life with. Until then,  I will probably not get over this man, ever.

[the-bounce-back]

5 STEPS TO  EMOTIONAL DETACHMENT FROM TOXIC AND USELESS SOMEBODIES

Well, hello there. It’s been a slightly long minute… but I’m back with another banger for your headtops. A lot has happened since my (four month late) birthday post in which I said I was going to write more regularly… but you know what? I refuse to feel bad about it. We’re really in a whole pandemic, life is hurling curveballs at all of us at very disrespectful rates, and now the year is coming to an end very swiftly - like say it wasn’t June just a couple weeks ago. Yes, I’ve been feeling extremely unmotivated to come on here and give everyone a pEpTaLk about how ~*great*~ life is once you let go of everything that’s been holding you back - and that’s okay. I’ve decided to give myself a break instead of beating myself up over it, and can’t lie… I needed it. Besides - posting this post in particular now coincides nicely with releasing and purging all the drama that has been happening during this year before 2021 arrives, so let’s just pretend that the delay was intentional. Okay? Okay!

All jokes aside, I have been struggling a little with writing about this topic, because I really wanted to make sure I did it properly. If you read my never-ending birthday post (if not, read it here), you might remember that one of the points was that learning how to detach yourself from toxic people and situations is pretty much crucial for you to be able to fully let go of the past, to be able to move forward in life without any remorse or guilt, and to never revisit what used to be very painful situations ever again. As much as my own detachment jOuRnEy has been going relatively well, to say that the whole “letting things go and never revisiting them again” thing has proven to be quite the challenge would be the understatement of the century.

By quite the challenge, I mean a f*cking nightmare.

I’m sure many of you can relate when I say that having all this forced time off/downtime throughout the past year has made introspection, reflection and self-analysis pretty much inevitable. Even when you’re just trying to chill and binge watch your favourite box set for the gazillionth time as a distraction, eventually your thoughts catch up with you - forcing you to face certain things that were so easily ignored and avoidable when the outside was still open. 

When you spend so much time of a day in your thoughts (trying not to lose your mind from the boredom), it’s only natural to start evaluating your situation, relationships and state of mind. I can only speak for myself, but going from constantly being able to avoid certain thoughts and feelings to suddenly being brutally forced to sit with them ended up being the catalyst I needed to want to find a way to finally strip myself of all the painful baggage, situations and people that have been holding me back from moving forward in life. Aaaand cue the inevitable - but extremely necessary - discomfort that the detachment process brings.

Hella revelations. Hella difficult conversations. Hella growing pains. Hella tears. Hella ended relationships/friendships. The list goes on.

I realise that I’m not exactly selling the whole detachment thing very well, but let’s be very real - it is painful, and you definitely need to be in the correct headspace to even be able to admit to yourself that you’ve allowed a certain situation to go on for so long. I can’t even lie, living in denial and turning a blind eye to former fRiEnDs’ behaviours and how they treated me was a hell of a lot easier. I accidentally got into the habit of justifying and defending other peoples’ mistakes and sh*tty behaviours, no matter how much it hurt me in the process… all because I saw pOtEntIaL in them.

Bruh. Typing it out like this and reading it out to myself is even annoying me. Ya girl is pissed for letting this sh*t run because where was my logic? My critical thinking skills? Common sense? InTuItIoN that I claim to have?! Was my third eye asleep?!

Sigh. Let me relax. It is well… no point in beating myself up over it now. But still.

However - with that being said - I definitely feel like I had to put myself through a lot of that sh*t, because if I hadn’t I’d definitely still be clinging on to expired/toxic friendships and connections. Going through it really had me in a place of suspecting that everyone wanted to hurt me and/or take advantage of my kindness. Luckily, I met some amazing people along the way that reminded me that not everyone is trash, that I am deserving of genuine and real connections, and that I need to learn how to let go of people once they start moving all kinds of mad… enter the concept of detachment.

As you can probably tell from the ever so slightly passive-aggressive title - no, I haven’t fully mastered the art of detachment… yet. I definitely have a long way to go before I can commit to the last couple of steps of the process, because as a chronic overthinker that looooves to analyse past situations and an eMpAtH that hates giving up on people, simply ~*letting go*~ is infinitely more easier said than done… but definitely not impossible. It really is an ongoing process, and I can tell you from now that you will revert back into the toxic mindsets that lead you to your current situation at least 1000 times along the way… but what’s important is learning how to g-check yourself, remind yourself why you are doing this and to keep it pushing no matter what.

Anyways. Without further ado, keep on reading to find out how to leave your d*ckhead exes, fake-ass friends and painful memories in 2020, so you can move forward into 2021 with love, light, a clean slate, peace of mind and all that other corny and cringe sh*t that we all crave - and never look back. Enjoy!

1. Set a very concrete reason why you want to start the detachment process.

Usually, this is a no-brainer. Most likely, the person you’ve decided you want to detach from has just done or said something unforgivable that makes you feel sick for ever even being associated with them. Or, you’ve clocked a series of minor violations that have built up over time… and one more tiny violation pushes you over the edge and makes you lose your head. Either way, it works as a catalyst to make you finally realise just how little respect they have for you, your feelings or your mental health.

However, there are certain situations where the reason may not be as clear as “she f*cked my ex” or “he stole £5k from my account” - sometimes, it’s literally just a gut feeling that someone doesn’t have your best interests at heart the way you have for them. Regardless, it is important to remember that any and all reasons to want to let someone go are valid, and you don’t owe anybody an explanation. This is your healing process and journey, and you’re the one that’s going to have to deal with the pain of it - so anyone that has any remarks on how/why/when you do it can choke, because what’s their own?

With that being said, it is imperative to make sure that the reason is strong enough for you to be able to stick to the process - because believe me when I say that there will be times where you’ll start asking yourself if you’re overreacting, if it’s really that deep, you’re being too sEnSiTiVe or being too radical. These thoughts are either a way for our mind to avoid having to process a lot of sh*t that will probably be very emotionally painful to work through, or a result of being gaslighted and being told that it’s nothing serious. In those cases, a strong reason should be enough to keep you reminded of why you are putting yourself through this process. It should keep you going, and help you find yourself on your darkest days when you just want to give up.

For me, determining a good reason that I know I will stick to became easier over time, because I realised that really delving deep into the root cause of the issue makes everything so much clearer. For example - yes, while Lucy shagging your ex and then meeting up with you for drinks is violation enough, chances are that if you dig deeper, you’ll realise that there’s been repeated pattern of her not respecting you as a friend, disregarding your feelings and not caring about how her actions affect you. In instances like this, it becomes easier to commit to cutting them out of your life, because it’s not just a “one-off” violation, if that makes sense.

The bottom line is that regardless of what the reason is, it should be a clear indication that you are choosing you. Your mental health, your sanity, your energy, your present and your future - and why would you want to jeopardize any of these for someone that clearly doesn’t appreciate your worth?

2. Find healthy coping methods to release your emotions.

I’ll be honest with you - the beginning of the detachment process is definitely the most difficult part, emotionally speaking. Yes, the whole journey is hard, but it’s in the beginning where you have to adapt to not speaking to this person anymore, not seeing them anymore, and having to force yourself to establish heavy boundaries with them… which will most likely be met with reactions that will make you want to respond in some way. Just because you know someone isn’t good for you anymore, doesn’t mean that your old feelings for the person just magically evaporate into nothing. 

As much as you may hate to admit it to others and even yourself, you’re going to be hurting. And pain has a way of pushing us to find coping methods to release these emotions - or not have to deal with them at all.

Trust me, as much as I understand and can personally attest to that coping methods that numb your senses may feel like the best option at the time, the truth is that they do nothing for your personal growth. Sure, sometimes you just don’t want to feel - but what happens when you’re sober again? The feelings come right back - and now you’re really playing a dangerous game that can lead to spiralling, health problems and addiction. In the long run, you rarely end up feeling any better.

Healthy coping mechanisms look different for everyone, but there are definitely a few that are universal and can be good for pretty much anyone regardless of the specifics of the situation. 

Talking to someone you trust (or a therapist). Working out. Indulging (heavily) in self-care. Doing things that bring you joy. Finding a creative outlet that you can pour all your feelings into… like a mental health blog(!). The possibilities are endless if you stay open minded and genuinely want to get better.

For those that may be stuck in that dark place where literally nothing will make you feel better (except maybe the person you’re trying to detach from… gets like that sometimes), or you feel like your energy is extremely limited - try to set one goal for the day. Just the one. Even if it is just tidying your room, taking a shower or doing the dishes. Setting minor goals that you realistically feel are achievable - and achieving them - are very helpful in gradually building up the confidence in yourself that you will get past this part of your life. And that goes for all situations in life that are heavy -  not just the detachment process.

3. Find ways to keep your mind in the present and on the future. 

So, you’ve started to begrudgingly get used to the fact that the person isn’t going to be around in your life anymore. You might even have started to realise how much your stress-levels have reduced, and begun to realise that this whole process was an excellent idea. However… not quite enough time has passed for you to be fully immersed in your journey, and you still think about them pretty much all the time. You’re feeling like a nitty trying to cope without crack for the first time in years, and that’s okay.

While it is important to allow yourself to fully acknowledge your feelings and mourn the loss of what used to be a very strong connection, you definitely owe it to yourself to try your best to remain present during this time. As tempting as dramatically starting out the window while it rains and thinking about them - like you’re in a music video - may sound, doing this is guaranteed to keep you firmly lodged in the past, and very stagnant in life… and we don’t want that. 

Just do a couple songs to get the dramatics out of your system, then get ready to boss the f*ck up.

Now might feel like the worst possible time to start something new, especially since your emotions are probably all over the place and you’re finding it hard to focus on little else. But trust me when I say that this is exactly why you need to do it - you need to reclaim your life by putting yourself back into the main focus of it. And what better way to do it than starting a project you’ve always wanted to do, but haven’t because of insecurities and/or self-doubt?

Regardless of if it’s pursuing a new hobby or even starting your own business, having an activity that brings you joy, challenges you and pushes you to set and exceed goals for yourself is imperative at this kind of time in your life. While a lot of the detachment process is pretty much trying to force yourself not to think about someone - thus making you want to think about them even more - having a passion project is a healthy way of willingly keeping your mind in the present and on your future. This, because you’ll constantly be looking for ways to improve your skills for yourself and your success in life.

Personally speaking, this blog was the perfect passion project for me back when I started my own detachment process. It still is - despite my inconsistency in writing, there actually isn’t a day that goes by without me thinking about future posts and what messages I want to share with whoever ends up reading it. However, since my writing does involve a lot of reflecting on past situations, I’ve decided to expand my creativity and start selling my art (check it out here, we love a cheeky and shameless self plug!). Focusing mostly on drawing, getting more involved in the art community, investing in art supplies and researching drawing methods lately has definitely made me more present and motivated… and I’ll even go as far as saying that I’ve forgotten about the people I’m detaching from at times.

The point I’m trying to make is that doing something you enjoy for your own mental wellbeing is one of the most rewarding parts of this whole detachment palaver. When you fully deep how much of your time that used to be spent worrying and stressing yourself out over someone trash, and focus that time on something creative that actually benefits you and makes you feel better about yourself, you’ll soon find yourself asking yourself why you didn’t start earlier.

Of course, it is important to remember that while feeling passionate and motivated in your creative/business ventures after feeling like sh*t for so long is a great thing, you should still make room for sitting with your feelings from time to time. Especially in the beginning. There’s a very, very fine line between using a hobby to empower and uplift yourself, and using it as a distraction to not think or feel at all. At the end of the day, it’s all about finding a good balance that takes into account where you currently are in your healing process - over time you’ll realise that you won’t need as many “days off” to be in your feelings, and trust me… that realisation and feeling is phenomenal.

4. Forgive and heal.

I just love how I’ve bunched these two together into one cute little step like they’re not the hardest part of the process. In theory, forgiving someone for yourself (not for their benefit) makes a lot of sense, but let’s be honest… a lot of us lie to both others and ourselves when we say we’ve moved on and forgiven them. 

I, for one, can confidently say that most people I’ve claimed to have fOrGiVeN still live in the deepest parts of my mind rent free. They might not be present all the time in the way that they used to since I started the detachment process, but once I get in my feelings their presence is often there as strong as ever… and this is okay. Of course you’re not going to magically forget how someone treated you just because you’re committed to moving on, but there comes a certain point where you realise that all you’re doing is going round and round in circles in your mind, while time is just passing you by. Think about it - how many hours of your life do you reckon you have spent in bed, staring at the ceiling dramatically while fuming over a situation in which you were done dirty?

If you’re anything like me, the answer is BARE. And don’t even get me started on how the amount of hours increased more than tenfold during the lockdown because I couldn’t even distract myself properly.

Actual footage of me re-deeping a vio at 4 am.

But as much as lamenting to yourself about how much sh*t you’ve let slide and how you’re never going to let yourself be treated like that again is healing in itself, at some point you literally feel yourself losing the plot from replaying the situation in your head so much.

This is a sign that it’s time to heal and truly move on. It’s time to evict them from your mind… because they have millions of pounds in rent arrears at this point… and that can’t run, because what kind of disrespect?! You deserve better than shitty tenants, or worse - squatters.

Ok, enough with the renting comparisons because I can’t concentrate while chuckling to myself. The thing about healing and moving forward is that there is no one size fits all solution that works for everyone, so all I can really do is speak for myself and hopefully provide some tools that you can use to tailor your own healing journey. 

This is going to sound very dramatic and depressing - because it is - but I’ve noticed that for me, the past creeps into my mind in the form of happy memories and good times… inevitably making me reminisce about people that used to mean a lot to me. This might not seem like anything harmful - surely there’s nothing wrong with reliving some good times in your head, right?

Wrong. For me, it starts off all cute and positive - but then my mind starts to wander. I start to remember other memories with the person. The bad memories that made me not want to have them in my life anymore. The memories in which I realised exactly how worthless, disrespected and unappreciated they made me feel… and what was meant to be happy reminiscing turns into either sadness or frustration, because now I have to re-open their case to really make sense of how much they had me f*cked up back then. Aaand before I know it, hours upon hours of angry analysing have passed by. Time that I’ll never get back, which will never sit right with me.

The way I’ve managed to combat this is by throwing myself into my own self-growth and self-love journey. In simple terms, placing all my focus on my mental wellbeing, my future goals and personal development makes it gradually easier to leave the past in the past - because the more I evolve, the less I associate myself with past versions of myself where I may not have been as strong, secure and assertive, as reminding myself of my worth has made me now. I can now understand and accept why I chose not to see the disrespect at the time - usually because of my former attachment issues, or because I deluded myself into thinking that the person cared the same way I did. El oh el.

Basically, I realised that a lot of my attachments to these toxic people came from a place of unresolved trauma, lack of validation and low self-worth. Once I identified these issues and started working through them, I noticed that placing my focus on understanding myself instead of someone else made things easier to cope with - because while I’ll never fully understand how someone else's mind works, I can work on understanding mine because I’m literally in it 24/7, 365. 

In other words, healing and forgiveness is all about YOU and your development, and has very little to do with the other person in the long run.

Another large part of the forgiveness process for me is dedicating some time to use what I know about the person that I’m trying to detach from to understand the “bigger picture” of why they treated me the way that they did. A vast majority of cases just made me realise that their actions, thought processes and ideas were literally just a series of trauma responses and projections that they weren’t aware of - or were aware of, but refused to address.

Either way, this is where my empathetic nature works in my favour - because I know what it’s like to not be able to swallow your pride and deny certain negative aspects of yourself. Admitting that you’ve been in the wrong and that you need to heal takes a great deal of self-awareness and humility - traits that the people I’ve dealt with definitely do not embody. The unfortunate truth is that a lot of people might even live their whole life deluding themselves that they are okay, that their actions don’t hurt others and that they are not to blame for anything. When I realised this, I noticed that a lot of my anger started to fade - and I started to pity them instead, making forgiveness slightly easier. What’s important to remember here is that while pity can make you want to bE tHeRe for the person and help them heal, it’s actually very much their personal journey. You can’t help someone that doesn’t realise they need it, or that doesn’t want to be helped - so all you can do is leave them to it and focus on your own life.

Another important aspect of forgiveness and healing is remembering that it is inherently an act of self-care, and not a service you’re doing to the other person. You’re not “letting them off easy”, “letting sh*t slide”, or “letting them win” by choosing to not allow the situation poison your thoughts, feelings and present anymore. You’re choosing your mental health, sanity and future - all very valid reasons for jUsT LeTtInG gO, if you ask me.

“But Liv! How do I know that I am truly ready to move forward? And how do I know that these feelings won’t come back and re-trigger me in the future, despite all this effort I’ve put into healing now?”

Excellent questions. I wish I had better answers... but the harsh truth for both is that you don’t. You have no idea what’s going to happen, how people are going to act, what will remind you of the situation or what is going to trigger you. You have zero control over the situation, and you’ll come to the ugly realisation that the world, in fact, doesn’t revolve around you and your comfort and mental health.

I know, right? Imagine my shock, horror and surprise when I realised this.

The truth is that life is going to keep throwing cute little triggering curveballs at you, and the only thing you can truly control is how you react to it. You can choose to let it poison your mind and mood… or you can simply sit with it, allow it to pass without attaching emotions to it, and then keep it pushing when you’re ready to.

I’d definitely argue that this part of the process is the hardest to achieve - especially when you’re an emotional drama Queen like myself. However, once you get to that point where you can let your triggers and memories pass without affecting the present… you’ve pretty much won, because nothing can rattle you anymore. You become truly unf*ckwithable, and I can’t wait until I get to this stage of my process. 

In the meantime, it’s all about constantly reminding yourself to stay in the present, because life will keep going on regardless of where your mind is at.

5. Be grateful for the process and do not look back.

I know, I know - feeling gratitude when you’re neck-deep in the sh*t is infinitely easier said than done. When you’re there ugly crying in the mirror, the last thing on your mind is going to be “Aw, look how much I’ve grown! I love that for myself! Well done, me!”. However, when you’re all exhausted, cried out and feel that zen feeling afterwards (you know what I’m on about), take time to acknowledge that while it feels like it’s never going to end now, one day you’ll be able to make your peace with what happened and that it will never happen again. 

Be grateful to yourself over your resilience, how much you’ve learnt and how highly you must regard yourself for pushing yourself through this whole experience - because as you know by now, it is extremely hard.

When you can learn to see past the pain and emotional distress this whole process has caused you and find silver linings that you can be grateful for, it’s finally time to start looking towards never looking back on the situation ever again. Or, at the very least, being able to think about it without attaching any emotion to it, and just letting the thoughts pass by without any judgement before gently bringing yourself back to the present and getting on with your happier, stress-free life. Sometimes it can be easy to romanticize an old connection when a lot of time has passed, and you start to forget why you were so angry and hurt in the first place. In these cases, it’s important to remind yourself of why letting go and keeping it pushing is so important for your growth. Here are some things I like to consider when I feel myself spending too much time on memory lane, reminiscing and lowkey wishing I hadn’t been emotionally intelligent enough to recognise I needed to move forward:

Where would I be - emotionally and mentally - right now if I hadn’t decided to put myself first?

If I met someone new that reminds me of the person I’m detaching from, how would I react?

How have my current friendships and other relationships changed since deciding to focus on detachment and healing?

When comparing my past state of mind to my current one, what has changed in regard to how I view myself? How I view relationships/friendships? 

How has pushing myself being the best version of myself set me up for future relationships, friendships and generations (if I end up having kids)?

Spoiler alert: I can tell you now that you will realise that you have grown so much without even realising it. Seemingly behind your own back, you’ve become a self-aware, self-loving, no-sh*t-taking, confident powerhouse that would rather have all your toenails slowly extracted before even considering letting someone get away with disrespecting you ever again. You will realise that everyone currently in your life is there because you want them to be - not because you need them in any way. They’re there because they love and support you the way you deserve to be - but you know that if anyone was to act up, it’s curtains… because now you know that anyone that doesn’t consider your mental health and happiness important has no place in your life. And that’s on Tampax Compak Super Plus.

I want to end this post with a personal story from my own detachment process. As those of you that have been reading my blog for a long time know, one of the biggest reasons why I even started this blog in the first place was to have an outlet for my emotions and to help myself to heal after a bad breakup. 

When I say I thought I was going to die, I’m not even being dramatic or exaggerating. I legit thought that I would never be able to move past it, or get over him. Back then - despite having a decent background in psychology and understanding the importance of expressing my emotions - I chose to bottle things up (except for in therapy) and turned to unhealthy coping methods so I didn’t have to feel so much. I can’t lie… life was very sh*t, and I honestly struggled to see the point of even being alive anymore.

Fast forward about a year - I made the conscious decision to take responsibility for my healing and detachment, because I realised that holding on to someone that hurt me so badly wasn’t healthy. Deciding to let go of all the promises we made to each other, the memories and good times is hands down one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do, but I realised that just clinging onto the past just because of familiarity was not the one. Plus, at this point I had started to be able to admit to myself that the relationship was never as perfect as I had made it out to be in my head - making it easier and easier to gradually let go. I begrudgingly continued the healing and detachment process, winging it and hoping for the best.

Major time skip to just a few months ago - I’m literally just at home, chilling, minding my business. All of that. I went on the calendar app on my phone to check something, when it suddenly hit me that what would’ve been our seven year anniversary had passed a few days before… and I hadn’t even noticed. A date that used to mean so much to me and get me in my feelings just a year before, had now completely slipped my mind.

What’s more is that when I clocked it… I felt nothing. Nada. Zilch. And that’s when I fully realised how oblivious I had been to the bigger picture of my healing journey, because the sudden apathy towards a situation that really had me considering if life was even worth it anymore really came as a surprise. Even now, as I’m writing this and am clearly thinking about how dirty I got done… I feel nothing besides how proud I am of myself, and I love that for myself.

If I - THEE most sentimental, dramatic and emotional woman on the planet - can get there, trust me… you definitely can too. I had to figure out the “formula” for myself, but now that I’ve given it to you, you literally have no excuse for not letting that toxic and useless somebody hurt you anymore. Get to it! 

With that being said, I wish you a happy, stress-free, peaceful and self-loving 2021, because you deserve it. I can’t wait to share my new ideas with you in the new year, so I’ll see you on the oThEr SiDe.

Love,

Liv

[legobiwan]

I was the one who asked that last question about the light vs dark and i loved the answer you gave. I hope you don’t mind me asking another. What do you think makes the darkside so difficult to turn back from? Speaking from my own personal experience with mental illness (depression, anxiety, diagnosed anger issues. All of this from birth) in know that all those things can send a person to a very dark place. 1/

Not literally like with the force, but it can do that to anyone and it’s like doing a muscle man marathon to get out of it. It takes incredible strenth to dig yourself out of it and sometimes it’s easy to NOT want to get out of that suffering, painful state because you get so used to it. 2/

I subscribe to the idea that force sensitives constantly have enotions being filtered back at them, even their own which is why they all have to be in control of their their emotions, because if they let emotions like rage and hate and fear and pain and grief and all those things you frequently feel when dealing with those kinds of things, it gets reverted back at you and you are stuck in a cycle of all these negative things the dark side feeds on. 3/

Imagine dealing with all of that as a normal person and then having this echo chamber of it directed back at you and some, i’m guessing, semi-sentient dark side that feeds on that and tries to bring you down deeper. I think another part of it is 1.) Sunk Cost Fallacy and 2.) as you said about Anakin fir example: “well, i ate two cookies, might as well eat the whole bag”. 4/5

I’m sorry this turned out WAYY linger than i originally intended. I’d like to hear your thoughts (i always do) about maybe why the dark side is so hard to pull away from. 5/5

Oh hello again, friend! You ask such intriguing questions, thank you for stopping by!

First off, mental illness sucks and I am sorry that it is something you have had to contend with. I won’t profess to know exactly what you have gone through, but when I was a younger Lego, things got pretty dark for a while, so I do know of that bottomless pit to which you refer and the absolute wrenching struggle it is to dig one’s self out, tooth and nail.

Now, there are a few ideas at play in this question so I want to start with the idea you float about how Jedi feel emotions in the Force as a kind of feedback loop, make one or two detours before getting around to why it is so difficult to come back from the dark side.

“The Force is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us. It binds the galaxy together.”

Yoda basically lays out the Force for us in ESB, describing as an invisible energy field that for me, resembles the way we describe the energy between (and in-between) molecules. And subscribe to the theory that all sentient are at least a little Force-sensitive, if they are able to lower their own barriers enough to listen for that heartbeat, that rhythm and song of the universe (music of the spheres, in a way.) But for the Jedi, well, they are on a whole other level, and to my mind, that barrier I just referred to is a whole lot more permeable, no longer a dense, velvet curtain, but a gauzy, diaphanous veil separating two planes of existence - the one we know and some unseen dimension of energies made, if not visible in the strictest terms, visible to the mind’s eye by metaphor.

In this little scenario I have set up, then, let’s say our Jedi is happy. Simple happiness. If our reality is a glass of water, this one emotion is a drop of food coloring, let’s say green, which, when dripped into the water is coalesced around the focal point of the droplet (the droplet being the emotion within the Jedi) and then branching outwards with its tendrils, beyond the Jedi themselves. In this way, the Jedi can almost see their own emotion outside of themselves. But, of course, at some point, the food coloring will overtake the water and turn the entire glass green, in which case the Jedi has been subsumed by their own emotion unless they can erect some particular carriers around themselves. This, in Yoda’s words, would be control. (A vaguely problematic term that I will get to in a little bit.)

But without that barrier, it does become a bit of a feedback loop, the Jedi (or Sith) broadcasting an emotion which then clouds (aha!) everything around the Force-sensitive who can then feed off that cloud and repeat the entire cycle ad nauseum. And well, we know where that can lead. And so, in a way, that semi-sentient voice that is whispering poems of power, words draped in seductive scarlet into our Jedi’s ear is really their own voice, turned back on them, taking this outside form as a separate being because of this strange feedback loop.

The seeds of our own destruction - and salvation - lie wholly within us.

And so to escape the dark side’s pull, its suffocating cloud, one must, in a way, come out of themselves. Which is what leads us to the Jedi idea of detachment and control, to build that barrier which I referred to earlier, that space of nothingness where our green dye is repelled by that shadow of oxidation, where it can exist on the outside without feeding back, so one might be able to look at it as a scientist might - without passion.

Now, the thing is - and if I may go on a tangent for a moment - the Jedi, especially the Jedi we know during the Republic, refer to this too often for my taste as control, and prefer to totally bleach out any of the dye rather than observe from the outside. To my mind, the Order had become a bit polarized in the wake of Ruusaan Reformation, eager to stamp out any bit of dark side rather than to acknowledge each being’s duality - something Yoda himself rally only came to when he had his adventures with the Force priestesses. It also explains, to a degree, why he is so laissez-faire in The Last Jedi - finally, he has come to true balance, and knows that the universe swings on a pendulum of energy, that light and dark will settle and unsettle again. I know TLJ gets a bad rap in some circles, but I personally adore the way they approached Force philosophy and the Jedi, because balance, to the Republic Jedi - was good, good only. Which is why it was referred to as control.

But seeking control in a universe where we can never control, ultimately, is an of fear, which leads to anger, and etc. 

However, your question is not about the foibles of the Jedi Order, but rather the dark side. Let’s take Anakin as an example. Anakin falls prey to his worst tendencies (and he is powerful in the Force, his connection with that other plane perhaps too strong, his ability to influence it unprecedented but also that open conduit making him more susceptible to everything I mentioned above.) He’s angry, he’s upset, and he turns that first on himself and then takes that fear and turns it on others, burning down the outer world with his inner. But he saves Luke. A fantastic act, but only a single act. Does one life saved balance out the atrocities of the previous twenty years? 

To my mind, no. It’s like those studies they’ve done on reform, where it is often found that behavior changes before mindset. Meaning Anakin has to go through the motions before he is truly redeemed. That, to my mind, is one of the hardest parts, because you can’t just flip a switch and say, hey, I’m light now! Look at Ventress - it took her a while just to get to morally grey and she wasn’t nearly as full-fledged dark as Anakin got. Look at Dooku, who started out grey and through his actions, through his own need for control, fell further and further until he walked right into his own demise. (And this is astounding for a man so intelligent.)

Note, I’m not even touching on that unearthly drug, adrenaline, that anger can unleash, sparking up all those dopamine receptors and as a Force-sensitive, this is only going to be multiplied by a thousand. It’s probably like doing hard drugs and there’s a reason they say the dark side is addictive. And we all know addiction is one hell of a beast to fight, that even in the throes of anger, the hangover must be brutal, emotionally and to give that up to turn light? 

Not easy. Not easy to do alone and the problem is as a Sith you have basically pushed everyone else away so who going to be your support if you even want to recover? (Note how Dooku was always trying to connect with his students. It says something.) And you know, if Anakin hadn’t died on the Death Star, despite everything, I think he would have had the best chance at redemption because Luke would have been there. It would have been a terrible, exhausting experience for all involved (not to mention Leia, who did not have Luke’s soft spot for her biological father, and for very good reason.)

Although after going on about all of this, I will say that from an author’s perspective, exploring a character’s fall and struggle is such an opportunity, narratively. But then again, I love to joke that writing is cheaper than therapy :D 

[yuliethebold]

Something I've not seen talked about nearly, NEARLY, enough -

I love Batman. I adore the Comics, love every movie, am crazy for the animations and buy a lot of the merch. Batman is a part of my life I will never quite part from, and a series I absolutely love.

Batman, as in Bruce Wayne, however, can pretty much go fuck himself.

Now, see, Every DC character gets a little unstable from time to time - a product of the myriad of different writers in charge of any given Character, and their many different visions for that said character. One of the most interesting characteristics of the New 52 Continuity in regards to Batman is the bigger featuring of the BatFam, as we call it - at least for me. We have more scenes like that Diner scene, or like in Robin Eternal, and so it goes.

So , here's the issue - Batman is a Shit Parent.

He's had shitty moments in the past - God knows he has. But it was more inconsistent, back before the Flashpoint Reboot, as most things were; sometimes he was a good dad to Damian, sometimes he hit Dick in the jaw. We can kind of forgive the character for it because of that - those moments of shittyness usually faded out and he was back to being a stoic shit, which isn't good but is better.

In the New Continuity, however, that's kind of a Characteristic of Bruce. Hear me out here.

Now, to Damian, he fluctuates between Good and Bad with a capital B - it's very clear be loves the boy, as demonstrated by his reaction to his Death, but he's also emotionally weird. Still, comics like SuperSons further prove that he's a decent father to Damian, usually.

I won't get much into Dick, because I haven't had much exposition to their interactions in the new Continuity - my fault, I suppose - but I can't remember any particular drama between them, so he gets a pass for this one---

Aaaand then he hit Tim Drake. In the face. For literally no good reason - they weren't in an actual physical fight and Timothy didn't taunt him, he was angry and took it out on the son who was questioning him. Sound creepy? Yeah, I thought so.

Hell, all of their interactions have been weird - A point further proven by the distinction between Bruce's reactions to Damian's death and Tim's fake death. Just putting it out here.

There's no excuse for hitting your child - and what he did to Timothy is different than what he did to Jason, because, with Jason, they were at least actually fighting, but Timothy wasn't. Timothy had never actually done anything wrong - which still wouldn't justify shit - and Bruce still punched him.

And to Jason - He took him back to Ethiopia and pushed him about his Brutal Murder when he was like 15 for no good reason and proceeded to be an absolute asshole about it, he treats Jason like shit at most - Oh, he's being nice,,, wait, RHATO 25, he beat his son half to death when he was barely fighting back. "Harder than you beat the Joker" or something.

I can't even tell Lobdell to go fuck himself for being a shit writer for that, because, unfortunately, that's kind of In Character for this iteration of Bruce Wayne. You got away THIS TIME, Lobdell.

And then there's the hug after Roy Harper died, but that doesn't mean absolute shit because the next time he sees Jason he's being an - admittedly justified at that point - asshole, and then he calls Jason for help in the Leviathan case only to mcfucking attack him and accuse him of being Leviathan, without any actual evidence, while hiding behind the great justification of "You did it for Roy Harper, you don't even know you're doing it", because yes, that just screams "Reasonable" and "World's Greatest Detective."

At this point, we can't just say " oh (x) is a bad writer for this". This is consistent. This is an actual characteristic of Bruce's at this point, and though we can all hate the direction that was taken with Bruce by DC's team, it's about time people stop ignoring that about this iteration of Batman or trying to justify every shit thing he did.

If you don't like what he did, make an AU or stick to a different iteration of Bruce, but this is how the Post-Flashpoint Batman is as a character and person.

[ganymedesclock]

Clockie unpacks: Team Sincline

Well, okay, here it is, it’s time to talk about it.

So, I went through a lot of emotions with season 8. Some of them were disappointment. Some of them were anger. Some of them were happiness, and, some of them were a kind of relief.

The first is the realization that I’ve been kind of putting the show on an idealized pedestal. At first, that was easy- a lot of its issues were minor and easily overlooked in the face of what was overwhelmingly a lot of good. And even in its ending, it did a lot of good.

But it also did some not so good, and some genuinely frustrating.

And that’s okay. I think ultimately, the verdict is I still like Legendary Defender. It’s been the kicking-off point to get me heavily into the other Voltron continuities and I think out of the continuities I’ve encountered it’s still by far leader of the pack. It did its job getting me to care heavily about all of these characters and a total clown show with no redeeming qualities would not have done that.

That said, it definitely has lobbed the ball right into that particular intense alley where with enough to make me love it, it also has enough to frustrate me and get my little rewriting goblin fingers trembling up a storm, which is about what I’ve been doing in private with my friends since s8 dropped- lots and lots and lots of AUs.

I’m going to be titling and tagging all of these “Clockie Unpacks S8″- specifically referring to me unpacking my thoughts and emotions on the show. This is obviously not meant to be taken as an unbiased judgment from on high, just a dude in his kitty pjs and at some point, other clothes, blogging about cartoons. Also, fair warning, this is gonna have some undertones of bitterness to it; again, I still love the show, but there’s quite a few things they did I am really not wild about.

With that introduction, let’s kick things off. The first topic I’m picking is really, really predictable, because it’s my favorite goshdang characters.

Team Sincline: Ezor, Axca, Lotor, Narti, and Zethrid. Admittedly, this is going to be looking at them from s3 to the end of the show, so, it’s gonna have a lot more than just s8 in it, but, with the show concluding, I want to talk about what I loved and what I didn’t.

The frustrating thing about Team Sincline is that I can go back all the way to s3 and tell that these guys were not intended to make it.

The Lack of Curiosity

Even when we were clearly given the screentime and focus to relate to them, to want them to win, to want them to do well, a certain amount of onscreen attention is not given to how they’re obviously struggling. We know they’re struggling. Their entire thing is they’re a group of disenfranchised minorities within the empire. They act like people who are all quietly used to being desperate, to making cutthroat decisions, from Acxa stonefaced gunning down Lotor (which, sorry, that, was not an act,) to Lotor ultimately getting frustrated at the paladins because he knows it was bad to hurt the colony Alteans, the morality of the action is besides the point, the point is if you didn’t want the cutthroat solution to the problem you shouldn’t have left him in charge, and don’t you show up passing judgment with all of your better resources and actual support after he’s already done the hard work the brutal way-

But as long as they’re Sincline, we just see them in sharp uniforms. We never see Lotor outside of his nice uniform, actually, except when he’s a child.

Lotor has a crew besides the generals, but, we never hear who they are. We just assume a significant part of the empire followed him into exile, even when in practice, we can assume the two fleets Acxa dismissively sets up to be bait for Voltron in s3e3 weren’t any of theirs. Are these more half-galra? Why would they wear standard imperial uniforms? There’s so many questions about how Lotor got half the resources he did, and where he got them, considering he was so obviously cut off from support and holding colonies. If he did obtain other territories for fiscal support, why didn’t he or the generals run to any of them when things went downhill?

The generals themselves have no backstory. Sure, there are implications- all the parallels drawn between Acxa and Keith-

(though Krolia’s comment in s6e2 that Keith was the most important thing to her would seem a bit condemning to the idea she had another child, unless she somehow assumes her daughter is dead, and is thus excluding her on those grounds, much like she would exclude her husband who she knows is dead- likewise, Keith never sees a second child, unless Acxa was born afterwards, meaning Krolia was pregnant when she left and was unaware, which might explain why she didn’t return to Earth to leave Acxa behind, if her pregnancy was only discovered once she was already undercover and there wasn’t an easy way to make the baby disappear back to Earth where she’d be safe)

-there’s Kythra which is brought up as a setting and Te-Osh openly shoved in our faces so we can see how obvious it is Zethrid is galra-kythran, a connection that never appears to go anywhere, not with Te-Osh, and not with Kythra as a planet. We don’t even seem to have any more Kythrans in the coalition even though they help Pidge in her search in s4e2.

There’s Ranveig’s superweapon, which, especially in the technopathy it manifests, strongly resembles Narti and makes it pretty likely where she came from.

And there’s one of the pirates in s7 and s8 who’s seemingly the same galra-unknown that Ezor is, possibly a relative of hers.

But these stories aren’t explored. I’m not saying we needed full backstory episodes from all of them- runtime is limited (although, frankly, why would you introduce these characters and never go into who they are)- but we needed something. Hell, if nothing else, it would’ve been nice to mention and acknowledge Narti’s existence sometime after s4. She became something to condemn Lotor over, and, then, everyone forgot about her, evidently; the paladins never ask about that one with no eyes that gave them so much trouble, they never even have to face or deal with her incredible power.

And especially when we discover Kova was basically Lotor’s only childhood friend, this should have massively recontextualized his relationship with Narti that he would give Kova to her as her attendant. It should’ve meant something serious and concerning that he would just leave Kova behind without a second thought even if we somehow have assumed that Lotor wouldn’t grieve Narti.

Frankly, it should have meant something serious that he’d cut Narti down in the first place, but we have so little answers on how Haggar was able to affect Narti. Yes, we can speculate, especially about the riftbugs and Ranveig’s superweapon, but the thing is, this plot hole shouldn’t be here where we as an audience need to fill it. Did Lotor assume Narti was a willing traitor? Has Haggar done this to him before? Could she have killed Narti on her own?

These questions aren’t answered. And, as a result, the dissolution of Team Sincline feels kind of contrived.

Why did they fall apart?

In s3, it’s clear the Generals are completely trusting of Lotor. Even when that’s called into question, they clearly miss him and want him back. Before s4e3, it seems like nothing’s taboo or uncomfortable for them; and four for four, these are cautious, smart, calculating people. They do not trust blindly. As far as VLD’s own rules about solidarity, trust, and open emotional exchange, Team Sincline does everything right in its first season.

Lotor is emotionally transparent to the generals. Not just in the sense of which plans he tells them about in detail and involves them in the formation of (the majority of them) but that he makes his entire thought process clear to them, to the point that in many ways, they’re comfortable and confident in their ability to read Lotor.

The times that they’re unable to read him, and are shocked by his behavior, frankly doesn’t even work as a contrast to this- because when Lotor surprises them, it’s because these sentiments genuinely are coming out of left field.

The Lotor that screams he’s going to get rid of all of the galra is not talking about a long-term plan, and this is pretty obvious given how earlier in the exact same season, he pulls this face when Allura talks about how they need to protect occupied galra planets. Keep in mind this is Allura- someone who Lotor unambiguously admires and adores.

Keep in mind Allura’s heroic and compassionate nature is pretty clearly one of the things Lotor admires about her. 

This is a guilty reaction. This is someone who’s agreeing with Allura’s assessment that they morally have to respond to the Omega Shield- whose objection against it was not that he didn’t want to, but that he suspected it was a trap.

If Lotor’s endgame goal was to make the Alteans into an army and use them to kill the galra, none of his behavior makes any sense. However, if that was never Lotor’s endgame goal but something he landed on in a combination of desperation and power high because he’s been kicked so many times in his ability to trust that frankly the idea that just getting rid of everyone so he can finally, finally stop feeling personally betrayed by everything he gets close to starts to look like an appealing option- makes total sense to his behavior.

And I can’t fault Ezor for being scared of that side of him once it rears its head. Lotor’s breakdown at the end of s6 is not pretty at all, and after Narti’s fate, the generals are all unsure whether or not the Lotor they know is real (though we as an audience have all the evidence it is) or if he’s just been a very successful conman. They’re all, as much as he is, vulnerable people in a bad bargaining position. They’re all going to be anxiously hypervigilant that they weren’t just suckered by someone they felt like they could trust for years.

I can’t blame Acxa and Allura for talking about him the way they do.

I can blame the narrative, however, for giving them those words, for giving them those situations, that response, and never challenging it.

In s8, we do a lot of mooning over Lotor’s fate. In s8 we’re given the most sympathetic flashbacks to Lotor’s lifetime of abuse, neglect, and how many times his legs were basically cut out from under him, how many times he lost everything and had to start over from scratch at Zarkon’s whim, and all the scar tissue that built up psychologically for him.

However, all that s8 mooning is exclusively for Honerva’s benefit. Lotor’s long gone, and they went out of their way to show us, grotesquely, exactly how far gone and not coming back he is. The generals aren’t there. The main time Lotor talks is as a puppet for the riftbug playing on Allura’s lingering guilt and lost love.

This is pretty significant considering Sincline- the symbol of this team, the unity of what they could accomplish together- is stolen by Honerva, puppeted, and then assimilated into her machine.

The feeling is these people were conceived in s3 specifically to be disposed of. They were born to die. Their downfall was planned from the start, and that is the explanation for the lack of curiosity.

I’ve seen the argument raised that they’re supposed to contrast Voltron in terms of their dissolution but if you want to explore a failed team in contrast to our heroes... we already have that, perfectly tailored to the role in a way that Sincline is not remotely. A team whose failure is written in the stars from the moment we clap eyes on them, and whose downfall moves enormous pieces of the plot:

The paladins of old.

If we really wanted to write a drama about the dissolution of Team Voltron, they were right there. We know before we meet Gyrgan, Trigel, and Blaytz that all of these people are dead. We even get to see them in the finale. And they’re, of the three groups of paladins we see, the ones who aren’t underdogs. They were sovereigns of occupied planets. They were confident, bold, enthusiastic about the future and they had very little to fear.

There’s stories to tell there, but, ultimately, they’re the least compelling- what makes them interesting is that sense of a forgotten golden age, the way they were lost to time, and lost to Zarkon’s ambition.

Conversely, Team Sincline is basically a group of vulnerable minorities holding onto each other in the dark. Even when they’re introduced confidently and dramatically...

...We see them stealing around central command like thieves. When they move publicly, they move together; when they talk, it’s lurking around in darkened corners, privately discussing how their duplicity of the larger empire is going well.

These are vulnerable people. Even at the top of their game, they cannot afford making their sentiments open publicly. And even in public, Lotor’s speech to the empire is all about its maltreatment of minorities. It’s all about the underside of their boot, and the people ground into dust beneath it, because it’s a defining characteristic of Lotor, and of the generals, that they are the people who’ve been under the empire’s boot this entire time. They contrast the paladins and Allura as people who’ve been heavily affected by the empire’s cruelty, but largely, distantly, or in ways that did not define their life from the cradle. Even Shiro, who was actually brought into the empire’s hierarchy, only endured that hell for a single year before Ulaz rescued him and got him out of there, and he had a stable childhood and supportive environment to get him through it.

Team Sincline has nothing but each other. And then, starting with s4e3, we see them lose that. Peeled away, layer by layer by layer, as they get more miserable, more desperate, and continue stealing, continue bartering, losing more and more as they keep trying to find some way to make it work because these are people who’ve learned a long time ago their tears are meaningless and the only comfort they have is what they can find in the cracks.

There’s really nothing interesting about their downfall. It’s just sad. And frankly the reason why I was so sure this was going to turn around was the sense that they can’t just leave it like this. They wouldn’t just kill Narti with no saving grace and leave her body there in a way that doesn’t affect the plot at all, even to the end that they want it to- that she could easily have just been there with the other generals and parted ways with Lotor when they did. They wouldn’t just have Lotor lose all his friends one more time. They wouldn’t just take all of this amazing room to grow and explore these characters and flush it down the toilet to achieve basically nothing.

And? If I’m honest? They did.

3/5ths of a happy afterthought

I initially thought people were kidding when they said The Grudge looked like they planned for Ezor to have died in s7e3 and Zethrid perish in an attempt at revenge but oh boy howdy. Sure there could be innocent reasons they didn’t have Kimiko Glenn there in s8- it’s not like all the times they’ve changed Acxa’s VA mean they were planning to off her- but everything about that episode makes what I dismissed as a conspiracy theory sound a lot more plausible.

Zethrid is not a vengeful person. We see from as early as her first appearance that she has a soft spot for small animals and children. She can be talked down from killing people very easily, she likes to fight but talks up fighting worthy opponents- she’s happiest cutting her teeth against something big and strong like her that can hold its own.

Her motivation is also, overwhelmingly, that of a Yellow Paladin. There’s a reason she’s so clearly Hunk’s counterpart. “I will always protect you, Ezor.” We can actively see in s7e3 that when the blast goes off, Zethrid tries to shield Ezor with her own body. 

The heartbroken Zethrid we see in The Grudge, not quite taking care of herself, full of anger and bitterness and down to just wanting to make someone else hurt as much as she is- really could only have happened logically if Ezor had died. If Zethrid had felt like she’d failed as a protector for the last time, and was hitting a similar wall to Lotor himself- where after so many people dying or otherwise being lost she just couldn’t take it any more and gave up on trying.

In her post- grudge negotiations with the team, Zethrid is levelheaded and calm. Before being reunited with Ezor, she just looks empty and tired.

The person who’s always been the vindictive one is Ezor, and I don’t say that to demonize Ezor and depict Zethrid as saintly.

Ezor has an obvious edge to her, and, out of Team Sincline, she’s also the one who voices the most doubts and fears. She talks about the fun in torturing someone, and, behind the scenes, she also talks about being personally terrified that they’re going to be hunted down. She’s the one basically panicking as soon as Narti’s body hits the floor, she’s the one who’s anxious at Acxa shooting Haggar (“did you kill her?”)

Ezor is a brittle person- a lot of broken edges and anxiety. This is why The Grudge seems like an odd reversal in roles. If anyone would get overly preoccupied with getting even to the point of losing sight of themselves, it’d be Ezor. If anyone would be the person willing to bargain with enemies because this has gone too far and they’re scared of something going wrong and happening to hurt the other person, it’d be Zethrid. Zethrid who’s always defined herself as Ezor’s protector.

Now, again, being fair, it really does seem like they were backing off from a version of The Grudge that featured a dead Ezor and Zethrid either going to die or simply give up and remain in custody afterwards. But again, it comes back to this sense that Team Sincline suffers a huge amount in a way that doesn’t seem to narratively accomplish much or be particularly meaningful.

When the timeskip happens, Acxa and Matt grow their hair out. Earth builds its way up to a superpower on the footing with other planets and fights Sendak for survival.

Zethrid loses an eye and Ezor an entire leg, which s8 chases with a disfiguring scar for Zethrid and a missing eye for Ezor, too.

Now, I’m all for disability representation. Thing is, if that’s the angle they were going for, they could have started Team Sincline out with these grievous injuries. Hell, you could argue there’s potential evidence Ezor’s had a prosthetic leg all along- after all, in s5e2, she’s able to parry Shiro’s laser prosthetic with her leg and it would contextualize a lot of her fearful attitude and that she’s both romantically and in other ways drawn to Zethrid, who’s probably the warmest and most protective person out of Team Sincline.

As far as an “afterthought”.... Acxa sort of fades into the background in many ways after she starts working with the paladins. Someone who has been incredibly driven, who most clearly seems to follow Lotor out of a sense of higher purpose and something to believe in became a drifter who shows up to help the paladins and then wanders off to the coalition. She doesn’t even accompany them to Earth to help with the journey.

And then there’s their scene in the aftermath. Ultimately, the three surviving members of Team Sincline take their scars and injuries and join the Blade. They become Keith’s subordinates. Is this satisfying for them? Unsatisfying? Hard to say, since we know very little about their past and motivations. Zethrid probably likes taking care of people, but, is this the way she’d want to do that?

Narti stays dead. Maybe she somehow picked herself up, made an Altean suit, cut her tail off and became Matt’s helmeted girlfriend, but, considering how much of a ridiculous speculative long shot that is, I’m not going to cite that to canon’s credit.

Lotor stays dead, and, much like Narti’s death- so much of what led up to Lotor’s demise is rather poorly explained. We don’t know why Lotor harvested the colony, or what his intentions were, or if he planned to heal the podded Alteans, or even how Bandor escaped. With so many unknowns on the table, and so many things left open, we’re left feeling unsatisfied- like, maybe this whole thing could have been avoided, maybe the response was reasonable, we just get the shock- either of Lotor killing Narti or the sight of the lab- and then we’re urgently bustled forwards without analyzing the situation.

Not only that, but his afterlife ghost passed up Allura- his love- and Alfor- his personal hero- to have a loving heart to heart with both of his abusers.

Here’s the thing. Honerva never apologized. She said ‘he deserved better’ after having spent centuries watching him suffer and not just sitting on her hands but actively making it worse. Honerva, the one who has so much to say about her own suffering, has no possible way she could’ve been unaware of Lotor’s misery and the effect she was having on it. No matter what Being Haggar did to her, which seems largely a factor of disorientation and amnesia, you shouldn’t need to remember that baby came out of your body before you care at all that the person it grew up into has just lost everything while you sit there and watch, having more than enough power to stop this.

Zarkon never apologized to Lotor.

Neither of them made amends. Neither of them did anything that warranted Lotor being kind to them.

Neither of them even needed him for their happy ending. He was frankly just a possession to them. Honerva only ever even seems to consider Lotor’s own feelings at a point when Allura forcibly shows them to her. If we wanted Honerva to be welcomed warmly when she steps into the light, you could easily have had Zarkon waiting for her- because Zarkon loved her, because it would give her life a cyclic sense of closure from how we see in s3e7, that Zarkon and Haggar began what happened to them hand in hand, together, and they could end the same way.

We know for a fact Zarkon would be happy to see her. This is even further vindicated in the “happy family” alternate reality- Zarkon’s the one who’s ready to take this woman in as his lost wife with open arms, while Lotor is the one holding back, wary, anxious, “that’s not my mother.”

The only reason that’s unacceptable to Honerva is because Honerva doesn’t want to respect Lotor’s feelings, she wants Lotor to flatter hers. She has major entitlement problems to Lotor, and the finale makes him a prop for her welfare.

That ‘walk into the light’ scene could have been a lot more palatable if they’d simply put Lotor on Alfor’s other side, and had Zarkon alone doing the sweet hand clasp with Haggar.

But that’s our last note on Lotor- the idea that he’s going to be spending whatever afterlife they have here with his abusers. Lotor didn’t get anything he wanted. 

And Narti? We don’t even know what she wanted, just that she trusted Lotor, and that somehow, when Team Sincline does trust, it leads to their total dissolution. Sincline itself is gone, having never once actualized. Lotor’s dead, Narti’s dead, and Haggar went ahead and murdered Kova.

The three survivors firmly set that chapter of their life behind them, discarded the Sincline uniforms, became Blades, and, evidently, spent the rest of their lives handing out relief packages to war-torn planets.

I don’t want to take a dump on relief workers here. Humanitarian work is beautiful and important and heroic. But in practice, how they framed it in that show is an afterthought. They’re not suffering but what they’re doing doesn’t really have a sense it’s personally meaningful to them.

I might be unsatisfied with some of the endings VLD did for its main characters, but at least they’re recognized as heroes and get to stay together, or, in the one area that’s not the case, say goodbye and be remembered fondly. But I think Team Sincline absolutely got the rawest deal here, and that’s on a list that includes Alfor, Gyrgan, Trigel, and Blaytz being frozen as corrupted mindscape ghosts for ten thousand years.

Additional Notes: Sincline-Adjacent Figures

I mentioned Lotor’s crew earlier, and, the thing is, there’s a perfect answer within canon for who Lotor’s crew beneath the generals could have been.

What highly diverse group of people,

(because Lotor would put his money where his mouth is in more ways than just with the generals)

Would Lotor logically find at the edge of the universe,

(because he had to have built these forces in exile and without imperial support, since he has them at his disposal at the beginning of s3)

Who would be immediately ready and willing to double-cross and otherwise raise merry hell on the empire, to the point of building rift gates and comet ships behind their back,

(because a single person willing to barter what they knew for a pardon could have fucked up Lotor’s entire operation spectacularly)

Who would also be a pool of talent untapped by the empire so Lotor feasibly could get at least some of the best pickings,

(because you don’t want an uneducated clown putting your interreality gate together)

Who would be an interesting and colorful cast of characters to play off of, and loud and rambunctious because they’re not career soldiers, even if they are career fighters-

(thematically contrasting the regimented and heavily classist, stratified empire)

Who would also thematically lend themselves very well to Lotor’s hit-and-run, evasive, deceptive, adaptive underdog tactics?

A group of people who have traditionally been the enemies of the entrenched government and who have often been minorities?

Pirates.

Pirates exactly like the ones who without any explanation for where they came from, were working for Ezor and Zethrid after the timeskip. Pirates who had their own custom uniforms as if they had some reason to have a sense of decorum. Pirates who are already full of interesting and memorable characters like the nosering pirate, Blofar, the armored giant Coran faced, and the smart-aleck Olkari technician.

Lotor literally talks about desegregating the imperial fleet and recruiting people based on the merit of their skills and not how galra they are back in s3e1. And yes, as a half-galra himself employing four other half-galra, it’s not like he’s a hypocrite about that- but it feels like a serious oversight to just give him the standard imperial-armored subordinates and drones.

The pirates should have been Lotor’s crew. They should have been there from the start playing off the generals and off of Lotor, and that would have helped us flesh out Lotor and the generals so much more. Yes, you’d have to make some adjustments to scenes like s3e2′s fighter ship battle to make it clear they were drones and not imply the paladins just massacred a likable bunch of rag-tag pirate antiheroes but all that would take is some acknowledgement that Sincline, like the empire, uses drone-piloted fighter ships.

Hell, it’d give a sense in s3 besides Zethrid’s offhanded reference of pilots going into the rift in s3e4 (presumably also drones since Lotor has no reason to waste manpower and try loyalties making them throw themselves fatally at a rift) that Lotor and the Generals aren’t just doing what they do in an empty ship.

And you know who else could’ve been there?

Ven’tar.

Sure, her people were massacred and her planet burnt to pieces by Zarkon and that was significant to Lotor character-wise- it marked the decisive, keening death of his intention to appease his parents and try to work with them- but Ven’tar could’ve also have taken significance and motivation from that going forwards. it’s her planet, her people, and, it would make it feel a lot less dismissively killed off.

There was someone Lotor trusted leading the “secret team” constructing the inter reality gate. Someone who’d know things about Quintessence, who would again have a grudge on the empire.

I’m saying, rather than a lost lenore, you could make Ven’tar Lotor’s bitter chief engineer. Sure you’d need some explanation for how she’s still alive but this setting has been basically handing out immortality like candy to a bunch of its secondary cast but I feel like they could narratively find a reason for Ven’tar to be alive.

While we’re at it, you could also have had Dayak there (the one from s6, not the slightly inexplicable other one from s8 given the entire way Lotor introduces s6 Dayak never once implies that the word “Dayak” is not a name, which, the best explanation I’ve heard for that one is that “Dayak” is a surname and the s8 one is the s6 one’s sister) since she’s so obviously enthusiastic about Lotor taking the throne and standing by him, there’s not really a reason she’d hide out until it was safe and then fair-weather return to Lotor’s side when she’s such an aggressive and forwards person about her opinions and what she stands for.

There’s so much to work with, here. We could have explored so much of this. They put this tantalizing information on the table, and, then, just sort of pushed it to the floor without considering it.

[bthump]

This is the essay I wrote for @berserk-zine Memory Fragments, which can be ordered in hardcopy or digital here. If you have the means it’s well worth checking out.

Like Lightning

In the Golden Age, Guts and Griffith’s narratives centre around the conflicts between their respective dreams and their relationship with each other. Their dreams are self-destructive ways of coping with deep-seated issues while their relationship is shown to have the potential to heal and emotionally strengthen them. The Golden Age is a tragedy entirely because neither man recognizes the significance of their relationship until it’s too late - they turn to their dreams instead of each other, which leads them directly to the Eclipse.

Guts’ issues stem from his abusive childhood. Gambino’s neglect and emotional abuse left Guts craving attention, affection, and respect.

“But wandering the battlefields made me realize... that wouldn’t do me any good in tryin’ to survive. It was just somethin’ of a childish complaint. Even so... incidentally... I found someone I really wanted... to have look at me.”

That person is Griffith, a boy who delivers a thoughtful personality analysis after observing one fight, who specifically tells Guts that he wants him, and who risks his life for him after knowing him for only one week.

Three years after they meet, they encounter Zodd together. Gambino selling Guts to Donovan left him with trust issues, and killing Gambino in self-defence added guilt and self-loathing to his collection of emotional scars. This scene with Zodd is a powerful reminder of these aspects of Guts’ childhood, with a much more positive outcome which solidifies Griffith’s place in Guts’ life. Griffith is someone who can fulfill his emotional needs in ways his last family, Gambino, never did.

Miura uses strong, consistent imagery to illustrate fear: bright eyes in an indistinct, towering form, and huge, grasping hands. These images recur constantly in Guts’ nightmares and flashbacks, during apostle fights, several times during the first Zodd encounter in particular, and chronologically we first saw these images when Donovan entered Guts’ tent, and again when Gambino told Guts that he sold him.

Donovan was the first monster Guts killed, and the impression Zodd makes on Guts is deliberately reminiscent of him for the purpose of drawing a life-changing contrast: while Gambino sold him to a monster, Griffith risks his own life to save him from the monster.

When Guts asks him why, Griffith’s answer is that he did it for Guts. “Do I need a reason each time I put myself in harm’s way for your sake?” Now that Griffith has proven that he values Guts as a person over and above even his dream by very nearly dying for him, Guts feels the respect and love which he has craved since childhood. With someone at his side who will face the monsters with him, he is finally ready to replace one family with another and begin to heal from his trauma and guilt.

This is the purpose of the scene on the rooftop, when Guts reflects on the night he killed Gambino, contemplates that the same bright full moon is shining down on him now, and dedicates his sword to Griffith as an answer to the question he asked back when he was eleven: “where am I going?” He finally feels like he may have found the place where he belongs.

And then he accidentally kills a kid and overhears a speech and it all goes to hell.

After the assassination Guts hits his head, falls unconscious, and has a dream: as a child he watches a monstrous figure kill Gambino, and then run Guts through with a sword. The figure represents both Donovan and Zodd, as it’s essentially the Donovan-esque monster from Guts’ nightmare in chapter 13 with some additional Zodd detailing, and its face is revealed to be Guts’ own.

Flooded with reminders of his traumatic childhood and feeling like a monster after killing Adonis, Guts seeks Griffith out, presumably in the hope that Griffith can provide the same feeling of being valued and respected that he felt after Zodd, to counter his self-loathing. Instead he hears a pretentious monologue about a dream which just nails that self-loathing into place and, primed by years of neglect and abuse, he’s readily convinced that Griffith looks down on him after all, the same way Gambino always had. So, taking Griffith’s speech to heart, Guts decides he needs his own dream.

And the dream he eventually lands on is to swing his sword as much as possible.

Guts’ sword is his method of emotional repression and his original defense mechanism.

We see this same sentiment when he jumps to Casca’s defence after brooding on Griffith’s speech: “Anyone will do… I just feel like swinging this with all my might… until I can’t think about anything else.” We see him swing his sword as a distraction from his feelings during the hundred man fight, in his rage after the Eclipse, and eventually the notion of his sword as an escape from emotion becomes very literal with the berserker armour, which wipes away every feeling except bloodlust.

Guts falls back on his dream of challenging himself by “crossin’ swords with stronger and stronger enemies” when he loses trust in his relationship with Griffith and departs the Hawks, and again when he loses Griffith entirely in the Eclipse, as Griffith essentially sells him out to a hoard of monsters in a reversal of the affirming Zodd encounter and repeat of his childhood trauma.

The way Guts describes his dream neatly applies to the Black Swordsman arc, and to hammer that point home the Promrose Hall speech that inspired his dream flashes to his mind when he makes his war declaration after the Eclipse. This ties Guts’ dream to his emerging inner monster, the Beast of Darkness, and we see the attitude of emotional repression that brings it out in statements like, “I’ll take my urge to kill… and black everything else out.”

When Griffith risked his life to save him from Zodd, Guts chose to wield his sword “for his sake.” After overhearing the Promrose speech, Guts chooses to wield his sword “for no one else’s sake.” This is the difference between finding comfort and strength in mutual trust and companionship with Griffith and the Hawks, and roaming the countryside as the lone Black Swordsman, swinging his sword and feeding his own inner beast. Griffith’s dream is associated with becoming a monster in as blatant a way as possible, but Guts’ dream also has that same self-destructive association, and both are a result of throwing away relationships to pursue those dreams.

Now, whereas Guts began with a positive relationship and replaced it with his dream, Griffith’s narrative has the opposite trajectory: he begins with a dream and Guts becomes a potential positive replacement for it.

We learn everything we need to know to understand Griffith’s dream when Casca tells Guts about her past. Griffith scratches his own arms bloody while claiming he feels no responsibility for the deaths of his followers, after prostituting himself to a sexual predator to prevent as many of those deaths as possible. This contradiction between words and actions tells us loud and clear that Griffith is driven by immense guilt and self-loathing - which we see when he asks Casca if he is dirty, and when he insists that he has to win “for the sake of the dead.”

Casca tries to comfort him but he turns around with a reassuring smile and says “I’m all right... It’s nothing,” blood dripping down his arms.

This tells us that Griffith constantly buries that guilt and self-loathing behind the image of a perfect leader. He can’t admit his true feelings even to himself, except in extremely rare moments of vulnerability, because it is absolutely necessary to maintain this image for the sake of his dream.

When Griffith achieves that dream, everyone who died will posthumously attain what they died for and every act that makes him feel dirty or cruel will be proven to have been worth it. To Griffith, the dream represents absolution. Success will absolve him of his guilt, assuage his self-loathing, and even justify his very existence, as implied in his words: “to be born and then to simply live for no better reason… I can’t abide such a lifestyle.”

After a second night of assassinations, Griffith asks if Guts thinks he’s cruel. This is an echo of asking Casca if he’s dirty, and it’s another chance to see himself anew through the eyes of someone else, someone aware of the harsh reality behind his image - the assassinations, Gennon, the intrinsic brutality of war - and who still sees him as “dazzling.”

Griffith clings to his dream as a defence against his self-loathing, but in this moment the dream is forgotten and he turns to Guts for the affirmation he needs instead. But Guts fails to reassure him, having already been taken in by the image Griffith projected during his Promrose Hall monologue. He reminds Griffith that cruelty is “part of the path to [his] dream,” implicitly and unintentionally confirming that he is cruel, and voicing Griffith’s own guilt-fueled justification for him - the same justification Griffith gave when he self-harmed in the river.

This is the moment the Godhand uses to finally convince Griffith to make the sacrifice, bury his heart, and become the monster he thinks Guts - of all people - knew him to be already.

The cruel irony of the Golden Age is that Guts and Griffith both respect, admire, and love each other, but they fail to realize that those feelings are returned, so they retreat to the emotional safety of their dreams. Guts pursues a dream of sword swinging because he believes that Griffith looks down on him, but, the very chapter after Guts waxes poetic about his dream to Casca, we learn that this is how Griffith really feels about him:

Conversely, Griffith believes that Guts sees him as cruel and that he wants to escape from him, when we know this is the real reason that Guts left the Hawks:

If Guts and Griffith had realized that their feelings for each other were mutual, they might have been able to heal from their inner demons by finding support and reassurance in each other - by having someone they trust and respect in their life who knows them and believes them to be worthy of love and respect in turn. They each try to reach out for emotional support from the other in moments of self-loathing, but both times dreams stand in the way.

So instead they return to those dreams, which help them bury their feelings and bring out the worst in them: Femto and the Beast of Darkness.

[daresplaining]

“Purple” Part 3: Several Matt Murdocks Walk into a Bar...

    As much as I dislike the ramifications of the Purple Children’s decision to “solve” Matt’s secret identity dilemma by making everyone forget it, the “Purple” arc that establishes this plot point is quite good. The progression of Matt’s feelings about having a public identity from where Waid left him to the present makes logical sense, and his struggles to figure out how to deal with his escalating problems in this new status quo make for an emotional read. The mind wipe was not his idea, and he has mixed feelings about it, which I appreciate.

    However, for the sake of this run overview, I wanted to highlight #19 in particular, which is a stand-out issue that works just as well as a one-shot as it does an integrated part of the run, and which showcases a vital and-- I think-- perfectly in-character element of Matt’s personality. 

    For this story we are back in Matt’s head, though the landscape of the place looks significantly different than it did in issue #8, thanks to the intrusion of the Purple Man. While Matt’s blindness has always given him a degree of protection against Purple Man’s specific brand of mind-control, in this story arc he has found a way to amp up the potency and reach of his powers by using his children. This issue follows what happens to Matt while under the Purple Man’s sway, and switches back-and-forth between the real world and Matt’s mind-controlled subconscious, which here takes the form of a rather unusual bar.       

    This issue is pencilled and inked by guest artist Marc Laming, who is one of my favorite artists to work on Soule’s run. His work is beautifully detailed and expressive, and he and colorists Matt Milla and Miroslav Mrva do a great job of depicting the many Daredevils (and a few of their significant others) from throughout the comic’s history who populate the bar. For anyone not up on their DD continuity, here’s a breakdown: 

    With one of his greatest nemeses now finally under his full control, the Purple Man is eager to have some revenge. But instead of inflicting his own flavor of  pain on Matt, he decides to take a more insidious approach: he asks Matt to name the worst thing he (Matt) could possibly imagine himself doing. Something repulsive, that would break him were he to actually carry it out. This becomes a topic of debate for the Matts in the bar, each of whom has their own answer.

“Man Without Fear” Matt: “You lose control. You put your hands on the people who can’t defend themselves. You let the darkness out. You hear the bones splintering. You smell the blood, the coppery, swampy blood. You know the exact moment their hearts stop.”

Public Identity Matt: “Easy there, friend. We’re all just trying to have a good time here. How about you get back over there and I’ll buy you a drink?”

“Man Without Fear” Matt: “Who the hell are you supposed to be?”

Public Identity Matt: “Oh, you know.”

    (Please note Public Identity Matt, Foggy, and Kirsten’s facial expressions in the first panel. They crack me up.)

    It’s not only fun, on a geeky level, to see all these different versions of the Daredevil identity fight interact with each other, but it’s also a great way of exploring the huge range of character development Matt has experienced-- which is something I’ve always loved about him. Matt’s mindset and approach to superheroing, and the tone of the stories, encompasses such a huge range that all of the Matts in the bar have slightly different personalities based on where he was, mentally, at the time. And it’s logical that all of these different perspectives and conflicting ideologies are still present in the back of his mind. Matt has always been a complex character, and this issue gifts us a visual representation of that. 

    Black Suit Matt’s presence here is worth pointing out, because he is the result of some messy continuity that has never been resolved. He’s from the Man Without Fear mini-series, which is Frank Miller and John Romita Jr.’s alternate universe re-imagining of Matt’s origin story. It’s much more brutal and violent than Stan Lee’s version, and features a shuffling of the timeline that resulted in Jack dying while Matt was still in high school. Despite the fact that it was not written as a retcon, writers on the main DD series were quick to integrate elements of MWF into 616 Matt’s backstory. But it wasn’t a complete reboot; Matt’s yellow costume is still considered his first by most writers (it’s even in this issue!), Jack still died while Matt was in college (...or law school), and so Black Suit Man Without Fear Matt exists in a strange limbo, not quite canon but still somehow part of the 616 universe. 

    But for the sake of this issue, it’s best to just not think about it too hard. Here, he represents the most violent side of Matt’s psyche, which inspires his first response to the Purple Man’s question: which is seemingly to kill Kirsten. 

Kirsten: “Matt! What are you... What are you doing? Why are you with the Purple Man?”

Purple Man: “Be patient, Kirsten the Girlfriend! You don’t want to spoil the surprise.”

Matt: “You know... no. This feels a little small. I mean, I’ve lost girlfriends before. This would be terrible, sure, but... been there, done that. I can do better. Or worse, actually.”

    ...PHEW. Fortunately, Matt talks himself out of it. 

    If the issue were longer, we might have heard all of the Daredevils’ ideas, but sadly we only get a few more. 

Yellow Suit Matt: “You’re making this too complicated. Keep it simple. Get back to your roots.”

Armored Matt: “Wrong, idiot! You’re not thinking big enough, Murdock. The worst thing needs to be... extreme.”

    Again, part of the entertainment value of this issue is seeing the different Daredevils react to each other, and Soule makes a point of pairing the chipper DDs with the, shall we say, less psychologically healthy ones. And it’s worth noting that the two solid answers to the Purple Man’s question that Matt comes up with are both put forth by his darker identities; as mentioned, Man Without Fear Matt is emotionally raw by design, and while the armored suit period in the 90s wasn’t actually, relatively speaking, that depressing, it was a reinvention of Daredevil that Matt intended to be violent and frightening. And it makes sense that these darker DDs would have an easier time dredging up worst case scenarios. Frankly, it’s surprising that Volume 2 Matt-- arguably the darkest DD of all-- didn’t jump into the conversation (but maybe he was too distracted by hanging out with Milla (see above), and who can blame him?). 

    It’s also clever that the whole discussion is mediated by the one Matt who isn’t a superhero: Matt the Lawyer (who isn’t blind, which is a little weird). While the Daredevils represent all of the bombastic chaos of Matt’s impulses and emotions, Lawyer Matt sorts through their answers from a slightly removed vantage point and tries to apply logic to them. He is the clever, analytical part of Matt’s mind, and I love that he essentially serves as the main character for this issue. 

    Armored Matt (actually, his civilian identity was Jack Batlin, if we want to be really precise about this) makes the requisite “extreme!” 90s comics joke-- which made me laugh out loud the first time I read this issue-- and that leads Lawyer Matt to figure out his final answer. He requests that the Purple Man create worldwide chaos using his newly enhanced powers. And from what Matt and the reader can tell, he does. And then Matt explains what he has in mind.  

Purple Man: “...Now what?”

Lawyer Matt: “Nothing.”

Purple Man: “Wait... what? Nothing?”

Lawyer Matt: “Yes. This is the worst thing. The entire world goes to hell, I know about it, I have the power to help, and I do... nothing.”

Purple Man: “WHAT?”

    Arguments can be made about whether this is the actual worst thing Matt can imagine himself doing. That’s kind of the point of the issue, and I’m sure the answer changes daily for Matt. But it fits, and brings him-- as Yellow Suit DD advises-- “back to [his] roots”. The Daredevil identity serves many purposes for Matt, but one of its main functions is as a tool of empowerment. Its initial purpose was to give him a way to avenge his father’s death without breaking his promise to not become a fighter. After growing up unable to defend himself from bullies, unable to use his training (once he acquired it) out in the open, and ultimately unable to protect the person who meant most to him, he put on a mask and gave himself an alias, and thereby empowered himself to break free of that cycle of helplessness. Losing that power is certainly one of his greatest fears, and so the idea of choosing to render himself useless would be horrifying to him. 

    This is also a theme of Soule’s run in particular. This arc deals with the deterioration of the wonderful life he built for himself, Kirsten, and Foggy in San Francisco-- a destruction that is partly his fault, and which he is powerless to stop. It leads to the Purple Children’s decision to make the world forget Daredevil’s secret identity-- a decision in what Matt had no say. In the arc before this, Matt nearly commits suicide because he was unable to stop Muse from blinding Sam. And of course, the final arc of the run-- “The Death of Daredevil”-- is all about powerlessness; Matt achieves a huge victory over the Kingpin, then realizes it was just a dream. But the lesson inherent in Soule’s run is that whether or not he wins, Matt will never choose to not fight. 

    This moment of clarity and self-awareness, and the realization that his worst nightmare is actually coming true and he needs to stop it, allows Matt to break free of the mind control. He kicks the Purple Man’s butt and saves the Purple Children, who repay him by “solving” his secret identity issues (Hey, at least they meant well. I love the Purple Children...) But regardless of the unfortunate outcome, this is a great battle of wills between Matt and one of his most dangerous enemies, and is definitely one of my favorite single issues of the run.  

[vibrationplate6-blog]

Group 5 Workout Intensity (Activating The Force Fueling SERIOUS Training Effort)

vibration platform Have a person ever possessed a exercise where you were therefore feverishly driven and required, you felt you could possibly, metaphorically, "burn a opening by way of steel"? Where the actual weights an individual used most workout extended felt "light" in your arms; while if the force going through you that transferred the weights totally out-matched the particular iron's "attempt" in order to defeat and exhaust anyone? Along with, it was seeing that if your muscles were being a conquest commanding file format of your will; that they executed, and contracted, with a levels seemingly above where many people ever acquired before -- the taking in intensity within moved typically the muscle you skilled in to an exertion patience wherever you could actually f-e-e-l often the deepest, underlying fabric currently being worked in any way you never experienced before... (and I indicate by no means! ).

vibration platform

Rep right after individual, set after arranged, you are a dominance exposure unit; your heart experienced as if it were invincible steel tube -- your nostrils as well as voice remained on supercharged intake amounts, feeding the actual machine the breathable oxygen this needed for sustained cure. And the degree involving magnitude brouille conquest energy pouring during your every soluble fiber moved that you push on your own with an inhuman fierceness - and compulsion -- that could only become branded by the plan "more : More rapid M-O-R-E! very well

Your cardiovascular system and inhaling rate get likely enhanced somewhat only by reading exactly what We've described so far. Precisely why? Because you're emotionally figuring out with an inner work out overall performance state I call up Class 5 Intensity. Really a level of inner power and strength so powerful and feverishly conquest influenced, it blasts you directly into sustained buff exertion ranges which persuade literal mega-size and actual physical strength improves!

CATEGORY five INTENSITY A Ultra-Success Making Workout Power

The You. S. meteorological service categorizes hurricanes structured upon their level, electrical power, and the wind rate their force generates and also sustains. Category 5 things literally carry torrential down pours, overpoweing wind speeds above 150 mph, and an electricity forcefulness, indeed, fierceness, which cannot be stopped, waived, or even impeded by any kind of manmade thing. It will certainly tear by any natural environment it reigns upon, along with will unleash the vehement fury in a detailed, terrain altering assault (seemingly a merciless assault via Hell). Literally, it may create its uncontestable mayhem -- uprooting, overwhelming, in addition to powerfully conquering every issue in its way.

The idea can, and will, produce it is relentless torrent because it remains along their earth scare tissue procession. Practically nothing remains unaltered by it has the wrath; every little thing impacted by simply its brutal fierceness is still changed... literally once and for all!

Woah! Just take a second to be able to catch your breath of air as well as think - genuinely think: Precisely how would your own workout efficiency and has a muscle physique exertion/contraction quantities change in the event that you began producing power at the Category a few level? What kind and also amount of energy would you actually generate along with sustain? Precisely what kind of muscular exercise levels would you generate in addition to sustain? What type of total, previously worked, greatest contractions would you provoke - through the beneficial as well as negative aspects connected with each repetition? What sort of mental toughness instructions and attitude forcefulness -- would you mobilize and also proceed fueled by? In fact... just what degrees of bodily increase, advancement, and muscle growth does one sense you would decisively activate?

I'll think your pulse rate, body temp, and breathing pace just simply elevated somewhat yet again, since you just considered the particular effect you'd produce via creating Category 5 level. Envision now what might happen when you truly start generating this training voltage!

BUILDING, SURGING, MAGNIFICATION, AMPLIFYING Moving Yourself For you to Make Category 5 Region Training Intensity

Uh, I am just hoping you're "interested" throughout how one can begin strengthening your current inside training force for you to much more extreme, and strong degrees? Ah; thought thus. Time to share, therefore, now present you a really specific, advanced process helping you to infamously produce this, along with create it when you educate.

[*Just recall, for some sort of instant, the TV graphics you found of natural disaster Katrina's Classification 5 strength bending enormous palm forest over to where these people looked like little couple of twigs willing to be snapped with half. At this point, you'll receive an even sharper impression of the command influence electric power Category 5 depth wields. And, what would certainly it appear like if this particular force were your own exercise routine fuel? How about this specific: Set after set, representative after rep - which has a gut wrenching compulsion : you're pushing, driving, looking -- feverishly exerting a lot more intensely, more fiercely, in fact, more indomitably FEROCIOUSLY! Hey there - can you take care of that?! I think a person CAN!! ]

Mobilizing Type 5 Intensity In Anyone [First, read through the below process in its whole. After that, apply exactly while outlined. ]

Step #1: Mentally/Physically Soothing To Get Subconscious Access

(perform this kind of Step #1 in your own personal home just! )

Throughout an area just where if you're sure you won't end up being disturbed, lie comfortably on your own back on either your personal bed, the floor, or perhaps extended completely in a E-Z lounge chair. Let your own arms rest for your isn't stable, palms facing down, palms loosely apart.

Following, outstanding as still as is possible, enable your eyelids gently shut, and take 3 l-o-n-g d-e-e-p breaths, inhaling throughout your nostrils, and easily exhaling from your mouth. And along with each exhalation, mentally replicate the word "R-e-l-e-a-s-e".

Subsequent, envision yourself slowly and gradually climbing down a staircase of seven entire steps. And as an individual descend each step, in your mind do it again the word "D-o-w-n" to by yourself, allowing each muscle in addition to fiber in you to simply quickly let loose, and slowly relax with each effective step you descend. Any time you've easily reached underneath step #1, and check out the sensation of deep as well as soothing comfort, shift your current awareness to perform Action #2:

Step #2: Being able to view Some sort of Magnitude Intensity Exercise routine Recollection

(perform this Move #2 in your house only! )

Now, seeing that you're mentally/physically relaxed, call to mind a exercise where you know your speed and agility (and effort) could simply be labeled as "sustained cure travel - as Ultra drive impact. This can be easy for anyone as you recall typically the very very last time you actually embodied feverish, driving energy, and absolutely compelling fierceness and power during a new workout:

o Possibly the idea was during an hand workout where you ended up blasting your biceps about barbell preacher curls rapid to help extreme pump and also physical effort degrees. You don't simply do 10 reps, a person does 12. And the item felt the skin would likely pop. Nevertheless, you maintained often the mental anger - the actual fierce, unwavering mental stability - which often over-rode virtually any attempt of the body in order to stop you!

e Maybe it was a knee workout where you cinched your own personal belt one step firmer than you generally do. In addition to hung far more weight on the tavern than you usually will. As well as blasted out established following set of travails that still left your lower limbs feeling similar to max-engorged shrub trunks; your personal lungs sensed like bellows from nightmare, but since you also sustained this sort of fierceness associated with effort, this was a igual laborious task for you to wander out somewhere else to your own car after your current work out was done!

You will know what that magnitude intensity training ended up being for you. Just let your awareness to search your own personal recollection, and you will probably come to identify the target workout such because this from the past. With once you've in your head singled out this specific workout out of your memory core:

o Imaginatively make the picture regarding this predicament brighter, considerably more vivid and even more distinct.

i Then, suffering from it since if it's playing out and about upon a large, bright motion picture screen, imaginatively provide it nearer, and deeper toward an individual.

o And also as you imaginatively deliver it closer toward anyone, make it even nicer, better, and more 3-dimensionally vivid.

to And subsequently, imaginatively bring it possibly closer toward you -- so close, it's like it's right in front side of see your face -- while if you can touch base and touch it -- as if this is usually your extremely reality in that case and right now there!

At this particular moment you should inwardly notice, feel, sense along with expertise all related variables containing this scenario instructions as if that had been your very lifestyle within the current moment.

Stage #3: Anchoring The Serious Sensory Strength of Your Specifications Intensity Exercise

(perform this specific Step #3 at home simply! )

Now, as an alternative to6123 "watching" this scenario of your personal specifications intensity workout, imaginatively action into the photograph, into your human body... in addition to, feeling your incredible strength and energy internet streaming expertly through you:

- ) See exactly what you actually observe as this mega-intensity workout drive - growing to be aware of precisely how all of things you see all-around you look for you.

only two. ) And then, thoroughly f-e-e-l exactly what you experience as this mega-intensity exercise routine pressure.

3. ) Subsequently, venture the exact skin expression a person project whenever you are this mega-intensity workout force -- in the slant of your vision, towards the flare of your own nostrils, for the curl as well as purse of your respective lips.

some. ) In that case, mentally claim to yourself -- applying the exact words and also voice tonality you employ : exactly what an individual say to yourself if you inwardly communicate to your self as the embodiment involving this mega-intensity workout push.

5. ) And, after that purposefully b-r-e-a-t-h-e exactly the particular way you inhale while you are this mega-intensity exercise force.

Next, seeing that most likely inwardly replicating almost all of #'s 1-5... squeeze your correct fist challenging, continuing to be able to breathe just as the mega-intensity work out you does. Along with, possessing your fist tightly clenched, choose a word, that will to you, singularly presents anyone as this mega-intensity workout power.

For example of this, you might choose any expression such as Electrical power, Force, Lead, or Region, etc. Whichever word you actually choose, holding your current proper fist firmly clenched (and continuing to inhale and exhale because mega-workout intensity breathes), psychologically exclaim your chosen key-word 5 consecutive times together with emphatic passion.

[lewepstein]

The Banality of Evil

“Evil” is an interesting word and not one that we usually associate with modern times.  To me, it harks back to The Dark Ages in Europe when Christ allegedly battled Satan for men’s souls and sinners were  condemned to spend eternity in a fiery hell.   For a therapist like myself, the word “evil” is also an outlier, with much of the field  grounded in the social sciences and more recently the physiology of the nervous system and the brain.  Psychotherapy’s foundational principles and methods have mostly to do with the use of inquiry and understanding in the service of change and there are probably few therapists who subscribe to the more fatalistic belief that there is inherent darkness lurking in the human heart.  And yet, the existence of what has begun to feel like an impulse or instinct to do evil becomes harder to deny as privileged individuals who live in a post-Enlightenment world, and are the beneficiaries of affluence, science and an almost unlimited access to knowledge continue to act in ways that are cruel and inhumane.  

This post, “The Banality of Evil,” is taken from the subtitle of a work by political theorist Hannah Arendt.  The full title of her book is “Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil,”  published in 1963.   It was written during the trial of Adolph Eichmann, the Nazi war criminal and architect of what was called “The Final Solution,” - the extermination of over six million Jews in more than a thousand German concentration camps scattered throughout Europe between 1933 and 1945. ​​  What Arendt saw as “banal,” as she observed Eichmann during those hearings was how inarticulate, ordinary and even boring he was.  He would claim during the trial that he had no particular hatred for the Jewish people.  No malice at all.  He also stated that he bore no personal responsibility - just a man following orders and doing his job - a joiner all his life with a need to belong.  

My personal definition of evil includes a lot of what Hannah Arendt describes in her book.  It also relates to things that people may see as normal and reasonable -  the beliefs they hold, the leaders that they follow and the actions they take.  But when it comes to rooting out and understanding evil, there are two crucial questions that people need to ask themselves:  Are my actions doing harm to and disempowering others?  And, am I allowing others to disempower people with my knowledge of it?  Whether this kind of cruelty occurs in families in which one member imposes a brutal regime of control and terror on his partner or his children and sees it as justified and normal or, if it happens within a political system in which a leader and his followers dehumanize, abuse or willfully disempower another group of people - to me, the underlying ethos is the same.  

There are laws that Republican dominated legislatures in Texas, Georgia and 12 other states have recently passed or are currently enacting that are to me examples of the banality of evil.  On the surface, and to someone who knows little about the historical context, these laws may appear to be reasonable, common sense approaches to protecting the security and sanctity of elections in their states.  They have even been framed by Republican majority legislatures and their leaders as attempts to reassure citizens that voter fraud will not occur.  

What these laws are actually designed to do is suppress the votes of African Americans, Latinos and young people with laser-like precision.  The statutes disenfranchise these groups by restricting mail-in voting, purging voter rolls, diminishing the number of voting drop boxes in urban areas, and eliminating the amount of time and days that would allow members of these targeted groups to vote. Other parts of the hundreds of bills rushed through Republican majority legislatures are crafted to intimidate election workers by imposing tremendous penalties for any action that might violate these laws.  The laws also give partisan “poll watchers” the power to harass and further intimidate workers who are simply and honestly doing the job that they were hired to do.  These same state legislatures have further empowered themselves to challenge the results of elections and overturn them if they are unhappy with the results.

The Republican Party is doing what every kid who has played ball on a sandlot or in a schoolyard knows in his gut is wrong - changing the rules of the game to disempower the other team and give your own team an unfair advantage.  It violates the core values that we try to instill in our children around competition and fairness - but what is at stake for our society is much greater than which team wins a little league game.  It  has to do with the very survival of our democracy.  If winning at any cost becomes the way that we operate, and legislatures are willing to disempower another party or group of people and rig an election so that some people’s votes do not count - and they do this in order to maintain what they see as their own power, privileges and advantage - then we as a society have truly lost our soul.

What may be the most pernicious part of all of these Republican efforts is that in November’s presidential election there was no evidence of voter fraud or so little as to validate the integrity of the system as a whole.  This was upheld in court after court as Trump challenged the election results and appealed to Republican officials to “find him votes.”  He particularly cast doubt about the legitimacy of voting in cities with large Black populations in swing states - Atlanta, Philadelphia, Milwaukee and Detroit - a part of his divisive strategy and his underlying message that Black votes do not really count.  It was his “Stop The Steal” campaign and his big lie that the election was stolen that sowed doubt, fueled the January 6th attack on the Capital and  gave Republican dominated legislatures the cover to push through their raft of voter suppression laws - all in the name of stopping voter fraud that did not exist in the first place.

On the surface this may seem like partisan politics as usual - one group merely seeking a competitive advantage but isn’t that what can make evil so banal?  This underlying issue that cuts so much deeper is that there is a demographic trend in the United States predicting that it will no longer be a majority white nation by 2045. The core of Trump’s “Make America Great Again'' movement that challenged Obama’s citizenship, vilified Muslims, labels Mexicans as “rapists and murders,” and calls African nations ``shithole countries,” is a a white Chritian nationalist  “us versus them” strategy designed to delegitimize and disempower non-whites while it plays into the fears of many white Americans that they are losing “their country” to the feared others.

This is the playbook of every dictator and authoritarian regime:  appeal to a majority group and manufacture a threat about a disempowered and disadvantaged minority - for Hitler it was Jews, Gypsies, Socialists and trade unionists for Trump and the Republican party it has been Mexicans, Blacks, Muslims, LBGTQ’s and refugees.  Repeat the lie often enough and you can create a fascist movement.   Then, barrage a population with so many vile acts that they become inured to what is going on and  begin to accept the caging of refugee children and the separation of parent and child asylum seekers at our borders. Once the envelope has been pushed that far, internment camps for the despised others might not be such a stretch.

For Black people in the United States the intersection of being in physical danger and being emotionally harmed by a white supremist narrative is nothing new.   History has proven that increases in voting rights have always been followed by periods of backlash and disempowerment:  Slavery is followed by emancipation and what is called Reconstruction which included the 15th Ammendemnt - the right of Black men to vote in elections.  But Reconstruction was soon abandoned along with the enforcement of the right to vote for the former slaves. This period ushered in a reign of terror and lynching that included voter intimidation and poll taxes in the Jim Crow South.  The Civil Rights movement, along with the The Voting Rights Act of 1965 attempted to redress some of these injustices only to be gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013 and again in a decision in June of this year.  

Republican state legislatures are currently scrambling to make sure that once again there will be infringements on the rights of Black Americans to vote.  The third of America that fiercely supports these laws and  policies has been around for a long time -  they include those who would choose a George Wallace or an authoritarian Donald Trump over living in a multiracial democracy.  The policies pushed by these demagogues have been called the “politics of hate” but they always involve the willful denial of rights along with a moral injury -an  assault on a person or group’s dignity, worth and esteem.

In the big picture of Trump and the Trumpification of the Republican Party and its base, it is a story about normalizing what is criminal,  cruel and crass - the willingness to lie, cheat, steal and demean others in order to achieve one’s ends.  The underlying message to people is, “look what I can do - I can hold another nation hostage to my selfish needs.  I can demean a reporter with a disability.  I can have affairs and pay women off so they won’t talk.  I can assault women sexually and get away with it.  I can call a Black congresswoman ‘low I.Q.’  I can lie every day when it suits my interests. I can use the bible as a prop. I can even shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and pay no price for my crime.  I can say and do all that we know to be wrong and get away with it”   What Trump has done is to activate and validate the basest parts of us and has left Americans with the cynical message that we are all chumps if we do not follow in his path.  

Psychiatrists have analyzed Trump’s behaviors and labeled him a “pathological narcissist.”  Others have said that he lacks a moral center and have called him a  “sociopath.”  He has also been described as a shallow, incurious and selfish man.  I see him as an evil man, one who has unleashed the dark side of our humanity and tried to turn it into the new normal.  This is truly the banality of evil and Trump’s evil legacy and there will need to be a deep reckoning before we absolve our nation of these sins.

[teikokusuffering]

Inazuma Rewatch  Episodes 1-11

This begins my adventure in canon reviewing for Genda to roleplay him on dreamwidth. The thoughts are shotgunned and mostly written as they came to me with no coherent fashion. Also most of these are live reactions that I did in plurk hence the format of them. Also fair warning I do curse so that’s in there too.

Canon reviewing just makes me look up at the sky within the first seven seconds because how did I forget how Try Hard they were in making Teikoku out to be the villain of the show

I will also never be over this fucking tank 

ah Kidou you had dignity for like half an episode After this begins your slow descent into never being dignified ever again oh no I forgot how cute the bitty soccer team Endou plays/practices/coaches is why didn't we get like an arc with them growing up and joining Raimon or such that would have been adorable jesus christ I forgot Gouenji has a sick ass guitar solo bgm when he shows up also I like how none of the teachers in this school are at all phased by endou like how long did it take them to get used to this child being who he is there it is the exact moment Kageyama fucked up he challenged Raimon to a game that was like poking the sleeping dragon you know better then to do that Kageyama you have a history with this school dramatic shadow effect over Teikoku up to like three now where the fuck do all of these tires come from? Endou do you have a dimension to pull those from? I still am in love with the fact the only reason Endou's grandfather's techniques have remained a secret is because of horrible handwritting not due to super fancy code or hidden messages nah bruh he just sucked at writing and explaining himself is all and Someoka with the first "Soccer isn't a game" one liner what weather wizard did Teikoku pay to cause that storm cloud effect as they roll on in with their fucking tank bus part of me is not even shocked anymore over the honor guard, only with soccer balls and not rifles, and red carpet dramatic moment of Teikoku arriving but a part of me is still just Fucks sake Teikoku chill kids you are fooling no one with your "practice" that is straight up showing off on the highest tier there it is the moment Kidou's fate was sealed Endou being Endou despite the fact that shot was a deliberate attempt to hurt Genda's first line in the entire show and it's basically code for "Here Kidou kick their asses I'll hold your earrings" I'm pretty certain there is a mercy rule in soccer like there is in baseball so I know this score is just ridic really oh wait that's right this game will not end until Gouenji shows himself my mistake Oh Max I have missed your blunt destroying of self confidence that you accidentally do trying to be helpful also this entire scene is so disconcerting because it shows that Endou really is knowledgeable about this sport and how to be a captain which flies out the window when he does a Stupid in the name of soccer and I'm just like Endou please god Someoka and his anger issues over Gouenji all this anger in this episode and then the awkward that is Endou and Gouenji before Gouenji just gave in and joined this soccer team meanwhile back on the ranch: Kidou gossips plots and shares intel with Hemni regarding Raimon and what this is causing regarding schools taking notice and basically rents a fifty foot neon covered billboard to tell us that Domon is going to arrive soon how did I ever take these kids seriously they try so hard to be edgy it's ridic 

I have finally reached the episode in this slow as hell canon review to meet the character that deserved so much more then he got 

Domon deserved a better soccer husband then what he settled for he put up with so much both as a double agent and as someone having to suffer constant exposure to a Raimon still learning how to stand on its own ah yes the moment we first really learn just how much of a douche the teacher/coach for Raimon really is Endou's father is still the purest of the adults in this series ...the fucking secret fort is still horrible no matter how I look at it children please that is not how we share secret information /wheezes at how everyone but Gouenji and Domon are shocked at Endou reading the secret notes those two just look so proud I also forgot how up in the personal bubble Kazemaru is regarding Endou in the early season like Kazemaru pls fuck Kidou and his hiding behind lampposts I keep forgetting he does this so much child child please ah the start of the Gouenji Endou friendship is so awkward as Gouenji is still realizing what he has signed himself up to follow Kabeyama tries so hard for this team technique with Gouenji I also keep forgetting Gouenji and his socks that are such a different color from anyone else like who let you do that? Are you one of those types of sports people that have lucky items they have to wear while playing a sport? Kabeyama's fear of heights is so real excuse me as I sit here and laugh brokenly as I remember how naive I was thinking that these episodes right here was the gist of the show despite all of the giant hints they keep doing with Kageyama I want to know how many of those kids collecting data on Raimon were being paid by a different school then they one they actually attended for that data like you can't tell me with how sophisticated that equipment was that they weren't being paid by several schools for that data meanwhile Kidou and Sakuma are just like 'amateurs' considering they legit stalk and have an inside man on the team instead of just filming and observing the practices good christ I forgotten how much Kidou just dunks on the cyborg team over them thinking a computer simulation is good enough to figure out Raimon like bitch please he can't figure them out what makes you think you can? I keep forgetting episode 8 is the start of Endou's leaving the fucking goal open 

episode ten is just full on, no stops at all drama 

when they decided to start the pain train for Kidou they just shot it out like a bullet also goddamn Kageyama just spell it out in fine detail you see these kids as mindless puppets for you to control why don't you god how many horrible backstories can we cram into one episode Inazuma Eleven: Teikoku kids must suffer Don't be related to a Teikoku kid and def don't be a friend of one that way leads to being part of a painful backstory also I repeat Domon deserves so much more look an episode with the one I'm actually canon reviewing for! I best savor this as I won't see him for like ten more episodes after this 

Genda: /standing next to Kidou and has no idea wtf to say that isn't soccer related, praises the rest of the team instead of actually saying anything else. Kidou: /stands silent while intensely gazing into the distance this is it this like forty second conversation is 90% of this social link how they have achieved the "Will die for you" level on the s-link rank is a mystery well okay Genda pretty much had that as level one/two for Kidou because it's Kidou all of Teikoku would die for Kidou because this disaster apparently has a +50 modifier when it comes to Teikoku wait no NOPE NOPENOPENOPE this is the episode where Kageyama basically destroys an already emotionally compromised Kidou even more no #ProtectKidou2018 Kageyama even calls Kidou a "perfect being" not a perfect human being just a being also who the fuck picked this particular piece of music for this scene this is not a nostalgic happy moment anime this is a man brutally destroying a kid's sense of self and self worth in order to keep him in line fuck god the magazine scene is still horrifying to watch as you see that dawning realization that Kidou Made A Mistake when he reacted to Kageyama going for that magazine jesus christ it just hit me how fucking insanely watched and scrutinized Teikoku is just it only now hit me that during the entire talk between Kageyama and that minion Kageyama has multiple screens from various angles all watching the practice fields in real time as the team practices and we know that the team knows this is a thing considering in episode 11 when Kidou decides to create his rebellion with the team he makes sure to plan it in a random hallway and not on the field where someone could watch and listen in on this whole thing

[bizarropurugly]

Dame’s Eating Problem(s)

okay so I’ve been wanting to make this post for like ever now but kept getting too tired to write it but basically this post is going to be a detail on my difficulties with eating and food

so tw for disordered eating, and food obviously, and vomiting too, and unsanitary stuff too, there might be ableist language, suicide and self harm, body image and/or dysphoria probably? I think that covers it

let’s get this show on the road below cut

So to start with, I have digestive issues, a tender mouth, sensitive teeth, and autism. This makes eating hard enough already. 

I am sensitive to grease, sugar, dairy, spiciness, and salt. Which kind of sucks because I actually need a lot of salt in my diet due to my vasovagal syncope and chronic low blood pressure, but it burns my mouth so brutally I swear I even bleed. Some other examples of problems I have would be eating a candy bar in one sitting makes my teeth ache, or fighting between puking and shitting myself to death over most fastfood because they use so much fucking grease. 

It’s very possible I have irritable bowel syndrome but I have hangups with getting any of that checked out, mostly that THAT particular area of my body, I am actually too shy and embarrassed over to want to risk any kind of... examination of it... haha... and with all my other problems it takes a back seat. 

Then there’s the autism, which is almost unpredictable in what will set off my gag reflex sometimes. I know for certain peanut butter*, mushrooms, and anything with legs (such as some shrimp and DEFINITELY any squid) are guaranteed triggers. 

(*Small amounts of peanut butter in things like packed candy bars or puppy chow are fine. Small amounts, though.)

And then sometimes I just get tired of eating something and will come close to puking on just the thought of eating it. This mostly happens with meat, potatoes, pastries, and whatever you’d consider shit like waffles and pancakes. Vegetables and fruits seem to be safe for the most part, but unfortunately they’re not very filling and their acidity / fructose content can trigger my OTHER digestive issues. 

I’m guessing it’s an autism thing because it’s primarily about the textures that I don’t want to feel when I get tired of a food, hence why it tends to be with... squishier, sometimes slimier stuff I guess.

Usually food intolerance comes from the fact I have very few options of “safe” food and eat the shit out of any I find, and ultimately make myself hate it temporarily from that being the only thing I ever eat. Sometimes, though, this is permanent, such as with peaches, pears, chili, goulash, pineapple, and at times beef stew specifically of the Dinty Moore line.

This is a backdrop for how my troubles began. I kind of ignored this, like, aggressively for a long time, particularly because of being abused by adults over it? I had no explanation and everyone thought I was being a picky brat - in fact being called picky was a trigger for me as a kid because it was always in such a brutally negative fashion that implied I was a lying spoiled piece of shit because I would shit my pants or throw up over some adult’s stupid fucking idea of “kid friendly” food like tacos and peanut butter sandwiches. 

So I just... didn’t eat. A lot. It got worse over time. I was so tired of fighting about food, and I was tired of not knowing what was going to hurt me, that I just straight up forewent eating, often. Very often.

By high school, I was probably only eating lunch twice a week. When I graduated high school I was down to like 95-98 pounds. 

But it wasn’t just that, actually. It got worse, if you can believe it! 

What this did was pave the way for me to get worse as my depression, anxiety, and other untreated mental illness took their toll on me in high school. Years of ignoring my hunger pangs / being used to them left me with no realization of just how bad my mental health was, because not eating was normalized to me.

It came to be that even when I had food that I liked and knew was safe, I couldn’t eat it. My body was completely rejecting anything I tried to eat. And I didn’t notice for a while because it “wasn’t” interfering with my life, because it was all par for the course. Starving was par for the course. Like, my mother worried about me moving out on my own because she knew I had to be pushed to eat, otherwise I’d go the whole day and not notice.

I can’t remember when I realized something wasn’t right. I do remember a particular moment in my favourite restaurant, which I didn’t get to go to often because we are poor and it’s a steak place, and I think it was my 18th or 19th birthday, and I had my most favourite things to eat in the world in front of me and... couldn’t eat it. 

In fact, I threw up for my hubris in trying to make myself eat it. 

And I started crying, because I was hungry, I was SO hungry, and this was my favourite food, and it wasn’t fucking cheap, but... I couldn’t eat it. My body wouldn’t let me, and on top of that, I fucking THREW UP on the table. I felt so ashamed and like a horrible person, because of course wait staff has to clean that up, and I was so weak and tired and just wanted to eat my fucking steak and go home... 

(This was when I learned to never, ever, EVER push it if I’m feeling this way lol)

And this kept going on, actually. The explanation was never found until I actually got help for my mental health, but only after urging from my best friend after confessing to them a suicide attempt.

I don’t remember how we went about trying to find the cause before I came in about depression. I remember that I was literally wasting away for like... 5 or so years. It wasn’t just the depression that made me fall asleep in class or in the halls between class. I was always cold, too, cold and weak, and could often be found wedged underneath a radiator at school. I got so small and tired and miserable. My mother says I dropped towards 80 pounds before I finally got help.

I kind of really hate it because I used to be strong, but I was beat down. It was beat out of me, verbally, emotionally. Bullies nobody did anything about, teachers proud of embarrassing me, everyone around me thinking I was obnoxious and retarded, having no actual friends. I used to be able to carry classmates twice my size and take down football players. Now I really am a sack of shit, now in a more literal sense. 

When I fell through the mire, I lost it all. The muscle and the wile and the flexibility. Started failing my classes, when I had previously been among academic elite. None of those kids thought I was smart enough for it either and couldn’t wait to position themselves as better than me when I literally fucking DYING, STARVING TO DEATH, TRYING TO KILL MYSELF.

....But that’s a tangent. Sorry. 

Anyway, once the problem was actually found, and I got put on medication, it was like magic. I could eat again!! I could seriously eat again and not be afraid of throwing up or wasting food or anything!! 

And by god, did I eat. 

A common side effect of psychiatric medication that they don’t seem to explain very well is that your appetite increases. In my case, where I was literally starving, that was like going from 0 to 100 overnight. And I get why it’s a side effect - difficulty eating is a very common symptom of depression and anxiety! - but nobody told me how intense it would be, let alone that I should be careful.

You know how you’re not supposed to feed a starving animal a full bowl of food right away or else they’ll make themselves terribly sick because they’re stupid as hell and will gobble it down in seconds?

Basically, that. I gobbled and gobbled and gobbled everything my fucking hands could snatch, even my not safe foods. Didn’t care that I was shitting my brains out because I could FINALLY EAT AGAIN. I was so excited to EAT AGAIN. 

Well, by starving myself, I had completely destroyed my metabolism. Experts have said it over and over again, starving puts your body in panic mode, and it relegates everything to storage. 

So now I’m fat. I eat the same as I did before the troubles really got going, but because I went through several years of NOT eating, I have completely fucking screwed my body up. I’m fat, fat as hell. 

And I’m pretty sure it’s not my “normal” weight because when I finally sit up out of the fucking mire and get to exercising and eating on a normal schedule, I lose weight, or at least change fat to muscle pretty easily. 

But I’m wracked with stress and little to no feeling of control on my life. My mental health is spiraling again and I’m not eating, let alone eating right, again, and certainly I don’t have the energy to properly exercise myself. 

Back when I first started my job things were better and I was excited because I was losing weight and feeling a little healthier because I was on a regular schedule, but now...

My executive dysfunction is also being a fucking pain in the ass because it keeps waving a metaphorical to-do list in my face and saying, “No!! you can’t exercise now!! look at all this stuff you need to do!! you have so many things to do!! there’s so many things and they need to be done and you can’t do anything ever without doing all the things right now!!”

The consequences are worse now, though. I have to actually drive and be at work and be an adult, which takes a LOT of my energy, and if I don’t eat? I pass out. More vasovagal syncope bullshit combined with the chronic low blood pressure. It was one thing falling asleep in high school, but now I have much more I need to do in a given day thanks to life being, you know, life.

Sunshine and One Eye keep me from letting myself wither, right now. I have to have a job and go to it in order to take care of them. If I didn’t have them, I’d probably quit my job and move back in with my parents and basically fade away. 

Sometimes it’s a curse because I really, really don’t want to live, I don’t want to sustain myself. I’m... really fucking tired, I am beyond tired. 

And I have to force myself to eat, but it’s rarely anything worthwhile anymore. It’s almost always snack food because it’s just so hard to eat anything right now, let alone something fulfilling. It takes me months to go through a bag of pretzels or something because I’m so unwilling to eat. I don’t even buy actual food now, no butter or bread or soup or meat, because I’m so unwilling to eat that it ends up expiring without ever being used. I cleared out my freezer recently and had food in there that expired in 2015. The only thing my fridge has is juice, soda, and milk for cereal for breakfast (the only dairy I’ll be able to eat for the next 12-24 hours unless I’m feeling less sore for once and want an ice cream cone lol). 

So. Uhhh.. I guess that’s it. That’s my problem. Ruined metabolism brought on by starving because depression which was easy to do because I fucked up my eating instincts from a childhood of Angry Stomach vs Angry Adults, and now I’m heading right back in that direction again. 

And I fucking hate it because all my life I’ve been skinny but strong-ish and smol but now I’m just a weakling blob and none of my favourite clothes fit.