#tw child abuse

[mae-daej]

I would like to know from former Child actors... Should child acting still be a thing or should we be working to end one of the last legal vestiges of Child Labor?

It seems like animation has come so far that we could find ways around cold acting easily at this point.

How did you get into acting? Was it something you've always wanted to do?

My mother forced me to become an actor when I was seven, and then refused to let me quit, even though I literally begged her to stop making me work. She used and exploited me to get things she wanted for herself.

I sincerely believed acting was something I wanted to do, because my mother manipulated and gaslighted me my entire childhood. I was completely brainwashed. By the time I was old enough to realize that not only was it not my idea, but that I didn't have to be an actor any more if I didn't want to, I was terrified I would be the huge failure my abusive father always made me believe I was, so I kept trying to be an actor well into my 30s.

In my 40s, I decided to retire from acting on-camera, and use what I'd learned over the years to work as a voice actor, audiobook narrator, and writer. I'm a New York Times bestselling author! And number on audiobook narrator!

I just turned 50 in July. I'm still doing the performing and entertaining work I'm pretty good at, but I'm only doing it on my terms. My favorite thing I'm doing right now is hosting The Ready Room, the official online destination for all things Star Trek universe.

I'm the happiest I've ever been in my life. I'm truly thriving. I've been married for almost 24 years, I have two wonderful children and a daughter-in-law I love like my own. It's a really good life, but I'm not going to lie: I had to crawl through a LOT of shit to get here.

[weirdo-from-bonesborough]

everytime a fic has tim go "my parents turned off the heat in the winter and didn't leave me with in food" i'm like damn that sucks. why did you run away from boarding school?

[mollywog]

Oooh tell me how what you find interesting about the “I don’t know how you survived this long” line from Peeta. Now that I think about it’s so interesting to me that Peeta thinks lying is a necessity for surviving, and actually says a lot about how he was raised?

Ooo thank you for the ask @mage-chocolate!!

"You're such a bad liar, Katniss. I don't know how you've survived this long." He begins to mimic me. "I knew that goat would be a little gold mine. You're a little cooler though. Of course, I'm not going." He shakes his head. "Never gamble at cards. You'll lose your last coin," he says.

Three different levels here: Living in Panem in general, surviving the Games, Peeta’s home life (this is more HC stuff)

In Panem

You’d expect Katniss would need to be a good liar with all her illegal activities, but fortunately she’s recognized this and has found other ways to stay out of trouble:

When I was younger, I scared my mother to death, the things I would blurt out about District 12, about the people who rule our country, Panem, from the far-off city called the Capitol. Eventually I understood this would only lead us to more trouble. So I learned to hold my tongue and to turn my features into an indifferent mask so that no one could ever read my thoughts. Do my work quietly in school. Make only polite small talk in the public mar-ket. Discuss little more than trades in the Hob, which is the black market where I make most of my money. Even at home, where I am less pleasant, I avoid discussing tricky topics. Like the reaping, or food shortages, or the Hunger Games. Prim might begin to repeat my words and then where would we be?

Not to mention, she says the peacekeepers are among her best customers (don’t execute bite the hand that feeds.)

In the games

Let me start with a kudos to @cutpaperbleedswater for their point from this ask

The idea of putting on a facade and pretending to be something for the sake of strategy is everywhere- from Katniss slipping her mask of indifference on and not crying as soon as she volunteers to her interview prep struggles:

"All right, enough," he says. "We've got to find another angle. Not only are you hostile, I don't know anything about you. I've asked you fifty questions and still have no sense of your life, your family, what you care about. They want to know about you, Katniss."

"But I don't want them to! They're already taking my future! They can't have the things that mattered to me in the past!" I say.

"Then lie! Make something up!" says Haymitch.

"I'm not good at lying," I say.

"Well, you better learn fast. You've got about as much charm as a dead slug," says Haymitch.

…

By the end of the session, I am no one at all. Haymitch started drinking somewhere around witty, and a nasty edge has crept into his voice. "I give up, sweetheart. Just answer the questions and try not to let the audience see how openly you despise them."

I’m also thinking about Katniss hiding her tears over Thresh’s death because it won’t play well for sponsors.

In Peeta’s home life

We know Peeta’s mother physically and verbally assaults him at least once in the past and it’s suggested it wasn’t a one-off occurrence.

So moving into the stuff of HCs: I imagine that Mrs. Mellark is sort of unpredictable - that she can be loving and charming (Peeta’s charm comes from somewhere and Mr. Mellark is often described as quiet), but she can also turn on a dime. And as a result the family walks on egg shells and Peeta, from a young age becomes accurately perceptive of moods (and then by extension others’), and learns to anticipate reactions and lie convincingly - skills he applies beyond just his home life.

[nshtn]

I do think Wesker is cold and callous - in fact, he's at very least a canonical serial murderer - but he was forced against his will at the threat of an unspeakably torturous death and with a heaping lifelong IV of propaganda straight into his veins to do most of the atrocious pre-and-present-Arklay deeds he committed. Under Spencer, Wesker was raised to be acted through and manipulated by people above him - he was not raised to thrive unleashed. He doesn't know a mother's love or what a warm, loving hug feels like, or what it's like to wake up without a sickening, bile-bubbling ball of dread gnawing at your stomach - he does not know civilian life at all, how it feels to engage in a hobby you love for the sake of loving it and not a value proposition.

Wesker (and Birkin) was faced with the threat of becoming another Lisa Trevor and the looming ever-present thrum of 'do or die' the entire time he worked for Umbrella.

His beliefs are a product of what he is - a product. He couldn't get any closer to a manufacturing line, the Truman trope - the Arklay Executive Training School literally had a human-sized gas chamber and torture devices visibly implemented to the right of Marcus' office for the purpose of psychological intimidation of the minors attending, and Marcus was known to leave bodies of students improperly disposed (whether in warning or a general lack of care for the process is unknown). It is genuinely not possible to rise from these conditions as a normal, empathetic human being.

There is a lot that could be said about Resident Evil 5 and Wesker around the timeline of TRICELL. I'd like to acknowledge that neither Birkin nor Wesker made an attempt to continue their particular cycles of abuse - Birkin never forced Sherry into a private school, and Wesker never started a facility or school to raise TRICELL executives. In fact, Birkin doesn't raise Sherry under the Umbrella Doctrine and the Doctrine is not enforced by TRICELL.

To leave out most of RE5 when I talk about Wesker is overgeneralizing him, but I don't have the mental fortitude to add it all. Instead, I will lump it into the single and unclarified statement that Wesker snapped and fell into a state of mania and mental crisis after tracking down Spencer and discovering the truth - he was not mentally well. He was tracking Spencer down during the events of 4. This is not the excuse of his actions, it is the reason they occurred.

Writers who pen Wesker while not truly caring for his character often forego or forget that Wesker is a deeply complex villain - not a hapless killer who merely pursues nothing more than power and has no emotion except 'smug & sadistic'. Writing a character by painting their entire personality black or white is an annoyingly common sin that Wesker faces; he is often painted entirely black as if he was born a psychosociopath.

I'm sure my writing is fraught with its' own mistakes and woes, but I do enjoy talking and reading about him and examining his underlying psychology.

adding onto my mischaracterization of wesker post but not only was he severely mentally ill but he also went through extensive trauma growing up. he was literally abducted as a child and raised to be a fucking machine. he is not cold or cruel or callous. he is capable of love. the only reason we haven't seen proof of that is because every situation we've seen him in he was dealing with people who want him dead or in jail.

he was someone's baby. he may not know who's but he knows that in another universe maybe he could've had the life he wanted

[scramratz]

[cosmic-dust-poltergeist]

Dick, after Tim nearly sacrificing himself Again: Tim .... you know we care about you... right?

Tim: That's strange...

Jason, was eavesdropping: What is?

Tim, blandly: The data does Not support that

Dick: Wha..?

Tim, pulling out a PowerPoint full of wacky transitions and clashing colours, titled "Evidence That Tim Drake Does Not Matter": Alright, do you want all the evidence starting with my parents or just what's relevant to the bat clan only?

Jason: Jesus, replacement.... please send this PowerPoint to a therapist and get so much help

Damian: Drake! Why is Richard crying?? What is this trash?

[a-sip-of-milo]

It's always infuriated me hearing people say that children have it easy. It's only gotten worse as I've gotten older and have been able to reflect on my childhood and see the children around me grow up.

They do not have it easy. They don't get a say in most important things. They're seen is unintelligent, yet expected to understand things that full grown adults struggle with.

They've got a job, which is school, that is actually proven to not be working for a lot of them; myself included. They're expected to sit still and in silence for at least forty minutes at a time, and those with ADHD are treated as though they're immature and lazy because they often physically can't do it.

Far too many of them have abusive parents that lie through their teeth to make people think everything is fine, and of course, who would believe the child over the parent?

Aspects of abuse has been normalised. Parents are sympathised with when children open up about the things they've gone through, especially if they're not physical. They're told that their parents are only doing this because they love them, or that the child needs to start seeing things from their point of view. Meanwhile, adults can freely complain about their children on public forums and to friends and family and get away with it because "it's hard being a parent".

Fuck off and do better.

DNI Believers of narcissistic/borderline/anti-social/histrionic abuse.

[pearsfears]

happy mothers day

[liberaljane]

Your feelings are valid on too. Special shoutout to all the cycle breakers. 💐

Created with Mother Wound Project

Digital illustration depicting three generations of women with a ribbon linking all of them. The scene includes an elderly Latina woman shrugging, a middle-age Afrolatina woman dodging the ribbon & her daughter cutting the ribbon. Text reads, “pain travels through families until someone is ready to feel it” by Stephi Wagner

[ladyantiheroine]

While I'm still thinking about Nosferatu, am I the only one who sees a bit of a child molestation allegory in Ellen and Orlok?

Ellen tells us that she called to Orlok when she was young. She'd been experiencing symptoms of his influence since childhood, after all. She wanted someone to comfort her, protect her, guide her.

But then that someone turned out to be a predator. To paraphrase her, it was "something sweet turned to torture." She speaks how it fills her with shame, complicates her marriage and sexual relationship with her husband, how she lowers to the floor and makes herself smaller and more childlike ("I promise I'll be good") when beckoning Thomas to have sex with her.

It reminds me a little bit of the book My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell. It makes me think of the dynamic of a child who had a relationship with an adult she had a crush on, only to grow up and realize that he was a monster. It's the horror of realizing that the person you are attracted to and even fond of was a predator all along.

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

yea it's a show about nepo babies but Succession really said "20 billion dollars doesn't erase the persistent trauma of childhood abuse, or absolve the abuser" so like. remember that next time your parent tries to uno-reverse-guilt-card you with "but we gave you so much"

[windybluebelles]

A lot of the justice league canonically have children who they raised more or less since birth,

(there’s a few time travel/rapid aging/losing them for a few years issues, but ignoring those)

,It’s not entirely out there to think that one of them would bring their kid to the watch tower.

I want there to be a fic where someone brings their kid, and have that kid meet Captain Marvel. There’s no doubt on this persons mind that Cap will adore the kid, he’s great at interacting with children, and their right! He’s great with the baby, answering their questions, picking them up, giving them hugs and high fives, all the cool shit!

He’s this 9 foot tall god speaking to a 3 foot tall toddler and answering all their questions with the seriousness of an actual interview, it’s going wonderfully!

When the kid toddles off to go interview another one of the supers, Billy turns with this big grin on his face and asks the parent,

“So how old did you say they were? 2?”

And the parents like,

“No? They turn 5 in a couple months,”

And Captain’s smile just, drops.

His face pales, he looks back at the child who is chatting with one of the more human members and doesn’t even reach their waist. That’s what a four year old looks like, laughing at everything, chubby cheeks, small curls, and teeny tiny body.

That’s how big four year olds are.

That’s how big Billy was.

That’s what Billy looked like after his parents had died and he was sent to live with his uncle.

That was what Billy looked like right before he became homeless

Oh God-

That’s the day when he found that he could technically throw up while powered up.

[motherofplatypus]

Killed an 8 years old girl along 36 others of her family

This post has been compiled in Record of Genocide.

[traumasurvivors]

If someone you know experienced childhood neglect, they may not know things that you or other people consider “basic knowledge.”

Don’t shame them for not knowing. Making them feel bad because you had someone in your childhood who taught you things, while they didn’t, is not even a little bit helpful.

And yes, this post applies even if that person is you. Give yourself some patience and understanding. It’s not your fault.

[aubeezz]

whaddahal

[incognitopolls]

Psychiatric help could include medication, therapy, institutionalization, etc.

Hitting or hurting could include spanking, yanking arms or hair, etc.

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