#until I came to terms with abuse neglect and grooming

[justa-lil-guy]

Day 23: Favorite Hero (Real or Fictional!)

Sarah, The Labyrinth

"Through dangers untold. And hardships unnumbered. I have fought my way here to the castle; beyond the goblin city, to take back the child that you have stolen. My will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom as great...You have no power over me."

🌕sources

[tenkos-heart]

tenko/tomura and fenrir: similarities

Welp. I consider this my proper post for the MHA fanbase, as I've been a lurker because the fanbase can be... something! If you wanna know more about me, pinned post!

Anyways, I've been thinking over the past couple of days of how strikingly similar Tenko is that of the figure of Fenrir in Norse Mythology. Also, if I DO get anything wrong in terms of Tenko, please let me know! My memory is shit and this manga is 400+ chapters long.

The thing with Fenrir is that his fate was already pre-destined, in a way. One of the seers told Odin that Fenrir would be apart of Ragnarok and being told to "swallow the All Father," as so as been told. Fenrir's tale already starts with tragedy. Being separated from his mother, his sister Hel was taken to... Hel, to be imprisoned in there, in a way. His brother, Jörmungandr, a regular snake was tossed into the sea, with hopes of drowning him. Instead, he grew so large, he became the Midgard Serpent, or World Serpent. For those who don't know, Midgard is our world within Norse mythology. But, the Gods had a different plan for Fenrir.

They decided to take Fenrir with them and to keep an eye on him. The one who took care of him the most, and cared for him the most was the God Tyr. The God of War, and even Justice. He was formerly apart of the Æsir. Also, something to note of, Tyr is also a God of Justice. So, Fenrir is raised in Asgard, home of the Gods and Goddesses, and fallen soldiers. Fenrir was a very happy, excitable pup who loved having a lot of fun. However, the wolf pup seemed to grow quite larger and larger. This worried the Gods, and because of the prophecy that Fenrir would eat Odin, they put together a plan to trap the wolf.

The Gods disguised their efforts as a game for Fenrir. Fenrir, the excited wolf he was, loved playing games. So, for this first "game", they chained him to a rock. It was a contest of sorts to test his strength. Even then, Fenrir broke through the chains. The chains weren't strong enough to hold the wolf down. So, the Gods turned elsewhere.

To the dwarves. They asked the dwarves to make the strongest chains, ever. This chain was quite different from the others. It looked more something like a ribbon. In some different stories, this happened twice before the ribbon idea. And naturally, the third time this happened Fenrir is suspicious and isn't sure what's going on. The wolf agreed to only be chained, IF only one of them would placed a hand in his mouth.

Tyr, the closest God to Fenrir to him offered his own arm up. Then, Fenrir couldn't be freed. He couldn't get out of his bindings, and thus, bite off Tyr's arm. Then, they teleported the wolf far away, and placed a sword within the wolf's mouth so he couldn't use his jaws. Then, it's said that the only way Fenrir will be free is during the destruction of Ragnarok. Odin confronts the beast on his stead with 8 legs, Sleipneir.

He will swallow Odin whole. However, Odin's son wouldn't let this stand. Vidarr would slay the wolf with his magical boots, splitting the wolf's mouth in half, thus his fate had befallen him.

I promise, there's a reason why I gave a lot of the backstory, we'll get into it!

If you haven't read up until MHA chp 425, spoilers will be here!

Tenko, since birth, had his entire life planned and trapped by literally one of the most awful people to ever exist. It didn't help that his father would emotionally berating him, leaving him outside. Even physically abusing him when he was 5 or the people in his life who were suppose to protect him, being bystanders. While Tenko does love his family, the bystander effect is very real. Or no one on the streets helping a bloodied, orphaned child on the streets.

Wondering for days and many nights without shelter, home, and food. That is, until All For One "found him and took him in." I.e. kidnapping his grooming victim, and then molded and neglected this kid for literal years until the LOV came around. I could go on about how much of a brillaint character Tenko is, but so many people have done that already and I wanna get into the meat of this.

Tenko and Fenrir were both happy, hopeful people who were molded and shaped by the very environments they were made in. Even before birth. For Fenrir, he was destined to be this destroyer of the world, and bring an end to a mighty King of Gods. While Tenko was going to be All For One's next vessel. The next Symbol of Fear. Both Tenko and Fenrir were molded into being their own separate Symbols of Fear.

Fenrir and Tenko never had a chance. Fenrir and Tenko never had a chance since birth. Fenrir and Tenko's destinies were already pre-determined. Both were left to rot by the societies they both were in, and no one bothered to give a helping hand. With Tyr, he did give justice, in a way. He had to deal with the consequences of his own inaction when he placed his hand into Fenrir's mouth. They both got something the other wanted, in a way.

Fenrir got some semblance of justice. While Tenko did gain friends, in the end. All Fenrir and Tenko (before his hatred was destroyed) thought they could do was bring destruction, violence, and chaos onto the world. I mean, fuck. They weren't taught anything else. I remembering reading a comment on a YouTube channel going over Fenrir's mythos and some others, and it perfectly sums up their situation.

The Gods just created their self-fulfilling prophecy. That is something that can absolutely be applied towards the heroes. Instead of trying to PREVENT Fenrir from being this symbol of destruction, and treating him nicely because of the prophecy, they decided that Fenrir was evil from the get-go and already plotted of leaving him to rot when he was a fucking pup. It was said of being a hopeful, happy pup who just loved to play games with his family. If someone had stepped in and actually HELPED Tenko, he wouldn't be dead.

(Or supposedly dead, with that one mysterious guy.)

If someone didn't ignore and just swept the problem of a stumbling, scared, child, they could have prevented so much. And now with Tenko being dead, they just created a self-fulfilling prophecy of another Symbol of Fear being groomed again.

Fenrir and Tenko were just two kids who were happy and hopeful of their world, and their innocent got snatched away from them from their respective societies. At the start of it all, they were just kids who loved their families.

[tylernation]

Explaining Tyler Galpin

Ok, just thought I might post this because I need to say this. I don’t care who you ship in the show, whether you’re Wenclair, Wyler, Wavier, or no ship for Wednesday at all (since Jenna favours that). But lack of understanding for someone like Tyler completely annoys and angers me greatly.

His whole life from the day he was born has been a curse. His mother Françoise had her Hyde unlocked just afterwards via severe postpartum depression which led her to be institutionalised in a psychiatric facility for the rest of her life. As Tyler would have been weeks to months old when this more than likely happened. He probably spent his childhood seeing his mother in hospital under limited and supervised visits, leading Tyler to develop confusion about this and later leading him to frequently press his father about her to which Donovan would ignore or try to change the subject as he was to engulfed in his own grief and depression to answer his son.

Everytime he looked at Tyler, Donovan would have instantly been reminded of the woman he loved and what became of her. And as Wednesday deduced in the last episode, he spent the past years living in fear of the possibility that Tyler would suffer the same fate as his mother. So rather than face that possibility and further heartbreak again, Donovan chose to bury himself in his work and alcohol and keep his distance from Tyler. From Tyler’s POV, seeing his father rarely would have led him to feel unloved or unwanted. And it would have led him to grow up on his own without any help and lead him to be easily influenced by certain figures within his life such as Lucas, Jonah, and Carter, and develop feelings of resentment and perhaps self-hatred to which he took out on others such as when he assaulted Xavier Thorpe a year prior to the first season. Though another theory is that he only attacked Xavier AFTER he learned about his mother from Laurel and how Nevermore refused to help her because she was a Hyde, but that's a theory for another time. Now instead of helping Tyler deal with his problems, Donovan once again decided to let someone else handle this by sending his son off to a boot camp, and while this might of helped somewhat in terms of his behavioural problems. It did nothing to help him when the inevitable came.

When Thornhill began grooming Tyler a year before Wednesday’s arrival. She did so by taking advantage of his neglected life, and emotional insecurities that craved for affection and care. Caressing his hand in the Weathervane and slowly but surely luring him into a false sense of security (probably acting flirty and sexual towards him as well). So when Laurel finally shows Tyler his mother’s psych file about her being Hyde, it leads him to realise he could potentially be one as well. And when he likely finds out about Nevermore’s rejection of Hydes this would have led him to develop even more resentment towards outcasts as not only did they refuse to help his mother once she went spiraling, but not even they of all people would accept his type. Tyler could have had a life of belonging in Nevermore instead of the life of neglect and abandonment he got from his distant and grieving father.

When Laurel tries to get Tyler to allow her to unlock his Hyde, he becomes against it, as he was fearful of where that would lead. Which is why Laurel kidnapped and chained him up in a cave where she subjugated him to chemical experiments that would lead to his Hyde being awakened. Whilst the Hyde would automatically become loyal to her, Laurel would have needed Tyler’s cooperation as well. Which is why she tortured him until he fully submitted. The use of physical abuse as well as the plant derive chemicals would have brainwashed him completely. May I remind everyone who reads this that he is still a minor in the series when this happens. The more times she orders him to transform, the more the Hyde consumes him and becomes attached to Laurel, like a sort of Stockholm Syndrome in which a person becomes attached to their captor / abuser if they are brainwashed to a degree, which Tyler definitely was.

Now we get to his actions. People who are so against him (haters) like to point out what happened to Thing and Eugene to justify their arguments. But here’s where I discredit that. 1. Thing was stabbed by Laurel, not Tyler. Yes, Tyler was assigned to distract Wednesday which resulted in Thing getting stabbed, but I sincerely doubt he knew that his master was going to stab Wednesday’s closest companion since childhood and probably thought that she was going to go in, get the Faulkner diary, and get out. Yes, Thing has a right to be mad, but I'm hoping that he can see, that deep down, Tyler is not the true villain here, Laurel is. 2. Tyler could have killed Eugene yes. In fact, as a Hyde, he should have been able to easily kill him, but he didn’t, Eugene lived and managed to recover well enough from his coma to the point where he easily assisted Wednesday in subduing Thornhill with his bees. The only person chasing after the Hyde the night of the Rave’N was Wednesday, who had already seen the monster, and was no match for such a creature. Therefore her arrival shouldn't have been able to disrupt his act. The fact that Eugene survived is proof that Tyler chose to let his humane side take control for once. With Thornhill’s orders being “take care of it”, it wasn’t an explicit instruction to kill him, therefore Tyler was able to interpret that as a way where he didn’t have to let Eugene die.

Haters also liked to point out that he manipulated Wednesday and used her. Yes this is true. But people who read this, I implore you to remember that Tyler was manipulated himself, though in a much more cruel manner. Tyler is a tragic character and a tragic villain. His actions came from being abused and brainwashed by Laurel, and had she not been in the picture, none of this would have happened. In fact, had Donovan told his son the truth about what he potentially was a lot earlier, it would have helped Tyler be on his guard on who to trust as he would have been made aware of the creature living inside him.

Tyler is someone who has had his life constantly fucked over completely by the following:

His father (for neglecting him)

Laurel (for abusing and manipulating him)

Nevermore (for rejecting him)

The thing I worry about is that the writers are gonna overlook Tyler’s past, and that they’re going to disregard him or make him suffer some cruel fate when has already been through enough already. They should not do this. Tyler needs HELP and a chance to HEAL. I can’t stress that enough everyone.

[oxtoxtoxto]

i think i had an epiphany about pokemon black and white.

i think it was released about 5 or 6 years too early. what do i mean by that? BW came out in 2010, around a decade ago, and im going to assume it probably started full development not that long after HGSS finished up development, which would have been somewhere in 2009.

2009 was definitely a complex time, especially in Japan, but it was a *very different* time to now.

See, I think team plasma would have had a much more smooth narrative if they had incorporated the idea of *misappropriating progressive language*, and otherwise misusing certain terminology to the point of rendering it completely meaningless in its prior context.

we know the language bigots use to talk about minority groups nowadays, right? how there's pieces of language that used to serve a *very specific purpose* to refer to a *very specific kind of act* (such as grooming, a term which is now just thrown at the LGBT community whenever a bigot feels they need to drum up hate) which have now been sandblasted down into just another sneer to spit at people they hate?

and how by doing this they've tainted the usefulness *of those terms* to the point where it's genuinely impacting people's ability to report on certain things?

this was not as close of a topical issue in 2010 as it is today, where language is increasingly being weaponized due to the availability and reliance on social media our society has increasingly found itself with. this is why i think in a better world, pokemon bw would have come out in 2015, maybe even *later*, when this shit not only really began to develop into the cancerous issue it is now, but also when people began to actively speak out about it in a way that was wide-reaching.

think about a reframing here. at its core, team plasma is a pokemon welfare organization being used as a front as an elaborate way to dismantle any potential threats ghetsis might have to succeeding in a coup. ideally, this means trainers are pressured into releasing their pokemon and the ones who aren't have theirs *taken by force*, causing immense trauma to both pokemon *and* person, thereby necessarily weakening them in the process.

so, lets approach it as it might be done today. the first thing you do is you start widening the meaning of *abuse* and applying it in situations where it absolutely isn't the case, just to *force* people to legitimize a conversation that, say, owning a house pet might qualify as pokemon abuse.

you muddy the meaning of abuse until you have caused schisms in local culture. you rely on what examples of abuse you can find--neglect, power-hungry trainers who do view their pokemon mostly as instruments to increment ever-higher in ranking, but you do not turn you ire, *specifically*, on them. you turn that blame on your real targets: everyone else.

and all the while, what *abuse* or *neglect* or *mistreatment* even means when it comes to pokemon is muddled. people start reporting people for what they perceive *as* abuse even when it's not, and wasting the time of the organizations designed to look after this kind of thing, while also making anyone who reported things and got a "this wasnt abuse" feel validated that, yes, *everyone is in on it*.

with of course the occasional group of aggro anti-trainers reporting in such large numbers that the legal bodies involved have to investigate and maybe even separate pokemon and human because, well--look at all of these reports. there might be something going on.

and this snowballs. those who dont immediately bend to the pressure are targeted. they get picketed, they get people screaming at them. they have their organization decried as "abuse enablers" and with the way social media flattens nuance and these people already making sure to leave out all of the important details, many of these figures become hated by people who have been caught up in a cultural hate furor towards someone who has really been the one looking after these issues. people who are good, but are now demonized by a very vocal and aggressive group.

and then, you twist the knife, because with the eradication of all meaning to terms like *abuse*, you also make it a lot easier for abusive trainers to get away with what they're doing so long as they just pay the correct kind of lip service. just look at ghetsis: he has a hydreigon that genuinely seems to fucking hate him, judging by its frustration. abuse doesnt actually *get reduced*, because the words have been muddled so much the kind of clues and hints that might help a pokemon abuser get caught and put away are lost in the endless froth of vitriol.

abusers dont get hurt by this so long as they know how to phrase it.

and when you add in that the people who would actually be handling cases of abuse and mistreatment being either demonized, bent to the will of an angry mob, or too terrified to speak out, real abuse goes untouched.

people, *figureheads* of the movement, become untouchable because they crusade for the campaign with the right combination of words that *surely* they're not using this as a smoke screen to cover for their own goals.

this, this right here? i think people have always been aware of how language can be shaped like this, but genuinely the last 5 to 8 years have been the absolute worst of it, and most obviously criticized. if BW came out during this period, and used this as a touchstone rather than the absolute stance it does, it could have been a much more nuanced and compelling narrative.

the point is, though, Pokemon BW could have come out in the late 2010s and probably had a much stronger real-life example to build on and work with. The conversations we are having today are eminently relatable to Team Plasma's goal, it's just *too early* to have that connection.

It also would have permitted some nuance within the narrative. As it stands right now, the Pokemon universe simply rejects the idea that mistreatment of Pokemon is a realistic idea in the first place. Even among some of the darkest, and arguably the most likely teams to abuse their Pokemon (Galactic and Rocket) mainly view their Pokemon as integral sources of power that they must nourish and improve for their own benefit. It's not a purely benevolent reason, no, but Cyrus has a Crowbat (only evolves with high friendship) and while some of it is anime apocrypha, virtually *nothing* implies that Giovanni mistreated his Pokemon, and that Team Rocket mainly mistreated Pokemon via stealing them in the first place or by attempting get rich quick schemes (slowpoke tails).

In other words, the only group that has been shown to actively and aggressively *abuse pokemon* is team plasma itself, where in one of their first appearances two grunts, claiming to want to protect Pokemon, repeatedly kick a fucking Munna not ten feet away from you.

These would be the leaders, the problems, the actual criminals stringing the others along who have been caught up in the momentum of finally having someone to just *hate*.

This would let the story also progress as you work your way up from the grunts (who may fall anywhere on the scale between shitheel or ideological warrior consumed by the movement) to the admins (who are all eerily powerful, well-connected, and giving away hints that their Pokemon are mistreated, its just that they have the language and reputation to avoid scrutiny) and finally to Ghetsis, who is the embodiment of these leaders in the worst way possible. Part of the story, then, would be figuring out where N falls, if what he's saying is just lip service or the truth, and it would make his struggle to reconcile the world Ghetsis has painted for him (one of casual Pokemon cruelty and Pokemon forced into subservient roles to do as humans wish) against the one he faces (one where Pokemon and humans work together--not always perfectly, but with a lot of care) and the slowly dawning realization that everything he's been told is a projection of how Ghetsis and his admins actually feel about Pokemon a lot more meaningful.

You could even include hints. Admins putting their Pokemon away whenever N is around, almost in a panic because if N got a single chance to speak to any of their Pokemon, the entire plot would go up in smoke.

N not knowing about certain operations or being intentionally redirected to you to keep him occupied as Ghetsis and his admins are finally allowed to throw their weight around.

By making it much more reflective of trends we know about today, you could get a fair bit more intense narrative about deceit and the real fucked up consequences of this kind of thing.

[many-but-one]

This is a poem written by Dorian nearly couple years ago now. He never ended up posting it because he intended to post the audio with it but we never finished captioning the audio. Going through our drafts, we found it. Since we’re on a poetry sharing kick tonight, I’ll post it now. This poem should probably be updated eventually since Dori knows more now, but we will keep it as-is for now.

Written by Dori:

I want to note that this poem is HEAVILY inspired by a slam poem by Patrick Roche. He came up with the idea of moving backwards in the timeline, which I felt was just...genius. Especially in the realm of DID, where if you know at the first age you have DID, you know it will only get progressively worse. And in my case, things do get worse, but then you get to see the real things that were believed back then. I discussed this poem with several parts in our system, not only asking for their help, but also asking if it was okay for me to share.

Lastly, here are the trigger warnings. This poem is HEAVY. It is graphic, it alludes and blatantly states some very disturbing things. I am tired of being silent.

TW: Alcohol, CSA, adulthood/teen SA, intense religious imagery, blasphemy, unalive attempt, drugs/pills, medical/hospital/doctors, self harm, domestic violence, parents, violence in general, car crashes, AFAB menstruation, neglect, death of a family member, a lot of cursing, BIG mentions of grooming from the POV of the child, brief mentions of abortions.

Haha. The gods really put every single TW they could think of in my life huh. Realizing that my entire life is essentially a trigger warning is 😅 Oof.

Anyway, here is the poem. Read with caution.

24 years and counting.

24, going on 25. I wake up each morning not knowing who I am and this is normal now. I have realized that this will be my normal forever, or at least until I process the layers upon layers of trauma, hidden underneath layers and layers of amnesia that I slowly peel back like onion skins, each layer getting more and more terrifying, more and more worrisome. The deeper I dig into this hole of unknown the harder my heart beats, and I realize my heart beats like a war drum. I have always been at war, with myself, with this body of mine. Of ours. 

Mid 24, I come to terms with a diagnosis called DID. I start to learn more about the different versions of myself, where they all intersect, where it melds together and where it stands apart. I think I know everything but 24 going on 25 version of me laughs at how naive I am. Perhaps 25 year old me will laugh at 24 going on 25 me. Maybe I’ll realize the depths of the hell I crawled out of called childhood was worse than I know even now. I don’t look forward to it. 

Early 24, I got married this year, my wife married three of me, three of me love her dearly. Things feel right and good again, I feel like I am on a happy path. My brain makes about as much sense at it always has, but at least I somewhat understand the pieces of the puzzle I’ve been given. Or at least, so I thought. 

23, this year is a blur, the only thing that stands out is that I quit my job I’ve had for five years. I loved that job. I quit that job because one of my past abusers walked in with no warning, and the sirens in my head went off like there was a nuclear bomb incoming. I still tell myself he didn’t see me but I know I’m lying to myself. I quit that very day and I realized that he still has control over me to this very day, 17 years after the trauma ended.

22, Two months before I am set to graduate college with my degree I get the diagnosis that changes my life. Not that my life is any different afterwards, at least not yet, so I try to continue forward regardless. How badly I wish to return to this moment and take my own face in my hands and look myself deep in the eyes and tell the 22 year old me that they have a storm coming. I think I already know, despite not really knowing, because I find myself getting drunk after work almost every night. I hide the bottles from my fiancée. I don’t want her to think I am my father.

21, I am old enough to drink! I barely drink. Every time I drink and it tastes too much like alcohol I am reminded of my father’s breath. I...don't know why. I stick to fruity drinks that taste good so that I can stop feeling things. Maybe I really am my father’s daughter. 

20, I finally start making friends in college, which is strange. Some people talk to me and I’ve never met them before, but they act like we’ve been friends since forever. Sometimes I attend lectures and I don’t remember what they are about. Sometimes I ask questions and I can hear my voice speaking and feel my mouth moving and I don’t know what I am saying. This is normal. The competent version of me sometimes does stuff when I get overwhelmed, that’s normal. That’s always happened! Everyone does that, right?

19, I wake up on the floor of my mother’s bathroom one afternoon, I smell my own stench I have been rotting in, I peek my eyes open and see pill bottles all around me, but no pills to be seen. The burn of bile on my throat and in my mouth makes me gag. I look in the toilet and see the pills. I won’t remember this moment until I am 24. I will learn it was not me that tried to kill themselves. I will also learn it was not me that saved me.

18, I have my first of many mental hospital stays. The doctors watch me stare at the other kids in the ward, nearly catatonic. They said they’d never seen a patient that never smiled. “Most kids get out of here within a couple of days!” They assured my mother and I. Two weeks later and I am still rotting on the plastic bedsheets. I lie and tell them I’m okay but I am not okay, I just want to live a life that involves shoelaces and doesn’t have nurses yelling at me to brush my teeth. I go back to school like nothing happened and almost all of my friends are gone. They never really cared.

18, pre-mental hospital, I am dating a boy that I don’t love. I am dating him because that’s what girls do even though I am not a girl. He is my best friend and it just seemed right. I really only dated him because sometimes I felt like I really loved him, but most of the time his lips on mine and his hands on my waist felt wrong. Something in my head feels like it’s buzzing like a beehive every time I go to his apartment. It’s almost like a spidey sense, except I ignore it and when I find myself back home, I don’t remember anything that happened at his house, nor how I ended up back home. I don’t think about it too hard. 

17, My dad punched a wall again. He screamed until I cried again. I can’t do this anymore, I can’t do this anymore. I hurt myself with sharp objects because it feels like that’s what I’m supposed to do. I never feel the pain, I only ever clean up the mess. I try to make myself as ugly as possible. To me(?) it makes sense. Obviously, if I am hideous, people will leave me alone. They won’t hurt me anymore, right? ...right? 

17, suddenly an angry version of myself appears and I realize I am SICK and TIRED of mistreatment. I fight back, I fight back with teeth and claws and words that are even sharper than both of those combined. I don’t remember these times very well. I certainly don’t remember the time this angry version of me YANKED the largest knife out of the butcher block and threatened the very man who ruined my life with it. I LOVE this version of myself. She’s intensity, with veins full of gasoline, ready and waiting for someone to ignite her. She bares her teeth in a grin and laughs, she says “I dare you, set me aflame, I will burn you with me.” Thanks, Alice. 

16, I nearly crash my car while I’m zoned out. Haha! I always zone out. Sometimes I zone out so hard that I forget big chunks of time, but everyone does that! 

15, my friend shows me his self harm scars and is trying to gain sympathy but I have none to give. I wonder if maybe doing the same will help me learn to have sympathy. Thus starts an addiction to pain that lasts for nearly a decade. 

14, I don’t remember this year very well but someone does. 

13, I started my period and I was told that I’m just a late bloomer. Everyone always said I was a late bloomer since forever. I didn’t hit my growth spurt until I was 14 either, and I didn’t stop wetting the bed until I was 9. Weird, but I didn’t put that much thought into it.

12, I wrote a detailed story that I no longer have a single copy of that talks about the structure of my inner world. Traces of the DID that I can actually remember. I don’t remember most of this year because I wasn’t the one who lived it.

11, My dad is neglecting me to party with his girlfriend. The one who lives some of next year lives this year too. Too much going on for fragile little me, someone stronger has to deal with this mess. She does. 

10, My brother died this year and this is the exact moment I stopped caring about God. Everything he ever gave to me he took away. I won’t understand the heaviness of such a statement for another decade and a half. This is when my depression started and when I lost my faith in humanity. I thought I gained it back for a while but I never did. I also stopped crying. Nobody heard me anyway. Someone in my head did it for me.

9, I don’t remember this year and I don’t want to.

8, I don’t remember this year and I don’t want to.

7, I am remembering this year and I don’t want to.

7, I am remembering this year and I don’t want to. 

7, I am remembering this year and I don’t want to.

7, I am remembering this year and it is the year that I well and truly shattered, the year I learned of the depravity of men, the year I learned that I was just holes to fuck, an actress in a sick film, a faerie, a demon, a screaming little cunt, and that’s all I would ever be seen as. This is the year I learned why I liked demons more than angels, and why God was my enemy. This is the year I realized for real that I was alone in this cruel fucking world and no amount of crying or talking or begging will ever make them hear me. They smile and laugh. They smile and laugh. They smile and laugh. :) 

6, late stages, My Sunday school teacher is so nice to me! He has a fun secret that only him and I share! I love him, he takes good care of me. He makes me feel good and special inside. I think deep down…I know it’s not okay. But I can’t help it. Actually, I am really scared because I see the way he looks at me and I feel queasy. I know this is wrong but I am scared he’ll hurt me if I say no. He said that God will tell him if I tell anyone what he does, and if God knows I am bad then I will go to hell. I don’t want to go to hell!! I’ll do whatever you say! I promise. I’m a good little girl. I’m an angel! 

6, early stages, my mommy and daddy broke up. They are fighting in court for me, and I don’t really know what that means. Mommy said the church is helping dad pay for good lawyers so she probably won’t get custody of me. I don’t know what that means. Mommy says daddy is bad and evil. Daddy says mommy is bad and evil. I don’t know who is telling the truth. Or maybe they both are. Or maybe I am the bad and evil one?

5, My dad visits me every night and calls me his little angel. :) I am his sweet angel! His breath smells funny though. And his fingers hurt me a lot, and I don’t like the way he tastes. But he said since I am a good angel it’s okay, so he must be right. 

4, Daddy and mommy fight a lot, my daddy has bottles in his hands a lot. He breaks them a lot. He hits mommy a lot. I am scared so I go hide. I am a being of terror. 

3, I am a toddler but there’s a version of me that remembers that he started existing at this age. He did everything he could to protect me. Even though he didn’t really know why. Thank you, Deimos.

2,

1,

0. I am just a twinkle in my mother’s eye, she’s just a teen and she’s scared out of her mind. This baby is saving her life, though. She didn’t want to keep going but now she has to. If only she knew that 25 years from now this baby would be a shattered and broken mess of themself, because of things desperately out of their control. They were just a baby. You failed them. They all failed them. They all failed US. Too bad you were a Christian. Maybe instead we could have been aborted. Or, rather, maybe we wouldn’t have step foot in that fucking church in the first place.

[ashesandhackles]

The Abandoned Boy And His Problematic Fathers: Snape with Voldemort & Dumbledore

"He and Voldemort and Snape, the abandoned boys, all found home here..” - Forest Again, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

This comparison line of Harry, Snape and Voldemort being abandoned boys is not an accident. There is an intentional parallel being made between three of them - not only in terms of their parallels with the Hallows (as Tumblr has astutely pointed out), but also the commonalities in their upbringing. Given that Harry empathises so deeply with both of them, I am going to argue one of Harry’s attributes was present in all of them. We know that as an abandoned boy with lack of male authority figures to model after, Harry strongly craved a father. Here is a meta by u/metametatron4 that tracks Harry’s feelings about James (and Snape) through the series.

In Voldemort’s case, Tom believes his father to be the magical one and keeps his father’s name until he could no longer prove that it was his father who gave him his “special” lineage. He goes as far as searching Hogwarts records for his father because in his mind, his mother was “weak” to die. Once he is forced to concede that his mother is the magical one, he chooses to emphasise her ancestry in a paternal sense - “Salazar Slytherin, greatest of Hogwarts four”, tying himself up in grandeur. He also killed his father and his own paternal side of the family, his source of rage and shame. He sheds his father's name and becomes someone else, only known by his "special" magical lineage - cutting off that undesirable part of himself. Voldemort’s reaction to both his parent’s abandonment is to be special in every way, and choosing to discard love and seek power and control - a place where he is not rejected at all.

Snape is different from both Harry and Voldemort is that he specifically rejects his abusive father, having known him. As a child, he is seen wearing his mother’s clothes, only with an overlong coat that might belong to his father on a hot sunny day. As per Pottermore, he occasionally got whipped - so one can assume the coat is to hide that. Harry identifies strongly to Snape wearing overlong clothes that don’t quite fit him - a clear sign of neglect, if anything else. The fact that he wears his mother’s smock (and is willing to comfortably wear it in private with Lily in the scene before Hogwarts express) is an interesting detail to me. It feels like a rejection of his father and a sense of identification with his mother. With a person who he is comfortable with, he cuts an "impressive figure" with his smock. We see this detail pop up again in his textbook - where he is proud of being “Half A Prince”, emphasizing his magical lineage, his refuge in a violent, neglectful home.

Snape rejects his father (implied to be a violent man) by also rejecting hypermasculinity - as he tells sneeringly to James Potter: “If you’d rather be brawny, rather than brainy-” and by mocking “foolish wand waving” and how Potions is much more complex than that ("bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses" - thanks for some sensual imagery, Snape :D). His skillset, with the exception of Sectumsempra, is further testament to his rejection of hypermasculinity: Potions (a witches’ brew), spying (again, noted to be something women were famous for in war), branches of mind magic such as Occlumency. He is also strongly associated with mother figures - Eileen Prince (by his own admission), Lily Potter, Narcissa Malfoy. He has a feminine Patronus, in memory of his love and devotion to Lily. The insults also thrown his way are also emasculating: “Snivellus” “a lapdog”, and Dumbeldore’s own “a basket dangling on the arm of Lord Voldemort”. So if he rejects his own father, who does he look to as a male figure to model himself after? After all, he does discard the smock quite eagerly when he gets on Hogwarts Express - so he is keen to perform masculinity.

But we see that teenage Snape and Adult Snape are entirely two different personas. Teenage Snape is anxious, twitchy and walks around like a spider. He swears, he is barely in control of his emotions, is often rendered incoherent when he is emotional and lashes out. And he lashes out in ways that is reflective of a power dynamic he models from home: he feels small, so he will look for someone else to make feel small.

Adult Snape, save for being around Harry where he regresses, is the opposite. He glides when he walks or "swoops like a bat" and if you see him in scenes apart from Harry’s, he is very in control of himself and his jabs are intended to discomfit rather than lashing out. (See the Bellatrix scene in Spinner’s End).

We don’t know too much about this phase of life - we can only speculate. Adult Snape has choice words to say when he witnesses Harry's lack of control over his emotions. He may have been speaking of himself: "Fools who wear their heart proudly on their sleeves, who cannot control their emotions, who wallow in sad memories and allow themselves to be provoked so easily - weak people, in other words - they stand no chance against his powers!"

Speculation aside, what we do know is that teenage Snape shows signs of unstable identity, insecurity - all prime for grooming into a cult. He also shows a disorganised attachment style. His caregiver, his mother is too preoccupied by her own abuse to be there for her son - we see this in glimpses Harry sees in OOTP: " woman cowering" where a man shouts at her, and a young, neglected Snape cries in the corner. Children born in homes like this have trouble regulating their emotions, simultaneously displaying tendencies to aggressively lash out or show disassociative symptoms. Both of which Snape displays. Statistically, this is also seen more in low income households where economic instability and resulting domestic instability creates an unsafe environment for the kids to safely form ideas of their identity, or express emotions in healthy ways, modelling instead out of behaviour seen at home.

I believe Voldemort, as the man who has experimented with boundaries of magic in ways no one else has, is an attractive father figure for someone like Snape ( and Barty Jr. as well). After all, Snape spends his spare time inventing hexes, making great shortcuts to Potions. He has a genuine thirst for learning and is inventive and original. In SWM, we see that he has written far more longer answers than anyone else, he is poring over his paper after exams. Voldemort, as a man who pushed boundaries, is an attractive mentor who shows him a new path. Joining a cult not only gives you power and protection (one he desperately needs because of his social inferiority and as someone who is relentlessly bullied), but it also gives you an identity.

Cults usually instill a homogenous, stable identity centered around charismatic leader. Cults turn your unbearable feelings (sense of rejection, social inferiority), and externalise it and manage to a higher purpose. A cult acts as a safe container for people who cannot understand their trauma or overpowering feelings. As a boy with an unstable identity, it is easier for him to project on Voldemort and re-enact an attachment that he has rejected in early childhood: the one with his father. Voldemort also reinforces a world view that the system had taught a half blood working class boy with nowhere to go arrives at: "There is no good or evil. There is only power and those too weak to seek it".

And then, Voldemort does something Snape doesn't believe a father figure could do, something he cannot conform to or abide by - he threatens the only relationship in his life that he puts on a pedestal. To ensure Lily Potter’s survival beyond asking Voldemort (who he no longer trusts to keep his word), he goes to Dumbledore. Why doesn't he trust Voldemort to keep his word? We don't really know, but given the dynamics we see at play in the first chapter of DH, where Voldemort employs Legliemency to confirm the information from Snape, the trusted spy who at that point had killed Dumbledore - it is safe to say ruling through absolute control can only take you so far. Contrast this with his later scenes with Dumbledore, where Dumbledore trusts him with magic he does not trust himself with: "I am very fortunate that I have you, Severus" .

But before we get there, we see their first scene. In his very first scene with Dumbledore, there is a power dynamic established. He visibly shrinks from Dumbledore’s judgement: “you disgust me”. He is also "stricken" when Dumbledore says "perhaps we sort too soon" - indicating a need for Dumbledore’s approval and validation. (Dumbledore’s own reaction to Snape is interesting - he doesn’t express this kind of strong disgust with Fenrir Greyback in HBP, for example. Perhaps he sees something of himself in this man who lost his way?)

Their next scene together is a grief stricken Snape, who has turned his misery and self loathing inwards and wishes to die. Dumbledore is cold, harsh: “What use will that be to anyone? If you truly loved Lily Evans, your way forward is clear”. Once Snape accepts the path of atonement Dumbledore lays out for him, Dumbledore is demonstrably gentler with him and is even exasperated that Snape asks him to keep “the very best of him” between them.

Once Dumbledore becomes his new father figure, Snape’s loyalty to him is absolute. He will back up and defend Dumbledore where it is not even required - when people accuse Dumbledore in GOF of being unfair, Snape is quick to say: "Don't blame Dumbledore for Potter's lack of respect for school rules. Potter has been crossing lines ever since he first came" (Defending Dumbledore and insulting Harry, he has a talent lol). And at the end of GOF, he shows his Dark Mark to Cornelius Fudge, essentially outing himself as a former Death Eater, to back up Dumbledore's claims because Fudge was insulting him. Even in front of Bellatrix, he emphasises: "Dumbledore is a great wizard, yes he has - the Dark Lord acknowledges it".

He is also resentful of Dumbledore's trust in Harry with secrets that he is not privy to. He enjoys being Dumbledore's closest confidant..("why may I not have the same secrets?" "You trust him, you do not trust me"). It's a less intense version of Harry's "This isn't love, this mess he has left me in. He shared a damn sight of what he was thinking with Grindelwald than with me”. He angrily tells Fake Moody that Dumbledore happens to trust him and he "refuses to believe" he gave permission to search his office. Similarly, he tells Umbridge "jerkily" to ask Dumbledore why he doesn't have the DADA job. Snape is offended at any suggestions of Dumbledore's lack of trust in him.

He also has a similar disillusionment like Harry's with Dumbledore - "you have used me. I have spied for you, lied for you, all intended to keep Lily Potter's son safe and now you are telling me he is being raised like a pig for slaughter". All of this and yet, just like Harry, he chooses to do what Dumbledore would have wanted of him. He goes as far as committing a sort of patricide, just like his former father figure (who did it for different reasons) on the wishes of his current father figure.

And ultimately, he chose Dumbledore's plan of Greater Good rather than Lily's fierce intention of keeping her son alive. It’s also interesting that Dumbledore, a queer, non conforming man is what Snape ultimately chooses as a father /mentor to his path of atonement.

There is a cyclical projection of father among all three boys: Harry inadvertently projects a desire for a father figure on Snape when he wishes that the Half-Blood Prince was his dad. (Read more about Harry’s relationship with Prince in wonderful meta by @thedreamermusing here) Snape projects a wish for a father figure by projecting on to Voldemort. Ultimately, both of them project this desire onto Dumbledore, and it is Dumbledore who ends up being the ultimate guide and father figure for both of them, guiding them through their respective roles in the war.

Thank you to @thedreamermusing and pet_genius for the inputs for this post 🌻 here is a suggested reading from pet's treasure trove relevant to this meta: Death Eaters As A Cult.

[forgiveness-in-the-misery]

Skwisgaar's Psychology

After rewatching Metalocalypse a total of three times ever since the news of the potential finale movie I kind of had a realization; I really fucking love Skwisgaar. I also started by halfway through rewatch two realized that his story and background and general psychology is really fucking fascinating to me.

So I am going to do my best to discuss his character and his psychology and how we see him progress through the show....I already did this with Toki a while back and kind of would love to do it with Murderface and maybe Pickles as well, I'd say Nathan, but he's the....least fucked up in a sense.

Skwisgaar let's start has the most dialogue in the first couple of seasons of the show and even then it isn't overwhelming compared to the other members of the band. By season four he speaks very little and rarely.

When we are introduced to him in the beginning of the show he seems to be like the rest of the group; a diva spoiled rich rocker who has been grossly wealthy for so long that he's forgotten how to function as a human.

You also with the first season especially have this running gag that isn't even a running gag that Skwisgaar or Toki will say something weird and then the other will add onto it and they just say weird shit about life and death or the violence of man, it's weird, and strangely endearing.

Which speaking of how those two play off each other brings me to the fact the pilot episode immediately establishes that these two are almost always together. The band goes to a grocery store and everybody splits up, except for Skwisgaar and Toki who go off together when in all reality that isn't remotely necessary. We also learn in that first episode that Skwisgaar gets pissed when Toki teases him and calls him a woman despite Skwisgaar calling him one like a second earlier and also that Skwisgaar is sexually attracted to elderly women.

Two things are heavily associated with Skwisgaar as a character; he is extremely sexually active and he's got his guitar with him in 99% of scenes. Skwisgaar also doesn't appear to be the most talkative, he can be bitchy and throw tantrums like the rest of his bandmates, but also seems to be more prone to crying and becoming anxious or worried for his friends and their wellbeing/safety, in terms of socializing he seems to be a bit awkward and seems the most comfortable communicating through sex and music. He's teasing and can be a dick, but there's no real edge to it. He also while seeming in some regards to be a bit....dumb to be blunt about it seems to actually be rather smart, though often seems to just keep that to himself probably because he knows who his friends are and they aren't prone to listening to people.

Season one wasted no time in introducing the band's parents and this included Skwisgaar's mother, Serveta. One thing that I do find super interesting is that he is the only member of the band who comes from a single mother, technically it isn't interesting, but the theory (probably canon) that their fathers aren't really their fathers at all and that their mothers became pregnant by the Deth Star makes it interesting. To me at least.

With Skwisgaar's mom in regards to the first season of the show we quickly learn that their relationship is strained. She's an older woman who just like Skwisgaar is very sexually active, we see her come onto Nathan's father who is married and sitting with his wife and son, Skwisgaar's reaction to this is to get upset and begin frantically playing his guitar. Skwisgaar spends a good portion of this episode drinking and at one point saying that ever since his mom got there his stomach had been hurting and he'd just been feeling like absolute shit. When we see him bonding with his mom he's brushing her hair and looking like he'd rather be dead or any place else, seeing him helping her groom is weirdly a red flag to me.

We learn by the third season of the show that his mother is intensely vain and in love with herself, she resents Skwisgaar because being pregnant with him and giving birth to him ruined her 'perfect' body and I'm sure the years where he was too young to fend for himself annoyed her because it meant she couldn't party or have men over or run off whenever she wanted, something I get the feeling that changed when he was about ten years of age. In a bonus video that comes with the first season of the show you see interviews with the band on various random topics; one of the scenes that is...uncomfortable to say the least is when family is brought up. Skwisgaar begins to say something, but trails off and becomes visibly upset before saying he's just going to shut down for a while, Toki confesses some more physical abuse before also shutting down.

I'm going to take a guess that Skwisgaar only had his mother when he was growing up and she only had him, I'm sure she has parents and maybe even siblings and aunts and uncles, but it appears that she has absolutely no relationship with them and Skwisgaar most probably never met these people.

The walls of Serveta's home sport dozens of headshots of herself and a couple of pictures of Skwisgaar as a kid thrown up by the front door almost as an after thought. It's likely and most probable that Skwisgaar was thrusted into the position of caretaker and even a husband sort of position when it came to his relationship with his mom; given the task of looking after her, holding her hair back when she pukes after a night of drinking, doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc. We know when he was about ten or thirteen years old he came home from school to find his mom having sex with two men, an event that scared him and led to him being chased by wolves and falling into a pit where if he weren't a demi-god he legit would have died. I feel like his mom reached a point with him where she stopped caring whether or not he saw her....personal life, perceiving him as an adult despite still just being a boy and also seeing him as somebody who is taking up space in her home and preventing her from having fun.

When she marries Tyr they're all over each other constantly....until Skwisgaar and Tyr become friends and begin spending time together, then she cheats on him. She was jealous that her latest man wasn't giving her constant attention and got angry at the concept of sharing him with her own child, which is super fucked up.

Skwisgaar throughout the show has a fake persona. He likes to pretend he in some way is like his mom; he likes to pretend he has his head up his own ass and doesn't need anybody but himself, he loves himself more than he could ever love another person. Which isn't true. At all.

I think that growing up with a narcissistic parent who emotionally neglected and emotionally abused him put him in a position where he had to shut down like that. He had to learn at a very young age that crying and yelling and being angry gets nothing done except maybe piss his mom off more, after finding his guitar he threw himself into music and appeared to shut himself off socially, preferring music over human interactions.

Music is something that Skwisgaar can rely on no matter what happens; he will always have a guitar, he will always be able to create music even if it is just for himself and nobody else. People come and go, people physically hurt you, people emotionally hurt you, or make you feel worthless. When we see the flashback to the night Magnus was kicked out of Dethklok Skwisgaar is faded into the background, almost like a ghost with his slumped shoulders and his hair curtaining his face as if he wants to just disappear. When they're auditioning for a replacement Skwisgaar is positive he doesn't want somebody else in the band, that they are fine just being four.

I think it comes from the fact he was terrified of repeating what just happened with Magnus, finding somebody he might think he can bond with over music only for that person to turn into a monster who makes him feel like he can't even do the thing he loves more than anything correctly....Then Toki came in and when they had their duel it quickly turned from a competition into a conversation. Because that's the one way Skwisgaar knows how to communicate, the way he is the most comfortable with; he likes to communicate through guitar and finding somebody who he could speak to through music excited him.

It's clear for obvious age related reasons that Skwisgaar has/had a care taker role where Toki is concerned. I mean he was about 15/16 when Skwisgaar took him into the band so he was a literal child, even when he's older Skwisgaar still looks out for him and is in his own sense immensely protective where he's concerned. Skwisgaar is also that way with the rest of the band even if it's more subtle. He worries about his bandmates, if they get injured or nearly killed it bothers him and he doesn't want anything to happen to them. When the band is going to break up he completely shuts down, because admit to it or not they had become the only family he ever had. I think Skwisgaar is so hard wired from his childhood to care for people that it's something he can't shake and maybe with the band he doesn't feel its a bad habit, because unlike with his mom, his bandmates arent forcing him to look after them. It's something he does because he wants to do it.

Of course in regards to his attraction to older women that definitely comes from issues relating to his mother....I don't think it's in a creepy Freud way, but more so just wanting to feel cared for back. Very obviously he can't exactly approach any of his bandmates and ask for a hug....well except maybe Toki and Pickles if he's super drunk or high, but outside of those two instances....they aren't people he could exactly just ask for validation or comfort or consolation. They aren't....good with that shit. Older women though usually have a tendency to be coddling and kind, Skwisgaar probably learned that as a teen or in his twenties, I think it's less about the sex factor and just feeling important. In terms of sex with people closer to him in age (I will die on the hill that he's bisexual, because he keeps just throwing it out there that he would blow a guy and he had multiple three ways with Melmord) I think it's a distraction for the most part, he uses sex the same way he often uses music, and honestly....He grew up seeing his mother have men over constantly.

Skwisgaar didn't grow up seeing love or healthy relationships, he saw his mom parade various men through the house and maybe she kept some of them for a while and I doubt the relationships were healthy and I'm sure he knew that his mother didn't love any man she dated or married for a short while. Even in the show he isn't fond of love or marriage, the only time he dates somebody is when he moves back to Sweden and finally starts to get his life together in a more healthy sense and that relationship didn't feel like it was based on sex. It was based on physical and emotional affection and it was the only time Skwisgaar ever looked actually happy in terms of intimacy.

Sex is a job, a chore for him; he's the God of Life so it's technically what....it's y'know his thing, creating life. As a lot of people notice....he seems far more sexually active after him and Toki's second fight in regards to music and petty bull shit. Season four is essentially the season where Salacia gets what he wanted aka the band tearing itself apart and you can see them all fall apart individually. For Skwisgaar falling apart means closing himself off, throwing himself more into his guitar and more into sex. He becomes more of a tool and an object as if that's all he wants to be, because being a person who opens yourself up and lets people in and tries to care about people ends up with you being hurt, badly.

Which does bring things back to his super complicated slightly homoerotic to the point even the show had to mention it for a hot second relationship with Toki.

We can gather from Doomstar that Toki was far more into music when he first joined Dethklok which I think worked out great for Skwisgaar, because as I said before; Skwisgaar communicates through music and this gave him somebody that he could talk to without the awkwardness of verbally conversing.

Though that changed clearly and you can feel that Skwisgaar is bothered by it, like in some weird way it feels like a minor betrayal. Toki notoriously never practices or puts in a lot of effort in terms of making music which Skwisgaar often comments on, complains about, or gets on him about. Reasonable. Guitar is part of who he is, but at the end of the day a talent that made him rich, that's what it is to Toki.....Skwisgaar on the other hand his guitar is literally an extension of himself and seeing him without a guitar in his hand for longer than a single scene gets weird.

Still despite the two of them losing the art of communicating through their music....they're close. Super fucking close. If you watch Metalocalypse and tell yourself going into the show that you're going to focus heavily on a single character or on a certain relationship you notice a ton of shit. Like you notice that Toki and Skwisgaar almost always sit together, stand together, talk over one another, finish each others weird sentences or ideas, copy each other to the point they spend an entire episode bickering like children over copying each other, and often spend their time hanging out together. Again. They're really close as if they're a single person split into two.

They're close to the point that inverse their fans just to some extent assume the two of them are fucking and madly in love and I mean I'm gonna be honest just objectively speaking here I would not be surprised to find out they have had sex before at least once or more times. Just saying.

That aside though and just sticking to the platonic here....They're close, Toki means as much to Skwisgaar as guitar does, and that's saying a lot. One big reason I want to bring up their relationship is that his relationship with Toki brings to light Skwisgaar's issues with death or more specifically death where Toki is concerned.

In season one when Toki has a bit of a breakdown and Pickles suggest they kill him, Skwisgaar looks tense and uncomfortable and says that he doesn't like the idea because it's a lot and it makes him feel not so good. In a deleted scene where the band watch Nascar together Pickles ask Toki and Skwisgaar if they were supposed to be dead or in jail or something because it's the same episode where they got shit faced and got into a high speed chase. Skwisgaar when responding about it changes the word dead/death out for sleep, stating they were supposed to be put to sleep but just had to do community service instead (Toki corrects that it was jail, not being put to sleep). In the deleted IKEA scene when Toki stressed says maybe the two of them should just kill themselves Skwisgaar immediately freaks out and later when they return to Nathan and Murderface they both look super emotionally fucked up and when Nathan ask if they had been crying Toki gets defensive and says no while Skwisgaar beginning to cry again says they had been crying. Then of course after Toki ruins Skwisgaar's reputation and becomes Magnus Jr. for a few weeks and ends up having a panic attack and making an ass of himself....Skwisgaar thinks he's having a heart attack and freaks the fuck out terrified that he's dying.

Then finally for a compilation of Skwisgaar not handling Toki dying well; in Doomstar before they go in to save Toki Skwisgaar makes the sorrowful comment that sometimes he wonders if they should have stayed a one guitar band. It isn't him being a dick, he isn't saying this isn't worth it. He's saying essentially that Toki was stabbed, kidnapped and possibly murdered and it's completely his fault; if he hadn't taken Toki in then none of this would have happened. Which immediately leads me to believe that post the funeral episode that Skwisgaar spent those months high and drunk and late at night blaming himself for Toki being taken/murdered. That's a lot of blame to put onto yourself and to say its your fault solely because a few years ago you took this kid in off the streets is honestly heart breaking.

Early on in the series there's an episode where Toki's pissed that he isn't seen as Skwisgaar's musical equal, he wants solos, and Skwisgaar turns him down. Which through the series and within that episode itself we easily learn why Skwisgaar never gives him a solo; Toki has performance anxiety and he never practices and quite honestly knows almost nothing about guitar. It's valid. Either way in this particular episode Toki gets pissed and decides he wants to take lessons, Skwisgaar offers and Toki turns him down because last time they tried...he kind of just ended up beating the shit out of Skwisgaar. (to be fair don't dump a bucket of blood on your friend's head) So he goes off and finds an elderly man to teach him how to play guitar, Murderface being a dick decides to tell Skwisgaar that Toki is super good at guitar now and.....Skwisgaar doesn't react well. He gets pissed off and has nightmares about Toki becoming better than him. He even confronts Toki and his guitar teacher and threatens to kick him out of the band. When he realizes at the end of the episode that Toki is still....really not great with music....he's chill again, everything is forgiven.

I kind of think that episode is a reason people perceived Skwisgaar as a dick or is one reason, but honestly he isn't being a dick. I mean sure, a bit, but they're all dicks. The thing is guitar is a crutch for Skwisgaar, it is super important to him and he doesn't know who he is without his guitar, without his music. So somebody else threatening to take that from him freaks him out and he reacts poorly to it.

Then we get to near the end of the show when the same issue arises except completely different. Toki again later in the series ask Skwisgaar for a solo and Skwisgaar annoyed refuses him, Toki being the mild psycho shit that he is decides to just kind of ruin his life as revenge. Again by this point in the show its kind of obvious if you actually pay attention at all that Skwisgaar keeps telling him he can't have solos because Toki never fucking practices and even in the studio Skwisgaar has to record most of the rhythm guitar parts. He's also known since Toki's audition that the kid is prone to choking up and making mistakes, so he's technically protecting him without just outright confronting him.

Toki writes a book calling out Skwisgaar as an abusive tyrant and an over dramatic bitch. Admittedly Skwisgaar is a slight diva and just like the rest of them can be a total asshole, admittedly to a lesser degree than the others. What's really fucking interesting for me personally about this episode is that Skwisgaar is catatonic and depressed for 99% of it. He doesn't speak. This starts literally the second that Toki releases his book saying that Skwisgaar abuses him, this is before Skwisgaar's career goes down the toilet, his career hadn't been impacted by this yet.

Skwisgaar falls to pieces because Toki, Toki who he's known since he was just sixteen and took in off the streets and they're always practically attached at the hip and have been since day one just released a book calling him an abusive monster.

I do have a feeling one reason this fucked him up is because he might be terrified that he's turning into Magnus without realizing it, that perhaps he has become an abusive monster and has been making Toki feel the way that Magnus made him feel towards the end of his time in Dethklok. I think there also is probably something soul crushing about the person you love platonically or otherwise referring to you very publicly as abusive. Of course all of this worsens when Skwisgaar's career begins to fall to shit, eventually towards the end when Toki is at the top of his ego trip being a prick Skwisgaar does confront him, that in itself is interesting.

Skwisgaar goes in way calmer than I would be in that situation, sure he gets pissed off as they bicker, but again he's waaayyyy fucking calmer than anybody else would be especially since Toki just yells at him through the entire conversation. Of course interestingly is that Toki perceives Skwisgaar in a way that isn't entirely true, he thinks Skwisgaar mocks him and thinks of him as nothing which isn't true at all, when he says Skwisgaar laughed at him he just responds that he never did that and he sounds slightly hurt by that. They're both hurt and none of these men are good with healthy emotions. Skwisgaar never loses his shit on him in the entire conversation, he looks like he could easily go ape shit but instead warns him that the audience will eat him alive the second he fucks up.

Which turns out to be true, Toki fucks up and people begin turning against him which leads to him having a severe panic attack. Like I mentioned before Skwisgaar thinks he's dying and tries to save him, scared out of his fucking mind at the concept of Toki dying. Which....the dude just spent several weeks treating you like garbage and calling you a monster who abuses him, if Skwisgaar was actually a shitty person then he would have laughed at him or mocked him or given him shit about this moment for years to come....but he doesn't do any of that. He is worried about saving him, probably terrified that if Toki dies then their last conversation was a fight.

Their dynamic changes a lot after this, not in a way that's overly obvious unless you watch it closely. They spend a lot less time together and what feels almost out of character initially in Dethcamp is....Skwisgaar easily going along with Murderface and bitching about Toki, because....again can't stress the Scandinavian dudes are always attached at the hip and now suddenly he's easily saying mean shit about Toki. It feels weird until you remember that not long before this they had a massive fight, Toki called him abusive and momentarily ruined his career and most likely afterwards tried to act like nothing happened at all while Skwisgaar probably wasn't capable of doing that.

Occasionally in season four Skwisgaar and Toki will sit together or stand together, still talk or have that physical closeness but it's far between and you see Toki spend a majority of his time with the toxic trio: Murderface, Rockso, and Magnus. Skwisgaar spends his time typically with Murderface and Pickles then near the end spends most of his time with Nathan.

Skwisgaar is a person who grew up in a home lacking affection and love or safety, he didn't grow up with examples of love or healthy relationships and as far as he's concerned relationships are a waste of time and energy because they all end the same.

Of course for as much as he says that, as they all say that....it's bull shit. He cares deeply about his bands and him trying to act near the end like Dethklok was just another gig it isn't, these people are his close friends and his only real family. Seeing Pickles and Nathan fall apart wrecked him and having Toki turn on him so easily gutted him. Skwisgaar is a super emotionally fragile person, he seems absolutely terrified of showing anger or aggression as if it's something he's never been comfortable with or learned when he was young gets you nowhere or perhaps there were men around who were violent and loud and it made him scared to ever be that way. He's the only one of the band we never see really lose his shit or be randomly aggressive and violent, he also strangely enough cries the most out of them canonically. People always make the assumption Toki cries a lot, but like canonically he cries waaayyyy fucking less than Skwisgaar.

I really find Skwisgaar interesting....clearly and this analysis might be a jumbled mess, but there's strangely a lot of things to unpack and things I probably didn't even touch on as much as I could have, because this is already insanely long. I have a deep appreciation of him rewatching this show now that I'm older and far more into analyzing works of fiction.

I hope that this was remotely coherent.

[chubbymoongoddess]

Pampered

I have no idea how I feel about this. i’m indifferent.. like I like it but I also don’t. But all that matters is that I tried- This is crossposted to ao3. 

----------------

  Seokjin was adopted into a rather well off family during Christmas one year. He was essentially a gift for the couple’s rather spoiled son who absolutely loved the siamese hybrid. The boy would groom Seokjin, would cuddle him, even enter him into shows where the hybrid would win first place each time. Seokjin knew he was gorgeous. He knew he was purebred and he made sure everyone he met knew it. Over the years however, the boy lost interest in the hybrid, locking him in a cage when he didn’t want to be bothered, not grooming him.. At all, hell the kid barely even fed the poor siamese. He always opted to go out all night or even days at a time with friends, leaving Jin home alone, hungry and wondering what he had done wrong to deserve such treatment.

  A day came where the boy had forgotten to lock Jin’s cage before he left with his friends, so Jin took this chance to escape. The boy’s parents were never home as it was, so leaving the house was as easy as walking through the front door. The siamese hybrid frowned once he was outside, looking back at the door only once before he made his way down the street. He had grown weak in the past months thanks to the neglect and had lost a substantial amount of weight. So when Seokjin had smelled a small hint of food in a nearby alley, his stomach loudly growled. So, he followed his nose. Unfortunately, the smell was just an empty pizza box, which had the weakened hybrid sniffling. How was he supposed to find food on his own? All he had ever known were his previous owners and the high quality hybrid food they had fed him. He didn’t know how to fend for himself out here. Maybe he should just give up, he thought, sliding down onto the dirty alley ground. He curled in on himself there, wrapping his arms around himself as he quietly cried, the pain in his stomach worsening.

---------------

  Jimin had just finished his daily walk through the neighborhood. He was just about to walk up his driveway when he heard a small cry coming from the alley next to his home.  Out of pure curiosity, he turned and made his way into the alley, calling out gently. “Hello? Is anyone down here?” When he got no response, he stilled his movements, listening for the cry again. It took a few moments, but he did hear another few sniffles and whimpers, making the young man move deeper into the alley. It took no more than a few steps for him to see Seokjin curled in on himself and the sight of it had Jimin’s heart dropping. “Oh.. oh honey..” He frowned, kneeling down and holding his hand out as Jin peeked up at the blonde man. “Hi there.. I promise I’m not going to hurt you.. Are you lost? I can help you find your home if you are.”

  Jin frowned at Jimin’s question and slightly shook his head. “No.. not lost. I don’t have an owner anymore..” The statement had Jimin’s frown deepening. He looked at the hybrid’s gaunt face and then over his obviously malnourished body. He must have been living out here for months without him knowing. “No owner?” Jimin spoke. “How long have you been out here, baby? It looks like a few months at most?” Again, Jin shook his head, curling up into a tighter ball. “No.. only about half an hour.. I’ve been neglected for y..years.” He was tearing up again, his voice wavering as he spoke and all Jimin could reply with was a soft “Oh.” How could anyone neglect a hybrid? Especially one that looked like he was the softest and sweetest thing on the planet. It took a few moments of thinking before jimin gently reached out to pet Jin’s matted hair. “Well.. I can’t in good conscience leave you out here. What’s your name, honey? And do you want to come home with me? I promise I’ll take very good care of you.”

Jin looked up immediately then, squinting his eyes at the other man in front of him. “You.. you promise? How.. How do I know I can trust you?” He sniffed, carefully shifting into a sitting position. “And my name is S..Seokjin..” “Well..” Jimin began, pulling his hand back for the moment. “How’s this, I’ll make you a deal. I’m a veterinarian for hybrids. So, if you want to come in, let me check you out, get you cleaned up and get you some food and a place to stay for the night, you can. If you want to leave in the morning, I won’t stop you. But, if you want to try letting me take care of you, you can stay. That okay? I really can’t leave you out here tonight by yourself.. It looks like it’s going to rain anyway.”  This had the siamese weighing his options. On one hand, he could have food and a warm bed or on the other hand he could sleep out here and get rained on. Besides, this guy seemed pretty genuine and the look in his eyes told him how he felt.. He could have even sworn there were a few tears threatening to fall out of the other man’s eyes. With a sniff and a small sigh, Jin nodded. “O..Okay but only if you tell me your name too..” Jimin smiled, standing and reaching a hand out to the other. “My name is Jimin.”

  Over the next few hours, Jimin had completely checked over Jin. He was obviously malnourished and had some issues with matted fur, but otherwise he was healthy. He used that term lightly. The smaller man showed the hybrid to the shower and let him bathe himself to give him privacy, though he checked on him every few minutes to make sure he was okay. After he had cleaned up and gotten out, Jimin had given him the biggest pair of pajamas he owned, hoping he’d be comfortable in them until he could buy him new clothes in the morning. Unfortunately, the younger man didn’t have any hybrid food on hand, so he decided to make dinner for the both of them that night. A little human food couldn’t hurt if it was just one day, he thought. While Jin ate, Jimin had to remind him to slow down so he wouldn’t get sick, since he hadn’t eaten in awhile. Thankfully, he listened and Jin ended up with a full belly for the first time in months.

 After dinner, Jimin showed the taller man the room he’d be sleeping in, secretly grabbing a brush while the older looked around. “Seokjin? Would you mind if I brushed your hair before you settled into bed? It’ll help get any left over mats out of your hair.” Jin almost teared up again but nodded, slowly sitting down on the bed and letting Jimin crawl behind him. As the brush glided through his hair, Jin had started to purr. Something he hadn’t done in years. It sounded so foreign to him but he loved this attention and Jimin was being so gentle. He almost didn’t want it to stop, but it unfortunately had to. Ten minutes later, Jimin put the brush down and crawled off the bed, leaning over to press a small kiss to the hybrid’s temple. “There we go. If you need a nightlight, there’s one right there okay? I’ll see you in the morning and I hope you rest well. Remember to think about my offer, okay?” Jin quietly nodded and mumbled a soft “Thank you.” as Jimin left the room, closing the door behind him.

  Seokjin did turn on the nightlight but he didn’t sleep. Instead, he laid out on the bed and thought. He thought about Jimin’s offer. Thought about how a stranger had shown him more love in a day than he had gotten the last two years. He was conflicted to say the least. What if Jimin was telling the truth? What if he really did take care of him and love him for the rest of his life? But.. What if he was lying? What if Jimin just abused him like his last owner? It took hours of thinking, but in the end, Jin had made up his mind. He had only gotten about three hours of sleep before the sun rose and the birds started chirping. It was okay though, he’d get better sleep tonight. The hybrid had quietly gotten out of bed when he heard noises coming from the kitchen. He quietly padded in peeking around the corner at Jimin. It took him a moment to gather the courage to clear his throat, but when he did, the shorter man turned and gave him a bright smile. “Seokjin! Come sit! I’m making breakfast.” The siamese nodded and moved quickly, sitting down at the table. He fiddled with his fingers for a moment as he watched Jimin cook. “Um..J..Jimin?” He squeaked, making the small blonde turn around once more, head tilted to show he was listening. “I was thinking.. I.. I wanna stay if you’re still offering.” Jimin beamed wide and bright at the older man. “Of course you can! You can have the room you slept in last night and after breakfast we can get you some new clothes and some proper food, okay?” For the first time in years, Seokjin cracked a small, genuine smile, nodding at Jimin’s words. “O..Okay!”

 Jimin had kept his word, buying the hybrid all sorts of new outfits, high quality hybrid food and anything else he asked for which wasn’t much, just his own blanket and a few snacks. Jimin was fine with the snacks, one every once in a while wouldn’t hurt Jin thankfully. Over the next few weeks,the two had gotten closer and Jin had comfortably settled down in his new home. The hybrid had started to sleep with Jimin about a week in, snuggling against his back and hugging onto him as he slept. Jimin definitely didn’t mind this and it helped Jin sleep much better.  Every now and then, Jimin would give Jin a few snacks or a few bites of his dinner, cooing and praising him, telling him how gorgeous he was. How good he was.

  Every now and then became more than once a day and over the course of four months, Jin’s snacking had taken a toll on his weight. All of his shirts now rolled up the curve of his stomach and he had trouble getting any of his pants up and over his ass, which now wobbled whenever he would walk. His moobs jiggled in his shirt whenever he moved and he had a rather thick double chin as well as his thighs brushing together more and his arms having slight wings. This never phased him or Jimin even, as the shorter man would continue to dote on the hybrid. After his nightly grooming, Jimin would gently rub over his belly and sometimes even kiss at it, making sure to let Jin know how handsome he was. Why would Jin’s weight bother him anyway? He was still being loved and pampered and Jimin had shown no signs of stopping. Whenever he would snuggle the smaller man at night, he’d have him pressed into his tummy. Jimin seemed to like that, as he’d turn over and snuggle deeper into the feline’s wobbly tummy.

  Seokjin had noticed how Jimin would watch him whenever he walked anywhere. He always had a small smile on his face whenever Jin’s sides would barely brush against the door frames in the house. Was there lust there? Probably. But Jin saw a ton of love in the other’s eyes as well whenever he caught him staring. There was a night where Jin crawled into bed and nudged Jimin, head tilted slightly. “Jiminnie? I always see you staring.. Do you um.. Wanna play with my belly? You seem to like it a lot..” The younger male blushed slightly but nodded. “I do like it, sweetheart. I love seeing you so happy and well.. Pampered like you’re supposed to be.” He mumbled while reaching to gently rub and grope at Jin’s slightly exposed belly. “I like how soft you’ve gotten and it’s really cute to see you waddling around the house and needing my help more often.” This had Jin’s chubby cheeks tinted pink and had him fiddling with his fingers. “You.. you know, I like it too? I love that you give me all of this love, it’s all I’ve ever wanted? And I like how you snuggle into me more now that I’ve gotten softer? So.. I wouldn’t mind if I kept getting.. Well, bigger.” Jimin smiled, leaning over to kiss the hybrid on his nose and cheeks. “If that’s what you want, Jinnie, then that’s what we’ll do, okay?” Jin nodded and smiled, relaxing completely against the bed as Jimin rubbed and played with his tummy, eventually nodding off.

 -----------------

 Two years had passed since Jin and Jimin’s talk and since then, the hybrid had ballooned. He couldn’t even turn sideways to get through the doors because his belly got stuck in the frame. If he tried to waddle through normally, his hips and ass would get wedged. Jimin had given up on making him wear clothes because he always grew out of his new ones within a month. Seokjin had gotten so big that Jimin had to buy a bigger bed for both of them to fit and even then, whenever the hybrid rolled over, he would crush Jimin under his belly. The younger didn’t mind it, especially in the winter. Jin’s belly had kept him warm whenever he was pinned under it. His belly drooped down, almost brushing the floor when he stood, his moobs had grown into full on breasts, his cheeks had plumped up and his double chin had started growing into a triple. Jin needed at least two and a half chairs if he could still sit at the table, but lately he’s been opting to lounge on the couch or the special cloud chair Jimin had bought him and placed near the window so he could sun. His thighs could rival tree trunks and his arms were just as flabby.

 None of this stopped Jimin from doting on him or grooming him more than once daily now. His fur and hair were still healthy and sleek and with all of the praise the younger male had given him, jin knew he was still as gorgeous as ever. He was happy and he had a loving owner. It’s all he had ever wanted and it was never going to change.

[newbrn-moved]

tagging:  @monstyres​ (riley) , @rosefromdeath​ @eclipseloved​ @rivalrus​ @butvic​ @brideblooded​  @arachnidfangs​

—    BASICS.

▸     IS YOUR MUSE TALL    /    SHORT    /    AVERAGE ?   Short.

▸      ARE THEY OKAY WITH THEIR HEIGHT ?  It makes it hard to reach anything on a high shelf but otherwise she doesn’t mind it.

▸      WHAT’S THEIR HAIR LIKE ?  Bree cut her hair just after joining the Cullens and dyed most of the length an ombre teal. After a couple conditioning treatments, it’s soft again but due to her natural texture, her locks have some curl and wave to them. 

▸     DO THEY SPEND A LOT OF TIME ON THEIR HAIR     /    GROOMING ? Only when she has to maintain the color. Otherwise she just brushes it out with her hands (brushes make what frizziness she has worse).

▸     DOES YOUR MUSE CARE ABOUT THEIR APPEARANCE   /   WHAT OTHERS THINK ?  Bree doesn’t have a lot of opinion on her appearance. She bathes and shows and cleans her face and brushes her teeth, but she doesn’t usually wear make up except to cover the shine of her skin if she absolutely MUST go out in the sun. But in terms of what she WEARS, Bree doesn’t put a lot of care or consideration and just wears what’s comfortable. Alice usually tries to help convince her to wear otherwise.

—    PREFERENCES.

▸     INDOORS    OR   OUTDOORS ? ▸     RAIN    OR    SUNSHINE ?  ▸     FOREST   OR    BEACH ?  ▸     PRECIOUS    METALS OR AND GEMS ? ▸   FLOWERS    OR  AND   PERFUMES ?  ▸     PERSONALITY    OR    APPEARANCE ?  ▸     BEING    ALONE  OR    BEING    IN    A    CROWD ? ▸     ORDER   OR    ANARCHY ?  ▸     PAINFUL    TRUTHS    OR   WHITE    LIES ?  ▸    SCIENCE   OR AND    MAGIC ? ▸     PEACE    OR    CONFLICT ?  ▸    NIGHT    OR    DAY ?  ▸   DUSK  OR   DAWN ?  ▸     WARMTH    OR   COLD ?  ▸     MANY   ACQUAINTANCES    OR    A    FEW    CLOSE    FRIENDS ?  ▸     READING  OR    PLAYING    A    GAME ?

—    QUESTIONNAIRE.

▸      WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR MUSE’S BAD HABITS ? Doesn’t look people in the eye often, even when she’s talking to them. She wrings her hands when she’s nervous.

▸      HAS YOUR MUSE LOST ANYONE CLOSE TO THEM ?  HOW HAS IT AFFECTED THEM ?  Bree never much becomes close with anyone, the only time was with Diego that one day during her time in the newborn army. Even then, they weren’t all that close but he was at the same time all she had-- up until a couple days before they started heading toward Forks she had never even spoken to Fred. Losing Diego -the only person who had been kind to her, and the only person who wanted to talk to her- devastated her. It was enough that in the peak of battle, it made Bree lose her will to live, or to fight to live. Between the Volturi leaving and joining the Cullen family, she hasn’t had much time to actually process the death of him but when she does, she grieves. It’s mostly a guilt that wallows up inside, over all the things they could have done different, and a despair that of course, the only good thing to happen to her out of all the shit is gone. She finds little comfort in the Cullen family during this time, since everything is so fresh and new and they are mostly occupied with Bella’s wedding then baby and transformation. The grief ends up blending into a thick black mess of all the other things that are happening at the same time that she’s forced to process--- so she never ends up coming to terms with it much internally. She’s only ever forced to face it as a blunt fact without much closure.

▸      WHAT ARE SOME FOND MEMORIES YOUR MUSE HAS ? She has very few memories from when her mother was present, before she “left” and most of them have blurred out. The most clearly she can recall is her mother reading her The Giving Tree at bed time. As a teen, she hates that story but she can still somewhat vaguely recall the tenderness her mom treated her with when it was read out loud.

▸     IS IT EASY FOR YOUR MUSE TO KILL ? It is terrifyingly easy for Bree to kill other humans, at least for the feed. In the army, humans weren’t people anymore. They encouraged the idea that humans were now just food to hunt and kill and drink from and as a newborn it was easier not to fight that idea because the thirst was so powerful, so intense, it didn’t leave any room for guilt or empathy. Bree described herself as “shutting off her brain” when it came time to hunt. She becomes predator and erases all feelings of guilt and fear and sadness, and lets the thirst take over. When she joins the Cullens, a lot of this begins to get brushed off and she remembers humans have value, that they have lives and hopes and dreams. It helps keep her from wanting to feed on humans again.

▸      WHAT’S IT LIKE WHEN YOUR MUSE BREAKS DOWN ? It’s quiet and withdrawn. Even in her grief Bree tries to take up very little space, tries not to make a show of it or draw attention. She’ll bite and cry into her hand to avoid making noises, or into her shirt and holds herself (she doesn’t count on anyone else to do it for her).

▸      IS YOUR MUSE CAPABLE OF TRUSTING SOMEONE WITH THEIR LIFE? Yes, but it takes an enormous amount of trust. In case of the Cullen family, she had very little choice but  Carlise and Esme saved her life and she is very aware of the fact she trusts them with her life every day she stays with them. 

▸  WHAT’S YOUR MUSE LIKE WHEN THEY’RE IN LOVE ?  Bree has no experience with love before Diego and this is a stretch to say, since I don’t consider them having been IN love... I don’t think it was possible to have escalated that fast when they only knew and talked to each other one day. I believe Bree had become infatuated with him and vice versa-- it was puppy love. He was the first person to treat her like someone of value and with kindness in YEARS. She suffered abuse and neglect her whole life and then came along someone who for the first time besides Riley, had conversations with her. And unlike Riley, Diego treated her with compassion and humanity- he made her laugh and appreciated her intelligence and encouraged her and invited her to think and criticize which is millions more than anyone else in the army. In love, though, Bree doesn’t change who she is, but she becomes more open. Sadly she will put the other person ahead of herself, whether it is their needs or their safety. She will become a little more tactile and willing to touch, but otherwise it will depend on the person.

[loadsuperior898]

Snow White Progenyamerican Meadow's Equestrian Center

When I found Meadow Creek Farm, I knew right away it was a place I would make many memories at. I've been fortunate to ride the amazing and skilled horses at the farm and looking forward to many more years of happiness with this awesome group of people I have met.

Kristie Alexa with Berkshire Hathaway Hudson Valley & Wappingers Homes and Happenings, stops by to visit us and provide her review of Meadow Creek Farm. If you are looking for a place for horseback riding lessons or somewhere to board your horse, you should definitely check this place out! Meadow Creek Farm is THE place to ride! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGavpBrHZro

Kristie Alexa with Berkshire HathawayBerkshire Hathaway Hudson Valley & Wappingers Homes and Happenings

The farm is truly my favorite place in the world and everyone is so friendly. There is always something to do at the farm so it is never boring! It is my home away from home. Thank you, Helaina, for creating such a great place for all of the horses, animals and your visitors.

The number one reason I love having my daughter at Meadow Creek Farm is confidence building. She has also gained responsibility, determination and physical strength while pursuing something she loves.

Snow White Progenyamerican Meadow's Equestrian Center Nj

Snow White Progenyamerican Meadow's Equestrian Center Facebook

Snow White Progenyamerican Meadow's Equestrian Center Michigan

Snow White Progenyamerican Meadow's Equestrian Center Nj

Summit Meadows Adventures offers guided snowmobile tours this winter as conditions allow. Touch points on snowmobiles are sanitized between tours. Helmets and boots are available for rental, but pants, coats, gloves, and goggles are not. Guests should be prepared to provide this equipment. Limited retail is available on-site. Trailhead directions: From Morton, follow US 12 east for 55 miles to White Pass. Turn left and proceed to parking area near the Yurt behind the Village Inn Condominiums. Well known for its excellent family-friendly tracked and groomed cross-country ski trails; the White Pass Nordic Center also offers family-friendly snowshoeing trails. Snow tubing, Skiing, Skating Center, Horse Drawn Sleigh Rides and more! TripAdvisor Rated #1 All-Inclusive Family Resort in the US. Reservations 800-647-2624. We are a wedding venue in Wasilla, Alaska. We offer a Sperry Tent for reception and a mountain view ceremony site.

“A place where horses can heal”

Mission Statement

Our goal is to provide a safety net for severely neglected and/or abused horses, which after veterinary care, nursing, treatment, and management, can eventually return to living as healthy, active horses. This will be accomplished in a number of ways:

A state of the art treatment facility with an eight stall barn and several outside corrals, two round rings and turnout area.

Medical equipment to assess the health and condition of each horse and monitor its recovery.

A foster care network to house healthy horses until they can be adopted.

An adoption program designed to ensure each healthy animal will be well cared for the rest of its life.

The History of Mountain Meadow Equine Rescue & Rehab

Mountain Meadow Equine Rescue & Rehab Center, while a newcomer to the horse rescue community, comes from a long history of saving animals from neglect and abandonment. It started as the Animal Trust Foundation which was founded May 16, 1973 by Patrica Woodbridge Nelson. Originally named the Animal Trust Sanctuary, the foundation owned a five acre ranch in Ramona, California, where Ms. Nelson established and maintained a rescue center for dogs and cats. Years later the ranch was donated to Fund for Animals, a New York animal rescue of which Cleveland Amory was the head. The Animal Trust Sanctuary changed its name to Animal Trust Foundation (ATF) and continued in the ensuing years to donate funds to many local animal welfare and rescue organizations. It was in November, 2014 that the decision was made to create an offshoot from the Foundation designed to rescue and care for injured and starving horses. Thus Mountain Meadow Equine Rescue came into being.

Home Tags Posts tagged with 'SimCity 4 free. download full version for MAC' Tag SimCity 4 free. download full version for MAC. Simulation Strategy SimCity 4 Deluxe Edition MacOSX Cracked Game Free Download. Search For Games. Action (57) Adventure (52) Arcade (2) Co-Op (3) Exploration (1) Fighting (1) Horror (5) Indie (26). You can free download mac games Simcity 4 torrent. This is cracked macbook games. Simcity 4 was developed in 2004 in the Simulation genre by the developer Maxis. At the moment latest version: 1.1. Game language is Russian, English. Simcity 4 download torrent mac.

Snow White Progenyamerican Meadow's Equestrian Center Facebook

Substantial investment was made in creating a state of the art care facility, including an eight stall steel barn, weight scale, and medical equipment. There are also six outside corrals with a half-acre paddock. As we grow there is room to expand to about double our current capacity. Being limited in space to about four acres, we focus on horses with urgent medical issues in the need of long term (six to twelve months) care, rather than warehousing abandoned animals. There are many rescues in San Diego County doing a great job in taking care of these orphaned horses and they deserve all the praise they receive. Our doors are open to any organization which may find itself overly burdened by the health care requirements of some horses with special needs. Additionally, equine veterinarians occasionally encounter an injured horse which requires long term care and which the owner cannot afford to address. In these circumstances, often the unfortunate choice is made to euthanize the animal solely because of the unbearable cost placed on the owner. These are our patients.

Snow White Progenyamerican Meadow's Equestrian Center Michigan

ATF continues to operate as it always has, contributing to the support of welfare and rescue organizations under the direction of Anthony Clark, one of the original founders. The former president, Douglas Stoodt, became and continues to be the CEO and Director of Mountain Meadow Equine Rescue.

PictureScape® displays allow for angled and curved frame sections so you can create a look that complements your graphics and supports your brand. Create nearly any angular or curved shape imaginable. After you request an electronic version of this brochure, you will have the option to also request a hard copy version as well. Free Download PhotoScape X - Fun and Easy Photo Editor. PhotoScape X is an all-in-one photo editing software which provides photo-related features such as Photo Viewer, Editor, Cut Out, Batch, Collage, Combine, Create GIF, Color Picker, Screen Capture, RAW images and More. Best Photoshop Alternative. CAPE Biology: Home Overview Unit One Unit Two Videos Pictures About Me Useful Links Past Papers and Questions Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates. Fun and Easy Photo Editor. What's new in this version. New Text Effects: Long Shadow, Overlays & Masks, Background New Object Effects: Long Shadow, Overlays & Masks New Filters: Gradient Opacity, Radial Speed Lines, Lines, Concentric, Geometric Collage New Filter Objects: Mosaic #2, #3, #4, Frosted Glass New Text Warp: Gradient Upper, Gradient Upper 2, Gradient Lower, Gradient Lower 2 New. Pictures cape biology journal.

[shizzymcfizzy]

*******PLEASE READ*********

This is my request for justice to be brought to the land in between Ashcroft and Logan Lake, British Columbia, Canada.

The SPCA and Highland Valley Coppermine have been trapping wild horses and selling them to meat markets.

The Government of Canada better be prepared for a petition and a protest.

I noticed 5 the stallions just over a year ago, trapped on the little hill that you can see from the cinder hill viewpoint. I have spent the last year observing that they never get water to drink, they are terrified of the trucks that go round and round and never stop, they are trapped. They never leave that hill. *******THERE IS NO WATER FOR THEM TO DRINK. THEY SPENT THE ENIRE WINTER ON THAT HILL, WITH NO TREES TO PROTECT THEM FROM THE WIND.

These Feral Horses are native to that area of the world and have been there for a long time. Free-roaming horses are being held captive on the copper mine property to aid in ���population control” when the proper term would be “animal abuse”

These Feral Horses are unique in their physical features and native to the highland valley. They are uniquely structured to run. Since someone seems to be the “owner” of the horses trapped on the copper mine side of the road, they don’t get to run. Their muscles are DEPLETING, they have no shoes on their feet, their tails are dragging on the GROUND BECAUSE THEY’ve never been groomed, and they aren’t being fed. The copper mine has no fresh water to drink AND THAT IS ANIMAL CRUELTY.

The Ashcroft gas station owner told me “someone owns them and they are grazing them there.” WHAT GRAZING, THEY BARELY HAVE ANY ROOM. THEY ARE ALWAYS EITHER TRAPPED ON THAT LITTLE HILL, OR STUCK ON THAT TINY PIECE OF GRASS. THEY ARE DYING OF THIRST AND ONE OF THEM CAN BARELY WALK.

They are DESPERATE TO GET BACK TO THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ROAD BECAUSE THEY HAVE BEEN STOLEN FROM THE WILD, AND THEY, BEING ALL STALLIONS, HAVE MARES ON THE OTHER SIDE WAITING FOR THEM.

I have been camping in that area since I was a small baby. EVERY SUMMER. I HAVE KNOWN THISE HORSES.

I remember they were so hard to spot. The only time you ever seen them was when they came down for a drink, always just before dark, THROUGH BINOCULARS. And they would disappear again and not be seen by human until they were thirsty.

They do not usually go near humans.

THE ONLY REASON THOSE HORSES REMAIN IN HUMAN AREA,

IS BECAUSE THEIR STALLIONS ARE TRAPPED ON THE OTHER SIDE.

Leaving THE MARES AND BABIES TO FEND FOR THEMSELVES ON THE other SIDE OF THE ROAD

AND MOST OF THEM RIPPED APAPRT BY CYOTES BECAUSE THE STALLIONS ARENT THERE TO PROTECT THEM.

POPULATION CONTROL..... YOU WOULDNT EVEN KNOW THEY EXISTED IF YOU WERENT TRAPPING THEM ALREADY, THEY ARE NOT NORMAL HORSES. THEY ARE VERY INTELLIGENT. THIS IS LIKE SELLING HUMAN BEINGS ON BLACKMARKETS.

IF THAT HERD GOES EXTINCT I WILL NOT STOP UNTIL I FIND A WAY TO SHUT THAT COPPER MINE DOWN FOR INVESTIGATION.

ANIMAL ABUSE IS ILLEGAL. INCASE YOU FORGOT.

I AM GOING THO BE FORCING THE GOVERNMENT TO SECURE THOSE BEAUTIFUL CREATURES A HABITAT.

*AS A MATTER OF FACT******

*WHY ARE THEY NOT IN THEIR PROTECTED LAC DU BOIS GRASSLANDS******

THE SPCA AND HIGHLAND VALLEY COPPER-MINE ARE SELLING THEM FOR MONEY!!!!

******* THIS IS ILLEGAL*************

INSTEAD, THIS IS WHERE THEY ARE FORCED TO LIVE ON THE COPPER MINE PROPERTY.

THAT WATER IS NOT SAFE TO DRINK!!!!!

*********YOU ARE FORCING THEIR EXTINCTION BECAUSE YOU WANT TO EXPAND YOUR MINE, And THEY ARE IN YOUR WAY.********

One of the stallions has a bad leg, I believe it is a dog bite that is infected.he will die if it isn’t treated. IT IS EITHER A SOG BITE OR HE HURT HIMSELF TRYING TO CRISS THE CATTLE-GUARD, TRYING TO GET BACK TO HIS FAMILY.

YOU ARE TORTURING THE POOR THINGS.

they are all incapable of going for a run, AND THEY ARE FREE-ROAMING WILD HORSES.

they are skin and bone, have nothing to drink, I do not see a water source for them.

****** THIS STALLION SHOULD BE AT A WILDLIFE PRESERVE******^*

THEY NOW HAVE A SMALL BABY WITH THEM, SOMEHOW, ALTHOUGH THEY ARE ALL STALLIONS.

AS SOON AS I STATED “THEY ARE ALL STALLIONS”

THEIR LAST NIGHT ON THE HILL WAS THE NIGHT OF SOME OF THESE PICTURES.

in the photos you clearly see the baby,

THE BABY WAS NOWHERE TO BE FOUND THE NEXT DAY.

4 STALLIONS WERE BY THE ENTRANCE AND THIS INJURED STALLION, STOOD BY THAT FENCE, I DROVE PAST HIM 3 times and finally pulled over. He showed me he can barely walk. I SPENT THE REST OF THE MORNING, AFTERNOON AND EVENING WITH HIM. I named him (Hadouken)

He Was put on the other side of that little hill BY HIMSELF to be ripped apart by the coyote THAT LIVES ACROSS THE STREET.

BY THE HIGHLAND VALLEY COPPER MINE.

I HAVE SEEN THE CYOTE I SPEND SO MUCH TIME UP THERE.

The police PULLED ME OVER DURING THE NICHT WITH THEIR LIGHTS ON, WHILE I WAS SLEEPING IN MY VEHICLE PROTECTING THAT INJURED STALLION,

but I stayed with him all night,

His buddies found him the next day. They protect him. WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN TOHIM ONCE THE OTHER 4 ARE SOLD!!?!!!

YOU SICK FUCK!!!!

The day after that, all 5 stallions were on that small piece of grass beside the small hill there are photos of 2 of them, Hadouken laying down. THE BABY IS STILL MISSING.

They’ve been missing for over a week.

Now over 3 weeks.

I DO NOT BELIEVE THEY LEFT THE PROPERTY AND THAT PLANT SHOULD BE SHUT DOWN AND INVESTIGATED.

UNDERNEATH. THEY MUST HAVE A DOG FOOD FACTORY UNDERNEATH.

WHERE IS THE BABY. AND WHERE IS THE REST OF THE HERD THAT EXISTED IN THE ONE PHOTO FROM A PRESS CLIPPING??

******GOVERNMENT OF CANADA,*******

GIVE THOSE HORSES A PIECE OF LAND AND I WILL TAKE CARE OF THEM FOR THE REST OF MY LIFE.

YOU ARE DISGUSTING FOR ALLOWING THIS TO CONTINUE.

********THE LAW REGARDING

ANIMAL ABUSE***********

Causing damage or injury

* 446. (1) Every one commits an offence who

* (a) by wilful neglect causes damage or injury to animals or birds while they are being driven or conveyed; or

* (b) being the owner or the person having the custody or control of a domestic animal or a bird or an animal or a bird wild by nature that is in captivity, abandons it in distress or wilfully neglects or fails to provide suitable and adequate food, water, shelter and care for it.

* Marginal note:
Punishment
(2) Every one who commits an offence under subsection (1) is guilty of

* (a) an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term of not more than two years; or

* (b) an offence punishable on summary conviction and liable to a fine not exceeding five thousand dollars or to imprisonment for a term of not more than six months or to both.

* Marginal note:
Failure to exercise reasonable care as evidence


* (3) For the purposes of proceedings under paragraph (1)(a), evidence that a person failed to exercise reasonable care or supervision of an animal or a bird thereby causing it damage or injury is, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, proof that the damage or injury was caused by wilful neglect.

#animalabuse #animalcruelty #governmentofcanada #bcrcmp #savethehorses #highlandvalleycoppermine #ashcroft #loganlake #animalrescue #wildliferehabilitation #endangeredspecies #canada #animalactivists #animalrights #horses #feralhorses #wildhorses #help #spca #britishcolumbia #justintrudeau #parliament #primeminister #justice #freedomoflifeandliberty #suffering #protest #anonymous

[gch1995]

@cienie-isengardu @redrikki @tragicfantasy-girl @gamebird You’re right, though. There are no excuses for Anakin’s crimes. He had more agency than he believed, even if it was pretty limited. He was selfish in his fear. No one deserved to die. After awhile, he did stop trying to fight it. If this were real life, though, I definitely think he would have more than enough mitigating factors in his favor to keep him from the death penalty. Long-term to life imprisonment with psychiatric treatment? Yeah.

The Jedi Council of adults who raised him definitely contributed to the creation of Darth Vader, though. They’re definitely responsible for creating that emotional/mental instability in Anakin with the 14 years of emotional/psychological abuse and neglect they put him through. Yeah, they mistreated all of the Jedi with them, but it negatively affected Anakin the most because he knew the ways in which they interacted were not emotionally/individually/psychologically healthy. He knew what abuse, anger, love, fear, and oppression felt like. He could sense that was what the Jedi Council were doing to him and these other recruits, but they gaslit him by teaching him to deny his feelings, rather than expressing them healthily, and Palpatine had been given the opportunity to groom him for 11-14 years, so by the time we get to AOTC and particularly RotS, Anakin doesn’t know who to trust anymore, including himself.

Before he came to be a Jedi, the only way he knew how to survive was through forming close relationships with other people. Yet, he kept trying to fit in with them by living a double life to try to please and protect everyone he loved until it broke him because he didn’t feel confident enough to stand up against it. It’s like the story of an extreme doormat/people-pleaser gone wrong when taken too far. That’s a huge part of the tragedy for Anakin. He never learned how to have a balance between being true to himself and serving others because he was too afraid and rarely got to deal with any of his feelings in a positive way, so eventually, he cracked under the pressure. The fact that he lasted for the first half of his life without totally losing his shit under such consistently horrible circumstances with limited options for escape and help is pretty impressive.

As for Padme, yeah, it does kind of bother me that she encouraged Anakin to stay with the Jedi when he repeatedly told her he wanted to leave, rather than taking it more seriously. However, I also think it goes back to Padme’s tragic flaw of being naive to the flaws of the the world she grew up in as a young woman of privilege within it as a Senator of the Republic. She’s lived her whole life in the Republic. She was a monarch of it. She’s only ever seen how good the Jedi look from the outside serving the upper and middle classes of the Republic, which she benefitted from. She’s never actually been involved with them as a soldier and/or padawan and seen firsthand just how emotionally/psychologically abusive, deceitful, irresponsible, isolating, and hypocritical the Council can be in service of “the greater good.”

The sad thing is that I don’t think Padme really understood just how problematic the Jedi Order was in regards to Anakin’s well-being until after finding out he turned to the dark side and Yoda’s and Obi Wan’s immediate solution was to plot to execute him, and she found out Obi Wan snuck on her ship.

would ani leave his job for ahsoka if she asked him to 👀

No. Anakin,among other things, lacks Ahsoka’s self-confidence. Over and over again he’sput into these situations where he should walk away, where he KNOWS he shouldwalk away but he stays because he doesn’t know how to leave. He doesn’t know hecan leave. That’s why he stays withthe Jedi and then Palpatine.

Anakinwouldn’t leave with Ahsoka for the same reason he didn’t stay with Shmi, forthe same reason he didn’t immediately disobeyed Obi-wan’s orders to not checkon Shmi, he didn’t left the Order when he fell in love with Padmé, he didn’tleft the Order when the refused his promotion, when Obi-wan played dead, whenhe realized the Order didn’t care about slavery or when he found out Padmé was pregnant.He was unhappy with the Order but he felt couldn’t leave. He thought aboutleaving, but until he was pushed to the extremes, he never did anything aboutit.

Anakin wasborn into slavery and indoctrinated to be obedient. What comes so easily to us, it’snot so easy for him. I mean, it’s hard to walk away from abusive orunhealthy/unhappy situations when abusive and unhealthy situations is all you’veever known.

The factAhsoka realized she could and needed to leave is practically a miracle. It’s a testamentto her and Anakin. Thanks to his training, Ahsoka was able to realize she hadoptions. Unfortunately, no one ever did that to Anakin. No one ever told Anakin, “It’sokay, you can leave if you want”. They took him from slavery but they neverexplained to him what it means to be free.

Add that toAnakin’s unstable personality and need for reassurance, and you will havesomeone who will destroy themselves and everyone around them before they can say“this is not for me, I’m walking away”

[mynarcissticex]

Because, in essence, they do exhibit multiple personalities. I think that is one of the most unsettling aspects of dealing with someone with NPD. Because, at least in my experience, when the loving, doting boyfriend was presenting himself, I believed him. He was very thoughtful, very considerate, he made me feel important, loved, and special. He’s the man that I fell in love with. The man I still love, much to my irritation.

However

The other individual who I came to know, the darker, scarier, intimidating, domineering, control freak was one that terrified me to my core. That’s why most people who end up caught up in this vicious cycle emerge with something referred to as cognitive dissonance. I learned what that term was when I started researching the behavior I was witnessing. It’s the mind-blowing experience of holding two conflicting beliefs about the same subject. He was both the nicest, and the most ferocious, person that I knew.

In essense, this man, who I fell in love with, once managed to make me feel like the most important, lucky person on the planet; and has just as equally caused me to feel debilitating terror with the belief that my life may possibly be in danger I was killing myself slowly by staying with matt.

So, I would say, that by their very nature, they do exhibit at least two distinct personalities. But here’s the kicker. One of their personalities persists, throughout their life, as it is the true personality behind the many masks they create. The true personality is the dark, unhappy, insecure, miserable, maladaptive, often cruel, and almost always vindictive personality you end up seeing if you are around them often enough. The others are simply masks they create to fit in and to forge their tenuous relationships with those around them. Narcissists don't always know they are narcissists. We have to keep this in mind.

A narcissist is like speaking to a tree. A tree is convinced its a tree. But what if the tree was really a bush but the bush just thought it was a tree? ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Narcissists assume they are kind, wonderful human beings. They are unaware they are not trees--they are NOT kind--they are not LOVING and instead they are self-absorbed and only exhibit kind and loving behaviors when it SUITS THEM. They are only able to appear to be kind and loving when doing so helps make THEM look good.⠀

Being a victim of narcissistic abuse is as painful as having bones broken all at a time or even much more. You are drained and sucked out a lot mentally. My ex was an absolute narcissist. It was an emotional whip for so long for me with him. The sad part about being a victim to people with this disorder is that we just don’t realize that we are feeding their narcissism more and more by being obedient and considerate just to hold them back from breaking the relationship.

The burden of working out the relationship becomes so torturous that we unintentionally start to transform ourselves into their slaves. They start treating you in the harshest way possible. You feel like a piece of shit. They can get absolutely barbaric both emotionally and verbally & financially, They start ignoring you. They no longer bother to make plans or care about your needs They always need dominance in the relationship. They no longer respect your emotions or how you feel. They ignore or avoid calls and texts on purpose, lie tremendously, behave sensitive and make you feel guilty about anything and everything.

If you behave even a little like them, they’ll make a big issue out of it and keep threatening you emotionally. This behaviour of theirs is so powerful that they can even turn a strong individual into a most inferior one. They criticize you, abuse you, mock at you, bring you down make fun of you and make you look like a fool. They deliberately do things that hurt you pretty hard and make you cry and then say that they hate being with weak people. They start rubbing their insecurities on you. They start digging for reasons to discard you but shall never do until they find a replacement because they constantly need someone to feed their ego. Once they do, they will never look back at you no matter what. Even if you are dying, they just don’t care. Because of this, eventually you will feel/become like this.

It's the most confusing thing to be told "i love you" by the very same people or person who is destroying your heart. When we hear these words of affirmation, we are so inclined to believe them that we choose to dismiss or move past all the horrible treatment we've undergone from being in a relationship with them. We all want to be loved. Toxic people prey upon this natural need for love and belonging and use it is as a game of putting us in between the extremes of despair and hope. They discard us and make us feel as we mean absolutely nothing to them and just as they feel we may be moving in they capture us from our pain by telling us they love us. They dope us up on hope with little bits of counterfeit love. When it comes to toxic people we need to pay very little attention to their words. We need to pay attention to the consistency and persistency of the actions they take that break our hearts again and again. Our answer is in our despair.

They stay BECAUSE they are selfish. If they are getting attention, admiration, sex, a place to stay or whatever they need as supply, why wouldn't they stay?

Narcissists are lazy. While they get easily bored and are always on the lookout for a fresh piece, they invest a considerable amount of charm and effort into grooming someone they believe will supply their needs.

Once they have that victim under their control, they will satisfy their other desires and needs with whoever triggers their fancy. But unless they find a new supply that is superior to the one they have, they aren't going to end the relationship.

The “discard” phase of a narcissist is not always indicative of them physically leaving their main supply. Sometimes, it just means they have no interest in you other than what they can use you for, so they neglect you emotionally and sexually but stay in the relationship. You basically become roommates at that point, being little more than a glorified maid or babysitter.

If they find someone who is willing and able to give them a better status, you will be unceremoniously discarded. Otherwise, you are stuck with them as long as you will tolerate their abuse

[elljayvee]

Severus, Harry, Albus, & Tom

(This post is based on some thoughts I spewed all over Twitter a bit ago.) 

I was thinking about the final duel in Deathly Hallows, which first of all has Albus Dumbledore’s fingerprints all over it -- Harry calling Tom “Tom”, lots of talking intended both to drive Tom right up a wall & to reach for his humanity.  There’s a lot of talk of love in it, which is something Harry understands and Tom doesn’t. (Has Tom ever loved anyone?) 

Tom understands sexual desire, and knows that sexual desire is not love -- but he doesn’t understand that Snape loved Lily. As far as he is concerned, there was only desire there, and he clearly perceives desire as fairly shallow. He says that Snape agreed that there were more worthy women: basically that Snape just wanted to fuck Lily. 

Harry understands love a lot better. (He’s been protected by love all his life. There were limits and flaws in that protection, but it was still there.) Harry knows that Snape could both desire his mother, & love her in other ways as well: for their shared past, for his childhood friendship. (I mean I'm not denying that Snape was kind of a creep, here, because there's all kinds of ways in which he was.) But I am saying that Tom only understood "Snape wants to fuck this lady" & not "Snape has a complicated emotional relationship with this woman that includes sexual desire." 

Also, re-reading that scene after reading Cursed Child puts a new complexion on Tom's knowledge of sexual desire. 

The whole duel works its way through two of the major triads in the series: Tom-Snape-Harry and Tom-Dumbledore-Harry. (Rowling uses triads & 3-vs-1 setups a lot, which I love. They’re very appealing. One of the notable things about the Horcruxes is that they aren’t triadic; they are unbalanced and scattered, symptoms of Tom’s broken and irredeemable soul.) 

The Tom-Dumbledore-Harry setup is about their relationships to love and power. They're all extremely powerful wizards who have very different approaches to both love and power. 

Harry cares much more about love than he does about power. There’s a deep satisfaction, for me, in seeing Dumbledore's infuriating dueling style used against Tom by Harry, a wizard whose strength lies in his ability to love. Harry understands love AS a force, as a power in its own right, but a power that lies in being given away. In open-heartedness. This makes Harry naming his second son after Snape more understandable: he understands love's complexity & has a generous heart himself. It also makes his complicated relationship with Albus Severus in Cursed Child more understandable: Albus Severus sees that same openness as nonspecific and uncaring. 

Dumbledore craves power & only resists it out of love, & only after tragedy. He is never again open-hearted as he was with Grindelwald, because for him love has been complicated by fear, pain, resentment, manipulation. He does love -- it seems to me that he loves both Snape and Harry -- but his love is always at a remove, never letting anyone too close. Dumbledore, at the liminal King's Cross, tells Harry that going to Hogwarts was resisting power; that’s either a bit self-deluding or he’s straight-up lying. There's a lot of power in controlling the education of generations of children, Albus. People make fun of the Slug Club, but at least Slughorn is open about what he's doing. Dumbledore cultivated people, too, and he used Hogwarts to do that cultivation -- which included recruiting children to war under his command. Dumbledore knows he has a lust for power, & maybe he honestly tried to avoid power, but he failed. I mean: "You will find that I will only truly have left this school when none here are loyal to me." Come on, Albus. I think he's VERY clear that he wants power too much & shouldn't have it, but NOT clear with himself on how much power he has via Hogwarts.

Tom loves only power and nothing else. It’s not clear to me that Tom has ever loved another person. 

Albus Dumbledore is very present in that duel, and so is another: Severus Snape. Harry, in talking to Tom, in centering a narrative of love, protection, and remorse, talks a fair bit about his mother, & about Snape, & he does it in front of EVERYONE. Snape spent his time living "no one must know"; Harry, by contrast, is about emotional accessibility. Everyone must know. It is all right to love people and not to hide it. 

The Tom-Snape-Harry triad is one of the most interesting in the series. It is formed by similar heritage, early lives, their relationships to Hogwarts, to Albus, to power, and to love. There are so many ways in which they are three men who could have been similar, but their choices define them. (Love. Choices. Respect. Names. These are some of the recurring themes of the series.) They’re all abused/neglected halfblood wizards who found their first real home at Hogwarts. Tom & Snape both loathe their Muggle fathers, & let that lead them to a very nasty belief system. In Tom’s case, he picked up his belief system at Hogwarts. We don’t know exactly how but there are implications that it was at least in part through a fascination with Salazar Slytherin -- his ancestor and fellow Parselmouth. In Snape’s case we know he probably didn’t start out with those beliefs, and also adopted them to a certain extent at Hogwarts. He tells Lily, before they go to Hogwarts, that birth doesn’t matter. He apparently doesn’t start using the word “Mudblood” until sometime after that. He leaves the Death Eaters and began to distance himself from their views for love, & renounced them entirely in at least two timelines (in Deathly Hallows, he tells Phineas Nigellus not to use the word "Mudblood", and in Cursed Child he says that he came to believe as Lily did). Harry...did not learn to hate Muggles or Muggleborns at Hogwarts. He had as much reason to hate his Muggle relatives as Snape or Tom, and he DID, but unlike them he didn’t generalize.

Tom, Snape, and Harry also all had relationships with Dumbledore beyond usual teacher-student relationships.

Of the three of them, the one whose relationship with Albus is the most obscured is Tom’s -- partly because so much of it was so far in the past, but partly because Tom doesn’t have normal human feelings. Albus knows a lot about him, and Tom hates that. (If you were trying to be a powerful Dark Lord, would you like it if your old teacher kept reminding you of when you were a young, vulnerable student? If you were trying to be more than human, would you like it if someone kept pointing out how human you still were?)

Severus Snape might have the most complicated relationship of all of them with Albus, and we see a lot of that in his memories in Deathly Hallows: there’s genuine dislike and disgust, there’s friendship, protection, sacrifice. How much Albus saw Severus as a tool to be used vs how much he cared is, I think, something of an open question. But I do think he did care, and that Severus cared for him -- Severus’s reaction to Albus putting on the Gaunt ring, for example, shows that. (Sidenote: given Albus’s issues with power, you’d think he’d be more understanding of Severus’s cravings for it. Shut up, Albus.)

Harry is very clear that he is “Dumbledore’s man”, despite a fraught relationship at times. He knows that Albus is manipulating things, and he isn’t exactly pleased about that, but he is also very clear that he knows which side is which and on whose side he stands. Even when he’s angry or frustrated with Dumbledore, he is still loyal to him. (As a sidenote, I think it’s clear in-universe that Dumbledore’s sexuality was either not secret or an open secret, at least among the adults. The Daily Prophet article by Rita Skeeter says Albus had an “unnatural interest” in Harry. “Unnatural interest” is a specific anti-gay term used to indicate sexual abuse of male children by gay men. Skeeter is using a homophobic slur towards Dumbledore. The Prophet article is written to imply to adult wizards that Albus had been AT LEAST magically & sexually grooming Harry, if not molesting him. It’s meant to cast aspersions on Dumbledore and on Harry’s emotional stability. Given how Rowling uses the Prophet and Skeeter throughout the series, I suppose one could say that readers were not intended to see any truth in that article -- but what always made Skeeter’s work effective was that there was just ENOUGH truth in it to build belief on.) 

All of Tom, Severus, & Harry have a lot of anger (& a lot of JUSTIFIED anger) but how they direct it is very different & it comes down to love.

Tom doesn’t love. He thinks of love as silly; he tells Harry that love didn’t save Dumbledore or his mother, after all. He mocks Lucius Malfoy for caring about Draco; he treats Bellatrix callously when she shows him affection (because I do think Bellatrix loved him, in her way). Tom only cares about power: the power of his weaponry, of his army. 

Severus comes to understand the power that love can have but he remains always twisted up about it, ashamed & secretive. That’s real tragedy of his life, I think. If he could have learned some openness he probably would have been happier. Moved on from Lily, at any rate. He did care for Albus, who up until very late rather thought that Severus HAD moved on from Lily -- I think, to an extent, Dumbledore also felt that Severus’s love was mostly desire-based, and so was surprised that almost two decades later it was still strong. 

And then there’s Harry. When thinking about choices, and about love, and about anger, Harry has at least as much reason as Ariana Dumbledore or Credence Barebone to become an Obscurial & doesn’t. He has at least as much reason as Tom Riddle or Severus Snape to hate Muggles, and doesn’t. Rowling implies that a lot of that has to do with Lily’s sacrifice, with her love protecting her child. It also has to do with Harry himself, though, and his choices: his choice of Ron over Draco, his choice to go after Ginny in the Chamber, his choice to be offended on Luna’s behalf when he sees she is being bullied, his choice to love Sirius, to share victory with Cedric, to trust Albus Dumbledore, to free Dobby, to bury Dobby. Not all of his choices work out for the best, and his anger at Snape (which is largely justified because Snape really is a jagoff to him) clouds his judgment at times. But largely, he is making choices that show him to be a caring and loving person -- when, like Tom and Severus, he has plenty of reasons not to be that kind of a person. 

[trickstercaptain-archive]

modern verse outline.

       this is ridiculously long so I’m sticking it all under a cut, but here is my official outline for Jack’s modern verse! it only took me three years to write lmfao, although I have had the majority of this planned out for a long time, it’s just taken me until now to organise all of my thoughts coherently and actually write them out. and this will also be linked to under my modern verse on my verses page :’))

       trigger warnings apply for child abuse/neglect, violence, drugs, human trafficking, alcohol -- you know, the usual when it comes to this man.

        Born of a former trainee nurse and one of the most prolific crime bosses in the country, the first seven years of the young Jack Sparrow’s life were anything but ordinary. Homeschooled, his mother attempted to create as stable an environment as possible for their small family, but Edward Teague’s criminal enterprise was only growing in influence, and the birth of a child soon became an irreparable fissure in the two parents’ relationship. This tension, along with the increased arguments and danger Teague was putting his family in, came to a head seven years later, during a car chase that would end with Maria dying of a gunshot wound in the backseat, her head resting in her son’s lap.

       Everything changed after that. Swearing off crime, Teague relocated with Jack, turning him over briefly to his own mother until he realised, with the help of a sober mind, the extent of the torment he’d subjected his son to at her hands. Eventually, the two were reunited in a home of their own, where Jack would stay for the remainder of his childhood and adolescence, and slowly come to loathe. School took adjustment of its own but, in spite of the bullies and, as he grew older, his habit of letting his sharp tongue get him into trouble, he at least thrived in his academic pursuits. 

      Personally, however, was another matter. When he was nine, Teague left the home one night with the intent of going out drinking, and Jack heard nothing more from him until he returned three days later, nursing a headache and having left his son to fend for himself in the interim. From that point onwards, Jack would depend only on himself; he taught himself to cook, would spend hours cooped up in his own room studying, or reading, or teaching himself to play the guitar, and was intent on making success enough of himself to finally leave the family home as soon as he was able. Acing his GCSEs without too much difficulty, he opted for A level History, English Literature and Spanish and, with the support of his teachers, aspired to university study -- but that ambition, too, ended up derailed.*

       Little did Jack know that his father had gone back into crime, this time keeping it very much under the radar. The truth only came out after a hostage attempt; shortly after turning fifteen, Jack was minding his own business before being kidnapped by a group of thugs intent on using him as leverage against his father. With Teague’s help, Jack escaped with only a few cuts and bruises, but the betrayal left its own mark and quickly pushed him into the company of another in his final few years of school. Christophe was also a man ensconced in crime, but of a far more tempting variety: it was he who first introduced Jack to petty theft ( along with a variety of other vices, including alcohol and drugs ), grooming him in his own image only to threaten to discard him later on. 

        A heist aimed at damaging another crime syndicate: the one run by Teague himself. When Jack discovered the identity of their mark, he tried to pull out, but by then it was already too late. He was offered an ultimatum by Christophe: pledge complete loyalty to his gang, or be set up and thrown to the wolves, painted as the instigator in a plot to betray his own family. With little choice in the matter, Jack went with them, leaving school several months early and forced to work for a man who had thrown his trust and affection back in his face.

       He then kept his head low for several weeks, looking for an opportunity to get his revenge. Compiling as much evidence of their illegal activities as he could, he arranged a set up of his own, inviting police to the crime scene and offering his own testimony to ensure they were sent down. With Christophe’s blackmail of him come to light, Jack is spared prison, but he’s still ordered community service and the whole experience makes him vow to clean up his act completely.

       Knowing that academic study was no longer in his future, and too ashamed to remain in his familial home, Jack moved into a modest flat with his longtime friend and mentor, Joshamee Gibbs. In the next seven years he took up a number of jobs to break even and make a living, from bartending to serving as a lifeguard at a public swimming pool and working at the local dockyard. In this time, he turned his life around, largely kicked any unpleasant habits from his youth ( except his one true vice: alcohol ), and even had time for a first love, a budding actress on holiday in London, and who he would remain in contact with when she returned to New York.

       But nothing good ever lasted in his life, and during his work at the London Docklands was when he got involved in an enterprise that nearly cost him his life. On paper, it had seemed ideal: managing the shipping of cargo into London, a job with a reputable employer and the prospect of advancement beyond the menial employment he’d been able to find thus far. But it had a sinister underbelly. Scarcely a year into his newfound partnership with its head of operations, Jack discovered that the distribution of materials and products was merely a veneer to disguise the true heart of the business: human trafficking. Appalled, he set about trying to expose the organisation for what it was, dismantling some of the trafficking rings and succeeded in weeding out a few of its members, as well as casting media scrutiny and doubt on the organisation. 

       In the meantime, a ghost from his past was rearing its ugly head again. Five years behind bars and Christophe-Julien de Rapièr was free once more, and out for vengeance on the man who put him there in the first place. His path to Jack culminated in one dramatic final showdown. The Frenchman wasn’t pushed, but he did lose his footing as he made one last push to murder his quarry -- and for the first time Jack Sparrow knew what it was to have someone’s blood on his hands.

       Meanwhile, his employer had begun to discover Jack’s apparent betrayal of the company, and utilised its unscrupulous connections to rid itself of its newest problem. A planned arson attack on Jack’s block of flats. He managed to save the lives of a few as the building went up in smoke ( fortunately Joshamee wasn’t home at the time ), but ended up injured and passed out before the firefighters arrived and found him. When he woke, he was in a hospital bed with scarring on his arm from being burned and the effects of smoke inhalation, and knew even before he was visited by his best friend that London was no longer safe for him. It might have been reported in the press as an accidental fire, but Jack knew who was responsible, and knew that if word got out that he’d survived they’d no doubt try again.

      He was resolved to leave the country,** and as soon as he was well he headed for Dover and crossed the English Channel to France. For the next few years, he backpacked across Europe, his new goal being that of seeing the world and experiencing it. Sometimes he stayed in the local hostels, other times he’d earned enough money from both honest -- and dishonest -- employment to stay in a hotel, but he lived out of a mere suitcase, never staying in one place for too long.

      After the Champs Elysees and the Colosseum, the French Riviera and the Canary Islands, experiencing yachting and wine drinking and everything in between, Jack moved on to the Far East, residing in Singapore. It was there that he was exposed to a culture very different to his own and fell in love with it. He remained for two years before finally resolving to move on ( only after upsetting the wrong sorts of people ), and made for the next place on his bucket list: the Caribbean.

       He stayed in Kingston, Jamaica for a while before the longing for home began, realising just how long he’d been away from London. Now in his thirties, he returned to the city that had been the source of so many conflicted feelings, very much changed from the man who had earlier left it in such a hurry. He moved back in with Joshamee and settled back into an ordinary life, but the need for excitement and danger in his life led him back down an avenue that he’d narrowly avoided ten years prior: con artistry. This time, the crime was on his terms, targeting those most corrupt and susceptible to his schemes, while avoiding the innocent and anything as morally reprehensible as what prompted him to leave the city in the first place. After a few years, Jack had made a name for himself in criminal circles independent of Teague, and with the help of his best friend was making a reasonable profit for his time, too.

       The default for this verse is after this point, where Jack is in his late thirties and living in Soho, London, having already travelled and experienced a lot of the world and already enjoying success as a con artist in the city. There are also rumblings from members of the same organisation that Jack escaped and nearly dismantled thirteen years prior; when he’s not gaining valuable contacts in the city by targeting specific individuals' reputations and purses to damage, he’s preparing to take down his former employer once and for all.

extra notes: *in two alternative modern verses, Jack never meets Christophe and is accepted into university, studying to become a university professor and lawyer respectively. **in an alternate arc, Jack moves to New York and in with Esmeralda, giving up crime completely.