#which combined with my history of being bullied and mistreated by people

[thelastspeecher]

Being at work is a lot of trying desperately to beat back my rejection sensitive dysphoria with a stick

[shreddedleopard]

Thoughts on chapter 137, and why it makes complete sense and cements the themes and lessons of Attack on Titan.

I have so many thoughts, I just want to word vomit them out at a million miles an hour, but I’ll try to do this in some sort of order and not my usual chaotic mess.

Attack on Titan is about family and belonging, and THIS is the dream that Ymir was drunk on. This is ‘that scenery.’

Ymir, the founder, just wants to belong somewhere. With someone. She wants to be loved and valued as a person, not as a slave; not as someone who merely fulfils a role. In the latest chapter, Zeke explains how he failed to understand her, but Eren did.

Look at Eren’s words to Ymir in this moment, several chapters earlier:

All Ymir has ever wanted is to be held. To be loved like a person. To feel that connection because of who she is, not the role she fulfils.

Eren understands this, in contrast to Zeke, who once again tries to impose her role upon her:

Ymir has been hanging around in paths all this time, unable to fully die and let her consciousness pass on to the next world, because she needs to find this thing that she’s been searching for since the start of the story.

It’s not just about romantic love. It’s about connection. That sense of being understood and belonging with someone else, whether that be romantically, platonically, as family ... we keep seeing the same theme brought up throughout the entire manga.

Who else is a character that constantly searches for the same thing? Mikasa.

She has so many parallels and yet also opposites with Ymir. Ymir is told she is a slave, she obeys the king, that is her role. And she accepts it. Because she believes that it’s the only way to find happiness; to find this belonging she’s been craving. However, unlike Ymir, who does not truly love the king, I believe that Mikasa does truly love Eren - what form that takes doesn’t necessarily matter to me at this point. It’s just about connection.

Whether Eren feels the same, tragically for him, doesn’t matter. Because Eren knows he is destined to be the one to end the cycle of hatred and free Ymir. And that will ultimately cost him his life. That is why, when Zeke asks him what he will do about Mikas’s affections - which have nothing to do with her bloodline and everything to do with him - Eren cannot answer. That choice has sadly been taken from him.

When Eren asks Mikasa what she is to him, I think he genuinely wants to know at that point. I think he cares about her so deeply and wants to know she feels the same way, and it’s not just about him being ‘her saviour’. But as we’ve seen before, Eren cannot afford to stop for too long and dwell in the moment, because he must push on towards freedom - the freedom of Ymir and the Eldian people from the curse of the Titans.

This brings his conversation around the table with Armin, Mikasa and Gabi into a whole new light. Eren insults his friends in an attempt to push them away from him - because he knows he won’t be around to live that ‘long, happy life’ with them. So instead, he wants to push them to confront their feelings in the arms of others. He pushes Armin to really consider what Annie means to him, and for Mikasa, I believe that Eren intends her to perhaps look towards Jean, who is truly willing to give her the love she has always sought from Eren. Because again, so tragically, Eren will not be around to provide that for her - regardless of whether it’s something he wants or not. His own wishes no longer matter on the path he has been set upon.

Back to Ymir. Eren tells her, he will put an end to this world:

He doesn’t mean the human world; the living world. He means the world of paths, where Ymir is trapped, unable to let go of the souls of dead Eldians, because she’s still searching for that connection she craves so much. Her paths world is an attempt to quell that feeling of loneliness she’s been plagued with, but ironically, she’s more lonely than ever, stuck there, serving the bloodline she’s created from a place of misery and duty, rather than love.

The rumbling and the destruction of Marley is a very tragic consequence of what Eren has to do to put an end to the curse of the Titans. He’s searched for another way to no avail; we’ve seen his remorse when he apologises to Halil or Ramsey in chapter 131:

I think the anger and devastation that’s unleashed in the rumbling, is a result of the hurt and mistreatment both Eren and Ymir have felt at points in their lives.

Eren understands that to destroy the paths realm, first this devastation is necessary, because he’s seen it in his future memories, despite the conflicting feelings it’s evoked from him - he doesn’t really want to destroy humanity outside of the walls, but his own future is telling him that he must and he will. But it’s not Eren’s emotions that drive this initial destruction - it is Ymir’s. These emotions are no different in nature than the ones that Eren felt in response to Armin’s childhood bullies - that sense of unfairness and need to lash out at oppressors - but tragically, unlike Eren who in that moment of intense, irrational emotion had only his fists to vent and release, Ymir is in possession of one of the most terrible and destructive weapons there is - hordes of colossal Titans. And in that moment where Eren finally gives her that validation she has been searching for, and allows her that feeling of release from the duty she’s felt she needed to fulfil for thousands of years, Ymir releases that frustration and anger too and sends them walking.

This theme of the oppressor and oppressed switching places in an endless cycle of revenge and stealing from others what has been stolen from you is a theme that we see repeated throughout not only the AOT manga, but also soundtrack and additional content too.

Eren was right that it would be Armin that saves humanity - because Armin is the one that makes the connection in paths - he understands what is being shown to him with the leaf - and tragically, it actually highlights how, even up until the very end, Eren and Armin knew each other very well. Eren trusted Armin to make sense of what he’s had to do - even if it’s only Ymir that he understands, because while Eren is the one to give Ymir her freedom and unleash this terrible devastation, Armin is the one who must stop it.

But how does this idea of family and connection tie in to the rest of the events in the chapter, and wider manga, and what’s up with Historia’s pregnancy? And how is paths going to be destroyed, if the rumbling has been stopped and Ymir is free, but the Titans are still around?

This is where the rest of our cast fit in - namely Zeke, Levi, Historia and Reiner. If my theory is correct.

Eren gave Ymir the validation she needed and that sense of connection, freeing her from her role, and this bought that final bit of time needed for Historia to give birth to her child. Why is Historia’s child important? Because it is the ‘new dawn’ we’ve seen foreshadowed repeatedly throughout the series. The birth of a new history. And this comes in the form of a new bloodline, no longer infected with ‘parasite’ of the founding Titan.

Unlike Ymir’s bloodline, which stemmed from a place of duty and slavery - as she was ordered by the king to take ‘his seed’, and carried the parasite of the creature that bound to her within the depths of the tree, creating the paths realm and an almost purgatory type space free of death or heaven or earth or anything, Historia’s bloodline will be ‘cleaned’ because of the genes of the child’s father. And not only this, it will be born out of a moment of love and connection, rather than duty. This new combination will make it impossible for a child of the royal bloodline to become a Titan. There will be no coordinate - no link for Ymir from her paths realm to the living world, because the last link to her bloodline - a Titan with royal blood - will no longer exist.

This really brings home the gravity of the moment where Levi cuts Zeke down - he’s the last of the royal Titans, but the reader knows Historia’s baby is about to be born - will they inherit the Titan, and the cycle will re-start?

They will not. The cycle will be broken with them, because - and here’s where it gets wild - Historia’s child is not a Fritz, or a Reiss - they are an Ackerman. They physically cannot turn.

Why does all this fit in symbolically? Let me draw your attention to the genre of Seikaikei.

Attack on Titan uses this idea with our two Ackermans.

We have both endings. Eren and Mikasa, our bittersweet ending, where Eren ultimately chooses the fate of humanity over his relationships with Mikasa and Armin, and Levi, who, in a moment of selfishness, allows himself to put aside his role for a night - probably at the railroad banquet, where he was supposed to be making sure the likes of Eren and Yelena were kept apart - and indulges in this connection that he’s formed with Historia. You can read my 10 reasons post if you want to for why the heck I would think these two would form a deep bond - it’s all there in the Uprising Arc. They have been the same as Ymir - yearning for a sense of love and connection, but bound by roles neither of them asked for or particularly wanted - reluctant heroes comes to mind. Remember how freckled Ymir’s parting wish was for Historia to live for herself?

The result is an accidental pregnancy which, ironically enough, is what is going to annihilate the curse of the Titans and save the world. How poetic that the Titans will not be ‘driven out’ by hate, violence, and destruction, but instead by love, connection and new life.

Remember Kenny and Uri’s miracle?

Kenny and Uri’s chapter, ‘Friends’, was exactly halfway back into the manga. History moves in repeating cycles in AOT, and we see things change slightly each time, on this journey to freedom. At this point, the Ackermans and royals were one step away from where they needed to get to in order to build this paradise - and Levi and Historia complete the cycle by becoming ‘lovers,’ tragically, the thing that Eren and Mikasa could not become, because Eren had to undertake the rumbling and be the one to free Ymir from her sorrow and loneliness. She can make the choice now - will she fight to be reborn as Historia’s child - fight for dominance with the Ackerman bloodline - or will she concede, finally laid to rest because the cycle has been broken by two people that love one another, just like the couple Ymir saw long ago and wished for.

Remember how Eren asked Zeke whether the ackermans act the way they do from a place of duty or genuine feelings? He needed to check it was the real deal that would break the curse, and finally lay Ymir to rest peacefully, after 2,000 years of hatred and searching. She will see that her descendant, Historia, finally has what she always dreamed of. That idea of dreams pushing us onwards - Ymir’s dream is realised through Historia and Levi.

As for the parasite itself? I believe Reiner will be the one to lock it in a Crystal prison with himself, deep underground.

A new dawn will come, and a new world will be built from the ashes of the old.

[testudoaubrei-blog]

TL/DR - Catra is a uniquely complex and compelling character who has -so much going on- compared with most characters in any medium. Her character arc is psychologically astute, morally powerful and dramatically compelling, and it pushes the boundaries of the audiences sympathies in ways that are really groundbreaking for a kids show, and her arcs conclusion celebrates love, growth, and the power to change in a way that is all too rare in TV for grown ups.

Content note for mentions of suicidal ideation and self harm.

Well, now that the summary is out of the way, here’s a massive fucking dissertation on why Catra is such a great character.

This is the first of a series of posts outlining things that make She Ra a truly great show, one that stands out even 15 years into a golden age of TV animation for kids. This isn’t going to be a comprehensive account for why the show is great - the real answer is that this show has so many arcs and so many fully realized characters and they are all growing and changing in ways that interact with each other and complement each other so well. But I’m going to highlight some particular standouts, things that this show does better than anything else, things that made me step back and say ‘holy shit they did this in a show pitched at 10 year olds?!’

And so the first of these posts is about Catra. I’ve never seen a character in a kids TV show like Catra before. Depending on the season, she’s an anti-villain, an outright villain and an anti-hero and then, in the end, a hero. Being glib, I describe her in villain mode as a Saturday morning cartoon Supervillain as written by like, Dostoevsky. She’s got the trappings of classic villain camp - long speeches, sneering, over-complicated plans, she’s oddly ineffectual at times etc/ Yet all of this is underlaid and justified by something much deeper - her feelings of rejection, her desire to lash out at everyone around her, at her self-hatred and hatred of everyone and everything else (at least by Season 4. Good God.) And her actions are as dark as her motivations - she nearly destroys reality out of spite, betrays literally everyone who cares about her (often multiple times) and isolates herself so completely that in the season 4 finale she is a solitary, suicidal wreck of a person. Hell, in her last fight with Hordak, I was definitely rooting for Hordak (to say nothing of Glimmer, who is a pretty impressive antiheroine, like if Sparkles had just blasted her into glittery oblivion would we have held it against her?).

Let's start by discussing trauma. It comes up a lot with Catra for obvious and good reasons. But I almost feel like that word is insufficient for what's going on with Catra, or at least, we shouldn't stop with it (I know there are terms like complex trauma, but rather than simply using those I want to explain the difference between Catra’s consistent abuse and a single traumatic event). To use another example from a different show, Korra was also traumatized in season 4. But she was traumatized by a series of an events when she was a young adult. She had something horrible happen to her, and it fucked her up, and then she had exposure therapy with Zaheer and at least starts to get better. Catra...Catra is much more consistently abused. It's not just that shadow weaver traumatized her with the various acts of torture, but that Shadow Weaver taught Catra both an explicit worldview and a series of coping mechanisms that she struggles with through young adulthood. First, Shadow Weaver trained Catra to seek her approval. This is something she is particularly vulnerable to with Shadow Weaver, but also what she does with Hordak and to a extent Double Trouble. Catra's instinct when people mistreat her or show that they aren't trustworthy is to invest further in the relationship, until the breaking point. By contrast, when people treat her well Catra lashes out or takes them for granted. This is uh…a dymamic I am acquainted with among people who have been abused as kids, people whom I love. It is pretty rough.

She also developed a desire to prove herself. This starts off being tied to her drive for approval, but combined with her competitive streak (which is expressed in both healthy and unhealthy ways with Adora) it turns into a desire to beat Shadow Weaver and then Hordak at their own game.

At the same time, Catra learned by always being blamed for everything to evade and deny responsibility, no matter what. I think this form of self reassurance is tied to her self doubt (I think at some level she does think she is worthless) and her self hatred. It is also enabled by Adora’s martyr complex and willingness even act as Catra’s punching bag (as we see in the flashback in Corridors). This is a dynamic that actually repeats in an even worse fashion with Scorpia. Far from being arrogant, her constant evasions, put downs against others and preening speeches sound like the words of a woman who is trying to convince herself most of all. This tendency borders on narcissistic self delusion by season 3-4, which she begins recounting her version of events and possibly believing it even when it is obviously false, and everyone knows it.

When it comes to worldviews, Shadow Weaver taught Catra that love is about control and manipulation. We see this in seasons 1-3 where she congratulates herself for manipulating Adora when all she has done is take advantage of Adora's lingering love for her. Meanwhile, she’s learned that power is her only protection, and that the only way to stay on top is to abuse those beneath her.

The final kind of static tendency in Catra is her identity in the horde and her view of herself as one of the bad guys. This is something she rarely articulates but underlies much of her her decision to stay and not join Adora (at least at first). I think one thing to consider is that even if Catra never believed horde propaganda, it may have made her cynical and unwilling to imagine something better for herself or the world. Another factor is having struggled to belong in the horde for so long, she isn't going to give up now. At first this ties into her desire to win the approval of shadow weaver and Hordak, then it comes from her desire to prove herself better than them. Another factor is her self hatred. She sees herself as someone who hurts people, perhaps as a monster. She sees herself as a bad guy and so team evil is her side.

So yeah, our girl is kinda fucked up.

And yet Catra is never reduced to the sum of her traumas and bad habits. At every step of the way she is shown as a moral agent. She is shaped by shadow Weaver's abuse but she remains aware of and responsible for her actions. This is a double edged sword. She is fully responsible for her actions, but also she is never shown as broken by abuse or mental illness. She’s fully responsible, but by the same token is also redeemable, because she still has a choice.

So with that our of the way, let's go to Catra's arc.

I’m not going to recite everything terrible Catra does because I’m still on my first complete rewatch and I honestly find it hard to list it all. It’s a lot. So let’s talk about her shifting motivations. Early on, we see her desire for approval and recognition motivating her in ways that are so easy to sympathize with - she’s been told she’s worthless for years, and she wants to be worth something. We see how much she’s been scarred by Shadow Weavers abuse and by the ruthlessness and callousness of the Horde, and can sympathize with her desire to survive and advance since her own position is so untenable. We also see how, at first, she wants to be reunited with Adora. Her first huge turn into much darker territory is Promises, when she tries to kill Adora in order to permanently sever her connection with her own life and eliminate a possible rival for advancement (should Adora ever return). She’s told herself that she doesn’t want Adora back, and at least partly means it. Yet we still show her care for Scorpia and Entrapta and even Shadow Weaver in Season 2. It’s when Catra realizes that Shadow Weaver has chosen Adora over her once again that she takes her darkest turn. It’s not just that she destroys reality out of spite, it’s that she rejects her chance for a better and happier life, betrays every friend she has and focuses single-mindedly on hurting Adora (and arguably herself) and then on surviving when her attempt fails. Then Catra spends an entire season both fully inhabiting her role as a villain (and not a sympathetic one - really only our history with her leaves us sympathetic) and being utterly self-destructive and miserable. At the end, as mentioned, she’s a broken, suicidal wreck who has destroyed everything she’s strived for. If this was an HBO drama, we’d roll credits here and she’d go down as another self-destructive antihero. It would perhaps be too much to call her ‘Walter White as a catgirl’, but still. Of course, her story doesn’t end there.

Something that is incredibly dark that is happening in step with this is Catra’s hardening of herself, indeed, her dehumanization of herself. We see her struggle with her natural compassion, her kindness, her need for connection, her desire for happiness, and we see her ignore it all, stamp it down and nearly snuff it out. This is a huge factor in her descent into becoming a real villain (no ‘anti’ qualifiers needed). Every step of her descent is a struggle for Catra - not going with Adora in the second part of ‘The Sword’, trying to kill Adora in ‘Promise’, going back to the Horde, betraying Entrapta, lying about Entrapta, threatening Scorpia, destroying the world - but she always chooses evil. And with every step she becomes more isolated, more callous, and more cruel. Her default reaction becomes not just bravado and mockery and insolence, but threats, bullying and intimidation, until her management style is identical to Hordak’s, and indeed, is quite a bit worse. Catra starts off fighting for Hordak and Shadow Weaver’s approval and struggling to survive, and ends up cackling maniacally at her brutal and murderous conquests. She has very deliberately turned herself into a cruel conqueror, and a tyrant. This self-dehumanization is a huge part of evil in the world, I think, and it’s really powerful to see it so clearly in a kids show.

Meanwhile her insistence on evading all responsibility finally results in a self-serving, self-protective narrative that insulates her from responsibility or self-examination but also cuts her off from reality and other people. It’s always a bit unclear to what extent her various untruths (about Adora leaving her, about Shadow Weaver’s escape and her concealment of it not being her fault, about Entrapta betraying Hordak) are things she believes, lies she is telling to have power over others (mostly Scorpia) or things that she doesn’t quite believe but is trying to convince herself of. It’s probably all of these at various times, and in different degrees for each lie. The end result is that Catra is even more alone, because only she inhabits the safe cocoon of lies she’s built around herself. It also is the key to her and the Horde’s downfall - Catra is so isolated and in such denial that she can’t see how thin her forces are spread, and this crack shows up even in episode 1 of Season 4, with her insistence that the Princess Alliance is in shambles (when, in fact, it’s already rebounding, and proves more resilient than she allows herself to believe, and is led by a woman as ruthless and determined as herself). This part of Catra’s arc brilliantly shows how deception (of yourself and others) can feel protective by keeping shame at bay, but ultimately is destructive and strips someone of so much of the intellectual and moral qualities that we call ‘human.’ It’s also chilling to see since we’ve seen the end game of this mentality play out in US national politics, at the highest level.

I said at the opening that we’ve never seen a sympathetic character like Catra in a kids show. What about Zuko? I would argue that Zuko is never a cruel, or as callous, or as self-destructive as Catra is at her worst. Zuko is motivated by a desire for recognition from his abusive father (much like Catra is initially motivated by desire for recognition from Hordak and Shadow Weaver, and indeed Adora), and perhaps a desire to belong in the Fire Nation. All of this gets wrapped together in his ‘Honor’. He’s a young man with a very weak sense of what he truly believes, instead relying on external guides to what he should do. He’s also incredibly self-involved, and initially indifferent to anyone’s pain but his own and anyone’s needs but his own need to restore his honor. Uncle Iroh is there throughout to push Zuko both to see the needs of others and to become his own person. Zuko’s redemption arc, then, is a twofold quest to recognize other people and to find his own moral center and act from it. This is a pretty powerful coming of age story in that it is about him becoming his own person and throwing off the shackles of his upbringing. Politically, it’s a powerful story of a young man taking responsibility for his own actions in an authoritarian regime and refusing to participate in its imperialism any more and to embrace a new way forward both for himself and his nation. At the same time, in some ways it is easy to sympathize with Zuko because his greatest crimes are those of weakness - he’s not strong enough to stand up to his nation and his family until midway through the last season. Catra though...Catra does what she does, eventually, because she wants to hurt people. She’s cruel, and spiteful, and destructive in ways that are truly scary and which prevent any excuse or mitigation.

Which brings up the other comparison - Azula. But while Azula is (somewhat inconsistently) shown either as a monstrous child sociopath or a traumatized and broken child who can’t help it (and thus, perversely, as not a moral agent but something like a monster), Catra is consistently shown as a moral agent. Catra chooses her own path, every step of the way. She has so many chances to do something else - Adora’s offers to leave together in the two-part series opener, Promises, Scorpia’s suggestion that they dessert the Horde and become desert gang leaders, etc - and until season 5, she turns them all down. While Azula seems destined for evil and madness, with Catra we see a young woman very deliberately walk down the path into unmitigated evil with both eyes open. And then we see it destroy her.

And after she is basically destroyed, we see her build herself back. This process actually starts in Season 4 with the creeping realization that even when she is winning she is miserable and alone. She doesn’t even notice Scorpia is gone for several episodes, then she completely loses it. She spends the entire time when she is at her most triumphant isolated and raging and borderline incoherent, as ineffectual as she accuses Hordak of being. She’s won, and she’s alone, and she’s the most unhappy she has ever been, and I think for the first time she realizes that. And that’s the worst blow to her, even before all the external things come crashing down. She’s already miserable before Double Trouble and Glimmer deal her a triple coup de grace of destroying all her armies*, turning her and Hordak against each other and then Double Trouble’s epic evisceration. By the time Glimmer shows up, Catra is, as mentioned, literally suicidal. But she’s also already begun the process of changing in that she knows that she has a problem (her, and her self/other-destructive tendencies). Moreover, she knows, at some level, that what she really wants isn’t conquest, or to prove herself as the baddest leader of the Horde, but love - and she’s seen how she’s squandered that at every opportunity.

Let’s just pause for a moment to observe how much better Glimmer is at villainous machinations than Catra. In a couple episodes she makes a faustian bargain for unlimited power, kills all her enemies armies, sets her two chief foes at each other’s throats and literally cripples one while rendering the other helpless. And given her ironic non-answer about hurting Catra (‘we’re the good guys, remember?’ and the fact that she’d tried to kill Catra twice before**, she walked into Hordak’s sanctum fully intending to end Catra’s life, one way or another. She does all this through ruthlessness, recklessness and treachery, and she could give like, a TED talk on villainy. Of course it also blows up in her face and is actually way worse than the portal did in Catra’s, endangering the whole universe (I always assumed that the portal only threatened Despondos), dooming Etheria to invasion and all that. Of course, Catra pulled that switch and then fought Adora knowing that the world was ending, while Glimmer was just ignoring warnings from...just about everyone, including Shadow Weaver. So yeah, Glimmer, best kids show antihero since Princess Bubblegum***(unless we’re counting Catra as an antihero, which works for the first half of season 5).

Anyway, at the beginning of Season 5 Catra is adrift. Though some interpretations, like TV tropes, see her as immediately falling back into old habits and casting her lot in with Prime, I see her actions from the end of Season 4 onwards as more ambivalent. She seems to be kind of...going through the motions. She doesn’t have any of the drive or passion in her plotting that she once did, she seems to be maneuvering into Prime’s good graces out of habit. At best she’s back in the survival mode of early season 1, but without the ambition and desire to prove herself that motivated her. Some interpretations put a lot of stock in Prime being someone that can’t be bargained with or appeased, but...I don’t buy it. I take him, to an extent, at his word when he says that he was ‘exalt’ Catra (I am sure it is something awful). Catra actually gets what she wants halfway through “Corridors.” Only it’s not what she wants. She’s done jockeying for advantage, especially in a world where she truly would be alone because all she has is this psychopathic narcissist and his clones for company. She wants connection. She wants to do what is right. She’s suppressed all her humanity (felinitity? Anyway) for years and it’s made her miserable, and now she’s ready to embrace it. At the same time she confronts her own culpability, seeing just how much harm she’s done and admitting it for the first time. Her first lifeline is Glimmer, the only person she can actually talk to, the only other Etherian, the woman whose mother she doomed and who has nearly killed her three times. But Glimmer is also going through her own dark night of the soul - Glimmer and Catra’s character arcs were converging at the same time that Catra’s and Adoras and Glimmer’s and Adora’s were diverging. And they come together on either side of that forcefield, just talking and being people in an environment that is designed to be as dehumanizing as possible. Even this barest lifeline is enough for Catra to hold on to for dear life, and enough to inspire her to not just feel bad about the bad things she’s done, but do something good.

But the first way she does this is a cop out. Her plan, like Shadow Weaver’s in the finale, is to sacrifice/kill herself doing ‘one good thing.’ That way she doesn’t have to figure out how to live with the consequences of her actions, face the possible rejection of the people she loves whom she’s wronged, and do the hard work of building herself back up as a better person. She gets to die a hero rather than live as a villain. That said, unlike Shadow Weaver she does at least get off one apology, and it makes all the difference.

Then Adora fucks Catra’s sacrifice up, in glorious, space operatic, gay AF pulp fiction fashion, by saving the cat. Catra is mind controlled or unconscious for most of this episode, but what she does do is so crucial. When Adora comes for her, she reaches out to her, as soon as she is able. She doesn’t push her away, she takes Adora’s help, and her love, and Adora does the rest in badass fashion. The next few episodes plus the so perfect its canon Don’t Go are my favorite part of Catra’s entire arc.

She nearly falls back into her old habits, at least partly. Now that she has to live with what she’s done rather than just dying for it she just wants to run away again. But when she has to choose between losing Adora all over again and confronting herself and her past, she chooses Adora, and asks her to stay.

Catra then spends the rest of Season 5 slowly easing herself into the very human world of the Princess Alliance - the comaradery, the dedication to others and a cause, the goofiness. I’m going to talk a lot more about her relationship with Adora in my Catradora post, but I do want to highlight three moments.

The first is Catra running away again. This is actually a big change from what she’s done before - she’s not leaving because she’s angry, or bitter, or spiteful, she’s leaving because she doesn’t want to see the woman she loves sacrifice herself yet again (maybe this time for good) after being manipulated by the woman who had abused them both. But then she comes back. And then she confronts her abuser in a way that she has never done before - for the first time in the series, she not only calls Shadow Weaver out but calls her to do the right thing, and doesn’t give up until she does (this is after Adora also calls SW out and cuts her off forever, meaning that her two charges have finally called her on her bullshit and chosen each other over her, more in my Shadow Weaver Rant...and I guess my Catradora rant).

Then, at the end, Catra both stays with Adora through her potentially fatal harnessing of the Heart of Etheria and then her comes in and rescues her by challenging her to do something for Catra and for herself. Not to be with Catra, or to kiss her, or love her, but just stay for her. Needless to say, Adora responds far more enthusiastically than Catra had dared hope. (more on this in my Catradora rant).

Catra starts the show convinced she doesn’t need anyone except Adora, and she’s willing to even push Adora away if she can’t have Adora on her own terms. She goes down that path - ambition, manipulation, treachery, cruelty and isolation - until she has nothing left. She then slowly, painfully, turns around and reaches out and begins to heal the pain in Etheria and the universe rather than causing more. This is a psychological journey in many ways, but even more than that it is a profoundly moral one. It is a story of her accepting responsibility for her actions, facing reality, reaching out to others and making amends. It is in every sense a redemption. And while it works perfectly with Adora’s own development into her own, fuller, happier, healthier person, it works not because of Adora or the power of love, but because of Catra herself. Adora’s companionship, Adora’s rescuing of her and holding her to account, all of these are necessary for Catra to change for the better. But in the end it is Catra herself who chooses the right path, maybe for the first time in her life. And that’s what makes the romance work in turn - Catra is motivated to change not simply by a desire to impress her girlfriend or by Adora’s shining goodness (to the contrary, Adora’s a healthier and less self-sacrificing person at least in the finale...she comes around later than Catra) but by her desire to be true to herself and seek out what she really needs and wants - which is love, and connection, and to do good rather than evil. It’s a gorgeous story that takes an antihero all the way down to hell and then back again, and this makes it a truly unique redemption arc in all of kids TV - not just because of how far Catra falls, but how far she travels overall.

*(I know a lot of fanficcers talk about there being a lot of Horde Soldiers left but like...in the show...they’re nearly all dead, guys. Glimmer and company...okay mostly Mermista... just about killed them all in an afternoon. The cadet Triad survives because they deserted and weren’t there to get drowned/frozen/suffocated by plants when the grand invasion of Brightmoon went sideways)

**Okay, once she was only an accessory to Shadow Weaver’s attempted murder of Catra, the other time she leaves Catra for dead in ‘Pulse’

***I stan PB so hard guys. So hard. Machiavellian genius, mad scientist, god figure, possible Nietzschean Ubermensch? She’s so great. So great.

[tartutation]

Venus de Milo (TMNT AU Profile)

A/N: English is not my native language. Therefore, any advice on any grammatical errors is very welcome! Thank you and enjoy your reading <3

Warnings: None

The TMNT AU summary: This is an alternate universe of teenage mutant ninja turtles (mostly inspired by the 2003 series and Bayverse movies) that was inspired by the structure of a "coming-of-age" novel. After losing their beloved father and incomparable master and defeating Shreder, the enemy they have been chasing since the age of 15, Leonardo, Raphael, Donatello and Michelangelo must learn to accept the grief and move on with their lives. None of it will be easy, now that the transition from adolescence to adulthood will be strongly impacted by an unexpected reunion with two women from their past and the new friends who have joined them.

Introducing Venus de Milo

You can see Venus aparence HERE

In this universe the boys met Venus because she spent 9 months being trained by Mestre Splinter when they were only 10 years old. It is a consensus among them that they share the same mutation, but all the genetic tests that Donatello made were inconclusive (yes, that does strasses him out).

During this period when Venus spent 9 months in New York studying the old history and secrets of the biggest and most famous ninja clans with Mestre Splinter (Hamato Yoshi's only living heir) her relationship with the turtle brothers was somewhat troubled. At the time, they were all children and the tension of having a girl in the group made it very difficult for them to interact normally. Raphael and Michelangelo used to exclude her from the games and playdates with the excuse that it was "for boys only!" and Leonardo felt very jealous of his master (and father), who seemed to pay special attention to this lost konuichi. Of all of them, however, the one who made the most hell of Venus's life was (who knew!) Donatello. Even with his gentle and pacifist spirit, Donnie did not like this new guest who claimed to be (ABSURD!) high priestest of a lost lineage of magical Konuichi. They were doomed to disagreement: after all, a little prodigy of science and a child with magical powers are two existences that contradict each other. But as soon as she came, Venus left, after finishing her intensive course with "Master Hamato" (which is how she referred to Splinter) she returned to Japan and spent the next 11 years training extensively every day to be able to become the best guardian of the Secret of Kunoichi Magic that had ever existed. Without the distraction of other brothers or  any friends close by, Venus became the most dangerous and disciplined warrior who had ever set foot on this Earth.

Now a young woman, Venus reencounters her former hashi colleagues. What does the future await?

Name: Venus de Milo

Age: 21

Species: Mutant Tortoise

Favorite color: Blue

Moral alingment: Lawfull Good

Sign: Libra

Sexual orientation: Demisexual

Characteristics:

Because of her disciplined and restricted upbringing, Venus has a very difficult time socializing with other people (or mutants!) her age. She doesn't know what a "meme" is, how twitter works, what's the fun of a 6-second video with a cat sppining to the sound of "sweet dreams are made of this". Having grown up in a temple and spent her entire life studying, she has a different concept of what "fun" is.

Her favorite hobbies include reading, meditating, studying ancient history documents, doing push-ups, kneading healing herbs, studying new types of incense and their calming propreities, etc ... All things that she also does as part of her daily work as the Keeper of the Kunochi Secret, so... The boundaries between fun and work are very thin.

She is an excellent reader and can read fluently in three languages: English, Japanese and Cantonese. She loves to read, it's her favorite activity, especially out loud, as she considers herself an excellent announcer.

She can defeat any of the Hamato brothers in combat (including Leonardo). Although neither bigger nor stronger, Venus uses the weight of the enemy's and their strength against them. In addition, her physical speed and strategic ability together makes her literally unbeatable.

Despite her advanced combat skills, Venus is extremely shy and anything makes her blush. Especially conversations that involve sexual pleasure and explicit language. Unfortunately for her, Michelangelo will discover this very quickly and will be able to defeat her in a fight whispering "What's up, hot stuff?" during combat. None of the other brothers will understand how he did it and he will never tell.

Despite being aware that her appearance isn't considered neither normal nor attractive to humans, Venus has no problems with self-esteem. She is very proud of her origins and to be the heir to a lineage of magical warriors is enough to make her one of the most beautiful people in the world in her mind.

Despite having a limited social skill, she is a very valuable friend and after she becomes attached to you, she will do everything to guarantee your safety and comfort.

She is very elegant and graceful. She was taught during her upbringing that each movement must be calculated and rehearsed strictly, what makes some of her very commom and daily actions, such as putting on a shoe or pouring tea look like choreography of a soft dance.

Venus believes deeply in soul mates. So she never worried much about learning the art of seduction or how to flirt with other people, since she always knew that one day the right person would cross her path and she wouldn't have to change who she is to win their heart (spoiler: she was right!)

It might not look like it, but she is very easily irritated. The fact is that she can disguise her stress and impatience just as easily. Never loses her temper.

Even with all these characteristics, she is not the leader of the group. This role was given to Mona Lisa (you will be able to read about Mona Lisa from this alternative universe very soon) through an election between the four friends (description of the twins May and June coming soon!). Venus has no grudge against her friend, as she knows that despite her physical abilities, herself lacks the charisma that a leader needs.

She is not very good at comforting others, nor is she a big fan of physical contact.

She was educated to never feel hatred towards anything but despite this she cannot control her contempt for lies. Trust is the most important thing in the world.

Summary of relationship with each of the turtles:

Leonardo: Venus and Leo are kindred spirits. They have, all jokes aside, everything in common. Therefore, when they met each other for the second time, they developed a friendship that made them absolutely inseparable. She likes how he doesn't underestimate her and how he respects her discipline and life doctrine and he likes having a partner to meditate and train. Their union allowed Leonardo to finally have someone with the same dedication (and obsession, honestly) as he, someone with whom he could complain about the neglect of his brothers and someone to train his japanese with, which also guaranteed them a certain privacy and intimacy that Leonardo had not yet experienced with anyone.

Raphael: If asked, Raph will say that he thinks Venus "is ok". Deep down, meeting her for a second time left a bitter taste in his mouth. He is very jealous of his brother and wonders if Venus would not be the true sister that Leo always wanted - besides (of course) the fact that her discipline and posture are literally the combination of all the things he doesn't like in Leonardo multiplied by 10. Despite all this, the thing that he hates the most is her absence of anger: there are few things in the world that Raphael likes more than stressing his perfect big brother and watching him lose his temper, but it seems IMPOSSIBLE to get the same reaction with Venus . No matter how much he teases her, ridicules her or bullies her ... she never breaks! And THAT is unforgivable. (As they will get to know each other better, Raphael will be able to see Venus for what she is: not the incarnation of perfection on Earth, but a very shy young woman with very basics communication skills )

Donatello: Donnie, now a 21-year-old man, is ashamed to face the ghosts of his childhood that Venus brings with her. He remembers very well how he treated her when they were young and is very ashamed of how bad he was to her. Age made him realize that despite not sharing the same beliefs he didn't had the right to mistreat her. Because of this, upon their reunion, Donatello can't even look her in the eye... The situation gets so much worse when he realizes that she is kind, peaceful and strategic and that the obsession and discipline she exercises in her spiritual rituals are equivalent to those himself repets with his inventions, experiments and research. In silence, he starts to admire her more and more, and the more he admires her the more shame he feels for how he treated her. For a long time, he fantasies with the day when he will be forgiven and accepted, who knows, maybe she will admire him in the same way ... Poor Donnie, he doesn't even imagine that Venus does not hold a single drop of resentment and that she ends up interpreting him distancing himself of her as a form of showing contempt. (Agsnt is my fucking life)

Michelangelo: Mikey finds Venus so.fucking.intimidating. He remmembered her as a very small and shy crybaby, but now? Now she is the greatest warrior he have ever seen. If Leonardo tries to be the authority figure and ends up rejected by his younger brother, Venus does not have the same intention, but ends up winning the respect and trust of the youngest of the group. She ends up being the only figure that Michelangelo really respects and obeys blindly after Master Splinter. He adores her  just as a troubled student adores the patient and empathetic vice director. Their friendship ends up becoming so sincere and pure that he starts playing video games on mute just to hear the stories she reads aloud.

_________________________________________________________

Well.. That’s it for Venus BIO! Please tell me what do you think! Every comment and opinion is welcome. My ask box is also open for any questions about this AU! Thank you so much for reading till the end. 

[iturbide]

I need some Claude Headcanons please especially if its baby Claude

Considering the fact that I am suffering right now in my playthroughs a Claude break sounds delightful thank you

cut for length and spoilers because this got way out of hand

Claude wasn’t really a talkative baby.  Oh, after he was born he was always laughing and babbling, but once he got to the age where he should be learning to talk, he got very quiet and very watchful.  People were concerned about this, and his parents spent a lot of time worrying and trying to figure out what to do, attempting various methods to get him to talk…none of which worked. 

As it turns out, Claude was just absorbing everything going on around him like a sponge.  He picked up not just Fodlan from his mom and Almyran from his dad, but also sign language (since his parents used that a lot in their worried conversations with each other, thinking it was the best way to avoid Claude knowing they were talking about him).  When he started talking rather later than other kids, he was doing it in full sentences.

…he had also picked up some absolutely terrible language (particularly in sign language, since it wasn’t just his parents using it with each other, but also his dad with his Almyran friends, and they weren’t exactly watching their language).  His mom was significantly less pleased than his dad was, and he was discouraged from replicating that kind of talk.  (He didn’t forget it, though, he’s just more careful about where he uses it.) 

Claude is an able climber – just not where trees are concerned.  Almyra is a land of vast plains and rugged cliffs both, and given his love for the open skies, he picked up rock climbing pretty early so that he could have the best vantage point to see the stars. 

Considering the rough treatment he got in his youth from most other Almyrans by virtue of his Fodlan heritage, he also took to using this high ground to his advantage at every opportunity.  He had a penchant for raining things down on his adversaries – at first mostly harmless things (wyvern dung was a favorite weapon), but once he started studying plant properties and poisons, bullies could expect everything from itching powder to stink bombs. 

Although he had a difficult time growing up, Claude still loves his parents dearly.  They didn’t fight his battles for him, but they did what they could to help him, providing him with training, resources, and support to make his own way.  

While Claude doesn’t speak freely about his ambitions in Fodlan, his parents are well aware of his intentions.  When he was younger, in his frustrations, he often raged about how he didn’t want to be hated, how he wanted people to see he wasn’t different from them, and how he wanted change.  His parents agreed with that, earnestly – after all, his father married a foreign woman, so she had been as much on the receiving end of mistreatment as their child – but while they were trying to pave the way for changes, the progress was slow due to a long and troubled history.  They both cautioned him that such a desire would require a lot of work, and it would be a hard fight – but never once did they discourage him from that path.  

In truth, they’ve been working hard to help make their son’s dream a reality, preparing for and even making changes in the hopes of forging the world their son wants to see.  Nader’s presence in Fodlan was fully endorsed by Claude’s father, and the troops he brings with him were sent with orders to support Claude. 

Although some of Claude’s knowledge of poisons comes from books (especially when it comes to working with Fodlan plants and fungi), the vast majority of it comes from hands-on experience and experimentation.  The medics and apothecaries that treated him after his childhood run-ins couldn’t help getting attached to him over time, so when he took an interest in their work, they didn’t have the heart to turn him away.  

It ended up becoming a mutually beneficial arrangement for them all, no less.  Claude’s climbing habit saw him scaling to otherwise inaccessible locations, where he could collect plants that were difficult for them to come by; in exchange for that, they taught him the different properties of those plants he’d found, what parts were beneficial and which were toxic, what to combine them with to mitigate ill effects and what to avoid to keep from turning a curative into a poison. 

Of course, Claude also did a lot of experimentation on his own just to see what might happen with certain combinations.  The medics and apothecaries ended up treating Claude for his own errors more than anything as he got into his teenage years (though he eventually got more careful with his experimental practices and those incidents became less frequent). 

Almyrans make extensive use of horses, so Claude was trained in horseback riding from an early age; however, he quickly developed a passion for wyverns, instead, in part due to those aforementioned climbing habits (since the cliffs he climbed were also home to the Almyran wyverns).  He took a quick, keen interest in them, and came to spend a great deal of time around them as he got older. 

In fact, Claude spent so much time around the wyverns that he was witness to the hatching of an albino chick.  The white hatchling was considered a good omen on her own, and Claude’s presence for her hatching was viewed as equally auspicious; since he’d been begging his parents for a wyvern for ages anyway, they couldn’t really say no at that point, so the chick was granted to him on the condition that he raise her properly. 

Naturally he agreed to this, and equally naturally he proceeded to spoil her rotten.  She slept in his bed (not on it, in it, under the covers), went everywhere with him (first in arms, then at his heels once she got too big to carry), and got to eat whatever Claude did (since he absolutely snuck her things under the table).  Wyverns are naturally intelligent, and she picked up more than a few of Claude’s cunning tendencies in her formative years – to the point that Claude’s parents could only suspect, but never prove, that she was getting table scraps. 

It takes a fair amount of time for a wyvern to reach a size suitable for riding: they’re dependent on their parents for the first few years of life until they’re able to fly and take down prey themselves, but it takes still longer to grow large and strong enough to fly with a passenger.  Unfortunately, Claude was called to Fodlan before she was big enough to fly with a rider, but he had every intention to reunite with her at some point: though he wasn’t being untruthful when he requested axe and flying studies for his ‘Rite of Passage’ (since doing so is actually part of Almyran cultural traditions), his deeper reasons were much more personal. 

[bountyofbeads]

"Trump’s disordered personality...

manifests itself in multiple ways: extreme narcissism...addiction to lying...detachment from reality...affinity for conspiracy theories...petty cheating...and his lack of empathy and sympathy."

Read the whole thing.

https://t.co/3Lq1F4TH8v

Trump Is Not Well

Accepting the reality about the president’s disordered personality is important—even essential.

SEP 9, 2019

Peter Wehner | Published September 9, 2019 | The Atlantic | Posted October 11, 2019 9:00 AM ET |

During the 2016 campaign, I received a phone call from an influential political journalist and author, who was soliciting my thoughts on Donald Trump. Trump’s rise in the Republican Party was still something of a shock, and he wanted to know the things I felt he should keep in mind as he went about the task of covering Trump.

At the top of my list: Talk to psychologists and psychiatrists about the state of Trump’s mental health, since I considered that to be the most important thing when it came to understanding him. It was Trump’s Rosetta stone.

I wasn’t shy about making the same case publicly. During a July 14, 2016, appearance on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, for example, I responded to a pro-Trump caller who was upset that I opposed Trump despite my having been a Republican for my entire adult life and having served in the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations and the George W. Bush White House.

“I don’t oppose Mr. Trump because I think he’s going to lose to Hillary Clinton,” I told Ben from Purcellville, Virginia. “I think he will, but as I said, he may well win. My opposition to him is based on something completely different, which is, first, I think he is temperamentally unfit to be president. I think he’s erratic, I think he’s unprincipled, I think he’s unstable, and I think that he has a personality disorder; I think he’s obsessive. And at the end of the day, having served in the White House for seven years in three administrations and worked for three presidents, one closely, and read a lot of history, I think the main requirement for president of the United States … is temperament, and disposition … whether you have wisdom and judgment and prudence.”

That statement has been validated.

Donald Trump’s disordered personality—his unhealthy patterns of thinking, functioning, and behaving—has become the defining characteristic of his presidency. It manifests itself in multiple ways: his extreme narcissism; his addiction to lying about things large and small, including his finances and bullying and silencing those who could expose them; his detachment from reality, including denying things he said even when there is video evidence to the contrary; his affinity for conspiracy theories; his demand for total loyalty from others while showing none to others; and his self-aggrandizement and petty cheating.

It manifests itself in Trump’s impulsiveness and vindictiveness; his craving for adulation; his misogyny,  predatory sexual behavior, and  sexualization of his daughters; his open admiration for brutal dictators; his remorselessness; and his lack of empathy and sympathy, including  attacking a family whose son died while fighting for this country, mocking a reporter with a disability, and ridiculing a former POW. (When asked about Trump’s feelings for his fellow human beings, Trump’s mentor, the notorious lawyer Roy Cohn, reportedly said, “He pisses ice water.”)

The most recent example is the president’s bizarre fixation on falsely insisting that he was correct to warn that Alabama faced a major risk from Hurricane Dorian, to the point that he doctored a hurricane map with a black Sharpie to include the state as being in the path of the storm.

“He’s deteriorating in plain sight,” one Republican strategist who is in frequent contact with the White House  told Business Insider on Friday. Asked why the president was obsessed with Alabama instead of the states that would actually be affected by the storm, the strategist said, “You should ask a psychiatrist about that; I’m not sure I’m qualified to comment.”

We have repeatedly heard versions of that sentiment over the course of Trump’s presidency. It’s said that speculating on Trump’s mental health is inappropriate and unwise, especially for those who are not formally trained in the field of psychiatry or psychology.

That’s true, up to a point. Yes, it is best to leave it to experts to determine whether Trump satisfies the criteria for a clinical diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, some combination of both, or nothing at all.

But if a clinical diagnosis is beyond my own expertise, Trump’s psychological impairments are obvious to all who are not willfully blind. On a daily basis we see the president’s chaotic, unstable mind on display. Are we supposed to ignore that?

An analogy may be helpful here. If smoke is coming out from under the hood of your car, if you notice puddles of oil under it, if the engine is overheating and you smell burning oil, you don’t have to be a car mechanic to know that something is wrong with your car.

Accepting the reality about Trump’s disordered personality is important and even essential. For one thing, it will help us to better react to Trump’s freak show.

Even now, almost a thousand days into his presidency, the latest Trump outrage elicits shock and disbelief in people. The reaction is, “Can you believe he said that and did this?”

To which my response is, “Why are you surprised?” It’s a shock only if the assumption is that we’re dealing with a psychologically normal human being. We’re not. Trump is profoundly compromised, acting just as you would imagine a person with a disordered personality would. Many Americans haven’t yet come to terms with the fact that we elected as president a man who is deeply damaged, an emotional misfit. But it would be helpful if they did.

Among other things, it would keep us feeling less startled and disoriented, less in a state of constant agitation, less susceptible to provocations. Donald Trump thrives on creating chaos, on gaslighting us, on creating antipathy among Americans, on keeping people on edge and off balance. He wants to dominate our every waking hour. We ought not grant him that power over us.

It might also take some of the edge off the hatred many people feel for Trump. Seeing him for what he is—a terribly damaged soul, a broken man, a person with a disordered mind—should not lessen our revulsion at how Trump mistreats others, at his cruelty and dehumanizing actions. Nor should it weaken our resolve to stand up to it. It does complicate the picture just a bit, though, eliciting some pity and sorrow for Trump.

But above all, accepting the truth about Trump’s mental state will cause us to take more seriously than we have our democratic duty, which is to prevent a psychologically and morally unfit person from becoming president.

The office is too powerful, and the consequences are too dangerous, to allow a person to become president who views morality only through the prism of whether an action advances his own narrow interests, his own distorted desires, his own twisted impulses. When an individual comes to believe his interests and those of the nation he leads are one and the same, it opens the door to all sorts of moral and constitutional devilry.

Whether or not his disorders are diagnosable, the president’s psychological flaws are all too apparent. They were alarming when he took the oath of office; they are worse now. Every day Donald Trump is president is a day of disgrace. And a day of danger.

PETER WEHNER is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.

[dreamingbrownie]

Tagging games part 4

Stole this from @potter-at-the-disco and as sure as heck nobody will ask me all of this bunch but I wanted to answer them all the same, I’m doing them in their entirety now. Tagging @fandom-glazed and @luckymoony (I can’t properly tag you for some reason, http://luckymoony.tumblr.com/) if you guys want to do this. 1. Which Hogwarts house are you? Ravenclaw, proudly so. 2. Who is your favourite professor at Hogwarts? Remus. By far. He’s the kind of teacher that we would need a hundred times over and more in our schools. 3. Would you have an owl, cat, or toad? ohmygod give me an owl to pet and send my letters, I still want to have my much loved black cat Nonny at home back tho 4. Favourite character and why? Ufff, tough one. Albus Dumbledore is turning more and more into my favourite at the time because Fantastic Beasts gives him even more depths, aspects of the Harry Potter books make more sense now and I’ve developed a good many headcanons about him and his feelings over the decades by now. On the other hand, I still adore Luna to pieces because she’s so loving and the special kind of person that I tend to gravitate to in reality. Also, I sure as heck relate to being bullied all your damned school career. Can’t really decide, honestly. 5. Pro or anti Marauders? Okay, this is a direct contradiction to having been bullied for 7 years: I’m a bit conflicted about them. I love the Marauders as a concept of very strong male friendship, coming of age, growing up in war times... Still, I’m well aware how shitty a person James and Sirius had been towards Severus, and man, I was so sorry to see him dangle upside down in 7.2, but it’s that friendship aspect that fascinates me. (And Wolfstar, Remus and Sirius, will forever be my OTP that I consider very much in tune with the canon and you can pry it from my cold dead hands.) Even if I never got the whole enemies to lovers between Lily and James. Until somebody explains to me how that happened, I’ll be a bit sceptic about that. I mean, a guy pestering you for a date who just won’t get the hint to leave you bloody alone already? Meh. 6. Avada Kedavra, Crucio, or Imperio? Man, this is a cruel one. Imperio, I’d say, cause it’s the most “““harmless”““ one. Take this with a huge grain of salt. 7. Favourite book and why? At the moment, Jane Eyre. Read it just before Christmas last year for uni and adored it from start to finish for all its directness, unmasked honesty of the conditions of early victorian times, Jane being the most self-respecting person I have ever encountered in a book and the tender love story between her and Mister Rochester. 8. Who do you think was the best father figure towards Harry? Remus. I still wish he could have grown up under his tender care. 9. Favourite movie and why? Interstellar. No unnecessary love story despite the fact that the setting very much would have allowed one between the main character Cooper and the female young Doctor Brand, for once, secondly, I’ve been in love with realistic space movies for ages and this one is by far the best in my opinion. The relationship between Cooper and his daughter Murphy is so heartbreakingly loving from start to finish, I always, ALWAYS cry during the last half hour and frankly, the director Christopher Nolan is a genius. To finish it all perfectly, the score comes from Hans Zimmer. And if Nolan and Zimmer in combination aren’t reason enough to watch a movie, I don’t know what. ... Ah, wait, you asked about my favourite Harry Potter movie, right? That would be 7.1 for the terrors of war displayed realistically for the first time and the Shell Cottage scenes with Dobby that moved me to tears. Also, riding a majestic dragon will get me every time. 10. Which character do you relate to most, and why? A mixture of Luna and Hermione. People say I’m like the latter one all the time due to my perfectionism in History and Literature (that honestly only developed when I started uni last semester, I was a mixture of okay and shit at school) and, as I said, being bullied makes you like the bullied characters more. But she’s unbroken. I admire that a lot in her. It sure as hell didn’t leave me as untouched... 11. Who was the most evil character? Umbridge. Discussion over. No, seriously, I’m well aware that Voldemort was a fascist, killing people, using Black Magic, yada yada, and Bellatrix was mad and cruel, the Dursleys abused and neglected Harry... but who didn’t hate Umbridge the most? Let’s be entirely honest there. :D 12. Thoughts on Severus Snape? Misunderstood arsehole. His character is fascinating and I loved his redemption ark, but I’d never in a lifetime want him anywhere near children to teach because he was the picture example of How Not To Be A Teacher At All. Being amused by scaring students, a fucking cynic (which stems from his character, yes, but keep that out of the class room please), favouring and mistreating certain students due to their House (or parents, for that matter)... Nope. I’ve had enough of that type in my school time, thank you very much. But as a character, he’s very interesting indeed. If you want to read a Snape that’s just as grumpy, magically capable, dark and dangerous but very much lovable in the end, read Naomi Novik’s Uprooted. Trust me. The wizard the Dragon is Snape 1:1 and it’s just so hilarious how blatant the adaption was done, I loved it. 13. Who was the bravest character in Harry Potter and why? Harry himself, I think. To sacrifice yourself so that others can live is the greatest act of bravery in my opinion. He stood up for others time and time again, somehow survived years of neglect and difficult years in school at the best of times, he would have had every right to throw it all to hell at one point, turn his back on everybody and leave. But he didn’t. 14. Best subject at Hogwarts? Transfiguration and Charms would fascinate me the most, I think, because essentially it’s the core of everyday magic. It fascinates me infinitely what one could do with Magic in Harry Potter. 15. Worst subject at Hogwarts? Potions, by far. I can’t cook, I’d be shite at Potions. xD 16. Who would be your enemy or enemies at Hogwarts? I absolutely agree with Harry that Draco was the worst, although I ship the two to death in a fanon sense and in the movies. I hate bullies and Draco was precisely that. Yes, he was scared, forced to do horrible things and under a lot of pressure by his parents, but he was arrogant and said horrible things from the very beginning until he finally grew up in book 7. You asked for my enemy, not for the worst character, because he’s absolutely not. 17. Who would be your best friend at Hogwarts? I’d probably gravitate towards Luna, Seamus, Hermione... Those are the people I’d like to have as friends. 18. If available, would you use a love potion on someone? Nope. 19. Favourite Weasley? The twins. By far. I love them so much. :D 20. Favourite Death Eater? O.o Uhm, ehrm, Snape? If he counts? Because he’s not murderous and mad and all, you know? 21. What would your boggart be? Either a very big spider, Aragog would make me scream like a child, or my math teacher from 10th grade. Yeah, no. The giant spider. Definetely the spider. 22. What is your patronus? An applemare horse according to Pottermore, personally I’m fine with that, but it wouldn’t be the first animal to come to my mind as a patronus. It’s supposed to represent me as a person, isn’t it? That would be a cat without any doubt. :D 23. Fuck, marry, kill *Insert 3 characters* Fuck Gellert Grindelwald (don’t ask me, honestly), marry Luna, kill Dolores Umbridge a dozen times over. Torturing children is Not Cool. 24. How do you feel about Cursed Child? Meeeeeeh. 25. How do you feel about Fantastic Beasts? Fucking loved it from the start, still hyping it and very much looking forward to the next movies.

[nyxelestia]

Let me assure you, Nyx, that Hoechlin's comments on Sterek (I think you're mainly referring to his comment about Sterek being disrespectful), has by no means been forgotten, and absolutely not in one week lol! Just yesterday there was a long discussion on it between many of my mutual Stereks. The difference about Hoechlin and Posey's comments, though, is the spiteful nature of Posey's comments. He also hasn't tried to apologize or explain his comments, not even to save face, like Hoechlin. 1/2

There are many of us who are very disappointed in Hoechlin, and who are now side-eyeing him. I think there’s a truth to the saying that you don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Lastly, another difference between Hoechlin’s and Posey’s statements is that Hoechlin replied to a question to him, while Posey hijacked a question not directed at him to take out his frustration on fans. 2/2

and

Do you have any links where I can read up on how Sterek fans harassed Posey into calling Sterek fans bizarre, weird and twisted?

I’m pretty sure you are two separate people, but since my response is mostly the same, I’m lumping you into one post.

A slice of what Posey had been dealing with:

People literally not knowing that that his character is the main character of the show, or sometimes not even knowing he’s in it at all.

Panels and cons about Teen Wolf getting constantly derailed by Sterek. There have been bans on Sterek fanart, and Hoechlin avoiding signing Sterek fanart, as a result.

And as someone on Reddit point out (on a post about how Tyler Hoechlin finds Sterek to be disrespectful), the cast and crew may appreciate the publicity and support, but that doesn’t mean the sheer prevalence of the fandom ship doesn’t burn, given, “…it is slightly insulting to the cast and crew. They’re pouring their efforts into doing X, and all they get asked about is Y. Also…people are practically leering at these guys when they ask about it usually.”

Literally cutting Posey out of gifs and pictures to make it about Hobrien (aka RPF Sterek).

Calling for the show to kill off Tyler Posey and make someone else the main character.

It’s not just “shitty people being shitty on the Internet” - this has had ripple effects on cons that Posey has absolutely noticed.

And it’s not just racism - there’s misogyny, too!

Complete with tremendous victim-blaming of Allison.

We don’t see it as much now, but Allison hate was extremely widespread, back then. And this absolutely hit the actress - such as being asked, in a con, “Is Allison going to dress like a slut this season?” So it’s not just Posey watching himself get marginalized - it’s watching a friend of his get mistreated, too, and that’s on top of the overall show getting drowned in a fanon/crackship.

Also, the fact that people claim Posey insulted or slammed on Sterek fans is one of the ways people twist him into something he’s not in order to justify hating him.

Posey never called Sterek fans “bizarre or twisted”. He called the ship that, which sucks - it hurts when someone you like looks down on something you like.

But as so many other Sterek shippers themselves have pointed out, he already had a really shitty history with Sterek fans and fandom.

Given how often Sterek fandom has overtaken everything else about the show, I don’t blame him for overtaking this single question.

Quoting from another Sterek shipper on Poseygate:

“It’s like going up to an actor playing Hamlet each night after the performance and asking him what it’s like playing… Macbeth. Eventually, the guy playing Hamlet isn’t going to want to talk about Macbeth any more… and will get a little pissy when you continue to badger him about it.

When fans and the press focus on the Sterek phenomenon and ignore almost every other aspect of the show, you are not only ignoring the incredible fact that a young Latino is the lead in a popular television show, you are also ignoring the story that everyone who works on Teen Wolf is trying to tell you.”

His word choice was terrible, but Posey was speaking out not against fans of Sterek, but, “anyone who pays more attention to Sterek than the show”. As some of the aforelinked Redditors have pointed out,

“if you’re only watching for Sterek, there’s a 99 percent chance it won’t happen, and you’re missing the rest of the show.”

As another one said,

“It’s okay to watch Teen Wolf for inspiration for Sterek. It’s not okay to demand that the creators include it or to insist the actors discuss fanart/fanfiction about their characters when they are at an interview/panel expecting to discuss the show.”

Yet after “Posey gate”, people were saying Posey needs to get raped (by Hoechlin, no less).

All of this is accompanied by a long history of hatred of Scott - the main character of the show, and Posey’s character - that was largely perpetuated by Sterek fandom. Things like:

Claiming that the show is all about Stiles.

Injecting Sterek-derived Scott hate onto non-Sterek fanart (Sterek derived in that the language, argument, and intent are all derived of Sterek fandom), and saying that Scott needs to die.

People trying to remove Scott from his own story by claiming it’s really about Derek and that everything is from Stiles’ POV, and if he isn’t actually in the scene, we should just assume it was “told” to him and may never have actually happened (which conveniently means you get to ignore quite a bit of Scott’s storyline and development, as well as many of the other characters’ evil and villainy).

Erasing all of Scott’s (and Derek’s!) character development.

All on top of a long history of erasing Derek’s abusive behavior while calling Scott a rapist and victim-blaming him.

Calling Scott selfish for making tough decisions to save as many lives as possible in really shitty circumstances, such as falsely accusing someone he thought to be dead of murder to protect his peers (and then still trying to help Derek anyway, even when Stiles didn’t want to); blaming Scott for Gerard’s villainy and making a choice to save as many people as possible (especially while ignoring some of the Hale mens’ own actions), and erasing Scott scenes to paint him as putting Stiles and Derek in danger so he can spend time with his girlfriend.

And the rest of us can’t avoid it.

For all that people claim Scott-stans and non-Sterek fans go into Sterek tags to bully them, most Sterek fans seem to have no idea just how much Sterek infects other fandoms/the rest of fandom.

People will make non-Sterek fanart, and it still gets tagged as Sterek - even when the post is captioned with Scott, or when there’s some pretty clear disparities in skin tone.

They turned a picture of Stiles and Scott into a post about Sterek. And somehow a Scerek fanart became a Sterek post.

And we’re all supposed to be grateful because turning non-Sterek fanworks into Sterek and getting reblogged by Sterek fans will give it more notes.

Yes, there were crazy fans from all ships sending hate to all the actors, for a variety of reasons.

But, something a lot of people fail to realize is the sheer scale of the Sterek fandom compared to all the rest of Teen Wolf fandom combined. The numbers may have been even worse back then.

The last two paragraphs of that link, neatly summarize why I side-eye a lot of the claims that Sterek fans were unfairly bullied, especially by Scott fans, and my sentiments on the matter overall:

And this is just a sampling of some of what this fandom throws in Scott’s direction (and not even bringing in the shit and the fuckery that they throw at Tyler Posey). So, yeah. In conclusion: you are not a special and unique snowflake because you hate Scott McCall; you are falling in line with about 90% of the rest of the fandom on this count (at least). It is not hard to be a Scott McCall hater in this fandom just because a handful of vocal people call you on your shit when the reasons you give for hating Scott are hot problematic nonsense; most of your fellow fans agree with you and think you’re being unfairly bullied when people criticize you.

No one is saying that you are required to like Scott McCall—but when the majority of the fandom hates him, demeans him, demonizes him, belittles him, flings ableist and racist shit at him on a regular basis, mischaracterizes him in order to valorize their faves, and actively wishes death on him (usually so Stiles or Derek can become the star of the show), and when this behavior and these attitudes are not only common but actively encouraged and supported, with an undercurrent that suggests, “but why would anyone ever like Scott, I don’t like Scott so clearly no one else would ever like him either”? Then yes, people have a right to be pissed off.

In conclusion, as I’ve literally already said before:

If my understanding of a ship was predominantly made up of people erasing me from my own TV show, saying I deserved to be raped and murdered, and making the rest of my friends uncomfortable or harassing them in the process? “Bizarre and twisted” would be the nicest way to say what I think of them.

(In my case, it really is.)

[ellenlucasonlinedatingblog]

Sexuality in Color: Respectability Politics

Let Rosa be the one; white people aren’t going to bother Rosa, they like her.

In my last Sexuality in Color post, I took some time to acknowledge some of the activists badasses that are left out of common retellings of civil rights movement. Today I’d like to elaborate on exactly why they were left out, how this happens time and time again in a modern context, and why it can be so harmful to people from marginalized communities.

Respectability politics refers to the phenomenon in which members of a marginalized community “police” their own peers, asserting that they should look, dress, act, or speak in a certain way to gain or maintain the respect of the mainstream community. (If you have a second to check out a longer definition, explanation, and contexualization, one of my favorite talks on the subject is called Black Feminism, Popular Culture, and Respectability Politics, given by Trisha Rose, a Professor of Africana Studies and Director of the Center for Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University.)

The term was coined in 2000 by Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, in her book Righteous Discontent: The Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920. She wrote about the women who would gather in church in order to strategize ways to combat racism and discrimination in their communities. One particular tactic, which Higginbotham termed “politics of respectability,” involved the school teachers encouraging their young black students to “integrate into middle class, white communities” so they would fit in and be distanced from negative stereotypes.

This was by far not the first time this idea of “fitting in to survive” had been put into practice — oppressed peoples have been forced to make a choice to either a) go along with the status quo, try to make the best of it, and try to “prove” their lower status assignment wrong, or b) stand up for what is right, regardless of the risk of losing respect/acknowledgement/power from those in the mainstream who might disagree.

Flash back to what Mrs. Colvin told her daughter after the incident on the bus: Let someone else do it. Rosa Parks has a higher social status and they’ll listen to her. Even the high-profile members of the NAACP said Claudette wasn’t a good candidate to be a representative in this litigation, and it’s precisely because of respectability politics that they made this decision. They were thinking about how this story would sound to the powerful majority of white folks who would read about it in the newspaper and see it on TV. They wanted the most “relatable” and “non-threatening” black person that they could find, in order to appeal to the white public and hopefully influence their litigation for the better.

Claudette was too young, too loud, too feisty, and rumored to be pregnant. (Again, she was not actually pregnant at the time, and after weeks of research I still cannot find anything about the identity of the “married man” who had sex with and impregnated a minor, which speaks volumes about how society back then viewed young women’s sexuality and bodily autonomy — and how society now views black women's bodies.) In an interview with The Guardian in 2000, Colvin talked about how her lower class status and darker skin color than Parks were a part of the decision to exclude her from the movement. In this way, her part in history and the bravery that she displayed were downplayed in favor of creating a narrative that was more palatable to the public, even for purely superficial reasons.

This concept of respectability politics, although deeply rooted in black culture and activism dating back to precolonial times, can also be applied to folks with other marginalized identities who are encouraged to exist in a certain way in order to gain basic respect or common courtesy:

Folks with disabilities or chronic illnesses who are told to “keep a positive attitude,” willingly participate in inspiration porn, or deal with rude or invasive questions and behavior in public.

Black folks who wear their hair un-altered/natural being written up at work for being “unprofessional” or sent home from school for “violating dress code.”

People with mental or psychiatric illnesses who receive support and encouragement only if they choose to do things like go to therapy consistently, take or not take medication, or limit discussing the more upsetting or disturbing aspects of their illness publicly.

Folks who are bisexual or pansexual who are made to feel that they can only be accepted if they are the “good kind” (which translates to being committed and monogamous).

Anyone whose opinion is considered to be less valid or credible because they dress, look, or talk a certain way, especially if these are indicators of lower socioeconomic status or privilege.

The public insisting that young black men like Trayvon Martin or Mike Brown would not have been profiled or killed by police if they had not been wearing hoodies or had things in their pockets (as if those are justifiable reasons to shoot a person).

Transgender folks who feel pressure to identify themselves within the binary, and to medically and/or bureaucratically transition in order to fit in with the mainstream trans narrative; and similarly, gay and queer people across the spectrum feeling like they must “assimilate” into mainstream heterosexual culture and adopt the same values in order to be considered equal citizens.

Women being treated like better or worse by other women depending on their aesthetic choices about their hair, body, clothing, etc.

Folks who practice visible religious rituals or traditions (daily prayer, wearing a hijab, turban, or payot) who are mistreated or harassed.

All of these different experiences and identities combine in a way that puts a lot of pressure on people from marginalized groups to act a certain way to feel like they’re good enough. The reality is, there is no singular, appropriate Way to be Black™ (or Disabled, or Queer, or Bipolar, etc.), because each individual’s reality and life circumstances are different.

I’m personally of the mindset that respect is something that everyone should be given freely — without first being subjected to a test to determine whether they’re rich, clean, educated, happy, or easy enough to fit into a box.

As for those of us within marginalized communities who watch and judge each other’s behaviors, these politics of respectability can only damage the relationships and bridges that we could be building. Whenever someone says “I’d never be like [insert peer’s name], I’m one of the good [insert ethnicity, gender identity, class status, etc]s,” they enact what’s essentially bully behavior. They throw other people like them under the bus to make themselves seem better. All this really does is perpetuate harmful stereotypes and further divide groups of people across lines of inequality.

Combatting this kind of elitism within ourselves isn’t an easy thing to do, either; we’re constantly facing all sorts of subtle and explicit messages about “acceptable” ways of existing in the public sphere. In moments of panic or stress we might be tempted to call out or make fun of someone because the way that they present themselves in the world isn’t traditional or picture perfect, especially when there are more privileged folks around.

In those moments, I try to practice a little bit of what I call “doing-my-best” empathy: as someone who is fat, brown, queer, hairy, chronically ill, and neuroatypical, I may not be what comes to mind when people read my work or look at my business card. And I’m probably not going to be called to model for the #pride section of a JC Penney catalog anytime soon, but I’m doing my best. I am surviving and creating positive change in a world that is complex and difficult to live in, and I deserve respect and recognition for that. Just like everyone else.

Know of a blog, organization, or resource that belongs here? Send it to our curator, Al (that's me!), at al AT scarleteen DOT com.

Interested in contributing as a guest writer for our Sexuality in Color series, or any other part of Scarleteen? Check out our information for writers and then take it from there! Experienced queer and trans writers of color of varied abilities and experiences are always strongly encouraged to apply.

sexuality in color

respectability politics

respect

racism

empathy

internalized messages

social justice

social attitudes

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