#you didn’t deserve to be abused.]

[weekendwife]

Every single fucking thing about Joey’s character makes sense when you consider he has internalized that physical abuse is a good thing

[thebestusernamepossible]

I’m mostly staying off the Mouthwashing fandom bc I personally don’t want to put myself through whatever discourse is ever going on there. But know I love Anya and Mouthwashing is one of the best games I’ve played that had an SA survivor AND was respectful about it!! The abuse Anya suffered is never portrayed as a spectical for the audience to leer at. They use the art of implication VERY well, and in the end Anya gets to go out dignified. She’s not just Jimmy’s tradgic victim, she’s her own character who makes her own decisions. Jimmy doesn’t get to kill her, she expresses her own agency to do so. She’s also the one who kept the gun away from him for so long. Also she’s SO fucking strong, she’s so cool. Anya I love you.

Also the game’s overarching (but subtle) commentary on rape culture, enabling, and how capitalism almost makes a set dressing for it is peak.

[clawsextended]

me dragging my hands down my face every time someone tries to be nice to selina and she just HAS to respond with violence.

[hexcrystals]

me ascending astarion and seeing the whole ‘getting revenge on your abuser’ bit: yeah! fuck yeah!

me interacting w ascended astarion at any point following that: what the fuck

[proudfreakmetarusonikku]

”why aren’t there any designs of the dsmp characters as poc?” i do agree on principle that it’s shitty there’s barely any but the reason is you literally got called out on multiple platforms and sent slurs for drawing c!tommy with a tan. i know bc it happened to me i literally lost friendships bc i dared draw him with dark skin. people used the fact i was in toxic overly sexual environments as a minor as a weapon against me bc… being pressured into sexual situations was my fault and i was evil and dangerous and that was somehow proven by the fact i didn’t draw c!tommy as lily white. this wasn’t even a poc design he literally just had a tan i can’t imagine the harassment people who actually tried to design characters as poc faced.

[thereareeyesinsidethetrees]

y’know i honestly don’t think stan would have been as much of a hardass about getting ford to say thank you if that whole conversation where he ended up disowning him hadn’t happened

cause that was never the goal. he didn’t spend thirty years teaching himself theoretical physics and building something he didn’t have most of the instructions for just because he wanted ford to say thank you, he did it because he wanted his brother back

but ford didn’t want to be back, so, hell, what else are you gonna get from it?

[dykedvonte]

I'm probably going to post about this on the MW subreddit, but I still find it pretty hilarious that most fans assume the "struggles" Jimbalaya was dealing with back on Earth were related to criminal acts (usually in order to demonize Curly) meanwhile most of the pieces of clues I've gathered from the HFIM dlc and the QnAs we got about the characters' lives have lead me to believe Jimbalaya's struggles were about poverty.

In the HFIM dlc we're pretty clearly playing a fish version of Jimbalaya, and the whole game is about how a capitalistic system ruins people (fish) and those that climb up help perpetuate the system and those that go down just get eaten. So it's pretty interesting to me that Jimbalaya fish even after consuming other fish and items... keeps going down.

But it was the third QnA that sealed it for me. Curly's hobbies are around a lot of friends and family that he could join interesting things. And of course play snow sports in Winter. Winter snow sports... which let's be honest is a pretty expensive hobby to have. Meanwhile, Jimbalaya can't afford any hobbies other than joining one with Curly.

I think this kinda just adds more fuel for Jimbalaya to both envy yet aspire to be like Curly.

I dunno, it's just fascinating to me watching so many fans claim the "struggles" were so obviously to do with crime when most of the current evidence I noticed seems to point towards money related issues.

-🌟 Anon

I think both are valid and valuable interpretations that’s the MW fandom makes but I think the major problem with it is the severity in which they make Jimmy out to be every factor wrong with men in society.

Like I think it’s interesting to use the idea he has some record, misdemeanors/petty stuff, that has complied to make his life more difficult. It’s all his own doing for his entitlement and general behavior but it can also be used to comment on Capitalism banking on desperation and envy. A lot of his actions are desperate because he knows his crimes on the Tulpar will make it virtually to climb any ladder, anywhere anymore due to their weight. Like in the end the problem is undeniably how the proverbial rat race creates environments that fosters Jimmy’s and creates ineffective systems like Curly represents.

Curly on the other hand benefits from the corporate part of it with his financial freedom, stability and prestige but he too is socially stagnant, deeply unhappy in the identities placed on to him and unrecognizable as anything other than a cog in the machine. I think this goes in tandem with the other members too as the identities placed onto them in the scenario all represent stages in capitalism and class discrepancies: Anya represents largely marginalized identities (particularly women in blue collar fields/harassment) and how they ultimately have to fend for themselves. Daisuke a sort of perception of both a class between Curly and the rest, protected no matter the effects of the establishment due to his home life but at the same time he is the metaphorical future gen, things stripped from him as the older generations squabble amongst themselves in private conversations leaving him unequipped. Then there’s Swansea being sort of those who have lived through it, knowing how it ends but ultimately still lack the skills, resources and want to change it, letting it cycle.

The entire thing with Jimmy circles back to the fandom ultimately wanting easy solutions to the events in the games, a face to blame and a weird black and white thinking to issues that are dangerous to view that way.

[fluffypotatey]

Skill issue maybe. But kindness certainly didn't help the prosecuted for the rest of the show.

Maybe a balance is needed between me being proactive and merlin being kind, bc merlin sure needed a bit of the former (this is really more of a complaint for the showrunners rather than merlin. I read so many fics of merlin being proactive and helping magic that canon is slap in the face with his passivity and class traitorness)

yeah Merlin’s approach to certain issues definitely show the writers’/showrunners’ hands than his actual character (where he is pretty outspoken in these topics) but there’s also the nuance of keeping his magic secret and yada yada

but also, one of the reasons we like Merlin is because of his goodness and open-mind. there is a reason he is a foil to Morgana, who was proactive in magic users rights, had an identity crisis of her own, and descended into villain-hood. there is a reason why his struggle between his duty as Emrys and Destiny is so compelling and how it slowly become his struggle between Destiny and Arthur

are there moments where i wish Merlin did certain actions differently? 100% yes i do (2x08 for example and his relationship with Morgana) and i know a lot of the time these narrative choices were made in order to keep Merlin in his 5 season struggle of ideologies by the showrunners themselves which just hurt his character in the long run (similar to how they revert Arthur’s character back to his s1 caricature sometimes 🙄) bc if he progressed too “quickly” then it could lead to a different outcome than they wanted at the end of the show

but i digress

[an-ivy-covered-summer]

i think that some people have fully lost the plot. maybe i’m just a cupcake, but idk, i personally think that if you want to abolish prison and death penalty and you want rehabilitative justice to exist, you kinda shouldn’t rejoice when people who were in clear need of help and who were victims of abuse in a toxic environment before they became abusers themselves die.

like, i don’t know, but i do think that death is kind of a fucked up thing to wish for people who fucked up if you preach about changing the system, making the world a better place, owning up to your wrongdoings and the harm you’ve caused and becoming a better person, and redemption. whether you like the people or not.

maybe it’s just me, but it does feel hypocritical and makes everything you say about social justice performative at best. but what do i know!

[clawsextended]

selina was declared a ‘problem child’ as a kid pretty much immediately. falcone had his own hand in this.

when her father killed her mother and then died by his own hand, accidentally or intentionally, carmine shut down any investigation that could occur. greased a few palms, easy as that, and the cops looked the other way and released this severely traumatized child into the foster system without so much as a peep.

as a result, the particulars of the case — when they’ve occasionally been discussed on podcasts, or in the original article — are increasingly lacking. the abuse selina and her mother suffered at the hands of hands of her father was swept under the rug and forgotten. she grew older and older each year and contained the ghosts, the bits of that dead little girl, held deep inside and forgotten and remembered all at once.

as a child she was ferocious. she was inappropriate and strange and forward and fearless and violent. she would startle at the slightest provocation, but was so eerily silent she never made a sound. she bordered very strongly on completely lacking in speech and was assumed to have been almost completely nonverbal. she would say the most out-of-pocket, accusatory statement the second she felt even vaguely threatened. she was much more given to biting the minute her space had been invaded, prone to receiving any and every gesture as ill-intended to downright hostile.

selina was the type to sleep under a bed instead of in it, under a couch instead of on it, beneath a pile of blankets and clothes. she’d cram herself in a corner, tight enough for her shoulder blades to touch, and feel only soothed by it. she’d close herself in a closet, forget everything, anything for hours. she couldn’t cry, but the feeling sank in her chest like a stone. she gripped it tight, and it only ballooned bigger and bigger until it burst.

she’s always intensely staring, a holdover from childhood that’s stuck with her. she keeps her gaze and doesn’t move it when she pays attention to someone. every single second ticking by she hangs on your every motion like a thread, she doesn’t look away. that silence is tangible, and she reads every inch of your soul.

this was the kind of stare that was incredibly discomforting on a child. those brown eyes and their fixed, unmoving pinpoints. on a girl of no more than nine it’d been haunting; selina’s spent her entire life growing into her hollow gaze. it only seems enchanting now because she’s just old enough to reflect that intensity. every scar on her face is precisely where it should be.

it’s difficult to imagine her as a child. it’s hard to see this thin, willowy little girl with cornsilk gold hair and the emptiest stare you’ve ever seen, eyes that could see through you and to the other side of the world. with tshirts a little too small and jeans a little too tight and stolen heels and swiped boots with a juuuust enough height. how pale she is and the faint pink constantly flushing her cheeks and the way her eyes become the only thing on her face you can see. they’re the draw, a whirlpool, flint sinking into porcelain. it’s difficult to see that stare beset in a face too young to wear it.

it was very easy to declare this unsettling, eerie little girl a problem child. it was impossible for anyone to actually ask themselves why.

[malkaleh]

I keep trying to write an update and then being embarrassed about it and feeling like I’m trauma dumping on people by updating and I just..I know it’s on me to manage my crap, I know. I am trying (not very well but I’m trying) and it’s just…I don’t know. I don’t even know.

[boyczar]

[eclecticelectriceccentric]

it’s so so easy not to hit children.