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alchemania · 3 years

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Barbara, and Bennett: Toxic Positivity (and how they each exude it)

While it's easy to spot negative toxic behavior, toxic positivity can be harder to recognize and pin down. In this blog, I am going to analyze 2 characters in Genshin and explain just how they show traits of toxic positivity. (I originally was going to include Jean, but I already covered her in an earlier blog so it'd just be redundant)

Barbara Page

Barbara is all smiles and sunshine, trying her best to ensure that everyone is happy. However; she does this to an unhealthy degree and often does not prioritize her emotional wellbeing.

#1: Forcing herself to always be happy.

Barbara's story lines state that she "only allows herself to be depressed for 30 seconds" and that after that, she basically puts on a smile; regardless of what she's actually feeling. She often talks about how good everyone is to her, and I honestly believe that Barbara invalidates her own depression because in her eyes; she has a good life and there's no "reason" for her to be sad, plus if she was sad then everyone else would feel down. She hasn't experienced anything traumatic, so how can she have the right to be depressed? But the thing is, she has: her parents divorced when she was young; and Barbara grew up apart from Jean, leading to a lack of a relationship between the two. While the divorce, based on Jean's story lines, did not seem to have a lot of negativity around it (from what I can tell Simon and Frederica actually split on amiable terms, they just fell out of love with each other), it still affected Barbara in a negative way and no doubt she is hurting from it but she's not acknowledging her pain. All trauma is not the same, this is true. But all trauma IS valid; just because someone is hurting less doesn't mean they're NOT hurting and Barbara needs to understand that her pain is valid and give herself time to process it.

#2: Lack of emotional boundaries

If there's anything that Jean and Barbara have in common besides both being healers, it's that they're absolutely terrible at saying no. In Barbara's hangout, she feels guilty for avoiding Albert and wanting to be left alone despite being emotionally exhausted and even wants to apologise, despite doing nothing wrong. Later on when her fans ask for autographs; she agrees, despite being off the clock and trying to take a break: Aether has to step in personally to get people to go away, and not only that; he has to lie through his teeth in order to do so. If you tell the NPCs the truth ("Barbara is currently on leave, please don't disturb her",) they'll reply "Oh she's on leave? Perfect time to ask for an autograph!" They don't care about her feelings; all they care about is what she can do for them and the worst part is that Barbara lets them treat her like this. It's so bad that the Knights have to constantly step in and rescue her because folks can't get it in their heads that off the clock =/= available; and Barbara feels like if she can help other people that she needs to; to the detriment of her own needs. She seems to think it's selfish to put herself first; but looking out for yourself emotionally is anything but. It's okay to say no, it's okay to tell people you're not available. Just because you're free doesn't mean you're up to engage and there's nothing wrong with that. But like Sister Victoria says herself; Barbara is too nice. She gives and gives and gives and expects nothing in return, and people take advantage of that.

#3: Undermining herself through constant praise of others

In her hangout, she tells you that besides singing and healing, she doesn't have anything worthwhile about her, and then goes on about how amazing you are, Jean as well. Barbara doesn't acknowledge her positive traits, and then when she vents to you she apologizes for doing so, since you were supposed to be hanging out and having fun. She puts a lot of her worth in comparison to what other people can DO, and not actual character. Barbara is a lovely person: she's sweet and kind and loving, but because she doesn't see herself as physically strong or powerful, she doesn't think she's worth a lot.

Bennett

My GOD, Bennett is like the EPITOME of toxic positivity.

1. Allows others to mistreat him and take out their feelings on him because he feels it's his fault they're suffering (essentially, a martyr complex)

Bennett's hangout is a prime example of this where when Royce got angry, Bennett simply let him yell until you step in. Due to his almost perpetual bad luck, he feels that he's responsible for the misfortune of the people around him and since he can't physically do anything about it, he attempts to "atone" by letting himself be emotionally assaulted.

He also puts himself in physical danger to keep other people safe (he figures since he's already unlucky, might as well suffer a little more if it means everybody else is okay, right?), and accepts abandonment as the norm since he's a liability. Bennett does not value his wellbeing whatsoever due to constantly being in danger and he seems to be of the mentality "If I'm going to die, at least let me die protecting everybody" and that immensely upsets me that a KID, who's probably no older than 17, is already considering his mortality.

#2: Not allowing himself to process negative emotion

Just like Barbara, Bennett constantly forces himself to always keep a smile on, only in his case it's more to keep himself from getting overwhelmed about his situation. It's heavily implied in his story that Bennett is afraid that he could die any day (and I don't blame him) and so he lives hard and fast because he feels he doesn't have a lot of time. He's cheated death MULTIPLE times (he almost died as a baby, and he almost died prior to receiving his Vision), and Bennett more than likely feels that one day, he's not going to get lucky enough to escape again; and he'll actually die. His life is an entire string of misfortune and unlike Barbara and her parents divorce, Bennett is aware of this trauma: he simply chooses to take it in stride and forces himself to stay upbeat. Which is just as bad as letting negative emotion completely overwhelm him, it's literally just the other ditch.

Bennett also seems very sad about the fact that his team abandoned him but he doesn't let himself process that either (if you respond angrily to the revelation that his teammates left he'll jump to defend them and insist "they had their reasons"- and that may be true, but that doesn't invalidate the trauma and sadness of being left behind because of something you literally cannot control). Similar to Diluc, Bennett is sort of an Atlas of his own right, but instead of carrying all of Mondstat on his shoulders he's shouldering his emotional wellbeing: he refuses to vent to anyone and bottles everything up because he doesn't want to be a burden; but in doing so he's only hurting himself in the long run.

(Thank God for Razor though it seems like he might be hanging around for the long haul and that makes me immensely happy. I could cry. Please don't let anything bad happen to him and Bennett they deserve friendship)

I'm going to go off the beaten path a bit here but, to all you guys reading this; please remember that:

1. Your trauma is valid, regardless of how "lesser" you think it might be.

2. You are not obligated to give yourself emotionally to other people if you are not up to it. You cannot give what you do not have, and if you're not 100% emotionally wise, you really shouldn't be taking on any more negative energy. It's not selfish to take care of yourself. If people can't respect that then they're not worth your time. Set emotional boundaries and don't budge for anyone. The people who are meant to stay will honor your boundaries.

3. It's okay to be sad! And it's okay to be sad and have no idea why. It doesn't matter if you have a 'good life,' depression doesn't care who you are or where you are on your walk of life and sometimes it hits like a truck. Your sadness is valid and don't be afraid to take the time you need to acknowledge and process your negative emotions.

Please take care of yourselves, friends; and be safe.

Have a good day. 💗

#bennett #barbara page #did i get a little choked up writing this? YES. yes i did.#seriously guys you don't have to be a shoulder all the time.. it's okay to lean on other people. ok?#genshin impact

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goldheartedsky · 3 years

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I told myself I wasn’t going to make a post like this—that I wasn’t going to stoop to the level of making call-out posts—but I really can’t stay silent after what has happened in the last day or so.

The TOG fandom has a serious issue with excusing antisemitism and allowing people who have painfully hurt marginalized groups to continue to ignore, dismiss, and refuse to acknowledge their limits of intersectionality in regards to social justice. I have seen it myself, been on the receiving end of it, and have talked to other Jews in this fandom about what’s been going on and it needs to start being addressed.

Now, I’m not going to name names or tag people (mainly because I have been blocked by almost all of them for this very issue) but if you message me I will gladly tell you the users involved in this. Also, if you have doubts of any of this’s validity and would like screenshots, feel free to reach out to me here or via Discord and I will share them.

A lot of this started when a member of the All&More server had brought up the scientific and medical “discoveries” during the torture and medical experimentation that took place during the Third Reich and how a lot of the origin of it isn’t taught. LR made a comment saying that “we are three-dimensional creatures who are stuck moving forward in time and can’t go back” and added that not using the research won’t make past horrors not happen. When the original user added that there has been a movement in medicine for removing Nazi scientists names off discoveries and that progress was slow moving, she deflected the conversation onto herself, saying “Not using research won’t make my family not harmed by the Japanese” and then immediately pivoted into admitting that, from what she understood, there weren’t any particularly valid scientific discoveries made by them. She then said, in regards to said Nazi atrocities, “Take it, learn about it, put it in context, and then own it and transform it.”

A Jewish member of A&M voiced their discomfort about possibly taking medicine that was a direct result of the murder of their grandparents and other relatives, to which LR said, “Still stuck in the 3rd dimension, still moving forward in time.” I brought up the fact that medicine was built on antisemitism and racism and that starting over would be better than a lot of the procedures we have now. There is a longstanding issue in medicine of disregarding black pain and so much of what we have now is created by eugenicists—including Nazi scientists. There is still a lot of Jewish trauma due to medical experimentation and that is oftentimes dismissed.

LR then made a flippant comment about “Does this count as Godwin’s Law?”—which is about how all internet discussions lead to someone being compared to Nazis/Hitler. When called out on the inappropriateness of the comment, she did not respond and was backed up by one of the mods of the server. There was no apology made nor an acknowledgment about the casual antisemitism of the comments she made and the dismissal of Jewish trauma/pain.

Now, fast forward a couple months when I was contacted by a third party who had not been in the server at the time but had joined and heard about what LR had said there. H said they were friends with LR and had concerns about antisemitism and would like my perspective. I explained what had happened and offered screenshots if they would like them, which they did. They thanked me and apologized that it got to a point that I felt unsafe in the server and had to leave, which I appreciated.

A couple weeks later they reached out to me again and offered to broker a conversation between LR and myself because the situation wasn’t sitting well with them. I was skeptical (because I had been blocked at that point) and didn’t have a lot of hope that this conversation would actually take place but I felt a responsibility to try and be the bigger person and deal with what had been said head on, so I agreed to sit down and have a discussion with her as long as there was a third party in the chat as well—given our history.

After a couple weeks of back and forth with H and hearing that LR had said that she would “think about it”, she finally agreed. I was asked for a time and date and I gave my availability and was told she would be asked for the same. A couple days later, I was suddenly told LR would only be comfortable with this conversation if H acted as a “literal go-between” with us copy-pasting our responses in their DMs so we can “sit with the message and everyone can get to them when they can” rather than it being a session with an actual back and forth and was asked if I was okay with that. I honestly said no, because this was supposed to be a situation where she and I sat down and discussed what she said in the server, not a back and forth message relay where the conversation got dragged out for days or weeks or however long it was going to take. I said if she was serious about meeting me halfway on this, she needed to be able to sit down and actually talk.

H copy-pasted my response to LR and came back that she had backed out of the conversation, which part of me had expected from the beginning—even though all I wanted from this sit down was for her to understand how hurtful the antisemitic comments were and an apology.

These comments that were made in the server are not a secret. It’s pretty well known what was said and again, these were all on record, not privately made in some DM. She has still not owned up to the comments she said, nor has she ever apologized for them. She has ignored message after message about them and blocked more people than I can count. Many of the people defending her when the discourse begins have also been messaged about the comments she’s said and also either block people or ignore the messages completely and refuse to acknowledge them.

Now, this being said, in the most recent conversation about fandom racism, someone brought up the post that was made reducing users on ao3 to faceless, nameless numbers without saying who they were, what they had done, and how they were specifically contributing to the problem of racism in this fandom. They made the comparison of other situations like HR looking at pay stats to see how to fire and included “Nazis, capitalists, and colonizers.”

This is not an invalid argument. There have been other Jews in the fandom who specifically voiced feeling uncomfortable for the exact same reason. However, another person, LT, decided to specifically make a post calling the OP out and drag them for having the audacity to liken it to the Shoah (which, mind you, this person is not Jewish nor did they decide to capitalize Shoah or the Holocaust as they should have). She received a reply saying, “you’re offended by antisemitism? Here’s LR’s (someone LT has agreed with multiple times over racism in fandom) track record of antisemitic comments” which outlined everything I delved into previously.

LT said that they were “unaware of this incident until a couple days ago” but agreed that it was an upsetting display of casual dismissal of Jewish pain and hoped that LR had apologized. She was then called out for being aware of it and still continuing to reblog LR’s posts even after knowing about the comments and was linked to my post clarifying that LR had not apologized and refused a discussion about it, to which LT said that she had gotten “quite a different version outlined in the post linked and corroborated by a third party” and “felt uncomfortable” making a value judgement, insinuating that I was not being truthful about my side of the story.

I messaged LT off-anon and said that I was not lying nor over-exaggerating about what had happened in the server or about the following discussion about trying to broker a conversation with LR, and was immediately blocked by her. I am also not the only Jew who has sent her messages about this topic, only to have their messages ignored.

Now, am I surprised that I was immediately blocked after voicing my issues with what LT had said in that post? No.

She has a history of making antisemitic comments, most of which happened during the brunt of the Israel/Palestine discussion happening, which included statements such as “You cannot be considered indigenous if you hold a position of power”, that, despite having been displaced for 2,000 years, the Jewish diaspora was “integrated” into their respective communities (a wholly untrue statement), as well as linked to and promoted a website with extremely antisemitic articles including one about “Spartan Jews” and how Israeli Jews are violent to “send messages to their deprived self-esteem” that they won’t be victims again. Half of the comments on the site’s front page included such hits as “Death to all Jews” and “Wow, I had no idea this was happening—I guess it is true that Jews control the world and the mass media.” This website was repeated in multiple posts as “unbiased” and “a good resource” for other people to truly know what was going on.

Jewish dissent on the content of some posts and that website went unacknowledged and dismissed.

Being that LT is a relatively big user in the TOG fandom, her posts got circulated frequently. Seeing things like that touted as unbiased was extremely triggering for me and multiple Jews in this fandom that I’ve spoken to.

Now, the reason I made this post in particular was because I have seen a lot of echoing of the sentiment: “no matter how much you disagree with their sentiment, aligning yourself with racists is...well aligning yourself with racists.”

This statement NEEDS to become intersectional. If we are criticizing the work of people because of who they hold company with, why does that end at racism? If we are going to have a discussion about racism in this fandom, why are we letting it come from people who have openly said antisemitic things, people who have stood by them and supported them in silence, and people who have silenced Jewish voices speaking up about this issue.

These are not separate issues. This is a really good post regarding the white washing of Jews in social justice discussion and it comes full circle into the medical experimentation discussion. Jews were not seen as white during the Holocaust. The Nazis were trying to cleanse the Aryan race because they did not view Jews as white. They experimented on them because they did not view them as white and, thus, disposable.

Every Jewish diasporic community is still vulnerable. Even though the US has half the world’s Jews, over 50% of the religiously based hate crimes are consistently anti-Jewish even though Jews make up 2% of the population. Chinese Jews are still holding their holiday celebrations in secret due to government crackdowns. The attempted genocide of Beta Israel was less than 50 years ago. Across the Middle East and North Africa, Jewish communities are barely hanging on after centuries of attempted destruction. These are not just Jewish issues but racial issues as well because when people make the sweeping generalization of “Jew” and they only mean white-passing Ashkenazi Jews, it erases so much of our community.

I absolutely agree that this fandom needs to have a discussion about race and portrayal in fic and what we can do better moving forward—and I want to see that done—but we also need to acknowledge what so many people starting this discussion have said and the marginalized groups they have hurt along the way. I see these posts come across my dashboard and know exactly who they're coming from and what they think of people like me. If we are going to say, “No matter how much you disagree with their sentiment, aligning yourself with racists is aligning yourself with racists,” then we NEED to be saying, “If you are aligning yourself with antisemites, you’re aligning yourself with antisemites.”

We all need to move forward. But that means moving forward together. Jews included.

#i just really needed to get this off my chest #I really don’t want to start shit but some of this has been bothering me for months and I can’t stay quiet anymore #I’m just so tired #intersectionality includes Jews pass it on

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mxchellesworld · 3 years

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Helping Hand

Spencer Reid x Reader

*tw below* please read the info before the fic and proceed with caution

Request; Hey Ik that this may be super dark and feel free to skip it if you want but I was wondering if you could do a BAU! Reader where she has an eating disorder and Spencer realizes it and tries to help her through it while not alerting the team per her request. I’m not trying to romanticize eating disorders at all and I totally get it if it’s to hard

Warnings; eating disorders, mentions of throwing up, starving

a/n; this request hit me hard because these are things that i struggle with to this day. over the summer i dove into a really bad pit so many of the instances mentioned are based off of things i have done. i feel like this really helped me put something negative into a place of comfort. please know i am not trying to romanticize eating disorders or invalidate any other aspects i didn’t mention.

if you need help please reach out to someone you trust or a professional, its not easy but i promise people are there to help :)

You didn’t know what triggered it.

That was a lie, you did. You just chose not to acknowledge it and act like everything was fine. Why place the blame on someone or something else when it was just your fault.

Maybe it was when you noticed how much easier the girls got into dresses whenever you went shopping. JJ was easily a size 0, looking as stunning and glowing as ever in the little dresses you guys would pick out for her to try on. How she could so swiftly slide in, never having to ask to a size up or help with getting the zipper up past her back.

Maybe it was when you did that yoga class you saw how good everyone looked. Even after the intense class the other participants came out glistening and smiling in their matching sports sets. While you on the other hand had sweat stains trailing on the neck of your old gym shirt. Why had a workout made you feel worse about yourself than you did when you started?

Then it was like every little instance was adding up. Pushing and pushing you back into old habits you thought you had outgrown. At first you got the excitement of seeing the quick progress. Within two weeks you could see the small changes. But that was mostly your mind tricking you. As the months went on then you knew the progress you were making was in more than just your head.

It felt so good walking into work and hearing the hoots of

“wow you look so good!”

“that top looks so nice on you”

“you look different now, but its a good different”

That just fueled the need to keep going. You didn’t think anyone would notice because whenever anyone would ask what your secret was you’d say “Oh I’ve been trying fasting.” or “I just workout more often.” Which wasn’t a lie but of course you couldn’t tell them to what extreme.

You couldn’t mention how 16 hour fasts soon turned into 20 then a whole day surviving off coffee and gum. How those workouts were never for your enjoyment. How you would rack up as many sit ups as you could just to burn off any extra calories possible.

Or how you couldn’t eat a meal normally anymore. If you weren’t counting the calories you would make that trip into the bathroom and try to get rid of the contents of your stomach.

However someone did notice - Spencer. He was your best friend and you guys used to spend everyday together. So when you started to pull away it caught him off guard. He thought that maybe he had done something to offend you. Then when he had asked you about it and you shrugged it off he was thrown for a loop.

Then he really saw it. After your talk you started hanging out with him again but he noticed you always refused any outings where food was involved. Even then he noticed that you would pick around your food, never fully finishing the meals you used to one love.

Or at work instead of going down to the food truck for lunch, you would decline saying you weren’t hungry or that you had a big breakfast.

How during cases you would get dizzy spells and be tired more often. He used to have to keep up with you and Morgan always having bursts of energy out there but now he was keeping an eye out to make sure you didn’t pass out on the field.

He knew he had to say something when he noticed the tears in your eyes while out at dinner with the team. You had picked out a small salad, tossing the green leaves around the plate and taking minimal bites. Then desert came and you shared a few bites of chocolate cake with Emily. Shortly after you had excused yourself to the restroom, coming back a few minutes later with your lipstick gone and watery eyes. He knew what you did in there.

At first he was upset with himself for not noticing sooner. He knew what it was like to go through a tough time without support and he didn’t want his best friend to have to deal with something on their own. He would do anything he could to try and help.

When walking out of the restaurant he came up to you, “Hey Y/n, do you want me to take you home so you don’t have to get on the metro?”

“Yeah Spence that’d be great thank you,” you said smiling at him and walking to his car.

The ride to your house was spent listening to music. He let you play with the radio, seeing how you perked up to the music, emitting a happiness he hadn’t seen on you in a while.

Arriving at your apartment you invited him in to watch a movie and catch up. You handed him some sweatpants and a t-shirt he had left from past sleep overs which he took into the bathroom to change. You met back in the living room. You had on a big sweatshirt, sweatpants, and fuzzy socks.

“Y/n you look like it’s gonna start snowing in here,” he said with a laugh trying to lighten the mood.

“Damn near. I’ve been so cold recently.”

He tried to stop the fact from coming up but his brain wouldn’t let him keep it down, “feeling cold is one of the leading symptoms of an eating disorder including fatigue, sleeping issues, and irregular menstrual cycles.”

You both sat there with wide eyes. Neither of you knowing what to say. You looked down and started picking at your nails, chewing on the inside of your lip.

“When did you know,” you asked still not looking up.

“A little while ago but I didn’t know how to bring it up,” he started, “I- I didn’t want to say anything to upset you. I just want to be here for you Y/n in any way I can.”

You looked up to meet his eyes which were also getting glossy, “The shine in your eyes is gone. You don’t eat the pasta Rossi brings or Penelope’s cupcakes anymore. You’re hurting yourself Y/n and I couldn’t live with myself if anything bad was to happen.”

You shifted in your seat on the couch to get yourself in his embrace. You sighed as Spencer wrapped his arms around you, letting out the sob you felt was stuck in your throat for months.

“I’m sorry Spencer,” you choked out, “I don’t know whats wrong with me.”

He shushed you and rubbed his hands on your back, letting you cry on his chest. It broke him to see you in pain, knowing he could only do so much to help.

“You’re going to be ok. I’m right here and I’ll always be here to help you if you want me to be,” he said into your hair.

You pulled away and he wiped your tears off with this thumb, “Please don’t tell the team a-about this,” you hiccuped, “I just don’t wanna worry them, and I know Hotch will make me take time off.”

“Hey hey I won’t tell them, I promise. But if you feel like it’s getting worse then you need to at least talk to Hotch. I’ll take time with you and make sure to be with you every step of the way.”

“I don’t know what I’d do without you Spencer. I love and appreciate you so much. Thank you for being you,” you said leaning into his palm.

“I love you too y/n. But don’t thank me, I don’t know how to be anyone else.”

You went back to your previous position of having your head on his chest where he continued to rub your back and whisper reassuring phrases in your ear. You didn’t know when you ended up falling asleep but you knew that whenever you woke up you’d be ready to get help knowing you had Spencer in your corner.

#spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x reader #Criminal Minds Fanfiction #criminal minds fic #mgg fanfiction #mgg x reader #matthew gray gubler fanfiction #matthew gray gubler fic #matthew gray gubler x reader

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bestworstcase · 3 years

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I like your thoughts on how Rapunzel was handling things wrong in “Rapunzel: Day One.” The episode tries to imply that Cassandra is wrong for not sharing her feelings with Rapunzel, but is a Rapunzel really the person Cassandra should be opening up to? Rapunzel never respects Cassandra’s boundaries. Cassandra’s a private person. Rapunzel doesn’t respect that. And just because Cassandra doesn’t want to open up to everyone doesn’t mean that she’s bottling things up.

ok so this is gonna be a long one bc tbh i like. fundamentally disagree that RDO, the narrative of RDO, in any way positions cassandra as the one at fault for the emotional conflict between her and raps.

to digress a bit - while tts is not immune to Aesop Episodes (e.g. rapunzel's enemy or you're kidding me) wherein the characters close out the story by talking about What They've Learned, ultimately i don't think tts can or should be read as a morality play. it's a story where sometimes characters just... fuck up and the narrative doesn't waste its time on hand-holding or spoon-feeding us the moral.

anyway, i submit that RDO is what i'll call a False Aesop Episode. it follows the basic structure of an Aesop Episode (protagonist acts badly -> protagonist learns a lesson) but the lesson rapunzel learns is a bad one. it's like if you took... say, "an apple a day keeps the doctor away" as an aesop, the False Aesop here is rapunzel confidently eating a rotten apple and then being blindsided a few months later when the doctor who kept begging her not to eat food with maggots in it steals the moonstone from under her nose and runs off into the night with her new demon pal--

and that metaphor got away from me a little bit but you get the idea.

#1: constructing the conflict

the episode opens with cassandra. she's training; we see the sword fly out of her injured hand; lance suggests she take a break, and she answers, "thanks to rapunzel's little trick at the great tree, i have to relearn everything using this hand, so breaks aren't really an option."

she isn't harsh about it. her demeanor isn't all that different from her normal self—she even segues into a very typical concern (that the woods are dangerous and they should all be on their guard) and banters with lance a bit.

what this communicates, immediately and succinctly, is that:

1. cassandra's injury is severe. it's disabling. she's either in immense pain or she's lost all the strength in that hand or both.

2. cass is really upset about this, and not happy with rapunzel.

3. nevertheless cass is keeping her feelings more or less in check; the worst anyone could say about her is she's being a bit more curt than normal.

which is to say, she's acting quite reasonable. she's not taking out her hurt feelings on anyone else or being mean or lashing out, and she's not hiding her injury either. the most concerning thing about her behavior here is actually that she's focused on training so she can do her job instead of on healing or resting or taking care of herself.

then there's a pan over to rapunzel, who is angrily watching this play out while venting to pascal. "i get why cass is mad at me," she says. "she told me—" huge disdainful rolling of eyes here "—not to use the decay spell back and the tree, and i did, and she hurt her hand. but if she had just listened to me and stayed out of it, this all could have been avoided! and i feel like we could work things out, but she refuses to talk about it!!"

line this up against cassandra's behavior and spot the differences.

cass is focused on her injured hand. cass is upset because rapunzel accidentally mutilated her in the great tree. that's what this conflict is about for cass; her injury, and how she feels about being injured.

by contrast, rapunzel thinks the conflict is about them not listening to each other. she does acknowledge that cass was injured, but 1. she puts the blame on cass, and 2. has shoved the fact of the injury to the periphery of the conflict. it's not important, it's just a natural consequence of the real conflict, which is cass being mad and petty and refusing to talk to her about how she's unfairly blaming rapunzel for something that wasn't rapunzel's fault.

[i will add here that this behavior from rapunzel is 100% not knowing how to handle guilt and externalizing it as anger, and this thread of rapunzel burying her guilt gets picked up again in rapunzeltopia; it isn't that rapunzel doesn't care that cass is hurt, so much as she's just not emotionally equipped to process these feelings in a healthy way so it mutates into...this.]

and where cass handles her feelings in a pretty reasonable way, rapunzel rants and raves and draws cass as a literal monster with fangs and claws—she's stewing in her out of control emotions and concludes that she just has to find a way to force cass talk to her, which she does shortly thereafter by ordering—not asking—cass to come with her to search for parts to fix the caravan.

#2: the breakdown of communication

i've said it before but it bears repeating: cassandra might not be perfect, but she's a good communicator. in s1 and the front half of s2, she shares her feelings with rapunzel readily and frequently. when she tries to set boundaries with rapunzel, she's able to be clear and specific about what she needs. when she expresses frustration with eugene or her dad or rapunzel, she's very articulate about exactly what she's frustrated about. she can recognize when politer, softer refusals are being ignored and become blunter and more specific to ensure the message is getting across.

the moments when cass struggles to communicate are noteworthy because they're not normal. they signal that she's in acute crisis. think of how her unhinged rant about adira in RATGT heralded a complete emotional breakdown. she clams up in RDO because it's the only thing she can do to protect herself. because rapunzel is an inexperienced nineteen year old who learned all her social "skills" from a manipulative, egotistical abuser and nowhere in the series does that show more than in RDO.

rapunzel knows cass doesn't want to talk about the great tree, so she isolates cass from the rest of the group with the intention of forcing her to talk about it anyway. she's passive aggressive at first: chattering about inanities and trying to bait cass into 'opening up,' and acting vexed and guilt-trippy when she finds out cass brought owl along. she broaches the subject by going "too bad there's not an open-up-to-your-best-friend-about-the-thing-you-guys-are-fighting-about wand, huh?"

then she leads with "i know you're mad at me, but i did the right thing. i didn't have a choice," which... what can cass even say to that? she acknowledged cassandra's anger in one breath and followed up with "but you're wrong tho" in the next. that statement makes cassandra's feelings about her debilitating injury into an argument about Who Was Right.

this is a game that cass tries very hard not to play. "look, if you feel that way, then it's fine. we're good," she says, which is a statement that is not true at all on its face but - what it means is that if rapunzel wants to turn this into a debate about Who Was Right, cass will concede because that's not an argument she's invested in. cass does not want to put her feelings on trial so rapunzel can pick them apart and decide whether she deserves to have them or not.

so she disengages. the sun sets. they camp. rapunzel pokes her again, this time with a more direct approach: "cass, i need to talk about what we both know is going on between us."

and that's when cass throws up a WALL. prior to RDO, when cass is pressed on her feelings, she either: 1. opens up and explains to the extent that she's able (e.g. under raps or RATGT), or 2. flatly shuts the conversation down (e.g. cassandra vs eugene). but in RDO?

"there's nothing to talk about."

"i never said i was upset."

"what makes you so sure that you know how i'm feeling?"

this is cass falling off the end of her rope. this is a cass who spent the last year and a half with rapunzel running roughshod over every boundary cass exhausted herself trying to set. this is cass maybe a few weeks out from rapunzel screaming at her in front of all their mutual friends and then telling her "i am going to make decisions you don't agree with and i need you to be okay with that" when cass tried to open up about her deepest insecurities. this is cass spiraling into despair because she's seen that her best friend cares more about assuaging her own guilt and exerting her authority as a princess than she does about cassandra's feelings.

this is the moment when the friendship dies.

#3: the memory wipe, cassandra's apology, and the false aesop

the details of the tangled-but-cass shenanigans are not super important for the purposes of this discussion. suffice it to say that cassandra lashes out in the heat of the moment, seriously harms rapunzel by mistake, and spends the rest of the episode trying to repair the damage, then apologizes to rapunzel for hurting her. this is, obviously, the correct thing to do when you hurt someone, even if it was an accident.

you see the parallel here, yeah?

rapunzel hurt cass with magic by accident, and then made cass's hurt feelings all about her, blamed cass for the injury, twisted the facts to justify her own indignation, picked a fight about Who Was Right and invalidated cassandra's feelings, and pushed and pushed and pushed until cass blew up and lashed out at her.

cassandra also hurt rapunzel with magic by accident, and then she set aside her own hurt feelings from the argument they were having before to focus one hundred percent of her energy on brewing a cure and keeping amnesiac rapunzel safe, readily admitted her fault, and offered an earnest apology for losing her temper as soon as she could reasonably do so.

if RDO were a true Aesop Episode, this would be the lesson, and rapunzel would of course learn from cassandra's good example and reciprocate by apologizing for the accident in the great tree and her abysmal behavior afterwards—and in a reflection of how cass shared how bottling up her anger allowed it to erupt in a catastrophic way, rapunzel would probably confess that her demanding, selfish behavior came from a place of feeling awful about what happened and terrified that it would ruin their friendship.

but RDO is a False Aesop Episode. rapunzel isn't emotionally equipped to handle the intensity of her guilt, and she lacks the social insight and empathy to draw comparisons between what she did to cass and what cass did to her, so she can't connect the two situations in her head to understand what she's doing wrong. the true aesop flies right over her head, and instead what she learns is this:

1. she was right about cass being upset

2. backing cass into a corner fixed the problem

3. friends really do "just know"

4. being pushy and forceful was the right thing to do.

because the thing is, when cass apologizes for the accidental memory wipe, she truthfully explains why she acted the way she did—she's furious and she didn't want to talk about it, so she held it in as long as she could and then exploded when the pressure became too much—and for rapunzel, i think the explanation and the actual apology get conflated. meaning, cass says "i'm sorry for what i did out of anger" and what rapunzel hears is "i'm sorry for being angry."

and because of that misunderstanding, from rapunzel's perspective her own indignation has been validated and her behavior justified, because she was right all along and cass shouldn't have been angry with her in the first place and now everything is fine--

but it's not fine.

we're not supposed to share rapunzel's perspective here, because she's flat out wrong. nothing is really better and nothing has really changed, except that rapunzel got the talk she wanted and stops putting this intense pressure on cass. so as we enter the house of yesterday's tomorrow, rapunzel is taking it for granted that things are fine with cass, and meanwhile cass is still injured, still angry, still as aloof as she can be without getting rapunzel breathing down her neck again... and then she meets zhan tiri, who gives her everything she needed and couldn't get from rapunzel.

like, to my mind, this is the entire point of RDO, that rapunzel makes this catastrophic mess of trying to patch things up after RATGT and comes out of that mess wrongly thinking she succeeded. the episode is presented through the lens of rapunzel's perspective, but the lines are very wide and i absolutely think the intention is for the audience to read between them and understand the reality that rapunzel has sort of blinded herself to.

#tts #rta #interpersonal conflict......good #theres also a whole separate layer of stuff going on in RDO w the class dynamic #this fight coming on the heels of raps pulling rank in RATGT and all but ordering cass to shut up and deal. like -#in RDO cass is Literally Doing What Rapunzel Ordered Her To Do #being okay with the decisions rapunzel made that hurt her #except that's not what rapunzel wants really. rapunzel wants cass to be her friend #but cass learnt in RATGT that her friendship can't transcend her servitude #she knows now that when push comes to shove rapunzel will treat her like a servant so... she acts accordingly #er #long post

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dyalinohera · 3 years

Text

An Open letter to Quippy.

Through the various relationships in my life, I have learned a lot about trauma through learning everything I could about various mental issues because the after-effects of my own personal trauma were preventing me from living life normally. I was lucky enough to have family members, be blood or found (or a little of both), who have always tried to help me and love me very much.

Recently in my life, I lost a good friend to a misunderstanding during a PTSD episode and their partner took that opportunity to swoop in, gaslight myself and another good friend of mine. Before this moment, I only knew a few things about this partner. ONE. My friend.... Let's call them Q.... was not having sex with this person but they were in a romantic relationship. TWO. They sometimes had fights and Q admitted so to me. Three. About a week or so prior their partner admitted that they were being abusive towards Q in various ways. No details.

After having been subjected to a gaslighting attempt, my other friend P actually crying, and then Q threatening to kill themselves... Well. I blocked them both and ran for the hills. I did have a private private server with Q and I could have reached out to them at a later date, but I could smell the badnews rolling off of F (the partner).

About a month or so after this event I received a message from Q (on Christmas day like a wonderful puzzle to work over) and I discovered something horrible. Abuse victims will mirror the abuser's maladaptive control techniques and further become entrenched in the Abuser's guiles.

Below is that message. I have removed any names pertaining to those whom I have dubbed 'P', 'Q', and 'F' from this message. Any text prefaced with ( and ends in ) are my own comments on what did and did not happen while pointing out each tactic used to try to scare, confuse, and manipulate me in some way.

I am not a healthcare professional of any kind. I can’t diagnose disorders. I simply have learned how to identify abusive tactics from the counseling I have received for PTSD.

And finally, before we break down this wonderful message, I would like to dedicate this to those who are being gaslighted right now and I pray this essay finds you somehow.

Making It Clear That If Any Distress Comes To Any Other Parties Because Of This Message Then It Will Be Because You Dragged Them Into This. You Will Shoulder That Blame, Not Us. Remember How You Thought We Should Have More Control Over When And Where We Have A Crisis? Practice What You Tried To Preach With Your Reactions To This Message.

(This right here is an excellent show of blame-shifting, gaslighting, and emotional manipulation to throw their victim off and start questioning themselves.)

To:[Redacted] [Also referred to as "recipient" or simply "you"— as the term will only be used to refer to the recipient for the purposes of this message. Only exception to this being quotes taken directly from the recipient's own messages.] From: [Redacted] [also referred to as "system" or "us/we" for the purposes of this message]

(This Legal jargon is used to make the sender feel more secure and righteous in their anger, which is very much from being scared, pulling power away from the intended recipient.)

This Notice Was Written After The Messages You Decided To Delete Before We Saw Them, Which Leaves Us Only To Assume That They Were Harassing In Nature. That Is Why This Message Is Being Sent. We Wish To State Our Intent In No Uncertain Terms In Order To Avoid Any Possible Misunderstandings. You Will Receive No Further Communication From The System Unless It Is In Order To Inform You Of Actions Being Taken Against You.

Due to the fact that you were intent on:

Blaming the system for being in crisis

Expecting a person/system who had been sent into crisis by an attack to be the one to carry full responsibility even when unaware of key information and still being actively attacked.

(I never did any of these things. What I did was say that a public chat server in discord with people who are emotionally sensitives, me included, was not the correct action and upon them threatening to take their own life, I was sent into a state of fear and reacted with aggression. Was this a smart thing for me to do? I have no idea but it was what I did.)

Refusing to re-read the very exchange you were attacking the system over in order to see that the system had not been given the information you were insistent they had been given and were attacking them over.

“I am not text shuffling for exact proof. They made it clear that it was affecting them negatively.” "The moment they spoke up about internalizing the guilt is the moment it should of stopped." “[Redacted] said. That they felt it was their fault.” "They said they felt it was their fault."

(I had two chats going on with the poor P who was watching this System go into a severe PTSD episode and lash out at everything around them. I got confused in my panic HOWEVER I was correct in saying that this system was not right in going into that chat and doing that, not because it hurt someone else, though it is apart of it, but because it is a dangerous state to be in. Please note that the text Q is quoting is from my chat with F. Q is F’s mouthpiece now.)

Refusing to acknowledge that you were wrong even after discovering that the information you were attacking the system for ignoring was actually sent to your private messages, not the chat where the system could see said information.

“Okay. They didn’t say what I thought they did. That was in my DMs." "But. I am not gonna talk more of this.”

(Again. This is an attempt to gaslight and invalidate my views and what I did.)

Being a hypocrite by expecting the system to flawlessly read someone while in a blended and unstable state while you, yourself, still drunk dialed the system twice on 08/02/2020 after you had been explicitly told not to do so on 07/24/2020 due to the fact that being drunk dialed causes the system distress.

(I got drunk and sad. I am prone to doing this when upset and I am working on it. HOWEVER. I didn’t say anything on these calls. I only said hi and looked tired. After that, the system did not talk to me for quite some time afterward, but I gave them space and I never made this mistake again. People. If someone keeps bringing this sort of thing up when you have been trying, get away from them. This is a clear sign of abusive tactics. I’ll also go even further in saying that I didn’t even imply that is what SHOULD have happened. I said that was not right. I even told F that Q needed to go to a professional, they are at serious risk and needed help. All I got was excuses. In situations where someone is going through suicidal episodes you have to do everything in your power to get immediate help.)

Ignoring the fact that both times the system was asked if they were okay they told you they weren't yet you still attacked them under false pretenses.

(I was confused and scared at the time due to ya know, someone I care for greatly threatening to kill themselves. SO. Idk)

Acting like you have any idea just how far the system has come from the state they started in a decade and a half ago. You have neither room nor right to even dream of attempting to invalidate anyone's progress. Much less that of those who have survived what you never could have.

(I never did any such thing. I tried to empathize and place myself in their shoes to better understand their struggle because I know what it means to be different with different needs and so forth. I am a compassionate person.)

Attempting to validate your stance after your argument fell apart by claiming you were thinking of leaving anyway. People do not get excited about an increase in activity from those they wish to distance from.

(There were various languages that the system was using that were bothering me but I didn’t say anything because I really cared for them. There was also was a revelation that their romantic partner was abusive and it was brought forth in the public chat. Please keep in mind I was mainly talking to their partner in the end and I decided that for my safety to leave and block both Q and F)

Doing all of this after misleading the system into believing that you were understanding of how difficult it could be for someone to live in a head with people who actively want to kill the body they're in.

(I am still understanding of it. My issue was and will always be the fact that there was a refusal to look at the problem, what they had done, step back, and get help. Because the only thing that was made clear by this message even being sent to me is that I made the right choice to block both Q and F.)

Proving that you need to stay the hell away from abuse survivors because abuse survivors have been blamed for the side effects of survival enough by people like you.

(I never ever blamed abuse survivors for their problems. The system’s abuse is valid, HOWEVER, these past abuses and the unique cognitive issues that come from that trauma does not exempt you from accountability from your actions in or out of high-stress phases. It is up to the individual to find and attempt to get better and stronger from these issues and find solutions that are unique to their situation.)

Any future attempt from the recipient to contact or otherwise interfere with [redacted] or any of said system's alters will be viewed as a hostile act w/ intent to cause further distress and/or harm. Any such attempts will also be viewed as harassment and shall be dealt with via whatever practical — and, when applicable, legal — means deemed necessary. Drunken episodes are not exempt from this and will also be treated as harassing contact. (<Oh my god they really are trying to hammer home I am some form of ‘evil’ just because I was sad and got on camera for a couple of seconds.)

Just remember, we apologized to the one we inadvertently caused distress to. You were far too weak to be able to do so. We even left you unblocked following the incident to give you a chance but all you did was send us messages you obviously thought better of before they got to our machine. Thank you for confirming that we really will be better without you in our lives because we don't need people who can't face their own shortcomings involved with our system. If you cause any member of this system further distress — in any form — then we swear to you that we will use whatever tools we must to contend with you.

(Again, more blame-shifting, bringing up that they apologized without addressing the times I have apologized for the various stupid things I did while dealing with amygdala hijacks and so forth. I’ve been in intense therapy for PTSD and underwent EMDR which entails going over trauma memories in hopes to desensitize the brain so that the fight and flight response isn’t triggered so often. AKA. I have literally gone over very traumatic events, in detail, while doing this therapy. I am an abuse survivor, but Q is very clearly still the victim of current abuse.)

We only hope someone returns the favor to you when your depression is at its very worst.

The account this notice has been sent from will not be signed into again after sending this message on 12/25/2020. Any responses to this notice will go unrecognized.

(And the final last message shows how angry they are at me for leaving a group chat and blocking them. This is from a fear response. A lot of people think that Amygdala is responsible for aggression responses. However, it deals with fear. Aggression and anger is a response to fear. Thus, those who tend to use these abusive tactics are fundamentally scared of not being in control of you. PTSD episodes are called Amygdala Hijack and I am willing to bet Q sent this to me during one.)

Now. For the messages that I had deleted.

It is hard for me to process my emotions. I tend to get bogged in how to say things in my head but when I try to speak or write it all comes out wrong. The original messages were wordy and confusing and… not very good. So here and now, on this space that you the reader walk on, I would like to formally give those messages to Q in simple and clear terms.

Quippy,

I love you.

And I miss you.

Please don’t die.

#tw: gaslighting #tw: DID #TW: PTSD #gaslighting #DID #PTSD #abusive techniques #Abuse victims #abuse Survivors #Please keep in mind that this is meant only as a tool #to identify gaslighting

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ailuronymy · 4 years

Text

Hello, Grey. Hope you’re doing well.

First off, a note for your information. I’m autistic, and tend to come off as incredibly direct without meaning to. Do read straightforward bluntness in this ask as genuine, matter-of-fact forthrightness, please. No aggression or derision is intended by anything I write hereafter.

Recently you made a post responding to an Anonymous ask referring to a question about non-binary cats in Ailuronymy’s character generator that was asked by the same Ruddles five years ago. I couldn’t follow your argumentation in either post, nor understood what you found wrong about the original question of that Ruddles.

Grey’s notes: hello there. I’m putting all of this under a read-more since there’s already a lot of words here. I would like to settle this matter and so I hope this might give you some answers–but if not, I’m sorry but I’m not really looking to continue the conversation any further. I didn’t really volunteer to have to deal with this kind of thing when I started writing a blog about pretend cats, and while I am very happy to try to educate and do what I can with the knowledge and little platform I have, this particular kind of education not what I’m here for and I’d prefer not to spend my time on it more than is necessary.

I have absolutely nothing against nonbinary people. I also consider real-life commonality a possible valid argument for commonality in a character generator for a fictional world that is integrated into a version of real Earth.

This is where we disagree. In real life, non-binary people are (allegedly) less common than binary people. I’m willing to agree with you on that. However, that is also not actually the issue I have and to explain what I mean by that I want to raise two points:

1. why should a for-fun name or character generator be expected to reflect real-world statistics?

2. why is the non-binary entry the sticking point, and not the the statistical over-presence of albinistic cats, for example, or white cats with blue eyes that aren’t deaf, or tortoiseshell toms?

If I made a character generator for a pseudo-medieval fantasy, would you expect me to carefully ensure that the ratio of kings to peasants was correct? Would I be expected to put several thousand peasant entries in, and only one monarch, so that it would “accurately” reflect the “real world” (note: pseudo-medieval fantasy is not a real place or time, just like the world of Warriors is not)–or would people recognise that a character generator is merely a prompt and not something that needs to be taken literally? A character generator is simply holding up an option to you, which you are free to take or leave or change as you desire.

The fact that the non-binary entry is the issue and none of the others I’ve listed–all of which are “statistical errors” within the context of the generator–reveals that this is not actually a concern about accuracy. If it was simply a concern about accuracy, then the person would be considering all of the ways in which my generator does not deliver an accurate reflection of “the real world.” But it’s not about accuracy, it’s specifically about the non-binary entry. And that is why I have an issue with this stance.

If you can look at an otherwise error-filled generator and express concern only about the fact you have to see the word “non-binary” more frequently than you think is correct, that is a bigoted mindset. The non-binary entry in the generator is exactly as common as “tom” and “molly”: a one-in-three chance. You have two-out-of-three chances to see a binary gender, which is still a majority.

I understand if you don’t want to spend your time on this, and respect your decision to do so if you so choose. However, I would like to understand why the above argument I mentioned isn’t valid in your eyes, and what makes inquiring about the generator ratio’s incongruence with real life ratios in humans instantly bigoted, since I wasn’t able to follow the reasoning there. How can asking a mere question that, to my eyes, seemed innocent, qualify as being bigoted? Isn’t the definition of bigotry more in the direction of an actively damaging, enduring prejudice?

It is not a good faith question, even if the person asking isn’t intentionally trying to be prejudiced or is asking the question in genuine curiosity. The question itself is not innocent. I think it is a mistake to refer to any question as “mere” because many questions can in fact be insidious, hurtful, inappropriate, malicious, or intentionally derailing.

I would also like to point out that “sealioning” is a technique that certain people use to exhaust people by asking questions. That’s not what the anon who asked me was doing (I believe this was entirely an isolated incident and not actively malicious), but it’s not uncommon for marginalised people to be asked seemingly innocuous questions with the intent to exhaust, derail, infuriate, or belittle them. I can recommend watching carefully for this kind of behaviour, because it often takes the form of “polite” or “innocent” questioning--and then getting performatively upset when the person eventually refuses to engage anymore.

Answering questions takes time and effort and energy, especially when the question is “explain why you should have rights” or “I don’t see why [thing that hurts you is bad], please explain in detail,” so sometimes people get fed up and lash out after being needled at length with similar. (This is kind of a detour, but I felt it’s worth acknowledging the way in which question-asking can actually be weaponised against marginalised people).

Anyway, as I said above, to isolate the frequency of the non-binary as an issue in a context where statistical accuracy is not assumed or required and would not be expected of other traits reveals that the person asking has an issue with non-binary being as present as it is. What does the person asking this question seek to achieve? If the non-binary entry in the generator is reduced in frequency to a “normal” or “accurate” level, what does that actually accomplish?

One could certainly make the argument that it’s fallacious to relate real-life commonality to generator commonality, bringing forth whichever reasons one might choose; but instead in your response back then you chose to instead personally criticize the commenter while skipping over their actual question. How come? What made it invalid to address?

Sometimes I am tired and people make me cross with the things they say, so I be short with them and say exactly what I think of their behaviour, rather than hold their hand like a kindergarten teacher. If I was asked the same thing today, I would probably have been gentler and attempted to be more informative, because I have become gentler as a person in the five years since I answered that ask. I’m sure you can understand. Sometimes I’m not playing 4d chess and don’t have the wisdom and forethought of the sages. Sometimes I’m just a cranky old guy writing about cats who gets interrupted and has to tell someone to get over their nonsense.

The Ruddles from back then didn’t imply viewing non-binary people negatively in any way, did they? (Genuine question; due to being autistic I’m not good at reading peoples’ intentions, and even worse at it over text.)

The implication is the question. Perhaps this person really did believe they “don’t have a problem with non-binary people”–but they clearly had enough of a problem with the word showing up 1/3 times on a generator to come and request for me, the creator, to make the word less common so they did not have to see it as much. That is not something a person does when they legitimately don’t have a problem with non-binary existence.

How did what they asked have the potential to hurt anyone?

The question is hurtful implicitly because it calls into question the validity of the non-binary entry taking up space in the generator, and I suspect that could possibly hurt people’s feelings to read.

But the big issue is actually what that person might also do. The question itself can do very little, but the unchallenged prejudice that caused the question to be asked at all can be very hurtful if left unchecked. That’s why I go to the effort to answer questions here.

Why did you consider their train of thought about relating commonality in the generator to commonality IRL unkind or self-centred? It seems an obvious and innocuous connection to make, to me. Where does kindness or the lack of it come into the matter? How I understood, the argument appears focused only on factual observations of our reality, rather than making any statement disliking the inclusion of non-binary as an option in the generator, or equivalent.

There’s a phrase some people like to use that says “facts don’t care about your feelings.” But we are not facts and we can choose how we interpret and deliver facts to one another. Unkindness features in this question in the absence of considering how non-binary people might feel seeing themselves represented in the generator, and how it might feel to have someone quibbling over “commonality,” like they are a hypothetical to be debated, instead of real people who will read the question on my blog.

Many people have thanked me over the years for including the entry and I care about how they feel. I felt that the person asking that question cared only about comforting their own worldview, instead of ceding some space in it for others–at no personal cost.

As far as I can tell, there ought to be some layer of personal prejudice that seems invisible to me in the original Ruddles’ question, else your response wouldn’t make sense - and I doubt that’s the case, based on what I’ve read from you the last few years.

I understand that you may not want to respond to this for whatever reason. Maybe it would take too long, maybe you don’t want to open this can of beans, or consider me a lost cause for my confusion.

That is fine. I accept your choice.

But if you do want to help me understand, I’d be thankful for a short explanation about your reasoning, so I can gain the contextual information to evaluate whether my own viewpoints, that wouldn’t have considered the initial Anonymous question from 2015 to be anything but an innocuous inquiry phrased a bit unfortunately, have the potential to cause hurt in the future.

I’m afraid I can’t really give a short explanation, given how much you’ve asked for me to clarify in this message, but I hope this reply clarifies what you’re struggling with.

For what it’s worth, I think caring about the impact you have on others is the best possible place to come from as a person, so I don’t think you’re a lost cause. Best of luck to you in the future.

I don’t want to unintentionally (or intentionally, for that matter) make anyone’s life worse, especially not that of people belonging to a group that already faces so many undeserved struggles in this world. That’s why I chose to write this, even if it may seem overly lengthy or not worth the effort to some.

Take care, and thanks for reading

Anony Mouse

#ask #submission

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boldly-ho · 4 years

Text

Another Life Chapter 3

Pairing: Vladislav x Reader

Fandom: What We Do in the Shadows

Word Count: 2678

Trigger Warning: Brief mentions of domestic abuse

Chapter Summary: You spend a night on the town, but become increasingly frustrated by your lost memories as you almost recognize a place you’ve never been, and a man you’ve never seen.

A knock at the door.

You ignored it.

You sunk lower into the bathtub, letting the now lukewarm water rise to cover everything but your nose. You liked the way the world sounded from underwater. It sounded heavier. You took slow breaths, careful not to get any water up your nose, wanting to prolong your submersion.

Nothing wrong with you. That’s what all the doctors had said.

Dawn had taken you to the emergency room on that first morning last week. You’d explained your situation and were subjected to a number of examinations, tests, and scans. All had come back fine. Your brain was healthy. There were no indications of physical trauma. You didn’t have problems remembering anything before that year, or since you’d woken up on that morning. There was no medical reason for your amnesia. You were fine.

So, you were referred to a psychologist. You met with her this morning, a pleasant-looking woman with round cheeks and short, mousy curls. She made you feel comfortable when she asked why you were there, when she expressed sympathy at how stressed and frightened you must feel. You were stressed. You were frightened. And she told you she’d help you get to the bottom of your problem. You weren’t sure it would work, but it was something. A solution to move towards. For the first time in a week, you didn’t feel so helpless.

However, you began to feel a lot less comfortable when she suggested that your relationship had ended so poorly, on such emotionally traumatizing terms, that you’d repressed the entire thing. She hadn’t outright asked if you’d been abused, but the question was in the air, being danced around. You were fairly sure that she was going to suggest it outright, but decided to wait until at least your next session after seeing your response to her attempts to broach the topic. You’d shut down, refusing to acknowledge any prompts to take the conversation in that direction.

It terrified you. You felt deep down that it wasn’t true, but you didn’t know why, and so you couldn’t really rule it out. Maybe your gut feeling that you hadn’t been abused wasn’t based in reality but in denial. Still though, you hadn’t found any marks on yourself, and all your exams from the ER had come back fine. There was no evidence that you’d been abused, at least not physically. It wasn’t entirely unfathomable that you had been emotionally or psychologically abused. There wouldn’t be any physical evidence of such treatment. And it would fit with the psychologist’s suggestion that you had repressed your memories of the events since last May.

If you had in fact repressed your memories, you’d asked the doctor, should you try to get them back? If your relationship, or whatever it was, ended so horribly that you blocked the entire thing out, maybe you were better off not remembering? The psychologist told you that was something you’d have to decide for yourself. Either trying to remember or not was fine, so long as you were sure, and willing to accept the outcome of your decision.

So, you were underwater.

Another knock. “Y/N?”

You poked your head up, wiping water from your eyes and ignoring the unpleasant sensation of water sliding down your ear canal.

Dawn’s head peered from around the bathroom door. “You’ve been in there for a while. Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t seem fine.”

“Well, I am.” Too terse. You softened your tone. “Really, Dawn, I’m okay. I just need some time to relax.”

“You’ve been in there for hours. Get out. Get ready. We’re going out tonight.”

You sunk lower into the tub, the water making a satisfying sloshing noise against the bathtub. “I don’t really feel like it.”

She ignored your protests. “We’re leaving in an hour.” And with that, she shut the door and left, preventing any further protestation on your part.

You pulled the plug from the tub, letting all the water drain before you finally stood up and toweled off. You stood in front of the mirror, looking at your face, inspecting it like you might a stranger’s. You were looking for any difference, any changes that would show you the passage of time. There were none. You hadn’t aged enough, nor experienced enough weight change, nor changed in any way significant enough to render your reflection unrecognizable. You should probably find that comforting, but instead it upset you. It was as if it invalidated the time passed.

Turning away from your all too familiar face, you wrapped the towel around your body and walked across the hall to your bedroom, rummaging through your closet until you found what your were looking for- your favorite little black dress. Laying it out on the bed, you noticed that it had changed. It was slightly washed out. The fade was relatively insignificant, something you likely wouldn’t have noticed if you had your memories. But your last memory of the dress was almost a year old, and you’d clearly worn it often over the past year. You smiled. You might not bear any signs of the passage of time, but at least something did.

You pulled on the dress, then rushed through your hair and makeup. If Dawn said she was giving you an hour, then you had that hour and not a second more. Sure enough, Dawn knocked at your door. “Ten minutes!”

“I’ll be ready!” you called back, blotting your lipstick onto a tissue.

You gave yourself a final once-over in the mirror, and realized you weren’t wearing earrings. You grabbed your jewelry box, but stopped dead in your tracks upon opening it.

There was an unfamiliar plain white business envelope sitting on top of the jewelry within, with three words written on it in a messy scrawl you didn’t recognize. ‘Wear every day.’ You picked up the envelope and stared at the writing. It definitely wasn’t your script. Maybe it was Vlad’s. The thought excited you, though you couldn’t quite tell if that feeling was positive or negative.

The envelope was unsealed, so you reached within and pulled out its contents. It was a necklace. The chain was long, so long that the pendant could be tucked into even a fairly low cut top. The pendant itself was small, but obviously recognizable, a simplistic silver cross. You didn’t own any other cross jewelry. It really wasn’t your taste.

‘Wear every day.’ You wondered why on earth you would even own the necklace in the first place, let alone wear it daily. The message wasn’t even your own. Is this something you used to wear daily? Its ties to your forgotten life of the past year were more appealing than the necklace itself, so you pulled it over your head, tucking the cross into your dress where it couldn’t be seen.

You walked out to find Dawn on the sofa, scrolling on her phone.

“How do I look?” you asked her.

“Perfect. Ready to have fun?”

You nodded, not really committed. If Dawn noticed, she didn’t say anything.

Some of Dawn’s colleagues, including a cute new coworker she blushingly insisted she wasn’t into, had met up at Boogie Wonderland, so the two of you were headed that way to join them. You walked quickly through downtown Wellington, chilled by the cool autumn air. You wished you’d brought a jacket, but knew you’d regret having to tote it around when you got to the club. Dawn was telling you all about this new coworker she supposedly wasn’t interested in, but you were only partially paying attention, too focused on how cold you were becoming. You picked up your pace, glancing behind you make sure Dawn was keeping up, when you spotted it across the street.

The Big Kumara. A small, uncrowded dive bar you’d never paid much attention to in the past. But something about it grabbed your attention now. It was like déjà vu, almost, though different somehow. You didn’t feel like you had experienced this moment before, more that you almost remembered something. It wasn’t that you recognized the place mentally, more like you recognized it emotionally. It made you feel something, though you weren’t sure what. You didn’t know the place; you felt like you should. It was a bit like when you knew a word, and it was on the tip of your tongue, but you just couldn’t get it. It was like that, but with recognition.

“Y/N? Are you okay?” Dawn stood beside you, looking from you to The Big Kumara and back.

You didn’t look at her, still staring at the bar, frustrated by your inability to recall whatever it was you were almost getting. “I think I know that place.”

“What? The townie bar?” She sounded confused. “Oh! You mean from last year?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” The almost déjà vu feeling was fading quickly, like a dream after waking up. “Maybe it’s nothing.”

“Do you want to go in?”

Did you want to go in? You weren’t sure. You didn’t even know what you would do if you went in. Just look around? See if anything sparked a memory? You could ask around, you supposed, see if anyone recognized you. But that would probably be a bit weird.

Did you even want to chase this feeling? Your psychologist had said trying to get your memories back was fine, so long as you were sure. But were you sure? As the saying goes, ignorance is bliss. Maybe leaving the past year alone was in your best interest. You had a sneaking suspicion that you’d regret either option. If you left it alone, and chose not to pursue your memories, you’d always be wondering. You don’t think you could ever fully come to terms with not knowing. But if you walked into that bar, and tried to uncover the truth, you’d most likely find something bad. Bad enough that your brain erased it in the first place, as some sort of method of self-preservation. There were no good options.

Typical.

But now you had an idea of where to start, should you chose to do so. Walking into The Big Kumara now or never walking into The Big Kumara weren’t your only two choices.

“No,” you finally answered. “Let’s just go to Boogie Wonderland.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” It felt nice to answer honestly. And it felt nice to be sure.

Boogie Wonderland was just as loud and as crowded as you remembered from your last visit with Dawn. She spotted her friends immediately, but it took you a good few minutes to fight your way through the throng of close-pressed bodies to get to them.

“Dawn!” They greeted her as if she were Norm from Cheers. She was certainly more outgoing than you, and had quite a few more friends and acquaintances.

Dawn introduced you to all of her coworkers, giving you a pointed look when she introduced the one she didn’t, but of course definitively did, have a crush on. The group didn’t make much of an effort to include you in the conversation, but that was fine by you. You listened from the periphery, absorbing what you could with the music blaring, focused mostly on trying to decipher whether or not Dawn’s new coworker had any interest in her. The good news: he was absolutely flirting with her. The bad news: he was flirting with two other coworkers, the bartender, and a woman sitting at the bar, as well. Dawn had always had terrible taste in men. The thought occurred to you that you might not be able to judge. The guy you’d apparently been involved with could have been just as sleazy. Or worse. Your hand absent-mindedly traced the silver chain around your neck, as you once again became frustrated by your lack of memory.

You were pulled out of your thoughts by one of Dawn’s friends talking to you.

You focused on him. “Sorry, what?”

He raised his voice, assuming you couldn’t hear him over the music. “What is it that you do? For work?”

You were startled to realize you weren’t sure. The last few days had been so crazed that you hadn’t even thought about work. You didn’t have any angry calls about missed shifts. Were you unemployed? Last May, you had been transitioning to working remotely. Maybe you still did that?

He continued to look at you expectantly. “I, uh…”

Thankfully, Dawn came to your rescue, confirming that you did in fact work remotely at the same job. You probably should try to get some hours in, soon.

The same man, whose name you couldn’t remember, turned to you again. “That’s cool. How long have you known Dawn?”

“Three years.”

He nodded. “Nice. I’m going to head up to the bar. Would like me to get you anything?”

You realized he was asking to buy you a drink. You panicked. “Uh, no, thanks. I’m probably just going to close out, myself, anyway.”

His face fell. “Oh, yeah, sure, okay.” He got up quickly and went to the bar.

You were uncomfortable with everyone’s eyes on you. “I’m probably just going to head home,” you addressed Dawn, before getting up and making your way to the bar to close out.

It wasn’t that Dawn’s friend was unattractive. He wasn’t drop dead gorgeous, but he was definitely handsome, with gorgeous eyes and attractively mussed hair. A year ago, you would have accepted a drink from him, no questions asked. But you felt different. You felt almost guilty for being flirted with, as if you were cheating. You felt a sudden pang of loneliness, similar to grief. It felt like the first time you had the urge to phone a grandparent before remembering they had died, like falling with nothing to catch you. It felt surreal.

It was as you signed the receipt and put your credit card back into your clutch that you noticed him across the dance floor, talking to some woman. You had the feeling you’d had at seeing The Big Kumara, but so much stronger. You almost recognized him. You didn’t know him from Adam, but you missed him, like he was a dear friend you’d given up for dead. He was pale, with messy brown hair, and wore an outdated black and red military jacket that had clearly seen better days.

The man saw you staring, and seemed startled for a moment before his face lost all expression and he looked past you to the bar. Had he recognized you? It happened so fast, you couldn’t be sure.

He left the woman he was talking to, and walked towards the exit. Without thinking, you followed. You pushed past warm, dancing bodies, picking up speed when he went out the door and you lost sight of him. As you finally made your way through the crowd and out into the cold, you saw him halfway down the block and called out to him, “Wait!”

He turned to your voice, and you started to go towards him, but he turned and ran. Shit. You sprinted after him, calling now and then.

“Please, wait!”

He ran a few blocks before ducking to the right. When you rounded the corner, you stopped in your tracks. What the hell? You were standing in a dead end alley. The man was nowhere to be seen. There was no one in the alley, save for you and a stray dog who sat beside a dumpster. Your heart was racing, and not just from the running.

That was that, then. He was gone. You felt a lump form in your throat. You were so confused, stressed, and overwhelmed. Leaning against the alley wall, you let out a soft sob as your tears started to flow. The dog trotted over to you, and you scratched his head with one hand as the other clutched at the chain of your necklace. He looked up at you with big, intelligent eyes as you let yourself lose composure.

#vladislav x reader #wwdits #what we do in the shadows #jemaine clement #another life #al fic

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unweavinglies · 5 years

Text

Kokichi Ouma Analysis: What Makes an Ultimate (Supreme) Leader, and Why His Talent is Not a Lie

SO A QUICK DISCLAIMER: Yes, I am very aware that this is most likely not canon, or at least not what the writers intended on being canon, nor am I saying that this is 100% canon and should be considered as such. This is just a fan theory/analysis I came up with for my own enjoyment and wanted to share with others, as I like coming up with theories/analysis posts and reworking canons to make enhanced stories and character development in my perspective. I firmly believe that the idea of making theories isn’t supposed to be a shouting contest to see which opinion is the most loud and correct, but should be something to share with others and find acceptance and understanding in different interpretations, even if you don’t agree with them.

This was honestly a long time coming, and is far, far overdue! However today, I got a bit inspired to discuss Kokichi’s role as the (unwanted) anchor for a class that is always trying to find peace in escapism, and then I realized that it tied in very well to his Ultimate Talent--being the Ultimate Supreme Leader, or to keep it shorter, the Ultimate Leader.

A big misconception that shrouds Kokichi is that his talent as a “Supreme Leader” is a lie, due to how little people he leads in his organization (which may or may not be true, as I’ve discussed in an earlier post) and doesn’t have the leadership qualities that other classmates like Kaede and Kaito have. So, if he doesn’t have these qualities, then he can’t actually be an “Ultimate Leader” of any kind.

Except... Kokichi’s leadership skills are so profound and subtle, that they go completely under the radar--the class was being lead by him without them ever even knowing it.

Without further adieu, let’s talk about the subtle nature of Kokichi’s talent, and what defines him as an “Ultimate Leader” above everyone else, even Kaito and Kaede.

Warning, this is pretty long!

So there’s a lot to unpack here, and it might be easiest to start from the beginning--from when Kokichi’s talent first shows up, and the progression his talent takes to “lead” his classmates without them realizing that he’s leading them to begin with.

The first, and most noticeable, Leadership quality that Kokichi takes is his willingness to say what needs to be said. For example: when Kokichi stands up to Kaede in the Death Road of Despair tunnels.

Though before we talk about that, let’s make a mental note here first: In the beginning of their attempts to escape through the Death Road of Despair Tunnels, Kokichi is supporting Kaede with full force.

After the first failed attempt, Kaede inspires the group to try again, and this is Kokichi’s reaction:

And even after the second attempt at failure...

It’s not Kaede who rallies everyone together this time--but Kokichi, who isn’t ready to give up yet. They’ve only tried a total of two times by that point, so he’s still inspired to progress forward. He doesn’t even wait for Kaede to come to completely and get her head together before he takes charge, not letting Miu’s pessimism bring anyone down.

And then they try, and try, and try again...

... With no success. Remember, the students started their attempts at the Death Road of Despair in broad daylight, and by the time they end, it was nighttime. This means at the very least, they’ve been attempting the tunnels for several hours, potentially missing dinner, and in the most extreme case, missing lunch as well. Despite this, despite everyone being tired, in pain, and weak, Kaede refuses to back down from the challenge.

(And yes, I am aware Angie says she is thankful no one was seriously injured, but considering Kaede has been knocked unconscious multiple times, her judgement as to what a “serious injury” actually is, is very unreliable. I thought I’d just throw this in here for good measure.)

Anyway... Kokichi, unlike Kaede, sees the pain everyone is in...

... And takes it upon himself to stand up for everyone else.

While Kaede doesn’t intend to, she is forcing everyone to endure very painful traps, ignoring the injuries the others might have obtained, and her message has gone from “inspiring” to “unreasonable” and “impossible.”

This instance is the first time Kokichi openly stands up for the others, and says something that no one else wants to say. They’re all afraid to hurt Kaede, to fail her expectations and morale, but they are tired. They are struggling, they are injured, they are weak, and they will only get more and more exhausted and hurt if they continue.

So, Kokichi stands up to the inspiring, passionate Kaede, and tells her exactly what she is doing to them.

Notice how Kokichi isn’t saying that he’s the one in pain, or he’s the one too weak to go on--he’s speaking up for the people, standing up to someone when no one else would, and this is a shining example of his true character--that he has the well being of everyone else on his mind at all times.

He could probably go on. Maybe he can’t. But he’s not speaking for himself, he’s speaking for those around him who he sees are in pain, who are suffering, and gives them a voice that they are unwilling to admit they needed. They were too afraid to be “the bad guy,” So Kokichi took it upon himself to do it for them.

And, let’s not forget, how difficult it is to actually stand up to someone. Even more so stand up to someone who doesn’t actually mean any harm. It’s natural human nature to remain quiet, to push forward and go with the flow. It’s far more difficult to rise above the crowd, especially when everyone else around you is doing the same--sitting there, and not doing anything. To stand up against the crowd--for the crowd--is a very admirable and brave act. Because when you rise above, there will be consequences--

--And that is, you might become the one to blame.

Because no one else wanted to stray from the path to do something uncomfortable, Kokichi’s willingness to do something so harsh leaves a bad taste in everyone’s mouth--like he has malicious intentions, like he wants the killing game to start. Rantaro’s own paranoia and Tenko blindly accepting it and reinforcing it, sets this unfortunate downward spiral into motion, and from here on out, Kokichi can’t take back the reigns. He does try here, too--giving an offering of peace in the form of bubblegum, but is threatened instead.

Everyone has this thought in their heads now, always tainting their perception of Kokichi and thinking the worst of him in every situation where he opposes them.

A normal person would have probably crumbled in a situation where they were just trying to do the right thing, and ended up with a threat like having their head smashed into the ground. It’s not a good feeling, to try to do right by others and be villainized for it. Most people would probably think twice about speaking up just from Tenko’s threat alone, and fall back into the crowd.

But Kokichi... doesn’t.

While the class is arguing and the peace is falling apart, the Nighttime announcement plays, alerting everyone that it’s about time they get some rest. When there’s resistance to the idea--

He tells them, point blank, to suck it up and makes a plan for the next day. Note that he’s still including himself in the group here as well, saying “we have to suck it up” instead of “You need to suck it up.” He doesn’t want this either, but they literally have no other options but to rest. Despite Kokichi getting the short end of the stick just moments before, he doesn’t hesitate at all to stand against the class in order to do what he thinks is right, for all of them, and not just himself.

He knows they need rest, and he knows that resisting is pointless. So once again, he does what no one else wants to do, and tells those protesting to the idea that they don’t really have any other choice. The class is unwilling to be as blunt nor do they want to hurt each other’s feelings or invalidate them, but in doing so, they are encouraging problematic behavior that will do more harm than good in the long run.

Kokichi also immediately makes a plan for the group to meet up at the Dining Hall every morning, a tradition the class follows for the rest of the game.

This is one of the biggest piece of evidence that points to Kokichi’s talent actually being genuine, but it doesn’t account for everything. He’ll take charge and power through in order to do what he thinks is best for everyone, but it’s actually not the more subtle ways Kokichi leads the group.

Kokichi leads them all with subtle manipulation.

The very next morning, when they all meet up in the Dining Hall, is an example of how Kokichi maneuvers the class into facing and accepting their issues and reality.

First and foremost, Kokichi notices/is aware of the fact that tension from the night prior have yet to be resolved, and thus still remains an issue that divides the class, and thus needs a resolution as quickly as possible.

Here, Kokichi is forcing the class to acknowledge two things--Kaede’s distress, and their own resentment towards her for their pain from the tunnels.

Again, he is met with resistance--

Instead of letting them avoid the problem, he forces them to confront it. There are hurt feelings among them, and frustrations that they need to talk about. Kokichi can tell that the people who were upset at Kaede and blaming her were still doing so, and it needs to be addressed.

A note to point out:

During this conversation, Tenko accuses Kokichi of blaming Kaede first--but that’s actually not what happened at all. Go back and read over what Kokichi says--and you’ll find that he never says it’s her fault. What he did tell her, however, was the reality of the situation, that she was hurting the others by pushing them too hard. He doesn’t blame her for her ignorance to the other’s suffering, but he brings her down to earth by making her realize what she was doing.

Yes, he was harsh, probably suffering from his own pain and exhaustion, but there’s a distinct difference between calling someone out for problematic behavior and blaming them for their ignorance.

It was Maki who openly expressed that she actually blamed Kaede with full force.

Note that this is right after Kaede was profusely apologizing as well. Considering that there was at least one person that openly expressed resentment towards Kaede, Kokichi knew that there had to be several others who were remaining silent, putting on a false bravado and pretending like it didn’t bother them.

It’s not just Kokichi who noticed it, either--

Kaito had also noticed that there were people blaming Kaede, and it needed to be addressed and resolved.

And when it’s resolved...

He expresses relief--like that was what he wanted to begin with. Kaede needed to acknowledge that she was being inconsiderate to those who felt that way and apologized for it. Keebo then accuses Kokichi of originally blaming Kaede first, and Kokichi kind of rolls with it and they move on.

However, Kokichi does say this:

And from his actions in just a single day that we’ve seen him... this isn’t a lie. It matches up perfectly with his actions--he really does have everyone’s best interest at heart.

But wait, there’s more, and the scene’s not even over yet.

Soon after this resolution, Monokuma provides the class with the first motive--the First Blood Perk, and creates a Prisoner’s Dilemma to counter Kaede’s attempts to make everyone cooperate. This causes a sort of mass panic, and everyone is freaking out, until--

... Well, this.

Following this, the class is confused, having suffered from intense emotional whiplash. Going from absolute panic to confusion is overwhelming, and it’s Kokichi who steps up to do damage control.

While Kokichi says the first part with a smile on his face, it very well is probably a mask. He acknowledges that “everything’s a mess now” and immediately dismisses what just happened with the First Blood Perk.

With how quick Kokichi is to basically say “Nope, there’s no more killing game, we’re done here!” it’s telling that he’s most likely internally panicking like crazy and latching on to the first thing he can think of to dispel the confusion and panic in one swoop. Miu was already implying that she was on the verge of considering murder just from the idea of the First Blood Perk, so Kokichi’s internal panic is very justified.

Kokichi also immediately dismisses valid concerns brought up;

Which is... very strange, considering what we know about Kokichi in the later portion of the game. We know Kokichi is hyper intelligent, and always thinking of the worst-case scenario/distrustful/paranoid, so him just dismissing Rantaro’s concern as if he truly believes in it or is in denial is very strange--until you consider what his actions and words are doing to the other classmates.

They’re not freaking out anymore.

Kokichi is purposefully shutting down any and all valid concerns in favor of reducing mass panic, because mass panic could very well start up the Killing Game without any ability for him to stop it. It might have started right then and there. So Kokichi, thinking on his feet, took advantage over the fact Monokuma exploded to distract everyone from the mass panic caused by the First Blood Perk

And, it’s working.

Unfortunately, Kaede doesn’t quiet get the memo--

And Kokichi’s immediate rebuttal is a distraction from the problem of the First Blood Perk, reminding Kaede and everyone else of the suffering from the tunnels. Which is very counter productive to what he did before, but he most likely feels cornered and pressured--panicking himself, afraid of the mass panic bubbling up again, and Kaede is unintentionally trying to drag everyone back into the mass panic by insisting that they couldn’t just ignore valid concerns.

If Kaede is going to be the opposing force and lead everyone back to mass panic, then Kokichi has no other choice, he has to socially isolate her before she can undo his damage control. If no one listens to her, then she can’t accidentally start up the mass panic again.

This is an example of a rather ugly side to leadership--sometimes, the right thing to do is ugly. It’s not always pretty, it’s not always nice, it’s not always kind, it’s not always easy. People will get hurt. Choices will be difficult. However, Kokichi doesn’t even hesitate for a second to put Kaede back on the hot seat, because he’s already accepted this fact. Whether or not it was the right choice is debatable, but we already know Kokichi is most likely internally panicking himself. He can put on a front, but his actions suggest otherwise, and I’m sure even Kokichi can crack under such intense pressure.

Was it the best choice? It’s hard to say, but it does dispel the mass panic in the heat of the moment.

Either way, the next morning proves that Kokichi’s damage control to avoid mass panic was working, because--

Everyone’s calm and happy. The First Blood Perk is the furthest from their minds it can be. Kokichi keeps drilling “the killing game is canceled” into everyone’s heads, too, to keep it that way. The fact he keeps say it makes me believe that he is saying it less out of denial and more for the sake of everyone else. The repetition sounds almost... desperate. Like he wants everyone to believe it no matter what, and keep believing it. Probably while he does his own investigation to get everyone out of there before Monokuma can return and bring the mass panic back, except of course, Kokichi and everyone else aren’t so lucky.

Kokichi’s immediate panic here is telling too. If he wasn’t in total denial, Kokichi’s shock and horror is from the fact that Monokuma came back way before he could figure something out, and the mass panic is going to return to the class whether he likes it or not. That false sense of security he created was gone in an instant.

Monokuma specifically showing up right after Kokichi says he’s dead, opening with the line “And that’s my cue!”, it could suggest that this is Monokuma’s way of thwarting Kokichi’s efforts to keep the peace, similarly to how the prisoner’s dilemma was used to break Kaede’s peace. The time limit put into effect was probably a result of Kokichi’s attempts as well, actually, but I digress.

Now that we’re finally done talking about Kokichi’s attempts to keep the peace, there’s another sign of leadership Kokichi displays right after the time limit is in effect.

Kokichi... quite literally offers himself up to die first. Miu even catches on to his maybe-not-so-subtle implication. Before this, he was crying about how he “doesn’t want to die,” but dismissed it as a lie. Maybe it’s true that he doesn’t want to die, but with the time limit in effect--well. I’m sure a good leader would rather go down with the ship alone rather than drag their crew down with them.

That is yet another ugly side to leadership--self sacrifice. Kokichi displays a lot of it later on in more obvious detail, but I wanted to show how early on in the game Kokichi was displaying these characteristics to put the full game in perspective. Yet again, in the span of just a handful of days, we see Kokichi displaying some kind of leadership quality that goes under the radar.

Being a good leader means putting those you lead first, and yourself second. Or at least, that’s what the general consensus is, and Kokichi follows that pretty closely. Becoming the villain to stop the killing game, to force himself to give Shuichi and Maki information when he had a serious head injury, outing Maki in front of everyone--Kokichi often paints a target on his back, and it’s always to help those around him... even at the cost of his own life, which is his biggest self-sacrifice for the others in the end.

Finally, I’ll like to wrap things up with a time skip to after Kaede’s trial, and Kokichi’s behavior the next morning.

... Which at a first glance, reads as insanely insensitive. And you’re right--it is insensitive. However, there is a problem that yet again, no one is addressing.

The class has resorted into escapism.

Everyone knows it, but none of them want to acknowledge it. They’d rather pretend everything was okay, fall into a false sense of security, and escape their reality. However, Kokichi already saw the outcome of what happens to this group when that fragile escapism breaks--he was the one who put them into a false sense of security before, after all. It resorts into murder.

They can’t afford to fall into this false sense of security again, because that false sense of security is what Monokuma wants. He wants the class to pretend everything is fine, so he can come and destroy it later and provoke another murder. And when the class resists to leave their escapism...

Kokichi mutters to himself about how they’re falling right into Monokuma’s trap.

And Kokichi is hyper aware of it. So even when everyone is resistant to face reality, Kokichi is there to drag them back kicking and screaming, because they can’t afford to fall into escapism.

However, this paints a very negative picture in their eyes, since Kokichi is the odd one out. He’s the one not playing along, he’s the one not cooperating, he’s the troublemaker for being so cruel. He gets dismissed and ignored, yet despite that, Kokichi in the later part of the game still does his best for everyone. Even when his mind is twisted in chapter 4, his motives are still related to his desire to be the leader. To save them, to do the right thing, even if it was out of a twisted sense of madness. His plot with Gonta, the mercy kill plot, was genuine (I’ve done an analysis/theory on it if you are interested) even when he insists it wasn’t--and yet it was, and the twisted kindness of wanting to put people out of their misery before they fell into a mind-breaking despair that you felt is still an act of mercy, of wanting to make sure those around him aren’t going to suffer like he had.

From the very beginning, Kokichi displays remarkable actions that lend themselves to his talent, to being a good leader. He stands up for those in pain when no one else will, manipulates the class to discuss uncomfortable topics that really can’t be avoided, acts quickly on his feet and improvises some nonsensical idea that the Killing Game is over to prevent mass panic and keep the peace, offering himself up as sacrifice, and finally, just doing what he thinks is necessary to prevent more murders, even at the cost of his own sanity and even if the others start hating him for it.

And that’s kind of what a true leader is all about. It’s not glamorous, its not rewarding, you’re not always treated like a hero--sometimes, you can’t even be the hero. It’s hard, it’s ugly, and it hurts you, it hurts those you care about, but sometimes there’s no better choice. You have to put yourself second, no matter what that might mean. Sometimes, you need to make the biggest sacrifice of all--not to be remembered as a tragic hero, not to be remembered as a leader, but simply to do what was best for everyone, and dying while knowing that your sacrifice won’t even be somewhat appreciate--that takes a serious amount of willpower. Dying, sacrificing your life for people you think hate you or you know won’t truly understand how deep your loyalty to them ran, not understanding how much you had done for them, and yet, you still are more than willing to do it because it will potentially stop more death and heartbreak for those people, that’s what makes Kokichi an Ultimate Leader.

He doesn’t demand recognition, validation, comfort, praise, nothing for his leadership. He just does what he thinks is the best thing to do for everyone around him.

And that is why, I believe, his Ultimate title cannot be a lie.

Anyway, thank you for reading! Sorry it’s another long one, but what can you do. I hope you enjoyed it, either way!

#kokichi ouma #kokichi oma #danganronpa v3 #danganronpa #analysis #theory

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blackwoolncrown · 4 years

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Genuine question, so I’m bi and even if I’m not out I’m still bi because I feel that attraction regardless if I’m in a relationship or not. But I recently realized I am very much non-binary, but I’m part of a very conservative, religious, middle eastern community in which I will always be perceived and treated as a woman. So, am I still non-binary? That’s not really the question I’m trying to ask. I’m just struggling with wanting to exist as I am beyond gender but not being able to

1. Being non-binary is a personal, internal feeling and has no bearing on whether or not people around you acknowledge this. That’s how gender works. This is why a woman with a body perceived as a ’man’ who is misgendered daily is still a woman. Our genders are ours, the struggle is having them validated and properly perceived by others who generally rely on gender norms and bioessentialism to interact w people.

2. I feel your struggle, evne down to the ‘this isn’t really what I’m asking’. Being nonbinary is very much a thing but it can be impossible to give language to because our entire language was written around binaries. We are constantly struggling to manifest and find in life an experience that we have tacitly been denied language to. We can work towards it and build it but it is not easy at all. I struggle with this constantly, and literally recently have been dealing with how this is playing out painfully in my own life. I do not have all the answers, but here’s my philosopy [TW: EXPLICIT DECONSTRUCTION AND INVALIDATION OF GENDER]

My background is esotericism and philosophy. While those things did not give rise to my internal feeling of being they did help structure and give it language which likely ‘fleshed it out’ a little bit. So that’s the disclaimer.

To put it in brief pretty much all core philosophies or enlightenment or religious mysticisms admit that the thinker must go beyond the world as presented and see through to its undifferentiated state. Gender being a construct is no new idea, but most people intellectually accept it and then refuse, outright or subconsciously, to actually apply that to their life and inspect where their identity is informed by gender and then actually divest themselves of it. It is said, in many ways, in many different schools of thought, that the essential, highest, or core of human being, of human consciousness is both genders, or undifferentiated in gender; concepts of gods and ideas as ‘male-female’ or genderless (like angels) abound. You being Middle-Eastern yourself may have an intimate knowledge of spiritual ideas of beings who have transcended gender. This concept is sometimes represented as embodied (male-female or genderless beings) or as transcending the body (having nothing to do with what form the physical body takes). Scientifically speaking, even the universe itself has been found to not work on a binary at all, but to be fundamentally quantum; that is, fundamentally emptiness (nothingness, undifferentiated-ness, openness) that only collapses (limits, manifests, chooses) once a point is perceived or made to interact with something else.

I don’t think this is simply a thought experiment or an end-goal of studious practice though that is one way to get there. I think this is the basic form of human consciousness and while gendered people can endeavor to arrive at this point through spiritual, religious or philosophical practice, there are plenty of us throughout history ( more here now due to the exposure of information perhaps) for whom ideas of gender construction didn’t ‘stick’ either because they made no sense (they fall apart at the slightest investigation) or because they cause pain (you know that feel).

While it is liberating to exist in this state, uninhibited by the limitations of a binary, this ecstasy and openness is removed whenever it is invalidated. Now, for a cis person this happens rarely because they live in a world that reinforces that their body and their gender are perceived socially as ‘correct’. When it does happen, they find it upsetting, but again it’s very infrequent. Enough that they can maintain a very rigid and unfractured sense of identity bound to their gender. They spend almost all of their time in a gender euphoria so present it becomes background noise. When trans people who are men or women exist in the world, their experience of gender invalidation can be much more common and much more distressing. Their gender euphoria comes from affirmation of their gender, and dysphoria is inflicted socially when they are misgendered. If you are the kind of nonbinary that you and I seem to be (which I must put this way because not all of us have the same experience of gender though most of us have a same experience of struggle), gender euphoria is much more fleeting because any assignation of binary gender feels limiting and confusing. Rare euphoria comes when we see or experience a ‘mixedness’ or ‘completeness’ that is very very hard to depict or express so we don’t get it often. Dysphoria comes whenever gender is assigned; there is no ‘correct’ one because very few people understand us– we ourselves largely are denied language to even explain it to them, and ears that listen!! There are no channels we can go down to have our gender affirmed because it is our lack of gender specificity that feels most comfortable, yet this is an entirely gendered society where the idea of a person is gendered by default and almost always tied to some aspect of the body.

I think that a problem we face is that to actually understand our undifferentiated/quantum gender state, people would have to accept an entire deconstruction of gender which, as an idea, may be abrasive to their sense of identity. Gender is a metaphysical construct- i.e. it is nowhere to be found in the physical body. People who are attached to the mental security their sense of binary gender gives them do not want to hear that their gender is just an idea they have assigned meaning to.

I find it frustrating because it’s not particularly hard IMO to not do this: to understand each other not as men or women or gendered at all but to see our habits and needs and ways of life as being valid because we are human, human animals seems very easy and I wish people could do that more often. If I am nurturing that is not because I am a woman, because men can nurture too, can’t they? It is because I am human and the human species exhibits nurturing behaviors. If I am obstinate at times, it is not because I am being masculine, it is because human beings can exhibit bullheadedness and irritation at times. So on for desire, kindness, selfishness, resourcefulness, kinship…We do not need to gender these things for them to be real! But because we have, people are kind of stuck on that, despite the fact that the gender of certain attributes and behaviors can differ from society to society! If there is gender, it is always in relation to its opposite- men are not masculine and women are not feminine- men are masculine dominant and women are feminine dominant. The gender ideas should always be coupled into a whole, but I digress.Another question I raise myself and you may have wondered is if this is nonbinariness or the frustrating alienation of being perceived and treated as a woman, for surely discomfort with the gender identity of ‘woman’ is, ironically, quite common in womanhood. My answer is that, much like bisexuality, people considered women are much more likely to allow internal questioning to dissolve gender binaries or rigid gender role expectations because in a patriarchy, men’s gender brings benefits and women’s gender brings none. We don’t get anything really great out of the deal, and so we’re less likely to stick around and accept it. That doesn’t invalidate the fact that we’re nonbinary, because again ‘nonbinary’ isn’t specifically a ‘third’ or ‘other’ gender– it’s an experience of being that exists outside of the gender binary completely. It is the experience of finding gender as a concept too small to fit into.

You can be nonbinary in and of itself, and you can also be a nonbinary woman- a woman who identifies with the experience of womanhood but whose concept of womanhood is other than that of binary gender. It’s up to you. I sometimes use this designation but it is largely social- an admission that while I do not fully identify with it, I am born into womanhood and am experiencing life perceived as a woman, yet form a non-binary internal position.You in this moment are deeply nonbinary. It is not a fashion, it is not an outward expression. It is a deep inner presence and experience of unboundedness, unfixedness, and vague, undifferentiated immensity. It is, in my opinion, too big and ineffable to fit into any box, any outfit, any name. And so in this world we may find it difficult to interact with others who are always attempting to collapse us into gender, to cut us down to a digestible size, to see only tiny bits of us at a time. It is frustrating. To be honest I flirt every day with the idea of giving up and going to a monastery but I know good and well that monasteries, too have their gendered ideas for all their sweet talk of transcendance.

I wish I had sweeter words to offer but still, yes you are nonbinary. You are what you are before people perceive you and regardless of whether they are capable of seeing you in fullness or not. That cannot be taken from you.

#gender #nonbinary #nb #Anonymous

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tonohiyori · 6 years

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In Defense of Hiyori Tono

DISCLAIMER: do not send me hate over this. The point of this post is to bring attention to a lot of subtle details the show has been offering us, yet have been ignored to feed into the “Hiyori is abusive and toxic” narrative. Do I think that Hiyori was wrong in things he has done and said? I absolutely do. Do I think Hiyori is evil? Absolutely not. This post isn’t necessarily to make everyone love Hiyori or even like him, but I am asking that we view his character critically and not with blind hatred because he has played a role in keeping Ikuya and Haruka apart. Again, if you disagree with this post, that’s fine. But if you send me hate over it, just know that it’ll be deleted and I can guarantee you that it won’t bother me in the slightest. Part of the fun of being in a fandom is being able to debate and bring attention to things you believe may be missed, and I won’t be made to feel like a bad person for that.

Now, buckle up. This is going to get long because people have been nitpicking and here are just my personal thoughts on Hiyori and why people hate him and why some of those reasons I find to be invalid (or I’d at least like to play devil’s advocate to them).

1. Hiyori is not manipulative

I honestly don’t know where the “Hiyori is manipulating Ikuya” thing came from, because we haven’t seen any proof of that. People are citing the fact that Hiyori kept Ikuya from knowing that Haruka was looking for him as manipulation, but let me paint you a picture here: you have a best friend. He tells you about a traumatic instance from his past involving people he thought he was friends with, who then abandoned him with not a word or warning. They never tried to find him or contact him or reach out. It was extremely hard, and wore on your friend a great deal. Suddenly, in university, these people who hurt your friend show up looking for him, claiming to be old pals. Why would you be in any hurry to reunite them? Say whatever you will about Hiyori not telling Ikuya initially that Haruka and the others were around, but Ikuya makes it clear when he does run into Haru that he wants nothing to do with him, without any interference from Hiyori. Hiyori does show up and then leave with Ikuya, but he believed he was offering moral support. When I’ve been out with a friend and saw an ex of theirs who I knew hurt them, I steer them away and direct their attention to something else to save their heart from hurting over seeing them. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but I understand Hiyori’s motivations there. Again, another factor a majority of the fandom is ignoring is that Hiyori then confesses to Ikuya what he said and did to Haru and the others, and Ikuya has no problem with it. He says that Hiyori was fine to do that. Ikuya didn’t say, “Oh, no! I’ve been missing them and want to reunite! Please don’t keep them away!” He says their friendship was in the past, and he doesn’t want to revisit it. How is Hiyori being manipulative if he told Ikuya the truth, effectively giving Ikuya the chance to tell him to back off, which Ikuya then deliberately chose not to take? I’ve also seen people insinuate that Hiyori is isolating Ikuya when we haven’t seen anything to indicate that. He’s kept Ikuya away from Haruka, but we haven’t seen Hiyori and Ikuya interacting with anyone else yet, only four episodes in. They could easily have other friends. That’s a huge accusation to make, and an extremely unfair one.

2. Hiyori truly cares about Ikuya

I’ve also seen people calling into question whether Hiyori’s care for Ikuya is genuine, and again - there’s so much evidence to say that it is. Aside from the domesticity that we see (Hiyori and Ikuya spend a lot of time together, both of them extending invitations, Hiyori cooks Ikuya dinner, etc.), we know for a fact that Natsuya asked Hiyori to watch over Ikuya. The fandom likes Natsuya, correct? So, answer me this: would Natsuya ever have entrusted his younger brother to the care of a toxic, abusive sociopath? I refuse to believe so. As well, Natsuya and Hiyori know Ikuya far better than Haruka does. Haruka and the others spent one year with Ikuya. Natsuya and Hiyori have been around for far longer. People become angered when Hiyori will defend Ikuya against not wanting to swim relay anymore, but I believe that’s because he knows that Ikuya doesn’t want to, and Ikuya is probably tired of answering the question over and over. Should he stop stepping in on Ikuya’s behalf? Maybe. Ikuya probably needs to learn to speak for himself, and Hiyori might be enabling him not to. However, his intentions there don’t seem to be bad, and when you have a strong/outspoken personality, you tend to do things like that without thinking because you care about the other person. Another example is we see that after Ikuya’s second oxygen deprivation incident, Hiyori visits Ikuya in the hospital many, many times. If all he cared about was using Ikuya, there’d be no point in visiting Ikuya when it wouldn’t even be acknowledged, or when Ikuya was of no use to him. Hiyori has seen Ikuya suffer trying to emulate Haruka. That’s not Haru’s fault and I would never say it was, but I can see how that would sour Hiyori’s view of Haru,

3. Hiyori is not evil

Yes, Hiyori was an asshole to Haruka. I would never contest that. As fans of the anime, we know that Haruka and the others are good people who care deeply for their friends. And yet, we’re not seeing this from Hiyori’s perspective. He doesn’t know that Haruka is a good person, he doesn’t know that Haruka’s regret is genuine. All he knows is that Haruka hurt Ikuya badly in the past, and is only now showing an interest in Ikuya in university after all these years that he could’ve tried to apologize. And if the way Ikuya is after running into Haruka is any indication, it was deeply upsetting to Ikuya. We see him stop smiling, he becomes more withdrawn, and has another near-drowning incident in the pool. That is all that Hiyori has seen. He probably thinks Haruka is dangerous for Ikuya, and bad for Ikuya’s emotional well-being. Is it his job to decide that? No. But it’s the fact that his motivation is coming from a place of care for Ikuya that I can forgive him for that, just like I forgave Rin way back in the day. Characters can be imperfect and make mistakes and say mean/hurtful things and not be bad - just like people in real life! Hiyori calls Haruka and the others “weaklings,” but he doesn’t mean weak as swimmers. He means weak as people. They abandoned a friend because it was easiest for them, and seemingly forgot all about Ikuya while it reached deep into Ikuya’s core and messed with him. Hiyori is angry at them, and believes that he’s protecting Ikuya, who has also made it exceedingly clear that he wants nothing to do with Haruka, regardless of what this fandom seems to think. Ikuya isn’t trying to get in touch with Haruka, isn’t trying to find him, isn’t trying to set the record straight. He deliberately makes it clear he doesn’t want someone who hurt him to come back into his life. Hiyori sees Haruka going against Ikuya’s wishes, and takes matters into his own hands. Should he have? No, he shouldn’t. But again: it’s the simple fact that he’s so desperately loyal to Ikuya that he does this, not out of a place of spite or cruelty.

To sum up: I’m just sort of tired of the fandom spinning their own story about Hiyori despite what we’ve been shown in the anime. I don’t think everyone needs to like him and I’m not saying that everything he’s done is justified or okay. But as someone who has been on the receiving end of being hurt by people I thought cared about me and who I considered friends, I get why Ikuya wants distance from Haruka, and why Hiyori is trying to help Ikuya attain that (while at times going about it in ways that he probably shouldn’t due to anger on Ikuya’s behalf). I noticed the hate for Hiyori spiked after episode 4, and I know it’s because he was cruel to Haru. Which, that’s fine - be upset with him for that, it was a horrible thing for him to say and do. But at least think rationally and critically about who Hiyori is as a character and why he might behave that way before deciding that regardless of how the rest of the season plays out, you’ll hate him forever. A good anime can change your perspective on a character and help you understand them, even when they’re wrong; please give Free! a chance to do that with Hiyori.

#free!#free! dive to the future #hiyori tono #hiyoiku #raph rants

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secondpubertyscene · 5 years

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6.30.19

Feelings are complicated things to navigate. This realization is one that I keep coming to.

This summer has been one of infinite growth, as I’ve mentioned previously, and naturally, growth can be uncomfortable. In my case, it demands that I recognize unhealthy behaviors in the past and remedy them with mindfulness, intention, and consistency. Acknowledging where I’ve made mistakes or even acknowledging how trauma has influenced some of my relationship building practices has been really difficult for a number of reasons. I’m beating around the bush though. I should just break it down.

I’ve been taking a lot more time this summer to examine my relationships (both past and present) as I’ve just exited like my third really shitty relationship. Am I doing things that make my relationships fail? Am I creating spaces for toxicity grow with my own behavior? Am I the toxic person? In my analysis of it all, I’ve come to realize that I have indeed developed some toxic behaviors that need to be remedied before I even consider bringing someone else into life romantically. Let’s go piece by piece.

A lot of my previous relationships were based on my savior complex. I saw someone that I found attractive, I invested time in them, and I tried to help them solve their problems. More often than not, I found myself being the sole supporter for people that definitely needed professional help beyond what I could offer and I usually found myself super worn out by the end of the relationships because I neglected taking care of myself. As the old adage goes, it is much easier to deal with someone else’s problems than it is to deal with your own. These relationships had their ups and downs and to this day, I am still friends with most of these people (something that I think I want to write about more soon), but looking back at it all, they were based on some unhealthy foundations. In some ways, being able to help someone get better and grow helped me feel needed and significant and even powerful, but in other ways, I used their inability to reciprocate my actions as validation that I wasn’t really worth more than what I could do for others. I think that demands further explanation.

I never once felt angry or upset when my partners got better or grew as people. That’s literally why I was dating them after all. To help them grow and work on their own lives as much as possible. I think the thing that bothered me a lot was that the relationships were non-reciprocal and I felt as though they would never try to help me the way that I helped them (that statement isn’t ubiquitously true). What I’ve come to realize, however, is three things. One, if I’m dating someone going through their own deep personal recovery, I cannot expect them to dedicate a bunch of time to “helping” me through my own issues. If you’re bleeding from your eyes and I’m walking around with my own gaping wound, why would I look to you to help me? Especially since I can see that you’re bleeding from your eyes and I decided to help you despite knowing that I had my own gaping wound to take care of? My decision to prioritize your pain over my own resulted in added insult to my injury and only I can take responsibility for that because I CHOSE THAT. It is unfair for me to place the expectation for someone else to support me fully when I know that they’re barely hanging on themselves. That isn’t calling them weak or anything. If anything, the opposite. It takes strength to focus on oneself and confront the uncomfortable realities of life. I was avoiding doing that by focusing on everything and everyone but myself and my own condition.

The second realization I came to was that I didn’t really want help to begin with. Or at least, I don’t think I did. I think maybe I did but perhaps felt that asking would confirm that I was indeed not as okay as I would have liked to believe I was or that it would make me look weak to my partner, like perhaps I wasn’t able to support them in the way I needed to (which in some cases was true and my refusal to accept that resulted in more harm than help but that is another story for another time). I think I used my partner’s issues as reasons not to work on my own. I got so wrapped up in their world of hurt that I invalidated my own troubles by measuring my problems against theirs. Instead of dealing with the fact that I had just gotten dragged by my hair around my house and kicked in the face, I would deal with my partner’s emotional breakdown over THEIR parents abusing THEM. I didn’t want to face my own life, I didn’t tell my partners everything because I felt that they wouldn’t be able to support me the way that I supported them, and I think in some ways I found relief in that. I found relief in the fact that they couldn’t try to fix me or help. I don’t know why. That is still something I am working through. What I do realize now though is that I strongly underestimated the emotional capacity of some of my partners and they certainly could have supported me if I actually talked about things.

The final realization was perhaps the hardest to come to. The reality is, all of those things made ME toxic. While it wasn’t overtly toxic behavior, it certainly did not make for a healthy relationship. Especially a few years ago when I was still very much operating from an ableist mentality towards people suffering from mental illness and mental health issues. Not handling my own shit caused a lot of problems and contributed to the shortness of relationships. The “all-or-nothing” mentality was also an unhealthy thing that I still find myself fighting. Balance is so important in all relationships and if I keep dating people who aren’t in the right space to actively help me grow while also handling their own shit, then I’m playing myself out. There will be no space for our collective growth if there isn’t a foundation of “I’m working on myself and I am in a space where I am capable of supporting you healthily” from the beginning.

I don’t want anyone to read this and think that because they aren’t in fantastic spaces in life they can’t have healthy and fulfilling relationships. That isn’t at all what I am saying. Balance is important and if you’re capable of having open and clear boundaries with your partner with great communication, then power to ya. I can only speak to what I know is healthy and unhealthy for myself at this present moment.

I would also like to point out, my partners didn’t really need me, I don’t think. I think I conflated my role in their development a lot of times and they really would have gotten better with or without me. My partners were not helpless or weak or incapable of supporting themselves completely. They were just struggling a lot and much more open about that than I was with my own troubles.

Upon realizing these things, I’ve taken steps to be more intentional about the partners I seek out. Do I really see myself growing with them? How do they add to me as a composite? What do they have to offer? Are they capable of supporting me healthily? Do they WANT me or just NEED me? Do they respect boundaries? Do they know how to communicate? Do they genuinely make me feel good? Asking these questions as I look at the people that I’m talking to or crushing hard on has helped me so much and I think as I continue to unlearn past practices, I’ll be much happier.

I’m currently content with being single, even with my strong feelings towards one individual in particular. If they were to ask me out tomorrow I would be interested in figuring it out, but that also would never happen because I think their head is in a different place and I’m okay with that. More space for introspection and growth, right?

#personal writing #writing #personal writing blog #writing blog #personal blog #love #romance #relationships #growth #introspection #thoughts #quotes about life #life #toxic relationships #personal development #personal #healthy relationships #saviour complex #savior complex

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mortaljortlebortles · 2 years

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It isn’t morning I know

It isn’t the morning I know.

It is very afternoon so sorry.

Yaz knows very complex science and knows it better than Dan despite only knowing the Dr 2 or 3 years longer. She only knows how to get across her love through actions and hope because she is flipping terrified due to the homophobia and general anxiety she feels.

She can’t lose the Dr and she knows that the TARDIS is a huge part of the Dr’s life and that mechanics and poetry, and geography are her special interests. So she has amassed a lot of information she didn’t have before on these topics and doesn’t ask for a different beach because she knows the fear the Dr feels and that an neutral ( as a beach can be) environment in which she is comfortable and in control will help her be honest( also she doesn’t want to hurt her Dr even if she is mental struggling to and the Dr’s struggles aren’t yet all known to her)

Do you ever think that the Dr is very anticonflict because of her recent loss of Bill(guilt over Grace compounding this) but also because of the Time War. Capaldi was more anti conflict than Smith because of Christmas and the loss of River and Clara making him even more scared. This Dr is the most scared and we could say that this is because she is a femme but we could also say its because she lost everybody last time, even her enemy and lover in Missy. She also loses her memory which could be repression as the others didn’t struggle as much in this area of regeneration.

Yaz and the Dr are also both unable to talk about their trauma and the emotions they feel directly because of the world around them, my family refuses to acknowledge my sister was mentally ill now even though it lasted 2 years changed everything, it’s not all over and there are things we do and say which are because of her struggles and therefore I don’t talk to my family about my problems ever. Yaz trying to “do something stupid” is commemorated but they can’t talk about it out right and the Dr has been alone and rejected so often that if she shares her story she is afraid it will upset the person she is telling. This leads to them speaking in riddles but not having enough hope and belief they are loved to extract the meaning which results in the other getting confused and not trying and the one telling their truth feeling invalid in their feelings and speaking even more in code.

Dan is allowed to be a hero and villain – he has every right to ask Yaz if she is Gay and validate her because it builds her up and he would be allowed to do the same to the Dr but does he do it. I would say not really and the not telling Yaz if he suggested anything was a little accidentally mean cause Yaz is very anxious not to be rejected.

The Dr always looks at Yaz first when speaking -it is just cute

I think Izzy Flint did bully Yaz for being Gay in fact I think there was a Giant little ones/perks like relationship between Yaz and Izzy but I think Izzy might have got aggressive or even S/A her and that lead to Yaz hating herself and her identity.

Being Neurodiverse I also don’t do speaking literally because there are all the senses and feelings that belong in a sentence and I don’t know how to tell the emotions without a metaphor because else Neurotypical people won’t know the magnitude of the emotion- also sometimes I see the worst or am over dramatic or the sarcasm I am doing doesn’t get understood and then people shout at me.

Is being unidentified by Lez watch damaging ?

It could be if you’re a real life human as it makes you sound undecided, like you have avoided the box and that’s weird or makes it another category- I think a blank box is better.

Tanya and Quill have a moment where they save the other and Quill’s baby and life being saved looked like Ying Ki and Madam Ching’s vibes in the big fight.

#thasmin #class dw #dw #dr who #loftsd #actually dyspraxic #actually nonbinary #actually mentally ill #actually psychotic #its so cute #13th doctor #yazmin khan

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slashers-hell · 7 years

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Hi, I joined the sasunaru fandom not so long ago and you were one of the first blogs I encountered! I want to start off by saying how much I love every little analysis that you do. It's obvious how much effort you put into each piece of work you do, which I ma very grateful for (as it's hard to find blogs which are not biased just because of their ship). That is also the reason I came to you specifically to ask you about something. I read a few other analysis of the canon ships to see why 1/?

people ship them. I was never too keen on them. But some analysis did make sense (I guess) and it kind of upset me because maybe the canon pairings did make sense and us sasunaru shippers are just looking for anything to invalidate those ships. I’m not saying that Sasuke and Naruto had not potential because I’m 100% sure that what they had was something special. I just get sad thinking that they did not actually love each other and are happily married to other people (sorry if I sound childish) 2/?

I mean… How can they say that Naruto was ‘slow’ (he clearly knew about his feelings for Sakura) or that Sasuke was in the darkness and couldn’t return Sakura’s love (he was able to return Naruto’s feelings of friendship/love)? I was wondering if you’d be okay with giving a more in-depth analysis of NH and SS development (if they have any, in your opinion) and if either of them is happy. Thank you very much in advance if you are able to do this :)

First of all, thank you and pardon my rather late response. You are free to view NH and SS as logical pairings. Liking or acknowledging NH and SS does not mean you can’t appreciate SNS. However, your assumption that follows is flawed. You think because we see flaws in NH and SS, it means therefore that we SNS shippers must be biased since the majority of us disagrees with the endgame couples and is not sheepish with their critique. Needless to say, you confuse me a bit. Your message is contradicting, but I will just assume it’s due to the fact that you are unsure. I will put my thoughts under the cut for more convenient reading as my reply is fairly long.

Warning: The following content is heavily anti-NH and anti-SS. Hence, I’d kindly advise anyone who cannot accept differing views to keep scrolling.

Starting off with NaruHina’s development (or lack thereof), Naruto is a character that throughout the entirety of the series uses self-insertion to relate to comrades and villains alike. He feels empathy once he manages to establish a sense of similarity between himself and the other character, and while not all his bonds are based on this concept (Sakura, Kakashi, and Jiraiya being some notable exceptions), it holds truth for a majority of his bonds. This leads to a vast number of characters being eligible to be his foil—and by definition, they are.

If you would like to justify Hinata being the only logical partner for Naruto because she is his foil, then no, the argument doesn’t work. Nagato, Obito, Neji, or Itachi are all foils to Naruto (in different ways) that have given him admiration and acknowledgment, whereas Sasuke, Rock Lee, or Gaara are all foils that have extended the admiration to friendship, support, and love. NH shippers aren’t wrong in saying that Hinata could fit as a counterpart to Naruto, but it doesn’t mean that Naruto and Sasuke do not have any potential to become a far better couple. Naruto has many more literary counterparts, so their conclusion is not sufficiently supported by that argument alone.

In my opinion, NH has no romantic development. Hinata’s friendship to Naruto is no different from any other ordinary friendship Naruto has made throughout the series. Yes, Naruto and Hinata have had moments. That’s it, though. All in all, his bond to Hinata is not any more special than his bond to most people. The difference is, Hinata suddenly became his romantic interest despite them not interacting in a romantic context before.

Now I shall attempt to describe what is fundamentally wrong with SasuSaku and the reason why it lacks development and undermines the individual characters. I am aware that with good development, it could’ve more than reasonably flown off, but Kishimoto’s subpar writing in the last arcs created the SS we currently have. I do not hate any character individually, however together, they bring the worst out in each other.

Sakura begins the story as a scared and helpless ninja who learns to toughen up and is eventually trained by Tsunade in medical ninjutsu and combat. She has one of the best chakra controls in the ninja world with the physical and mental strength to match. Unfortunately, she returns to the same meek stuttering fangirl at the beginning of the series every single time Sasuke is involved. Sasuke, on the other hand, is introduced as an incredibly capable ninja who is a quiet and mysterious person with a traumatic past, making him reclusive and angry.

He had much more opportunity to open up to Sakura in the first part of the series since they went on missions together, fought together, and functioned as teammates; yet, he refused to talk in-depth about himself. And the problem is, none of the issues between them were ever addressed or resolved. One curt and unexplained apology and a time skip don’t cut it. As if that single sentence makes up for the complete disregard of Sasuke’s emotions and wishes on Sakura’s part and the hurtful remarks Sasuke uttered. Before anyone wants to argue that Sasuke’s words weren’t meant in a hurtful manner—it doesn’t matter because Sakura was still sad, and it’s important what the person who receives feels, not what the giver expects the receiver to feel.

Overall, his lack of interest in her was obvious enough to make Sakura question whether he cares about her at all while fighting Madara. I mean he dismissed her and Kakashi when Kaguya arrived, he allowed them both to fall into lava (a certain death) without batting an eye, and after Naruto yelled at him, he didn’t show any remorse. I’m not saying he should’ve shown remorse, I’m simply explaining how his actions represent the honest-to-goodness, as clear as day, down-to-earth climax of indifference he feels towards Sakura. Any sort of social relationship that involves a person who experiences indifference, whether the other person falls into lava or dies a painful death, is genuinely disturbing. And if that wasn’t enough, he throws Sakura’s feelings back in her face with a traumatising genjutsu and states that he doesn’t understand what she sees in him (Kakashi seems equally puzzled).

Sakura pretty much is the main reason SS represents an unhealthy relationship (notice how I used the term “unhealthy” instead of “abusive”). She becomes selfish and emotionally manipulative whenever she interacts with Sasuke, from start to finish. Whilst Sasuke eventually apologises for his behaviour, Sakura never does. The worst part, though, is that she actually had the audacity to compare him leaving Konoha to the Uchiha massacre.

This was a poor attempt to guilt-trip Sasuke and the readers into making Sasuke the bad guy and into humouring her selfish desires that take absolutely no one else into account. Their dynamic for almost all of the series is summarised as Sakura switching to her submissive personality and Sasuke getting annoyed. It’s a huge understatement in an even huger understatement to believe they merely have unresolved issues. Is there any evidence Sasuke ever saw Sakura as more than a friend or a pseudo-family member?

Having said that, I hope this answers your question sufficiently, Anon!

#anti nh #anti naruhina #anti ss #anti sasusaku #anon

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sophiqui · 7 years

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My thoughts and why am I am so deeply in love with La La Land (and why i’m kind of upset some people feel so negative towards it on this website)

So I’ve watched La La Land only about two days ago, but never in my life have I ever: 1. Cried that much in a movie theater. 2. Fallen in love so quickly and so deeply with a film.

Before I watched it, I was told by about 5 people that La La Land was definitely my type of movie. One of these people even said they went in and didn’t really enjoy it that much as it wasn’t their type, but were thinking whilst watching it, “You know who would LOVE this? Sophia.” This, coupled with, ofc, the unending hype and praise towards the cinematography and style, award show wins, my undying love for Emma Stone (and a bit of Ryan Gosling), and **musicals**, made me place this movie on my MUST WATCH list. I, however, took a really long time to get to it because school was being a bitch and I was so busy.

This Friday, however, I realized I didn’t have anything to do afterschool for once, so I (very last minute) asked my friends if they wanted to see La La Land with me. All of them, unfortunately, were busy doing other things.

Now, usually when it comes to watching films in the theater I refuse going alone. I’ve always been insecure about it and thought it made me look like a loner. BUT, my desire to watch La La Land was so strong that I didn’t care and I just went to watch it myself anyway.

And oh my god~ I loved it so.

The minute the “Presented in Cinemascope” frame popped up, some familiar notes filled my ears, and this beautifully saturated screen with people dancing (reminiscent of old Hollywood) flooded my eyes I knew I was going to love this movie. I found myself crying so many times simply BECAUSE the cinematography so beautiful - it made everything look like a dream, and made me wonder if life could ever look that beautiful in someone’s eyes. The music felt nostalgic and ended up touching me so deeply that literally every time I hear Mia & Sebastian’s Theme now I START CRYING. The themes about following your dreams and being a struggling artist really resonated with me -- and how these characters developed and followed their dreams inspired me and seemed incredibly geniune and realistic to me. And ofc, as a huge sap and hopeless romantic, I fell in love with the way Mia and Sebastian fell in love (and never really left it). I was probably crying for a solid hour of the film because I was so deeply affected by it, it was catharsis. I stayed after the credits and was just sitting there, crying STILL, and the guards had to tell me to leave because they had to finish cleaning up for the next screening. THAT’S HOW BAD FOR ME IT WAS. I immediately bought (yeah ikr BOUGHT) the soundtrack on my phone as soon as I left the theater so I could listen to it on the walk home (this was not really helpful tbh ‘cause everything inside me just felt surreal, hurt and puffy in the best way). That night, I proceeded to watch as many youtube videos on it as I could, listen to the soundtrack multiple times, and ended up staying up till 4:30am ‘cause I couldn’t sleep through all of my thoughts on La La Land. Super dramatic of me, I know.

I was so excited to blog about it when I got on tumblr this morning but ended up feeling quite sad because of all of the criticisms some users had.

Now, this in NO way means I’m not allowing any user to have their opinions on this movie, nor do I not acknowledge or recognize some of these criticisms~ In fact, most of them are incredibly valid! However, I tend to disagree with some of them.

No one would love or care about this movie had the leads not been white and attractive/There no diversity. As I mentioned before, what drew me to this movie wasn’t so much the characters, but rather the hype surrounding the cinematography and music. I’m a sucker for a good love story as well, no matter what race or sexuality. I can’t speak for everyone, but I feel like many other people were drawn to La La Land for similar reasons as me. Although I, being a PoC, would’ve appreciated some more diversity, particularly in the main characters, I didn’t feel it was incredibly necessary. Sure, it would’ve possibly made the script more interesting, as it would’ve described the even HARDER struggles of say, being an Asian actress in Hollywood, but as a movie replicating the style of old Hollywood, and as a movie generally reflecting the American Dream, I’m not angry at the fact that Chazelle decided to go with the characters that he did. I DO, however, agree with lack of more emphasis on the black characters who are rooted with jazz. Although there was inclusion, I felt the relationship Seb had with these characters (which would help in validating and explaining his love and connection to the genre) could have been focused on a bit more. And of course, I would’ve loved just a few more sprinkled in Asian side characters, as well, maybe.

This isn’t a feminist movie. Um, hold up. Are we watching the same film here? The character of Mia was incredibly feminist. She was strong and brave enough to follow her own dream and carve her own path, overcoming obstacles and challenges with the support and help of people who love her, whether that be her family, her roommates, or Seb. Mia wasn’t a character who sat down, gave up, and waited for the opportunity to come. She got out and fought for it herself. Just because she had the support of a man by her side doesn’t invalidate any of her actions. She was a great feminist role model. I didn’t find Seb particularly misogynistic, as well. When he was explaining why jazz was important to Mia, or inviting her to see a movie that he knew about but she hasn’t seen yet, it didn’t strike me as “Oh, I’m better than you because I know more, let me explain this to you because you’re an oblivious woman” -- it really just seemed like a guy that wanted to share his ideas and passions with a girl he was interested in, or a guy that wanted to think of a good date plan. It didn’t seem condescending to me.

It was predictable. I actually didn’t find it that predictable, especially towards the end. I even have some friends that are pretty good at picking out the rest of the plot, but even they were slightly shocked at the end. I can’t speak for everyone, obviously, but I feel that, ultimately, love stories are going to be decently predictable since there’s only two ways it can go -- but what happens between that time was incredibly interesting to me all the way through.

This movie was overhyped/I didn’t enjoy it La La Land is a type of movie you don’t see much in theaters anymore. It’s Old Hollywood: It’s over-saturated (both color-wise and in story), it’s a bit cheesy, it has music, it reflects everything to do with the American Dream, it’s a love story, the main characters are white, etc. I enjoyed it for these reasons, but I definitely understand why it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. I just sincerely sincerely hope that people don’t shit on other people for enjoying the film as much as they do. I don’t want another Frozen fiasco with this movie. Because in my opinion, this movie deserves all the recognition it’s getting.

I love La La Land (and I’m probably gonna go see it 4 more times in theaters haha)~ if you haven’t seen it yet, PLEASE go watch it in theaters before it disappears! It’s better on a big screen. Feel free to form your own opinion and shoot me a message! I’d love to hear your thoughts, even if you disagree with me. <3

#I speak pretty generally so it's pretty spoiler free!#also this was way longer than I intended woah #oh well #soph speaks #la la land

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bzbelle-writes · 3 years

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DEAR SPERM DONOR

When I was a child at the tender age of 10, you and mum announced your agreement to part ways in a divorce. Ultimately, my siblings and I had seen things going wrong for a while. You and her no longer loved each other and that much was hellishly obvious. She tried to keep things amicable until your new whore came onto the scene and, quite frankly, fucked that up.

It still crushed me in ways I will never be able to describe, knowing that one of my parents wouldn't be around to watch me grow up. But you always promised that you would be there, on the sidelines, ready to cheer me on.

However, aged 11, when she decided to move in with you... I could tell things wouldn't be the same anymore. We went from having movie nights, playing games together and having takeout on the sofa, to just ignoring each other and me upset and wishing I could go back to mums.

At the age of 12, when I was making friends and support groups, you condemned all of the friends I had. You were never satisfied with the company I kept. Or with the places I chose to put myself. Even though my best friends lived right in your door step, you would never let me see them or, heaven forbid, be seen WITH them.

Aged 14, I started to make the big choices. I could always tell when she was whispering in your ear... You told me I had to do what would make money. Not what made me happy. You shit on every single dream I ever had. And that made me feel very invalid.

At the age of 15 when I bought my first boyfriend over for the evening to meet you... You yelled at him, without knowing him properly, that you didn't want him close to 'your little girl'. I hadn't felt like your 'little girl' in many years at this point. Mostly because you had actually asked mum for less contact. I didn't think people could actually be that selfish... That they would actively want to spend less time with lives they had helped create?!

Aged 16 and 17 I had very little to do with you. I stopped visiting you after I turned 17 because I wanted to live my own life and maybe work part time on the weekends. But you never supported me when I said I wanted to turn my part time work into a career. In fact you actually dissuaded me from it because there was 'no money' in hospitality.

I called you the day I got my A level results... Sure they weren't straight As, but you showed very little interest in my career plans. Because I did have plans. And sure they changed a few times, but I was happy.

Aged 19 when I eventually go to university, it was never you picking me up in the middle of the night, it was never you at the end of the phone when I couldn't cope, it was never you. It was my step dad and my mum. They helped and supported me more than you ever would have.

You met my first girlfriend and refused to even acknowledge her in a positive way. You made a snide remark and then got offended when she threw it back at you.

Aged 20 I moved back into mums. I dropped out of uni because I couldn't cope with the stress. I got in with the wrong crowd. I did illegal drugs, binge drank and flitted about just to feel something. I found a 'boyfriend' who I loved. You and her even told me he was a 'lovely guy' and I had 'really done well'. Little did you know the guy was a massive narcissistic wanker. He abused me, and ignored our safe words. I fell pregnant with his child... And he dumped me. When I told you, you said I'd end up 'just like my mother'. I told you that I'd be proud to end up like her and you laughed.

Aged 21, I posted a Facebook tribute to my (step) dad in father's day. 1. You refuse to use Facebook for any reason. 2. He has been there and you haven't. 3. He's taken on children that aren't even his and has done amazingly for it. 4. You weren't there. Clearly this offended you. Because you were barely in contact after that.

Aged 23 I had a beautiful son and a daughter on the way. I had a long term relationship and a place of my own. You never contacted me. You rarely helped out when we needed it... I thought maybe you were just distancing yourself but whatever. Why should it matter?

We had a conversation about my third pregnancy (because we lost our second... But you never cared to ask when I told you about that). Your response was to tell me to 'keep my legs shut next time' and tell me you wish you never had children. Fuck you. Ass hole. Person 50% responsible for my existence.

I am now 26. With a family of my own. A beautiful son, daughter and husband, who I married last week. You got supposedly offended because I didn't invite you. You had told me my whole life you never liked weddings or family gatherings... I sent you photos and tried to engage you with your daughter, son in law and grandchildren but you just ignored them.

I'm done. People often say you shouldn't burn family bridges... But I'm more than happy to destroy this one.

All the best as you navigate this world knowing that your only daughter has given up on you.

Ps. I will never be able to see you as more than a sperm donor. You lost the title of 'Dad' when I was 17. You lost the title of 'Father' today.

#Father #sperm donor #writers of tumblr #writer #Daughter #Anger #Regret #Thoughts #Musing

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