some more exploratory sketches. while the story itself focuses on the aftermath of the abuse, i wanted to get down my ideas for the dynamic that occurred during the abuse.

alvin is a very self-pitying character, he uses his low self esteem to manipulate others into doing things for him because they feel sorry for him. he genuinely believes he deserves to get whatever he wants because he had a sad childhood and has convinced himself of his own excuses. he believes what he’s saying in the final image, because to face the truth of his actions would be too much to bear. however he’s more scared of getting caught than at the concept that he’s hurting someone.

he would frequently guilt trip ethan into doing whatever he wanted, followed up by rewarding him with good grades and gifts. ethan really looked up to him and viewed him as one of the very few trustworthy adult figures in his life.

its all "no one has ever been actually harmed because of proship fanfiction" until i point out that i was groomed into thinking these relationships were normal at age 12 BY THAT KIND OF FANFIC. and then subsequently got groomed again several times over. and then its all "well that's just you it's not indicative of a larger problem" are you shitting my dick.

seeing people who hate soren but love micaiah for moral purity reasons is so so funny to me like soren didn't groom a kid. not sure what else you can call micaiahs relationship with sothe. like get down off your high horse. soren sucks but so does micaiah. fee my girl she isnt your fucking cinnamon roll

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Did we really go from talking about actual grooming tactics to protect people to saying befriending anyone younger than you is grooming. Do you hear yourself?! someone in 20s can befriend a 18-19 y.o as long as theyre respectful and dont go over boundaries (not just sexual but other ways too) you all would kill yourselves in a university if thats how you react...

apparently saying someone should be dead for grooming children is the same as suibaiting. okay

i just saw a post that was like ‘bill cipher is a groomer’ and it made me laugh so hard i fucking gagged. THEY WERE COMPLETELY SERIOUS TOO

Hi! I’d rlly like to hear more info about your Maruki’s priest AU, it looks like it has a lot of potential for heart-wrenching conflict and i love that stuff :)))) pls do share if u feel comfortable!

yeas sure! so im not sure how evident it is in the comic, but maruki is controlling akira. it is why the halo mask goes over his eyes instead of leaving him space to see. id say its a mix of brainwashing and grooming from the therapy sessions and also because maruki got to akira first before akechi could.

maruki is basically using the small part of akira that considered keeping the new reality and blocking all of the rest of him out. like this, akira isnt interacting with the rest of the phantom thieves because he's still 'assisting maruki', but he is still allowed to leave the palace, and he still goes around to his usual haunts like kichijoji and shibuya.

fighting akira won't work out, because it isnt like sumires situation, where she is prompted by maruki but still choosing to fight; even if akira was defeated he wouldnt immediately change sides because of marukis hold on him. it means that sumire needs to work alongside akechi as they are trying to figure out how to get akira out of it, and the two of them trying to figure out what it is that sumire is forgetting.

on their side, they are also exploring 'kasumi's' life and the holes in her memory, which eventually ends with them clashing because of what they uncover and akechis pushiness in trying to get her to snap out of it.. they do figure it out eventually, but sumire is much more assertive and snarky towards akechi, especially when she finds out about his past actions.

in akiras case, snapping him out of it would take not only the phantom thieves, but also help from his other confidantes! they would first need to realize what is happening, and then help akira outside (and in :]) the metaverse. it would also mean them delving into akira's past relationships with adults and authority figures....

i dont have a solid design for akira yet, but these are the designs i have done so far ^_^

Olive makes me soooo fucking sad. Imagine being groomed from birth to be a fallen angel's wife, having a kid at 19, realize the same thing is happening to your newly born son as what happened to you and it makes you uncomfortable and then at 24 you decide that the best course of action is to abandon him even though it breaks your heart and you miss him every day.

And then none of that MATTERS bc 20 years later he falls right back into the man you were trying to protect him from's hands. Oooooooooogh SHE MAKES ME SO SAD

I’ve seen multiple times disliking scary being compared to misogyny and I don’t know how to express the fact that disliking a character who intentionally betrays her friends multiple times, belittles other people’s problems, who’s biggest struggle has been her mom finding a loving husband, who acts like that’s the most traumatizing thing that’s happened to anybody in the party, is perfectly reasonable.

Scary is being groomed and I understand that manipulation, I think it’s awesome storytelling. A really good chance for character growth. But she also read the journal with everybody else. She’s seen how her friends react. She intentionally HID who she was calling from her friends because she KNEW they’d disagree fundamentally. And as a woman who is a big woman fan, I think it’s important to have women who suck in media! And Scary sucks lmao.

That doesn’t even mean I don’t like her being in the show- I think she brings a lot to it and when I separate her from how she’s been acting? I love her and the party together I think they’re amazing. But I. Think we need to remember if someone doesn’t like our fav and talks about it, it doesn’t need to be horrible. We can just disagree. You can support women’s wrongs, I hope u do! Some people don’t <3

...i thought the groomer wally au was just a weird dream i had...aperantly no-

Spottedleaf?

a really tragic character!! i really like interpreting her character as someone who could have completed the cycle of abuse with fireheart but decided to break the chain. yandere spottedleaf interpretations make me roll my fucking eyes up in my head. apparently people hate her? idk why.

I figured you might be able to help with a sanity check. So I’ve recently been getting into Kim Possible after a decade or so of hiatus specifically kigo the ship of Kim and her archnemesis Shego and despite adamantly claiming any content I make would involve the two being adults and fairly close in age because AU why not?

I’ve had to deal with accusations of grooming and so forth.

It sounds an awful lot like the same rhetoric being thrown at the lgbt community and all over a fictional ship that I plan to portray as adults anyway.

Is it just me or is there no self awareness there?

Nah there is fucking none. A lot of antis grew up in religious fundamentalist households (a fuckton of white westerners did in general, myself included) and they haven't done the work to unlearn shit because they think they didn't internalize anything (we all did. We all fucking did its a societal level issue we all gotta do the work to pry the roots of it out.)

Pretty weird that every time someone is against Byleth relationship with a student it's about Edelgard x Byleth and never the other. Out of all student, even just out of the lord ( especially Dimitri x Byleth who's extremely popular ) it must be everytime the sapphic ship. Uh.

It's different, but there's similarities with the people who says they're disgusted with Hanneman but never say anything about Seteth. The dude is way older and has even more screwed power dynamic, but he got a conventionally pretty face and he appears younger so I guess he has a pass :/

I'm all for questioning unhealthy dynamic, but damn, you guys bias are way too obvious. It's pretty clear some of you don't care about teacher/student, age gap, grooming and all that, you just want to trash ship and characters you don't like.

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Oogly boogly

I'm KingOfClovers. Some will know me, some will not, I got banned a few months ago.

I was never a great person ngl, kind of a rude, never did and still don't particularly care to cater to people's feelings but I was cordial, I am not here to whine and guilt my way back to wa, it is irredeemable, unless by the grace of God the leaders accidently hand over leadership to someone decent.

The priorities of leadership are out of order, things such as grooming aren't treated as harshly as crude jokes, this is because the current admins see sit to impart their own beliefs upon the system. For example there is a chat, moonclan. Originally founded by a user named Maui, who took a long break due to mental health, and allowed host-ship to be given to a friend, said friend passed it off to a friend of their own, and when she finally returned, she was my with a hostile staff which refused to even make her a moderator again. Three standing members of the moderation team are all roommates, one has been banned 3 separate times for grooming. Maui lashed out as her chat was stolen from her. Her story, her writing, the things she loved. And what did the lt do? Banned her and left the groomer alone. Why? Because rather than following the strict guidelines, such that art theft in any form results in an immediate, permanent ban, they imparted their beliefs. They decided they didn't like how Maui reacted and banned her.

I was banned because in 2017, I had the word "dick" in my bio. In 2022, I had the word asshole, on my wall. And in 1019, someone told me to kill myself, so I told them I fucked their mom.

In attempt to finish out the characters I was writing I logged into my alt. And was banned within a week. Valid, I was breaking the rules. But you know who still romps around WA to this day? Bravado, thunder, whatever you want to call him. He weeded his way through moonclan and turned people on eachother to put him in a position of power, I was banned from that Chat because of said weaseling.

The lt is ineffective. Because they let their power go to their head. I am not going to name it and advertise the one I am staff on, but I will tell you. There are other options. Don't sit in WA because it's the only option, if you choose to stay in that cesspool stay for the reason I did for so long, because it's home. And if not. Find a new home. Just search warriors, a dozen aminos will find you, and its not much now. And the Fandom is dying because kids these days just aren't reading warrior cats, and amino is hardly a valid platform. So let's us oldheads stick together. And go out and find someplace to call home, if I see you in ours, then godspeed, if you happen to join mine after reading this post, message me with a screenshot and I'll give you a trinket of some kind, maybe a design, adopt, custom, or even a commission, depending on the time and whatever most convenient.

This will always be somewhere on my account

And so, Mazel tov, I pray I see you in your new home, or that maybe this will simply inspire you to become staff in WA and fix it. Either way, I love yall

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AITA for using illusion magic to artificially age myself?

My husband (middle aged, M, half-orc) and I (young adult, NB masc, half-elf) met when we were both barely legal adults for our respective races. It's a hard fact to come to terms with, but he's aging much faster than me. I'm actually older than him by about twenty years, but while he's been maturing steadily, I look about the same age as I did when we met. Unfortunately, strangers don't seem to think about that and we've been getting comments the past decade or so, framing him as - more or less - a groomer. We usually tell them off or just ignore them but these past few months, I could tell it was really starting to get to him.

I proposed, since I'm good with illusion magic (I use it for my work), that I could artificially give myself a few grey streaks, some wrinkles, and just a generally more mature look. He was reluctant until we gave it a try for a few days and we didn't get a single comment or even a second glance from anyone. I assured him if he ever wanted me to stop, I would, but he's confided in me since that he's glad he gets to see what I might look like with these signs of age, as he'll be "long gone" (his words!! Not mine!) by the time I really get them.

We just stayed with his elder brother (adult, M, not mixed) for the first time since we started this, and he was not impressed. He said I was being dishonest with myself and everyone around me, that I was living inauthentically. He thinks people who would make comments about us are "too idiotic to consider important" and we shouldn't even give them a moment of thought. It was just getting too much for my husband and this solution was, I thought, our best option.

If it helps, the two of them have a... complicated relationship. It's never been good, in fact it's often been very toxic and painful, but they both have this begrudging loyalty to each other since they're half-brothers with a tragic family situation that left them alone together. Its more complicated than that, but I don't want to write a novel about it.

Husband is still fine with my illusion and told me not to listen to his "asshole brother", but now I'm worried that I'm letting both of us live in a fantasy, which obviously isn't healthy. So, AITA?

@/proficgen says that radqueers depend on exclusionism to take advantage of people and groom them into being radqueer

I love it when people just claim stuff