#cw: gaslighting

[ama-master-of-satans-twizzlers]

I know that Cunning was an asshole for just so long before this and that he kinda got what was coming to him, but I just can't stop crying. Something about seeing the animal form withering like that, realizing that he's made a mistake and slowly giving up in that wholly alone sort of way just breaks me.

the fox god.

a comic about a trickster.

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creative notes:

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all my other comics

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[badaziraphaletakes]

"Without knowing or perceiving any danger" except that the Metatrash is a murderous lunatic whose organization has repeatedly put Aziraphale in great danger and who Aziraphale knows collaborates with hell, and therefore could put his husband in great danger as well.

"How would he go about listening in?" First of all, NG literally put in that moment with him hearing Michael from outside the bookshop, to make it so obvious that it's like he's practically hitting us over the head with a 2x4 to make sure we get it. But frankly, I almost wish he hadn't, because the real issue here is that Aziraphale can't afford to assume he's *not* listening in.

(Oh and also he (Metatrash) popped up right after Crowley disclosed the secret of the giant miracle. After 6000 years of forced paranoia, I guarantee Aziraphale picked up on that. You get soooo used to noticing the smallest clues as to what your ab*ser's up to. Hypervigilance, and all. Just because we don't see Aziraphale drink as often as Crowley does, doesn't mean he doesn't have the angelic equivalent of C-PTSD, and probably PTSD too. It's that tired male PTSD stereotype rearing its ugly head again.)

[moonshinecanvasproductions]

A mini thought/analysis I had bc I'm not ready for Mafuyu's focus event and the confrontation with Mrs Asahina. More under the cut. CW: gaslighting and parental abuse

Mirage of Lights has a flashback of Mafuyu as a child. Children's thoughts are relatively innocent and naive, untainted by the bad things around them. The warm and pink lighting represents how Mafuyu views her egg donor with rose-coloured glasses. Because she and Mrs Asahina gaslit Mafuyu into thinking the latter's always wrong in a negative memory, she subconsciously erased all bad memories until Guiding a Lost Child to What Lies Beyond.

Now in Mafuyu's upcoming focus event, the lighting is dark and cool while there are cracks. Not only is Mafuyu probably releasing a VERY freaking cathartic scolding to her egg donor, the more time she had under her mom's influence, the more those negative memories are coming back and the truth is revealed. This technique is kinda like in Tangled which also features an abusive mother-daughter relationship.

(If we don't get a "Did I mumble mother?" moment, I'll riot)

This also references the archery MafuShizu event card where there's glass breaking and it represents how her perfect facade is breaking and her anger is slowly reaching a point (cue N25 Kaito)

TLDR: Her rose-coloured glasses surrounding her egg donor have been shattered. Props to the artists for that. And let's pray Mrs. Asahina gets a Mother Gothel style exit too.

[lxvvie]

Oh no, honeybee, you are not just drop a thought like that and skedaddle! Come on! Just a crumb of darker CoD, please? Just a crumb?

Oh, that was quick. 👀

I can drop one idea I had. It was based on this ask, and I pretty much expanded on it.

It would be from your perspective. A deconstruction of what he always tells your child(ren): "Be better than me..."

Simon's father reasons that if he can't have his home back then he'll destroy yours. And destroys it he does, or at least tries to.

Cue the gaslighting. Cue the stalking. Cue him speaking horribly about Simon. It amps up especially when he's away on deployment and you're starting to see the cracks, in you, your child(ren), and Simon. You begin to wonder if everything the spiteful bastard said about your husband was true...

But your husband has enemies and when those enemies catch wind of what's going on with Simon's father, they use that and the asshole to their advantage. If they can't get to Simon, they'll get to you.

But yeah, I wonder what dark ideas y'all had in mind. Dark and smutty. Dark and angsty, you name it!

[humanitys-strongest-bamf]

dont need any of this gaslighting bullshit

[undeadorion-archive]

This is something that I probably should have said publicly years ago. It's now too late to matter to anyone but myself, but I need it to be public. About what happened between me and my ex, Genue. I don't know what her current usernames are, and I only partially remember her old one (heart broken something or other).

Gen and I met through a friend-of-a-friend chain after a friend and I ended up an RP group at the peak of Avengers fandom. I adored Gen's art, but didn't have a lot of contact with her at first. She wasn't quite Big Name Fan levels of popularity, but she was pretty high up there, so I was afraid to even speak to her at first. But eventually we ended up talking and hit it off really well.

This was around like 2013 maybe. I was quite possibly at my lowest around then, so all it took to win me over was the smallest amount of positive attention. I had zero confidence, and maximum anxiety. I was at the heaviest I've ever been and was well into a developing binge eating disorder. I was desperately trying to find work as a comic colorist after being screwed over by a terrible publisher. I was not in a good place.

So even though I'm primarily interested in men, when someone I admired wanted a relationship with me, I was so overwhelmed I agreed to explore it. And that was my first mistake. There were redflags galore, including how her family treated me, but I ignored them.

She coerced me into sexual activities over voice calls. I didn't want to do it at first, but she kept pushing. So I agreed. I never discussed that with her, though. I was very much in people pleaser mode and wanted her to keep liking me. So I didn't want to tell her no in any way.

When she came to visit, she wanted to get immediately to the sex. Which felt really fucking weird. I picked her up at the airport. And when we barely but our luggage down at the hotel, she wanted to get into the shower together. It was a lot.

But this isn't just about being pressured into sex.

Eventually we moved in together. Or rather she moved out of her parents house in California to live with me in Portland. At first things were good, even if she wanted to do things I was either incapable of or didn't want to do.

The biggest sticking point was the initial arrangement of our desks in the living room. It was summer, so I took a spot near the window to be cooler and she took the opposite corner. But that was a problem come winter, because the heater was on the wall behind me, and she was against the furthest wall. Too much heat makes me sick and she insisted being too cold makes her sick. But for some reason she absolutely refused to allow anything to be rearranged. Now I know the heat doesn't just make me sick, it gives me asthma attacks.

The rent, bills and expenses were another issue. I was barely scraping by on commission and comic work. I'd tell her how much we each needed to contribute that month. Every single month she came up short, wouldn't tell me until the last minute and just think it would be okay to not pay the rest. When our electricity got shut off due to being so far behind she got pissed at me because she insisted I didn't tell her how bad it was. Despite telling her every month how far behind we were and how much we needed to catch up.

Once I even put a chart on the fridge about how much everyone owed every month. Her and the other roommates insisted it was "unfair" because it showed I was paying more. Even though it was the amounts we agreed on.

But it wasn't just interpersonal stuff. I found out after we already lived together that she was deeply into shipping Thor and Loki. Specifically adult Thor and Kid Loki. She admitted that a tumblr account she'd had before I met her was banned from tumblr for drawing underaged smut.

Then there was the suspected scamming. She insisted that she was locked out of her paypal account so she had to use mine. I agreed because I thought it was a temporary thing until she got hers fixed. She never fixed it. She claimed it was because of an address mis-match, which isn't something I've ever encountered, but should be easily fixable with a phone call or email with documentation. It didn't bother me too much, because the money she got went into my account so I could use it directly to pay bills or buy groceries. That is, until I started getting emails. Someone saying they hadn't heard back from Gen despite trying to contact her many times. They paid for a commission months before. Every time I'd ask her, she'd insist she never received an email from them. If it was just once, I wouldn't have thought anything of it. But there was more than one. And every single time, it was the same story. Ghosted after paying for a commission, oops emails were lost.

Quite some time after we broke up, a person I sort of knew had tried to file a complaint through paypal, but it was like 6 months too late. The egregious amount of time had me very suspicious of what was happening so I contacted the person. If I'd had the funds myself, I would have gladly refunded them. And their story was the same as the others. Paid for a large commission, then got ghosted. They'd tried messaging and contacting Gen every possible way and never got a response. So I tweeted at her to fix it because it wasn't my issue to handle. I didn't accuse her of anything, I just said "this person contacted me with this issue about your commission." And she was PISSED that I hadn't contacted her privately. Well, if your email keeps losing emails, how can I trust that route?

At one point, she started to demand that I eat more healthy. My habits were awful at the time, but she just kept saying "eat better" and offered no help. I'd ask her what I should do, and she had nothing to offer. When I asked what I should get at the store, she just said she wanted pistachio ice cream. Never anything healthy.

Oh. The groceries. Even when I had to get a full time jobs just to keep the lights on, I was the one always doing the shopping. We didn't have a car, so I'd have to walk there and back. I'd often steal a cart and take it back the next day. She never offered to stop at the store on her way home from somewhere. She never went on her own. She wouldn't even go with me. One day it was snowing pretty hard and I got my period (this was before I transitioned). The cramps were so bad I felt ill. And she refused to go get me pads because it was too cold outside. So I was left to trudge through the snow, in pain. Cold and movement made the pain worse, too. But if she had so much as the sniffles, she'd put on the baby voice and ask me to get her treats from the store.

The only thing I asked of her was that she helped me carry the groceries in when I got home. Specifically that she keep her phone nearby while I was gone so I could text her when I was at the bottom of the stairs, so I wouldn't have to risk leaving a cart full of groceries in the parking lot while I ran up to get her. All while a single flight of stairs was enough to launch me into a full asthma attack. And needing to do that multiple times. But she acted like I was making an unreasonable demand of her to watch for a text.

She'd get super irritated over cultural differences and act like I was forcing mine on her. She wanted me to watch some soccer game where the announcers spoke exclusively Spanish. I don't speak Spanish, I have negative interest in sports, and I was trying to get work done. She wanted to do holiday activities that required either large numbers of people or highly specific details that I didn't know how to do. I told her we could do them but she'd have to be the one to put it together or teach me what to do. And that was a bad thing on my part some how. Or me simply not liking certain foods she put together. Like a salad that was just bananas, canned beets, and peanuts. I don't like beets and I couldn't eat peanuts at the time because of my bad teeth. I asked her to show me how to make tamales and she said it was too complicated and I'd never be able to learn. Years later, I taught myself how to fold and wrap them in about 10 minutes.

Her mom made and sold these flower gel things and she wanted to do them here and sell them at a local market. So I said "okay, but you have to tell me what you need and teach me how to do it." I even looked into what we needed to get a booth. And she acted like I wasn't doing enough and it was my fault we never did it. Mind you, she never told me even the supplies she'd need let alone how to do it.

Then there's her mother. Oh lord. One day her mom was visiting and they picked me up after a full day of work to go to Ikea, which was nearly an hour's drive away. I was already fighting fatigue and asthma on a good day, and now I was exhausted on top of it. I needed to stop to take a break because I felt like I was going to pass out. So when I sat down, her mother lectured me, and basically called me lazy. Because of how much she'd achieved in her life. Something about being a gymnast and breaking bones and all of the jobs she had. And it was somehow a moral failing on my part I couldn't keep up with her.

One of the moments that made me realize that there was a narrative on Gen's part that I was completely unaware of was when I got that job. Despite my not asking for it, she insisted on making a huge batch of tamales for me to take in for my lunch every day. But she was making multiple kinds and stressed herself out doing it. And somewhere along the way she'd come to the conclusion that it was my fault that she was working so hard in the kitchen. While doing something I never asked her to do. Something she wouldn't let me help with. And something she refused to teach me so I could help.

But one of the most telling things is that Gen refused to leave me alone. It's why in the end I didn't push her to the shopping because then I had an excuse to leave as long as I wanted. If I got overwhelmed by something, and took my laptop into the bedroom where it was quiet, she'd immediately follow and insist on talking to me. I just wanted to sit in the quiet. I needed to be able to focus in order to get any work done. Fully shut the world out levels of focus. I told her this, frequently. It especially irritated me if someone intentionally dragged me out of that focus for things that weren't even mildly important. She'd be watching TV and wave her hands at me to say "did you see that?" or other commentary. When I wasn't watching. Or worse was stuff like "I just wanted to say hi." When I didn't have a job we were together 24/7. I only needed that focus when I was actually working. We'd spend time sitting together on the couch watching stuff together. But my need for a work schedule didn't matter to her and she refused to respect even that simple boundary.

Another weird thing is that she refused to let me do dishes or clean the kitchen. It was the most neglected part of our apartment. Like rotting vegetables in the pantry, sink overflowing with dishes level. And if I went into the kitchen with the intent to clean, she'd physically block my path (her desk was right next to the kitchen). Remember this for what happens later.

At one point, she came down with a mystery illness of fatigue and pain (something I understood quite well even then). So I told her to rest. I had a full time job at that time, so we'd be okay on money if she took some time off. But she insisted on doing a livestream where she did sketches for donations and somehow insisted I was forcing her to work while she was sick. Mind you, I was slowly grinding myself to dust just to keep us afloat. Like ending up at urgent care levels of burnout. But she was the one being forced to work while sick. When I told her specifically not to.

Then there were the friends she'd bring over. They almost unanimously hated me for reasons I couldn't identify. I now suspect Gen was talking about me behind my back, but I have nothing to prove that beyond the way these people I barely knew treated me. But these friends included people like IronSpike and BeesMyGod, who each have their own....reputations in certain circles. At first I made sure I wasn't trying to work so I could be part of the conversation. But they basically pushed me out of it. In my own home. At times it felt like I wasn't allowed to speak. Or what I said was judged as harshly as possible, and dismissed. For the longest time, I thought it was just my anxiety talking. Everything was probably fine. That is, until she brought in the infamous Audrey Redpath. Then it became very obviously not my imagination. I'd start speaking, and Audrey would interrupt me about 80%. It was maddening. I tried talking to Gen about it, and she went full gaslight and said it wasn't happening.

One of these friends also told me it wasn't possible to be abused in any fashion by someone you only knew online, and Gen took her side. The friend insisted there needed to be a physical component for the abuse to be real. Which is just flat out untrue.

Then came the actual breakup. Gen went to see her family in California for 2 weeks in August of 2015. And for the first time since she moved in, I had a nice, long, uninterrupted time alone. It was the time in which I figured out I was trans. At the time it was the most liberating thing to finally accept. Which made it a wee bit awkward when Gen came home with rather feminine gifts for me. Gifts that even in the moment were very much her style and not at all mine.

I knew that when I told her I was trans, it might take some adjustment time. But I wasn't expecting her to be disgusted. Like I tried to hold her hand and she'd rip it away levels disgusted. Then she told me she wanted to break up. I'd not felt comfortable in the relationship for a good long time, so I was okay with that. I even said I was okay continuing to live together until we figured something else out. I was even going to move my desk into my room so she could have the living room to herself (she'd brought the couch with her, and the bed was mine). And yet she had a total breakdown saying that I was somehow forcing her to move out. When was I going to be looped into that decision?

Foolishly, I tried to reason with her and talk through it. She made wild claims about things I'd supposedly done. Remember that being barred from the kitchen thing? Yeah, she said I was forcing her to be my personal maid. Remember the state of the kitchen? She insisted she spent hours every morning just to clean the kitchen because I supposedly refused to do it. I'm not the best at keeping up with dishes, but she physically wouldn't let me do them.

She cited the fact that I "refused" to eat better on her command as part of why she was breaking up with me. Remember how she never did anything to help and just insisted I do it?

When I tried to tell her most of my issues that were actually true (like me not wanting to have sex anymore) were due to dysphoria, depression and anxiety, she called me selfish. And yet she thought I'd just let her keep a phone that I was still paying for (both service and device). I didn't even ask for it immediately and told her to get her own phone plan and to return it to me when she had a replacement. I didn't make her hand it over before she left. But she painted it as me leaving her without a phone.

Though it may seem so, I don't think she dumped me because I was trans. But rather because in coming out I displayed so much more confidence. People who resort so easily to gaslighting hate confidence, because that makes it harder for their tactics to work. I can't say for sure that's what happened, as she claims her family convinced her to break up with me. But she didn't have an issue with me after she came back from her visit until I came out to her.

I'm certain she's told people out there some monstrous things about me. Told them at all the things she gaslit me on were actually true. She so badly wanted me to be a bad person, she insisted I did things that were the polar opposite of what I actually did or said. Not just to other people, but to my face. I genuinely don't know if she was doing it on purpose, or if she'd somehow convinced herself of the things she claimed. But there's no more blatant gaslighting than telling someone "Hey, it's okay. There's no rush. You can take as long as you need. You don't even have to move out" and having them respond with screaming "You're forcing me to move out!"

I unfortunately don't have any receipts for any of this. It's purely my word against hers. And even the most recent events (the post-breakup paypal incident) happened over five years ago. But finding out just how severely bad my asthma really is, and how much its impacted my life has had me thinking about everything that happened. How badly she treated me. At the time we broke up, I was too afraid to say anything. She had a lot of influence over the circles I was in, and I was pretty sure no one would believe me. Or worse, they'd come after me for speaking out. Especially since she had a lot of friends with large followings. But I'm over that. And I'm over staying quiet and playing nice.

Gen treated me like garbage and lied to people about what I did. She pressured me into sex and gaslit me for years. She possibly scammed people, using my name to do it. She was ableist and fatphobic. She dragged my name through the mud to the point that I likely have no hope of ever being part of the local scene of comic artists (especially webcomics).

[badaziraphaletakes]

I'm fascinated by how this person used the word "gaslit" but has zero understanding of how ab*sive situations work.

I'm especially fascinated by how "gaslit" means "manipulated into thinking that something isn't happening" and yet the commenter doesn't see the irony of the fact that they are effectively denying that Aziraphale was being ab*sed and endangered by heaven. Which feels very much like... altogether now!... gaslighting.

[idiopathicsmile]

a horror movie about making a horror movie. wait, don't walk away. a horror movie about one of those grueling seventies productions that broke every OSHA rule—long, exhausting shoots in the middle of the woods, presided over by one of those directors convinced of his own genius and certain the only way to get the performances he needs is to relentlessly isolate and gaslight his female lead. the crew are terrified of the director's outbursts and so are going along with it. there's one other woman in the cast but she plays the one who takes her shirt off earlier in the film and then dies, and the director has done everything in his power to turn these two people against each other, the better to keep his female lead unbalanced and unsure, and when the deeply disquieting scary stuff starts happening for real, the female lead has nobody to confide in and assumes it is the director very characteristically going out of his way to fuck with her. one of the camera operators gets possessed and is being flung around the trees, head spinning as he oozes an acidic black liquid and the female lead is like, "i can't let fucking jerry think he's getting to me." and then—this may be too much, idk—the only way the two actresses can figure out what's really going on is to acknowledge that they've been pitted against each other and that they really don't have any reason beyond this not to trust each other, so they compare notes and that's how they discover that hey, this production actually is cursed.

[bearionette]

Doodled Cyn and Mel together since they share a VA!

Alt Version ⬇️

CW FOR EYESTRAIN

[deadandpink]

[humanitys-strongest-bamf]

you mentioned toxic guild drama from wow?

OH BOY prep for text wall i guess LMAO

tldr; husband and i got a bunch of elitist shit shoved onto us and then quit the guild

so husband and i joined a guild in wow. slowly started doing more things and got promoted to leadership roles (yay)

guild became problematic when they started advertising that we were laid back and prioritized friends more than content progress (through the 20-30 man raids each tier). but this was like NOT the case. people were getting explicitly left out due to "lack of skill" or were getting openly chastised mid-raid and that didn't sit right with me or my husband so we were like, we recruited a bunch of the people that are getting pissed, we can let the die hard try hard group go do their own thing, and we'll set up our own raid to actually make the guild the social, chill guild they claimed to be

unfortunately, allowing for people that weren't as intense as that other group meant slower progress, which got frustrating and it was just kinda left at a "lol sounds like a you problem" by any players (INCLUDING THE OFFICERS) whenever we were chatting about it. this translated over to other content like the 5-man dungeons where those from the "skilled" group would run really hard ones and get achievements and would make it blatantly obvious that it was a chore to play around other players.

anyway, that shit was toxic, but then i specifically got into a spat with another player because she decided to try to gaslight me and my friends into thinking there wasn't an issue (she was part of tryhard team) and then went bitching TO MY HUSBAND about me and how i'm not "allowed" to use the term gaslight on her and i was just like 👁️👄👁️

anyway that pissed me off so i quit the guild and took a bunch of people with me and it was a wonderful decision but i was with them for like 4 years so it did feel a little :/ to leave it all behind

[articus-icecream]

Bad timing ken

[surinnit]

an assortment of ken sketches (+ anatomy practice under the cut)

[badaziraphaletakes]

“I follow ‘all’ GO tags” - *immediately proceeds to accidentally tell on themselves that they don’t follow #BadAziraphaleTakes*💀

I love it when people shoot themselves in the foot like this 😭😭😭

On a more serious note - I’ve decided I’m no longer going to engage with “I haven’t seen any offensive Aziraphale/GO takes” comments as if they are made in good faith. Honestly I don’t know if I should have bothered to do so in the first place.

First of all, anyone who could think “Well, I haven’t seen any offensive behavior in the fandom!” (and all that that implies) is ever an okay thing to say to someone has some serious work to do on themselves.

And second, If you have been in the fandom for twelve months and think you haven't seen any offensive content (hell, if you’ve been in the fandom twelve days and think you haven’t seen any), then you should very seriously consider whether what's actually happening is that you in fact are merely unable to recognize said content when you come across it, and what that says about you.

[lordtardigrade]

I love the idea of John hearing that you want a divorce and just deciding you're clearly not in your right mind and can't be trusted to make decisions for yourself anymore.

When you try to leave him, it’s during a big argument…. A big argument. Things were getting heated, the argument reaching its peak and turning into a screaming match that ended up with the police being called.

He’d seen a chance, and he’d taken it.

He could almost convince himself that what he’d done had been out of genuine concern for you… He knew better, but he couldn’t admit it, not when he’d then proceeded to do far worse with even less justification.

Oh, how you’d glared when he told the officer that he was worried about you- that your behavior was “irrational”.

And it was… at least in his mind. He just didn’t mention specifics, lest the good officers definition of irrationality differ from his own.

Just like how when he’d told the officer about your self harm and suicidal thoughts, he didn’t mention how long ago that had been, nor did he mention the treatment you’d received since then.

And that’s really all it took. From the moment the officer gave John that sympathetic glance, he’d known he’d won. When the man takes John to the side, quietly asking him if he thought you needed to be brought to a facility, John turned, giving you an apologetic look as you glared at him, fists clenched in anger as you silently fumed.

“Yes… I think that would be for the best.” He says softly, faking guilt and internal conflict over the decision.

Seeing the betrayal and confusion in your eyes had almost made him regret it.

Almost.

But he knew this was for the best. You weren’t in your right mind- how else could you say you wanted to leave him?

And the more he repeated those words, the more he came to believe them.

Of course, the involuntary hold would only last 72 hours, and John knew you’d be livid once you got out. He had to make sure he was ready for you to come home. All it had really given him was time.

The emergency conservatorship is surprisingly easy to acquire. Your admittance to the mental hospital combined with you not being able to appear in court and defend yourself made it a relatively easy win.

Getting a proper conservatorship set up would be a bit more difficult of a process, but John had already contacted Nikolai and asked him for assistance with finding a doctor willing to… fudge the truth a bit for the papers. The man’s contacts would also come in hand when it came to getting his hands on some of the medications he’d be keeping on hand until you settled down a bit… just for when you got yourself a bit too worked up.

It’s a rough couple months, because christ- you’re beyond livid with him. Once you finally wear yourself out with all your crying and screaming, John’s left with a sobbing wife who looks up at him with her eyes heart broken from betrayal.

It breaks his heart when you look at him like that, but he has to remind himself, this is all for your sake. You’ll understand that one day.

John takes to his new task of caring for his wife with a steady but firm hand, allowing you to pout and mope for a few weeks as you adjust to what is- admittedly- a big change. It’s only when you turn that anger towards him or bring up wanting to leave that he has to correct you.

When he hands you a cup of water and a little blue pill, you know he’s not asking.

The Midazolam usually does the trick, but occasionally John has to be a bit harsher in his corrections.

He has faith you’ll come around. He doesn’t even hold your behavior against you, his poor wife is dealing with a lot, and if stepping up to take care of you is what he needs to do to keep you with him safe, then that’s what he’ll do.

And when you do finally accept your new life? He couldn’t be happier. He’s so glad you were finally able to move past what he’d done- what had to be done to protect you.

[bleedingpeace]