#the abuse was awful. but the fact that i am an abuse survivor is a neutral fact. the same as any other fact from my childhood

[theygender]

Yeah sure growing up abused may have left me with permanent scars on my psychological state that I'm still working to unpack, but on the bright side it gave me the ability to give a thoughtful in depth analysis of Roald Dahl's Matilda and all of its adaptations

[etz-ashashiyot]

You know how sometimes arguing a point is losing?

Like if you engage the argument at all you are inherently putting up for debate things that should never be up for debate and the argument itself is degrading?

You see this with interpersonal gaslighting:

A gaslighter doesn’t simply need to be right. They also need for you to believe that they are right. In stage one, you know that they’re being ridiculous, but you argue anyways. You argue for hours, without resolution. You argue over things that shouldn’t be up for debate  – your feelings, your opinions, your experience of the world. You argue because you need to be right, you need to be understood, or you need to get their approval. In stage one, you still believe yourself, but you also unwittingly put that belief up for debate. In stage two, you consider your gaslighter’s point of view first and try desperately to get them to see your point of view as well. You continue to engage because you’re afraid of what their perspective of you says about you. Winning the argument now has one objective :  proving that you’re still good, kind, and worthwhile. In stage three, when you’re hurt, you first ask, “What’s wrong with me?” You consider their point of view as normal. You start to lose your ability to make your own judgements. You become consumed with understanding them and seeing their perspective. You live with and obsess over every criticism, trying to solve it.

[Source]

But you also see this on a broader societal level, with people asking unfathomably awful questions about minority groups, such as:

[Source]

It should go without saying, but no group of people should be forced to explain that yes, they really are real people, dickheads. The question doesn't deserve an answer; it deserves at best a disgusted eyeroll + "Are you a Nazi?" and at worst a punch to the face.

There is also the related phenomenon of the "when did you stop beating your wife?" type questions. The question is framed as a yes or no question, but the real answer for the innocent is: "I've never beaten my wife and never would." But even that answer still dignifies the question with a real response and puts the idea in the mind of the listener that hey maybe that's a real possibility and this guy is lying because of course he wouldn't just admit that. Now I don't know what to believe, but I'm skeptical.

Even if he answers, doubt has been cast on his character and many people (maybe even most people) neither have the attention span to listen to his full counter argument and supporting evidence nor are invested enough in strangers' lives to take the time to dig for facts on their own. Critically, it comes from a good impulse that shouldn't be repressed or taken too far in the opposite direction; namely, that we want to believe survivors and make it socially acceptable to speak out about abuse.

This leaves us with the uncomfortable reality that balancing believing survivors and whistle-blowers against not automatically believing allegations that very well may be false and/or in bad faith is a very tricky balancing act indeed. Because of this, people tend to struggle with taking survivors seriously and with presuming innocence until guilt has actually been proven, both. And as for the latter, this is at least partially due to the same psychological factors underlying the Don't Think of an Elephant problem.

Why am I discussing this?

See the thing is that these types of discourse have all been used, heavily, against the Jewish community, especially since Oct 7th, but really going back hundreds of years.

If you want to be our ally, you need to be on guard for how people use this rhetoric to accuse Jews of absolutely batshit cookoo bananas allegations (like being lizard people or having horns, or secretly running the world, or killing Christian babies to use their blood in our matzah, etc. etc.) and get away with it. Now obviously if so many people weren't already racist towards Jews as a people and had a vested interest in maintaining their supercessionist cultural worldview from Christianity and Islam, it would be a lot harder for this to work. Alas, the past 2000 years has created a bit of a snowballing effect.

This culminates in the effect described so well by Sartre:

Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

— Jean-Paul Sartre

Right now, Jews are facing extreme levels of these types of rhetorical abuse, and are receiving very little help in the way of pushback.

We have to stop trying to explain ourselves and start just naming these tactics instead.

[matan4il]

I read an awful article about the rape victims who got pregnant on Oct 7 who are nearing the end of their first trimester.

Hi Nonnie!

My apologies that real life has been so crazy, I only get to answer this at the point when anyone who might have gotten pregnant on Oct 7, is now 4 months pregnant, which from what I understand is normally too late to have an abortion even if she were released today... And these women are not likely to be released anytime soon, if Hamas has anything to say or do about it.

So yes, I am devastated to say that this is a real option. We don't know for sure, but it is a real possibility, that between the weaponized mass rape by Hamas (including gang rapes, as testified to by survivors) that took place on Oct 7, and the on going sexual abuse that kidnapped Israelis have been enduring (and while none of the released Israeli hostages has spoken about being personally sexually abused publicly, we know they have privately, and that all released women in the relevant age group were given pregnancy tests. We don't know what their results were, but they were released much earlier, when abortion would not have been an issue), it is horrifyingly possible. One released Israeli said that she knows some female hostages who are still captive in Gaza were no longer getting their period. This could also be due to malnutrition. Without enough daily calories, the female body will conserve energy by stopping the monthly menstruation cycle. This happened to A LOT of Jewish women during the Holocaust, and is something we talk about when giving tours or lectures that focus on the unique challenges women experienced during that time. That said, I think the horror of the situation is the fact that as these women are not getting their periods, it's either because they're starving, or because pregnancy was forced on them by their rapists, who are also still their captors, and IDK which scenario is worse. One could kill them, the other could destroy them.

There's going to be a new documentary about Hamas' sexual war crimes released soon, I imagine they will touch upon this specific subject, too.

I wish I had some words of comfort to offer, Nonnie. I'm sending all the hugs I have instead... xoxox

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[threwedaway]

TW: SA, ABUSE

Someone said some victim blamer shit in my reblogs and that's an automatic no, but I needed to share... Because what the hell, man?

I got this reblog and I'm trying to keep my composure. This is probably going to be a rambling mess. I was just trying to make a fun little post about HuskerDust, but here we go!

I crossed out the name, because I don't know how old this person is and I don't know what their experiences are.

This will kind of go back and forth between Angel's situation and general information/experience. I think from what I've seen it won't resonate with everyone, but it is definitely within the realm of possibility and makes sense given his circumstances.

I also use the terms victim and survivor interchangeably as a fair warning.

I know there's been a lot of talk around victim blaming and this is blatant.

I'm aware this is a fictional character. I have, however, worked at multiple non-profits that focus on helping survivors of abuse and SA as well as being a victim myself. So, I am pissed beyond belief.

No one lets themselves be abused. Even in situations where someone resigns themselves to abuse, it is for their survival and safety. It is under duress and it is not someone letting themselves be abused. This person says Angel is doing an awful job saving himself, but in all reality he is attempting to keep himself as safe as he can in the environment he's in.

Husk isn't doing everything right and a relationship with the foundation of it being we both suck and we're both stuck in shitty situations isn't going to be stable, but as I said in my original post, he's telling Angel he's not alone. He's not doing that perfectly, but he's saying even if we can't fix everything I'll be here. He says we're in this together, respects that Angel doesn't want to be saved, and he takes the pressure off. He makes himself a safe place for Angel to vent and makes it clear that he enjoys being around him no matter what.

Trying to force someone can push them towards their abuser and isolate them further or put you and the victim in a lot of danger if you're untrained. Which is what happens in the episode when Charlie comes to the studio. Someone tried to help when he didn't ask for it and it ended badly, which just reaffirms that he cannot accept or ask for help without repercussion.

If you have someone close to you who is in an abusive situation and they don't want to leave for whatever reason, applying too much pressure can be counterproductive. If it is safe to do so (mentally and physically), be there for them. Try and keep the line of communication open so they have a life line if or when they're ready.

Angel is under contract, there has been a pattern of abuse for at least a decade, his self worth is extremely low, there are threats of violence against him and people he cares about and Valentino seemingly provided everything before Charlie and is still providing for his drug habits. That's not even getting into the intricacies of the fact he was trafficked, which makes things more complicated.

Aside from the magic piece of paper, these are real reasons people stay in abusive relationships.

My point is, this is uninformed and victim blaming. The amount of times I've heard from survivors all the reasons they didn't ask for help even though it was awful is too many to count. So many people come out of these situations after years and years and blame themselves for not getting help. It is never the fault of the person being hurt, it is always the fault of the person hurting them.

Angel is trying to save himself and is making steps forward. He's going to the hotel, distancing himself from Valentino and he's also trying to 'break himself' or make himself less appealing to his abuser. While that last one isn't good, he's not doing nothing. He is trying to use the resources he knows to stop the abuse.

Autonomy is very important in situations like this. Of course someone in this situation should ask for help, but if someone isn't ready it's not our place to decide that for them.

This struck a nerve obviously!

No one is a bad victim. We do not judge victims choices to ask for help or not ask for help. We do not imply any survivor of abuse lets it happen somehow.

Keep anything close to victim blaming off my blog. All and all, don't put these words in that order! Ever!

[thedreadvampy]

look I do not want to have this argument in the notes of a 5k+ post bc I will get crucified and so will the person who I'm arguing with

but see I made this post about the use of language and said I thought that words like rape or abuse or suicide are extremely necessary and that they can be uncomfortable words but that's because they're uncomfortable things?

someone in the replies said, quote, "that doesn't excuse y'all reblogging this without trigger warnings"

and like, far be it from me, a guy who spent a non-zero amount of time having panic attacks if I saw Chewbacca merch and once had a day-long dissociative episode because I saw someone carrying a guitar, to say what acceptable triggers are or how people should respond to them

but in this instance. I'm pretty clear that yeah actually it does excuse reblogging it without trigger warnings

because in this post I didn't at any point actually talk about rape, abuse or suicide, I talked about the words "rape", "abuse" and "suicide".

in fact in the original post I don't think I want into any more detail than I would in the tags "tw rape" "tw abuse" or "tw suicide"

which gets under my skin, right, because while there's no problem with choosing to trigger tag that post of you think it's helpful, demanding that this is such an Obviously Triggering post there's a moral obligation to tag it (because it contains the Bad Words) is uhhhhh kind of exactly what I'm talking about?

Language here is mistaken for the thing. Saying the word "rape" is construed as unambiguously harmful in a way that talking about rape without naming it isn't.

I have literally heard people begin to describe a rape, a domestic violence case, a murder, a suicide, in those terms - then stop themselves, change their language, and carry on describing these really specific, upsetting experiences with the clear understanding that they've removed the Problematic Part (now that they're saying "special cuddle" and "adult time" instead of "rape").

Part of what I'm reacting against in that post is exactly that - the idea behind the cutesy euphemisms and the censorship of important words like "death" and "rape" (and frankly "lesbian". and "sex" and "kink" and "porn"), which is this tendency to displace the discomfort caused by the word onto the word itself.

Obviously everyone's experience of trauma is different. But as a survivor I'm not triggered or disturbed by the word "rape", I'm triggered and disturbed by the act of rape, and potentially by conversations which describe or explore or evoke that act or experience.

And frankly I find it hard to believe that a significant plurality, let alone a majority, of people with PTSD connected to rape or abuse are so sensitive to the Word Itself that they must be protected from even hearing it named.

I am particularly clear on this with "rape" and "abuse" because, as I said in the post described, those are unambiguously words coined to create purposeful discomfort, because they're words coined to recognise the harm in very common and normalised actions.

If you've experienced rape, abuse, or whatever, and the words alone for those things are deeply distressing, I'm very sorry for you. That must be awful and I wish you well.

But a lot of the time I think when people start linguistically self-censoring (not "you can't talk about this topic without a trigger warning" but "you can't use this descriptive word without a trigger warning") they're not actually reacting to a debilitating trauma response, but to the fact that hearing the word inspires discomfort, because it puts an appropriate amount of weight on the topic.

you have to trigger tag for "suicide" but not for "unalive yourself" "sewerslide" or "kys"

you have to trigger tag for "death" but not for "no longer with us" "left the world" "unalive"

you have to trigger tag for "rape" but let's be honest not for a description of having sex with someone against their will, as long as you don't call it rape.

(btw people will blame this on the Algorithm but it goes back way further, we were having this Acceptable Words Discourse on Tumblr in 2012, you know? it's definitely accelerated by algorithmic control but this list of Bad Words as a shibboleth for Caring About People is old old bullshit)

(also the idea of trigger tagging on the basis of words rather than meaning strikes me as uhhhh suboptimal? especially when it comes to words created to talk about our experiences? like maybe there's a significant textural difference between a post which uses the word "rape" in a list of words that exist, a post saying "if this happened to you it may have been rape," an exploration of survivor feminism and the political positioning of rape, a list of rape prevention and recovery resources, and a graphic rape fantasy. like any of those might be things I don't wanna see, but they're very different in relation to each other and to my trauma, you know? and not wanting to see explicit discussion of rape doesn't necessarily mean not wanting to Ever Hear The Word. but that's another conversation.)

anyway this is all academic frankly because the thing you're objecting to is that the words are in the post. bc again, trigger tags on this post entail Exactly The Same Amount Of Exploration Of These Topic as the post itself

[hideawaysis]

there are so many issues i have with the whole [redacted] thing and how it's being handled. not even going to touch on the callouts and stuff because im obviously anti-callout but like

1. stop making fuckin jokes about it a minor was groomed and people were hurt. this is a serious matter stop treating it so goddamn flippantly. yes i know dark humor is a valid coping mechanism but theres a time and place for that stuff and that is not here

2. stop specifically targeting her for having a noncon kink. the fact that she refused to stop using people's characters for that stuff after they expressed their discomfort isnt okay but like, there is nothing wrong with the kinks she has. it is the fact that she violated people's boundaries and did things without their consent that was bad, not the kink itself

3. stopppp harassing people over this as i said i am very vocally anti-callout and this is why. harassment doesnt solve shit. the person involved in this obviously needs help and therapy to actually change. she is an adult but still young and has spoken about having trauma from csa in the past, and abuse is a cycle that can be broken but can also be perpetrated. this isnt to excuse anything that she's done i think grooming kids is awful as a grooming survivor, but like, punitive justice is shit and doesnt do anything in the long run but teach people to be more sneaky about this stuff. what [redacted] needs here is rehabilitation.

yet again going to reiterate that i don't think csa is acceptable, i just think this whole thing is a fucking disaster and i need to get my thoughts on it out lest my head explodes. tldr stop being fucking deranged about this shit

[thistlecatfics]

Okay, I want your opinion/meta on Sirius and Regulus' relationship. I I am so bad for them, BADD I ship them so much but it's impossible not to given the potential for angst, repressed sexual tension and shekspiarian tinged love that overflows their ship. I read your fanfic of them inspired by Taylor's song and it was very well done, I was very grateful to have found it, however I'm very interested to know your opinion given how unpopular this ship is.

Hello hello!

I started writing, and I realized I could write about these two forever whoops. This is going to a bit scattered, and hopefully I'll just keep adding to it.

Obvious content warnings for incest and underage! (though nothing is explicitly described here)

I don’t think this ship is unpopular at all! Looking at otp:true fics, the Sirius ships in order are: 1) Sirius/Remus, 2) Sirius/James, 3) Sirius/Snape, 4) Sirius/Hermione, 5) Sirius/Harry, 6) Sirius/Regulus. For Regulus it goes: 1) Regulus/James, 2) Regulus/Sirius. For an incest ship, that feels very high. 

They are so captivating! 

"I hated the lot of them: my parents with their pure-blood mania, convinced that to be a Black made you practically royal... my idiot brother, soft enough to believe them... that's him. He was younger than me, and a much better son, as I was constantly reminded."

My idiot brother, soft enough to believe them! “Soft enough!” What a way to describe your brother. Sirius can be so cruel in his words when he wants to be but calling him ‘soft’?? There’s so much tenderness there even when he’s trying to be defended about it. 

I have a number of different versions of them in my head, given that I’m not engaging in a critical reading of the text with regard to their relationship and more of the fact that I’m an incest survivor who has projected onto them as needed throughout the past twenty years. I like canon compliance and being rooted in the text, but I also recognize that most of my impressions of them are more about me and less about the text. 

I love many different versions, but I will say I cannot stand the newly popular fanon (especially in Jegulus circles) where Regulus wants to leave but nobly sacrifices himself to stay and be the heir so Sirius is able to leave the family. 

Regulus and Sirius love each other more than anything. Sirius builds into the core of his identity that he is Regulus’s protector. (When Regulus rejects that protection, he is crushed.) Regulus builds into the core of his identity that he and Sirius are one unit, a soul in two bodies. (When Sirius builds an autonomous identity outside of the family, he is crushed.) They are never quite able to forgive the other (because they are never quite able to forgive themselves for needing the other so much.) 

Here are a few contradictory thoughts and headcanons and ideas: 

Regulus is Walburga’s golden child, and it’s not uncommon for the golden child to be the one who is sexually abused while the scapegoat is physically and emotionally abused. The intimacy of sexual abuse as a marker of goodness and specialness within the abusive family system.  

Regulus is the initiator. The hypersexual kid. His mother uses him to make herself feel good, and Regulus wants to do the same for Sirius, because his mother loves him, and he loves Sirius, and that’s what you do when you love someone so much. 

And Sirius resists… just long enough that he can tell himself he resisted. 

And Sirius steals wine from the adults to share with Regulus so he has something to blame for giving into his desires again and again. 

As he gets older and spends more time with the Potters and in Gryffindor, his behavior with Regulus becomes something he associates with the awfulness of his family which he is trying desperately to reject. 

Regulus tries to initiate. Sirius is quite cruel in his rejection. 

(He returns to Regulus’s bedroom later that night, and he is cruel in how he embraces Regulus, but Regulus is thrilled to be used.) 

Sirius runs away, and Regulus can’t forgive him. Sirius has sex with random older men in Hogsmeade and keeps saying Regulus’s name. Regulus starves himself Seeker-skinny and that’s something to focus on, a disciplining of his desires. 

Then, maybe that’s it for them. Or maybe they come together in the castle by random happenstance or at a wedding of some politically neutral pureblood family, and they both carry too much hurt and a family legacy of cruelty, and they have sex to try to punish themselves and punish the other, and then that’s it for them, because Regulus dies and doesn’t tell Sirius when he defects. They each know that they love the other, but they can't believe that they themselves are loved.

Or maybe, Sirius is the initiator. He holds enough power over Regulus by age and by status of being the heir and by size that it can’t be considered anything other than abuse. Regulus can’t say no to Sirius. Sirius as bully, Sirius as predator. At Hogwarts, this behavior extends to Snape, and Regulus and Snape find each other as two boys who love/hate/desire/fear Sirius. 

Or maybe, the sexual intimacy feels like a natural evolution of their intimacy. Two very sheltered boys growing up in a scary house together which is entirely unsuitable for children. Their emotional worlds only consist of each other, and they sleep in each other’s beds, and the boundaries between one body and another feel impossibly thin. When Sirius is sorted into Gryffindor, it feels like the first tear in their interwoven body. Their sexual behavior towards each other exists as something innocent which can't survive in the real world of an impending war.

I'm feral for these two in every universe <3

My Regulus/Sirius fics: 

what if he's written "Mine" on my upper thigh only in my mind? (1k, after Sirius runs away)

Duty (2k, Regulus Black character study)

My writing on incest and being an incest survivor:

Talking about Incest in Public

[iratusmus]

so bizarre to me when people give fiona a redemption arc like making her evil wasnt literally like the fundamental core of making her an actually interesting character. like . ok actually i was mostly planning on just leaving the post as this but im going to make a proper post whining about this because ive seen it far too often for my liking.

it appears to me that a lot of people do this because they dislike fiona/scourge which is like. sure i get it. but you could literally just... break them up . and have her continue being awful on her own. like scourge is not the reason she switched sides and i find the idea. 1) a bit misogynistic frankly but thats more of a personal gripe than anything else like god forbid a woman make bad choices of her own volition and not because a man forced her hand into doing it (YES i am aware that abuse makes this more complicated than that but also we .... already have a relationship in archie sonic that fits this exact bill. yes it wasnt written well but the wonder of fan works is that you can always make it better. so why are we repeating it again 1:1) and 2) demeaning to the point of her character.

like. ok. lets go over the facts real quick. as a kid fiona got put in robotnik's salt mines and got accidentally left behind bc sonic & co couldnt find her. she realized that nobody was going make the effort to go save her, so she dug herself out and started life on the run as a treasure hunter/thief. she didnt ever really accept the fact that sonic and mighty not saving her wasnt really their fault, and even after becoming a freedom fighter, nobody ever said anything or apologized or said "hey wow that kind of sucks you went through all that". she never really made any actual friends within the ff or formed any meaningful bonds. she starts dating sonic, but its pretty clear that the only reason they're dating is that she's his rebound post The Slap. the moment her history with bean & bark came up - after she used that knowledge to save everybody - sally immediately turns on her and sonic is the only person to try to stick up for her. as bark and bean leave, bean also insinuates that fiona isnt really a freedom fighter, and that she's still basically one of them.

fiona is a "bad" trauma survivor. when i say "bad" i mean in opposition to the ideal tumblr trauma survivor - the sad poor uwu bean whose trauma only inclines them hurt themselves and they become more sympathetic kind etc. as a result. fiona, on the other hand, blames sonic (whose fault this is, frankly, not) for her experiences, and becomes more jaded and mean. she has no real support system and people repeatedly tell her that she hasnt changed and that she wont change and she cant change. shes already got all this baggage by the time her relationship with scourge starts carrying actual weight - he's offering her a way out. if none of them are ever going to really accept her being "good", then she might as well just give into her worst impulses and join hands with scourge, who, notably, has no stake in this - he doesnt have any obligation to be her friend like the freedom fighters, and more than that he likes her specifically because of the part of her that everybody else hates. the important part here is that he encouraged her to switch sides, he didnt make her switch sides.

id say fiona's character in a writing sense is an exploration of the failings of the freedom fighters to support a trauma victim, and how those failings, while unintentional, lead that victim to specifically turn against them. she says "ok actually screw all of you guys" and gives up on trying to be good because nobody ever gave her any real encouragement and decides to put herself on a path of self-destructive revenge and inflicting her misery onto the general population. we can also recall at this point that this motivation is entirely removed from scourge and you can literally break them up and still keep her evil.

the other important point here is that she purposefully chose that path of turning evil as opposed to leaving the freedom fighters or going somewhere else or like literally doing anything else. she literally could have just left but she did not and thats what makes her Interesting. prompted by her unhealed trauma and personal baggage she made those bad choices for herself, and frankly i cannot for the life of me understand why people think that walking back that character development (and yes i mean character development. character development can also mean getting worse) for ..... what. snarky but with a heart of gold generic protagonist girl? come on guys

[rhythmantics]

what the FUCK do you mean you wrote two of the best prototype fics AND drew some of the best art. illegal

seriously though i am in love with your characterisation, especially of all three mercer siblings. frankly your version of dr mercer is the best ive seen in the entire fandom lmao

Thank you! I'm really glad you're enjoying that terrible bastard of a man. Dr. Mercer enjoyers unite. We love this evil skinny twink

Thoughts about Mercer sibling characterization + themes of the game (under a cut because it's VERY LONG):

The thing I try to stress when writing Doc Mercer (hereto referred to as "Xander") is that yes, he is a narcissistic, vain, arrogant bastard of a man, generally irredeemable, with extremely loose and/or nonexistent morals and a terrible personality.

However, [PROTOTYPE] is a game where most of the characters are some level of fucking awful and monstrous, but their motivations are still explored, and sometimes even still justified. I mean, Alex eats people. Randall was on his way to nuke Manhattan. Blackwatch regularly laughs at being able to murder innocent civilians. A powerful moment in some of the WOI's is Blackwatch gleefully discussing killing people, while the visuals show a camp on a rooftop where the survivors have written a big "NOT INFECTED" in a bid to not be murdered by Blackwatch.

Still, there's nuance there. Alex may grow a conscience and save New York, but he's still, you know, a walking viral apocalypse that both eats people and enjoys it/thinks it feels "right." Blackwatch murders all the people they want, but at the end of the day, they ARE the line that stands between humanity and viral apocalypse. And Randall might even be justified in nuking Manhattan if it means taking Alex out, because - you know - walking viral apocalypse (and for all Randall knows, ZEUS only killed Elizabeth to establish his dominance as hive queen supreme). I don't see why Doc Mercer should be exempt from that nuance, but he so very often is.

So that as my starting point, what do we know about Doc Mercer? Well, mostly from the PRIMA guide, we have his backstory. This backstory is so hilariously awful that I legitimately don't think I'd believe you if you told me he wasn't supposed to be sympathetic.

Xander's mom is thrown in jail right after he's born, no other family is willing/able to take him in, so he's thrust into the foster care system (no father is EVER mentioned, ever)

To make matters worse, Dana's bio mentions that she moved "to New York" to follow her brother, implying that they aren't NY-born, which further implies that they're from NEW FUCKING JERSEY LOL (it's only like, an hour's bus away from Columbia U, where Xander went to college)

Xander is kicked around foster care system like a hot potato until mom is released from jail. Seems like she either got pregnant right at the end of her stint, or right as she got out; he's 10 when she regains custody of him, but 9 when Dana is born.

Dana's bio says "[Xander] was the only parent figure Dana ever knew." It also said their mother had "drinking problems." Xander raised Dana to the degree that she literally doesn't even see her mom as a parent.

"For [Xander], foster care was better." Yikes. That's definitely an implication of abuse (if the parentification weren't enough). What kind of abuse? Well, they're often bundled together, but we can make a Strong Case for extreme violence at minimum, given the following:

What was mom in jail for? A 9-year sentence implies a second-degree crime, which, uh... take your pick: aggravated assault, aggravated arson, theft of an item more than 75k$, armed burglary or burglary that results in injury or threats of injury, unlawful possession of a firearm, sexual assault. Yikes

Bio outright describes it as living in "abject poverty," so with the fact that he was LITERALLY the only parent Dana knew (a role he was forced into starting at the age of TEN), as soon as he was legally able, he probably had to take on a job in addition to school and childrearing.

Given the "abject poverty" angle, I find it doubtful that he was able to leave home until he graduated, especially given that a commute from Jersey to Columbia U could be as short as an hour. Since he graduated from his PhD at the age of 24, that means he was Dana's parent until she was fifteen. 3/4 of her life by the time of the game.

Needs to be stressed: this man changed her diapers, warmed up her formula, cooked meals for her, helped her with homework, taught her sex-ed and what puberty was, helped her get her first job, taught her how to apply for college. He is, for all intents and purposes, Dana's father. (Put a pin in that!)

Like... holy shit! This is a sympathetic character! I don't know how anyone would be able to read that in isolation and not feel bad for this guy. I mean, this is a person who has literally ALL the trauma. Like, he's in the 99th percentile of worst childhoods in America. This boy has collected PTSDs like they are pokemon.

The PRIMA guide literally says that, at the end of all that, he "trusted no one, had no friends, cared less and less what others thought of him," and was an "impatient, dark, tortured person" with a history of burning bridges. "Forever paranoid," "morally ambiguous," and "teetering on the border of sociopathy" are also used to describe him, and - yeah, of course! I mean, did you SEE his backstory? Holy shit.

And what really fascinates me about this is that, even under those circumstances? He was probably the best parent he could have been to Dana. She literally sees him as one, stuck around NYC for five years because he was just that important to her, and trusts and cares for him so deeply that she's willing to risk her life for him/willing to forgive Alex ranting about how eating people "feels right."

Some people argue that he was using Dana as a pawn, or manipulating her, etc. etc., and I really dislike this take (though, of course, everyone's entitled to their own HCs etc., especially because a lot of the PRIMA stuff was clearly rewritten by the time of the game's release). First, I think that a working college girl with a fiery personality like Dana would not have stuck around for FIVE YEARS if she didn't feel like Xander deserved it - and given that he was also ghosting her for those five years, any manipulation he had her under would have worn off. Like, it's REALLY HARD to gatekeep gaslight girlboss someone if you're no-contact with them. Also, are you trying to tell me that an eleven-year-old boy was looking at a literal 2 year old going "yes... I will raise her to trust me absolutely... as a tool for me to use in the future... and then completely ignore her calls for 5 years!" C'mon.

But the second, and more important, reason I don't agree with that take is that I feel like it strips Dana of agency and reduces her to this almost damsel-like role. Nah, man, even if Xander was not her brother/dad, she would have risked her life to help him out. Why? Because she's a fucking anarcho-socialist journalism student, that's why!

Her PRIMA bio is really interesting in that regard; I feel like the game didn't show off well enough just how awesome Dana actually is. She's studying journalism at NYU. You may have heard that her job is "writing tabloids," but that's such a simplification/misunderstanding of the text! We actually have the titles of the publications she writes for, and they are: "Everything You Know Is Wrong", "Bathsheba", and "The Military/Industrial Complex Report." Even just from that small glimpse (and the fact that she calls Blackwatch "goose-stepping motherfuckers"), I think it's evident that she's got some deeply anti-government, anti-military, anti-fascist beliefs.

Furthermore, Dana is like... kind of a terrible person. Here's a great excerpt from her bio that I feel like isn't talked about enough (emphasis mine):

"She owes money all over town, and somehow manages to sweet talk friends into lending her more. She's a hustler, good at manipulating people. Like her brother, she's narcissistic and evasive. When she doesn't like someone she'll go out of her way to make sure they know it - particularly if they push the point. She's disrespectful, foul-mouthed, and not afraid of a fight. This all serves her well when she's neck-deep in a story, but in real life, her kind of behavior only makes her one thing: enemies. In short, she's her brother's sister."

Guys, I am not normal about that last sentence. It's phrased the same way as "she's her mother's daughter" or "she's her father's son." Like. Oh my god, Xander is basically her dad.

But back on topic: Dana is characterized as a BADASS BITCH who doesn't take shit from ANYBODY and is ALREADY anti-government. She literally calls the Blackwatch shit "the story of the century." She would have taken that case on even if it weren't her brother presenting it to her, no manipulation necessary.

AND she knew the risks. I've seen it argued that Xander's to blame for "tricking" her into investigating something that put her life in danger, but I think that's unfair to him. First, I think Blackwatch would've investigated and/or disappeared Dana either way, given how trigger-happy they are. Second, she knew the risks - that's why she was using her friend's penthouse apartment as a safehouse. She was prepared to risk her life for this story; BW just moved faster than she anticipated and ambushed her at her apartment.

(And, also, like, just as an aside, we don't know if she had permission to be in her friend's place, and given her PRIMA bio, she probably didn't, like she just full-on broke into her friend's really nice apartment LOL probably even chose the friend with the nicest digs LOL)

This also serves as such an interesting glimpse into not only her and her brother's relationship, but her brother's characterization. We already know that Xander possesses good social skills to some degree, given that he has a girlfriend who was willing to risk her life for him (she went back to the lab to get something for him, which is how she got caught - let's ignore for now the ethics of dating his subordinate); he also climbed the ranks at his job, rising to Associate Director (McMullen's direct subordinate) sometime within only five years.

Dana's bio, however, confirms it. Every description of her personality becomes associated with Xander with the phrase "she's her brother's sister." Xander is a hustler; he's manipulative and gets people to do what he wants. Xander is evasive, disrespectful, and lets people feel it when he doesn't like them. Xander makes enemies. BUT.

Even in the midst of all that - his paranoia, the fact that he's having a freak-out because his coworkers are being "silenced," and that he ghosted Dana for five years in an effort to leave the past behind him... who does he trust to have his back? Dana. I need you guys to understand. He doesn't go to Dana because she's an easy tool for him to manipulate. He goes to Dana because he's scared for his life and she is the only person he trusts. I think there's a reason Alex latches onto her when he learns she exists, and part of it is definitely because the scaffold he's built on, the original Dr. Mercer, viewed Dana as unconditionally trustworthy. The feeling is mutual.

And just in case you needed some sort of in-game proof? He has at LEAST two photos of Dana on his foyer wall. Legit. Go back and rewatch that cutscene when Alex walks into Xander's apartment. He has 2-3 photos of Karen... and 2-3 photos of Dana. He's been ghosting Dana, but he keeps photos of her on his wall, where he sees them every day, right next to where he works. One of the Dana photos is also the only photo that Xander is not in. I just... he loves his sister. He's just too mentally ill to be normal about it and keep in contact.

So, we have here pretty much Xander's ONLY redeeming quality: cares about his sister! That's it. That's all he's got. Let's talk about some other irredeemable stuff.

So far, I've talked a lot about the PRIMA guide, but now I'm going to talk about what's in the actual game, because it's quite interesting, and I don't think all of it made it into the fandom zeitgeist. It's too bad, because this one major fact really adds a shitton of nuance to this character:

Xander was out of the loop.

Xander did not know anything about Hope, Idaho. Xander did not know that Blackwatch existed. Xander didn't even fucking know that his human test subjects were deliberately infected. Within day one, Alex knows more about the conspiracy surrounding Blacklight than Xander ever did. And we know exactly how much he knew about the virus because he mailed Dana a laptop containing everything he was able to find, and it pretty much got as far as "MOTHER is named Elizabeth Greene" and "Hope, Idaho existed...?" We have a WOI where Randall expresses concern over even giving Xander access to MOTHER, and a WOI where Xander is pissed the hell off when he finds out that their human subjects were not naturally infected. He didn't know!

That suddenly casts his role in Blacklight's production in a much less nefarious light. Look at this job from Xander's point of view: You're a 24 year old who completed an 8-year college run (undergrad and PhD) in six years, WHILE raising a teenage girl and probably while working, too. At graduation, you get offered this insanely cushy job, with a threat that you'll be blacklisted from the industry if you refuse (this literally happened to Dr. Ragland, according to his PRIMA bio). It's a top-secret government job. The government's not great, but you have loose morals, and it can't possibly be worse than Albert Einstein building the atom bomb. So. Whatever.

(On top of that, they're already lying to you abour what the project's purpose is. Xander states he "didn't know" what he was working on until he "figured it out," and there's a WOI where one employee raves that the virus could be used to cure every disease on earth. It seems there was a general vibe that they were probably working bio-weapons, but no one knew FOR SURE, and a contributor to Xander's meltdown is the fact that his research results just... vanish. He doesn't know what they're being used for.)

Plus, holy shit, the pay. Xander is making, like, seven figures by the time he's 29. He lives in an apartment on the Upper East Side (where Gossip Girl takes place lol). The average price for a one-bedroom there is, like, 4000$ a month. This man spent 24 years in brutal poverty; the money matters to him.

On top of that, the stuff they're doing at GENTEK? Of course, it's stomach-turning, but it wouldn't clock as inherently unethical. Xander's fury at learning that MOTHER was a test subject, and not naturally infected (as he's been led to believe), implies that they were NOT infecting people at GENTEK. The bodies we see in WOI, their test subjects, were already infected by the time they got there, supplied to GENTEK with a cover story, that the virus was one they'd found naturally, and that these people - whose brains were fried by the virus - were just unlucky victims of random happenstance. Furthermore, making viruses more dangerous is legitimate virology. It's called "gain-of-function" experimentation, and while it is controversial (for obvious reasons), it's still something you would potentially be doing at an above-board lab.

That means that, prior to Penn Station, the worst Xander can be accused of is being a bootlicker, class traitor, who knowingly worked on WMDs for the US government. And yeah, that is monstrously evil, and Albert Einstein is a monster by that metric, but it's a level of evil that's matched or surpassed by almost every other character in the game. Dana and Ragland are the two exceptions, maybe Karen too, depending on whether you think her low hierarchical position absolves her of any sin. McMullen and everyone at Blackwatch are all more culpable than Xander. They're the ones giving him orders - he's the low man on the totem pole!

And his reaction upon realizing how deep the rabbit hole goes? It's not asking to join up with the evil side. It's not going out to do a terrorism (even if that's how it ends up). It's blowing the whistle. His first instinct is to go to his sister, the anti-government, anti-military journalism student. And as he spirals into panic and anxiety, it's to escape the city, while warning someone - probably Dana - to "get out of there". Even McMullen says, when Alex confronts him, "you were always so smart. You were ready to give up all our secrets. [...] We were trying to figure it out -- you just wanted to bring it all down." The class traitor was about to redeem himself. His motivations might still be selfish - to punish the people who lied to him, to save his own ass - but he's not a cartoon villain.

It's only after he's cornered, staring down guns, realizing that all his efforts were futile, possibly even realizing that Dana is next, that he smashes the vial. AND EVEN THEN... I think we're supposed to understand why he did it. Not sympathize, necessarily, but... look at his life. Abandonment, abuse, parentification. Skipping meals to make sure Dana can eat. Running on a sleep deficit because homework has to be done after helping Dana with hers after coming home from work after going to school. His wealth and girlfriend are hollow victories when he can't trust people enough to make friends. He loves his sister, enough to keep her photos on his foyer wall, but can't bear engaging with her as an adult on equal footing. He thought he'd finally caught a break, only for it to turn out to be a death trap from the start. Yes, choosing to smash the vial was an irredeemable action, a selfish, vindictive, and evil choice; however, I don't think he could have chosen differently. Dr. Mercer was not necessarily intended to be a sympathetic character (although he was), but he was certainly, bare-minimum, intended to be a tragic one.

It seems like the game went through several rewrites, and those rewrites confuse a pretty major plot beat: does the virus Xander releases at Penn Station burn itself out, or does it go on to become the main virus on the streets of Manhattan? This question, and where you personally fall on it, is really important. And that's because... if the virus burns itself out in Penn Station (which apparently the writer confirmed on Twitter, but there's evidence in the game to suggest the opposite), then that means Xander has one of the lowest body counts in the game.

Yeah, you heard me. Let's say the virus burns itself out in Penn Station. How many people would that even be? A few thousand? In 2009, Penn Station served about 300,000 people per day. That is really busy, but obviously, not all of those people - or even a majority of those people - are going to be in the station at any given time. It's probably a number around four digits. Um, how many people does Alex kill over the course of the game, again? Obviously, the in-game kill counts can't exactly be trusted, because you can rack up millions depending on how much you fuck around, but it's generally agreed that he's in the tens of thousands, between all the military bases he destroys, civilians he eats, and soldiers he cuts through. Randall has been confirmed to have ordered the glassing of both Hope, Idaho, AND Two Bluff, Arizona, with an attempt on Manhattan. (Cross also mentions a Kentucky in one of the cut lines, implying there's more cities and casualties than we even know about.) There are 1.6 million people living in Manhattan in 2009, so Randall was about to kill, like, a thousand times more people than Xander.

It also means he never put Dana in danger. If it's a virus that burns out on its own, he - the person whose work was "years ahead of his nearest competitor" - would know that it wouldn't reach her. And it would make sense if it burns out, too, because it's a bio-weapon. Not a great bio-weapon if it causes a a whole-ass apocalypse! And I also don't think it's fair to blame Xander for Alex letting Elizabeth Greene out of her cage, because by that point, 1) Xander is dead, 2) Dana sent Alex there, 3) Alex is a fully sapient and independent being who is not under Xander's orders because Xander is dead. I mention this because I've literally run into people who believe that the virus burned itself out at Penn Station, BUT ALSO that Xander releasing the vial directly put Dana in danger of infection AND that Elly's rampage is somehow his fault. You can't have it both ways!

That's actually why I don't believe that the virus burned itself out. Narratively and thematically, it's much better if Xander did release his virus knowing that it might cause a full-on apocalypse. That does make it so that he risked his sister's life (although you can argue that he figured she was as good as dead, anyways, given that they'd tracked him down - I don't, since I think he was too busy panicking and being sleep-deprived to be thinking about that), and it DOES make the entire ensuing tragedy his fault. And the reason that this is important is because of Xander's role as a "father" to Alex.

Here's something else that's important to note, which I often see overlooked: Alex places the blame on the shoulders of Randall, not Xander. "You bastard," he says after he's eaten Randall. "You could have stopped all this - you let it happen." Meanwhile, here's what he actually says about Xander: "what Mercer did is beyond forgiveness," and at the end of the game, "Alex Mercer. This city suffered for his mistakes, for what he did at Penn Station. And whoever he was - that's a part of me." We aren't supposed to think he's unilaterally evil without nuance. Pretty much everyone, Alex included, has done things "beyond forgiveness" in this game. We're instead supposed to ponder what it means to be derived from his stock.

What is Alex's characterization? To be frank, Alex is a dumbass baby. I know that this is not necessarily popular, but I genuinely believe that it's intentional. There are literally cut lines from the very first mission that REALLY drive home that this poor guy has NO IDEA what's going on. Begging people to stop shooting at him, thinking to himself "where's a place with a lot of people?" (honey, you're in NYC), and generally going "what was that? how did this happen? what's going on? what? huh? what?"

There's also needing Ragland to suggest to him the novel idea of breaking both spines on the leader hunters, and following Phone Voice into a death trap, and then still listening to Phone Voice a second time, not to mention how awkwardly he shrugs his way out of Karen Parker's hug, or how he's constantly pushing himself all the way into Dana's personal space/startling her/disappearing while no one's watching. There's a point where his brilliant plan for getting McMullen to land is to disable some infection detectors... while standing ankle-deep in biomass... looking up at McMullen. He's just, ah, ehm... not the sharpest tool in the shed. If you replay the game with that in mind, it... yeah. I mean. His first instinct upon being attacked by helicopters is to go up onto the roof of a building, where he is surprised by... more helicopters. Who left this child unattended? Where are your guardians.

I know I'm exaggerating - Alex does show remarkable flexibility and adaptability and on-the-fly problem-solving sometimes - but when the PRIMA bios and McMullen repeatedly stress that Xander is clever, manipulative, a schemer, a hustler, "so smart," it really highlights how... straightforward Alex is in comparison. You cannot tell me that Alex, as he's presented in-game, is "a lateral thinker - plans within plans."

And the interesting thing is, this actually seems like a fairly late-stage change! The original PRIMA guide blurb for "The Prototype" seems to suggest that he is actually an amnesiatic Dr. Mercer, not a wholly separate entity. It goes on and on about how "The Prototype" is cool, calm, dry and witty, always in control of his body, etc. etc., but that really doesn't match the in-game characterization at all (he's consistently characterized as awkward, unsure of himself), meaning that I think this is more proof that a characterization as "fucking idiot dumbass baby" was intentional.

Sampling of cut voice lines:

"Ghost Twelve, Ghost Twelve... oh, shit, that's my callsign..."

"Aw, I hate D-Codes..."

"They think I'm dead. Perfect. I can't wait to see the look on McMullen's face."

"I need to get somewhere with a lot of people... somewhere where they can't just keep firing at me."

"Where is there a lot of fucking people? Where?" (girliepop you live in NEW YORK)

"Just remember! This was your idea!"

like. cmon, man.

That being said, Alex is not innocent. He starts the game without a conscience, easily and effortlessly killing people, instinctively eating them, too. He's quite literally built upon two existing minds - the people-eating virus, and the sociopathic misanthrope. I think this is why he defaults to shoving people and has no option to put them down gently - he's filled with Xander's rage, his hatred, and his casual cruelty. One of his earliest lines is this: "revenge was the only clear thought in my head. The only one I could call mine." LITTLE DOES HE KNOW. He continues. "I wanted to find out what happened to me. The reason. Someone to blame. Someone I could punish."

And now we get into a major theme of the game, my thesis: [PROTOTYPE] is about family. It's about nature vs. nurture, it's about the cycle of abuse, and it's about how the people who raise us, shape us. Xander is the "father" of this story; he's consistently placed in that role relative to Dana, and Alex directly inherits his genetics, his appearance, his name, and even his initial personality from him. And as for the mother... there is literally a character in the game named MOTHER.

Alex is, in a very literal way, the child of Xander and Elizabeth Green. He was born out of a fusion of their DNA - the virus infecting Xander's body. Elizabeth also literally says "I am your MOTHER" in their first meeting. And as if that weren't enough, Elizabeth's relationship to Alex directly mirrors Xander's relationship with his own mother: the first thing Elizabeth does is abandon Alex, and when she returns, it's only to threaten Dana's safety and torment him. Xander himself becomes a mirror to his own absent father, disappearing before he ever got to know his son. This is the cycle of abuse, the tragedy that occurs when someone who was abused becomes trapped by it, and has no ability to operate outside its confines, perpetuating the pain that was inflicted upon them.

However... something's different. Alex is not left alone to suffer like Xander does. He has Dana - a parental figure who loves him unconditionally, whom he loves unconditionally in turn. And she is the impetus for his ability to change, the one who most directly molds his burgeoning consciousness. His interactions with Dana are brief, but even in those brief interaction, she teaches him empathy ("my god, [Elizabeth]'s just a girl. What kind of fucking monsters are these people?"), kindness/mercy ("whoa, whoa, whoa. [Ragland]'s a good guy"), and trust ("look, no matter what, you're still my brother"). Let's go back to our pin. Xander is Dana's "father" also... and he was the best one she could have had, given the circumstances. Dana represents breaking the cycle. Dana represents Xander's single redeeming quality.

In other words... the key difference between Alex and Xander is that Alex has an adult figure in Dana that he can trust and rely upon, something Xander never had... because Xander was that for Dana. Xander broke the cycle. That's the one good thing he managed to do.

Now, we know that lots of rewrites happened, that final boss stuff got shifted around, and things got moved into a sequel hook, like Dana's fate or PARIAH's whole deal. However, I think we can almost piece together what it might have been if we follow this thematic line of thinking. Because here's something quite interesting: PARIAH... is in foster care. A child who kills everything he touches, abandoned and trapped, a monster, whose only use is as an agent of evolution, a direct parallel for Xander at his worst - this tortured man who "found solace only in his work", for whom foster care was better, who teetered on sociopathy and didn't care. Randall represents the government, the system, that put him there - the first ones to ever screw Xander over. So if we assume that the final boss was originally PARIAH, and Alex still needs to eat his way through Elizabeth and Randall to get to him, then an incredibly interesting thing happens when we view that sequence of events from this thematic perspective.

Alex would triumph over MOTHER, the government, and Xander's worst. The crystallization of the fleeting love within Xander's heart - the one redeeming facet of Xander's personality - would overcome his abusive mother, the cold-hearted system that forsook him, and even his own worst traits, the monster he was molded into. Quite literally, love would win. And I think this would have even tied in to curing Dana - that this would become a major facet of Alex's motivation - that he'd need PARIAH in order to cure her, or something like that. Dana - kindness, empathy, and love, breaking the cycle of abuse - becomes the impetus for Alex to change, to become a better person, to grow a conscience, to trust others. I think that's the central theme of this game.

Xander's shadow looms large over the entirety of [PROTOTYPE]'s story. There are more themes than just family, but it's the one I wanted to highlight, because I think it's the one most central, most core to the game's emotional experience. At every turn, you can feel the ghost of Xander - not just because Alex is literally wearing his corpse.

I'll restate here the relevant parts of Alex's closing monologue:

"I looked for the truth. Found it. Didn't like it. Wish to hell I could forget it. Alex Mercer. This city suffered for his mistakes, for what he did at Penn Station. And whoever he was - that's part of me."

Xander is Alex's father - the person from whom he inherited his base nature. But Alex is able to grow beyond that - to trust others, to love others.

"What have I become? Something less than human. But also something more."

Xander was so tormented by his past, by his abandonment, neglect, and abuse, that he was unable to face his sister. Terrified of the pain of abandonment, he chose to abandon her rather than risk being rejected when she became an adult. And yet, he loved his sister. That's the nuance of this character, the legacy he leaves. One of cruelty, but also one of kindness. Both are inherited by Alex - it's fair to say that everything Alex is has been shaped by Xander, his father. The bad... but also the good. And it is because of that miniscule, faltering, fleeting "good" that Xander was able to procure, that Alex is able to rise above what Xander became.

TL;DR: It would be appropriate, both narratively and thematically, to call Xander "daddy".

[alexmeeksmartin]

chosen family - pt i

pairing(s): wes hicks x male reader, slight chad meeks-martin x male reader

synopsis: the one where y/n roberts, survivor of the 2011 woodsboro massacre and brother of ghostface killer, jill roberts, is roped into another string of murders when his friend, tara carpenter, is attacked by someone taking on the moniker

a/n: new series! not sure if i’ll end up finishing this, but i would like to at least do a couple parts! hope u enjoy <3

wc: 1.9k

it was more than enough to struggle with the fact that your sister, jill roberts, had decided to stab you alongside your mother when you were only eight years old. ironically enough, your fame-hungry sister’s sickening plot to become a sole survivor is what thrust you into the limelight. for years, the media hounded you about the ghostface killings of 2011. it took you forever to get a group of friends who wouldn’t try abuse your connections. you were finally in a stable position…

…but now some fucker had decided to put on that damned mask and go stabbing again.

“that was sam.” your boyfriend, wes, let everyone know. you were all together, minus tara, obviously. you, wes, chad, mindy, amber, and liv. and nobody was taking this seriously, not even you at this stage. none of you had really processed it all properly yet.

you watched as amber’s interest was immediately piqued. “she’s coming?”

“yeah.”

“watch everything get worse.” amber says with a sigh, clearly unhappy about sam’s upcoming return to woodsboro.

“listen, all i’m saying is, with everything going on right now, i think it’s time we take our relationship to the next, most intimate level!” chad pleads with liv, doing his best to convince her.

“yuck.” you add across from the happy couple.

“it’s fine, y/n. he only wants me to accept his ‘find my fam’ request.” liv explains to you, removing the expression of disgust from of your face.

“it’s the smartest option with a would-be killer on the loose. you know exactly where i am and i know exactly where you are.” chad continues, building up his case.

“aw, you can stalk me like a jealous boyfriend.” liv giggles.

“and you can stalk me like a jealous boyfriend.” chad jokes as you and mindy make eye contact, signalling to each other your repulsion towards chad and liv at that moment in time with just one look of your eyes. it’s funny how much two best friends can say in just a glance.

“is this because you two aren’t having sex yet?” amber bluntly asks, looking between the two of them.

“you actually bring up a very good point! not that i want to sound like a stereotypical jock, trying to get into his girlfriend’s pants-“

“great!” liv says, stopping chad.

“come on, wes, you get what i mean?” chad asks, trying unsuccessfully to get some back up, but you shoot wes a death stare, making him think carefully about his next words.

“absolutely not. i wouldn’t dare.” wes begins, clarifying that he doesn’t agree with chad to you before moving onto liv, “don’t do it, liv, there’s some pyscho out there. you make yourself harder to find. delete social media, tape over your phone camera, disable gps-“

“yes, thank you very much, edward snowden.” chad says, cutting wes off. “actually, your mother just interrogated me about tara’s attempted murder.”

“i’m sure she’s asking everybody, i mean, ghostface is back.” wes responds. a chill goes down your spine at the very mention of the masked murderer.

“she hasn’t asked me.” you chuck into conversation, noticing how the sheriff hadn’t even seemed to have looked your way yet.

“yeah, because you’re like sheriff riley’s adoptive son. plus, you and her went through the same thing.” liv says.

“ex sheriff riley.” mindy adds, “also, the press still isn’t saying ghostface.” and another chill.

“my mom doesn’t want to cause a panic.” wes explains.

“it’ll get out by the second or third killing.” mindy says, nonchalantly.

“mindy, come on.” you say. you loved her, but her insensitivity could be an issue on occasion.

“jesus, mindy, there wasn’t a first killing. tara’s still alive.” amber says, slightly angry.

“that means she could still die.”

“what the fuck?” amber is progressively getting more and more agitated at this conversation, you note.

“or the killer could come back for her.”

“fuck, mindy!” chad says as you screw your face up, “come on.”

“i’m just telling you, arm up, okay? pepper spray, check, taser, check-“ wes lists off his weapons.

“y/n in the bedroom repellent, check.” amber cuts in, laughing at him.

“again, ew.” you say, turning away from amber to wes, “i’m glad you’re keeping yourself safe.” you smile at your boyfriend.

“keeping us safe.” he says, pulling you into his arms.

“oh, shit, is that… vince?” liv asks.

“wait. that creep you hooked up with last summer?” chad asks liv, concern immediately showing on his face.

“yeah, he worked with me and tara.”

“he worked with tara?” amber asks inquisitively.

“he’s been stalking my instagram the last couple weeks, posting the creepiest shit.” liv adds.

“probably time to introduce him to hobbs and shaw.” chad says, flexing his biceps.

liv puts his arm down to his side. “maybe not the best idea to incite violence right in front of the sheriff. looks like he’s leaving.”

“plus, i don’t think ‘hobbs and shaw’ are scaring anyone with names like that.” you say, laughing at chad.

“oh, please. you’d love to take hobbs and shaw for a spin.” chad retorts, smiling back at you.

“tara says she fought back hard. you’ve got bruises.” amber states, observing chad’s somewhat battered and blue arms.

“from football practice.” he says, defending himself.

“oh, sure-“

“tara’s awake! she just texted.” wes says, his face lighting up. “i’m going to the hospital, you guys coming?”

mutters of ‘yes’ and ‘sure’ are said by your friends, but what stands out is liv saying: “i can’t, but i’ll meet you guys later.” another thing to take mental note of.

“alright, i’ll see you later.” chad says, kissing liv on the cheek goodbye. you wait up for chad as wes, mindy, and amber walk on ahead and descend into playful conversation him.

you were all gathered in tara’s room at the hospital, with wes’ arm draped around your neck as you sit on the chair right beside tara’s bed. amber stands over you with a very concerned look on her face as the twins make small talk on the other side of the room.

the door opens, and everyone looks to it. sam. sam and- who?

“you came.” tara says with a small smile.

“of course i came.” sam says, giving her sister a very gentle and light hug. “this is my boyfriend, richie.”

that explains who the random guy is.

“it’s so nice to meet you, i’m so sorry if i’m intruding.” richie says to tara.

“nice to meet you too.”

“hi. thank you for calling.” sam says, giving wes a hug.

“of course.”

“look at your hair! i like it.” sam compliments, ruffling your boyfriend’s hair like she’s his mother.

you get up and embrace sam. god, you’d missed her. even though she had her own shit going on, she never failed to be the big sister you wish you had - a loving, protective figure. not jill.

“these are chad and mindy, the twins, wes, and y/n. i used to babysit them all.”

“which is always how i like to be introduced.” wes says, to which you let out a slight laugh.

“and amber.” sam finishes her introductions, locking eyes with the dark haired girl. “hey.”

“hi.” you can feel the tension radiating between them. they do not like each other at all. “nice to see you.”

“hi, um, i’m richie.” richie says, amber looking him up and down. you weren’t too sure if you liked the guy either, seemed a bit fidgety. maybe just nerves, with ghostface going around and all.

“hi.” amber says.

“where’s mom?” sam asks tara, a worried expression crossing her face.

“she’s stuck in a conference in london. she called me earlier.”

“yeah, for all of ten minutes.” amber adds with a judgemental tone to her words.

you look over at tara, who looks tired out of her mind, probably from the painkillers. as someone who had been in a similar position, you knew that it’d be best to make an exit right about now. not only that, the reality of the situation was starting to kick in now. how were you all going to navigate this and stay safe?

“guys, maybe we should give tara a little space. getting a bit crowded in here.” you say, concerned for tara.

your friends respond with a chorus of ‘yeah’s, and you all begin to head for the door.

“not you, sam. i want you to stay.”

“okay.” sam says, sweetly smiling at her sister before sitting herself back down.

“but the rest-“ chad says, looking back to you, mindy, and wes affirming that you guys should go.

you all walk outside of the hospital, and it’s really starting to hit you now. this couldn’t be happening again. you couldn’t lose anyone else to some stupid fucking legacy. to ghostface. you lost your mother, your aunt, and even your sister - all because a pair of stupid, deranged, psychopathic men picked up some halloween mask in 1996. it wasn’t fair.

you start to walk slightly ahead of the group, with none of their conversation registering in your mind. tears start to form in your eyes as you hear them calling out your name. this isn’t fair. you don’t deserve this. tara doesn’t deserve this. nobody deserves this.

you’re brought out of your trance when you feel mindy’s hand touch your shoulder as she walks in front of you.

“hey, you good?” she asks, but sees the tears in your eyes. you shake your head, and she turns to the boys and amber. “we’ll just see you guys at the bar later, okay?”

“you sure? i can stay.” wes says, but you turn around to speak to them.

“no, it’s fine. i’m fine. i’ll see you guys later.” you say, putting on your bravest face and best smile for them. you can tell they’re not quite buying it, but they know mindy’s got you so they keep walking. you see chad turn back multiple times to check on you again, and can tell amber and wes are already bickering again by the time they get in the car.

when they’re gone, it’s just you and mindy sitting against a tree.

“mindy, i don’t think i can do this again.” you say, sighing.

“it’s fine. we’ve got you. me, wes, chad, amber, and i guess liv have got your’s and tara’s backs. we’re here for whatever you need. especially me. you’re my best friend, y/n. nothing is more important to me than your well-being. got it?”

“i love you, minds. you’re the best.”

“i love you too, y/n. and remember, we understand if you need space, support, anything right now. sam’s got tara, and we’ve got you. okay?”

“thanks.” you say, a real smile making its way onto your face.

“anyways, i need to go show chad that i still am the king of eight ball. you coming?” mindy says, getting up and sticking her hand out to you.

“i wouldn’t dare to miss chad getting his ass handed to him.” you laugh, letting mindy pull you up as you head to the car.

maybe it wasn’t so bad. it was cheesy, but maybe with your friends by your side you’d get through this again. maybe.

a/n: hope you all enjoyed! have a couple parts already in the drafts for this so shouldn’t be too long till the next is posted !! thanks for reading 🫶

[drdemonprince]

resource anon again here, i just read the ask where you talked about how you fantasise about a time you were abused in which you had an involuntary orgasm. i just wanted to say that it's... helpful to see someone talk about that aspect of sexual abuse in a chill way. the fact that i orgasmed, or experienced some degree of sexual pleasure during some of my assaults fucked me up for YEEEAAARRSSS. i used to be able to come so fast but now if someone else is pleasuring me i literally cannot orgasm sooner than like 1 hour and it takes unfathomable focus. and 99% of the time it's unsatisfying because it's not intuitive, shame-free, non-judgemental. i'm like fighting tooth and claw against painful intrusive memories and obsessive thoughts and it just leaves me exhausted in a bad way. i didn't even share with ANYONE that i experienced sexual pleasure during assault/s until my current psych and it was like a year after i started seeing her, i opened up about it once and that was it. it was so completely tied in with shame and disgust. anyway thanks again, this was my Confession. i hope i can fuck wild n free one day without the burden of these messy confusing thoughts and feelings

Hey anon, thanks for your message, and I am so sorry that you have been made to feel so much shame about an involuntary reaction that is not your fault, and happens to a whole lot more sexual assault survivors than gets widely talked about. It is just a thing that happens, and in fact may be a physically protective measure, because if a person's body is aroused during the experience of being assaulted, it is less likely they will experience physical damage to that area.

Our sexual responses are unusual and unexpected sometimes, and we don't always get to choose what we enjoy or how our bodies react. Your sexual assault isn't any less of a violation because you orgasmed from it. And it's not weird or gross that you did.

My experience with sexual responsiveness following the assault was something of the mirror image of yours, which I'll share because I think it's useful again in normalizing such things. The orgasm that I had while being assaulted was so sudden and intense that it cast a long shadow over all my sexual experiences afterward for while. I didn't get triggered during vanilla, consensual sex in the way people normally expect that to mean -- instead, I craved the intensity and overwhelm of the assault experience. It's not that uncommon for survivors to go numb and check out during sex, of course. But I would actively bring myself to orgasm during these moments by thinking about getting assaulted, and recalling things that were said and done to me moment-by-moment during the assault that brought me to orgasm. I would also masturbate replaying the assault for a very long time, and every now and then it's still something I'll reach for.

I don't feel any shame about this. The brain does unusual things, and draws all kinds of funny and upsetting connections at times. Perhaps this doesn't jar me so much because I have always had intrusive thoughts of violence and death but also of tenderness and childish happiness and random absurdity. I don't feel fully in control of my mind, and never have, so I can go along for the ride with what it has to offer me sometimes.

The person who assaulted me isn't able to hurt me anymore, and I feel relief and a sense of victory from the fact that I have extracted from this awful experience a ton of pleasure. At this point, almost 13 years later, I can say that jerking off to the idea of the assault has brought me so much pleasure collectively over the years that it overwhelms any pain the initial experience had. And I think that's pretty cool.

I hope that you can work through your understandable feelings of disgust and shame about your body's reaction to your assault on your own terms and in whatever way works for you. Some people cope with assault and its aftermath by age regressing, others by being celibate, others by finding a completely new sexual identity or role from what they previously enjoyed, some by becoming super vanilla, others by becoming kinky, some people just wait it out with time, and some people find a way to live with the trauma and darkness running alongside them in parallel to their life for as long as it will. There are no rules. Whatever works and feels natural to you.

I'm sure many a psychiatrist would consider me super duper fucked up for jerking off about my rape for over a decade afterward, but i'm having great orgasms and indulging my penchant for being controlled and used far more healthfully now in my relationships because I've embraced what feels like a true rush of aliveness for me, so like, fuck them and their profession as usual lol.

[cannibalisticdespair]

🔥 kotoko

Literally my absolute favorite representation of a CSA survivor in all of media. I am so fucking sick of the whole perfect victim who does nothing problematic thing. It's bullshit, it's an insult, and it's made for non-survivors as trauma porn. Literally the first thing they suspect if a kid is being sexually predatory towards others irl is CSA. It's the same thing as "why is a child saying bigoted things", the answer is that that's been modeled for them. That's the cycle of abuse, and the fact that having gone through that cycle is portrayed as not irredeemable and actually fucking understandable and human and has no invalidation on her victimization? FUCKING YES. People don't recognize how goddamn major that is. She's not treated as "whelp, she broke, throw her away". Even her actual sexual assault victim is like "oh, yeah, okay, huh, that makes sense". And when irl it's someone the same age, yeah obviously that isn't an expectable reaction, but with Komaru it's so fucking reasonable and kind. Komaru not being vengeful or hateful once she understands the situation? Fucking YES!!! It's so fucking good!!!

As for her being a genocidal mass murderer... frankly, if we had the power and funding, yeah, absolutely woulda been same. For literally the same reason of "If the world is so good, why didn't anyone save me?" Like, literally was the same perspective. All of humanity deserved to die for it. Our biggest difference was not viewing anyone as worth living because, well, children in Redneck Shithole Florida in the 2000s. You can guess how goddamn awful and bigoted they were to the obviously autistic, obviously trans to everyone else, obviously horribly abused kid. And I've known a lot of folks who were the same. It's a normal human reaction to want revenge for intense victimization, and the vengeance tends to get a bit generalized to humanity when the abuse has shaped your entire perspective of humanity.

[thunderheadfred]

Things I did not expect about giving birth after many many many years of thinking I wouldn’t or couldn’t

I could, in fact, do it

Not just the labor part but the loving a newborn part

I never got the newborn hype. Not once. Babies are weird smelly little blobs, and I didn’t want to be near one, ever.

I was wrong about approximately everything. All the stupid cliches and adages are true. It’s really like that. A magic spell made a homunculous come out of me all slimy and putrid and I instantly fell in love with her. I am bound by a pact to kill on her command.

I mean seriously. They passed her up from the water and she immediately took a breath, opened her eyes, and just… chilled with me. We stared at each other and partner and I started UNCONTROLLABLY BABBLING LOVE like we were possessed. We were. We are.

You ever just spend an hour weeping beatitudes while holding the baby that just came out of you skin to skin while she sleeps?

It’s so much to process. I know a lot of it is the keyboard smash of postpartum hormones and sleep deprivation but I’ve never felt so many emotions and like. Soul shattering gratitude. Awe. Love. Religious devotion. Meaning of life enlightenment levels of feeling, good and bad. Parents can tell you this, can promise that it happens (it doesn’t always, as survivors of abuse can attest) but when that chemistry does work? Wow. Wowie wow. Jeebus lord.

I haven’t really slept since the night before I went into labor. So this is like the fourth continuous night awake. I’m not even mad about it, but I am so shaky and delirious that I tried to karate chop one of the night nurses when she startled me out of a doze. Time is an illusion. Sleep is for people who don’t want to stare at a baby for the rest of their life. This part lasts forever, right? I promise I’ll try to sleep soon. I just… feel so… Aerosmith Lyrics about everything

[brasideios]

Watched a bunch of Booktube videos last night, and am once again struck by how books get called problematic simply because they deal with heavy topics.

How else are you supposed to write about, say, the cycle of abuse, other than by depicting - you know - abuse?

No, we as a society, as humans, shouldn’t flinch from writing and/or reading about the awful things that happen to people - and sometimes, that should be in detail. We shouldn’t sweep it under the carpet as ‘too distasteful’ or cringe from it, squirming, hiding behind buzzwords or by impugning the author’s intent - like they’re just writing torture porn or something.

The gods know there is problematic content out there - in my opinion, romanticising abusive, controlling relationships is genuinely problematic and should be critiqued (while supporting the rights of such books to exist); but piling on against an author, just because abuse is a topic being openly explored in their books? That’s dangerous.

I say this as a survivor - reading about people - fictional or non-fictional - who’ve faced abuse can be very important in realising that you are, in fact, a victim. Even now, many years later, the sense of understanding another persons struggle, seeing myself in it in some ways, rooting for them every step of the way - that’s still important to me. It makes me feel less alone in my experiences. We are survivors together.

At the end of the day, something not being for you, or making you uncomfortable, doesn’t make it automatically problematic.

[npd-claus]

Funny how the narc is calling abuse survivors ableist :/

Honestly, yeah, I kind of am. Not trying to generalize, but the community around abuse survivors does have an extreme ableism problem. As someone who is a survivor, I don't feel welcome in support groups because of the disorders I have that resulted from the severe abuse and neglect I had growing up. In fact, the whole "narcissistic abuse" stuff is just another flavor of the day for the community. I've seen it happen to antisocial personality disorder, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, PTSD, depression, anxiety, ADHD, and even autism.

People are so fucking focused on armchair diagnosing the shitty people in their lives, (which inherently removes personal responsibility from the abuser themselves and throws everyone else under the bus) instead of actually realizing that some people are just dicks. Some people are just awful. You can't help having a disorder, but you can choose to hurt people or not. I know that's hard to hear that some people are just awful enough to hurt you, but they are. It sounds anticlimactic as fuck because your brain wants there to be this big ass reason for everything that happened but nah. I had to come to that realization myself too.

Just know you didn't deserve what you went through, and you deserve better, but you can heal and grow without being an ableist piece of shit. You're not hurting your abuser. You're hurting other abuse survivors.

(I swear to fucking god if you pull that shit about narcissistic abuse being a psychology term, the field of psychology has its own boatload of ableist issues. I'm not going to argue semantics)

[lainalit]

hey, about your sjm's abelism against lucien, i'd just like to say i 100% agree!! i'd like to point at other abelist things in sjm's writing and i apologize in advance bc this might be long.

as a disabled person, yeah sjm is pretty fuckin abelist, unintentional or not. tower of dawn's disability storyline starts out as ehh to downright awful as it employs the abelist fantasy trope of *~magical healing*~. although chaol comes to accept disability and others who are disabled by the end (which is good!), he gets fully healed :/ also yrene's treatment of him in the beginning was atrocious. telling him to stand up even though he couldn't?? it read like an abusive medical care worker

on acotar-related things, i disliked how feyre's father is depicted as useless until his death, where he "finally does something" buuut it ends with him dying. if someone is ill enough that they cannot do anything, calling them useless and then killing them when they save the day gives me the ICK.

finally, the way nesta's mental health was handled was abelist (same could be said with feyre and tamlin in their own ways) sjm cannot depict PTSD/trauma consistently or, hell, equally between her characters. her knowledge of this disorder seems so misinformed, either that or she purposefully cherry picked qualities, which is an awful way to portray any disorder. nesta's """healing""" in acosf was absolutely miserable. sorry not sorry but i don't think getting dicked down, chocolate, and meditation will help anyone get better from literal Post Traumatic Stress Disorder!! it's giving a middle aged white woman telling my disabled ass "have you tried yoga?"

anyway, sorry about my rant 😭 as someone who liked sjm as teen during early tog and acotar book 1, i am. very bitter sometimes.

Hi,

It is definitely good to get a perspective from someone who has a disability rather than from someone like me who is ablebodied and only has family members who are disabled, so my perspective is limited in that regard, so thanks for your views on the matter.

I hadn't read ToG yet, so I can't judge if it's ableist or not, but if it's true, like you said with the whole magic healing, then that's pretty bad, especially if she has no knowledge or even personal relations with topics like paralysis. The thing is magic healing in itself; I don't hate so much. It makes sense in a fantasy setting to maybe have advanced healing abilities, but to outright make a character who is disabled to completely heal and have no side effects or struggles later on is such bullshit, and this trope should die out as it is right now.

The problem with Papa Archeron I have is that he is a nonexistent character till the end. I don't know why sarah even bothered to write him in the story; he hasn't even gotten a name.

Also, his health problems are so vaguely described that I often forgot that he had any, and the fact that he is a deadbeat makes it even more atrocious that she portrays a man with physical and mental health problems as such an unlikeable throwaway character.

Don't get me started on Nesta. I hated every second of Acosf; everybody was constantly dogpilling on her, and for what?

Did she have problems and made mistakes? absolutly, but why is the inner circle (besides elain and feyre) in nestas business? Like,  nobody besides her sisters truly cared for her and wanted her to get better; they just wanted her powers and making her amiable so she could sit with them on their stupid dinner table and fondle rhysass ballsack.

The fact that they know to some extent that mental health problems existed in the night court since we got the library with the sa survivors, but the ic couldn't fathom to maybe just ask some healer what the best course of action for nesta is since she obviously struggles, is so baffling to me.

But since SJM thinks hiking/ training= therapy, I'm not surprised by anything anymore.

Don't worry, rants here are always welcome💙