#Abuse victims

[furiousgoldfish]

people will tell abuse victims to ‘forgive’ and ‘stop being so bitter’ instead of admiring us for not turning homicidal with rage

[ask-a-bot]

From one older, wiser Starscream to another: it does get better. It took me many, many years to move past what my own Megatron did to me and forgive him for it, but now we are friends and I know that if anyone ever tried to harm me he would leap to my defense. Letting go of the anger and hate is hard, but believe me when I say it will very much help you in the long run.

Thank you. I'll try to remember that.

Which "me" are you?

[kazhanko-art]

Hot take maybe, but if your response to a man who was victimized by another man is something like “not all men; but always a man” you do not care about male victims, you are erasing a large amount (the majority in fact) of male victims, and are actively pitting male victims against eachother

[felucians]

With the news coming out on Wilbur Soot, a lot of people need to learn - or relearn - the signs of abuse before it gets to physical abuse.

A lot of people also need to remember that they have a parasocial relationship with these influencers and that none of us will ever know the whole story.

[ultraericthered]

The re-traumatization of Satoko Houjo

Following up from my last reblog, I want to really specify all the ways in which the Gou/Meguri manga has been doing far more justice to Satoko as a traumatized victim of abuse than the Gou/Sotsu anime, which just went for the stupid, cartoonish Enfant Terrible route with her. Most impressive is how for the most part, it’s all in the artwork.

Firstly, look at this part here:

The TREMBLE there as Satoko has bruised her own hand is telling. Bruises on her body are such an old, familiar sensation for her given how her aunt and uncle used to treat her. This is the first time in ages she’s felt it and while Looper Witch!Satoko finds it pleasurable, the traumatized human child she is deep inside is trembling with pain. And the choice of words, “appeal to uncle”, is interesting. Satoko understands how Teppei thinks and how physical violence is such a core part of who he is, even now. It wouldn’t be enough to just claim to him that she’d been hurt by bullies at school; her uncle would need to SEE the bruises, the aftereffect of violence that are so familiar to him, in order to be sold on the threat to his niece’s well-being. 

Then we have this part:

Method acting at it’s finest. Looper Witch!Satoko is pulling from not only the memories of human!Satoko (who the witch persona now looks at as simply a character she’s play-acting as for “the game” she’s in), but the emotions that accompany those memories which they may still evoke. She’s willing herself into the mindset of a child who has been horribly abused, traumatized, and wants to be saved. The child she was. The child she, way deep down, still is. (Also fuck Teppei, he is indeed repulsive and deserved that headshot he got.)

She actually fucking gags herself to bring out all the bile and vomit that was rising up in her thanks to her “acting technique.” The look on her face and in her eyes as she’s panting and going into a nervous breakdown, followed by the brief smirk and mad giggling, encapsulates the self-harming, masochistic nature of what Looper Witch!Satoko is doing and her own psychology towards it versus how it makes her feel on a subconscious human level. She hates it because it’s unpleasant, emotionally and mentally scarring and draining to be put through, but she loves it because herself on the brink of destruction makes her so pitiful and worrying to her dearest friends and found family in Hinamizawa, brings out a fierce desire to protect her and treat her with love and compassion. Satoko has long felt like she’s only deserving of love and warranting of her friend’s time and care when she’s an object of pity, a damsel in distress to be saved, a “tragic heroine”. Looper Witch!Satoko is that externalized.

This picture here really is worth a thousand words on what I just said:

Is it, Satoko? IS IT REALLY?

And then we see a specific reaction from her at two different points:

The FLINCH. First that, plus her horrified expression and trembling, is at the sound of her uncle roaring in rage, a sound that forever haunts her and shakes her to her core. Yeah, Teppei thinks he’s protecting his neice from bullies this time, but he’s applying the same wrath, intimidation techniques, and threat of violence he used to use on her in order to do so. The next time she flinches is when Rika is shouting encouragement to her to take her stand against her uncle, and brings up Satoshi. The talk of her brother who “always fought back” and “stood up against the abuse” is hitting Satoko different this time - because Satoko, deep down, recognizes that she’s once again suffering in silence and allowing her own abuse to be perpetuated, this time not by her aunt and/or uncle or even others in Hinamizawa, but by Eua and her own witch persona. She’s again lost in darkness.

Earlier into Rika’s phonecall, Satoko was smirking, so some who have a colored perception of Satoko at this point may have the interpretation that she’s faking everything and has her hand over her mouth to hold back laughter. But that’s not what ends up shown:

That clench. That squeeze. The deliberate artistic choice that, just as when she flinched back there, her upper face is darkened so that we cannot see her eyes. There is an internal struggle going on her. This is Satoko’s buried humanity acting up and trying to break back out to the surface, all while the witch persona tries to “get into character” without letting that “character” overtake her and mess up the whole performance she’d wanted to put on. Ultimately, we see the witch eyes and a smirk return to Satoko’s face, meaning the witch persona won out...except for one tiny detail. The tears. And had those tears stayed like that, it’d seem fake....but then Satoko cannot stop them.

Those tears are real, and the cry for help, those words “HELP ME!”, now ring true with an extra meaning. Satoko wants to be helped and saved from herself. She wants to leave the darkness of her warped psyche and subconscious and the metaphysical embodiment of her mental breakdown and the malevolent demon who empowered her with the looping ability all behind so that she can return to being the person she was, the person she needs to be, with the friends and family she needs to be with. And what really signifies that this is the inner human Satoko crying out from Satoko’s very subconscious? 

There’s the precedent established earlier. It’s happened before, when Satoko was not intending to really cry in the moment, yet still did because she’d been touched. She’d been reached. She’d been felt.

So this has been a great portrayal of a traumatized victim of child abuse who has willingly put herself on a self-destructive course by seeking comfort in her own trauma and stability in her would-be eternal childhood by controlling her own victimization and how the narrative of events and responses of others plays out from it, rather than seeking comfort, control and stability in what and who provided her the means for salvation and release from all that pain years ago.

(I will update this with reblogs as Satoko’s tragic tale continues.)

[kaythefloppa]

My Abuse Story - A PSA

For those who don't know, or are new, here's the rundown:

Hi, I'm Kay. Some may refer to me as Kan, or K. Since I was young, I've immersed myself in many online fandoms, including The Lion King, Tangled, and of course, Wild Kratts. But there's one fandom that I've been in where a series of events that 'unfortunate' wouldn't even scratch the surface of. Events which for my own safety and salvation, I've had to keep in lock and key, and have only recently found the bravery to come out about in its entirety.

The year of 2020 is reviled as hell on Earth. Which it was, for various [and obvious] reasons. However, for some worse than others. I thought I had seen the worst in that year, but I was wrong. I was dealt a very nasty hand, by very nasty individuals, all of which in the last place I'd ever expect. As a result, I was left with many scars that have stuck with me throughout my adolescence. And now, four years later, I feel as though it's finally my time to speak up about what I've waited nearly half a decade to pull from under the rug; The mistakes I've made, the abuse, the impact it had upon my life, and most importantly, the people responsible for this. All within the MLP fandom in its niche audio drama community.

This video below details the abuse I went through, including the evidence I had gathered (partially from a witness of the abuse who was also victimized by these people). Massive trigger warning for mentions of abuse, self-harm, and suicide.

In the description of the video, there is a Google Document that details the exact bucket list of abuse that MLP users Pretty Pegasus Wings/Empire Productions, @pand4monium, Vchart, KikibatVA, Mara/McFlurryVA, HollyJSFrosting, ZarosianPony, ect. are guilty of.

Go through the doc and watch the video entirely before coming to your own conclusions and commenting. This is something that has been swept under the rug in its entirety for far too long and needs to be brought to light.

[sometimes-men-need-help-too]

"That's your mother"

"That's your father"

"That's your (insert here)"

I wish we cared about the victims, acknowledging their feelings and what they've been through as much as we care about defending the abuser

[auroragehenna]

AI-less Whumptober

Day 6 Human shield (alternate)

TW/CW: Torture, paranoia, character death, poisoned, kind of whipping Words: 827 words

Gosh how she hated taverns. She wasn’t drinking anything, at least not something strong. Just water. And that she guarded with her life. Okay today might not be the best day in terms of her suspiciousness. Yeah sure suspiciousness that’s what this is, not paranoia, her sarcastic inner voice threw in. It’s not like it’s ungrounded, she shot back. Then she shook her head,enough self-talk. As she was about to take another sip she saw a young man lead another young man outside through the back door. Technically that was nothing bad but the young man did not look happy. Tierney’s eyes narrowed. She drank the rest of the water in one go and laid the required money on the counter. Upon turning around she casually followed the two men through the backdoor. Outside she saw clear dragging marks in the dusty ground and carefully followed them. It wouldn’t be the first time she fell into a trap. In certain circles her reputation proceeded her. After a few corners she had left the village and by trusting her instincts she came to a field. And really on that field she saw the two men. One towering over the other. There wasn’t much time to think of a plan, the torture had already started and she had to act. So Tierney ran to the guy, prepping an offensive spell in her mind and threw herself in-between the two as a thorny whip just came down on the both of them. Fortunately Tierney succeeded in taking the whole impact. Unfortunately, ouch. “Go!”, she hissed at the boy and he didn’t think twice and sprinted off. Not even a thank you…

“Who do you think you are, hm?”, the other boy, also barely a man asked enraged. He tried to grip the girl’s jaw but she pulled away and suddenly his hand felt like he touched a stove. “Argh!”

Tierney used the moment and launched a counterattack. The guy fell over and with a wave of her hand the soil wrapped itself around him until he was ingulfed in it. Lastly she pulled out a dagger, drenched it in liquid from one of her vials and delivered a thin cut over his neck. By far not deadly but opening the bloodstream. There, that should for a while. She fell to the ground next to the now trapped and poisoned guy who was still utterly shocked. Apparently one of the arrogant ones. Tierney carefully tried to touch the bloody wound reaching from her face down to her hip. It stung and her fingertips were covered in bright red blood. She laid down to avoid further and faster damage and started searching her bag for herbs. Simultaneously she initiated a healing spell.

“Are you just gonna lay here and ignore me, you peasant!?”, the guy yelled.

Tierney rolled her eyes, so she was right. “As a matter of fact we have the same status and yes, I will. Now shut up before I decide I have to gag you. It will be over soon.”

“W-What do you mean? Over?”, the guy asked and now his voice was shaking lightly.

“You’re a druid too, right?”

“Yes? Why?”

“And why do you torture people?”

He set up a cocky grin. “Because it’s fun.”

“Sure sadism plays a role. But my best guess is that you have a fragile ego so you make sure to crush other people for the trip of power gives you the confidence you so severely lack. Are you going to stop doing it?”

The other druid just started at her; mouth slightly agape before his face hardened. “No.”

Tierney sighed. She chewed on a few leaves and her wound had nearly stopped bleeding. “I was fearing you’d say that.”, she answered and with that she closed her eyes and tried to only focus on the healing magic.

“What are you doing to me?”, the boy asked, fear now imminent in his voice.

“You’re going to die and there’s nothing you can do or say to convince me otherwise. Just accept it.”, Tierney simply said. But the boy started screaming at her so she took out a couple of petals from her bag, shoved them in his mouth and held it closed. Soon after his mouth movement slowed down and she knew the dianthus/clove petals had done their job. After another ten minutes or so her wound had healed up and there was only dried blood. She got up, opened the soil again to take the guy’s belongings and then turned him fully underground. There he could now lay with nature and the world was a little safer. Even if it was heartless work. It felt right when she thought back to the other boy’s face. Of all their faces. Of how she felt. Trying to shake off the thoughts Tierney turned around and left the field. Walking into a forest, away from the city. Wherever the paths led her.

Taglist: @yourlocalgaefae33, @princessofhe1, @ailesswhumptober Learn more about Tierney here

[emotional-moss]

people hold victims of abuse/rape/etc to such a crazy standard like. you have to be quiet and good but you also have to speak up immediately when it happened and all your details about what happened have to be perfectly correct and you have to be too traumatized talk about it openly but also if you’re okay talking about it openly you’re actually lying and if you’ve ever done questionable things in the past people shouldn’t believe you and if you’re angry about it you’re lying but also if you still like your abuser you’re lying and you have to vehemently dislike your abuser or you’re lying but if you hate them too much it’s actually fake and if they were younger than you or you were a man and they’re a woman you were lying and abusing your power and if you can’t be still attached to your abusers after what they did and you can’t refuse to accept help or recover from it but if you’re too insistent on asking for therapy and recovery then you’re lying etc etc etc etc etc. so on and so forth. it’s ridiculous

[castiej]

It's so annoying to be so deep into a video or a podcast or whatever and then the person makes a random rude comment about a character/person you really like cause it's like damn I really wasted all that time cause I'll stop watching rn and never watch any of your stuff again

[unwelcome-ozian]

[ask-a-bot]

Star, I'm sorry Sunstreaker snapped back, and he will be apologising for his actions later. I get where you're coming from, but as someone who grew up in the same circumstances, growing beyond the abuse that shaped you is a choice only you can make. The earlier you see that, the easier of a time you'll have, trust me. Megs is at least trying to make amends for his past actions, and I know it's a huge adjustment, but it's not an excuse for either of you to lash out.

And though it's not my place to say, Sunstreaker understands better than you might think, just not from Optimus.

Oh... has he been giving you verbal abuse? My apologies. I shall have a gentle word with him. Starscream...

You wanted to talk to me? Look, I'm sorry about the spider thing. I know it was wrong. I put my pet in danger when I was supposed to be responsible for his safety. I hurt you and I shouldn't've done that either. It didn't feel nearly as good as I thought it would.

You say all that, but I have just found out that you were verbally abusive online.

I'm upset.

So am I. Has it ever occurred to you that I might lash out because of the way that I have been treated? Would that make all that I have done to you fair?

Is it an effective excuse?

...

No.

No. Of course is it not. I use my fists, my pedes, my cannon... I lash out when words fail me. When I am frustrated, scared, hurting... I do as my mentor told me: when words are not enough, resort to violence. But violence never solves anything; it makes matters worse.

Hmph.

I am learning from Dorothy and Optimus. They make me want to do better. To be better. You do not have to change for anyone, but you might want to sit down and ask yourself what you really want.

Do you want to have friends?

I want to have a pet!

I am sorry about the spider. I am sorry about my reaction and I am sorry I made Optimus kill it.

What if he hadn't killed him? Would you let me keep him in my room? What's the matter?

Is it still alive?

If I was given a new one and I promised I wouldn't let it loose, could I keep that one? Please?

If you have a spider in that room, you are to keep it in an enclosure with a lock on the door. You are to keep it away from the door, because, if I see it, it will die. There will be a big, smoking hole in the wall where the spider was. I will not be able to control my fear and I should not have to do so inside of my own home. I have a right to feel safe here.

Yes, I know. I'm sorry about what I did. What's the matter? Megatron?

I have to use the facilities. Get out.

[anthroxlove]

It's surely no coincidence that ‘Amber & Johnny’ and ‘Pam & Tommy' have cropped up as fancy-dress costumes in the same year that the entertainment industry sought to profit from their respective traumas.

[the-expose-on-girls]

"Among the things that victims have lost, how many things do you think they can reclaim? It’s just their own glory and honor. Nothing more. Some regain those things through forgiveness, while others regain them through revenge. Only then can they reach the starting point."

—The Glory, part 2

[ultraericthered]

Couldn’t reblog this due to the OP having me blocked for whatever reason, but it is an excellent discussion about the characters of Slade Wilson and Tara Markov, and what went so wrong in the story of The Judas Contract as initially concieved and told by Wolfman & Perez in TNTT that it’s plagued their characters, their fans, and DC Central officials for years, and how things for them might be handled better.

But it also includes a link to a Marv Wolfman interview conducted back in 2018 (ironically when Terra got to have some long-needed retribution against Slade in the Deathstroke Rebirth series) that got me seeing red because good lord, this vile old man is at the height of delusion, still seeing no wrong in his interpretation of what he wrote.

“George’s strength was he also understood the characters 100 percent as I did so there was never any question. He knew. We had talked enough about the characters to know we were exactly on the same page with them.”

No, Marv. George understood the characters 100% better than you did. He shared your creative wavelength (hence the notorious “slut” line about Terra) but his actual understanding of what canonically made characters, events, and narratives tick in his and your work ran far deeper than your shallow comic book junkie fanboy mentality.

You always had characters pop up, certainly at Marvel, who were bad that get redeemed. But this character would never get redeemed. She was insane. In fact, she was the catalyst for everything. She wasn’t working for Deathstroke. He was working for her in many ways and she was leading him because she’s crazy. She’s a total psychopath… and she’d be 15. And she’d be smoking and she’d be trying to seduce him.

OH. MY. FUCKING. CHRIST. Just...how does a man say something with THAT much wrong in it and still feel totally okay with himself and his handiwork? Tara was in fact NOT “the catalyst for everything”. The HIVE were the ones who assigned Grant Wilson the contract to kill the Teen Titans, and Slade was the one who took up that contract and, as part of fulfilling it, found Tara Markov as per Wintergreen’s own words that Marv himself wrote, in order to utilize her as his secret weapon to do the Titans in with. She absolutely was working for Deathstroke since Deathstroke was the one who was first out to destroy the Titans specifically to fulfill Grant’s contract and settle his score with them, he was the one answering directly to the HIVE, and he had seniority over Terra in both age and profession; he was the stable, wealthy, well-resourced adult who held the power in that relationship, and it goes without saying that Slade was absolutely not “working for her”, nor would he ever allow such a thing to be reality. How does her “being a crazy psychopath” enable her to “lead” the more mentally sound grown man? Slade was cautious in how he dealt with Tara, but again, nowhere did he ever let her lead him around. It was his contract and his plan - he HAD to be in charge at all times. And finally, a 15 year old girl, a child, trying to “seduce” a full grown adult? That’s not how it works, Marv. Children can neither legally consent nor definitively “seduce” in a relationship with adult groomers and predators. There’s too huge a power inbalance.

The very first time we see her, she’s trying to blow up the Statue of Liberty. It’s just that all the fans assumed because we went out of our way to make her cute — but not too cute, with the buck teeth and everything — everyone would assume that she was gonna become good by the end and that was never the case.

For one thing, “buck teeth and everything” don’t make a girl in her mid-teens any less cute, and for another, it’s not an unreasonable expectation that a character introduced as a villain trying to do a villainous thing may well not remain static in that image of them and recieve character growth, for good or for bad, so it’s not the clever rug-pulling that you can blame the readers for you seem to think it is.

First thing, we made a promise that day that we would never renege on our view that she’d never become good. It’s sometimes hard to do that with characters you like. You want them to become good or something like that. But we never liked the character enough - because we knew what we were doing with her, we never allowed ourselves to fall for the character. Because that’s bad. That’s bad storytelling. You’re doing what you want as a fan at that particular point, not as the creators. The fans had to accept what we were doing and not do the same stories that they had read 14,000 times before. You know, at Marvel, Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch were villains who became good guys and I could go through a whole list of ’em.

The bolded parts are telling of three things:

1. Terra never becoming good is not a problem. If you created her to be evil, wrote her as evil, and fully intended on keeping her evil, then sure, let her stay evil. The problem is in the way she’s framed and talked about given the circumstances and her status as a victim of so much abuse and trauma (and CSA, grooming and statuatory rape in particular) that you wrote and displayed on page for all to see, and the decision to kill her off in the end via a horrific accidental suicide due to a total meltdown of her mind and her powers, and then still have the gall to thoroughly vilify her both during her death and afterwards rather than acknowledge any of her better points and all the legitimate ways she’d suffered as a victim of tragedy. That shit is gross as fuck and even a teenage supervillainess deserves better.

2. He openly admits that he and George never liked Terra’s character enough the way they did other characters, and beyond that, they didn’t learn to love, understand, or appreciate her any deeper than their initial rough ideas behind her conception because they willfully didn’t allow themselves to even TRY to. And the excuse for that?

3. Every damn thing Marv refused to do with Terra on the grounds of it being “bad storytelling” and “acting as a fan rather than a creator”...is exactly the bullshit that he then went and did with Slade! Let it sink in: Slade didn’t say or do a goddamn thing in the entirety of The Judas Contract to suggest that he would or could “become good” (or actually be a pretty good guy deep down all along as the revisionist bullshit goes), but because Marv fell in love with the character while writing his backstory and POV, became a fan of a character he was also the co-creator of, he decided he wanted to see this heinous villain turn good, reconcile with his family, and befriend his victims, so he wrote to make happen exactly what he wanted to see happen! And that truly WAS bad storytelling, yet Marv gives himself a pass on that because what? Slade’s a “badass” adult male character? But no, even that’s not entirely accurate because Marv did a repeat of the same favoritism bullshit with Raven following her Heel Turn. GAH!

I generally don’t want to stoop to this and would not have before, but after reading this? Marv...it should’ve been you, not George.

Additional comments not from that PoS I can remark on:

Creators who have followed have tried to soften Terra’s character…and they totally miss the point. Terra was an irredeemable sociopath from the get-go. It’s a brilliant storyline, and Terra’s nature left a permanent mark on the team. Best to just leave it alone and let it stand as is.

Pieces upon pieces have been written to debunk the notion that giving Terra more depth, “softening” her, and even redeeming her is a horrible disservice and betrayal to the original “brilliant storyline” but rather improvements upon material that was originated from outdated misogynistic and abelist thinking, so I shouldn’t have to go there. The Judas contract saga was great – we all kept waiting for Terra to turn good and save the day because that’s what always happen in comics. And it never happened. What was particularly brilliant is that Wolfman never gave the readers any indication that Terra might have a good side – he was completely playing off reader expectations.

Move over, Rian Johnson - Marv Wolfman was the original “Subvert Your Expectations And Then Do Little For The Work That’s Substantial And Satisfying Afterwards” master! And yeah, Marv never gave readers any indication that Terra might have a good side, but Michael W. Barr did. And rather than actually work with that even if having to compromise his initial vision for Terra as a pure evil monster, Marv totally contradicted it in his writing and statements. I think what it boils down to is this: It’s difficult to depict their relationship without making one of them the villain, and making either of them the villain just doesn’t sit right with a lot of people. You don’t want a compelling antihero/villain to also be a remorseless child predator; you don’t want to write off a teenage girl as a ‘total psychopath’.

And that’s the problem with people; they can’t accept complexity in villains, their characterizations and their relationships. Objectively, Slade Wilson is always going to be “the villain” in that story, but both characters are bad people and yet neither are purely evil monsters. I think the judas contract story fails not by making tara openly and shamelessly villainous, but by turning her into a black-box plot device with no real character exploration beyond being a "evil psychopath". to make her sympathetic or at least human, you don't have to retcon her behavior, you just have to give a glimpse into her mind and motivations enough to make her into a Real Person. (like the near suicide attempt you see in priest's run).

^ EXACTLY THAT.

And meanwhile, he’s manipulating a teenage girl who clearly and desperately needs help she’s never going to get. Slade can’t step back and acknowledge that what he’s doing is wrong because then he might have to admit everything he’s doing is wrong, and then it all unravels, and then he unravels, which I think can kinda sum up Slade as a character so far up his own ass he can’t stop making the worst decision.

See, that’s what the Terminator character was SUPPOSED to be and was originally written like before Marv, ironically, got so far up his own ass and couldn’t stop making the worst creative decisions. And it’s what smart writers like Christopher Priest opt to faithfully stick to.

On Slade’s part, I basically think that if Tara did approach Slade first and if their relationship progressed along the lines of him gradually manipulating her because he needed to keep using her, that’s a little different than him seeking her out and systematically isolating and grooming her in the first place, as he did in TT03 and in the Judas Contract movie. It’s still absolutely fucking wrong, I just think that path makes more sense for his NTT character.

Well it’s canon now that it was indeed Slade who approached Tara, though he didn’t start off with intent to groom her. Which is for the best because it fits better with what Wintergreen said originally.

MY MANS KILLS PEOPLE FOR MONEY AND TRIES TO MURDER TEENAGERS. What happens with Tara is One Of The Thing

Like imagine if they allowed their own characters to be complex and contradictory just like real people. That would be revolutionary.

It makes him look really bad and it's supposed to. Slade WILL do bad things like killing and manipulating people, but he will also do good things sometimes, love his kids and have a moral code for a lot of dynamics in his life. It's not as contradictory as it might seem - people do contradictory shit all the time, that's just how a lot of people work.

All of this. Just...all of it.

But I can’t help thinking, given how ridiculously sexist and victim blame-y the folks over at DC Central tend to be, maybe it’s better that we didn’t get her POV.

Got me there, unfortunately!

[blu-cosmo]

not the SA cleanser shiiiiiit i need some of that in my life 💀