#I'm not saying the story's *not* already about generational trauma I just wish it zeroed in on it lol

[thegayhimbo]

Say "I know nothing about the history of Russia's treatment of Ukraine (the Holodomor being one such example) or what's currently going on between Russia and Ukraine" without saying it. 🙄😒

For those who can't access the video due to the "age restriction," here is a transcript of the 60 Minutes interview with Scott Pelley interviewing Freed Ukrainian Prisoners of War:

SPOILER ALERT: The following video/transcript contains descriptions of beatings, torture, rape, starvation, child deaths, and human rights violations.

As for "Russia is not continuously bombing all civilian infrastructure and committing a genocide," there have been multiple posts and articles over the past 2 years proving otherwise (including their recent attack on New Year's Eve). This also includes the Russian war crime of Ukrainian children being kidnapped by Russian soldiers, deported to Russian reeducation camps, getting brainwashed, and being used as Russian Propaganda tools:

Between the 2:27 and 2:37 mark, Isobel Yeung (the narrator) doesn't mince her words when she notes how Vladimir Putin and his cronies are accused of trying to "ethically cleanse a generation of young Ukrainians."

If you've read this far, you can probably come to the conclusion that imtryingsir did absolutely zero research, or even cared enough to follow the last 2 years of news about the Russian-Ukraine War, before making their abhorrently idiotic comment.

So why am I bothering to dignify this with a response when it's clear this person is being maliciously stupid? Because of this post. Specifically, the disgusting little remark they made where they tried to justify why a Jewish woman on social media deserved to be bullied/harassed (which eventually led to the Russia apologist comment above when they were called out on it by multiple Tumblr users):

Putting aside the gross victim-blaming and thinly-disguised antisemitism (which I'm sure my Jewish followers are deeply sick of at this point), what really gets me is how disingenuous this user is. They don't actually give a rat's ass about what's going on in Gaza: Someone who truly cares about genocide and the deaths/suffering of innocent people wouldn't be going out of their way to downplay/whitewash the genocidal actions of another country (Russia), or making comments dismissing another groups problems/trauma while dehumanizing them, or even straight up wishing for more death and destruction:

People like this (as well as the so-called "Pro-Palestine" users in the Jewish woman's post who were harassing her) are devoid of empathy. They relish in being cruel and condescending to others because they feel empowered in doing so, and they know they can get away with it without facing lasting consequences. They are doing nothing to help alleviate an already horrific situation, and are just making the world a worse place to live in. I'm sure they'll tell themselves the sweet little lies about how their bullying and antisemitism is really "activism" or "caring for Palestinians" or "Being antizionist; not antisemitic" (while continuing to spew the same bigoted rhetoric that Jews have been calling out as antisemitic for YEARS). At this point, I truly don't give a damn what their excuses are since they will grasp at anything, no matter how flimsy, to rationalize their behavior.

I never thought I'd see the day where a bunch of Leftist/Westerners would embody two of the most loathsome fictional characters in media (right down to their hateful, sadistic, vile attitudes), and yet that is the point we've currently reached:

To say this has been deeply unpleasant to witness is an understatement. 😒

I talked about this in a recent post about antisemitism from the Left, and I'm going to reiterate something I said: "There is a larger conversation that needs to be had about how selective Leftist empathy and compassion really is. By this, I’m talking about people on the Left who will a.) Only be compassionate/empathetic when it’s convenient for them, or b.) Only be compassionate/empathetic towards people they think are “deserving” of it."

People like imtryingsir only prove why it's important to have this conversation: If you're perfectly okay dismissing/downplaying the suffering of one group of people (be it Jews, Ukrainians, Palestinians, etc) so you can prop up your preferred group of people who are suffering because you think they are more "deserving" of empathy/compassion......................you need to do some serious self-reflection about the type of person you've become.

[roguetelepaths]

There's something fundamentally wrong with the way Odo is written

(namely, I really don't think the writers see him as a person at all)

And like. I know what y'all are going to say. It's in vogue right now to avoid any insinuation that a writer must have respect for their own characters, because doing that is tantamount to implying that those characters *gasp* have feelings, or agency, or rights, and should not be Put In Situations. I will not be engaging with any of these arguments, because they're stupid. More than stupid, they're distractions from the larger point that is "when an author is writing a story in which most characters are, as a conceit of the narrative, people with rights, feelings, and agency, it's reeeeally easy to tell when those things are afforded to some characters and not others." I can't believe I have to explain this in such minute and exacting detail, but this is the "writing is just playing with dolls" website, so of course I fucking do.

So I'm going to explain what "have respect for your characters" actually means, and why the narrative doesn't respect Odo. Robert Hewitt Wolfe DNI

Having respect for your characters does not mean that nothing bad is ever allowed to happen to them. I've read extreme horror books with profound respect for their characters, and for the trauma those characters go through— it's practically a requirement for good extreme horror. Having respect for your characters means allowing those characters to react to the bad things that happen to them in a way that is true to the way a person would generally react to bad things happening to them. It means allowing their interior perspective of events to shine through. It means portraying them, within the narrative, as more than just Things That Are Acted Upon.

"But Lyta," I can already hear you say, "fictional characters aren't people! That's antishipper rhetoric!"

I said I wasn't going to engage with this argument because it's stupid, but sure, I'll engage with it if you fucking insist. Have you ever actually read something where no one in the narrative is written as a person with an interior experience of what's happening to them? What do you think that would be like? It would be pretty boring and lifeless, right?

But fictional characters aren't people so that kind of bad writing is just fine I guess.

Get your head out of your ass and stop letting your petty fanwank bullshit contaminate discussions about the craft of writing.

That being said, let's talk about Odo for a minute.

Within the conceit of the greater narrative that is DS9, Sisko is a person. Kira is a person. O'Brien and Bashir and Quark and Dax and Garak are people. Odo is not.

Has any member of the cast besides Odo been tortured to the brink of death by another cast member, only to forgive that same cast member at the end of the episode and agree to start having breakfast together?

Has any member of the cast besides Odo been asked to take part in a drill that requires them to playact their own capture and execution, and shown to have zero problems with this arrangement?

Has any member of the cast besides Odo been told, by a superior officer, anything even close to the level of callousness that is "I wish you'd never found your people", and been written to agree with that statement?

Has any member of the cast— and I'm aware that both Garak and Bashir have their own struggles with abusive parents, we're not talking about that right now— has any member of the cast besides Odo had their superiors go behind their back to contact a person they have repeatedly stated that they categorically do not consider family, a person who tortured them in a lab for years and who refuses to take any sort of real accountability for that, on their behalf? If so, has any other member of the cast had an entire episode devoted to the fact that their former torturer is Actually An Okay Guy even when he's forcing them to continue the cycle of abuse he started by repeating the same torture methods on a literal infant? I mean, credit where it's due, Odo was allowed to at least be a little upset about that, but with the way that episode goes, I'm not inclined to be overly charitable towards it.

Does any of this sound like a respectful way to write a character? Any character?

Does any of this sound like things that would happen to a character who is treated as equal to the rest of the cast?

And the thing is, it's possible to write these kind of situations respectfully. It would have been easy to write Garak's torture of Odo, and subsequent genocide attempt against the Founders while Odo was STILL IN THE LINK, as something that created a rift between the two of them. It would have been easy to follow "sometimes I wish you'd never found your people" with literally any acknowledgement on Odo's part that that's not a thing you say to anyone, no matter how fucked up their people might be. It would have been easy to show Odo demanding some kind of apology for the whole "hunt the Changeling" drill, or at least make up a reason why he can't even if he wants to. It would have been easy for Odo and Mora's relationship in The Begotten to end any other way than it did. Preferably something involving an airlock, but I'm not picky, and I'd have just settled for any narrative acknowledgement that it's not cool to use electric shocks on babies.

I hope I've been able to give some kind of rundown of what the core problem is here— that there are things that would not be okay if they happened to anyone else, that are treated as totally okay when they happen to Odo. And like, Odo was always persecuted for being different (that season 1 episode where his office is vandalized with the word "SHIFTER" comes to mind), but it really seems like once they introduced the Founders, there was an implicit decision that actually, treating Odo like a non-person was justified, because if you treated Odo like a person you'd have to treat the REST of his people like people, and you'd lose out on the neat little unsympathetic evil race the writers so badly wanted the Dominion to be.

[villains-with-benefits]

Playing the blame game, and other pointless endeavours

A reflection on BNHA Chapter 291

Before and after: or, How to violently radicalise an abuse victim in five easy steps

I think a lot of the people throwing blame around or trying to declare that one character or another is the One True Villain™ or the One True Victim™ need to stop seeing personal responsibility as a zero sum game, because it really isn't.

Arguing about whether Dabi and Endevour should each have 50% of the blame or if it's more of a 60/40 or 70/30 split (in either direction) is pointless. Endeavour is 100% responsible for his abuse of his family and general failings as a human being, and Dabi is 100% responsible for the lives he's taken and people he's hurt in retaliation because of it.

Sure these two things are absolutely related in that good ol' cause-and-effect sense, much like how an earthquake at sea will cause a tsunami. And much like them neither happened in a vacuum, the surrounding environmental conditions needed to be just right for a perfect storm of this magnitude to occur. It just so happens that in this case both the earthquake (Endeavour) and the tsunami (Dabi) are not faceless forces of nature, but human beings with superpowers who chose to take action based on their deep-set mental and emotional issues at everyone else's expense, either because they think their needs are more important, they think the price paid is worth being the means to the end or (most likely) a combination of the two.

Please note, I don't say this to excuse or condemn either character, the readers who are taking sides, or even Horikoshi's writing. It's pretty well established by now that one of the biggest themes in BNHA is that there is no perfect black and white when it comes to people and society and morality, and just about all the conflict is driven by just how badly their entire system (which is built and determined to die on that hill) messes it up for absolutely everyone on all sides. Saying Dabi is a Bad Victim while Shouto is a Good Victim is just as pointless, because you're missing that the real villain is their broken society, of which everyone is a victim, even Endeavour.

Again, Endeavour was the one to abuse his family and he gets no passes for that so don't even try to argue that's what I'm saying, but he didn't wake up one day and just decide to do it. If Chapter 291 has done anything it's shown how escalation is nine tenths of the law in cases like this. He was already an asshole narcissist with a raging inferiority complex, we've heard from his own POV in an earlier chapter that he purposefully chose Rei to have kids with to eugenics a solution to his problem, he was never an upstanding guy.

While we don't see Endeavour's own upbringing there's a reason he's been such a strong narrative parallel with Bakugou, so we can make an educated guess from what we've seen of his what it must have been like having a powerful Quirk and ambitions being fed by the people around him, and the way Bakugou has clashed with characters like Deku and Shouto when he was confronted with the reality that he wasn't going to get Number One effortlessly, we can guess how well he took realising he was always going to be Number 2.

Pictured: the hero equivalent of always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

At least with Bakugou's rivals they're his own age and acknowledge him as a rival, All Might is at least a decade older than Endeavour and he's always been a loner who didn't get to know his colleagues that well. As readers we know All Might keeps his distance because he's kinda awkward socially, and because between the threat of All For One and maintaining the flawless image of the Symbol of Peace he wasn't ever able to let his guard down or it might risk people's safety. But just like Bakugou assuming Deku was looking down on him, from Endeavour's perspective it probably looked like All Might was looking down on Endeavour too.

Again, not excusing Endeavour. He's an asshole and needs to be held accountable for his actions. But just like Bakugou he didn't spring fully formed from the womb as an asshole, sure he had all the ingredients for it but their society is what decided it was a good idea to put the lime in the coconut and mix it all up, just like he's the one who broke Touya which ultimately led to the creation of Dabi.

Which brings us back to Dabi not just calling out his abusive dad but making a spectacle of it, and while again, yes, he's done a lot of murder and that's not okay either, he is absolutely justified in this. Especially because the part of his reasoning for his actions which isn't just maniacal laughter (also totally valid) is that he's correctly identified, much like Shigaraki, that while specific individuals have hurt them and must pay for it, that the overarching problem is hero society itself.

Shigaraki attacked All Might at first because Sensei said so, but later on because he was the symbol of everything he felt wrong with society, everything he's done has been to attack the pillars of the hero system like All Might and UA. Dabi attacked Endeavour, his abuser, but not just physically attacking him as a man and a father, but by attacking his reputation as the Number One Hero and the new pillar of society.

Pictured: an asshole who's realising that no matter how badly you think you done fucked up, another asshole can always come along and point out just how much worse it actually was than you thought.

Endeavour's sin was always acting as a hero first and a father second, if ever, and even then it was usually still to further his own ego and ambitions, which was tied so tightly to his role as a hero that Endeavour pretty much didn't exist outside of that. So Touya with his healthy sense of dramatic irony is naturally retaliating by treating him as a hero first and a father second, if ever, because that's the standard of behaviour that Endeavour himself set. Before discarding him for the new model he made it clear he wanted his son to be powerful, aggressive, independent, and to take down the Number One Hero without regard for anything else, and that's exactly what Dabi is doing. He's giving Endeavour exactly what he wished for and is making him choke on it.

Just like he said, Touya's making sure Endeavour reaps exactly what he sowed because it proves his point, that if he hadn't been such a violent, toxic narcissist none of this would be happening. His desire to call out his abuser is both personal and justified (regardless of how he's going about it), and it shouldn't be condemned because it has nothing to do with his family. His family, who he was the scapegoat of and who he hasn't seen in probably around a decade, and who are still keeping silent about the abuse even though as far as they know it killed him. I'm not saying he hates the rest of his family like he hates Endeavour (though it probably comes closest with Shouto, there's a lot to unpack there) but it would be a very complicated web of love and grief and resentment and guilt that he'd need a weapons-grade therapist to unravel, which he's clearly never gotten considering this is how he's dealing with the trauma.

tl;dr Touya is a victim just like Shouto, and all the awful things he's done as Dabi don't detract from that, just as his victimhood doesn't excuse his actions either.

In conclusion, you don't have to reconcile or find explanations or excuses for Endeavour's abuse or how any of the other Todorokis have been dealing with it, especially Touya. They are all established facts and exist as objective truth regardless of our feelings on the matter. Instead of making moral judgement on the characters (or the readers who love them/hate them) maybe we all need to stop and think about it critically first, especially when chapters are still incoming and we don't even have the full story yet.

If we can all spend some quality time thinking objectively about all the sides of the story and what lessons we can learn from them, I can guarantee that little things like 'having compassion', 'listening to victims and survivors before they have to resort to domestic terrorism to be heard' and 'learning from the mistakes of the past' will get us all much better results than just sharpening some pitchforks, no matter who they're pointed at.