#Still remember that one show that started with a woman getting gaslit into thinking the guy with her is her husband

[empty-blog-for-lurking]

Look not to be "You younglings have it easy" but everyone of those people wanting the Nuanced™ and Sensical™ Plot™ in the 2nd episode of the show would not have survived 90's/00's/10's cartoons

[nicascurls]

I feel the need to defend Season 1 Nica, so that's what I'm gonna do.

I know there are loads of posts complaining about how Nica acts in season one of the show. I get that it sucks when she was (and still is) such a strong character but it can't be said that it doesn't make sense when you consider everything that's going on.

For the sake of this post, I am going with what Nica said in episode 5 and season one takes place 2 weeks after cult.

So on that note, within the past month for Nica she has:

Suffered aggressive (and probably illegal) shock treatment

Been transfered to a lower security mental hospital so a creepy doctor can have more time alone with her

Instantly been judged and insulted due to crimes she did not commit

Be told she has a visitor for the first time in 4 years only to be met with the wife of the person who caused all her suffering

Been told that her niece, her only reason to keep going, 'died of a broken heart' from actions she had been gaslighted into believing she committed

Then, have the same woman gleefully dump a massive trauma trigger into her lap as she breaks down

Mentally gotten to a place where she decides to try and take her own life

Wakes up to find out someone else is dead at the hands of the person she had been manipulated into believing wasn't real

Is immediately blamed for the death

Tries to prove what is happening and is immediately shut down and labelled as 'crazy'

Hypnotised and assaulted

Finds out for certain that she wasn't crazy and there really is a killer doll

Woken up not remembering what happend and then gaslit by her abuser

Drugged and put in a straight jacket by Chucky

Laughed at and assaulted again when trying to tell Dr Foley what is going on and warn him (when he definitely didn't deserve it)

Have Chucky try to manipulate her into becoming a killer

Finds out there are multiple Chuckys before being told by them how her niece really died and the fate she suffered before hand

Immediately witnesses the murder of the only staff member that showed her any kindness

Possessed by Chucky knowing that this was the fate Alice suffered before she died

Wakes up 2 weeks later on a hotel floor in nothing but underwear with a hostage in front of her who tells her that she killed the other person in the room.

Yet despite all of this, the first thing she does is try to free the hostage and willing to fight Chucky should he turn up. Not to mention when she wakes up the next time she is smart enough to work out how Chucky would act in her body, continue to act that way and somehow manage to get herself into a chair without Tiffany seeing. Not to mention when Tiffany starts confessing her feelings to her she instantly grabs something she could use as a weapon when Tiffany looks away.

Yes, Nica acts much more afraid and is much more vulnerable than in past installments but it makes total sense. Every time she wakes up she is completely disorientated with no way to move other than to drag herself across the floor since she has no wheelchair. Not to mention that once Tiffany spoke to her as Nica, I'm sure all Nica could think of was probably her mother and how similar her situation is as well as how her mother ended up.

Overall, I'm not a fan of what happend in season one regarding Nica and will never accept her being dismembered as canon but I will not say that her reactions didn't make sense or that she is not still an incredibly strong character.

[softxsuki]

Hi, can I please send in an urgent request? I'm just having a really night, I can't stop crying. I keep remembering what happened and I feel like I'm in that place again and I'm all alone. I don't want to trauma dump so I'll put in some warnings. If you see something that triggers you, please disregard this request, I understand and I can manage.

Warnings: Manipulation, Gaslighting, Cheating, Insecurities (body image, mentions of scars and size)

I was a teen when I first had my first "serious" relationship. It lasted 3 years and it was on and off. We broke up multiple times due to them cheating and me not being able to cope with it. We had a 12 hour time difference and lived on opposite sides of the world. I wasn't perfect. I wanted him to be here when we were both teens, expected too much. He gaslit me when I questioned him when he became cold. Truth be told, I think he's a good friend and person but wasn't a good partner to me. I got traumatized by this relationship and second guessed my every move. I got into a relationship after that one and I promised myself to do absolutely right by this person. He didn't have confidence in our relationship and other people were telling him I'd leave him for someone who was "better" looking. He believed them. Over the period of a year, I'd tried my best at showing affection. Texting, updating, and trying to call but he wouldn't answer. It even reached a point where there was 10 days where he didn't talk to me but I still texted good morning. I went to his college to give him a gift and he basically shooed me into a bus terminal to make me go home. I didn't even know the way back home because I didn't know the area. He then got sick while I was in uni class. I blew my month's budget for food and necessities to buy him what he needs while he was in the hospital. I went there right after class, still in my school clothes and tired after 10 hours of class. He wouldn't say which hospital it was. I had to call around to find him and when I got there, he wouldn't even look at me. After that, he broke up with me. Soon the person he was cheating me texted me just to rub in into my face that he chose her. It hurt. It still hurts. And we got back together after half a year with promises for him to change for the better and he has changed. He did everything I asked. Been nothing but regretful and trying his best to change and show that he's changed but here I am still hurting. And all of this started when I saw that he had a reminder set for her birthday that he forgot to remove.

I just need comfort, please. Like maybe a scenario where there are rumours that Hawks (he's my comfort character) is cheating and he comforts me, tells me that it's not true and reassures me that he loves me through and through, even my scars and my size. or I'm vividly dreaming that he's cheating on me to the point that I'm crying in my sleep then he wakes me up to comfort me because I'm really wishing that this is all just a really bad dream and I just wish someone would wake me up.

I'm sorry. I found your blog a lot earlier and I told myself to only send an urgent request when I couldn't handle it by myself anymore. I just need reassurance from my comfort character.

Hawks Comforting Reader Who Hears Rumors That He's Cheating On Her

Pairing: Hawks (Keigo Takami) x Fem!Reader

Warnings: Mentions of cheating (he's not actually cheating), mention of scars, low self-esteem because of body image

Genre: Comfort, Fluff

Post-Type: Oneshot

Word Count: 1k

Summary: In which you see an article that suggests that Hawks is cheating on you with another woman. As soon as he gets home, you confront him about it and he denies the rumors as he tries his best to reassure and comfort you.

[A/N: Hello anon! First, thank you for coming to me with your urgent request. Please don't ever hesitate to send one in, I'm always grateful to be able to help you guys like this if I can. Second, I am so sorry you had to experience all that. Cheating is such a horrible thing and I know it may seem like you're the one who is having bad luck finding a man who won't cheat on you, but please know that you are NOT the problem. You deserve someone who makes you feel secure in your relationship with them. I really hope it works out with your boyfriend that you have now, but if it doesn't (which is normal), then I know the right man is out there waiting for you. Someone who will treat you like royalty, who won't make you feel insecure in your relationship, and someone who will love and appreciate all the efforts you make, while making efforts of their own. NEVER SETTLE. You deserve so much more <3. With that being said, I hope Hawks is able to provide you with some kind of comfort through this oneshot. I also made reader Fem so please let me know if you'd prefer a Gn! Reader and I'll change that up for you. Take care <3]

Not again, please not again.

You read the headline over and over again.

“Is Number Two Pro-Hero Hawks Seeing Someone Else?” you read the title out loud for the nth time.

Attached to the article is a picture of Hawks with another woman that wasn’t you; his hand was placed on her lower back as he looked lovingly at her. You eye the woman in the photo– she was perfect. Everything you wished you were–thin, beautiful– not one imperfection in sight.

Why did this always happen to you? You always did your best to show affection to your partner, giving him all your love and attention, putting him first before yourself whether he realized it or not. What were you doing wrong?

Your boyfriend wasn’t even home yet so you couldn’t confront him about it, but truth be told, you wished he wouldn’t come home yet. You weren’t ready to talk about it. What if he really was cheating on you? How would you deal with that again after your numerous previous relationships where you had been cheated on? If only you could just close your eyes and wake up from this horrible nightmare.

Your thoughts are cut short as you hear the jiggling of keys at the front door. He was home. Your heart hammers loudly in your chest–so loudly that you can hear your heartbeat in your ears.

“Baby I’m home! You here?” you hear him announce himself as soon as he gets the front door open.

You peek around the wall you were sitting behind, trying to hide yourself from him as you see him walk further into your shared home, still in his hero clothes. You almost jump out of your skin when his eyes flick to yours, his eyebrow raising slightly as you scurry to hide yourself behind the wall again.

“What’re you hiding for?” he asks now crouching right beside you.

You screech at his sudden presence and move away from him.

“N-nothing,” you say, not ready to know the truth yet.

“Oh c’mon baby, you can tell me,” he moves closer to you, bringing a hand up to cup your face lovingly.

You swallow hard, hating the way your body reacted to his touch, leaning into the warmth of his hand, but you stop yourself and scoot away from him once again. You hold your phone up to him, allowing him to read the gossip article you had found about his alleged cheating.

He stops in place and takes your phone from you, reading the article and scrolling through it, the frown on his face grows longer the more he reads. You can’t help the warm tears that come falling down your face as you admire him. Will this be the last time I ever get to see him as mine?

“Y/N, baby. These aren’t true, I promise you. I had just saved that woman from a gang of villains. These reporters just happened to capture the moment I was putting her down as she thanked me. I’ve never seen her before other than that,” he explains as he finally looks down and sees your tear stained face.

“But she’s so beautiful. Not like me with my disgusting body and horrendous scars. I can see why you’d want someone like her,” you confess the dark thoughts that had been eating away at you.

Cheating or not, you always felt like Hawks would eventually leave you behind whenever he found someone more appealing–someone worthy of loving.

“Baby no. Don’t say that about yourself,” his eyebrows furrow as he sits on the floor beside you, taking your hand in his, “I love you and only you. I love your scars, I kiss them all the time, don’t I? I love your body too! Every inch of you is complete perfection to me. No one on this earth could capture every inch of my heart as strongly as you have. I just wish you could see for yourself how amazing you really are.”

“Really? So you don’t love her?” you sniff, turning towards him to see if he was being sincere.

His eyes were pooling with love for you as he responded, “Of course I don’t love her. There’s only enough room in here for you my love.”

He pats his chest where his heart is located and once again cups your cheeks.

“Let me know whenever those negative thoughts come back into your head. I’ll kiss them all away,” he says as he leans in and kisses your forehead, “And please know that I would never cheat on you, ever. A man never lets his woman feel insecure in their relationship, so I’m sorry for not showing you enough, how much I love you.”

“You do!” you assure him, remembering all the moments he’d take care of you and make the first move to call you or tell you he loves you, “I just let my insecurities get the best of me. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t ever apologize,” he whispers before leaning in and leaving a lingering kiss to your lips, savoring the feeling of your lips on his–his favorite feeling–before pulling away, “Always question me whenever you feel insecure or suspicious, I’ll make sure to ease your mind instead of having you worry about it by yourself. I love you so much, please remember that.”

“I will,” you hum, leaning your head on his shoulder as you close your eyes and enjoy his presence.

You feel him leave your side for a second, before warm hands wrap around your back and thighs, lifting you off the ground.

“Off we go for cuddles!” he announces with a laugh as he carries you to your room.

You laugh along with him, swinging your arms around his neck, glad that he wasn’t cheating and still loved you dearly.

He lays you on the bed before jumping in beside you and pulling you into his arms.

“I love you,” he rests his forehead on yours, “so much.”

“I love you too,” you reply, closing the distance between you with a kiss of your own.

REQUESTS ARE OPEN :D

Posted: 12/26/2021 (yes ik it's the 27th, but I haven't slept yet so no <3)

[aquafaith]

My lengthy, angry ACOSF rant review.

Spoilers, TW for mental, emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.

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.

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I loved ACOTAR. I still love ACOTAR. I always will love ACOTAR. But every book afterwards made me give up more and more. ACOMAF romanticized an abusive relationship and assassinated characters for the author's convenience. ACOWAR was a bunch of boring and inconsequential death scares. ACOFAS was all-round dreadful. And each book kept shitting on and pushing away Lucien for no reason.

I'd like to preface this by saying I hated Nesta too. I hated the way she treated Feyre in ACOTAR especially, and I wasn't even too excited for this book because I wasn't that keen on Nesta as a character.

Nesta's POV and her backstory changed my perspective. It does not excuse her actions. All Nesta stans can hold these characters accountable for what they do - trauma is a reason, not an excuse. I, and many others, sided with Nesta because of the way she's treated by everyone else in this book. Also, if you're going to hate Nesta for not teaching Feyre how to read and letting her hunt at fourteen, (which I did, and are very valid things to hate), AT LEAST hold Elain accountable too.

This book. This fucking book.

Shall we start with the intervention? Feyre on her little power trip thinks that her boyfriend that hates Nesta and Nesta hates back, Nesta's ex-best friend, and her possible mate who she never talks to should be at this stupid fucking intervention??? Excuse me???

Remember in ACOMAF when Feyre wouldn't shut up about how rich Rhysand is? Feyre literally has four or five houses and is always talking about how much jewelry and lingerie she can afford because Rhysand is so rich??? Well, Nesta has a few shots. So you know what Feyre does? Humiliates Nesta at this "intervention", TEARS DOWN HER HOME, and forces her to go to the Illyrian training camp.

That was the god awful premise for this book.

Did you think Elain wasn't there because she was against the "intervention"? Nope! She was packing Nesta's belongings without permission.

Remember in ACOMAF when it's made a big fucking deal that locking up a traumatised woman is extremely damaging? Well, when Nesta decides she doesn't want to be in Illyria, Feyre locks her in the House of Wind. Nesta can't fly, so her only way of leaving is down the TEN THOUSAND STEPS, that Feyre KNOWS Nesta isn't capable of climbing.

Feyre's pregnant. In ACOFAS she randomly decided that she wanted a baby to remember Rhysand by if he dies. Which doesn't make any sense because they made that stupid fucking death pact in ACOWAR. It's just SJM superimposing her pregnancy onto her early 20's protagonist. Ignoring the fact that Feyre isn't ready for a baby and Rhysand CERTAINLY isn't, and with a war just ended and another looming and so much trauma and a DEATH PACT are all such horrible circumstances to bring a child into, Feyre is already pregnant. Remember when SJM made a big deal about Fae babies being so hard to conceive, and Feyre said in ACOFAS they wouldn't have to worry for a long time because it can take years to conceive your first Fae child? Well it's been no more than 3 or 4 months and Feyre's already pregnant. Yep.

Also the birth will kill her. Because of course it will. Rhysand KNEW this, and still agreed to try for a baby.

There's no solution. Abortions don't exist for some stupid reason, and a C section would apparently kill Feyre?

(Wasn't this book supposed to be about Nessian?)

In ACOWAR, Cassian was on the battlefield with his entrails around his knees. Someone had to literally hold his guts in for him, and he's fine, but you're telling me a C section would kill Feyre?

Don't worry, this is just setting up the AWFUL ending to this book.

ACOSF amounts to Nesta being gaslit into believing her abusers are right. Her friends and family slut shame her and shame her for her lifestyle constantly. Cassian says it took him decades to work through some of his trauma, and he tried to drink and fuck it away too, but suddenly when Nesta does so it's heinous? Nesta's barely twenty five and she's expected to cope better than these ancient immortals.

Hell, didn't SJM write ACOMAF? Nobody expected Feyre to pick herself up so quickly. The IC (excluding Rhysand) respected her boundaries for the most part and understood when it was grief, trauma, and turmoil that made her angry, sad, want to be left alone, etc. But that's all forgotten here.

Amren also compares Nesta to the people in, and says she belongs in, The Court of Nightmares. You know, the murderers, abusers and rapists? This innocent woman who had a few shots and a bit of sex is on par with them, apparently!

The sex scenes.

SJM is scared to say vagina so she says sex.

She says seed to mean semen.

Apparently the word cunt turns SJM on. I just found Cassian saying that kinda cringe because I'm Bri'ish so the word cunt really isn't a big deal.

Back to the baby killing Feyre, because this is definitely what we all wanted from this book as indicated by the change in covers and format and title... Rhysand decides not to tell Feyre. He tells her friends and family, and tells them not to tell her.

SJM loves sweeping Rhysand's abuse from the first book under the rug and claiming it's always about Feyre's choice... where is that here, MAAS? WHERE IS IT?

Anyway, when Nesta rightfully decides to tell Feyre (although it is kind of out of spite), Rhysand threatens to kill Nesta.

And I believed him. With the way he treats his """mAtE tHaT hE lOvEs sO mUcH""" and all the people he's mindlessly killed before, do you really think he wouldn't kill the person who gave Feyre an inch of autonomy?

So what does Cassian do? His lover who he cares deeply about and suspects is his mate has received a death threat from tHe mOsT pOwErFuL hIgH lORd iN hIsToRy.

Cassian simply gets Nesta out of the court.

EXCUSE ME?

He doesn't breathe ONE word to Rhysand about this. This Illyrian WARRIOR who fought with his GUTS HANGING OUT didn't dare step up to the hIGh lOrD who he considers his brother and sparrs and fights with all the time?

Cassian literally does nothing.

Was it not Rhysand himself who said Mated males are dangerous? Can kill anyone who looks at their mate? Can be dangerous simply leaving the house? Rhys and Feyre both pull the Mate card to justify their bad actions on the other's behalf... and Cassian just tried to get Nesta out of the court?

Also, this High King bullshit.

I swear to fucking god, if SJM DARES to make this abusive, power-tripping, mOsT pOwErFuL hIgH lOrD eVEr, husband-insert of hers hIgH kInG, I will fight her in the street.

My beloved Lucien is in this book. Only for him to be used and shat on.

I really liked it when he calmed Cassian down with just a look though. Yes please fox man.

Helion is also in this book. Nothing to do with Lucien.

Eris is also in this book. ERIS. Lucien's eldest brother. The same one who abused him for years, but according to SJM he's slightly better, because at least he didn't agree to kill Lucien's lover. He betrayed his daddy that one time, therefore Eris is good. Y'know, the same Eris who abused Mor? Left her laying on the Autumn Court border with a nail in her womb? Well SJM is going back on her own canon to redeem yet ANOTHER abusive male, while continuing to demonize Tamlin for things he only happened to do when SJM decided the villain from the first book was sexy.

Nesta and Cassian are Mates.

Remember when Mates were supposed to be a rare and sacred thing? Now SJM dishes them out like Oprah.

I don't want these characters to be mates. I want to see them slowly fall in love. But SJM is incapable of writing that so she forces them together with the mAtInG bOnD. That's literally the only basis for most of these relationships, Feysand especially.

The only relationship where the bond would make sense is between Helion and The Lady of Autumn. Who still isn't named. But I will die on the hill that they're mates, I can feel it between them.

I wanted someone to die in this book. I predicted that it would either be Helion or Tarquin, but Tarquin isn't even in this one.

And the ending.

SJM can't write a decent climax, so she kills both Feyre and Rhysand for the second time. Yep.

The baby is being born which stupidly kills Feyre, and thankfully takes Rhysand with them.

Nesta decides to save them. Bad choice. But she decides to save them! Because she's so powerful and she ATE THE CONTENTS OF THE CAULDRON and she's CONNECTED TO THE MOTHER.

Do you know what happens.

Nesta loses her powers.

NESTA.

LOSES.

HER.

POWERS.

The powers we've hardly seen, the powers that were briefly mentioned and used ONCE in ACOWAR, then we saw like two flashes of in this book? They're GONE now. GONE SO NESTA CAN SAVE HER ABUSIVE SISTER AND ABUSIVE HUSBAND WHO ABUSES THEM BOTH.

Nesta is just an Amren now. They both fought for their powers, and had to give them up to save people who didn't deserve it. Now they're anticlimactically trapped in powerless bodies.

Also, and I can't BELIEVE I didn't originally include this - do you know what else Nesta TRADED HER POWERS FOR?

Illyrian anatomy so she can carry Cassian's baby one day.

EXCUSE ME?

I am so fucking SICK TO DEATH of the narrative that every woman needs a man and children to be happy. SJM clearly loves this because she's literally only keeping Amren and Nesta alive now to be sex objects to their partners and nothing else seeing as their POWERS WERE RIPPED AWAY FROM THEM, and now NESTA TRADED THOSE POWERS TO HAVE A BABY SHE DOESN'T EVEN KNOW SHE WANTS? Nesta does NOT strike me as a motherly type. She's the wine aunt, she and Cassian are the couple that go on holiday a lot and and babysit their nieces and nephews, but nope. Nesta HAS to have children.

The Feysand baby is called Nyx. That's just so underwhelming, you go from these huge, multiple syllable names like Amarantha and Morrigan and Lucien to Nyx? I get it's supposed to be unique but it's not even meaningful. It's just more shit-flavoured icing on the hAHa nIgHt uWu cake. I prefer Renesmée.

Nesta is wrong somehow. She says she's sorry as she's saving them. FOR WHAT? For being a little rude to Feyre as all sisters are? And rightfully hating your sister's abuser?

Oh yeah, remember in ACOWAR when Nesta took care of a comatose, starving Elain for months? Elain is randomly okay now because she takes care of her mental health the stereotypical way of baking cakes, and not drinking and fucking, which she shames Netsa for.

Remember the slut shaming, demeaning comments that the whole iNnEr cIrClE made about Nesta? They all expect apologies from her. For some reason.

Nesta has done nothing wrong. She coped with her trauma and minded her business in her own ways, and she's expected to apologise to the people who control and emotionally abuse her.

Nothing that any of these characters did to Nesta is right. Nesta wasn't okay at the end, this wasn't Nesta's healing story. This is Nesta being shamed and degraded until she submits.

Oh I can't believe I forgot to write this in my first draft of this review, do you know how Nesta "overcomes" her grief about her Father's death and her conflicting feelings about him and his life and her guilt? When she visits his grave for the first time, she takes Nyx.

NYX.

She holds NYX up to the grave and talks about how it's his grandson.

GO AWAY YOU STUPID DEMON BABY THIS IS NOT YOUR BOOK.

Speaking of, it's revealed that Nesta was abused by her mother and grandmother in this book? Something we were all looking forward to is seeing more of the Archeron's mother seeing as Feyre was so young when she died, but... nope. She gets a few vague mentions, and this newly revealed abuse is entirely glossed over. Nesta was also actively groomed by an older man at 14. But SJM glosses over this because of course she does.

Finally, the bonus chapters.

My edition came with a bonus chapter from Feyre's POV. It was pointless and I hated it.

There's another bonus chapter from Azriel's POV. Once I'd finished this book, he was one of the few characters I still harboured a shred of respect for.

Then I read his bonus chapter.

This exists to purely objectify Elain.

Whether you ship Elain with Azriel, or Lucien, or neither, this chapter is disgusting. He thinks about her coming on his tounge, and other things simply just to please him.

He then dares to suggest that "the Cauldron picked wrong" in choosing Lucien as Elain's mate?

No Azriel, SJM picked RIGHT in not giving each Archeron sister a bAt bOy.

Rhysand does the only right thing he's ever done by telling Azriel to stay away from Elain, but then he has to ruin it by clarifying that it's only so they can manipulate and use Lucien more.

Oh, and Azriel wants to kill Lucien.

Need I remind you that Lucien respects Azriel? Lucien is another victim of the Night Court's needless, baseless torment, and Azriel is no exception.

Lucien stays well out of Elain's way because she makes it clear that she's not interested in a mate, but Azriel wants to kill him simply for being her mate.

Lucien has done nothing. And I mean literally NOTHING to warrant any of this treatment. From the bAt bOyS, from Feyre, from his family, from SJM, from the deluded part of this fandom that think he's done wrong. NOTHING.

All I liked about this book was the Lucien scenes (which is a given), ((although I hated the way everyone talks about him behind his back)), Nesta's relationship with the house, Emerie and Gwyn, the evidence that Gwynriel is endgame and subsequently Elucien, and the book love. Everything else was horrible. Oh, and Nesta hates Rhysand. I love that for her, because everyone else bows at his feet.

Oh yeah, when Nesta DARES suggest that Rhysand is an "arrogant, preening asshole" which I think is a compliment, Cassian can't take Rhys' cock out of his mouth for one second, and has to get mad at her for having an opinion. Don't even get me started on Azriel in that scene.

If each book after ACOTAR made me slowly give up, this book made me give up altogether. I cannot go on to support this victim-blaming, abuse-forgiving, misogynistic series. I've given up on SJM, and the only characters I care about anyone are Lucien, Nesta, Helion, and Tarquin. I'll continue to read this series to see if SJM redeems herself, but I'll be downloading them for free. I'm not giving this piece of shit any more of my money.

I hope we don't get the Lucien book. I don't want her to slaughter my fox in the way she slaughtered LITERALLY EVERYONE ELSE.

Thanks for listening.

Edit: I put the review on Goodreads!

[katsukikitten]

Part 5

For once in your life, your eyes slowly open, only having been disturbed by warm morning sunlight. The soft comforter trapping your body heat and essentially you, as it pinned you to the soft mattress. You snuggle deeper into the sheets, breathing in the smell of clean linen and caramel.

Wait. Caramel?

With a jolt you jump from the bed, eyes wide as you look for the source of the scent. Patting down your jeans and shirt for at least one knife. You hardly remember what happened after dinner with his family. You remember booze, light conversation while feeling warm and floaty. Oh shit what was that passive that activated again? Rest assured?

"Info on rest assured." You grumble, voice soft from disuse. Your quirk happily pulls up a little informational box that you can see. Too sleepy to make the box private as it reads aloud to you.

"PASSIVE BUFF REST ASSURED. A newly unlocked buff that increases sleep quality and can only be activated around trusted individuals and safe places. Would you like a list?"

You stare at the question box with a flashing yes or no before you point with the tip of your knife to yes.

"Currently there is only one thing listed. Type : Individual Name: Bakugou Ka…."

"Oi." Someone calls from the front door of the apartment as you dismiss the information with a wave of your hand. He discards his boots at the door before making his way to his bedroom.

"You talking to yourself dumbass?" He says, blocking your only exit by leaning on the door jamb. He holds an iced coffee towards you, his eyes sharp as he adds.

"We need to talk about your file."

Crossing his arms you ignore his offer of iced appeasement, he sets it on the low dresser as you speak.

"It's not up for discussion."

"I'm your boss, I deserve to know."

"What you deserve to know is what's in that file. My whole life doesn't fit into a manila fucking folder. Quit asking questions."

"I'll ask what I want." He growls, "Because it's suspicious that you have this unbelievably complex quirk and yet I'm sure your top skills have nothing to do with stealing."

"If you're that concerned then ask the director of the program. I'm not the only secret 'reform'." You throw your hands into the air is exasperation

"He showed up dead shortly after you were inducted. Plus no one has any real record of what you've done. Not a single thing listed on what you've stolen."

"Talk to Deku then, he's next in line for that program, he ain't dead."

"He said he doesn't remember approving your file." He bites back and before you can retort strong fingers wrap around your wrist. His calloused pads brush over the cool metal of your bracelet.

"RECOGNIZED, BAKUGOU KATSUKI : NEW LIMITED ACCESS GRANTED. 1. Health and Condition status, upon request 2. Top five skills 3. Buffs that would benefit Bakugou Katuski. 4. Pending buffs to be activated by host. Please state a number."

"Two." "Cancel!" You try to shout over him but he beats you to it. The bracelet opens up a little box displaying your top five skills as of late.

"Stab resistance, poison resistance, what would a thief need those for? Stealth is number three and slight of hand is number five. Shit don't add up Princess." He glares while your nostrils flare, ripping your wrist away from his grip.

"You're really fucking pushing it…" He takes a step towards you while you step back as if it were part of a dance as you try so hard to keep your wrath in check.

"Am I? Like I said, shit ain't adding up. You have this bracelet that still has limited information to your quirk, support knows nothing of the recordings or god damn blocks you've placed on it and lastly…" Your knees hit the back of the back of the bed causing you to sit on the mattress. His rough palms come to lie flat against the fabric next to your thighs as he leans in. You fight to shrink back.

"Lastly, I deserve to know how an unnamed woman, who obviously knew you, turns up dead moments after I arrive on scene and then her body is gone in a matter of minutes. She poisoned you with a complex concoction that the lab in the agency has yet to figure out the formula to it and yet you knew the fucking antidote? What did you really do?"

Rage boils in your blood as you stare into his vermilion eyes. Like flipping a switch you turn ice cold, your breath mingles with his.

PASSIVE BUFF SHARP TONGUE ACTIVATED INSULTS DEALT WILL HAVE 39% MORE STING.

"You know what's funny? You don't see me asking how you became a manager with your shitty attitude. Nor do you see me asking how you manipulated and gaslit your way to the number one spot." You press your cheek against his as your lips graze his ear, "And you sure as hell don't see me asking how you're considered a hero at all after you told Izuku to kill himself in middle school."

The scars in his chest and stomach roar to life, demanding attention as his shirt scrapes against the sensitive skin. He takes a step back as if struck while the room begins to smell of smokey spiced caramel. His bones groan as his knuckles bloom white.

You smile as you stand, collecting your bag and the jacket he lent. Even grabbing the iced coffee he got you. Because why let it go to waste?

Cruelty slips onto your shoulders as nicely as his borrowed jacket while you pause at his bedroom door wanting nothing more than to leave him with terrible thoughts.

"Did you ever even apologize for that?"

Silence is your answer as you chuckle to yourself.

"Didn't think so."

You leave him with those nasty thoughts. Long gone as he still pants, pain shooting through his gut and lungs as it did all those fucking years ago.

As he moved without a second thought and placed himself in front of a stupid, dopey mop top boy who tried to hold up the weight of the world by himself.

With a guttural growl he looks over his destroyed room, as if a bomb went off.

He reaches for his phone dialing the number he never bothered to save.

"Meet me at our usual when you get off your stupid fucking shift. I know you've forgotten to eat you useless hero." The other line chimes in with a deep laugh as he adds.

"Okay Kaachan. I'll be there."

Izuku doesn't get invited out often and especially not by Bakugou. So the emerald haired boy decides to keep an eye on his oldest friend. Silently watching and not glancing too long as hot head huffs and puffs, taking another shot. The ash blonde's favorite spicy ramen goes untouched as the large man across from him slurps up his fourth bowl, covered in sweat and dirt from the day's work.

"You better get my fucking money's worth of this endless ramen bowl shit." He bites, slamming down another shot, fingers subconsciously finding the old scar on his chest. The action does not go unnoticed by his more docile friend. Izuku thanks the waiter as he starts on his fifth bowl.

"I'm starting to think you're mad about more than the endless ramen you ordered me." Bright emerald meet dark garnet eyes that glare, Bakugou's cheeks burn in his buzz.

"Fuck you. Nothin's wrong." Another deadly shot.

"That's your seventh. Kaachan you can't fool me. Your body language gives it away." Bakugou follows Izuku's eyes to his fingers. Quickly he removes his calloused pads from the divot. Angrily staring at the wall like a child who's been caught.

"Fuck you." He murmurs, silence settles over the pair in the far back corner of the restaurant. Bakugou's eyes glance over to Izuku who continues to eat, crimson bore into the scars on his arms from where the dumbass had broken them time and time again. His scars burn with your words, with the memory of what he's said in the past.

Too cruel and for what?

"You know I'm-" Bakugou starts but Izuku holds up a hand, wanting to spare his friend.

"I know, you've shown me everyday, even before you jumped in front of me, Kaachan. I've always known." He leaves it at that, in his heart he knows that Bakugou is sorry. He's seen it in every action since their first year at UA, he doesn't need to hear him say it.

What good are words when actions spoke louder?

"So what's bothering you? Worried over someone? You're dating Rogue now right?" Izuku asks, holding his chopsticks at a point while Bakugou takes another shot.

"Her file is what's bothering me. Deku, she doesn't have a fucking thing of her past. Not to mention you don't even remember signing off on her. Real responsible." Bakugou watches with a dull snarl as Izuku goes back to slurping his noodles.

"Ka...Kaachan." Izuku chokes, "Not fair. They put a lot of your desk too and I bet you don't remember half of it."

"I'd remember something like that. Just makes it that much more suspicious. Probably foraged by someone but the question is who…." Katsuki sets his head in his hand, staring at his orange broth.

"Well, did you ask her yourself?" Bakugou scoffs in response.

"Yea, and it didn't fucking turn out well." His finger finds his stomach this time, the ghastly white crater suddenly irritated by the fabric of his shirt. Izuku stops eating, he isn't stupid and easily connects the dots. The soft man thinks back a decade of his friend is the worst condition but more worried about him.

"Kaachan…" Deep jade eyes water a bit but Bakugou puts up a hand

"Don't." He barks, sighing.

"So you must really care about her if whatever she said affected you that much. You weren't even bothered when they were trying to 'cancel' you." Izuku taps Bakugou's bowl with his chopsticks, silently begging the blonde to eat. Hopping he'll take at least a bite to soak up some of that alcohol. Reluctantly deadly fingers pick up the sticks, gathering ramen between them but still undecided if he should eat.

His silence is answer enough for Izuku.

"I know my agency started the program. I'll look into it some more tomorrow. I'll be mostly office duty since I have so much paperwork anyway. But even if her past is dark Katsuki, what are you going to do? She may not have had any say in the matter, she doesn't give me that evil vibe."

Bakugou thinks back to you. How you fight, how you hold yourself.

How cute you were sleeping on his shoulder before he eased you onto his lap. How softly you snored in his bed. His stomach twists, Izuku's words and yours floating around his head.

"I guess I'll decide once I have more answers." With that the blonde decides to bring the spicy noodles to his lips.

[kaypeace21]

Stranger things is about mental health & trauma- deal with it!

I’ve seen a lot of people claim anyone who mentioned this topic immediately be gaslit and told they’re “just crazy” and “rudely projecting their own issues on to the characters.’ Like- no you don’t have to believe my  Will DID/Lonnie theory ( I could be wrong). But to claim one of the show’s central themes isn’t about mental health/trauma (screams either complete lack of lit comprehension or denial cause you have your own negative biases towards such people). So let’s just go into what’s literal text-not subtext/symbolism. Just the super blatant stuff.  RIGHT IN THE SHOW!

S1

-We have El when she first appears on screen  asked by Benny if her parents starved and hurt her and if that’s why she ran away. Benny then calls CPS to say El “may have been ab*sed or something.” After this Lucas says there is “seriously something wrong with her-wrong in the head. She’s probably from the NUT-HOUSE in curly county.penthurst” We also see El  cannonically has PTSD-all of s1 she’ll see something benign (a cat, a coke commercial, a closet) and is triggered to see a traumatic flashback. That’s literally ptsd.  There’s also hints throughout the seasons she’s developmentally behind in both language, telling time etc (neglect like El’s irl can cause an intellectual disability-analysis on El/that subject here).The real pethurst in pensylvannia (not the one in stranger things/ Curly county)  closed in 1986-  it was a facility for people and mostly  kids with intellectual disabilities (it wasn’t technically a psych facility like the one in st)-but it was infamous for it’s abuse of these intellectually disabled patients kept there. We also have Brenner be a ab*sive psychiatrist.

- Hopper after suffering from the loss of his daughter. Is popping pills like candy, drinking and smoking constantly. He later says he used to hallucinate and forgot what was real -seeing and hearing sarah and says if he didn’t confront the pain he’d “fall down a black hole he couldn’t get out of.” NO... subtext here about what the void represents nope.

- Both mothers (Terry & Joyce) are dismissed as being mentally ill and simply grieving the loss of their kids . But both end up being right about the supernatural.

- “Terry pretends Jane is real. i mean it’s all make believe. you know the doctors all say it’s a coping mechanism.”

- While with Joyce the whole town pre s1 already questioned her mental health. Jonathan says “She used to have anxiety problems (pre s1).” And Jonathan, Hopper, and Lonnie all assume she’s hallucinating: talking to Will via lights, seeing a man without a face, saying Will’s body is fake -due to grief. Plus Lonnie mentions the fact Joyce’s aunt Darlene also used to hallucinate as a possible reason  (terry’s aunt also had mental health issues mentioned in s2 by Becky). Lonnie even says everything Joyce is seeing  is “all in her head.”  Hopper and Jon both say she needs to sleep and accept reality and Lonnie says she needs to see a “shrink”.  Hopper “i’m not saying that you’re crazy”. Joyce : “no, you are.” Joyce also says to Lonnie “Stop looking at me like that... like everyone else like i’m out of my damn mind.” Hopper also says about Joyce she’s “on the edge”. Callahan says in response , “she’s been on the edge for a while now” (referring to her mental health- even before Will’s dissappearance)”. While Lonnie says Jonathan is “feeding into her hallucinations ... you’re going to push her right over the edge.” In s2 Hopper says “ I think everyone is on edge- you, me, Will most of all. (when talking about Will’s ptsd/trauma)” 

- in s1 They claim Will just “fell” over the edge of the quarry’s cliff. Later the only other queer coded character (Mike) jumps off the quarry cliff (where Will’s body was found) cause the homophobic troy forced him too jump. Troy even says earlier dead-Will is “flying with all the other fairies all happy and gay” (to Mike). And Troy says to Hopper El made Mike “fly” after jumping off the cliff. Friendship saved him from jumping off the edge metaphorically ( and he’ll prob eventually be happy and gay too).

s2/3

-Will is seeing a therapist . And we are told he has ptsd and will experience the anniversary effect, personality changes,nightmares, having episodes, etc. And things “will get worse before they get better”.  Mike also asks if what Will is seeing is “real or like the doctors say all in your head?” And Will continues to see hallucinations of the mf/upsidedown that only he can see initially.

-Hopper also agrees with owens mentioning how he knew guys with ptsd . joyce : “it’s not like he’s describing a nightmare. He talks about them like they’re real.” Hopper: “Yeah, because they’re not nightmares they’re flashbacks.I think he’s right about trauma.I think everyone is on edge (bringing that s1 ref back), Me you, Will, most of all.Nothing’s gonna go back to the way that it was. But it’ll get better.In time.”

-Nancy suffers from survivor’s guilt and drunkingly says she killed Barb. Jonathan says like Nancy he has “a weight that you that carry all the time . i feel it too.” (cough depression). He also says he tries to be there for Will but says about Will “he’s not the same. maybe things can’t go back to the way they were. (mirroring Hopper’s words earlier that season)”

-Jonathan said in s1 Joyce had “anxiety issues” than Nancy says in s3 “you really are your mother’s son... you worry too much.” Then we see him look worried after the comment.

- in s2, Axel & a scientist both call El and Will “schizos” because of their powers. In s3 mrs driscoll isn’t believed about the supernatural cause she’s schizophrenic-but like Joyce/Terry was right.

- Kali saves a woman named Dottie (a british slang term for crazy)  from a mental hospital and then compares herself and El to dottie. saying her non-powered gang is “Like us ...outsiders... society discarded them.”  In graphitti we even see the title “obedlam” a british poem about discarding the mentally ill and leaving them homeless.  El before this sees a mentally ill man screaming “we’re all dead!” Kali’s friend says to El, after this encounter they were “dead all of us” until kali “saved them here” (points to head) “and here” (points to heart). Pointing to the theme of love and friendship helping those with such issues. Similar to the cliff analogy.

-The cycle of ab*se. Max in s2 says she’s afraid of becoming like Billy (her ab*ser). We see Billy mimic his ab*ser neil and inflict pain on max. In s3 we see the roots of his behavior are linked to mimicking Neil- Neil in a flashback says  about baseball “what are you scared?”  “ did i raise a p*ssy for a son”. So young Billy later in a fight says to a boy “ what are you scared to fight me? fight me p*ssy. (as he beats the boy)” Deflecting his anger of his father on to someone else. In s3, We see as a kid he used to say to Neil “don’t hurt her” (his mom)-specifically after  Neil backhand slaps her -but we later see possessed Billy backhand slap Max (just like neil).  The resentment to his mother leaving - festered into how he views women and max negatively . And his attraction to mrs wheeler prob is linked to him subconsciously missing his mother. Max in s2 even says  he can’t take it out on her mother so he does so to her instead (we even have Billy hallucinate hurting mrs wheeler).We see in s2 the cycle of abuse is there- Billy mimics Neil, and then Max mimics Billy. Billy harrasses Max and yells “SAY IT!” (mimicking Neil).  Max like Billy later  yells “SAY IT” and uses a bat /violence to stand up for herself against Billy- which earlier she said she was trying to combat … explaining she can be angry like Billy sometimes but she never wants to be like him (her nickname symbolizing this: aka ‘mad max’).  Billy’s last dying words were an apology to Max- for becoming her neil. And we hopefully will see Max break this cycle.

- Will says his now memories (that he describes like dreams) are “growing “, “spreading “,and “killing”. While Kali says they need to face their father and (as Brenner) says El has to confront her “wound” or else it’ll “grow”, “spread” and “eventually it’ll kill her.” Kali says she used to be like El . She used to bottle her pain away and it “spread.” But she then says  “I confronted my pain and I finally began to heal (from those wounds).” We also see with jonathan and nancy when describing “shared trauma” zoom in onto the scars on their hands. The wound heeled into a scar so to speak.

S2 & 3 ENDINGS

both have Hopper do a speech that delves into dealing with trauma/depression but still finding good along the way.

-s2 Hopper outside the snowball: “how are you holding up? Yeah, that feeling never goes away. It is true what they say, you know. Everyday it does get easier.”

-s3 Hopper monolouge : “ Feelings jesus. For so long, i’d forgotten what those even were. I’ve been stuck in one place,in a cave you might say , a deep dark cave (cough s2 supernatural cave). For the first time in a long time, i started to feel things again. I started to feel happy. Life... yeah sometimes it’s painful .sometimes it’s sad, and sometimes it’s suprising... happy.. And when life hurts you, because it will .remember the hurt . The hurt is good. It means you’re out of that cave.”

BUT YES- St has nothing to do with mental health/trauma, we’re just “crazy” and “projecting”. It’s not like some of ya’ll  act pompous when you just have a bias and get pissy at the idea of relating to characters you “other” as “crazy” or “damaged” irl or anything (so attack people for pointing it out). Or (benefit of the doubt) you are just like.... oblivious... or just a kid who doesn’t know better XD

[ladyofriverrun]

#there’s so much to unpack here i don’t even know where to start#i mean the fact that she’s been gaslit so badly that she genuinely thinks she’s not worthy of love…the fact that she thinks this is love at#all?? it’s so telling of what she’s been forced to endure and how she’s been conditioned over the years#lilith’s origin story was literally about her knowing her worth and demanding equality#and she was punished for that and eventually convinced by lucifer that she had in fact been asking for too much and wasn’t worthy at all#it’s such a painful thing to think about…how her core beliefs were essentially beaten out of her and turned inside out#if that makes sense#and then there’s the fact that she feels the need to thank him /for not beating her/#she is genuinely grateful her didn’t react with violence to her failure#she’s not flattering him or playing him in any way she really does believe he’s being merciful#and to thank him she /happily/ kisses his feet and even goes as far as to call them beautiful#this is what severe long term abuse looks like#lilith exhibits all the textbook signs here it’s not even subtle#lucifer took a bold self-assured self-sufficient capable and powerful witch and made her feel like she was nothing#lilith is someone who stood up to the false god for fuck’s sake….imagine the amount of mistreatment it took to get her to this place#where she was literally on her knees bowing down to a man— the one thing she had refused to do in the garden#it’s so sickening to think about @penelopeblosscm​

All of this. Like her whole origin story is that Lilith knew her own worth and the worth of a woman in general to challenge a FUCKING GOD, she literally told a God to fuck off, and then chose banishment rather than submit to being lesser...and then through thousands of years of abuse and condition Lucifer manages not only to make Lilith scared and trapped, but also makes her no longer have faith in her own CORE BELIEFS. 

And being grateful for him not hitting her, for seeing his letting go without punishment as love, for believing herself not worthy of even this illusion of kindness is such textbook abuse victim that it’s genuine agony to watch. 

But I do dread to think just what her suffering and abuse was (since we only see the glimpses of the most recent times when she’s already ‘broken in’ so he has to use his more obtuse techniques less frequently) that was enough to make the first woman who defied a god rather than submit to being considered lesser believe she’s unworthy of even the smallest illusion of mercy. With that in mind, it is amazing that Lilith was able to retain any sense of herself, enough for her actually to recover and break free.

I always think about the fact if she hadn’t been sent ot Greendale she’d still be trapped, but it was the experiences she had in Greendale and the people she met and grew close to that showed Lilith what her life was, what Lucifer was, and gave her the strength to remember who she is and to fight back and break free. 

Oh look, I’m emotional again. Sigh.  

[generallemarc]

Heard a sermon on the radio talking about spiritual warfare

It wasn’t that I disagreed, not entirely, but it spoke entirely in terms of large-scale things. And yeah, large-scale actions against things like legalized murder(abortion/the death penalty) and large-scale charitable efforts to bring people up from poverty are important. But spiritual warfare can have a deeply personal element to it. I’ve spoken about this before, but when I was in high school I met a kid who was going through utter hell, with everything from epilepsy to depression to gender dysphoria to having three suicide attempts before his 16th birthday. Now I’ve spent over half a decade untangling my own depression, and I’m still nowhere near capable of assessing my actions in helping this guy(who I now refer to as my little brother due to how we’re basically found family), but one thing I do know was that he was completely and totally convinced that he was alone, that God hated him and that anybody who said they’d help would eventually leave. And I know that Satan was loving every minute of it.

I can specifically remember hearing him talk about his urges to self-harm and thinking “Ok, I’m gonna help this guy until he’s not dealing with this anymore”, and the next year of my life became structured around this thought. I didn’t quit, even as my own depression worsened. That’s not a brag, that’s actually a warning-I ignored my own depression to the point where it gaslit me into thinking I was actually a terrible person for feeling good about helping my little bro, and that I had no right to feel any kind of joy in the progress he made at recovery, both of which definitely contributed to my depressive death-spiral in college, and definitely made it harder for me to help him with how much harm was doing to myself. I fucked up at least a million times just in regards to myself, but what mattered most was that I was there whenever he needed it for as long as he needed me, and because my little brother is one of the toughest, most enduring children of God out there that’s all he needed to march into recovery while telling each and every one of his disorders to go straight to Hell. 

Now, did I convert him to the faith? No. We already know we’ll be friends for life so I’m definitely working the long game on him(at least according to the memes we trade back and forth every time religion comes up), but even then I’m not 100% sure of anything, nor should I be. He had some fucked-up experiences with bigots in churches that will instinctively affect him the way a woman raising her voice at me will for me(I’m an abuse victim, for those who don’t know), and so some of his thoughts and fears aren’t even within his control anymore. But what I do know is that I convinced him to look at faith through a more even-handed lens by showing up, saying “God created you to love yourself, not hate yourself”, and then helping him go through each and every step of recovery towards the ultimate goal of self-love. But even that pales in comparison to my bro himself-this dude is kindness and compassion given human form, and without the crushing weight of his mental demons he’s hell-bent on spreading that to the world. He’s training to get a technical degree so that he can work in medicine, he’s saved at least a half-dozen lives through reaching out to people in need online, and he was instrumental in giving me a lifeline when I was coming out of my abusive relationship. By helping save him, I wound up helping save myself too. So yes, always be willing to take part in larger, group endeavors. But sometimes things are going to be personal, sometimes you’ll see a single person who needs someone. Be that someone. If there was someone there for you, do it in their name. If there was no-one there for you, do it in your own name, that you might start a new chain of assistance from person to person. But always do it in God’s name, for He is the one who wants you to do it, who may very well be calling you to do it. I can’t possibly think of a better way to show the world His love.

[thenonbinarydetective]

SPNGATE Summary to my Knowledge

So let’s see if I got this

One-sided destiel confession and then immediate bury your gays sacrifice for dean

There’s a rumor the Putin is resigning

Georgia turns blue in the 2020 election

Castiel is basically forgotten for the final two episodes

11 Scenes were cut from the finale. Two romantic songs were part of the storyboard, one of which being Angel with a Shotgun.

One of the scenes is rumored to be Dean screaming for Cas

Eileen, Sam’s deaf girlfriend, is dead and forgotten

Jack becomes God after Dean kills God and leaves

The brothers are alone again and fall into their old monster a week thing and Dean is still doing what his dad told him to even though he should’ve grown past that with character development

Dies impaled on a nail, any injury that probably could’ve been fixed. This character who has struggle with depression and s*icide just shown giving up instead of getting the happy ending he deserved and longed for. Cas sacrifice is made meaningless by this

There’s incest

Unhealthy codependency last beyond death when Sam names his son Dean

The first woman who isn’t killed or in pain for plot development is just standing blurrily in the background. Silent, with no name, or no pictures around the house they’re supposed to be living in. IDK if she’s real, she just so blurry

Party city wigs for old Sammy

He dies of old man disease

There’s maybe some more incest

Ends the show the way it began. Not in a symbolical circular ending, but one that basically throws away any character development they had

Random side character is in the finale and dies

You know instead of the beloved reoccuring characters the show has accumulated over 15 years and belongs in Heaven

Bobby I get, but Dean is in Heaven with his canonically abusive father? Why?

They blamed that on Covid and multiple actors came out and said that wasn’t true. That they were never called

Georgia is confirmed blue again around the same time

The Spanish dub comes in and reciprocates the confession that the CW said wasn’t

Everyone freaks out

The CW is officially in trouble at this point

Jensen recorded the scene on his phone and still has it. Hasn’t released it.

 Everyone realizes the scene is clearly edited

#TheySilencedYou and #TheySilencedThem trends

The CW uses Misha as a shield. They get the situation wrong and most likely told him to say the things he said. That it wasn’t a bury your gays, we can DIY our rep, and the Spanish dub comes from a “Rogue Translator”

Possibly gaslit him into thinking that he did something wrong when he’s not to blame

Many people say through it cause this isn’t like Misha to say the things he said. He’s on social media a lot, I think most fans understand him.

There’s a possible Indian dub confirming it, idk what happened with that.

As well as Portuguese Dub (idk if rumor or confirmed)

Negative reviews of the finale start disappearing from ImDb

Black Lightning is cancelled, which somehow became a part of this. Sorry Black Lightning

CW stays silent

 Video(s) of the finale start disappearing from the CW’s official Youtube Channel

Also videos of the confession in Spanish have disappeared from the internet.

People start to open the conversation to the rest of the network and start questioning how the CW has represented minorities

Obama is a Destiel Shipper

There’s now an Italian Dub rumor. Which is questionable.

#SomethingToSay starts and goes hard on judging and speaking on the “representation that the CW has presented. Going far beyond Supernatural to the point were every show is now guilty of something (with evidence)

Main points being questionable/bad queer representation with repeated use of stereotypes and bury your gays, stereotyping and villainizing black characters, fetishizing and stereotyping asian characters, ableism surrounding their treatment of disabled and mentally ill characters, and using a woman’s pain as a plot device

That’s surprisingly not the only points. Whole list here

The CW still hasn’t made an official statement. The closest they’ve done is pin that generic “we don’t hate you” post they made even though it’s practically incorrect at this point

Considering they’ve promised to do better in terms of representation multiple times in the past and have yet to prove it. Many people remembered Lexa and also Vanessa Morgan and that other Riverdale actress that moved on the Katy Keene. Who was apparently forced to leave her role, not due to the fact the series was cancelled.

Unrelated but someone on the Flash got Covid and they had to stop filming

Only God knows what’s gonna happen next? Let me know if I left anything out

[dicapriho]

Important quotes to take from this article, that sums up perfectly why Daenarys’ treatment in season 8 was so heartbreaking..(long post with bullet points for easy reading):

Game of Thrones is "a world where women are often treated as disposable objects, Daenerys outwitted and overpowered her male enemies. As the sole protagonist in her own storyline, far from the rest of the characters, she was set up to be one of the few unambiguously [female] heroic figures in the series."

"in just a few episodes, she quickly transformed from a woman who has prided herself on saving the downtrodden to one who burns the innocent."

"[Daenerys’] treatment this season from the makeup of the writers’ room: The writers and directors on the show have always been overwhelmingly male, and women were shut out of both writing and directing jobs for every episode in season 8."

"Throughout her life, Daenerys has shown a commitment to justice...She freed the slaves in Meereen... When Drogon burned one child, she chained up her other two dragons, leaving herself more vulnerable...She put her fight for the Iron Throne on pause to fight in Jon’s war against the White Walkers [in the North where she knew she would feel unwelcome]."

"She was called the “Breaker of Chains” for a reason. When she misstepped, we forgave her, as we forgave, say, Tyrion for strangling Shae." [And Jon for killing a child for betraying him!]

“Daenerys has certainly used “Dracarys” to punish plenty of people during her reign... she always gave some compelling reason for doing so.”

She first used her dragon’s fire to kill a warlock who tried to imprison her, and again against a slaver who tried to cheat her...she crucified all the masters in retaliation for them having killed slave children — but they had killed children...She burned all the Khals who were threatening to keep her as a slave or rape her, or both."

Dany’s advisors gave awful advice:

"Daenerys agreed to make Tyrion her hand because Tyrion said he “knew things”...specifically, he claimed to know how to make alliances in Westeros and exploit people’s hate of Cersei in order to put Daenerys on the throne. Except, Tyrion did…none of that."

"...when did Tyrion convince a single lord that if they joined their side, they could get a new title and nice castle and see the land’s most hated woman [Cersei] burned to a crisp? Never."

"...what Tyrion did do: Try to cut a deal with slavers that would have kept slavery legal for a longer period of time, until Daenerys decided to burn their ships instead; convince Dany not to fly to King’s Landing and burn the Red Keep, which would have resulted in far fewer Kings Landing deaths; come up with the horrible plan to capture a wight that almost got Jon killed and lost Daenerys a dragon and still didn’t earn Cersei’s allegiance; convince Daenerys to trust Cersei, who has never proven herself to be trustworthy; forget to remind Daenerys that Euron and the Iron Fleet would almost certainly be waiting near Dragonstone, thus losing Daenerys another dragon; free Jaime from captivity in an effort to help both his brother and Cersei escape death at Daenerys’ hands..."

"Don’t even get me started on Varys, who didn’t write a single letter to a single lord to gain intel against Cersei or an ally for Dany but did find time to spread the word about Jon’s true parentage...”

“Tyrion and Varys were supposed to be her helpers. They failed her. Instead of owning up to this and realizing the part they have both played, Tyrion and Varys begin to worry that Daenerys is a flawed ruler exactly because she’s losing faith in them over their terrible decisions."

On the Sansa v Dany struggle:

"...The writers of the show cited much more petty reasons for their [Sansa and Dany's] conflict: “[Daenerys is] also very pretty, and how much does that factor in? Sansa starts off this season very suspicious and not at all friendly with Dany.”"

Her Isolation:

"In the last few episodes, Daenerys finds herself envying the love that Jon’s people feel for him...it’s destabilizing for her to arrive in Westeros and find that people are not eager to see her. Why, exactly, the Northerners don’t appreciate her dragons — without which they could not have defeated the Army of the Dead...."

"Daenerys rightfully glowers at Jon as his countrymen celebrate the fact that he mounted a dragon a couple of times when Dany has been riding one for years [Not to mention she is the first Targaryen in hundreds of years to have successfully mothered & raised/trained dragons]...In a mission to make Dany feel as isolated as possible, the show killed off her closest advisors, Jorah and Missendei."

"Daario is controlling Slaver’s Bay in her absence. Yara Greyjoy is sworn to her. In theory, the new Prince of Dorne would be allied with her since Daenerys struck a pact with Ellaria Sand. Daenerys could have called on any of these allies when she faced Cersei’s army but didn’t — simply because the show needed her to be alone ."

On Missandei:

"Game of Thrones fridged Missandei. There’s no other way to put it. Her capture and death happens just so Daenerys would feel isolated. The fact that the writers turned the only major black female character on the show into a device to motivate Daenerys feels even more cringeworthy."

"The fairly quick transition from complicated hero to totally mad villain leaned heavily on an oft-repeated line: “every time a Targaryen is born, the gods toss a coin”. But should Daenerys’ Targaryen blood necessarily doom her? After all, Jon is half Targaryen, too. So why does he get to sit comfortably on the other side of the coin?...The show has long been obsessed with various characters’ struggles to shake their family’s legacies. Tyrion killed his own father and joined Team Daenerys, only to betray Daenerys in order to help his family again." 

"Daenerys has long tried to differentiate herself from her father, the Mad King, only to become her father’s daughter."

"...the show’s most recent plotting flaws was Varys’ rushed decision that Daenerys was a terrible enough queen that he would endeavor to poison her — quite a stretch for a man who served under King Joffrey...Remember that Varys once wanted to put Dany’s brother Viserys, a demonstrable megalomaniac, on the Iron Throne."

"...when Varys found out Jon was a Targaryen, he began openly conspiring to undermine and overthrow Daenerys...He accused her of being paranoid while simultaneously conspiring against her, which means she had every right to be suspicious...Again, it’s a failure of the show that the man who was once revered as Master of Whispers walked up to Jon in the middle of a crowded beach and suggested he usurp Daenerys."

"Other rulers we think of as heroes in this story have executed men for less than attempted murder: Robb Stark executed Rickard Karstark for killing the Lannister hostages, against Robb’s orders...Ned Stark executed someone for abandoning the Night’s Watch...Jon Snow executed the men who succeeded in murdering him (before he was resurrected) including Olly, a young boy."

"...Jon betrayed Daenerys’ trust by telling his family, and Tyrion betrayed her — twice. Davos also betrayed her too for totally inexplicable reasons by helping Tyrion smuggle Jaime to Cersei...Her advisor’s lie to her and gaslit her, plain and simple. And yet the way that Daenerys’ destruction of King’s Landing is shot, we are supposed to see her as the irrational one and Tyrion as one of the victims of her terror."

"...either due to time restrictions or lack of source material or just plain lack of creativity, the show took shortcuts this season...And those shortcuts tended to rely on the laziest of sexist stereotypes about crazed, power-hungry women."

"Maureen Ryan at the Hollywood Reporter put it best: “Inescapably, infuriatingly, what we’re left with is apparently the central message of Game of Thrones: Bitches are crazy.” "

"...Had [Dany's] paranoia been seeded many episodes ago and grown over the course of several seasons, it would be an epic Shakespearean tragedy. Instead we must infer this descent based on her frizzy hair."

"Worse, the moment when she seemingly decides to rule with fear, not love, comes after she’s romantically rejected by Jon...” [Suggestible that the lack of requited love is a strong enough reason for a level-minded strong woman to fall into a pit of craziness, despite all the good she has ever done and vows to continue doing..]

"Varys suggested that Jon would be a better ruler exactly because he did not want to rule. Figures in mythology and history ranging from Moses to George Washington to Harry Potter have been heralded as heroes because they came to power reluctantly. Those figures also tend to be male. How do our stories cast women eager for power? As evil queens. And now Daenerys is a cliché."

"There have been a lot of problematic characterizations of women this season, as revealed by the writers’ own commentary surrounding the episodes...Sansa essentially parroted what the writers have been saying for years about her rape by Ramsay Bolton — that it made her stronger...and the showrunners called Cersei, one of the smartest, most vicious characters on Thrones, “just a girl who needs the comfort of a man..”

"...in the end, Daenerys cycled through several tired stereotypes: Another evil, power-hungry queen literally shot with a dragon’s wings behind her; the crazy lady that a noble man has to heroically overcome..."

Like Cersei, Dany was a character introduced in the first episode, who ws incredible meaningful in the narrative of Game of Thrones. Instead of going out with a bang, Daenerys’ death wasn’t a bang like she truly deserved, but a whimper and forgotten to emphasise the man’s conquer and victory.

[floralkittygambler]

Reposting for reasons

Response to Honest’s post here: Doing this to spread this awareness more as I know theres a bit of a rift in the critical community - plus I really fucking go on. Im PISSED and I do apologise however it NEEDS urgent addressing. I know people will hate me for it but Im used to hate and honestly? Hating rather than helping to solve the issue only furthers my fucking point here. So yeah this is so more people are aware (no offense to any of those involved in said rift either, but this is an important message. Thank you for understanding and if I can do anything to make all sides comfortable, then please message me and I’ll do my upmost.) “ More awareness of this is needed. Even if it’s your favourite, you can’t justify their shit but rally against another’s shit. Have people tell you you’re experiences arent real or invalid because, like Husk, people have - in real life - shipped you with someone you are far from comfortable with but you still treat them like a person. Because you have basic respect. And people force you to accept harassment, touching, stalking, advances for THEIR satisfaction. People use you for their fantasies. But you’re just a ‘tsundere’ for it. Or you have addiction issues but people think being with another addict will ‘save’ you because you’re apparently too incompetent to save yourself. Love isnt some magic fuckin cure so stop romanticising it as a fuckin saviour. It’s gross and fuckin creepy. Get stalked and have someone NEVER accept your no just because you show youre still decent enough to not treat them shitty or any different from anyone else. Try having someone way older or way younger (both in morally fucked up ways) advance on you and people encourage that. People you’re supposed to feel safe around.

People touch you when you pull away or show discomfort. Follow you home. Have pictures of you and wont accept you dont like them like that and it’s not ‘playing hard to get’ or ‘the thrill of the chase’. Fuck. OFF. In fact, Im not only disappointed in the fandom. Im disappointed in the entire team who some should know better from their OWN personal experiences - or at least the bare minimal of being a fucking adult. Im disappointed in especially females (sorry idk whether girl or woman is more appropriate here-) who statistically are more likely to have experienced something similar at some point in their lives think this is a cute gay moment. No. Angel is made out as a fucking predator - Im not saying he is, Im saying that his persistence is very fucking unwelcome like one. People like Husk dont need that fucking invasiveness. They/We need patience and someone on our level. Angel’s I know are the fuckin polar opposite - and some of them I know are very sexually harassing, including unwanted touching. It’s a shitty way to present gay people. Gays are fuckin people. Some are cunts and some arent. It’s a HUMAN thing. But considering the shit theyve been subjected to, presenting a gay as a victim only to also show them as a perpetrator is insulting! And for those Ive seen argue this about how people like AD wouldnt know how to express their love normally and whatnot? His pig. His best friend. He’s in his fucking 30s. There are literal real life criminals who get molested as kids and then go on to molest kids. Not all who grow up like that turn into nonces. Stop just fucking STOP justifying and romanticising this bullshit! I used to see the good in AD but now he makes me fucking sick. Especially with my verrrrrry fucking real traumas and connections. But fuck me, eh? Because this fictional guy matters so much more. Fuck real victims. And whilst we’re at it, fuck AD too when it suits your fetishes! Sarcasm aside, the fans and the team need to straighten up their abhorrent behaviour. Stolas. Fucking clearly having an affair, knowingly fucking up his daughter’s mental health and bribing a guy into sex who only wants the book and nothing more. He even has a fucking warning button over Stolas- Guys, how do you think any of this is cute? Even the team gross me out- I genuinely see potential and talent and it’s all gone to shit to satisfy horny teens, horny adults, and literally everyone who doesnt for the life of them understand being an adult is more than sex, drugs, violence and swears! I REALLY want to keep enjoying HB/HH but it’s getting harder and harder with such ignorant and bordering lazy creators (note: lazy as in wont do the fucking research or actually listen to real criticism and victims), such despicable fans (yeah, some HDers fuckin mocked that they triggered my ED, yet they had the fucking NERVE to support Angel’s potential ED AND laugh and blame me for me getting treated so badly for actually having the balls to call Angel and the teams hypocrisy. I got told to kill myself, that my problems arent real - oh but Angels apparently is! Which... They *are* but AD isnt real so technically only onlookers will suffer and not a drawing  - and they just excused their toxic behaviours. These people are like “aww poor angie babey!” yet fuckin INSULT sex workers. All this red in Hazbin yet it feels everyone and they mama colour blind. The issues are getting worse and fans are outright becoming EVIL, VILE, Vindictive little bullies - from kids to adults. You SHOULD be ashamed of yourself if you conduct yourself in such a manner. And you need to readjust your attitudes and behaviours because the only fuckers getting hurt are actual fucking victims. Ever been violated and been gaslit so much you STILL fucking question it’s reality? So you drown that shit out yet somehow it’s effects still hit you? Fetishise it. Make it your uwu gae couple goals, you’re no better than people believing Harley and the Joker werent toxic af. If this shit happened to you, most of you would actually SEE where we’re all coming from. Also, stop making gay a fetish - you’re like those creepy old men in the alley heckling lesbians to make out so they can wank off. Gays, no ALL the LGBT+ are fucking people too. So dont give me that bullshit then start turning everything just gay or just straight to mentally wank off to. It’s degrading and dehumanising. And yes, fiction does effect reality. You crush on a fictional character? Mourn one? Support one? Hell, fuckin jerk off to one - that’s affecting reality. Remember how in fiction all blacks were treated as villians? Look how theyre treated IRL. JAWS, great classic unfortunately their was a spike in shark killings over a fucking movie - the shark in the movie wasnt even real for the most part because they dont behave like that! (Also the animatronic was so shit they genuinely had so many issues - I think they even took to naming each one! Some fun trivia there!). Tiger sharks are more nasty than great whites as tiger sharks will hunt and eat a human. Great whites prefer seals and dislike human flesh, they just mistake us for seals. Hell, theres the toothless basking shark - theyre often SWAM WITH by divers for being so friendly. Yet Jaws made people think all sharks are bloodlusting over humans. Slenderman was created for a fucking contest and that influenced a stabbing (NOT Victor’s fault). Watch a horror movie that isnt based on a real life event and tell me that at least ONE has left you peaking over your shoulder. Stella may be a bitch - we dont know for certain - but try getting cheated on. Y’know what? Try growing up in such a broken home like Octavia. Yeah reaaaaaal fucking cute now, huh? Funny how as well y’all petition for male victims to be taken seriously then laugh when fictional males experience this abuse, further adding to stigma. You can be hit on by the hottest mf on the planet but if you arent interested, that should be respected! Also we’ve all been inspired by at least one fictional character so yeah. Yknow, since I was little Ive been fighting for sex worker and homeless rights. But HH/HB treatment of both leave a bitter taste in my mouth. I’ll still fully support sex workers and the homeless, but that’s the fucking effect this show is having. Bearing in mind I wont ever share everything Ive been through - and I shouldnt fucking have to in order to be believed and validated (obvs proof is required in a legal case but that’s a whole other topic). Why should I share MY fucking pain especially when you fuckers have belittled and triggered it more so? We have our rights to our secrets but fuck ME you lot NEED to start acting appropriately and like decent fucking humans. ‘iTs HeLl’ yeah and welcome to Earth- the team and yourselves live HERE. You obide by THESE rules. And as someone with beliefs (and a LOT of ancient fucking texts and studies on this shit) their Hell isnt even a proper Hell! It’s closer to purgatory and even then it’s not. Regardless, it’s a poorly built world with the lore consistently changing per episode and tweet, with many plot holes, and is apparently easy to get into - even via accidentally watching porn according to a stream. If youre gonna parade youre a fucking expert and research into demonology and use real believed figures, at least get THAT right. In fact, Lucifer and Lilith (and Stolas tbf) are ESPECIALLY risky as theyre a lot more complex than most easy access texts will tell you. Likewise, Stolas’s first introduction and main focus is sex. He’s one of the FEW Goetia demons that dont have some involvement in relationship issues at ALL. He’s known for astrology, crystals and herbs but hes also known to aid MONEY troubles (it’s lesser known but it’s true! HB Stolas is an insult to the Prince). Turning Vodou into something evil is vile considering it’s powerful and liberated slaves. Pentagrams are nothing to do with Satan, they’re magic based sigils. Upside down cross is the symbol of a SAINT. It’s just some edgy attempt to trick people into believing they know more than they do. Also you should NEVER dabble and doodle sigils without knowing the meanings or respecting what they behold. Vox and Val, real fuckin cute way to make them look like a stupid fucking highschool drama instead of a fucking SEX TRAFFICKER (note: real pimps often target YOUNG folks too - aka minors - and groom them into sex work. Theres different types of pimp. Viv has shown barely any understanding of ‘the game’ and its a fucking insult to injury. Yes we KNOW what a fucking pimp and prozzie are! We dont need to see it. We need REAL AWARENESS.) and a fucking scheming bastard of a CEO salesman botman. And yet even THEN lets go a step further and make some yandere wuv on boyfweind aboose! Fuck off- Now I love a good anime but these tropes are getting fucking dangerous now. And unrealistic to real love and relationships. Kids nowadays know fuck all on a healthy relationship (neither did the fuckin 50s tbf) and Im seeing more romaticism and glorifying abusive situations. Like the show ‘You’. Ok, there’s a fuckin bloke online who slaughtered innocents and kidnapped yet people commented how cute he is on his IG and that they want to be kidnapped or killed by him next. Dont believe me? Look up Peter Manfredonia Connecticut and the comments people left him and then tell me why shit like whats being presented in HH/HB ISNT fucking concerning - because it is. For a series about redemption, it’s brilliant at the opposite (Quote from the creator herself, Viv has posted that it’s influencing her bad choices. Even as a joke, proof’s in the pudding). And the overall focus on sex in the way Viv does is so immature and really creepy, and this is from an ADULTS perspective. From one adult to another, Im concerned as to why any of them think this is a normal fixation. Then again they’ve hired quite a large amount of dodgy folks and even a child. Most of this shit gets avoided with a basic background check like most companies run. I DO like Hazbin. Or the premise. I love some of the cast and spite the others. In Helluva, I just like a tiny portion of the cast. And I critique it so harshly because Viv DOES need a wakeup slap, grounding to reality, people who arent going to big her up or kiss her arse for once and shape her up to be the best she can be. The actually reach and even surpass her potential. And to reach where you need to be, there’s a lot of harsh lessons youll face. That’s life. Shes chosen one of the most HEARTLESS industries and if she blocks out critique as ‘hate’ then she’s not strong enough and wont last. It’s just another unprepped YanDev again (except I dont believe Viv to be a nonce. Even with her dodgy past and dodgy present, I think her perspective on sex and relationship with sexuality is FAR from healthy BUT I dont believe she’s a pedophile. Ive bled my fair share and so far, I just think her sex perspective isnt healthy or mature for her age. But there’s little to nothing to suggest actual noncery - dont worry about accusations there. But YanDev is totally a dirty predator. Just clearing that up). Viv NEEDS some harshness and stability if she wants to do things right. And it’ll make her fucking cry but if she loves these projects as much as she claims to, then you’ll sacrifice blood, sweat and tears for that shit. Even the strongest points are mediocre at best when properly observed. She CAN do more, but she’ll have to face the harsh music. Viv wont see this, but if she does, I dont care if it upsets her. Why? Because this is that much of an issue - something she’s cultivated - that she needs to take action and not ignore it or be secretive about it. She needs to grow up and get tougher skin. Im not saying this to cause her pain. In fact, I wouldnt waste my fucking limited time if I DIDNT care. Trust me, I have duties to be met at a certain quota every single day. I say this shit only because I give a shit and care. If we met, she’d fucking hate me. But people like me are good for shaping people up to their potential. And we arent always this ‘tough love’ either. But when someone needs that level of harshness to help themselves, we’re not afraid to lose people or cause upset if the results end up being the best for them. If she ever saw this, she needs to re fucking evaluate her message, her story, and those she’s choosing to welcome into her circle. And all Im seeing is one rookie mistake after the other. Her paid patreon discord. Just like the messages Honest has posted on her side of being harassed (not in Vivs fyi), Ive experienced shit and bullying and even stay silent on their for being attacked for a group I fuckin paid to be in and yet I feel isolated. It’s all arsekissing and ‘thank you viv’ (thats an actual channel-) and it feels like a place of borderline worship and people trying to appease her 24/7 whilst kicking others with different opinions down. There’s so many I love but I aint kissin yer fuckin arse. Ask the closest friend I have - we’re fucking raw and wont just side with each other just because. We’ll call each other out if we think they’ve fucked up and then help each other build themselves up better. Because real fuckin people who actually care wont just want to be adored by you. They’ll care enough to point out your bullshit and help you, even if they upset you at the time. They’re real and upfront with you. People like us arent always the easiest to be close to either because we arent afraid of upsetting someone if it’s in their best interest and to help them. Likewise, we dont go out looking for fights either. Most times, we’re fuckin soft bastards- All this shit listed is the fuckin surface level of the real life hell of this fandom. And unsurprisingly, those who experience little to no toxicity have always been higher on that popularity ‘food chain’ - enough admirers and shared opinions that people wanna arse kiss regardless of their OWN feelings as well as neutral perspectives. I’d say you’re the lucky fans, but you’re not. You’re sheltered, and that isnt always the best way to be sadly. As for the fans. If Ive upset you. Well... I dont care. Because many of you have actively sought me out and weaponised my traumas against me. You never cared about my feelings then. Why should I care about yours? Im not doing this out of malice. Im fed up of humans behaving so pathetically yet claiming to be high and mighty. Most of you have been arseholes to those in and out of the community. The victims and non-victims alike. Hardly any of you considered once my real suffering. You put a drawing over a life. Many lives. You had the audacity to tell me Im full of shit. Some even using my real traumas to make a mockery of me and those Im around with a very similar history. Some with traumatic histories that differ from my own. You hardly ever considered the real lives of those effected. So no, Im not sorry for having the fucking balls to this day to still stand up for our rights and give us a voice that’s long been stolen. Im not sorry for being a fucking victim. Im not sorry for saying what desperately NEEDS voicing. And Im not sorry for not conforming to you or any fandom just to belong. We deserve better than to constantly be your fuckin arse monkeys (well... the trope is butt monkey but yknow-) and to be mistreated, misrepresented and harmed by you. You’re no different to the school bullies who give speeches on anti-bullying day. And I hope every single one of you starts looking into yourselves and improving. PS: Depending on the texts you read, Lucifer is said to have been redeemed or to be redeemed. Fun fact to haunt yalls with~ “

[lacependragon]

Look, at the end of the day, you might not ship Bumbleby, you might not care about a ship becoming canon, you might not care about the implications of the interactions.

But denying what has gone down here is not something easily done. Barb confirmed it. Arryn confirmed. Multiple people on Twitter confirmed it this week and the last. Barb gave us the insight to know this has been endgame from day one.

Bumbleby has not always been a ship of mine. But it is a powerful ship, and one that won me back over, despite my own personal misgivings in the past. It is a ship I will proudly stand by and a ship I am floored to see become canon.

RWBY is one of the biggest, most popular internet shows out there. And for them to do this with Bumbleby? That's... that's almost on par with what Legend of Korra did with Korrasami.

And, just as I did the day the finale aired in Korra, I see the same arguments now. "They didn't kiss/say anything, therefore it isn't canon". I see other shippers arguing. I see antis arguing. I see people jumping through hoops and making leaps and bounds to deny what has happened here today.

But there is no denying it. Bumbleby is canon, and regardless of your personal feelings toward the fndm, the characters, the ship, whatever. This is an important moment in RWBY history. And it is a god damn important moment in our fndm, in our culture, and in our knowledge of anime and cartoons.

Miles, Kerry, Gray, and Monty, bless his soul, wherever he is, gave us something that we didn't think could be canon. That we didn't think was possible to see in modern animation.

And that is worth celebrating.

We saw Blake, abused, beat down, gaslit, and destroyed, stand up and stand against her abuser with a woman she thought she'd lost forever. We saw her find the ability to forgive, to love again, and to face her fears. We saw Yang, torn apart by Adam and shaking, be comforted by the person she thought she'd never have the same relationship with again, and see what they could be.

We saw Adam, a monster, realize what they were to each other.

We saw the revelation. We saw the start. And now? We get to see everything else. Maybe they're not together right now, maybe it'll take all of V7 for them to face this new knowledge, especially with how traumatized Blake and Yang are, right now.

But we know they know how they feel. We know they must face it. We know they love each other.

And we know that CRWBY stands behind Bumbleby canon 100%. And I think that that, regardless of anything else, is important. That that, even if they take three more volumes to sort it out, to kiss, to say "I love you", is so, so fantastic.

They know how they feel. They know how the other feels. And WE know. Beyond a SHADOW of a doubt we KNOW.

What we're seeing here today is only the beginning of something beautiful. A piece of RWBY that will change so much both in the show and outside it. And I think that's so, so important to remember.

This is not queer baiting. This is not an accident. This is not something to misinterpret.

They are canon. Just like Arkos was. Just like Renora is. Just like Tai loved Summer and Raven, Yang and Blake love each other.

So thank you, Miles, Kerry, CRWBY. Thank you Monty. For giving us something I never thought I'd see in a mainstream show way back when this all started. Something I still doubted even up until last week's episode.

Thank you.

[miikkasakari]

21

It took Marvel way too long to get around to a movie starring a female superhero, but Captain Marvel does a good job of sticking to its comic book movie roots while acknowledging, yeah, it’s a little different.

There’s nothing inherently special about a comic book movie with a female lead (and a white one, at that), but what I absolutely love about Captain Marvel is how they played it. For the most part, it seems to know it’s not special. It’s pretty standard fare: you don’t see it for a good feminist time, you see it because you like comic book movies. That’s what it is to its core. But it has all of these moments that work on a universal level, but carry gendered undertones - and it’s nice to be able to relate to those.

Like one of the key plot points in the movie: Carol is constantly chastised for being emotional. There are plenty of reasons that makes sense - the Kree not wanting her to be herself, for them to be able to control her and rely on her (after all, it was her disobeying orders that got her captured to begin with) - but, of course, there’s that moment every time a woman is told she’s being too emotional and can’t be taken seriously. But it’s when Carol gets emotional that she has to be taken seriously - whether it’s Maria giving her a supportive talk or her getting the chance to use her powers in full for the first time, Carol getting to be her true self with full expression is when she’s at her most powerful. And there’s a real joy in getting to see her experience it. The final battle is pretty anti-climactic because she’s so strong, but she’s also literally whooping during it - she’s getting to have the time of her life because she finally knows who she is again, and she’s emotional and protective, and she finally gets to express that as she’s found herself. It’s a celebration of a woman getting to do what she wants and anybody who would tell her off for it can go to hell.

And there’s also what leads up to it: Carol always gets back up again because she’s human. And that’s something pretty much anyone can relate to. But it carries that extra weight for anyone who grew up as a girl because it’s flooded with those mocking moments - “too emotional, too weak” - because she’s doing things not typical of a little girl, like going all out while go-karting or playing baseball (and either the kid pitching has absolutely terrible aim or he was absolutely trying to bean her). I remember those moments of being picked last for whatever I wanted to do and the neglect and dismissal that came with them. Carol’s resilient because she’s a human, but she’s also resilient because she grew up being told she couldn’t be.

And and, of course, the final moment with Yon-Rogg, which has so succinctly put into words exactly the tell-off I’ve needed: “I have nothing to prove to you.” Yon-Rogg’s move was absolutely a survival tactic, and it wasn’t inherently gendered in any way - he was completely outmatched, he knew it, and playing on his history with Carol as the one thing that could have possibly actually worked for him - but at the same time it was gendered, because he made himself the centre of her story. Carol used to go knocking on Maria’s door way too early in the day; she replaces her with Yon-Rogg and latches herself onto him because he’s made himself the central figure in her world (and probably gaslit her to do it, at that). He tried to set it up so that without Yon-Rogg, there’s no Carol; everything she did had to tie back to him in some way. That’s how a main character works, after all. But Yon-Rogg was never anything but a side character to her story - a nuisance, really - and Carol refusing to take him seriously at the end (to the point of dragging him across the desert, which was a perfect shot) is that one last weapon: a fuck off to a small, little man who has nothing to do with you and doesn’t deserve the attention he thinks he does. He’s not important and she tells him as much.

But otherwise, you know, comic book movie.

Except for some of the other moments in which it’s tonally different. It feels like there are many more quiet moments in which characters get to just talk - most scenes in Maria’s house are like that. They talk to Talos to advance the story and find new things out. They’re just having a nice evening together after the big battle. Carol calmly gives Fury his modified pager while they’re doing dishes and goofing around together. The movie gets the chance to breathe and explore its characters emotions, a lot, and that’s what i’m missing in a lot of these: something traumatic happens to a character but there’s no time to process it (except for maybe a scene in a sequel) because it always has to be go-go-go, and Captain Marvel is completely happy to just hit pause on things and square up its characters.

It also does a great job tying itself into the MCU canon and weaving itself into decade-old fabric rather seamlessly. For one thing, it finally gives us a Fury movie - not someone who knows all but certainly doesn’t say all and operates behind the shadows, but a Level 3 agent adapting on the fly to new situations because he has no other choice. We finally get to see him as a person, not just a figure, and turns out the person is pretty awesome. He’s competent, he’s curious, he’s a good judge of character. And his quick rapport with Carol makes the entire movie - when they first escape on the jet and are joking around together is when it really hits home, how easily he can make her laugh as her personality actually gets the chance to start shining through (before she knows the truth, even).

It’s easy to see why they’re friends, too: they have similar lived experiences, as he points out rather quickly from his “rogue soldier” remark. He quickly admitted to his faults in not quite trusting her without argument and had redeemed himself pretty much right away, as well. They don’t just end up with similar goals; they genuinely enjoy one another’s company. It’s what will tie Carol so well into Endgame, in all likelihood, judging by the first post-credits scene - she has a real emotional investment in the outcome, she has just as strong an emotional tie as any of the other characters to fight. We’ve only known her for one movie but she’s just as relatable as the rest of them thanks to her time with Fury.

And, of course, the kicker: the very end, in which Fury names the Avengers Initiative after her, with the theme briefly playing before transitioning to the credits. That’s what makes Carol feel like she’s been a long-time part of this universe even though she was just introduced: her friendship with Fury sets the stage for everything that’s to come without ignoring everyone else who built it up. Her shadow touched it all, even though we didn’t know it at the time, and then seeing Fury quietly work to build a legacy around her really drives it home.

Also, it was completely predictable how they’d tease him losing an eye, and once they showed him aggressively playing with Goose at the end it was obvious, but it was still perfect - him losing an eye was essentially played off as a joke, but also he did lose an eye to one of the most powerful and dangerous creatures in the universe, so it’s not that much of a joke if you really think about it.

Though Carol’s friendship with Fury is a big driving point, her friendship with Maria is equally so: she regains her humanity through her (and Monica), nobody else. It’s Maria she has the most emotional moments with, seeing the astounding loss play out from Maria’s point of view, Maria being the only reason she actually finds herself again. The moment in which Carol is screaming at Talos that he doesn’t know her, not even she knows herself - but there’s one person there who does know her, and then they just hug for a long time - was beautiful. The MCU has extremely little in the way of female friendships - Gamora and Nebula reconciling is the only one that comes to mind off the top of my head - so finally getting to see one so genuine and of such consequence was wonderful.

That, and all of the Photon foreshadowing. Monica was a delight as well - though that seems to be expected, since she was basically co-parented by Maria and Carol. (Seriously, this movie was Steve-and-Bucky-level gay.) It wasn’t a movie dominated by women, but their presences were so much more pronounced than they normally are, it really does make one wonder why they can’t do better in this area. Black Panther figured it out; Captain Marvel downsized it and made it more intimate.

But again - even with all of that - this really was a comic book movie. The way Talos uncovered Carol’s memories was unique and set the right amount of intrigue, but the casual way he goes about it really introduces us to Talos as a character, as well. He’s someone with a sense of humour trying to solve a puzzle - highly relatable - and yet when they made it to Mar-Vell’s lab, I was bracing myself for his inevitable betrayal, because Skrull. It’s wild how relieved I was he actually was just a good guy, because it was easy to get attached to him and his straightforward nature (when he finally decided to go in that direction). Skrulls can be tricky but just making this small group genuinely good people caught up in a shitty war was the right way to do it. I hope the MCU never does a Secret War storyline, because it won’t translate to a movie-verse like this - there’s too much time between movies/chapters, too much time to get attached to characters and actors; it would feel like a betrayal. I look forward to seeing evil Skrulls at some point, but I’m happy Talos wasn’t one of them, and he got to hold his share of heart in the movie, too.

That, and Monica’s budding friendship with Talos’ kid - they’ve set themselves up to do more if they want to.

I wish we could’ve gotten more Ronin - he feels so underused in every movie he’s in, and maybe that’s just the gravitas to his character or maybe he’s legitimately being completely underused - but he was really threatening in the bit of screen time he did have. His intrigue with watching Carol go about her business and his respect for her was outstanding and highlighted the both of them: he’s a brutal murderer and he recognizes he’s no match for her.

Getting to see Coulson again was really great as well, especially since I’ve finally taken the time to watch Agents of SHIELD and get attached to his character. Seeing Coulson as a loyal rookie was just the perfect dose, from him being left behind at the Blockbuster to looking upon Fury in awe at the end. He’s kind of just a guy, but you can tell why he’s special, and why he would have looked up to Captain America: ultimately his defining trait is a very warm heart.

And finally: making Mar-Vell a woman was something I definitely wasn’t expecting, but it really did add another layer to the entire movie. It gave someone else for Carol to relate and look up to; her history and Maria pretty explicitly spell out that their being women is a problem, so it makes it all the more believable she would grow close to someone like Mar-Vell and truly want to help, all the while admiring what she was doing, even if she didn’t know the truth behind it all. It carried so much more weight than if they had kept Mar-Vell a man. And she was such a good character that seeing the Supreme Intelligence warp her into someone so warmongering actually did hurt - and seeing Carol fight partly in Mar-Vell’s honour made it so much better, and it makes so much more sense that she would take on her name.

It really shouldn’t have taken Marvel this long to create a movie actually starring a woman and focusing on her relationships with other women. But at least when they finally did it, they did it right - and it made for a really good, fun comic book movie with just that little bit extra under the surface.

[queercapwriting]

For Kara x Maggie: I really like angst or hurt/comfort. Maybe Kara dealing with the aftermath of Moron-hell coming back and being shaken up by reliving the abuse and Maggie finding her and helping her work through it?

She tells Alex she’s going to be with James and Winn; she tells James and Winn she’s going to be with Alex.

And everyone jokes that Kara is a terrible liar. 

Flying places on busses and totally being from this planet, and all that.

But really, Kara is too good at lying.

Kara’s lying, really, makes Alex’s look amateurish. 

Because she’s lying with her body every time she hugs someone without crushing their bones; she’s lying every time she pretends that she doesn’t understand something about Earth science, because really, it was all pretty damn rudimentary; and she’s kind to a fault, she truly is. That part isn’t a lie.

But it’s a lie when she pretends that she’s all sunshine and rainbows even though every morning – every. single. morning. – she wakes up wondering why the gravity feels all wrong until she remembers that her entire planet, her entire people, are just… gone.

So although her friends tease her about being a terrible liar – and, in many respects, they’re right, and she laughs right along with them – she’s also a spectacular one, when the lies are about her day-to-day survival.

And after he shows up again, it feels like a matter of life or death, to tell James and Winn that she’s with Alex, to tell Alex that she’s with James and Winn.

Because if she’s not alone, she’ll have to think. She’ll have to talk, and if she talks, she’ll cry; and if she cries, she’ll break, and she’s fairly convinced that she can’t survive another fracture like this.

And it’s not because she’d missed him, and because he’s with someone else now.

It’s because she’s too kind for him, too smart, too generous. 

It’s because she can’t stop wondering if his new woman is as beaten down as she had been.

Which, of course, requires her to admit that she had been beaten down; that she’d let herself be beaten down, be diminished and gaslit and degraded and… abused.

And she’s not about to go there.

So she lies. 

And they believe her, because she really is quite amazing at it.

They believe her, and Maggie would have too; if, that is, she hadn’t caught a glimpse of a streak of blonde flying past her window, her flight path erratic and shaky.

She sighs as she strides to her window and sticks her head out of it.

“Kara!” she shouts, knowing the superhero can hear her, even if she’s pretending she can’t. The blonde streak continues flying away, wobbling with what Maggie can only imagine are heavy sobs coming from deep in her chest.

She sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose between her fingers. “I just made pancakes!” she tries again, and this time, her future sister-in-law wavers to a stop.

Maggie smirks, satisfied, to herself before backing away from her window and setting back toward her kitchen. She doesn’t turn around when there’s a slight crash near the sill; Kara might be practically invincible, but damned if that means she’s not clumsy.

“Syrup, butter, or both?” Maggie asks, her attention on the spatula in her hand, deliberately not turning around, deliberately giving Kara whatever moments she needs to wipe her eyes, to arrange her face into her best image of composure.

Instead of answering, though, Kara asks a question of her own as she shuts Maggie’s window against the wind.

“Why are you making pancakes at night?”

Maggie grins, turning with the pan in one hand and spatula in the other.

“Night shift last night, far too much paperwork today. Seems like an appropriate excuse for breakfast for dinner.”

Kara collapses onto the couch as Maggie piles a plate high with pancakes and then sizzles more batter into the pan.

“You never need an excuse for breakfast,” Kara mumbles around a mouthful of pancakes.

Maggie smiles but doesn’t say anything as she waits for the new batch to start bubbling on top, rummaging in the fridge for orange juice, syrup, and butter for her future sister-in-law, bringing them all to the coffee table.

She doesn’t ask why Kara isn’t with James and Winn. She doesn’t demand that Kara apologize for lying to her sister and her best friends. She just bends to kiss the top of her head briefly before shifting back into the kitchen to check if the pancakes are ready to flip yet.

They’re not, so she turns and leans back against the counter, watching Kara eat passively, quietly.

“You’ve been crying,” she offers as an opening, but the tone of her voice makes it clear that if Kara doesn’t want to talk, she won’t press it any farther.

Kara looks up and looks even more like a deer in the headlights than she does when someone talks about aliens.

Maggie stays quiet, keeps her face deliberately neutral. She waits, and for more than just the pancakes.

“Long day,” Kara finally says, setting the pancakes down on the table. Maggie nods as the batter starts to hiss, as she flips the pancakes, presses them down, and chews at the inside of her cheek. 

Silence rises between the women as she finishes the batch, switches off the burner, slides them onto another plate, and crosses her studio to sit next to Kara.

“Your ex is back,” she observes, not bothering with a fork as she just treats the pancakes like finger food.

“Alex thinks it’s gross how you eat things plain.”

Maggie smiles. “Alex loves me.”

“She does,” Kara smiles back, until her smile trembles and becomes a sob.

It’s something Maggie was expecting, but it still breaks her heart.

She sets her half-eaten pancake down and hesitates with her arms spread open. Kara lets herself shift forward into them, and gratitude sweeps through Maggie.

“How do you do it? The two of you?” Kara wants to know, and though she doesn’t specify what she means, Maggie knows.

“I respect her. She respects me,” she says, keeping her voice deliberately soft, deliberately judgement-free.

“Apparently I don’t have any respect for myself,” Kara shivers slightly, and Maggie shakes her head.

“It’s not as simple as that, Little Danvers,” she swipes a slow tear off of Kara’s cheek.

“But it is,” Kara stiffens and backs away from Maggie’s arms. “I let myself stay in a relationship that… and even getting into it in the first place was… and now I have to see him at work, and watch people treating him like…”

“I can arrange to make the air toxic for him again. Lena would definitely be down,” Maggie offers, and Kara gives a weak laugh before that, too, transforms into a defeated sob.

“It’s embarrassing,” she chokes out. “I just feel so… stupid.” She’s gasping for breath now, and her face is burning bright red, part with shame, part with the effort of holding back a rush of tears.

Maggie shakes her head, but lets Kara keep control of the conversation. She needs control of… something.

“I’m Supergirl, for Rao’s sake. You know that concert at Ruby’s school we went to? All those little girls, dressed up like Supergirl? But if they knew how weak I really am… the things I let him do to me… I’m so stupid,” her voice squeaks and cracks on the word, and Maggie opens her arms again.

This time, Kara lets herself sink forward into them, the scent of Maggie’s skin mingling with a scent Kara knows to be her sister’s. 

“You and Alex are so good to each other,” she sobs. “Don’t stop being good to each other, okay?”

“And if we weren’t? If I started treating Alex terribly?”

“You realize I’m Supergirl, right?” Kara sniffs, and Maggie smiles in relief at the bemused tone in Kara’s voice.

“Yes, and if I ever do treat Alex badly, I give you full permission to destroy me however you see fit. But that’s not my point. My point is, would it be Alex’s fault? If she still loved me?”

Kara sighs. “That’s not -- “

“I know. I know it’s not the same, kid. Not at all. I’m just saying. Would it be her fault?”

“No -- “

“Then why is it yours?”

Kara’s silent for so long Maggie starts to wonder if the analogy route was the wrong way to go; if appealing to Kara’s love for her sister wouldn’t help, would actually hurt things, would...

“Because I should know better. Because he was never any good to me, he was always manipulative and... and...”

“A gaslighting misogynist?” Maggie scrunches up her face with half of a smile, and Kara laughs wetly.

“Maggie, how did I...”

“He reminded you of home, Kara. He was a piece of what you lost. And even if he wasn’t, that’s exactly what it’s supposed to do. Get into your head, make you doubt what you thought you knew was real. That’s what abuse is, sweetie.”

Kara flinches at the word, and Maggie almost apologizes, but then Kara is nodding with tears leaking down her cheeks as she reaches for three pancakes.

She stacks them like a pancake sandwiched in pancake bread, and chomps down before offering Maggie a bite.

She’s never let anyone feed her except Alex, but she leans forward, opens wide, and takes a bite anyway. 

They both giggle through full mouths.

“I like having a second sister,” Kara says after their laughter turns to tears and Maggie holds her steady.

“Should we call your original one, get her in one this wild pancake party?” 

“Yes please,” Kara mumbles sheepishly.

“She won’t be angry,” Maggie reassures her. “She loves you, and she’ll understand. So will James and Winn.”

“Can... can we call them, too? And Lena? I... I want my family.”

“Of course, kid. Of course.”

[echoesofcanons]

Fuck Father’s Day

I want to talk about Father’s Day. I did this two years ago on a different site. Apparently every few years I need to write this out. That’s fine. It’s a lot better than living it. My father hit me when I was a kid. Not spankings; though I’m against those as a parenting technique, that’s not what I’m talking about here. I mean he hit me like I was a grown man in the military when I was a small girl of 9. A short list of the worst stuff is pretty awful, but just recall as you read that this doesn’t cover a tenth of what he did. He picked me up and threw me so hard into a bookcase that I bounced off and still had enough force to go through my closet door. It dislocated my shoulder. He punched me in the chest so hard I fell onto the ground. It hurt for a week. He kicked me while I was running up the steps away from him; it was a kick so forceful that it lifted me two steps, where I again sprawled on the ground. I had trouble sitting down in school for a while after that. I can’t count the number of times he slapped me upside the head. He threw a wrench at me twice, once at my legs (I think that one was throwing it aside in anger and he didn’t mean to hit me, but no pass on that) and once at my head. He missed both times. Sometimes I wish it had hit me. Then I’d at least have a scar to point to. Then I think about traumatic head injuries and shudder; no, I don’t wish it had hit me after all. Thinking on that makes me think about how close he came to doing that, and I get angry and afraid and depressed all over again. This is to say nothing of the emotional abuse, the racism, homophobia, misogyny and transphobia I endured on a constant basis. It says nothing of the times he threatened to kill me with the words “I brought you into this world, and I can take you out.” (It’s a Bill Cosby quote.Bill Cosby was thought of as a parenting role model for a long time. I never liked Cosby growing up. I didn’t know anything about him being a rapist. I just knew my Dad liked him and that he joked about killing his son on the show.) Threatening to throw me out of the house to live on my own was so mild by comparison that it didn’t even register as abuse until much, much later. He never hit my younger brother or my even younger sister. He was disgusting about women and weight, so both of them got plenty of abuse of their own, but no on else got hit.  Into that reality, I realized around 10 or 11 that I wanted to be a woman. Not exactly that, at the time; I just knew I identified more with female characters, and I wanted to dress in women’s clothes. I thought I was sick. Being raised in a Catholic family can do that to you. You think their sickness and vileness in hating people they’ve never met is yours, because it’s all you know.

Even if we’d been atheists, though, my father’s rage towards me combined with his sexualization of every female comic book, cartoon, and novel character I was interested in who was female made me terrified. He was hitting me already. What would hitting look like combined with sexualizing? I didn’t know. I thought maybe rape. What he did was awful; what I imagined he would do, as a creative young woman and a writer fully capable of imagining the worst, was even more terrifying.

When I first started sleeping with a man, in what I thought was a gay relationship but was, counter to my then limited understanding, a straight one, I insisted we keep it quiet from my both of my parents. I meant my father. I was worried he’d hurt me. Worse, I was worried he’d hurt the guy fucking me. Even though that guy was a rich asshole who used, hid, and shamed me, he didn’t deserve my father’s fury. No one did. But I got it. I hadn’t worried when I’d slept with a woman for the first time a few months before that. I didn’t tell him about that either, but that was because I couldn’t bear to hear him talk about it. I couldn’t bear that he would be proud of me, but for all the wrong reasons. It would dirty what she and I had shared. Again, that was a gay sexual experience. I couldn’t even frame it that way. The idea of being a woman, of being who I really was? That was unthinkable. That was too dangerous to even contemplate. So I didn’t.

I don’t talk to him anymore. I held back from considering transitioning until I was 30. That’s the year I realized I was holding back in part because I was afraid of my father. He’d only stopped hitting me when I’d started working out and getting into sports my junior year of high school. When I shoved him back and was clearly ready to punch him at 16, he backed down and never did it again. He was an ex Marine, so I don’t think it was fear. I think he wanted to get some sort of manliness check out of me, perhaps, or was such a bully that he instinctively backed off people who were strong enough to stand up for themselves. Or maybe he was just a coward, and I’m even now giving him credit where it isn’t due. My ex-wife was just like him. I fell into the abuse trap so many childhood abuse survivors do, clinging to a new abuser to escape the old one. She was an abuse survivor too, if she was telling me the truth. It’s hard to tell; she lied about so much, most of which I didn’t find out about until leaving her. I think she was, though. The types of abuse she faced matched her abusive behaviors. He was bad; she was worse. He was an idiot at least, and I knew he was wrong. She hid things so she could shame me for my mental health. Where his abuse was blatant, hers came with the promise that only she would ever love me so much. Where he was violent in rage, she hit me while she was laughing. Where he drove others away, she brought them into the abuse and made mocking me a fun game for others. She gaslit me terribly, so that I still have panic attacks when I lose my keys for a moment because of all the times she would hide my things right before work, or a trip to my family, or interviews, then harangue me about my lapses. Maybe worst of all, she used the fact that I’d shared my deepest secret with her, that I was a woman or at least liked dressing as one, to manipulate me through fear and shame.  I escaped her the same year I cut off contact with him. It was one of the hardest years of my life. I had no job, as I’d been fired for coming out as potentially transitioning soon at work under the pretense of it being for forgetting to call a customer back. It was a crucible of a year. I had a screaming match with my father and mother, walked out on both of them at my brother’s graduation from basic training, and took a year away before speaking to my Mom again after she profusely apologized, acknowledged his abuse, and promised to work on our relationship from the understanding that she had failed to protect me. I’m 34 now. It took me two years after my ex to feel certain enough in myself to transition. I’m two years into electrolysis and a year and a half into HRT. I’ve been mildly assaulted on the street three times, four if you count the old woman who tried to spit on me. I get stared at constantly. People routinely talk about how they’d kill a trans woman, or hurt her, when I’m on the bus. Having a beard and breasts is not something people are willing to let slide. Every time it happens--every damn time--I flash back to my father. I don’t think these people realize how lucky they are that I’ve embraced nonviolence. It wasn’t out of lack of capacity or skill; having an abusive father like mine has meant knowing how to fight lethally while other people were still posturing and swelling their chests. No, it’s not lack of capacity. It was and is a conscious ethical choice.  I’ve chosen to turn my father’s violence, his pain and suffering from his own abusive father, inwards on myself rather than ever let it escape and hurt someone else. Just learning to stand up for myself without the violence he always used has been a trial. I always want to please everyone, and when I’m upset or hurt I either cringe or have to walk away. I’m forever bowing and scraping. I often hate who I am. I often think I’m a violent monster at heart. I try hard to remember that’s his voice, his hate. Father’s Day is a shitty day for me. It’s a shitty day for a lot of people who had abusive men in their lives who dared to call themselves “dad.” If you’re out there reading this and you’re remembering similar terror and pain from a man who was supposed to be your protector and parent, your guardian and loving father, I’m sorry. He might never say it, but I will. I’m so sorry you suffered and you deserved better. So did I. So does everyone with an abusive father. If you’re in it now, please know that it can get better. Please hold on. Don’t kill yourself. I thought about it constantly in those years, and I still do, but I held on and it did get better. It’s still getting better. It’s not that your pain isn’t enough to make death a desirable alternative. It is. It’s that such pain isn’t eternal, and you will be able to escape it if you can just hold on. Please do. It gets better. I’m a happier person today. I’m in several romantic poly relationships with people who treat me with dignity, respect, and gentleness. One of them has been going on for five years now. I have good friends, and I’ve never been closer with several members of my family. My dad isn’t one of them. So fuck Father’s Day. Today’s the day I mourn the life I could have had. Today is the day I hold out hope for those caught in situations like mine. Most of all, today is the day I remember that I was and am a woman strong enough to survive everything he did to me as a little girl, and to still have compassion for the pain he suffered to turn him in to what he was. Compassion doesn’t mean forgetting or forgiveness, but I’m damn proud that I don’t think he’s a monster. He just acted like one. Fuck Father’s Day. Heal where and when you can. Escape when you’re able. Know that you’re worthy of love and affection that isn’t coerced through fear and violence.You’re stronger than he’ll ever be, and you’re beautiful and brave in a way no one who hasn’t suffered like you will ever understand. 

[heatherleeson-blog1]

a letter a therapist had me write to my abuser about two years after I left

Dear J*****,

This is a letter to say goodbye. I never want to have anything to do with you ever again. I want to be free of you forever. Living with you was the worst time of my life. You hurt me more than anyone has ever hurt me and in ways I’ve never been hurt before. You’ve wounded me in a deeply unsettling and permanent way. I won’t lie: I know I also caused you harm, I hurt you, knowingly and deliberately, in many ways. I won’t pretend I was blameless in the breakdown of our relationship. But the things you did to me are unforgivable. I’ll move on from this and eventually the pain will subside and I’ll be a stronger and wiser person in spite of, or perhaps because of, the grief you inflicted on me. But I will never forgive you. I’m not interested in hearing your side of the story. I don’t care what your reasons were or what pain there is inside you that may have compelled you to act the way you did, towards myself and others. I’m sure there’s a lot about you I’ll never understand, and I’m not sure you will either. You obviously have a lot of issues to work through, and despite your veneer of confidence and your constant show of bravado and aggression, I believe that at your core you’re an extremely frustrated, anxious and scared little boy. Not that any of this should make a difference. You always told me such things were ‘an explanation, not an excuse,’ and I’m holding you to that. I’m beyond the point of attempting to rationalise or justify your actions. Now it’s time for me to push you aside and move on with my life. This letter is my chance to say the things you never let me say and then turn around and walk away.

I remember the day I met you, at your beach house in B*****. My first real boyfriend and I had broken up about 6 months before, and even though I made a big show about being ‘over it,’ I was still extremely hurt by what had happened. Unlike you, he’d always been a good friend to me, and although we both knew it had to end, I was sad and lonely and feeling unwanted and unloved. My self-esteem was so low. I’d been feeling depressed and even though I didn’t know what it was at the time, my anxiety was at an all time high. I tried to make myself feel more confident by losing weight and meeting new people—tried to invent a ‘new Heather.’ One of those people was your ex S*****. Right from the start, she told me how messed up you were and how badly you had hurt her. By the time I met you, I had really heard nothing but bad things about you for months. When she invited me to a weekend at B***** I was nervous but quietly excited to meet new people and potentially find someone to hook up with—a dumb attempt at boosting my self-esteem. When I met you, you turned on the charm almost immediately: the pet names, the cheesy pick up lines, the obsolete slang you thought made you sound world-weary and well-read. You seemed cocky and sure of yourself to a point my rational side found repulsive. In hindsight I was desperate for attention, any attention. Despite the fact that I didn’t particularly like you as a person, my submissive side was drawn to your aggressive confidence and slimy charm and I desperately wanted to feel loved. Within weeks of hooking up, you asked me to be your ‘bird.’

I can’t pin point when it started to get bad. Maybe it was when I moved in and you started treating me like your maid. Maybe it was when you started taking out your frustrations and huge feelings of inadequacy on me. Maybe it was when you grew angry at the thought that you weren’t ‘getting enough’ sex, so you started taking it from me. I’m not sure. It felt like I woke up one day and realized I was trapped in a terrible nightmare that I couldn’t escape from. I still don’t understand how it happened.

Did you plan it from the start? Have you always treated girlfriends this way? Your disgusting behaviour towards the majority of your friends and family, and your utter contempt for almost everyone you encounter would suggest that this is your standard mode of operation. It certainly seemed that over the course of our two-year relationship, you became increasingly angry at the world. You seemed to feel that everyone was ‘wrong’ all the time, that if only they would listen to you, subscribe to your bizarre line of thinking, the world would be better off. I could see you becoming more tightly wound and withdrawn. I saw you doing poorly at uni. The frustrations with the job you had but didn’t want. The flippant comments about how you didn’t really care about your law degree, to hide the fact that deep down you knew you weren’t achieving the grades you needed to succeed, weren’t up to standard, weren’t doing as well as your class mates, who you wrote off as wankers and conformist idiots. You were obsessed with the idea of non-conformity, as if to hide the fact that you never really fit in. They say, if you meet one asshole in a day, you met an asshole. If you meet ten assholes in a day, you’re the asshole. I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you are a major fucking asshole. If everyone you meet is in constant disagreement with you, you’re probably wrong. And yet you persisted in acting as though you were the authority on every subject in the book. You were constantly angry. You made a big show about being a hippy, a bohemian, a happy stoner, yet you’re one of the most tightly wound, aggressive and malicious people I know. You took out your bad feelings on me and it made my life a living hell. Maybe you really meant to hurt me. Maybe I was just a convenient target, an innocent bystander who got caught in your cross hairs. I don’t care and it doesn’t matter—what you did to me was, and always will be, inexcusable and unforgivable.

What you did to me was abuse. Emotional, physical and sexual abuse. When you made fun of me and belittled me, that was abuse. When you isolated me from my friends and family, that was abuse. When you told me nobody cared about me, that nobody would care if something bad happened to me, not even you, that was abuse. When you constantly lied to me, manipulated me, confused me, gaslit me, that was abuse. When you undermined my self-esteem, my sense of self, my sense of reality, that was abuse. When you preyed on my obvious eating disorder and told me I should lose weight, that was abuse. When you told me I was crazy, that I was making everything up, that was abuse. When you screamed in my face, that was abuse. When you called me names like ‘stupid bitch’ and 'cunt’ and 'pathetic,’ that was abuse. When you punched the wall next to my face, that was abuse. When you told me it was my duty as a girlfriend to have sex with you, that was abuse. When you bullied me into having sex with you when I didn’t want to, that was abuse. When you threatened to throw me out of the house if I didn’t have sex with you, that was abuse. When you continued having sex with me while I was crying and saying 'no’ and 'stop,’ that was abuse. When you told me you couldn’t enjoy sex if I was crying so much, that was abuse. When you gave me a vaginal infection caused by repeated injury and forced penetration, that was abuse. When you repeatedly threw me out of our house and told me to pack my bags, only to 'allow’ me back in after a few hours, that was abuse. When you made it so that you were the only person I had left, that was abuse. When you made it so that I had no one else to turn to, nowhere else to go, that was abuse. When you lied and told me I was going insane, that I needed professional help for my mental issues, that was abuse. When you forced yourself into my psychologist’s office and demanded to know why she hadn’t 'fixed me’ yet, that was abuse. When you humiliated me in front of my friends and family, that was abuse. When you called my friends and family and told them I was a lying whore, that was abuse. When you told me I was a broken, worthless, pathetic person who could never be saved, that was abuse. When you made it so I didn’t care anymore, that was abuse. When you made it so I wanted to die, that was abuse.

I know this now. I’ve spent the last two years healing myself, reading, researching, receiving therapy, talking, listening, growing. I see now, clear as day, that what you did to me was wrong. Categorically, fundamentally wrong. I see now that I was vulnerable. Lonely. Unsure. Naive. Eager to please. Desperate for love. I was the perfect victim just waiting for you to swoop in and pick me up. To charm me. To blind me. To use me and discard me. Maybe it was inevitable, unavoidable. Maybe it was meant to be, if not then, than at some other time, some other place. If it wasn’t you, perhaps it would have been some other man. If it wasn’t me, perhaps it would have been some other woman. I know now that you’re a narcissist and a bully. You display the classic symptoms of a person so disordered in their thinking, they cannot comprehend the notion that they could ever be wrong, that the entire universe doesn’t revolve around them. All I ever was, was a side character in the drama of your life, playing the role of whatever you needed me to be to maintain your ridiculous fantasy. Back then I was your perfect princess, the only one who truly understood you. And you needed me to be perfect, because you needed me to be a reflection of you. You wanted to look into my eyes and see yourself staring back at you. The perfect man must have the perfect wife. And with a girlfriend this lovely, no one can accuse you of being mad. You told me you were attracted to my wit, my humor, my intelligence and my ‘moxxy’. Pretty and with brains to boot. The shiny trophy to hold up for everyone to see, and say, “see? I told you I wasn’t crazy!”

But that’s not how relationships work. You can’t ask another human being to be the support act in your bullshit fantasy. You can’t shove someone in a box and tell them to shut up and play nice, pulling them out now and then to wipe the dust off and play with them until you get bored, before chucking them carelessly back in the corner. You can’t get mad when it turns out they have their own story to tell, one in which they’re the protagonist, with their own dramas, their own desires, hopes and fears. You can’t act surprised when they’re not a perfect princess. Suddenly, the things you used to love about me drove you to despair. I was a little too opinionated, a bit mouthy in fact, and why was I talking so much anyway when there was dinner to be made? So you wore me down. You wore me down over months and months until I was so red and raw I couldn’t stand it anymore. You wore me down until I caved, until I knew it was easier to relent than face another round in the ring with this infamously argumentative nightmare of a person. Until I was a shadow of the person I once was. When you picked me out all those years ago, when you told me I was the special one, the chosen one, you wanted me to reflect the sparkling self-image you so desperately projected. By the time you were through with me, I had started to look a lot like the person I now know is hiding deep, deep down inside you, where you pray no one will ever find him: broken, scared and miserable. And now that you’d played with me so much that all the veneer had worn off, you threw me away for good. It’s classic narcissism. The pattern of abuse is undeniable. I was shocked, when, in the months and years that followed, I would read books about narcissistic personality disorder and discover the abuse you’d enacted upon me described with frightening accuracy within their pages. When listening to a friend confess that they too had been caught in the throes of an abusive relationship with a narcissist, I heard your words echoed back to me almost verbatim in the statements of another abusive man. It all made sense now. It fit the pattern to a T. After all that effort, you’re not even original.

But I’m not here to pathologise your behaviour or rationalise your excuses. That’s not what this is about. After all, you’re not even going to read this. In the end, it doesn’t really matter why you treated me the way you did. The important thing, for me, after so many months and years of denial and guilt is to finally speak up and say: yes, this happened to me. It wasn’t my fault, I’m not ashamed, this has hurt me and changed me but it hasn’t killed me. My spirit hasn’t been broken. This is an opportunity for me to make a radical statement- to myself, to you, and to the world- that I’m still alive and I’m still here. And I’m not going away.