#and victim complexes

[t4tails]

millennials will be like "we only make fun of gen z bc they made fun of us first" and be referring to when a 16yo called them a disney adult

[filmnoirsbian]

Anyone who says the divine comedy is fanfiction has not actually read it. They may think they read it but really they just stared at each page and then set it down they did not read it.

[neuroticboyfriend]

time with complex trauma is like. i need to do everything all at once and if i don't i'm a failure, even if there's nothing to do. three months ago feels like yesterday but i can hardly remember yesterday anyway. i'm running out of time. for what? i don't know. i need everything to slow down but my life is so stagnant. i can't go to sleep because the day can't end, but i need the day to end or i'll go insane. i'm constantly worrying about the future but it feels like i have no future. i'm running out of time. for what? i don't know. time has no meaning but every second is the end of the world.

or is this just me?

[luck-of-the-drawings]

THIS THING IS SCUUUFFED AS HELL & ITS ALSO THE BEST THING I HAVE ANIMATED THUS FAR. IM SO IN LOVE WITH EMIZEL. JUST WISH I GAVE HIM MORE STUPID TATTOOS. NEXT TIME THO. NEXT TIME. I ALSO LOVE VEX&VIV SOOOO MUCH. charlies flavor of Deranged is my FAVORITE!!

[blacknight7890]

The Power of Control

An essay on Victim

Spoilers for Animator vs. Animation VI - Ep 2

So, our dear boy Victim, of animator vs animation ONE fame, has officially returned.

We have been waiting half a year for this guy to return, and here he is. Now we finally get to see what he can really do in the only thing that matters in this series. How much ass can this stick kick?

Well, as it turns out, not a whole lot.

Victim is not a strong physical fighter. But, what he lacks in strength, he makes up in something else.

Control

The express purpose of this white box, is to ensure that he has full, and unambiguous, control. You could say that everything he has built is for the express purpose of control. He is the CEO of a gigantic, very well funded corporation, and is the boss of probably thousands of employees.

he has dedicated money and men towards researching and replicating animation tools to give him direct power over the world around him. He gave his top Merc the ability to Stop Time. His tech is all to extend his reach of control.

And this idea of control is shown no better than his signature weapon.

A lasso. An unusual choice at first but it makes perfect sense. Its entire point is to restrain, constrain, and control another.

Victim is not a powerful stick, its why he was initially never able to escape the flash program he was created in. How he got out, and how he survived is still unknown, but I'm sure future episodes will show us.

What we do know however, is that after all these years he has took to heart one thing. True power, is control. The more you have, the more powerful you are.

Which is why Alan nearly deleted him. Alan had the cursor, so he had control, which made him powerful.

Of course, that power has an equally potent weakness. When you lose your control, you lose your power.

The lasso he has wrapped around so many, breaks, and he loses control. Without control, he is vulnerable. Without control, he is powerless.

Its no wonder he seemed so scared when he learned what The Second Coming was truly capable of.

And now, Second has also learned what he can do.

So, what does he do? He tries to reestablish his precious control.

But unlike before, this control is flawed. He never knew what our dear orange could do, he never planned for it. His cage was likely never designed to hold someone as powerful as he is.

Victim may have locked him away, but its clear his grip on the situation has slipped. A lasso can only restrain what it can hold after all. When the rope snaps, when control is lost, he has nothing.

It makes sense why he would be after someone with more control than anyone.

[whetstonefires]

The reason I keep banging the Jiang Fengmian drum so hard is not that he did nothing wrong--he's definitely in contention for best parenting in this book but that bar is in the ground--but because most of the takes I see about him are so extremely bad.

If you want to slag him off for trying to make choices that would hurt no one, and winding up properly protecting no one as a result, that's valid! That's an interesting and text-based critique, which opens into his parallels with Lan Xichen!

If you want to blame him for being weirdly over-invested in Wei Wuxian and Jiang Cheng being bffs, that's fair, that definitely contributed to the weirdness between them. If you want to say he was a poor communicator, that he fundamentally misunderstood his son, that he failed to be emotionally available in a way his kids could get much use out of, even that he should have figured out a way to stop Yu Ziyuan from creating such a hostile environment, all of that is fair game!

If you want to tackle how the worst thing he did to his kids was die I am so interested in how Wei Wuxian went on to abandon A-Yuan by going to his death, and how that might be tied to how his primary adult role model tied him to a boat and went off to a fight he knew he was going to lose.

After his parents had already left him like that once before, presumably less intentionally.

But no, instead I keep seeing that Jiang Fengmian didn't care. That he never expressed affection. That he actively participated in Yu Ziyuan's fucky game of forcing proxy conflict onto the boys instead of constantly trying (and failing) to shut it down, or that he ignored her bad behavior because it didn't affect him, or that he fought with her constantly, or that he was too much of an unmanly coward to stand up to her when she wanted something.

All of which are directly in contradiction to every scene he's in, and several of which manage to invert or erase the actual conflicts between him and his wife that were the source of all that tension.

And which are really interesting, because some of the most intractable elements are ideological--Yu Ziyuan is fundamentally a conservative and Jiang Fengmian seems to want to be an egalitarian, which ofc matched poorly with his hereditary authority as patriarch of a large sect.

The fact that the bit where we get to actually see him failing to parent Jiang Cheng consists of him gently and firmly trying to correct Jiang Cheng's ethics when what was actually needed in that moment was reassurance for the well-founded insecurities that were causing him to be a little bitch, only for Yu Ziyuan to charge in and make everything fifty times worse, is so much more interesting than literally any version of this family dynamic I have seen in fic. It's to the point I'm relieved when writers kill Jiang Fengmian off, because it means they probably won't feel the need to character-assassinate him too badly.

The number of people I've seen come right out and say some variation of 'men can't be abused' is killing me here. No, Yu Ziyuan wanting to hurt her husband does not constitute sufficient proof that he abused her first and deserved it! That's not how anything works!

[seance]

INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE ❧ i bet on losing dogs.

[shalom-iamcominghome]

If you look at jewish people voicing their concerns about antisemitism as anything close to a "victim complex," you're just an antisemite, like... How do two THOUSAND PLUS years of antisemitism around the globe sail over your head so easily.

[hunybody]

buck absolutely knows the suicide rates and ptsd statistics re: eddie’s active combat tours. he has those memorized but he never says them out loud because they scare the shit out of him

[achaotichuman]

Cassian strikes me as the kind of guy who would physically overpower Nesta in order to cake her face at their wedding.

[iamnmbr3]

right now im thinking about how draco didn't even know who harry was the first time he tried to befriend him in madam malkin's. he saw a scraggly lonely kid and interestingly, given what we know about draco, he didn't mock or ignore him but rather tried to strike up a conversation and even shared some of his own worries about the sorting - a rare moment of vulnerability for him given that he usually hides away anything that could be seen as a weakness. of course the attitudes he espouses almost immediately turn harry against him but he doesn't realize that.

then he meets harry again on the train, now knowing who he is, and once again tries to befriend him. in his mind he probably thinks harry's hesitation is due to the fact that draco wasn't impressive enough. this time draco doesn't share any insecurities about ending up in hufflepuff. he shows off his status and his cronies and brags about his family and offers himself as a useful guide to harry in navigating what draco sees as the elite of the wizarding world.

naturally this does not improve things and in fact only succeeds in turning harry against him completely and draco spends the next 5 years smarting at this rejection. the fact that this rejection is the basis of their relationship rather than immediate hostility is fascinating to me.

[tazmiilly]

it is always nice to find another abuse survivor who also felt like ford's story resonated with them. it's nice to feel like there's other people who know what I'm talking about

[bardly-working]

I never really engage in disc horse, but I am so baffled by some of the CR takes about Bells Hells ep 95.

Lemme preface this by saying that I thought this scene was FASCINATING and brilliantly played by Marisha and Liam. Especially after watching CR Cooldown, it's brilliant and heartbreaking and I am that sicko meme grinning as I watch it unfold.

But I have seen multiple people say that...

Orym defending himself against an unknown assailant who attacked him in his sleep (after casting darkness so he couldn't see who it was) means he's toxic and and lashing out because of his grief.

Laudna is a bad person for clinging to the only source of stability and company that she had consistently for 30 years, and her being essentially addicted and trapped in an abusive relationship makes her weak and evil.

it's Orym's fault Delilah is back because he actively encouraged Laudna to give her power... by nodding to agree that they needed to kill Bor'dor? As if he had any reason to know she was gonna suck out his soul and bring back Delilah?

Laudna/Orym should get over their trauma because what Orym/Laudna have dealt with is worse.

And holy shit. It's just... all of this is bonkers.

I know fandom is allergic to nuance, but can we like... try a little allergy exposure therapy?

Can we acknowledge that Laudna has a ton of trauma and is being manipulated by her abuser, but that it is still her responsibility to stop doing bad things? Can we acknowledge that Orym sucks at setting boundaries or expressing his feelings and it's damaging his relationships with the group, but that the solution is NOT to repress his feelings even more? Can we let characters be complicated?

[sleeplessv0id]

sometimes the distractions fail, and I am forced to confront the fact that I am still as sick as I've always been.

[hookechoes]

I guess it’s official now that Jordan has to return the medal. This is so cruel and unfair. Why they couldn’t just do what BOTH THE USA AND THE ROMANIAN FEDERATIONS advocated for and give out two extra bronzes is entirely beyond me. Why punish the athlete for an error that wasn’t her fault?

[easypeezysilverbreezey]

ivypool they will never ever make me hate you. god forbid a traumatized mentally ill woman behaves in a way that isn’t woobifiable to you :/