#being retraumatized in another way entirely

[runawaycarouselhorse]

Wishing blocking folks actually kept you from seeing their posts on tumblr.

[aronarchy]

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/william-gillis-one-giant-red-flag-folded-into-a-book

So much abuse is about trapping and monopolizing the target’s attention, feeling entitled to claim a chunk of their brain. The experience of being abused is often one of being forced into thinking about the abuser constantly, from trying to predict their acts to trying to follow the latest tangle in their proclamations. Abuse strips away agency by stripping away the capacity for the abused to think for yourself, to think about anything else or think at all. If the abuser controls critical needs then everything is devoted to trying to turn yourself into a complex key that can unlock those needs. If the abuser besieges and terrorizes you randomly, you form your brain into a vast prediction net, trying to preempt as best you can every single avenue by which they might strike. Or you huddle up and turn yourself off, turn your brain off, to try and weather through things like an inert object. All of these are about losing your capacity for agency in a way that extends beyond any physical constraints directly imposed upon you. Abuse takes over your brain.

Sometimes the abuser acts so as to not have to think about you, to terrorize you into smallness and confined predictability, but sometimes the abuser is themselves driven by their own ravenous attention on you and the need to make you dedicate that same level of attention to them. This sort of abuser is never more happy than when their provocations force you into direct immediate raw unthought emotional tangles with them. They yell and yell until you finally yell back, and then they grin in glee because they have you. Neither abuser can stand your escape to any degree, which they read as a direct assault on them.

There are many aspects of abuse, but abusers feel entitled to your attention.

I can’t emphasize this enough. Demanding that an ex listen to you, mobilizing The Community to force that ex to give you a monopoly over their brain is an abuser’s wet dream. It’s how thousands of accountability processes have derailed into an abuser continuously retraumatizing their survivor.

Schulman, it must be emphasized, has no argument for why we should be obligated to give away our attention to anyone who wants it. What she has instead is 1) a fixation on pain and suffering of those denied control over the attention of their targets, and 2) the repeated assertion that having no boundaries is “adult” whereas saying no is “childish.” Mature adults talk things out in person, only immature children—or those so traumatized and broken as to be infantile children—would draw a line around their attention and enforce it.

“In another example from other people’s lives, sometimes angry, supremacist, or traumatized people send emails commanding, ‘Do not contact me.’ I want to state here, for the record, that no one is obligated to obey a unidirectional order that has not been discussed. Negotiation is a human responsibility. Little children order their parents around: ‘Mommy, sit there!’ When adults give orders while hiding behind technology, they are behaving illegitimately. These unilateral orders do not have to be obeyed. They need to be discussed.”

It would be trivial to compose a little passage reversing the associations, casting knowing how to draw boundaries and assert one’s independence and agency as the “mature adult” position whereas being caught under the boot of others’ demands to the point where you can’t own your own associations or attention as the “child” experience. But I want to reject the entire adult supremacist frame she’s appealing to.

If the child often stomps their feet and declares “no”—no, I refuse to give uncle a kiss, no, I refuse to get dressed to be your marionette at an event, no, I refuse to listen to your lecturing—perhaps we should see that as an inspiring site of resistance by those most oppressed before they are ground down. Perhaps we should endeavor to be more like children desperately trying to assert their autonomy and consent as agents who get to choose. Certainly the world “adults” have built and perpetuated by beating each new generation into surrender is a clearly sickening and grotesque one.

Even though I personally have made choices to maintain some level of contact, I vehemently support every abused child who walked away from their parents and never answered their calls ever again. Hell, I support children who killed their abusers. You do not owe everyone a path for reconciliation and negotiation. From abusers to even just wingnuts and inane time burglars, the best option is sometimes to just walk away forever. We have limited time on this planet, why spend it trying to repair every single relationship you have so far happened into?

Schulman somehow cannot even fathom goals other than the maintenance of existing relationships.

“Refusing to speak to someone without terms for repair is a strange, childish act of destruction in which nothing can be won.”

Liberation can be won. There’s a world of possibility beyond the confines of one given relationship. Opportunity cost is a real thing that is worth considering. That nothing is gained in one specific relationship by walking away doesn’t mean that a world of possibilities can’t be gained through the absence and negation of that relationship.

[botaniqueer]

Forward: This post isn't meant judgmentally, targeted at anyone in particular or as a gotcha and I write in entirely good faith.

A question I have for white folks in particular (but also abled people, cis people, etc, but also everyone in general who votes) when engaging with electoral politics is, are you taking measures to protect the rest of us from your candidates? There's no perfect candidate for sure, but that means people will be hurt, and as voters we have a responsibility to call out and prevent harm that our candidates do; if we aren't then we're directly complicit in that harm. Are you willing to put your bodies and minds on the line to protect those who aren't going to be protected by those candidates? Because of the nature of US politics, our own candidates need to be challenged just as fiercely as if someone else got elected.

Again, I'm not against voting at all! I literally vote blue every time and in every election. I think there's strategic value in it, but we have to actually strategize, which hasn't been getting done. Are we actually engaging with why people are hesitant to vote? People use the "you're damaging your own cause!" whenever people seen as "scary leftists" participate in their actions, but it's never applies to liberal and electoral politics even though the same can be said. Trying to harp on and guilt people into voting when without engaging with why that is just damages the cause and pushes them further away. Also note that the majority of people critical of the way electoral politics are done are BIPOC; this is important to think about.

The democrats are objectively better for more people than the republicans, but there are people who are destitute to the point where those two parties are the same. Palestinians for example! Democrats also fund police measure against homeless folks as we see in the PNW, which is strongly blue. Indigenous people here are another similar group– the way indigeneity is legislated here, they're literally programmed to eventually go extinct from a legal standpoint due to the colonial law of blood quantum. Not to mention that reservations are literally, in their words, concentration camps.

Are you going to make things better for yourself and leave others to fall through the cracks? Or are you going to use that to lift everyone else up? This traditionally hasn't been the case, so if you want BIPOC voters to trust you, you have to demonstrate that you won't get attached to you candidates and hold them on a pedestal.

How are you going to assuage fears when people get anxious (and they will!) without also invalidating their fears (which is common under electoral politics votes). Can you do this without a lot of the manipulative tactics a lot of outlets use? (Blaming disaffected BIPOC for when things go wrong, using the "well the other guy is worse!" line.) Folks ask for 1000 step plans when talking about non-electoral political elements, but when engaging with electoral politics people treat it like magic, and if anyone falls through the cracks and complains, they're just being cantankerous. This is only a small percentage of the things that need to be considered.

Election season is also really retraumatizing for folks who have colonized backgrounds. Are you making sure we feel safe? Are we being thought about as real people, instead of just abstracts or as a resource to generate votes, but who are just being obstinate? (As opposed to again, real people with real motivations)

As a final note, people also comment on "Why abstain anyways when you know it's going to be bad either way?" for particularly marginalized people, and I think the answer (folks in those situations can correct me here) is that it's more cathartic to watch the people who let you slip through the cracks fall with you, than slipping through the cracks and watching those same people have brunch and pretend you and your problems don't exist. It's like being trapped in a room with only crumbs to eat while the people on the other side of the door throw a dinner party, and if you complain, yell at you saying that the other guys wouldn't even give you crumbs.

[mxboxlocks]

cropping the username out just in case!

i have my few gripes about separation of reality and fiction when it comes to fantasies like that, because regardless of whether it's real or not, i'm of the personal opinion that it's important to have moral boundaries in place. for me, it helps not to retraumatize myself, be in control of my surroundings, and in rare cases recontextualize some things i've seen that have scarred or triggered me.

i personally am heavily against r kink for a plethora of reasons - again, separating reality from fiction to me isn't really applicable, kind of like proship arguments - but i'm not going to sit on a moral high ground about it no matter how strongly i feel. at the end of it all, it's a personal boundary thing. but the rest of this ask has really good points, especially the cnc bits which i do practice some elements of occasionally, so i wanted to share. (thank you for being open minded, though.)

thing is, this is now not the issue. last i checked they're now angry because i "lied" about them being able to use tonetags/using tonetags in the past, because rot is apparently also a system. what a ... wild way to find out about that. side note, they keep using the word liar as a descriptor of me and it's so confusing, because half of the shit they're genuinely just misreading, and the other half is entirely new information to me lol. side side note, in a reblog from another person's ask, they said it was because rot is autistic. so...? i don't doubt either of these things obviously, but which mental illness are you blaming it on for them?

while rot being a system does put things in perspective a bit, i as a system myself have struggled with amnesia all my life (i literally cannot remember being 4-8 or 15.) and especially lately after discovering ourselves. my brain is actively trying to make sure i forget we exist, so it throws a LOT of shit under the rug. hence, i document and archive a lot of stuff. having bad memory due to being a system is not an excuse, but it is an explanation. and of course it's not at all ableist to not use tonetags (that's a ridiculous fucking statement), but when i make a personal space built for me, my friends, and my community, i'd like it to be as accessible as possible. rot's general attitude towards it (i can't remember all the tone tags, it's only been like two days) put off rory and i a lot, on top of the spam, the fact that somehow an invite slipped under my radar and they weren't supposed to get in, and (what we percieved at the time) to be pretending to be a different person, we just didn't want to have to deal with it. rot being a system was never communicated directly to us.

i blocked and removed rot because of all the reasons above and a few personal ones that are literally petty as shit. for example, in 2023, i had to leave one of their servers because they and a few of our shared friends at the time like drawing gore. like of course there is nothing wrong with that - hell, i draw gore sometimes. i write it even more intensely. but i guess it's just that i feel more in control when i do it, and i don't like seeing it done by others. which is a complete personal preference and nothing to do with them as a person. everything in that aforementioned server was tagged appropriately, spoilered, and warned about thoroughly as far as i can remember, so everyone was generally great about it. i am genuinely so sorry if me communicating that i was leaving for it was done in a tasteless or weird way that made anyone think i was trying to be morally superior. i am not morally superior and i'm not trying to be.

anyway, that's off topic. the point is, i'm done having these conversations with them (angryburdie) and i'm done entertaining them. it keeps switching topics and they're also spreading around the screenshot of me saying rot not speaking up about rat defending them given the age gap was weird and trying to spin it like it's dirt. they prove themselves wrong every time they post it. it is quite literally not a predator accusation, what it was though was worded very poorly and that made it easy to misconstrue, i guess.

and yeah, i blocked them before they could respond because genuinely nothing they're saying has any sort of weight - aside from the things i'm already heavily self critical of (black hairstyles, tagging things correctly, keeping distance from minors, etc).

they admitted themselves that they don't like me. that's literally fine. i don't have to be morally reprehensible for you to justify disliking me. i handled a situation in a way you don't like, and i'm sorry that made people upset. dragging my art, calling me a liar, making it all out to be this huge thing that it isn't, it's just fucking weird. y'all didn't have to make your dislike of me known through several anons over the course of months since april (obligatory acknowledgement of rot not having sent any of these i knowww that already) and act like it was some big reveal when i said i was open to talking about it. be fucking fr

[chatnoirwithblackhair]

What I wish my dear system understood is, it's completely normal for us to avoid being around people who have certain disorders. It doesn't make us ableist. It doesn't make anybody ableist, in fact, because trauma does not equal discrimination unless the person chooses to engage in hateful behaviors, which is a completely separate topic. Ableism, by definition, "is discrimination and social prejudice against people with physical or mental disabilities. Ableism characterizes people as they are defined by their disabilities and it also classifies disabled people as people who are inferior to non-disabled people."

It is not the same as trauma.

There is a line drawn between being ableist and traumatized. Until you are actively speaking out against certain people and discriminate against them, until you are actively trying to put them down, to hurt them, to speak of them with hate, you are not being hateful by avoiding certain groups of people depending on characteristics they have. That goes for ableism too.

The easiest example of this I can give are women who are avoiding men because of sexual trauma. You wouldn't immediately assume that they are being sexist, you would think they have trauma around them, understand them, and while these women would still have to engage with men from time to time, you'd support them (women) in wanting separation from them (men) in every other way. Then how is it the same with disabled people?

My dear system, we have been around narcissists our entire lives non-stop. We had narcissists who used their disorder as an excuse to hurt us, and we felt too guilty to stand up for ourselves because we thought we would be ableist if we were to tell them to stop. "They just don't know any different," we told ourselves. But the harsh truth is, no matter the amount of empathy, no disorder allows you to hurt others. No matter if you can control it or not, it is not an excuse, ever, and we have always had a right to say we do not want to engage with people with NPD. We are not being hateful towards them. My darling heamdates, we tried to understand them the best we could and find ways to work with them. And we know that if those people decided to abuse us again, we would fall for it immediately. We were always allowed to sat "no." We were always allowed to avoid them.

No person is being ableist if they set a boundary in order to not hurt themselves. We have no kind of prejudice against them other than basic trauma and a desire to not get into yet another relationship/friendship that would retraumatize us. We are allowed to join support groups for those like us. The people who we have been with put us through literal hell, and we can't even admit it due to there being so much that if we're not in denial, we are going to spiral into insanity.

We ourselves barely experience empathy, if at all, and we never gave ourselves the opportunity to hurt others.

And people out there with same experiences, you are allowed to avoid certain groups of people because of your trauma. Or just simply because you're uncomfortable. I know that there are disorders that are stigmatized to the core, and so people are trying to defend them the best they can, but it should not enable abuse. If a person is abusive, they are abusive. If they are abusive because of their disorder, they are abusive because of their disorder. If they have a disorder that makes it hard for them to understand empathy, social cues, etc, they can still listen to a "no," "stop," "I don't like this," "you're hurting me," "you're making me uncomfortable." Therapy exists, and if it's not available, basic human decency works, too. Nobody is saying it's fun for people with certain disorders to be stigmatized because of them and treated like garbage. But it also doesn't give said people the "okay" to treat others like garbage either.

Ableism is not the same as avoidance due to trauma.

The existence of stigma and ableism and people suffering from it is not an excuse to enable abuse.

Your trauma isn't any less valid just because somebody had a mental/physical disability that influenced/cause their behavior.

And whoever decides to tell us, or wheoever's reading it, otherwise, should go to hell.

[malorisaurus]

This has easily been the worst holiday season of my life, and I have been struggling profoundly. That is why I disappeared, really. Family I am no-contact with suddenly became excessively aggressive in their pressure, and a lot of grief that I hadn't addressed surfaced (ultimately positive because it means I am acknowledging and mindfully addressing it and moving toward acceptance). My father expanded his boundary pushing and I decided it was best for me to respond to him for the first time 2.5 years to establish my clear boundary so that if he continued to cross it I could block him without guilt (I still have to jump through a lot of emotional hoops with myself). He respected my request and didn't respond to my messages and has stopped texting, so now I have the annoying problem of the panic that comes with that—what are his motives? Is this a tactic and then he will redouble his efforts when he goes back to being annoyed that this has continued for so long?

I am trying to let it go while being mindful of the fear and panic that arises whenever I hear from him while also trying to look at this from more positive angles. I want my father to acknowledge my autonomy and respect me; in this circumstance, the only way for him to do that is to not reach out to me in accordance with my request. It doesn't mean that I have to change my position on this relationship, but it can be an opportunity to feel better instead of allowing intrusive thoughts to run rampant. It is very difficult for me to regulate in this way, though.

But between him and his mother, this entire month has been filled with ulterior motives expressed under the guise of birthday and Christmas wishes; I have not had peace. It made me feel stupid for not blocking them earlier, but to do so felt like abandoning hope of reform, and I had to realize that it was a bad premise for me to hold the door open for them with that demand on the other side of it. I don't deal in denial of another's autonomy or ultimatums. I am not safe with them, and I am not in a place where I can be vulnerable with them without being retraumatized, or at the very least, without moving beyond my capacity/ability to regulate. And since unmasking, it has become very difficult for me to mask my Autistic meltdowns and behaviors while in distress. I am not safe doing that with them, so it is an impossibility for me to open lines of communication at this point. That is a good enough reason to block numbers to avoid dealing with the stressors while I continue to process through the CPTSD.

On top of that, today my mother sent me an audio recording of my mentally ill brother going through an episode of psychosis because she didn't know what to do.

I talked her through ways to help him and was an ear for her to process her feelings—it is heartbreaking and so grief inducing (how can you not despair when someone you love is in so much pain?) but it is also a bit crazy-making having blaring music and wailing and shouting. I understand being frayed when that is your constant reality. My mom has been doing a good job of managing her overwhelm as her own issue, so that is fortunate. But she struggles to know how to offer him touchstone spaces that are low on pressure and still engage with him on his level, and instead, she leaves him to his raving and tries to ignore it. To be fair, she is the primary breadwinner of their household as well and she is working from home. It is a lot.

I feel pretty helpless most of the time, and I did have to go and cry and process through a huge surge of anger when she sent that message to me. She is doing the best she can with what she has, but it is often just so inadequate. The lack of healthcare options for low-income people is so profoundly damaging, and I grieve for our lack over our lives. And truly my parents have given us so much trauma and grief. My father is a truly awful person as it stands now. And while I believe that people can change, and I do not believe in dehumanizing even people whom I hate (unfortunately, I love him but I also profoundly hate him), he shows no interest in acknowledging his behavior. My mother has made a lot of very damaging choices, and my siblings and I bore the brunt of the consequences of those decisions. Now, she is too invested in maintaining the status quo when it absolutely does not serve anyone, least of all my brother. I am truly so angry at all that my siblings and I have suffered at the hands of our parents, which is a lot, sadly.

My brother carries so much pain. I listen to him and I see a man who is trapped in a prison of all of our shared traumas, his own unique traumas, and then the mental illness that he has no help or real support with. He desperately wants things in his life and has no recourse to achieve them. And unmasking is such a hugely vulnerable act, and he trusts no one and with good reason. I want to be a safe person for him, but I can't convince him to trust me. So he is just so trapped. I hurt for him, but all I can do is continue to reach out and let him know that I am there—a thousand unanswered text messages and voicemails.

So yeah, a lot of weight all at once. A lot of grief. I don't know what the future will hold, but I am working hard to be the person that I want to be through putting in the work to heal, putting the work in toward accountability, and by being present and available to those that need me.

[bklynmusicnerd]

I love Sprina so much. I just really need them to address that literally almost everyone is Spencer’s orbit has emotionally or physically traumatized Trina. From Esme to Victor to Cyrus. And Laura occasionally facilitates it? I loathe Trina’s narcissistic boundary-less momma, but I’m starting to understand her point. Trina keeps getting retraumatized almost every week and has to suck it up. I wish someone on the show would acknowledge that. Maybe only Ava understands it. But SOMEONE, my lawd!

I actually think from the post-nyc "five year plan" discussion to the Cyrus confrontation, and now this last, blowout fight, this element of their dynamic is being addressed because it's at the core of Trina's perspective. I love your use of the word "retraumatized" to describe Trina's experience in this whole demon spawn situation because that's exactly what happened.

She watched Spencer become a team again with the girl who drugged and framed her. And she forced herself to grin and smile through all of it and pretend to be okay because that's what Spencer and his family needed from her. This is why she has concerns about him switching up on her when it comes to Cyrus too.

While Spencer was blissfully hiding from his daddy issues, Trina was put back in the mental space of being the girl walking into a trap that almost destroyed her life while trying to support a guy who barely supported her in return. This is why I'm kind of defensive of Trina's "finally" that pissed Spencer off. Yes, it was insensitive. It was also a completely human moment for a girl who, up until that point, put herself to unreasonably high "understanding girlfriend" standards.

I would honestly describe Trina in this relationship, from the moment that sociopathic mooch moves into Laura's, as holding her breath. She's enduring. But between all the milestones they experience in the NYC trip and being retraumatized by Cyrus' release, I think that "finally" is an example of her losing her martyr resolve and just letting go. Letting herself breathe and be human and be relieved at the idea of having one less trigger perpetually in her orbit. She just did not have it in her to be the perfect support system to Spencer in that moment.

She's been sacrificing to be the perfect support system to Spencer all year. Spencer got used to her being the fixer, but Trina is in self-preservation mode over all the reminders of her being endangered surrounding their relationship. And he's still asking her for more and honestly, for indefinite sacrifice or else. It's all very absurd and trauma-based on his end as well.

The one thing I will push back on in your q is the idea that Trina "has to suck it up". That's what Trina convinces herself, that it's always her obligation to endure for the betterment of the people around her. That it's her obligation to keep her pain as quiet as possible so as to not be a burden. That she needs to be the one to "fix" things. But uh, that's not actually true. That's her savior complex talking and it's her character flaw. People admire her for it, but it's a self-destructive behavior. She never has to do any of it. It's a choice she makes. It's her (kinda unhealthy) way of expressing she cares.

And on the Portia having a point end, that is why I was disappointed by the decision to have Portia be one of the props for the sociopathic mooch. There was something really compelling about Portia being hypocritical, judgmental, manipulative, toxic, and yet still not entirely wrong about the situation her daughter landed herself in.

There was some justification, however warped, for protectiveness as her motivation. This all got undermined when they had her bond with the drugger of her daughter. Now she's just another person Trina can't count on to be on her side.

[weebsinstash]

Your recent posts inspired me to reread The Remarried Empress and Good God is Rashta the fucking worst. Not to mention Sovieshu constantly insisting Navier should suck it uup, accept Rashta and be besties with her, tells her she can have a lover and then gets jealous even though he knocked up another woman, AND tells Navier she is a cold hearted woman all the time. Oh and also the way he just expects her to love the baby he is having with the mistress??? They are both horrible, but Rashta is definetly the queen of dogshit manhwa side bitches.

Honestly even though I very strongly dislike Rashta and her manipulative antics, I can entirely 500% see EXACTLY where she's coming from if you look at it from a factual perspective.

She was literally a slave. A legal slave. People watched her be a fucking slave and didn't care because it wasn't against the law. Not touching on how traumatizing it would be to have literally everyone around you not care about the worst thing that has ever happend to you, which is constantly happening to you, but then she was further retraumatized by Alan, who made her feel safe and secure, then proceeded to impregnate her and pull all that safety and security right out from underneath her and leave her vulnerable and alone. My god she had to give birth alone in a dirty barn on her knees and she thought her baby died, her baby that no matter what was happening to her, she genuinely loved, genuinely wanted

I hate to say it but there are a decent amount of times Rashta was genuinely trying to be friendly in the very beginning, but she was ultimately being way too fucking dense and eager to please and fit in to her new life to realize Navier could not reciprocate all these friendly feelings. Rashta cried when Navier rejected her because she wanted her approval, and being rejected as a sort of friend and, in her mind, being looked down upon, kind of made her trauma resurface again in the sense of "oh no I'm finally safe with Sovieshu but his wife might kick me out". Like, Sovieshu was the first instance of security she had had in a very long time and she was TERRIFIED of going back to her old life. Like my god can you even imagine how it felt for her to be at the party Sovieshu was hosting, she's in his house, she feels safe, she is with her lover, she's nice and clean and dressed up pretty and she is trying to become a noble in the eyes of the people around her so that she can be safe and respected, and out of nowhere her literal slave master appears right in front of her and says to everyone in the room "well golly gee look everyone if it ain't my slave Rashta!"

Honestly, Sovieshu, by contrast, is worse to me. Not saying Rashta is completely innocent but like he took in a clearly traumatized woman who was in an extremely emotional vulnerable scenario as an enslaved woman who was desperate to not live in constant agony and he immediately started a romantic relationship because... he misses how his wife used to be? He's chasing his fucking glory days from when a young woman would bat her eyes at him and tease him? Sorry is being an Emperor and leading an entire kingdom a real bummer for you, dude? Gee, i wish there was someone you could try and open a dislogue with who would understand your scenario, someone who also has a lot of responsibilities like gee I dunno YOUR FUCKING WIFE???

Sovieshu had absolutely no pretense or pre-established behavior to start painting Navier as a villain amd accusing her of bullying Rashta besides "oh no you aren't a sweet innocent obedient little damsel who does whatever i say anymore therefore you are clearly a jealous cold-hearted bitch and you are doing this to spite me" WHEN SHE JUST TAKES HER JOB SERIOUSLY? and he's fucking dumb enough to think that he shouldn't loop Navier in on his plan to try and legitimize Rashta's child, which ultimately stems from his belief that Navier is infertile and he needs/wants children? "Oh yeah I'll just blindside her with a fucking divorce after we've been married since childhood after I started accusing her of being a nasty bitch and having an affair, she'll definitely take me back, 100% she will still love me because I will apologize :)"

He tried to fuck his cake and eat it too and eventually he will be left with jack shit nothing and meanwhile Navier will living it up with her new hot mage hubby and her romantic tension with that hot respectful love potion making Duke whose name escapes me

[herethereverywhere]

who’s your favorite npc you’ve designed :0 (- @/albatrio)

i have been WAITING for this one :D

if my players are seeing this before they block the tag (#when the dust settles do NOT click on the tag in the post) BLOCK IT NOW AND DO NOT PROCEED. please i want you to experience the surprise :(

are they gone?

ok, here’s a list :)

1. Cordia Hyre

Cordia is my ultimate babygirl. She has committed several war crimes as an individual who’s high in rank in the rebellion. She’s also one of the most powerful magic wielders of the entire campaign - one of her unofficial titles is Planemover, as she (with the help of her husband, a member of the Order of Glass) convinced the Feywild to give the cause a bit of the plane to hide away on as they gathered resources and recuperated.

She’s…a very complicated character. The majority of the decisions she makes are made genuinely from a place of love, but she does make some objectively fucked up decisions.

One of my players, Luna, gave me the opportunity to write a large part of his character, specifically her backstory. Perle doesn’t know this, and neither does Luna, but Perle is an incredibly significant individual in the context of the rebellion. He’s is Cordia and Aedium’s kid, and Cordia’s decision to modify his memory to make him not remember his community is one that effects the entire rebel body.

It’s also a decision that effects Perle - I was actually just speaking to Luna about how the cracks that are starting to show through with that spell are effecting his ability to trust himself. I’m…deeply intrigued by what will happen when that spell inevitably gets dispelled, or goes down, and how Luna will play that as Perle. Because I know what Cordia’s thought process was, but she never asked her son what his desires were before she executed that act.

2. Metis Kore Hey so you know how I was heavily sympathizing with a war criminal above? Yeah, here’s her foil that I despise but love from like, a character perspective. Metis is...genuinely one of the worst people I’ve ever written. She’s the mother of one of my other PCs, AK, who she experimented on to the point of his death, and then subsequently revived him. She’s a litch at the moment because I needed her to be somewhat present in the story, but wanted to honor my player, who when I inquired about the Kore family, said that they thought that AK might have killed Metis while he was escaping. Right now she’s the individual who funds the actual criminals (I specify because the Firelights are technically criminals in the eyes of the law, but are actually trying to help their community) of Zuan who have been slowly, but steadily, abducting Zuan children for Metis’s experiments with Hextech. She’s essentially trying to create immortal humanoids and, um...let’s just say that from the TW list I’ve had to put together for AK’s arc, has thus far had no success. 3.   Zeus & Romulus Aere More members of the Kore family, what a surprise! Candle, as much as AK is the character I find myself having to think of ways to balance more and more on a mechanic level, has created so many fantastic opportunities for me to introduce aspects of the world that I don’t think my players would have sought out on their own. One of these is the members of the Kore family that are missing - Zeus, and Romulus. Romulus is AK’s older brother. When he is reunited with Zeus on the Dominum, a pirate ship that his father captain, he’s not incredibly friendly towards him. All that Romulus knows is that his father left by his own violation, and cause a domino effect that lead to Romulus being forced to flee Piltover too. Zeus...does genuinely try, from the time he recognizes Romulus again, to have a relationship with him, but he wasn’t there to witness what Metis put Romulus and AK through - he doesn’t know that Romulus is being reactive to not be retraumatized. They do eventually get to a good place with one another. Romulus’s last name is taken from one of Zeus’s close friends, and quartermaster, who is the person on the ship who mentors him, and is generally someone he leans on in the healing process. I’m excited for this reunion too, because Romulus does think about AK a lot, to the point that the only picture that remains of him pre-transition is in the locket he carries.

4. Silco Yeah. She’s alive and she’s transfem. My game, my rules, and I say that Silco is a transfem Paladin who kicks ass. She’s presumed dead right now but I do have a player who suspects she’s alive because of a...very good perception roll. For Silco I’m excited from a storytellling perspective, and a mechanic one! Her oath is one I’m working on homebrewing myself because I like to make my life harder. That and her relationship with Vander & how their respective oaths effect that relationship should be fun. An honorable mention goes to the Firelights, who I’m sort of glad AK traumadumped on because now they have a reason to have a relationship with my players! The Firelights are really the only organization other than the Academy that I’ve worked on extensively, and they’re just fun :)

[whyispotatoheadalreadytaken]

I recently saw Regina Spektor at the Ryman. She's been on my bucket list for a long time now. She played a few songs I enjoyed but not as many as I had hoped for. I still kick myself for not seeing her back in 2017. That was my senior year of college. There was no way I could swing it with 19 credit hours, a practicum, and two jobs. That setlist was perfect, so I think I should've tried harder. Seeing her this time was mostly good. I knew it would be an emotional time, but I got caught off guard in the worst way imaginable during the concert. After she played Eet, one of my all-time favs of hers, she almost immediately went into a different song. I recognized the piano, and when it clicked, I couldn't breathe or stop the steady leak from my eyes. It didn't even feel like I was crying. It just wouldn't stop streaming out of my eyes. I don't know how to explain it. My brain goes into flight or fight as I recognize The Grand Hotel. I'm shot back to July 2020. I had just told Zoë what had happened before I went to the hospital, and we went to her friend's house to watch Hamilton. After that, we went to RJ's so she could swim in his pool…which was awesome. Loved that. Made me feel so good that we were just randomly stopping by. That this is the first place we're going after being emotionally tortured and retraumatized by Hamilton. I have almost no memory of RJ's. I only remember staring down at the pool and how I felt. I remember feeling invisible and humiliated. The shame. I was beyond not okay when it came time to leave, so I put on the only person I knew who could help me feel not so hopeless, Regina Spektor. We drove to the park after that and walked around almost in silence. I wasn't sure what we were doing anymore or the point of anything or trying to make things better after living through this day. From start to finish, I felt like I was nothing. Not a person. Just nothing. Guess I deserve that, though, right? After she was done walking around the park, I drove us home. The road was all I could see as the song played. I dissociated the entire car ride home so I wouldn't have a mental breakdown. I stared out the windshield of the mini, wholly focused on the road, just listening to Regina's Remember Us To Life album. It had not occurred to me that I've not heard any song from that album since that car ride home from one of the worst days of my entire life. I didn't see this coming and hadn't prepared for this. I look to my left slightly, and Zoë is crying too. I'm unsure of why and afraid to ask because I don't want to know what she is thinking about. I don't want to talk about why I'm in shambles, so I keep staring at Regina, waiting for all this to pass. Once it does, I focus on breathing, though I still can't stop the steady leaking from the corners of my eyes. Sometime later, Regina tells us that she happened to be in town at the same time as her dear friend, Ben Folds and that she wanted to invite him to the stage. Shocked, I turn to Zoë, who is so excited.

"BEN FOLDS IS HERE," is all she can get out.

Hamilton.

Then, I begin to reenter my trauma brain as the only thing I can get out in hardly a whisper is "Theodosia." I don't think she even heard me.

And that's precisely what happens. Regina and Ben covered Dear Theodosia back in 2016. This was the only song from Hamilton I had known before seeing the musical. Zoë is sobbing, probably for a different reason than I am. At least, I'm hoping it's for another reason. I'm hoping it's because of how much she loves Hamilton and that it's unrelated to that terrible day. It's hard to know, though, because her love for Hamilton is also derived from how much that time in our lives was horrible. Hamilton was how she coped. I'm not sure how she was able to cope with Hamilton. It was so painful; it took me two years to listen to it, and I still can't listen to all of it. If I hadn't had such a visceral reaction to The Grand Hotel, I would've been in a better head space to enjoy Dear Theodosia. The pairing of the two was too much. So, I would do it again, with some more preparation next time for the potential of reliving some not so great memories.

[gncrevan]

cw: depp/heard trial, abuse

.

if johnny depp defenders can go on all day about how he's just like them forreal because they were also completely falsely accused of being a bad person once uwu, then so can i, here goes:

no matter what you think of amber heard, the shit you're doing to and saying about her on the internet right now is fucking triggering to survivors and you need to stop. you are so convinced that you're justified because you think you know she's lying, but you don't. you don't know. you can't know. you're basing your conviction on how she divulges information, that her memory isn't always entirely complete and correct, how she performs her grief; and i'm here to tell you that all of these are things survivors do.

trauma is locked behind layers of dissociation. that means memory is altered, distorted, distant. some things are perfectly in focus while some cannot be recalled. time and place is often unclear. and i wanna emphasize, even normal non-traumatic memory is notoriously unreliable. add to that the way fear responses affect the encoding of memories and you end up with something "fragmented, associated with intense arousal, readily primed and triggered, and poorly contextualized into memory".

another effect of this is the division of narrative memory and emotional memory. that means on the one hand you may have poorly intelligible (for yourself and others) emotional fragments floating around in your brain, that can be triggered easily and lead to flashbacks or meltdowns. on the other hand, you may be able to recall something traumatic with clarity, but without emotion, or with a poor connection to the emotion.

when the brain processes hugely painful and scary experiences, it often gets tripped up and doesn't fully integrate them. you can think of it like the different things that make a memory - outside narrative, thoughts, physical sensations, emotions - getting stored in separate boxes instead of coming together to make a whole.

therefore it's not uncommon for survivors to recount traumatic events like they're talking about the weather, or for their emotional reaction to their own story to seem mismatched or disconnected, or for them to mix up the exact order of events, or for them not to recall everything (such as, "i was in the kitchen and then i was in the bathroom and i don't know how i got there or how much time passed"). their expressions and gestures may not fit the emotion you would expect given the topic (not to mention, all humans emote differently and body language analysis is junk science).

it's also exceedingly hard to talk about painful, intimate things while people and in this case even cameras are watching you. you are very aware of their expectations of how you perform your trauma. expecting any person to behave natural and authentic under this sort of pressure is asinine. having to restate your trauma over and over again is hard enough, being judged for it and knowing there are people watching, ready to tear you apart, is at best triggering and at worst retraumatizing.

the expectations you are projecting onto amber in order to be a "convincing" victim cannot be met by a real person. victims forget, victims show disparate emotions. victims also very often, both during and after the abuse, exhibit irrational and erratic behaviour, they might become aggressive and fight back against their abuser, taunt them, provoke them, even attack them; or lash out at others. none of that makes their claims of abuse false.

this is the personal part, i cut a lot of what i originally wrote because it felt too intimate, but i wanna try: my trauma doesn’t look like amber's, but my experiences of gaslighting and victim blaming are starkly reflected back at me in the way she is treated by media and observers. every time i tried to go up against what was happening to me, or reach out to a person of authority to help, it was turned on its head. my pleading, my crying, my detachment, my aggression, my confusion - all were taken as justification to either say that i was causing it, i was to blame, or that it wasn't happening, i was imagining and misinterpreting things, i was making things up, i was a liar. to this day i sit in therapy and have to hear my therapist tell me that my emotional expressions don't feel authentic, and i know it's because i can't connect to them, i can't touch them, i'm floating somewhere above my head, i'm always watching myself. i know that if i were sitting in a courtroom to try and prove what people did to me, i wouldn't remember it right, i wouldn't show the right emotions, i would try to overcompensate and come off as fake.

regardless of what you think of amber, abuse survivors are reading your posts and seeing your videos, and the message we receive is very clear: that you wouldn't believe us if we spoke out, because we can never be the kind of victim you deem acceptable and believable.

as a survivor, you really can't win. whatever you do will be used against you.

.

more about trauma (pdfs):

trauma and recovery

the body keeps the score

cptsd - from surviving to thriving

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terfs dni, i'm trans & not aligned with you

[dowhatteverer]

So, for Remnant City, I've decided to make a core part of the story the ableism Ironwood has to experience on a daily basis. And guess who the lucky bunch of reprehensible fucking assholes I'm using as a reference are?

The Big List of the FNDM's Ableism Regarding Ironwood.

Dehumanization

Done by the writers themselves when describing his last amputation as "losing his humanity", and by fans who call him "more machine than man" in what they wanted me to believe was a serious fucking in-depth analysis of the character that they apparently didn't have the fucking sense to see was an incredibly ableist thing to say, as well as being full of absolute cannon rejecting speculative bullshit that they straight up made up just to try and convince everyone else that their Headcannons are what the character was actually like-

There are also people trying a little sneaky thing where they bullshit up a backstory for Ironwood where it's actually him dehumanizing himself. Now, I love a good traumatic backstory and unhealthy trauma response, but these often feel like they're just people are just trying to justify the ableism in the writing by misattributing the writers ableism onto the character that they chose to write in an ableist way.

Threats of violence

People talking about how Ironwood should be torn apart at the seams of where his prosthetics are by characters like Pyrrha. Does anybody remember that one? Or how about how people go on and on about how they wish violence and rejection on him while ignoring how the way the narrative demonized Ironwood because of his disabilities, because if they noticed that the writers have intentionally manipulated them into hating a character for his disabilities, they would also notice how fucked up it is that they are wishing for a disabled character to be hurt worse than they already have been, even though they had just witnessed that character be horrifically mutilated and forced to be retraumatized.

Sexual Harassment

Calling Ironwood unfuckable may seem like the exact opposite of sexual harassment because it's stating a lack of desire for the character. But responding to that post going into depth about how the state of his body makes him undesirable, as well as implying that this disabled character has no worth because you personally find his prosthetics a major turn off. That's sexual harassment.

Victim Blaming

There are so many instances of victim blaming Ironwood that it's not even entertaining to see it. Ironwood reacting poorly to be triggered, mutilated, and betrayed, are used by writers of the actual show to demonize him. Fans have been caught straight up saying that Ironwood losing his arm was his own fault. People have stated that Ironwood's robots being hacked without his knowledge or consent was his fault. They have even made up bullshit backstories about Ironwood's prosthetics coming from him refusing to wait until he got better and intentionally replacing his body parts cyberpunk style because Ironwood's disability has to be his fault. Because if it's not, then they can't shame him for it. (Not that they should shame ANYONE for their disability no matter what the circumstances that caused it were)

Invalidation

Ironwood has extensive prosthetics going all across the entire right side of his body and then in volume 8, has another prosthetic arm. You would think that having this information so clearly and unabashedly obvious to you, you could see that Ironwood is clearly an amputee, and therefore, disabled. And then some self awareness lacking peace of garbage decided that because Ironwood's a badass, and because Ironwood doesn't use a wheel chair, and because Ironwood can easily hide his disability under clothing, that he is not disabled. His status as a disabled person is completely erased, because he's not a pathetic helpless baby you want to donate to charity for.

Final thoughts

That's basically all of the ways people have been ableist about him in my recent memory. There was also the instance of people editing a Nazi esc. Armband onto him and that other time someone essentially claimed that Jason Rose was lying about how Ironwood was designed to look like him because this fandom can't accept that this character they hate beyond any semblance of sanity is not a white person. But those have more to do with the fandom's already well documented racism and antisemitism and this post is about ableism.

So... Yeah.

[seventeendeer]

finished watching bojack horseman and I have to be entirely real with u all. while the last 10 or so episodes are clearly trying to bring up like twenty-seven Very Important Themes and ask Tough Questions and be Realistic and Nuanced, all that shit just kind of slid off the wind screen when its final takeaway seemed to be "months of rehab and working on himself and making new connections and removing himself from a toxic environment that was bringing out the worst in him was NOT GOOD ENOUGH, the bad man did bad things and the only thing that will really make him better is JAIL. jail makes people better :)"

like, I get that the writers were probably trying to talk about the ups and downs of trying to radically change your own life and consequences for shitty actions coming back to bite you in the ass and how a person who wants to change reacts to being confronted with their own past mistakes and the concept of an abuser getting to simply walk away from their mistakes while their victims have to live with the scars, and like 11 other Important Themes about People and Society and Whateverthefuck, but the fact of the matter is simply that I think the idea of someone needing to be Called Out and Punished for shitty behavior long after they've made amends as best as they can and worked hard to make sure it never happens again is fucking stupid

this show had a lot of good stuff in it, but whether it's intended to read that way or not, much of the narrative seems to value bringing shitty people to some kind of karmic justice over actually reducing harm to everyone involved, and it overshadows a lot of its more subtle, constructive takes. like, yeah, that interviewer delivering an #epicsmackdown on bojack about his past treatment of women is cool in theory (and to me, it reads as if the narrative wants the viewer to think it's cool and insightful too), but ... who is it actually helping? we see one of his victims get retraumatized from the whole affair coming up again. bojack himself ends up relapsing because of it. is it just to "get the word out" about shitty dudes in hollywood? then why not confront someone who was actively hurting people still? was it all for the sake of sarah lynn's memory? sarah lynn is long dead. how does the truth about her death help anyone? her shitty mom gets to squeeze a bit of extra cash out of her dead daughter, but that's all.

I get that bojack horseman was trying to be radically Real about some tough subjects, but in trying to portray an abusive character without bending the narrative out of shape in order to make excuses for him, I feel like the writers instead bent the narrative out of shape in order to rain hellfire down on him every other episode. ironically ending up with another story that focuses so hard on the abuser that the abused fall by the wayside and become means to a thematic end, just coming from a different angle

[redrobin-detective]

The 101 Deaths of Danny Phantom

AO3 link

One of the first things people learned about dealing with ghosts, other than not to try and date them, is to never asks about their death or obsessions. That doesn’t mean the citizens of Amity Park aren’t curious though, especially about their resident ghostly hero and the confusing and concerning comments he sometimes makes.

“Are you okay?” Phantom asked Maisie as she shook and tried to hold back tears after that car had almost slammed into her. She sometimes joked about getting hit crossing the street of her college campus to pay her obnoxious loans but it was another thing entirely to almost experience it herself. Maisie was nearly twenty, she shouldn’t be comforted by someone younger than her little step sister but here she was, shaking like a lead and leaning into Phantom’s comforting, chilly touch. 

“Sorry,” she stuttered, “thank you, I’m sorry I’m just-”

“Hey, it’s okay to be upset that was very scary. The thought of dying is very scary.” Through her adrenaline and her tears, she took in the ghost’s unnatural glow, his faded, barely visible appearance and the fact that he was floating a foot off the ground. Maisie knows this ghost, this boy, knows more than she ever could about death. 

“And getting run over by a car sure is a bad way to go,” the ghost kid chuckled awkwardly, taking his cold hand off her shoulder to scratch at the back of his neck. “You should see how my dad drives or my mom or my sister if she’s running late enough,” Phantom paused in thought. “No one in my family should have a license now that I think about it. Anyway,” he dismissed with a wave. 

“My sister and I were getting ready to head out to school and my dad was backing out of driveway too fast and didn’t see us and uh, luckily I got my sister out of the way in time haha,” Phantom trailed off awkwardly. Was it because of the uncomfortable conversation or because he noticed her dawning horror.

Her best friend ran the community college’s Phan club so Maisie was a member by default. Phantom’s death was sometimes talked about late at night, everything from wrongful murder to a freak accident. She never in her worst nightmares imagined being him being runover in front of his own house by parental ignorance. It was so normal, a quick mistake and a life lost.

“Oh my god,” he said with an adorable little green blush. “Why am I babbling about that? You almost got hit by a car, I’m probably retraumatizing you or something. I should probably go get the jerk who almost hit you,” he said before disappearing into thin air. 

“Tia is not going to believe this,” she whispered to no one. All she knew is that for the rest of her damned life she was going to look both ways when crossing the street. She’d seen first hand what a single moment of reckless driving could cause.

XxX

Matthew, not Matt or Matty or Hughie, Matthew shivered from the cold. He was only in his boxers with little Pacman on them. It had been fine when he’d gone to bed considering it was mid-August but Phantom and this stupid flaming mecha ghost had tussled outside the summer camp he was working at. He could see some of the kids snickering at his state of undress though he was just extremely glad they were alive enough to disrespect him like this.

“Oh man, I’m sorry,” the ghost kid said with big, sad eyes that looked so human despite the fact that they were literally glowing. He looked around at all the snow and ice left over from his fight. “Jeez you guys must be freezing, I wish I could warm you all up but all I can do is make things colder.”

“S’okay,” Matthew said through his chattering teeth. “Teaching the kids how to start a fire was supposed to be next week but we can get a jump on it.” That got a smile out of the ghost and within a half hour, the other counselors were distributing blankets and hot beverages to the kids clustered around multiple fires. They didn’t seem particularly upset by the potentially fatal attack, Matthew will breakdown about that at a later time when he was alone. For now, he just smiled as the children chattered happily with the ghost while he cleaned up as much of the damage as possible.

“So you spend all day fighting ghosts?” Zoe asked with stars in her eyes.

“A lot of the nights too,” Phantom nodded, “I do other stuff but yeah it seems ghost fighting takes up most of my time.”

“Where’d you learn those cool powers?” Zuri asked, miming a punch.

“Comes with being a ghost,” Phantom shrugged, “my ice powers came in later though so I still struggle a bit with them but I’m getting better every day.”

“Why ice though?” Morris said with his cocked curiously to the side. “I see some ghosts use fire or shadows, why do you have ice?”

“Ah that’s a little personal,” Phantom chuckled but his posture was easy despite the invasive question. “Specialty powers like my ice require special circumstances and a certain uh connection to the ghost. Someone like me couldn’t use fire or electricity or plants, ice is in my soul, it’s who I am.”

Matthew paused in drinking his lukewarm coffee as a horrible thought came to mind. He’s been an outdoorsman all his life, practically from the time he could walk. He’d been a deep woods camping guide for a decade before switching to working at summer camps. But the years working in the relative comfort of a stable camp didn’t erase his knowledge of how unforgiving and deadly the woods in the winter could be. A grown man, much less a young teen, would freeze to death in 20 minutes if it was cold enough. 

It made sense for ghosts to develop powers related to their deaths. Had Phantom been one of the dozens of unfortunate kids he read about every year who ran away in the middle of winter only to found later as a frozen corpse. He eyed the boy’s snow white hair and frigid aura he exuded with mournful trepidation. God, what a horrible way to die. 

“I’d get chilly with ice powers,” Tabby said with a shudder, she held out her cup of cocoa. “You want some of my cocoa to warm you up?”

“No thanks,” Phantom said with a soft smile that was warm despite everything. “The cold hasn’t bothered me for a while.”

XxX

Ghost attacks may be the norm but, if there was one good thing that came out of whole mess it was the fact that violent human crimes went down drastically. So when the rare murder did happen, the shock and fear rippled through the whole town. 

Stanford Newton had only been sheriff of Amity Park for eight months after the last guy had gone gray overnight and moved to Florida the next day. It was a daunting position but one he bore proudly. This wouldn’t be his first murder investigation having initially cut his teeth as a beat cop in Chicago but it would be the first in Amity. And it certainly was the first in which the dead served in an active capacity.

“Amanda Chastain, 27. Officially she was a waitress down at Spengler’s Diner but she’s been picked up for prostitution twice in the last year,” Stan said calmly, ignoring the cold, angry presence over his shoulder. “History of polysubstance abuse as well, not that either of those things mean she deserved this.” Used, beaten to death and then dumped in the trash like yesterday’s paper. 

He wondered if she’d come back a ghost or if she’d finally get some peace this world hadn’t offered her. “We don’t have many leads right now, I’m afraid. Acting illegally as they are, there’s not a lot of resources these poor girls have to turn to.”

“I’ll find them,” The Phantom said with blazing conviction, his voice thick and sharp as ice. “I’ll find and bring them to justice and make sure no one else is hurt again.”

“I believe you,” Stan nodded, shutting his notebook as he finally turned to face the teenage superhero haunting his town. He can’t say he liked what he saw. The Phantom looked even less human than usual, his aura flaring and flickering like the foggy mist before a heavy snowstorm. His unnatural green eyes glowered, painting his too young face in a terrifying light. 

The kid looked furious, clearly taking this death to heart. He’d read the Fenton’s memos about obsessions and such but this seemed beyond that. “But don’t hurt anyone to do it, or yourself while you’re at it.”

“I won’t, I’ll make sure they’ll face human justice and don’t worry,” Phantom gave a snarling smile. “No mortal can hurt me, not like this,” he growled causing the hairs on Stan’s arms and neck to stand on end. He flew off after that, presumably to track down Amanda’s killer.

“Not like this,” Stan mumbled to him, pulling out his handkerchief and wiping his brow where a cold sweat had broken out. “Jesus Christ that poor kid.” Stan had seen plenty of murdered and mutilated bodies in his lifetime, some of them even kids. He just never got to talk to them after they’d had their life forcibly snatched away. It would explain the ghost’s near fanatical determination to save others, why he took a stranger’s murder so personally. 

“I hope your own murderer is behind bars,” Stan said as he tucked his handkerchief back into his coat pocket. “Or even six feet under, for killing a good kid like you.” Stan made his way back to his squad car so he could head back to the station and move forward with the official investigation. But he’d eat his hat if there wasn’t a stammering lowlife there by tomorrow ready to turn themselves in.

 Maybe after all this was settled down, he’d delve into some of the cold cases stacked in the cellar. Maybe in there he’ll find a picture of a smiling, carefree teen who’d disappeared and returned with the power now to ensure no one else suffered as he had.

XxX

“Yes, I know about the Phantom,” Luis Oliveira will say to anyone who so much as brings up the ghost kid. Locals know better by now but the tourists eat it up every time. He twists his finely combed mustache and gestures to the floor where his audience is standing. “He died right there oh ten or eleven years ago.”

Luis has worked his way all across the the United States since he emigrated from Brazil in the 70s. He finally settled in Amity Park about twelve years ago. He’d never intended to stay in the small Midwest town but the fatal shooting of a young customer kept his little corner market open.

“He was a nice kid, always said hi to me and paid in exact change. Was big fan of the snacks I made, would stop by after school and take half my inventory. He had big brown eyes and a crooked nose,” Luis would smile at the memory before closing his eyes and frowning sadly. “One day, he came late. His teacher made him stay after to go over a failed test, I remember he complained. He was pulling out his money when robber burst in, demanding my money. I fumbled for the register key, dropped it. I bent down to grab it and I hear shots going off. Two over my head, another right into the boy’s throat.”

Luis will hear the sound of that sweet boy’s guttural choking sounds as he drowned in his own blood until the day he himself died. The robber left after the shot, Luis called the police and held the young man’s hand as he died. The would be thief were never found and Luis never did learn anything about the boy who’d died on his floor for getting hungry after school.

“As soon as I saw Phantom on the TV,” Luis would say, perking up after his moment of somber grief, “I knew it was that boy come back. Those kind eyes, I’d recognize them anywhere. He’s never come here but one day he will and I will be able to pass on my regret on not being able to save his life that day.”

XxX

“I think he killed himself,” Mikey whispered to Lester during lunch period, angling his voice low. “The jocks may love Phantom for his powers but I just know he was one of us, an unwanted nerd. I’ve seen him chatting up a ghost I’m pretty sure is Poindexter, Casper’s suicide kid. They’re probably bonding over their similar deaths and the circumstances that led to it.”

“That’s pretty dark,” Lester whispered back. “I also get unpopular vibes from him but I don’t think he’s the time do uh do that to himself; he’s too stubborn and protective. But I bet he was the victim of a prank gone wrong. Dash locked Fenton in the Janitor’s closet last Wednesday, he got out okay somehow but maybe something like that happened to Phantom. He always looks kind of annoyed at the A-listers, maybe they remind him of old bullies.”

“Nuh-uh,” Clara said, pushing up her glasses with her middle finger. “The ghost kid totally got electrocuted or something. He was fighting that weather ghost and he sent lightning bolts his way and Phantom flinched. He fought the Ghost King and yet a little electricity scares him? It might not’ve even been a lightning strike but something manmade like a machine backfiring or something.”

“Get real,” Mikey scoffed, sipping his milk with an eyeroll. “I’m sure we’d have heard about some poor kid getting zapped to death; this town isn’t that big.”

“We’d have heard about a suicide too,” Lester noted with a wry grin.

“Shut up Mr. I base my theories around Fenton who’s a known weirdo”.

XxX

“I’m telling you, the ghost kid died of some debilitating illness,” Abbie McMillian, retired school teacher and three year reigning champ at the Tristate area’s Daylily Competition. She sipped her tea and spoke with as much confidence as she had back in the day wrangling Amity’s impressionable youths. “The superhero thing is clear wish childhood fulfillment, a chance to live and be free like he never got to in life. You see how happy and carefree that young man looks while flying? Clearly he spent his formative years sick and weak.”

“No way,” Greta von Martin frowned as she aggressively stirred her own tea to show her displeasure. “I worked in a hospital for close to 30 years and I know what chronically sick kids look like and Phantom doesn’t fit the bill. I will agree he’s carefree when he’s not battling spooks but he acts like a stupid teen. I’m telling you, the boy got into his parent’s liquor cabinet or took a few too many of whatever pill was going around his school. Tragic but something that happens every day.”

“Greta, dearie,” Abbie said with a pinched frown. “We’ve been friends since grade school and I love you like a sister but you are wrong and until you admit it, I won’t share anymore of my recipes.”

“You’re just being stubborn because you can’t see what’s right in front of you even after working with kids half of your life, Abbie, love,” Greta sniffed. “And you can kiss my grandson’s help weeding you garden goodbye until you relent.”

XxX

Perhaps one of the most human traits is curiosity, especially about what comes after death. Now the good people of Amity Park know a great deal about the dead so the lives before is what attracts their attention and none so more than the ghost boy. Maybe it’s because he’s their hero or maybe it’s because he’s so young. Or perhaps it’s because Phantom is such a mess of contradictions that it’s very hard to guess how the unfortunate boy met his end. But everyone has their own theories, from the mundane to the fantastic, some with evidence backing them up and others pure poppycock. 

But for all their curiosity, as much as it burns them to know, they’ll never ask. They don’t want to risk the powerful ghost’s wrath but, moreover, it seemed in poor taste. The boy risked his afterlife to keep them safe, they couldn’t ask what traumatic and miserable circumstances had led to this point.

And besides, it was so much more fun to look up at ghostly figure as he sped through the skies and wonder.

[quinnick]

hey! this is the byler chicken anon, @swashbuckling-chicken and i'm here to ask you your opinions on the trauma cycle and how it's portrayed in stranger things because i feel like you would have some deep thoughts

Anon, you have too much faith in me and I am slightly terrified that I have gained a status as a "Deep thought" haver (/lh)

But I have never not answered an ask (a lie) so I will try to give some thoughts.

I am not entirely sure if you are referring to a trauma cycle as in a person being unable to break themselves out of constantly being retraumatized or a trauma cycle like as in the act of one traumatized person passing on unhealthy behaviors and traumatizing another person by their healed trauma

I am going to kind of explore both options although I will say that I am not going to go super deep, 1 because I am in a silly goofy mood where I don't finish long tasks and 2 because I am not very well prepared for a long forum post (I say this 2 paragraphs in. This isn't going to be short just not a whole essay)

The characters in the story of Stranger Things are constantly still being retraumatized as the source of their trauma never really goes away. Starting in S1, we know the events must have been traumatic for Mike, Dustin, and Lucas as they are just small kids. They aren't even in highschool. Not even close. Along with this, these three have no trusted adults they can actively talk to about their trauma as the government is actively stopping them along with the fact that even then they are small kids. Traumatic shit happens to kids and they have no idea how to express their emotions or feeling surrounding it because they haven't learned how yet along with this many parents aren't prepared to deal with this either. A professional therapist would be needed but if they can't tell their parents then they can definitely not tell a person not even connect to them.

In season two, we can see that even though the active threat is not constantly present, they still have trauma and big emotions that they can't express. Mike is obvious in that he seems to be acting out in the beginning of the season as they discuss in the family dinner in S2 Ep1. Despite the fact that his parents note this as odd behavior, they don't try to reach out to Mike. Their only response is to punish the behavior to make it go away. In my opinion, a way to get rid of the symptom without actually treating the main issue. Which makes sense for the Wheeler parents to respond with as Ted is inattentive and careless while Karen is attentive, yes, but also only knows how to deal with unwanted behavior with punishment. It's been a moment since I watched S2 in it's whole so forgive me for forgetting a bit what Dustin and Lucas were up to in their small character moments. It is important to note that both these characters are also forced to hide their trauma from their parents. Along with this they also can't talk to Max about it which makes her feel like an outsider in the group.

Dustin does have to scrub the blood of his family pet off his rug so that can't be a bright spot in his day.

If S1 wasn't already traumatic for these characters, they also have to be under threat from something they thought was over. As much as I love a good old fashion, Mike S2 staying beside Will. Mike shouldn't have to deal with the constant threat of the unknown and if his bestfriend/crush could live or die. Not after S1.

I feel like I am starting to go off the rails and not even be tying this back to the orginal subject

Basically, every season so far as been characters reliving their trauma and being retraumatized and also get new ones. All while any adult is either unable to help from their own lack of knowledge, or understanding of trauma, or just the damn government stopping them.

I mean, I didn't even mention Jonathan who was already showing signs of parentification and inability to not put his needs on the back burner for others in S1. I love Joyce and understand her and can sympathize with her but can also understand that Jonathan need someone there to tell him that he didn't need to keep it all together. Which she does but sadly the plot forces her to choose between abandoning Jonathan emotionally or possibly saving Will. Now that I think about it, the casket scene is a good way to show how this all comes to a head and the show outright makes her choose. Jonathan chasing her down and basically begging her to be there for him. But she knows Will is still there so how could she possibly go casket shopping for her completely alive son.

Sorry if this made no sense. I am not used to writing analysis posts so this is more crumbs then actual thoughts.

Thanks for the ask and thanks for listening to me ramble <3

[ladyloveandjustice]

Wonder Egg Priority: Post-Mortem Spoiler-riffic Thought Dump (Repost)

Since I accidentally deleted the old post, might as well!

Quickest Summary: After her friend commits suicide, Ai Ohto enters a world where she’s promised if she protects the souls of other teenage girl suicide victims from the monsters that embody the horrors that drove them to their deaths, her friend will come back to life. During her journey, she meets three other girls fighting to save their loved ones and begins to form a bond with them.

Yeah so. This show. Sure had potential. The subject matter was dense (self harm, suicide, abuse, marginalization, transphobia, corrective rape, sexual assault, mental illness are just the beginning of the list of issues depicted), the animation was beautiful, and I’m someone who truly loves stories where one wrestles with symbolic and fantastical representations of social and psychological issues,  who loves a magical twist on heavy struggles, it was catnip for me initially. The issue of suicide/depression/trauma/suicidal ideation and how it interacts with girlhood  and adolescence is something that really hits close to home for me. It was clear from the beginning the show had so much potential- the system run by these creepy robot guys exploiting girls trauma and convincing them if they racked up enough wins like a video game they can, y’know, undo suicide is a fascinatingly fraught and rich set up that could have the potential to say powerful thing about the social systems that entrap us, Utena-style. It was also clear that the show had potential to fall apart under too many ideas and horribly mishandle the heavy subject matter and end up being another story by that enforces harmful myths and stereotypes about girls. BOY HOWDY GUESS WHICH ONE IT CHOSE.

The show has some genuinely powerful moments in early episodes (I’d say episode 7 was is maybe where you’d want to stop if you wanted to watch the show and get some enjoyment out of it) and the girls it introduces were all immediately fascinating and had some fantastic moments and the potential to be such great characters- unfortunately, it squandered pretty much all of that by the end of the show, when it introduced a brand new antagonist and a whole host of sci-fi concepts at the last minute with no space or ability to actually explore any of it. (A ROBOT IS SUPPOSEDLY MAKING GIRLS COMMIT SUICIDE Y’ALL IM SERIOUS). The girls who’d made progress on their character arcs were all abruptly retraumatized in a way that felt cruel and didn’t serve the story because again, no time to explore it!

Importantly, one of the central driving mysteries of the show- why Ai’s friend committed suicide- had the most disgusting, insulting answer it was possible to have. I’m not going to bother to dance around it- we had a teacher who was framed extremely creepily the entire show. He crossed definite lines- he drew paintings of his female students and submitted them to art competitions and drew a picture of Ai, in particular, AS AN ADULT WOMAN (???), with the title ‘latent heat’ (which is as one reviewer put it is the absolute worst thing he could have called it my soul wants to leave my body), and told her she would be hot like her mom (who he was dating) when she grew up. Those aren’t even red flags okay, that’s like….like…Akio Ohtori’s red car has pulled up in the station (I’m just making Utena references to cope shhh).

Ai’s central conflict was she had a crush on Sawaki but also was suspicious he might be a creep who did something to her friend Koito to contribute to her suicide. The conclusion is, nope, Koito is actually KER-AY-ZY and was in love with Sawaki and when he rejected her she falsely accused him of raping her while threatening to jump to her death and but OOPS that silly girl slipped and died! Oh and she’d totally done this before, driving another man to suicide with a false accusation, because this show supposedly exploring the issues of teenage girls is officially pivoting to “yeah but what about the adult men they’re the REAL victims of those malevolent fifteen year olds” now.

Of course we get this all from Mr. Sawaki, Koito doesn’t get a voice or to tell her side of the story here, because who the fuck cares about that I guess! We just accept Sawaki’s word- Ai doesn’t question it, Koito doesn’t get to say anything because she got amnesia or whatever when she got bought back to life and Ai can’t talk to her and Ai also specifically says she was wrong for being suspicious of a teacher made of red flags. I cannot overemphasize how fucked it is that this show is essentially saying young girls who get bad vibes from adult men (or hey, adults in general but this show only cares about men!) shouldn’t like, listen to themselves and be cautious. What a truly dangerous message to send.

(Also, if Koito made such a fuss, why did Ai never hear about it when she got back to school? It should have been pretty obvious whether she fell vs jumped to onlookers if Sawaki could apparently tell, why did no one say that to Ai? And when he was dating her mom did Sawaki bother to mention “oh yeah your daughter’s best friend, who died, you know the reason she’s a traumatized shut in right now, well she accused me of rape and then that’s why she fell to her death but I promise i did not rape her  also she totally fell she didn’t jump :) I did hug her once which was definitely inappropriate considering what I apparently knew of her history but im a nice guy i swear :) anyway I’m so down to date you and be part of your family I’m sure it will help your daughter recover this a great idea”. Imagine a mother listening to that story and being like “yeah this is fine”.

In the Anifem podcast covering this trashfire, Cy Clewis, who taught in Japan, mentions how when she was teaching there, she heard of a teacher who was caught recording elementary school girls in the bathroom, and he didn’t even lose his teaching license, he just could no longer teach in that city. In a world where these kind things happen, where men still easily escape consequences, THIS is the story show told to tell, and I just want to emphasize how fucked that is.

So yeah, I could talk about other aspects of the show, (the way characters like Momoe and Kaoru in particular are handled is something I encourage you to seek out trans takes on, listening to the anifem podcast is a good start! But hey, at least this picture is super cute I’ll always like it:

LET YOUR FLAG FLY MY GUY)

But does it really matter. That one issue pretty much represents how hard the show fell apart and how utterly it fails in caring about its teen girl characters (plus two teen trans boys) and the reality of teen suicide, how utterly it falls apart in both emotional and narrative logic. I’m tired, so the only other thing I’ll say about I find interesting about this show is it COULD be a study in directors, writers and animators clashing. Nojima, the writer, went on record saying he truly DOES believe teen girls don’t commit suicide for the “logical’ reasons men do and are more impulsive (i know, i hope he steps on a lego, DON’T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB AND GO INTO PSYCHOLOGY), yet the director might not. The animators framing Sawaki as super creepy (Atelier emily goes into it very well) and including a lot of depth to a clumsy story may also be them either having different ideas or actively disagreeing with the writer’s vision.

And let’s not ignore how the show was a disaster for it’s poor animators and it’s possible staff may have even been hospitalized. I should mention this was a 13 episode anime with two recap episodes (one of them being 25 minutes of the 45 minute special that was released three months after episode 12).

Basically, the egg is on everyone’s face, and I feel so sorry for everyone involved (except Nojima because he’s pissed me off). I hope things get better for the anime industry and future ambitious projects like this value the health of the staff and stick their landing.