#children abuse mention

[furiousgoldfish]

I'm going to sit down and try to explain this with patience, to everyone who still thinks calling out narcissistic abuse is 'ableist' or 'dehumanizing to the narcissists', and that abuse is something we're all equally capable of.

I don't think you understand what narcissistic abuse is, or how it differs from the other kinds of abuse. We can agree that all and any abuse is damaging, traumatic and scarring, but narcissistic abuse is so extremely pervasive, hidden, strategic and unbelievable, to the point where I can't honestly tell it's something any regular human would be capable of. And even more than this, the survivors of this particular type of abuse have found it extremely, extremely difficult to figure out they've been abused, even when they've been put through extreme, devastating, and absolutely dehumanizing scenarios. Realizing that your loved one is a narcissist requires your entire world to break down, and every piece of your heart shatters in the realization, and it takes months, even years to accept it.

The only way we can possibly figure it out is to connect the patterns. And patterns of the narcissistic abuse are focused on erasing one's own sense of self, one's perspective and ultimately, complete control over someone's emotions and behaviours. This is often done from early on, the grooming process starts at age zero, your value, worth and usefulness is determined by them, and you cannot wrangle yourself free from it on your own, not without someone confirming to you that you've been held captive, that your free will has been taken a long time ago.

Unfortunately, I have to give some examples, because I don't think it can be explained otherwise. When I was 2 years old, a narcissistic person found it a nuisance to watch over me, and they beat me up every time I disobeyed. I was a toddler. Then they proceeded to convince me that I was a demon, and would burn in hell regardless of what I do for the rest of my life. I've been brainwashed by this person to believe I was not a human being, had no human rights, that it was correct and regular for me to be locked up, beaten, and that it was my fault every single time, even when I did all that was asked of me. This person then had me comfort them after they would beat me, because it was a stressful experience for them. I wasn't allowed to cry. I would be beaten for making a face expression they didn't like. It was random and unexplainable.

Another narcissistic person created a game where they would give me wrong instructions for a task, then torture me when I did exactly as they instructed me to. It got to a point where I would beg them to tell me what to do correctly, and they would respond with a laughing 'you should be old enough to know this' and they would be even happier to beat me up and scream at me for getting it wrong. This person not only threatened to kill me regularly, but often made me believe I was in my last few seconds of life, putting me in position where I believed I was about to die. They forced me to work for them in unsafe conditions, heavy physical jobs, where I was not allowed to say I'm tired, not allowed to cry, and even after I'd do everything, they would still tell me I didn't deserve to eat. I was a child. I didn't think for a second I was being abused. I was already brainwashed to believe that everyone else had it worse, and that I was lucky.

I had no identity besides existing for them, I had no free will except to try and make myself into something they could use, and if I didn't do a good enough job, I'd be ostracized. They loved beating me, screaming at me and making me cry, and then they'd leave me in a room crying without being allowed to make any noise, while they laughed in the room next to me, as a family, loudly so I could hear what a great time they were having. They would treat other children gently in front of me in order to try and make me jealous. They would revise every part of what they did to me if I ever tried to bring it up. I wasn't allowed my own perspective, opinion, or complaint. I wasn't even allowed to remember the abuse correctly. I would be locked in a room and questioned and punished if my opinions weren't to their liking.

I don't believe this is something anyone is capable of doing. I don't believe anyone of us is capable of torturing a kid until the kid begs to be killed. I don't believe most of us are capable of erasing a child's point of view, their reality, their humanity to the point where the child is forced to live a life where they will either comply or be killed, and they will be tortured no matter what. This isn't a regular thing that a person can easily do.

Luckily, us who have been through this, have noticed that there is a specific pattern to their behaviour. That they use almost identical phrases with which their invoke guilt, fear and hopelessness. That they can go frighteningly fast from rage to laughter to acting hurt. That they enforce their will over ours with a specific type of terror that triggers both our survival instincts and our compassion and shame. That we've been groomed by them in an almost identical way - to not believe that we're allowed our own feelings, memories, opinions, point of view, or freedom. That we have learned to exist only to be an extension of them.

We also all noticed that we're all absolutely, beyond terrified of them, and that we don't feel we're allowed to say it, or think it. That we're taught by terror to keep believing that they're good people, that they do none of it on purpose, not even the most extreme, insane, egregious abuse. That they will go to any length, even committing more atrocities, to escape accountability. That they use tactics of darvo, gaslighting, double-bind, planting insecurities, triangulating, future faking, discarding, love bombing, mirroring, smear campaigns, projection, scapegoating, silencing, throwing tantrums, victim playing, like it's in their second nature. That they're genuinely, absolutely terrifying and almost unreal in how far they're capable of going. And most of all, that they are dangerous, and capable of completely turning another human being into their puppet, and never think for a second that it might be wrong. To them, we are nothing more but toys to manipulate, control, and discard. We are disposable. There is no limit to what they can do to us, because to them, we are not alive. They would do to us what normal people wouldn't do to a corpse. And they feel superior for it.

People abused by narcissists from early age are likely to develop the most complex and extreme disorders, complex ptsd and dissociative identity disorder being some of them, because that's what it takes to survive being a child and existing next to a narcissist. This means that small children need to be shattered in pieces in order to please the narcissist. Others that are very common are eating disorders, anxiety, depression, paranoia, avoidant personality disorder, panic disorder, and compulsions to cater to everyone's needs, to the point of our own destruction. This is what they make of us, on purpose, in order for us to be of use to them. And they will forever insist it's their right.

When I'm saying the word 'narcissist', I am not referring to 'anyone diagnosed with npd', I am referring to a person who will do this to a child, and insist on doing it for the rest of the child's life. I am writing it because I don't want children to have to live like this forever. I am not aiming to dehumanize the narcissist, their actions show who they are, I am saying, be careful and aware that this person will dehumanize you. That you are disposable to them. That making you feel good in order for you to like them, is a game to them, and one they're very good at. That playing the victim at you and demanding justice, will easily manipulate you into standing against the victims of abuse and talking down to them for 'dehumanizing their abusers', and being 'ableist to the npd', after being tortured past the point of return by those people.

A lot of us are permanently damaged by what's been done to us. We are not asking for justice. We're not asking for revenge. We are asking to be safe. We're asking for this to stop. We're asking for children not to be left alone with people who are dangerous to this level. We're asking you to understand that a narcissist left alone with a child means a child in danger.

It's common to not be aware just how bad it can go, because we think that most humans know not to torture a child. We believe that nobody would do things to children that narcissists do. If you read the stories of the survivors, you'll find out what actually happens behind closed doors. The themes of torture, dehumanization, sexual abuse, brainwashing, violence, and extreme cruelty are common, even towards toddlers.

I need you to not attack those children when they grow up and say they no longer want to be around narcissists. I need you to understand that they know what they're talking about when they say it's not safe, that they want to be protected. The society already failed to protect them at their most vulnerable, and they had to make it alive by their wits alone. And now you won't even let them speak without attacking them? It's inexcusable.

If you want to know about the narcissists, read what their victims have gone through. Then make a judgment on whether we're allowed to speak, and whether it's worth warning others to hold caution. I've heard and read stories of narcissistic parents sex-trafficking their own child, holding them captive and locked up and convincing them it's right to do this, using brutal punishments to 'train' them into inhumane slave-like behaviour, keeping the children in state so terrified the children wished they were dead. And in all those cases, they still convinced the children to love their parents, and to never blame them for any kind of abuse. Yes, even in the sex-trafficking cases.

Fighting for those children to realize that they didn't deserve that, is the only correct thing to do. Fighting to help them realize they're in danger, and that they deserve safely, it's not only right but extremely necessary, it's what we all should be putting all of our energy into.

Wanting to keep others safe will never be wrong. Wanting to protect those who still have their identity, their sense of self, their undamaged humanity, their free will and their point of view, that's worth fighting for! And above all, those who already lost it all, need to be protected. We cannot allow for already badly wounded people to be dehumanized over and over again. Nobody deserves that.

[five-flavor-soup]

I personally think that basing your interpretation of how Ursa treated Azula on Zuko’s memories shown in ‘Zuko Alone’ is kind… incorrect. You can obviously — they’re the only real images of their childhood we get in the cartoon, other than the tiniest of snapshots in sepia — and that’s fine, but for me personally I just don’t think they’re complete enough.

These memories are from Zuko’s perspective. Not Ursa’s, not Azula’s, not Ozai’s or Iroh’s—Zuko’s perspective, his memories. And they’re all about him and Ursa together: every one of these memories have Ursa at their centre. We see her protect him and be kind to him, see her be physically affectionate and gentle, see her encourage him to be kind to himself and to Azula.

They essentially tell us that Zuko is Ursa’s son first, Ozai’s son second. Ozai remains a hovering, intimidating shadow on the sidelines (we still don’t see his face, we don’t see him genuinely interact with his children, and we see him irritating his father while being a very hands-off kinda dad himself) but Ursa is fully present. And ‘Zuko Alone’ is about Zuko trying to figure out who he is: the memories show that he views being his mother’s son as an exceptionally important part of his identity, which means they are about Zuko and his relationship with Ursa alone.

They are not supposed to tell us that Ursa neglected or abused Azula emotionally—that she only focused on protecting Zuko, while leaving Azula to suffer in Ozai’s incapable hands. Sure, we see Ursa scold Zuko for acting like Azula and cuddle him right after, and we see her scold Azula for acting mean and not cuddle her right after, but the key differences here are that Zuko shows guilt after frightening the turtleducks and Azula doubles down on trying to scare Zuko. The behaviour is different and will be, by any halfway decent parent, treated differently. 

I’m absolutely not saying that Azula wasn’t abused, because she 100% was. She was absolutely abused by Ozai, and I’m not ruling out that Ursa didn’t have a hand in how Azula ultimately turned out. But my point here is: these memories are far too limited and narrow for the viewer to properly determine whether Azula was treated incorrectly by Ursa. 

Zuko isn’t going to remember an intimate, lovely moment between Ursa and Azula when all that’s on his mind is his identity, and how it’s entangled with his mother and what she may have sacrificed for him. Additionally, he’s not particularly fond of Azula at this moment in the show (she did kind of kickstart his being a refugee, disregarding how the audience sees this sequence of events having begun), so he’s not going to remember her fondly either. Why would Zuko try to remember Ursa’s relationship with Azula at that point, instead of his own?

(Small tidbit: we also... don't know if Ursa's last words to Azula were 'what is wrong with that child', disregarding the comics which completely ruin azula anyway. Again, the memories are from Zuko's perspective and therefore won't show any private moments between Ursa and Azula. We're not even certain whether Azulon actually ordered Ozai to kill Zuko, or if that is simply what Azula interpreted it as/thought would be funny to say--causing the sequence of events that ultimately put Ozai on the throne. But whatever)

[queerism1969]

[jasontoddenthusiastt]

Imo Jason is “irredeemable” by default because I don’t see what he needs redemption from.

[harukapologist]

Lately I was thinking about 0108 parallels since they're both so associated with water and I had a thought.

Haruka and Amane are both shown drowning in their MVs

Amane tries to swim back up; she believes she can still get what she reaches out for,

she believes she can still truly be a “good girl” despite how much it is destroying her and how terrified she is of the very people who enforce the cult ideals on her, to the point that their faces never appear in her MVs (in Magic, there weren't even any humans beside her to begin with, only the mascots and animals)

Haruka, on the other hand, just lets himself fall into the water; he does try to reach out for what he wants—his mother’s love—later on in the MV

but she promptly disappears, i.e he already knows it’s no use doing that. He’s accepted that he cannot become what is expected of him, he believes that he’s inherently at fault and has already accepted that (thus the inno verdict in T1 ignited a lot of inner conflict and self loathing, even though he tries to appear confident and happy and Okay)

[andtheyreonfire]

goro akechi has been dead for 7 slutty, slutty years

[milimeters-morales]

here’s the original post (instagram), the constant sound of shooting and bombing is awful.

[themoonking]

when people bring up the racism, homophobia, transphobia, romanticization of domestic abuse / rape / pedophilia / incest, literal actual written porn of literal actual real life flesh and blood children, et cetera et cetera on archive of our own, one of the ao3 stannies’ main defenses is “you can just filter out the tags if you don’t want to see that!” when that defense has no fucking legs to stand on.

ao3 is not an archive, it is barely even a website: a rant <3 (very long)

ignoring the fact that it’s a problem that all of that is permitted on the site in the first place (i guess child porn and racism are fine, and the people who allow it on their platform are fine, as long as i, personally, do not see it), that defense literally means nothing. it’s assuming that every little thing on ao3 is tagged properly and it absolutely is not, and if you think it is you are dumber than rocks. i mean for fuck’s sake, just touching on archive warnings and not tags, “creator chose not to use archive warnings” is literally a valid option for fic authors to use when it should fucking not be.

if someone is a freak who thinks that pedo shit is hot, they might not tag it as “rape” (archive warnings OR tags). i’ve literally seen underage father/son rape porn with no trigger warning tags but “child abuse if you squint”. IF YOU SQUINT. if someone thinks that domestic abuse is actually cool and sexy when attractive people do it, they might not tag it as “abuse”. if someone is a freak who likes incest, but bends over backwards to justify it by only shipping adopted family members, then they tell themselves that they don’t view it as incest, and might not tag it as “incest”. if someone is a racist, a homophobe, a transphobe, et cetera and they wrote bigotry into their fic (or else wrote a deliberate troll fic to trigger people on purpose), do you really think they’re going to tag it as racism / homophobia / transphobia / et cetera? and some people get kicks out of writing purposefully triggering content and either leaving it untagged or mistagging it so that people will read it unsuspectingly.

even for just general content tags, it’s a mess. people just forget to tag things all the time. people deliberately won’t tag the endgame ship of their fic because “it’s a spoiler heehee”. people use the romantic or sexual “x / y” tag instead of the platonic or otherwise “x & y” tag, sometimes by mistake sometimes on purpose. it’s a joked about issue how people will tag characters or ships that appear in their fic for two sentences.

there’s no standardization of tags, which is a pretty obvious problem. what first comes to mind is the “dead dove: do not eat” tag which should just not be a tag at all because it just has no meaning. depending on the individual fic writer using it, it could mean anything from “literally the most sickening and depraved thing you’ve ever read in your life” to “horror w/ gore”. but it applies to other vague tags too - different fic writers will have different ideas of what the tag means.

in addition to that, what is and isn’t made a filterable tag, what tags are made synonymous, et cetera, is entirely up to the whims of the site staff. as an example, if you’re trying to look for fanfiction of a singular animated disney movie, the infinite crossovers with other disney movies will not actually be counted as crossovers (which they are) because they’re classified as the “disney theatrical animated universe” (which isn’t a fucking thing), so you can’t filter them out the “exclude crossovers” way. if you try to filter out the fandom tag “disney theatrical animated universe”, it’ll show up with zero fics because that tag is synonymous with every disney animated film (regardless of if the fic author actually used the tag “disney theatrical animated universe” or not), thus also filtering out the one you actually wanted to find.

and do not get me fucking started on the “all media types tags”, which also just shouldn’t be a thing because it makes it fucking impossible to find the specific fics you’re looking for. some people use it in place of tagging a specific canon / adaptation when their fic very clearly draws from one specific canon / adaptation, and you can’t filter it out because it’s synonymous with every fandom tag under its umbrella.

as an example of the issues of both the “all media types” tag and mistagging in general: as a fan of the witcher books, it used to be a fucking ordeal to find fanfiction specifically for the books (post netflix show release). some show fans would, for whatever reason, tag their fics with the book fandom tag in addition to (or even in place of!!) the show fandom tag when their fics were unquestionably show-specific, meaning i could not simply search only in the book fandom tag. i could not simply filter out the show tag, because some show fans would, for whatever reason, tag as fucking “all media types”, when their fics were unquestionably show-specific. and alas, i could not filter out “all media types” and the show tag, so that i see only those fics which have been deliberately and exclusively tagged as the book, not only because as mentioned some show fans would tag their show fics with only the book tag, but also because the fucking all media types tag filters out the book tag as well, leaving me with zero fucking fics REGARDLESS of if the author actually used the “all media types” tag. now, thankfully, i’ve thankfully seen this issue in this specific fandom lessen, but it still occurs in other fandoms and i guarantee that it didn’t lessen in the witcher fandom because of any fixing of the site on the part of ao3 staff.

another common defense of ao3 freaks is that it’s an “archive”, and therefore can’t get rid of anything anyone posts, and disregarding the fact that that is not how archives fucking work, they don’t just allow anything and also ao3 DOES get rid of fics... when they say that they don’t like proshippers, apparently, archives have... you know... archivists. they have someone or a team of someones making sure that everything in the archive is *properly fucking categorized*. they have someone or multiple someones making sure that everything they recieve (1) belongs there and (2) is properly labeled and organized. same for libraries. meaning that if ao3 really were an archive and not a sub par fanfiction website, they’d have something like that in place. something as simple as a report button for fics with a review team that will see if something’s been mis- or untagged. they’d have some kind of standardization of tags (especially the warning / trigger tags) and have proper tagging enforced in some way. and then they could also do something like stop being spineless racists, queerphobes, and pedos have the barest minimum of content guidelines saying that you can’t post fucking hate speech.

if something is mistagged or untagged, the most you can do is leave a comment politely asking that the author fix the issue, and then hope and pray that they do that. and if that person thinks [insert form of abuse] is hot, or if they’re just straight up a bigot that wrote bigotry into their fics to be bigoted, or they’re a troll that gets kick out of deliberately traumatizing people by tricking them into reading their mis/untagged fics, they might not! AND if you see a major tagging issue on an orphaned work, or a work that has an inactive author / hasn’t been updated in forever, good fucking luck getting even a negative response.

you can’t permanently block tags (i mean even tumblr.hell has that), meaning that if you would like to search for fic without coming across something troubling, triggering, or just something you don’t like, you have to either (1) do a work around by having a bookmarked link for every fandom you’re in or every character you like with all of your tags already blocked, (2) download browser extensions that do the work for ao3 because they can’t be bothered themselves, or (3) input every individual tag every time you search ao3 and don’t forget that all of those options only fucking work at all when everything is tagged properly, and we’ve already established its not. you also can’t actually block people (you can only prevent them from commenting) meaning that if there’s a specific person you’d like to stay away from your fics or a specific fic author that you don’t like and would like to stop seeing their fics clogging up the tag, you’re out of luck (though for the latter you could insert “-[username]” into the “search within results” box, but then uh oh we’re right back around to having to input that every time or have a bookmark)

their archive warning system is shit. first of all it’s functionally useless because, as mentioned, “creator chose not to use archive warnings” is an option. what’s the fucking point of special required archive warnings if you’re going to allow people to opt out anyway. second of all, aside from “chose not to use warnings” and “no warnings apply”, the only warnings are “major character death”, “graphic depictions of violence”, “rape/non-con”, and “underage”. disregarding the fact that they shouldn’t be allowing porn of underage characters in the first place (but i’m talking to a brick wall on that issue) and that “non-con” (and “dub-con”) as terminology needs to die, it’s just fucking rape lets not use weasel words... this is a paltry list of possible warnings. there’s no official warnings for depictions of: domestic abuse, animal abuse, depictions of racism / homophobia / transphobia / et cetera, suicide, self harm, et cetera et cetera. and we return to the issue of standardization of tags. in your required archive warnings at very least, there should be a standardization of what these mean, but ao3′s own faq is just like “ehh... you decide. we’ll leave it up to you”. what qualifies as graphic depictions of violence? two people may write the same level of violence, but qualify “graphic” differently, and make different decisions regarding their warnings. and we also return to the issue of: if a freak doesn’t see something that is clearly rape as rape, they might not tag it as such.

this website gets a disgustingly large amount of money every year that it doesn’t fucking do anything with. it’s been over a decade and they’re still in fucking beta. features that would actually be useful, like an actual block system, don’t exist. they technically have a report system for abuse and harassment and such, but apparently what they qualify as abuse and harassment is fickle. ao3 defenders seem to be very proud of the legal work they do for fandom / fanfic authors, but they set aside a very small amount of the money they get every year for legal advocacy, and they actually use even less of that, because it’s not the early 2000s “anne rice hates fanfiction” era anymore - you aren’t going to get fucking sued for writing fanfiction in the first place. based on their own self-reported yearly cost of upkeep, they literally already have enough money to run the site as they are now for the next twenty years.

once again: ao3 is not an archive. it is not a library. it is barely a even a website.

[outofangband]

3 for Aerin and 9 for Morwen

From this headcanon ask game here! Still accepting them

Thank you anon I love them🦔

9. Are they observant

We know canonically Morwen is very observant!  she was the only one to notice a discrepancy in the number of guards Thingol had sent, leading to Niënor’s discovery.

In my mind, Morwen is a distinctly sharp person in every way. Sharp tongued and sharp sensed. She has a keen eye and ear and quickly spots things that are out of place. Of course, post Nírnaeth her awareness of her surroundings takes on an almost frantic note. She knows of the men in the woods and is acutely aware of the sounds of hooves, of leaves crushed underfoot, of the difference between drunken shouting between comrades becoming too bold and the threatening approach…

3. Are they afraid of heights

went on a little ramble for this, I’m sorry!

Aerin is not afraid of heights! She spent her childhood upon horses, when she was still young enough that the ground seemed a dizzying, deadly fall. She climbed trees with her cousins, she scrambled up the rocks upon the falls along the streams. She was fearless.

Five years after the arrival of the incomers, five years after her wedding, Aerin climbs one of the alder trees in her favorite clearing. It had been damaged greatly by the recent storms. It will not survive the next one. The bark crumbles beneath her fingers and palms and her skin on her arms tears open when she nearly slips. She sits there in the dying rain, watching the rapids of Nen Lalaith, trembling from the cold but numb to her fear.

When she returns, late enough that she knows she will pay for it later, one of the more sympathetic older women, Rhea, touches the scrapes and bruises and asks her, gently, discretely, why Brodda had found cause to punish her this time. Aerin looks down at the leaves stuck upon her skin. She laughs in the silence. She cannot breathe.

(Note: rhea mention!! Thank you to @nelyoslegalteam and @maglors-anion-gap for supporting me in my development of her!!)

[pochapal]

this being the first theory battler has lampshaded and discarded as a joke is making me extremely 👁

[runs-red]

So you all know you can talk about how you're uncomfortable with that kind of drawing and writing about fictional minors without having to compare it to the real and serious abuse of real children? That real cp has real living victims and that it's not something you should be comparing to the pixels? That you make victims feel like shit when you feel like saying it's even in the same fucking realm of awful?

[uncanny-tranny]

If there's anything I wish I could do, I wish I could clue in every parent who says or thinks, "my child is my property, not your property!" into what their future will look like

I've gone no-contact with my abusive family - I haven't seen, spoken to, or acknowledged them. This has been for twenty and ten years, respectively, to the parental figures who abused me. I blocked one of their numbers. I call them by their first names when talking about them. I am happy for once, I am free! I haven't harmed myself nearly as often or as horribly.

This is the future you're potentially setting yourself up for. I know this because I was always seen as property first and never as a child. I was never allowed the grace that the adults in my life expected. Is this what you want? If you want property, then do children a favour and just buy a car.

[void-proxima]

One of the more heartbreaking episodes of this show was released on April 28, 2019: "This is Not A Drill", featuring Drill Man (...and his absolutely abysmal excuse for a father). To commemorate it, I drew him over the weekend (and touched up the shading today). As always, the poor guy is not having a good time.

no background version under the cut:

[greensaplinggrace]

it is actually so funny that we've now got people in fandom saying that people only discuss baghra's abuse and absolve the darkling, because the reason discussions of baghra's harms even became so fraught was that people would say the wildest most dehumanizing shit about aleksander and then turn around and call baghra a girlboss for it. you literally had people praising her for beating alina. like yeah sorry a lot of us don't cotton to the 'abusive mentor figure' in fiction anymore. some of us didn't like the double standard of the so called moral police.

[nightmaretherabbit]

💞

Gabriel and Cassidy had a strange family life.

Their mother was abusive and neglectful. And their mom and dad got divorced,due to their mom's lying they live with her full time only seeing their dad sometimes.

Jeremy had a good family life. His mom and dad love him very much. They have a good bond

Susie lived in a house with an alcoholic, abusive father and her timid mother. She thought all households were like this.

Fritz was an adopted child,he hadn't been with his family long before it happened. They were good though

[obscenicon]

hey okay i dont know what about my blog made it seem like im okay with "pro contact" or ""complex contact"" ppl interacting with me. there is no fucking nuance when it comes to whether or not its okay for adults to sexually abuse children. if you are either of the above i think you are horrifying and you need to stay far far away from me and children generally