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drdemonprince · 1 year

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is it (internally too I guess) transphobic of me to be cautious dating someone who just started transitioning?

I don't want my opinions and preferences on how femmes look to be a factor as a tme non-binary femme. I don't want or need her to change herself (or not!) in a certain way, to be clear; I just assume that attraction can fluctuate for both of us and she is the kind of person to take relationships seriously quite quickly. can't tell if I'm overthinking it.

if that's too specific and/or obviously fucked up (I'm honestly not sure) I'm super sorry. my gender presentation stuff is a hornet's nest I am not addressing as nothing helps so I'm really happy for her.

thanks for reading

I think this is actually a really lovely and conscientious question and that your fears are reasonably founded!

The early years of transition are quite emotionally perilous for people and they try our romantic relationships quite heavily; there's a reason I've seen prominent trans people on Twitter claiming that you should end your relationship the moment you come out and begin to transition. I don't fully agree with that advice, but I think a lot of people who try to bluster through an existing relationship while transitioning do end up living to regret it, myself included. I tried to transition gradually to make all the shifts bearable for my partner and me, but that only fomented resentment and insecurity on my end and complete bafflement about how far this was all gonna "go" on my ex's end and ultimately it just meant we drifted apart painfully over the course of years instead of swiftly. it wasn't pretty.

During the first couple of years of transition, people try on all kinds of new styles and presentations, explore new sexual roles, try on different mannerisms, join new friend groups, adopt new self-narratives and frames on past events, and much more. And it's also an incredibly vulnerable time in terms of physical safety out in public AND emotional safety in bearing one's evolving self to close loved ones, and even the slightest reaction from another person can have massive ripple-effects on how we view ourselves and the 'success' of our transitions for a long period afterward.

I think it's very wise and appropriate for you to be concerned that your own reactions to your partner's transition might unduly influence them! I have seen T4T couples with bad boundaries erupt into chaos over this kind of thing in so many ways.

Sometimes the babier trans in the relationship molds herself too much on her more seasoned partner's transition and personal style. Other times, the babier trans leans heavily on the more experienced trans partner for advice and psychological transition related doula-ing, leaving the more experienced trans partner feeling used (Casey Plett has a lot of short stories about this dynamic! check out A Dream of a Woman for a story about a trans girl who becomes disillusioned with her cute, sweet, perfectly supportive cis boyfriend the moment she realizes he isn't so cis, and then ends things). I've even seen trans-trans couples break up in a hail of drama and abuse accusations, all because one partner was triggered by the (misgendering kink) porn preferences of the other partner.

There are so many ways to be trans, and each one of us who has been trans for a while has a lot of strong opinions about the subject. Even if in theory we support the body autonomy and self-expression of every other trans person, in practice we come to relationships with a mess of dysphoria triggers, trauma responses, aesthetic preferences, medical know-how, load-bearing neuroses, and sexual role hang ups to bear, and sometimes when our existing soft spots bash up against a newly-transitioning person's raw wounds, it hurts everybody.

I think it might be easier for you to know this newly-out trans person as a friend than as a romantic partner at this time. It sounds like your gut is telling you something like that, too. You mentioned that she gets attached very quickly. She's in a really open, raw position right now and will probably need a lot of support as she transitions, and she might also be really desperate for approval and for feelings of safety because of it too. And you're not bad or transphobic for wanting to avoid getting wrapped up in all that.

I think it's really big of you to recognize you have your own hang-ups and that they might unconsciously influence her and how her transition goes, too. a lot of trans people don't interrogate how their own expectations and baggage might radiate into their partners (for instance, a lot of TME nonbinaries with trans femme partners pressure those partners into staying masculine to some degree, and keeping their penises sexually available to them for penetration, and it's really harrowing and traumatic). I don't get the vibe you're the type to do anything like that and I don't even know if you're TME, but you get the idea. Trans people aren't inherently pure, we hurt one another and turn one another into symbols of what we desire and what we fear and what's hurt us when really we should be regarding each other as distinct people.

It's fine to not want to date someone newly transitioning. Do you know how many gay people I've met who've said they'll never date newly out or questioning people again? A ton! Being with someone who is newly out requires a lot of patience and emotional caretaking, and some people have no taste for that or aren't equipped to do it, and that's fine. I'd be disinclined to date someone newly out for the most part too, at least if they were also trans masc. I'd be too afraid of accidentally punishing them for reminding me of my earlier self, and that's not fair.

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nefretemerson · 5 months

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Trigger warning for pretty much everything under the cut :)

i don't know how to articulate this properly, and I'm probably going to come off like an insane basket case, but I cannot stand those 'i love the way men love posts' because I don't. I hate the way men love. I've got a brother who thinks the 'women should not speak in church camp' has got a point and I've got a father who sent me a long-form article on the modern theological rebuttal to homosexual acceptance in the church (here's a secret - I don't know if I'm a homosexual or a bisexual. Do I love men or am I simply Desperate to love men because I'm religious, because my father is my pastor, because I'm a vile sinner for eating pussy). I love my father (he told my mother the woman-hating was all in her head when they hosted a deeply misogynistic pastor for dinner who required that he be waited on hand and foot by the women of the house, that he was probably just stressed and needed to relax a bit). I love my brother (he calls my sister-5'2 105 lbs-fat everytime he sees her and thinks women are inherently bad at math). The first time I was raped (executive-sous at the restaurant I was working for), I was so drunk I got kicked out of the club we were at. He walked me home for my safety and then followed me into my apartment. I was vomiting. I was so dry he broke three condoms trying to force his way into me until he decided they were too much of a hassle and fucked me bare. It hurt so much (here's a secret - I was no longer a virgin after that). I had the honor and the privilege of working with with for the next year. I ran into my rapist and his brand new fiance in town the other week. I congratulated them both.

I have a lot of best friends. Alisa was raped so severely at such a young age she is unable to orgasm. Liv was in a physically abusive relationship for four years that culminated in him strangling her till she blacked out. Do u know what's fucked up about manual strangulation? It doesn't actually bruise most of the time (the first time a man strangled me during sex he misaligned two of my vertebrae, pinched a nerve, and caused three weeks of light-headedness but there were no marks it was all in my head hysteria). Kara. Well. Kara got married at 18, had a kid at 19, was divorced at 20 (at least he pays child support even if his custody agreement is for one weekend a month and the dollar amount is pitiful) and then ended up in the sort of physically, emotionally, psychologically abusive relationship they write horror stories about. A cult of two where he was literally Jesus. He strangled her till she was blacking out, beat her,left her for dead (he is delinquent on child support and has no custody), and ran up 10k on her credit cards. We don't talk about Abigail. We simply do not talk about what happened to Abigail.

In my experience, This is how men love: they love through strangulation, through gagging, through dismissal, through gun in your mouth while you're making dinner, through the inescapable threat of violence, through shut the fuck up u bitch-ass whore u don't deserve to talk. This is how men love women: they don't (I love my father I love my brother).

there is one thing I ask of the Lord, for this I long: to not live in fear, to be loved as I love, to be able to speak 🩷

#about me 💔#but Byrd you're 28 and beautiful why r u single?#well. here's an essay

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fanahrts · 1 year

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i hope you realize you're exactly like him. Exactly. Like. Him. going through the receipts, suicidal guilt tripping just like a certain someone. "he would purposely give u his attention like a rollercoaster to keep you on" just like a certain shitty ex boyfriend.

Hi. This is a very dead blog, and this is not the previous owner - I am his current boyfriend. This account will go right back to being inactive after I post this.

I have a lot to stay, and I'll try to keep it as brief and concise as I can, but I think it's incredibly telling that you would be willing to compare a mentally ill autistic teenager (teenager at the time, at least) who, at the time, did not know better (and no one bothered to tell him either, everyone kept their mouth shut until it was time to dogpile, it seems!) to someone who manipulated and abused him for months on end - emotionally, psychologically, sexually, and I'd even argue physically (causing someone multiple seizures, accusing them of lying about having them, and then continuing the behavior that caused the seizures could be classified physical abuse, could it not?).

It's also incredibly telling that you'd be willing to take the side of someone you're actively admitting to being an abusive person.

Those two freaks have been actively stalking him for over half a decade at this point. Half. A. Decade. Following him around from platform to fucking platform in order to try to run off any friends or community he has. In the time that I have known him, Barry (or whatever name the freak goes by now) has done this twice.

They want to claim to be victims, but that is not the behavior of victims. Victims do not actively seek out their supposed abuser multiple times over the span of six years to actively antagonize them and the people who associate with them. They generally have a tendency to avoid their abusers at all costs, actually - I would know, I am a victim of abuse myself.

Everyone involved in this situation back in 2017 are now adults. Fucking act like it. The fact that there were anons from one of them on this very blog as recently as October of 2021 is just pathetic. Grow up, go to fucking therapy, get a life, something, please.

This next bit is specifically for Barry - who I assume at some point will be reading this as he's clearly deranged and actively sends anons to a blog that's been dead for years: You are genuinely one of the most vile people I have ever witnessed. And I say witnessed, because I have seen you in action twice now. It's bad enough to abuse someone the way you have, but it's next level evil (and I do not say that lightly) to proceed to obsessively stalk this person for the following 6 years, and try to continue to abuse them. I get angrier thinking about you than I do thinking about the people who have personally caused me severe trauma throughout my lifespan.

You disgust me. Blaming your extremely abusive behavior on a stigmatized disorder and refusing to take any steps to better yourself so you don't hurt those around you and just expecting them to accomodate abusive behavior is not what a victim does. It's what an abuser does. I'd say to get help, but I genuinely believe you are beyond help at this rate. I hope you stay far, far away from other people.

And for Cisco (or whatever name he goes by now) : I am not your biggest fan either, not by a longshot (in fact, I think you are highly abusive as well in your own ways, and enabled Barry) but I'm going to say this, because I think that you need to hear it, incase you are still with him: He is abusing you. Everything I have heard of how he treated you is textbook abuse. And I think you know that to some degree, based on the way you have seemingly sent asks to this blog begging for it's owner to come back years after the fact. I think you knew when sending those anons that you were in a bad situation, and that you wanted someone else to come back and help deal with that abuse as well. That is selfish, and cowardly, but it is a sign to me that you are in over your head. If you are still with him: leave.

Overall, I have witnessed first hand the effects of what you two did to him. I see the uncertainty in relationships, the flashbacks, the PTSD and OCD, the nightmares, the self-doubt, the alters who split in order to merely hold the trauma that was caused, the paranoia and fear, etc. I see it all first hand. You are not the victims here, and I think you fucking know that - unless you are actually completely delusional. Barry, I know you are stalking my twitter account - or were, at some point, that is - because I know that is how you found him the last time. You are completely fucking deranged and either need serious help or to not be in any interpersonal relationships with anyone.

Go ahead, call me a p3do apologist or whatever it was you called people who stuck by him in the past. You two wouldn't know p3dophilia if it struck you in the god damn face, it seems, considering you are grown adults spreading around a callout from over half a decade ago that contains screenshots of a then-17 year old talking sexually about himself. I don't know, maybe it's just me but that seems awfully similar to distribution of CP, hm?

I'm pleased to say that neither of you can access him, or hurt him anymore. And your last couple attempts to get the people he cares about to leave him failed. Miserably. He has me, and he has friends who have stuck by him and will stick by him. I hope that fact bothers you, you fucking miserable, pathetic freak. Go fuck yourself.

#please for the love of god get professional help and stop stalking and harassing your victim after 6 whole years after they left you

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winter-insomniac · 1 year

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I Am Not Your Inspirational Story

The other day, my sister in law, who was once my highschool guidance counselor, said something to me that I have struggled to come to terms with and has made me incredibly angry; and it started with "my husband and I are so proud of you."

To understand why this would make me angry, you first have to understand a few things about me. I am 22 years old, I am a Registered Veterinary Technician who graduated college Magna Cum Laude. I am a member of Phi Theta Kappa; I wrote for the college I went to, and I have been at my job as a Technician for 2 years and I write their informational articles for the local paper. I graduated highschool as Valedictorian and Kansas Governors Scholar, also receiving an award for having an ACT score of 32. I am married to my very loving husband and have a healthy circle of friends. To most outsiders, this appears as objective success.

I grew up in a home environment with very little support. My father was not a part of my life for the first 20 years. My mother was absent for the majority of my childhood due to alcohol and painkillers that she used to self-medicate for her spine injury. When my mother was present, she was sexually, physically, and emotionally abusive to both me and my sister. It was always made clear to me that I had ruined her life by being born, and that she didn't want kids, or wanted only a son. She was also incredibly controlling about every aspect of our lives, including her disbelief in most medicine and doctors. She controlled what we watched, listened to, spoke about, wore, and even who we were allowed to be friends with. My Grandmother was similarly emotionally abusive, though I suspect it was in a very unconscious and generational way. My Grandfather was never abusive, however he never stepped in to stop what was happening and simply turned a blind eye. I was bullied in school, but sought validation, praise, and love by pushing myself as hard as possible with my grades and activities. I excelled in school from an early age, hoping that one day, it would make my Mother love me. That one day she would say "I'm proud of you" not because she felt like she should, but because it was genuine. In highschool my Mother and I regularly had arguments because as I grew up I was forming my own opinions and they differed from hers. These arguments often became physical altercations where I was thrown into doors, backed against walls, smacked, or tossed onto furniture. She would also belittle me and call me names to sway me to her side. I would often debate for opinions that I did not believe in to make my Mother accept me. I kept things about myself a secret because I feared that one day her threats to take me out of this world would come true. My mother struggled with alcohol abuse and anger management my entire life. I moved out with my now husband 2 months after I turned 18. This was the first time in my life that I was safe. I lived in an psychological and physiological war zone for 18 years.

In the 4 years that I've been free, I've been constantly unlearning and deconstructing behaviors that I learned in my youth. One of these behaviors being constantly trying to prove myself worthy of love, praise, or validation. I have tried very hard to stop pushing myself past what I want just to make others happy. In the spirit of this is my refusal to try to go to vet school. My mother wants me to go, my teachers wanted me to go, and people constantly ask me why I'm not going to try. The answer is, I don't want to. I have other priorities that I'm putting first. I want a family, I want time to myself, I prefer the role of a technician. Another of these behaviors is only doing things that everyone will approve of. When I first got my hair done, I kept it a long caramel blonde cut with bangs and got immediate approval, however I never felt like myself in that hair. The most liberating thing was just cutting it all off, coloring it whatever color I felt like, and not listening to what anyone else had to say about it. These behaviors have been hard to fight off, and they are very easy to slip back into.

All of that being said, why would I be upset that my sister in law and her husband were proud of me? Well, that statement was followed with "for all that you've accomplished....in spite of the situation you grew up in. You beat the odds!" And she even told me how she uses me as an inspirational story of success and how you can turn your life around! This made me angry for a number of reasons:

1) She is dismissing all of my personal effort towards the achievements and ignoring the fact that I was so burned out trying to prove myself that I could not function for days on end.

2) She is proud of me for defying her expectations, because she expected me to fail! She expected another statistic to state as a sad story and is proud that I somehow get to be on the "inspirational" side of her speeches.

3) Those achievements are a constant reminder of how much of my life I wasted trying to make other people love me.

4) Finally, she isn't giving them the whole story.

Do you think she is telling them about my 5-6 breakdowns a month where I sob for hours on end because I'm so exhausted and burnt out and can't afford to take a break? Do you think she tells them about how I have terrible panic attacks, trouble sleeping, nightmares, flashbacks, generalized anxiety, and never feel like I deserve any of what I have. Do you think she tells them how many nights I lay awake wondering if I am truly myself or just a compilation of every trait my Mother would have rejected; how I will never be able to separate who I am from the things that happened to me? Do you think she tells them about my struggle to ever trust that my husband, friends, and family love me and aren't just pulling some elaborate prank because no one could ever really love a fuck up like me? No. She tells them about my career and my marriage and my grades and my articles. She tells them how I "beat the odds" and succeeded! She doesn't tell them that I struggle with suicidal ideation, that I've had the knife to my wrist more than once, that I've looked up how many Tylenol I'd have to take for it to stop hurting in my soul. I am not your god damned inspirational story. I am a survivor of terrible trauma who will spend the rest of my life struggling with the effects of my childhood. I am always going to be fighting for my life. I will never be okay. I am not a success story, I am a story of neverending battles. I will not be reduced to a manipulation tactic used to make others think that trauma ends with rainbows and sunshine and that it's all just a part of some deity's plan to shape you into a better person. Bad things happen, and they will never stop happening, and the effects will never go away. No one person is better than another for how productive they were during the times they were struggling. I don't want to inspire false hope, I want to encourage you to keep fighting. I am not your inspirational story, I am your comrade in a constant battle to be more okay than we were yesterday. Thank you.

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doeflowerchild · 1 year

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To The One Who Will Never Listen,

Mummy, there is a lot to say to you. I don’t think you’ll listen because you never have in the past. Maybe that was because it was out of anger and spite in the past. That is not where this is coming from. This letter is coming from a place of compassion, I’m merely writing this to get everything off my chest and have a place for it, what you do with it is up to you. I love you, always have and always will.

Loving you comes with a lot of pain though, the pain of loving a drug addict, the pain of losing someone to their mental illness, the pain of the flat out neglect and abuse that took part, leaving a permanent scar on my psyche. I remember one day, when I was seventeen I overheard you and a friend talking, I tuned in on you telling them that you could tell I was angry. You were genuinely concerned about how that would and has affected me. I could hear it in your voice, for once you cared.

I’m still angry mummy and I don’t have a good way to express it. It was never modeled to me. I don’t know how to self regulate my emotional state due to the constant neglect and abuse. My needs were constantly ignored. I know, you did the best you could. Psychologically though, I developed borderline personality disorder due to one parent loving and caring for me too much, and one constantly neglecting me. Please listen when I tell you, in my eyes I had two different moms until I was twelve. I had a good mummy that cared and loved me and would do anything in the world to protect me. Who saw me as a beautiful light in her life. But I also had a bad mummy. One who was cruel and cold. Distant, who seemed to despise the very ground I walked on and resented the skin I was born from.

The thing is mum, I have a right to be angry, though I’m doing the work to resolve the twenty two year pent up aggression I have at various parts of this world, I have a right to harbor this anger. I mean, I’m a codependent drug addict with extreme commitment issues, that is paired with an intense fear of ever being alone. I jump from one abusive relationship to another. I’m an asexual that copes with sex. I hate intimacy with a passion but have a deep yearning to be close to someone. Anyone.

This constant battle between two polar opposites is how I got my bipolar diagnosis. I flip between a manic state of love and closeness to people without fear. I’m on top of the world and nothing can bring me down. Until the inevitable light switch goes off. There is no warning to the light switch. The light flickers off and all of a sudden I am taken, plunged deep into the darkness. I will isolate and end any relationship that causes uncomfort. Which is all of them.

Some people close to me see this pattern and respect it. Never getting too close to me but still there. Others fall deeply for the mania, getting too close only to be hurt by the always coming but never predictable cut off. I burn bridges like I have an endless supply for new ones, but I have come to realize that it isn’t endless. As I burn more bridges my supply for sturdy ones that will hold my weight dissipates. Nowadays I am constantly plagued by the effects of my anger, the burning of bridges. I hurt and abandon good people. People who do not deserve the constant push-pull that is a close relationship with me.

Abandonment brings up a lot for me. It brings up shame and guilt, as I abandon everyone, including myself. It brings up sadness and memories. And those memories, well, they bring up the anger once more. Anger at myself because I feel like I am a horrible person for everyone I have left. Anger at Tomek for being the first ever man to get close and hurt me. Not only did he hurt me, but he left. He was my first experience with true abandonment. Following the anger with Tomek, we have the anger with you. After he left you left, not physically at first but emotionally. You started heavy into the drugs, the booze, the men. You needed something, anything to distract you from your life, from your child. Then one day, you gave up, and there I was alone. Abandoned by not only the abusive man you let play daddy but you as well.

I hope you realize that I’ve been mentally and emotionally preparing myself for your death since I was 12. That's why I hardly talk to you anymore, every time I try I instantly flood with regret and remember why I stopped in the first place. It feels like codependency with you was the true gateway drug. I’m now a cold distant person, especially towards you. If I’m being honest mom I feel very little if anything at all towards you anymore. I hope one day I can once again not feel a numb sensation that clouds the love I know is still present in me for you.

Signed,

The Miracle Child

#original writing #artists on tumblr #writeblr #writing #creative writing

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psychsounds · 2 years

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Themes Lately

Sex in the 80s (might have 80s/90s crossovers too).

Erotic 80s film podcast, Pam and Tommy, Heidi Fleiss podcast on LA sex work empires, Columbia Pictures execs / (boys networks) using women, proclivities towards rough sex, cheerleaders, performative/transactional, backlash of 80s pressure groups against social justice movements of the 60s.

I’m having some raging thoughts about sex scandals among Conservatives (in the US and UK) especially in light of the political tide at the moment in the US aiming to restrict female choice over their own bodies.

Mullholland Drive

I like Heidiworld because Molly Lambert covers several topics I find interesting such as subterranean history of LA, LA city planning, LA architecture, female identity, sexuality, rock music and film subcultures, counterculture sociologies, history of vice, links between vice and the film industries, communist purges, seedy aspects of Conservative political classes, hypocrisy of LA police, LA mafia links, OJ etc. etc, 80s/90s cultural shifts, the 2nd generation kids of celebrities/prominent members of the community, Clueless. I realise I just regurgitated many complex subjects I like but this podcast covers these extensively and interestingly, I would recommend listening to it.

Heidiworld mentions how one female escort was abused physically and psychologically and kicked out of a house on Mulholland, which is a remote, scary canyon road. I imagine this experience to be awful and traumatic, experiencing sexual violence with limited access to getting help. Also, a basic point but Mullholland features in the David Lynch film for this reason and it’s got me wanting to re-watch it.

I’m also reading Angelica Huston’s - Watch me autobiography and when she was dating Jack Nicholson initially, he had a house on Mullholland. Angelica liked him in Easy Rider. When they first slept together, he booked her a cab the next day as he had a game to go to, so he said. This seems an emotionally cold red flag, but maybe not.

Incidentally, last week my friend Liz got back from LA and I am so envious, I talked her head off about it. I can taste the air and see the winding canyon roads and desert landscapes. I would kill to go. I would go to the Palisades, Griffith Observatory, Manson family sites, Frank Lloyd Wright houses etc etc.

Parenting style lament

The Heidiworld Heidi Fleiss podcast covers Heidi’s childhood in the 70s and Molly Lambert makes the point that 70s parenting was kind of hands off. This interests me as a couple of GenX people have said this to me - that they thought their parents had checked out. There were broader sociological factors influencing things as well - strikes, recession, higher divorce rate, naming of ‘latch key’ kids, perceptions that the 60s permissive social factors had led to an erosion of stricter parenting and structure.

Heidi’s parents are ex-hippies and her Dad is prominent paediatrician Paul Fleiss. They have an arguably casual approach to parenting where love and affection was prioritised over rule making and reprimands for problematic behaviour. Heidi was wilful, going out clubbing, failed exams, she dropped out of school etc, dated older men.

It just got me wondering about parenting styles - whether any in particular are more useful than others, Interesting how approaches to parenting, or behaviourism in general, are shaped by specific societal, contextual factors and on an individual level - as always interactions between the two.

90s themed teen school movie appreciations

She’s all that, Senior Year. A perpetual interest of mine as I like gawky female protagonists becoming sexual and popular, a subject close to my heart.

Hip Ireland

Conversations with Friends, Maria Somerville. Every year I return to my port Glasgow playlist and what I am yearning for is acknowledgement of my ancestry - themes include, the sea, sexuality, fertility, blue/green, mermaid voices, social isolation, the Church, bleak architecture, high rise flats.

W. class childhood

Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart made me think about so much about childhood that it was almost painful to read in some places.

Featuring, parental alcoholism, domestic violence, shame, low self esteem, absent fathers, ugly slag men who shack up with slag women, single mums bearing the brunt, feeling unwanted/unloved like you don’t fit in because your dad left, waiting for the catalogue lady coming/underhand way of cementing further debt to people without much, Council House exchange programs - the Utopian dream of a better life, homelife affecting studies / giving a sheer iron will to want to succeed, other relatives’ desire to be away.

It’s a book I wish I had wrote and it brought me back to when we lived in Glasgow - the colour and contrasts, vibrancy, the bittersweet love/desolation, sectarianism, community/anger/violence, cycles of addiction, massive access to education/social deprivation, jealousies/grievances, wins/losses, abundance/absence.

Dan and I have so much in common with w.class Glaswegians it’s unreal and it’s no wonder we gravitated up there 2016-2020, like homing pigeons, aye.

One thing about Glaswegians is that they have good chat. I’ve never met a boring one! They also judge your level of chat extensively, so you better be ready to bring it and not be a wee boring cunt.

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againstthegrainphoto · 5 years

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......................okaaayyyyyyyy................but what about all the other girls........

#it took me three attempts to watch this #william control is cancelled #<-that tag came up as a popular tag...fyi #for as many times as I've photoed this dude #we never became friends #despite the fact that me and his former bassist were literally roommates #he addresses one girl in this video #i am friends with others he abused physically and emotionally and psychologically #they are literally still trying to recover #they are still deeply depressed #they are still hurt #they are still angry #and I feel for them #over the years....i have seen his control over my friend destroy her self image #he is a predator #and used his social/music scene status to fuck probably hundreds of girls #why doesn't he address that #HOW ARE PEOPLE STILL SUPPORTING HIM

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meanautisticenbian · 3 years

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Lilith Clawthorne has Borderline Personality Disorder: an essay

Content warnings: mentions of abuse, cults, and self harm

I don't have much of an intro but I need to get some things out of the way.

First off, this is an essay that I made mostly for fun and because I feel like more people need to hear about this. I am not excusing Lilith's actions in any way, though hopefully this may explain some of them.

Secondly, as you might know I have BPD myself. I'm self diagnosed yes, but I still have enough symptoms. I see a lot of myself in Lilith, as well as several traits, and I hope that this essay will be informative.

With all that being said, let's get into the analysis starting with the symptoms that are only hinted at. One of the hallmarks of Borderline Personality Disorder is an intense fear of abandonment, which Lilith seems to display disgusted as her desire to cure Eda's curse. If it's not clear enough, Eda's really the only thing Lilith cares about, which makes sense since she's clearly the only thing she has. We know that she isn't super close to Amity, despite what fans want to believe, we don't know if she's formed any positive relationships with anyone in the Emperor's Coven and it would say a lot of she didn't. With all that in mind, she is clearly very close to Eda and whenever she tries to get away from her, Lilith is always either pissed off or saddened. Sure, this could just be because she wants to heal Eda's curse and is most likely being punished by Belos, and that's why this is listed as something that's hinted at. Then again, Catra from She Ra is BPD coded as well and she mostly wanted to bring Adora back to the Horde because Shadow Weaver wanted her and was an abusive piece of shit, but it was pretty obvious that she also just wanted her crush and only friend back, so I don't see how this can't be applied to Lilith as well.

Lilith seems to have a black–and–white view on the people around her and maybe even herself. Whenever Eda escapes her, she suddenly flips from being loving and caring to her and really acting like she cares about her to treating her like she just pissed on her waffles. Her way of viewing other people (mostly Eda) is another symptom of BPD, being a black–and–white view on everything and rapid changes in self image and views of everyone else. One moment she views Eda as a beautiful and loving sister, the next she's just an old woman slowing her down. One moment Belos is a trustworthy leader, next he's a monstrous tyrant. One moment Luz is an annoying child she can use as bait, next she's her only hope in saving Eda.

She seems to harbor some of these feelings to herself as well. One moment she acts like she's fully aware of the baddie she is, and next she seems to hate herself. Another valid explanation is that this could also be viewed as her hiding her insecurities since she is clearly one to hold back those emotions and she only ever seems to let Eda see this side of her (save for Luz in the season 1 finale) but this is still a common BPD trait that seems to fit her so it would make sense.

Now let's move on to the more explicit symptoms. If it's not obvious enough, Lilith has some major anger issues. She was ready to kill Eda after she did as much as annoy her in Covention and tell her how worthless her life is after she (actually Luz) escapes her in Once Upon a Swamp. It was certainly reasonable for her to be upset about Luz accidentally blowing up the side of a building, but she had a worse outburst over her sister rhyming.

Now we move on to what I think is her most obvious trait: her impulsiveness. Like I said before, Lilith tends to have sudden violent outbursts and act without thinking. It doesn't excuse anything she's done but it certainly does explain a LOT.

It could be a possible explanation for why her first instinct was to use Luz as a human shield while she was fighting Eda and threw Luz off a cliff in order to get Eda to use all her magic instead of making a new bubble for Luz or doing literally anything that WOULDN'T harm Luz. This could maybe (key word) also provide an explanation for why she cursed Eda instead of going and talking to her (assuming she didn't), but her disorder seems to stem more from trauma than it does genetics, both of which are ways BPD can manifest.

Mood swings are another symptom she definitely has, but that can easily be paired with the point about her changes in self image and how she views others, as well as the points about her anger and impulsivity, so I won't go into detail about that.

Depression, guilt, and ongoing feelings of emptiness are obvious traits that don't need much explaining.

The last major trait wanna bring up is self harm and self destructive and suicidal behavior. I couldn't really find any point in which she showed any suicidal tendencies or urges to hurt herself and it is most likely that she won't be showing those traits at any point in the future, though I do believe it is possible that the show may depict self destructive behaviors in her. Obviously, she wouldn't be shown cutting or burning herself, but maybe it could be displayed in a more PG fashion such as her not taking proper care of herself or having risky behaviors.

There are nine main traits of BPD and one needs to have at least five of them to get a diagnosis. Lilith seems to exhibit six and possibly seven of these traits. I could end it here by saying that Lilith definitely has BPD and needs a hug, but we're not done yet.

Despite what most people might say about borderline people and how we're depicted, we're more likely to be victims of abuse than we are abusers. Most of the time the trauma from the abuse is the cause of the disorder, for those who don't inherit it. Many people with the disorder have claimed to have been physically, sexually, psychologically or emotionally abused or neglected during their lifetime. We don't know the exact details of Lilith's time in the coven or what it was like for her, all we know is that it was basically a cult and she definitely experienced some form of abuse. We know that emotional and psychological abuse were definitely present in her and Belos's relationship, and there is definitely a possibility that there was some physical abuse as well. As for neglect, there isn't really anything that can support the claim even if it seems plausible, and logically speaking, she most likely wasn't sexually abused simply just because this is a family show, so unless Disney is ok with Dana going THERE, that one's a little too far out of the realm of possibility.

So, where does that leave us? Well if I'm being honest, she definitely seems to have a case of untreated and probably undiagnosed BPD caused by a series of traumatic events. And the thing is, she's only in 6/19 episodes in the series so far, and we've probably only really seen the tip of the iceberg. She could have a lot more going on with her that we will definitely see in season 2, I highly doubt she won't.

Lilith is definitely BPD coded, and whether the rep is intentional or not, it's still something I can consider good rep. It's super rare that you find borderline characters in the media that are not abusers, manipulators, or terrible, irredeemable people in general. Lilith is not a bad person whatsoever, and even if she's not much of a good person either, she's not irredeemable. She certainly has a long way to go, but with proper guidance and psychological help, she will get there eventually.

I would like to finish this off by saying I'm not trying to excuse or condone her actions, I am simply addressing how it's possible for her to be borderline, based on what screen time she has and my own experiences. I just want to express my appreciation for what rep we have, as well as analyzing her character a bit.

Thank you all for reading

- Sunny

#the owl house #toh #lilith clawthorne #toh lilith #lilith #emperor belos #edalyn clawthorne #eda clawthorne #toh eda #toh luz #luz noceda #tagging them just because they're mentioned and important #cult mention #bpd #Borderline Personality Disorder

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itsthenovelteafactor · 3 years

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Fall of the House of Hargreeves

So I mentioned a while back in my Superhero Gothic meta that there were a number of parallels between the season one finale of The Umbrella Academy and the Edgar Allen Poe short story The Fall of the House of Usher and that I could probably write a whole meta on that if anyone was interested. Shout out and love to the anon who requested that I do that!

It’s been a minute since I’ve done one of these long form metas, but I am very excited to get back to writing about two of my favorite things: gothic literature and chaotic superheroes.

Part I: The Fall of the House of Usher

The Fall of the House of Usher (which I’ll call House of Usher for convenience for the rest of this meta) is a short story by Edgar Allen Poe first published in 1939. It is considered a classic gothic short story, and deals with themes of family, madness, inheritance, and isolation.

Since it’s in the public domain, I’ll go ahead and link a pdf to the story here. If you aren’t interested in reading, though, or just want a refresher, the story follows an unnamed narrator going to visit his ill friend, a man named Roderick Usher in his isolated (and very spooky) family estate. Upon arrival, he discovers that Roderick’s sister, Madeline Usher, is also ill, and has a tendency to fall into dreamlike trances.

Over the course of the visit, Roderick confesses to the narrator that not only does he believe the house is alive, but that it is connected to the fate of the family which, at this point, only includes Roderick and Madeline. He later comes and tells the narrator that Madeline has died, and enlists his help in order to bury her in the family tomb beneath the house. They do so, but for the next couple of days Roderick is suspiciously...on edge.

Then, one dark and stormy night, Roderick shows up in the narrator’s room incredibly worked up, and throws open the window, and starts low-key (read: high-key) having a breakdown. The narrator is unsure as to why until he hears ripping and tearing sounds coming from somewhere in the house. These ripping and tearing sounds are revealed to be Madeline whom Roderick and the narrator buried alive whose appearance scares Roderick to death, right before she collapses, also dead from the strain of tearing through the foundations of the house.

The narrator decides this would probably be a good time to leave and is very much right about that because as soon as he leaves, the house (which was already in pretty bad shape) splits in two and collapses into the lake surrounding it. The end.

Part II: Umbrella Academy as Gothic

So, there are probably a couple similarities between House of Usher and The Umbrella Academy season one that stand out right off the bat, but I’d like to start by taking a step back to talk about thematic parallels between the two works. If you’d like to read a very long winded explanation of why I consider The Umbrella Academy to be a modern gothic tale, I have a really long meta about it.

If not, here’s a quick overview:

Gothic does not have a clearly defined set of requirements as a genre, but its purpose is to explore the contradictions and the failing edifices of convention in a way that is dramatic and often fantastic.

Gothic fiction plays with reality, but usually in a way that is representative of the characters and story.

It often situates itself during times of great change, as there is something haunting about the irreversible passage of time, particularly for those that struggle to acknowledge it and hide behind conventions that have grown increasingly irrelevant.

Poe is considered one of the classic authors of gothic fiction (though the genre significantly predates him), and is decidedly one of the best well-known examples of it.

The Umbrella Academy is a family drama about former child superheroes dealing with their trauma while trying to prevent an apocalypse that their every move seems to set further in motion. It explores the messy and complicated relationships between siblings who have been abused and pit against each other for years. And yeah, it’s fun with great music and talking gorillas and dance sequences, but the premise is kind of hard for me to read as anything other than gothic.

Part III: Parallels

Like House of Usher, the first season of Umbrella Academy takes place in a massive, largely empty mansion where siblings gather with disastrous consequences. Both works explore a family that is past their prime and disconnected from the present. They also both explore the psychological toll of isolation, the consequences of tyrannical family rules, and why it is a really bad idea to lock your unstable sister in a basement and just leave her there.

Let’s start with some thematics parallels. Everyone in House of Usher is extremely isolated, and the absence of anything resembling the modern world amongst the house full of relics is part of the horror. All of the siblings in Umbrella Academy are defined by their isolation as well, physically (Luther, Five, and Ben), socially (Vanya, Diego, Klaus, and Allison), and emotionally (legit all of them). It is this isolation that drives the conflict of the story, feeding into every characters’ choices.

In both House of Usher and Umbrella Academy, the main characters are trapped in this isolated state as a direct result of their familial legacy. In House of Usher, the titular house is a character itself, a manifestations of the obligations Madeline and Roderick hold as members of an aristocratic family that is so far divorced from wealth and status that it keeps them from ever fully moving on and rejoining the real world. In Umbrella Academy, the characters are similarly trapped by their familial legacy, this time in the form of the specter of their abusive father, and the roles he created for them. Like the Usher siblings, the Hargreeves have no way of maintaining the roles their family left out for them – they were never given the tools to function in the real world and it cripples them – but are trapped in them regardless.

Part IV: The Woman* in White

*As of the time I am writing this, nothing has been said regarding Vanya’s gender identity being written to match Elliot Page’s. I am using she/her pronouns for Vanya, as that is what has been used for the character thus far.

Aside from thematic parallels, however, the most direct connection between the short story and series, and in fact the reason I was inspired to write this meta in the first place is the way both of the stories end: with a sister trapped beneath the house clawing her way out to face her brother(s and sister) and creating a disruption of the family legacy so great that the entire estate crumbles.

Madeline Usher is described at this point as wearing a white dress, strained with the injuries she sustained from physically breaking herself out of the basement tomb her brother buried her alive in. Vanya, of course, becomes at this moment the White Violin, and though she has not yet had the epic violin-music-so-powerful-it-changes-the-color-of-her-clothes scene, the principal still stands.

As characters, there are also a couple of noteworthy parallels between Vanya and Madeline. The narrator at one point describes “the illness of the lady Madeline had lone been beyond the help of her doctors. She seemed to care about nothing” (Poe, 27). The reader never knows what illness precisely is the cause of Madeline’s apparent madness, but we see the effects. It dulls her emotional responses to situations and leaves her withdrawn and powerless. Similarly, we learn over the course of the first season of The Umbrella Academy that the medication Reginald Hargreeves prescribed Vanya for her anxiety is actually a power suppressor for her abilities that has much the same effect – because they are strengthened by extreme emotion, the drugs numb Vanya’s emotional responses and deprive her of the ability to access her powers.

Additionally, the final scene of the story story shows Madeline escaping her tomb during a great storm and going to face her brother who put her there, the storm itself being a metaphor for her anguish that tears the house apart. Vanya’s connection to the destruction of the house is a bit more literal, but it is similarly a manifestation of her anguish and trauma. She sees flashbacks of her siblings being distant and rude to her in their childhoods and the anger she feels rips the foundation apart.

It is not entirely clear in the short story why Roderick buries Madeline alive – there are a lot of theories: he genuinely believed she was dead, he wanted her out of the picture, he himself was succumbing to the madness of the house, etc – but the guilt he feels for doing so manifests as him hearing her scraping her way out for several days preceding her escape. The justification for Vanya’s imprisonment is more clear in text, but the series of flashbacks make it clear that it is not just the imprisonment that has driven her over the edge. It it guilt for her sister, anger at her abusive upbringing that is much more easily directed at her siblings than her father, the newfound emotions experienced by being off her medication for the first time since childhood, Leonard’s manipulations, etc.

In both cases, amidst a spiral of emotions and experiences folding in on themselves, Vanya and Madeline experience a single, cold moment of clarity that drives them to escape, and it is that moment of clarity that breaks the shadow of the family legacy. They observe the situation as it stands and realize that it is completely unacceptable, and it is the realization that leads everything to crumble. Because gothic literature is focused on the complexities of maintaining that which is out of date, the realization that things must change can break the spell.

Part V: Conclusions

As per usual, I have no great theories on why this is or what it means. One of the reasons I love gothic literature is that it is rife with meaning that can be more easily felt than deciphered. I welcome any and all interpretations, theories, (politely worded) disagreements, and comments.

Thanks for taking the time to read; I have a lot of fun doing these. Enjoy spooky season, y’all. 💛

#The Umbrella Academy meta #TUA meta #The Umbrella Academy #TUA #The Fall of the House of Usher #House of Usher #Edgar Allen Poe #back here with the long metas on gothic literature and superhero tv #Vanya Hargreeves #Madeline Usher #happy spooky season y'all

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forgiveness-in-the-misery · 3 years

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Skwisgaar's Psychology

After rewatching Metalocalypse a total of three times ever since the news of the potential finale movie I kind of had a realization; I really fucking love Skwisgaar. I also started by halfway through rewatch two realized that his story and background and general psychology is really fucking fascinating to me.

So I am going to do my best to discuss his character and his psychology and how we see him progress through the show....I already did this with Toki a while back and kind of would love to do it with Murderface and maybe Pickles as well, I'd say Nathan, but he's the....least fucked up in a sense.

Skwisgaar let's start has the most dialogue in the first couple of seasons of the show and even then it isn't overwhelming compared to the other members of the band. By season four he speaks very little and rarely.

When we are introduced to him in the beginning of the show he seems to be like the rest of the group; a diva spoiled rich rocker who has been grossly wealthy for so long that he's forgotten how to function as a human.

You also with the first season especially have this running gag that isn't even a running gag that Skwisgaar or Toki will say something weird and then the other will add onto it and they just say weird shit about life and death or the violence of man, it's weird, and strangely endearing.

Which speaking of how those two play off each other brings me to the fact the pilot episode immediately establishes that these two are almost always together. The band goes to a grocery store and everybody splits up, except for Skwisgaar and Toki who go off together when in all reality that isn't remotely necessary. We also learn in that first episode that Skwisgaar gets pissed when Toki teases him and calls him a woman despite Skwisgaar calling him one like a second earlier and also that Skwisgaar is sexually attracted to elderly women.

Two things are heavily associated with Skwisgaar as a character; he is extremely sexually active and he's got his guitar with him in 99% of scenes. Skwisgaar also doesn't appear to be the most talkative, he can be bitchy and throw tantrums like the rest of his bandmates, but also seems to be more prone to crying and becoming anxious or worried for his friends and their wellbeing/safety, in terms of socializing he seems to be a bit awkward and seems the most comfortable communicating through sex and music. He's teasing and can be a dick, but there's no real edge to it. He also while seeming in some regards to be a bit....dumb to be blunt about it seems to actually be rather smart, though often seems to just keep that to himself probably because he knows who his friends are and they aren't prone to listening to people.

Season one wasted no time in introducing the band's parents and this included Skwisgaar's mother, Serveta. One thing that I do find super interesting is that he is the only member of the band who comes from a single mother, technically it isn't interesting, but the theory (probably canon) that their fathers aren't really their fathers at all and that their mothers became pregnant by the Deth Star makes it interesting. To me at least.

With Skwisgaar's mom in regards to the first season of the show we quickly learn that their relationship is strained. She's an older woman who just like Skwisgaar is very sexually active, we see her come onto Nathan's father who is married and sitting with his wife and son, Skwisgaar's reaction to this is to get upset and begin frantically playing his guitar. Skwisgaar spends a good portion of this episode drinking and at one point saying that ever since his mom got there his stomach had been hurting and he'd just been feeling like absolute shit. When we see him bonding with his mom he's brushing her hair and looking like he'd rather be dead or any place else, seeing him helping her groom is weirdly a red flag to me.

We learn by the third season of the show that his mother is intensely vain and in love with herself, she resents Skwisgaar because being pregnant with him and giving birth to him ruined her 'perfect' body and I'm sure the years where he was too young to fend for himself annoyed her because it meant she couldn't party or have men over or run off whenever she wanted, something I get the feeling that changed when he was about ten years of age. In a bonus video that comes with the first season of the show you see interviews with the band on various random topics; one of the scenes that is...uncomfortable to say the least is when family is brought up. Skwisgaar begins to say something, but trails off and becomes visibly upset before saying he's just going to shut down for a while, Toki confesses some more physical abuse before also shutting down.

I'm going to take a guess that Skwisgaar only had his mother when he was growing up and she only had him, I'm sure she has parents and maybe even siblings and aunts and uncles, but it appears that she has absolutely no relationship with them and Skwisgaar most probably never met these people.

The walls of Serveta's home sport dozens of headshots of herself and a couple of pictures of Skwisgaar as a kid thrown up by the front door almost as an after thought. It's likely and most probable that Skwisgaar was thrusted into the position of caretaker and even a husband sort of position when it came to his relationship with his mom; given the task of looking after her, holding her hair back when she pukes after a night of drinking, doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, etc. We know when he was about ten or thirteen years old he came home from school to find his mom having sex with two men, an event that scared him and led to him being chased by wolves and falling into a pit where if he weren't a demi-god he legit would have died. I feel like his mom reached a point with him where she stopped caring whether or not he saw her....personal life, perceiving him as an adult despite still just being a boy and also seeing him as somebody who is taking up space in her home and preventing her from having fun.

When she marries Tyr they're all over each other constantly....until Skwisgaar and Tyr become friends and begin spending time together, then she cheats on him. She was jealous that her latest man wasn't giving her constant attention and got angry at the concept of sharing him with her own child, which is super fucked up.

Skwisgaar throughout the show has a fake persona. He likes to pretend he in some way is like his mom; he likes to pretend he has his head up his own ass and doesn't need anybody but himself, he loves himself more than he could ever love another person. Which isn't true. At all.

I think that growing up with a narcissistic parent who emotionally neglected and emotionally abused him put him in a position where he had to shut down like that. He had to learn at a very young age that crying and yelling and being angry gets nothing done except maybe piss his mom off more, after finding his guitar he threw himself into music and appeared to shut himself off socially, preferring music over human interactions.

Music is something that Skwisgaar can rely on no matter what happens; he will always have a guitar, he will always be able to create music even if it is just for himself and nobody else. People come and go, people physically hurt you, people emotionally hurt you, or make you feel worthless. When we see the flashback to the night Magnus was kicked out of Dethklok Skwisgaar is faded into the background, almost like a ghost with his slumped shoulders and his hair curtaining his face as if he wants to just disappear. When they're auditioning for a replacement Skwisgaar is positive he doesn't want somebody else in the band, that they are fine just being four.

I think it comes from the fact he was terrified of repeating what just happened with Magnus, finding somebody he might think he can bond with over music only for that person to turn into a monster who makes him feel like he can't even do the thing he loves more than anything correctly....Then Toki came in and when they had their duel it quickly turned from a competition into a conversation. Because that's the one way Skwisgaar knows how to communicate, the way he is the most comfortable with; he likes to communicate through guitar and finding somebody who he could speak to through music excited him.

It's clear for obvious age related reasons that Skwisgaar has/had a care taker role where Toki is concerned. I mean he was about 15/16 when Skwisgaar took him into the band so he was a literal child, even when he's older Skwisgaar still looks out for him and is in his own sense immensely protective where he's concerned. Skwisgaar is also that way with the rest of the band even if it's more subtle. He worries about his bandmates, if they get injured or nearly killed it bothers him and he doesn't want anything to happen to them. When the band is going to break up he completely shuts down, because admit to it or not they had become the only family he ever had. I think Skwisgaar is so hard wired from his childhood to care for people that it's something he can't shake and maybe with the band he doesn't feel its a bad habit, because unlike with his mom, his bandmates arent forcing him to look after them. It's something he does because he wants to do it.

Of course in regards to his attraction to older women that definitely comes from issues relating to his mother....I don't think it's in a creepy Freud way, but more so just wanting to feel cared for back. Very obviously he can't exactly approach any of his bandmates and ask for a hug....well except maybe Toki and Pickles if he's super drunk or high, but outside of those two instances....they aren't people he could exactly just ask for validation or comfort or consolation. They aren't....good with that shit. Older women though usually have a tendency to be coddling and kind, Skwisgaar probably learned that as a teen or in his twenties, I think it's less about the sex factor and just feeling important. In terms of sex with people closer to him in age (I will die on the hill that he's bisexual, because he keeps just throwing it out there that he would blow a guy and he had multiple three ways with Melmord) I think it's a distraction for the most part, he uses sex the same way he often uses music, and honestly....He grew up seeing his mother have men over constantly.

Skwisgaar didn't grow up seeing love or healthy relationships, he saw his mom parade various men through the house and maybe she kept some of them for a while and I doubt the relationships were healthy and I'm sure he knew that his mother didn't love any man she dated or married for a short while. Even in the show he isn't fond of love or marriage, the only time he dates somebody is when he moves back to Sweden and finally starts to get his life together in a more healthy sense and that relationship didn't feel like it was based on sex. It was based on physical and emotional affection and it was the only time Skwisgaar ever looked actually happy in terms of intimacy.

Sex is a job, a chore for him; he's the God of Life so it's technically what....it's y'know his thing, creating life. As a lot of people notice....he seems far more sexually active after him and Toki's second fight in regards to music and petty bull shit. Season four is essentially the season where Salacia gets what he wanted aka the band tearing itself apart and you can see them all fall apart individually. For Skwisgaar falling apart means closing himself off, throwing himself more into his guitar and more into sex. He becomes more of a tool and an object as if that's all he wants to be, because being a person who opens yourself up and lets people in and tries to care about people ends up with you being hurt, badly.

Which does bring things back to his super complicated slightly homoerotic to the point even the show had to mention it for a hot second relationship with Toki.

We can gather from Doomstar that Toki was far more into music when he first joined Dethklok which I think worked out great for Skwisgaar, because as I said before; Skwisgaar communicates through music and this gave him somebody that he could talk to without the awkwardness of verbally conversing.

Though that changed clearly and you can feel that Skwisgaar is bothered by it, like in some weird way it feels like a minor betrayal. Toki notoriously never practices or puts in a lot of effort in terms of making music which Skwisgaar often comments on, complains about, or gets on him about. Reasonable. Guitar is part of who he is, but at the end of the day a talent that made him rich, that's what it is to Toki.....Skwisgaar on the other hand his guitar is literally an extension of himself and seeing him without a guitar in his hand for longer than a single scene gets weird.

Still despite the two of them losing the art of communicating through their music....they're close. Super fucking close. If you watch Metalocalypse and tell yourself going into the show that you're going to focus heavily on a single character or on a certain relationship you notice a ton of shit. Like you notice that Toki and Skwisgaar almost always sit together, stand together, talk over one another, finish each others weird sentences or ideas, copy each other to the point they spend an entire episode bickering like children over copying each other, and often spend their time hanging out together. Again. They're really close as if they're a single person split into two.

They're close to the point that inverse their fans just to some extent assume the two of them are fucking and madly in love and I mean I'm gonna be honest just objectively speaking here I would not be surprised to find out they have had sex before at least once or more times. Just saying.

That aside though and just sticking to the platonic here....They're close, Toki means as much to Skwisgaar as guitar does, and that's saying a lot. One big reason I want to bring up their relationship is that his relationship with Toki brings to light Skwisgaar's issues with death or more specifically death where Toki is concerned.

In season one when Toki has a bit of a breakdown and Pickles suggest they kill him, Skwisgaar looks tense and uncomfortable and says that he doesn't like the idea because it's a lot and it makes him feel not so good. In a deleted scene where the band watch Nascar together Pickles ask Toki and Skwisgaar if they were supposed to be dead or in jail or something because it's the same episode where they got shit faced and got into a high speed chase. Skwisgaar when responding about it changes the word dead/death out for sleep, stating they were supposed to be put to sleep but just had to do community service instead (Toki corrects that it was jail, not being put to sleep). In the deleted IKEA scene when Toki stressed says maybe the two of them should just kill themselves Skwisgaar immediately freaks out and later when they return to Nathan and Murderface they both look super emotionally fucked up and when Nathan ask if they had been crying Toki gets defensive and says no while Skwisgaar beginning to cry again says they had been crying. Then of course after Toki ruins Skwisgaar's reputation and becomes Magnus Jr. for a few weeks and ends up having a panic attack and making an ass of himself....Skwisgaar thinks he's having a heart attack and freaks the fuck out terrified that he's dying.

Then finally for a compilation of Skwisgaar not handling Toki dying well; in Doomstar before they go in to save Toki Skwisgaar makes the sorrowful comment that sometimes he wonders if they should have stayed a one guitar band. It isn't him being a dick, he isn't saying this isn't worth it. He's saying essentially that Toki was stabbed, kidnapped and possibly murdered and it's completely his fault; if he hadn't taken Toki in then none of this would have happened. Which immediately leads me to believe that post the funeral episode that Skwisgaar spent those months high and drunk and late at night blaming himself for Toki being taken/murdered. That's a lot of blame to put onto yourself and to say its your fault solely because a few years ago you took this kid in off the streets is honestly heart breaking.

Early on in the series there's an episode where Toki's pissed that he isn't seen as Skwisgaar's musical equal, he wants solos, and Skwisgaar turns him down. Which through the series and within that episode itself we easily learn why Skwisgaar never gives him a solo; Toki has performance anxiety and he never practices and quite honestly knows almost nothing about guitar. It's valid. Either way in this particular episode Toki gets pissed and decides he wants to take lessons, Skwisgaar offers and Toki turns him down because last time they tried...he kind of just ended up beating the shit out of Skwisgaar. (to be fair don't dump a bucket of blood on your friend's head) So he goes off and finds an elderly man to teach him how to play guitar, Murderface being a dick decides to tell Skwisgaar that Toki is super good at guitar now and.....Skwisgaar doesn't react well. He gets pissed off and has nightmares about Toki becoming better than him. He even confronts Toki and his guitar teacher and threatens to kick him out of the band. When he realizes at the end of the episode that Toki is still....really not great with music....he's chill again, everything is forgiven.

I kind of think that episode is a reason people perceived Skwisgaar as a dick or is one reason, but honestly he isn't being a dick. I mean sure, a bit, but they're all dicks. The thing is guitar is a crutch for Skwisgaar, it is super important to him and he doesn't know who he is without his guitar, without his music. So somebody else threatening to take that from him freaks him out and he reacts poorly to it.

Then we get to near the end of the show when the same issue arises except completely different. Toki again later in the series ask Skwisgaar for a solo and Skwisgaar annoyed refuses him, Toki being the mild psycho shit that he is decides to just kind of ruin his life as revenge. Again by this point in the show its kind of obvious if you actually pay attention at all that Skwisgaar keeps telling him he can't have solos because Toki never fucking practices and even in the studio Skwisgaar has to record most of the rhythm guitar parts. He's also known since Toki's audition that the kid is prone to choking up and making mistakes, so he's technically protecting him without just outright confronting him.

Toki writes a book calling out Skwisgaar as an abusive tyrant and an over dramatic bitch. Admittedly Skwisgaar is a slight diva and just like the rest of them can be a total asshole, admittedly to a lesser degree than the others. What's really fucking interesting for me personally about this episode is that Skwisgaar is catatonic and depressed for 99% of it. He doesn't speak. This starts literally the second that Toki releases his book saying that Skwisgaar abuses him, this is before Skwisgaar's career goes down the toilet, his career hadn't been impacted by this yet.

Skwisgaar falls to pieces because Toki, Toki who he's known since he was just sixteen and took in off the streets and they're always practically attached at the hip and have been since day one just released a book calling him an abusive monster.

I do have a feeling one reason this fucked him up is because he might be terrified that he's turning into Magnus without realizing it, that perhaps he has become an abusive monster and has been making Toki feel the way that Magnus made him feel towards the end of his time in Dethklok. I think there also is probably something soul crushing about the person you love platonically or otherwise referring to you very publicly as abusive. Of course all of this worsens when Skwisgaar's career begins to fall to shit, eventually towards the end when Toki is at the top of his ego trip being a prick Skwisgaar does confront him, that in itself is interesting.

Skwisgaar goes in way calmer than I would be in that situation, sure he gets pissed off as they bicker, but again he's waaayyyy fucking calmer than anybody else would be especially since Toki just yells at him through the entire conversation. Of course interestingly is that Toki perceives Skwisgaar in a way that isn't entirely true, he thinks Skwisgaar mocks him and thinks of him as nothing which isn't true at all, when he says Skwisgaar laughed at him he just responds that he never did that and he sounds slightly hurt by that. They're both hurt and none of these men are good with healthy emotions. Skwisgaar never loses his shit on him in the entire conversation, he looks like he could easily go ape shit but instead warns him that the audience will eat him alive the second he fucks up.

Which turns out to be true, Toki fucks up and people begin turning against him which leads to him having a severe panic attack. Like I mentioned before Skwisgaar thinks he's dying and tries to save him, scared out of his fucking mind at the concept of Toki dying. Which....the dude just spent several weeks treating you like garbage and calling you a monster who abuses him, if Skwisgaar was actually a shitty person then he would have laughed at him or mocked him or given him shit about this moment for years to come....but he doesn't do any of that. He is worried about saving him, probably terrified that if Toki dies then their last conversation was a fight.

Their dynamic changes a lot after this, not in a way that's overly obvious unless you watch it closely. They spend a lot less time together and what feels almost out of character initially in Dethcamp is....Skwisgaar easily going along with Murderface and bitching about Toki, because....again can't stress the Scandinavian dudes are always attached at the hip and now suddenly he's easily saying mean shit about Toki. It feels weird until you remember that not long before this they had a massive fight, Toki called him abusive and momentarily ruined his career and most likely afterwards tried to act like nothing happened at all while Skwisgaar probably wasn't capable of doing that.

Occasionally in season four Skwisgaar and Toki will sit together or stand together, still talk or have that physical closeness but it's far between and you see Toki spend a majority of his time with the toxic trio: Murderface, Rockso, and Magnus. Skwisgaar spends his time typically with Murderface and Pickles then near the end spends most of his time with Nathan.

Skwisgaar is a person who grew up in a home lacking affection and love or safety, he didn't grow up with examples of love or healthy relationships and as far as he's concerned relationships are a waste of time and energy because they all end the same.

Of course for as much as he says that, as they all say that....it's bull shit. He cares deeply about his bands and him trying to act near the end like Dethklok was just another gig it isn't, these people are his close friends and his only real family. Seeing Pickles and Nathan fall apart wrecked him and having Toki turn on him so easily gutted him. Skwisgaar is a super emotionally fragile person, he seems absolutely terrified of showing anger or aggression as if it's something he's never been comfortable with or learned when he was young gets you nowhere or perhaps there were men around who were violent and loud and it made him scared to ever be that way. He's the only one of the band we never see really lose his shit or be randomly aggressive and violent, he also strangely enough cries the most out of them canonically. People always make the assumption Toki cries a lot, but like canonically he cries waaayyyy fucking less than Skwisgaar.

I really find Skwisgaar interesting....clearly and this analysis might be a jumbled mess, but there's strangely a lot of things to unpack and things I probably didn't even touch on as much as I could have, because this is already insanely long. I have a deep appreciation of him rewatching this show now that I'm older and far more into analyzing works of fiction.

I hope that this was remotely coherent.

#metalocalypse #skwisgaar skwigelf #character analysis #character psychology

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bitter-sweet-coffee · 2 years

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your tags 🥺 ❤️❤️❤️ honestly it's so hard to find someone who has critical thinking in the entire euphoria fandom. like, just last week- well, the last couple of weeks, actually, people have been calling cassie just the vilest thing, and even though she's done some questionable, if not outright bad, stuff, I don't think it's deserved. all in all, she's still a kid, and she was at THE LOWEST of her life when nate jacobs decided to sink his claws into her and infected her with his poison. i just think she deserves a little bit of a break.

and this week is what really got my blood boiling. like, lexi literally said in the episode she was afraid people (cassie, especially) would take her play the wrong way, while she only had good intentions. people be out there praising her for "ruining lives" while that's very much not what she intended. she said it herself, she's an observer, and she's observed all of these things, and now she's only reporting them back. i think she intended it more as a way for people to reflect on their actions and relationship, how they might look through in other people's - namely, lexi's - eyes.

do correct me if im off the mark tho. i would love to hear what you think ❤️

BESTIE!!! sorry i waited a while to respond, i didn't want euphoria tumblr to interact with me again lmao it should be quiet now though 👀

i think people start to fuck up when watching euphoria when they assume anyone is a good person. lexi knew she was being messy but deserved to vent, cassie is extremely unstable and self destructive but also not innocent, and nate is psychologically damaged and emotionally neglected, so i am begging the show to get him help at this point.

every character is abusive, and every character has been abused. cassie has been awful to people but she also had a secret abortion last season that everyone forgets about like ???

maddy apologists are my biggest issue tbh. she is a victim of a toxic relationship but she enabled a lot of anger out of nate such as lying about being sexually assaulted by an adult. she was a selfish terrible friend (especially to kat in season 1) and has been physically/verbally/emotionally abusive to multiple people, even beating up random students at school. after the incident in season 2 which i won't spell out for spoiler reasons, i am sympathetic and hope she gets the support she needs. but since season 1 there has been a LOT of support for her bad behaviour because alexa demie is gorgeous and tumblr loves a "girlboss moment" to the point i've seen takes like "well it was NATE who made her do all that bad stuff, she was just psychologically manipulated to be a mean person" as if nate could just "break up with his father" and was totally 100% responsible for his behaviour because childhood and lifelong inescapable abuse from a family member means he's too far gone to be saved. like, pick a side— are abuse victims conditioned and shouldn't be blamed for any toxic abusive actions they perform, or are they fully responsible and unfixable monsters? the true answer is neither/both but since the internet has 0 critical thinking skills, the fandom answer is to sort all the faves as innocent and the unlikeable characters as permanently damaged abusers.

like, people hate jules and always shove the "she's a slutty male-affirming cheater" identity on her every fucking second because they love zendaya and rue. there are also people who get mad at rue for being mean, self destructive, and for doing drugs, but that's literally the point of her character??? she's an addict and it's an atrocious battle that is going to harm her and result in irrational toxic decisions?

a lot of people are mad about kat this season but have missed the entire point of her segment earlier on in s2: kat still can't love herself and ethan's love feels superficial and sappy in the face of her own self worth issues. she gave ethan a shallow, blatantly false reason for breaking up with him so that he'd hate her and not say something like "i know you have self worth issues but i love you!" or "we can make this work!" because kat sees herself as undeserving of love and made it so ethan wouldn't forgive her, and therefore treat her like the monster she sees herself as. THAT is why she went back to cam work and embraced/validated the dark/taboo side of her identity she keeps tucked away: perverted appreciation is all she is worth because it's all she can process people valuing her with.

TLDR: everyone in euphoria has been hurt and have hurt other people: some more than others. the fan favouritism and cherry picking is the reason "fandom mentalities" don't work for a show like this!!! i enjoy/love every character and that doesn't mean i excuse their behaviour, but in fandom-terms it's assumed that liking someone like nate means i justify all his actions by refusing to wish death upon him and the other male characters like mckay and elliot.

ultimately, i want everyone to get the help they need even though i don't expect it to go over that way, and i will spend every other second i have actively hating the "hot takes" people have online that are just supporting female abusers and ignoring the fact that real people and three-dimensional characters are morally grey so liking a character doesn't mean they're a good person 🥴✌️

#bsc moment

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mikami · 3 years

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Would you define Light’s relationship with Misa as (psychological) abuse? The wikia defines it as such so I’m curious to see what your opinions would be on it

Oof, that is a loaded question.

Honestly, I am not sure I can give a definitive answer here that I would be comfortable with other people quoting. I find it easier to outline the patterns that do occur in their relationship than to make myself an authority on whether or not that is abuse. That's not a line I think can be drawn with 100% clarity either.

I think people ascribe more aspects of abuse to Light's treatment of Misa than are actually present. I think the time he yells at her during Sayu's kidnapping is a new phenomenon that she reacts to with surprise more than recoiling from him as learned behaviour. She seems baffled he would treat her this way because it isn't something that has precedent.

But while Light doesn't go out of his way to do what we might think of as active hurtful treatment, what he does is absolutely just... ignore her. A lot. Ignore her opinions, ignore her attempts at help, ignore her entirely... And he does certainly not protest her isolating herself from her friends and career to focus on him and what they do together (being Kira) - sometimes he outright enables it (asking her to resign from the movie and agreeing to her framing of retiring as a popstar to become his wife).

As a result, Misa becomes entirely emotionally reliant on him and him alone by the second arc. Having his already sporadic affection vanish entirely as he grows busy fighting Mello and Near thus takes a massive toll on her well-being, especially once he makes her forget she was Kira thus erasing her memory of WHY they are even together.

Is Light an abusive partner? I don't know and I am still inclined to say no. Is he a neglectful partner, who's emotional and physical absence hurts his partner immensely? Absolutely, completely.

While I ascribe a lot more agency to Misa in their relationship start than other people do, I agree that by the second arc Light is absolutely and knowingly taking advantage of her emotional instability and disproportionate focus on a romantic fantasy without any regard for her well-being.

#answers #like i do think misa during the timeskip WAS happy #but that's because misa is good at playing makebelieve #light was always doing the bare minimum #to ensure she is complacent #its not a healthy setup even when she is not actively suffering

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traumasurvivorshelpingsurvivors · 2 years

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Hi. I have hink this is gonna get long a bit

Tw: parental abuse, Mental health issues.

Plz dont continue if this would harm ur health

I guess i need to vent. Advise. And perhaps reassurance.

Im 13 years old. Basically a minor so i cant leave my parents'. Though even if i wasn't i wouldn't be able to move out, as i live in the middle east, and this thing is unknown to our culture. (There isnt shame in still living with ur parents even at after ur twenties. But shame on u if u leave them even if it was for studying. Though the last rule only applies to girls. And guess how lucky i am?)

Anyways, i have 4 siblings. 3 of them live out bec of college. My two sisters r in college, my brother getting a master, all of them in different countries.

My last sister would be leaving at the end of this school year. To live with my sisters for college. And i support her. I do. She can get out. And shes gonna do whatever she wants in that country (with limits, perhaps, but still.) But, guess what? Im the luckiest, youngest, of all five of us. So i get to be stuck with my parents alone here. Which im very angry about, and terrified of.

Perhaps i should insight u to what my parents are. My mother is the one mainly abusive, she doesn't let anything slip by, emotionally unavailable but questions why we (me, especially) dont care, ask, and worry about her. She basically wants to force her dreams on me. She doesn't fight me on my hobby, writing, but that doesn't mean she supports it. And shes against me going out with any of my friends, other than going to their houses which she usually doesn't even let me bec they live too far? I mean, even the mall thats beside our school (and filled with KIDS) is forbidden.

While dad seems the quiet one, hes actually kinda worse. Because u dont see his abuse. You mainly see mom urging him to punish us and so u would have a grudge against mom, not him. Even though he's the one who delivered. He was my figure when i was little. He wasn't close enough for me to tell him personal stuff, but we were close. I was his favorite. We used to go out on our bikes and race, we used to go buy groceries together a lot. He would take me (and only me) out with him to places that seem really silly now but they meant a lot. I found closure with him. Which might be why i didnt recognize his abuse. Mom's is loud and demanding attention. Dad's is quiet. The type that creeps up on you, slowly eating away ur confidence and self-worth. For years dad made fun of my hair (which is an insecurity, i have a Hermione-ish type of hair, mom made me feel bad about when i stopped brushing it when i was a kid. But his comments were the worst) He went against everything i wanted, and worst of all, he didn't do anything about moms abuse. He was abusive himself. And lately starting physical abuse again. (Im sorry im taking too much but my parents used religion bec there was a text where he said that u can punish a child if they dont pray which doesn't excuse anything bec what they hit us about wasn't about our religion. Even if it was, my religion is way better than let parents ABUSE their children. and they found out a couble of months ago that hitting ur child over three times isnt permited. I had fun watching mom panick bec she knows what shes done. She basically asked us to forgive her. Two of my sisters said yes. Me and my other sister didn't say anything) My point is, just when i felt the bit of stuff getting better. He came in. Now heres the thing, when they hit u, it doesn't leave any marks, and it barely hurts. But its pretty much more of a psychological abuse than physical

I guess what im asking advise in is, how do i deal with this? I have a friend that knows about this already, im working on my confidence, my mental health, but i cant have therapy bec my parents wouldn't agree to it (i meant to ask them about it, but i haven't. They'll just make it a joke.) But i cant build anything if i dont solve the root of it all. And i just never felt so lost and pressured and im having a lot of more breakdowns. (I think i have anxiety, cuz the symptoms often look like anxiety attacks).

I shouldn't have to feel this at 13. Im supposed to be having fun.

Hey there,

That is a lot to be dealing with, especially for a 13 year old. You're absolutely right that you should be having fun, not dealing with abuse and trauma. I'm so sorry you're going through all of this. You deserve so much better. Please know that things won't always be like this.

I'm sure it's really scary and distressing to know that your sister will be leaving soon and you'll be left with your parents. It's hard to know what to expect. It sounds like your mother is emotionally neglectful, but accuses others of not caring. That's hypocritical for sure and I'm sure that's frustrating and upsetting.

It's awful being isolated, I feel for you. You deserve to be able to hang out with your friends and peers. There is nothing wrong with wanting to socialize with people your age.

It can hurt a lot when your relationship with your parent changes. You and your dad enjoyed your time together before, but now, it seems like he is criticizing you and not building you up. People who physically abuse others use physical acts, even if they aren't that hard, to intimidate and control their victims. You do not deserve to be hit, at all, ever.

You deserve parents who give your love and care. None of their treatment is a reflection of you. You are so worthy of compassion and nurturing.

Coping with abuse when you can't leave home.

Here are some coping skills.

Panic attack help.

Grounding can help calm you down and help you feel connected to your body and the world around you. Here are some links: One, two

Breathing exercises: One, two, three.

Journaling can help when you want to vent or work through your thoughts and feelings. Returning to what you've written when you're feeling okay is great so you can reflect on what you were going through.

Online therapy/counseling/chat. 7 Cups of Tea, BlahTherapy, and HelpfulChat may be worth looking into.

Take care. Remember how important and worthy you are. You have a bright future.

- Mod Misa

#trauma talks #mod misa #tw child abuse #tw abuse #tw misogyny

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