#it would make perfect sense for josh to become a confederate bcos of his need for power but he better be shown as much sympathy as nora

[magicalgirlsasuke]

tw// sexual assault

i fully support anyone who wants to drop the show bcos of how dark things have gotten this season. i really wasn’t expecting it either and i’ve dropped many shows i’ve loved for including sa. what i’m going on to say is in no way trying to influence anyone to come back who was triggered by it’s inclusion or how things were handled. i’ve just seen a lot of people interpreting things in a way that i personally disagree with.

i’ve seen so many folk on twitter saying that seth was a closeted queer man and that is just so blatantly untrue and deeply homophobic. what seth done to josh was a show of dominance, he was in no way attracted to him, it was an act of sheer violence and torture with the sole purpose of showing josh how powerless he is in comparison.

i’ve also seen folk saying that it was solely included for shock value and i just have to disagree. they didn’t make up something horrific just to make us uncomfortable, they showed us the real darkest aspect of a patriarchal society. sa is something i have a really hard time hearing discussed even on tv so honestly if they pulled punches and decided to use a murder instead it would’ve been a relief to me, but i don’t think including it was out of place when the act itself along with the aftermath clearly showcased the insidious nature of toxic masculinity, which is the purpose of the boy group.

it would’ve been so so easy for the writers to have the characters fall into a half and half split of people who believed josh and people who believed seth, as an easy way of negatively presenting the boy group. but the characters were instead written in a way that was really realistic for modern teenage boys. i often didn’t agree with the characters’ behaviour in the aftermath but i was really impressed with the care taken to flesh things out and how it was utilised to open up discussions and show a different kind of implosion.

i found it so realistic how all the boys offered full support to josh up until he showed trauma reactions. first we see ivan who’s chronically online, get upset that josh isn’t appreciative of his kiddy glove handling of him. then ofc we have all the boys disgusted by josh starting to mimic kirin, even tho it makes absolute perfect sense for him to want to feel as powerful as the one person on the island who’s making him feel safe. josh lashing out at bo was nasty and uncalled for yeah, but no one other than kirin and bo recognised/cared it was a way of josh trying to establish any power he could. it should’ve been called out for sure but the other boys showed a complete lack of compassion by treating it with the same severity as sa.

raf’s reaction absolutely boiled my blood and i still can’t forgive him but it was such an accurate characterisation to include. seth made raf feel like he was seen and special, and as someone who wasn’t used to that type of companionship, he became very loyal to seth. he fully believed in seth right up until he learned that he was lying about his girlfriend (the commonality that seth initially used to bond with him) leading to him finally realising that seth’s friendly personality was all a fabrication. we see that as henry tries to placate raf - telling him that seth could be a nice person sometimes so it was understandable for him to fall for it, that raf doesn’t buy into it at all anymore. we see him fully come to understand that being nice doesn’t make someone trustable bcos abusers will act nice solely as a way of getting you to trust them.

i really didn’t read seth’s backstory as being in anyway sympathetic? with the story that’s being told we need to see what made seth this way bcos he himself is a product of the patriarchy. it isn’t as obvious as it should’ve been made but his need for people to like him is abandonment issues ofc, his need for power is due to him being tossed aside by women. men are raised to see women as a lesser type of person, only serving purpose as mothers and potential partners (even when they’re their friend), so for someone who views women in that way to learn so harshly that they themselves don’t matter to those women?? that they’re below even them?? that’s what resulted in his strong desire to assert dominance over others, especially ones he knows are weaker than him like josh and henry. just to be clear i’m in no way trying to excuse him, what he did is absolutely irredeemable even tho something lead him to become the way he was (i actually felt they gave him a much less drastic backstory than they could’ve for us to be in no way sympathetic). acts of violence are almost always rooted in the maintenance of misogyny within society and this just leads to an ever feeding cycle that can only end with its abolishment.

i hope this in no way sounds preachy or anything, i’ve just read a lot of folk rallying against the writers for including something so homophobic and unnecessary which is just untrue in my opinion??