#like a child abuse survivor going through even more abuse later on and then finally choosing himself

[radioactive-earthshine]

Hi. I really enjoy your analysis and I was wondering if you could explain why Wally is so mean to Bart? Maybe mean is too strong but as you read Impulse it gets hard to read sometimes because it comes off as just bullying and not just 90s sitcom teasing.

Hello!

The most direct answer for why Wally is the way he is with Bart is simultaneously simple and complex with nuance that any reader of Wally's run should have been able to catch onto pretty easily.

And no, the answer isn't just "he's a jerk" even though yes, he is a jerk (Bart is too) but there's more to it.

1.) He was a little incredibly jealous of Don and Dawn for existing and he felt like their existence threatened his status with his Uncle Barry. We all know blood =/= family in this circle, but to Wally it meant MORE to him.

It's also important to note that Wally and Barry's relationship is unique in the greater examples of DC as Wally refers to Barry thoroughly as his uncle, and their tether together was through marriage (Iris). Even so, Wally was as close to Barry as a son, and the feelings they had were mutual. Wally was not just assigning himself a position within Barry's life erroneously, he is family. Period.

The Flash (1987) #109

Wally knows that Barry had kids (Iris told him and Bart had to come from somewhere) but when Jenni shows up we finally see his true introspection and rumbling thoughts about the situation of them - that he is jealous of them even though he's learned that Barry dies when they are young and didn't even get to have a relationship with him.

The Flash (1987) #114

Later, Wally finally gets to meet Don and Dawn in the future and things are tense between all of them at first. Wally is self conscious of his thoughts concerning them, that he is jealous, and there is some mutual jealousy between all three because the Tornado Twins, while Barry's children, grew up without him when Wally did.

Wally got to have a father/child relationship with Barry and they didn't.

The Flash (1987) #114

The Twins let this go and Wally does partially but there are other instances where Wally persists there is a rivalry between them later. For Wally the biodetermination is very much a part of his insecurities in this situation.

(also this is a side note they are not the catalyst or inspiration to the Legion of Super-Heroes but they do need to die to make way for a future to have it, Wally doesn't know this and probably just assumes they were)

The Flash (1987) #148

Wally continues to be jealous but he's emotionally intelligent enough to know it's not appropriate. It never was, now or otherwise.

So Wally's jealously and deep desire to be as close to Barry as possible manifested in some redirected tension onto Bart who is blood related to Barry.

2.) Bart reminds him of himself when he was kid, and he is ashamed of how he was.

This point is something Wally admits directly as a reason why he is so short with him.

The Flash (1987) #92

It's also extremely necessary to remember that Wally grew up with Rudy West as a father who was verbally, emotionally and physically abusive. This is where we get meta about Wally and this is more speculation because we don't have Wally on panel saying this but; Bart reminding him of himself as a kid very easily could remind Wally of that house, that relationship, that abuse and it sets him on edge. This is something that is common among trauma survivors.

3.) Wally is young, insecure, traumatized, stressed, and Bart is a lot.

Wally here is in his early 20s, and while he was shown to be in therapy in a previous issue, he still has years of trauma built up to deal with - and not all of it is due to being raised in an incredibly abusive household with Rudy West.

When Wally gets stressed, he lashes out and gets short, Bart in particular in his introductory comics stressed him out on top of the stress he was already experiencing with Kobra.

Bart in his earlier comics was utterly feral - his own high energy and inability to distinguish between fantasy and reality led to some stressful situations between him and Wally. Wally is just not equipped with the tools to deal with Bart, mostly PATIENCE, so it led to mutual aggravation.

Bart pushes, Wally pushes, Bart pushes back and it's a pretty solid circle between them.

4.) He is in fact a jerk, and it's the result of the sum of his trauma and personality. Regardless of his status as a hero, regardless that Bart and him do have good moments.

The later issues of Impulse show this very clearly.

Impulse (1995) #82

Some people prefer to interpret Wally and Bart's relationship as sibling-like where the older sibling teases the younger one - and if you do prefer this relationship between them there is nothing stopping you from doing so, but there is more nuance behind Wally's shortness with Bart and it makes him 1000% more interesting of a character.

Impulse (1995) #84

Bart calls Wally out on his behavior in one of the last few issues of his series where it ties everything together with their relationship - Bart identifies that Wally's past is what drives him to behave the ways he does with him, and it is bringing up the past and reminding Wally that he is being a scroach that he finally talks to Bart.

It was a major step in their relationship, but unfortunately, as any Bart reader knows, it did not stay this good because of the next point.

5.) Conflicting personalities add more depth to stories and generally make a story better. Bart having a grating personality and a tough relationship with the current Flash of the time was the story the writers WANTED to tell and keep intact well into Teen Titans.

Wally doesn't KNOW Bart, not really, and he never really learns enough about him due to his chronic absences in his life - so he never got to SEE him in any real depth other than during the brief moments their comics intersected. He only sees him the way he thinks he is, not the way he ACTUALLY is.

Teen Titans (2003) #1

stfu wally

Having a beloved hero figure in a story simply not believe in one of the protagonists offers a growth subplot for the writer to focus on. Unfortunately, for Bart and Wally, it was a subplot that lasted a very very long time. This conflict between them could have ended with Impulse #84 but Geoff didn't want it to, so it didn't.

So that's the general reason why Wally is the way he is. He's not a villain to Bart and they DO get along plenty of times - but at the end of the day he was also a jerk to him (Max was too but we're not getting into that right now).

[mypromptlair]

TCF Prompt 18

AU- Brilliant Tears

--------

The Roan Kingdom and its surrounding Country's and Continents have been blessed with magic and abilities since the first group of heroes defeated the villain The White Star lead by the lost god of despair.

While many see these abilities as gifts, there are some who feel as if they are cursed instead. One such family was the Thames. Not only with the power to see ones lifelines, but when they shed tears out of pure grief and despair(and happiness/joy) said tears produce beautiful gems that hold the power of S-grade mana stones. Said gems drain away at the creators plate, wearing it down until it breaks.

These gems are sought by many. Not only for its power with mana, but for the enticing beauty the gems emit. The beauty of the Thames Family(some saying they were even more beautiful than Dragons) did not help in such matters. Making greedy, envious nobles and the like seek them out for horrible reasons.

When the head of the Thames family refused to give anymore to the kingdom and its people, after the loss of his wife due to perverted greed, half the family was killed and causing the survivors to go into hiding.

Many years later, Jour Thames married her childhood sweetheart, Deruth Henituse and having their precious child, Cale Henituse. One day, when Cale was just 8 years old, on the way back from a trip to Harris Village with his mother, the carriage was attacked and he and his mother were captured.

While it was at first an attempt for the Henituse wealth, once they saw tears form into gems any type of ransom was lost.

Cale went through many horrors no child should go through, being forced to cry over and over again in different ways, until he learned to control his emotions(much to their annoyance). When he finally escaped at the age of 15, he found himself on the Eastern Continent.

While on the run, he comes across a group lead by one Lee Soo Hyuk. While Cale was reluctant at first, LSH was quite insistent on Cale joining the group(seeing this thin, clearly abused kid, come out of nowhere put his protective big brother instincts on high alert. CJS didn't help any). Realizing he wouldn't give them his name, LSH(as his unofficial Hyung) give him the name Kim Rok Soo.

After only a year, KRS gets separated from the group that had become like a family to him, after a quest gone wrong. Thinking they all died, KRS escapes and is on his own once again. Luckily(or unluckily) KRS runs into someone who realizes who he is and forcing him all the way back to Rain City. Where his father and new family await.

The next few years until he is 18..were....somewhat blissful. Kim Ro-no Cale could finally rest and relax. Then a man named Choi Han shows up asking for aid. And its all downhill from there...well in Cale's mind anyway.

----------------

Cale and KRS are the same person

Jour dies protecting Cale, destroying her plate in the process.

Deruth never knew about the gems(he does eventually, and overprotective dad mode activates. He wishes he had known sooner.)

Cale, who originally had a strong plate, is now left with a very frail one. Because of this, he ends up going after certain ancient powers(who happen to be certain heroes of old, and are protective of their new wielder)

AP's are not widely used anymore, as ppl have their own abilities.

Cale/KRS has all his APs and earth abilities. To bad his plate is so brittle. Hello coughing up blood. Unlucky bastard - Eruhaben

Cale still gains his allies/found family and kids

LSH and the gang are still alive, and all eventually meet up again.

Everyone finds out what happened to him and his mother, and the Thames family gifts, thanks to a certain Sekka and Empire Prince(Alberu may more may not have killed Adin himself with a certain holy weapon...oops).

Too bad for them that he has overprotective dragons and family on his side.

Cale finally starts to heal along the way, and learns that its ok to show emotions and smile.

He eventually gifts his loved ones with a single gem, which they cherish more than anything.

Alberu figures out a way to give Cale and his mothers family an old type of protection that shields other nobles of trying to take advantage of their powers.

Cale does get his slacker life...eventually.

Cale is of course, super pretty, and his friends/family have to fend of a LOT of suiters. That Cale is oblivious too, oh dear.

Can have romance(AlbeCale, etc) if wanted.

Oh yea, a guy named Barrow was trying to be the next white star...didn't work out very well. Background plot?

The jewels helped somehow in defeating him and the sealed god maybe? a special power no one knew existed...hmm.

[mandibuzzing]

you should ... totally infodump abt your warrior cats x lost au ...... 👀

RUBBING MY HANDS TOGETHER

i first watched lost back in 2012 and this watch through i’m doing rn is the first time i’ve gotten farther then season one and i’m watching it with my roommates who haven’t seen it yet so im VERY MUCH making things up as we go and getting input from my roommate but there’s also some things i remember from watching that they have no idea about and i just have to be like “mhmhmhm :x we will get more info on that later…..” so the story and how the overall show ends up (and especially the uhh… crazier things later on) are changing

BUT ANYWAYS the main gist from a human perspective is that the characters are all a part of a experiment on feral cat colonies and feline behavior and in being flown to whatever location the lab is, the plane(just a small private one i imagine) crashed on the island and there were no human survivors so once the cats are there, it’s basically just them and other wildlife. the island IS indeed purgatory and is a direct conflict with starclan. obviously not all the cats believe or even know about starclan, but for the ones that do, that is their first explanation for how they ended up there.

though i call the au lostclan, the characters never refer to themselves like that. the others i think will have a clan name but i’m still rotating them in my brain since we haven’t gotten there yet. but the idea is going to be that while yes they are a clan, it’s definitely nothing like what the clan born castaways are familiar with.

for the cats that were in clans before the island… honestly i don’t know what their clans were. the cats(other than ones who canonically know each other) are all in different clans that most likely haven’t interacted with each other and also probably have slightly different customs than the existing clans in warriors, like with mousenose(jack) having a mate and briarfur(michael) having a kittypet mate and it not being that big of a deal. cross clan relationships are generally still frowned upon and ofc wolffrost(christian) having a child other than mousenose is very much a secret. for characters like sun and jin and dealing with the pretty big point of uhhhhh speaking korean… we decided to just. have them be cat korean and pretend like there’s still a language barrier bc who cares it’s all pretend. their clan life customs are different than the other clans so we tried to have that shown w their names just being korean words. sun is obviously hae(sun) and jin is mulgogi(fish).

some plot points i think we’re going to have to just gloss over or cut out, but one i’m really proud of is that instead of being a one hit wonder rockstar, honeythorn(charlie) was a part of a prophecy, likely when he was an apprentice and after the prophecy was completed he kinda just was seen as a regular warrior by his clanmates which is what leads him to kitty substance abuse(that part is still a wip lol).

wolffrost(christian) and mousenose’s(jack) relationship has been the most fun to adapt. mousenose was mousepaw well into adulthood because wolffrost withheld it from him as a manipulative tactic to force his son to keep pushing himself for his father’s approval. he finally receives his full medicine cat name after mousepaw had to take over for wolffrost treating a young warrior who was in a bad border scuffle. wolffrost’s paws were shaking and he ended making her injuries worse. while this was happening, mousepaw was out collecting herbs when a clanmate comes running up to him saying he needs to get back. mousepaw sprints back and takes control of the situation, but unfortunately she died- the first death under mousepaw’s paws. later in the medicine cat den, wolffrost tells mousepaw that death happens and it’s no one’s fault to which mousepaw stops him and accuses wolffrost of not being of sound mind while trying to treat her. wolffrost then pivots the conversation, telling mousepaw he is finally ready to gain his full name. mousepaw is skeptical but the two leave for moonstone(or whatever the equivalent is in this clan) and speak with starclan. he receives his full name but it’s then that mousenose is approached by the warrior he lost. she thanks him for trying his best to save her and her unborn kits. this makes mousenose stop in his tracks. he had no idea she was pregnant- information that would have affected what herbs he used while trying to save her. furious and betrayed, mousenose wakes up and sprints back to camp, wolffrost chasing after him, begging him to stop and just listen to him. mousenose barrels into camp where the clan is holding vigil for the warrior. he proclaims in front of everyone that she had been pregnant, that wolffrost knew, and that he was responsible for her death. the clan is appalled and wolffrost is exiled.

if you’d like to look at more art done by me and my roommate and eventually character info of each, they’re all uploaded on toyhouse! and if there’s any specific questions about any of them… i’m happy to answer and ramble more and also maybe doodle :3c

[rhaenyras]

EXTENDED LIST OF THINGS THAT ARE WRONG WITH CHAPTER 139

ymir the founder fritz, aka the most powerful and compelling plot device that isayama could have ever employed in order to explain the origin of the titans, the inherent slavery of the eldian people, and also everything else wrong in the world, was emptied of all value and purpose when she was revealed to have loved her abuser and oppressor. her life-long struggle to break free from the slave mentality that was pounded into her since childhood turned out to be... totally hollow. the woman's real purpose was to keep loving the man who cut off her tongue, raped her as a child and eventually had her cannibalized by their daughters when she failed to survive a murder attempt on his person. which makes for a very pinpoint parallel with eren, tbh, but he gets a whole paragraph all to himself later. amor vincit omnia should not become a convenient fix-it trope so that stuff can magically make sense in less than 50 pages. not to mention that this makeshift “solution” doesn't account for countless plot holes, that would only make sense if ymir was an abuse survivor looking to get her agency back. and even if i was keen on excusing the sloppy writing, i still wouldn't let the whole romanticisation of rape and trauma thing slide so easily. by giving a young victim like ymir fritz romantic feelings and a blind devotion towards her rapist, isayama is basically conveying a very pitiful and toxic message, one he refuses to even dignify with a realistic explanation for the thousands of readers who couldn't make a sense of it. the way this twisted version of love seems to be universally accepted by all the characters in the last chapter, as they just shrug it off like some sort of inevitable superior force that works in mysterious ways, made me wanna gouge my eyes out and never read another word again

mikasa's arc. mikasa had the potential to be the only character in the entire manga to come out on top when all was said and done. she had openly opposed eren's idea of a genocide. she had left the scarf behind when he voiced his hatred for her. she seemed ready enough to sever the proverbial umbilical cord and move on, live a life with pride, knowing how she could have outgrown her silly, dependent, obsessive old self. she might have started out as a yandere caricature, a passive and annoying side-effect to having eren as the main character, but she could have done so much better later on. she, too, just like ymir fritz, might have broken free, if only isayama liked liberated and strong women. she had the range. she had the potential, the backstory, everything. given the chance, she could have redeemed herself. but did isayama care? nope. he just threw her to the sickos in the fandom and said “here's your little psycho doll. do what you will with her. also, she's the key to understanding the superior force that works in mysterious ways aka love aka all the nonsense i'm actually too lazy to commit to”. and so, mikasa is as inconsequential in the ending as she ever was as eren's ever-present bodyguard, if not more, because now she's even refusing to look ahead and fight. two things that she at least tried to do every so often back when eren was alive. not only she surrendered to her own mental illness, but she even saw it turned into a pretty fantasy that the readers can idealise (again, romanticisation of all the wrong things) and that she'll never be able to escape so long as she lives. what's worse, she doesn't even want to, because in this manga we love downgrading and being stuck in the past, as the worst possible versions of ourselves.

historia's pregnancy. it shouldn't even have happened in the first place, unless it was dictated by historia's explicit desire to have a child precisely when she asked for one and by that one unnamed farmer guy and nobody else. whether that was the case or not remains, to this day, still shrouded in mystery because, again, isayama didn't think of coming clean about any aspect of historia's sudden decision. the notion that she might have been raped or submitted to something she really didn't want simply for the drama of it leads to some pretty terrifying implications. i have already explained countless times how it didn't even make sense for eren to be so adamant about rejecting the 50 year plan on account of not wanting historia to be breeded like cattle, titanised, and eventually devoured by her children, if he was just... gonna let her have her way, she only had to ask him nicely. why ever would historia need eren's permission to have a child? what was she even trying to tell him in chapter 130? why did eren tell her something as pivotal as the genocide plan if the friendship between them wasn't any different from any other in the 104th? why would eren take the risk to meet her in secret and suggest that they do something as radical as fighting the mp's or running away, if all she had to do was just... ask that he let her get pregnant? i suppose that was just a bait for a very specific side of the fandom, at this point, as the extent of the entire cryptic conversation from ch. 130 was never covered, and we were probably just supposed to forget about it. I can only forgive isayama for basically baiting me into shipping erehisu because he still gave historia a decent wrap-up in the ending, she looked in control and happy enough with her new life, which is something i warmly wished for her. she seems to be in a better spot than most of her former comrades, and virtually, she is the true inheritor of eren's original (and later disowned) ideology, as she is the one who will lead eldia into the future as a free nation, whatever that may mean for them now that titan powers are no longer a thing. I'm very proud of her and generally i am happy with how things played out for her and yeah, thinking back on it with a colder mind... i wouldn't have wanted it any other way, ships be damned

wHY WAS LEVI IN A WHEELCHAIR????? like..... scars aside, he was up and about in one panel, and in the next he was disabled... that was just... idk?? weird but i suppose isayama went overboard to provide us with some residual dramatic value here

the genocide being just a red herring. APPARENTLY eren never believed that the genocide was a solid way to achieve freedom. his true intention was to antagonize himself so that his friends would be hailed as heroes, but like... why... he didn't even achieve the complete annihilation of conflict in the world by doing so? his friends might be heroes now, but they're going to spend the rest of their lives fighting for their very lives. if anything, eren sparked new conflicts and made the new order so much worse for the eldians, as they have no choice but to keep fighting, except with the same weapons as anybody else now. he basically doomed his people to a bleak future of war and possibly extinction. he killed 80% of the entire world to cause nothing but a disappointing regretful outcome, and in the end he even disowned everything he ever believed in. in comparison, zeke's euthanasia plan was some genius level shit that would have achieved the same result as eren, except with not nearly as much bloodshed.

the parasite. again, great idea, poor execution. what on earth happened to it? it was the Scientific Shit that made titans happen one moment, and then gone in the next, wrestled to death by a buff war criminal with ptsd... my disappointment is over the roof

eren himself. like, as a whole. oh, what's not to regret about the 180 eren did in the finale? witnessing a mc forsaking every relevant trait that's ever made him who he is, is simply painful on the eyes. isayama basically went and said “remember eren yaeger aka the suicidal blockhead who would sacrifice everything in order to achieve freedom? yes? well forget about him, you've got aaron yogurt now.” …... who even is this man? when he broke down and cried in front of armin, whining like a baby that he wanted mikasa to never move on from him, i legit got second-hand embarassment. I felt actual shame for the way isayama handled his characterisation. like... he is a mass murderer, ok... how can he just... kneel down and cry about his step-sister whom he never did anything to date anyway like it's nothing??? armin is right to be pissed at him but he's pissed for the wrong reasons, sadly. I don't even want to tackle the topic of eren murdering his own mother, as he basically confessed to going through life on autopilot because the founding titan just erased all his feelings, gave him superior knowledge of all things and compelled him to go with the flow of things, aka the exact opposite of what he's been preaching ever since day 1. W HAT on earth man. like i said in point #1, eren's crush on mikasa is actually very frightening too, and it leads us back to that one dark force that overpowered even ymir fritz. eren is in love with a girl who's obsessed, in denial and damaged. and what's worse, mikasa reciprocates his feelings, even though eren always overlooked her or manipulated her. ymir fritz kept misunderstanding all those red flags from the king as love, probably. this is really not a story of breaking the cursed cycle, because it seems to me that everyone has returned full circle in the end.

CONCLUSION: nothing isayama or anyone might have said in interviews or elsewhere could have prepared me for this raging shitfest. the entirety of that last chapter was farfetched to say the least, everything looked half-hearted and rushed, clumsily glued together because the real isayama died and somebody else had to ghostwrite the ending for him. I am sorry if i do sound a bit disillusioned about the whole thing and can't bring myself to be outraged either, but i've been way too invested into this manga for nearly a decade, and now it all blew up in my face, so i guess i no longer give it the power to upset me lol

[scripttorture]

One of the central characters in a fantasy story I'm writing has torture as part of her backstory. She was captured by an evil race, and one individual in particular put her through a "training" regime designed to turn her into a useful/trustworthy slave. Specifically the goals of the training were:

- destroy her sense of self / agency

- overwrite her ingrained response of healing herself when injured (she has magical healing powers)

- an affectionate or worshipful disposition towards her captors

- immediate obedience to any command

I feel like both physical and psychological torture / mental conditioning are probably appropriate, though I'm leaning away from including sexual abuse. I honestly don't know much about torture at all and the only things that come to mind as producing a result similar to what I'm looking for are the Game of Thrones torture sequence and the use of obdience collars in the Codex Alera book series. The latter is very interesting to me because it is a magical device that inflicts pain in reaction to disobedience but also inflicts pleasure to reward obedience.

I guess I'm just wondering if you have any advice for what kinds of methods would be good to include in a process designed to produce obedience, rather than torture for its own sake or to extract information, as well as if there are any common pitfalls I should try to avoid in writing about such a thing.

The training itself won't be in the book, but I need to be familiar with it for backstory purposes because later in the story this character encounters her torturer again, and is subjected to some further abuse before she finally overcomes her fear and kills him.

Alright well I’m going to be straight up with you: the scenario you’ve presented is a very common torture apologist trope. It’s incredibly unrealistic. And it’s unrealistic in ways that support torture by claiming it can be ‘useful’.

 Which probably means that you’re new to the blog and haven’t heard me give this talk before. That’s OK, we all learn sometime and it’s not my intention to shame you for the fact you’re not as obsessed with this stuff as I am or couldn’t afford to shell out for the books.

 Torture does not produce obedience. The best evidence we have right now suggests it encourages active resistance.

 If you got a lot of your inspiration from Game of Thrones then frankly I’m not surprised you came up with apologia. The torture in that series is incredibly badly handled. And a big part of the point of running this blog is that most people are getting their information on torture from shows like that. Which happens because the research is inaccessible and hasn’t been popularised the way fictional tropes (sometimes fictional tropes literally started by torturers) have been popularised.

 The important thing is what you choose to do now.

 I’m going to break down the problems here and make some suggestions for what you could do instead.

 Firstly: there is no torture or abuse that will guarantee obedience. Pain does not make people meek or compliant or willing to follow commands.

 Torture survivors are not broken.

 They are not ‘controlled’ by their torturers and the suggestion that they are is used in the real world to bar real survivors from treatment. It is also used to bar them from entering safe countries and to argue that they shouldn’t be allowed visas or passports.

 The best statistics we have for any sort of compliance under torture come from analysis of historical French data where torture was used to try and force confessions (something we know torture can sometimes do).

 The ‘success’ rate averaged at 10%. Under torture 90% of people will not comply long enough to sign their name.

 Secondly: torture does not and can not ‘make’ a victim feel ‘worshipful’ towards their torturer. The suggestion is kind of like asking if someone can tap dance immediately after removing the bones from their legs.

 Torturers have no control over a victim’s emotions. They have no control over their symptoms. They have no control over their beliefs.

 And there is no such thing as a torture that can change someone’s mind in a way torturers can control.

 Once again, this fictional trope is used by politicians and the media to justify marginalising real torture survivors.

 I have read hundreds, possibly thousands, of accounts from torture survivors. I’ve read historic and modern accounts. I’ve read accounts from all sort of people from all over the globe. I have never seen a survivor say anything positive about their torturers. I have never seen anything close to toleration.

 A lot of survivors are blisteringly angry at their torturers. A lot of them feel overwhelming levels of spite and some report literally putting themselves at risk of death in order to spite their torturers. And yes, a lot of them are afraid too. None of these emotions are mutually exclusive.

 Affection is impossible. We are not wired that way.

 Thirdly: I understand that ‘evil races’ are a long standing fantasy trope but it would be remiss of me if I didn’t mention the racism inherent in that idea. That some people are ‘born bad’.

 I’d strongly suggest you look up the Black, Indian and First Nations people that I know are on this site critiquing these kinds of fantasy tropes. Because they will be able to explain it better then I can.

 Fourthly: the term ‘psychological torture’ is a pretty common dog whistle for torture apologia.

 Most of the time tortures that people dub ‘psychological’ are things with real, physical effects that lead to lasting injury and death. They just don’t tend to leave obvious external scars. I use Rejali’s term ‘clean torture’ for these techniques. Researchers distinguish them from scarring tortures because they are harder to detect and prove in court.

 The majority of survivors today will have experienced clean torture. They will have no obvious physical scars. But they will still be disabled. They’re ‘just’ less likely to see any form of justice for it.

 Fifthly: torture is a terrible training method because it decreases a person’s ability to learn.

 Torture causes memory problems. It also often causes lasting physical injuries that make performing basic tasks more difficult. And it causes a lot of serious psychological problems which make performing basic tasks more difficult.

 A trained person who was never tortured will always out perform someone whose training involved torture.

 I probably sound quite angry here.

 I write fantasy and I also write about torture a lot. But I can’t imagine that it’s just flavour for a fantasy world or some artefact of the past. Torture is a real, present threat in the country that I grew up in. If I was to return now I could, literally, be tortured and executed.

 If you want to include torture in your world, in your story then you are committing to telling someone else’s story. You are representing an incredibly marginalised group of people and you are presenting that representation to a third group, one that has never had contact with real torture survivors.

 Are you comfortable with the idea of telling your peers that survivors are still controlled by ‘the enemy’? That they’re passive? That they don’t have the capacity to make their own decisions?

 Are you comfortable knowing that the popularity of this message keeps millions of genocide survivors in refugee camps, blocked from citizenship, aid and safety?

 I understand feeling attached to a story and a character. And I understand that this information is hard to find. Hell I’m probably going to end up with the only English copy of one of the pivotal textbooks because I’m shelling out to get it translated.

 You say you want to write a torture survivor. With respect I don’t think you know what a torture survivor looks like.

 I think the most helpful, and kindest, thing I can do here is describe what torture does to people. Because I can’t tell you whether that’s something you want to write. I could try and rebuild this scenario for you (and if you decide you’re interested in that after reading all of this and all the links then I suggest looking through the blog tags for ICURE, torture as training, Black Widow and Overwatch.) But I think you need to decide whether you actually want to write a torture survivor first.

 Here’s a post on the most common torture apologia tropes.

 Here’s the post on the types of memory problems torture commonly causes. I strongly recommend picking at least one.

 Remember that this would never go away. Improvement and recovery in torture survivors means learning to live with symptoms. The symptoms themselves are permanent.

 It’s a hundred different alarms set up on their phone to try and make up for the forgetfulness that makes them miss appointments. It’s the little bottle of perfume in their pocket to bring themselves back to reality when they get intrusive memories at work.

 Here’s a post on the other common symptoms.

 You want something in the range of 3-5 of those, though more are likely if your character is held for years. Each of them should be severe. Every single symptom should have a large, negative, impact on the character’s daily life.

 Do you know anyone with chronic pain? It warps their world. Work can become impossible. Basic household tasks like getting dressed, cooking, cleaning the dishes are done through gritted teeth or not at all. Hobbies and ‘fun’ activities dwindle as they struggle to find a way to do them that doesn’t hurt. Interaction with other people, even loved ones, can easily become barbed.

 Because the pain makes everything more difficult. It means everything takes more energy, more effort. Which means that things fall by the wayside, whether that’s by a pile of mouldering dishes in the sink or snapping at a child. It means tears and the social judgement that follows them. It means the world narrowing as it gets harder to go out.

 Do you see what I mean? Every part of life.

 That’s an example for one symptom. You need to work out at least four. Then figure out how they interact. Then figure out what the character can do to make her life better.

 With chronic pain that can mean painkillers but it’s always more then that. It’s re-learning how to do things; how to put on trousers without aggravating the bad knee, how to sew with one hand. It means learning to cut down on what they do and it means learning a new sort of flexibility; accepting that there are days when the pain is too much.

 It can mean having the same conversation about disability over and over again. With family, with friends, with colleagues. ‘I can’t do that.’ ‘I can do that sometimes but not always.’ ‘That will hurt me.’ ‘I can’t use that chair.’ ‘I can’t get my arms that high above my shoulders.’ ‘I need help with this.’

 And that sometimes means learning a kind of patience that is really barely held back rage. Or perhaps I’m projecting a little with this last one.

 If you’ve never met a torture survivor, if you’ve never looked at a survivor’s work, then all this is difficult. You’re trying to imagine something from first principals with nothing to fall back on.

 So let’s bring some survivors into the discussion here. Some reality.

 Who’s listened to Fela? How about Bobi Wine?

 Fela Kuti was the father of modern Afro beats music. He was tortured multiple times and during one attack, which destroyed his home, his mother was murdered by the military. When he got out of jail Fela marched her funeral procession past the biggest barracks in Nigeria’s biggest city. He wrote two songs about this attack and he doubled down on his opposition to the military government.

 Fela’s music started causing riots.

 You can read what I have to say about him here. You can listen to his music on youtube.

 Here’s an interview with Bobi Wine, which was conducted shortly after he was tortured in Uganda. He talked about how he was determined to go back and continue fighting. Which he did. He even ran against the president.

 I’ve also got a short piece on Searle who was a cartoonist captured by the Japanese during World War 2. His drawings of what happened in To the Kwai and Back are worth seeing. Especially if you want to write atrocities on this scale. They will show you the scale and how to focus on the small, human elements despite that overwhelming scale.

 Alleg’s The Question is pretty much a must, it’s one of the most thorough accounts from the Franco-Algerian war.

 Monroe’s A Darkling Plain is also a must, it’s a series of interviews with survivors of various different conflicts and atrocities. Some are torture survivors. Some are not. It is essential reading because it shows the variety in survivors as well as giving a sense of their lives beyond the symptoms.

 Finally Amnesty International has literally hundreds of interviews and studies available for free online.

 The most important decision for any story with regards to torture is whether it should be there at all.

 So much of this topic is intimidating and so much of it is difficult to write. Not just in the ‘oh this is horribly effecting’ sense but in the ‘I have twelve things to juggle in this simple scene’ sense.

 Ask yourself what torture adds to this character and this story. What does this backstory actually give this character?

 Because if the point is to have her vulnerable and then ultimately triumphing violently over her attackers I don’t think you want a torture scenario. You could get the same thing from a bad guy trying to drug her and having the kidnapping fail when she fights him off, clumsy but effective nonetheless.

 And she could still come out of something like that traumatised.

 Right now I really don’t see this adding anything but torture apologia to your story.

 Handling torture well in a story means accepting that it can’t be the same story without it. It means watching the characters and narrative warp under the weight of it. It means lasting effects, for all the characters and for the world itself.

 I believe you are capable of writing that if you want to, pet. But this ain’t it.

Edit: I’m having trouble seeing the beginning of the answer here. Can anyone let me know if there are formatting issues again please? The first word in the htmal is ‘Alright’ but what I’m seeing on tumblr starts 8 paragraphs in.

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[reds-burrow]

Sorting Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

If you're unfamiliar with the Sorting Hat Chats system, check out @sortinghatchats and their WordPress, or this post by @wisteria-lodge.

Spoilers below. This really was Wenwu's movie though, so I may change my mind about Shang-Chi and Xialing's sortings if they get more development in future movies.

Xu Shang-Chi: Snake/Burnt Lion (recovers by end of movie) Throughout the movie it is his loved ones that spur him into action. In the bus scene, it's only when Katy is attacked that he decides to fight. After, he realizes his sister is in danger and rushes to hop on a plane to see her. Even his decision to save Ta Lo comes from his sense of responsibility for his father and a desire to protect the place his mother protected. As a kid, his father's unhealthy Snake primary dominated Shang-Chi's life, and he constructed his sense of right and wrong based on what Wenwu taught him, that a "Blood debt must be pain in blood." This led to the assassination, and the moment when Shang-Chi finally stopped prioritizing Wenwu's needs over his own. There is a pattern for unhealthy Snake primaries to latch onto someone and make them number one in their circle, above themself, especially if that Snake is young and is dealing with a parental or authority figure. Shang-Chi did this with Wenwu after the trauma of losing his mother and seeing the change in his father. The assassination was the first time Shang-Chi was on his own however, and the first time he was able to see himself and what his father had made him into. He finally found the strength to put himself first and ran away. His secondary burned, however, though only partway. When you look at how he solves single-player problems, particularly when he's fighting, he looks like a healthy Lion secondary. Watch in the bus fight, how he uses the bus itself as a weapon, bashing people against poles, using the elasticity of the articulated joint to jump and maneuver around people. Or in the scaffold fight how he knocks a guy down and uses the guy as a bridge. Shang-Chi displays some of the most creative Lion improvisational fighting we've gotten out of the MCU. But while his Lion was still healthy in single-player situations, it was burnt in multiplayer ones. He could no longer face his authentic self, something vital to the multiplayer part of a Lion secondary. He wound up finding Katy, who was experiencing her own secondary issues, and the two of them spent their days avoiding anything remotely hard. His journey to heal his Lion is a journey of accepting himself and what he did under the influence of his father, and after his time in Ta Lo with his aunt, he is able to reach that acceptance in time for the final battle. Both sides of himself, Loyalist and Constructed, reflected in the mixture of both his mother and father's style of martial arts, find balance.

Katy Chen: Snake/Snake

Katy is adrift when we first meet her. Her family and friends, aside from Shang-Chi, all push her to find a "real" job, to do something with her degree, to live up to her potential. But Katy just wants to have fun and admits that she tends to abandon things. This is a common thing in Snake secondaries, usually immature ones. As soon as something gets hard, boring, or if they feel they might get locked into it with no other options, they search out something new.

The only think Katy is unwavering in is her loyalty. She flies to a different country, enters another dimension, and puts her life on the line to fight for that dimension all because she is following her best friend. Even when Shang-Chi admits all the secrets he's been keeping, Katy's Snake primary doesn't falter. She refuses to abandon him, and if the mid-credit scene is any indication, Katy and Shang-Chi will be a package deal from here on out.

Xu Xialing: Snake/Badger

After her mother's death, Xialing was ignored by her father as he poured everything he had into revenge and training Shang-Chi. So, Xialing trained herself in secret, mastering the rope dart and a high level of martial arts. Her self-discipline and persistence helped her shape herself into a warrior, indicative of her Badger secondary. She also tells Katy that the way she managed living years alone with Wenwu was to keep her head down. When in survivor mode, Fluid secondaries may try blending in with the background, going invisible to avoid conflict. This is especially true of Badger secondaries who don't already have the extra armor that a mask can provide. Xialing describes this time of her life with distaste because she was essentially trapped and alone. Even so, she waited for years for Shang-Chi to return for her. Her loyalty to him is undeniable, and even as furious as she is for him abandoning her, she goes back to save him. Her founding of the Golden Daggers and later taking over the Ten Rings not only shows her ambition but comes back to the deep wound she was inflicted when she was rejected from training by her father. She wants a place where men and women can fight alongside each other because if she had had that as a child, she would have had a place to beside her father and brother.

Xu Wenwu: Snake/Bird

Wenwu is shown to be a collector of information, of old legends and maps. He's a collector of people, of warriors and even a jester. He collects Morris simply as proof of Ta Lo. His Bird secondary is in large part why he is able to hold power of a worldwide organization for over a thousand years. After living so long and experiencing so many deaths, he barely blinks when several of his men are killed on the way to Ta Lo. They were simply tools that served their purpose for as long as they could. Even so, he is undeniably a Snake primary. Everything he does in the movie is for Li. He gives up the Ten Rings, both the weapons and the organization, all for her, and after her death, everything is about revenge or bringing her back. While he is too consumed by grief and revenge to care for his children's emotional needs, he trained Shang-Chi because he thought his son needed revenge like he did and also to protect Shang-Chi. As he says, "I trained you so the most dangerous people in the world couldn't kill you." Conversely, he didn't train Xialing because she reminded him too much of her mother, and he didn't want her fighting anyone in the first place. As abusive as he is, he needs his children to be safe, which is why he had them tracked when they left. It is only when he sees that Li is living on through his children that he is able to find some semblance of acceptance and peace.

[flowerflamestars]

Hey hey hey 😀 not sure if you've been getting my asks(could really be my WiFi too) or Tumblr has been up to no good again, but hey how was ACOSF? I gather from your updates and posts you're just disappointed by it. A lot of us are. Hope you've been doing well after reading Acosf 😅

Hey babe! I know I have at least one from you that I need to answer- entirely my bad, I’ve been going through my inbox in little chunks. Yall have been too lovely and the influx is great :)

Disappointment is very much the right word. 

The big thing- ignoring that Nesta as a character was meaningful, or that the baby plot line was big swing in every wrong way possible, the plotting is a MESS- is that I think the story resoundingly fails on both it’s goals.

It’s a recovery story, a healing story. And a romance.

BIG SPOILERS AHEAD

Nesta is stripped of her autonomy. And I want to be extremely clear on that- this is framed as an intervention and it is not an intervention. It is not, at any point, really about Nesta becoming healthy. It’s about control. Rhys says it, Feyre says it, Cassian says it: Nesta is a problem. Nesta affects their reputation. Nesta needs to be punished.

Morrigan, a fellow abuse/assault survivor, tells Cassian with absolute seriousness that they should just throw Nesta into the Court of Nightmares and leave her there. Because she’s just as bad.

WHAT

The entire structure is that Nesta needs to change- but it isn’t about her being safer, her finding her way- it’s about the fact that her being suicidally depressed makes her sister sad.

So yeah, Nesta gets stronger. Because one of her two-pronged punishments is army training with the man she once loved and has been trying to distance herself from for YEARS. Who proceeds to control what she wears, when she sleeps, WHAT SHE EATS. Who laughs, when she gets hurt. 

By the end of the story, the issue Nesta has confronted, from her laundry list of trauma is...that she’s bitchy to her sisters in instances of extreme distress/hardship. 

That she...blames herself for the death of her abusive, absent father, who in no way contributed to her life from the time of her mothers death into her adulthood until he showed up for...ten seconds in acowar, named a ship after her, and immediately died. Watching a parent die? traumatic as hell. Retconning an ENTIRE parent-child relationship to make a character have something more palatable to struggle with? Bad writing.

Rape hangs over Nesta like a cloud this whole novel, but she never talks about it. It never in any way comes up while her and Cassian are having rough sex on every available surface.

She never heals, and she never becomes comfortable as a faery. She gives up her power. 

Literally AND figuratively- Nesta is the same person at the end of the novel, but now she can punch really hard? has no magic, gave up a destiny the book STRONGLY IMPLIES was actually, really, always about Rhysand. All that changed is now she’s finally bent enough to play by the rules of the same people who condemned her for responding to the terrible things that happened it her...in ways exactly like they have and continue to do.

It makes me so sad, you know?

Which brings us to Cassian.

Who is supposed to be the emotionally intuitive one. The one who has survived so much, who understands trauma. Who more than that, understands Nesta, better than anyone else.

That is not the man in this book. 

He’ll make this earnest declarations that sound...almost right? and then ten seconds later he’s guilt-tripping her. Saying just, absolute bullshit to her. Sexualizing her in her lowest moments.

It’s not enemies to lovers- Cassian is ashamed of Nesta when the book begins. Takes active glee in physically punishing her when she’s having a breakdown 600 pages later, on what it supposed to be the great tipping point of their relationship.

At no point does this man seem to even LIKE Nesta. He wants to have sex with her. He want her to do what he wants and obey 1) him and 2) their High Lord and Lady. 

Nesta, who even toward the end of the book, as I said STILL IS NOT HEALING AT ALL, tells Cassian: “I don’t deserve you, and I never, ever will.”

Cassian’s response it to...kiss her?

Tell her: “You’re not going to marry Eris.” “There will be no one for else. For either of us.”

And then Nesta says yes, cries more, and they have sex again.

oh yeah, and then in the morning he runs off? To have a snowball fight? And then doesn’t speak to her or see her for three days.

I just. This dynamic never gets better. Proud, strong, intelligent, ferocious Nesta is always kind of like: will you look at me? you’re good and i am not. 

She’s not safe in this love. Not comfortable, not ever on even ground. The entire dynamic of this relationship has brought her low and keeps her there.

So like, in the end. They have this fight where Cassian fully starts yelling at her...in public...because she isn’t saying yes! we’re mates! I’m going to quote it here:

“I am your mate, for fucks sake!” Cassian shouted, loud enough for people across the river to hear. “You are my mate! Why are you still fighting it?”

She let the truth, voiced at last, wash over her.

“You promised me forever on Solstice,” he said, voice breaking, “Why is one word somehow throwing you off that?”

“Because with that one word, the last scrap of my humanity goes away!” She didn’t care who say them, who heard. “With that one stupid word, I am no longer human in any way. I’m one of you!”

He blinked. “I thought you wanted to be one of us.”

“I don’t know what I want. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Well, I didn’t have a choice in being shackled to you, either.”

GUYS. I hate this fight to unfathomable levels.

so yes, he immediately tries to recant it...but like, let’s follow the thread for a minute. They’re together, really together, ever since the stupid moment Nesta said she was trash and didn’t deserve Cassian and Cassian said...you and me! forever! let’s fuck about it!

I get that the matebond is a precious thing- but god, it could not be clearer Cassian just...doesn’t respect Nesta even a little bit? She won’t use the word, so he’s yelling at her.

a page before: “That word means nothing to me, Cassian,” she said, voice thick as she tried to keep people who strode past from overhearing. “It means something to all of you, but for most of my life husband and wife was as good as it got. Mate is just a word.”

BECAUSE SHE WAS HUMAN. Because, very validly... Nesta has been fae for, two years? Her baseline is human, that’s how she feels. And she’s not wrong??

Faeries get married too. It’s not mates or nothing. 

In my imaginary book, Cassian goes: why Archeron, is that a proposal? Because I’d love nothing more than to be your husband.

In THIS BOOK, he snaps: “That’s bullshit.”

Annnd cue fight.

Not only is Cassian so, so disrespectful of Nesta’s feelings...HE THOUGHT SHE WANTED TO BE A FAERY?

Are you kidding me, canon? Nesta was drowned against her will in the Cauldron! Cassian was there, unconscious in a pool of his own blood, still trying to reach her and save her. The ENTIRE pivot of her character that slides her into the dark place this book is meant to heal her from is her complete loss of autonomy at Hyberns hands.

and then the shackle line. I just...obviously, people say things in arguments they don’t mean, But Cassian never once stops going for what hurts the most where Nesta is concerned, and is yet baffled by her responses. He understands how to hurt her, but not how to comfort her when they’re fully clothed.

And then the end is...they’re mates. They’re going to have babies. They’re going to have a big faery mating ceremony. Nesta’s feelings aren’t not addressed, they magically cease to exist.

I’m sorry this turned into a FULL RANT- but yes, I’m disappointed. 

Its always the same story: the difficult woman has to soften. Learn to be nice. Power? she can’t have that. She’s going to have a mate and babies, that’s her journey, because that’s every woman's journey.

There is one bright spot, which I do have to mention. I love Nesta’s friends. 

They’re her real chance at recovery, that the IC have nothing to do with. And you know what? she makes them right off the bat. It’s crazy how if you treat someone like a person, they can function like one.

I just want them to have their own story far, far away from everyone else. 

[the-ferocious-kittyrose]

What I would’ve done w/ Lotor’s character

It’s not exactly a secret to anyone who’s been following me for a while that I’m not the biggest fan of canon Lotor. I had high hopes for the character from his 80s counterpart and intro in season 3 but I was really let down by the direction the writers went with him in canon.

When he was introduced, I was so hoping for him to be this cocky manipulative asshole that’s only out for himself. I love that character archetype so goddamn much.

But in canon he was just kinda boring to me. His personality was bland and his motivations never really made sense. He’s introduced using empty promises of peace and comradery to manipulate people, then its revealed that he actually does want peace and comradery and wants to lead a peaceful empire, then that turns into draining Alteans and wanting to kill all Galra...

I also didn’t like how the writers decide to tack on this whole child abuse plot to explain why he was the way he was. As if that’s the only way to make a villain sympathetic. Yeah other versions of Voltron have touched on Lotor’s childhood before and it was never pleasant, but VLD really leaned into that shit, to the point where it felt like the writers were just shoving angst down our throats thinking that equals good writing.

It takes more than a tragic backstory to make a character compelling. It takes an interesting personally and motivations that make sense. And you can make a character tragic/sympathetic in more subtle ways.

For me personally, I wanted Lotor to be a sorta fusion of Loki and Littlefinger in space.

Loki is a sly trickster who grew up feeling like an outcast, unaware of his true heritage. He grew up believing he could be king but when his shity father handed it to his perfect brother he felt he had been robbed and decided to take the throne by force.

Littlefinger is a small man from a small house with no power, and after getting the shit beat out of him trying to win the hand of the girl he loved, he decided he would use his intelligence and skills in manipulation to screw over all these noble lords and weasel his way into the throne. And when he did he would finally get vengeance on all those who had looked down on him.

I feel like this fits Lotor well. Lotor is a prince, so he isn’t small in that regard, but he is not respected in the way a prince should be.

He is a lot smaller than the average Galra. And even though Lotor is still quite strong, developing a fighting style that suits his small form and uses his opponents size against them, in a society so heavily based on physical strength that’s still a big blow to your rep.

He employs half breeds, which we know are looked down on in the empire. And there are definitely rumors about Lotor himself being a half breed. I think after 10,000 years Zarkon would’ve done a pretty good job at hiding Lotor’s heritage from the public but just looking at him compared to the average Galra there’s going to be some suspicion there. On that note Lotor is probably considered butt ugly by the Galra.

And Lotor works in the shadows and achieves his goals through lies and trickery, which Lotor himself says are things the empire looks down on.

So yeah, the people in the empire hate Lotor. Even Sendak who’s all ‘Gung ho empire’ has no respect for Lotor. And because of this it would probably be up in the air whether or not Lotor would even be allowed to take the throne if his father were to pass, even though it’s his birthright.

And in the face of all this rampant disrespect, Lotor decides that he is going to overthrow his father and take the throne. And when he does he will take vengeance on everyone who had ever undermined him and expand the empire beyond anything his father could’ve dreamed of.

And don’t try telling me, “oh that’s so out of character! Lotor would never take pleasure in the pain of others!” Because he does.

Remember Throk? Remember how Lotor sent him away to the worst station in the empire and joked about letting him, “rot with the ice worms?” Remember how Lotor later invaded his station then watched with a grin as he was tortured by Haggar?

Lotor 100% takes pleasure in hurting those who would hurt him, because it makes him feel powerful.

Now let’s talk about Lotor’s planet. The one given to him and destroyed by Zarkon. I always felt weird about this plot. Obviously it’s a very sad thing to have happen, but I always liked the idea of Lotor’s promises of peace to be empty, a means of manipulating people. So this whole situation being genuine feels weird to me.

In my version, Lotor didn’t get banished for being too kind. He got banished because Zarkon caught him in a plot to betray him.

When Lotor was put in charge of the planet, he seduced and married the princess Ventar. He filled her head with promises that her people would be free and they would rule the universe together and convinced her to secretly round up her armies and send word to her ally planets to do the same, so they could start planning a way to overthrow Zarkon.

It’s left ambiguous whether or not he was being genuine and whether he really loved Ventar and intended to keep his promises to her or if she was just a tool to get the throne. But either way, it ends the same. Zarkon finds out, destroys the planet, kills Ventar, and exiles Lotor.

Still sad/humiliating thing for Lotor, and definitely a story that could gain sympathy from Allura.

Speaking of Allura and Ventar, let’s talk about Lotor’s relationship with the women in his life.

(Trigger Warning: Brief mention of of a rape scene in GoLion)

In the 80s Lotor was incredibly misogynistic. He walked around with a harem of half naked women, tried repeatedly to kidnap and marry Allura against her will, and in GoLion it’s heavily implied that he raped Romelle because she looked like Allura.

It’s a common joke in the fandom that he went from this to drinking respect women juice in VLD but I don’t know if I’d go that far.

He’s definitely better in VLD than he was in the 80s, but even in VLD he manipulates, uses, and hurts most of the women in his life.

Allura is the obvious example, but you also have his generals. Acxa talks to the paladins, Allura in particular, about how persuasive Lotor could be. Implying that she and the other general were manipulated the same way Allura was.

Well not EXACTLY the same way Allura was, romantically I mean. Though there are people who believe that Acxa was also in love with Lotor and he used that to his advantage, which I can see.

But I feel like it was more about giving them a place in an empire that didn’t care about or accept them.

I hate The Last Jedi but I really feel like the line, “you’re nothing, but not to me,” fits really well. They were outsiders with no place to go until Lotor swooped in and gave them a purpose.

Do I think that there was a part of Lotor that genuinely wanted to help them because he saw a kindred spirit in them? Yeah. But I also think that at the end of the day, they were more tools than real friends. And he had no qualms about killing them if they betrayed him.

The situation with Narti proves that. As well as the fact that Ezor and Zethrid seemed very scared of the prospect of Lotor being alive and coming for them.

And then you have Allura. Lotor’s lust for Allura has always been a very important part of his character. In the 80s the reason behind his obsession with her was that he had a lot of baggage about his mother and had a thing for women that looked like her. Also the fact that he just didn’t like not getting something he wanted.

There was never any love. He didn’t want to be with her, he wanted to own her.

In VLD, his want for Allura seems to stem more from the fact that she’s Altean than an Oedipus complex. As well as the fact that she’s powerful and skilled in Altean alchemy, which makes her rather useful.

I don’t personally believe that Lotor ever really Loved Allura. I think he liked the idea of her and what she could do for him, but the end of the day she was more a means to an end than anything else.

Allura’s been trough a lot. Zarkon betrayed her family and destroyed her entire planet only about a year ago from her point of view, and she appears to have a pretty bad case of survivors guilt and PTSD. And to make matters worse, while Lotor was on the ship she was fighting with Shiro, someone she clearly cared about. The idea of loosing him after already losing so much must’ve been really painful.

She was hurting, conflicted, and lonely. Which made her all the more vulnerable to Lotor’s manipulation.

He took advantage of her loneliness and insecurities, making her believe she had found someone who understood her and could help her avenge her family and planet. She trusted him, let herself be vulnerable around him, which made it hurt even more when it was revealed to all be a ruse.

And then you have his relationship with his mother Honerva/Haggar.

I talked a lot about this in my whole rewrite/rant about Honerva, but I’m not a fan of how they made their relationship 100% negative. I feel like it robs the show of a lot of interesting character interaction.

It’s sad. The whole relationship is really tragic. Shit like this is literally my worst nightmare. The thought of looking my mom in the face and have her not recognize me as her daughter keeps me up at night.

But the thing is, in canon the relationship kinda falls flat because Lotor and Haggar/Honerva have no connection. Haggar was awful to Lotor and Lotor hates Haggar. What reason do I have to be invested in their relationship?

So If you haven’t read my Honerva rant, here’s how I would’ve done the Honerva Lotor relationship.

10,000 years ago, when Alfor came to Dibazzal to convince Zarkon to close the rift, Honerva went into labor. Alfor and many Galran doctors tried there best to save her and the baby, but the quintessence had damaged her body so much that she couldn’t be saved and died in childbirth.

Zarkon went ballistic and Alfor had the doctors take baby Lotor somewhere safe, fearing Zarkon would take his grief and anger out on the child.

After Honerva was resurrected as Haggar and throughout Lotor’s childhood, they had a strange sort of relationship. Lotor was an inquisitive child and was always curious about Haggar and her work, making a habit of following her around like a little shadow and watching as she worked. And there was also the fact that, while his father was never friendly, he was calmer when she was around.

Haggar had no idea what to make of this weird child following her around all the time. All these big strong Galra were terrified of her but this tiny child showed no fear as he tugged on her robes and excitedly asked questions about her work. And she never minded. She didn’t know why or how to explain it, but she cared for the child. As much as a soulless undead witch could care for something anyway.

But as time went on there relationship became more and more strained. Lotor was a smart kid he was gonna find out about his mother and deduce what happened to her.

He resented Haggar. Resented her for not remembering him. Resented her for the fact that he had to go through life without a mother while she was right there. And he resented her for being loyal to Zarkon, who had been making his life hell for thousands of years.

Every time she showed him something resembling kindness he’s conflicted. He knows he should feel happy that she cares, but at the same time, why does she care? It’s not like she sees him as her son.

He turned to denial, insisting that Haggar couldn’t possibly be his mother, even though he new the truth deep down, and a part of him always secretly longed for her to remember who she was, who he was, and embrace him as her son. He hates that part of himself.

And when he does meet Honerva for the first time, it’s... tense... to say the least. Having his mother reach out to him and acknowledge him as her son is something he thought would bring him joy, but in that moment all the pain he went through rises back to the surface and he lashes out. He draws his sword and is about to cut her down but he hesitates. He’s trembling with tears in his eyes. He can’t forgive her, but he also can’t bring himself to kill her.

Then you have his relationship with his father.

It’s no secret that Zarkon is an awful man and a shity father, always has been.

The explanation as to why is kinda shaky. All we get is Zarkon saying Lotor is his greatest shame because he’s Altean but I don’t know about that. Zarkon may hate Alteans but he loved Honerva and I don’t think he would be ashamed of his relationship with her.

He definitely did his best Lotor’s heritage from the public. But I don’t think that’s the reason he hates him.

In my version of the story, Zarkon hates Lotor because Honerva died giving birth to him and Zarkon blames him for her death. He lost his beloved wife and was forced to watch the son that killed her waltz around wearing her face.

It didn’t help that Lotor was a snarky rebellious kid that liked to show off. He did things his own way, didn’t care much for rules, and had a real knack for finding loopholes. All things that made his strict father very angry. He was an embarrassment. Small and rebellious. That’s why Zarkon began training Sendak.

I personally believe the reason Zarkon was so trusting of Sendak and had so much faith in him was because Zarkon had been grooming him to be his “true heir.” Sendak is the epitome of what a Galra should be. Strong, loyal, and brave. He would be the son Zarkon wished he had. The favorite child.

Lotor obviously hates Zarkon, and rightfully so. Zarkon hates him for something he had no control over and constantly disrespects him.

Lotor may not follow the rules, but he passes every trial. He excels at everything he does but Zarkon refuses to see that all because he blames him for Honerva’s death.

Lotor sees Zarkon as an old fool. He knows that he could do a far better job at running the empire.

Lotor dedicated thousands of years of his life to overthrowing Zarkon. His hatred for his father was his motivation, what got him out of bed every morning, so when the deed is done and Zarkon was finally defeated, in the moments after he felt empty.

But he didn’t have time to dwell on that feeling for long. He still had to deal with his father’s men and take the throne that was rightfully his.

Then you have his plan.

Lotor’s plan in VLD is really weird and over complicated. There was no real reason for the whole draining Alteans thing. Just a lazy way of making him 100% evil.

The plot could’ve been a lot simpler. He gains the paladins trust, gets them to help him build his ships and overthrow Zarkon, and then once he has the throne he pulls an Uno reverse card and is like, “yeah, nothing personal but this was all a trick and imma lock you and your lions up now.”

Obviously more complicated than that but that’s the basic idea.

One of my main problems with VLD is that they had a bad habit of over complicating the plot. People don’t care about VLD because of the plot, they care about the characters and their relationships, the actual plot doesn’t have to be anything spectacular.

It’s strange to say but I feel like the writes tried too hard with Lotor. He had the potential to be an amazing villain but the writers were too focused on tricking the audience and making him angsty that they forgot to make him compelling.

[hotchley]

neptune’s ocean (wash this blood)

Okay so, I ended up on the part of TikTok that has A Thing for Hotch’s hands, and I decided to make it angsty. And then it had a happy Mortch ending? I don’t know... 

The title is a reference to Macbeth: “Will all great Neptune’s wash this blood from my hands? No, this my hand will rather the multitudinous seas incarnadine, making the green one red.” It’ll make sense when you read.

This was cathartic to write, especially given the conversation I had today. I hope it is somewhat cathartic to read. You can heal. You can move on, you can be happy, and your biggest fears may never come true, no matter what your brain says. As usual, no proofreading, or dialogue.

Word Count: 2486

Trigger Warnings: child abuse, blood, vomit, guns, death, grief/mourning, intrusive thoughts, survivors guilt

read on ao3!

He can’t bring himself to look at his hands. They’d never been something he’d actually focused on. He’d never thought they were cute the way Jack’s were, or hated how slender his fingers were, so unlike the stereotypical hero. He didn’t pause his life to watch them carry out household tasks the way Haley always had.

Haley. Haley who is dead, and gone and cold, and whose blood coats his hands like a second skin. She loved his hands. She always told him how she loved everything about him, but his hands were her favourite thing. She loved how soft they were. How strong they were. Everything about them. 

In their first apartment, with the random photos and multi-coloured walls and traces of themselves and love everywhere, she had confessed this love to him. He had laughed when she couldn’t explain what she loved, or why. Haley had thrown a pillow at him in retaliation. But when they ended up laying on the sofa, both claiming they would go and clear the kitchen in a moment, she had linked their hands over her chest and kissed his knuckles.

And confessed that part of the reason she loved them was that they were so much bigger than hers.  When Aaron asked her why, Haley turned away and said it was embarrassing. He convinced her to tell him. How, he wasn’t sure. But she told him.

It was because they made her feel safe.

But as he sits in the living room that had once been full of love and life and joy and her, his hands being wiped of all of his sins as though they were as easy to bury as her body, he thought about how those same hands she loved had only hurt her.

He looks down, needing to see the traces of blood before they’re removed forever. As he does so, the limbs start to blur before his eyes. His eyes swim with tears and his throat starts to close. How many times before today has he washed them? Scrubbed at the pain until the skin turned red and raw?

How many times had he succeeded at rubbing it away? At hiding it, not just from everyone else, but from himself? And how many more times would he have to repeat the motion before his hands were clean? Would they ever be clean?

He wipes the tears from his eyes. He doesn’t deserve to cry. Not now. Not after everything he has ruined. 

Moments flash through his mind all at once.

Aaron Hotchner is eight.

His father is drunk- but that’s not an excuse, not now and not ever, although he will only learn that at thirteen in a boarding school meant to destroy him- and he does not understand what is going on. 

But his father has taken the belt from his trousers and brought it down on too small for his age hands until he sees blood. His hands tremble uncontrollably. Tears stream down his face, but there is no sympathy or kindness waiting for him. Not this time. 

The next day, he can hardly hold his pen. Nobody seems to notice or care. So he grits his teeth and bears the pain. It is the first time he finds himself doing such a thing, but it will by no means be the last.

Aaron Hotchner is fourteen. 

Someone insults his mother. And they aren’t wrong. He will realise this in a few years: that his mother was just another victim, but in that moment, he is just a teenager angry at the world for letting him live. But whilst he knows it to be true, Sean does not. Sean does not understand that their mother is not perfect, and is just as broken as his brother’s spirit.

Sean is scared. No, he’s terrified that their mother is going to be taken from them and that they’ll never see her again. Aaron feels guilty for wishing that would happen- that both their parents would be taken away, and they would be carried off by someone that can love them the way a parent is meant to be. 

Sean is scared, and Aaron is meant to ensure that never happens. He punches the boy.

It hurts his hand more than it hurts the other boy’s face, but he still ends up being suspended. His father hurts his hands again. It’s in that moment that he finally makes a wish: that he would never be like his father, even if he was his mirror.

Aaron is seventeen. 

Somehow, he finds himself at Haley’s home. Her parents are away for the weekend. His are still in that wretched house, playing roles in front of their guests and destroying the set behind closed doors. 

His hands are covered in blood because his father hit too hard.

Jessica, who is back from college, and the reason their parents are not at home, answers the door. She starts to close it when she sees that it is him. But then she sees how scared he looks, and finally understands why Haley is so protective over this boy. 

She lets him in, and does not let him apologise. She summons her sister. His girlfriend.

Haley hugs him. She has suspected this for a while now- everyone has- but she’s going to be different in the way that she is going to act. His fists remain clenched at his side as she makes this decision. Because this is a mistake. He cannot ruin her as well. He needs to walk away.

But Haley and Jessica don’t let him. Haley takes his hands and in the same way Derek will twenty years later, wipes the blood away without blinking or flinching. And then Jessica bandages them up, making sure to use antiseptic to prevent infection. It stings. He doesn’t react. It’s nothing compared to his father.

He tries to ask them how they know what to do, and they both shush him. When Jessica wipes her eyes, and Haley pats her back, he remembers the days they would spend at the church, and the women that would spend hours with them, only returning to their homes when the sun went down.

It is enough to make him vomit. They clean that up without judgment.

And then, and then-

Aaron is twenty-six. 

He is graduating from law school, just like he is supposed to. His hand is shaken. He does not flinch away, even though he wants to. He doesn’t recoil because Haley and Jessica are sitting in the audience, the only people he even wanted to watch him walk across the stage. 

Their cheers are the only thing he can hear.

When Haley hugs him, and Jessica tells him how proud she is, he knows it isn’t just because he made it.

Aaron is twenty-eight.

He is dancing with Haley at their wedding.

Her hands are so much smaller than his. So much gentler. So much softer. So much more human. And so beautifully void of scars. So perfect.

He makes one final vow that he will never say aloud. He will always keep her safe. No matter what happens.

Hotch is thirty-two.

He shoots someone dead for the first time. The medics come running in to check the injuries on the hostages. To confirm the time and cause of death.

He drops the gun. Dave’s words- don’t let them see you break- echo somewhere in his mind, but he cannot help the display of vulnerability. His knees buckle. He hits the ground with trembling hands. He pulled the trigger that released the bullet that ended someone’s life.

On the train journey home, he pretends to be fine. Jason and Dave pretend to not notice that he is silently falling apart.

The door to his home- the only one he has ever known- closes. As Haley holds him, he cries. And then he tries to push her away because is going to destroy her. It’s in his blood. His father destroyed him, and his father destroyed him, and it is a vicious cycle that he cannot break.

But Haley does not let go.

When the tears stop, she asks. He manages to force the truth out. Haley tells him everything is okay, and that he did the right thing, that he will move on from this. Aaron pretends to believe her, and pretends he doesn’t see her shift away from him ever so slightly.

Perhaps this is the moment their marriage starts to end.

Aaron is thirty-four.

A nurse is placing his son in his arms. Haley is watching them both with a smile. He mirrors that smile. so in awe at her for giving birth.

He’s in awe of his son as well. Jack- named for Jacqueline, the mother Hotch gained from and lost to the job- is tiny. Aaron cannot quite believe he is real. Jack Gideon Hotchner is so small, but so trusting that the arms holding him will keep him safe.

So just as quickly as the awe overwhelmed him, the fear sets in. What is he doing holding a baby so small and precious? He will ruin this child. He needs to let go.

He hands the baby to Haley, and runs to the bathroom. His meagre dinner- fear for Haley had stopped him from eating properly- makes a second appearance.

Haley knows what happened- she always does. She doesn’t force him to explain what went through his head, nor does she tease him about not being able to handle the sight of childbirth like the nurses do, so blissfully unaware of the monsters that haunt his nightmares.

Instead, Haley lays Jack down in the cot beside her bed. And then she takes Aaron’s hands, covering them with her own. She presses a soft kiss to his knuckle. Almost like she is silently promising him the same thing: that he will not hurt this child the way he was.

Suddenly, he is in the present.

Aaron is thirty-nine.

He is sitting in the living room of the home he had built with Haley. The home they were supposed to raise Jack in. Together. But now she is gone. She is gone and it is all his fault. 

He let George Foyet escape. And then he took too long to work out his final plan. He took too long to get to the house. So now Haley is gone. Jack will grow up without a mother and a father that cannot trust himself to touch him without causing harm.

How can he?

He has killed a man. A person. A person who had surrendered, with nothing more than his bare hands. He killed the man that had murdered Haley, in order to save Jack, but what kind of person does that make him? How is he supposed to comfort his son by hugging him and holding him when the blood would never be washed from his hands? 

How could it?

He is worse than his father.

Derek leaves him after he finishes with the bandages. 

He returns a few seconds, minutes, hours- Hotch doesn’t know, time has become nothing to him- later. He returns to Hotch sobbing over all the things he has loved and lost since he was born.

Derek doesn't say a word. He doesn’t need to. He knows nothing he says will make the situation better. Instead, he takes Aaron’s hands and lets the man cry.

Healing- physical and emotional- takes time. Rationally, Aaron knows it will, but it’s still a difficult thing to accept. It takes longer than he wants it to.

 It angers him- that it’s taking him so long to get back to normal and move on. The grief counsellor (the one Derek urged him to see, if not for his own sake, then for Jack’s) reminds him that it’s normal. If it were anyone else, Hotch would tell them to let themselves feel, and to give themself time to mourn.

But he is supposed to be the leader of the BAU. And although he can hardly look at Jack without tears forming, he is a father. He needs to be there for his son. So whilst everyone- colleagues, family, Jack’s counsellor, his own therapist- tells him he needs to take care of himself as well, he just can’t.

He can’t bring himself to eat. He can’t bring himself to let go of the guilt. He can’t bring himself to mourn. He can’t bring himself to accept that Haley is gone, nothing more than a casket, a headstone, photos and the memories and stories her loved ones cling to.

There is so much he cannot do. Too much that he feels.

Yet no matter what seems to happen, no matter how sad he feels, how angry he gets at the world, Derek seems to stick around. When Aaron is terrified of hurting someone he loves, Derek is there to remind him he won’t. When he is so tired he can’t even sleep, but Jack wakes from a nightmare, Derek stays awake and reads to him.

When he forgets to eat.

When counselling drains him of his energy.

When his hands shake too much to point the gun at the target during his re-certification training.

When he can’t even look at his hands because of all the harm they have caused.

Derek stays, even when Aaron cannot hug his son.

Aaron Hotchner is forty-three years old.

It has been three years since Haley’s death.

Two years ago, he let go of his guilt. One year and nine months ago, he let go of his fear of moving on, as he realised he could love someone and remember her all at once. Seven months ago, he built up the courage to tell Derek how he truly felt.

Derek had kissed him, soft and gentle and perfect. It had been exactly the same and completely different to the first kiss him and Haley had shared. Because it had been perfect, and it had been unexpected, but it had been less desperate and less messy.

Derek had kissed him, and Aaron had felt peace. He knows Haley is proud of him.

Derek is watching him. The man who had lost everything and then found a way to carry on. The man who put everyone above himself, but is learning to care for himself. The man who still wakes up screaming, but who has learnt to breathe without fear of timing running out. 

The man he loves.

Jack is holding an ice-cream in one hand as he and Hotch walk side by side, down to where Morgan is waiting to surprise the boy- not so little anymore- with a trip to the bowling alley for his birthday. 

Jack holds his hand out for his dad to take.

And what does Aaron do?

He takes Jack’s hand in his own, without a single ounce of hesitation.

[kitkatopinions]

I feel the need to hear your opinion on this since this is something I've been thinking about recently, and it's how crwby handles complex relationships/abuse in their show... It's infuriating.

I can't tell if they genuinely think they are writing this in a good way or if they know they're half asss-ing it and don't care since the fandom will eat it up anyways. Two big examples that come to mind for me in the last volume are emerald & cinder and whitley & jacques. In both instances the the victim never gets a moment of closure or a moment of breaking away from their abuser, nor are either victims allowed to show any sort of 'hesitance' (for a lack of a better term) related to their abuse.

Emerald (despite being all over cinder before Midnight), just conveniently forgets about her for the finale. Same for whitley. He just completely forgets about jacques (the man who manipulated him from birth) the moment weiss hugs him. On a shallow level, watching a victim pay no mind to their abuser is satisfying, but it being so immediate is just unrealistic and takes away from the pain that we are supposed to think these characters have suffered.

One of the worst things about suffering from abuse is how is affects the victims even when they have left the abusive relationship, but crwby seems to want to erase that completely from characters who should experience that for plot convenience.

It seems like the lesson learned from this is "if you were abused, just get over it and be convenient to our heroes or else!" And it's pretty gross imo.

Thoughts?

I thought that I would put these two asks together and take this opportunity to talk about the abuse victims in RWBY and how they're handled. I've tried to think long and hard about what to say about this, because this is an important topic to me and something that's personal for me. I'm an abuse survivor, but I have a complicated relationship with that part of myself and I'm never really comfortable talking about it much. But despite the fact that I've experienced abuse, I recognize that I'm not a professional sensitivity editor, not a therapist, and not someone who's studied the effects of abuse.

I'm simply writing this based on my own feelings and what I've picked up witnessing other abuse victims discuss their own feelings about abused character. There will be RWBY criticism below the keep reading. Please keep in mind that I'm not speaking for all abuse survivors and am only trying to articulate my own feelings in regards to this issue.

The first thing to note is that there isn't one, correct, right way to write an abuse victim in my opinion. Lots of people have different reactions and responses to abuse, the way they were abused is often also different, causing different reactions.

In the first anon, it's noted that Emerald and Whitley both seem to move on from their abuse quickly and with very little effect on them or their stories. Many abuse victims put their experiences on the back burner or 'in a box' to deal with later, or mask and pretend that they're alright or that their abuse just didn't happen. Some of them let their feelings or their anger simmer over time. There are also abuse victims who do just... Move on with relative ease. I'd imagine that's very rare though. (again, I'm not not an expert or any sort of psychologist.)

In the same way, an abuse victim becoming an abuser in their own interactions is something that one hundred percent happens. Cinder, Salem, Adam, and even Blake and Winter have all acted in abusive ways towards the people around them (though obviously Blake and Winter acted much less abusive than any of the villains mentioned.) It might be very hard for abuse victims to not fall back into those patterns of abuse that they've suffered, especially if they go through it at an early age. I'm not very comfortable talking about my own experiences, but myself and my siblings have all had to fight down toxic, hurtful traits that we picked up either through emulating or through survival. And it's hard to do that. Portraying characters who have been abused that lost that fight and might have abusive tendencies or slip themselves is - to me at least - sometimes even helpful in working through my own feelings.

And there are definitely one hundred percent abuse victims who feel like the way they were treated is deserved, that they 'earned' it, that they must 'make up for it.' Oz is in this category. There's nothing wrong with the concept of a character who feels responsible for their abuser or the hurt their abuser has caused to others, there’s nothing wrong with a character who tends to act as though everything is their fault and who thinks very poorly of themselves.

In theory. But the problem is that in application, there are a lot of pitfalls and struggles that come with writing for abuse victims. Understanding, thoughtfulness, and care are not the RWBY writers’ strength, and any time you portray real life issues that strongly impact the real life people involved in them, you have to be aware and careful with the messages you’re sending. This is obviously very important when someone writes for any minority or oppressed group or the issues that they face, but it’s also important to remember when you write for abuse victims, because they do have stigmas around them and deal with stereotypes and harmful portrayals as well. Let’s look at what I consider some harmful or hurtful pitfalls when it comes to abused characters.

Are the abused characters treated as the victims they are? If the abuse a character faces is treated as comical, treated as unimportant, or treated as deserved, that’s an obvious major flaw. Sad to say, but RWBY does not pass this. On two separate occasions, a character is hit by someone close to them in a way that clearly causes them some pain, with Blake hitting Sun across the face for following her, and Winter hitting Weiss for answering a question incorrectly and again for failing in her training (I tend to be more sympathetic towards Blake’s situation, as it is more gray with her clearly thinking Sun had stalked her which is a clear trigger from her own abuse, but this is an explanation, not an excuse and the fact that it was framed as funny rather than something Blake shouldn’t have done and should apologize for is the problem.) They also do not treat Ozpin like the victim when Qrow punches him in the face, having no one call Qrow out for it and having him never express guilt or try to apologize for it. Yes, I know Ozpin had retreated, but they never showed Qrow even make an effort to get Ozpin to come back so he could apologize. . They also ‘redeem’ Hazel and give him a ‘partially right’ storyline despite his openly beating Ozpin, unfairly blaming him for the death of his sister, and insisting that Ozpin deserved to be tortured. On top of this, despite having been horribly abused by the SDC, Adam isn’t treated with even an ounce of sympathy or understanding and Jacques Schnee and the SDC is treated like a more comical-ish nuisance in season seven and eight. This is greatly flawed. Hitting someone because they lied to you or kept secrets from you is not okay, hitting someone because they said something you don’t like is not okay. This should not be treated as funny and it shouldn’t be treated as the fault of the person who was hit for not being a good enough friend.

Are the abused characters mostly villains, when the heroes have never faced it? The reason for this is obvious, although it’s valid to have a villain be an abuse victim, it’s never alright to villainize abuse victims. Making the majority of your bad guys abuse victims and your good guys have positive relationships is in my opinion, harmful. Point for RWBY, this is not the case for their show. Mercury, Salem, and Cinder on the bad side are all abuse victims with Raven being a possible, but unconfirmed abuse victim as well. While Weiss, Blake, Ozpin, and Whitley are also abuse victims, with Qrow and May both being possible, but unconfirmed abuse victims, and Winter and Emerald are both abuse victims who were on the side of a villain and then turned good.

Is the abuse more severe in the ‘bad’ characters and lighter in the ‘good’ characters? If the abuse that the good guys faced is mostly lighter things and the abuse that the villains suffered is worse and more severe, that might send some bad messages that people who suffer more are automatically worse people, or ‘unsalvageable’ or ‘too broken,’ as opposed to the people that ‘there’s still hope for.’ Unfortunately, I think RWBY is almost a tie? We’ve never seen Weiss or Emerald suffer more than a hit, we don’t know for sure that Whitley or Winter were ever victims of physical abuse. Ozpin and Blake’s abuse is worse, however, as they are hunted down by their abusers who attempt to murder them, make them suffer, and hurt their loved ones. They also were heavily emotionally manipulated and victim blamed by their abusers. And on the villain side, Mercury was beat by his father who hated him and stole his semblance (an extension of your soul, I believe, in canon,) and the abuse led to the loss of his limbs. Cinder was forced to work hard labor by her abusive employer and the ‘stepsisters’ treated her badly, and she was physically electrocuted. We see her abuse extend to Salem using her Grimm arm to hurt her, copying the effects of the necklace. Adam was also a child laborer who worked in terrible conditions who got his face branded by his employer, in the SDC, which had to have been anti-faunus charged due to his bull horns. We don’t see Salem ever physically abused, but know that she was mistreated, isolated, and neglected by her ‘cruel’ father. So it’s not quite a tie, there are more severely abused characters amongst the villains than the heroes, but this is close enough that I don’t consider this much of a strike against them.

In the villains, is the abuse they faced given as ‘reason’ for their villainy? As I said before, villainizing abuse victims isn’t the way to go. A good way to avoid this - I think - is not have abuse be the sole reason for someone’s fall into a life of crime or cruelty. This is something that RWBY... Fails at imo. When showing us Mercury’s backstory, we’re introduced to him through seeing that he had just killed his abuser who cost him his legs, and then gets recruited by Cinder who at the very least likely emotionally and physically abused him the same way she did with Emerald, leading to the conclusion that the only reason he’s there at all is due to abuse. However, he’s just a teen and it’s possible that (like Emerald) he’ll be redeemed. A much more condemning story to talk about is Cinder’s. After people had been clambering for a Cinder backstory since volume three, RWBY finally showed us one. But it doesn’t include Cinder meeting Salem, why she joined her, her proving herself, none of that. Instead, Cinder’s backstory was entirely focused on her abusive situation as a child, entirely focused on her suffering. Cinder killing her abusers and then killing the teacher who decided to arrest her for getting herself out of her abusive situation was portrayed as the only needed backstory, the explanation to why she’s a power hungry, abusive, cruel, selfish, and just plain evil person. ‘She was abused’ is the explanation for why Cinder is where she is and why she is who she is in RWBY. That’s highly problematic to me.

In the heroes, are they “the Perfect, Sanitized Abuse Victims?” As I said before, there is no one type of abuse victim, but if someone has several abuse victims and they’re all either submissive, sad, and self-doubting, but gentle and caring and soft or dropped their abuser like a hotcake and never looked back, never seem affected, never really talk about it after they left... That’s bothersome to me personally. Measuring how RWBY is in this particular subject is... A little harder than I thought it would be. Let’s start by looking at the most prevalent abuse victim, Blake. She’s one of the reasons why this is hard to gauge, because for the first five seasons, Blake was deeply flawed and clearly affected by her abuse in ways that made her ‘unappealing.’ Blake was cynical, stubborn, cold, hard to get to know, she didn’t trust easily, she lashed out at her friends regularly, ran from her problems, made choices for her friends, and had a very negative self image. This didn’t stop her from being a good character and friend with a lot of good sides, too, and she had real, important friendships. This was - to me - a really great portrayal of someone clearly affected by their trauma, with lots to work on, who was still a good person. Some of her faults and problems started to get resolved in a natural way through her journey with Sun in volumes four and five, but when season six came around, many of Blake’s other traits suddenly vanished. No longer stubborn, independent, or cynical, and no longer standing up for herself, or really displaying her temper or hardheadedness or her struggles with getting to know people... Blake became more submissive, sad, self-doubting, but gentle, caring, and soft. Sigh. As the first ask mentioned, Whitley and Emerald both seemed to drop their abusers quickly the second they were removed from their lives again. it’s also worth noting that Whitley was treated with nothing but coldness and contempt by Weiss until he ‘proved himself’ by doing something selfless. Weiss did more or less drop Jacques the moment she left her house in V4, only mentioning him or her experiences when she’s using it to talk about Blake, and when she confronted him again in V7, she did so as someone who is proving she no longer cares. Ozpin seems to be the only one still unable to move on from his abuse and the ‘unappealing’ abuse victim. The first anon is right, there’s something satisfying with seeing an abuse victim move on like their abuser didn’t matter. But when almost all your abuse victims do, and one of the only other ones is turned into a submissive and soft support based / romance based character, and the only really ‘unappealing’ abuse victim is someone we’re supposed to see as ‘gray’... There’s something off there, in my opinion.

Were the abuse victims treated respectfully and thoughtfully by their friends, and if not, were they portrayed as wrong? This probably isn’t something that really even needs an explanation. Abuse victims should be able to set their own boundaries and tell their stories only when they want, when they feel comfortable, Their friends should be understanding of this and not force anything from them. In the case of Blake and Weiss, this is handled really well! Their friends let them talk about their experiences in their own time, and they’re understanding and validate their feelings when it comes up (much more common with Blake than with Weiss, who like I said, seemed to move on from her dad quickly after she left.) However, when it comes to Oz... This is all wrecked. Although unintentional (no one knew how deeply tied up with Salem Ozpin was or how intimate the memories they were going to watch were,) our main characters still forced Ozpin’s deepest and most personal secrets out of him in a fit of upset while he was tearfully begging them not to. He was forced to relive his most traumatic experiences in hi-def with other people watching with him, all his secrets and all his abuse wrenched away from him in what was clearly a very painful way. And then no one showed Ozpin even the slightest bit of sympathy or understanding for what he’d gone through, and no one ever apologized for what they had forced him to relive. In fact, Team RWBY were clearly displayed as in the right, and Oz was displayed as completely wrong for not trusting them implicitly. He had to apologize to them, which they acted begrudgingly accepting of as if they hadn’t shouted at an abuse victim after forcing him to relive all his worst experiences.

Are some abuse victims portrayed as bad for things that other abuse victims aren’t portrayed as bad for? Like the second ask says, in RWBY, Cinder and Mercury are treated as villains for having killed their abusers and Cinder is almost arrested for it, it’s considered a step in the direction of their villainy. But Blake is (rightfully) treated as the victim who was forced, who had no choice, who just wanted the abuse to stop. This is hypocritical and fundamentally flawed. I think this is a reflection of the fact that Cinder and Mercury are meant to be ‘bad’ abuse victim, who had violent tendencies and anger issues, and were already featured as bad guys before their backstory’s dropped, whereas Blake was meant to be a better abuse victim who (by season six) was starting to get written as a soft girl who just wanted to help her friends.

All in all, although there’s some things that I think that RWBY did well enough, I definitely think that I would consider their portrayal of abuse victims to be lacking. This is just my opinion and the way I feel about the writing, but there are a lot of ways to look at it. I think overall, I just really wish that the RWBY writers had been a little more sensitive and spent a little longer focusing on the character arcs involved in abuse recovery. (There’s still a chance for Whitley, Weiss, and Emerald to get more focus in volume ten, though, so long as the writers don’t timeskip!)

[bestworstcase]

for months i’ve been dwelling on the, like, foundational differences between canon cassandra and bitter snow cassandra and meaning to write a. write-up of those differences and basically:

appearance

- canon cass is a bog standard slender but curvaceous woman with disney sameface and wavy hair and that is not how we roll in this household 

- one day i am going to do a proper design sheet for bitter snow cassandra but in the meantime this gets the gist across. cheekbones, strong jaw, squarish face, bigger more defined nose with a bump, thicker eyebrows, curls. plus, stocky and muscular. i imagine her being like 5′7″ she’s pretty short. 

- it is just emotionally important to me that all of you know bitter snow cassandra is not a skinny waif

- also she is trans

- disney heroine syndrome aside it’s clear that the intention is for canon cass to bear a strong resemblance to gothel, but - there being no biological relationship between bitter snow cass and gothel - i don’t imagine there being a significant similarity in her appearance and calanthe’s. obv they’re both strong-faced women with dark curly hair but that’s the extent of it. 

cutting here for length

parentage/family

- this is the obvious category lol 

- canon cassandra is gothel’s biological daughter, father unknown. she was an only child, and if she had other living biological relatives then we did not get to meet them.

- gothel abandoned her and she was thereafter raised by the captain of the guard, unaware of her heritage.

- bitter snow cassandra is the daughter of sholar and morana hároham, who were farmers of no particular renown in the remote saporian village of socona. she has/had two aunts—sholar’s older sister sirin hároham, and her partner maíne dathámar—who had two children, tathēdora (tath) and cornaīn, both older than cassandra.

- cassandra also has a number of living relatives in artois: her maternal grandparents perun and sibéal ghealach, their other children ronan and acanth, and their families. the ghealach side of the family is estranged from the hároham side and has been for two decades.

- several months after rapunzel’s birth, sholar and morana were implicated as ringleaders in the socona poisonings—an (alleged) terroristic attack on the royal court of corona involving tainted crops, which killed six and sickened dozens more, queen arianna included. they, and seven other farmers from the area, were arrested and swiftly hanged for treason.

- sir peter morgenstern, then a sergeant, was among the guards sent to arrest the hárohams and found cassandra in their home. he brought her back to herzingen with him, put her in an orphanage there, and then adopted her himself three years later once things settled down.

- except there was no treason or conspiracy. the socona “poisonings” were in actuality the result of a magical blight that burned through southern corona from artois to alcorsīa, killing hundreds and leaving its survivors disabled; the farmers of socona were a politically convenient scapegoat, nothing more. 

- maíne died in the first wave of blight-sickness. tath also became ill but survived for another fourteen years before succumbing to a secondary infection. cornaīn was killed almost four years after that by soldiers aboard a coronan prison barge. besides cassandra, sirin is the only surviving member of the hároham family. 

- cassandra is informed of the coronan version of the story when she is ten years old, and learns the truth from sirin shortly before her twenty-third birthday. 

trauma!

...which brings us to this section. 

canon cass

- suffered early childhood neglect and emotional abuse in gothel’s care. witnessed her mother’s abandonment at the age of four. this early trauma was exacerbated by the captain, and she suppressed the memories of her life with gothel. 

- her sense of self worth is tied to service and what she is able to do for other people; this was inculcated in her by gothel through parentification and neglect, and inadvertently reinforced by the captain’s militaristic and emotionally distant approach to parenting. he taught her to “earn her keep,” and seems to have used the credible threat of forced imprisonment in a convent to encourage good behavior. 

- that lack of self worth is further exacerbated by her station as a servant. cassandra’s closest—and perhaps only—friend is the princess she is duty-bound to serve, and this relationship becomes more and more toxic for her as time goes on and rapunzel repeatedly and consistently transgresses her boundaries. she has no viable support network and by the end of s2, she is completely alienated from her friend group and vulnerable to zhan tiri’s abuse. 

- learning about gothel is the final straw that pushes her over the edge, leading her to take the moonstone herself and lash out and rapunzel and corona in a blind rage with encouragement from zhan tiri. 

bitter snow cass

- sholar and morana were loving parents, and as a child cassandra was doted upon by her aunts, cousins [tath being 5 years older, and cornaīn 3], and the tight-knit socona community in general. around 4 she started to become insistent on being a girl, and was both allowed and encouraged to live as one. 

- the blight began approximately one and a half months before cassandra’s fifth birthday. maíne became sick and died very suddenly, and both tath and morana became severely ill almost as fast. the arrests began in tárosh, just weeks before cassandra would turn five. the trauma of all this and her abrupt removal from her home was all intensely traumatic for her, and compounded by her negligible grasp of the coronan language at the time. 

- in the orphanage in herzingen cassandra was mostly neglected and left to her own devices, but punished harshly for speaking saporian or asking for her parents. she began to suppress her memories of socona and her fluency in saporian was badly degraded. she continued to live as a girl but began to grasp that the particulars of her girlhood were not acceptable in herzingen and went to great lengths to avoid being identified as trans.

- shortly after her adoption, she met feldspar willipeg, who took her under his wing and helped her relearn and retain the saporian language as well as reintroducing her—lightly and delicately—to certain aspects of saporian culture. he remained an important anchor to her saporian heritage and friend/mentor throughout her life. 

- being a saporian child growing up in herzingen was traumatic in and of itself. much of her sense of self-worth is wrapped up in the idea of being coronan, and her various failures to measure up in this regard. she is riddled with self-disgust and self-hatred after years of active, subtle and not-so-subtle coercion to reject her saporian heritage. as a child and young adult she feels a tremendous pressure to demonstrate loyalty and service to the kingdom of corona in order to ‘prove’ that she is not like her parents. these internal feelings often manifests as compulsive acts of self-sacrifice or self-sabotage. 

- after she learns the truth of her parent’s innocence, her sense of identity and self-worth come unmoored altogether and she begins to oscillate wildly between defiant pride and vicious self-loathing. she is able to find community and solace with other saporians—moira caine and the crew of the zampermin—but her self-hatred and doubts continue to fester, and she struggles with feeling alienated from both her saporian heritage and her coronan upbringing.

key behavioral differences

- both canon cassandra and bitter snow cassandra are defined by their inability to articulate what they truly want. however, the sheer depth and breadth of the injustices bitter snow cassandra faces do mean that she is able to describe broad long-term goals or desires in a way that canon cassandra is not: she supports saporia’s side in the emergent civil war, and she wants redress for what was done to her family. where canon cassandra agonizes over shapelessly vague notions of “destiny” and “proving herself,” bitter snow cassandra wrestles with more concrete questions—how does she reconcile her friendship with rapunzel and her newfound separatist sympathies? what role will she play in corona’s civil war once the black rock problem is dealt with? who does she want to be? is [insert problem that is absolutely not her fault] secretly her fault?—and this gives her a certain sense of direction even when she is floundering and unable to come up with any answers. 

- bitter snow cassandra seeks to separate herself from rapunzel and embraces the support of other friends long before canon cassandra’s friendship with rapunzel even begins to truly sour. there are several reasons for this; the situation in herzingen becomes untenable for her after she learns the truth and her loyalties change, and the simple fact that she has somewhere else to go enables her to leave. but also, rapunzel’s difficulty accepting her shifted allegiance and saporian heritage in general accelerate the crumbling of their relationship. at the same time, however, because bitter snow cassandra has both left rapunzel’s service and found a solid support network of her own, she is actually much better equipped than canon cassandra to assert her boundaries with rapunzel and attempt to repair their friendship.  

[robininthelabyrinth]

Either a prompt, or just an answer! But based on your post about JGY and using microaggressions, what do you think would have happened if it had been LXC who caught him in one of his manipulative stunts and realized it was all a trick, rather than NMJ? I almost feel like he'd talk himself out of believing what he's seen, or let JGY talk him out of it, and then neither of them might have guessed at his true nature.

Lan Xichen did his best to like most people, to give them the benefit of the doubt whenever possible – truly, he did. He even thought he was mostly successful at it, purposefully looking at Sect Leader Yao’s boorish nosiness as well-meant although ill-executed sympathy or Sect Leader Ouyang’s tendency to follow the crowd as a sense of fellow-feeling taken to an extreme.

And yet –

He was certain that there was something wrong with Meng Yao.

The seeds of doubt had been planted the first time they’d met – or rather, the first time he’d seen Meng Yao, he supposed. The man had been travelling in a caravan of merchants, heading towards Qinghe; Lan Xichen, on the run from the burning of the Cloud Recesses and utterly exhausted, had abandoned his initial campground and hidden himself in a tree.

He’d intended on simply continuing onwards, ignoring his tired feet (what right did he have to be merely tired, after all, with uncle injured and father likely dying and Wangji taken away by the Wens to be abused…), but something he’d stuffed into his mouth earlier had disagreed with him and he’d just hidden in the tree instead, thinking it’d be nice to see the faces of some fellow humans, even from a distance.

He’d seen Meng Yao then, though he hadn’t known it was Meng Yao, and the way he investigated the campgrounds with a slight frown that turned into a pleased smile, as if something had worked out according to plan –

They’d bumped into each other again a few days later, when Lan Xichen was even more tired and hopeless and fleeing a badly timed set of Wen cultivators out on a night-hunt, only Meng Yao had been alone.

Alone, and with rations to spare, and a story that he’d left Lanling after his terrible disgrace to travel all on his own.

Lan Xichen had been starving at the time, too busy to think twice about it or ask about the other merchants he’d seen with Meng Yao, and it wasn’t until later that night that he opened his eyes and looked up at the moon, bewildered by the one flaw in the otherwise truly piteous story.

If Meng Yao had merely parted ways with the merchants, why lie?

The seed of doubt remained only a seed, then, and they travelled together some ways before parting – after all, Lan Xichen had assured himself, in some ways it could be said that Meng Yao had saved his life; it would be impolite, churlish even, to question him on something he clearly didn’t want to talk about.

It wasn’t until later, when Lan Xichen began to act as courier between the sects during the Sunshot Campaign, that the seed bloomed into a flower, and then began growing even more rapidly than a weed.

A weed like Meng Yao, who was brilliant enough to piece together information and yet selfish enough to use it for his own benefit instead of the benefit of all.

Lan Xichen hadn’t realized it at first, too busy lecturing himself on his pointless suspicion of his benefactor, but the information he collected – some too late to be helpful – suddenly put certain things in context.

Certain battles that didn’t have to happen, but did, and the way that they did threw Meng Yao’s merits into sharp relief – he wasn’t the best at battle, but he was excellent at clean-up, especially in aiding the common folk, but for that to happen the battle had to take place somewhere where they would suffer.

And then there were certain groups of people, Nie cultivators or otherwise, that died shortly after crossing Meng Yao – one survivor telling Lan Xichen that he hadn’t known some critical information that Lan Xichen was certain that he’d conveyed to the Nie sect in time.

He’d been about to go demand answers from Nie Mingjue when the survivor had let slip that it had been Nie Mingjue’s so-capable deputy that had given them the briefing – and that the deputy was Meng Yao.

Lan Xichen had fought with himself, not wanting to believe it. He had no solid evidence, after all, merely suspicions, and Nie Mingjue was delighted by Meng Yao, praising him as virtuous and capable. Nie Mingjue was not a man to praise people lightly, so this was evident evidence of his esteem, and a sign that Meng Yao had managed, somehow, to get in through the usually standoffish sect leader’s guard and into his heart.

But once the suspicion was there, the signs were there, too – things that Lan Xichen would have written off if he hadn’t been looking, things that he would never have noticed.

How facile Meng Yao’s face was, how responsive to his will, and yet how different he was when around different people. Lan Xichen had had to learn to read emotions from the smallest of signs to understand Wangji, prided himself on it, and when Meng Yao was around him, the little things – the crinkle of his eyes, the pursing of his lips, the quivering of his cheeks – all accorded with his words. In other words, he was sincere and true, as far as Lan Xichen could tell, and the only deviation was when he so-nobly tried and yet failed to avoid talking about the occasional injustices that he suffered, and yet those were subject that he had brought up himself, or which Lan Xichen just happened to walk in on.

It was precisely the sort of person he most liked, straightforward and sincere and just a little piteous, someone combining the best parts of Nie Mingjue and Lan Wangji and yet also reminiscent of when Lan Wangji was a child young enough that Lan Xichen could actually do things for him, to be the protective and indulgent big brother in a way Lan Wangji hadn’t needed in years.

If he wasn’t already suspicious, Lan Xichen was quite sure that he would be as enchanted by Meng Yao as Nie Mingjue was.

After all, Nie Mingjue was good with reading emotions, too – only his favorite type of person wasn’t the honest-but-shyly-pitiful type, but one who was straightforward yet restrained, who was hurt by the slights of others but who held his head high regardless, who had a spark of mischief and humor hiding behind his solemnity.  And when Meng Yao didn’t know Lan Xichen was watching, that was exactly the sort of person his face said he was: his eyes dancing in amusement at Nie Huaisang’s latest antics even while his mouth remained stern, his chin lifted a little as if he didn’t even notice when other men spoke ill of him…not shy, not subject to coaxing, still young but in a different sort of way, a happy and energetic way that was reminiscent of Nie Huaisang’s younger years (and, indeed, of his current ones) rather than Lan Wangji’s solemnity, his hidden pain and earnest striving to be good.

A first-class manipulator, Lan Xichen concluded after months of study. Meng Yao’s preferred mask was a display of weakness perfectly tailored to the interests of others, and he wielded that weakness as skillfully as Nie Mingjue wielded his saber or Lan Xichen played his qiao – and as ruthlessly, too.

He was a dagger hidden in the dark.

Lan Xichen tried to warn Nie Mingjue, but to no avail: Nie Mingjue was a stunning fighter, a brilliant general, and there was none better when it came to understanding how the quirks of his enemies would translate into strategic and tactical decisions that could be used on the battlefield, but outside of that context he had always been a little naïve about human nature.

It was something Lan Xichen should have known – Nie Mingjue had never understood, not really, why the other clans would allow themselves to be insulted by the Wen sect, trod upon, why they would selfishly turn their face away from the cries of the innocent to preserve themselves, as the Nie sect had only not declared war because it was too busy helping others – and most of the time he found the almost child-like innocence and inflexibility extremely cute.

Not right now, though.

Nie Mingjue simply couldn’t conceive of someone he was close to lying to him like that. His exterior was fierce but his heart was warm; once he was convinced you were one of his people, he would never turn against you no matter how harsh his tongue might be.

So when Lan Xichen told him he needed to be wary of Meng Yao, he tried, in deference to their old friendship and the trust between them, but he just couldn’t do it. He tried to be wary, tried to watch him, and then something more important distracted him and he fell back into his old habits of trusting and relying on him – no, until Nie Mingjue somehow saw with his own eyes what Lan Xichen put together through clues, he wouldn’t be able to believe that the man was a scorpion rather than a friend.

And while he didn’t say it, the distressed look in his old friend’s eyes suggested to Lan Xichen that Nie Mingjue was worried that he was the one affected, that his suffering at the Cloud Recesses and thereafter had injured his kind and trusting nature, and that he was merely being unduly paranoid.

It was a fair point, so Lan Xichen turned to the one he trusted most.

Lan Wangji listened solemnly to his suspicions, to his concerns, and promised to investigate, agreeing that there was enough there to merit justified suspicion even if he wouldn’t commit to a final decision until he’d had a chance to determine it for himself.

That was fine.

Lan Xichen was sure that there was a problem, even if no one else in the world believed him – but he had Lan Wangji at his side, capable and earnest, and that meant he didn’t have to be the only one in the world. They would unravel the riddle of Meng Yao and shine a light into the dark spaces he preferred to hide, and they would do it together.

[californiannostalgia]

Tangled the Series Character Analysis: Childhood Trauma POV

I can't believe Tangled the Series really created two incredible antivillains and threw them in direct contrast with the pre-existing golden couple. I love what the showrunners did with the main quartet, so I made a very subjective analysis post about it from a Childhood Trauma POV. (Spoilers, obviously.)

The Boys

The series' focus is on Rapunzel, and by association her direct opposite, Cassandra, so the boys get comparatively less screen time. But it doesn't take long to figure out that Varian is meant to be a parallel for Eugene—these are two people dealing with the absence of parental guardians, struggling to reconcile the lives they previously had with their changing ideals in relation to a less-than-perfect Father Figure.

They both respond to the helpless state of being young, alone, and powerless by trying to take back power in any way they can. Eugene reinvented himself and buried his desires for a family. Varian throws in everything he has into recovering what he lost, because he's a child and the best solution he can think of is to return to the familiar safety of his father's presence. A significant portion of his desperation is fueled by fear of his father’s disapproval, because as much as Quirin loves Varian, he wasn’t the dependable voice of support. Varian needs approval from outside sources, which was also Flynn Rider’s purpose in life, once upon a time. (Again, parallels.) 

Throughout the series, the boys' relationship with each other transforms from exasperated incomprehension to easy understanding. The process is hastened as Eugene lets himself realize he cares a lot about troubled kids who remind him of himself. He becomes aware that children should not be required to survive on their own like he and Lance had. Spurred on by his significant other's love and encouragement, Eugene is able to acknowledge the adverse affects of his childhood on his life and start moving on. His extending a ready hand to Varian is his process of healing. Though Eugene's first priority will always be Rapunzel, he truly wants to save Varian from the uncontrollable volatility of risky decisions because he knows that downward spiral intimately.

Of course, there is a difference between thieving from the rich and planning the destruction of a kingdom. We'll get to that later.

The Girls

Rapunzel and Cassandra are the biggest driving forces of narrative power in the show, and they are survivors of child abuse. Every one of the main quartet has Parent Issues, but Rapunzel takes the crown (figuratively speaking) with this one. She was kidnapped and groomed into a life-giving doll, and she was only able to escape her abusive adoptive mother through incredibly traumatizing means. For Cassandra, it was neglect, and even her loving adoptive father couldn't leviate the scars left on her childhood mind.

They're a classic case of Golden Child vs. Scapegoat, which is a common case seen in siblings raised by Narcissistic parents. When one child is "favored" more than the other, the kids experience vastly different childhoods, resulting in resentment that stems from their inability to understand each other. Rapunzel and Cassandra are both jealous of what the other had—Rapunzel wants Cassandra's casual, practiced ease with freedom and personal agency, while Cassandra wants the attention and respect that Rapunzel is given by the status of her birth. Because they're unwilling to speak candidly about the unique hardships of their childhood, what results is a series of miscommunications that put a strain on their friendship.

Cassandra and Rapunzel both want the other in their lives, but how they attempt to make that connection is very different. Cassandra wants to be a helpful, essential force in Rapunzel's life. Unfortunately, Rapunzel has been raised on the idea that when push comes to shove, no one will help her survive. Cassandra interprets Rapunzel's desire for independence as Rapunzel scorning the connection that Cassandra is attempting to create. Add in some manipulation from an ancient evil, and Cassandra decides she is done exhausting her emotions for Rapunzel.

Rapunzel, on the other hand, wants absolute honesty in her relationships. Gothel raised her on lies, so she spurns deception. But Cassandra knows the merits of protecting herself by holding her opinions in, which is where the misunderstandings occur. Rapunzel cannot trust someone who isn't completely forthright with her. She's tired of dealing with liars, and she grows afraid that Cassandra will cause her the same pain as Gothel did. But the thing is, Cassandra is not Gothel, and Rapunzel loved Gothel. She couldn't save Gothel, but maybe she can save Cassandra. It's not too late.

Rapunzel doesn't know when to give up on Cassandra because she is aware that she and Cassandra are similar people. Giving up on Cassandra would feel too much like giving up on her own hopes for a happy life. Rapunzel can't let Cassandra be unhappy. This princess cares too much, loves too hard. She never learned how to write people off because you can't survive a childhood like hers with that much cheer if you don't hang onto your optimism like a goddamn lifeline.

This is Rapunzel’s method of taking back power for herself: saving others. Rapunzel could have been Cassandra. Rapunzel is trying to believe she herself is worth saving—therefore, Cassandra must be worth saving as well. Rapunzel's significant other is giving her a stable source of love and support, but without a proper resolution to Cassandra's struggles—a final proof that despite Gothel's influence, they can both be happy—Rapunzel would feel incomplete.

The Golden Couple

At the end of the day, Rapunzel and Eugene are fundamentally good people. If it comes down to it, they would be unable to sacrifice the world for their own desires. (Eugene's thievery doesn't count as an expression of true desire because it was literally his method of survival. An expression of true, selfish desire for him might've been something like manipulation and abduction for the purposes of making people stay, but Eugene is not Gothel and he would never do that to anyone in a million years.) (On a side note, Rapunzel's selfish desire might've manifested in the abandonment of all duties and personal connections in favor of eternal exploration, or revenge towards a kingdom that failed to save her, or a thorough destruction of authority figures—but she loves people too much and would never be able to forsake her family.)

Life threw a lot of rocks at them, but these two came through it marginally well-adjusted. They affirmed their love for each other in a violent, unforgettable manner, which makes it easier for them to trust in each other's affection. Eugene would've been okay with never finding his biological father, just as Rapunzel had been okay with her biological parents' inability to protect her. They have no wish to punish the world for what they suffered. They’re content with who they are. They're just glad they made it, that they're finally allowed to love someone without being afraid. They're each other's saving grace.

The Antivillains

This is the difference between Hero and Antivillain: Cassandra and Varian are willing to punish the world for what happened to them. There’s a very faint line between justified retaliation and venting. In their desperation and anger, they cross the line, and they’re unable to stop themselves once they get going. Unlike the Golden Couple, Cassandra and Varian refuse to settle. They want what is owed. 

Also, they really, really hate themselves. (This is important.)

Varian believes Quirin is the ultimate source of affirmation. The fact that he lost his father by way of his own dangerous experiment, coupled with the fact that no one prioritizes his call for help in the face of national disaster, is enough to make him feel isolated from the world. Though he is burdened with a growing sense of remorse for his deeds, he doesn’t stop resorting to drastic, harmful measures to get his father back until he is forcefully stopped by betrayal from his allies. He finally makes the full transition from “antagonist” to “protagonist” when Rapunzel risks herself to save Quirin from the rocks. If Quirin could not be saved, there’s a possibility Varian might have stayed an antagonist, unenthusiastic though he may have been in his villainous role. As long as Quirin is trapped in those rocks, Varian remains the villain who put him there.

With Quirin safe, Varian allows himself to take huge steps in healing. He slowly rediscovers his self-worth, one that is separate from Quirin’s approval. Rapunzel—and by extension, Eugene—play the friendly, supportive role to Varian’s ingenuity, helping him along in his quest for self-acceptance. Varian still has trouble working through the heavily ingrained self-hatred, but he recovers enough confidence in his own judgment that he takes Eugene’s warning to heart and is able to install a safety device in his father’s helmet, just in case.

This is the Varian who meets Cassandra in the Tower that once belonged to Gothel. At this point in time, Cassandra has been manipulated into thinking of herself as weak and unimportant in comparison to Rapunzel. Her adoptive father, much like Quirin, was too gruff to be vocal with approvals. Her efforts have not been met with successes. She feels like a failure, and she hates feeling like a failure. This is Cassandra’s method of taking back power: by turning herself into someone unforgettable. If she can make something of herself, she’ll finally be able to prove Gothel wrong. She can be just as special as Rapunzel, if she’s given the chance. She wants that chance.

Similar to Varian, Cassandra doesn’t stop her downward spiral until her supposed ally and mentor betrays her and forcefully takes her power away. Only when there are no options left does she allow herself to admit that she was wrong. She is then rewarded for her honesty with Rapunzel’s love and trust. Armed with a new confidence, the sisters vanquish the evil together in an epic showdown that will long be remembered. Cassandra finally gets her dramatic hero’s tale.

Rapunzel and Eugene have an internal compass that lets them make snap decisions. They don’t have the healthiest self-esteem, but they can at least stand by what they think is right. Comparatively speaking, Cassandra and Varian have terrible self-esteem. They don’t trust their own judgment and are heavily influenced by outside forces. Without the constant barrage of trust and affection from Rapunzel, who is akin to a blazing sun when it comes to personal loyalty, these antivillains might never have reached their redemptive ending. They wouldn’t have been able to let go of their twisted priorities without outside influence. Can’t blame them for it, though.

It’s no surprise that Cassandra and Varian are relatable to many people. Who wouldn’t want to reclaim what was taken from them during childhood? (Of course, the problem occurs when you start hurting others to reclaim what you lost.) Their journey is a different kind of vulnerable from Rapunzel and Eugene’s journey, and it’s extraordinary in its detail. This show is essentially a long exploration of the various ways a parent can mess you up and the coping methods of kids who want to become more than their past, which is totally up my alley of expertise. I’m grateful I got to watch them grow taller than their trauma.

Finally, here’s a parting gif of Lance, because I love him and he’s a well-adjusted ray of sunshine. We all wish we could be as mentally stable as Lance—the main quartet included.

[treestargarden]

wonder egg priority, episode 7 “after school at 14″ analysis below the cut. 

tw: child abuse/neglect, cutting, self-harm, stockholm syndrome, co-dependency, covert incest, (attempted) suicide

Rika’s Mother: 

During this scene, we get (finally) get a sneak peek of Rika’s home life, which has largely been up in the air up to this point. for the most part, Rika has either visited Ai’s home or has only mentioned her parents in passing (like when she mentions her dad saying pretty girls have people who will buy things for them). She hasn’t really discussed her home life. 

What we do know:

-Rika calls Ai’s mom “mom” when she visits (in the dub), which signifies that she thinks of Ai’s mother as her own family (despite not being super familiar with her from the start). 

-Because of this over-familiarity, we can extrapolate that Rika may not feel a strong connection with her own family or that her relationship with them may be strained. 

-In this scene specifically, Rika’s mother is seen lifting her head from a table, indicating she fell asleep at a late hour either drinking or smoking. Later in the episode, it is revealed that they own a bar and Rika’s mother often stays up with patrons drinking and smoking. Most of the patrons are men. 

-Judging from Rika’s impatience in this short scene, its likely this is a common occurrence that has caused a divide at least between Rika and her mother.

Money is also a prominent theme in Rika’s life. Her favorite mantra is “Daddy says that when you’re a pretty girl, you will never have to spend your own money” and she makes sure to repeat this to any new people she meets (Neiru and Ai specifically). 

This clip definitely keeps that important characterization in mind when Rika’s mother informs us that its Rika’s birthday and for her to “buy something [she] like[s].” There is a heavy tension in the air throughout this brief interaction (referenced earlier). Rika’s mother could be attempting atonement by providing Rika with money for her birthday as a replacement for attention, love, affection, etc. 

My personal intuition is Rika’s mother has also internalized Rika’s father’s mantra and repeating this mantra to Rika. It’s possible Rika’s mother is projecting her multiple and brief experiences with men onto Rika as way to guide Rika down a path of finding a man who will take care of Rika’s financial needs.

I think the message that came through on this episode the hardest was Rika’s epiphany that children had to save their parents: 

I don’t agree. Especially because Rika is a child, a 14-year old girl. It is not her duty to “protect [her] mom.” In instances such as abuse, however, the parent-child relationship becomes extremely convoluted and the issues that arise in the relationship can even be compounded by single parenthood (and abuse). 

Often, children of single parents become survivors of a term called “covert incest.” These children often become therapists for the parents’ financial problems, emotional turmoil, relationship failings, etc. This puts unnecessary burdens onto children that can often encourage them to form unbalanced/co-dependent relationships with other people that could easily out-power them. I won’t go into much detail about it here, but I definitely suggest reading some material on it. A great book to reference would be “Why Does He Do That?” by Lundy Bancroft. 

Thankfully, Rika snaps out of the daze, claiming that allowing Mannen to rescue her, would make her an undesirable mother. She recognizes the issues of having a child carry the burden of “protecting” a parent. 

Rika’s Father: 

Rika, for her birthday, is determined to find out who her father is. She has a stack of photos that her mom took with various men and Rika is sure one of them his her biological father. 

Up to this point, Rika has given us a very laid back, gossip-y girl facade with brief glimpses into her true nature as a thoughtful girl with a lot of hang-ups on life. She imparts small quips like “what if we don’t save our girls” (episode 6) and is incredibly insightful when it comes to other girls’ intentions (accusing Ai of wanting to go back to school because she misses Mr. Sawaki, episode 6). 

Even if she may not be right with her perceptions, she does seem to have a perspective different from all the other girls based on what I have assumed to be her background up to this point (back when I analyzed episode 3). It would not be unlikely to inference that Rika has put a lot of time, research, and effort into this goal of finding who her father is. 

I worry about her mental state. Perhaps this is just an escapist routine she has been latching onto as a way to “replace” her neglectful mother. It mirrors her mother’s apparent search to find a man who would take care of her. Rika believes if she can find her true father, then her home life could be better (finding her father means she can replace her mother). 

Rika Cutting: 

This is the first time we have seen the weapons of the girls (outside of Ai’s pen) in their real lives. This confirms that the weapons they use are a significant item they own (I’m not so sure all of them are coping items though, as I had originally believed). This is a significant scene in the series. Back in episode 3, Rika was taking a bath at Ai’s house when we here her promise to herself she wouldn’t cut again.

We’re reminded of this promise when Reddi, Rika’s partner, catches Rika’s attention as she prepares to cut her arms.

We’re given a bit of hope as Rika smiles softly at Mannen before she tells him to “come back.” There is no resolution to this scene. Instead, we are immediately shown Rika’s next Wonder Egg Girl fight. In this scene, Rika has a fresh bandage on her arm, indicating she did not keep her promise. 

Rika’s Wonder Egg: 

This is the first time we’ve encountered an Egg that absolutely did not want the girl to kill the Egg Killer. This definitely made me reflect on what Rika said in the previous episode about “maybe we don’t need to save them [wonder eggs],” which was met with the other girls’ conflicting thoughts about needing to save their eggs to save their friends. 

However, this is not the first time we have seen a Wonder Egg cause conflict with one of the girls (refer back to Neiru in episode 5). It seems as the Seeno Evils evolve into Haters, its quite possible that the Wonder Eggs make the girls’ quests (reviving their friends from their suicides) a lot harder to accomplish. 

The conflict Eggs present to the girls also speaks to the fact that some “survivors” (used loosely, because the Eggs are dead, so have not survived their abuse), can also be perpetrators of abuse, which can complicate survivorship (whether you read the Eggs as individuals in need of help or as extensions of the girls as a way to combat their own insecurities/traumas). 

I’ll admit, I’ve been pretty wary of the Wonder Egg system since the beginning. I don’t think it is at all feasible to revive the lost girls, but given that the challenges in the Egg World become more... evolved... its becoming more suspicious that perhaps it may be a way to coax more girls to commit suicide to trick other girls into “saving them.” 

Friendship and Suicide: 

I think it is extremely important the emphasis friendship has on this episode. There are a few takeaways to be had when discussing the dynamics of this episode though: 

-friendship is important for those struggling with suicidal thoughts

-even if suicidal people feel there would be no people who would care if they were no longer to exist, that is often not the case

-even though friends are incredibly important and can alleviate the struggles for those with suicidal tendencies, it is not the responsibility of said friends to prevent someone else’s suicide

-suicide is an entirely personal issue, and although we can provide support for loved ones, ultimately, it is up to the suicidal person to continue surviving

These are very difficult truths to face, and if you are a friend of someone who is suicidal, has committed suicide, or has attempted suicide, difficult feelings about your (supposed) responsibility is normal. 

If you are feeling suicidal or a friend is feeling suicidal, please make sure to contact the national suicide hotline at:  800-273-8255

[rachelbethhines]

Tangled Salt Marathon - Rapunzel’s Return Part 1

We’ve finally made to season three and the entire reason why I made this review series. This season features some of the worst writing I have ever witnessed in a television program. And this season kicks off with the third worst episode of the whole series. Rapunzel’s Return is the iceberg that sinks this show and manages to assassinate everyone’s character.

 Everyone’s.  

Summary: Inside the House of Yesterday's Tomorrow (as seen off screen in "Rapunzeltopia"), Cassandra is greeted by the Enchanted Girl, a spirit who reveals that Cassandra is the biological daughter of the late Mother Gothel, who abandoned her on the night she kidnapped infant Rapunzel. Enraged that Rapunzel has been (unknowingly) overshadowing her for the entirety of her life, and that she will always be unfairly overlooked, Cassandra snatches the Moonstone Opal, absorbs it, and declared Rapunzel's destiny as her own. She manages to escape from the group and cuts all ties with them, with Rapunzel unable to wrap her head around the entire situation. The group returns to Corona and find that it has been taken over by Varian, who has aligned himself with Andrew and the Separatists of Saporia to erase the King and Queen's memories and enslave Corona's citizens.

Plot Hole Number One: Why Would Cassandra Just Blindly Follow A Ghost While Trapped Inside a Haunted House? 

Outside of that one snarky remark, Cassandra never stops to question the literal ghost who is bossing her around. The ghost she met in a creepy haunted house. A haunted house that she was already suspicious of before ever going in and that has tried to kill her and her friends many times now. 

Cassandra, the most distrusting and cautious of of individuals in the show thus far, just suddenly decides to leave her brain behind from this point forward for no given reason whatsoever. 

If you have to dumb down your main character and have them behave OOC in order to get your plot rolling along, then you haven’t a good plot. 

Plot Hole Number Two: Cassandra Sees for Herself How Awful Gothel Was to Her Here, So Why Would She Obsess Over the Woman? 

Forgetting for a moment that Cass very well knows that Gothel treated her best friend like shit and tried to murder her other friend, Eugene, as evidenced by Quest for Varian; Cassandra can see for herself right here that Gothel is a crap person who never treated her right. 

I mean there’s denial, and then there’s flat out stupidity. Cass being hurt by the this reveal is one thing. Cass believing that Gothel really loved her and blaming everyone else for her death is totally another and not based in any kind of sensible logic.     

Plot Hole Number Three: Why Would Gothel Even Have a Child to Begin With? 

Look, I’ll accept that the flower can deage Gothel enough for her to get laid and bare a kid, but that only brings up the question of why she would keep said kid? 

She kept Rapunzel cause she needed her powers in order to stay alive, but Cass? What reason would she want to have Cassandra around? A baby can’t do chores for you and it's a hell of a lot of work to raise one. Plus the show repeatedly tells us over and over again that Gothel doesn’t really love her or even likes having her daugther around so... yeah, what is the point of this? Why didn’t she just drop Cass off at an orphanage to begin with?  

You can’t make this type of reveal and have it go against the what we fundamentally know about the characters without explaining why they would partake in such actions.  

This is Manipulative Writing 

But of course the real reason why this flashback and “twist” exists is just to manipulate the audience into feeling sorry for Cass. It’s not here to actually enhance the story, further the characters, nor answer any mysteries in any real way. That’s why it’s such a poor plot point. 

It’s setting up the viewers to have a bias so that they’ll more readily forgive Cassandra for her irreprehensible actions later. In short, it’s the same bullshit that the writers pulled for Frederic back in season one. Only it makes even less narrative sense here because this ‘tragic backstory’ is so divorced from later events in the story. 

It’s also flat out lazy because all it’s doing it slapping Rapunzel’s backstory onto Cass instead of letting Cassandra be her own character with her own battles and character development to have. 

And before you say, “well that’s the point”, then let me tell you it’s a stupid point. One that makes zero sense for the character and is insulting to the audience’s intelligence.    

Plot Hole Number Four: Why Didn’t Gothel Just Stay Hidden Till the Soldiers Left? 

Hell, why did Gothel even come back here? We already established that she doesn’t really care about Cass and it’s a plot point that’ll only be further reiterated as the season goes on, so why? Why would Gothel behave like this? How does this help her in her goal? Gothel’s suppose to be smart remember? 

Plot Hole Number Five: How Does Any of This Logically Help Zhan Tiri? 

So Zhan Tiri is the blue ghost girl and while the series tries to keep it a secret reveal for later, it’s pretty obvious from the get go, so I’ll just be calling the character by her name. 

Anyways, Zhan Tiri’s plan is to show Cassandra her past, in order to make Cass angry enough to steal the moonstone and fight Rapunzel, so that the two powers fighting each other will then release her from her interdimensional prison. 

Now ignoring how literally none of that was set up nor previously established, and ignoring that Zhan Tiri’s disciples were trying previously to stop the sundrop and her friends from getting to the moonstone, thereby undermining their master’s plan; just how exactly is any of this suppose to work? 

Why would showing Cassandra how her mother was a shitty person somehow make Cass angry at Rapunzel, angry enough to try and kill her even, and somehow keep her angry for months on end, in order to fulfill this clearly illogical action that holds no personal benefit to herself?    

I don’t mind Cassandra becoming a villain; I just want it to make sense. 

This does not make sense. 

Not only does it require incredible leaps of logic and Cassandra acting out of character to work, it also depends far to much upon conquincidence and things playing out just in exactly the right way to benefit Zhan Tiri and her poorly laid out plan. 

Would it not have made more sense for this “evil master manipulating worlock” to just, you know, lie? 

Like shouldn’t she be trying to make Gothel look good? Shouldn’t she be trying to make it all seem like Frederic’s fault  (which it mostly is anyways)? If you want Cass to attack Corona and turn against Rapunzel, then why not lie about their involvement or tell some half truth?

Or better yet why not make Gothel and actual complex figure for real? 

Ugh... I got to move on from this point, but believe me, we will be back to this dumbfuckery in later episodes. 

Plot Hole Number Six: You Can’t Just Ignore that Cap Exists and Is the One Who Raised Cassandra for Most of Her Life 

Like I’m sure finding out that you mom was a piece of crap who abandon you hurts, but that doesn’t automatically erase the fact that Cass’s dad was there for her, raised her, and loved her for the majority of her life. I’m not saying that Cap is perfect, but he at least tried to do right by her (and is consequently the best parent in the show) and Cassandra is old enough to recognize that fact. Pretending otherwise is a disservice to everyone. It’s a disservice to the Captain, to Cassandra, to Rapunzel, to Gothel, and to the viewers watching along with this BS. 

Trauma Doesn’t Make You Suddenly Stupid 

Look, I’m not downplaying Cass’s trauma here. She is allowed to feel upset and yes trauma is painful and effects us all in different ways. Also yes, past trauma can carry on through into adulthood and still harm you. 

However that’s not an excuse for hurting others. Cass’s trauma isn’t any less traumatic than any of the other characters’, but neither is it somehow more important than any of theirs. She doesn’t get a free past to step on people just because she was sad once. 

Cassandra is, once again, old enough to know this and more importantly smart enough to realize that what happened in the past, if even true, has nothing to do with what she is currently dealing with right now. 

Like why is she believing any of this? Why is she still listening to the suspicious ghost that she met in a magical house that’s tricked her and her friends numerous times before? Why would finding out her mom was shit make her turn that anger against her best friend? What does any of this have to do with her current struggles with trying to build up her career or staying friends with Raps? 

Remembering past trauma does not make your brain shut off. Even having a mental breakdown or panic attack still does not render you completely senseless and anything done under extreme pressure like that is temporary. You don’t wind up acting bananas constantly for over a year. 

As a woman who suffers from complex-PTSD and is an abuse survivor myself, Cassandra’s story is deeply offensive to me. Not the least of which because it actively dumps her down. 

This Is the Point Where Cassandra’s Character Gets Assassinated 

Like I said in the opening, everyone’s character gets assassinated in this story. Cassandra just happens to be the first to die and it’s right here with this line. 

Not only is this line incredibly cringy and poorly worded, and I have to just feel sorry for the VA here cause there’s no way to make this much stupid sound good, but it’s also completely divorced from what’s going on. 

Cassandra is suppose to be explaining to her friends why she’s stealing the moonstone and her answer is “I’m this dead bitch’s daughter”? Like oookaaay, and that has what to do with it exactly?

Did Gothel have any connection to the moonstone? Does stealing the moonstone somehow bring her back or fulfil her revenge? What does grabbing the moonstone actually gain Cass and what does that have to do with her dead abusive mom? 

The reason why Cass doesn’t work as a villain because she has no goal nor reason for doing what she does. She just lurches from plot point to plot point with no idea of what she is doing nor why she is doing it. 

But watch as the show keeps digging in its heels and keeps insisting that Cassandra’s connection to Gothel is totally a sympathetic motive even as it makes less and less sense every damn time it's brought up. 

What Does Destiny Even Fucking Mean Any More???

What Destiny?!

There is no damn destiny. There is no prophecy to fulfil, no world to save, no consequence for just having everyone sitting on their asses for two whole seasons. And even if there was a destiny to even steal; why would Cass even want it? What does actually she gain from any of this? And how does any of it connect back to Gothel? 

This Should Have Been the Point of Resolution Not the Inciting Incident for Their Break Up

Look no idea is without merit. You can make the stupidest sounding idea engaging if you present it right. 

This was not presented right. 

If Cassandra being Gothel’s daughter was to hold any meaning to the story, then it needed to be what brought her and Raps back together again, not what broke them apart. 

Rapunzel says it right here. Logically this should be common ground for the two of them. There’s no real reason for Cass to direct her anger at Rapunzel over this. 

But this show doesn’t care about logic, reason, or treating it’s audience with intelligence. It’s just flashy bullshit “drama” that pretends to be deep but is really a shallow puddle once you stop to think about it for two seconds.   

Let’s Talk About “Sisters” 

Cass’s face just says it all doesn’t it? 

The creator, Chris, wanted to make a story about two “sisters”, because he has two daughters and he thought that would be inspiring and speak to little girls everywhere. 

It’s a nice sentiment. Shame he’s so utterly incompetent at it. 

There was no build up to them being sisters. Instead all we got was a bunch of meaningless parallels and a very toxic friendship. Even with the Gothel reveal the connection to them being siblings is tenuous at best because there’s no biological relation and more importantly, they weren’t raised together.   

Chris is basically trying to rip off the likes of Frozen or Guardians of the Galaxy here with Raps and Cass’s relationship but it doesn’t work when the two siblings in question didn’t actually grow up together. There’s no reason for Cassandra to project her anger at their abusive parent on to Raps because that parent wasn’t the one to actually raise her. And on top of that, said abuser is dead, and both her and Raps have separate guardians in their lives, so the jealousy angle doesn’t work either.  

And to make it all the more confusing, Chris failed to inform his crew of this brilliant plot twist, so we now have two seasons of gay baiting put in by the storyboard artists hitting that Cass is in love with her “sister”, And because the hardcore Cazzpunzel stans are the only fanbase that hasn’t given Chris the boot, there’s still even more gay baiting to come. 

Why are We Victim Blaming a Baby? 

Seriously, Cass? You are twenty four and have a brain. Why are you blaming someone for being kidnapped as a baby? What kind of sense does this make? 

Worse, there’s plenty of real shit Cass could get angry at Rapunzel over and this is what you go with show? 

If anything Rapunzel should be the one who is pissed here. Cass got to escape and lead a normal life with a loving father all because she got kidnapped as baby. And now said bitch is trying to gaslight her while stealing the very thing she’s been risking her life to grab for a year now. 

No You Haven’t Cass

Once again, you got to live a normal life with a loving Dad. You had plenty of chances to build relationships and further your career for 18 years while Rapunzel was trapped in a dang tower, and Rapunzel returning from said tower didn’t cut you off from anything. In fact Rapunzel being rescued from the tower actually presented more opportunities for you and you spent all of season one climbing up the ranks. 

There’s Nothing In the Show to Back Up This Statement 

Nothing is at stake. There’s no threat here other than Cassandra herself. Cassandra is dranger to the world here not the moonstone. If you wanted it to be the other way around then you should have kept the rocks active during season two. 

So Why Didn’t We Go With the Original Set Up From Season Two? 

As said before, there are real reasons that were set up during season two that could have motivated Cass. 

Rapunzel is irresponsible and can’t be trusted to save the world 

Rapunzel is a shit friend and Cass is better off going her own way and leaving everyone high and dry. 

Cass’s hand was injured by Raps and the moonstone might be able to heal it 

Cass sees the injustice in the class system and wants to fight back against the royals in order to help everyone, not just herself. 

Cass might believe she’s stopping Zhan Tiri and not realize she’s being manipulated by her instead

Or is playing along with Zhan Tiri under the idea that she can stall for time figure out how to stop her. 

Cass wants to play her and use the power of the rocks to save people only for it to go wrong later. 

Possession (which was the original idea in the concept stage) 

Like I said, there were plenty of ways to make this work. In fact some are so dang obvious that you’ll hear Cass fans try to claim that a few of those are what her real motivation was despite the the show clearly going against them later. The “fighting against the class system” is a real popular one despite the fact that Cass herself attacks a bunch of poor people repeatedly and doesn’t seem concerned about anyone but herself.  

But I digress. 

The real reason why we have this bullshit is cause Chris doesn’t want to hold his favs accountable. Rapunzel’s flaws can’t be called out in any meaningful way and Cass gets a convenient scapegoat in Zhan Tiri. 

In short both Cassandra and Rapunzel have their agency stolen away from them by the narrative, while still trying to pretend that they’re “strong independent women”. Even though those two things aren’t compatible at all.  

What Exactly Have You Been Denied Cass? 

Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs? 

Lance, Eugene, and Lady Caine were all denied physiological and safety needs while growing up in an orphanage and then later on the streets as a thieves. 

Rapunzel was denied psychological needs while being raised by her abuser. 

Varian was denied everything on that dang list. 

Cassandra tho? 

Trauma or no trauma, Cass was still raised in a safe and loving environment for the majority of her life. She, at best, has been denied “self-fulfillment” needs and even then that’s a stretch cause throughout season one we see her time and time again gaining what it was she wanted. 

Cassandra isn’t anything special. She’s not suffered any more than anybody else in the show and in fact has lived a pretty cushy life when all is said and done, especially when compared to other characters in the show. 

The worst that she has to complain about is working a crappy job for a little while and having a shit mom that she can barely remember. Boo Fucking Hoo. 

Note How Easy It Is For Cass to Control the Rocks Here

The show can’t even keep Cassandra’s powers consistent. Like everything else about the character, Cass’s powers come and go as is convenient for the narrative with little explanation as to why. 

This Song Doesn’t Work Because It was Cut In Half Due to Time 

I’ve talked about the problems with this song before in my songs from TTS ranking list. It’s choppy and consistent. Yet it only feels that way because it was cut down. It’s missing a full other verse, second chorus, and a bridge.  

Which is inexcusable because there’s so much dang filler in this show! 

We could have had time for the full song if they had just cut one of the non-essential episodes and made all of this a full episode on it’s own. Just save the Corona and Varian stuff for later if need be. 

The management of this show is just atrocious.  

Why Wasn’t This the Cliffhanger for Season Two? 

Speaking of making all of the Cassandra stuff it’s own episode... Everything we just seen should have been in season two. 

It’s more connected to what happened last season, it flows better, it would have had more time to breathe, and it would have given us more time in the Dark Kingdom. Given as that this is what season two was building up too, it would have been more satisfying there.  

And if the writers still wanted a cliffhanger to end the season in order to draw crowds then this right here was it. 

So We We Spent A Whole Season Getting Here and We’re Just Going to Leave Now? 

The Dark Kingdom is Wasted!!!!

And because the Dark Kingdom is a bust, the entirety of season two now feels even more pointless. 

Chris said he cut the Dark Kingdom stuff because it didn’t interest him. 

Chris is a fucking fool. 

Ignoring that different people will gravitate towards different things and you need to keep that in mind when writing for mass audiences; you don’t spend valuable time setting things up just to drop them later. 

If you didn’t like that particular plot thread then you needed to just not bring it up to begin with. Once you’ve put it in there you need to commit to it. 

Behold the Only Thing Useful Shorty Does This Whole Season 

There is less Shorty overall this season which is ultimately a good thing, but it does highlight what a stupid decision it was to bring him along to begin with. 

I mean did we really drag him around for a whole season just for this? Couldn’t some other Pub Thung or townsperson have found them? One that could talk. 

Adria Gets Put on a Bus 

Adria doesn’t get assassinated like some of the other characters, but she does get unceremoniously shoved off without any real closure. The character will return later in the season, but brainwashed and without any lines. Which is doubly insulting to the VA who voices her. 

And Here Is Where Lance Gets Assassinated 

Lance is drastically dumbed down in season three. Even more so than in past seasons. You could call it flanderization specifically, more so than assassination, but the effect is the same. Lance’s character is effectively dead from this point onwards. 

Also this should have ended the Lance & Adria ship in the show for good. She flat out rejects him here, but nope. 

Eugene is the Only Person Acting Like a Real Human Being This Episode Thus Far

Edmund spent his whole life protecting the moonstone. He lost everything to it. He was convinced that letting Rapunzel take it would be best only for her to lose it right afterwards. And what does he do?  Immediately become the “comedicly bad dad” in show oversaturated with both comedic foils and poor father figures. 

Meanwhile Eugene is the only one properly responding to what is going on. Don't expect that to last. 

I Thought You Left Cass?

Remember that foreshadowing with Quirin way back in the pilot? 

This is just that, but dumber. 

There’s no reason for Cass to hang around out of sight only to stare menacingly at Rapunzel and company as they leave. It’s just a lazy hook to get viewers to believe that there might be more going on with Cass then what we’ve been told. There’s not.  

So This Map Proves That the Dark Kingdom Is North East of Corona 

Continuity and worldbuilding in this show is utterly garbage, so I’ll latch on to any little scrape of info that we get. 

According to the map shown here, the balloon is heading Southwest back to Corona. That means the Dark Kingdom is Northeast. 

So if Corona is somewhere in Northern mainland Europe that means the Dark Kingdom is either in a Nordic country (Norway,Sweden,Finland, ect) or Russia.   

Meta Jokes About Being a Bad Writer Doesn’t Excuse Bad Writing 

Get use to this. Season three is full of meansprited meta jokes that try to defend against the quite frankly valid criticism that the show has received. Or more specifically the criticism Chris had received. 

Most of season three was written during the hiatus of season two back when Chris was seeing backlash from the fans due to his PR fiasco and that’s not even taking into account the crew walkout after season one. 

Not only is that too late to be writing your final season, but it’s also reflective of how Chris can’t handle critique with grace nor listen to other ideas as jokes like this are in poor taste. 

Everyone Acts Shocked Here but Honestly this Fits King Frederic’s MMO

This is the same guy who prosecuted poor people for eighteen years with his crack down on crime, and thrented the life an orphaned teen. Is anybody really surprised by this? 

I Thought Your Real Name was Hubert? 

I guess he just prefers the name Andrew. I don’t know. But what do know is that “the devil is in the details” is a thing my animation teacher in college use to say repeatedly, and no one working on this show seems capable of remembering or keeping up with details. 

Why Are There Only Five Saporains? 

Saporia was set up as an entire race of people who’d been displaced from their homeland for generations. They’ve been living as nomads for centuries according to season two.  Why are there only five of them in this episode? 

How did they overthrow a kingdom with only five people? How do they maintain hold of it with only five? How do they expect to further their bloodline and culture with only only five of them?  

Why did we waste money on a bunch of one off villians that we sent packing in season two and not built more Saporian models instead? 

Like you could have had the core five here, as like leaders, and then imply that there are more of them with background citizens and guards ect. 

NO!!!

WE DO NOT IMPLY THAT A 15 YEAR OLD BOY WAS LOCKED IN A JAIL CELL WITH A GROWN MAN FOR NEARLY A YEAR!!!!!

I.... What?!

Who the fuck thought this was a good idea to put in a children’s show?

Did no one behind the scenes stop to think, “Hun, maybe we shouldn’t suggest that a teenager was trapped inside a small enclosed space with no way out twenty for hours a day with an adult who attempted to murder his girlfriend when lying to her stopped working. Perhaps someone might get the wrong impression.”? 

Like I hate censors as much as the next person, but editors work in the business for a reason, and that reason is to pull the artists aside sometimes and go “Hey, that shit don't fly with normal folk.” 

What’s worse is I don’t think the writers were even trying to be shocking and edgy here. I just think they were careless. They needed a quick exposition dumb to explain how Varian and Andrew know each other, and didn’t think through the implications of that line nor considered how Varian’s age changes the context of his situation. 

Which is beyond inexcusable because it’s so damn lazy! 

You wouldn’t need rushed exposition had you actually took the time to set up this plot point back in season two. Heck, you wouldn’t have needed to even set this plot point up had you not cut Varian’s original story out at the last minute. Finally, you should care enough about your characters to at least take their age into consideration when writing their development. 

There’s also the fact that it makes most of the ‘heroes’ look like assholes. 

We’ve seen these dungeons several times throughout the show. We know of their poor conditions. There’s little light, the food is slop, there’s no way to stay clean or use the restroom, prisons are never let out for exercise, ect. Like these are medieval style dungeons that are considered inhumane my modern audiences.  

Just because the show tries to play off the horribleness of it for laughs doesn’t mean the audience is going to find it funny that they traumatized a fifthteen year old with it.... again! 

Moreover Frederic had promised last time we saw him that he would give Varian help. He idea of ‘helping” Varian is supposedly to throw him into a nasty jail cell with a violent criminal? WTF? And there’s no indication that he tried anything to save Quirin either.

Not to mention that none of the mains act surprised by this revelation, nor comment about how awful Varian’s treatment is. As usual for them. 

It’s just sicking and most of the atempts to explain away this line by the fans have been super pathetic. 

“Frederic was giving him therapy while in jail” - there’s nothing to indicate therapy exists in this world and even if this were true it would be undermined by stupidly throwing him in a cell with Andrew. 

“It’s not literal, Varian was in a separate cell” - once again there’s nothing to back this up and even if that were the case it’s not that much better because it’s still a dungeon cell with zero privacy and Varian would still be close enough to Andrew to talk to him thus invading his personal space to some degree or other. 

“Well he tried to help but Varian wasn’t cooperative” -  still not an excuse and there’s nothing on screen to back up this headcanon. 

“It’s someone else’s fault.” - Who’s? Frederic is in charge of everything. The buck stops with him. If a guard did this without his knowledge then that means Frederic neglected his duties and his promise anyways. 

“Well maybe it’s true, but Varian did a bad thing and teens who do really bad things get sent to prison in the real world too” - Not an argument. Teens aren’t typically jailed with adults and the conditions for modern jails are at least somewhat better than those in Corona. Plus kids being sent to jail in any form is major topic of controversy in today's time. I’ve already covered why trying teens as adults is a vile abuse of power in the real world; I shouldn’t have to mention that the current government throwing children in cages is a bad thing as well! 

“Well that’s just part of the time period” - Doesn’t make it right, and sadly it’s not something in the distant past either. It’s currently happening right now in the US. It was happening when this episode and season was being written. The writers unthinkingly threw in a very real thing that affects hundreds of thousands of children and didn’t bother to follow up on it or comment about how wrong it is. 

There’s just no excuse for the way Frederic and Rapunzel treat Varian in this show. There’s just not, and some of y’all really need to stop trying to do so cause it means you’re inadvertently condoning real life abuses of power. 

You can like a character and except that they’ve done wrong. That’s a thing that you can do, you know. 

Let’s Talk about Character Design 

For the most part the art direction in the show is top notch. It really is the best looking animated show on tv today, and the character design is usually of this same quality. But they really dropped the ball with Varian’s design here. 

The structural bones of it isn’t bad. Taken on it’s own it would be fine, but good character design is supposed to give context and enhance the story and this doesn’t do that. 

We’ve haven’t seen Varian in a year, but instead of visually showcasing the passage of time by having him physically age we just get season one’s design but in bargain bin hot topic clothes and a drawn on barcode. 

Even the color palette is wrong. 

Varian’s is suppose to feature blues and earthy browns to go with his eyes and hair but instead we get bright reds, neon chimballs, and sharp contrasts with blacks and whites that just clashes with his base colors. 

And what does any of this tell the audience? How does it add to the story? What can we glean from his new design about what transpired in the last year?  

Nothing. 

At best it just reinforces that villian Varian is a try hard edge lord, but we already knew that. We would have known it even without the villain arc cause he’s a teenager. Not that he looks it. The boy is supposed to be either 16 or soon to be 16 and he still looks fucking 12.

What’s more they spent money on this. They made not one, but two new models with two new outfits, but they couldn’t be arsed just to make him a little taller? And no, he’s not actually any taller in season three. He was always Rapunzel’s height regardless of animation errors and squash and stretch techniques.  

It’s a waste. Just like nearly everything in season three. 

This Is Such a Cop-out

Speaking of things being a waste. Wiping Frederic’s and Arianna’s memories is taking the cowards way out. It’s them escaping any sort of meaningful consequence for their past actions and robs them of the chance to grow and develop as characters. All cause Chris didn’t want to deal with people pointing out the bullshit his self insert caused. 

Well guess what, I’m still pointing out Frederic’s BS, only now I’m extra angry cause I was robbed of a genuine character arc, so fuck you! 

Was Varian Actually Needed for This Plot?

No really. What does Varian even do here? The wand of oblivium is Saporian magic and they could and apparently did wipe the king’s and queen’s memories without Varian’s mindwipe concoction. That alone apparently gives them the power to run the kingdom.  

All Varian does is give them some alchemy based weapons and a bomb he accidentally invents. Both are things that the Saporians could have made themselves given how they know apothecary according to Rapunzel Day One.   

I’m currently in the middle of writing an AU fanfiction where Varian winds up in another world before the events of this episode, and let me tell you it is incredibly easy to write him out of the majority of season three without changing the plot much. 

Given how Varian is meant to be a main character this season, that’s not a good thing. 

So How Come None Of the “Heroes” Give a Shit?

Like I said above, none of the protagonists show the least bit of concern for what Varian is going through. Even though ignoring his needs is precisely what lead to this mess in the first place. It not only makes them look heartless, but it also makes them look plain stupid as well. 

Why is it so hard to just even pretend to care about the fact he’s been orphaned? Half of them are orphans themselves for fucks sake!  

Varian’s Not the One in Charge Here Rapunzel 

I know Varian is the bigger threat and has more of a personal connection to Raps, but it’s pretty clear that Andrew is the mastermind behind this coup. What good does shouting at Varian do? What makes Rapunzel think that any of the Saporians would listen to him even if he did change his mind? What makes her think ordering Varian around after she helped ruin his life would get him to change his mind. Like, my gosh is Rapunzel dumb! 

Why Are We Victim Blaming a Child Soldier?

That’s what he is at this point. He’s a weapons specialist for a rival kingdom fighting for control of the government. A government that has abused its own people leading to such an uprising. 

A teenager may not be as blameless as a baby but it's still beyond callous and cruel to blame kids and young teens who join extremist groups in war torn lands out of desperation.  

Is This Suppose to Be the Inciting Incident for Varian’s Redemption, Cause If So, That Makes No Sense  

This look of regret is the only indication that Varian is questioning where he stands before his redemption in part two. Except there he points out that he’s been thinking about it for while now, even before Raps showed up. Only there’s nothing to suggest why Varian would suddenly change his view point and motives. So the audience is still in the dark about his thought process even with this “hint” and I use that word loosely. 

Conclusion 

So that’s the end of part one. I hope to have part two up before the week is out. 

[singingforthepromises]

fruits basket manga lb (chs 131 - 133)

CH 131

We’re learning about the origins of the curse now. Oh boy. 

The cat went to God first ;A; 

omg the cat died first.... 

God saved it!

Oh, the cat didn’t want to have eternal life... and the others and God took that as rejection.... seriously? So petty, honestly. I love learning about how it happened but I’m just like... wtf. It’s like all of this generational trauma could’ve all been avoided if God and the animals hadn’t misinterpreted shit LOl

YUKI’S CRYING ;A;

I totally understand Yuki’s feelings here. It must be hard. You’re free, but you’re also letting go of something that was a part of you for so long, something that helped shaped who you are, no matter how negative a situation. 

AH AJSFJSJF HE CAN HUG HER NOW OH MY GOD I TOTALLY FORGOT IM SOBBING

MACHI IS SO CUTE 

She’s calling him by his first name KSFJSJFJSF

AHHH THEY KISSED! ENDGAME YUCHI! <3

“When did that promise turn into a curse?” What I’ve been asking since since the very beginning rofl

AKDGDKG KYO’S SHOWING KAZUMA HIS BARE ARM IM ;A;

KAZUMA IS SO HAPPY SJJDG

Haru and Rin!! <3

omg look at Tohru pulling on Kyo’s shirt how cute

is Tohru gonna see Akito? <3

SHE’S HUGGING HER! I LOVE THIS! I love that Akito can see that even after the curse has been lifted, Tohru wasn’t lying about being there for her, about being her friend. Akito needed this, honestly. I’m very happy with the resolution of their rivalry. I’m happy with how the curse broke. 

“The Cat’s wish... wasn’t granted... until much, much later.” IM CRYINGGG

CH 132

Starting the last volume... this is so depressing, I don’t want this story to be over. 

Akigure time, lol. 

Oh is this the final banquet? 

IT’S SO NICE TO SEE RITSU AGAIN!! <333

“Things might be a bit tense.” Oh, I’m sure. I don’t think it’s all going to be sunshine and daisies. Akito may be behaving a hell of a lot better and changed her ways, but there’s still a lot of pain here, pain that she directly caused. I’m interested to see how this is going to go. 

LOL @ momiji calling Kyo a cheater we love to see familial teasing!

I love that they’re not all awkward around each other. It just goes to show that a lot of their genuine personalities poked through even among the curse. They all do have a bond, curse or no curse. And it’s very nice to see Kyo being actually included in that bond. 

lool fucking Ayame, man. I love him. 

Aww is Yuki kinda sorta looking out for Kyo around Ayame? I love this. 

HAHA 

“Akito’s ready to see you.” sfjsjfsj

OH WOW.

Look at her? She looks so pretty? 

RITSU LMFAO

Oh, Shigure got her that kimono. 

Yeaaah, this is what I’m worried about with Akigure as a ship. Akito’s better, but she still has a tendency to fly off the handle if she thinks she’s being slighted, and it makes me worried about how they would handle dispites and arguments without getting physical like that, you know? I’d hope that she’d do it less and less as time goes on. 

“All of you are free. And this may come too late, but for everything... I’m...” Oh my god. Is she trying to apologize? 

She can’t, though. It won’t come out. I bet she probably feels like sorry isn’t enough, in some ways. How do you apologize for a lifetime of suffering that you’ve caused, the trauma inflicted on other people? 

I guess Akigure are official, lol. I mean, I’m glad that Akito’s getting a somewhat happy ending. Shigure, I still don’t like him but he’s a fantastic character. 

Akito’s gonna stay at the estate and be the head without keeping anyone shackled to her. That’s as good of an ending as I could’ve anticipated for her. I’ll be honest: I still feel like she got off a little easy. She should’ve faced some legal consequences, at least. But I don’t dislike her like I used to. She’s definitely come around and I’ve partially forgiven her. 

I’ll talk more about my feelings about Akito and everything once I’ve finished, but that’s where I am right now. 

CH 133

AHHH KYORU. THEY’RE OFFICIAL! 

loool who is Mayu talking about? 

OH Yuki and the others know about Akito being a female now? Nice!

“I can’t believe I was so violent... to a girl.” KYO. MY BOY. Omg what a sweetheart? Honey, she was violent to you, too. 

“The last thing I wanted was another guy interested in you.” LMFAOOOO 

YUKI’S DYING

“The mood between the two of them has become somewhat gentler than before.” Somewhat? Girl, they’re friends now, and I’m loving it. It’s so cute. 

“He beat the crap outta me.” YES LOL

“Kyo-kun smiles more than he used to. I’ve come to realize that this is his true self.” ;A;

oh my gosh THEY’RE SO CUTE.

How are they even cuter now that they’re dating?!

“Walking together, hand in hand, isn’t something that I’ll ever take for granted.” I’m cryinggggg. ;a; My babies. 

NOT TALK OF A KYORU BABY MY HEART CAN ONLY HANDLE SO MUCH.

AND GRANDPA KAZUMA!! HE’D DOTE ON THAT KID!

What’s wrong with my bby girl Isuzu? :(

“Not everyone... is in the same situation.” Ah, yeah... 

“How can you act like nothing ever happened? She did all kinds of nasty stuff to Kyo. And she hurt you a lot too. Those wounds will never disappear, will they?” I 1000% understand Rin here. I was waiting for this to be brought up!

Oh, Isuzu, my poor girl. 

This might change later on, but as of right now, I don’t fully forgive Akito, either. There’s just too much that she did to too many people. Like Rin, like Yuki, like Kyo. Even Hatori. I’m generally a forgiving person, but I have a hard time with abusive characters. Maybe it’s from my own past, being a survivor of abuse. Being around it and knowing how they are just impacts you differently, I guess. I don’t know if it’s right to say that maybe people who haven’t experienced abuse are able to forgive easier. 

I haven’t forgiven my abuser, and I never will. Do I still understand why they did it, why they are who they are, and do I still empathize? YES. I feel a lot for people. I feel a lot for Akito on a positive note, and I’m so proud of her progression. She’s a hurt woman who deserved better and who hurt people because she was in so much pain herself. She hasn’t been able to break free of her abuser or heal yet. She needs a safe space to do that, and she’s beginning to learn to be better and be a sweeter person. Tohru showed her that. 

But like Rin, I can’t fully forgive her. If Tohru hadn’t done what she did, hadn’t reached out to Akito, Akito never would’ve changed. She would’ve continued to be horrible and not feel regret for the things she’s done. I appreciate that she was trying to apologize, though. And there are things that I’ve forgiven her for. It’s the worst indiscretions that I can’t. How she treated Rin and Yuki, specifically. I know that she was projecting with Rin. But Rin was a child and an abuse victim herself. Out of all of them, Akito could’ve related to her. Akito knew. She used that instead to hurt Rin, and that is the one thing that I’ll never be okay with. 

“They’ll need time. A whole lot.” Yes. And even then, it may not be enough. Some scars run so fucking deep that even time doesn’t help. I’ve healed from my trauma. It doesn’t impact me anymore. I’ve learned how to cope and move on and now utilize those skills to help others. I think time will help, though, and it may allow others to forgive Akito later. 

Distance is the key here, I think. If they’re not around her, maybe forgiveness will come easier. 

Wow, Akito taking what she learned from Tohru and reaching out to the maid? We love to see it.