#mentioned rape

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

Suspend Your Disbelief. Seriously.

One thing I've taught myself when it comes to interpreting literature, no matter what it is or where it comes from, is when something is left unsaid, I assume the best-case scenario.

An example: Greek Mythology.

Greek Mythology is notorious for having very...disturbing things happen. And yeah, it happens to even your favorites.

But something that ticks me off (on this website in particular) is exaggerating a myth.

I think Apollo is a very good example of this. I have heard "Apollo raped [insert name here]!" so many times, but you know what? They never back it up with actual sources! Just heresy!

Daphne? He never even touched her. Chased her? Yes, but people also tend to disregard Eros's own involvement in that matter. (i made a post about it and other things)

Castalia? Same as Daphne. also was a very late addition by the Romans and is not Greek

Cassandra? This is literally a case of a woman being given autonomy! If Apollo was literally any other god, she would have been raped - but he didn't! Curse her? Yes and there's a lot more to unpack here but that's another post but he never assaulted her! "But she was coerced-" NO SHE WAS NOT. AS A MATTER OF FACT SHE LOVED HIM. YEAH THAT'S RIGHT CASSANDRA LOVED APOLLO. PROOF IN THE TROJAN WOMEN:

Farewell, ye garlands of that god most dear to me! farewell, ye mystic symbols! I here resign your feasts, my joy in days gone by. Go, I tear ye from my body, that, while yet mine honour is intact, I may give them to the rushing winds to waft to thee, my prince of prophecy

also this is after the curse situation. so. they have NUANCES! and i like that. euripides be giving us NUANCES and i SALUTE him GIVE ME THE NUANCES PLEASE

I could go on and on. But one myth is a very good example of this "assume the best happened" vs "assume the worst happened" mindset.

Bolina. She was a mortal who Apollo fell in love with, but she threw herself off a cliff. Apollo turned her immortal to save her life, and that's the end of the story.

Yet I have heard people use Bolina's myth as "proof" that Apollo's a rapist.

First of all, I have a whole post basically debunking this notion, but also, where does it say. at any point. that Apollo raped Bolina?

(screenshot from Theoi.com)

Where.

That's right. Nowhere.

Sure, I guess you could assume it was done after Apollo turned Bolina immortal, but honestly, in my opinion, that's just grasping at straws. That's looking for something to complain about.

What I've learned is to assume the best happens. And guess what? That makes me enjoy mythology more! Suspend your disbelief! Not that difficult! Just because these myths are from ancient times doesn't mean terrible things happened all the time!

And I say this as an enjoyer of Mythology. This is not my religion, or my culture, but I am an avid enjoyer (particularly of Apollo's myths, hence why I used him as an example) and I do get irritated when these myths are twisted around in someone's quest to "prove" that a certain god usually Apollo is The Worst.

and it's kinda funny how people are determined to make Apollo this terrible, misogynistic asshole when...he's not. Then turn around and call the goddesses feminist girlbosses when they have also done fuck-up shit to other women.

Suspend the disbelief. You'll be happier.

[pigeonwhumps]

Who’s your worst OC and why?

Oh god. There's so many awful ones. Finn kidnapped and raped a young woman, then got her memory wiped and was disappointed he didn't get to rape her more until years later. So he's up there. As is Tyrone.

Right now though my instinct is to go with Abbie. She preyed on a vulnerable kid with awful parents to persuade them to join up, took them in when she was their only option, and then continued to hurt them until they thought, quite reasonably really, that everyone would do so. She isolates them so much, doesn't let them get medical treatment, they have no idea what it's like to be treated well, no idea about anything to do with Hero League that Abbie didn't want them to know (in particular they don't know anything in HQ beyond their flat, for isolation purposes), and it's just... They're 16, homeless, extremely vulnerable, and all she can think of is how to exploit them.

And Phoenix has so much trauma from her too. I've got a lil rp going with @i-eat-worlds at the moment and like... the operating table is not a good place for a flashback but of course they have one there and it's all Abbie and her friend's fault (she got medical treatment once, disregarding Electrocus. Not from the medbay and it wasn't pretty). And that's honestly why she's my worst rn I'm sure, rather than anyone else, bc she's who's on my brain the most, but like... she's really, really, horrible, and yet so many people are on her side bc she does such a good job of convincing people she's not. She's just overprotective of Phoenix, that's why she looked in their medical file, she shouldn't have been forced to go on leave (not like that's proper consequences anyway). She's so two-faced and I hate her so much.

Anyway. That was a rambly rant.

[glitchingonthetimeline]

I've just. Seen someone go "yeah, rape is awful, expecially if the victim is a kid or a teenager, but if the victim gets pregnant because of that, we shouldn't kill the baby. It's still a life and it has value."

I. Am not. A FUCKING WALKING WOMB. I, AND ONLY I, CAN CHOOSE WHAT THE FUCK I'M SUPPOSED TO DO WITH MY BODY. NOT YOU, NOT THE GOVERNMENT, NOT THE CHURCH, AND CERTAINLY NOT A FUCKING RAPIST.

[awesomestarfighter]

After two years, I have risen from the writing grave to share another fic. Potential readers, please heed the tags.

[antebellumite]

" The tree-turned-into-a-bush, in short, is fucked. So, too, is the soil. When the enslaved men broke it open for the tentrepreneur, he fucked the dirt with them as his tool. He fucked this field. He might fuck their wives in the woods, or in the corn when it is high. Or their daughter in the kitchen. Then the next new girl he buys at New Orleans. " But he fucks the men, too. He plants in all his hands the seeds of his dreams. In fact, he plants them all, men and women, in this place, just as he plants as those seeds. Plants, ecosystems, people strain to live their lives according to their own codes, but he twists their efforts into helixes of his own design."

[txttletale]

non-normative sexuality is not the root of sexual abuse or rape. for a huge amount of history in a huge amount of the world, sexual abuse and rape have been thoroughly normal (cf. marital rape exemptions being removed from US legal codes as recently as 2019). rapists are not 'freaks' -- the default, 'normal' paradigm of sexuality across the world is one of violent misogyny. 640 million women are or were child brides and the men marrying them are not abberations or exceptions, they are normal. men who engage in endemic workplace harassment or frat boys who assault women are behaving in a way that is 'normal', they are fulfiling the gendered expectations for expressions of heterosexual sexuality when they harass and catcall and abuse women. projecting sexual violence onto the specter of the obviously deviant, abnormal outsider is a scapegoating mechanism intended to sanitize and exonerate the cisheteropatriarchal standard of normalized and ubiquitous sexual violence

[awakefor48hours]

Please stop telling people, for any reason, to kill themself. Stop advocating for suicide in any form or capacity.

[spookside]

[fairuzfan]

Here's a summary of what's been happening in Sudan the past couple of days. It's gotten to the point where women are asking for contraceptives for fear of getting raped by RSF forces.

[headspace-hotel]

okay but like this is what deeply bothers me about the whole "tiktok is making people think every negative experience is a trauma!" thing

Trauma is common. Like really common. How do we accept statistics like "1 in 4 women has been sexually assaulted" or "1 in 3 people grew up in a home with domestic violence" or whatever number of people will fight cancer or be in a car crash or an abusive relationship, and at the same time doubt any suggestion that a lot of people may actually be traumatized?

It's in our cultural definition of trauma—that trauma is some extreme event outside "normal" life, and that the people that experience it are a sequestered group that is well outside the "average" person.

but like, even strictly Criterion A PTSD type "traumatic" events are...not rare. at all. You can be a hardass about it and say that you have to be raped or threatened with death or violence to have trauma, and that's still a lot of people that have experienced that. People around you. People that pass by you every day. People that appear and seem "normal" to you.

if you accept the idea that belonging to certain marginalized groups can have some traumatizing elements to it, "most people are traumatized in some way" is just the most blandly obvious statement ever.

but even if you're for some reason squicky about "watering down" the definition of trauma (lol), we can at least agree that most people are hurt, right? Deeply hurt. Most people have been mangled by their experiences in one way or another. People's behavior is guided by the fact that they are hurt.

One of my dad's sayings, which is earnest and not at all shameful or demeaning, is that People Are Broken. And in church settings (because he was a pastor and is still very devout) his measure of the quality of that church setting was always their ability to come to terms with the fact that People Are Broken, not just people Out There or hypothetical people but us, the people around us, the people we live alongside and befriend and love. And if a church thought of Broken People as an external category of people to be "reached," instead of a near-universal experience of being human in a cruel society, well that church was likely to be, ultimately, toxic. And hardly any church passes that test, because our brokenness is hard to talk about.

We can't admit that most people are traumatized because it means that the call is coming from inside the house, that the menace is contained within our society instead of being a freak accident/act of god/attack by a lone wolf outside of the normal confines of our world.

But this is the truth. That our world, the nice, "normal" world, the everyday world, hurts people. We are not gentle enough for other humans, our society is not kind enough for humans to thrive.

We have to try to be less cruel. We have to understand that almost everyone has endured something unspeakable and has not fully healed. This is why I don't care about watering down the definition of trauma. We have not even begun to fully define the wound. There is no virtue in conserving recognition for the most obvious and extreme human pain. Why would we need less compassion?

[ayeforscotland]

Can 2024 be the year we stop using stupid fucking terms like ‘unaliving’?

Self-censorship is still censorship, and mature conversations should use mature language.

Same can be said of ‘grape’ instead of ‘rape’, ‘corn’ instead of ‘porn’.

We need to be able to discuss these things, and we also need to use that language so people who want to avoid these conversations can block the tags. Using silly language like that circumvents the space that people curate for themselves.

[lilithtransrights]

Hey!! Idk if you know this but terfs on twitter have been screenshotting your kink posts and using them to demonize trans women (calling y’all monsters, r@pists, etc) You might wanna put a fantasy disclaimer on the bottom of your posts but stay safe!!

I don't think there's really a difference to them if there's a fantasy disclaimer or not.

Also woah I'm twitter famous now?

[saywhatyouwillbut]

i’m sorry about kidnapping your boyfriend so we could give the fbi false testimony. yes, i tried to feed him, he thinks thai is too fattening and wouldn’t have any. i also put out a hit on his rapist

[peoplegettingreallymadatghosts]

I never played Life is Strange, does this match up

[mostly-funnytwittertweets]

[vague-humanoid]