#real child abuse and exploitation

[peantisdeliriouts]

Once again if you call lolicon “CP” I almost instantly know how much of a fuck you actually give about real kids being abused and exploited.

Genuinely at that point you just need to shut the fuck up with your virtue-signaling bullshit.

[wincist]

If you are in any online spaces that discuss the morality of fiction or its censorship, please keep the following in mind:

CSAM refers to Child Sexual Abuse Material. This is a term that was created for use by US federal law enforcement. As such, it is important to remember that this is a term used specifically to describe illegal sexual content that is produced involving real children. the term CSAM was specifically constructed to highlight the trauma these victims experience because of this abuse, and therefore their humanity.

if you come across CSAM online, you should immediately report it to a tip line. Some websites that host their servers in the US are subject to US federal law even if the person who posted it does not currently reside in the US, so keep that in mind when reporting. again, this is involving CSAM - it is illegal sexual content involving real children.

CSEM refers to Child Sexual Exploitation Material. This is material that involves a real child in a sexualized situation, but either 1- the material itself is not illegal to possess, or 2- the material is not sexualized, but is included in a series or other content that does contain CSAM. Think along the lines or a parent with a few too many photos of their child in the bath. These images are not explicitly sexual, and are not illegal in and of themselves, but they can be used exploitatively.

If you come across CSEM online, it's still a good idea to send in a tip as well as alerting the website it was posted on. Even if the content itself isn't technically illegal, some websites do have strict rules regarding nudity and the sexualization of minors, which can help stop the spread of such materials and reduce the impact on the affected child.

CSAM and CSEM are words used to describe the assault, abuse, sexualization, and exploitation of real children. CSAM, specifically, is used as a way to identify and remove these materials.

CSAM and CSEM do not apply to fiction. They don't apply to any fictionalized or simulated child abuse or sexualized children. They only refer to real children.

Do not send in tips about fictionalized child abuse or sexualized children to tip lines meant to be used for CSAM.

Do not use the words CSAM and CSEM when discussing fictionalized child abuse or sexualized children. In a worst case scenario, it leads to people misusing tip lines due to a conflation of CSAM with fictionalized depictions.

In a more likely scenario, using CSAM to refer to fiction minimizes what CSAM was created to do - which was highlight the trauma experienced by survivors, and therefore draw attention to their humanity. By continuing to use these terms in situations that do not involve real people, it reduces that impact.

[stackslip]

fujimoto is the absolute king of creating a world where mass death is a regular occurrence and yet every single time it feels singularly devastating. i've seen people say his work is nihilistic, that people die over nothing--i profoundly disagree! again and again, it is made clear that the deaths and horrors in chainsaw man aren't random acts of god, and that the people who die aren't random faces in a crowd but people who are willingly sacrificed in the name of social cohesion and the comfort of a few. the people killed by the gun devil all had names, lives, ages that were inescapable and their deaths are just as bad of a tragedy's as aki's. asa's mom's death might have been forgotten by all, and yet it has a profound impact on asa's own life and outlook. the people convinced to commit suicide by falling had long discussions about their everyday life before they fell off their balcony. it is power and nayuta's deaths--people who mattered little to makima and to barem, who were simply seen as tools for an end--that utterly crush denji and awaken pochita. himeno lost her partners, one by one, and every time she got more and more depressed. these are real people, all of them! their lives mattered! death is a normal occurence in chainsaw man, but the loss of a life is a tragedy every time

most importantly; most of these mass death events, as normalized as they are, are not random or natural. they're the result of devils being used as tools, of the powerful using those that they consider belong to them as payment for their comfort or to further their goals. in chapter one, denji got murdered after a lifetime of abuse as payment for his abuser's eagerness for power. the president of the united states pays for the gun devil to fight makima with one year from each american's life. the japanese government pays for makima's every death with the death of a citizen. public safety regularly sends its employees to cut their throats for a devil to wipe out a building. the german government contracted santa claus and gave her children in return. the chainsaw man cult used its desperate, scared child members to gain an army.

and now, foreign children are given citizenship simply so they can be gunned down coldly and used as blood and payment to use chainsaw man and make scared, rich old men live longer. idk how much more explicit you can be here. look at these kids! do their lives mean nothing? they're drawn in loving detail. they're real people being sent to be butchered!

death in chainsaw man isn't meaningless. far from it! this isn't saying "this world is absurd and has no meaning". this is about exploitation. chainsaw man has always been about exploitation and abuse, at its very core. these people mean something. these are real human beings, being fed to the grinder, again and again. they're being fed to it BY the rich and powerful, by their governments, by their employers, by their abusers. hell, yoru has fed her own children to this grinder, just to get a little more. ownership and greed, this is the core of what's happening. this is murder, not random acts of violence!

[duckthisone]

repeat after me: you cannot draw/write cp/csem. there is no child being exploited. it is fake. unless you are drawing a real child, no child is harmed. you are watering down the definition and flooding cybercrime tiplines. legitimate accusations of abuse are getting drowned out by hand wringing over cartoons. you are doing more damage to victims than a drawing ever could. i hope you feel ashamed for taking attention and resources away from living breathing victims. i hope you can't sleep. i hope it eats away at you.

[dolche-tejada]

You know, I think this ending would have been slightly less of a fucking disappointment if the heroes hadn't been so unfairly favored by Horikoshi compared to the villains. I mean, seriously

Deku destroys every bone in his body multiple times throughout the story and is warned that if he continues, he'll permanently lose the use of his limbs ? Everything's fine, his body's just got used to being reduced to a bloody pulp somehow so there's no consequences for him. In fact even when he literally loses his arms to Shigaraki, he gets them back two minutes later thanks to Eri because guess what ? Her horn still works even when cut off from her body. How convenient.

Gran Torino gets his ribcage obliterated by Shigaraki ? Don't worry guys, he'll survive that despite his old age and injuries, and this to have no particular role in the plot afterwards.

Bakugo dies heroically trying to buy time before Deku arrives ? Lmao, did you really believe it ?? No of course not, Edgeshot just uses his last-minute Deus Ex Machina to save his life at the cost of his own and- Oops nope he's fine too, my bad !

Hawks murders a criminal fleeing for his life in cold-blood ? The best Hori has to offer is him completely free and in charge of the HSPC.

And no, losing his quirk isn't a real consequence for him because not only it literally played a major part in saving the world with Vestige!Hawks raising an insurrection among AFO's quirks, but also because his quirk has always been the element through which people exploited him.

Endeavor abused his family for years and completely destroyed his eldest son ? No jail time and no media backlash for that, the only blame he received was due to the heroes' failure to stop the League during the Raid Arc.

And don't even get me started on this bs about facing hell or whatever for what he's done : He's literally free and wealthy ; he has Rei, Fuyumi, Shoto, his sidekicks and Hawks on his side ; and all the difficulties he's apparently going to suffer are off-screened.

Deku had to sacrifice OFA and his future hero career to save the world ? Guess what, Bakugo invested all his time and money to make him an Iron-Man suit and now he can still be a hero with everyone else.

There are plenty more examples of this but I think you get the idea. Now let's take a look at the villains' ending :

Toya is now a piece of charcoal kept artificially alive for the few years he has left, unable to move a finger, and whose few minutes a day during which he can stay awake will be spent talking to his father who abused him as a child.

Toga, a literal teenager, killed herself to save Ochako and because she knew it's still better than rotting at Tartarus her whole life.

And not only did she die but she did by bleding to death. Let me repeat for those who have trouble grasping what I've just said : In a manga where the heroes can survive having their heart blown to bits, being impaled Kakyoin-style or smashed against buildings like a fly on a windshield, one of the main antagonists died of a fucking hemorrhage…

As for Shigaraki, after learning that his very birth and all the tragedies of his life have been orchestrated by AFO, after all this development and narrative promises about him being saved in the end... Deku just kills him.

Because despite all his speeches about saving him, it seems like the best our MC could do was beating him both physically and mentally until he crumbles to dust…

Compress on his side is apparently locked up for life and kept alive by machines too.

A begging Kurogiri tried in a desperate attempt to save Shigaraki, only to be unceremoniously blown up by Bakugo and dying off-screen without anyone giving a shit, including Aizawa and Mic.

And Spinner will now spend the rest of his life struggling with the extra quirks inside him that affect his body and mind, while having to cope with the thought that his boyfriend best friend and companions have either died alone or are locked away for life in horrifying circumstances.

Clearly not the same as with the heroes...

Now don't get me wrong, even if they suffered just as much from the consequences of their actions or the plot as the League, this ending would still be a disaster in terms of writing but AT LEAST it wouldn't reek that much of hypocrisy.

[wilwheaton]

“Probably the most meaningful and significant thing that Star Trek has given me, and what will be the longest lasting thing, is that [it] gave me a family,” he says. “I'm a survivor of child abuse and exploitation. I lived in a house with four other people, but I was not part of a family. My parents worked real hard to be mom and dad to my brother and sister. My dad was a bully to me, and my mom was an incompetent manager who I couldn't fire. I was super-alienated, super-alone, super-lonely. And when I was at work, I was with people who saw me and loved me, and just by treating me the way I guess decent people treat other people, something I was not experiencing at home, I felt loved and I felt safe, and I felt seen.”

Wil Wheaton on Wesley Crusher’s Impostor Syndrome: ‘He Had This Revelation’

[radfemsiren]

🤍A basic rundown of my beliefs as a radical feminist 🤍

(I don’t represent every radical feminist, but these are usually the standard opinions you’ll find of many radfems. Hate or disagree with them, that’s fine! But know the truth of who I am and what I stand for beforehand)

- there are 2 sexes, the male sex is oppressing the female sex

- femicide, rape, child sex abuse, hijab laws, female genital mutilation, domestic labor, trafficking, war crimes, revenge porn, prostitution… women and girls around the world are being exploited, tortured, and killed because of this oppression, and it must end.

- female oppression is sex based oppression, meaning a woman can’t just identify out of her oppression (for example hijab laws)

- sex is biological and an immutable truth, gender is a social construct

- gender should be done away with because gender roles are male supremacist and result in women and girls being stereotyped, dehumanized, barred from education, safety, bodily autonomy, etc.

- defining women with anything other than biology is misogynistic and relies on stereotypes

- the biological differences between men and women must be acknowledged in order to effectively end patriarchal oppression

- radical feminism is getting to the root of female oppression (radical -> root)

- misandry is not real and is just an extension of misogyny (for example, “men are told not to cry!” Yes because women are seen as inferior and any trait associated with us is seen as degrading/emasculating for men. This is why there is no female equivalent to emasculation.)

- all current religions are patriarchal and made by men to exploit and control women

- access to abortion is a human right and should never be threatened, women are the creators of life and deserve to gatekeep it, as well as exercise full autonomy over our own bodies

- Using sexist gender roles to define yourself is giving these misogynistic stereotypes power (wearing makeup or dresses doesn’t make anyone less or more of a woman, this is misogyny)

- the beauty industry is patriarchal and exploits women, our bodies and our money

- sex work is not work, it’s always exploitation (consent can not be bought)

- the porn industry is patriarchal and relies on trafficking, coercion, and rape to function. It also conditions its watchers to be aroused by violence against women, and results in more real life consequences for women and girls

- women’s spaces and institutions must be protected. Women’s safety is more important than catering to male feelings

- marriage is a patriarchal institution made to exploit the domestic labor of women for her entire life

- BDSM/kink are patriarchal and only center the pleasure and well being of men.

- hookup culture is patriarchal and the risk to reward is not worth it for women to engage in it

- gender ideology is patriarchal and is a direct hindrance to female liberation (we can’t define ourselves or our oppressors, we can’t create spaces away from our oppressors, we can’t create laws and policy based on these definitions, people who are gender non conforming / have gender dysphoria are pressured to alter their bodies to conform to a rigid standard and become lifelong medical patients, etc)

- choice feminism and liberal feminism caters to conforming to patriarchal standards and institutions, and refuses to examine why women make choices under patriarchy

- women of color face oppression on the axis of our sex and race, men of color only face oppression on the axis of their race

- non white patriarchal institutions must be criticized: a mullah is just as dangerous to the liberation of women as a pastor is

- women should decenter the men in their lives just as men have done with women. That means prioritizing us! Engaging in women’s media, art, stories, fostering female communities and support networks, uplifting and empowering their sisters around the world

- being a radical feminist means consistently taking radical action, big or small, we all can do it! Go support a female artist, go donate menstrual products to a shelter, go tell off a man when you see him making a woman uncomfortable. We all can make a difference!

…My feminism focuses on criticism of Islam and middle eastern patriarchy, but there are radfems with many focuses/passions… some in eco feminism, some on uplifting Romani women, black women, neurodivergent women, women with disabilities, prostituted women… some are passionate about women’s sports, women’s art, women’s writing, women’s history, lesbian and bisexual women’s stories… everyone has their passion on here, so before you come to attack, just check out my blog and click around at the different profiles on this corner of the internet…. maybe we might not be the terrible witches you thought us to be. Or maybe we are, but witches are awesome so who cares lol

[apas-95]

the view that sexual predation is based on 'brain development' rather than life experience and social power is, like the common view that incest is bad because of 'inbreeding' rather than the control granted by the family structure, one where the issues of social power imbalance are replaced by an unhelpful bioessentialism - one that both makes permissions for these abuses (whether it's in the cases of non-blood relatives, or of an 18 year old being exploited by a 50 year old), and targets non-abusive relationships (if the reason for incest's immorality is that it might produce a disabled child, how does that logic continue towards people with inherited illnesses?). working within this essentialist logic, it's impossible to rectify these issues - neither extending the supposed 'undeveloped brain' to greater ages, nor simply deciding that there exists no real power a middle-aged man has over a new graduate, can fix the errors generated.

[moonveiltarot]

How Do You Intimidate Your Haters?

Okayyy let's go! As usual, pick the image you're drawn to for your reading. Only take what applies. This is not advice and I am not a professional. You can change anything by manifesting what you prefer. You are a beautiful soul. I use my unpublished bratz oracle deck. Entertainment only.

Profanity.

Minors do not interact or read.

˚　　　　✦　　　.　　. 　˚　.　　　　　 . ✦

This should be juicy!

Sorry for the het terms, it's just what naturally came out, please use the pronouns that fit if it resonates with you

"Bitches want you to compete with them so bad. Bitch it's YOU against YOU & you're still losing! LEAVE ME ALONE."

Songs: Miss Possessive - Tate McRae // Exes - Tate McRae

Cards: Monster. Victim. Power Couple. Femme Fatale. Innocent. Hometowns. The Intellectual. Daydreamer. Tattletale. The Moon. Leap of Faith.

The "leap of faith" card looks like it has been chewed up and spit out. Considering the other cards, I'm getting the vibe that someone misunderstood the assignment. While you, pile 1, understood it very well.

You are perfect at playing the role of an innocent bystander or a harmless person, but someone made a mistake and saw what you were capable of. You have your haters saying you a split personality because, whatever they did to push you over the edge was enough to make your nice girl facade disappear. Immediately, they saw the horrors that lurk within and do NOT want to experience it again.

Some of you may have been in a situation where you were innocent and acted like "bait" just to expose someone's true colors. It worked. Your haters are watching and waiting for you to slip up and show them your ugly side, but they will never see it. They are too scared to provoke you to that point.

Whatever the situation was, it made you stronger. You know how to play the role strategically and get your way, whatever that means.

You probably have an ex saying you're crazy and they may actually have gotten a new partner to believe you are crazy. The truth is, you are fucking crazy when you have to be. They could never get you out of character though.

In fact, you probably staged a situation so your ex would harm or abuse you in a way that you could finally record it or get them to do it in front of someone, so you would be believed. Even though you may have strategized to exploit this side to them, they had already been this way to you. You did what you had to. And that is incredibly badass, to be honest.

Now, their reputation is ruined and yours? Glowing! Because you are a venus fly trap, darling. So alluring, so easy to get one over on, but wait! You were two steps ahead the whole time? And now everyone who tried to set you up essentially failed and now everyone's looking at them crazy.

2. "The 'loser' in you is so loud."

Songs: The Boy Is Mine - Ariana Grande // Von Dutch - Charli XCX

Cards: Gifts. Self Care. Victim. F*ck-Boi. Saboteur. King of cups. 6 of Cups. Knight of Swords. 3 of Swords. 6 of Swords.

Oof. Somebody, a little pathetic player, tried to come between you and your boo. You have something solid already and they really thought they could steal your partner away?? Or steal you from your partner? If that's not the case, this is an ex who is comparing themself to your new relationship.

He knows this King of Cups is "big daddy" vibes because he can see that you are being treated the way you always should have been. Flowers, dates, romance, love. You're being cherished and valued. You are up-leveling yourself and have more offers.

This man-child is feeling like a real clown. They are embarrassed and feel like they aren't up to your standards anymore. This loser from the past is really plotting to or heavily fantasizing about home wrecking.

They are taking your boundaries personally (their problem). What a creep.

Your new person probably victimized them or bullied them in some way. Ngl, that made me laugh. Imagine your new partner bullying your toxic ex and just walking away. lmao

Anyway, you could also be victimizing them. It is breaking their heart, if you were wondering. They are crying all the time about it, but won't let you see. Unless they are one of those toxic, whiny crazy ones. Yikes.

Played the player, pile 2. Now that your energy is going to yourself, this op can't stand it.

3. "Why fight a b*tch when you're already beating her in life?"

Songs: American Beauty - Nessa Barrett

Cards: Queen of Swords. Ace of Cups. 6 of Swords. The Moon. Queen of Wands. 3 of Wands. Cheater, Cheater. Baddie. Blocked. Divine Couple. Trophy Wife. Rabbit hole.

You are incredibly gorgeous. Your haters don't trust their partners around you. They know their partners talk in the group chat about how hot you are. They know their partner would love to spend with you or talk to you. It's giving "fan / simp" energy. They know their partner doesn't simp for them like they do for you.

This is kind of sad … They have insecurities. They probably had to block you because of how beautiful you are. That or they had their man block you.

On the other hand, once you find out men in your DMs have someone you cut them off cold. This makes them feel a certain type of way.

They get obsessive and stalkerish, though mostly they just search for you online with no intent to harm you. The "cold cut-off" is what does it. They like that little bitchy side you have.

Your haters are the men who can't get you to cheat with them. You are the kind of woman bad boys want on their arm. You make them simp for you and meanwhile they are stringing along some "good girl" who has never been used like this before.

You are the woman every man wants. While you have a hood-side to you, you've got that under wraps.

You are polished, well put together, on top of your shit, could be an entrepreneur or witch (idk, don't ask me it just came through) and that badass side to you is simmering just beneath your carefully curated surface. You are polite and diplomatic.

Let's be honest here, you are the prize. Men view you as what they really want vs their current woman who is just a placeholder.

You may deal with guy friends blocking you out of nowhere. This is their women blocking you when they find out their man was in your DMs or was even your friend.

You're at the top of the "sexual desire" hierarchy. You are considered an accomplished person who looks very attractive. You literally could have your pick of anyone on the planet. Men / fans / simps / women / anyone who you attract can get a little delusional and sick about you.

They might spend hours and hours of their day just spaced out fantasizing about a real life with you. They could end up neglecting their own life because of how much they think about you.

This is their problem with you. You win. They literally can't fucking compete. Cheerleader, prom queen, pageant queen … you name it. You're considered gorgeous and accomplished by many.

To be honest, no one likes to feel that all of the love and nurturing they poured into someone will go out the window the moment they think they have a chance with you. Nobody.

The partners of these "fans" feel beneath you and it hurts them, it cuts deep, that if you chose to take their man they'd be helpless and have to sit there and watch their life walk away. The fact that you aren't evil makes it worse for them because then they have to sit on pins and wondering if you'd ever actually do it.

Their chest aches when they go to sleep, they cry themselves to sleep sometimes beside the same partner who waits until they think their girl is asleep then goes on their phone and looks at pics or vids of you.

You could have one ex who watched your come up from a distance and can't reach you now, but is longing for you despite having a family and maybe even kids.

They desire you, but do they even have what it takes to stand beside you? They just objectify you and it's sickening how they act. If they are blocked, good. If not, they can die mad just watching from the sidelines.

Some of these people / your ex (whichever scenario resonates) believe strongly you were supposed to be their wifey/hubby/partner for life. Their dream partner. Their partner in crime. They think they would gain the world if you were by their side. They want the lifestyle that comes with having a beautiful woman like you.

4. "People do weird sh*t, then go to a weirdo to get it validated."

Songs: Leah Kate - Get In Loser // F U Anthem - Leah Kate // Leaving This World Behind - Starset Cards: Spoiled Brat. Anger Issues. Hidden Enemy. Divine Feminine. Mentor. 2 of Pentacles. Page of Wands. 5 of Cups. 8 of Swords. Queen of Swords. The lovers.

I'm picking up a clown show. This isn't the kind of fuckery that makes me cringe or want to bully said "clowns." It's cute. It makes me giggle.

Anyway, because you are attractive, you have a "player" in his head. You confuse him. You're free spirited and just do your own thing. Like a manic pixie dream girl meets a meathead who is actually goofy and cute. He's kind of an asshole though.

He sees you living your life after he did something mean and is spiraling a bit. Good leave him there. You're not going to like what I have to say probably, but you're in love with each other. You both are "players," not quick to get attached or anything. Living your life just for you and having as much fun as possible.

This person is in their head. Why did their games not work on you? If they bullied you, why in the Hell did it not work on you?

Like, they literally asked someone if doing "insert their stupid action" was a good idea and that person was dismissive as fuck, but it went over your person's head. "Yeah…" was pretty much the response and for some reason that's the only validation your person needed.

They wanted to conform to something and did it, but saw that it had no effect on you. Sure their buddies might have laughed about it, but you? You just kept on going (at least it looked that way to them). Now they know you view them a certain way because your cute little self just kept on trucking and brushed it off like he was nothing.

Suddenly, out of no-fricking-where he has feelings for you. He tells himself he doesn't. He likes to be the impulsive one. But then you happened. He saw you just overcome that shit like it was nothing. Like he was nothing. He got to see a good person be done wrong because of him. He feels so stupid and embarrassed by his own actions. He'd never say it out loud.

You wouldn't either. You're a dreamer and a doer. You kind of like to go where the wind takes you. You can be impulsive too, which leads to really good times. But then the other person has withdrawals.

Your person casually did this to others and didn't give a fuck, but then they met you. Your vibrant, bright and fun energy was like medicine for their soul. Then you took it away. All the sparkles just disappeared. The magic was gone. You took it with you.

You two could be really great friends, like actual besties. Because you both give the "funny, cute oddball" couple energy (without the couple). You might currently view each other as enemies outwardly, but the truth is that you're both in love. The lovers was on the bottom of the deck and I almost didn't turn it over. When I did I felt incredibly relieved.

You could definitely end up together. Or this is someone who will play a key part in finding your someone somewhere. The truth is, they are just like you, but they crave the validation of others and conform way too easily.

They want to be respected and admired, they want to be a leader. They could do it, but they won't stop trying to win over others. They want fame, they want money. Their aim is to be one of those people others wish they were.

This is their divine path, but they have to overcome the fear of being judged by people who only use them and don't value them anyway. As long as they are surrounded by toxic people, they will absorb that shit.

You intimidate them because they secretly fucking wish you were their wifey. They want you. But they aren't ready yet to cut off the other people in their lives. You set a hard boundary and act like they don't exist. They may have psychic abilities too, but never talk about it because they don't want to be viewed as a "weirdo" which they have probably called you. For shamelessly being yourself and surviving what you've been through.

This person is as cute and sweet as you are in a "higher perspective" kind of way. I am seeing that now, you're so inspiring to them and made them realize they didn't want to go down this path anymore. They want to change, but their greed and materialism still has a strong hold on them. Something about parents, trauma and abandonment is coming through.

They were thrown into the world to navigate it on their own. They learned some tough lessons on the way, some of those leading to them having to shut off their emotions. They had to do toxic, sick things to get attention.

His past self is holding on for dear life, but eventually (not yet, as he's still gotta face some more consequences) he will learn and move out of this behavior. You will cross paths again in the future. For now, follow your bliss and do what brings you joy. One day you will be so happy with where your life leads you with them.

They are toxic, I know. Please don't ask me to judge them. You're both such cutie pies. I just can't… because I can see that there is a future here. They view you as an inspiration. You are who they wish to become. You are attractive, cool and loner. But you're not bitter or mean.

You are smart. You are strategic. You look like you just don't give af about others and their opinions and that you're happy-go-lucky all the time. The truth is, you've been through what they have and you still chose a brighter path. You chose those lessons and learned them. You're vibrant and strong. Your soul is fully present in your body.

He knows you deserve the whole entire world because you are pure. He knows you love him. You both know, don't you? And no one is saying anything. This is a little sad. He isn't ready or willing to give up his life yet. Whatever he did to you, there is one far worse who will do it to them. His journey isn't important right now though.

He's intimidated because you played the player, you turned the tables then left. Like poof and then he was left with his mind reeling. Like, you literally duped the meanest bully on the playground. He might feel a little vengeful, but the divine is stopping this shit if he tries it again. He already tried once and failed.

You're basically equals in opposite ways. If you're a clown it's because you know how to put on a good show and entertain everyone. His clown show would end in someone getting amputated.

He is so fucking baffled. Like why and how is he attracted to a "weirdo" like you? Little does he know, you're leading him. He wants to teach you some lessons too! But they're mean and he can go kick rocks. Or his clown friends.

He knows you're his counterpart and his mind is blown. Like to pieces. He also communicates with you telepathically.

5. "I can't tell if you btches hate me or want to live in my pssy."

Songs: Purple Lace Bra - Tate McRae // Dirty Little Secret - Nessa Barrett // Sports Car - Tate McRae

Cards: Spiritual Journey. Divine Masculine. Pacifist. Green Light. Unexpected Twist. Heartbroken. The Tower. The Devil. Ace of Pentacles. King of Pentacles. The World. Death.

You were set on a Divine Masculine's path. You were such a temptation to them that they would have left their current committed partner for you.

They are on their spiritual journey and it's his lesson. I'm seeing that you weren't scorned, but rather shut things down yourself because of this masculine's partner. He probably turned to you or tried to turn to you in his weakest moments because he is having problems at home. His partner / wife has done a return to sender on him.

You were caught up in this. You were sent to break this man's heart because he hurt hers. She chose not to physically harm anyone in the situation and let the chips fall where they may.

I'm feeling like you aren't heartbroken at all. This man did someone that pissed off the divine, something he knew would make him feel guilty and hurt his partner. Now they're both hurting!

You were the greatest temptation this man has ever met and now it's over forever. He really embarrassed himself because now people are talking about it.

He is being judged by the divine and the locals. Ouch.

When you entered his life you were such a shock to this person. He's intimidated because he's scared he will face divine judgement if he steps out on his wife with you. He's intimidated because he knows you are a lesson, but he wants you. He saw an opportunity and took it.

Oof. Oh well. A lesson he has to learn.

Toodles, loser~! Pile 5 is doing perfectly fine. It's over now. You learned whatever you needed to, got your coin and bounced. You don't even need him, haha!

He and his partner can pick up the pieces. This is literally over. He doesn't like that. The end was very shocking when you pulled away forever. He and current partner have to "endure" and get through this together. I would have left his stupid ass but anyway this ain't my reading

6. "One of the best feelings is when you finally say 'I deserve better' and the universe starts conspiring to prove you right."

Songs: Bitter - Fletcher, Kito // Cate's Brother - Maisie Peters

Cards: The Sun. 6 of Cups. Queen of Pentacles. The Hierophant. Strength. Judgement. Ace of Cups. Phoenix Rising. Seeking Revenge. Neurodiverse. Victim. Karmic Feminine. F*ck-boi.

You may have a crush on someone who is definitely crushing back. They have a girlfriend though, this person who has feelings for you. In fact, you may have been innocent in this.

Like completely innocent. You aren't malicious at all and you probably don't acknowledge social hierarchies.

Because this person didn't tell you they had a partner, you may have been labeled a boyfriend stealer.

After you found out, you probably hired someone to cast a breakup spell or did one yourself. If not, it's cool. You may have good astrology with this fuck boy. He was playing you and just wanted to use you.

Now, his ex-girlfriend is single, you left him in the dust. He's the one feeling intimidated.

The karmic feminine is still hating, but now the masculine is feeling incredibly guilty for what he did to you. You're still going through your transformation and he knows you're going to be out of his league.

You decided to stop letting him string you along. You have a strong sense of self and wanted better. You deserve better than whatever he was trying to do. He might have made you think he'd be in a relationship with you.

You had to make a difficult decision, but you did it. It hurt for a while, but now you're in your "I'm doing me" revenge era. Welcome to the dark side! You're still as sweet and lovable as before, but now you're more wise. You know what you deserve and you are taking it all for yourself with a vengeance.

The karmic feminine may have made her presence known or something. Especially after watching him toy with you. She may have even encouraged him to do it. That or she got tired of him cheating and broke up with him. Either way, this man is a joke and he's hating on you for knowing what you deserve. An immature ass-hat to be certain.

You could be into the craft and have done a protection or return-to-sender that bit them in the ass. You could have just prayed to the angels or the universe (or whatever protects you) and asked for them to help you move on and forget this fool. To make them see what they did. To watch you glow up and move on. To know how irrelevant they are.

Good job for doing better! You absolutely deserve it, beautiful. <3

7. "Bitches do NOT intimidate me at all. I'll sit right next a person who doesn't like me. Hey girl!"

Songs: Say It - Tori Lanez // Daisy - Ashnikko // Venom - Little Simz

Cards: Baby witch. Wounded Feminine. Wounded Masculine. Solitary witch. Wifey. Sadist. Seeking Revenge. Strength. 7 of Pentacles. The Lovers. Knight of Cups. 6 of Swords. Justice.

You found out someone wanted you to feel unwelcome or did some action against you. You somehow made it very well known that you don't take that shit sitting down.

You inserted yourself into this hater's personal space or got a little too close for their comfort.

They see you as competition and they were trying to trash you or sabotage you. If they didn't they want to. You somehow found out and stood up for yourself.

You interjected yourself into their space and let them know just where you stand with them.

You trigger a lot of insecurities in this person.

They don't have anything to say suddenly when you're around, but there is tense energy between you. And silence. You are the type to look them in the eye and dare them to lie on your name right in front of you.

Shortest pile, but to the point. This person is just beginning a path that you already know and can do alone. They are still learning and know you could help them or hurt them. So they tried to destroy you / your reputation / your relationship/s.

8. "You're a little too comfortable running your mouth because no one has checked your sh*t yet. Come over here and do it."

Songs: STFU - Pink Guy // One of Us - The Word alive // Lucifer - Eminem

Cards: 10 of Pentacles. 4 of Pentacles. 8 of Cups. 4 of Cups. The Sun. The Hierophant. Death. Seeking Revenge. Wounded Masculine. Protection. Divine Daughter. Spoiled Brat. Dark Feminine.

Your hater is intimidated by how chill and abundant you are. You have so much going for you and you have wisdom.

They may have said they would fight you and all that, but when you actually showed up, radio silence.

Now they know not to run their fucking mouth unless they want to say it to your face.

I'm feeling like this is a triggered ex that is running their mouth to trash you or ruin your reputation. The divine is protecting you from this.

The fact that you are protected from their schemes makes them feel very intimidated by you. You have so much, but it looks like it is just handed to you.

It makes them feel stolen from. It makes their sense of lack all the more obvious.

They think you just get things and are God's favorite while they have to suffer, slave and work hard for anything they get.

They also feel the need to assert their masculinity over you.

You just sit there unbothered as fuck and pleasant to interact with and it just triggers them. You are the favorite. It could even be a sibling who is competing with you.

You're obviously the favorite.

You use your dark feminine qualities to get what you want and they hate that about you. People like you and this person feels like they need to expose you.

Please don't steal! I hope it was good? I wish I could get more energy for this reading. <3

[lizardanya]

maybe i’m too much of a staunch “atsushi is kind of a dick” purist but i actually don’t think him witnessing dazai’s abuse will actually change all that much in terms of the direct relationships between these characters and how they act towards each other.

part of it is i think sskk’s ultimate arc is moving past the spectre of dazai haunting them, and part of it is like. akutagawa is (was..?) an abuser too. it would make no sense for atsushi to flip on dazai for akutagawa because it’s either he believes redemption is real and dazai has changed (which like, he objectively has, regardless of whether he handled his relationship with akutagawa well) and akutagawa can change too, or abuse forever tarnishes your moral character and then atsushi must hate both these guys (which he clearly doesn’t).

ultimately bsd has a complex relationship with abuse that’s often uncomfortable to acknowledge, like the fact that akutagawa has abused two women on screen and hasn’t actually made proper amends either, and the fact that bsd both acknowledges that the mafia is a cruel organisation based in child abuse and exploitation that largely operates by grooming children into violence, and also posits that the mafia is kind of a necessary entity for the safety of the city. child abuse in bsd is interpersonal, yes, but it’s also a larger system of exploitation of ability users, largely for combat, and practically every character participates in that system to a degree.

even the agency has child members, and while for some it can be argued that the agency saved them from bad situations, kenji, for example, seemingly lived a normal peaceful life until he was recruited to be a child soldier.

ultimately i don’t think the wish fulfilment scene where atsushi explicitly rags on dazai for treating akutagawa badly will ever happen, especially considering this isn’t news for him and atsushi hasn’t been sympathetic to akutagawa about it before. i’m not saying it’s not going to be called out, but i don’t think the #dazaiisoverparty is happening guys hold your horses

[cozmo-system]

Reminder for pedos: CP is a crime, even drawn CP. If you make it, its a federal felony. Posess it? Another federal felony. Send it to someone else? Another federal felony. Have fun with 5-20 yrs in prison as a first time offender.

(we will go off the usa law since thats where we live)

first off, its not “cp” calling it porn implies consent which children cant do, its CSEM. second, you cannot exploit a fictional character. if the drawing is of a real life child then you have a case, not if its Deku from My Hero Academia.

and third, pedophilia doesn’t mean you’re going to abuse a child, just that you have a paraphilia and should get the proper treatment if you’re struggling

[p0wderedmarbl3s]

TW: CSA/RAPE TALK

A (positive) mini rant about SA metaphors in TOH:

I hate how quick people are to dismiss any SA headcanon involving Belos as "too evil". It's so nasty and disrespectful to victims of any origin, as well as the victims of the people Belos is based off of and represents clear as day.

Rape is a form of control, of power because you are stripping the victim of their humanity in the most violating way you can.

Remind me again what Belos's entire deal is?

I feel like the possessions is such a crystal clear metaphor for rape in the most blatant way possible, from the way it's start varied between Hunter and Raine, the states they were in during it, to the scars it left on them afterwards.

It's so beyond important that it was presented the way it was too in a Childrens Show, through body horror. Because that's what it is. It's BODY HORROR. It's VIOLENCE. It completely destroys you on the inside and outside.

Especially the way it was presented in Hunter, a child, a person still developing in a body so fragile because of it. It's a perfect visual representation of what CSA to that degree can be like, beyond just being touched at. There are different levels to it, and it's so beyond important to depict these different types in a way that let's kids know they aren't alone, that these feelings afterwards that they can't put words to are in fact, REAL.

Remember, Belos literally ATE HIM from the inside out. He was inside him in the most literal way you can be.

He went in and out of "episodes" of paranoia because of him, because of his ongoing abuse since he was born. This is presented THROUGH the method of possession, it's slow, it's patient, but it's still so extremely violent and body AND mind altering, taking into account how violently his mentality and demeanor switched afterwards, to the point he barely said a thing in the following episodes.

Not to mention usually covering some part of his body with his arms, subconsciously or otherwise.

And Raine.. oh. They make me so sad. Raine is the other most explicit form of CSA victim in the show, starting with Terra when they were a kid. The fact that the scars left behind after being assaulted again so violently in adulthood, by the white man who colonized their people, were tear streaks, makes my heart ache.

Not to mention they were essentially "unconscious" (semi, at least) when Belos first possessed them. And then Belos kept aiming for their mouth over and over again. Even when they fight back, when they verbally scream at him to get out, to leave them alone. It doesn't physicially alter them in the same way it does Hunter, a child, but the end results do not lessen what happened.

Their body was simply done growing by that point. They were not a child when such a violent form of this type of assault happened.

But it happened.

The show is so violent and vile about the nature of it all, it doesn't hide a thing.

But it's all done so well.

It's the horror that it is.

And yet, these things are either demonized in the completely wrong way, or sexualized because the sexual violence towards brown people is so deeply fetishized in every white culture. You as a white victim, do not get to exploit our trauma because of your own in this case.

Because they do not stem from the same place.

It's not like the implications with Belos aren't a pattern either, even way back when he was Philip. It's not something I can put into words, but the way he talks at Luz.. when you've been around those men long enough, you can sense it.

It's not "attraction." It's exploitation.

It's power. It's control.

It's why I don't like drawing anything with him and Luz much.

Not to mention, this pattern is attempted again with the Collector in their sleep, before he resorts to mentally manipulating them instead. Even then, he is actively using another victim to do so.

It is never subtle.

It is never the same with any two characters.

And that's what I love about it.

It's so incredibly important to show these sorts of things in children's shows in the ways they can understand, in ways they can relate to and identify with.

These things are already so confusing and isolating on their own, and the way the writers handled it all is so beautifully well done and respectful. It all fits, it's all well constructed, it's all done with genuine care.

[thatsonemorbidcorvid]

ON AN AUGUST night in 2003, a young woman who went by the name Paulina sank into the sofa of her modest, rented apartment, opened up her laptop, and began talking about sex with a man she’d recently met in a Yahoo chat group. His name was Stephen Bolen. His first communications had been terse, but he soon warmed to Paulina. It didn’t take long for both of them to begin to open up.

Paulina had told Bolen she lived in the Atlanta area, that she had a three-year-old daughter, that her daughter’s father was no longer in the picture. Soon, she was sharing more intimate details: what it was like growing up a skinny white girl in a rough neighborhood outside of D.C.; how her dad, a Marine, had died by suicide two weeks before she was born; how her mom had been emotionally and physically abusive, and had never really shown her love. How she’d had a sexual relationship with her stepfather.

Paulina would put her daughter to bed and then she and Bolen would chat throughout the night, over Yahoo and sometimes on the phone. The back-and-forth could feel like dating, but with an added element of danger and risk: Both Paulina and Bolen knew they were tiptoeing up to a line to see if they trusted each other enough to cross it. It could take a while to figure that out.

Eventually, Bolen asked Paulina to send pictures of her daughter, and she agreed to do so, though the ones she’d shared were chaste — the little girl clothed and her face turned away from the camera or obscured behind an untamable halo of blond curls. After seeing the pictures, Bolen asked to meet. While a lot of the men Paulina had encountered in chatrooms like “Sex With Younger” just wanted to trade images and videos of children, to expand their illicit collections, Bolen was a “traveler,” someone looking to act upon his obsessions.

On Sept. 17, just as they’d arranged, Paulina sat on a bench outside Perimeter Mall with a stroller parked in front of her, scanning the parking lot nervously. Part of her hoped Bolen wouldn’t show. When he did, she could see he was handsome, a preppy guy in a pink polo shirt and khakis. “Paulina?” he asked eagerly. She nodded. As he smiled and pulled back the blanket draped across the stroller, he found himself surrounded, handcuffs slipped around his wrists.

“Paulina” watched his face fall, his confusion giving way to distress as FBI agents took him into custody. It was her first undercover arrest. It would be the first of many.

[long read]

IF ONE WANTED to hide in plain sight, one could do no better than the tidy, suburban neighborhood on the outskirts of St. Louis, where FBI Special Agent Nikki Badolato now resides. The well-tended, two-story homes are so pleasantly indistinct that I could hardly tell you what hers looks like, even if it were safe for me to do so, which it is not. Suffice to say that Midwestern comfort and conformity unspool around every gently winding curve. Here Badolato has raised her two children, a daughter who is now in college and a son who is a junior at a local high school. When planning a neighborhood scavenger hunt or tending the community garden, Badolato does not often mention her many years as head of the Child Exploitation Task Force, a joint effort between the feds and local law enforcement that targets some of the country’s most heinous crimes. Open a cabinet in her kitchen, however, and a government-issued Glock 42 can be found stowed away between the vitamins and mixing bowls.

On a sunny morning this past October, Badolato sat at her dining room table, scrapbooks and albums spread out before her on the dark wood. There was the acceptance letter she’d received from the bureau the spring of her senior year of high school, after a representative had shown up to administer a test in the typewriting room. “I chose to wear a red dress and red heels,” she says of her first day as an FBI mail clerk, two weeks after her 18th birthday. “I don’t know what the hell I was thinking. I guess maybe I was trying to go in bold?” She pauses at a picture of herself on the gun range at Quantico almost 10 years later, her shoulders squared and her caramel hair pulled back into a ponytail as she fires off rounds. By then, she’d married a man she met just after high school, had a little girl, completed college at night, and been accepted into agent training in the heady days after 9/11. She’d seen her first dead body only a few weeks into the job, after the pursuit of a bank robber ended with a shootout in a Walmart. When Badolato got to the scene, the body was still warm, and the perp’s head was resting on a bag of cookies. ��It was surreal,” she says. “How many times have you been in a Walmart and walked down Aisle 4, not really expecting there to be a dead person with his head lying on a bag of Chips Ahoy?”

Badolato wasn’t deterred. She felt like the bureau saved her, plucked her out of a shitty home life, and gave her prospects and purpose. As a new agent, she was intent on proving herself worthy. “My training agent told me, ‘You know, Nikki, it’s a marathon, not a sprint,’ ” she says. “I was like, ‘That’s ridiculous. I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean.’ ” She turned a few pages to show a picture of the 391 kilos of cocaine and 140 pounds of meth she’d recovered on a single raid during a stint with a cartel squad, then pointed out another in which she poses with a five-year-old child she’d rescued, the little girl’s hair cut short because the kidnapper had wanted her to look like a boy. But the keepsake she really wants to find is the card that Bolen’s wife had pressed into her hand at his sentencing, the one with the picture of their children — a blond girl of about three years and a tiny baby — and the words “These are the faces of the children you protect each day.” Bolen’s wife had been the only one she’d ever encountered who had lobbied for her husband to receive the maximum sentence. Some wives accused the FBI of planting evidence inside computers. Most seemed intent on clinging to their delusions. (Attempts to reach Bolen for comment were unsuccessful.)

“Right now some little girl is being dropped off in the parking lot of a motel. There are four girls holed up in a hotel next to a McDonald’s. It is happening all the time.”

Which, Badolato has come to understand, is the way it goes with child trafficking and sexual abuse. She had invited me into her home — had agreed to speak on the record about her decades-long career working undercover — because when it comes to the crimes she’s spent her career fighting, she has had enough of the delusions people are under. She’s had enough of the way movies like Sound of Freedom both glamorize and trivialize the work she and her colleagues do, enough of the idea that swashbuckling white men burst through doors and rescue trafficked children with a Bible in one hand and a firearm in the other, enough of conspiracy theories about Hollywood and Washington that detract from the real root causes of why children are trafficked and abused. “Human trafficking is not the movie Pretty Woman — the girl doesn’t get the guy — and it’s not the movie Taken, where people are kidnapped in a foreign country and sold on the black market, or shipped in a container across the world,” one of the detectives who worked on Badolato’s task force tells me. “I’m not saying that doesn’t ever happen, but it’s not what we’re seeing.”

What they are seeing is a lot more insidious and a lot more homegrown. A report released in 2018 by the State Department ranked the U.S. as one of the worst countries in the world for human trafficking. While the Department of Justice has estimated that between 14,500 and 17,500 foreign nationals are trafficked into this country every year, this number pales in comparison to the number of American minors who are trafficked within it: A 2009 Department of Health and Human Services review of human trafficking into and within the United States found that roughly 199,000 American minors are sexually exploited each year, and that between 244,000 and 325,000 American youths are considered to be at risk of being trafficked specifically in the sex industry. Heartbreakingly, many of these children are victimized not by strangers who’ve abducted them from mall parking lots but rather by people they know and trust: Studies have found that as much as 44 percent of victims are trafficked by family members, most often parents (and not infrequently parents who were trafficked themselves). Between 2011 and 2020, there was an 84 percent increase in the number of people prosecuted for a federal human-trafficking offense. Of the defendants charged in 2020, 92 percent were male, 63 percent were white, 66 percent had no prior convictions, and 95 percent were U.S. citizens.

Badolato started her career as an FBI agent in some of the earliest days that children could be bought, sold, and traded online. As the internet-porn industry mushroomed, its most lucrative branch turned out to be that of child sexual-abuse materials (the term “child pornography” is no longer used by those in the field, as it implies consent). And as demand for these images increased, so did the abuse that led to their creation.

In 2003, just a few months after Badolato graduated from Quantico, a Crimes Against Children squad was formed in the Atlanta office where she’d been stationed. By then, the FBI was starting to get a handle on the extent of the problem — if not exactly what to do about it. At a weeklong training in Baltimore, Badolato was given a tour of the darkest underbelly of fetish chat groups and then instructed to figure out how to infiltrate. “Everyone was a little nervous,” she explains of the directive. “It was a process, a direction that was new.” Agents were told that they would need to come up with a “persona” and a “story,” and that they would likely have to provide images of children to “prove” they had a minor on offer. They were also told that they could use images of their own children, if they were comfortable doing so (the FBI no longer endorses this policy).

Badolato’s unit with a kidnapping victim after her recovery in 2011. A Health and Human Services review found that roughly 199,000 American minors are sexually exploited each year, and that as many as 325,000 American youths are considered to be at risk of being trafficked in the sex industry. 

Badolato developed “Paulina” based on her understanding that any persona would need to share most of her own backstory and traits. “That’s the only way you can really do undercover work,” Badolato says. “People can tell the sincerity in what you’re saying, so there has to be a level of genuineness, but then you just add this criminal element to it.” Most of the things Badolato had told Bolen were true: where she was from, her family background, the monstrousness of her mother, a woman who she says would pass out cigarettes and beers to Badolato’s 13-year-old friends in a state of manic permissiveness one minute and fly into a violent rage about a piece of lint on the floor the next. (Badolato’s mother declined to comment for this article, but a childhood friend corroborated Badolato’s account.) It was true that growing up in an unstable home with a string of stepdads, she had never really felt loved, true that she had divorced her first husband, true that she was raising their three-year-old daughter on her own. The only thing that wasn’t true was her tale of being molested, her initiation into the “lifestyle” — to use the chatroom parlance — that Paulina said she now wanted for her daughter. As Badolato had familiarized herself with the language and behaviors of the chatrooms, she’d honed that added criminal element, imagining what psychological conditions might believably lead a parent to traffic their own child and how those conditions could be grafted onto her real life story. She already had a history of abuse; it was not hard to extrapolate to a fictional stepfather who had seemed to provide a gentle counterpoint, showing her love and making her feel special when no one else had, even if others couldn’t understand. From there, it was easy to convince the chatroom participants that she shared their belief — or justification — that most people had it all wrong and that “child love” was natural, and could even be beneficial for the child.

Badolato estimates that she has arrested more than a thousand people; not one of those arrests has failed to end in a conviction. She didn’t know until she was in the thick of it that most agents refuse this sort of work, that most can’t even pretend to forge a relationship with someone looking to victimize a child. But she could. “Paulina,” she points out, is not a name she chose at random; it’s similar to her own mother’s name. Badolato says she had grown up learning to compartmentalize for the sake of her own emotional survival. She’d perfected the art of engaging with someone whose actions she couldn’t stand. Doing this work had felt like a way of taking her trauma and putting it to good use, of leveraging her past as a safeguard against her daughter’s and other children’s futures.

Of course there were moments that were hard to take — when suspects mentioned which brands of lubrication were best or whether or not a parent might hold a child down. There were times when she knew that even talking about these things was a turn-on for these men, times when the conversations made her nauseous, times when she’d lie awake all night or play back a recording and think, “Holy shit, I listened to this? I said these words?” But she kept faith in the mission. She reminded herself that the pictures she sent of her daughter — the beautiful, little girl sleeping in the next room — did not represent a real child on offer. “I was thinking, ‘If I send this obscure picture of my daughter and he acts on it, then he’s never going to harm my daughter or anybody else’s,’ ” Badolato says now. “I was presenting a fake girl to save a real one.”

KYLE PARKS SEEMED to think he could get away with anything. He seemed to think, for instance, that he could get away with running a brothel, a 1-900 sex line, and a housecleaning company out of the same Columbus, Ohio, office park and under the same oxy-moronic name, XXXREC and Hygiene Services. He seemed to think he could invite one young woman and five teenagers (four of whom he had only just met) on a road trip to Florida, but instead deposit them in two rooms of a Red Roof Inn in St. Charles, Missouri. When they piled out of the minivan — high on the drugs he’d given them — saw snow falling and asked to be taken home, he thought he could make a little money off them first. All it took was a few ads in Backpage — the Craigslist of sex advertisements — and men began showing up.

Even after things started going south for him, Parks couldn’t fathom that he wouldn’t prevail. When someone alerted law enforcement as to what was going on, Parks (who, according to legal documents, had been out getting food when the police showed up) burst into the precinct the next morning looking to bail his “friend” out. When questioned about the 88 condoms found in the back of his van, he said they had been prescribed to him by a doctor. After being taken into custody, he protested that he was being set up. Most people would have cut their losses and pleaded guilty, but not Parks. He thought he could take his case to court and win.

And it wasn’t impossible to imagine that he might. Badolato knew that even the tightest cases could go sideways when put before 12 people who would inevitably enter the courtroom with a cinematic sense of what sex trafficking was supposed to be. In fact, it wasn’t just the jury that Badolato knew she would need to convince; it was also often the victims themselves, young people who had internalized the exact same misconceptions about trafficking that the jury had — along with any number of other judgments society had thrown their way — and who were loath to submit themselves to a courtroom full of more judgment.

Of all of Parks’ underage victims, the hardest to pin down had been a 17-year-old we’ll call Sierra. Once she returned to Columbus, Sierra seemed to basically disappear. Calls to her mother’s number went unanswered. When one of the other victims managed to track her down in December 2016, a month before the case was to go to trial, Sierra agreed to meet Badolato on a blighted Columbus block with a string of dilapidated homes, climbing into the bureau’s Chevy Malibu with matted hair, dirty clothes, and a wary expression.

By this time, Badolato had remarried, had a second child, relocated to St. Louis, and taken over as head of the Child Exploitation Joint Task Force, which had become one of the most productive FBI teams in the country in terms of arrests and convictions. Meanwhile, as the internet streamlined the process of buying or selling any good or service, trafficking had become one of the fastest-growing criminal enterprises, estimated by the Department of Homeland Security to bring in $150 billion globally and considered by many criminals to be a superior business model: If caught, the sentences were often lighter than those for peddling drugs; and unlike crack or heroin, the same product could be “used” again and again and again.

Badolato taught her team of 20 how to do the online undercover work she’d trailblazed in Atlanta, tracking the movements of child-abuse material through the online underworld and then prosecuting those who distributed and produced it. Her new squad also initiated her in the type of undercover work it had been doing before her arrival: covert sting operations in which a detective would pose as a john, set up a “date,” and then meet said date in a hotel room fitted out with hidden recording devices while, in the next room over, a taskforce team listened in, waiting for the code word that would let them know that enough evidence had been gathered for them to swoop in and shut the op down. This had proved a very effective technique for getting convictions, but Badolato’s arrival coincided with both a growing sentiment that consensual sex work had been over-criminalized and an increasing awareness that what looked like consensual sex work might actually be trafficking, no matter what the “date” professed in that hotel room.

Badolato has a tendency to say aloud the things she notices — about you, about others, about situations — observations that are not at all unkind but are perceptive enough that most people would keep them to themselves. She points out when someone deflects, and she has a sharp eye for defense mechanisms. She once casually mentions my tendency to mirror other people’s vocal and speech patterns. She is not shy about bringing up the emotional and physical abuse she says she experienced as a child, and she is quick to comment when someone is making excuses for someone else’s behavior. It was soon clear to her colleagues that Badolato brought a trauma-informed mentality to the work, a tendency to look beyond what someone was doing and instead try to parse why they were doing it. And she was relentless: While some squads did one or two trafficking sting ops a year, her team was doing four or five a month. In addition to the hotel rooms reserved for the john and the team, they would have a social worker set up in a third room, ready to offer services to the victims. They would have lookouts stationed to see who might be dropping the date off. If that date was found to be underage, the case was automatically classified as trafficking. But even if they weren’t, Badolato’s team was primed to get to the bottom of what was going on, to figure out whether they were being manipulated or coerced, and by whom.

“If I could put my hands on a pimp, that’s what I wanted,” says Jeff Roediger, a St. Louis county detective who was the “john” for many of Badolato’s sting ops and who makes clear that the team was not interested in policing voluntary sex work. “When I had those types of cases, and I knew they were being sincere with me, I wouldn’t book them,” he says. “It was all about talking to the girls. It’s not like in the movies where they come running to you. You know, ‘Thanks, you rescued me!’ It’s not like that. A lot of them try to bullshit you at first — ‘That’s my boyfriend, blah blah blah’— but once I talked to them for a while, they would become more forthcoming.”

Badolato’s unit was one of the first in the country to take on this “progressive and proactive” approach, as she puts it. Soon, St. Louis looked like a sex-trafficking capital — not because it was actually trafficking more victims than other cities but because the task force was so aggressively pursuing those cases, and classifying them as what they were. “I mean, I was working in vice for years,” says Roediger. “Back in the day, it was always ‘prostitution,’ ‘prostitution,’ ‘prostitution’ — until we started to figure it out a little bit, until we started digging a little deeper.”

Once they did, the task force found that roughly a third of the sex-trafficking victims they recovered were under the age of 17 — and they began to see the reach of the problem. Kids were being trafficked out of every hotel in the area, from the seediest roach motel to the fanciest Ritz-Carlton. They were being trafficked every time of day and by every socioeconomic group (“Before you go do brain surgery, you got to bust a nut real quick,” one underage victim told Badolato of her high-end clientele). Some of the victims were girls. Some were boys. Some were LGBTQ kids who’d been kicked out of their homes. Some were straight cis kids from the suburbs. “I tell people that I could probably name two or three [kids] in the school district they live in that have been trafficked,” Roediger says. “And they just can’t comprehend it.”

“If I can be perfectly honest, I truly don’t believe that the FBI realizes what they put their agents through doing that kind of work.”

There were kids who were about to age out of foster care (a particularly at-risk group, according to those who work in the field), kids who’d run away, kids who were being sold to pay their family’s rent, or to buy their family member’s drugs. There were kids who’d sit in the hotel room, backpack at their feet, dutifully working on their math homework while agents and social workers tried to figure out what to do with them. Was their home life safe enough that they could be returned to it? Would a residential program take them? Of all the imperfect options, which would make them least likely to be trafficked again?

The one common denominator was this: They all had a vulnerability that could be preyed upon. They all lacked a safety net — societal, familial, emotional, or some combination thereof — that might have broken their fall. Mostly, their stories weren’t dramatic; they were typical American tales of neglect, of abuse doled out casually, of a steady stream of letdowns by people and institutions who should have propped them up. Badolato found that she had a knack for getting them to talk about this, for getting them to open up to her. She didn’t look like an FBI agent — at least not what they’d imagined. She spoke softly, but with authority and a slight vocal fry. And she thinks that, at some level, they could probably sense that she’d once been a vulnerable kid too, that with only a few slightly different twists of fate, she could have become a trafficking victim herself — and that she knew it. “My trauma looks different than theirs, but it’s trauma nonetheless,” she says.

“And I think victims can feel that.”

AS THE TASK force learned more about the psychology of victims, they also learned more about the ways in which their vulnerability was being manipulated, and how those ways were evolving. It was known in law-enforcement circles that once a skilled trafficker set his or her sights on a vulnerable young person, they could be groomed in a matter of days: one day for an introduction, a day or two to make the victim feel special and cared for, and then the day when a “friend” comes over and he needs to be “cared for” as well. Sometimes violence was involved at that point; sometimes drug use was involved throughout. But emotional manipulation was the key element, which is why it was so easy for grooming to move online, for groomers to take advantage of the false senses of connection fostered on social media.

Of the victims who are not being trafficked by family members, the majority are being groomed in this way. “I would say that probably 75 percent of the initial grooming is happening online now,” says Cindy Malott, the director of U.S. Safe Programs at Crisis Aid International. “Recruiters used to have to work really, really hard to get access to kids, but now they’re practically sitting in a child’s bedroom. And kids put everything out there — what’s going on in their life, who they’re angry about, parents are going through a divorce, their insecurities about their body, about themselves, what they do, how they spend their time — so it’s like a gift to these predators.”

The ways to manipulate are legion: Get a kid to send a compromising photo, and she’ll do almost anything to keep you from sending it out to all her Facebook friends; find out a gay kid is still closeted, and the threat of outing him gives you incredible power. And predators aren’t just on Instagram and Snapchat; they lurk in the chat functions of Roblox, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto. “They’re everywhere,” says Malott. “People think, ‘Oh, I just got to keep my kids away from those porn sites, those horrible places.’ Well, no, predators are gonna go where the kids are.” And once there, they’re going to zero in on the kids who are most vulnerable.

That’s what got to Badolato. In her online undercover work, she’d plumbed the psychology of pedophiles, but now she wasn’t just dealing with suspects; she was spending time with victims and seeing the same vulnerabilities in them that the traffickers had seen: the instability or poverty, the addiction or mental health issues or abuse that had been normalized in their lives long before the traffickers entered them. Sometimes Badolato couldn’t help but feel that all the conspiracies and misconceptions weren’t just a distraction from the truth of trafficking but rather some sick attempt to let society off the hook for trying to solve the much more intractable problems at trafficking’s root.

“People would rather stick their head in the sand than address the real problem, because then you have to face and talk about the societal issues,” she says. “With a movie like Sound of Freedom, it’s like, ‘Oh, this is in a jungle in South America. This isn’t actually in [my neighborhood].’ You know? It’s easier for people to ignore the problem than deal with the issues on a societal level.”

BY THE TIME Badolato was sitting in that Chevy with Sierra, on that blighted Ohio block, she knew that the rate of revictimization for children who are trafficked was as high as 95 percent, according to FBI reports. She knew that 90 percent of sex-trafficking victims have a history of child sexual abuse, that more than 75 percent had lived in foster or adoptive care. She knew that she could arrest one perpetrator, and another would pop up in his place, that she could send one pimp to prison and the same victims would show up to stings some short time later, run by a different crew. She knew that testifying was a way for Sierra to psychologically push back against what had happened to her, and she was right: After the young woman took the stand on Jan. 10, 2017, Parks was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years; while testifying, Sierra had seemed to transform, to channel and embody a sort of empowerment. But Badolato also knew that once her testimony was over, Sierra would go back to that blighted block. She wondered how long that empowerment would last.

She also wondered about her own trajectory, her own ability to continue doing this work. The youngest trafficking victim she’d ever recovered from a sting op — an 11-year-old who’d been recruited through Facebook — had been returned to her family in a house that had no heat (Badolato had used an FBI slush fund to get it turned back on). One did not become immune to the human misery of such things. They compounded, became harder and harder to compartmentalize. “It’s just a combination of all of those years — and it’s all awful,” she says. “But there are particular moments that, for one reason or another, you can’t get out of your head. I just don’t think it’s in human nature to be exposed to that for so long and it not start changing who you are.”

One night, at a restaurant near where Badolato lives, I ask her whether she thinks children are being sex-trafficked right then, in that very moment, in just the mile or two radius around us. She’s quiet for a long time, her gaze fixed downward at her glass of wine. By the time she looks up, her whole body is trembling. “It’s happening right now,” she says quietly. “Right now some little girl is being dropped off in the parking lot of a motel. There are three or four girls holed up in a hotel next to a McDonald’s. It’s not only when we think about it. It is happening all the time. And if I’m just sitting here, present, having dinner, not thinking about it, that means I’m ignoring a problem that I know is real.” Tears stream down her face.

“Many images have never left my mind,” she says. “It’s really hard to have worked your entire life in law enforcement with a lot of child crime victims and be at the end of your career looking at the situation where you realize you can only do so much to make a difference.” Badolato wipes back the tears with the palm of her hand and shudders her head, as if she can shake the thoughts away. “Damn,” she says. “Fuck. I shouldn’t be the one crying. I’m not the victim of this.” The veteran agent steels herself and repeats, “I am not the victim.”

THE HOUSE WHERE Korina Ellison says she was first sex-trafficked no longer exists. It once stood on an unassuming lot in a residential suburb of Portland, Oregon, that stumbles down to the banks of the Willamette River. Now, Ellison can’t quite bring the house’s features to mind. She was so young back then, maybe four or five. There is so much she’s repressed, or only pieced together after the fact. As a child, she wouldn’t have known what she now believes to be true: that her grandmother scored her drugs by offering up her youngest daughter, Ellison’s mom. Or that, once her mom was hooked on the meth cooked by the man who’d lived in that house, she’d known just what to do to get more. But Ellison does remember being inside the house, unclothed. She does remember how the man would touch her.

Her life unspooled from there. Her father died of a heroin overdose when she was six. Her mom lost custody for good. She bounced around foster care, then various residential institutions, then whatever shelter she could find. In the story she tells of how she was sex-trafficked again in her teenage years, there’s no moment of drama, no kidnapping, no clear coercion. There was just a random, rainy afternoon when she had no place to go and was alone in the street and a car pulled up. The man inside took her home with him, fed her, introduced her to his girlfriend. They took her shopping. They let her stay. When men showed up at the home to have sex with the woman, Ellison was invited to watch, but she wasn’t expected to participate — not at first, anyway. According to a statement Ellison later made to law enforcement, she just “realized that people aren’t going to take care of [me] for free.” Soon, the woman was posting Ellison’s services on Backpage — $150 for half an hour, $200 for a full one — and the trio were traveling the Midwest. For a long time, it didn’t even occur to Ellison, then 16, to leave. “Where would I have gone?” she asks. “I’d been missing for over a year. Nobody was looking for me.” When the man told her to call him “Daddy,” she complied.

That was more than a decade ago, near the beginning of Badolato’s tenure as head of the Child Exploitation Task Force. But by 2021, leaving it had seemed a necessary form of self-preservation. One of her last cases had gone well legally: The perp, a retired police officer from California who had produced child sex-abuse materials of three sisters in Manila, had pleaded guilty to such charges when he learned that Badolato had brought the girls to the states to testify against him. But the experience had been emotionally devastating for Badolato, who had wanted the sisters, then 16, 13, and 11, to have memories of the U.S that consisted of more than reliving their trauma in a courtroom. She took them shopping and to the zoo, invited them to her home to have dinner with her own family, saw them slowly start to open up and laugh and behave like the children they were. Then she’d had to put them on a flight back to Manila, back to the aunt who had allowed the man to abuse them and who Badolato had been unable to extradite. Fortunately, she says, their estranged father ended up intervening and taking custody of the girls, but that feeling of futility in the fight lingered.

“I stayed for a little bit longer after that trial, but it really was when I should have been able to look myself in the mirror and say, ‘Nikki, you’re done,’ ” Badolato had told me in St. Louis. “It became clear that I had been doing it too long.” She’d spend the last couple of years working national security, a position without the immediacy of child-exploitation work, but also without the heartache. “If I can be perfectly honest, I truly don’t believe that the FBI realizes what they put their agents through doing that kind of work. I just don’t,” she says.

And yet, here Badolato was in Portland, leading Ellison, now 30, up to her hotel room, telling her about all the announcements she’d heard in the Atlanta airport instructing travelers to be on the lookout for sex trafficking. “It’s like white noise in the background,” she says as Ellison settles into the sofa. “It’s a false sense of doing something to help.”

“Here’s the thing: Nobody knows what to look for,” Ellison agrees.

“And what about the victims who are in that airport, who are walking around and listening?” Badolato asks.

“I wouldn’t have even heard that announcement,” Ellison replies. “Because I didn’t feel like a victim. It goes a lot, lot, lot deeper than anybody realizes.”

That’s what she and Badolato both understand. That’s why they started talking eight months ago. Of all the teenage victims Badolato’s task force recovered, Ellison is one of the few who she knows has permanently extricated herself from being prostituted, though it took years for her to get to that point, years for her to see that what happened to her was not her fault but rather a fault in the system, a fault in many systems over the course of generations. Neither she nor Badolato can fix that.

Yet they can’t help feeling like there’s something they can fix — or at least try to. Under the umbrella of an organization she’s founded called Innocent Warriors, Badolato created a program for schools, instructing educators on the signs that might indicate a student is being trafficked and teaching kids how to avoid getting groomed online, which, she believes, is not about stranger danger but rather an awareness of subtle manipulation. Ellison has been working with trafficked youth through nonprofits like Children of the Night, the residential program where Badolato’s team sent her when she was 17. Together, they’ve been talking about having Ellison help train undercovers who are learning to do trafficking sting ops. They’ve also discussed starting a mentorship program in which children who are still being sex-trafficked are paired with young adults like Ellison who once were, providing a way for victims to begin to envision a different future for themselves and a path toward it even while being prostituted. Such a program may be retroactive rather than proactive, but it would capitalize on Badolato’s and Ellison’s experience and expertise — and it could help in the healing of mentors and mentees alike.

Badolato had traveled to Portland for the two to talk face-to-face about how the program might work. “You have to understand how they’ve been traumatized because sometimes, to a child, relating doesn’t sound like you’re relating. It sounds like you’re pointing out all the bad things in them,” says Ellison from the driver’s seat of her Nissan Pathfinder as she drives Badolato around to show her certain landmarks of her past after she’d left Children of the Night: the bridge she’d slept under for over a year after a boyfriend had gotten her hooked on heroin, the blocks downtown where she’d bounced between a children’s shelter and the needle exchange. It had taken a prison sentence for her to finally break her addiction and commit to a different kind of life, though that evolution had had less to do with not having access to drugs than with seeing her own mother cycle in and out of the same facility — like looking into her own future and witnessing how bleak it would be. Maybe, she thought, she could provide the inverse of that for kids in Innocent Warriors. Maybe she could reverse engineer her own escape.

“I just want to make it very clear that if you were a victim, you are a victim, and just to not have any shame in that,” she tells Badolato as they drive through Portland’s misty streets.

“What I anticipate and hope is that then we get survivors that are like, ‘They get it,’ ” Badolato replies. “And that it opens up doors to help, for people to recognize that there are people who get what’s really going on.”

“It took a really long time for me,” Ellison says of coming to terms with her own victimhood.

“It’s like reworking your thought process about some of those things,” Badolato agrees. “And that’s hard, and it happens slowly over time, and it looks different for everybody.”

Ellison grips the wheel tightly. “The truth does matter. It does. The truth is the fucking truth. And it’s been empowering to be able to talk about it because that’s another way that I’ve realized, like, ‘Man, I was a victim,’ is re-going over all of this. Because when it happens so many times, you do blame yourself. It’s a lot easier to just continue to live in a lie than believe that you were lied to.”

Still, Ellison and Badolato agree that the impressionability that makes children vulnerable is also what makes them open to guidance and mentorship if a relationship of trust can be established. “What do you think a parent does? They groom you. I’d been waiting to be guided and groomed,” Ellison says.

It’s been instructive to see that potential from another perspective, as a mother doing the guiding. As the afternoon wears on, Ellison stops to pick up her then-15-month-old son, who was being watched by a social-worker friend. She buckles the little boy into his car seat, ruffles his hair, and passes him a bottle. He grins widely and begins removing his shoes and socks, throwing them gleefully onto the floor of the car and then kicking his tiny feet in time with the music as Ellison glances back at him and smiles. “Kids are so perfect,” she says.

The last stop of the day is the large plot of land where the drug dealer’s house once stood. Now, it’s been turned into a playground, with brightly-colored jungle gyms, a covered picnic area, and a large lawn, where a couple leisurely walks their dog. Ellison and Badolato climb down from the car and stand at the park’s edge, as Ellison’s son toddles around the grass, oblivious to what had transpired in that very spot. There is some form of poetic justice in the land being earmarked for children’s enjoyment, but neither woman voices it. Mostly, they’re quiet. Night is falling, the air growing cooler, and the gray sky fading into dusk.

“You would never think a park could hide what it used to be,” Ellison says at last. And yet it did. Driving off with Badolato at her side and her son babbling happily in the back seat, Ellison glances in the rear-view mirror, but only for a moment. Badolato keeps her eyes fixed only on the road ahead.

[cooltmoney95]

I think what makes the Amanda The Adventurer games stand out compared to other mascot horror games is that despite being a game about demons and occultism, it's actually frighteningly realistic to how child actors are exploited and abused in real life.

[fenrysmoonbeamswife]

rhysand stans/nesta haters wonder why I'm aggressive with them when they come out with this absolute drivel

but I actually want to unpack this comment because this is the pathetic narrative that so many people try to push

pink is for my commentary

the comment is from nyxess_mea on instagram if anyone else wants to block them asap

"so, a brutally abused, traumatized man, whose greatest fear was losing his loved ones, learns his family is going to die, – Feyre was going to die because Rhysand endangered her, she didn't have fully informed consensual sex. He didn't magically learn she would die, he knew it was a risk and just didn't care until it came back to bite him in the ass – and he desperately tries to find solution to save them all, – um where? People love to say this but show me one single instance of him actively looking for a solution – without stressing his wife (who would never choose abortion, be for real), – without informing Feyre about her body, who should have had the choice no matter what that choice would be that's the fucking point – his terror has him in choke hold, – literally who fucking cares this is not about him stop babying this 500 year old man, terror does not have you in a chokehold for months so this is a weak excuse – and he cannot bear to shatter his mate's happiness – the very essence of Feyres personality, wants, and requests of other people since the very first book have been to be informed and to have a choice, she wouldn't give a shit about being happy she would want to know and you know what? Even if she wouldn't, she has the right to – because stress can trigger premature labour (as it did!) – and that's a problem why? If the pregnancy was already at risk why would a premature labour even matter? If anything a preemie baby would have made the delivery easier and inducing the labour early should have been considered as a potential solution. "Oh we can't stress Feyre out stress is bad for the pregnancy", um the literal pregnancy is bad for Feyre so?? Again, weak ass excuse me –

And that is worse than a narcissist – Nesta, apparently – who abused an innocent child for years, – she was also a child but go off – mentally, emotionally, financially and physically (trying to force one to work for hours when exhausted and frozen is physical abuse) – please, what extra chapters did these psychos get that shows Nesta dragging Feyre out to the woods and "forcing" her to work because how else is it possible that so many people are so very wrong?? their little headcanons make me picture little Nesta out whipping Feyre around the woods and it kind of cracks me up I won't lie – Who enjoyed hurting and dehumanizing her sister at every chance – you mean... like Feyre did? Or do you mean when Nesta ran her baths? Or had her dinner ready after she napped? Or when she went to look for Feyre? – who tried to kick Feyre out of the house Tamlin provided, who then exploited money of Rhys. – "exploited" yes I'm sure she really abused this poor, penniless saint of a man. That's like saying someone exploited Elon Musk, it's quite literally impossible –

A vile abhorrent ungrateful abuser is worse than a man with brutal trauma with the most understandable reaction considering what he had been through, who tried to save his wife. – The vile, abhorrent abuser is Rhysand I'm sorry to tell you (not really). Keeping a woman's bodily autonomy from her is absolutely not the most understandable reaction. "Considering what he has been through" if anything that should have made him more responsible and more concerned for Feyres consent and autonomy but he wasn't. He endangered her and didn't inform her of the dangers of the sex they were having and then kept life threatening information and bodily autonomy from her for months. And he didn't try to save his wife, he tried to save himself and his heir. If he had tried to save his wife there are these magical things called ✨abortions✨. Nesta saved his wife, and his ungrateful ass – Nesta never cared for Feyre (and no, looking for her breadwinner slave to feed her after being taken to the wall is not caring) Rhys cares too much. He did not mean no harm, unlike Nesta, who enjoyed hurting Feyre at every turn – I honestly just have 0 words for this last bit other than get help and a sprinkle of reading comprehension wouldn't go astray either. Then again he did not mean no harm is actually absolutely correct, congratulations👏🏻

[maxdibert]

Okay ill go with what you say and admit they did bad things but whys all thst class stuff relevant like okay you like to use that division but its..not everything its all about?

Talking about the relationship between James and Severus without addressing the issue of class is a mistake that perpetuates a partial and distorted view of their conflict. Too often, the bullying that James inflicted on Severus is minimized under the idea of a simple "rivalry," when in reality, the power structure between them was tainted from the start by the material and symbolic inequality that separated them. James Potter, the son of a wealthy pureblood family, raised in an environment of privilege and without economic worries, exercised violence over Severus Snape, a working-class child, abused at home, with evident economic hardships and no social capital to support him. This is not a simple fight between equals, but a clear example of how class structure influences dynamics of abuse and exclusion.

Bullying does not occur in a social vacuum; it responds to the same power structures that govern the adult world. Authors like Bourdieu have developed the concept of capital in its multiple forms: economic, social, and cultural. James Potter had access to all of them. Coming from a wealthy family, he possessed economic capital, which translated into a life without deprivation, new clothes, access to goods and resources, and the certainty that any misstep would not compromise his future. His social capital was even more decisive: he was the son of a respected family in the magical community, with a strong support network and a position of prestige at Hogwarts that protected him from any real consequences for his actions. His cultural capital, reinforced by his pureblood lineage and upbringing in an elitist environment, allowed him to navigate power spaces within the school with ease. None of this was available to Severus Snape.

Severus was a working-class child, the son of an abusive man and an impoverished witch. His patched-up clothing and unkempt appearance were not a choice but the result of his material position. He grew up in a depressing industrial neighborhood, a space marked by precariousness and lack of opportunities. Within the Marxist framework, Snape represented the exploited class: without his own resources, without a support network, and without access to the benefits of the upper class, he could only survive through his intelligence and individual effort. His mixed-blood lineage also placed him in an intermediate position within the magical world, always inferior to the purebloods who dominated Hogwarts' social sphere. This is why talking about a "rivalry" between James and Severus is a misrepresentation of the facts: there was no equality of conditions, no level playing field. What existed was a rich boy using his social and economic power to humiliate a poor boy who had no tools to defend himself.

James Potter's classism is reflected in the way he chooses his victim. He does not harass other students of his same social class; instead, he preys on Severus, who is in an absolute position of inferiority. James exercises his abuse in public spaces, under the gaze of other students, aware that his status protects him from any retaliation. It is no coincidence that he is always the one initiating the harassment and that he does so accompanied by his friends, while Snape is alone. This is a classic manifestation of violence exercised from a position of power: it is based on impunity, on the certainty that the system will not intervene in favor of the victim because the aggressor is a legitimized subject within the social structure. James, like any child born into the upper class, learned from an early age that he could do whatever he wanted without real consequences because the world was designed to favor him.

Goffman speaks of stigma as a social marker that defines who is accepted and who is marginalized in a community. Snape embodies the stigma of poverty, domestic violence, and lack of resources. In the Hogwarts imagination, he is someone who does not fit the model of success and prestige represented by children like James Potter. This is key to understanding their relationship: James' aggression is not just personal but structural. Severus is not just Severus; he is the poor boy, the dirty boy, the boy who has no allies, the boy who will never be part of the winners' circle. In this sense, the violence he receives is not an isolated phenomenon but the manifestation of a hierarchy that placed him at the bottom even before he set foot in Hogwarts.

The argument that James "matured" and "changed" over time does not nullify the fact that his youthful violence was possible thanks to his privileged position. Within the meritocratic logic often applied to his story, we are told that James became a better person and that, therefore, his past should be excused. But this ignores that the underlying problem was never just his attitude, but the system that allowed his abuse to occur without consequences. When James finally "grows up," he has already enjoyed years of prestige, power, and acceptance. His change is not the result of a struggle against the system but a smooth transition within the same structure that always benefited him. Meanwhile, Severus remains trapped in the logic of the dispossessed: still alone, still marginalized, still without the resources to rewrite his story.

From a Marxist perspective, the story of James and Severus is not just a story of two children in conflict. It is the story of how social class defines who has the right to dignity and who must fight for it every day. It is the story of how the violence of the privileged is treated as "youthful pranks" while the anger of the oppressed is seen as a threat. It is the story of how the impunity of power allows the victors to write history and how those who have been humiliated are the ones who must bear the weight of their own suffering.

For this reason, no, there can be no talk of rivalry between James Potter and Severus Snape. Not when one had everything and the other had nothing. Not when one could exercise violence without fear and the other had to endure it without hope for justice. Not when the story of one is remembered as that of a reformed hero and the other as that of a resentful man without redemption. Because history, as always, is written by the victors. And in the world of Harry Potter, as in our own, the victors are almost always those born with privilege.