#shes COMPLICATED shes MESSY shes TRAUMATIZED shes A WAR CRIMINAL

[rxttenfish]

having a lot of thoughts about miranda and how her mental state has been fucked over by the merkingdom and by repeated and consistent abuses at the hands of the vanderbilts, to the point of singlemindedly considering herself an object. 

an object to be fought for, an object to be valued and protected, an object to hurt other people, an object to serve a purpose, an object that can be replaced, an object that belongs to a bigger system than it, an object that will be jealously guarded, an object to be used, an object to be hurt, an object to be a means to an end, an object to kill with, an object to be killed, or an object to be worshipped.

but always an object regardless.

[bpdanakins]

Name ten favourite characters from ten different things (books, tv, film, etc.) then tag ten people

I was tagged by the dear @gffa who clearly enjoys making these lists and seeing everyone else also struggling with just choosing ten. It’s hard but I shall do my best sdfk <3

1. Lara Croft - Tomb Raider Okay, let’s just get it out: I prefer reboot!Lara. idk I know some people think she sucks and the games suck for whatever reason, but I found the games and their mechanics super fun, and Lara’s story really compelling. She was a young girl who was determined to make her own way in the world, and instead went through something extremely traumatizing. She kept pushing through, kept getting back up no matter what the world threw at her. She went on this clear journey that was compelling and fun and messy. She wasn’t perfect. She pushed people away, she fucked the world up because she was determined to find the answers she felt would make all she went through make sense. Her survivor’s guilt was present really well in RotTR but most especially in SotTR. People were dying but she was so focused on finishing her personal mission. She was numb to it despite the fact it still horrified her. And her arc ended well. She finally was able to reach a place where she was able to let go of her losses and try to join society again. And I’m gay for her. So, you know.

2. Senua - Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice I cannot recommend this game enough. It’s tough to play bc it’s not just a horror game but you feel a lot of Senua’s anxiety, which is part of the point to the game. Senua’s a Celtic warrior who suffers from psychosis, and the game devs worked directly with both professionals and those who experience psychosis. There’s a whole mini doc to it which is great, even if you can’t stomach horror. You’re in Senua’s head with her throughout the game. You see what she sees, you hear all she hears, and she talks to you directly at times. But the beauty of the game is Senua’s true journey. She goes on a quest to try to rescue a loved one she lost to Vikings, but the real story is about a girl realizing she’s not a monster for seeing the world differently. That the abuse and ableism she faced weren’t her fault at all. There’s so many little things I can point to in this game that just made me so emotional, and it’s such a beautiful and necessary story to tell. Senua is great and deserves a hug.

3. Anakin Skywalker - Star Wars If you asked me at what point in my life Anakin became one of my favourite characters, to the point I frequently talked about him even on my main blog at random intervals, I couldn’t tell you. I haven’t the faintest idea; he just was. And if you asked me why he was a fave early on, I also couldn’t tell you lmao. It might partially be that I grew up on the prequels, and maybe at such a young age I didn’t really grasp at first that this was a story about a guy who was already revealed to be a villain, but I haven’t the faintest clue. He just is now, and I’m so passionate about his story. He’s complex and difficult and written so well. You want him to be happy, you feel heartbroken seeing a good character fall so deep, and you want to smack him upside the head a whole lot. You laugh at his silly dialogue (which he has as Vader too smh), you cry when you see him struggling, you become horrified by his actions. His story’s also a great inversion of the Chosen One trope - whereas usually we see Chosen Ones struggle, become imperfect and undoubtedly traumatized, they remain heroes the whole time. Anakin doesn’t. He becomes the bad guy, one of the worst in the series (Palps takes the award tho). But even then, when you think this guy has nothing to offer but an intimidating villain, he’s shown to have good. And then we see how much good he had all along, the good he forgot and was punished for and hated himself for. His heart that had good intentions but he chose the worst actions. He’s complicated and I love him. And more over, I love how many people who struggle or have mental illness can relate to him. I love that he wasn’t treated as a guy whose actions were glorified, but that were honest in both the good ones and the bad ones. Anyone can fall, and anyone can get back up, if they choose to. I just. Love him. He means a lot.

4. Commander Shepard - Mass Effect I know that Shep is technically the player’s character and can be any combination of person, but anyone who’s played Mass Effect would get why they were put here. The original trilogy for Mass Effect touched on so many things, and was a really emotional one. You had your great moments with friends, you had your struggles against both unknown horrors, and horrors close to home (so to speak). There are so many small moments that stick out to you, and idk how many people can say that playing this story didn’t impact their life in a meaningful way, bc I can’t see how it couldn’t. I’ve played the games many times, but even after all of this, there are moments that I not just still get emotional to, but take on new meaning as I go through my life. And Shepard’s the hero of the story. They’re not perfect, and they can downright be an ass if you play them that way, but their story is one of perseverance, of fighting on even when entire worlds are being lost and everyone is still looking to them. Everyone needs them to find a solution. But even then, it’s a story about friendship too. About tons of amazing characters that all have their own motivations, their own pasts and goals and hopes and failures. About how all these varied characters become a found family. And so Shepard’s the hero of the story, but their companions aren’t just there to be sidekicks, but end up with all their own accomplishments and arcs and you go on this journey with all of them. idk the whole series is great dsalkkljads

5. Lexa & Clarke - The 100 Let’s not talk about how terrible this show got and how messy it was because we all know. But it started with a really compelling story that was interesting, and to see two characters on screen who were flawed but understood each other, and to have them both be women - one who was a lesbian and one who was a bisexual?? It made me so excited and it’s a really flawed show but it meant a lot to me at the time to have a couple like that on a tv show, and so despite all its flaws, that relationship still means a lot to me. 

6. The BAU team - Criminal Minds Yeah, I put the entire friggin team down, and that means all of them. There was only maybe two or so characters that were on it I didn’t like so every iteration is put down. Criminal Minds isn’t exactly a complex show; it’s a typical crime drama, and its unique feature is that it looks into the behaviour and minds of criminals instead of finding the science, like we saw with CSI. But the episodes were compelling and entertaining to watch, and, what do you know, there’s a found family at the center of it all and naturally I’m a sucker for it. Strangely enough this show is kind of a comfort one to me, bc it’s entertaining but not always overwhelmingly emotional. I can put it on at any time and just have it on in the background, or when I’m not feeling well, and I’ll enjoy myself. Also strangely enough, I’ve seen almost every episode enough times that there’s a game in my house to see how long it takes for me to recognize the episode and its plot once a rerun is put on lmao. There’s a lot of good shows like this out there - I enjoy SVU a lot too - but something just draws me to the characters on this one. We’ve been with them for, what, 14 seasons?? And we’ve seen them go thru some shit, we’ve seen them grow and change and they’re all really unique. It’s not a complex show but it is good enough to just binge. A part that plays in it is probably the time in my life I started getting into it too, but I’m alright with standing by it.

7. Korra - Avatar: The Legend of Korra I probably don’t need to wax poetic about atla or atlok much at all. I just love her journey, as a brash and overconfident girl who realizes that being the Avatar is hard, the people expect so much and there’s a lot put on your shoulders. That, when things go wrong, people will blame you. She went and became this giant blue monster thing, but her struggles were all human. Her PTSD was shown really well, despite it being a kid’s show. She’s fun and her journey is lovely and it’s definitely true that Korrasami did it way better, and both characters are bi women too (◡‿◡✿) We Do Not Talk About That Dumb Love Triangle Nonsense Though

8. Chloe & Max - Life is Strange What can I even say about this game? I don’t know. If you’ve played it, you’ll know why it’s here. It’s.... way deeper than you’d think it’d get at first. I love the story, and I love the journey Max and Chloe go on together. I love their friendship, how Chloe was always trying to uplift Max and encourage her to follow her dreams, and Max just doing the impossible for Chloe. I love their relationship, because it was built on support and love and struggle. I love their complexities, their flaws, their strengths, their times together. I just fskljdjlksfd love them, I love this game and all its various stories and character arcs. It’s all so beautiful and raw and unique and yay, another pair of ladies loving each other is on this list.

9. Solas - Dragon Age: Inquisition Okay. There’s a TON of characters I adore in Dragon Age, and to be honest, I don’t know he’d be my absolute top one. But I do like his story. I love Dragon Age companions, because, like in Mass Effect, they’re all their own characters with their own stories and journeys. Solas is flawed. Like, really flawed. Here’s another guy on my list who went and fucked up the world a bit. His worst actions (and the consequences of them) were built on good intentions, on his desire to help his people. We can get into the way this direction BW went with the elvhen religion was icky, but it’s a different conversation. I adore elvhen lore and I love exploring theories on it all the time. For Solas, I just like that he’s complex. I mean, he’s still silly and kinda weird, and he loves to hear himself speak on topics and loves Lavellan for encouraging him to never shut up, but most of all I kind of like their relationship? A friendship with Solas is still great, but I like that it’s an asexual one (don’t fight me on this, idc, it’s how I see it). It’s soft, built on mutual respect, one with no pressures or expectations. Solas asks for time and Lavellan gives it. There’s no fade to black s.ex scenes that so many times aren’t optional in BW games. I just really like my asexual wolf god egg ok

10. Mulder & Scully - The X Files Okay, it’s super hard to choose characters for this holy heck. BUT I really, really, really love their relationship. Mulder is an idealist who believes in the supernatural, and Scully his pragmatic scientific counterpart. And we could talk about how Scully’s character as a woman in science meant to a lot of people, and how Mulder’s tenacity to not give up on his beliefs is a nice one (when it’s not getting him into trouble). Their relationship is the slowest of slow burns in television history, I think. But it’s good that way. Scully starts out thinking Mulder’s just a delusional guy, one who’s intelligent but wastes his accomplishments, and he knows that. Then they go through shit, they’re a team and many times it’s them against a whole bunch of unbelievable stuff (and their own government). What I loved most was also their son, and I’m literally deleting all knowledge of the new seasons from my brain bc I think it was gross and took away from the story, but I liked that they were so close, loved each other so much despite there not really being a romance yet, that Scully trusted to go to Mulder to donate to her bc he was the only one she could think of for this. It’s another asexual relationship on screen, and it’s built on a love that happens over time. I just fljksdfkjl could go on about it too.

-

This was hard lmao. I wanna give an honorary shout out to Peggy Carter since she had wonderful lines like: “I know my value. Anyone else’s opinion doesn’t really matter.” Which is *chef’s kiss*. Peggy was the true unsung hero of the MCU and they gave her and Steve a weird ass ending.  

idk who to tag bc I’m not sure who’d be into this, but if you’re willing, I’d love to hear from @sapphicfinalpam, @mariaromanovs, @vinterskald, @zombiefishgirl, @nb-aziraphales, @serkonans and anyone who feels like doing it. Feel free to obvs ignore this, or only make a list without rambles, idk. I am never too sure about who’s into this or not, but if I didn’t tag you and you wanna do it, you can just say I tagged you and I definitely wanna read what you have to say!

[finsterhunde]

Explaining what happened

So I figured I would explain what pushed me to how low I got in a traumatic spiral these couple months, more so for future reference than anything.

I wanted photos and memories about my first childhood dog Spot. In the process my mother dug up a ton of traumatic repressed memories that I’m not yet strong enough to face. It also turns out that she had been lying about the death of my last childhood dog, causing additional pain when I found her out.

Having old memories dug back up is extremely damaging to my mental state. I wanted cute little facts about my puppy that I would have been too young to remember. Instead what she told me brought back flashes of abuse.

This escalated and what finally pushed me over the edge was that I started going back to my old compulsive rituals; the worst one being the need to check up on my birth father online, seeing where he was in the country, what he was doing, if he was alive, etc.

Now this originally was something that had a purpose. The divorce was extremely messy. And when he was kicked out of the house and we were in the process of changing the locks we were living in terror that he could come back at any time with a firearm and mow us down. He was threatening us, threatening to abduct us kids, and he had made severe violent threats in the past. As of 4 years ago he actually assaulted an RCMP officer. So he definitely was still capable of violence at the time. He used to have an extensive gun collection.

Checking up on him was a safeguard. If he didn’t know where I was, if he wasn’t where we were, we were safe. But gradually I stopped needing to do this. I ran away and lived with a friend. My mom and brother moved. He wouldn’t know where any of us lived.

But of course, that’s not how trauma is. Trauma is complicated and that was one of my safety rituals. To compulsively check his social media. Just in case.

He got old and obese and pathetic. He has a heart attack pretty much every year. He’s nothing short of a reanimated corpse at that point.

But in my traumatized brain I’m still that tiny malnourished boy and he’s still that hulking behemoth of a man. Just like in a nightmare where you can’t fly and no matter how fast you run you move at a snail’s pace. My rational mind knows I could easily overpower him, but my instincts tell me he’s as dangerous as he was 10 years ago.

Gradually though I began to heal as I lived with my friend. And I didn’t feel the compulsive need to make sure he wasn’t an immediate threat.

Until now. When my mother started opening old wounds.

A couple days ago I had an uncontrollable compulsive need to check his social media again.

And found some horrible stuff.

He’d been making creepy threatening status updates every year on my birthday, discussing how he wanted to find me “wherever I was...”

and he wrote “music” with lyrics about enacting the vengeance of god, thunder and brimstone and all that.

He threatened to kill any of the RCMP officers he is convinced are “hunting” him.

And in my desire to document evidence like I did with Wannabe, still not waking up from this maladaptive safety ritual of “knowing your enemy” I went through his four different facebook pages screenshotting things.

And it just got worse.

He posted photos of himself at my age, and I realized that I don’t take after Mark Hamill like I say I do. I take after him.

I mean, I figured. But it was very upsetting to see photos of him as an older teen and pretty much see a non-sickly version of myself staring back at me. He was actually handsome. Could I have looked like that if I wouldn’t have been neglected and abused the way I was? Not to mention the disgust I feel at resembling such an evil man.

He had photos of him as a child and he bragged in the comment section about how he abused his dog and “made them crazy” and knowing he was like that even at a young age sickens me.

He idolizes his horrifically abusive dead father. I’d even argue there’s evidence that his dad was a straight up war criminal. There’s photos of the two together where he’s a toddler and his dad is holding him while smoking. It was disgusting.

He’s racist, a trump supporter (in Canada for some reason???) threatened violence against members of a political party here and again, the rampant “vengeance of my god” lunacy.

He was making posts about how the RCMP “attacked him” for being Christian.

For reference the RCMP had a warrant for his arrest and he assaulted an officer so they took defensive action. They had a warrant for his arrest because he threatened them when they earlier that week seized some of his electronics. (they had a warrant for that too)

The official statement for why they were arresting him was because they considered him mentally unwell and a threat to the safety of others.

So knowing that it’s much easier to tell why the RCMP were after him. Having the context paints and entirely different picture doesn’t it?

The case against him is still confidential but apparently he also had the police called on him numerous times for his behavior where he lived at the time. He frequently complained about how the community was “bullying him” for being an outsider.

He also says that they considered him mentally ill for “being Christian.”

And, because when I get into one of my traumatic mental states I have no off switch I started going back deeper. In the past he was seriously harassing politicians and posting stuff that I’m pretty sure is illegal. Unlike Wannabe he never posted anything overtly “I abuse kids” but he did make posts about how he supported physically abusing children and claimed that photos of children being pepper sprayed were “fake” and that they were “spoiled brats.”

I eventually went too far and found something super bad that shook me to my absolute core.

He made a status back when I was in middle school about how pedophiles don’t deserve longer prison sentences than illegal cannabis growers because their crimes “aren’t as bad” and that they “aren’t as dangerous.”

Ironically, he justified this by saying that pedophiles “kill far less RCMP officers”

This is ironic in the fact that he himself would attempt to kill, and afterwards repeatedly threaten to kill, RCMP officers less than a decade later.

So I guess he decided to prove himself wrong?

But yeah. I shut down after that. It was a dogwhistle looking back on it and it frightened me.

The lyrics for another one of his “songs” are basically “laws can mean different things if you know how to pull some strings” which is also terrifying in context.

Other things that made my heart hurt was that the woman he’s with now loves dogs.They had three. One passed away. I fear for those dogs. In an account that’s shared by both of them posts made in support of dogs with “adopt don’t shop” messages and similar are uploaded. It enrages me because he was a backyard breeder and he also killed my puppy. He’s a lying snake pretending to be a good person.

He’s pretending he cares about us kids, painting my mom out to be “the abuser” and saying about how he wished he could take us to games and stuff. He HATED us. He beat us senseless. He was a torturous monster. Seeing him pretend to be a good father broke me. I want a dad. I wanted someone to play catch with me and take me to see the Penguins and teach me how to shave. I didn’t get that. I got a sexual predator instead.

Look at this: I’ve censored as little as I can and that’s largely for personal reasons. Everything he said is wrong.

I was diagnosed with PTSD because of what HE DID TO ME. My brother’s mental health diagnosis (it’s personal and not my place to share) is also because of him. My mom definitely wasn’t a perfect parent but compared to him she’s a saint.

She didn’t work because she had to stay home to ensure he wouldn’t KILL US. And that only started after the Spot incident. She was working extremely long hours before but stopped after I got beaten super bad.

He’s playing the victim and it’s so upsetting. The nerve he has to say “there was nothing wrong with you while I was there” NO. You refused to let us get mental health treatment. I didn’t get diagnosed until you were gone because I wasn’t allowed to see a psychiatrist.

Him wanting us to take our dogs to him is horrific too.

Also I feel bad about the penguins hat. I guess that means that the grooming still works.

Despite denying my mother’s desire for me to be a “wish kid” (make a wish foundation) because “kids don’t deserve handouts” he would donate profits from his failed pub (a story for another day perhaps) at one point to the make a wish foundation. Seeing the photos of him looming over the kid the money helped made me queasy. I don’t know if he thinks he’s covering his tracks or if he just likes being around disabled kids. Both would make sense honestly. I wonder if that had something to do with the confidential reason the RCMP were after him. I really hope it wasn’t. I really really really hope it wasn’t.

But yeah. All that happened and I was unable to sleep. I was terrified. I was crying. I felt guilt for not being brave enough to report him. For being too much of a coward to come forward about what he had done to me.

My friend saw me talking about what was going on on twitter and told me that this was caused by my mom retraumatizing me and I had to cut her out and not engage for my own sake. That I wasn’t ready to face things yet.

That I had gotten worse because mom was ripping open old wounds and that for my health I needed to back off.

So yeah. I agreed with my friend. I am backing off. I am going to be trying to shut that down. As I said on my main blog, my old abusive childhood is dead. I am making a new one. I will use my imagination to keep myself sane and I will retreat into my passions again. Until I am strong enough.

But I know I need to be strong enough. I will confront him someday. I’m just not ready.