#there is context for why I'm so hopelessly obsessed with them

[simp-for-long-hair]

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Lil' Jigsaw Doodle 💜

[ewesless]

I have nothing nice to say tonight.

Edit: this was a quick rant with a brief explanation. It's not meant to go into depth on any subject matter and has a hostile tone throughout, including the notes. I ignore men and politics in real life, I have no desire to learn about them or explain anything beyond the post's scope. This is drawn from when I had a passing interest in learning about the diseased male thoughts. I've clarified and expanded the original post.

Barbatos does have the admirable Sigma traits, but he is just as hopelessly in love with the player character and panders just as much as the other males in the game which is only one of many ways that negates a self-respecting Sigma 😂

I honestly hate that words like Simp made it into Obey Me. In a sexual context it has been appropriated from incels and MGTOW language. It's 'reclaimed', redefined and is used unironically again everywhere, but it is still completely sexist bullshit. Women can't even get basic respect and sympathy from a man without this type of men degrading, jeering at and insulting both.

It's a term heavily used in this fandom so I can't really fault the writers. They use catchy slang to stay hip and contemporary, especially with Levi and his jargon. It's in awful taste to use a misogynistic term FROM a character who is identifiable as an incel, towards a character meant to represent anyone, in a game and genre specifically intended for women.

I doubt that anyone who uses the term on themself cares about the implications or origin of trendy labels. The term Simp, used in a sexual context such as this, is from the Manosphere (Far Right, Masculinist, Anti-Feminist, Anti-Woman and LGBT-phobic "Movement".) It is an acronym that means "Simpletons into Mediocre P*ssy". For Levi to call himself a Simp is to specifically refer to MC mediocre pvssy. These are characters meant to represent idealized fantasy men and yet the writers decided to invite concepts from men who violently oppose, objectify and hate Women and LGBT?

While it's believable that Levi could operate out of this belief system, they shouldn't have actually done it. 🙁 OM runs absolutely counter to Masculinism, the character are PROUD "SIMPS" that aggressively pursue, "paypig"/throw money, gifts, fawn over, pander to and compete against one another in hopes of getting attention from someone who can be interpreted as a woman. The characters are "pathetically" obsessed with gaining favor, monopoly over and a romantic and/or sexual relationship with the player. It is ANATHEMA TO THE MASCULINIST CONCEPT. Masculinism is, in other words, male supremacism and a call to arms for "oppressed men" to reject progress towards equality, retake full patriarchal control and force everyone else to submit to their ideology and social order and accept the "inherent worthlessness" of equality, the female sex, non-whiteness, LGBT, Liberal/Left and those that disagree with them.

OM promotes a progressive and LGBT friendly stance while remaining solidly as the otome genre's woman oriented escapism + power fantasy, romance game. That isn't to say OM players/Otome/Joseimuke players aren't also literally Simps who paypig for mediocre prick, but this game is supposed to be about "good men" and romantic fulfillment.

It's ridiculous 😂

There will be no tolerance for "Not All Men" or "Not Just Women/Female Players" on my post. This is about specific men and their ideology that specifically attack women, their lives, safety and futures in horrific, vile, life ruining ways.

Edit: you know the trendy phrase of "death of the author" and how viewer interpretation trumps creator intention? Yeah, this is that.

Edit 2: I know I'm acting "butthurt" and being "sensitive about no big deal, it's just a localized, foreign, gacha game" but that's just part and parcel with any form of protest and activism. Why else is anger the primary, force driving, motivation?

[conduitandconjurer]

We know that Klaus would rather stay in a toxic/abusive relationship than be alone. In that context, how are you interpreting Ben's "That's why you're always alone" line in S2?

Honestly I think that line is as much if not more about Ben at his worst than it is about Klaus.

Though understandable given the circumstances, it wasn't Ben's finest hour, tbh: particularly when you consider the sentence that precedes it: "Nobody wants to deal with your shit, Klaus." Because sure, everyone has their own struggle to deal with, BUT: who does that sound like?

I think the intention might have been a tough-love reminder that one's own choices are key to recovery....but lbr, sandwiched in with a hundred other rejections disguised as "I'm worried about you and really frustrated," it begins to sound like Reginald's "You're more trouble than you're worth." What complicates this is that, other than Reginald, the people who have said these things are speaking from their own poor emotional regulation and trauma (the other Umbrellas and some of the Sparrows). And that's incredibly tragic.

People who are (repeatedly) traumatized and ND (neurodivergent--ADHD, autism, learning disabilities, PTSD and C-PTSD, among others) hear those words in a thousand micro-aggressions a day, in a neurotypical world over which they have very little say or control. They can be as small as an angry sigh and eye-roll, a "shut up" or "this is an adult conversation" or "you always say stupid shit" or "you useless pukebag" or "just be the lookout." They begin to internalize the callousness and the projection, and BELIEVE the things others say or do to invalidate them, and make choices that self-fulfill the worst opinions that others have (which is why I get frustrated when I see yet another fan shitting on Klaus for "choosing" to return to bad relationships, or drink, or use, or simply walk away: "you are hopelessly broken, so why bother" is NOT an idea he planted in his own head). That's what has happened to Klaus, and it is why he is reluctant to step outside the methods he already knows how to utilize in order to keep going (including repeated patterns of enduring toxic relationships, with Dave as the sole canonical exception).

Yes, sometimes their own actions reinforce these invalidating remarks, BUT WHY? Because they have grown accustomed to being disregarded and ignored ANYWAY, so best to beat others to the punch and cut out some of the sting of another dismissal.

I don't think Ben understands that, because Ben is built to be a people-pleaser; Ben is traumatically obsessed with making the people he loves and admires proud. He struggles SO MUCH with this, and we see it most vividly in his Sparrow timeline, in which he absolutely despises himself and resents everyone around him just because Marcus, not him, is Number One. Ben, ironically, does not have Klaus's survival skills or adaptability. It's by the book or failure. It's all or nothing.

And his frustration with relying on someone who has been forced since AGE 8 to adapt to intolerable circumstances bubbles over in his third year stuck in the 1960s with Klaus the accidental cult-starter. He resents that Klaus can achieve a sustainable living situation by taking advantage of (frankly very willing and privileged) people. These aren't real relationships to Ben, so he boils over and aims his self-loathing outwards at the sibling he has helped survive for 17 years. "After all I've done for you," etc.

There is resentment for PERCEIVED (but I would argue, not real) ingratitude and there is jealousy: Klaus, "King of the Dead," is better at staying alive (even after overdosing a thousand times) than Ben, who died at sixteen indubitably trying to do something selfless.

Again, I can understand where he's coming from, but it's also unfortunate that Klaus's Jiminy Cricket voice has joined the throngs of "you're a fuck-up loser that no one will ever take seriously and you brought it entirely on yourself."

Which, incidentally, is a core belief that directly causes Klaus's initial decision to just stay dead, in 3x10.