#there's so much more to the story I think I'm actually being victim to financial abuse

[scum-belina]

My granny royally ripped me off this month on paying me for cleaning her house and other chores and errands she didn't want to do, and less than a week later has the nerve to ask me for money so she could buy some Valium. This is the quality of family I have.

[yanderecandystore]

Hello! If it's not too much of a hassle.

May I please request, Alexandra?

Scenario: Reader (AMAB) is poor and forced to marry Alexandra. But unfortunately for Alexandra, Darling is more interested in their daughter than in her (not incest btw!!) As the years go by.

Lmao I can see it happening X'D

TW/Tags: Somewhat fluff, somewhat goofy, somewhat weird? // mentions of past bullying // silly goofs sort of headcanon // questionable marriage/relationship with Alexandra // People ignoring the victim's side of the story // Reader has a lot of conflicted feelings about his situation // low-key happy ending unlocked?

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

Oh no, please don't spoil this child, her mother is already very spoiled, sir. [Yandere!Bully!OC x Male!Reader - Headcanons]:

→ Alexandra Coldwell:

I don't think much would happen to be honest, although it is interesting that you got in this situation in the first place. Being forced to marry your rich bully sounds like an absolute nightmare, and it could be considering it's Alexandra we're talking about!

Ah, but who isn't to say that this was all a carefully laid out plan to get you to be with her anyway? I mean it doesn't sound so ridiculous if you think about it.

I don't think she would've been able to orchestrate EVERYTHING, but imagine this- You two met in high school and she hasn't stop being a menace to you even during college, but since your family was always in a tight situation financially she knew how to play her cards right to convince your parents that she was your "high school sweetheart", and that she was the perfect choice for you!

She is a beautiful model after all, she comes from old money- And she has that added benefit of having been in your life for a while now (for the better or for worse… mostly worse). How could your parents NOT fall for her charm??

Which by the way, they never understand why you never showed her to them before, it doesn't matter if you told them the truth before or not, right now they were absolutely sold on her as the perfect candidate for you.

There was an awkward dating phase at first, she would treat you a lot better than she did in her high school years but you still couldn't help but see her as a bit of a menace to your otherwise calm life.

It took you a while to notice why she would treat you the way she did, how she didn't actually mean it… Of course you weren't one to easily forgive and forget, but you did give her a chance to improve herself, despite the odds being against you, you stood your ground and never gave her the chance to put you down again.

The dating part felt a little rushed in your opinion, but nothing could be done about it considering your marriage was planned a lot earlier than you ever could have expected- And I'm not talking about your parents who really needed you to get that financial security, I'm talking about Alexandra.

Your new wife was still creepy… Not scary and overly domineering as you expected her to be in private but still somewhat creepy.

And somehow you grew to accept that! It seemed to get better with each passing year, or maybe you just didn't really care about her obsessive weirdness towards you… Sometimes, it was a bit endearing!

Or maybe you're crazy too, who knows!

Ah, but your daughter, a sweet little girl that thanks to some miracle was not as bratty as her mother! A bit of a daddy's girl, and just a tiny hint of a troublemaker- But that's basically any child.

I would beg you to not spoil her too much as You Know Who is her mother, but I assume you would still do it anyway, wouldn't you?

Your relationship with Alexandra was always a bit odd, and hard to explain. You weren't unhappy, not at all! You had a really good life now, and it wasn't just because of the money.

You've built a really nice family with Alex, even if it's just you three… But sometimes you're not sure if you really love Alexandra all that much…

Well, you grew to like her! But sometimes you feel like you shouldn't so easily forget her past interactions with you, and even though it might seem perfect to be next to someone like her (rich and beautiful), you're very much aware of the ways she could easily ruin someone's life if they got too close to you. The person who slept next to you every night was also the one who would lock you in empty school lockers, and is the same person who would also use her money to ruin someone else's life for even looking at you wrong…

And it's also the same person who smiles everyday as if everyday was sunny to her, who is a good mother overall and great wife despite her unhealthy tendencies, who is always apologizing late at night about her past mistakes even if you didn't bring it up yourself.

You clearly loved your daughter a lot, and after having the displeasure of meeting your mother-in-law you REALLY didn't want your daughter to end up like them (I named her Yasmin but it can be whatever you want-).

It's not just that you really love your daughter with all your heart- She is the reason you feel glad that this marriage happened in the first place- But you're also worried that if you are not around, Yasmin will turn into her mother or worse yet, her grandma, ugh.

You were thankful that she didn't come to visit you three much, if at all. You didn't know why exactly, but something told you Evelyn wouldn't be a good influence on your daughter. She never treated you badly, but you sure knew she didn't treat Alexandra well.

Spoiling wasn't the same as parenting. Nor was whatever that witch did.

In Alexandra's point of view, she recognizes that you seem very distant to her in general, but from her perspective you seem to be slowly getting more comfortable around her- Even if you don't notice!

It can be a bit frustrating that you never give her the same amount of attention you give Yasmin, but she doesn't mind all that much… It's really cute to see how much you care about your family, it's all that she could ever dream off!

Nice try in trying to make her mad, yeah, she gets a little petty sometimes but she isn't the same person anymore, whatever you did during all these years somehow motivated her to become a better person for the sake of you and for the sake of your daughter.

Alex isn't completely unaware of your disinterest, the fact that even after all this time you still feel conflict hurts her but it makes a lot of sense.

But since you're married to her, she would still like to think she has a chance to win your heart, if you would like that or not is up to you or course.

🍭꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍰꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖♡🍮꒰⑅ᵕ༚ᵕ꒱˖🍭

[oliveroctavius]

If it's okay to ask, I'm curious what your initial thoughts are on the potential plot for the Insomniac Spidey sequel game! I'm still sorting my thoughts, but one of the things that definitely crossed my mind was how the story trailer reminded me of both TASM films (eg. terminally ill Harry as a major villain, the main villain plot being forcibly 'healing' the world, and we know from the MM post-credits scene that Connors is behind Harry's treatment with the symbiote, etc.), and while the main issue with the eugenics stuff in the TASM films is how it was framed as being both real and good and neither Peter nor the narrative ever challenges it, rather than just the villains being villainous and it could go differently here, I'm really not sure how optimistic to be at this point in speculation - but it's also not an aspect of the trailer I've seen much discussion on either.

having gone over the original game again, (geez I forgot how hard they went on the Spider-Cop bit) I still don't feel as pessimistic on this plot point as others seem to be... yet.

MSM1 had parallels to TASM1 too, without fumbling the ball as hard. Main villain starts as an ally researching limb replacement, partially for themselves; plot turning point is a Oscorp gene-cure-mist being released into the city with terrible results. It helps that Insomniac's medical science is just 50% less bullshit. Devil's Breath names a real genome editing tech (CRISPR by viral vector) and genetic diseases that aren't just disabling, but fatal (cystic fibrosis, Huntington's) as the intended target. There's no TASM-esque twist where victims with improperly edited genes become a ''devolved'' ''lower lifeform'' or turn murderous. They just get sick.

Otto doesn't consider using Devil's Breath on himself. His condition isn't even genetic. Dumb to have to point that out, but TASM Curt compares limb loss to agonizing death by disease (??) and proposes his amputation be "fixed" with genetic modification (???) while Otto's focus is on (embellished) mobility aids. The idea that brain damage from the arms made Otto evil is brought up and then refuted. Martin and Otto have social + financial motivations which overlap with but aren't fully defined by disability. They're well-intentioned extremists: they want to take down a crooked capitalist who's politically untouchable... time to poison random civilians!

Going by these trends: I expect Harry to have a fairly realistic diagnosis and to use real assistive aids alongside any sci-fi treatments (he has a cane for a second in the trailer). I expect that if he did inherit his condition it was from his mother, and the only person who might be weird about that is Norman. Insomniac Harry's previous vision for "healing the world" has been air and water quality, green energy, and wildlife health. If this changes, I expect a more nuanced explanation than "idk he's sick and crazy now".

Will I actually like it? Who knows! (Like MJ was fine. but she's not My MJ.) I'm still crossing my fingers for sentient alien Venom because I think it would make everything more interesting to have Venom the character rather than just the plot device.

I'm truly more worried for Curt--most of the Insomniac plotlines are pulled from modern comics. (For the love of god please let's not do Shed.) But comics Devil's Breath was a poison that killed only certain genetic lineages, and someone made the call to avoid that minefield of weird ideas. So. Hope remains that this will not be the TASM movies' kind of freakshow.

[0xo]

tw abuse & transmisogyny tho

it is kind of nuts that on the flipside of having incredible trans relationships, i've also been treated like dirt by former partners who happened to be transfem, and it like... sucks. hard. to feel a little bit unable to talk about how they treated me for fear of people interpreting that as me not loving or respecting trans women.

like. idk. especially one ex in particular. having my life threatened and being emotionally/physically/financially abused really really really sucked. especially because i loved her a lot and still really, really care about her. it took literally years for me to tell the full story to our mutual close friends because. i didn't want them to cut her out of our community. like "exile abusers" blah blah blah but she NEEDED friends and support, she was also going through a hard time, the last thing she needed was for every local friend she had to drop her or talk shit about her. even if she did really really mean things to me. i still want her to be happy.

it was hard telling k about what actually happened because he was so mad, not at me but at her, asked why i didn't tell the whole story sooner, all that. and all i could say was that i was afraid she would get more hurt. i didn't want her to be isolated. and i asked him, if you knew what she'd done, would you have been so nice that day when she showed up and scared the hell out of me? and he said no, i would've understood why you were so scared, i would've told her to leave. and i said EXACTLY, she wasn't in a state to leave, she needed a soft place to land. even if it meant she broke a promise to me. don't you get it? i didn't want her to end up dead. i still had an obligation to her to try and keep her safe.

i don't know. like. there is no such thing as a perfect abuse victim and you don't have to forgive your abuser or try to make things easier for them or protect their reputation from the truth of what they did. i just. couldn't let it all blow up immediately, right? i could only tell the truth after she was in another place, a better mental state, with more support that wasn't connected to here or our mutual friends.

and it's weird because we're still kind of friends, sort of. and i still care a lot about her. she has so so so many good traits, she's talented and beautiful and smart, and. i didn't want the way she treated me to get in the way of her recovering and having a good life. i want to believe it was all a really really big mistake, that she didn't mean it, that it was just the drugs and the sobriety attempts talking. and pushing and threatening. like yes take responsibility for how you act but also, maybe, that wasn't really her. maybe she's really actually a great person and we were just in a really difficult situation. i know that's not realistic but god i hope maybe she didn't mean it.

idk. abuse makes you feel absolutely insane sometimes. five years later im still grappling with that. the gender layers just make it more complicated because i never wanted to be that asshole who ruins the life of a trans woman over petty stuff. but it. wasn't petty stuff, and i know that and i have witnesses, it was genuinely bad. and i still couldn't/can't bring myself to write her off as a terrible person. because i really and truly don't think she is one. i believe she's changed and i believe she's better and i believe she's got the potential to do amazing things.

and i'm not looking for brownie points by saying all this, i'm not trying to paint myself as a saint for the act of still treating her like a human. i was never perfect. and i don't want to hold it over her head, okay? that's not what this is about. i am not a wonderful person for trying to forgive her. i am just trying to minimize the damage for both of us.

i'm just. still processing. and i think the way i had to handle it kind of complicates things. i've had people accuse me of "protecting abusers" because i don't really publicly talk much about what she did, i don't "warn" people about her. but. it's not necessarily anyone's business? they're not entitled to know the details of one of the worst periods of my life just so they can get some sick glee out of regurgitating it, using it as a reason to alienate her... using my pain as social currency. it's not their business. especially if she's changed her behavior? she doesn't treat her wife like she treated me, thank god. and if i'd gone out to crucify her... i don't think she would've gotten better. she may have hurt me but i don't want to hurt her in return. she doesn't deserve that. i didn't deserve cruelty from her and she doesn't deserve cruelty from me.

i'm not looking for validation that i've done the "right thing." i'm not sure there is a "right thing" to do coming out of all that. i just need to talk about it a little bit. because maybe other people who've survived shit situations need to hear that it's okay to have complicated feelings.

but her changing for the better doesn't. erase. what happened or how it affected me. the flashbacks and nightmares and general fear and anxiety. the added layer onto my pre-existing ptsd. it's difficult to process and talk about. it's affected the way i relate to people and my ability to trust. (i'm forever grateful that my current girlfriend saw what was happening and stepped in to protect me... sometimes i only really feel safe when i'm with her, because i know she's not going to hurt me or let anyone else hurt me. i can actually relax when she's around. she's safe.)

and idk, i guess the thing is, i could've let that experience turn me bitter towards trans women. i could've blasted my ex publicly and tried to ruin her life, and i probably could've succeeded at it. but. i never wanted that. i needed to be away from her, and she shouldn't have done those things, but i was never willing to turn it into a witch hunt. and it was a trans woman who came to protect me when i thought i was going to be murdered! it was my trans fem partners that helped me get out and get safe. i owe them my life. they didn't have to help me but they did.

so it's confusing to me that some people are so transmisogynistic because... what, a trans woman was a little rude to you on the internet? she called you out on your transmisogyny??? you feel personally emotionally attacked or some shit?

like. please get real. you're just hateful. not to be like "oh i got over a horrible experience so you should shut up," but. i lived through hell, i was abused by a trans woman, and i still don't have a nasty attitude about trans women in general. so i think some of you should shut the fuck up. trans women have every right to be angry and snarky when you treat them like shit!!!

i think it's just. difficult. to watch people act like fuckheads. i deeply, deeply love and respect the trans women in my life - including the ones who hurt me. and some of these assholes are throwing hissy fits about jokes and well-deserved criticisms of how they treat/talk about trans women. like. just admit you don't like trans women specifically. don't pretend you're being attacked. i know what being attacked is and, i gotta say, it's NOT that!

wishing people would view other people, especially trans women, as Real Actual Humans and not just a collection of their worst moments. it's so dehumanizing and so blatant and i'm sick of it

[bbygirl-aemond]

Hey! I Love Stormbreak, you make my Sundays less scary Lol. Keep writing!

I was wondering if you've ever written any original work or if you've ever considered becoming a traditionally published author?

aww thank you so much! always happy to help with the sunday scaries, i get them too and answering comments is an excellent distraction hehe

i have written some original work before, but none of it's published. when i was really young i wrote two novel-length original works. i don't remember them very well, but one was some elf-like fantasy world where the main character was the bastard slave child of an evil king, and the other was a modern setting with vampires and what i know as an adult to be some kind of illegal human trafficking? not like a sex kind, like a "humans are living blood bags" kind. so you can definitely say i've enjoyed whump and fantasy from the beginning?

in more recent years, i've written some short stories (<10k words). there's one about a society that uses happy memories as currency, with a mom giving up a memory of her daughter walking for the first time. there's another about an astronaut who's sent to mars to help terraform it, only to realize she's been tricked and the government is leaving her there to die. my favorite is about a closeted lesbian witch in a salem-esque setting who's driven insane by the ghost of her first love, who was a victim of anti-witch hysteria. so again... heavy on the angst lmao.

right now, i enjoy writing fanfiction because it requires very little actual effort and discipline. it's almost entirely wish fulfillment, and you get to jump in with fully-formed characters, world, and plot, skipping the boring exposition. it's also "safe" because any pressure to create, or criticism, is purely online, so i never feel trapped by it. i think this type of creative writing suits my current situation (sleep-deprived phd student) where i just don't have a ton of time or patience to deal with any of those things.

all that being said- i DO very much plan on spending the majority of my life writing and publishing original works of varying lengths. i'm in a very fortunate financial position where i don't actually have to work a regular job, and the older i get the more i appreciate how privileged that makes me in my ability to actually center my life around creating for creativity's sake- completely divorced from any need to publish by a certain date or appeal to a wide audience in order to make profits. so i only plan on really working up until i turn 30 (which will admittedly still give me 6 years post-phd in the workforce). after that i'll have full reign over how i allocate my free time, and that's when i'll be able to put in the elbow grease required for a longer original work.

...so like a decade from now, check back in and there will probably be some highly dramatic, psychologically intense, at least somewhat magical works hitting the shelves, written by yours truly.

[adamsvanrhijn]

(i forgot that editing asks was broken and saved this to my drafts, where i now cannot finish it.)

so my take is actually that one in fact Cannot set john adams's surprise appearance aside because it is one of two (2) decisions within that episode (more to come hopefully?) that makes the whole debacle work narratively for oscar — as opposed to work narratively solely for the upcoming change in the brook + van rhijn family dynamic, which was the broader objective that required oscar losing the family fortune and which would have been served no matter the means of said loss. (the other decision is oscar's conversation with george which makes me want to die so i'm not going to go in depth on that one!)

but this is a great opportunity to share the conclusion of the maud post series i was writing about what i Did want to happen — and THE most important caveat i can give before sharing this is that i was operating under the real life assumption that john adams would not be coming back in season 2.

below content from past me 😌 (strikethrough and [brackets] are present me)

Especially after 2.06, with our first main instance of behavior from Maud that is notably out of the ordinary enough that it's worthy of comment from another character, I don't really think it's unlikely that this turns out just to be a scam that Maud was in on from the beginning. If we give the show the burden of proof to show that Maud is telling the truth, and that Maud's connections are not limited only to the characters we see on screen, it's easy to create a thread between her interactions that leads to her actions being ultimately to defraud Oscar.

To me, the narrative & character impact of a total scam (company is fake, takeover is fake, Maud and Crowther are fake/lying) is:

Oscar never had a chance with Maud to begin with (and by pursuing her lost time in which he could have been pursuing another girl)

Oscar expresses (some degree of) honesty and vulnerability with another person and has it used against him / is punished for it

Similar to what @likehandlingroses pointed out this morning, Oscar is doing what is expected of him by his social peers and superiors and placing his trust in them, and taking for granted that the information they give him is true and to his benefit without further critical thinking — and getting seriously burned by that. That could significantly impact his worldview and teach him the necessary lesson that his society is not invested in his well-being and safety, buuuuut it could also just put him in a position where he can abdicate personal responsibility. Everyone thought Maud was what he thought she was, so how much can he be blamed for seeing her that way?

Oscar loses money from a foolish and hubristic financial decision, and could have continued his life unaffected if he had stayed out of it

Oscar is seen, successfully, as susceptible to scamming by another person/group of people by tempting him with a pretty girl — this would follow 2.01, where we had narrative confirmation that Oscar is seen, successfully, as easy to deceive specifically by feigning interest in him as another man / likewise, Oscar is a genuine actual victim of another person/group of people for the second time this season

We do not know what was or was not true about Maud other than that her interest in Oscar was not intended to be genuine

This is the least telegraphed (as of 2.06) storyline of season 2 if not the show as a whole, and demonstrates a departure from the usual JFCU style — in that the story relies on the audience having outside knowledge to really predict what is happening

I really don't like the combination of the first two! I think that is a serious setback in Oscar's character development, and it pushes him in the opposite direction that he needs to go. Oscar does NOT need to learn the lesson that making himself vulnerable to others and approaching them in good faith leads to ruin. Everything about him screams that he already sees everything that way; this result confirms his world view and discourages him from taking any steps to grow as a person. It puts him back to his own square one and reinforces the beliefs that are making his life difficult. He can't let anyone know any truth about him or what he wants; he needs material wealth and power to be happy; he needs to be more calculated and cautious and second-guess the intentions of others. 

I simply don't think Oscar has the emotional maturity at this time to independently get from point A to point B on how to care about and invest in other people without getting hurt in this kind of plotline. He thought he was paying attention to Maud and her circumstances; how could he pay more attention? And the only way it would matter if he had paid more attention is if it made him see the scam, but if he didn't know what to look for then he wouldn't have done that, so his hands were tied, etc. There's room to see error but not room for improvement. How does he know what he needs to do next time?

I do not see a narratively coherent path forward for him after that (other than perhaps a very unhappy, guarded attempt 3 at finding a wife or giving up entirely) (his whole life being ruined and losing everything he has both materially and immaterially is not narratively coherent for my purposes here), because this outcome doesn't really encourage him to think about what he does have control over and how he can change his behavior for genuinely different results. 

3 & 5 are really the only points that genuinely interest me and that I can see serving the broader story, but I also don't really think they're exclusive to this outcome.

I just really don't think that (given the information I currently have) it is the most compelling way to serve Oscar's story and narrative, nor Maud's for that matter. If Maud is "just" a con artist, we lose the information that gave her depth and humanity because it becomes untrue, which reduces the dimension of her character. (As an audience member I care more about characters who have confirmed character traits and are not lying to me the entire time!)

As I said in the previous post, even if all the information we have been given [about Maud, Crowther, the railway takeover] is true and as it is shown to the audience, it is STILL a series of bad decisions from Oscar, and it can still lead us to the same place of Oscar becoming bankrupt — all roads lead to Van Rhijn family financial issues to create a power shift between Ada and Agnes — and potentially losing Maud. 

But unlike "it was a scam all along and Oscar shouldn't have involved himself at all", it does so in a way that is:

An expansion of multiple concepts introduced but mainly glossed over in the previous season, such as illegitimacy

An alignment of Maud's motivations for her behavior with Oscar's: obligations to their families

An exploration of 1880s business practices - a portrayal of how shady methods of doing business today that throw many red flags to a modern audience was business as usual for robber barons and indeed critical to their accumulation of immense wealth

Justifying Maud's screentime that demonstrates her consideration and concerns about Oscar's motives and reveals that she is operating on a broader moral framework, and tying her actions in to the broader narrative themes around how and why women married at this time in American history — if Maud is only scamming him, the only narrative purpose of these scenes is to mislead, and I would rather have not had that and gotten to see something else either about Maud that better set up her intentions or see more of another plotline that didn't have as much screentime

Oscar making a series of social and financial choices that lead to an undesirable outcome, when he could have made different choices at any point with the possibility of a desirable outcome that would move him closer to his goals / what he thinks his goals are (rather than just the possibility of not having the undesirable outcome) — but because of both his greed and his fear of discovery, he was taking only the information that he wanted to be true, making assumptions based on it, and ignoring information that might make a more thoughtful person think twice

More specifically, he loses money from foolish financial decisions that he makes out of hubris, but he alone is responsible for sabotaging his chance to achieve his goals.

Oscar, again, ~making a series of social and financial choices~, that are in line with goals established for him in the first season — involvement and prominence in new money society — and that prove that at the current time he is unequipped to move within and keep up with the community he wants to be in, which plays by different rules. (This doesn't work as well if this isn't Actually a new money scheme with Actual new money stakeholders and is just generic fraud.)

Consistent with the style of storytelling we see in the rest of the show, where we usually have indicators of some kind about a character's true motivations from very early in their inclusion in the story (compare Maud to Turner, our primary schemey character, who was framed in a suspicious way from day one)

above content from past me 😌

rereading all this... honestly, i do have reservations about where oscar will go from here! as well as distaste for certain choices made, such as bringing in a female character who could be ~complex and interesting~ and reducing her dimension to be more of a plot tool than a realistic person. i do not vibe with maud as a disposable character and also i think that crowther and maud are both unrealistically good actors for this gig — people keep talking about anna sorokin and cassie chadwick and like, yes they were successful scammers but also we have evidence they were unliked and at least some people thought they were fishy social climbers. this could have been avoided by having literally Any scene before 2.06 give the impression maud might be deceptive. it means the plot is kind of an outlier in terms of the audience feeling like they're in on the story — i know a lot of people thought maud was scamming oscar, but frankly some of the most outspoken justification for that was not based on what we had seen in the story so much as. how those people feel about oscar (no shade to anyone on tumblr. lots of shade to people on other websites). it's just really not my preferred storytelling vehicle. (not saying it's bad or people are wrong for liking it. i specifically do not like it.)

but most importantly, i want oscar to stay on the show, and i don't want his life to effectively be over — that can be great fun in various alternate universes one might consider, but it would not work for me in the actual show. they have already set up the consequences for behavior like oscar's in this series, and those consequences are death (patrick morris) and impoverished ostracization (collyer/watson). i don't want either of those things for oscar, especially when they have greatly expanded his role this season and evolved his relationships with marian, ada, and aurora. (this could have happened with the alternative, though.)

HOWEVER. as i wrote in this other post, and also the oscar van rhijn lily bart parallels post, they averted the narrative consequence i was most afraid of resulting from this plotline by having oscar go to john pretty much immediately! instead of teaching him he can't be vulnerable and honest with Anyone, he instead remembers and prioritizes that he does have someone who, he thinks, might care, and with whom he can really be honest and himself. that changes the entire tone and clarifies the story they are trying to tell in a way that did not seem possible to me if john isn't coming back.

in addition to that the george thing successfully replaces item #7 in my second numbered list above, and if on the very off chance maud comes back we have a chance to get #4 and perhaps #2 and a negation of my rant two and a half paragraphs ago. inb4 maud shows up in 2.08 back from newport where her for real aunt was for real sick and she got scammed too or something. my only preferable alternative to list 2 #6 will be if they do list 1 #3 well, and i am hopeful that they will (albeit not yet Convinced they will) based on the scene with oscar confronting aurora.

and while i do not Want a social ostracization plot. i must admit i could change my mind about that if it involves john and oscar getting back together. but that means they need to stay on the show, which means oscar needs to retain relationships with other characters.

[buddyhollyscurls]

I love you ysblf opinions so much. The ones about Marcela’s attitude are always just *chefs kiss* it seems like nowadays she gets a lot sympathy for being cheated on which is terrible, but for some reason people are obsessed with portraying her as The Only and Only Victim when she had very questionable behaviors: hated and sabotaged Betty since the beginning, didn’t even view her as a woman just because she was ugly and had an inferior financial status ( I have gotten jumped by so many people for pointing this out on YouTube comments 😂) Not saying she was the villain either as Betty clearly was no saint herself, in this story all the characters are flawed which makes them very human. It doesn’t help that the actress who plays her has this very same mindset that Marcela is the victim and Betty the real villain, the fact that Mario rarely, if ever, gets this treatment is bonkers to me since he is the one who concocted everything.

Also, it’s not a bad thing that your character didn’t keep a man who didn’t respect nor love her ( he couldn’t even stand her) way before Betty even came along, I don’t see the big loss about this, it’s actually the best thing that could happen to Marcela. It’s sad that she had to leave her own company, but she’s still getting her monthly checks, she’s still one of the rightful owners and didn’t seem like she wanted to be the president at all. There was even talk that maybe she went to Miami to be in charge of the franchise over there which I think would be a great way for her to remain involved in Ecomoda without having to run into Betty and Armando all the time.

Anyway, this already got so long, but wanted to say again that I live for all your ysblf content and you have a very interesting blog overall.

THIS MESSAGE MADE MY ENTIRE DAY THANK YOU SO MUCH!!! It always boggles my mind when ppl tell me they like or even read my opinions on things I watch/ read/ whatever looool to me it feels like I'm just screaming into the void (not that i mind i have tons of fun doing it lol) and it absolutely makes me so hype when I can interact with others about the same media.

Now on to Marcela! I'm not going to say that she was not hurt or a victim AT ALL in the story, there are times I genuinely feel for her especially in the end when she realizes that Armando had the affair with Betty and she STILL wants to be with him anyway. That's why she gets me more upset as the story progresses bc I'm like GIRL U DO NOT DESERVE THIS YOU ARE SMART BEAUTIFUL SUCCESSFUL A SUPPOSEDLY STRONG WOMAN U DONT NEED TO GO THROUGH ALL THIS FOR A MAN WHO DOES NOT WANT U U SHOULDN’T NEED TO FIGHT TOOTH AND NAIL TO HANG ON TO A MAN. But unfortunately Marcela is her own worst enemy and more than anything I think her character shows that even a rich, beautiful, successful woman can be doomed in love. It's not only "ugly" girls who suffer when finding partners. But yes the few times I feel sorry for her and the manipulation she goes through with Armando are almost swept away by her own choices and the person she is. Classist, Elitist, a bully. I think that's something even Armando sees and even when he wasn't in love with Betty or even dating her Marcelas treatment of her since she got the secretary position was what lifted away the last mist of love he felt for her and u can see that in his interactions with her. Overall, Marcela while I do not particularly like her, is such a complex dimensional character

[fairymint]

SHIPPING INFO. Answer the following for your muse(s) so people know how shipping works on your blog.

What’s your OTP for your muse(s)?

....there's a lot, and the most 'realized' of them atm is trainer Felix x Volo, although admittedly no OTPs are 'active' right now brainwise I've been slowly rotating Zivan and Felix, or Rex and Felix, but those are more vague sexual ideas rather than details;

What are you willing to RP when it comes to shipping?

Most everything, but my writing boundaries are more mun-based; I will not ship/write with you if you constantly churn out single sentence or generic replies-

I am not a fetish or smut/etc. machine that you can just put coins in to redeem. also, I don't care if your muse is shy or a bottom or whatever- you need to learn how to write descriptively to make up for that.

They need to be a good victim, or else it's not fun, and you're making me write a glorified fic in that case. Try to match my energy here.

Unrelatedly, I don't RP on huge image, generic 'open to all' starters; it just feels too close to 'bullshitting on stolen* fanart' than writing a story.

and lastly, I don't write super upsetting topics of active noncon for the benefit of everyone; writing it respectfully or realistically sounds like more work than it's worth. Theoretically possible, and I have a strong stomach, but nah. As for sexual myths, I'm just tired of seeing them and the misinfo pisses me off; not the person writing tho, so I'll ask you to edit your reply with more correct info.

How large does the age gap have to be to make it uncomfortable?

American School range, I suppose? As in, middle school with middle schoolers, high schoolers with high schoolers; 4 years at most. Case by case, as we all know that a lot of growing happens at those ages. (tbh in different countries w/ different school gaps, I'd follow those instead.) However, Kids are not usually the best at relationships IRL, so shit happens and I'm not actually super into 'toy shipping' as it's called, unless it's pretty wholesome. If it's adorable and interaction is reasonable, I'll find it cute. If not, meh.

As far as adults go though, I don't mind age gaps. Lots of teenagers get antsy waiting for the big 18, so are mentally prepared on purpose for the big leap- but just lack experience, which can happen at any age. (especially when sheltered/spoiled.) Relationship problems have all to do with cooperation and situation anyways- things like chores, financial situation, boundaries... I do personally prefer a slow-burn with 18 year olds dating anyone too much older, with small room for exception if they're exceptionally bold and/or responsible. (read: slow burn would feel undoubtedly ooc for them. But my older muses will not take the lead here, so to speak.) That's more about not being a creep than ability to consent.

Are you selective when shipping?

a smidge. I've rejected ships before based on excessive teasing because my muse really wasn't into it, as a pretty serious/stoic/smartass/dominant character that doesn't like to be thrown around playfully.

I think I need to be asked/told that you want to ship if our muses don't have chemistry, that way I can plot some instead. I'm a very 'my muses drive themselves' unless asked otherwise.

But I'm not here to play games, though. If you're a no ship blog, or the character is no ship, the intent is not there, regardless of IC feelings; I'm expecting IC rejection in that case, it's this magical thing called a 'crush'. On a similar note, I'm not comfortable with muse creation biases; If you 'don't ship with OCs/Self Inserts/trans' or any blanket statement, you're starting to make assumptions that will piss me off, and you don't get other ships. I don't follow people with rules like this, so springing it on me during discussion isn't welcome, either.

How far do steamy moments have to go before they’re considered NSFW?

I usually cut it as actual sex acts, and depiction of arousal; that moment when making out devolves into explicitly wanting sex. Suggestive tags usually lie on the border for me; things that people joke about or are allowed on radio/tv.

Does one have to ask to ship with you?

I prefer it, but technically no. If our muses have chemistry and the question pops naturally in replies, I'll count it and likely double-check ooc.

But, y'know, old habits die hard and I have the reflex as a self insert player to always ask first and be clear, if it's coming from my side. I usually let crushes and sexual desire bother my muses while they figure out the logistics of actually acting on them and asking.

I'm delighted if I'm asked before the fact and happy to help, however! Because that's both consent and a prompt/challenge; how to make em get together and like each other/etc.? These ideas sound cute to me.

How often do you like to ship?

it's my comfort zone, but let's be real, I'd interact with my entire dash if i had the time and muse. platonic or otherwise. I theoretically don't give a shit if i ship or not, but will fall into shipping content if i'm feeling lazy. Because I've written it a lot before. comphet i guess???

Are you multiship?

Yes, in the sense that I'm not playing with the whole 'jealous rp partners' thing; I'm poly IRL and not interested in ship wars.

But, I'm fine with things like IC Poly, have my biases, and am okay with commentary that's non-toxic on an ooc level.

Are you ship obsessed or ship more-or-less?

like i said, shipping is my lazy comfort zone; I'll be thinking of ships in bed and ooc when I'm chilling. But attention is good. dynamics are good. no need to be afraid if you're on the platonic and aromantic-interactions boat. We can't all be romantically compatible 24/7.

What is your favourite ship in your current fandom?

I'm not invested enough in my latest games quite yet; I suppose from Mistria, Eiland is cute, and I kinda ship the protag with Juniper as well!

I'm a bit of a LambxNarinder fan for the karma-esque, 'mercy is cruel' irony; marrying your biggest threat and User is just funny to me, especially if the relationship itself isn't cruel afterwards. I wanna see the death cat crumble under kindness-

in a meta way, my brain is rotisserie rotating Zivan, Rex, Volo, and Naoya as 'he's hot i'm gay' without much further thought; life's been a bit hectic for fantasy lately.

Finally, how does one ship with you?

Asking me at any point is the most reliable, IC chemistry and asking is possible. Suitable prompts and opens count as asking IC.

As a bonus, feel free to ask anytime about what my muse's opinion of yours is, if that's what helps you decide what to do. I'm honest when it comes to that shit, because it's fun-

Tagged by: stole it!

Tagging: take it!

[positivementalaxolotl]

So I want to start this off by saying that although I have watched Hazbin Hotel, I did not pay for it. I watched it with someone who was going to watch it with or without me. I don't fully understand what the shit storm against Vivziepop is this time, and I'm unsure of if there is actual dated evidence for it, but regardless of such, I've seen Hazbin and have done so without financially supporting the creator. I have NOT seen Helluva Boss and am not interested in it. What I'm about to talk about is a serious situation regarding fetishization in which Hazbin Hotel is simply used as an example, and is not really about Hazbin in itself.

Now onto what I'm actually wanting to talk about which is what fetishization is. I've been hearing a lot about how Angel Dust is a fetishization of gay men, which without the context is a HUGE problem.

However, fetishization inherently pulls the humanity out of a person. When you listen to people who talk about their experience with fetishization, they typically talk about how they're automatically expected to act a certain way and pulls all actual personality from the individual. For instance: A lot of women with a big chest talk about how men often times refuse to acknowledge they're actual people. They'll drool and cat call and touch them, and it's scary.

Angel Dust? The people saying he's a fetish are entirely ignoring his entire story and character, and just looking at his behaviors towards himself, and also ignoring the fact that there are other canon queer characters (including queer men). A lot of this I'm basing on the wiki, but there are other queer people in the series. Husk is pan, Sir Pentious is scooted into a room with a man but is crushing on Cherri, etc. There are heavily non-sexual queer characters. ONE character in the whole series who heavily sexualizes themself. How about it's a character who's sex positive? A character who has an ENTIRE backstory and character and development? A lot of people ignore the character Angel has, and claims fetishization when there's so much more to his story than his sexualization of himself, and this is all stuff that been known *since the pilot*.

Regardless of whether or not you think Vivziepop is a horrible person (which I currently don't have an opinion on simply because I can't find any information on it that seems credible) you have to agree that finding any kind of sex-positivity as 'fetishization' is disgusting. People should be allowed to create sex positive characters without it being called fetishization. This is why purity culture is so... disgusting to look at. Because it's sucking in sex-positive people into it's propaganda too. LGBT characters can be sexual, just like straight ones. If Angel were a straight man, I PROMISE you that this wouldn't even be a discussion, and if he was a woman then so many people would be telling him to slay, but because he's a gay man suddenly it's a fetish. He has so much more you can focus on than the sexualization and you're just not. Don't sit there and overpower stories of gay men being fetishized with stories that aren't of fetishization. It's insulting and damaging for actual victims of this.

[chthonic-cassandra]

It's such a tiresome cliche to reread/rewatch something as an adult that you first encountered as a child or teenager and go "actually these sexual dynamics are more disturbing than I thought," but unfortunately I did just rather have that experience with the Schumacher Phantom.

[cut for discussion of csa and trafficking dynamics, also this gets personal]

Phantom was never actually My Story, even as an adolescent. I was saying to @child-in-her-eyes yesterday that the musical and then the novel were among my first introductions to the gothic, which of course was revelatory; I ended up in the fandom and witnessed all the acrimonious ship wars, but then I read Dracula pretty soon afterwards and it mattered so much more to me and I sort of left Phantom behind.

At this point, I still think the novel is doing some pretty interesting things, especially when I put it in conversation with Hugo; I think the musical is an effective seething Rorsach test of psychosexual energy that can mean whatever you want it to mean and that I still feel fondness for.

I don't need now to relitigate the myriad flaws of the 2004 movie; I was in the fandom, after all (though yes oh dear gods Gerard Butler can't sing). But until this rewatch it never registered for me quite how young Emmy Rossum was when she played Christine, or how profoundly disturbing Madame Giry's enabling of Erik's access to Christine is (which is, of course, emphasized in the movie with Giry's expanded role). There are good reasons why I wouldn't have seen any of that as a teenager; Giry was my favorite character, and I also really really didn't want to think too closely about any of those kinds of trafficking/procurement dynamics. I was also rewatching this with my partner, a dancer who kept yelling throughout the whole thing about the historical reality of 19th century ballet girls being pressured into sex work, which brought this home differently.

There's also something I'm trying to grapple with, thinking about this alongside the Dangerous Liaisons Daily emails, which I am finding a lot more emotionally fraught than the Dracula ones (I think this has to do with how I have the Dracula dates memorized, so nothing truly creeps up on or shocks me). Merteuil and Giry are not at all the same archetype; Giry might arguably be complicit in something but she's not actually orchestrating or taking pleasure in it; they're also in profoundly different socioeconomic positions, which matters a lot here.

But there's something here about the particular archetype of female perpetrator that Merteuil most perfectly exemplifies, that overlaps closely with the role of the trafficker but is not synonymous with it, this kind of indirect exercise of abusive power, these variations on enabling, watching, taking benefit from the abuse of younger and more vulnerable women. It's at its psychologically clearest with Merteuil because she's not actually a trafficker, she doesn't need the financial benefit, though she does psychologically need the experience of aligning herself with the libertine so that she is not aligned with the victim.

She wields Valmont's capacity for sexual violence like an extension of her own will. When he rapes Cecile it is like she is doing it without having to trouble herself with the act itself; she gets the voyeuristic pleasure of being the one to whom both perpetrator and victim narrate themselves, the one Cecile goes to for comfort and help making meaning of what happened. It would be easy and correct to write Merteuil also abusing Cecile sexually within the context of what the novel gives us, but the element of relational triangulation and indirection would, I think, always be there, always be crucial to the pleasure of it for her.

I struggle with all this. Merteuil is hot, even (especially?) as she's also scary. I've always found female villains hot, but some of my own experience with female perpetrators is closer to the Merteuil-type than to the evil sorceresses on whom I had intense preadolescent crushes (still do, I write as I think wistfully about Achren). Giry isn't nearly as bad as Merteuil, but why as a teenager did I think she was so cool, why did I decide she was my point of identification in that story? At the same time my mother, who has zero capacity for strategy or deliberate psychological manipulation and so can't ever be a Merteuil, was telling me all these fantasies which edged right up against some bright-colored sex positive version of a trafficker archetype, fantasies that thank all the gods she never acted on but that I needed to figure out a way internally to distance myself from. It was all very tangled. It still is.

Maybe some of it is that I don't think anyone reads Dangerous Liaisons and wants to be Cecile. And I don't think I ever was Cecile, or Christine for that matter. It was more like I was in the middle of Clarissa and then Lovelace invites over his good friend from the continent the Marquise de Merteuil (I mean, that bears some resemblance to the actual plot of Clarissa, which also has complicated triangulated representations of female perpetration, but that's a reflection for a different time).

I don't know. It's all hard to talk about, think about, look at. I appreciate Dangerous Liaisons for representing this thing so clearly, so that I can turn out from different angles and try to understand it. But there's a lot here.

[itsclydebitches]

I'm sorry, I might have been unclear. ^^;; I mean that when Bakugo is told for ten years he deserves to be arrogant and ambitious, it'd be hard for him to not be. But he picked All Might as his hero, whose compassion and saving people define him. In many ways I see a neglected kid lashing out from frustration before UA. He wasn't going to change until he was among equals in class, and adults who cared enough to tell/show him more than a simple 'you're the best bc you're strong'.

OH yes yes, sorry for the miscommunication! Yeah, we've definitely seen moments in his past where Bakugo's arrogance was stoked and I think those details are the cornerstone of how sympathetically each individual reads him. Does the reader focus on the actions themselves (bullying, encouraging suicide, recklessly fighting Izuku), or the environment that led to that behavior (doting teachers, his mother, peers who egged him on). It's that line between "Bakugo is just a kid. He needs the chance to grow" and "Bakugo is the perpetrator hurting other kids. His growth should not come at the continued expense of his victim." Which is where I think the structural issues of the story come in. Meaning, both takes are right — Bakugo does horrific things and Bakugo is also a teenager whose behavior is arguably stemming from his upbringing — but it's hard to balance both sides when he's in a story where he's attending school with Izuku, his relationship with Izuku is one of the most important, and he's set from the get-go to be a hero. By making Bakugo such a crucial part of the story in the form of a) being a hero and b) being Izuku's foil, reading #1 — he's a poor kid who just needs endless chances to improve — wins out. In a better story setup, Bakugo would not be training alongside his victim. He would have been expelled from U.A. for all the stunts he pulled. His future as a hero would have been seriously called into question until he learned that bare bones respect. As it stands, the structure of the story ensures that Bakugo (to my knowledge) never faced any actual consequences for his actions, pushing a lot of messages that fans are uncomfortable with: past behavior doesn't matter, any improvement is equal to reaching a standard expected of everyone else, the best thing is to forgive your abuser, talent is prioritized over empathy, etc. Since the apology dropped, I've seen a couple of fans arguing that whether to forgive Bakugo or not is Izuku's decision. It doesn't matter what the fans think because they aren't the ones who suffered. But Izuku isn't a real person. Izuku is a character, controlled by an author who gets to decide how he reacts, knowing that lots of fans want Bakugo's behavior to be acknowledged as serious as it was. I'm currently working under the assumption that Izuku will accept Bakugo's apology because the story has never been interested in actually making Bakugo face consequences for his actions. He was established as a hero from the start, despite his unheroic behavior, which created a contradiction that has hurt the story as a whole.

For me, what it comes down to is the reaction as opposed to the explanation. If I had a kid acting like Bakugo who I know was pushed to that behavior by others and also kid acting like Bakugo for seemingly no reason... they both need to learn the same lesson. Because, as established, that over-encouragement isn't an excuse, just a possible explanation (and I say "possible" because plenty of our other heroes were likewise praised for their talents and didn't turn out like that). What it comes down to is that Bakugo is not the victim here. Was Bakugo neglected? Arguably in some respects, but we know for a fact — seeing from the very start of the series — how much damage Bakugo has done in turn. And yet the story is focused on his pain, his struggle, the tragedy of what supposedly drove a teenager to encourage someone to jump off a roof, rather than the tragedy of a minority kid bullied to the point of someone encouraging suicide. That's the flaw imo. Both kids deserve to work through their problems and have their stories told, but doing that together — putting both at the heart of the manga, as equals in terms of their status as heroes — really doesn't work for me. It's hard to get invested in the supposed tragedy of a kid who was endlessly praised and decided to turn that into despising everyone "lesser" than him when the "lesser" person is right there, having his victimhood largely ignored in favor of unpacking how hard this is for his bully. That's the focus we keep coming back to. It's "poor Bakugo, realizing that Izuku isn't a useless nobody" rather than, "poor Izuku, forced to work alongside the guy who thinks he's a useless nobody." To be totally honest here, I never cared about Bakugo's supposedly sad backstory because it reads as so inconsequential compared to others in the class and compared to what he did to Izuku. Todoroki had his face burned by his father. Uraraka is becoming a hero to try and help her family financially. Izuku is right there... and Bakugo's great struggle, the struggle the story spends so much time on, is "Wow, other people aren't trash I can just walk over and hurt for the fun of it? And I'm learning this at a snail's pace while heading towards the prestigious career of being a hero? And the reason I'm like this is because people praised me too much? What fantastic development on my part!"

I get snarky, but I do honestly believe that Bakugo's story is one worth telling, just not in this context. The story of a kid so talented, and beloved that he developed an ego the size of his school and needs to unlearn that arrogance is a legit story to tell. Trying to tell that story at the expense of his victim, alongside kids his age who went through the same thing and turned out kind, went through far worse and turned out kind, all while having him train to be a hero without ever seriously questioning whether he should be allowed in such a profession is... a mess. It is good for Bakugo to be among equals and learn some humility, but I don't think the first half of the story did nearly enough of that and, even if it had, that struggle is hard for me to take seriously when the others have so much else going on.

Also, did Bakugo latch onto All Might because of his compassion? That always seemed incidental to me. Rather, Bakugo idolized him because he's the best: the most popular, the strongest, the one who always wins. I'd need to re-read flashbacks from the manga to be sure, but I do recall one of the scenes from the anime:

"You see that? I bet he'll dodge and then punch! Think they've won and then ha! Look, he totally stopped him! That's why he's the greatest. No matter how much trouble he's in, he's always the winner!"

Bakugo likes All Might because he's "the winner," not because he's presumably saving people during this news coverage. Izuku is the one who latches onto All Might because of his smile and ability to help. That's their crucial difference between them. Izuku fights for others. Bakugo fights for himself.

Is he slowly unlearning that? Yeah, sort of, but again, it comes down to who continually suffers to teach that lesson, how slow Bakugo learns it, how it compares to the struggles of his peers, and how this is situated in a story revolving around allowing him to be a hero in the first place. Cool character idea, bad context and execution.

[scripttorture]

I'm trying to write a character who gets depression/anxiety after a few days of torture, but I'm worried that from an outside perspective the tiredness, lack of interest, and hyper vigilance are going to look like the character has been beaten down into meekness/compliance by the torture. Any advice on how to avoid the trope that this character was broken by their expeience when most days they're too tired to argue about anything and are slowly checking out of life due to the depression?

That’s a really good question. I think the best thing to do is combine several different approaches rather then relying on one particular thing.

 My first piece of advice holds true for writing any kind of minority experience. If you think you could be suggesting that an entire group has a particular feature/characteristic include another character from the same group who doesn’t. The more characters you have who are torture survivors the easier it is to show that they’re a diverse bunch with different symptoms and experiences.

 They don’t need to be major characters. They don’t need to be in the story for very long. But having them there makes a big difference.

 This is a lot easier if you’re talking about legally defined torture in a prison of some kind. But if that’s not the kind of story you’re telling consider bringing other survivors in during the character’s recovery. They could meet people while waiting to see the same doctor or mental health professional. They might be advised to join a group, either for group therapy or communal support. They might meet people while looking for financial support or jobs. If they’re religious they might be introduced to people through their priest or broader religious community.

 The next thing worth thinking about is: what can your character practically do?

 We have this tendency to conflate resistance with big, obvious, violent acts. Most of the time torture victims are not in a position to do that kind of thing. And in situations where people are held for a very long time (ie slavery, prisoner of war camps etc) what you tend to see are a lot of smaller or less obvious acts. Enslaved people did oppose slavery violently, with organised military action and with smaller acts of violence like poisoning slave owners.

 But they also did a host of other things. They sabotaged equipment or products they were supposed to produce. They broke valuable objects. They provided each other with material support and aid. They escaped and set up separate societies. They channelled resources into these societies. They aided others in escape attempts.

 It’s always worth thinking about what your character can actually practically do and what the risks or consequences of those actions might be.

 I talk about that in a post over here. Characters can take meaningful action even when they can’t take effective action. It’s worth taking the time to think about what would be meaningful to this character and figure out ways to show them prioritising it.

 It’s also worth considering what depression and anxiety can look like because yes, the features you describe are common in people with depression and anxiety. But they’re not necessarily constant and they’re not the only ways these conditions manifest.

 Depression can look like sleeping all the time. It can also look like not sleeping and a lack of sleep feeds into anxiety. Insomnia also causes paranoia after a while, makes it harder to interpret other people’s responses and can increase the risk of violent behaviour.

 Similarly depression can look like eating a lot, but it can also look like nausea, like being unable to eat full meals and struggling to keep food down. From the outside anxiety can be read as fear but it can also be read as aggression.

 It wouldn’t be unrealistic for this character to be more depressed at times and more anxious at others. It wouldn’t be unrealistic for them to be incredibly sleep deprived, paranoid and less able to see the risk in something like… spitting on a guard some days even if they’re generally incredibly tired, lethargic and apathetic.

 Basically even if this is the predominant way depression and anxiety manifest in this character there’s still leeway. There’s still moments when you can have them go against that. Even if it isn’t very often.

 The choice to use an outside perspective does make things harder. Especially if that perspective is a character who believes these kinds of tropes and has a poor understanding of mental health. One way to get around this is to have the point of view character’s perspective change with time and have them come to (and lead the audience to) the conclusion that they were wrong.

 But the character doesn’t need to reach that realisation if you work in enough signals to the reader that they’re unreliable. One way to do that is to contrast what the point of view character thinks with what the survivor character actually says and does.

 Let’s say the point of view character is having a conversation with another person who isn’t a survivor and they present the survivor as this sad case, broken by what they experienced because of a specific behaviour. Like sleeping a lot or being listless or not engaging with things in the way they used to.

 On it’s own that scene could easily back up these tropes (though it’s not an unrealistic scene because these tropes are commonly believed.) So let’s imagine the scene with the survivor’s response.

 They could respond that they sleep a lot because they have chronic pain or because their depression makes it hard to eat properly which leaves them exhausted. Physical symptoms like that are often easier for people to understand and it underlines the point that this is illness not some state where they’re permanently incapable. They can also respond with the steps they’re taking to try and make their life better. For chronic pain in torture survivors that can mean medication or physiotherapy. Perhaps they’re working on changing their diet or the schedule they eat at and sleep at, to work around these physical limits.

 You can apply the same kind of logic to the other points here, talk about why depression makes the character listless or stops them engaging and what they’re doing now. The aids that help them focus, how therapy is going, the new hobbies they’re exploring instead (perhaps because old ones contain triggers.)

 It’s harder to apply the same thing if the character is still imprisoned and still being tortured. But you can still do it. May be the dreams and plans the victim character had before seem meaningless now, but there will still be things they want to do and there will still be things they find meaning in.

 May be they don’t think they can be a Nobel prize winning doctor any more and may be to an outside perspective that looks like ‘broken’. But it’s harder for the audience to agree with that conclusion if the victim character is saying ‘My priorities are different now. I regret spending so much time working and I miss my family. If I get out I want to make them my focus instead of work.’

 A self aware character might be able to say ‘I don’t think I could achieve that dream anymore. But I think I could achieve this instead.’

 You can have other characters, doctors, psychologists or anyone who has worked with survivors for a long period, refute the idea these people are broken. Hurt, yes, but that doesn’t mean they’re incapable of living or of living well.

 If the perspective is more of an omnipresent narrator you’ve got more scope to show little acts of resistance the character might be engaging in. You’ve also got more scope to just straight up tell the readers what’s going on in this character’s head.

 It’s worth stressing that characters like this do still have and make choices. They are choices in incredibly awful situations and they are not free choices. But that capacity to choose is still there. And there are understandable, though not always rational, thought processes behind those choices.

 Depression doesn’t always mean checking out of life. I’ve known a fair number of people with depression who kept going with things they considered important. They just also… got no enjoyment out of it. They were miserable and in pain. But they were still trying to do the best they could for their kids or finish their degree. These efforts weren’t always successful. Depression makes most things more difficult.

 But a character willing to give up on themselves isn’t necessarily willing to give up on other things.

 At the end of the day the symptoms you choose for your character and how those symptoms manifest isn’t the problem. There’s nothing wrong with picking the symptoms that are right for your character and there’s nothing wrong with writing them in this way.

 The problem comes when we start telling people that there’s no hope, that nothing gets better. It comes when we imply that natural, physiological reactions to trauma are somehow the fault of the victim or that those reactions mean they are forever controlled by their abuser.

 Torture is an awful, effecting and life changing experience. It leaves lasting wounds.

 But humans are incredibly resilient, stubborn creatures. Our capacity for survival, to find ways to live well, is astounding.

 There’s room for optimism here and it’s worth making space for that in your story.

 I hope that helps :)

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[copper-dragon-in-disguise]

I have something to say.

And some people might not like it but whatever. I was scrolling through Pinterest and found this.

Here's the article link if you want to read it.

It's true. They're right. We need a break.

For context: I'm a middle schooler in her early teens, American. Public school my entire life. LGBTQIA+; Anxiety; ADHD; Social Anxiety; and a very bad understanding of social cues sometimes. I'm 2e (Or 'Twice-Exceptional), meaning I'm academically gifted but also have what qualifies as a learning disorder (ADHD). I'm a nerd and don't fit society's definition of normal.

When I was in kindergarten I loved it. Patterns? Easy. Red, Blue, Red, Blue. Writing letters? Sure my handwriting sucked but I understood it. Making clay snowmen in Art class? Fun as hell. Library? The best thing ever. Teacher? She was incredible. Other kids? Yeah, I was social. Foreign concept to me now but I was friends with almost everyone.

But you know what I miss the most?

Naptime.

An hour or so after lunch where you could sit on the floor, with a blanket, and relax. I never actually slept but gods, I got scolded so many times for whispering with the person next to me. I didn't get stressed then. I loved school back then.

First grade? I had mixed feelings. Lot of issues from then.

Second? Enh. Okay- Ish.

Third? If I hadn't had the teacher I had I would not be as okay as I am now.

In 3rd me and my parents looked at a private school. All girls, the entry test thing was amazing. I went there for a visit and there were people skipping- SKIPPING!- because they were happy with their education. But it was an hour away from us and we needed financial assistance. If it had been one or the other I would have gone there in a heartbeat. I loved it.

Fourth? PSSAs are hell, my best friend is on the other side of the school district in a different elementary school because her parents divorced, and I'm stuck with her cousin that doesn't really like me (The feeling was mutual), so I spend the entire year alone because I only ever had two friends. I also had two 15 minitue recesses and that was barely enough to keep me sane but at the same time too much time that made my loneliness even more visible.

Fifth? Ten minutes of break the entire day. Lunch was 30 minutes. The wait in the lunch line was between 5-15 (ish) minutes. My family thinks I eat too fast. I don't. Not for that. I don't have many memories of that year. I repressed them because I was bullied horribly the entire year. It's the first and only time I've ever cried in school. That summer was the last time I cried. I haven't cried in two years. I've repressed the memories to the point that I don't know if it was actually me doing the bullying or if it was her. That's how messed up my brain is. My few memories say it was her bullying me but I don't know. I really don't.

Jean? And her cousin? I didn't really fit with them anymore, but I stayed with them because I had no one else. I should have left. Made friends with Scott or someone else who understood me slightly. yes, I had my parents, but I just never told them because they were already so stressed about other shit. I didn't tell any teachers; they didn't know until it ended in a shouting match in the very beginning of my (tail end of her's) math class. I think my ELA teacher knew though. Or suspected, at least. He never gave me points for reading in class. For a year (two) my only support system was books and I had no actual friends. I didn't have any actual friends until I moved and now I have one.

Sixth? The same (Minus part of the bullying, she wasn't in my classes, mostly), except a pandemic halfway through. I sat with people I barely knew who really didn't get me at all at lunch because I was terrified of being alone, of any potential for being seen as a target ever again. I still am.

Seventh? I moved. No Gifted Program. Middle of a Pandemic. Get back to me in a month, when it's over.

My point is that I grew up too fast. I lost my childhood. I have more of the symptoms of a emotional abuse survivor than I should. I'm not comparing myself to those people; I'm not saying what happened to me is anything like whatever happened to them.

I'm just saying that I went through what, to me, was hell and some of it could have been avoided if I had had the social-emotional learning skills to make a friend.

If school had taught me what it should have maybe I wouldn't be so broken now.

If school had given breaks and less homework maybe I wouldn't be so stressed now.

If I had a chance to breathe in those years maybe I would be different now.

I can't remember the last time I was properly relaxed. The closest I get is when I'm writing; when I'm crafting a story that's all my own.

I don't really know where I'm going with this post. I'm not even sure why I wrote it. But...

I just needed to tell someone and if they- if you ignore me I'll never know.

I don't know if I was the villian. I don't know if I was the victim. All I know is I am broken; touch starved; blaming myself for everything bad that ever happened to me; and I really, really want to cry but I can't.

Sorry its so long and doesn't really connect to the picture at all.

Thank you, if you're still here.

[overbearingstruggles]

The more I read about famous/rich ppl and lawsuits like these, the more it seems like the purpose is to find out the identities of the Jane Does and just financially drain or intimidate them until they recant. I don't necessarily believe the allegations to be true, but I'm now also not sure this will even ever see a courtroom or that the "proof" will be factual. It's about finding out who these people are and just getting them to recant.

The court system is deeply flawed and as much as I don't think the allegations are true, I am also super uncomfortable with the direction this is going. Whether their intentions are pure or not, ATL is a band with a primarily female fanbase, and they are sending a strong message to victims that this is what can happen to you if you report.

I don't think ATL are responsible at all for fixing the flaws in our society that are making the situation play out like this, but it's just a big yuck factor that they're throwing their weight and money around like this. Maybe they didn't have another way, maybe they don't care, maybe they feel terrible about doing it. I don't know. But the ball is rolling and there's going to be a ripple effect in the fandom that is just really sad and defeating, whether they mean it or not.

The logical person in me understands why they're doing this, but the feminist in me is like fuck these assholes, they'd be fine no matter what.

I agree with this so much. And I have to believe it’s with best intentions and not like, intimidation or insane retaliation or whatever the fuck people want to toss at them. The closest story we have to this in the scene is Conor Oberst but the difference with him is his accuser was public while they have to out these people which is a shitty reality of the situation but understandably feels fucking gross. In his case, once she recanted the accusation he dropped the suit which I also think is likely here as you said. Regardless, @danswank made a good point in all this that it sucks the message is victims shouldn’t speak up instead of don’t make harmful false accusations online because it downplays actual survivors. Of course because one is immensely more likely than the other, statistically people assume the former. Will also say, they had blatantly been working towards giving more space to non-men in their openers and their crew and it’s harder to keep those kinds of openers on shows when people attack them for being associated. I’m still not defending this shit and because of how this looks it could still screw them in that realm, but afa losses go I do think that’s important.

[renaerys]

I know in BTM the guys are estranged at the moment (*tear*) but in the sequel as they start to repair their relationship will the apologies be from all of them? I know that in BTM it ended with Brick causing a lot of emotional damage which he did need to apologize for however imo I feel like all of them owe each other an apology. It's obvious they don't get each other and there's been underlying tension brewing for years. Boomer and Butch don't get that Brick wasn't controlling all the time because he necessarily wanted to be but because he had to in order to ensure their survival. They're products of shit parenting and because of it the oldest sibling had to step up and become an adult way before his time. As as result he wasn't there for his brother's the way they needed. He supported them financially but was never there emotionally. He was dismissive of their feelings and internal struggles. Basically miscommunication from all ends. Brick doesn't get his brothers and they don't get him. I know in the sequel after all the angst and tension dissipates they'll have that hallmark worthy reconciliation we all can't wait for but what I'm hoping is that in the uncomfortable conversation that needs to had. Not only are the apologies coming from all of them because they all owe each other that(though it mostly should come from their "parent") but most importantly they at the end they come out of it with an actual understanding of each other and a real brotherhood with no toxicity or lack of boundaries running rampant. Love your work. Looking forward to the sequel. I had to get this out because it was a nagging thought in the back of my mind for awhile now.

Thank you so much for reading Beyond This Morning! I’m always delighted to hear from readers. This is going to be a long answer, but it’s extremely important to me that these points make sense and are heard. You’re right that the brothers’ relationship will be more of a focus in the sequel. However, I want to be clear: Butch and Boomer do not owe Brick anything, not an apology and not their forgiveness. I think you may have missed some of the point of the emotional climax of BTM, so I’ll try to explain it here.

“Boomer and Butch don't get that Brick wasn't controlling all the time because he necessarily wanted to be but because he had to [sic] in order to ensure their survival.”

That’s not true. In Chapter 14, Boomer admits in his POV that he understands exactly why Brick did what he did, and how he will always be grateful for the sacrifices he made. That’s not at issue. What is at issue is Brick’s subsequent treatment of his brothers over the years since they left Mojo’s care. It was Brick’s choice to be a controlling asshole, just as much as it could have been his choice not to be that way. For example, Boomer flat out tells him that four years ago, he didn’t need Brick’s money, he needed emotional support and understanding when he was going through a difficult time after breaking up with Bubbles. But Brick never asked what Boomer wanted four years ago, or even what really happened. Instead, he threw money at him and threw a tantrum, and Boomer realized that there was no way he could leave Brick because Brick was no good on his own. This is emotional manipulation by a person with more power and authority in the relationship (Brick) at a time when the party with less power (Boomer) was in an emotionally and financially vulnerable place. That was all Brick’s choice to make, which you can piece together through the various hints and foreshadowing through the fic up until that confrontation in Chapter 14. It was also Boomer’s choice to stay because, and this is a little fucked up but realistic imo, Boomer loves his brother and let that behavior slide at the time for the sake of preserving the relationship. But the confrontation in Chapter 14 is the breaking point when Boomer has had enough and will no longer put up with Brick’s toxic behavior. 

By contrast, another choice Brick makes is to let Butch leave Townsville to join the military overseas. Butch talks to Buttercup about this in Chapter 8 when they are talking about what it means to be a leader. Letting Butch go was a choice Brick made because, as Butch tells Buttercup outright, they both knew Butch would never learn unless he experienced leading and failing himself. This too is a type of manipulation by Brick, but like Boomer in the above example, it’s a manipulation Butch fully understood and went along with to get what he wanted and needed. And of course, Butch comes back in the end because he was always going to come back. That’s the relationship the brothers have, for better and for worse. They stick together. Brick demands blind loyalty from both of them, as Boomer said, and yet he manipulates and controls them to his own ends. Sure, he does this out of a sense of love and loyalty himself, but it is grossly misguided and often executed for the wrong reasons.

“They're products of shit parenting and because of it the oldest sibling had to step up and become an adult way before his time. As [sic] as a result he wasn't there for his brother's [sic] the way they needed. He supported them financially but was never there emotionally. He was dismissive of their feelings and internal struggles.”

You’re right about Brick’s behavior here, but not for the reasons you stated. When Brick got them out of Mojo’s house when they were 16? Yeah, that was him making a difficult choice to ensure his brothers’ survival, using the tools he had at the time and doing what he thought was the best thing he could have done. Boomer explicitly tells the reader how he and Butch understand that sacrifice, how they are grateful for it, and how they will never forget the solid Brick did them for as long as they live. But that is the past. None of it excuses or absolves Brick’s subsequent behavior up until the present, which included controlling, manipulating, and being emotionally unavailable to his brothers and to pretty much everyone else. Having shitty parents may explain, but in no way excuses, absolves, or forgives a person’s terrible treatment of others. That kind of thinking harms real life people who are the victims of this type of toxic treatment. I made an effort in BTM to call this out. I will make an effort in the sequel to show how people who genuinely want to make positive changes in their lives might go about doing that.

Brick’s shitty treatment of his brothers is not the product of a “miscommunication from all ends”. It is squarely a product of his own bad choices, which are informed but in no way excused by his troubled upbringing. In the sequel, I will examine the steps Brick chooses to take to make positive changes in his life. I will show how his brothers react to that effort he makes, and how it might improve their opinion of him. But I will also be extremely clear that they are under no obligation to forgive him, and how that has nothing to do with Brick’s decision to try to be better anyway because that is what it means to grow and be a good person. I think Brick as he will appear in the sequel does deserve empathy, patience, and understanding for the work he does on himself, and I am interested in showing that journey for him as he rebuilds his support system. Many people who put in the effort to be a better person deserve that chance to build new relationships and move forward. But they are not entitled to the forgiveness of their past victims, no matter how much progress they make. 

All that said, I am very glad you sent me this Ask. I suspect that there are others with similar views or questions that were raised here, and it’s very important to me that you all understand the type of story I’m telling. There are a lot of stories out there that do apologize for Brick’s shitty behavior, that ignore it, that even romanticize or glorify it. And yeah, they’re just stories and people can write what they want. I’m not here to police anyone or ruin their fun. But stories don’t exist in a vacuum, and media and culture are reflections that inform and influence each other. For me and my fics specifically, it’s important to me that I do my best to tell a story that calls out bad behavior unequivocally and holds that behavior accountable, even if the character exhibiting that bad behavior is the hot, cool love interest. Perhaps even more so because of that, since that’s a Venn diagram with a lot of crossover in general. I do not think I’ve done a perfect job, far from it. I don’t think I haven’t made mistakes (I know I have). But I work closely with my beta, I talk to other writers whose work I admire, and I listen to smart, feminist people whose opinions I respect. I use everything I glean from them to try to write a story that is sensitive to these types of topics. I’ll keep working to improve, as I think all creators should. 

[crossdressingdeath]

You are being a bit too hard on JYL. While she wasn't a perfect sister, she was also a victim to her parents dysfunctional relationship and she was only 2 years older than the boys. She was a poor cultivator and had a very weak constitution. She also had no political power despite her high birth. I'm pretty sure she never got any apologies for any of the slights against her character and on the pheonix mountain scene doesn't Jin Zixun storm off and then madam jin completely dismisses the situation as JYL being silly? Madam Jin loves JYL but I would say she doesn't respect her. JGS doesn't respect Madam Jin either so even if JYL went to her, nothing would be done. However JZXuan does invite WWX genuinely so I would say JYL was trying to improve WWX's situation as much as she could. As for not giving any financial support, she was completely dependent on JC and then the Jins, so I dont see how she could have helped there. Also I could totally see JC selling JYL to the Jins to appease JGS so she could be used as a political hostage against WWX.

Some points, in no particular order: First off, Madam Jin for sure respects JYL. Yeah, she dismisses JZXun insulting WWX (that’s important; he’s insulting WWX, a glorified servant, not JYL) because WWX is just a servant, but when JYL says that this isn’t a minor thing to her Madam Jin orders JZXun to apologise. To a servant. To appease JYL. That suggests the opposite of what you’re saying; it suggests that Madam Jin adores and respects JYL enough that she’ll force her family to lower themselves to the level of a man viewed by the Jins as a servant for her sake. And if she’s prepared to do that, maybe she could be convinced to do other things! Like... I don’t know, send servants to buy some food at market that can then be sent to Yiling? Or, alternately, JYL could ask the adoring husband who will give her anything she wants for money which she could then send to Yiling. And if she doesn’t trust anyone from Lanling (or Yunmeng; if she can ask JC to bring her to Yiling she can ask him to deliver some money) enough to think they could be persuaded to help her out with this, including the brother who she knows knows the Wens and WWX are innocent, then that raises a whole bunch of other questions about things like why the fuck she trusted anything the Jiangs and Jins said about WWX.

In fact, that’s kind of the issue here. Everything about her being dependant on JC and then the Jins raises an important question: if she, as she seems to, doesn’t doubt that JC and the Jins are being honest in their dealings with WWX... then why doesn’t she ask them to help him? Why doesn’t she even try? She goes to the Burial Mounds with JC and sees how badly things are going for WWX... and doesn’t feel the need to question whatever story JC gave her about what WWX was doing?

See, that’s the problem at the end of the day. It’s not about whether JYL could have done anything (although I’d say she could’ve done more than she did), it’s about whether or not she tried. Which... there’s no evidence she did. She brings WWX soup one time, but there’s no evidence that she tried to send him and his people actual supplies, or the means to acquire those supplies on their own. She convinces JZX to invite WWX to JL’s one month anniversary, but JZX is still assuming that WWX is the aggressor even though at least in CQL JYL knows for a fact he’s not and should have told him that. She shows up in her fucking wedding dress talking about her approaching marriage to the son of the man who’s in the process of ruining WWX’s life and there isn’t a single word that implies she’s at all unhappy with this situation; while I did say that JC could have forced her to marry JZX against her will there is no evidence that that was in fact the case and it looks more like he was just doing what she wanted him to. (Honestly the wedding dress thing in general is like... on the surface it’s a sweet gesture, and I’m sure that’s what she meant it as, but if you think about it her showing up in the dress WWX won’t be able to see her get married in to give him enough soup to keep a couple people fed for maybe a day when he’s got fifty starving civilians up that mountain and let him name the nephew he’s never going to get to meet and talk about her marriage into the family that’s currently running a massive smear campaign to get WWX killed and then leaving and as far as we see never trying to help him after that beyond wrangling him an invite to an event that clearly no one wants him at besides her is such a slap in the face whether that was intentional on her part or not that I’m surprised it doesn’t get talked about more.)

Look, JYL may be a woman in a patriarchal society and a weak cultivator, but it does not follow that she has no power. Or that no one respects her or is willing to apologise to her for slights against her, for that matter. She’s the sister of a sect leader. The wife of a sect heir. Even if she failed to actually achieve anything, the fact is that her lack of suspicion towards her family (by birth and marriage) and their actions in regards to WWX’s situation makes it pretty obvious to me that either she asked them to help or look further into the matter and didn’t feel the need to question why the only person willing to so much as make an attempt was her husband... or she didn’t ask at all. And the latter seems more likely, given how we see her react to conflict between her brothers; it’s “boys will be boys” and “they’re just teasing, they’re as bad as each other” all the way down, even when JC is threatening WWX with his literal worst fear or telling him that the children of servants will never amount to anything. JYL will defend WWX from outsiders, but the second he’s being targeted by JC she just decides everything’s fine. Maybe she really couldn’t have helped him! Maybe bringing him a bowl of soup and pretending everything was fine really was all she could do! But given there’s no mention either from her or from the narration itself that she so much as tried to do more... Well, it raises questions, and the fact that those questions are never brought up in this fandom means that I perhaps feel the need to be a little firmer on this point than I might be otherwise.