#which is hard to find in media!

[banished-away]

i keep thinking about how much more poignant delly's storyline would have been if she and catti-brie had been allowed to interact in a significant way before it all went to hell

delly basically wanted an idealized version of catti's life. a life of adventures and travel and to have a strong man take and save her. she has always lived in poverty half-drunk on the city streets and in stranger's beds and wanted the freedom of the outside and an idyllic little family. and then she got hit with the reality of raising a kid that isnt even her own, having to fight for your life and living closed into a fortress under siege that may as well be a prison, and basically the existence of being a stay at home wife. she feels locked in catti is someone who has lived for adventure her entire life. she has known how to use a sword since she was a kid, was raised the princess of a clan of always battle-ready dwarves, and was sorrounded by over-protective men with hardly a chance to interact with other women (we know that both among the dwarves and the reghed, once a woman marries she's basically home-bound, and when she meets alustriel for the first time she doesnt even know what perfume or cosmetics are, and feels incredibly jelous and inferior). and after a near-death experience she is now torn between this adventurous side and the side that wants to marry and have kids, which she knows is incompatible with her current life and is also running out of time for. shes a tomboy who she admits wasnt really raised as a girl but she does yearn to interact with feminity to some degree (after that first meeting with alustriel she relents and enjoys that bubble bath and later admits she was wrong in her assestment of alustriel, and a few books later when meralda offers her also a fancy bath and some gowns to borrow we see her having fun trying them on)

ultimately, even if they come from opposite ends, they want the same thing. they want to not have to compromise between adventure and motherhood, they want to be indipendant and make their own choices while also having the security of people around them caring for them when they need it. which is a very fair thing want, and yet they feel like its outside their possibilities

i think that couldve been used to properly set up the subplot. they both want the same thing but come from such different lives that its hard for them to relate and that could cause attrition. i think that centering the subplot around them and not wulfgar would have improved it quite a bit

[bumblingbabooshka]

Voyager's obsession with every female character being a mother either literally or metaphorically is so dire like even SESKA got pregnant. Someone put a planned parenthood in the Delta Quadrant PLEASE. Someone start handing out condoms, this is an EMERGENCY.

[un-pearable]

so this is one of the scenes netflix rotates though as their teaser clip for the show and im obsessed with this little wave and eye squint mr e does…. how on earth does this translate . what is he doing . tee~hee before i fuckin kill you ✨

[seaweedstarshine]

Hi! Long time no yap but I've been really bothered by this thing and I know you're just the person I can go to with this (even if we don't always end up agreeing at times).

I got into a tiff with someone in a comments section of a post that was about Amy (Which character do you think deserved to become a villain? or something similar). They brought up Amy's abuse of her boyfriend. I may have tried to defend Amy (key word is tried. I am officially rubbish at debating) but then I may have said something? Because they said that I (and apparently a lot of other fans) was excusing Amy's abuse because of her trauma. It got me stumped because isn't young Amy's treatment of Rory rooted in her trauma? Did I miss the memo where we separate trauma and abuse? Am I missing something?

That statement bothered me a lot because if there's one thing I never want to do it's defend an abuser. So here I am, humbly asking and hoping to clear the muddy waters.

Your really confused and disturbed moot, Tia 💌

TIA!!!!! Thanks for the ask 💌 , and I send you all the hugs.

Discussion of abuse, trauma, ableism, infidelity, and unhealthy relationship dynamics beneath the cut.

(First off… while I really appreciate your faith in my explaining skills <3 <3 <3 my passion for traumatized characters and mentally ill+neurodivergent rights doesn't make me especially qualified to fully clear muddy waters especially not knowing the full context, but I feel you, and what follows is my informed perspective!)

Speaking generally first, harm done in media is best examined by the impact on the audience, with a different lens than harm done to real people. While relatable experiences in media can be useful and validating and incredibly important, you can’t be “defending an abuser” when the abuse is fictional. It's actually normal for traumatized/ND/mentally ill people to project onto mentally ill villains, when villains are the only significant representation for those stigmatized symptoms in a media landscape that excludes and demonizes us simply for existing. RTD can't stop people who hallucinate from reclaiming the Master's Drums and projecting onto the Master, for example — 90% of the best Doctor Who psychosis fic by psychotic authors is about the Master, whether RTD likes it or not. It's not true crime.

(This is speaking generally. Amy Pond is very much not the Master.)

Abuse is a behavior, and there can be many reasons for it, but reasons based in trauma don’t make it not abuse (some forms of generational trauma can propagate abusive parenting styles, when the parent thinks abusive parenting is normal, or lives entirely vicariously through their child). This absolutely should not be taken to mean trauma correlates with abusive behavior; rather that abusive behaviors from traumatized people are more likely to present in specific ways.

Abuse is also a targeted behavior, based in control — not consistently displayed C-PTSD symptoms as seen in Season 5 Amy Pond through many aspects of her life. Mental health symptoms don't become abuse just because they hinder one partner from meeting the other partner's needs. Any life event can do that.

Without knowing the context of the arguments, this is the aspect of their relationship I've seen you talk about before (which I also feel strongly about), and what I assume is what you were debating? So, here I will talk specifically in regard to Season 5.

We all know Amy — she's never attached to Leadworth because she never wanted to leave Scotland, no steady therapist because none of them stick up for her, can't stick with one job yet her first choice is a job that simulates intimacy because her avoidant behavior (a known trauma response) isn't sustainable to her wellbeing. Rory knows her fears of commitment stem from her repeated abandonments, it’s why he’ll always wait for her, and it's why he blames the Doctor “You make it so they don't want to let you down.”, who apart from having caused a lot of her trauma, has actively taken advantage of her being the “Scottish girl in the English village” who's “still got that accent,” because he wants to feel important, so yeah, I think interpreting Amy's issues (and how Amy and Rory transverse them) as Amy abusing Rory indicates a fundamental misunderstanding of their relationship, as well as a misunderstanding of the (raggedy) Doctor’s role in Amy’s formative self-image (which of course she works through in Season 6, but I am sticking to Season 5).

Abuse is always based in control. That just doesn’t fit here. While Amy's detachment from her real life includes things like calling Rory her “kind of boyfriend” (which she is upfront about to his face; differing commitment levels isn't abuse, though it can be a relationship red flag for both parties IRL) — her Season 5 disregard of Rory’s feelings occurs only in response to the fairytale embodiment of her trauma. It's never a response to Rory; it's a response to the Doctor, who stole her childhood and led her by the hand to her death. She cheats on Rory with the Doctor in her bedroom full of Doctor toys, drawings, models, she made from childhood to early adulthood.

(And yes, like many repeatedly-traumatized people, Amy is prone to being sensitive and reactive. Take her “Well, shut up then!” line in The Big Bang; but given Rory responds to this by hugging her, clearly he doesn’t take it as her actually dismissing him. He knows her better than that.)

And by no means do I meant to imply this is fair to young Rory, poor Rory, who's left struggling with the feeling that his role in her life is in competition with the role of her trauma (aka the Doctor). But not every unhealthy relationship dynamic is unhealthy because of abuse. Labelling Amy's treatment of Rory in Season 5 more accurately isn't the same as excusing her harmful choices — but making mistakes is part of being human, Amy's mistakes are certainly understandable, and she works through them out of love for Rory.

If there's one thing to say about Moffat women, it's that Moffat allows his female characters the same grace that the male characters *coughTENcough* have always had, to hurt and struggle and make realistic mistakes and overcome those mistakes and to heal without being demonized.

Amy isn't perfect, but she is a fully realized character, and her story gives us a resonant depiction of childhood trauma.

[camellcat]

you ever realize you never properly learned how to say a character's name, so by the time you finally HEAR it, you have no idea who they're talking about? cause I feel like I keep doing this and it's very confusing to keep being corrected like that

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

trying to finish reading dungeon meshi now that it's done and just seeing everyone in the comments talking about ships. gun to my head

[huldrabitch]

mini compilation of Carver being sweet/trying

[reel-fear]

MIKE BLOCKED ME ON TWITTER FOR ROASTING HIS DUMBASS RESPONSE TO THE GRAPHIC NOVEL STUFF!!

grown ass man scared of the 19-year-old queer being mean to him over his public meltdown more at 8.

[itsjaywalkers]

favourite character game!!!

Put your 4 favourite characters from 4 pieces of media as options and let your tumblr pals decide which one most suits your vibes

thank you my beloveds @sommerregenjuniluft @pupmotif @quillkiller @fromagony for tagging me, this looks so fun!!

once again, and bc of my stupid job, i'm late for this so i think everyone has done it.. anyway, sorry if you've already been tagged but !! np tags: @carniferous @static-radio-ao3 @themuseoftheviolets @a-lilypad @standardlovers

[steakout-05]

*clenched fists, head on the table, white knuckled, seething, hyperventilating, visible veins showing, sweating, about to burst into tears, shaking violently, going to explode*

it's.... spelled........ JON.............. arbuckle........

[autisticlee]

i'm aroace, sex repulsed and don't get traditional romance or find the need for it, but I still often think how it would be neat to have a gf/partner for other purposes that arent romance and sexual. but it seems impossible to make someone want to date you if you take out those things????

sometimes I think it would be nice to have a gf to do cute gay cosplay photoshoots with. there would be mouth smooching and you usually can't do that with a friend and I don't really want to either, so a gf would be useful for that.

then there's hating showers because they exhaust me and it would be nice to have a gf to wash my hair and stuff for me??? can't call up a friend to do this every time I need to shower. that won't work and I doubt they'd want to/be comfortable doing that.

most friends will end up putting all their priority into their partner and/or family they create. I want someone that will make me their priority and not run off with someone else they start dating and abandon me??? something like that. their priority is cleaning our home together, hanging out together, going shopping and other domestic/partner stuff. they don't do that with someone else or use me temporarily until they can find a partner. so it's essentially dating/being partners. but it looks different from your typical expected romance and partnership.

doesn't matter how aroace I am, I have accepted that a relationship is beneficial in many ways and there's certain things that you can't expect friends to cover and they can't fill. but I have zero interest in looking for a partner in traditional ways that requires small talk/flirting/dates/etc. so that makes me realize i'll most likely not trick someone into partnering with me lmao

the internet seems to call this kind of thing "queer platonic relationship" (did I remember it right?) and you just need to find another sroace person to do it with. but either way, there's no textbook to study for how to get that and where to find these people. it seems harder than the puzzle that is regular dating tbh.

there's that saying "there's other fish in the sea" but i'm a worm in a puddle the other worms got out before they drowned. there's no fish here lmao. my options are so limited that I haven't met a single option yet in my life. there's barely any chance the first aroace person I meet irl will be compatible, or the first compatible person will accept a relationship with an aroace. you know what I mean? any other aroace that's interested in some kind of relationship/partnership and feel like you don't get that whole sea to choose from like everyone else and only have a dried up puddle? 😅

[skrunksthatwunk]

stole this chart from @asubakaa and spent wayyy too much time making my own so. yeah. also i did 6 instead of 5 bc i know no restraint

[fefairys]

man i honestly don’t think bee and puppycat is THAT confusing like by the end of the season they answered most of the questions i had and the ones that remain unanswered are an exciting mystery!

i just keep seeing posts that are like ‘it’s bad because it’s confusing’ and sorry but it’s not rlly that confusing u just can’t understand media unless they explicitly spell everything out for you constantly

or you think anything silly and wacky is “a confusing mess” because like sometimes silly things with no deeper meaning do happen and it’s just for funsies

[bogkeep]

im the victim of a HORRIBLE TRAGEDY (couldn't find my CD with the promare OST in my big heavy box of CDs :((((((( )

[sciencecourt]

how do you feel about the show of o’grady? it was made for “The N” by the same company

oh where do I start with o'grady...It's a HUGE inside joke between me and a few friends, for what I have to assume is around 4 years now. Somebody in a wordgirl server offhandedly mentioned it to me one time and it was all downhill from there.

I...am divisive on it? I think, since it's soup2nuts, it has the potential to be really funny and (dare i say it) good, but it's genre tends to really bog it down. Soup2Nuts isn't all that good at 'conventional' love stories, much less Teen Drama love stories, so whatever it tries to pull for a while with Kevin and Abby (and Phillip and Pete) just comes off as a big uninteresting, sometimes creepy slog. I think it wrapped up in a somewhat sweet way in the season 1 finale but it doesn't really make up for those few bad eggs.

I think it really picks up in the second season, but sadly, that was it's last. Soup2Nuts shows really need time to breath and O'Grady just wasn't able to have that grace. Shame!

As is my brand, my favorite characters are Harold and Lipschitz. Harold didn't deserve to be in that show and I love S2N characters voiced by Larry Murphy.

[giantkillerjack]

The cool thing about a horror movie that takes place in a mental hospital and, shockingly, actually turns out to be on the side of mentally ill people is that it avoids all the common disgusting pitfalls of mocking, demonizing, and infantilizing mentally ill people.

The downside is

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

[It's much scarier.]