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pizzaboat · 1 year

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Long post

I know people complain that Mike and El pushed Will to the background in season 3 and that Mike stopped being Mike, but I wanna argue that the real Mike was suffering in silence and being pushed to the back during s2 and that's why he isn't himself anymore and why he's so insecure in S4 and why he's only starting to act himself around Will again

For example (and I promise I'm leading to something here), he was on "strikes" for his behaviour in season 2 because he was "acting out" (some of the acting out was normal kid things like drawing on the school bathroom wall).

He was told by his parents that it was time to start fixing his behaviour and that he'd had enough time to express his trauma from season 1 at this point. And he was made give some more of his toys away.

(I can't imagine what Mike could've done that was bad enough to give his attari away or anything like that and I personally think making kids give away their loved belongings is a messed up thing to do.)

It was a very forceful and pacifying way to get him to start getting with the program. Especially since his Dad is a massive moron patriot and was more than happy to sign an NDA with the goverment after season one, his mom too.

Meaning they never talked about what happened to Will or Mike or any of them. Mike just had to stew in that.

In contrast, while Mike's parents were ignoring his trauma because "it was over now"

Joyce and Jonathan were obviously showering Will (the focus of season 1) in a lot of attention and love. Because as far as they knew, he had PTSD and was subjected to something that would give all grown adults nightmares and trauma for years.

And that made Will feel more of a freak, because not only was he different to everyone in school and understanding that he was gay, now he had this supernatural shit that wouldn't leave him alone when all he wanted to do was play with his friends and do normal kid shit

And I think while Will was set on his path of feeling different and like a freak and that it was unchangeable and that he might always be affected like that

Mike could've been feeling like there was no room for him to be in any pain ever, or to have hang ups about anything- (Will the public freak that everyone fuses over and Mike the private freak who feels there's something wrong with him and he needs to change it and hide it)

And he didn't just learn that lesson from what happened in season 1 and how is parents raised him, because he's been raised like that his entire life. He's no doubt been told to suck it up and be a man for a very long time.

So its his instinct to bottle things up like feeling his relationship with El wasn't right, or he naturally would repress his feelings of being gay or atleast bi because he grew up being scorned for the same sensitivity that was nurtured in his crush Will.

(Will wasn't totally nurtured, he was bullied by his peers and abused by his father before Joyce left him, because his father thought he was queer)

Jonathan and Joyce always tried though, to make sure Will knew he was loved and they no doubt tried to have moments where they wanted him to know it was okay if he was gay, while also trying to keep in mind he could become defensive after growing up in the 80s version of society

And from what I gathered from season 3, Joyce is the kind of parent who talks to her kids and puts communication, love and trust above everything else, (which is good because Jonathan and Will deserve better than to be emotionally abused on top of everything else that has happened to them)

But back to Mike. There is no one trying to reach out to him like that. I think his mom was trying during the period of season 1, when Will was missing and she was worried for him (because I think she could see he was a sensitive boy like Will)

But his mom was growing tired of living in a loveless marriage and having strained and distant relationships with her kids, so she mentally checked out by season 3 and considered cheating and all that other shit. By this point her family was becoming less of a priority to her as she was balancing on a painful edge of throwing in the towel and accepting she wasn't happy

But Mike after s1 no one tried to reach out to him emotionally. He got a hug he desperately needed from Hopper when he finally snapped after El came back. (He spent that entire time worrying about her and feeling like he was going crazy wondering if she was okay).

That reaction was so raw and emotional, its easy to only associate it with it only being a mileven thing. But I also think that was the only place in all of this where he felt he had room to express how deeply hurt he's been by all this all along.

Because El was going to be his girlfriend, he found room to let all the other bottled up emotions he had about the other stuff rise out of him and he was able to break down and cry and scream and hit and be held like he deserved to all along

So, in regards to him repressing himself more in season 3 and no longer acting like the sweet boy he was in the past seasons, I think it was because he felt there was no longer and room for it. His growing up talk also covered his pain from season 1 and 2 and the things he learned by being raised the way he was, to also extend towards being gay or bi in a household that supports the president who's doing absolutely fuck all for gay people during the aids crisis

Mike's suffering is so silent and in the background, that only signs up about who Ted is voting for in his yard, and snapshots into how his parents are handling him, and comments about his dad mocking the idea of Mike being with a girl, and him being "sensitive" like Will in season 1 and 2, and how he's bullied and what's on the back of a news paper he's reading in S4(something about the aids crisis)-can only give glimpses into what's happening to him and why he is the way he is

#mike wheeler #will byers #ted wheeler #karen wheeler #joyce byers #el stranger things #byler #stranger things analysis #mike wheeler needs a hug #pro mike wheeler

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hellyeahheroes · 3 years

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Let Molly Punch Wolverine: Why I’m worried about X-Men appearance in Runaways

I want to preface this by saying that I have strong trust in Rainbow Rowell and while I am behind her series due to financial and pandemic related reasons, I trust her to deliver the best story she is allowed to. The worries I express below come from the fact I do not trust X-Men editorial and Jonathan Hickman enough to believe they will allow her to tell the best story.

The way I see it, Runaways are the quintessential Millenial comic in that it perfectly captures Millenial generation’s disillusionment with world and society built by Baby Boomers. A disillusionment that was to be expected in face of failiure of American defenses to prevent 9/11, the government and mass media wholeheartely embracing islamophobia and homophobia in it’s wake and American war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, on top of myriad other problems that were already present in the 00s and only got worse as we went ahead.

This is not seen just in the core premise of the original series, the idea that the parents kids are taught to respect and look up to are actively evil and damning the world for their own benefit. But also in the general potrayal of adults and adult superheroes in the series, who are mostly useless or outright malicious in case of Doc Justice. Sole exception being somewhat Spider-Man, who himself is portrayed as having gone through what Runaways have and so having insight and empathy other adults lack.

While that theme has become more gray over the years, as Runaways managed to gain a good footing with teachers and students of Avengers Academy alike, and Nico and Victor were on Avengers offshot teams, even then it was clear that the older heroes are not these perfect ideals too look up to, but flaved in their own way. Entire Avengers A.I. is about fixing one of Hank Pym’s screwups and A-Force’s premise is the team doubles as a support group, every member having gone through traumatic experience in the past and being on different stages of healing process (not to mention how it crashed and burned due to mistakes made by Carol in Civil War II). Even X-Men themselves started as outright antagonistic to Runaways under BKV. And then uder Yost went into the mutual “MAYBE they aren’t THAT bad” relationship with Runaways. Every meeting so far had Molly punch Wolverine.

In current series most of the team moved from teenagers to young adults and their experiences still reflect those of late Millenials. There is this feeling in current series of powerlessness, Runaways making it to the adulthood only to find all it gets you is more problems and all ability to fix the world have been systematically wrestled from your hands by the very people who broke it just so that you cannot fix their mess. It is a story about trying to live in a messed up world with that realization and how your found family can help you carry on whatever it will throws at you. I think in this way is why I can turn a blind eye on things like Nico in Strange Academy - it makes sense she would want to at least try to help kids who are going through what she did to not have as much a hard time. And, you know, Strange didn’t invite A NAZI WHO ACTUALLY WORKED AT AUSCHWITZ WITH MENGELE to help him run the school.

I do not beleive X-Men editorial can play along with that. Right now X-Men and their fandom are at the height of drinking their own kool-aid, portraying their stupid sex island as the msot perfect and best thing ever, to the point they ignore the blatantly fashy things happenning like making up new minority groups (precogs and clones) to oppress, or abovementioned inviting of Nazis, mass murderers and islamophobic crusaders who want to “take back Jerusalem”. They are so into the “mutants are a minority” metaphor that they outright demand that every other book touching on it portray negatively anyone who does not immediatelly bows down at their feet. Something we have seen in X-Men interactions with Fantastic Four, where Sue Storm’s legitimate complaints about X-Men’s current position are caricaturized to cast her in a “uniformed homophobic mom” stereotype just to keep the metaphor working. Even in Fantastic Four’s own book. In wake of this I can somewhat see why the infamous “Franklin is not a mutant” retcon took place.

I cannot beleive that current X-office could allow X-Men to be shown in a way that adheres to themes of Runaways. I mean for Pete’s sake, look at their treatment of New X-Men Academy X - another Millenial at heat series. And another one that tackles disillusionment of that generation with Baby Boomers’ run world with its own 9/11 equivalent in form of a terrorist attack that killed many of its students and traumatized the rest. It is a known secret editor Jordan White considers this a “mistake” because it made old X-Men look bad. And under him in particular X-Books had a history of undermining and derailing NXM kids to show them as inexperienced, dumb kids who never had any hardships and do not know what it really takes to be an X-Man, who see it as all the glamour and no work. All in spite of the fact they may have suffered more than all their elders except Karma, writers’ favorite punching bag. Now the books are outright lobotomizing the surviving kids while bringing back dead ones not to explore any stories with them or how such return could affect the ressurected and their friends alike and maybe allow a possibility to heal. No, this is done solely to erase that massacre from ever happenning because it make Jordan White’s heroes look bad.

I’m supposed to believe this editorial will allow Cult Sex Island to be shown as imperfect or not a place that would “obviously” be much better for Molly? That it will allow Runaways to not be cast as “bigots” for not wanting to handle Molly to “real family” (as determined by genetics) same way X-Men treated Fantastic Four? As things stand now X-Men, a franchise and fandom that is ever entitled to special treatment to the point it cried Marvel wants to bury them when having “only” four books a month. One that has demanded for Kamala Khan to be handed over to them and made a mutant just to spite Inhumans over some perceived slights. A fandom that has wished death members of every superhero team with a mutant who refuses to hand the mutant over and celebrated brutal murder of a kid with a reprogrammed Sentinel. This blind entitlement is not jsut a fandom thing but also infects creatives working on it. Need I remind you how Jason Aaron made a big deal out of making Firestar join the X-Men? He took a character who canonically didn’t care much for the team and wanted to do her own thing and retconned her to be a total fangirl who dreamed of joining but was never before truly “worthy” of this “honor”. Right now we have more and more evidence every franchise interacting with X-Men needs to bow down and play a secondary role to it. but the respect here is a one-way street, Jonathan Hickman outright complains about having to adhere to work of other writers. I have absolutely zero trust that editorial will not try to force the story in Runaways to also be worshiping the ground X-men walk on. Worst case scenario they insert themselves like they did with Fantastic Four, becoming recurring plot thread and casting rest of Molly’s family as evil for not wanting her to join what is effectively a cult.

I wish I’m being wrong here. I do not want Runaways to become a glorified advertisement to a bigger franchise that has become souless and vile and whose fans turned into bullies. I have faith in Rainbow Rowell but that faith is outweighted by my distrust in Jordan White and Jonathan Hickman and their egoes. I hope I’m wrong. All I want is a story that ends with X-men fucking off and Molly staying with her real family, the Runaways. And of ocurse, her punching Wolverine. Which I do not trust White and Hickman to allow either.

PS: Some of you are probably already typing some sort of “if you don’t like the X-men, just don’t read them” response. To you I say: I would be glad too. Too bad they keep forcing themselves into things I actually like. Like a mold. Which is a good metaphor for what this old, gross thing the franchise has become.

-Admin

#Runaways #X-Men #Molly Hayes #Marvel

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documentingmythoughts · 6 years

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The Hijab-less Muslim

05/28/18: Marks the 2 Years I have gone without my Hijab

PHASE 1: Wearing a Hijab during 4th-11th Grade

I remember having my parents approach my sisters and me when we were young to tell us that in our religion, girls have the choice of wearing a hijab. They explained to us that it was a symbol of modesty, of our willful practice of Islam, and that God would cherish us and send us to heaven if we wore one. I quickly accepted what they had said and thought I was going to be the coolest kid in school with my new hijab. I decided that I would color-coordinate my hijab with my clothes and be different from everyone else. I thought I would be the talk of the grade and gain SO many friends.

I did shock the kids in my school. And my school’s white administration. And all of the strangers who stared at me.

As a fourth grader, I was introduced to the concepts of racism, discrimination, Islamophobia, and hate.

I lost friendships. I became a target of bullying. I had classmates tell me that their parents said they couldn’t be my friend anymore because I was Muslim. But, all of this hate only fueled my anger and desire to break free of everyone’s prejudices and their desires to watch me fail. Some people voiced that they wanted me to take my hijab off, while others wanted to see me suffer and break. I persisted.

Part of what kept me going was knowing that by being studious and doing all of the right things, I might be making the life of another Muslim/hijabi easier. That maybe if these people got to know me, they wouldn’t condemn an entire religion anymore and not view me as subhuman. I was a VERY optimistic kid, can you tell?

My sisters definitely made wearing a hijab easier too. We would complain together, look up videos on different ways of tying a hijab, and be on the lookout for new patterned scarves. There came a point where the discrimination we faced seemed bearable and became part of the backdrop of our normal lives. I learned how to suppress my emotions and to continue to exist without letting racist comments torment me. I learned how to keep surviving. But that state of comfort changed in my junior year.

PHASE 2: The Climax of Discrimination and its Consequences

My junior year was a complete shitshow. There was incident after incident until my family and I no longer felt safe in my neighborhood nor my high school. Part of it was a reflection of what was being broadcasted by the media. Terrible acts of terrorism such as the tragic Paris attacks and the San Bernardino shooting were being committed by people who identified as Muslim. With the rise of Trump, people felt more justified in their racist views and harassed us more than usual. I remember my mom remarking to me that the discrimination that we faced during that time was similar to what my parents experienced following 9/11. So in the midst of taking the ACT, SAT, and deciding what colleges to apply to, I was dealing with heightened discrimination as well.

One of the first major acts of discrimination that affected me directly was when a Facebook page that I was one of the admins of for my high school class got hacked by racist white upperclassmen. These students flooded the page with posts of racially-charged images of men dressed in lingerie while wearing hijabs, pictures of student’s genitalia, and a threat against Muslim students. The threat warned Muslim students from coming to school the following day or else they would be hurt. The threat was present on the page for 8 minutes until I reported it and took it down. The threat was made by what seemed like a fake account and couldn’t be linked to a specific student. The dean of students asked me to screenshot every post and send it to her. And so I had to sit there, shaking, and in tears while looking at all of these posts stating that I don’t deserve to exist and mocking the religion that I grew up cherishing. The administrators at my school responded to this incident by informing me that they had no control over activity on social media. I never found out if those students were ever held responsible for their actions.

But this was only the beginning of a long list of actions that occurred and made me feel small, unsafe, and reduced me to my brown, Muslim identity. My parents began urging us to take off our hijabs and said it was too unsafe to wear one. That they would never forgive themselves if anything were to happen to their children because of this choice. My sisters and I were stubborn and refused to give in, but as the incidents abroad and at home started to pile up, my parent’s urgings against us wearing our hijabs became stronger and ours became weaker. I continued to fight and negotiate with them. Initially, we agreed that I would stop wearing one when I went to college due to their lack of control over what would happen there. Over time, we renegotiated until it was decided that I would stop at the end of my junior year of high school because I was going to be traveling in the Southern U.S. as part of a college-access program in the summer, in areas where anti-Islamic sentiment is very prevalent.

Choosing to take off my hijab was a painful choice. Not because I am a religious person, but because I had fought all these systems of oppression for so long, that it felt like I lost. That maybe this world is too fucked up to fix.

PHASE 3: The Aftermath

I remember going back to school for the first time without a hijab. I remember flinching the first time I felt the wind touch my neck. My teachers, counselors, and peers struggled to keep their eyes from widening and stuttered when they spoke to me. I had white teachers and coaches tell me they thought I made the *right* decision by taking off my hijab and that I looked *pretty* without it. They even asked me if my parents knew about my decision and were genuinely shocked when I informed them that my parents were the strongest advocates to take my hijab off. As if the notion that my brown and Muslim parents could not look past their religion and care for the safety of their children was too far-fetched.

In addition to this, I felt like a lab rat that everyone was fascinated to watch and monitor. My hair got caught in car doors because I never had to account for the extra time I had to wait for my hair to settle. I never had to think about how my hair was a reflection of my well being, until the little effort that I initially made to maintain it was enough for people to make comments to me. They remarked that they could tell how much sleep I had the night before or that they could determine how stressed I was depending on how frizzy or put together my hair looked. I had to start thinking of ways to maintain it, to “find the right products” so that I would be accepted by society.

In many ways, taking off my hijab made me realize that it was a blessing and a curse.

While wearing a hijab, most of my interactions felt pre-determined, as I had no choice but to interact with the overt racists who had something to say to me. All of my battles were chosen for me and I had no choice but to take arms and fight. I fought to exist with the label I carried which was emotionally draining and laborious. Without my hijab, I can pick and choose which battles to exert my energy towards.

On the other hand, wearing a hijab filtered my interactions; those who were my friends really, truly respected me as a person. Those who were uncomfortable with my presence and existence did not approach me and definitely did not befriend me. But, without my hijab, people don’t instantly label me. Only after interacting and in some cases becoming their friend did it become clear that they didn’t know my story, my identities, and that what they say or the views they have hurt me. I wish I could continue to have this filter that my hijab provided. It definitely would be helpful in college.

I also did not know that strangers smiled at (and at times greeted) other strangers when you walk on the street. I only became aware of this phenomenon after I took off my hijab and this started to happen to me. I was genuinely shook by its occurrence in the beginning and realized how fucked up it was that I didn’t receive these “smiles” when I wore a hijab. I guess that’s a reflection of how messed up society is. People need to do better.

I am often asked if I would consider wearing a hijab again later in my life. My current answer to this is no. I like being able to pick and choose my battles and not feeling emotionally drained as I did with my hijab. Since I now know what life is like without that constant influence weighing down on me, it’s too high of a cost to reintroduce now. I’m still only 2 years without my hijab so my answer may change once I fully experience what life is like this way.

People often talk about how the women who wear hijabs in Islam are oppressed and face a lot of sexism through religion. While this may be the case for other Muslim women in the world, it wasn’t my general experience with Islam. It was American culture and small-minded people who oppressed me and made me feel worthless for practicing my religion. For being the “secular” and religiously tolerant country America claims to be, my experiences would suggest otherwise. So while Congress shall make “no law respecting the establishment of religion,” or prohibit “the free exercise of one,” this country is already built by its people and institutions of power to reject my existence.

If y’all really took the time to read all of this, I am sincerely impressed and grateful. Thank you for hearing part of my story. Feel free to reach out if you wanna talk!

#islamaphobia #muslimandproud #brownandproud #RamadanMubarak #america #desi #browngirlsgang

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the-musical-cc · 7 years

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You realise the fanfic trope you're talking about is usually a self-insert thing right? It's not written very well, maybe, but in my experience its fantasy coming from the perspective of people who have been abused themselves. I dunno, that's what I've seen more often than not. People want to believe that the right partner will make them better and help them with trauma so it makes its way into fics but I like to think that irl life they know better.

Hmmmmmm. I’m…uh…OK, here’s what:

People are different from one another. The ways in which we cope with pain or trauma are different for each. Kinds of abuse are also so diverse that it’s pointless to try and fit the topic into any specification. This is just a general view from my personal experience as shared with me by other victims and experienced in my own flesh; BUT it does not mean to invalidate any other abuse victims who don’t meet what is described here. You do what it takes to survive each day, that’s how it is, and what can’t help me proooobably CAN help someone else.

My first thought is you may have mistaken ‘Projection’ for ‘Self-insert’. Since ‘Self-insert’ already implies a lot of wish fulfilment, it’s basically do-whatever-the-heck-you-want-time and trying to police that would be futile. There is literaly no way to write self-insertion wrong in my book. Projecting into a character, though, I believe makes for the most sincere forms of writting, provided that the writter doesn’t lie to themselves, in which case you’re just reading an ode to their ego that may or may not be well written but it tends to get boring very quickly.

That said, in either of those scenarios it’d still NOT be OK to portray recovery as something that takes only for someone to love you. That is not how it works and as a victim there’s few things more damaging that getting told or telling yourself that getting ‘The right partner’ will magically make you well. It’s setting yourself up for more heartbreak when it doesn’t happen, and it isolates you even more because if abuse victims already tend to tell themselves they deserve the bad things they’re being put through, this impression gets only strengthened when getting a partner doesn’t help like the frigging world told them it would and it’s only after years of torturing yourself with the thoughts that you don’t get better because there’s something wrong with you that you get to know any better. In the particular case where an abuse victim is STILL suffering abuse, it can even be dangerous to them.

With the aggravant that now they’ve hurt someone else, ‘cause being involved with a person who suffers abuse is a constant struggle of wanting desperately to help them and not knowing how, and in a scenario where this person makes YOU directly responsible for their wellness, it easily becomes toxic for the survivor’s partner.

…provided that the partner does want to help because this whole ‘My partner will fix me’ mentality more often than not only sends survivors into yet another unbalanced relationship. I have some trouble seeing the preservation of this particular myth, even in fiction terms, as harmless.

I once learned of a situation where a survivor of abuse, literal decades after the actual abuse took place, was still over-compensating herself for it. She was told as a child that she was fat and had specific foods she liked locked in a cage at her plain view. Everyone else in the house was allowed to have them, except her, and she would have to go through life seeing everyone else eating at their leasure while she couldn’t so much as have a taste of anything her mother deemed unhealthy. This on top of being constantly bullied BY HER MOM for her weight, verbally abused and even sometimes physically abused for it (Spoiler alert, she wasn’t much fatter than you’d expect a healthy child to be and even if she had been I can’t fathom why being fat is a crime so severe that you have to punish a kid for it). As an adult, this person would still be unable to hold herself back at the sight of the specific foods that had been locked in the cage; I mean it in the most literal ways possible, she’d see them and consume them frantically without being able to withold herself until she’d made the food disappear. She knew it wasn’t healthy, she knew WHY it happened to her, but at some point during her recovery she made those foods her wellness, gave them the power to compensate her for everything bad that had happened to her, and is to this day unable to de-program herself from that mentality. All this to say: Even more dangerous than the incorrect ideas society puts into our heads about recovery, are the ideas WE put in there. Which is why I don’t think it’s healthy at all to convince yourself in any way that one magical specifical thing is going to solve everything. In the long run it might do more harm than good.

And might I add, saying a lie to yourself a lot of times is a pretty good way to make it seem real.

There’s a difference between portraying characters supporting a character with trauma or helping them recover and portraying characters fixing it with a kiss like it’s a booboo or something. My post on the matter refers to the latter, as you will observe, and I stand by what I said. Frenching =//= Therapy and the actual process of recovery.

Recovery isn’t pretty. Recovery isn’t easy. I can’t say this enough times. It’s one of the hardest things people go through. One day you get better, but it’s only after a long, tiring road. I don’t think it’s necessarily better to be aware of every excruciating step through it, but I don’t think there are any short-cuts, and I certainly don’t think that being like ‘Hey, I bet if I went down this other, shorter, more convenient road, it’ll amount to the same thing’ helps anyone.

Abuse messes up your head. Your trust in others, your turst in yourself, your capacity to funtion as an individual rather than an extension of your abuser, your reactions to everyday things like people raising their voice or loud noises. How people think being a relationship without recovering all it takes from you (Or growing it from scratch, in the case where the abuser is also the parent) won’t take any hard work on both parts (But specially the survivor’s part) is beyond me.

Of course, this is all just a general outline on why I personally don’t understand the trope. I never said the trope was like the ultimate capital sin of writting, though. Did I read it when I was younger? Yes. It wasn’t good for me, to say the least because the fact that the magical cure didn’t materialize before me in the shape of a romantical partner made me think ‘Woop, I knew it, I’m completely unlovable, I deserve what’s happening to me because no one could ever love me’. Did I WRITE it? I TRIED. Keyword being ‘Tried’. I recall writting something about a dude who hit the kids put under his care getting brutally murdered (I was a very angry smol) and one of the kids (A girl) being able to overcome it because oh at least now she had a boyfriend, she had love in her life. Someone being romantically involved with you fixes everything, right? Right? Wrong. It didn’t…really make me feel any better. So there, it might work for others, but personally and seeing the cases of other victims I know, I think it makes more harm than good.

Finally, I…see some holes in the logic where abuse victims are the ones writting it. As in everything, there’s gotta be exceptions, but I find that a good 98% of the time, the people who write abuse recovery poorly are people who have never in their life experienced how HARD staying alive through it is, much less recovering from it.

((Not having experienced it is still not a good excuse for not writting it properly, mind you. Stephen King wrote abuse rather well in Rose Madder and made a point in making his abused character climb out of the slope by her own will to live and make it through. She has help. She meets kind people who are willing to help, but there is a difference between getting aid and placing responsability for your recovery on someone else’s hands, and King does a really good job at painting the line. His character does this BEFORE even thinking of getting tangled in another romance and her new partner isn’t written as a magical cure, but as someone who comes into her life and happens to be good for her. Furthermore, he shows the consquences of the trauma still within her YEARS after her abuser has died and her dealing with it in a way that couuuuld be supernatural but it’s mostly a “Things might not be all good, but you can grow again” kind of message.))

Then again, it could only be a matter of you and I moving in very different fandom circles. The kind of fic I used to find with the topic of abuse would be 1)Fics where character A was not a victim of abuse in the canon material BUT they had potential partners B and C and the writter felt the need to make the one they didn’t ship them with look bad so boom now C is an abuser and character A needs B to save them. Or 2) A has strict parents so writer turns them into abusers so B can come and be the knight in shinning armor- ‘cause you know parents who take no nonsense from you and parents who will make you feel worthless and trapped at any chance are basically the same thing. Among these, not once did I read any work where I could find anything REAL in the way the abuse and the recovery was written. It was just a gratuitous and lazy way to have drama happen without having to think too hard about it. Which, no matter how I look at it, isn’t very respectful towards non-fictional people who are either still being abused or recovering, and sends the message, once again, that ‘They don’t have it as bad’.

So no. Nope. Still one of the worst tropes out there, in my eyes.

(To be fair I also find a lot of what are popular fanfic tropes VERY lazy in terms of character development or even making the story interesting but that’s another matter and depends mostly on the writer)

#cc rants #tw abuse

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