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a-really-good-lawyer · 1 year

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I've seen a number of discussions of the NMCU Daredevil ep Nelson V Murdock, some of which I couldn't understand, and figured I'd throw in my 2 cents so far as my feelings on one particular thing.

I really, really dislike what I call the 'BFF Secret Identity Reveal Fallout' trope.

I see it all the time, often as a key narrative beat when attempting to create tension or complexity. The hero has someone they care for or trust more than anyone else, but they keep the secret out of fear - fear of a number of things, but often at the core a fear of rejection. This might be amplified by the BBF previously expressing negative feelings about the masked persona.

Then the secret comes out, and just as they feared the BFF is angry, and at the center of the interpersonal tension is the fact that the hero lied, and that's the part that gets to me, because the reasons for why the hero lied seem to so rarely be taken into consideration - lying, especially to a loved one, is depicted as wrong in and of itself.

But here's the thing - lying isn't inherently amoral.

(I'll note here that I recognize this is an opinion - our personal morals are steadfast, connecting to our core values, which are actually the anchors of our identities/sense of self, but they're just that: personal, not universally absolute. What I'm expressing here is my own opinion.)

The concept that it is inherently amoral gets my back up, and I know it's because of personal experience (good times with trauma! (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:・ﾟ✧), but I think my feelings are legitimate nonetheless. I know how it is to lie to protect yourself or others from harm, physical or otherwise; that there are times honesty is unsafe, or even simply unkind. I know how it is to lie out of fear of rejection - every time I come out to someone I feel it. I've learned the hard way that someone who has given every indication that they have zero issue with queerness and would be accepting of my queerness can end up not being accepting. It rips my heart out every time, and does nothing to help my own trust issues - this reminder that you can never actually know how a person will react to something, or how they'll treat you as a result.

I know how it is for a friend to believe that them showing me trust creates an obligation that I show them the same - the expectation that trust from one party should engender an equal degree of trust in the other, regardless of what is or isn't being shared or what either party's personal experiences have been.

Now, how does that apply to these fictional situations? Well, it varies depending on the story of course, but when the 'lesson' is just straight up 'lying is amoral' or even 'best friends should never hide things from each other', I grit my teeth. The impact of a lie on the person it's told to is put front and center, while the impact of revealing the truth on the liar is treated as secondary or even treated as moot. The liar broke The Rules by lying, and that makes them the one in the wrong, full stop.

I see that a lot in discussions of why or why not people consider Foggy's reaction 'right' or 'wrong', and rarely consideration of the shape his reaction took (whether the things he said were warranted, fair, or should later be discussed or apologized for). I see people saying that Matt's reasons don't matter, and that he was wrong for not trusting Foggy (and whew, the issue of Matt's ability to trust is a whole other thing, speaking of trauma). I also see people defending some things Foggy said on the basis that he was angry and had a right to be, when his right to be angry isn't actually the issue. If I say something unfair or unkind, etc, in the heat of the moment, it's my responsibility to talk that out with the person later when tempers have cooled, regardless of whether I was 'right' or 'wrong'. That's the kind of thing healthy communication and healthy interpersonal relationships require. All emotions are valid, but not all behavior rooted in that emotion is.

Of course, it's a very complex thing. Sometimes there isn't a clear cut 'person A was Wrong and person B was Right'. And what you lied about and why factors in, but that's exactly the point. My ex lying to me because of trauma-caused trust issues? Understandable. Him doing it because he was afraid I'd dump him when I learned he'd been cheating? Nope.

And then there's the 'you should have known it would be different with you' thing.

I recently saw a situation play out in a story where the hero brings up the BFF's previously expressed opinions on the masked persona and the BFF saying that the hero should have known that their opinion would be different as far as the hero is concerned - that their particular case would be viewed differently, an exception to the rule, so to speak.

I don't love that, either. 'It's okay because it's you' is a kind of exception that isn't the kindness it's so often portrayed to be. I've had people say homophobic or sanist things then tell me that oh, they don't mean *me* of course, because I'm *different*. My grandparents heard the same kind of thing all the time growing up, having friends say all kinds of antisemetic garbage in front of them and say, 'oh, but we don't mean you, of course'.

When I'm treated as an exception because I'm a 'good queer', it isn't a relief. That person still disdains what I am. Them saying that to me isn't kind, and I can't believe it to be kind in these fictional contexts. If the BFF can understand, accept, or even get behind why the hero takes certain actions - or even commits certain crimes - that should open the door to the possibility that there may be more to why other people do similar things. A more openminded viewpoint, such as a willingness to look at all the factors before rendering judgement, should be the result, not 'it's okay just this once because I care about the person doing it'.

My feelings about people equating criminality with amorality is a whole other complication when it comes to my thoughts on these situations. I won't get into that here, but I thinks it's another issue worth consideration.

I'm not going to write out my opinion on the Foggy/Matt conflict, though I do get into it a little in the fic I'm writing. I really just wanted to express my issue with that particular aspect of that narrative trope in general and how it's discussed, and the way the matter of trust and applying morality to distrust is often talked about, too. I may be expectionally sensitive to this kind of thing, or maybe I'm not. I'm not sure my possible sensitivity is the point, though.

Either way, it's a trope that gives me a lot of anxiety, and when I rewatch shows or reread stories I often find myself needing to skip those parts. That goes for fanfic, too.

#fanalysis #daredevil #nelson v murdock #fiction tropes #narrative tropes #riker talks

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angria · 9 months

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During session, I asked to change topics to T’s vacation since that is coming up in little over a week. Even though I know it is coming, I still always feel unprepared. Especially this year since Dr W is away at the same time and I have no one as back-up. I’m going to my home-state for most of that time, so I won’t be alone. But, that has its own problems. Triggers, nightmares, hellhole, family. Overall hypervigilance at all times.

T said I will make it through okay. Not to mean it will be easy or I will like it. But, I still make it through each year. Which I know is true, yet at the same time, it feels invalidating. Not sure if T could sense that because he asked what would happen if I ran into someone from hellhole, which is a big fear of mine anytime I go to my home-state. And I don’t find it irrational because when I have run into someone, they do approach me and are antagonizing. One time, T asked what is the worst that could happen…they glare, say something mean. No. I legitimately fear for my life. Which may be extreme, but they still go after me. Decades later.

So when T asked a similar question this time, I still said I would run away, leave whatever place it is. Which he challenged because why should I, as an adult, feel forced to run away. He jokingly said I could glare right back or even flip them off. I just stared at him. Like I would actually do that versus run away. It’s a split impulse. Or have a panic attack, which has happened before when I thought I saw someone. That’s when he grew serious and started his validations and that just flipped the fuzzy dissociation switch.

T has always wanted to do exposure work around hellhole because I refuse to go to the town, let alone drive by the building. And that is impossible given the 7 hour distance and me refusing to do anything without him there. But, he said, “Hellhole cannot reach out and physically hurt you, it cannot tell you that you are worthless. You are no longer sitting on that rock, trying to be invisible. You have a voice now and fear cannot control your life anymore.” My head grew fuzzy as I tried not to cry. I was surprised he remembered the rock since we haven’t discussed it nor have I dissociated to there in a long time. There was a rock in hellhole’s parking lot, around the corner of an old garage. I would hide there during recess and essentially dissociate the whole time, trying to be invisible, nonexistent. Maybe then people would stop. Continuing, he told me I did nothing wrong and it was not my fault, which always gets to me.

Still afraid for my home-state. Still afraid to not see T or have any support. I can’t even meet with E since I’ll be away. Even if the hellhole triggers are not terrible, I still have nightmares every night, no matter what I do to prevent them. Bringing my usual coping kit with my partial folder and transitional objects from T. I never know how to make these trips manageable. My hypervigilance has improved since living in the city for over 10 years now. So I’m no longer as used to it and feel less prepared for it when it spikes while in my home-state.

Fun times with trauma….

#fucking hate august #cptsd #bpd #trauma #abuse #therapy #smshellhole #triggers #hypervigilance #fucking hate visiting my home state and family #coping skills #sitting on the rock #dissociation #angriadm

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suburbiatales · 1 year

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unhealthy attachments, embarrassing separations

we hear a lot about the perils of romantic relationships. after all, we are at our most vulnerable when we allow a person into every aspect of our lives. they see us at our best, and at our worse. from crying at a stupid video of a raccoon accidentally dissolving a piece of cotton candy (if you have not seen that video, you know nothing of pain), to a jealous screaming match over flirting with the cashier at the supermarket. they've seen us from every angle (literally). they know about the weird mole on your labia, your inverted nipple, and your fascination with pimple popping videos.

all of that to say 1) I have a weird mole on my labia and 2) it's old news. most romantic relationships end in tragedy or, at best, an awkward wave when you run into them at the local coffee shop.

but do we talk about platonic relationships enough? i can tell you right now that nothing has hurt me more then the "friend" breakups i have accumulated over the years. this year, for example, i had a friend dump me for keeping a secret that wasn't mine to tell. the worst part? they told me they forgave me. and then proceeded to ignore every text and every phone call. actually, that's a lie. they texted me to ask for a 4am ride to the airport. and my dumbass, of course, said yes.

i was dumped so many times by friends that i developed a (diagnosed by my lovely therapist) fear of abandonment. so, unlike other people with legitimate reasons to feel abandoned, like daddy leaving for a cigarette and never coming back, i fell prey to mean 13 year old girls who didn't like my dry sense of humor. lame.

anyways, back to my point. another thing you hear a lot about is the romantic soulmate. that look across a crowded bar, the butterflies, a hint of nausea. but did you know that there are friend soulmates too? that one person that just met you and immediately got it. "it" being why you are the way you are, how to navigate your flaws, how to cheer you up when you're down. and i met mine.

for the purpose of anonymity (as if anyone reads this blog-), we'll call her margaret. maggie darling was my first friend in college. usually people completely divorce their first freshman buddy; we are so desperate to find a friend we'll cling on to anybody at first. then you find your footing, your people, and that first desperation friendship becomes a lost memory. not me and maggie. it was friendship at first sight. we immediately died at each others jokes, shared our childhood trauma, had our first sip of watered down vodka together.

the funny thing is that we couldn't be more different. i was a goody two shoes, depressed little nerd. she was a drug addict, manic pixie dream girl. emphasis on the "manic". and the "drug".

she struggled to make friends at first. even though i didn't i stayed by her side whenever she needed. we were conjoined at the hip. when she wanted to leave a party because she had no one to talk to, i was outta there holding her hand.

when the situation flipped however, she forgot i existed. she made a new best friend that i didn't like. so instead of being that cute friend trio, buffy/xander/willow style, they became a duo. and i became a solo.

over the years, she eventually dumped the inconvenient new best friend. apparently, i wasn't crazy for disliking her, which maggie made me believe. "you are jealous," i heard numerous times. no, the girl was insane. no boundaries, shots for breakfast crazy. post a picture of maggie naked on her instagram story crazy.

i found that, over the course of 3 and a half years of knowing maggie, i have been the comfortable friend. the one she reached out to when everyone started hating her for hitting on someone's ex-boyfriend. or when her recent fuck buddy dumped her. but when i needed her, she disappeared.

it's so sad that she was the only person i have ever met that completely understood me as a human being. undoubtedly, in a different universe where she has any type of self-reflective inclination, we are inseparable.

but here i am. i neglected making other friends because she felt lonely, and i wanted to support her. now i am maggie-less and friend-less. it's my own fault really. i think our bond was so strong at first that i developed this incredibly unhealthy, concerning even, attachment to her. almost an obsession. and that's what i am here to warn you about.

take care of yourself first. i don't care if its with a partner, or a friend, or a partner/friend. no one is going to put you first, stop neglecting yourself for the service of others. friendship and acceptance aren't everything. sometimes a girl just has to be her own best friend. don't let yourself be the miranda to someone's carrie. be the samantha to your own samantha.

anyways, that's the rant of the day. i hope you learn from my misfortunes. don't forget to hydrate and take your birth control. deuces.

-A

#sex and the city #carrie bradshaw #diary #tumblr diary #vent #friendship #soulmates #platonic #online diary #opinion #unhealthy attachments #break up

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oleanderblume · 2 years

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Catastrophizing a lot recently.

Specially cause I just got done filling out top surgery consult forms.

So I'm thinking about like, how having top surgery is gonna change my experiences in day to day.

I'll pass better, which is fantastic. Conversely, I'm am still deathly terrified of using the men's room 100% of the time and when I'm feeling particularly scared (usually when someone is right in front or behind me when I'm going into the restroom) I don't my mask and use the ladies. Totally relying on the fact that I just have massive honkers.

Or the very uncomfortable idea of basically outting myself everything I show my license. And as a commercial driver, I do that quite a lot.

But like, I think that's something I can handle.

Right now, my brain is going mostly to worries about hippa, roe v wade and stuff because I'm terrified that if it gets overturned and my medical records are able to be viewed, it would be ridiculously easy to point at me and say "trans" and that is, to say the least, terrifying.

Cause I'm of the mind that if something doesn't change and change fast, I'm gonna be on a train to the nearest ghetto along with every other "undesireable" in the US.

And then, in the corner of my brain, on a completely different note, I am fucking terrified of the idea of spending a month post on at my parents. Cause that's the only place I can be realistically, since I don't have my own house and my sister has a toddler.

My parents aren't...very accepting. My mom had a big breakdown over me simply mentioning top surgery, and I legit asked my sister to take the consult pictures for me cause my mom is weird and really likes to talk about my breasts. Like, in a very strange "I'm jealous of your titles even though mine are cosmetically perfect in comparison" and she's done that since I started growing them.

So I just know that she is going to be "mourning" the loss of my boobs or some weird and frankly posessive shit like that.

And my dad, well. I fucking hate my dad. He beat my brother on more than one occasion and he's a chronically narcissistic abusive jackass. He gets violent when he's angry and I have had a consistent terror of him physically harming me in some way purely because I'm not what he wants.

He's blown up at my nephew (the toddler) over my name. Because my nephew corrected him, as taught by his momma (my sister is fucking awesome)

So it's not like I'm not hyper aware of his behavior.

The worst fucking thing though is this fear is mixing with my trauma and a very very deep seated fear that I deliberately shove down and ignore on a consistent basis.

Being a survivor of csa and all. I'm legitimately horrified by the prospect that my dad had anything to do with that abuse.

So of course, my brain immediately goes to "when you're recovering and less mobile and hopped up on drugs he could do something awful to you"

The awful thing ranges from strangling me to death (yay) to taking advantage of me because I'm loopy and can't easily move around.

And it's great because it's all on the basis of him really fucking hating me being trans. Like. He doesn't like me as it I because I was the first one to go to therapy, come back and call him out on his bullshit.

And he's constantly under the impression that I can somehow hurt him or put him in jail (wonder why that is, dad...what did you do??)

On top of me being the family tranny and openly lgbt+ person who doesn't take his shit anymore, AND makes more money than him.

He harbors a lot of resentment for me to say the least. And the idea of being as vulnerable as post op for at least 3 weeks, in a house with a disingenuous mother and a downright abusive father, and the only means of separation being my scrawny ass brother and a thin, hollow door...is really fucking scary.

I know I'm probably freaking out like, 10 times more about it than the actual threat of the situation. Doesn't help that I have 11+ hours a day to have vivid imagined scenarios of whatever could possibly happen.

Mostly this is me just venting and putting the fear out into the void cause if I don't I'm worried it will make me hesitant to get the procedure in the first place. Which is put of the question, I've saved up for 4 years to do this I'm not fucking backing out now.

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c-is-for-circinate · 3 years

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Wait, isn't "anti" stuff more like "anti-pedophilia" and stuff? Like, you have a point about anti-porn attitudes, but from what I've heard just "anti" on its own means against stuff like kid porn and incest porn and legitimately f*cked up sh*t like that.

Okay! So this, I think, is actually a great example of what I was talking about, and a really useful thing to understand. (CW rape, child abuse, etc)

Smarter people than me have written much better essays about why policing thoughtcrimes is a bad road to go down, and I will probably reblog some of them next time they cross my dash for more context. What I want to talk about is the trigger mechanism, the ‘oh, this looks like danger!!!’ immune response in how we look at different kinds of porn, and how that applies to anti culture.

Here’s the thing: I am anti-pedophilia. I think that, for most people, that’s a stance that largely goes without saying! Adults who prey on children are bad. I’m also against incest; relatives who prey on their family members are bad. Above all I oppose rape. Sexual predation of any kind is bad. In fact, I’d say that’s the most important item on the list. There is plenty of room to argue about where the lines are between ‘adult’ and ‘child’ and how teenagers fit in the middle, and there’s plenty of room to get historical about the lines between ethically terrible incest, distasteful-but-bearable “aristocratic inbreeding” between distant cousins, and the kind of consanguinity that tends to develop in a small town where everyone’s vaguely related to everyone else by now anyway. The core of the issue is consent, and it has always been consent. Pedophilia and incest are horrific because they are rape scenarios where the abuser has far more power and their victim far fewer resources to cope, both practically and emotionally; because harm to children is, to us as a culture, worse than harm to adults, for a lot of very valid reasons; and because they constitute betrayal of trust the victim should have been able to put in their abuser as well as rape--but they are all rape scenarios, and that’s why they’re awful.

These things are bad. It is good for us to have a social immune response system that recognizes these things when they’re happening and insists we step in. That is a good thing to develop! It helps us, as a society. It can help the people being victimized. It’s the same reason educators and childcare workers in the US are all mandated reporters, why we do background checks on people working near kids. These things happen, and they’re terrible, and it’s good that we try to be aware and prepared for them. (Though obviously studies show we’re a lot less good at protecting the vulnerable than we’d like to pretend we are.)

The question is: why does that same social immune response trigger, and trigger so angrily, in response to fiction?

Anti culture is fundamentally an expression of that social immune response. Specifically, it’s that social immune response when it is set off by a situation that, while it has some similarities to the very bad real-life crime of sexual predation including pedophilia and incest, is in and of itself harmless.

If you’re instinct is to flare up in anger or dismissiveness because I’m calling these things harmless, I want to ask you to just take a deep breath and bear with me for a bit longer. What you’re feeling right now is an allergic reaction.

Humans tell and read and listen to stories about “legitimately fucked up shit” all the time. It’s part of the human condition. It’s part of how we process those things happening, not just to use, but to other people in the world around us. It’s part of how we process completely unrelated fucked-up shit, playing with fears and furies and insecurities that we all have, through so may layers of fiction that we don’t even recognize them any more, playing with power dynamics in metaphor and making characters suffer for fun. Aside from the fact that literally all stories do this to some extent or another; aside from the fact that drawing lines between ‘ok that’s good storytelling’ and ‘that’s too fucked-up to write about’ is arbitrary, subjective, and dangerous in its own right; aside from all of that, these stories are stories. All of them.

Even the ones about rape, about incest, about pedophilia. They’re words on a page. No real children were harmed, touched, or even glanced at in the making of this work of fiction. This story, pornographic though it may be, is part of a conversation between consenting adults. (And if a teenager lies about their age to consent, that is a different problem altogether.)

Stories in and of themselves, no matter what they’re about, are no more dangerous than a crate full of oranges. Which is to say: utterly harmless, unless all you have to eat is oranges, all day every day, and you find yourself dying slowly of nutrient deficiency--which is why representation matters. Or unless someone wields one deliberately, violently, as a tool to cause harm, and someone gets acid in their eye--which is the fault of the person holding the orange. And unless you happen to be allergic to citrus.

The key here is this twofold understanding: First, the thing that hurts you can also have value to others. Real, legitimate value. Whether you’ve undergone trauma and certain story elements are straight-up PTSD triggers or you just don’t like orange juice, that story, those tropes, that crate of oranges may be somewhere between icky and fundamentally abhorrent--but we understand that that is still your reaction. Even if you don’t understand how anybody could ever enjoy it; even if every single person you surround yourself with is as sensitive and disgusted and itchy about this thing that makes your eyes hurt and your throat stop working as you; that doesn’t make it true for everyone. That doesn’t make oranges poisonous. No real children were involved in the writing of this story. It is words on a page.

But, secondly: the thing that has value to others can also hurt you. Just because a story isn’t inherently poison doesn’t mean it can’t cause you, personally, pain. That’s what a PTSD trigger is: an allergic reaction, psychological anaphylaxis, a brain that’s trying so hard to protect its own from a threat that isn’t actually present (but was once, and the brain is trained to respond) that it causes far more harm and misery than the trigger itself possibly could. And no, it’s not just people with PTSD who sometimes get hurt by stories. There are many, many ways a story can poke the part of your brain that says, this is Bad, I don’t like this, I don’t want to be here. The story is still, always, every time, pixels on a screen and ink on paper. The story causes no physical harm. But it can poke your brain into misery, it can stir up your emotions, it can make you want to cringe and run away. It can make you want to scream and fight and go after the author who brought this thing into existence. It can make you hurt.

This is an allergic reaction. This is your brain and body, your reflexes and instincts, trying to protect you from something that isn’t really happening. And just like a literal allergic reaction, it can do actual harm to you if it gets set off. This is real. The fact that stories can upset you to the point of pain and mental/emotional injury is real, even though it’s coming from your own brain and not the story itself. There are stories you shouldn’t read. There are stories I shouldn’t read, regret reading, will never read, because they hurt me. That doesn’t mean they’re the same stories that would hurt you. That doesn’t mean they don’t have value.

And, finally:

If getting upset about stories is fundamentally an individual person’s allergic reaction, their brain freaking out and firing off painful survival instincts in the face of a thing that isn’t, in and of itself, a threat? Then the anti movement is a cultural allergic reaction.

Fandom as a whole has a pretty active immune system, which doesn’t mean we have a good immune system. We try very hard to be aware of all the viruses and -isms and abuse and manipulation and cruelty, both systematic and individual, that exists around and within our community. We’re primed and ready to shout about things at all times. The anti movement is that system, that culture, screaming and shouting and fighting at a harmless thing on a grand scale. It wants to stop that thing, that scary awful thing that trips all of its well-primed danger sensors, at all costs. It’ll swell up and block off our airways (our archives) if it has to. It’ll turn on the body it came from. It’s scared and protective and trying to fight, and it’s ready to fight and destroy itself.

Luckily, fans and fanfic and fandom and fan culture are a lot bigger and older than they often get credit for, and it’s not like these cultural allergies are anything new. We could talk about shippers and slashers in the X-Files fandom in the 90s. We could talk about the birth of fandom in the days of Star Trek. We could talk about censorship and book burning going back centuries. We survived that and we’ll survive this, too.

But god, does the anti movement my throat and eyes itch. Man is it irritating, and sometimes a little suffocating, to realize how many stories just aren’t getting told out of fear of what the antis will say. And that’s the real danger, I think. What are we losing that would have so much value to someone? What are we missing out?

#fandom #anti culture #anti-anti #I guess?#asked and answered #you are not WRONG or BAD or BROKEN if a story hurt you #but neither is the story #Anonymous #anti discourse day

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slytherinsnekxvii · 3 years

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let's talk about lily evans and the marauders, aka moony, wormtail, padfoot and prongs. given that i didn't use their actual names, i think you can figure out where this is going. it's also long as hell, so. canon vs fanon, marauder edition, except snek is sleep deprived.

now, before we begin, i don't dislike the marauders. or lily, tbh. if I'm being perfectly, genuinely honest, i still go back and forth sometimes but they've been growing on me for a while now. the canon versions, at least. fanon does them real dirty, and that's part of why i'm writing this, because i'm genuinely tired of it. it's an injustice.

you can at least make excuses for james and lily, who were so undeveloped that jkr practically dropped a fill-in-the-blank sheet of character information in our laps, but sirius, remus and peter were around long enough for y'all to get real acquainted with them.

in canon, sirius black is an unhinged mf. genuinely. this isn't to say he's a bad guy, in fact, we see that he's still capable of doing good things, still capable of love, still capable of all the things that prove he's actually not bad at heart, just,,, severely traumatised and very steeped in negativity from his time with the dementors. what i'm saying is that this man is absolutely, no questions asked, no holds barred demented, and how could he not be? the guy sat wrongfully imprisoned in azkaban for twelve years, a good portion of which he spent as a dog in order to protect himself from the dementors. he certainly wasn't completely insane, but you cannot tell me that he was all there. he got out of azkaban fuelled almost solely by the intent to get revenge on pettigrew, tried to commit murder in front of three witnesses who were also children—one of whom was his godson—ate rats and was also malnourished, which i'm certain did not help the situation any. this man is off his goddamn rocker, and you know what? you love to see it. good for him.

oh, but, snek, that's what he's like as an adult. what about when they were at school? before azkaban? my guy, the reaction he has to grimmauld place is not the reaction of someone without trauma. i don't believe that walburga and orion were the type to physically abuse their children, but whatever happened in that house helped to fuck him up enough that he skipped the joke of part of practical joke, and pranked snape by telling him how to meet a werewolf that he knew would be fully transformed and dangerous to humans. more than that, the werewolf was remus, whom he's friends with, and who—best case scenario—would be facing a trial if james hadn't stepped in. you can say that maybe he didn't think about or understand the gravitas of his actions, but at the end of it, that's not how properly sane people react to people they dislike, and that's not how they treat their friends. if anything, it reads like he was in the middle of a breakdown and absolutely losing his shit and he wasn't thinking at all.

my guy went through some serious shit, and was in no way completely mentally stable. we can see pretty clearly that he's got a serious dark side to him that probably would have gone unbridled had he not disagreed with his family, and yet, fanon took one look at him and went, "teehee, uwu bad boi go vroom."

fanon said padfoot is a pretty boy with nice hair who is tastefully traumatised from his horribly abusive household. sirius rides his motorcycle and plays jokes and flirts with anything that moves, but he can do no real wrong and always comes back to his soft, bookish, chocolate-loving boyfriend remus, who will laugh about his lycanthropy and quietly disapprove but secretly laugh at his friends' antics while hiding his smile in his cardigan.

respectfully, what in the absolute fuck.

i'd put that meme in here if i could, the one that's like, "well done, you've broken _______ down to its bare essentials," but no. i can't bc it doesn't even apply. this isn't a meme, it's theseus' fucking ship.

fanon broke it down, and replaced the pieces one by one until we got to this point, where we need to sit down and ask ourselves, "is this even the same character?"

the answer is no, by the way. it isn't. when people talk about woobifying characters—you know, taking away every flaw they have, romanticising everything they do and making them only capable of doing good, wonderful, lovely things?—this is what we mean.

and it'd be one thing if it was just the one character, but, no. fanon went all in and made them all squeaky clean and boring, especially peter, who draws the shortest of the straws.

remus got fucked, too. not just because fanon insists on sticking him into a relationship with sirius. which, we'll tackle wolfstar in a bit, but that's not even the worst of it. here, we have yet another example of blatant, rampant woobifying. again, is he a bad person? no. we know he's a good guy, we know he's generally kind and well-mannered, we know that he wants to fo the right thing but hey, fun fact. did you know that you can be nice and a coward? did you know that you can be benevolent and good and kindly and have the greatest of intentions and still be shady as fuck? no? ask dumbledore. the man played people like chess pieces when he needed to, and he was a twinkly grandpa. these are things that can coexist.

teenage remus is a coward who, understandably, does not stand up to his friends, likely for fear of being ostracised, and doesn't uphold his prefect duties as he should and takes part in their bullying of snape as a result. he lets them romp with him in werewolf form while they are in their animagus forms and then, he lets them continue to do so even after they have multiple close calls, which, again, had anything happened, would have resulted in a trial in the best case scenario.

grownup remus is still a coward, he tells no one that sirius can move about the school in his animagus form despite wholeheartedly believing that he's a mass murderer, he tries to run out on his wife and unborn kid. he isn't deliberately making attempts to harm anyone, but he's content to sit back and let things happen to him and around him so he doesn't rock the boat, although he is capable of action, which we see when he is more than willing to help sirius merk pettigrew in the shack. he can be careless, he runs out to the shack knowing he hasn't taken his wolfsbane and ends up transforming in front of the students he, as a teacher, is meant to be protecting. of course, this doesn't negate his good qualities, it just bears repeating that his flaws do exist, and they're pretty serious.

fanon moony is always pleasant and kind and soft-spoken and bookish, and he always has to have his chocolate. he knows when to tell off his friends, and he'll do it, even if he's secretly amused by everything they do and laughs about it with his best friend, lily evans, who coincidentally spends all her time with them so he and sirius can go on double dates with james and lily and no one has to remember peter exists.

why. theseus' ship 2.0. does the actual character still exist or is this something entirely different thing bearing the same name?

as for peter, who needs peter pettigrew, the actual, legitimate, fourth marauder when you have lily evans? canon pettigrew is opportunistic as fuck. he's latching himself to the biggest bad on the block and he's going all in. for teenage peter, that was james and sirius, and for adult peter, that's voldemort. canon peter is good enough at transfiguration to master the animagus transformation, just like his friends, and he's good enough at potions to brew the potion that gives voldemort a body. and honestly, you can't say he wasn't brave. he could've run off somewhere and died, or changed his identity or something after he faked his death and framed sirius, but, no. he goes and resurrects voldemort. that's fucked up, yeah, but it happened and honestly, i respect that it. he stuck to his guns.

fanon wormtail is lucky if he exists beyond being a spineless sycophant for james and sirius, or an evil conniving little rat who's looking to toss his entire friend group to the wolves at eleven.

of course, this isn't meant to negate his bad qualities, he still murdered people and framed sirius and sold out the potters to die, but his good characteristics do exist, and james, sirius and remus genuinely were his friends.

and now, we get to lily and james.

we have hardly any information on either of them. they're a pair of cardboard cutouts that we can paint and stick flyers to and colour outside the lines however we want. we can do whatever the fuck, as long lily is brave and smart and somewhat kind and james is brave and willing to die for his family. we were essentially handed a pair of ocs.

and yet.

what little bits of canon we have are thrown out of the window regardless.

james is privileged and rich, and he throws hexes for fun. he's willing to hex lily when she disagrees with him, and then, he goes behind her back to continue hexing snape after she believes that he's stopped doing so. and that's all we know about him until he dies for his family at twenty-one years old. once again, say it with me: this does not negate his good qualities. he definitely had them, he took sirius in when sirius ran away from home, he became an animagus to keep remus company as a wolf, and he saved snape in the shack, thereby saving remus and sirius by extension. him having flaws does not make him a bad person.

fanon prongs is a feminist. he fights for equal rights for women everywhere, and he constantly treats his girlfriend, lily, like an absolute queen. he's the hottest boy in school and everyone claps when he walks through the halls. mcgonagall and dumbledore are always patting him on the back and making jokes with him. he has a built-in dark detector that helps him sense when someone is a evil and needs to he punished.

give me a break. the dude's cool and all, but was the gary stu treatment necessary?

...oh, he needed to match fanon lily? right, right.

canon lily is a contradiction unto herself. she's supposedly a great friend, but since we see her at a point where they were already drifting apart, we see her putting little effort into keeping their friendship afloat. she victim blames based on rumours, she doesn't seem to care over much about what snape has to say about the people who have been tormenting him since day one. and she's justified, of course, she doesn't have to stick around. canon lily is a bit of hypocrite, she says that snape calls everyone of her birth mudblood, but then that begs the question why she still hangs around with him if that's the case. he calls her mudblood, she retaliates by calling him snivellus, and finishes up with a dig about his underwear, which, sure, it's kicking a man with a rusty spoon and pouring salt in the wound, but she's, again, justified. i get where she was coming from. and then, of course, she dies for her kid after marrying the guy who relentlessly bullied her quote-unquote best friend for their entire school careers. but, like i said, canon lily is, in many ways, a contradiction.

lily is basically a plot device. she pushes everyone's narrative but her own, and does little else.

of course, this trend would continue in fanon. fanon lily exists to be the perfect girl who gets really angry over the slightest injustice, and of course, she gets to be one half of one of the oldest enemies-to-lovers "it was just sexual tension" cliche pairings in the book. she's just,,, a mary sue. in so many fics, so many headcanons, she's just pettigrew's stand-in, a girl to form a gang with marlene, mary and dorcas—who happen to be more undeveloped ocs who also get the woobify mary sue treatment—to parallel the marauders. there is nothing compelling about her character when she's presented as a saint, and even less when she's supposedly the other moral compass for the marauders that doesn't actually work because she thinks that james is cute.

and this brings me to the next topic. jily. what, why, how. this was supposed to be a healthy, happy relationship that would have lasted in the long run? absolutely not. even for its time, i can't say that i see it lasting.

first of all, jkr presents james' crush on lily as just that: a crush. a mildly obsessive one, but a crush nonetheless, which she tries to liken to the pulling of pigtails. and then, we see that james' way of getting her to go out with him consists of blackmail, and when that doesn't work, he resorts to threatening her. this could have been set aside if he had actually, genuinely changed when they started spending more time together, but as we're told by sirius and remus, he didn't. he just got better at hiding what he was up to. and it has to be that he hid it, because if she knew, this further damages the character that she's set up to have and paints her out to be either unable to stand up to him or an enabler.

regardless, they get married. and while i have trouble believing that it was out of genuine love, there are scenarios that could make some semblance of sense. it's wartime, after all, and maybe lily is worried about her stability in the wizarding world, so why not marry into an established family whose son is already showing interest? or perhaps, she falls into the trap of every bad boy cliche ever, and she thinks to herself, well, i got him to be better then, maybe i can get him to do even better in the future. or maybe, she doesn't get into a relationship with him immediately and sees him on and off, until eventually, she accidentally gets pregnant and they scramble to have a shotgun wedding so as not to leave lily alone at nineteen with a baby. or maybe they marry each other because they're there and sure, neither of then is ready and they don't know what love even is but what else is there to do when there's a dark lord about? anyways, the point is, they get married.

and then what? if we count pottermore into canon, he goes on to further damage her relationship with petunia and vernon, to the point where she ends up crying. if we don't, she fades into the background enough that nobody has anything to say about her. she's harry's mum, she's james' wife, lily potter, she was kind and smart and brave and that's it. her agency is gone, anything else we have of her personality is gone.

jily just,,, wasn't built to last. and, yeah, this,,, this is a hill i'll die on.

same with wolfstar, honestly. there are so many reasons why it wouldn't work, but fanon has made it so fucking prevalent that it's literally everywhere no matter where you look.

first of all, i've said it before and i'll say it again. sirius is more likely to get with james that he is to ever end up in a relationship with remus. their chemistry is just,,, underdeveloped. net zero for a relationship.

secondly, sirius instigated the werewolf prank, and lupin would have paid the price for it. this could have been overlooked, but he doesn't seem the slightest bit guilty about any of it when it's brought up in poa. he could have been responsible for lupin losing the security of his place at hogwarts in the best case scenario, and in the worst case, his life. and he seems to look forward to full moons, even though they clearly aren't pleasant for remus, which,,, yeah, you're going to have fun, but like, maybe be concerned about the fact that your friend undergoes excruciating pain and it isn't a pleasant time for him? read the room, my g.

thirdly, they don't trust each other as much as fanon seems to think they do. they were both willing to believe each other the traitor before ever suspecting pettigrew. sirius thought remus gave away the potters, hell, he thought remus was a spy for voldemort, and remus was convinced that sirius was a mass murderer. neither of them needed to be convinced.

fourthly, maybe i'm reading too much into it, but like. sirius had money. remus had no money, since, yk, he was a werewolf and struggling for cash and still, sirius,,, did not leave him any money. i feel like if you had money to spare, you would give to your friend who is literally poor. but, again, maybe i'm reading too much into it and this isn't as valid a point as i think it is.

and ehh, the fifth reason is that it's,,, actually very much not the representation for the ltgbt community that fanon says it is but y'all aren't ready for that conversation.

anyways, just,,, even when you set the couple shit aside, the power dynamics between everyone here is fucked. like, james and sirius are clearly at the top of food chain calling the shots and egging each other on. then there's lily, who isn't even a marauder, but is always ever-so-slightly above remus but still not on their level, because, well. neither of them actually listen to her. remus is the novelty friend, the friend who's,,, alright, i guess, but you keep them around specifically because they're funny or they can dance or they have something that you can either show off to other people or keep as your little inside joke, your little secret, yk? and peter is just sort of there. like, yeah, he can do what we can but does that make him as good as we are? no. does he have a funny little something about him that we can exploit? nah. therefore he sits at the bottom. and like, yeah, james and sirius are on the same level, but james is yanking sirius' chain, not the other way around. anyways, like i said. power dynamic's fucked and it bothers me that we were given all of this, and fanon decided to take it all and throw it away so they could give us flamboyant!badboi!sirius black x softboi!motherhen!remus lupin going on double dates with feminist!trustfundbaby!james potter and saint!lily evans while ignoring peter pettiwho?

theseus' fucking ship, indeed.

anyways, this needed to be said. it might not make as much sense as i want it to, considering it's 4:12 in the morning as i'm posting this, after taking a break from writing to do some research and coming across way too much content about fanon marauders, but it's here and it still makes enough sense that you can read it and understand what i mean. and like, at the end of the day, you can go ahead and headcanon whatever you please, you can write fic and make art and do whatever you like, just,,, remember that they're exactly that. headcanons. stop presenting fanon as canon. please. i'm literally begging. we actually have evidence against it. just,,, acknowledge that they're headcanons and stop putting them forward as though they're able to fit into canon. please.

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tangentsandbubbles · 2 years

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John and Percy VI

Further rambling thoughts on the topic of COWARDICE, a term used to describe Percy, and he even uses it to describe himself.

Cowardice is defined as a failure to do something/one’s duty, due to excessive fear.

It is an interesting term, one of the most disparaging terms one could use to describe someone, with such negative moral assumptions, the ultimate insult.

It’s use has changed over the centuries. It was used a lot by the military, initially to discourage desertion, to discourage letting down your fellow soldiers, to encourage heroic acts of possible folly, and the penalty for cowardice was execution by firing squad, even in WWI. Religion has used fear of purgatory and eternal damnation to create obedience to religious laws. Modern times has seen attitudes change- to battle fatigue, shell shock, trauma and PTSD. There have been interesting modern uses of the word coward. George W.Bush described the 9/11 terrorists as cowards. Bill Maher took issue, saying whatever they were, they weren’t cowards, and he was forced to apologise. The insulting aspect of the word has remained, but the original meaning seems to have become murky. It is still used to describe moral weakness, applicable in many aspects of life,- family, work, and love (here’s looking at you, John). And one could discuss our fears of COVID and our willingness to take risks for the most modern context.

Fear is a legitimate biological law of self preservation. The fight or flight reflex which is there for our protection. We have such a visceral reaction to cowardice, it can blind us to justifiable forms of fear. Yet cowardice, in it’s definition, doesn’t have the moral judgement, so perhaps cowardice can act as a motivator, as a way to overcome fear when we need to, if used in it’s truest sense.

Back to Percy. Who, if we look at the definition above, was certainly brave enough to do his duty.

Quotes from BotB

Percy: “I don’t want you to think me a coward.”

“Are you brave, John?” Percy drew a blanket over him and kissed his forehead. “No,” he said without hesitation. “The only time I did act from what I thought was courage ended in disaster.”....................”So I drew my dagger.” “That’s what you meant about courage.” Percy’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “My God, I wouldn’t have had the nerve even to think of doing something like that!” “Well, you would have been a good deal more intelligent than I was, then,” Grey said dryly.

Percy didn’t ask questions but rose in his stirrups, calling orders........”They’ll move closer. Charge them before they reload,” Grey had gathered his reins hastily into one hand as he spoke, preparing to draw his sword. Instead, he was just in time to grab the reins of Percy’s horse, as the latter threw them to him, slid to the ground, and bellowing, “CHARGE!” at the top of his voice, rushed towards the copse on foot, grappling for the sword at his side.........Percy’s tactic had been unorthodox in the extreme - to say nothing of contravening every known principle of order and command - but it was amazingly successful.

And so on...

So, after all this, Percy is no more a coward than John, or anybody else IMHO. I can think of less judgemental descriptions for him - conflict avoider, peacemaker, and his own opinion of himself is merely low self esteem, and lack of confidence.

Bees - “I’m sorry, John. I’m not brave. You’ve always been brave, but I never have.” This was no more than the truth, acknowledged between them and part of the love they once shared; John had always been willing to be brave for both of them. p817.

To sum up, I think Percy could be brave with John by his side. And Percy was brave enough to love John, enough love for the two of them.

#lord john grey #percy wainwright #outlander

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rpmemesbyarat · 3 years

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Hello Tumblr people. I’m 31 years old and I’ve been on Tumblr since 2014. That’s not really old, and that’s not really a long time, but I know it’s older and longer than a lot of other folks. Tumblr is a space mainly populated by teens and twenties, and I know when I was in that age group, I thought 31 was a Real Adult (TM) Which, shit, it’s not, it’s really not, especially not for me, but nonetheless, I have learned some things in my time that I wish I could impart to my younger self, and instead will impart to y’all. Take what you like and what works for you and leave the rest, I’m no expert or guru or authority on anything, I’m just trying to be helpful. Being nice costs nothing. I once was standoffish to someone who came and chatted to me in IMs. That guy later died. True story. I feel terrible about it to this day. I was wary and kind of snotty in those days and I regret that. It’s one thing to be careful about strangers approaching but that wasn’t what I did here. It costs nothing to be nice. It costs nothing to be friendly. To do stuff like show interest in others, care about what they have to say, comment when they share things about their day. These are tiny things that cost nothing but give so much. Don’t pass the opportunity by. And definitely don’t snub someone for no reason. If you don’t want to interact, you don’t have to, but don’t be cold about it unless it’s legitimately because you’re uncomfy with this person and want them to go away. Your safety and comfort do come before any obligation to be nice, but I hope it’s clear that’s not what I’m talking about here. Be a candle that lights other candles. You know what else costs nothing? Encouragement. There’s nothing stopping you from telling others what you like about their content, what they post, what they create, what thoughts they have, the things they say, or just how passionate they are about something. There’s nothing stopping you from saying you hope the best for someone going through a rough time, or how cute their pets are, or how you’re glad they got themselves a treat today. You don’t need to be someone’s therapist ---I know I sure don’t have the emotional energy for that--or have solutions for them, you don’t need to force yourself to say anything insincere or that you don’t have the spoons for, but when you can, say something positive to others. First impressions can be wrong but gut feelings are often right. Like I said, being nice should NEVER trump your own comfort or safety. If you get weird vibes from someone, book it. Sure, you could be wrong. I’ve been wrong about a lot of people. I’ve also been right about others, and should have left when I had the chance before they could prove to me how right I was. Technically, there was nothing stopping me. It was online, after all. I could have just vanished and they’d probably never have tracked me down or made contact again. But I was lonely, and socially awkward, and like many people, most of my human contact was online, and I thought that this was worth it. It’s not. Whatever kind of friendship or therapeutic RP or free art or support or compliments or advice you’re getting from someone online. . . it’s not worth it if they’re mean or creepy too. Whatever you are getting, you can find it somewhere else, in someone else, who won’t make you have to put up with that kind of crap for it. If something feels wrong, don’t wait around for it to get worse. Yes, you may be incorrectly judging a situation and running from nothing, but it’s better you run from nothing than NOT run from SOMETHING. And I know that things like anxiety disorders, trauma, and just different communication styles can make it hard to judge these things (I’ve thought people didn’t like me before just because they were far less effusive in their typing style than I am, and I was wrong) but if you really feel uncomfortable, like this person has said mean or sexual things to you, it’s not just the brain weasels telling you lies. If you’re truly in doubt, get another person’s opinion, but also don’t let them convince you “it’s nothing” if it feels like something. Trust yourself. Creeps, like children, will test your boundaries. Kids will do shit just to see what they can get away and how far they can push you before you put your foot down. Creeps are the same. They’ll start with stuff that you can easily ignore, brush off, and put up with without feeling it’s worth ditching the whole friendship over. But they’ll rarely let it stay there. They’ll typically escalate it if they’re not rebuked. Rebuke them. It can be scary. It can be hard. I know this. I know it firsthand. But feel no sympathy. Feel no fear. Tell them off and pack your bags. They want to know how much you’ll put up with? Show them----nothing at all, that’s what. Don’t be afraid to change your views but don’t feel the need to broadcast it. I’m never getting a personal Tumblr. Because I’m glad they weren’t around when I was a teen. I would have posted things I don’t believe now. Same for when I’m in my 20s. And I bet that will the be the case in my 40s, 50s, and 60s too. Our lives are journeys of changing, learning, and unlearning. And that’s great. But if you post every step of your journey for the world to see, there are those who will use it against you, even if it was stuff from years ago that you should be applauded for growing from, not derided for having ever believed in. Not to mention that what’s the most up-to-date woke terminology and politics changes very rapidly, and what was acceptable when I was a teen is not the preferred lingo now, and it’s likely going to keep changing, and there will be people who find your posts and don’t care about that either. I realize Tumblr gives us a format to metaphorically scream our present beliefs and show how right what you believe is, and the urge to reblog when you see something you agree with wholeheartedly is strong. And if you’ve got a blog that doesn’t easily connect back with you, or you don’t plan to have for the next five years, or whatever, go ahead. But if your blog can be easily connected to you, and therefore could be connected to you again in the future, it wouldn’t hurt to be a bit judicious. I’m not saying “don’t take a stand on anything ever because you might change your mind and/or someone might drag you”, I am saying that in the age of cancel culture and people deep digging for ancient receipts, young people are no longer getting to have their journeys, with all their rooms for fuckups and re-thinkings, that I and those before me got to have, and I think that sucks. By all means, take a stand on what you believe in now, fight for it with all your heart, just also don’t make it too easy for other people to use it against you should you ever change your mind---and don’t be afraid to change your mind either, even when it’s against the grain of what’s presently popular opinion. Find things out for yourself when possible You know how when they taught you things in school about history and America and whatnot and now you’ve found out that there’s so much they DIDN’T tell you, and at least half of what they did is a very edited sack of hooey? Well, the same is true of Tumblr, Facebook, and other online spaces as well as real life. We all laugh at our Boomer parents and grandparents who share clearly false stories on Facebook because they can’t tell that it was clearly crafted to incite their anger or endorsement based on how it’s tailored to validate their beliefs, but I see the same thing happen here. Loads of tale gets touted as “true” on Tumblr because they have been made to appeal to us emotionally by validating our beliefs. But just because our beliefs may be good or progressive or what have you, does not mean that everything that appeals to them is going to be true. When you see a post circulating that claims something really cool about history or such is true, I suggest fact-checking it. This will help halt the spread of misinformation---even if it’s harmless---and help you build your critical thinking and research skills. This does not mean “you must change your views” it means “be skeptical even when something validates your views” People on our own side can lie, and that’s not harmless even if it seems so---contributing to a culture of misinformation is NOT harmless, and we’re less likely to be skeptical of claims that validate what we already believe. Don’t fall for this. That’s all. I hope something in here was valuable to you. If not, thank you for reading and I hope you have a great day!

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tangledbea · 3 years

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Hi! I’m intrigued by your thoughts on how the Series turned Eugene into a comedic love interest. Could I hear your thoughts on that?

Hi, yes!

Let me preface this by saying that I don't mind Eugene being a goofball in the series. Hell, when you look at the movie, he was comic relief 75% of the time. It is completely realistic for Eugene to be a funny guy. This is the first time since he was a kid that he's gotten to relax and actually be a kid. The series is the first time we hear him really laughing, big and from the belly. (I legit almost cried the first time I saw "Rapunzel's Enemy" and Eugene was cracking up at gopher shenanigans.)

That being said, when you look at Eugene's development throughout the series, they give us tastes, glances, hints of something bigger, then snatch it away in favor of something else. Like, his identity crisis in the Dark Kingdom? It was over way too fast. He got my favorite song in the whole series, then promptly got over himself with hardly even any carry over into S3. We can see that his relationship with Edmund develops slowly, but we don't actually get to watch it develop. It's all stuff that happens off camera, and each time we see them together, things are a little better than last time.

Eugene's primary role in the series was to be Rapunzel's supportive boyfriend, and he often put his own wants and needs on the side to achieve this. How often does he have every right to be upset, but he doesn't share those thoughts with anyone, let alone Rapunzel. And how often, when he does share them with Rapunzel, does she advise him against his legitimate way of thinking? He loved Cassandra like a sister. Her betrayal hurt him too. He advised Rapunzel to just let her go, and the series sent her back in time to change his mind. His trepidation with reconnecting with Edmund was completely understandable. But Rapunzel advised him to just give Edmund a chance because family is soooooo important (even though her own dad treated her terribly several times in S1). I'm not saying she's not allowed to have a different perspective than he is, but he gave Edmund that chance because Rapunzel advised him to - even kinda made him (though not literally, because he was not required to bow to her whim) - and he wasn't really allowed to stick to his own thoughts on the matter and heal in his own time in his own way. (Don't get me wrong, I adore "The Return of the King," it's one of my favorite episodes, but I'm trying to look at things with an unbiased eye.) Even in "Flynnpostor," he wasn't allowed his extremely legitimate complaint that someone literally stole his literal identity, because he didn't happen to identify that way anymore. Rapunzel telling him that he's Eugene now doesn't change the fact that he was Flynn up until very recently, and being Flynn shaped who he is now.

Even stories that should have been about Eugene were handed off to Rapunzel. Why is she the one who was paired up with Stalyan for a heist? Why was she the one who got to forgive Stalyan for the way she treated Eugene, when how Stalyan treated Eugene in the past doesn't affect Rapunzel today? It was not her job to change or forgive Stalyan, and the one person who it really did affect a lot had no say in how that adventure went.

We're told that Eugene's faith in Rapunzel is unwavering and... somehow unlocked her hair's powers again. But how? They don't actually explain it, they just handwave it away, because Eugene being there for Rapunzel is this vague important thing. In "Be Very Afraid" his big fear is played for laughs. This man literally died! He was stabbed to death, and his biggest fear is that his hair's messed up? And this is just one example in a string of examples where it happens again and again. Both times they encountered the tower, he faced the whole ordeal with jokes. And it’s easy to say (and I agree) that he uses jokes to cope with trauma, but the fact is he’s got trauma that they don’t think is important enough to explore. I don't mind Eugene being funny or being comic relief, but I wish he was also taken seriously far more often than he is. And this project of mind is opening my eyes to how infrequently the man is sincerely praised.

#Tangled #Tangled the Series #Eugene Fitzherbert #TTS #Negativity #Answered

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panharmonium · 4 years

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you know what?

no. absolutely not.

i already did part 1 of this post here. i’m back again with part 2, because unfortunately the awfulness factor doesn’t stop with arthur, and as much as i adore hunith generally, this entire sequence is a MESS.

and yes, i am aware that pretty much nobody else thinks so. every time i see this scene referenced in fandom, it is always framed as a fun, cutesy, sing-songy moment of “oooo, hunith ships merthur!” literally every time.

which, you know, like i always say about everything fandom-related - that’s fine. everybody is going to enjoy things differently; you do you, and keep on having fun! but here on my own blog, in my own space, i am gonna do me, and in this case ‘me’ involves yelling about how much i can’t stand that particular read, and how angry the end of 1.10 makes me.

disclaimer, to help folks curate their own fandom experiences: i am going to be Very Cranky for the rest of this post. if you love this particular scene in the way i just mentioned, you will probably want to scroll on by, because this piece of meta most likely won’t be your jam. as always, these are my personal thoughts and nobody is obligated to share them, so please do not hesitate to simply skip this post if we are on different wavelengths - instead, keep enjoying fandom in whatever way is most fun for you!

fair warning now given, off i go on a long, frustrated tirade.

i already wrote about the first half of this scene, where arthur decides that the appropriate thing to do at this particular moment is to give merlin a scolding about the evils of sorcery, despite the fact that the only reason arthur is even alive to deliver this lecture in the first place is because merlin’s ‘sorcerer’ best friend just DIED saving arthur’s life. but sure, you know what, let’s use said best friend’s funeral to chastise merlin about how “dangerous” sorcerers are. let’s just make that completely dickheaded decision.

and, moving on to the second half of this scene - here’s the thing. hunith overhears this entire conversation. she overhears arthur telling merlin off about sorcery, in front of the burning corpse of merlin’s best friend, who is, as far as arthur knows, the ‘sorcerer’ who died saving arthur’s life.

and yet, for some inexplicable reason, hunith still cannot get off the arthur pendragon train for two damn seconds.

she has known arthur for less than a week. by contrast, she has known will for his entire life. but the instant arthur walks away, hunith sidles up next to merlin and says, “you’d better be going” - like. okay, my god, can you try to hustle him away from his best friend’s in-progress funeral any faster????? how about we maybe give him a second? the pyre hasn’t even burnt down yet, and merlin hasn’t had a single second to himself since this sequence started. he’s had to stand there and listen to arthur insult the dude who everyone is supposed to be memorializing, and then hunith - who overheard the entire thing - zips right over and tries to chivvy merlin on his way. you’d better be going.

HELLO?! the pyre is still roaring. how about, instead of hassling merlin and hustling him offstage, everybody just sits down and waits for a minute. how about they all just leave merlin alone for three everloving seconds.

honestly, just - every time i think about this scene i get angrier.

i love hunith, and i know she’s well-intentioned. but everything she gives merlin in this scene is the exact opposite of what he needs. he doesn’t need to be hurried off the village green like there’s some reason he can’t stay there for the entirety of his friend’s funeral. he doesn’t need to be pushed into going back to camelot when he is clearly struggling with the idea of leaving ealdor again. and he absolutely does not need to be told how much someone else “needs” him right now, when he himself is the one who is having a fucking crisis and who needs someone to take care of him.

i cannot emphasize that last point enough. it is just - beyond upsetting to me that hunith literally watches arthur shitting on merlin’s dead best friend (and, by proxy, merlin himself, since merlin is the actual sorcerer) and she still somehow thinks the right thing to do is walk over and start telling merlin how great arthur is and how arthur “needs” him and how merlin “belongs at arthur’s side.”

i can’t stand that. it makes me so angry. it’s not right. it’s not fair. it’s damaging. it’s the same shitty messaging that destroys merlin’s life in later seasons, this idea that he exists for someone else’s sake, the complete disregard for what he himself might want at any given moment, for what he himself might need, for the reservations he might have about this plan that other people have formulated for his life.

he is UNCOMFORTABLE when she says these things to him! he doesn’t look at her; he shifts his gaze to arthur and the camelot squad with this grim, unconvinced expression on his face, and then he averts his eyes from her.

everything hunith tells merlin in this scene is the exact opposite of what he needs to hear. he does not need someone to tell him how badly his services are “needed” by a man who hates the person merlin truly is, not when the only friend who ever accepted merlin’s true self has just been killed. he does not need to be told that arthur, who is alive solely because will is dead and who only seconds ago expressed exactly zero gratitude for that sacrifice, is the person to whom merlin owes his undying loyalty. he does not need to be shuffled off to camelot as quickly as possible, as if it would be better for him to just rush forward and forget what happened here, as if what happened here didn’t matter.

because what happened here did matter, whether hunith and arthur find it convenient to acknowledge or not. i have to lay this out again, because what happened to merlin in ealdor is so much more important than anybody ever seems to realize - and i do understand that, i really do (because yes, it was just one episode for us) - but we have to look at it from merlin’s perspective, not the audience’s.

will wasn’t ‘one episode’ for merlin.

i can’t say this enough times. i cannot say this loudly enough.

merlin, at the beginning of this show, has only ever had ONE FRIEND.

most of us can’t even imagine something like that.

but try. TRY.

merlin has only ever had one friend. he’s only ever had one friend to love him. he only had one friend for the first two decades of his life. he’s only been in camelot for a couple of months; he’s only known these camelot people for a couple of months, and they don’t know his real self anyhow. and now his ONLY FRIEND, the person he’s known all his life, the only friend he ever had who knew him for who he truly was, was just violently cut down before his very eyes, whilst saving a guy who can legally have merlin murdered for just existing. and even though merlin and will spend the entirety of 1.10 having a painful, complicated argument, will still uses his last moments on earth to tell the biggest fucking whopper of his life, in order to shield merlin from harm, taking all of the danger and infamy and condemnation upon himself. he dies with a lie on his lips. he dies with merlin’s hand in his hair.

and all the while, merlin knows that this would not have happened if he had just been willing to use his magic in the first place, instead of letting his fear of discovery prompt him into allowing his neighbors to offer themselves up for the slaughter in his place.

the avalanching double-whammy of grief and guilt that merlin is suddenly slammed with at the end of this episode is almost incomprehensible in scale.

i’ve talked about this before, but again, i think it’s something we don’t generally remember: losing will is the first time merlin has ever experienced personal bereavement. and he doesn’t get to start out with a warm-up; he goes straight to the big leagues. this is not some trifling thing. this is a total implosion of merlin’s world as he knows it.

when we think about the mark this episode leaves on merlin’s life, i don’t think most of us consider the magnitude of this event deeply enough. losing will in this way is not some one-off thing that merlin just...gets over. this is the most earth-shattering thing that has ever happened to him, at this point in time. it is still one of the worst things that has ever happened to him, period, even years later. the guilt never goes away.

and the thing that’s unique about this particular trauma is that merlin has to manage it alone. there are other tragedies in his life where we witness him receiving support/comfort from others - freya, lancelot, balinor (though of course there are aspects to these miseries that merlin has to keep secret from other people, as well) - but with will, merlin has to do everything on his own. he can’t get one single moment of peace at will’s funeral. his own mother, the only person who knows what really happened, can’t help him without making everything about arthur. and merlin can’t tell anyone else what happened, not the truth of it, because doing so would squander the gift he’s been given - will’s lie is still protecting him, years later, from arthur and morgana both.

merlin, at the end of 1.10, is forced to navigate this grief completely alone, in the silent secrecy of his own heart. arthur is actively making it worse. hunith is out here singing arthur’s praises. and will is just like - he’s suddenly not part of the conversation anymore. he doesn’t even register on anyone’s radar.

it truly is...incredible, for me, to watch hunith overhear arthur being legitimately terrible to both merlin and the guy who just died saving merlin AND arthur’s lives, and then to see her come over and start talking about how merlin belongs at arthur’s side, how much merlin needs to be there for him, how they’re two sides of the same coin. meanwhile, the guy who literally just lied his life away to protect merlin’s secret and who NEVER made merlin feel like he had to hide who he was and who never had any problem with magic in the first place and never made merlin feel unsafe and never treated merlin like he was less of a human being just for existing -

- he’s just burning to ash there, and hunith doesn’t even acknowledge that, despite the fact that merlin is so visibly, intently, single-mindedly focused on that funeral pyre, and so clearly in distress and in pain and NEEDING somebody. all she can talk about is merlin’s responsibility to arthur.

the dissonance here is baffling. hunith has known will forever. she met arthur less than a week ago. she barely knows him, and what she does know is that he thinks magic-users are dangerous/evil. she saw him being a dick to her kid. she knows her son is having the worst day of his life. and she still doesn’t offer a single comforting word in reference to the person who just died protecting merlin’s secret, instead choosing to wax poetic about a man whose bigotry is what merlin needed protecting from in the first place.

that...is a hot mess. the merlin-hunith-will dynamic is one of the few things in this show that reflects less-than-stellarly on hunith’s character, however much i love her. and even though it all stems from an overwhelming desire to keep her son safe, it doesn’t make her choices any less damaging. she sends merlin away specifically because she finds out that will knows about his secret. she spends 1.10 analyzing and encouraging and dissecting merlin’s relationship with arthur, when merlin’s relationship with will is the one that desperately needs attention. she’s proven wrong about will’s trustworthiness in the most stunning, powerful way possible, and then she never even acknowledges him, instead choosing to laud the dude who literally forces merlin to live in fear of execution.

she’s merlin’s mother. she’s the only person in his life who knows anything about what will actually meant to him. she is his only possible resource as he tries to weather a kind of devastation that defies description.

and she, like arthur, just barrels right on ahead and makes everything about someone else.

the cinematography choices in this scene matter. whenever arthur or hunith tries to talk to merlin, the camera is placed on the opposite side of the fire from them, meaning the flames are always in the foreground of the frame. they are something we are required to see and look past before we can get to anything else in the scene. and in terms of directorial/acting decisions - merlin doesn’t take his eyes off the pyre until the end of his conversation with hunith. not once while talking to arthur does he look away from it.

the funeral pyre is always in the foreground of the shot, because it’s in the forefront of merlin’s mind. that is where his focus is right now. that is what is taking up all of his attention. that is what is edging into the frame, eating up our entire field of view. that is what he needs help with.

but he doesn’t get any such support. the entire sequence ends up revolving around arthur. will’s entire funeral is about arthur fucking pendragon. arthur inserts himself so he can talk to merlin about how evil magic is, and then hunith inserts herself so she can talk to merlin about how great arthur is. nobody ever stops to think that maybe merlin doesn’t want to talk to anybody right this second. merlin’s entire ‘farewell’ to the only true friend he ever had in his life is completely swallowed up by the prince of camelot, and if that isn’t a metaphor for the rest of merlin’s life, then i don’t know what is.

i know nobody needs to hear this, because very few people are invested in this kid at the same level of embarrassing detail as me, but here it is, anyway.

yes, will is prickly. he’s hard to get on with. he’s angry. he’s bitter and snappy and uncharitable, sometimes.

but you know what? he has every reason to be like that.

this kid has nobody. his own best friend’s mother - who has known him all his life - doesn’t trust him and doesn’t respect him. she is too afraid for her own son’s safety to give will any credit. she sends merlin away to camelot, the most violently anti-magic place in the world, because apparently, will knowing about merlin’s secret would be even more dangerous than uther pendragon’s genocidal reign.

think about how that would feel. to hear something like that about yourself. to be somebody who is already so goddamn alone in the world, and to have your only friend vanish without so much as a ‘see you later,’ and then to be made to feel, however indirectly, like this is somehow your fault, like you’re the liability, like you’re the untrustworthy element here. as if you, somehow, are more dangerous than a king who literally pays to have sorcerers trafficked to him in cages.

will has every right to be upset, all the time. he has every reason to be angry, and bitter, and hurt, all the time. to be thought so poorly of - to be held in such low esteem - when he hasn’t done anything wrong, when he hasn’t ever done anything to earn that kind of mistrust - and to have that same misplaced suspicion used to justify separating him from the only person in the world who gives a damn about him - if it were me, i would be constantly on the verge of screaming, all the time.

will has always been on merlin’s side, and he has never done anything to endanger him, and in the end he gives up everything to make sure merlin can stay safe and hidden and unhunted. he shouldn’t have needed to prove his goodness, his constancy, his worth; not when he’s already kept merlin’s secret for who knows how many years, but even after he does do so, it doesn’t even matter. arthur acknowledges him only to disparage sorcery. hunith passes him over completely in favor of praising arthur, with no acknowledgment of the misjudgment she made.

i have said before that merlin tends to befriend people who have nobody, people who’ve been left behind by the rest of the world, people who’ve been made to feel that they aren’t worthy of love. and will, merlin’s oldest friend, was the first of those many characters, and it is so heartbreaking to me that in this instance, the same kind of disinterested and careless attitude towards his worth that dogged him all his life is perpetuated and affirmed after his death. ‘people are used to ignoring him,’ merlin tells arthur, and merlin is right - even when will is dead and burning, arthur only sees sorcery. hunith, who we would expect to be more sympathetic, only sees arthur.

merlin is the only one who knows better. merlin has always known better, and he loves will so much, but he is the only one, apparently, and honestly, after will dies? nobody else even tries to understand.

to sum up:

hunith and arthur, for all that i love them, are both way out of line at the end of this episode.

the legacy of this experience, for merlin, is that he spends the rest of his life processing this particular trauma alone. and that is why i always, always have to keep will and ealdor in the back of my mind when i write for merlin in any capacity - because this event isn’t some simple stumbling block for him; it changes him forever. it teaches him what he can and can’t expect from the people around him, and it solidifies how irrelevant his own needs are when viewed in comparison with arthur’s, even to people who barely even KNOW arthur; people who are supposed to put merlin first over everything. it teaches merlin to bury his sorrow, and to wrestle with personal suffering in secret, because if things aren’t ultimately about arthur, then they aren’t important enough to be granted any significant amount of time for merlin to deal with. merlin’s own grief, even at his best friend’s funeral, takes too long to resolve. arthur walks away from the pyre, and it’s time for merlin to leave, too. you’d better be going.

bottom line: i don’t care if other people think this whole ‘ooo, everybody wants merlin to be with arthur’ thing is wonderful or beautiful or dreamily romantic. it isn’t. it’s ugly, and it’s cruel, and it stripped merlin of his present identity and his future potential, one stolen moment at a time.

#and that's what i have to say about that #so.#in case you all weren't already aware #will is a goddamn hero #and merlin misses him every day #the once and future slowburn #meta #no kings no masters

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uncurlinglikeflowers · 3 years

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Queer Trauma, Coming Out, & the Long Road to Self-Love and Healing

As I’ve reflected on my past, I’ve discovered that my adolescence may be one of, if not THE most traumatic time of my life thus far as a queer person. The last few months with my incredible therapist have made me realize that the years of anxiety, panic, fear, self-loathing, confusion, and depression have scarred me deeper than I had previously thought. She also made me realize that this is at least partially because I have never really talked about it openly and in depth in a healthy and productive way before, which is what inspired me to start this blog to share my experiences with others that are currently struggling with their identity, or to allow those that are also currently healing from the trauma of their previously closeted life feel a little more seen.

I knew from a VERY young age that I was different, but didn’t know how or what it meant. I was a lonely kid for a lot of my childhood without many friends. I didn’t want to play football with the boys during recess. I sought companionship at lunch with a table full of girls more often than not, which in itself also made me feel incredibly self conscious at the time as well.

I asked, (with incredible shame) for the “girl’s toy” from the backseat in the McDonald’s drive-thru because I loved to play with the mini-Barbies and craft entire storylines for them. They were easier to hide in my room than regular sized Barbies. I spent most summers off school alone playing video games and reading book and book after book. I didn’t really click with the boys down the street. I was obsessed with Britney Spears and the color purple. I was lonely without really knowing what it meant.

I feel as though that fear I felt in my childhood and adolescence held me back from SO much. Middle school in particular was absolute hell. I hated it. I always felt constantly insecure and uncomfortable. I had absolutely zero confidence or self love. I hated my body and how I looked.

While other kids experienced their first relationships and first feelings of romantic love, I was convinced that it was just not a possibility for me. On top of being deeply closeted, scared, confused, lonely, and in deep denial, girls didn’t go for me anyway. I was the awkward chunky guy struggling with his identity feeling like he had to make up for it by working extra hard to get perfect grades and give himself 100% to other people. I tried not to think about it too much, but hearing about relationships, seeing people kiss in the hallways between classes, and girls talking about what they liked in boys which was the complete opposite of me... it was hell.

To make my self consciousness worse, I felt supremely uncomfortable in gym class and the boys’ locker room in particular. I was ashamed of my body and also self conscious for wanting to look at the other boys; terrified that they would catch on and beat me senseless. Hearing them consistently call each other f*g in a very VERY negative context drove me deep into the closet as the identity I already felt shame for was directly correlated with being a ridiculed outcast, and something that was inherently, disgustingly wrong and unacceptable. The worst insult teenage boys could deliver to each other in the safety of an unchaperoned locker room in a hick town often not kind to queer people or those that were different. I SO desperately wanted to fit in with the other boys instead of being any version of who I actually was.

Part of that façade of blending in with my hetero peers involved having a girlfriend for two months in 8th grade. We didn’t even kiss, let alone approach any sexual situations. I’m sure she had her suspicions. I was utterly obsessed with the concept of blending in by having a girlfriend like the other boys and just having someone special in my life, even if we really didn’t even do any couple things.

Upon reflection, I don’t think the concept of ever being sexual with her ever crossed my mind in the slightest. Even the idea of kissing her scared the hell out of me, and not just from first kiss nerves. Deep down I knew it wasn’t right for me. Don’t EVER tell a kid they’re too young to know. Fast forward to modern times, my first kiss with a girl was with a close friend YEARS after I came out. Go figure.

The idea of caring about and loving myself was non-existent at that time. It’s a very VERY new and ongoing journey for me. I didn’t really care about myself at all. I hadn’t learned how to. Mom was in and out of cancer treatments, and would later pass during my senior year of college and kick off my coming out process, but that’s a whole other post for another day. Spending pretty much my entire childhood watching mom deal with being sick, I didn’t want to cause my family any more discomfort. I was full of self loathing, fear, and confusion, but it seemed irrelevant and unimportant because I didn’t want to be a hindrance.

Instead, I tried so desperately to be the perfect kid and son by befriending my teachers, being a model student, and joining band and a bunch of organizations to stay as busy as possible to stay distracted and impress everyone else.I didn’t love myself because I didn’t think I was allowed to or deserved to in my own head. While I did finally make more meaningful friends in high school, I continued to go through the motions to make my family proud to make up for the scared closeted kid who thought he had to make up for his queerness as though it were a shameful weakness, and it seemed to be the only thing that could possibly matter at the time.

Non-surprisingly, I never really knew any openly queer boys in grade school. It probably legitimately wasn’t all that safe to come out in that environment. I’ll never forget the two boys I saw holding hands in a Wal-Mart that absolutely shook up my entirely reality, because I had never seen romantic same-sex affection in person before.

There was a lesbian couple at my school, but people said awful, degrading things about them behind their backs constantly and acted like they were the biggest freaks. Another boy in my grade in high school hadn’t come out yet officially but was very flamboyant, and thus was treated just as awful as the lesbian couple, if not worse. Other kids just regularly said despicable things about him without even knowing him at all. I even heard parents make blatantly homophobic jokes about him.

His life had to have been hell, and as a fully out queer adult, I still regret not being able to stand up for him more. That definitely forced me deeper into the closet. He wasn’t even out but got talked about like he was some disgusting abomination. How could I ever assume that I could ever come out, let alone kiss, date, and love another boy? I HATED the idea of any attention being placed on me, so I just wanted to survive school at that point.

I had multiple people throughout high school ask me if I were gay just as though it were the most casual question rather than a triggering inquiry that sent me into a mental frenzy every damn time it was presented. Having one of the jock boys ask me such a deeply personal question in passing on the way to my seat in Algebra class was traumatizing. I of course always said no, as at the time I was still convinced it was a passing phase and that I couldn’t actually be gay.

At home, in the days of Myspace, I got anonymous messages telling me they were pretty sure I was gay. The anonymity was arguably worse in some ways.

At a young age, I became hyper aware of how I carried myself, talked, and acted. I loathed hearing my voice or seeing myself in pictures, for fear of sounding too feminine or standing or emoting too gay. I obsessed over the concept that boys and girls carried their books a certain way, or the boys would be labelled as queer. I was paranoid about where I shopped for clothes, the colors I wore, and the length and fit of my shorts.

In middle school, I got a lilac colored trapper keeper for school that I ultimately had my parents take back to the store for a different one because I felt so self conscious about it all day. At home I played with my little Barbies, but didn’t dare tell the kids at school for fear of rejection and isolation. Overall, I felt grossly incompetent, irrelevant, and unimportant in my own mind. Unworthy of love and of course, deeply ashamed for my attraction to the other boys.

I never had anyone whatsoever to help guide me through the coming out process, because I didn’t know a single queer person who could. I’ve now dedicated a good amount of my energy trying to be that person I desperately could have used then for anyone else that needs that role to be filled, and for someone to tell them that someone is incredibly proud of them. An obscene amount of queer people don’t ever hear “I’m so proud of you!” when they really need it the most.

I also didn’t have any good queer representation on TV or in movies, so I really did feel completely alone at times. Most queer characters in media existedly solely to be made fun of and mocked, ratcher than celebrated, properly represented, or God forbid, given a legitimate love story, and the public’s reaction was so frequently one of such repugnance and disapproval.

This was also probably about the time that a close family member told me that he had punched a gay guy for hitting on him when he was younger, a story he again felt the need to share with a now ex-boyfriend and I when we were dating, as though that’s not a horrifying thing for an already scared and closeted queer to hear from their own family.

I think during middle school in particular is when my anxiety and depression issues started, but I assumed either that I was being a baby and that my feelings were invalid, or that it was just teenage angst. The idea that boys and men should mask their emotions and feelings and feel shame rather than expressing them was, (and seemingly appears to continue to be) a very real thing in small towns and society in general.

It didn’t occur to me at the time that I was experiencing varying levels of almost daily trauma that would fuck me up well into adulthood. If you take anything at all from this post, let it be that the conversation around mental health, (and men in particular in this instance) NEEDS to change.

Another particularly noteworthy event in my queer adolescence was when two of my friends, (both girls, shocker) discovered gay porn on my computer. While they pestered me about if it were mine while they laughed, I of course lied. I felt a deep shame and utter humiliation. On reflection, fucking IMAGINE if they had been able to be gentle and understanding with me and told me they loved me and still would even if I were gay. From then on I was terrified that they would bring that day up to our other friends as a joke. Perhaps they did a time or two, I don’t recall. These same friends made jokes about the queer kid I mentioned earlier, and both parents of one of the girls regularly gossiped and made homophobic jokes about him when I was at their house

By the time school dances rolled around, I knew I would never be able to go with anyone but friends. Even if I weren’t still deeply closeted, I’m pretty sure my school still had pretty strict rules against bringing same-sex dates to Prom. While I definitely had fun with my friends at the dances we went to, I so desperately longed for a world where I could dance with a boy who loved me like everyone else was able to.

The loneliness and isolation I felt at the end of those nights could be unbearable because it didn’t seem possible for me, even as I looked into the future. I was fully convinced I would live a very lonely life without anyone to love me the way I craved. I didn’t belong in that world, and wouldn’t ever be set up for that kind of happiness, joy, and feeling of content. I would live for everyone else but myself because that’s just the way the world worked for us queers.

I wish I had had just one single person then who gave me full permission to be my authentic queer self on any level. Someone who could hug me and tell me life after high school and college could and would be vastly different. Someone to tell me I wasn’t an unlovable disgusting freak, but rather a kind-hearted boy who deserved a deep love someday because I was a valid and gentle soul who deserved the world. I certainly deserved more than the shame and pain that constantly haunted me.

Maybe then I wouldn’t have thought about death before 30 so much and obsessed over it well into my college career. I might have realized that I needed to learn to be gentle with myself and take care of and prioritize me and my own happiness. So many people let me down and convinced me that I was a filthy sinner and an over-emotional kid with invalid perspectives and feelings. As most of my closest friends, (that I cannot stress enough have been the ones to save my life and encourage the authenticity that I present so proudly today) came into my life after I had already come out fully, they weren’t around during those dark early struggles.

Sometimes as an adult I still wonder what it would have felt like and how profoundly different my life could be if someone had held me close and sincerely told me they’re proud of me for what I survived and overcame, and told me that they can’t wait to see my eyes light up with the love I’ve always dreamed of in a boy, and that I still continue to seek.

Young, baby gay Travis would be in absolute awe if he knew what life had in store for him back then. To see a future version of himself painting his nails, wearing whatever he wanted, dancing with strangers at pride festivals, having the time of his life at drag shows with his queer family and falling in love with boys? Proudly holding a boyfriend’s hand walking downtown in a busy city? Openly telling his dad about the cute boy he’s going on a date with? Going Facebook official with a boy? Being a super vocal advocate and inspiration and mentor to not only queer family, but to people he hardly talks to but manages to influence and inspire just by unashamedly being himself? Genuinely looking forward to kissing his new husband in front of family and friends on his wedding day, knowing it’ll be one of the happiest days of his entire life?

Holy. Actual. Fuck.

Travis of six or seven years ago wouldn’t have even dared to dream this big, let alone baby gay Travis. He probably would have been utterly mortified but SO comforted to see that future life when he didn’t believe it to be any level of possible.

I’m so fucking proud of myself for this journey, and no one will ever take that away from me or water down my trauma or the grueling work I’ve put in. Genuinely, this is the one thing in my life that makes me absolutely burst with pride.

I think I want to learn how to keep baby Travis in mind with this pride without having to revisit the trauma in the process. Look back at him with open arms, excited to see him learn and blossom into his actual self someday. Even if he could have desperately used someone like the me I am today, he survived then, and continues to persevere today.

He’s queer as fuck, and proud to shout it from the rooftops. He’s a voice and an advocate for the voiceless. A shining light and beacon of hope for those still navigating their terrifying escape from their closeted life. He’s going to meet a man someday and love him so deeply in the way baby Travis always dreamed of. Above all, he’s going to continue to make that little guy so incredibly proud because he knows now the importance of loving himself in the process.

I’m so proud of that scared little boy. I just wish he could have known then how proud he would make himself one day.

As you talk with the queer people in your life, please keep in mind that just about all of us have incredible trauma directly tied to our identities. Talk to them with love, compassion, and understanding. Tell them how proud of them you are for pursuing their own happiness in the face of oppression and rejection.

Demand better from elected officials. Advocate for us. Shut down homophobic ideals, even if you think it’ll make your family and friends uncomfortable to hear. Support queer content, artists and creators. Be a proud ally, but don’t ever allow yourself to take the spotlight away from actual queer people or our queer spaces. Mourn, love, and celebrate with us.

Understand why pride is SO fucking important to us, and why you never have to worry about needing your own pride events. Listen to us and love us for exactly who we are, and were always meant to be. Love is the most incredible, beautiful, and often rare human experience we’re able to experience during our short time on this planet, and it should always be celebrated.

Happy Pride!

#pride #gay #lgbt #journaling #love #queer #coming out #coming out stories #queer trauma #adolescent trauma #self love #healing #trauma

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st-just · 3 years

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Semi-coherent Thoughts on the Poppy War Series

(Because I really need to start forcing myself to write semi-consistently again)

So I’ll say outright that I actually liked the series quite a bit, which does mean I actually got engaged and invested enough to start turning it over and picking it apart in my head after I finished it. So, like, this is probably going to come across as more negative overall than my actual opinions of the books.

Anyway, first off I really do adore Rin as a protagonist (I’d say ‘heroine’, but, well, no). Now partially this is because I always love even minimally sympathetic morally grey (..grey like coal soot, in this case) protagonists. But she’s just also such a complete garbage fire of a person, it’s kind of endearing. Well, that’s a bit callous – her entire personality is more or less a conflict between different kinds of unhealthy responses to powerlessness and trauma. Be she’s also just such a mess, and when she really starts leaning into delusions of grandeur you can’t help but root for her and hope things do actually turn out okay, regardless of how many fivers of blood she’s currently fantasizing about creating.

A big part of that is just how thoroughly awful the entire setting is, and how terrible everyone in it are, of course. Like, there are basically exactly three developed character in the entire trilogy who are unambiguously at least mostly good people (Chen, probably Venka, specifically the amnesiac and semi-delusional version of Jiang, but that’s being generous), and the fact that they stick around with Rin right to the end kind of puts that into doubt, honestly. Beyond that – almost every family has negligent or abusive parents, and literally every political figure is a bloody-handed tyrant ruling through violence and fear. The Hesperians are racist imperialists convinced they have a divine mandate to conquer the world, the Mugenese are every horror story from the IJA during WW2 translated to a pre-industrial fantasy setting, the ruling elite of Nikara are so many racist, scheming, power-hungry snakes with no concerns except their own position....

And, part and parcel with how terrible the setting is, Kuang does an incredible job of making all the worst things Rin does (until the final act, anyway) incredibly cathartic and badass and fun-in-a-fucked-up-way to read. There’s a terrible sort of awe while she turns the main islands of not!Japan into a pyroclastic hellscape. And whenever she gets a chance to enact any of her numerous revenges on some of the many people who abused and betrayed her it’s always poetic, in a Count-of-Monte-Cristo sort of way, and so kind of sickly compelling, even beyond it being some of the only times Rin’s really hopeful and happy. (Also, there are fun villainous monologues and quippy post-murder one-liners!)

Also, all forms of love are a terrible idea 100% of the time and is only going to end in at least one of the parties dead, abused, or (more or less literally) killing themselves in order to keep up with the other/earn their approval/try to keep them together. (I mean, Rin mostly had horrible taste in men, but Chen wasn’t able to stay mad at her for longer than a few months even after the whole ‘genocide’ thing, which he’s just about the only person to react to with any horror whatsoever. And look at how that ended up working out for him, so-)

I’m sure comparing grimdark fantasy to A Song of Ice And Fire is thoroughly out of fashion by now, but the overall perspective really did strike me as incredibly similar to Martin’s, a lot of the time. ‘Legitimate’ power and ‘lawful’ authority are ultimately nothing but polite fictions maintained by violence, terror and brutal oppression. War is a hell suffered most keenly by civilians with the misfortune to live and die in the middle of it, and least of all by the people with the power who actually start and end them. A flawed and unequal peace is very often preferable to dragging everything to hell with you as you die for the sake of freedom. And so on.

Now, to start the nitpicking – this is entirely personal and aesthetic, but it was kind of annoying how each of the first two books ended in moments of megalomaniac grandeur and terrifying empowerment, and then the next book started with a timeskip of things having gone to shit and her back under someone else’s thumb, and then a solid majority of the text is spent getting manipulated, betrayed, and finally crawling and clawing her way back out to the same point (both emotionally and in terms of independence/vision) that she had been at the previous book’s climax.

This isn’t anything even close to unique to TPW, of course – everything going to shit between the end of one story and the start of the sequel is kind of endemic to a lot of genres, really. And it is frankly incredibly in character for Rin to go through cycles flipping between resentment at being manipulated and used, and desperately craving authority figures to tell her what she should do and give her validation as valuable or useful. Still a bit annoying to read, though.

I’m sure it’s more me than the books – not like they didn’t put in the effort – but I could just never get really invested in the whole enemies-to-almost-lovers-to-enemies-again-to-? Thing with Nezha. Like, he’s interesting in that you can do a 180 perspective flip and he’d clearly be just as suitable a protagonist as Rin is, and his life’s very sad and everything. But, like, we get a front row seat to Rin’s internal monologue, and she gets thirsty for plenty of terrible men (and one awful woman), the only thing that makes Nezha special is that he’s not at least twice her age. So I never really got nearly as emotionally invested in them as the books seemed to expect me to. Which does kind of hurt the whole final act of book three.

Speaking of – okay, the ending isn’t awful or anything, but it is kind of disappointing in being exactly what you would expect it to be, as far as Rin’s character arc goes? Which might be just because I was already primed to compare this to ASOIF and she just literally pulls a Daenerys (fire-aligned vengeance/justice character with revolutionary impulses and an autocratic sensibility is willing to burn down the world in the process of freeing it, goes mad with power and paranoia, needs to be put down for the good of the country), but still. Her reading Venka throwing her to the ground to avoid an assassination attempt as a betrayal and burning her to death before she realized what was happening was just really heavy handed, you know? Same with turning on Kitay, who at this point is her actual literal soulmate. (Also sad in a broader sense, because those two are like literally two of the only characters in the entire series I’d actually peg as worthy of/capable of being trusted with political power.)

The specifics aside, I’m a miserable enough person to appreciate how unsatisfying the actual resolution at the end of the book is – imperialism wins! Literally no choice but to sign those unequal treaties and hope you’re eventually able to grow strong enough to force them out! Everything is the same as before this forty-year cycle of wars except much, much worse! - but yeah, I really just don’t actually care about Nezha enough as a character for it to really land. Also Kitay and Venka deserved better, even if literally no one else did.

Anyway, yeah, good series. Would recommend if you like the genre and can stomach all the, well, everything.

#books #the poppy war #the dragon republic #the burning god #r. f. kuang #book review #in this essay I will #this is theoretically a writing blog

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mneiai · 3 years

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Jaster and Obi-Wan, Krownest. If we had met sooner, I wouldn’t have to do this now.

I don't know why this ended up being the first one I got an idea for, but, here we are lol

xxxxxx

Jaster's cape flapped behind him in the chill wind, against the white of the snow surrounding them, Obi-Wan thought of how he looked like a propaganda poster come to life. The Mand'alor Triumphant.

At that angle, Obi-Wan couldn't even see the bodies around them, the soot and blood, and other things, soiling the trampled snow at most of their feet.

"If we had met sooner, I wouldn't have to do this now." Jaster's tone made a strong showing of regret, though in the Force there was nothing but the slow fading giddiness of battle and victory. "If you had forsworn the False Mand'alor, you would have been welcomed among the Faithful."

Whichever Wren it was they'd dug out of the pile of survivors and decided was high ranking enough to speak to was brave in the way of someone who knew their life was already forfeit. "You'll never win this, Mereel."

"I will. Every day Vizsla slinks away to a new hiding place instead of challenging me is a victory. There are so few neutral clans left they barely even count anymore. And you...your clan will serve as an example. What will happen to any who stay loyal to him." Jaster walked around the Wren, as if barely paying attention to him. "All of the adults of Clan Wren will be executed as dar'Manda. Krownest will be given to a clan who is faithful to *me*, your ade will be separated and raised as foundlings. Your name will be forgotten but all but the most devoted of scholars."

Fear was growing in the Wren, and those captives who were in hearing distance. Which was a calculated number, Obi-Wan knew, just enough to let this information spread, to see who would break knowing. Death was not a major threat against a Mandalorian, but the fear that Jaster could be legitimate enough to keep their souls from the Manda, combined with knowing the enemy would poison their children's minds against their enemies, would serve to persuade some to betray Death Watch.

Obi-Wan had seen it once before, already. He hoped he didn't have to see it again.

When he'd been offered a position of neutral observer in the renewed Mandalorian Clan Wars, he'd thought what he'd see would be familiar. He still remembered his year on the run with Satine, the terrorist attacks interspersing various clan meetings.

Mereel had been, so the story claimed, captured by an enemy and stowed away for all that time, missing the chance to bring some legitimacy to the traditionalist Mandalorians' cause. When he was freed (and Obi-Wan had doubts, but none of his other theories were any less preposterous), he slowly regained followers to his cause, support from across the sector and outside of it, from all the people and corporations that Death Watch and the New Mandalorians had made their enemies over the years.

Satine's death at Death Watch's hands had opened up a power vacuum that Jaster had expertly stepped into. And soon enough, Obi-Wan was sure, the entire sector would be his.

Jaster was leaving, pulling Obi-Wan from his thoughts, the Wren on the ground no longer forced to kneel, but slumped over with a bolt between the eyes. It was the easy way out, Obi-Wan knew, to let his mind wander instead of focus, but it was the closest he'd come to protecting himself.

No amount of diplomatic immunity (something he wasn't entirely sure the Mandalorians even understood) would protect him from trauma.

His feet led him straight back to the ship they'd taken down, only a few paces behind Jaster. They were the only two that entered, Jaster turning to face him as soon as the door sealed shut behind him.

"You disapprove?"

Obi-Wan stiffened. "It's not my place to approve or disapprove."

Jaster smiled, a wicked look that made a shiver go down Obi-Wan's spine. "It could be," he murmured, gloved hand tracing a light touch over Obi-Wan's cheek.

"You only want me because I was hers." He didn't dare speak Satine's name, still remembering the slurs the Mandalorians had slung the last time she'd come up.

"You undervalue yourself, Ben," Jaster ignored the wince Obi-Wan gave at Satine's nickname for him, "I saw you defending yourself out there, and getting to the ade and defending them. As soon as you admit you're a Mandalorian, not some Jedi, I'll have to fight off other suitors."

He should never have spoken Mando'a, he knew, should have never shown just how much of their culture he knew. When he was only Satine's pet Jedi, they'd ignored him. But then they saw his "potential," then Jaster started paying attention, and he'd accidentally sealed his fate.

#jaster mereel #obi wan kenobi #jastobi #ask answers #koramberlynne

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