so one of the things that's so horrifying about birth control is that you have to, like, navigate this incredibly personal choice about your body and yet also face the epitome of misogyny. like, someone in the comments will say it wasn't that bad for me, and you'll be utterly silenced. like, everyone treats birth control like something that's super dirty. like, you have no fucking information or control over this thing because certain powerful people find it icky.
first it was the oral contraceptives. you went on those young, mostly for reasons unrelated to birth control - even your dermatologist suggested them to control your acne. the list of side effects was longer than your arm, and you just stared at it, horrified.
it made you so mentally ill, but you just heard that this was adulthood. that, yes, there are of course side effects, what did you expect. one day you looked up yasmin makes me depressed because surely this was far too intense, and you discovered that over 12,000 lawsuits had been successfully filed against the brand. it remains commonly prescribed on the open market. you switched brands a few times before oral contraceptives stopped being in any way effective. your doctor just, like, shrugged and said you could try a different brand again.
and the thing is that you're a feminist. you know from your own experience that birth control can be lifesaving, and that even when used for birth control - it is necessary healthcare. you have seen it save so many people from such bad situations, yourself included. it is critical that any person has access to birth control, and you would never suggest that we just get rid of all of it.
you were a little skeeved out by the implant (heard too many bad stories about it) and figured - okay, iud. it was some of the worst pain you've ever fucking experienced, and you did it with a small number of tylenol in your system (3), like you were getting your bikini line waxed instead of something practically sewn into your body.
and what's wild is that because sometimes it isn't a painful insertion process, it is vanishingly rare to find a doctor that will actually numb the area. while your doctor was talking to you about which brand to choose, you were thinking about the other ways you've been injured in your life. you thought about how you had a suspicious mole frozen off - something so small and easy - and how they'd numbed a huge area. you thought about when you broke your wrist and didn't actually notice, because you'd thought it was a sprain.
your understanding of pain is that how the human body responds to injury doesn't always relate to the actual pain tolerance of the person - it's more about how lucky that person is physically. maybe they broke it in a perfect way. maybe they happened to get hurt in a place without a lot of nerve endings. some people can handle a broken femur but crumble under a sore tooth. there's no true way to predict how "much" something actually hurts.
in no other situation would it be appropriate for doctors to ignore pain. just because someone can break their wrist and not feel it doesn't mean no one should receive pain meds for a broken wrist. it just means that particular person was lucky about it. it should not define treatment.
in the comments of videos about IUDs, literally thousands of people report agony. blinding, nauseating, soul-crushing agony. they say things like i had 2 kids and this was the worst thing i ever experienced or i literally have a tattoo on my ribs and it felt like a tickle. this thing almost killed me or would rather run into traffic than ever feel that again.
so it's either true that every single person who reports severe pain is exaggerating. or it's true that it's far more likely you will experience pain, rather than "just a pinch." and yet - there's nothing fucking been done about it. it kind of feels like a shrug is layered on top of everything - since technically it's elective, isn't it kind of your fault for agreeing to select it? stop being fearmongering. stop being defensive.
you fucking needed yours. you are almost weirdly protective of it. yours was so important for your physical and mental health. it helped you off hormonal birth control and even started helping some of your symptoms. it still fucking hurt for no fucking reason.
once while recovering from surgery, they offered you like 15 days of vicodin. you only took 2 of them. you've been offered oxy for tonsillitis. you turned down opioids while recovering from your wisdom tooth extraction. everything else has the option. you fucking drove yourself home after it, shocked and quietly weeping, feeling like something very bad had just happened. the nurse that held your hand during the experience looked down at you, tears in her eyes, and said - i know. this is cruelty in action.
and it's fucked up because the conversation is never just "hey, so the way we are doing this is fucking barbaric and doctors should be required to offer serious pain meds" - it's usually something around the lines of "well, it didn't kill you, did it?"
you just found out that removing that little bitch will hurt just as bad. a little pinch like how oral contraceptives have "some" serious symptoms. like your life and pain are expendable or not really important. like maybe we are all hysterical about it?
hysteria comes from the latin word for uterus, which is great!
you stand here at a crossroads. like - this thing is so important. did they really have to make it so fucking dangerous. and why is it that if you make a complaint, you're told - i didn't even want you to have this in the first place. we're told be careful what you wish for. we're told that it's our fault for wanting something so illict; we could simply choose not to need medication. that maybe if we don't like the scraps, we should get ready to starve.
we have been saying for so long - "i'm not asking you to remove the option, i'm asking you to reconsider the risk." this entire time we hear: well, this is what you wanted, isn't it?
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Okay now that Anissa is in the show, I have to talk about THAT storyline. There's not much particularly new I can say that hasn't already been discussed but I need to gather my thoughts on what the show has to do to be successful in this regard. With that being said,
Spoilers for things the show has not covered yet
And massive Trigger Warning for discussions of sexual assault and post-assault trauma.
So first things out of the way, I do not believe they should cut it. The changes the show has made are ultimately pretty minor. A character change, order of events swapped. With them sticking as close as they are to the comic, I think it would be a massive problem to skip over it from a story telling standpoint.
From a real world standpoint, it's even more important. Male sexual assault is something that rarely gets depicted properly. It's usually a joke or a moment of triumph and that very much has had an effect on the way we look at it in the real world. And since Invincible is now a show pretty much everybody has their eyes on, choosing not to talk about it would be missing an opportunity to have a very real, very important conversation that very well could educate men on how to navigate and survive what they are going through.
I'm also worried that they'll be too afraid to actually say the word "rape". Lots of modern adaptations delete important discussions like Sokka's sexism or the gender discussions from Cowboy Bebop in order to avoid properly handling them and usually replace them with something worse in a sort of "all bark and no bite" liberalism. Directly saying it as it is is incredibly important to showing that talking about it is not only NOT shameful, but also necessary in getting the help you need and the healing that is necessary to survive.
And from a storytelling standpoint, saying it is important too. The moment where Mark tells Eve what happened is not only great in showing that telling someone is important but is also the moment where Mark is forced to admit the truth to himself. "She raped me." Those three words are a massive turning point for the whole story. Character dynamics change, this becomes a focus for most of Mark's loved ones, and it fundamentally changes his life.
Markus. This is a piece of the puzzle I don't see many talk about. While the rest is a showcase of what to do, Markus as a character is a showcase of what not to. It is so, so rare that a child conceived of a rape is properly depicted, nevermind discussed. From Mark's POV, he holds no ill will towards his son. He simply wants him to live a life on Earth with his family like he did and just can't be with him because he is needed in space. But to Markus, his dad hates him. He thinks his father keeps him on Earth so that he doesn't have to think about him. And this idea of his father's disgust contorts his image of himself. He begins to feel self-hatred, hatred towards his mother for making him this way, and hatred towards his father for abandoning him and leaving him to despise what he sees in the mirror. "You made Terra with love. I was made with hate."
Whether Mark meant it or not, his neglect of Markus ruined his early life. No matter how many friends he made, what groups he joined, they could never fill that hole. He idolized his father. I mean, how could he not? His father was, IS a great hero. A man who was out at that very moment leading the movement for universal peace. But because Mark barely visited him, he only had an idea of what his father was like. A man who sacrificed so much to help the world, who fought in space and yet still managed to save the Earth dozens of times. A man who had the time to help everyone and yet couldn't make time for him.
(Important edit: in no way do I mean to say Mark is obligated to be a part of his son's life, I meant that Mark chooses to be there but ultimately fails to do so and that causes issues)
And don't get me wrong, this story has some pretty glaring flaws. For example I think they tried a little too hard to teach Mark that the person who hurt him is human too and has positively affected the lives of many. Like absolutely there is a conversation to be had there but because they had to move on with the plot they kinda just went "HEY MARK DON'T BE SAD SHE'S COOL NOW AND ALSO SHE'S DEAD SO THERE'S NO POINT IN LINGERING OKAY BYYEEEEE". But I think instead of these flaws scaring the show away they should invite the show forward. It's an opportunity to improve on the story and discussions rather than shy away from it.
Oh and also harking back to my previous point in paragraph 2, there's another aspect that makes it stand out in an important discussion. If I'm remembering correctly, the comic makes it pretty clear that Mark could have overpowered Anissa but didn't for a couple of reasons, namely not wanting to hurt her. And that is SO important and SO rare. A discussion surrounding an assault victim who could have fought back but didn't where the victim is NOT portrayed as in the wrong and in fact just as worthy to be traumatized as any other victim is SO DAMN IMPORTANT and could legit change a lot in the way we look at these topics.
So yeah, I think the series should adapt it. Also I think it would be great if they brought on actual victims and experts and whatnot so their depiction could be just that much more focused around what needs to be said. Sorry if all this read as klunky, I have a lot of thoughts bouncing around up here that I kinda just spewed onto the page with no particular order. I'm also obviously not the most educated on the topic. My personal experiences with this were relatively minor and not something I've ever felt comfortable addressing. And yeah I know it's important no matter how "small" or "minor" it seems and I'm not trying to downplay any of that but I just don't really have the words to phrase that differently. Which is exactly why I think we NEED education and discussions about this stuff so that we DO know the words to navigate the topic.
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