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#implications of abuse
gorentaya · 3 months
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“Angel’s feelings” Question from @/shiruka_etc
(Follow @/Patient.Zero_Ask.Box on instagram to ask questions and interact with the main cast of Patient Zero!)
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bittyfromquotev · 5 months
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I’m not. Nope. Never. I’m not going to apologize for kinda calling my dad abusive even though he’s not. He’s just toxic.
I wish he wouldn’t just lecture me about when I’ve done something wrong and be done. I wish he’d tell me that it was good that I’m trying to fix it afterwards. He never does that. It’s always just “This was not okay. You did something wrong” and nothing else.
And also, is it REALLY THAT BAD if he’s WRONG for once? He accused my of lying about something with no reasoning behind it other than he left after the time he said I was doing the thing I needed to do for longer. I tried to explain and he accused me of fucking LECTURING HIM???? Like WTF???? And he doesn’t even apologize afterwards and tells me that he “doesn’t have to listen to me” and “doesn’t have to believe me.”
I’m definitely not going to contact him much once I get away. My mom is so much better.
PS: Contrary to his accusations in another argument, I do NOT want my parents to fight or get a divorce. That is the LAST thing I want, considering myself and my brother, plus both of them.
I love my dad but I’m afraid of leaving my little brother alone with him once I move out. My mother will be present, but it still scares me.
Edit: HIS FUCKING IDEA OF TRUST IS: “Your mom and I can go into your room or your devices and look through your stuff whenever we want.” Fucking ASSHOLE.
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cock-holliday · 8 months
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Adding to the post about staking our identities in being the “opposite” of what bigots think, but this deserves it’s own post…
The response to “gay relationships are depraved and evil” is NOT! Is NOT IS NOT IS NOT “queer relationships are inherently pure and free of toxicity and abuse uwu, we’re not like straight people”
You will not get the chance to lean into this rhetoric I will hit you so fast with a rock.
Queer relationships are not inherently healthier than straight ones, wlw relationships are not inherently healthier than mlm relationships cause phew there’s no icky boys—which is where abuse comes from!
Relationships are relationships and anyone has the potential to be an abuser if they are abusing someone. No, being gay doesn’t make you evil and abusive but it doesn’t make you NOT abusive. Abuser is not an identity, it is an action, and the perception that queer people can’t be abusive because we are oppressed lets queer abusers skate by!
Do not respond to homophobia with sanitizing people’s actions using their identity!
Nuance is so sexy please try it!
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jamiesfootball · 9 months
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Actually I will say this in regards to Beard, Wembley, and James Tartt Sr
I think Beard After Hours really shows how much the tone of Ted Lasso is seen through framing lens of Ted himself. Even if Ted says the story wasn’t really about him, the thematic weight of the show is absolutely about Ted. And Beard After Hours may be a crazy hallucinatory version in its self, but it’s still basically our only glance into this world when it’s not actively being Ted’s World.
And i think it being Ted’s World is why at Wembley, we only see the implication of violence. It’s always been the undercurrent when Jamie tells people about his dad - that he pushed him to dominate, that he’s a dick - but in that locker room scene? Man. Despite the show avoiding using the word ‘abuse’, everything from the acting to the staging to the dialogue fucking SCREAMS the impending threat of immediate violence from the top of the scene onwards.
I don’t think I have ever seen anyone disagree on the reading of that scene. The way Jamie tells him ‘don’t talk to me like that’ — we all agree that that’s something he learned from Dr Sharon. We are all in agreement, after watching him punch his dad, that it was the first time he’s ever fought back. And we all believe it, that when James got up saying ‘you can have that one for free’ that the threat was immediate and very real.
But before it can reach that point it’s cut off. Beard pulls James away. It’s a tense, hard scene to watch, but the actual violence shown is very minimal.
And then we get to Beard After Hours, where James has followed Beard out of Ted’s world, and we see the actual violence that just as easily could’ve taken place, and likely has before, in a world where Ted Lasso was not the lens with which we viewed things.
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bonefall · 2 months
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Clear Sky is a Monster.
Of all the characters in Warrior Cats, I think Clear Sky was the most heavily mishandled.
At every turn, the narrative begs you to sympathize with him, to "understand" the "misunderstood." To this end, his brother Gray Wing is used to "keep faith" in his inherent goodness, his abused son, Thunder, is forced to go back to him over and over, and his second dead wife is completely lobotomized in death to absolve him of all sin.
Because of this, of all this set-up for the "redemption" arc they're trying to tell in the last three books, DOTC is Clear Sky's story. Everything primarily exists to benefit and serve his arc. Thunder and Gray Wing might have POVs, but HE is the character who truly drives the plot. So in order to HAVE conflict for that back half, two evil foreign cats, Slash and One Eye, are summoned to act as contrast.
Their narrative purpose is to display "true evil" to make Clear Sky look less bad in comparison. Unfortunately, Clear Sky is the most malignant, deadly character who has ever blighted Warrior Cats.
The "pure evil" examples they summon aren't effective contrasts because they're flat. Clear Sky is what real abusers look like.
His rhetoric is what it sounds like when a cult leader is trying to keep control over a group. He lies when it benefits him, justifies his actions with his tragic backstory to assuage his guilt and manipulate others, and violently lashes out when his feelings are hurt before blaming his victim for making him angry.
He only made "some mistakes" in that SOME of his actions were accidents-- the vast majority of them were malicious, self-absorbed, intentional choices to punish, hurt, and kill others.
I've spoken about Bumble. I've tallied his body count next to Tigerstar. I've talked about how his infant son's death was his fault in sequel books, and called attention to the infected wound face shoving scene that no one talks about. I can't fit every detail into a single post-- because he's so rancid that I would practically be posting entire books.
So what I want to do here is tackle the heart of Clear Sky. Everything he does, everything he's motivated by, is absolute and utter control over other people. He leverages his "trauma" to evoke empathy from his targets to make them easier to manipulate. He's a dirty liar. He breaks down to physical violence when all other tactics stop working.
He's one of the most severe and realistic abusers I've ever read about outside of very adult literature-- and when I read the reasons why he's attracted to Star Flower, my stomach immediately lurched.
The Killing of Misty
Starvation Rhetoric and the Memory of Fluttering Bird
Aside; a question
Hunger as a punishment; he doesn't care about starvation
Exoneration arc
Predation: Star Flower is a replacement for his son.
I think that index is an evocative content warning. But to say it again; this post contains child and domestic abuse, physical assault, public humiliation, incestuous grooming implications, and a lot of murder.
I need to start with the death of Misty. I see a few people saying that Clear Sky killed her for "being on his land" or trespassing, but this is actually a misstatement that I feel is important to correct.
Misty and her children were on their own land. It was her house. Clear Sky killed her to take it.
This is one of the most important details to remember about Clear Sky, that this is the consistent end point of his obsessive need for power and control. By harassment, by violence, or by death, he will brutalize anyone who does not give him what he wants, or who makes him feel bad, and find some way to justify it.
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This territory expansion was for no logical reason. There was plenty of food and plenty of land. Any aggression that's happening on this territory is in response to how he's been stealing land and mauling people.
When it's found out she was fighting to defend her children, Clear Sky's immediate response is to slaughter them too.
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Petal doesn't have milk either. It wasn't about the logistics. He wanted to kill the kids, because looking at them made him feel bad, and she just managed to stop him.
Starvation Rhetoric and the Image of Fluttering Bird
It is often said that Clear Sky is doing this because he's "traumatized" from how his little sister, Fluttering Bird, starved to death in the mountains. That the emotion came from wanting to feed people. That's incorrect. It wasn't about food. Fluttering Bird's death, and all the "starvation" he's faced, are used as manipulation tactics to guilt, influence, and control other characters, particularly when he might meet resistance or be held accountable for something.
It was always, ALWAYS, about control.
He does not care about actually helping people; "Starvation Rhetoric" through Fluttering Bird is an image he can invoke to justify the actions that are as bloody and cruel as the one this post starts off with. Either in his own mind, or in the minds of the cats he's manipulating.
He does this to Falling Feather, before slicing her face open in anger when she doesn't buy it. He does it to Rainswept Flower, before he strangles her to death. And he does it in the chapter just before Misty's murder, both to his Clan and then to Thunder,
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Clear Sky climbed up in front of an entire crowd and gave a grand speech about hunger and "adjusting" the borders around territory he plans to conquer. When he gets to "forgiveness" he feigns pain to make his point because he is performing. If the sentiment is not a total lie, then at bare minimum, he is intentionally playing this up for the crowd.
He is rallying the Clan to support his violence against the cats whose land he wants to steal, and selling it with his life's hardships.
The audience is clearly well-trained, because several cats recognize the cue, particularly Frost who is praised for loudly comforting him. This signals "loyalty" because showing your sympathy towards his "suffering" is how this type of emotional manipulation works. It creates a persecuted, righteous in-group.
He's also apparently used this tactic before, since this entire crowd knows what "I Would Never Forgive Myself " means.
He's made sycophants out of his followers. Like a cult leader.
His abused son, however, hasn't been fully indoctrinated yet. Seeing Thunder uncomfortable with the idea of expanding the borders for no reason, Clear Sky calls him over for a personal propaganda session.
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Clear Sky begins the exchange by calling this a "duty" and a "great honor." Immediately framing what he plans to do as righteous.
He puts on the act when Thunder shows resistance, dramatically pausing to let the guilt trip sink in.
"Thunder waited, realizing that he said the wrong thing."
And then Clear Sky launches into infantilizing Thunder, talking down to him like a child who's too inexperienced to see the "signs of starvation," acting like he's being "patient" in "explaining" it.
And then we get it. "I know what starvation looks like (so stop trusting your own eyes) because I have been through more than you (so shut up and do what I tell you), and I'm being a HERO for what I'm about to do (so opposing me would make you a bad person)."
Thanks to these crocodile tears, looking "moved," the act works. The victim is immediately wracked by guilt because the abuser seems genuinely emotional.
He even lovebombs him over the corpse of Misty in the next chapter, making Thunder feel threatened.
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Thunder doesn't have the words to describe what is happening to him, but he knows that this sudden snap to praise isn't natural. That something is very wrong.
A Question.
Before I move on to show that this IS an act, and that he is lying about how important avoiding starvation is to him, I will ask a question. Please think about it, because I promise I mean it genuinely;
Why does it matter if Clear Sky actually believes this or not?
The victims are just as dead either way, yes? Thunder is just as abused and guilt tripped. The entire Clan has been driven towards violence while coddling and cooing at their Supreme Leader. Clear Sky is slowly annexing the entire forest. If you have ever accepted that he had "good intentions" as an excuse for the harm he did, or that abuse and murder was what he imagined was "the right thing," or that his trauma justifies the way he leverages his own pain to make cats do what he wants... why do you think that?
Why does that make it morally better, as the narrative concludes? Would you accept the same for every other WC villain or antagonist? Tigerstar? Slash? Tom the Wifebeater? Brokenstar? Rainflower?
How could you tell the difference, if you couldn't read their actual thoughts on the page? ...are there any other "good intentions" you've accepted, somewhere else?
Don't share that answer with me. It's a question for you. Sit with it.
Hunger as a punishment; he doesn't care about starvation.
...but, regardless, Clear Sky is not deluded about starvation. It's a justification for his obsessive need for control, and always has been. There was no shortage before stealing Misty's land and kits, he is fully aware that there's more prey than they can eat.
He punishes Falling Feather with hunger and harassment for thought crime, by briefly thinking of leaving. But first, he invokes Fluttering Bird at her like he did before, flying into a screeching fit of rage when she doesn't buy it,
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"I'm sorry I hurt you... BUT" is THE wifebeater phrase. THE stereotypical line of a domestic abuser. "I'm sorry I hit you... but it's your fault for making me so angry."
She went through the same exact starvation he did, calls out that he's just framing his greed as being for the collective benefit of his subjects, and is assaulted for that.
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When we're in his head, we see his REAL concerns are not about hunger. He invoked Fluttering Bird to try and make her shut up and bow down to him; what he's focused on is her "gossiping" and "whining" about the open wound he left on her face. He's still furious at Fircone and Nettle for how Thunder QUESTIONED him. So he will "strengthen their commitment."
When "starvation" DOES enter his thoughts, it is to assuage his own guilt and JUSTIFY what he already did. What he already WANTS to do. It's post-hoc.
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He had to suppress his own guilt at how his greed and ambition made these children into orphans, completely unable to admit that he's ever been wrong or has a change to make, so he invokes the starvation rhetoric at himself to excuse it. So he feels less bad.
Everything, EVERYTHING, in this confrontation is about his pleasure at being able to torment his subordinates. To continue the abuse when the initial confrontation is over. If it isn't pride in his power and control over them, it's plain sadism.
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He invokes starvation in front of the crowd, again, after being pleasured at the guilt in her eyes, hoping that everyone sees her writhing with shame and embarrassment. Fear wasn't at the root of why he assaulted Falling Feather; rage was, and now he feels better that he got to humiliate the person who offended him.
Starvation Rhetoric is a manipulation tactic.
It goes RIGHT BACK to his twisted idea of "loyalty." Obedience.
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A cat who's actually, primarily concerned about starvation wouldn't encourage other cats to steal her food if they feel like it. He wouldn't be using it as a weapon to retaliate against her because she hurt his feelings.
This is paired with the fact he restricts and monitors the diet of his cats. They eat when he allows it, and only what he gives them, in spite of there being piles of dead animals rotting, going to waste.
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We then find he personally doles out food from these piles, plucking carcasses off them and flinging them at his cats, one by one. Probably so he can watch how grateful they are to him and make sure they stay a little hungry-- and definitely because it means he can control WHO gets to eat at all.
If Clear Sky chucked a mouse at Falling Feather and someone took it? She would have gone hungry. For not groveling to him. Like when he decides to starve her brother; a hostage who he promised to feed and care for.
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He's a dishonest snake. He lied about abandoning baby Thunder, calling it a "test of strength," he lied about Bumble's death, he lied about keeping Jackdaw's Cry fed.
And he lied about starvation to Thunder, because he was just making up an excuse to steal more land.
He wasn't "seeing the signs" of starvation when he moved to "adjust" his borders. Even FURTHER into this so-called "delusional slip" into tyranny, he's freely admitting that it takes months for a person to starve when it benefits his sadistic need to punish undeserving cats.
"Dumb moor cats, always expecting more than they DESERVE."
Not need. DESERVE. It's not a delusion about starvation and it never was. STARVATION is how he CONTROLS SkyClan, and once again he's angry that his pleasure has been sullied.
The massacre at Fourtrees was started over Jackdaw's Cry catching a bat after being starved, on land that Clear Sky has decided RIGHT NOW that he also owns, because it mades him think about being disobeyed.
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The bat is forgotten as Clear Sky pivots into a tantrum, wanting to make his family HURT for being 'disloyal' and 'ungrateful.' For leaving him. He LIKES seeing people grovel, cower, and beg, getting PLEASURE from watching how he can hurt and command other cats, and if you don't give him what he wants he will kill you.
Which, make no mistake, is what the "First Battle" actually is. Clear Sky attempting to murder those who don't worship him or swear their undying fealty to him and his twisted dictatorship. Particularly his own son, the most prominent victim of his emotional abuse.
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It's not about the bat. It was never even about food or starvation. It's about retaliation for any perceived lack of control.
Once again he breaks out starvation rhetoric to try and manipulate someone, and when Rainswept Flower doesn't buy it just like Falling Feather didn't, he murders her in another fit of entitled rage.
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Exoneration arc.
At the end of this battle that was entirely his own fault, we're introduced to the hollowed-out ghost of Storm. She has been flushed of all personality, so that she can be the perfect narrative mouthpiece.
She accepts yet another Fluttering Bird Invocation in spite of how we saw it's not sincere. He was lying the entire time and using starvation rhetoric as a manipulation tactic to get control over his victims.
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And that's it.
That's the consequence. Storm's a little mad at him until he says "Buttering Flird" and she swoons.
He doesn't have to be ""afraid"" anymore because the cats just invented an afterlife to believe in. He keeps all of his power and influence and gets off scot-free, because "guilt" (which we SAW him repressing anyway) is supposed to be the best consequence for murder, abuse, and tyranny.
The husk of Storm even materializes again at the end of book 5 to say it outright; he "never drove anyone away." Not even after Book 4 where it's also his fault One Eye took over his Clan for 5 minutes. It was just destiny.
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His "redemption arc" is just an exoneration arc. The narrative doesn't think he really did anything wrong.
EVERYTHING about Clear Sky has ALWAYS been about making grabs at power, but since the narrative didn't see a problem with him extorting his personal tragedy and the death of a child, his own sister, he continues doing it. As if these behaviors are normal personality 'traits'.
Even when that sister COMES OUT OF HEAVEN TO YELL AT HIM DIRECTLY,
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He finds a way to COMPLETELY miss the point, so he can interpret her words in a bizarrely specific way that will conveniently end with him being the supreme dictator of the entire forest. Just like he ALWAYS does.
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It's the entire 5th book. Clear Sky trying to convince everyone, including himself, that it's Fluttering Bird who wants him to grab at power, NOT himself and his own ambition, that THIS time, he promises, for realsies, it's actually about keeping everyone safe.
But just like ALWAYS, because he does not change, when this tried and true tactic manages to work on Thunder, during ANOTHER exchange where he's dramatically pausing and using the cold shoulder to make his pitiable act land harder,
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He lapses right back into bullying his child, creating situations where Thunder will have difficulty or be put in pain, so that he can have an excuse to mock and belittle him.
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And this all comes to a head when Clear Sky takes romantic interest in Star Flower, his abused son's previous romantic interest.
Predation: Star Flower is a replacement for his son.
Direct parallels are drawn between Thunder and Star Flower. Star Flower contrasts her loyalty to her father to Thunder's "disloyalty" to his own, in an appeal to Clear Sky.
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Clear Sky brushes it off for now, citing that he cannot accept her because of who her father was.
But then, Thunder makes the connection between himself and her, because he knows what it is like to be a victim of parental abuse and correctly clocks that they have this in common,
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On his vouch, Clear Sky accepts her into the group. She starts trying to offer himself to him; hunting twice as hard as the others, self-imposing harsh conditions like taking a wet sleeping spot. In their second interaction, Clear Sky begins to take interest in her.
Thunder himself points out that Star Flower is seeking an abusive tyrant to replace her own father, which reads like he's deflecting the stress of how his father is abusing him to deny a connection he already made. As if Thunder sees so much of himself in Star Flower that it makes him (rightly) feel sick that his father is romantically invested in her;
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Thunder then goes on to follow his own advice and form his own Clan, because Clear Sky IS like One Eye... while Star Flower remains here. At Clear Sky's side. Because she feels like this is what she "deserves," that she "understands" him, truly believing that her crime (warning her father that Clear Sky brought an ambush in case he lost the 1 on 1 death match he requested, which he did) are on the same level as his abuse and murders.
Clear Sky is attracted to Star Flower because, in his own words;
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She is young.
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She will not betray him.
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She won't question him,
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and she obeys him.
We've seen what "betrayal" is to Clear Sky-- not taking his excuses or his beatings. To "disobey" is betrayal. To "question" is disobedience.
These are ALL things he's tried to drill into Thunder. We saw him happily exploit their difference in age to tell him he can't have an opinion. He constructed humiliating games in retaliation for ever being questioned. He tried to murder Thunder and his friends for their "betrayal." Even now, being disobeyed causes explosive reactions.
He was previously grooming the things he now identifies as attractive in a young woman into his child.
If your body becomes too useless to serve him, like Frost and Jagged Peak, you're thrown out. If you don't unquestioningly follow his bloody commands, like Falling Feather or Thunder, you're subjected to abuse and public humiliation. If you're in his way, like Misty or Rainswept Flower were, you die.
If you meet all of his expectations...
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You will be in a horrific position where you will never have agency over your own life ever again. Every move, every word, will have to be carefully crafted so that he feels like you're "loyal" to him by the arbitrary standard he feels that day. Never step out of line, never doubt his decisions, never live for anyone except him and the children you will give him, not even for a moment, because then you will not be "worthy" of his grace.
Star Flower would be in serious danger if this series wasn't written by abuse apologists. They accidentally wrote a perfect reflection of how child abuse victims often find themselves in unsafe and toxic romantic relationships with large age gaps which mirror what they went through as kids; but this team doesn't clock it, playing this relationship as wholesome and genuine.
He finally has someone who ""understands"" him. Because they think the character they wrote is misunderstood.
but reality is plain to see.
Clear Sky is a monster. The most realistic monster in all of WC-- far, far closer to real life predators and domestic abusers than the "born evil" rogues like Slash and One Eye. The Erins seem to believe that what separates Clear Sky from One Eye is "fundamental" good and "fundamental" evil, when the truth is that they'd be separated by very, very little.
If they had realistic motivations, they would be exactly like the character their existence is meant to excuse.
Slash and One Eye HAD to be kept flat and one-dimensional. If the book was more earnest, the only difference between Clear Sky and One Eye would have been that One Eye is stronger. So strong that Clear Sky needed to manipulate the other groups into helping him.
While anyone can change, not everyone will, and Clear Sky has no reason to. He sees no consequences. He has everything he wants; power, a pretty and obedient young mate, and unchecked authority over a brainwashed forest cult. There is always a victim on a leash, a naive enabler, or a bunch of desperate and gullible marks somewhere in his proximity to bully into doing his dirtywork
Whether his "intentions" were sincere or not (evidence points towards not) at its root it was always about control. Power is something he perpetually keeps, and continues to violently use.
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tenisperfection · 6 days
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7x04 being from Buck's perspective broke my brain because of the way we saw Eddie through Buck's eyes. Then I realized that Suspicion, where Eddie was shot, was from Eddie's perspective, and all of Surviviors was from Buck's perspective and I want to jump into the ocean.
#the implications......#we saw eddie's turmoil when carla brought up the follow your heart line#his agony over charlie's abuse#then the shooting and watching his best friend splattered with his blood#that split second where he realized who buck was to him and has been all along#the way he wanted to reach out and touch buck one last time#(do not think about eddie thinking about chris under any circumstances but if you do imagine eddie feeling relieved that buck will be there#and sorrow that he won't be there with chris and won't get to see him grow up and won't get to see buck#and then we have survivors right#we immediately jump to buck's perspective with him getting eddie into the ambulance and eddie asking if buck was hurt *sobs*#and the whole episode is mostly buck's side#but so is the will scene!!!!#because we obviously went nuts over the implications of it#but consider the tone of the scene--there's devotion yes#but most of the tone is that of disbelief#because buck can't believe eddie did this and eddie didn't tell him and eddie is telling him now#and eddie wants buck to carry on for christopher if eddie is gone#and buck absolutely would#but in his mind he can't fathom a world where he has to exist without eddie#and eddie is the one asking him to#hahahahah fuck you don't find it son you make it all over again#buck made this and buck chose this and buck has to live with it#i can't wait for these men to realize/bring to light all the love between them#911 abc#this unraveling on a saturday afternoon is brought to you by insanity
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iraprince · 1 year
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another one of these things that i just kind of bang out top to bottom w no script or plan. getting it out.
just some guy. some partially intangible guy who is not managing, and probably never will manage, to communicate myself fully (and probably i don't even want to?) but also is not managing to shut up about it
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theminecraftbee · 6 months
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hermit horror week day 4: season 7 or taken over
Xisuma slowly blinks at the console logs for the server again. He's very tired; he's been collecting blackstone again, and it's very tiring, collecting blackstone. He's been building a lot of pretty houses, and stocking a lot of shops, and he hasn't had time to look at the console much recently. He probably shouldn't be now, because he's tired, and tired people make mistakes.
He makes a lot of mistakes; he's silly like that. A big derp. It's why he has to be careful, since he's been tired so much lately. He definitely shouldn't have the console open.
It's just, earlier Impulse had a question, since his moss farm kept lagging, and Xisuma thought it would be easy enough to try to find the root cause of. And he did find the root cause of it--Impulse's farm is too fast and his storage simply doesn't keep up with the amount of moss--but there's... some other things...
He blinks again at the dates on the server files. The last edited dates. Slowly, he clicks again on his own player data, and tries to make sense of what he's reading. Files like this, they aren't really meant to be that human-readable. It's--well, it is mostly json, so it's mostly human-readable, actually, but a lot of it is still encrypted, for player safety, which would. Maybe explain what he's looking at? He thinks? He's--well, he does have root access, is the thing, because he's the admin, but he still shouldn't be able to look at any player willy-nilly.
He's a little too much of a derp to be trusted with that. He probably shouldn't even be looking at his data! It's just. That last edited date. Xisuma doesn't edit his own player data. That way lies madness. He's, uh, pretty sure he knows some people who went a little mad doing that. So the fact of the matter is--well, it's not the only file that's been edited recently, he tells himself. Just because it's a lot of memory files that seem to have been edited, as well as access permissions--that's... normal enough for a new season, right?
He's...
He doesn't notice his other self walk up behind him.
"Oh, hey Xisuma. You finished gathering materials for our next build, then?" Evil Xisuma says. All of Xisuma's hairs stand on end.
"I mean, I've gathered enough to get started," Xisuma says.
"Pity. I was really hoping you'd manage to get everything. I thought maybe we'd finish today, but I guess we can't now."
"I--you're right. I'm really sorry."
"No, no, don't worry, don't worry, my friend," Evil Xisuma says. "We probably couldn't have finished today anyway, even if you said you'd try for it."
Xisuma's heart is in his throat. "Sorry, my head's just been. You know how I am. Silly me, forgetting things."
Evil Xisuma shakes his head. "It's awfully lucky I came back this season. Think of all the important things you'd be forgetting without reminders!"
Xisuma looks down and away.
"Gosh, and now you're... playing around in the admin console?"
"Oh!" Xisuma says. "It's, er, nothing really big..."
"Can I see it?"
He barely resists the urge to close out of his player data and hide that's what he'd been looking at. He doesn't know why he wants to hide it. It's not like--well, if Evil Xisuma got mad about it, it would be... right, wouldn't it? Because, well, Xisuma knows full well he shouldn't be looking at or editing his own player data. Editing your own data is the way to madness, and Xisuma, well, he's been so tired lately. He could easily accidentally hit a button. He could easily accidentally hit delete. He has root access, after all.
His heart is in his throat again. He shuffles his feet. "Sure," he says, finally. "I, er, I promise, I wasn't doing anything. I just noticed the last edited date on, uh, files that aren't automatically created by the system? And I thought, gosh, that's weird. I'd only been in there to check on Impulse, really, after he'd had some lag issues. I was just finishing up. It's nothing--the date's weird, though, right? That's all I was noticing."
He watches Evil Xisuma's fingers scroll through all of Xisuma's data. It's not quite fast enough that Xisuma isn't sure he's reading it, and suddenly, Xisuma feels very small.
Finally, Evil Xisuma hands Xisuma's tablet with the admin console open back to him. Xisuma looks down, and Evil Xisuma has closed out of the player data again.
"You just forgot the last maintenance date," Evil Xisuma says.
"Really?" Xisuma says.
"Oh, yeah, for sure. You're so tired lately. You silly derp. You've just been forgetting things easily. You should really get more rest!"
"Oh, but then we won't finish our projects," Xisuma says.
"I guess we wouldn't," Evil Xisuma says back.
"It's just--it's. Most of the time, access permission for player memories isn't edited during maintenance, and I just--I don't remember putting your name down?"
"Why wouldn't you?"
Xisuma tries to think.
"I don't know," he says finally, small, unable to meaningfully articulate anything about what's wrong with it. "I guess it only makes sense, if I'm forgetting things so easily."
"Exactly! Gosh, we make a good team," Evil Xisuma says, and he smiles at Xisuma. Xisuma crookedly smiles back.
"Yeah, we do," Xisuma agrees.
"Don't pull that out again unless I say so, okay?"
"Okay," Xisuma agrees automatically, and then he knows he will not. It makes sense. If he was upsetting himself over nothing like this, why, imagine what he'd do if he could open it whenever? He'd just constantly be upsetting himself!
"Now, my friend, let's return to building the Evil Empire."
"Let's!" agrees Xisuma, and just like that, the entire encounter slips from his mind.
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quecksilvereyes · 1 year
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oh, sister, I am sorry. your eyes are sunken and your skin is bruised. your lips are chapped, your nailbeds bitten raw. your husband's hand on your waist is a ghost's touch held by the band on your left ring finger and I-
I am dead.
I got on the train, Su. Nevermind your tears, nevermind the plea you could not shape with words, nevermind your fingers on the pulse point of my wrist. "stay", you'd said, as you have always done, dictionary in hand and baby teeth yet lodged in your jaw. "don't go where i cannot."
I step through a wardrobe and you follow, damned be reason. I slay a wolf and you follow, I cling to the little ones and you follow, I am crowned and you follow, I am-
I go past a lamp post, and you follow, damned be dread. I go to a train station and you follow, trembling hands and tender heart. I go, and I go, and I go, and you follow. Sun of my skies. Light of my life.
I go. you stop.
are we too old for stories, now? ten-and-four and ten-and-three, budding bodies and steel bones, we are cast from our home. i hold the little ones until i drown in them. you grip your skirts until no iron can press the shape of your palms from them. and you have ever been, cruelly reasonable and logically callous.
say you, glass shard eyes and rouge-red lips: we are english. we are children. she thinks she has found a magical land in the upstairs wardrobe.
say I, trembling hands and coiling guts: we are narnian. we are monarchs. if she's not mad and she's not lying, then logically she must be telling the truth.
my sister Susan, beautiful as folk tales are and twice as sharp, did you intend every invitation you took for me to twist the knife a godly animal once thrust into my guts? perhaps it was the way your eyes turned blue, or the sound of your laughter losing its bells. perhaps it was just my trembling fingers at the back of your legs, drawing stocking lines where no stockings had ever lain.
the line came out shaking, and you rubbed it off until your skin cried red. the hem of your dress still dripped wet when you left that day, turning on heels too narrow for you to walk in.
do you remember? it took you days to come home, and mother wailed for all of them. you crawled into my bed that night, as you did when we were parents to our little ones, those terrible months. your head on my shoulder, your breath in my ear, I held you until morning.
your mouth in my throat, eyes heavy with sleep, tongue heavy with champagne: we are here now. we must make the best of it. he cannot have all our lives, and all our joys. i wish you would laugh again.
doesn't little lucy, shrieking mouth and tumbling legs, laugh enough for us all?
lucy's manic. if she didn't laugh she'd cry.
i think sometimes, in the parts of my guts that are still a schoolboy, and are mean and cruel to match, that the alcohol makes you softer than the daylight ever could. i do not tell you.
i press my lips to your forehead. i wrap my arms around you. the year between us rings heavy, and when I get up in the morning, you do not follow.
I tried, Su. I did. I applied for university, I saw that girl with that smile. with those eyes. I let you take sections from the paper before I ever touched it, I held the little ones in my arms, and I made coffee in the morning. I sat all my exams.
I smiled when the little ones came back smelling of home.
Aslan's wounds, did I try. but-
I have ever been a thing made for stories. brave the way knights are, bloody knuckles and buckling pride. a horse between my calves, a sword in my hands.
I think, sometimes, that I was born for my sword, for the hollow ringing of my heart when I first held it. a part of me, even then, ten-and-three and soaked to the bone.
such bravery is not made for real world boys and real world taunts. there is a map, I think, from the summits of my knuckles to the jaws of every boy who ever looked at me and bared his teeth.
I am sovereign. I am the skies for your sun to burn in.
I am made wrong, for this england, and I cannot take this life you want. I belong, I think, into myths and legend, the star-studded shards of our home.
so I went on the train, Susan. so I died, and I named what you have chosen. so I banned you from their scorning mouths. so you grip your husband's hand, realest of us all, and you cry. you do not follow.
Forgive me.
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seaweedstarshine · 4 months
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“They engineered a psychopath to kill you.” “Totally married her. I'd never have made it here alive without River Song.”
Sources: Let's Kill Hitler, Diary of River Song: My Dinner With Andrew, Closing Time, The Husbands of River Song, Diary of River Song: The Furies, Diary of River Song: Animal Instinct, The Ruby's Curse, Time of the Doctor
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friezaglasiencold · 10 days
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Hi berryblue! What was lord Frieza like as a child? Do you have any anecdotes that you like about him?
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pespillo · 1 year
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these screens are all correlated .
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with the fact that collector saw things/people as "playthings" that could be fixed up even as much damage its done to them, its messes me up with the implications / their behavior towards trying to be open to Belos again so quickly after everything because he thought it could kindness could work, to use their own self in the form of a doll as something that can be broken up and fixed on a whim fully makes me believe they expected to be freed by Philip and continue to be treated the same way he did before, even when Philip was physically lashing out at them in their shadow form, he put trust into Philip that even if they "got broken" , Philip would be able to "fix him" or he would fix themselves and continue playing on, just like the grimwalkers were made over and over and Collector was not raised to see them as their own individuals . By all means Collector was not raised to fear Belos like grimwalkers did , but its worse that Collector was actually always this willing to take in abuse on the guise that its "pretend" or "its just part of the game" because at the end of it all they are inmortal and it "shouldnt matter".
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demeterdefence · 2 months
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i have a lot of bones to pick this chapter and i will get to that but i'm still really pressed by how rachel depicts kronos apparently grieving having to kill hera in her vision
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rachel does this really gross thing where at some point in the narrative, she'll have the male abuser depict some kind of sadness in regards to his female victim, but it is not remorse. it really reads like whitewashing the abuse itself because "can't you see how upset the abuser is that he has to do this :("
apollo got that really disgusting pov chapter talking about his perspective on persephone after raping her and that was bad enough, but then you also see kronos and his relationship with hera being sanitized or even shipped, when hera said verbatim that he abused her and she did not want to sleep with him, she had hoped she could just charm him. the narrative explicitly points out that kronos is a chronic abuser - he kills or severely injures rhea in a fit of rage after using all her powers, he frequently drives away any nymph or consort who approaches him, and he spends who knows how long mentally torturing hera.
there's another essay tucked into that but i just find it so fucking egregious that rachel wants to portray kronos as being upset he has to kill hera because of his own feelings for her, when the fact of the matter is he is choosing to kill her, just like he chose to kill rhea, and swallow his sons, and tear hera in half. depicting an abuser (a serial abuser, in this case) as being upset over an action he's choosing to do for his own benefit is ... a choice, and a disturbing one. why are we centering the abuser in a sympathetic light when he is still ultimately abusing someone???
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zukosdualdao · 29 days
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another thing about the crystal catacombs is that it seems clear to me that katara and zuko MUST talk a little more in between what we actually see, because when zuko says, “i’m sorry, that’s something we have in common”, they are both sitting-slash-kneeling, and in the next scene (after a switch to other plotty events) they’re both standing, and katara is apologizing for yelling at him. i don’t think it was a particularly LONG addition to the conversation (i imagine katara asking what he means, zuko wanting to connect but not really knowing how to talk about it further due to The Abuse Trauma, katara apologizing for yelling because she thinks that’s why he’s not opening up, etc.) but what i AM trying to figure out (for fic-writing purposes) is what caused them both to stand back up?
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princessfroslass · 29 days
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I think a lot about that scene where Angel's drink got spiked and like- he said he was very aware of the fact it was spiked, that that happened to him all the time but looking at the scene itself he seemed just- ready to take it? like he is not reaching for his gun or anything, he is just chilling there about to take the drink.
And like maybe he would take it and throw it at their faces and just shot them because theatrics but the fact that he was in a VERY bad mindscape and that after this comes the "If I end up broken, maybe I won't be his favorite toy anymore" line raises in me some....concerns about what would have happened if Husk wasn't there.
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kendallroygf · 10 months
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mysterious skin + succession
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