#no one is insulting you personally for deciding people who were abused/traumatised need to 'grow up'

[garoumylove]

I want to continue talking a bit about the abuse Garou received throughout his life.

What happened to Garou is a classic case of reactive abuse. Here is a straightforward definition I found on The Internet(TM):

Reactive abuse occurs when the victim reacts to the abuse they are experiencing. The victim may scream, toss out insults, or even lash out physically at the abuser. The abuser then retaliates by telling the victim that they are, in fact, the abuser because of this outburst of behaviour.

This is exactly what Tacchan and the rest of the Garou's class do to him. They torment him until he snaps and then act like Garou is the bully when he does so and even the teacher gets in on this, punishing Garou as if he has been the unreasonable crazy child.

The scary thing is how easily narcissists like Tacchan get away with this in real life too. I think often people realise who the real abuser is but don't say anything or stand up to them because they're afraid they will be the next target.

Garou, as the sweet boy that he was, didn't have this social knowledge and dared to point out exactly that, Tacchan's abusive behaviour when Tacchan was bullying another child. And that's where Garou's school nightmare began.

Garou was no longer safe at home (see my previous post) or at school. Everywhere he went, he was being treated like garbage. Like he was a bad, terrible person.

You can see why his anger and at the same time insecurity grows. It's a strange parallel growth of emotion: anger and insecurity but that's how it is.

I think Garou realised, even if he couldn't really articulate it as eloquently as he would have liked, that he was being mistreated for no reason. That the only reason he was labeled as a monster and a bully was because he was an angry target, and ultimately, that's what fuels his righteous anger.

This is injustice that riles him up so much. That innocent people bear the brunt of society's cruelty and malice because of their weakness and naiveté. Their complete lack of being able to stand up for themselves. And that's what drives to go down the path he ends up on. He decides that he is going to learn how to stand up for himself, and not only for himself but for all the traumatised, loner kids like himself. He was going to be their saviour.

I think while not as obvious, the reactive abuse continued to happen throughout his adolescence. The more he saw of this injustice in the world, the angrier and more violent he became as a reaction to this. But his anger and violence were then used as proof to show what a rotten apple he really was.

While Garou's anger is righteous, we can't brush his behaviour away so easily though. He did hurt multiple people quite badly and his own past is not an excuse for this. Especially since the people he beat up didn't personally do anything to him but became the symbol and incarnation of those that abused him. The 'popular'. The heroes are (mostly) attractive and popular just like Tacchan was and it all melds into one thing in his head.

While the Hero Association has it's serious issues, I don't think the vast majority of the heroes are bad people as some like to point out and how Garou is justified in his crusade against them. I think each of the heroes is a flawed person, just like we all are and that's really it.

The heroes are not these terrible abusive narcissists as Garou paints them out to be. I think the vast majority of them genuinely want to save and protect people. Think of Mumen Rider, Child Emperor, Tank Top Master, Metal Bat for example. You would be hardpressed to say they're only doing it for the The Fame or for the opportunity to bully others.

Garou, unfortunately, just happened to be an easy target for Tacchan and his gang. A quiet, traumatised boy from a broken home and a host of issues that he still needs to untangle in the present day (and this complexity is exactly why I adore writing fanfics about him!) What Garou went through was reactive abuse. He took it much much too far and dealt with it the only way he knew how.

However, his plan was never going to ultimately work. It is impossible to change the whole of society just like that. I think he will realise that the best way forward is not scaring people into submission, into being nice to each other but by being the change you want to see really and just helping as many people as he can by being their supporter.

While I personally don't want to see Garou working as a hero, I do want to see him saving and protecting people, working just as himself, not as an employee of the HA, but that's just me. I'm still holding out for him to inherit Bang's dojo and start kids' martial arts classes ^.^

#garou #garo #garou analysis #opm #one punch man #opm meta #one punch man meta #garou meta #text post #character analysis

[melodies-and-memories]

I’m going to detail why my very first OCs are Bad this is a major callout for young me 

1. Greyson Greyson was my very first OC. I made him after we read Wuthering Heights for school. He was based off of Linton Heathcliff. Something in me at 13 years old adored the idea of the Constantly Sick character. Probably a deep seated psychological issue of not being needed. In his original story, he wasn’t *really* the main character. The main character was Amaya. Greyson was 10 when I made him (remember, I’m 13). Ayako/Amaya was like 15. She’s been sent abroad to study, and is boarding with the Knights and their young son. She never meets Greyson, and doesn’t really know he exists for a long time. She befriends 2 kids from school, Myles and Kathleen (Kath’s also Bad. She’s basically a Weasley ripoff.) Eventually, she does meet him. He never leaves the house due to illness (later, at...... 14? I retconned that he wasn’t just ill all the time, he’s immunocompromised. But in a REALLY uninformed way.) The entire point of the story is that these 4 outsiders become like a family.  My issue is mostly with how... uninformed my characters are. Amaya is so.... anime Japanese girl. Milo’s a typical Ruffian Bad Boy. Kathleen’s a red haired Irish girl with 7 siblings. Both Myles and Kathleen are actually based off my own family. My dad’s friend growing up was named Miles, and my Gran was 1 of 11 kids. The only character with any personality is Greyson. Amaya was a sad attempt at living through an OC. I had horrible identity issues through most of my life, and I desperately wanted to not be me, so I was projecting my ideal self onto Amaya. Which is whole other can of worms of Bad.  Greyson eventually moved out of that story and into my New Story. In a super convoluted way. And he didn’t change very much. (First drawings of the cast)

2. Eli “Toushi” Okay. Eli is 10000% the brain child of psychological issues. I made Eli sitting in Sunday school when I was 14. He’s the magical transformation of a Naruto OC whose design I liked (my own OC) turned into an older brother for me. That’s all he was to begin with. Eli is a horrible Frankenstein’s Monster of things I wanted or romanticised. He’s Japanese because I was into anime and desperately wanted to be Japanese, he’s tall because I wanted someone who would hold me and protect me, he’s older than me because my older sister failed me as an older sibling constantly, I wanted him to have blue eyes so I made him HALF Japanese, his mother is English because I wanted very desperately to not be American, eventually his story developed into one of neglect and running away from home to make a better life for himself (which was something I wanted to do, for selfish reasons.), he became an alcoholic at 13, because bad boys are Cool, and so I could bring in my New Ideal Self to come in and save him. His name’s not good either. It’s not a name. I pulled it out of my Japanese dictionary. Toushi (闘志). It means fighting spirit. But like. It’s not a name. As far as I know at least. He’s only called Toushi because the original Naruto OC was called Toshu (search me for where I got that). And even after all these years, I can’t change it. I have trauma. He became Eli because Ellison Kim and because I couldn’t bear to call him Toushi anymore. His appearance is taped together from things I liked too. He’s a mishmash of celebrities I’ve been attracted to over the years. I literally can’t draw him anymore because I don’t know what he actually looks like. I don’t know who he is.  As a teenager he was The Voice In My Head aka; My desperate attempts at fighting off depression. He and Leo would basically Angel and Devil in my head. Eli would build me up and was loving and supportive of everything I did, and Leo would criticise me and insult me. During my teenage years I also started expanding my world I was building in my head. Which will be point 3.  I might have. idk if I’m allowed to say this but like.... I kind drove myself crazy. I was always dialoguing with Eli or Leo. I didn’t connect with people, but I don’t know which came first; was I unable to connect with people, and so I made up friends, or was I unable to connect with people BECAUSE I made up friends? (The original sketches from 14 year old me)

3. The House I called it “the house” because I never decided what this story would be called.  You know those AUs where everyone lives together? It’s that but it’s my OCs. So this story was started when I was 14. And I was on the internet a lot. And I was seeing a lot of people saying stuff about “representation”. And that really like.... connected with me. I’m dealing with my own garbage, I’m at that age where I’m wrestling with personal identity, sexuality, sexual identity, mental illness and stuff like that, and I suddenly longed for representation for the under-represented.  Decent motives. Terrible execution.  90% of the 100 something characters I would make over the next 4 years would be POC and suffering from *something*. Whether physical illness, assault, or mental illness (or a combination of things), there was no one who could be called “average”. Which was the point. The House was a repurposed home, turned into a refuge for people who need help. It’s a hospital, but a home.  The major problem is, all of my research on all of the “issues” people had was the wiki page. It all feels so fragile. I’d slap a personality disorder on a character design I didn’t know what to do with. I’d give someone physical trauma if I didn’t make their personality one that could be convoluted to accommodate my ideas of mental illness. I’d straight up take characters from other media, tweak the design and give them a personality disorder. I also wrote some REALLY traumatic backstories for characters. All in the name of representation, but my tact was lacking. I wanted the abused and suffering to feel heard. But I didn’t educate myself. Their traumas and issues became props. And that’s really bad imo. Because traumatised people are more than their trauma. I don’t want to be defined by the terrible things that happened to me, yet I defined these characters by theirs. I made OVER 100 CHARACTERS like this.  4. Sen So. Sen. Sen is the most confused character I’ve ever made. They’re me. And they’re They because to this day I can’t decided what I want them to be. Sen started as a boy. Then a girl. Then NB. Then a girl who is mistaken for a boy and never corrects anyone. Short hair, long hair, brown hair, red hair, black hair, short, tall, skinny, fat. They were never anything other than whatever I was at the time. I have trauma.  -------- In short I need to do better. I need to let go of the things I did badly, and fix them, or just.... let go.  I think it’s important for me to reflect like this. Because sometimes I need to articulate my frustrations to be able to overcome them.

#personal #long post #OC #art stuff

[stargazing-enby]

FOR YOUR SLEEPOVER THINGY! Finally thought of something to ask! You often say you used to be someone you didn't like in terms of how you acted towards your friends and now you're a much better person. So, my question(s): What changed? How did you realise that you weren't being the person you wanted to be? What did you do to change? How long did it take? .... I think that's it 😂

Hey, these are really good questions! I hadn’t realised I said that about myself that often hahah. Also, sorry I took so long to reply!

Okay, so the answer to the first question is gonna be really silly, but… I grew up 😂 I’m in my early 20s, so when I talk about how I’ve changed in the past few years, I’m comparing my present self to my teenage self. And, let’s face it, who doesn’t look back to those years and thank the gods that they’re no longer like that? (No offence to my followers in their teens! I’m also really proud of many of the things I thought and did when I was a teen 💗) 

But apart from that, a few years ago I was also going through trauma, as I think anyone who’s been around my blog for a while knows. Which means that through most of those years, and especially at 15-18, I had some very unhealthy behaviours. I constantly felt full of hurt and at the time I couldn’t understand why no one around me wanted to save me. And because my friends were the closest people to me, I started demanding that of them. 

I guess what changed in that aspect is that I realised that no one can really help you if you don’t help yourself first, and making others guilty for problems that they haven’t caused and have no way of solving is very toxic. @paoak was a big part of that, especially since we started dating at 17. As I recall it (and we all know how memories are, so don’t trust me on this XD) I realised that my actions hurt her and I made a… conscious, but also unconscious decision to be better. It also helped that I moved out of my mother’s house and eventually started going to therapy and stopped going back to that house, that I started reading about trauma online and found healthier coping mechanisms, and that @paoak and the rest of my closest friends were patient and understanding and allowed me to grow up without holding my past against me. I apologised, promised to myself and others that I would do better, and actually strived to do so. I looked for professional help, opened up to family members that could give me the support my friends couldn’t, changed the way I talked to people, tried (and am trying) to change the way I talk about myself, and chose to substitute my rough edges and distrust with vulnerability and kindness, and here I am, I guess!

It also helped that I stopped being friends with a girl who tried to convince me that being into rock and metal made you morally superior to the people who liked “mainstream” stuff. I remember being very mean to my friends that weren’t like me and parrotting some really stupid stuff about how everyone needed to see the light and realise that metal people were the “woke” people, and I’m sorry for that. That’s why now I always try to spread the message that you can’t trust people who try to convince you they are morally superior to others. The “us vs them” mentality hurt me a lot, and I know firsthand what it’s like to insult and reject things I secretly liked just because if the people around me found out I liked it… it would be b a d. I don’t have time for that bullshit now, and neither should anyone! The things you enjoy don’t determine your worth. Never forget that.

I can’t tell you how long it took to change the way I acted toward my friends because it’s not something that’s over yet. I’m still learning to say and think kinder things about myself, not only for me, but also because I know the people who care about me suffer when I put myself down. But what I can tell you is that the summer when I was 18 was, I’m pretty sure, the point of inflexion that led to where I am now – the moment when the decision to be better turned conscious. That summer, when I was having a sleepover with my friends and my girlfriend, my self esteem issues and attitude made me hurt everyone, and especially my girlfriend. It wasn’t that serious, don’t worry XD but I did lose one of those friends soon after because of it, and that night Paoak and I spent hours crying and talking about what had happened (sitting dressed in an empty bathtub, of all places, lol). That was the moment I realised that I didn’t want to be like my abusive mother – that I decided to break the cycle, I guess, even if I didn’t know that was a thing at the time.

So yeah. If anyone has read this senseless ramble this far, I just want to tell you that if you’re in a place now where you’re realising the way you treat the people around you is toxic, it’s okay to want to change. You can be better. You’re allowed to be better and to learn from your mistakes. Not everyone will want to forgive you, and that’s okay, but you’ll have to believe the people who say they do, and, most importantly, you’ll have to learn to forgive your past self. I am trying to once and for all forgive my past self: she was young, scared, traumatised, and didn’t really have role models that didn’t do exactly what she was doing. Now I know better and I can do better, and for that I’m grateful. 

#1k followers #1k milestone #Sleepover #trauma tw #toxic behavior #abuse tw #toxic frienship #Toxicity #toxic people #april-thelightfury115 #us vs them #XD #I really dunno how to tag this #tw: abuse #tw: trauma #trauma survivor #friendship #growing up #pls tell me if you need more tags