i think in your ask box, there's also a bit of a double standard when it comes to gender. lucy forced a lot of kisses on paulo and messed with his feelings, constantly just using him as an emotional crutch to make herself feel better, even inviting him for sex and essentially lying by omission about her intentions. even if it was meant to be casual, he didn't know that she was about to leave, seemingly for good. lucy would've been the one who got away forever, leaving a permanent impact on an impressionable teen boy's heart. augustus' offenses are far less, but nobody really talks about her like this. i think a big part of it is also a lot of viewers project onto lucy, and they dont want to believe that they themselves are bad, but where is the empathy for someone's capacity to grow and make mistakes for other people? something that lives rent free to me is that i once saw a comment talking about how its a given that they treat fictional characters better than real people, because they struggle with empathy and they can see themselves in the characters. and i think that contributes to a lot of the types of comments you get. but we must ask ourselves, who is the revolution truly supposed to be for if you don't allow people to learn and grow? if vulnerable, impressionable teenagers aren't given the chance to learn and grow and become better, if that makes them unforgivable and irredeemable, who even IS redeemable? everyone makes mistakes. people struggle to communicate, people come from messed up backgrounds that makes them think of things in a skewed light. trauma, abuse, neglect, these can all contribute to a child doing weird stuff. augustus lost his virginity at a young age and was around those who used violence from day fucking one, of course he'd have a moment where he does some weird shit. (1/2)
(2/2) the most likely children to commit cocsa are children who have already been assaulted before. i've seen people try to say that there's no reason to humanize villains, and it's even problematic to do so. that we shouldn't feel sympathy for them. but my personal theory is that those who insist on refusing to feel any empathy for those who have committed misdeeds, actually have a lot of wickedness within their hearts that they aren't willing to face. they don't want to face that someone who is the same as them could've done something bad, because then they have to admit that sometimes they can be bad as well. we never see murderer characters villainized in the same way that those who sex crimes are, why is that? some people say that they'd rather be dead than be raped (extremely insulting to me personally as a rape victim! i'm glad i am alive and can recover!), or that sometimes murder is justifiable, but in most cases? it's really not. i think it's just that murder victims don't live to tell the tale. we can hear accounts from rape victims, but not murder victims. murder is the ultimate denial of autonomy. you take away literally everything about that person, down to their flesh. forcing themselves upon their victim, telling them that their life is more valuable than yours, and that they will end it, and that you don't get to live out any of your dreams any longer. they will never again get to eat their favorite foods, never get to laugh with their friends, never get to continue building into whatever life they had planned. it was like they were never worth anything in the first place. and yet murderers get the title of "babygirl", "i support womens wrongs", "silly malewife", and etc. it is such a sick, twisted and selfish double standard. not saying that to mean people can't dislike augustus, but people really ought to be consistent about their morals. all this to say, the opinions of sub room temp iq morons don't matter to me, and they shouldn't to you.
Veronica: Yes when it comes to having empathy for teenagers who make nasty choices, I must once again tap the sign…….
I do know I’m going to make it tough, but that’s how we learn :)
