cats are my favourites, but i think deep down i know i'm more of a dog
i'm not a violent dog. i don't know why i bite.
Isle of Dogs, film by Wes Anderson
I don't want to be this kind of animal anymore.
Disco Elysium, video game by ZA/UM
i bet on losing dogs,
i know they're losing, and i pay for my place,
by the ring,
where i'll be looking in their eyes when they're down.
i'll be on their side,
i'm losing by their side.
I Bet on Losing Dogs, song by Mitski
There was a sort of crazy light shining in Old Yeller’s eyes when I looked in at him. When I reached... he snarled and lunged at me with bared fangs.
...
It was going to kill something inside me to do it, but I knew then that I had to shoot my big yeller dog.
Old Yeller, book by Fred Gipson
run fast for your mother, run fast for your father,
run for your children, for your sisters and brothers.
leave all your love and your longing behind,
you can't carry it with you if you want to survive.
the dog days are over,
the dog days are done.
Dog Days Are Over, song by Florence + the Machine
It was a torment, this hand that touched him and violated his instinct. He could not forget in a day all the evil that had been wrought him at the hands of men.
White Fang, book by Jack London
with a hand that was trembling, i picked up my gun,
i aimed it at shep's faithful head.
i just couldn't do it, i wanted to run,
and i wished that they'd shoot me instead.
i went to his side, and i sat on the ground,
he laid his head on my knee.
i stroke the best pal that a man ever had,
i cried so i scarcely could see.
old sheppie he knew he was going to go,
for he reached out and licked at my hand.
he looked up at me, just as much as to say,
'we're parting, but you understand.'
Old Shep, song by Red Foley
a dog's dinner
sick as a dog
dog tired
dog days
in the doghouse
dogged by depression
world thrown to the dogs
a dog-eat-dog world
a world not fit for a dog
i don't have a dog's chance
but alas, every dog has its day, and things aren't as bad as i make them seem. i'm just putting on the dog.
i'm no old dog, i'm a sad kid with fucked mental health. there's not actually an animal for that other than the one i am, the one i don't want to be anymore.
i think one thing that gets missed in discussions of like. “okay depiction of abuse/problematic dynamics” where the person is on the side of “it's fine to depict problematic things as long as the victim is clearly traumatized/not enjoying it” is that a part of the way in which abuse functions is by changing what intuitively feels good or bad to a person, that is to say, why people stay in abusive relationships is bc your brain can be wired, as a result of sustained trauma, to only feel comfortable or at-home in such situations, and to not recognise that anything is wrong in the first place. that is how conditioning and grooming work, it's how people stay in awful situations for years... and how do you depict that? an abusive relationship is still a relationship, real victims have loved and continue to love those who perpetrate intimate violence against them. you can, from a distance, see and say that the love is wrong and should not exist. but when you're narrating a story from close quarters, you can't effectively differentiate without context, an author depicting as romantic a manifestly abusive relationship and a victim and perpetrator whose inherent sense of themselves, of right and wrong, of boundaries, and acceptable forms of intimacy, has been warped through abuse.
Lolita is a book that appears to be about seduction but is really about rape. The Incest Diary presents itself as the inverse, a book apparently about rape but really about seduction. But this conceit betrays the further truth — call it the secret under the secret under the secret — that sometimes rape and seduction, coercion and desire, are not opposed at all. This is why the question of whether or not a child “wants it” is irrelevant to the morality of pedophilia (something both pedophiles and many reviewers of The Incest Diary overlook): not because children don’t want it — or do want it — but because “wanting it” is itself something so easily formed by adult violence. And not just the declaration of the wanting — what is a child’s “let’s fuck” but a simulacrum of consent? — but the wanting itself. When a victim of sexual abuse says she wanted it, she is telling us about the sort of person the abuse required her to be. The author says that it is only “as if” her sexual obsession is being raped by the man who created her. Here she is hanging back, knowingly, from the bleaker truth: It is not merely “as if” she is sexually obsessed with the man who gave her half her genetic material, fed and clothed her, made her into a thing that would desire him forever. She is sexually obsessed with him. How, indeed, could it be otherwise? Describing her father letting her out of the closet in which he had locked her, she asks, “How could I not love the man who set me free?”
Silent Treatment: The troubling response to a memoir of incest
"wow smericans are so shitty because [something we have no control over] [something we have no control over] [really blatant fatphobia] [something we have no control over] [antiblackness] [antiblackness] [antiblackness] [anti-indigenousness] [something we have no control over] [more fatphobia] [anti immigration sentiment]"
next time you encounter something confusing, try using your fan fiction reading device to access websites like "wikipedia" or "miriam webster" to break down those pesky difficult topics. its sorta like a "enemies to lovers" situation, where the scary new knowledge can become your friend - and then you won't look so unflattering when you comment
"it's ok to show (x) in fiction as long as the bad guy gets punished!" the bad guy doesn't have to get punished. in fact the bad guy can win altogether. the bad guy can entirely get away with it. hope this helps
and this part might make some people's head explode but: characters can be written to forgive things you personally wouldn't ever forgive. not everything is written as what you'd perceive to be the right choice. not everything is a self-insert & protagonists don't have to be relatable.
everything goes back to the fact that fiction does not have a moral repercussion on the real world and therefore the most terrible fucked uppest thing can happen in a story and go unmentioned and it is still not wrong
"it's ok to show (x) in fiction as long as the bad guy gets punished!" the bad guy doesn't have to get punished. in fact the bad guy can win altogether. the bad guy can entirely get away with it. hope this helps
and this part might make some people's head explode but: characters can be written to forgive things you personally wouldn't ever forgive. not everything is written as what you'd perceive to be the right choice. not everything is a self-insert & protagonists don't have to be relatable.
