#abuse discussion

[a-new-dawn]

Thinking About Rain

[PT: Thinking About Rain]

Aka this lovely ladie

ID: A cropped panel from the Cloud and Rain story in Planet of the Apes: The Simian Age. It shows Rain, a chimpanzee with dark hair and dark skin. She says, in sign, "Caesar trust Koba. Rain trust Koba too," with an unsure smile. End ID.

She features in a POTA comic story called Cloud and Rain as well as WFTPOTA: Revelations by Greg Keyes (Honestly, I'm not convinced that these two were supposed to be the same character but idc, it works and it's interesting).

Pondering her lately. As much as I have talked about Koba being victimized by Caesar in That One Scene [link], [link], the comics show her being victimized by Koba in a very similar way that's just harrowing

The plot of Cloud and Rain is basically that Cloud and Rain are two adolescent chimpanzees being trained by Koba to forage, but Koba is... questionable. A human stumbles into the scene on complete accident, and cannot escape because of a broken leg. Koba kills the human outside the ape territory despite Caesar's rules and insists Caesar not know. Cloud is distressed by this and attempts to warn Caesar before Koba abruptly kills him.

Soon after, Cloud is found dead by Rocket, and a funeral is held. Koba feigns ignorance while glaring and intimidating Rain, and it culminates in him strangling her. Throughout the story, Rain is adamant that Koba is right and she listens to everything he says. She lives in the end, but she's no doubt traumatized.

It wouldn't be fair of me not talk about this. Rain has to live with the aftermath of this event, and it's really heartbreaking to think about. She's lucky to be alive, the same way Koba is after being strangled. Strangulation is no joke.

For whatever reason, she was quick to internalize Koba's rhetoric around humans. She follows his authority to a fault. But in the end, that didn't spare her of Koba's paranoia.

I do kind of have theories on why she took his view of humanity at face value. I figure her parents or other apes she was close to may have had their own stories of the labs. Maybe she had a poor encounter with a human herself.

And I think she made have had a sort of crush on Koba, especially with the panel above of her sheepishly saying she trusts him. She's young, and it would make sense to have a crush on an older authority figure for her age. Her admiration for Koba is very clearly clouding (pun intended) her judgment.

In any case, she lived with this knowledge for years until Koba's betrayal. We really don't get anything but mentions of her in Revelations, where she's giving birth to twins. But she must have feelings on Koba's betrayal and eventual death. Mixed feelings. Someone she admired is gone. Someone who abused her is gone. Cloud's murderer is gone.

I imagine it took her a long time to unpack and deconstruct what she believed about humans. But also what she believed about Koba. From what she says in the comic, she trusted Koba both because Caesar trusted him but also because she distrusted humans. It's honestly similar to Caesar placing his trust in Koba because he thinks apes are better than humans. (To an extent anyway, I still hold that Caesar does Not act like he trusts Koba in Dawn, but he did trust him on some level.)

Caesar and Rain could probably get a lot of mileage out of talking to each other about Koba and how he hurt both of them, how he proved both of them wrong. But also, how would Rain feel about Caesar strangling Koba at the dam? Caesar standing tall and trying to silence Koba with his own threats and intimidation? Would she connect that to what Koba did to her? How does she feel about the hierarchy and systems that enabled her abuse?

Much to think about. Much much much

[bluebyrd-screaming]

Ive started watching Mae Martin's Waywards on Netflix and holy shit what the hell. I'm only on episode four and it has me in the edge of my seat

If you dont do well with depictions of abuse (so far it's mostly psychological/emotional/spiritual abuse) particularly of teenagers, then I would steer clear because this show is heavy. The hot seat scene in episode three is gut wrenching and heart pounding. I kept just going "why are you letting this happen? Why won't you stop this? This is so bad and dangerous" when that is literally the whole point just for it to end in them being love bombed with their only acceptable form of touch that they are allowed to receive

So much of what they do goes just so far against what my understanding of best educational practices are. Yeah, what a great environment you have built for your students here, one where you sit them in a circle and allow them to hurl abuses at each other and if they object to the process then it becomes worse and even more targeted until they are forced to accept the abuse and verbally thank the group for it. Everything in me was just screaming the whole fucking time because how is this healthy communication? How is this not just asking for a fight??

And the answer is, of course, that there abuse and lovebombing and all of it is the point to make them reliant on the authority figures for everything that they do. To break down the trust between students so that they cannot truly process that anything is wrong and that they can do anything about it

And i know that it's not real, but i really want to know the suicide rates of their graduates because these are not teenagers being prepared for life

[keebiecoo]

100% i get if you have different feelings but, I love Stella Goetia as a villain & I will legit never understand why some people say her writing is sexist or flat.

How would her being a good mum to Via & trying to be a good wife to Stolas & being a legit betrayed & heartbroken housewife be better than her canon writing? Her writing in canon isn't sexist, that being people's fav way of "fixing her" is.

Why do people think it's sexist for her to be strong & stupid in her abuse tactics??? This is not sexist writing, this is not how sexists write women, you just want a different character entirely, let her be an abusive homophobe with no gentle or motherly bone in her body, let her be a mean & heavy handed & loud & bigoted villain.

Why is 90% of the Stella posts i see just people dunking on her writing in the show & wishing she was replaced by a different woman who behaves like everyone thinks female characters should??

Also seeing people act like she should have more sympathy or a better reason for abusing Stolas kills me.

One, she's abusive, she doesn't need to be sympathetic, & two, she already in canon has a clear defined motivation! She's homophobic & racist & sexist & controlling! That is her motivation! It is a very consistent & realistic part of her character & it's shown clearly how she ended up this way!!!

"We want more fucked up female characters" y'all couldn't even handle Stella Goetia. smh

[wordssomanywords]

I am so tired of acting like it doesn't fucking hurt.

The expectation to keep it all hidden.

To live on like nothing ever happened.

I'm so tired of everything being placed on the victim.

On the survivor.

Never the doer.

We are the ones who have to change.

We are the ones who have to put in the work.

We are the ones burdened with so much.

While they are free to do it again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Until one time they finally kill someone.

And then that's also thrown on us.

It's our fault.

No matter what we did.

No matter who we told.

We should have done more.

We should have been better.

And I'm just so fucking tired.

And I'm just so fucking hurt.

[fallensxvior]

My favorite thing is that as someone with religious trauma it's healing to see this kind of portrayal and I just think he's neat

to be vulnerable here- that's the main reason why I write Yeshua at all. To heal my own religious trauma as the queer and disabled grandchild of a Baptist Minister.

TW: Slight trauma dumping ahead.

growing up, my mother's father was incredibly abusive and cruel. He would say that my Autism was God punishing me for impure thoughts (being queer and trans), and that I would be cured if I just abandoned "all sin".

He encouraged my mom to hold me down and pull out a loose baby tooth with pliers, kidnapped me and my sister often to take us to church events to try and 'fix' me, and discouraged both my art and my acting. He was one of my first bullies growing up.

I actually based a lot of Eluhim on my grandfather, as well as other abusive male authority figures in my childhood. Yeshua is the version of myself I want to be- still strong, happy, and kind in the face of a lifetime of abuse.

[theomenroom]

Character agency and Nem's penultimate heart event

I really don't like this one, it's a shallow power fantasy. and I was thinking about how to re-tool it into a more realistic depiction of abuse, and I think the simplest way to do it would be to increase Nem's agency in it.

Rather than making it be Sol convincing Nem that she deserves better than how Vace is treating her, make it that Nem is already thinking about leaving (maybe Vace has recently escalated past a line she thought she'd never allow someone to cross), but has real reasons to feel trapped.

All her friends, except Sol, are Helios now. She's not on speaking terms with Cal, and she was never close with Dys or Marz or Tang. She and her mom have grown apart, because her mom keeps trying to baby her and she's outgrown that. Her social status in that group was bolstered enormously by dating Vace; she tells you as much. She might lose all of her friends if she leaves him.

and she's seen what happens to people who Vace directs his anger at. Even if Vace doesn't do anything, his cronies still beat them up to try to impress Vace; that's a big part of Rex's deal.

and then there's the fact that he's a control freak with anger issues, a history of violence, an enjoyment of inflicting suffering, and access to the colony's armory. If she leaves him without assuming he might try to kill her that's leaving things to chance in an un-soldierly way.

Let Nem be the agent here wanting to leave, and let Sol help her brainstorm and offer things to keep her safe to make it so that she can leave, instead of Sol convincing her to leave and she's gone the next day.

Maybe Nem needs to transfer to expedition support or something to get away from Vace, and after this, going foraging in the valley boosts friendship with her. Utopia would love to get someone transferred from a combat role to the survey team instead of the other way around, and Rhett would probably understand.

Maybe Sol helps her work out an arrangement so she's never left alone in the colony, which could involve having to reconcile her with her mom or with Cal.

Put Nem and what she wants and needs at the center, and let Sol help her with real obstacles.

[polyphonetic]

I feel like if I as a kid was getting yelled in public by my parents, if some adult came up and just said "hey it's not cool to yell at your kids" and walked away, even if I saw immediately my parent get even more angry at them and they just ignored and moved on, I would have felt at least a seed of the concept that it wasn't fair and that I was being hurt. There's a lot of normalization of parents snapping or berating their kids in parking lots, stores, places like zoos or carnivals, and just kind of awkwardly ignoring it. But as a kid when you get yelled at and no one around reacts, you're trained that that is just a normal way for a parent to interact with a child, anger and punishment (and often in a "I am not angry or acting hostile, this reasonable for punishing and controlling you" way). If any stranger at all had challenged that it would have opened up my perspective (a stranger seeing and calling out violence for what it is). I think we as a culture *should* weigh in on strangers being vile to their kids, actually. And of course do it in a context that's safe for you etc. etc. your safety is important, but a lot of time public shame is very effective. Making everyone else around you both be made aware of the situation.