Rant on why the Narrator is a selfish self-centered asshole (I love him though he is awesome)
**TW FOR SUICIDE MENTIONS AND SUCH (Zending)**
AHEM..
Okay. Here we go.
So many people in the TSP fandom think that the Narrator actually cares about Stanley/the player during Zending, but it seems stupidly obvious to me that he DOESN'T?? He doesn't really care about Stanley/the player at all during any point in the game. Everything he does that he claims is to keep Stanley safe or to keep him from hurting himself is actually only because he doesn't want something to happen. Everything he does is for HIS OWN BENEFIT, he's a self-absorbed, narcissistic motherfucker who cares about no one but himself. It's incredible to me how people can overlook that, like really??? He even says it himself during Zending, he says "Please Stanley, don't take this from me!" HEAVILY implying that the only reason he is trying to stop Stanley from jumping off the staircase is because he doesn't want the game to reset for his own happiness. And people are constantly like "ohh, he actually cares about Stanley during Zending, it was so sad to watch him try and stop Stanley, the poor thing! He must love him so much!" NO. He doesn't. He just doesn't want the game to reset. He doesn't want to go back. If the game didn't reset when Stanley died, he wouldn't give a shit if Stanley jumped off the stairs or not. Many, MANY times during the game he resorts to degrading Stanley and pushing him away, even temporarily abandoning him several times (During the Games ending, during the Infinite Hole sequence in the Stanley Parable 2, etc.), Which really shows that he does NOT care about Stanley one bit. He is willing to hurt him emotionally and on rare occasions even physically if it'll force Stanley to give in to the Narrator's own wants. He also KNOWS that the bucket makes Stanley happy, and can't deal with his own jealousy, and so he tries to destroy or get rid of the bucket many times throughout the game. He just can't deal with the fact that something other than HIS GAME makes Stanley happy, the jealous bastard. He even actively praises Stanley for stabbing the bucket during one ending of the game. I don't mention her or Mariella much, but I feel like the Curator is just a much more sensible and rational person. Though we don't hear much from her at all during the game or know much about her character, just from the little dialogue we get from her she seems much more down to Earth. She seems like she could accept the fact that she isn't the greatest being in existence, and even actively praises the bucket, ridiculing Stanley for his carelessness with it. I headcanon Mariella and the Curator as the alternate, genderbend universe of Stanley and the Narrator, and I feel like the Curator would treat Mariella with much more respect than the Narrator treats Stanley.
Okay I'm done, if anyone actually reads all the way through to the end WOW. You actually deserve a medal or something holy crap 😭 I still love Narrator by the way he's super cool even though I kind of hate him I love him so much
Ok, the time has come for me to write out the whole thesis that’s been bubbling away in my head for years about how deeply uncomfortable I have always been about elements of how Rodney McKay was handled as a character.
I’m sure there’s more I should say, and everything will be off the top of my head, cuz I’m not looking up episodes or plot points today. But here goes
McKay is introduced as an arrogant, deeply unpleasant man, who basically exists to clash with Sam, cause drama and tension, (and also make Sam look good). Then Atlantis started, and he became a main character. I think that was a really interesting choice, and overall a very good one, because it’s sets up an incredible character arc. A regular leading character (who is one of the “good guys”) cannot be as universally hateable as Rodney was when he was just a one (or two)-off character. But you can’t just scrap who he was when you introduced him, so how do you give him the kind of growth that makes him interesting and someone people want to root for?
In many ways Atlantis did a great job of that. The show took him way out of his comfort zone, and put him under great stress, so that he had to up his game. It isolated him long term with a limited number of people, so he had to learn some basic people skills. And in doing both those things, it pushed him to the edge and showed us (and him) that McKay had bravery and a good heart and love for his friends and the willingness to risk himself for others. He’d covered all that over with an incredibly thick layer of ego and cowardice and boorish behaviour, but when against the wall, that awfulness could be broken through and the nobler side of him could start to come out. And that was primarily made possible because the show surrounded him with people who called him on his bullshit. For the first few years especially, all the main characters held him to account and made him behave and become better.
So given that I’ve praised him so much, why am I so uncomfortable with McKay?
Two reasons. There are a few important areas we did not see him grow significantly, and at a certain point the show stopped challenging his behaviour to the same extent.
First point first: ways he kept being horrible.
He was a ghastly boss/coworker to the science team throughout. From the first episode to the last, he refused to learn his people’s names, he belittled them and mocked their ideas and used them as scapegoats when things went badly but never gave them credit when things went well. Occasionally he feels bad about that, but usually only after someone he treated badly has died a horrible death. The show clearly wants us to feel bad for these people - especially poor Zelenka - but Rodney’s never held to account for it, and never improves. Zelenka complains about his treatment, Rodney makes a snarky joke, and we move on, feeling the scientists’ frustration, but clearly just supposed to roll our eyes and be ok with it. The overall message sent is that it’s ok that Rodney treats people badly because he’s brilliant and he’ll save the day. It’d be nice if he’d treat people better, but we have to make allowances somewhere. Honestly, Atlantis probably would have been better off without Rodney, because with him there you have one really smart person getting things done but crushing everyone around him in the process, whereas with him gone you might not have that individual star, but you’d have a lot more very smart people who could actually work properly and achieve things as a team.
The other thing that never changes is his treatment of women - he’s a serial sexual harasser. He sexually harasses Sam the first time he appears on SG-1, and it’s gross, but he’s meant to be gross then. But he keeps doing it through every single season of Atlantis. Sam alone gets harassed by him so many times - even when she’s his boss! In the sunken jumper episode he hallucinates up Sam dressed a way she would never dress, behaving a way she would never behave, and the way he talks to her makes my skin crawl. And yes I know she’s not really there, and he has a head injury, but his creepiness is played for laughs. And then Sam takes over as commander of Atlantis, and then there’s the episode where they fall down the hole. First he tells Sam to flash the boys to bribe them to help - gross - and then he tries to convince Sam and Dr. Keller to strip under the pretense of making a rope out of their clothes. Again, it’s played for laughs, and it’s just fucking gross. Sam is his BOSS. Dr. Keller is his coworker. And all three of them are in extreme danger. And he is sexually harassing both women.
That story is also my big example of how the show starts letting him off the hook. In that episode, Rodney repeatedly sexually harasses every woman in sight. He’s so desperate to puff his ego that insists he is more competent at something he has never done before than Sam the professional soldier who does things like that every day and actively sidelines her. In doing so, he also further endangers them, starting a gas fire (that Sam has to risk injury to put out), and pulling in more dirt when Sam tells him to stop. He repeatedly tries to get out of doing the actual hard work of saving them and instead spends his time being snarky and trying to prove how smart he is. And after all that, the narrative rewards him. He’s the hero, because he got rope burn but didn’t leave Sam to die. People admire him. He gets a date with Dr. Keller. We’re just supposed to shake our heads affectionately at all of his grossness and go “Oh McKay...”
In summary, the narrative bought into the idea of making allowances for exceptional men. He’s dreadful to his coworkers, but he’s a genius who saves the day so we’ll let him get away with that. He gets pushback for treating the main Atlantis team like that, but his non-field colleagues are apparently fair game. He’s a serial sexual harasser - and here nobody is safe, not even the main characters or the soldiers or the [insert category here], because we are consistently meant to find his sexual harassment funny, or at worst an irritation on the level of bad breath. And it’s not. And finally, while the show did a good job of calling him out for the first few seasons, after that it started letting him off the hook, and buying into the glorification of Rodney McKay, no longer treating his unpleasant attributes as things to be worked on as part of a long character arc, but instead merely quirks that should be accepted.
A deeply flawed character like McKay is an interesting challenge, and when they write him well I really enjoy him. But I can never overlook or forget about these really gross decisions that were made in writing him.
Under a cut for a *lot* of personal venting regarding my in-laws.
I wasn’t really sure if I was going to write this all up here, but posting 140 character blurbs on twitter was too limiting, and posting my feelings on facebook just yielded a lot of “Be patient! :3 It’ll be okay!″ from my family members etc when what I really want is a “Wow, that sucks. Sorry bro.”
Right now I have a 3 hour “calming spa music with water sounds” playing. I have made heavy use of such videos over the last week, often having to rely on them to calm down enough to sleep. The reason sounds sort of stupid- my in-laws came in to town for a visit, but these people have a way of taking a totally normal situation and forcing it to explode until something as simple as “returning the rental car” is a code red.
This isn’t new behavior. The family is flat out dysfunctional. But there were a few different things to deal with this time around.
The last time my MiL came to town, she got into a prolonged “argument” about why I hadn’t had any children yet. (Obviously this was something on my shoulders, nothing her son had anything to do with, and certainly not our business to decide.) To make a long story short, she went around and around telling me things like having pets means wasting valuable time you could be spending on children, people primarily get married to have children, if there was some medical reason I couldn’t have children I should have told them before I married their son, an adopted child wouldn’t really be “ours”. She barked this at me for over an hour while my husband was out of the house. He threw her out the following morning, raising his voice for the third time in the nearly 15 years I’ve known him.
After that, we decided she was not welcome to stay in our home. His father (difficult in his own way, but we’ll get to that) could stay with us, but she would either have to stay with my husband’s brother, or in a hotel. When we were told (not asked) about their visit- we explained this to the FiL in a number of ways. That she made herself unwelcome the last time she was here. That she stressed my husband out triggering a lot of my husband’s health issues, etc. His response was always dismissive. Up until the day they arrived, we were preparing for a full on fight when we insisted- because he never treated this information with any kind of regard. Luckily, when the day came, she went to my BiL’s house with little fuss.
Their visit itself was stressful in a number of ways. This couple is incapable of doing something as simple as picking a restaurant for lunch without it becoming an ordeal. Arguments happen over nothing. FiL has a lot of health problems, but makes it everyone else’s job to cater to him, without acknowledging the effort. MiL is a whirling dervish of frenetic energy who wants to see and do everything but can’t calm down enough to listen to the information being given to her. She constantly and repeatedly asks questions without waiting for the answer, and then barrels on ahead with no information or context.
To be honest, MiL wasn’t at her worst this visit- which is exhausting in its own way. This is a woman who has run out her goodwill by being classist, racist, and absolutely inconsiderate of others around her while pushing for her own agenda. Any attempts to appease her are not noticed while she asks for more. And then she has moments of near normalcy that make you think everything might be okay- but the moment you trust her, she reverts to her regular behavior. She can’t take no for an answer. She is constantly chasing “Kodak moments” with her family so she has something to share at brunch with her friends, but never forged genuine emotional connections with the people she wants to show off. If it had been only her, this might have been simply a taxing visit.
However- this time around, my FiL really showed what he was made of. Which is to say a thick mass of manipulation, covered in a thin veneer of intelligence and the familial goodwill he has left with his sons. He even said things like he could “control” his wife, so she should be allowed to stay in our home. First of all, he can’t, at all. Secondly...ew?
It is only in about the last year or so that my husband has realized that the cycle of dysfunction in their home isn’t only due to their mother. Their father absolutely enabled her behavior to take over, leaving everyone else in the house constantly arming battlestations as they tried to minimize the damage. There is no open channel of communication in their home. There is only conflict and argument- even over things that should be occasions for joy.
What has ended up happening is that my MiL has come to represent the emotional, the irrational, and the bad. Meanwhile logic and rationality are theoretically championed by his father- but his father is just as emotional and temperamental, it’s just that when he throws a fit it’s because he thinks everyone else is being too irrational to see reason, not that he has done anything wrong. As such, the idea of emotional wellbeing is basically laughed at. Even my husband’s brother didn’t seem to understand my husband’s need to keep a calm household for his own wellbeing.
After only two days of their bickering, my body entered a very obvious set of fight or flight symtoms- but there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t physically fight these people, nor could I go anywhere. So I just... stayed that way. For hours. That’s... not how that’s supposed to work, and my body partially shut down. Another 24 hours later and my husband experienced something similar. It was a week of constantly checking in on each other- giving each other wide berth and space when there was little to be had.
Their visit was extended because Hurricane Irma shut down travel back into Florida. My MiL kept calling themselves “hurricane refugees” as though they’d actually fled their home, and not just come off of a month long cruise around Europe. She kept insisting they should get special treatment at car rentals and hotels as though our city isn’t currently full of people with real, actual needs- not just on extended vacations.
Two days after their planned departure, my husband and I had had enough. The boundaries we set had been breached (FiL convinced MiL to stay the night at our house, despite my husband having made it clear that was not what we wanted- bringing the total number of times he has raised his voice within earshot to four). We were stressed out, nothing we did to try and satisfy them was helping them, so we decided to help ourselves. We took a brief trip out of town (for a total of about 2 days, although we only spent one whole day out of their company) with plans to return before their actual departure. There was plenty of resistance from my FiL, of course, but thankfully my husband stood firm.
It was a much needed break for us, and even then we were still checking in on the home front, making suggestions for activities in town that we thought they might enjoy etc. We came back more ready to handle them in their last day with us.
They left, finally. There was much more stress involved in the process than necessary, and I’ve firmly come to believe that with no hobbies or interests to speak of, my FiL has no pasttime other than being miserable and spreading that out in a search for... sympathy, I guess?
In the end, I can only be thankful that my husband and I are on the same page about these people and their behavior. It would be another thing entirely if he somehow thought this was acceptable- but the fact that we could talk every night about what was happening, and how we wanted to handle things and proceed the next day already means that we are light years ahead of this pair when it comes to communication. I told him I was proud of him for deciding to prioritize our wellbeing and mental health (when there was honestly nothing we could do to make his parents happy) by taking a few steps back and taking a short trip out of town. Today he told me how happy he was that we could pick a sandwich shop for lunch in less than a minute and carry on from their without it becoming an ordeal. Simple things- but not ones I can take for granted anymore.
Okay I just started watching Riverdale on Netflix, and maybe it’s referenced later on in the season, but as of Episode 4 the way the creators deal with the Archie/Grundy statutory rape is an epic shit show that deserves to be raked over the coals and then dropped kicked off of a cliff
Because even though there were a few throw-away lines from Jughead and Betty about Grundy manipulating Archie, this show treats their “relationship” just like any other and frame it as some “juicy scandal--Drama OMG!” thing instead of the attack of a sexual predator.
Nothing about this was handled well. Like I said, they would have the other kids have a line or two about it being illegal but then would spend the rest of the time discussing where Archie thought the relationship was going and if it was fair to GRUNDY to keep it going. They had the gall to try to get us to sympathize with Grundy with the abuse story as if that was an excuse to EMOTIONALLY MANIPULATE AND HAVE SEX WITH A 15/16 YEAR OLD BOY (not to mention the fact they introduced us to her in the flash back with her slunk down in her car, glasses to her nose as she leers at hot & sweaty Archie--clearly contradicting her “I’m the real victim” story before they even tell it). Not to mention how “coupley” they blocked, lit, and music-qued a lot of their scenes--truly betraying the creators intentions of only playing lip service to the abhorrent nature of what was happening and focus on “hot people making out” and “sexy teacher” fantasy aspect.
The cherry on top was the big confrontation scene, which should have been about highly concerned and disturbed parents trying to help a victim get away from his predator turned into “The Alice Cooper’s Vendetta Against Red Heads Show”. She was ranting and raving so much that it was going to prompt Betty to actually LIE about Grundy’s crime JUST TO SPITE HER MOTHER! What rational person would even think such a thing (especially someone who just had a whole episode dedicated to rightfully crushing a ring of sexual manipulators and “slut shamers”)?! And the person who should be the angriest one of them all, Archie’s fucking Father, just stood in the back like a passive waste and was totally fine with Grundy slipping away in the night after distorting his son’s mind to the point where he was trying to take the blame. And again, the blocking and body language in that scene is indicating to the audience we are suppose to hate the loud, abrasive Alice that takes up the whole room and is in everyone’s face, and sympathize with the quite, sullen Grundy that’s trying to make herself small in the corner of the room and is the one to play peacemaker.
And then we have our closing shot of Grundy leaving, now clad in a short skirt and tight top, looking down her glasses at her next pray
This was a hodge-podge of mixed metaphors, lazy writing, and shitty framing. The one thing I did like was that they actually showed Archie sobbing at the end, it was nice to see an open display of emotions from a male protagonist ( but even that was a bit tainted by the scene being ambiguous about whether he was sad about what happened to him or sad that his “lover” was leaving).
At the end of the day this was just an exercise in The Great Double-Standard of Male Teacher/ Female Student = evil, gross, pedophile, Female Teacher/ Male Student = sexy, misunderstood, need of love. It’s stuff like this, handled as badly as this, that perpetuates the notion that boys should be “into it”, that they can’t be psychologically scarred from the experience they’re just expected to want sex all of the time. Boys and Men do and have suffered from sexual abuse, and we as a society should foster a better environment form them to feel like they can come forward and not be scoffed at.
And before you say that they were hinting at the awfulness of Grundy’s actions subtlety, I present you with #1. the “PG: Post-Grundy” flippant joke Veronica says in the very next episode and #2. A show with the scenery chewing monster that is Cheryl Blossom on it is not interested in subtlety
Sorry, I was bursting at the seems to rant about this to someone while I was watching it. . . .what better place than the internet ;p
I’m not interesed in fighting with antis, or trying to change other people’s opinion forcefully. However It may be usefull if I collect some things I and others have said
TL;DR: This ship *can* be handled so badly that it makes our beloved conman into a pedophile, but I think the grand mayority of the people being bullied on this site don’t even ship it like that. Don’t put everyone on the same bag. People don’t deserve to be bullied for what they like in fiction and there are clear differences between reality and fiction.
I don’t think this ship is pedophilia simply because I dont ship it that way. Pedophilia implies fetichistic sexual atraction to kids under 13, and a horrible abusive element of “I don’t care about you, I just wanna fuck u cuz ur young”. Now, if you see this pairing as reigen sexualy taking advantage of a very young mob or simply not really caring about his well being and preying on him, that would count (and also be horribly ooc and a sad way of doing it).
However if, by example, you ship them romantically as having mutual care for each other and mob in full understanding and control of the situation, even if the relationship gets sexual while mob’s still 14, I wouldn’t call it pedo. Questionable or innapropiate? Yes. But not pedophilia. And then you have many, many, other scenarios that get really away from all that.
An important distinction should be mentioned here: While I’m ok with a romantic relationship between this two characters despite their age gaps, If I saw a similar age gap in real life and the younger party is still a minor, I would probably call the cops. For me that is the difference between fiction and real life for this issue. Minors in real life should be discouraged from dating people much older because they could easily be taken advantage of. However in fiction, you have control over these characters and you can make sure their relationship is healthy, especially if you keep them in character as much as you can.
You can have them being romantically involved but not turning sexual until mob is older. You can have them being platonic for a long time before they develop romantic feelings. You can have mob being assertive. You can have reigen feeling conflicted. You can adress the age gap issue. You can have it not mattering at all and them just slowly getting closer witouth noticing. You can have them being only platonic, in a very strong friendship.
There is many many ways to make this ship beautifull and I don’t think it’s just to put everyone on the same bag as the worst content and condem them all using a really severe accusation of condoning child abuse or being abusers themselves.
It’s just not alright to make call out blogs and tag whoever ships it, regardless of how they ship it, as “pedophiles”. I remember one of these some months ago tagging a user who only had like two barely shippy posts with grown up Mob as “condones pedophilia”. Neither is ok to send mean messages to users with death threats or fill their asks with insults. Or flood the main tag with complains about which, I have to be honest and say that to have so much nsfw noncon underage content popping on your dash as some people complain, at least on this site you literally would need to follow the 2-3 blogs with such content and have them on notifications. I know what Im talking about, I check the main ship tag nearly daily, follow most shippers and have stumbled onto that only like twice on my dash.
Continuing with the list of shit people have been puting on with, it’s even less fair to ramp up the generalizations and make really rude comics portraying all the shippers as disgusting creatures. Or say you get disgusted if a shipper reblogs your content, even if they respected your tagging preferences and/or the content has nothing to do with the ship at all. Or to claim “x has great art but they ship reimob, nevermind, their art is trash”. What’s the necessity of doing all that? I frankly doubt people who do that have the best interests of minors at heart. At best I have seen questionable beliefs about content on a site as tumblr being influencial enough such that a fanart with less than 50 notes of a niche fandom can “normalize pedophilia” in american society (because you know, we are all americans and america is the world). At worst it just seems to be used as excuse for harassment.
Speaking of that, regarding the users who make really wrong content: While I won’t defend that, I feel another distinction should be made. Do I think certain content is gross? Yes. Some of that content nearly made me throw up? Yes. Do I think the autor of that content is gross/deserves to die/etc? No. Do I harass them? No. Some of them have turned out to be csa survivors. I try to abide to the notion that nobody should be bullied for their likings in fictional settings, even if I don’t like it. What I do to deal with that is simply not follow the blogs with such content and so far it works.
As I said, I’m not interesed in discussing with antis, I just wanted to put some things together. Maybe it will help confused bystanders understand the shippers aren’t defending pedophilia. We are just defending a ship we like and love. Let’s try to respect each other.
this is gonna be a bit of a ramble/rant, but I need to get this out somewhere
context: Our show for indoor guard is based on a board game. There’s a set of card props, pretty much just big pieces of foam board, and there’s nine of us with these cards. Everyone else is on flag/sabre/rifle. HOWEVER, us cards never touch the equipment until the flag feature (which got changed so now we’re only there for eight counts and disappear again). The work, which I already mentioned that got changed, pissed a lot of us off.
actual incident: Everyone was, rightfully, sorta mad about how we did literally nothing for roughly thirty ish seconds out of four minutes.
During practice, EVERY SINGLE CARD is bitching about it. Except for me. I legit just wanted to go home and never have to deal with literally everthing falling apart while I’m trying to be the “pOsItiVe OnE” but I was so drained and still am a bit and everyone is still being a bitch about everything and ISTG IF THEY DON’T GET THEIR SHIT TOGETHER I’M SLAPPING SOMEONE- WHAAAAAAT WHO SAID THAT?? The worst part is…
i feel… :/ my grades are not really what i want them too be. they are not bad, but in germany you need a really good bachelor’s degree to get a master spot. they also cut down the spots because of a new reform. that means competition is really high and i’m only average. i’m so stressed about not getting a spot because i really really want to become a therapist. i know i could push myself harder, study more but i don’t want a life where i study all day and dread every day. it’s kind of a dilemma? either have an everyday life which i don’t really enjoy and have the results i want (maybe) or the other way around. i also can’t stop comparing myself to others. why can others simply study a lot, know what to do to reach their dreams and don’t mind pushing themselves now (on the other side i know that that’s grind culture and a capitalistic way of thinking but we live inside the system so what other choice do i have??). in addition i used to be really good in school and i know this sounds pretentious but now being average is not doing much for my self worth. i kind of wish i could have it all or that the system would be different or that i just would push myself and stop making excuses. (but i wasn’t really happy in school bc of how much i had to do, i was very happy abt the results tho)
why,,, can’t I just like fuckin uhhhhhhh be happy??? like in my own skin and in my own house like I don’t understand why everything has to be terrible or unfavorable or why I can’t just feel 100% safe and loved in my own fucking HOUSE
It’s weird because I know my mom loves me but ever since I “came out” to her the first time it’s like I can feel the difference in her love for me. Like before, when I was “straight” it was normal and everything was normal, but the moment I came out to her when I was fourteen it changed and it’s been five fucking years and I’m MUCH more queer than she knows and she’ll ever know and I know, I just KNOW, if I was to come out fully to her she wouldn’t love me the same way, if at all, and I can’t take that risk where I am right now
Everything is so anxiety inducing about it and I literally wanna **** myself sometimes bc it’s that bad and I can’t fix it the way I want to or make it go back to the way it was and it won’t and I know it won’t and there’s nothing I can do. I’m guilty for things I can’t control.
