Hard Pill To Swallow, Maybe, But Sometimes You Are The Problem. You May Not Have Been Initially, But

An Example of Gaslighting:

My sperm donor only took me to a fair once. I was seven. I didn’t ask to go, because I made it a habit not to ask for things so no one could accuse me of being greedy. He decided we were going, but made sure I knew that it was causing him all kinds of stress and ‘cutting into his work time’.

We still went. It was okay. Fairs with my mom were waaaay better.

Well, after meandering and not being allowed to go on anything or eat anything unhealthy because of that death-vegan diet he had me on, he finally asks what games I want to play. I said I was fine. I’m not greedy, I told myself.

He insisted and flashed a large wad of money, which was standard for him. It was how he tried to make himself look wealthy when he wasn’t. It was a 50 covering several single dollar bills.

I, with hope in my little heart, motioned to the dart game because it was the cheapest. $5 for 3 tries. He scoffs, but pays for it.

I had to deal with him snickering and shaking his head and my first 2 darts nearly impaled the stall worker and got nowhere near the board of blue stars. But my last dart… hit dead center on the smallest star on the board, which automatically earned me a prize.

According to the stall worker, I was the only person that day to hit a star, and while the big prizes usually required all 3 darts to hit a star, he’d let me pick whatever I wanted, just because I was sweet and did so well.

I chose this big ass, pink guitar! I was so happy! I clutched it like a lifeline all evening. I rarely ever won things and the last thing I won was a large ass Easter basket from the Community Room back when I was 5, so this was monumental for me.

But then…

Something happened on the way back to the house. Something set him off, and all I knew was that he was suddenly angry and was lecturing me over something. So I did the normal, which was to stare at his face the entire time, no matter how much my neck hurt. I was in the passenger and that immediately meant bad things and I regretted not sitting in the back where he couldn’t immediately reach.

He glanced over, glared, and claimed I was ‘giving him a look’ and that he ‘wouldn’t tolerate such disrespect’. He then slammed his fist into the passenger seat, inches from my left shoulder.

Proceeds to complain about how he did this whole thing for me and whined about how greedy and ungrateful I was as a kid. How he bought me so much stuff(he bought me nothing but a ticket) and how he won me the guitar.

Now here is where I fucked up. 

Rule #1: Don’t interrupt your abuser. Just don’t.

I corrected him, foolishly thinking he forgot that I won it, after all, it was because of me specifically that I was allowed to have anything I chose.

Bad idea. “Are you calling me a liar?! I don’t like being called a liar!”

“No.” But I had won it, not him. But the situation was escalating and it got worse.

The guitar was confiscated by the time we got to the house and was held for ransom. I had to ‘work to gain his trust back’, which meant cleaning and catering to his every whim.

Lesson: Gaslighting is psychological manipulation to fuck with someone. I won the guitar, he claimed he did. Despite me only getting it because I was a ‘sweet kid’. He proceeded to talk over me and claim that he bought it and when I corrected him, he made the situation worse by using the ‘calling me a liar’ line to intimidate me into agreeing with him because I knew very well what would happen if I was calling him a liar.

It didn’t work completely, since I still know I won the guitar and refused to be convinced, but the threats and lies, and dramatics are all gaslighting attempts. And I only gave in to avoid pain.

I still have the guitar.

Dancing with Wriothesley

tfw i lose my motivation to draw daily AFTER starting a daily doodle account. can you believe it. i can't. i gotta lock in

*Presses hands together and inhales*

The Hoyofair group of Clorinde, Wriothesley, Arlecchino, and Kinich all have something in common. They're all orphans.

I bring this up because now imagine a Modern AU if they all grew up in the same orphanage. Wriothesley being the oldest, Arlecchino and Clorinde being similar in age but younger than Wrio by like a year or two and Kinich is the youngest of the four by three to four years.

That means all three of them are especially protective of Kinich.

I will leave this here to stew. I need these four now. Auggffhhhhh!!

Angst plot and the orphanage was unfortunately very much like the House of the Hearth and so the three tried to protect Kinich and/or tried to figure out a way to escape and they just lived in their own in the cities.

Someone online: "Men dont have to deal with [issue]. I have never heard a man talk about [issue]. This is a women's issue!"

Man: "I've dealt with this. I just dont speak up about it because no one car-"

People online: "Shut up. We're talking about women."

I wanna know ur Fontaine msq criticisms 👁️👁️👂I’m all ears

I'm not sure if you wanted me to talk about this secretly or publicly but! Here I go!

The TLDR: Fontaine MSQ aestheticised prison, poverty, child abuse, the justice system/court and didn't properly address any of it.

More:

Focalors/Furina has way too much of a sympathetic angle for a dictator who's lets people drown with her inaction.

Neuvillette feels Bad for sentencing some people to death/prison, but that's it. He's one of the most powerful people in Fontaine. If he felt like there are systemic injustices, I.E sending an abused Child to prison, he should be the first person to DO something about it, not just cry and be sad so the audience can be like aw, that's complex character writing isn't it? No it's not! And guilt doesn't absolve you!!!!!!! (These are stuff we deal with in OTCOJ read my fic now /j)

Meropide has children in it, both Sentenced there (Wriothesley) and BORN THERE (Lanoire), and this is just a quirk of the place. Not only that, Meropide accepts prisoners of all genders and crimes. There are abusers and abuse victims in one place. Do you know how bad that is? How much potential for crimes to happen in a place like that— oh wait, Meropide isn't under Fontaine's jurisdiction. If you are assaulted as an inmate it literally means nothing to the court.

Wriothesley had no qualifications when he took over. Depending on how long he lived on the streets, how old he was when he killed his parents, how old he was when he was first taken in by the orphanage, etc, the man might never have more than 4–5 years of formal education. Sigewinne probably had to teach him how to write reports. And do Meropide's spreadsheets. Edit because I forgot to elaborate on this one: This isn't a point brought up anywhere, which is bad, because when poverty and incarceration robs you of a proper education (and the rights to vote in many places too, too, by the way), it reduces your prospects for jobs, reduces many people's ability to get a home etc etc. Wriothesley was just, narratively, Given his position.

Meropide is an industrialized prison, and they portray this as a good thing. Prisoners are paid in coupons for their labour, and this is also portrayed as a good thing.

The One-Meal-A-Day reform was something Paimon gushed about being so great of a perk, that people might want to go to jail for food (could be interesting and reflective of systemic poverty if MHY had brains, but they don't, so I was just Pissed because essentially all Paimon wanted to say was "Prison isn't so bad, but still don't go to prison guys! Prison labour is really hard!"). By the way, in most real-world prisons they are obligated to feed you three meals a day. Because that's how much food a human needs. MHY went with one meal just so they can say "if you want to eat more, you have to work." And then the welfare meal is a goddamn gacha. So imagine you're a starving child who's too weak to work in the fucking robot assembly line, and you wander up for your first meal in 24 hours, only to luck in with a shit one. I'd kill myself.

They wrote Wriothesley, who's a victim of the system, into a guy who's say shit like "I'm the Duke I can do whatever I want" for a cool moment where he choke-slams an inmate (I know he was a bad guy. But also, in copaganda when cops are violent/disregarding protocols, they are always only portrayed to do that against bad guys, so what does our critical thinking tells us about this one?) They wrote Wriothesley, who was an inmate of a prison so bad, so notorious that it is the literal boogeyman of Fontaine, that has a legal (???) fighting pit, with an administrator who abuses his position to be unreasonable, to willingly stay in the place and become an Administrator who would choke-slam an inmate while saying a cool line about how he has the power to do whatever he wants. They wrote him, the guy who had to be fed on the streets by melusines, to think one-meal-a-day was a good enough reform (while he spends god-knows how much on his boat). This wasn't a victim-turns-into-abuser narrative either, they want all this to be seen as positive character growth.

And then, the final kicker is, they gloss over his entire abuse. You can only read about these shit in his profile, which most people don't because they don't Have Him or doesn't care to unlock it/read it online, and they jammed his entire backstory into a flaccid info-dump at the end of his character story quest. This man isn't Allowed to feel abused and neglected and show any reaction to it within the narrative of Fontaine itself, because if they actually Gave Weight to what happened to him, they'd have to confront THE FUCKING JUSTICE SYSTEM they had NO PLANS on criticising. I don't think they ever explicitly said the fucking Crime-Theatre nonsense was Bad either.

I could go on, but this is already so long. But yeah, I hope this gave you an idea.

Hey you ever think about The Characters so much to the point where

"why can't they just be friends" not in the homophobic way but in the "their platonic relationship in the source material is far more dynamic and complex than the sanitized personalities they gain as a result of shipping" way

"the tallest" "the brit" "the ravenette" "the oldest" "the pinkette" "the colorblind" "the smallest"

Please I beg you just use names and pronouns

Fresh from the oven 🐺