when you escape your abuser and they start acting nice it doesn’t mean they’ve changed it just means you’ve distanced yourself enough to see the side of them that people on the outside always saw
How well an abuser treats you is negatively correlated to how much power they wield over you.
The “I am a piece of shit and nobody will ever love me” factoid is actually a statistical error. You are actually are fantastic and infinitely worthy of people’s company. That person you used to care about, who taught you to hate yourself by abandoning you, is an outlier and should not have been counted
this is the greatest and most positive use of a meme that i have ever seen.
Because I feel like kids of color don’t hear it enough: domestic abuse is not a part of your culture.
A lot of us where raised with the idea that “its normal for wives/children to get hit! it helps them learn– only white folk don’t get beaten when they misbehave”. That’s not true, white people aren’t the only ones who deserve a safe and abuse free environment. Black and brown people can and do have loving families.
If you’re in a situation where you are enduring abuse and people use your culture to justify it, I want you to know that what they’re telling you are lies.
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I see the words “I know he would never hit me/physically harm me” in a lot of letters I get. Far more than I could ever, ever, ever answer or publish.
Those words break my heart, every time, because the people who write them are offering them up as an example of how the relationship can be saved and how I shouldn’t judge their partner too harshly. They mean “he’s not ABUSIVE-abusive (even though he does all these abusive and controlling things to me). I’m not like those abused women, I would leave if someone actually hit me.”
They break my heart because the letter writers have had to do the calculus, the calculus called Would He Hit Me? and they offer the answer up as proof that he wouldn’t but all I can see is proof that he almost did, that he’s thinking about it, that he’s a week or a year or a hair’s breadth away from it.
It’s proof that she’s thinking about it, too, that she’s had to do the math. Nathan wouldn’t hit you, but he’d punch a wall in front of you, so you can see the force of how his fists slam into things., so you can see how hurt his hand is afterward, so you know that the damage is your fault.
When I read those words about how the partner doesn’t harm or hit, I can hear the echo of the guy saying them, too, like “Well, it’s not like I physically hurt you! Come on! Be reasonable (and do what I say)!“
(Mentioning how “at least you don’t hit” someone kinda sorta exactly like reminding them that you could hit them, that you might hit them, that hitting them is on the list of possible things that could happen, you are a fucking goddamn hero of a man for making the difficult heroic choice not to. omeone saying this to you should always make the little hairs on the back of your neck stand up, and prompt you to look around for the exits).
And then the letters, like your letter, contain the most heartbreaking question of all, which is how, how can I be better/fix it/make it right/not make him scary and angry anymore. How can I be perfect (give up caffeine), how can I show him (check in with him by cell phone every time I change locations or company) that I’m worthy?
Because the abuser-logic has worked. “When you make mistakes it’s your fault, when I make mistakes (like scaring you) it’s also your fault.” Someone doesn’t have to physically hurt you to harm you.
People in non-abusive relationships don’t have to do this constant calculus. Non-abusive dudes don’t get described as “intimidating” by their girlfriends, because non-abusive dudes, even the big strong burly ones who might look pretty intimidating to a stranger don’t intimidate their girlfriends. They don’t punch walls, or throw things, or put 10,000 tiny conditions around everything, or monitor their movements or their phones. When those dudes feel lonely, they fucking call a friend, or they muddle through those lonely feelings. Non-abusive dudes don’t pat themselves on the back for not hurting women, because it doesn’t occur to them to hurt women.
every woman I know who’s been abused has said this at some point. EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.
and not to get too personal with you lot but I remember being seven years old and telling a girl on the playground how much I hated it when my dad kicked the shit out of me, and responding to her look of horror with “No, don’t worry, it’s not like he actually ABUSES me! I deserve it honestly, sometimes I don’t do my chores.”
and how normal that felt
and how easy it must have been for my mother to go from “well at least he doesn’t hit me” to “at least he doesn’t hit me too often” to “well at least I can usually stop him from hitting the kids” to “oh my god why didn’t you tell me, why didn’t you tell me he was doing that to you while he was still here? I would have left oh my god my poor babies”
that’s abuse. you normalise every fucking step until it stops, because you have to survive in that situation.
please oh god please get out if you can. before he starts hitting you.
you do realise that
Michael J. Straczynski - the man who wrote this comic, also wrote Superman Earth One, which is one of main inspiration for DCEU Superman, don’t you?
Really need to bring back the Superman and Batman from this era.
Also, here’s a very important thing: a lot of abusive people will not show their abusive side at all in front of non-victims. Perhaps your friend claims her mother is emotionally abusive, but when you meet her mother, the woman is very sweet and generous and makes for great conversation and even treats you guys to ice cream or something.
Abusive people are alarmingly good at coming across as perfectly good people when they’re not alone with their victims,. They can flip like a switch between being scary and being amiable. Some might even go the extra mile to turn people against you, making it seem like you’re just being selfish and they’re not at fault. The two-faced act may not always be intentional, but that doesn’t make it any less damaging. In fact, it can make things worse because people may not believe you and you may not get the support you need.
So, if someone tells you that their parent/significant other/etc is emotionally abusive, and your first thought is “But they were so nice when I met them!”, this is probably what’s happening. Please don’t dismiss them just because you may have had a positive experience with someone that makes their life hell when you’re not looking. Listen to them.
I never liked the idea of Bro just being pure asshole, but I don’t think that I enjoy the idea that he legitimately thought it was good for Dave all the time, either. It’s too straightforward for me. What I want is a depiction of Bro Strider that is frightening, and good intentions aren’t frightening, they may make a character understandable, even more repugnant in some circumstances, but definitely not frightening. Neither is a cookie cutter villain. So, here’s how I personally interpret Bro, from what may scare me about him, yet make it possible to understand Dirk falling into.
I’m drawn back to a very powerful scene (possibly my favorite) from ATLA: specifically, from my favorite character, Katara, “There’s just nothing inside you. You’re pathetic and sad and empty.” Then another favorite quote of mine in the Light Fantastic,
“Rincewind stared, and knew that there were far worse things than Evil. All the demons of Hell would torture your very soul, but that was precisely because they valued souls very highly; evil would always try to steal the universe, but at least it considered the universe worth stealing. But the grey world behind those empty eyes would trample and destroy without even according its victims the dignity of hatred. It wouldn’t even notice them.”
I’m drawing from what frightens me the most, and that is the idea that Bro didn’t operate out of good intentions, nor was he outright resentful or hateful of Dave; he felt nothing. A frightening Bro Strider, to me, would be the diluted manifestation of Dirk’s ruthlessness in reaching a goal, coupled with a deadened apathy of what was to come, a Dirk who was not brainwashed by Cal, but was simply told throughout the decades what was to come. “You’ll have to raise a kid. The world will end. You have to keep him alive. You’ll die.” And a knowledge that if this doesn’t come to pass, than the entire timeline will just collapse in on itself, so he’s got two choices: Keep barreling forward in his own personal convictions, keep not wanting a kid, just keep pursuing his Self and then eventually fade without relevence as the world comes to an end anyways, or go by the book. Follow the predictions of this rude puppet, raise the kid, and die. Bro to me isn’t just a Prince of Heart roaming unchecked in that he destroyed Dave’s self; Princes, when they’ve failed, tend to destroy their aspect within themselves as well (Kurloz’s disturbing lack of rage, Eridan losing hope). Bro having misguided care, or hatred? I don’t think it lines up. What really would punch it in would be a dead soul, someone who has lost all capacity to care, and does what they do out of necessity. He didn’t even keep food in the house, and yes, he taught Dave turntables, something Dirk linked to his own identity, pushed pieces of his identity onto Dave but with little personal attachment.
Bro is a result of Dirk giving up on his own personal convictions, then raising Dave in a purely clinical method, a complete lack of Heart as he coldly arranges an environment that closely approximates a battleground, grooms Dave to be afraid of coming death as any moment. To top it off, no emotional attachment is developed between them whatsoever. I have no doubt that Bro had every intention to not have Dave in mourning when he died, because Dave states that he never got one hint that Bro cared, and that kind of thing would most likely be deliberate, not even an accidental action betraying a hint of care. Destroy every emotional connection, don’t let it grow, and grief won’t hinder him. The most efficient course of action in the long run, he calculated, received information, and executed without an inch of emotion.
To me, Bro being completely devoid of any kind of malice or care throughout the entire ordeal makes it nauseating. As a failed Prince, he destroyed Dave’s sense of self, but he was utterly devoid of a heart in the process; no love, no resentment, no misguided beliefs that what he was doing was for the greater good. There’s just a possessed puppet telling the facts, and now he has to raise a kid (which he never wanted), divert himself to the sidelines (also something Dirk was adverse too), and die as an off note in what will become Dave’s story. Bro is empty. If anything, I’d bet the only thing he’d have to look forward too would be the final battle, where he begins the Scratch, and dies in combat.
It’s not only that; I believe this prospect of a Bro who was completely devoid of any kind of emotional attachment or motive would be more poignant (and more of a crushing revelation) to Dave. He spends his life wondering what the hell was happening inside of Bro’s mind, only to come to the crushing realization that there was nothing, just a guy following a script, whose heinous abuse wasn’t even out of some twisted good intention, or a hatred of his own kid. Dave suffered and his perpetrator is hollow. He didn’t even believe Dave was worth his resentment and granted him no autonomy throughout his life, that is the ultimate insult; he never even granted Dave the dignity of hatred, or resentment, which would at least be something. It’d give Dave a reason to hate him back. But what if he didn’t see him as a person so much as he was just another check on the list in the course of coming events, how crushing would that be?
tldr: I think Bro being an empty being who is blankly following a script, Dirk’s ultimate destruction of his own self and his idea of autonomy, is most definitely my most consistent, and most disconcerting view of him. With Dirk’s fucked up way of helping people, but a lack of heart behind it, as per a failed Prince.
