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Ppl defending c/atra: she was never abusive she was abused!
Me: she was both and hit rock bottom and kept falling and connected with people and realized her bs and fought it and faced her shame and guilt and self hate and that is why I love her.
Me: she was both and hit rock bottom and kept falling and connected with people and realized her bs and fought it and faced her shame and guilt and self hate and that is why I love her.
There's this really dangerous idea that being abused is a taint and you can either be so super-humanly pure and soft that the taint bounces right off you - or if it gets in your bloodstream at all then you are An Abuser and Trash and deserve to die because you cannot change.
C//atra is a powerful story about how you can be abused - and it can get into your bloodstream and rage like a fever inside you - and you can also *stop*. You can always stop, when you realize you've gotten lost and hate who you've become.
The show makes it v clear that C becomes verbally/emotionally abusive toward S/corpia - including a moment where S needs to leave for her own well-being and to give C the space to find a way to stop. And physically/emotionally/verbally w/ A who has a similar moment of stopping it
It's really harmful for people to "defend" her by buying totally into the PURE/trash survivor dichotomy and saying 'no no no she never was abusive she's not worthless trash, she's pure and worthy!"
she is not pure, she was abusive, and she's also a person and worthy of change
she is not pure, she was abusive, and she's also a person and worthy of change
The anti/pro re: C is so effed up bc you have a/nti C people who are pointing out things she totally did do in canon - in order to say she deserves only death - & then people 'defend' her by denying what she did because they too agree if she had done them she'd only deserve death
C//atra fans C//atra antis
if she was ever abusive she's worthless trash who deserves only death. growth and repentance and change are evil and wrong.
if she was ever abusive she's worthless trash who deserves only death. growth and repentance and change are evil and wrong.
anti logic means instead of people acknowledging that dark mental places/abusive behavior can be a temporary thing someone can change from-once you say change & forgiveness are wrong in all cases-you have to gaslight each other that things didn't happen bc there's no redemption
the discourse in that fandom is a case study in how purity wanker logic makes it impossible for people to appreciate really good characters and writing on human psychology - and survivor experiences
It's so frustrating for this powerful character--this nuanced arc actually about being abused and letting that rage inside you for a time--is surrounded in this miasma of victim blaming and trash/pure survivor dichotomy stuff
The ONLY way to change for people who fall into abusive patterns is to be able to admit what they're doing - the only way to be able to stop and grow and change is to admit it! But this discourse completely removes the option of admitting it, because if you admit it then 'kys'
It's really worrying to me that you have N//oelle doing this beautiful work offering this character who speaks to so much truth emotionally - and people drawn to that are going to be directed toward this really toxic binary logic re: being a survivor and being fucked up
It's particularly worrying when C fans victim blame A//dora and S//corpia in order to deny C's behavior - once you close off the exit of redemption/change/growth, it leads to truly dangerous logic that reinforces abuse instead of highlighting the exit ramps from toxic behavior
And NONE OF THIS trash/pure binary that purity wankers are promoting fits with how therapists actually handle abusive/toxic behavior - if someone wants to change they need to be able to admit the harm they've done and then work on their patterns of thinking/relating.
