like guys how big is even a cupboard under the stairs?
did harry even have a proper bed or was it like a camping cot?
and was he even able to fully stretch out when he slept?
did they still keep cleaning stuff in there?
like harry james potter i love you ok
And also: Like at what age was he put into the broom cupboard? And when did they put the lock on? I don’t fucking understand. Cupboard sounds all nice but, you know, He lived in a fucking closet. With a lock on it.
He wore clothes three sizes too big and held up his trousers with a string.
Everything he owns at age eleven, including his new school things and excluding Hedwig, fits neatly one trunk.
The only effort made specifically for his care (not leftover from Dudley) were his glasses, which were left is constant disrepair.
He was deliberately fed less than the rest of the family, and was quite “small for his age” (malnourished).
His birthday and Christmas ‘presents’ were worthless items like a clothes hanger or one used adult-sized sock, only given to him so the adults could tell themselves they were not cruel. (We gave him a present! We’ve done our job!)
At night he was locked in a tiny, bug infested space in a house that had four bedrooms and a sofa.
Harry Potter was a victim of child abuse. When people accuse him of being “emo” I’m like, “He’s probably clinically depressed, you dumbnuts!” Even without all the angst during the Hogwarts years, Harry could very well develop Complex-PTSD once you include that.
yes this is what i’ve been thinking about all morning.
live i’ve spoken about the dursley’s treatment of him before so i won’t reiterate all that but
the abuse against him was trifold..
he was neglected-a form of child abuse.
he was emotionally abused-a form of child abuse.
he was physically assaulted-a form of child abuse.
anyone who says a word against harry’s emotional state can kiss it b/c no. he endured more in eleven years that most people have to deal with in the entirety of their lives.
and this is before the really, truly horrifying things happen. or at least, other things happen to him that are so horrific that it makes his abusive, tormenting childhood seem like nothing, so his childhood gets little to no airplay.
but these are his formative years, when his personality is being developed, when he’s learning how to act and how to be. and he overcame it, yes but it was just one more thing in a VERY LONG LIST of things he had to overcome.
Our society has a number of loveable buffoons who fool around and are excused from acting like prats because they’re funny. They might be rubbish at most things but as long as their banter is flowing, we put up with it.
These types are almost exclusively men. You don’t get hilarious, idiotic women being lorded as icons of our culture. Diane Abbott is dismissed as a cretin while Boris Johnson is a joker.
Which begs the question: is conscious male incompetence a form of misogyny?
If you labour the point that you can’t cook, then chances are that you won’t be made to cook. If you make a hash out of doing the laundry or hoovering, you’re forcing someone else to take over.
Few have the patience to watch someone do a job badly over and over again and so often, they’ll just take it upon themselves to do your chores as well as their own. Emotional labour is doubled when you’ve got an incompetent clown on your hands.
I was recently listening Semi Circles, a BBC radio comedy starring Paula Wilcox, first broadcast in 1989.
It’s about a housewife who recently wakes up to the fact that she’s spent the past eight years being a slave to her kids and nice-but-emotionally-dim husband.
Part of this awakening is the realisation that she does all the housework because her husband is crap at it. Left alone, he makes inedible food. He lets the kids stay up well beyond their bedtime. He leaves the house a tip.
He doesn’t even try to do a good job because he fears that if he’s too good at these jobs, his wife will make him do more of them.
Put these garbage men in the garbage where they belong.
I went and checked the original source and it’s worse. While most of the comments get the problem (the lying, not the eggs) some of them just cannot see that this shit is actually a big honking warning sign for bigger shit. A loving person is not capable of doing this.
He literally puts his mere convenience over her actual well being. This guy thought up and executed a plan where she has to do *all* the work (because of course it wasn’t just this one specific thing) while he watches her tire herself out from the sidelines. Imagine this going on for *years*. …now imagine this with kids. You think this guy cares if she gets off during sex? Would he take care of her if she were to get sick? Would he ever lift a finger if he could get away not doing it?
She can’t trust a word he says and he doesn’t give a shit about her needs. It’s not about the *eggs*.
Sorry to reblog from you, stranger, but this commentary is all very good. I especially appreciate the emphasized statement that “a loving person is not capable of doing this.” That line is going to rattle around my brain for ages — the words feel good in my mouth. How you’ve said it is just so right.
I want to add some of OP’s further comments on the thread she made:
“To be fair, I have pretty high standards for cleanliness and his idea of clean vastly differs from mine and honestly, that’s okay! But now I’m starting to seriously wonder if he sabotaged cleaning, too, just to get me to do it. Dishes, for instance. He will wash half and leave a nasty sink full of the rest, claiming he’ll do them later. This drives me nuts, so I just do them. Often he will leave crusted on shit on then, too, so okay, I’ll just do them, right? Now because of the egg business, I’m seeing it as malicious.”
→ The husband is lazy. He seemingly commits to housework, only to bail partway through, and doesn’t even put in the effort required to do the job right in the first place.
“Yes, he sucks at dishes and laundry to the point he is banned from doing them. He will leave clothes in the washer overnight and doesnt separate anything to the point I’ve had many white clothes ruined. My favorite white brassiere is now pink due to his bullshit.”
→ The husband is inconsiderate of his wife’s property, even that which is well-loved. Could his repeated failure to learn how to do this task have been a ruse? Did he anticipate his banishment from laundry duty? OP now has to genuinely wonder about this.
“I’m starting to think he does things wrong on purpose now just to get me to do it. Another example! My car. For a while my driver side door wouldn’t open from the outside, so I had to crawl through the passenger side. He ordered a handle and kept putting it off for WEEKS. Finally, he says his hands are too big to do it, so I had to do it.”
→ The husband makes excuses for himself that cast him as an unwitting victim to fate, with the implication that he would totally do [action], if only he could. He distances himself from any possibility of blame.
Obviously, anonymous forum posts are taken with a grain of salt — we, as readers, will never know for sure if OP is real. That’s not a concern for me, though. Like I don’t care. The fact is that if one assumes this is all true, it is very obvious that the poster’s husband is a perfect example of maliciously feigned incompetence. He’s manipulative and lazy to the point of cruelty, expecting his wife to work while he fails to lift a single functioning finger. The statement that “he likes her eggs better” isn’t cute like some have stated in the replies to this post; it’s just another excuse that walls him off from criticism, a bullshit reason he pulled out of his ass to make her feel guilty and unreasonable for being upset.
The absurdity of the situation when taken at face value — lying about eggs, getting mad about making eggs, even just the reality of deviled eggs (an inherently silly prep style) being someone’s favorite food — extends an air of the absurd to the wife’s concerns, and to others’ warnings. I have noticed several comments to the tune of, “These people are all mad about eggs? What a joke! How oversensitive. That’s just how men are; this is just what marriage looks like.”
It’s fucked up, is what it is.
…deviled egg lady, if you’re truly out there somewhere, I hope you told your husband to make his own goddamn eggs from now on. It’s literally the least he can do.
When I was angry about this people reblogged from me to say it was no big deal and saying that it’s not as bad as I was making it sound and that he was actually just complimenting her and everyone takes things too seriously…this is what you need to read.
Actions show you the mind of the person who decided to act on them. His actions told her that he was capable of lying to and manipulating her for his own benefit. That is never healthy. It’s a sense of entitlement that can only be achieved when he doesn’t view her as having equal value as him, that her labour can be exploited to compensate for his lack of contribution.
It will never be the only time he is manipulative, that’s a place you can only get to when manipulation is very common and easy for you, you don’t even consciously realise that anymore.
It’s more than an abuse red flag, it’s abusive on its own.
bnha fans are weird because imo, tomura shigaraki is very overtly abused in the storyline but because it isn’t spelled out and shown graphically on camera or in the manga, people choose to ignore it. a lot of his traits stand out to me as an abuse victim, the fact that the flashback we see of him as a child is of him in tears and bleeding after (presumably) he lost his father, and all for one taking advantage of this trauma to kidnap (yes, kidnap) a child all points to a less than savory childhood. he has a lot of resentment and anger and pent up hatred towards the world because of how it’s wronged him and especially all might but i don’t think he would’ve targeted all might like that without all for one’s malignant influences.
the way his villain costume is designed, with hands pulling at various parts of his body, two of them positioned on his neck – this is a trope that has been used in various manga series to portray abuse. the way he clings to “father” showcases a lack of a father figure in his life, presumably one that he accidentally killed. all for one is always referred to as master/sensei, shigaraki reveres him as something more akin to a god than a father in season 3′s first opening, and it’s not… healthy. none of that is. that isn’t the basis for a healthy relationship
i’m not sure where people get the idea that all for one is a good father. he’s not even a father, he’s shown as a terrible person who has hurt many people throughout his overextended life time, he horribly abused his brother as shown in the most recently chapters during midoriya’s dream, and he taunts all might about the death of nana shimura, who is all might’s mentor. none of this says “good”. someone who is so vile in so many different situations is not likely to be a good father to tomura, who, again, he kidnapped as a child to use as leverage against all might. tomura was a tool to him, not someone he was rescuing. he used tomura’s relations to nana as a way to break all might’s spirit during their last fight
all for one is not a father figure, and abuse in bnha does not always have to be painfully shown on screen – the word “abuse” does not have to be uttered by the character themself.
him telling him he’d give tomura chances over and over again when he failed wasn’t him being kind, it was something that left me with a very bad taste in my mouth. i think it’s very obvious that shigaraki was abused by all for one, at the very least manipulated, and i would like for the “even afo is a good dad!” trope to die.
the thing is, you don’t get over ten years of abuse in a few months.
since the beginning of the manga, Izuku flinches whenever he’s in the same room as Bakugou. he admires Bakugou’s determination, yes, but that doesn’t make all those years of being bullied, abused, and put down any less traumatizing.
like. i love Bakugou. everyone knows i love Bakugou. i’ve probably written a short book’s length worth of meta about him and his character growth and development and where i think he’ll go in the future. but Bakugou seriously fucked up with Izuku,. he emotionally and physically abused this kid for ten years–Izuku is 15. that’s over half his life.
Izuku has been abused for longer then he hasn’t.
Bakugou literally tells Izuku he should just commit suicide. and it is 100% not treated as a joke.
for 1) you should never joke about suicide, and 2) what the fuck. this is the kind of shit Izuku has put up with for his entire life. even the first page of the first chapter, we’re introduced to little Bakugou beating up little Izuku.
Bakugou just walks by and Izuku is scared out of his mind and shaking. Izuku even says that he’s gotten used to cowering before Bakugu. he’s been conditioned to do this.
just look at what his mental picture of Bakugou is
poor boy is terrified. and it doesn’t end there.
again, because of Bakugou, Izuku is shaking. Bakugou isn’t even in the room, but Izuku knows that Bakugou will immediately attack him.
hell, Izuku even outright admits that he hates Bakuguo. he admires him, yes. but that doesn’t nullify the many, many different ways Bakugou has made Izuku feel like he’s worthless (which includes calling him the name “Deku”).
Izuku gets a little better around Bakugou after this, since Bakugou doesn’t do much to him since the Heroes vs. Villains training exam. Bakugou would rather avoid him than interact with him, which is a relief for Izuku.
but again, ten years of emotional and physical abuse doesn’t just disappear after a few months of relative peace.
hell, this one isn’t even directed at Izuku and he’s still shaking because of Bakugou’s tone of voice.
that shit stays with you. there is a reason Izuku is so shy and hesitant, and it’s largely due to Bakugou bullying him and shooting him down constantly. thanks to All Might and his time at UA tho, Izuku’s confidence is growing, but when it come to Bakugou… it’s still very complicated.
antipathy: a deep-seated feeling of dislike; aversion.
Izuku wants to beat Bakugou and is very inspired by him, but he’s still largely scared of him. and he really does hate Bakugou. it’s mentioned more than once.
the difference is that Izuku likes avoid conflict unless it’s necessary.
and god. i love Bakugou. i love him so much ok. but i refuse to ignore all the shit he did to Izuku.
Izuku is just walking by and Bakugou screams a death threat at him and Izuku tries to get the fuck outta there as fast as possible.
while i’m certain most of Bakugou’s threats are hyperbolic at best, it’s still feels incredibly horrible to have stuff like that thrown at you.
Bakugou addresses Izuku here, and first flinches. then Bakugou moves forward SLIGHTLY and Izuku BACKS AWAY. Bakugou isn’t even close to him right now, he’s all the way across the room. but Izuku still flinches and backs away.
there are several things i wanna point out here.
Izuku is stuttering. like. consistently, he is stuttering, because he’s scared of Bakugou’s reaction, even tho he knows he has to do this in order to pass the test. he has to do this, but he really, really, REALLY does not want to.
second, Izuku mentions that when dealing with Bakugou, everything he thinks is bad about himself comes back to him. his self confidence drops. again, this is directly due to all those years of abuse and bullying by Bakugou. i’m sure any time Izuku contradicted something Bakugou said, or tried to get him to do anything, he reacted with violence and jeers. which leads to…..
god, this whole scene.
Izuku isn’t even doing anything. he’s asking Bakugou to cooperate with him in order to pass the test. but he implies one thing that sets Bakugou off (that he can’t beat someone, as in, he’s not strong enough to do so) and Bakugou fucking attacks him. he HITS HIM IN THE FACE WITH HIS GRANDE THING.
i don’t care why Bakugou did this, it was totally uncalled for. that was just absolutely uncalled for. which was the point of the scene. to show just how uncalled for this action was, because Bakugou’s a goddamn bundle of emotional issues and a damn good chunk of them are centered around Izuku.
Bakugou gets better after this fight, thank goodness. he was forced to put aside his pride and work with Izuku to win. the narrative is slowly, but surely, chipping away at his pride and his negative behavior. every time Bakugou does something bad, the narrative punishes him for it, and rewards him whenever he does something good.
Bakugou is getting better. i’ve written so much meta about this that it’s ridiculous. that doesn’t excuse everything he did in the past, however. but hitting Izuku with his grenade arm thing was the worst thing he’s done since the Heroes vs. Villains exam. after this, he pretty much leaves Izuku alone.
Bakugou has a lot of complicated emotional issues that fuel a lot of his behavior, but as the series progresses, he’s gotten better with how he handles them.
this is the first time Bakugou addresses Izuku since the whole kidnapping thing. Izuku still looks a little freaked out and nervous. not as much as he would’ve been before, but it’s still there.
it’s because Bakugou hasn’t been picking on him lately, and Izuku even notes this. not since the Kamino incident, which is when Bakugou gets his first inkling of understanding about the situation between All Might and Izuku.
in fact, when it comes to that issue, Bakugou is always calm.
Bakugou is always calm whenever this issue is brought up. in fact, he’s the most calm we’ve ever seen in the series whenever this issue comes up.
(…. also i just realized the combo of pics above would make a nice graphic. but anyway)
Bakugou isn’t yelling. he isn’t raging. he doesn’t even seem particularly annoyed. no, he’s just…. calm. maybe a little pensive and contemplative. but no violently loud or angry emotions are shown anywhere, which is remarkable given the kind of person Bakugou is.
so Bakugou is getting better… he’s realizing some tihngs about Izuku. some things about Izuku’s relationship with All Might. he’s finding out about a lot of things, and a lot has changed in his attitude because of it.
however, Izuku still flinches when Bakugou calls him in the second to last panel. again, Bakugou is calm throughout all this. yet Bakuou calling him still causes that momentary reaction.
Bakugou is growing and improving and becoming a better person, but Izuku has been abused and bullied by him for over half his life. he hates Bakugou. it’s going to take much, MUCH longer than a few months of peace and quiet for Izuku to not react with fear towards him.
it’s going to take a lot of work, and teamwork, and patience, and a damn fucking good apology from Bakugou. it’s going to take years before this conditioned behavior finally goes away, if it goes away at all.
i do think that Bakugou and Izuku could become tentative friends, over time, but…. it is going to take so much more than just a few months to get to that point. as it is, we’ve only climbed a small hill. that final moment of peace and acceptance and apology is atop a mountain, and it’s going to take the entire manga’s length of character development between these two to reach it.
So I was reading Drusilla’s character page on TV Tropes and found an interesting description of her character;
“Karma Houdini: She killed Kendra, slaughtered hundreds of innocents, turned Darla back into a vampire at the behest of Wolfram & Hart before going on a massive rampage through L.A.; despite all of this, by the end of both Buffy and Angel, she’s still alive and at large. Taken to ludicrous extremes in the Angel & Faith comics, where after thwarting her plans and killing the Lorophage demon she was using to “help” people, Angel lets her escape… which leads to Drusilla attacking Faith’s Slayer squad and killing one of them.”
To put it kindly, I strongly disagree that Drusilla is a ‘karma Houdini’, or character who avoids comeuppance for her misdeeds.
First and foremost, I find it perplexing how death is the only thing the writer considers karma. Being killed, apparently, is the only way a character can pay for their sins, which makes for a twisted sense of justice in my humble opinion. According to this writer, being tortured to the point of being bedridden isn’t comeuppance. Nor is being tortured again by your own childe. Or being thrown off a building and into the path of a speeding Ford. Or being set on fire. Or being tasered, tied up, and nearly sacrificed as part of your ex-lover’s demented declaration of love to another woman. Or being driven even more insane by the brief possession of a soul. Or being made lucid only to be slowly driven insane a second time, fully aware of what’s happening to you, and that’s there nothing you can do to save yourself. None of this constitutes suffering for your actions, apparently. None of it.
Moreover, the idea that dying is the only way Dru can be sufficiently punished makes no sense in the context of her character. In fact, it borders on a non-sequitur. The whole theme of Drusilla’s character is “eternal torment”, being forced to live with the trauma of losing your family, your mind, your innocence. To put it in Angelus’ words;
“Killing is so merciful in the end, isn’t it? The pain is ended.”
– Dear Boy, Angel.
This is when he decides to sire Dru. Because for her, being forced to live is the worst punishment of all.Tragically, Drusilla would probably not regard death as comeuppance…But as clemency.
Ultimately, the idea that Drusilla never suffers any karma is nothing short of ridiculous. And this is without touching the issue of how much responsibility (if any) Dru can take for her actions, a whole other can of worms. Do people deserve retribution for misdeeds they can’t understand the consequences of?
I just realized why Drusilla flips out when she sees the roses in “Surprise.”
ANGEL SENDS RED ROSES TO BUFFY IN “BEWITCHED, BOTHERED, AND BEWILDERED” AND SCATTERS RED ROSE PETALS IN JENNY’S HOUSE IN “PASSIONS.” Red roses are part of his stalking pattern. And whose stalking and siring constituted, by his own account, the worst thing he’d ever done before he got his soul back?
I am not a huge fan of Angel, but I’m also not running a group determined to murder him with rusty spoons. HOWEVER. If there’s any one reason why I will not join his fanclub it’s because of how he treats Drusilla. He told Buffy that he regretted everything he did to her, but he never actually acted like it. He was almost nicer to her when he was ANGELUS than he was when he was souled.
Angel always treated Drusilla like he found her to be annoying. He was irritated by her and the way she acted. Like he wasn’t the one who stalked her, murdered everyone she was close to, raped her, drove her to insanity, and then turned her into a vampire to make sure that her suffering would be eternal. If he was so regretful of his actions, why would he treat her as though she was just an aggravation to him? If he really felt bad everything he’d done, shouldn’t he act like it? Everyone thinks of him as a hero, but I’m not so sure.
Drusilla deserved so much more than what she was given from life. She wanted to be pure. And Angelus took that away from her. He took everything away from her. He condemned her to a life that was so hellish that she may never even realize that she’s in hell if someone kills her off.
I think what Angel did to Drusilla is unforgivable. There’s no making excuses for it.
Cheloneuniverse 