A child weaned on poison considers harm a comfort.

But you are responsible for your own safe spaces. You can block tags, block words, block people.

“But i thought fandom was supposed to be a safe space” —yeah you have to curate it.

Unfortunately one persons’s safe space may be another persons’ trigger. That’s ok. Simply block them, block the tag, block the word etc. They can do the same for you.

I don’t know who said it first, but “I need to be able to express my anger without shame” and “I need to be away from yelling and loud noises” are both valid needs people can have for a safe space that really aren’t compatible with each other.

So are “I need to process my trauma” and “I need to not meet any trauma.”

Or “I want a safe space to tell/read the stories that speak to me” and “those stories are distressing to me.”

Insisting that your needs are the only needs anyone should have is not a safe space, it’s its own act of violence.

YOU CAN'T HOLD ONTO GHOSTS

artist statement below:

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the little lord and his loyal court

Marina Abramović and Ulay, Rest Energy, 1980

this is very much the reaction of a victim of childhood sexual assault. and this coding makes a lot of sense, because we know what hisoka gets sexual gratification from generally is physical combat. the punch is metaphorically a very intimate act, albeit a violent one. when killua asks gon about what happened, gon plays it off as something that killua doesn’t need to know about, because he’s too uncomfortable and embarrassed to discuss it.

gon keeps saying and thinking “i couldn’t do anything against him” multiple times over. he’s struggling with a realization of a loss of autonomy emphasized by his extended reaction to the incident added in this version. it’s not just literally the action of being hit that gon is struggling with—it’s the way hisoka has been objectifying him the entire exam. it’s hisoka’s declaration of ownership over him and this sexualization of gon that gon, as a very young and naive boy, does not have the words for. the 1999 version in general introduces multiple scenes to show how willing the adult men in the series are to take advantage of gon.

here’s a further example from the hxh musicals that were based on the 1999 adaptation specifically:

the attention paid to this detail, that exists within the canon but is taken a step further by the 1999 adaptation, makes gon’s eventual conversation with kurapika all the more heartbreaking. it’s the first time he’s trying to explain what hisoka has been doing to him to a trusted friend.

i really like the translation here. the vagueness with which gon is describing the incident (“when i told him i didn’t want it…”) leaves a lot of room for the double entendre of the punch as sexualized violence. and of course as the series continues, there are multiple other instances of hisoka dehumanizing/sexualizing gon (and sometimes even killua, particularly when he’s in proximity to gon) and even referring to gon as a toy or delivering lines like “gon is mine” / “gon belongs to me”.

gon is so used to having an obvious breakdown and then immediately trying to force the issue away.

1999 shows us the full extent of what one of these breakdowns can look like years before we even had a whiff of chimera ants where all of gon’s coping mechanisms shatter at once. with hisoka and gon’s relationship specifically, there are four arcs straight of hisoka using gon for the purpose of sexual gratification. and this clearly scares gon, but he doesn’t seem to have the words to be able to verbalize exactly why he’s so uncomfortable.

this is why i take gon very seriously when he says he has experiences with older women that “taught him a lot of stuff”. i don’t think gon’s naivete comes from inexperience, but rather the experiences he does have made the way hisoka (and eventually palm) treat him seem at least somewhat normal. i talk more about how gon rationalizes adults abusing and manipulating him here. the hxh world at large seems to have zero protections for children but they are also not taken seriously as humans.

I was wondering just a day or two ago if there was anyone who took what Gon said about those ladies who visit Whale Island seriously, so this is really great to see! It's played for laughs with Killua's (equally naive, awed/impressed/if a bit shocked) response that "This guy's an adult!"

(Meanwhile, 1999 Killua's much less innocent in general and was the one who tried to goad Gon into watching the adult videos on the pay-per-view... he was much more of a delinquent in general in that version, which was likely their attempt at showing how Killua's very child-unfriendly criminal past influenced him.)

On the topic of Hisoka using others... there's 1999 anime supplemental material where Hisoka gives everyone foot massages...

inspired by those stickers :D

Finally now that the comic is fully public on comicfury, I get to share it with all of you here, too <3