your friendly neighbourhood nobody

Because under the post about giving minors the right to medically consent, people are spreading a ton of misinformation on this - largely because they just do not question the stuff they just assume are "normal". Which here is: "kids are all afraid of needles and therefore if we let them consent or not to medical proceedures, they would just not consent and not get vaccinations, because needles hurt".

And, look. Here is the thing: no, needles do not actually hurt a whole lot. And while, yes, certain procedures that involve being stabbed by a needle hurt more if you are younger for a bunch of reasons... that is actually not the main reason children fear needles. Because, again: the pain is not that bad. And most kids, especially young kids, whose motor skills are still developing, usually will have a bunch more hurting scratches, bruises and the like at any given moment than there will be pain from the needle.

No, from what research can tell, the main reason kids are afraid of needles, is more that for many of them needle procedures are very traumatizing. And that is largely because of the consent issue.

Imagine you are a person who is still pretty darn new to that whole human thing. So for one, yes, your brain is actually not that great in understanding what pain is dangerous and what pain is a safe limit of pain. So yes, someone intentionally hurting you (like with a needle) is really kinda scary. But then there is also the thing where this person hurting you is not telling you why they are doing. The people who you normally trust with keeping you safe (your family) is betraying you, by just holding you down and scolding you for crying over it. Or maybe it is not your family, but some strange nurse who is holding you. And while you are scared, because someone is intentionally hurting you, while someone else is restricting you, the adults around you are telling you, that your emotional reaction to this is actually bad and you are wrong for reacting that way. They might in fact lie to you and tell you that something that is insanely scary to you is "not that bad", instead of just understanding that it is super scary to you. And that is then what you start to expect whenever you see a doctor prepare a needle: people holding you down, hurting you without reason, and telling you that you are wrong for being upset, actively gaslighting you.

We have research on this. And this research is pretty clear: most kids are actually somewhat okay with needles, if you inform them why you are doing it, allow for them to have their emotions, talk to them about their emotions, and allow for them to set at least some conditions.

And frankly, I hate how many people just accept the framing of "kids are naturally afraid of this because it hurts". Like, folks, I know y'all are fucking Americans and that in your culture it is kinda normalized to like put kids into like some sort of fortified hamsterball to stop them from like doing typical kids stuff. But... let me tell you: if you do not do that, kids will actually very regularly engage in dangerous play that they know will often end up in injuries that are going to hurt. And, no, they are not to dumb to understand that. The kids know that this is what might happen because of their play. They actually just take the risk. Yes, they will cry if they get hurt, because - again - their nervous system is still calibrating how it relates to pain. But they will likely do that thing again and again. I can tell you: I fell down a tree so often during my childhood, and I still climbed it. Again and again. So did most kids I knew. Like, fuck, we lived next to a forest. We played "Tarzan", and tried to go along paths without touching the ground. And we fell. A lot. And we still did it.

Public health would be so much better if nurses didn't literally pin kids to a table while they scream to give them vaccinations. I don't think that's necessary ever. And it can give them trauma for life that will impact their ability to access health care as an adult

I hate saying that I have medical trauma because my medical experiences were mostly "normal" routine stuff, I didn't have cancer or any kind of chronic health condition or unusual rare illness. But I still got traumatized, or at least had a response that was very similar to trauma

because my whole entire experience of going to the doctor was "a bunch of adults forcibly do whatever they feel like doing with my body" whether stripping off my clothes, touching me everywhere, sticking needles in me, or hurting me in some way I didn't understand

And I know almost everyone with similar experiences didn't end up nearly as Fucked Up as I did over it, but holy shit was I fucked up over it

I literally didn't even know that medical consent was a thing until I was 19...like I thought that if you went into a doctor's office or hospital they could just do whatever they wanted...unless you ran out of there I guess, or managed to plead/cry/convince them otherwise???...

But I don't know how the hell I was supposed to automatically know better, since even when I was 15 I got blood drawn while I was crying and saying "no no no no no."

And this is going to make a lot of people very angry to hear.

But a lot of y'all on this website are truly deeply genuinely never going to be capable of any kind of real narrative analysis--and I don't mean 'being right all the time' I mean 'meaningfully engaging with the text in any way'--

The match cuts were meticulously designed and put there to communicate something.

The VA's delivery of a line was being directed. Inflection and tone change the meaning of dialogue. This is intentional. There are entire teams of people shaping those choices and deciding which take to use based on what works best for the story.

Information is being revealed in a specific order, on purpose, to craft an emotional arc and guide the audience's understanding.

A character's romantic preferences are only, and SHOULD only be, their primary motivation if the genre is romance. That is why there is a genre called that. Most stories are other genres.

Creators who dislike a character generally give them LESS attention, MORE boring storylines, and LESS screentime.

Sometimes curtains are just blue. But if the shot composition or written narration takes time to HIGHLIGHT, especially more than once, that the curtains are blue, then the blueness of the curtains is by definition narratively important.

"Cite your sources" is not a witch's curse that banishes People With Different Opinions to the shadowrealm of Being Wrong. Someone making points that challenge your perceptions, while including screenshots and explicit examples, cannot be dismissed with "cite your sources" because they are literally doing that. Don't @ me on this one I've seen shit in the wars, y'all.

Failing to understand these things WILL bar you from ever really engaging with or understanding any narrative more complicated than Paw Patrol for the rest of your life.

OP: you guys are never going to be able to meaningfully engage with story and character analysis if you cant understand or aren't willing to even consider the context within writers create their stories and the intention behind characters actions and motivations, which are intentional and complex. Not everything begins and ends with romance and relationships, in fact most stories outside of the romance genre feature more complex themes and motivations than straightforward romance and romantic love. Sorry if that makes you mad.

.... you know I do think there may have been something more significant than romantic attraction motivating this character, who is a violent obsessive stalker. In fact, it could be something a little more... fatal?