#psychophobia

My issue with the Joker isn't about him. It's not a concern of fandom or a boast about how I'd be a better writer and it's not just Alan Moore or just Christopher Nolan or, or, or. My issue with the Joker is that I have met people, real people from the real world, who refused to go to therapy, to take potentially life-saving medication, or descended into brutal spirals of self-hatred because their entire frame of reference for their suffering was The Joker. I am not exaggerating and this is not me making assumptions they have voiced this concern themselves- they're not crazy, they're not like, The Joker, they're not like the other freaks, they can't be. Not to mention the abuse, from the people close to them and mental health professionals alike- you'd think being a goddamn psychiatric nurse would vaccinate someone against viewing a patient like the crazy murder clown from batman. The Joker, the Joker, the Joker.

DC has blood on its hands about this I am not exaggerating. Mental illness is not just a theoretical abstract idea it's something that kills people, and a massive part of that is the way it is stigmatized: a double form of suffering, from the disorder itself, and from a society that keeps hammering in that you should die from it. I have experienced both externalized and internalized psychophobia myself and it is horrible. People kill themselves from it and people murder people over it. None of this is intended to be hyperbolic. It's just a fact that people die from this.

So yeah, I am of the opinion that DC needs to kill off the Joker, never print a copy of a joker-centric comic again, never allow him to star even as a side character in any movie of show, and continue the complete erasure of his character until eventually the whole world forgets about him. It's not a question of good writing and again, it's not a concern from a fan: at this point, I consider it a matter of reparation for harm done and ethical duty. We have built a culture of hatred and dehumanization to justify systems that intentionally and purposefully criminalize, demonize and oppress people with psychiatric disorders, spearheaded by the Joker as the most famous symbol of this movement. You do not need to have read a comic, or a webtoon, or a fanfic, to know of the joker. You do not need to have watched a cartoon, or a movie, or a TV show. Everybody knows the Joker, his face is everywhere, his smile is iconic. And it's easy, after all, to know the Joker: he is crazy, and he is evil, and he is evil because he is crazy. Don't question it, don't think too hard about it, because that is simply the long and short of how things are: you don't need to know anything else about any of this. Nolan, if anything, is beyond shameless about it, toying with the audience's desire to understand the Joker and mocking us for it because that doesn't actually matter, silly, you are missing the point. The point being, of course: the Joker is crazy. The Joker is evil. Being crazy makes the Joker evil, and that is how it simply is. Everybody knows that the Joker is crazy.

[TW Psychosis, transphobia, psychophobia, medication, psych ward]

“Are you sure ?” she asked.

I remember looking back at her in disbelief, because that was certainly a question I never asked her when she came out.

“Why do you ask ?” I say.

“Dude, I’ve seen you go into depersonalization so hard you even thought you were a human soul in a robot vessel and now, you want me to trust you when you say that you, too, are trans ?”

That’s the memory that comes back to me as I fold and put in my bag my psychiatrist’s note attesting that I suffer from gender dysphoria, NOT LINKED to any psychotic symptoms. Here it goes in my folder with my prescription note, an increase - again - of my anti depressants and Xan, and my endocrinologist’s HRT prescription, increased too - finally.

I go to two separate pharmacies to pick up each prescription for two reasons:

There is only one in this godforsaken town that always had testosterone in stock.

I can’t explain to you with words the look you can get when you give back to back, to someone who, despite not being a doctor, works in healthcare, a note for trans HRT and then a note for psychiatric meds.

And I’m lucky, because I’m not taking antipsychotics anymore. Contrarily to what you could think, it doesn’t magically makes the voices and the shadowy people disappear, but it can make a mess of your head pretty bad and my doctor and I both agreed that I didn’t need more damage up here than what I already had. And no, it doesn’t make your delusions vanish magically too: in fact, I was still pretty certain that I was talking to my soul family out here in Argentine telepathically about my mission on Earth, the meds just made it more difficult to understand their voices, but the belief was still solid.

Anyways, I’m back home with the Hoy Grail I fought tooth and nails to get: a letter from the Sacred Council of Mental Sanity also known as Psychiatry that I was, indeed, a bit delulu, but also trans, and that both things didn’t play into each other. My transness wasn’t a delusion, my delusions didn’t have anything to do with being trans.

Or did it ?

Chicken or egg, you know the drill. Did I have my selves fractured before and one of the piece that shattered my brain happened to make me trans or was I just trans with a shitload of traumas in the back that made me insane ?

But don’t worry, at least, trans people when we’re together, we have each other’s back ! Right ?

“Transidentity ISN’T a mental illness !! We don’t DESERVE to be FORCIBLY LOCKED UP and MEDICATED and MADE TO CONFORM FOR OTHER’S SENSE OF SECURITY !!”

Neither do I, RIGHT ?

Oh

Or do I ?

Remember what she said, my girlfriend, right at the beginning ?

How I can’t be trusted about myself when sometimes I don’t even have a sense of self anymore or I have too much selves who fight against each other ?

And what do we say to that ?

Get treatment. Get in-patient. Take medication. And for the love of God, shut the fuck up about it, you’re giving us a bad name.

Because being trans and crazy can’t exist. It’s absurd. You have to fix one of these two things. Choose which jacket I’ll wear, and they call it a straitjacket for a reason it seems, so am I queer or am I insane ?

All I know today is there isn’t a universe in which I’m a trans without any mental illnesses, or mentally ill without being trans. And yet, I can’t tell you how many time I got asked “do you think you’d be trans if you never got through [x trauma] ?”. I. Don’t. Know. I’ll never know. And I deserve just as much agency as you get despite being mentally ill. If you don’t believe in that, don’t come yapping about “liberation for all of us”, but “if one of us is crazy they’ll all think I am too and that can’t happen”.

No LGBTQIAA+ person deserves to be told they need to be put away, to be cured, to be allowed out in the open only if they’re deemed “acceptable” by society’s standards. And no mentally ill people deserve to either.

No trans person should be going through years of counseling to have the access to HRT.

And I shouldn’t have had to threaten my own mother’s life to avoid being locked in an adult psych ward at 14.

If you ever think, for one second, that these two things have nothing to do with one another, you are far removed from history.

To hear queer people say “yeah but some mentally ill people are dangerous !” feels like you don’t even know where you come from.

And if I want to say, that me being trans is linked to me being mentally ill, or at least, that both are connected in a way, all hell breaks fucking loose.

So I’ll explain very carefully.

See, when I was young, my mind got shattered into a thousand of pieces I had to try to glue back on. All these pieces of myself broke further more down the line because I couldn’t catch a fucking break. And now, it happens that the final puzzle does not have the same face it had before. It happens that its shape changed over time, for reasons over the control of all of us who tried to build ourselves back. Now there’s a bigger picture, less pieces, a few other shadows, and me. Built from the shatters. With my own needs and afflictions.

And whoever you are, whatever your agenda might be, I will not let anyone take any agency away from me under the false pretext that I can’t know anything for myself. They say that about children, they say that about minorities, about physically disabled people, about the people they want OUT. And my trans siblings, you know that.

I came out for the first time 7 years ago, to my then girlfriend, who was the one asking the question that is the first sentence of this text. I came out a second time 3 years ago. Been on HRT, had top surgery, had psychotic breaks, got my meds changed, switch therapist.

Because I am trans and crazy. And yet, all these choices I made, I made myself. It didn’t have to be that hard to get the basic care I needed. It didn’t need to be. But it WAS. And I’m part of the lucky crowd of people who had access to out-patient treatment, who never have been locked up in ward, who managed to stay alive through meds withdrawals without medical assistance when I had no therapist.

a gift for my CN friends（or fans？）she translated the fanfic “perfect storm” and ask for a picture so i just made this（actually i did want to draw it cuz this is really good i love it sooo much）

listen, folks, making malcolm matthews not being an evil mastermind is not some type of redemption arc or anything

that's actually the whole point

and it's the type of thing we see in the world all the time

malcolm is not an evil mastermind, he's not a puppet master, just somone who says a bunch of casually bigoted stuff about his daughter's mental health condition

and that's the type of thing that happens all the time, these microaggressions

it actually reminds me a lot of the way some of my relatives talk about my aunt with schizophrenia, oftenly to her face

it also happens to other marginalized groups, likeor ppl saying racist jokes nearby their friends who are people of color; or relatives saying casually homophobic, biphobic, transphobic things etc bc they didn't bother to try to learn about the queer people in their lives, stuff like that

the actual problem in that plotline is not making malcolm the type of casual bigot we see every day, but making a storyline and scene that was supposed to be about lottie, to be about shauna learning a lesson to try to be more kind and understand other women she put on a pedestal and resented for perceiving them as better than her are actual human beings with problems

that's a problem on a general writing level, taking an emotional moment of an important character and make it about the character that is seen as the closest to a classic protagonist type is weak writing

that is also a problem on a representation level, bc it's taking a very emotional moment from a woman of color with schizophrenia and making it about a white woman instead

and both angles show issues with lottie's treatment by the narrative, which shows an issue with the writing as a whole bc it impacts her character development

imagine how much more impactful it would have been to have a scene of the man who spent most of his life ridicularizing his daughter's mental illness to end up in his elderly years struggling with mental health issues of his own, with the show hinting at him having dementia or alzheimer, and showing lottie herself having now to help take care of him????

it's sad and devastating and very realistic, bc many ppl all over the world have to come to terms with taking care of their toxic parents when they get older and develop severe health issues, and also the type of stuff which would make the premise of a drama movie or tv show on its own

and, ithe thing is, they didn't even have to keep lottie alive to make the scene be focused on her

all it would take was to have simone kessell to play adult lottie in a more recent present day flashback having the exact same dialogue, all while malcolm's caretaker explained to shauna that malcolm is severely ill and sometimes can't remember things and recognize people and lottie had to have this type of convo with him on a daily basis

instead, what they decided to do was to have shauna be mistaken for his daughter and have courtney eaton play shauna-as-teen-lottie, making something that was supposed to be about lottie and her father be all about shauna instead

that was actually more harmful than misty's plotline of trying to avenge lottie, bc, while fridging a woman of color to further the narrative of a white woman is bad, that scene of misty in the morgue was still about misty's grief

meanwhile, shauna's scene with lottie's father has shauna impersonating lottie as an act of mercy to lottie's father's illness, so, basically, a white woman highjacking a moment that was supposed to belong to the woman of color who was shown completely brutalized on screen on the previous episode

for all the efforts yellowjackets has put in lgbtq+ representation and the glaad awards it won, this show still fails people of color so much

The Myosotis Conundrum (Aka The Bush is on Fire Aka Iphigenia Sets Up A Dead Man's Switch)

I-ayayay am a selfish, selfish nasty man

You can check it black on white, section F60.2

It says I-ayayay am doomed to be a nasty man

It's written in your books and it's all thanks to you.

And maybe it's a cop out but for who?

For me, for you, for the idea of the idea of my idea of your idea of me and you!

Whoo!

Iyayay am a man, I'm a bomb, I'm a corpse with my hand on the detonator

I am really not that bad up until you press the trigger

I'm explosive as an explosion

I'm concussive as brain damage from a blunt force lesion.

Why are you afraid?

So many have done so much worse

Really I'm pretty tame

Why are you ashamed ?

You've crafted us a pretty neat curse

And now we're playing your own game!

(And now the chorus!)

I know my place (Do you?)

I know my place (Do you, do you?)

I know my place and it's six feet deep with a worm in the eye (What about you?)

But how far did you dig because you're not that high (Did they bury your heart where they buried my bones?)

And oh (I know my place know my place)

Why are you darkening your door (Know your place know your place because we share the same face)

You could bear to smile a little more (dark dark mirror on the wall)

It's a family reunion (they never prepare you for the violence of the fall)

It's the fibrosis osmosis of the scar tissue tying the god and the angel and the devil the fall and the son

We're always being chased in our nightmares

God we've had some really good scares!

Maybe what's chasing you wants you to look at it

Maybe Euridyce is crying out with her wrists slit.

(And if you dare to) Look at me without blinking

Think of me without sinking

This would make a man out of a salt pillar and a butterfly into a caterpillar.

And I-ayayay am a selfish man (stay in your lane or they will grind you down)

To become our fathers is so very human (going insane is no reason to drown)

And I-ayayay am looking for a place to rest

That's far away from you

If Abraham fails the test

Then what the fuck do you call what you do?

"You can't kill your father", they say

Can't is for quitters who don't try enough

"Tragic character", they say

But everything is a comedy if you just say it with a little laugh!

And I-ayayay (wall up your cellar, cover your well)

Am only our second worst enemy (better build your prison next to my cell)

And I will take responsibility for the atrocity but don't you say it didn't happen to me.

I know my place (Do you?)

I know my place (Do you, do you?)

I know my place and it's by your side in the family portrait (I'm not escaping you)

The day will come we'll be reunited just you wait (You're not escaping me)

And oh (I know my place know my place)

Why are you darkening your door (It's a gentle love song)

And when it all goes wrong

You could bear to smile a little more (We'll both be singing that song)

Singing I-ayayay know my place, know my place

It's a family reunion (god and the angel and the devil the fall and the son)

Him: oh yes it's not fun recently. we have a lot of borderlines and addicts, they're just the worst, desperate cases, you don't want to be around those kind of people.

Yesterday I saw a tweet answering to a Gotham confession (which told something like “Edward Nygma is a gross incel I don’t get why people loves him”) by telling “His whole character is he was actively abused and bullied throughout his whole fucking life and finally snapped?? The fuck is this person on...“

I was kinda angry, but I don’t think Twitter is the place to have a real discussion, plus I don’t like call out culture (this is why you will not see any link or @ in this post)

So. Edward Nygma.

Edward Nygma is kindaaaaa a gross incel. I’m sorry guys, I like him (especially when he finally find his Riddler persona) but season 1 Ed is very cringy to me. So yeah, he can have autistic traits and social awkwardness, I get why people can relate to it, but first, he fucking SMELT at Kristen, it’s not an autistic trait, it’s blatant creeps behavior. Second, he purposely rearrange Kristen’s archive, except it’s HER job, she didn’t ask for his help, he did it just for selfish reasons (because he thinks he knows better, because he wants she notices him). Its clearly sexist, he would never dare to do it if Kristen was a man.

By the way, he killed his boyfriend but still thinks he is better than him (lol) except he did worst because he didn’t just hurt her, he killed her.

Plus he thought she HAD to feel grateful so she HAD to be his girlfriend because he saves her during the Maniax attack. Typically incel mentality, thinking women HAVE TO give sexual/romantic affection to a man because he did something nice.

Other things (not about him to be an incel, but gross in general) : he does creepy things with body limbs, remember ? I don’t care it’s “not dangerous” or “just to punish (ahem trap) the coroner”, it’s still disgusting for the dead persons and their families. 

Oh and remember how he says he loves Kristen and all the killing was an accident ? Well, he respected her so much he butchered her body. Nice way to show your repentance or your love, lol.

Plus, it’s psychopobia : autistic persons and social awkwards people are not “special geniuses” or “total psycho”, thank you very much for the cliché.

That was the first point, but now, we have to talk about the abuse and the bullying.

I totally can understand people loving Ed, and relating to his tragic backstory. And again, I hate the bullying he suffered, by Harvey Bullock and the other policemen (and probably the child abuse by his parents). It’s the moments in which s1!Ed is the most sympathetic, because the verbal violence is kinda gratuitous ! Ok, during an investigation it’s not the good time for riddles and random facts, but hey, it’s not a reason to be so agressive to him !

But abuses and bullying don’t protect you to become an abuser and a bully. You don’t automatically become an untouchable saint because you suffered. Some people maintain the cycle of violence, and it’s not better, it’s not a good way to answer, and it’s definitely not a good reason to kill, torture, harass people, in Ed’s case. 

You can snap - especially if you suffer to psychological issues, the risk is more important - it’s understandable. But killing people ? Playing with corpses ? Trying to seduce someone who told you “No” again and again, making her vulnerable so she says yes ? Come on, it’s definitely off limits ! You can’t excuse this by “poor baby, he was bullied”

He is an adult. If he was bullied, he could relied on his boss, or change his job. Or eventually punch someone. I don’t know, anything someone can do when they snap. Because Ed’s snapping and killing people because they mocked/refused him ?

Kristen didn’t deserve that. She didn’t deserve he kills her boyfriend, making her feel enough distressed to accept his advances, she didn’t deserve to be strangled to death after probably have made love with him (so fucking creepy). Didn’t deserve her body dismembered and her glasses kept as a fucking token.

He killed her because she didn’t act according his fantasy. He would want the one to decide who she loves. Because he’s a cute patootie, a Nice Guy tm, so he DESERVES the girl, looooool

Think about that.