Poeticcos - Rayn's Blog

And this is useful to me, I didn't know the "n" was silent. But otherwise his name is very intuitive to say. People don't really have an excuse

here's your friendly reminder that disability advocacy has to be intersectional!

happy disability pride month to BIPOC disabled folk!

happy disability pride month to queer disabled folk!

happy disability pride month to disabled women!

happy disability pride month to those with physical disabilities!

happy disability pride month to those with mental disabilities!

happy disability pride month to those with invisible disabilities!

happy disability pride month to those with visible disabilities!

happy disability pride month who are unable to work due to their disability!

happy disability pride month to those who are seen as "Not Disabled Enough"!

happy disability pride month to those whose disabilities arent recognised as a disability!

happy disability pride month to those who require any amount of mobility aids!

happy disability pride month to those with high support needs!

happy disability pride month to those with low support needs!

happy disability pride month to people who are demonised because of their disability!

happy disability pride month to literally every kind of disabled person!!

Diego and Allison: Hey let's go beat the shit out of racists

“Christianity didn’t become a world religion because of the quality of its teachings, but by the quantity of its violence.” -Eleanor Ferguson.

I feel like a lot of people fail to see how similar umbrella Ben and sparrow Ben are and that bothers me a lot : they're not entirely different characters.

It really bothers me how most people see umbrella Ben as this pure little angel(tm) while he's not ? Of course we didn't see that much of him cause, yk, he's dead, but he was sometimes harsh, and just as pragmatic as sparrow Ben. Like remember when he wanted the brellies to kill Grace ?

When Sparrow Ben tells Viktor to put his shit together cause the apocalypse is happening and they don't have time for that, that something umbrella Ben did with Klaus and Viktor in the past, the only difference is that he has emotional attachment to them, and sparrow Ben doesn't.

That's also why I love that Klaus had a chance to talk about him, cause he's the only one who truly remembers how umbrella Ben could be a little shit sometimes, while the others forgot because of grief.

That was a long way of saying : stop making umbrella Ben into the shy nice little angel he's not.

klaus has this habit of searching for answers and purpose in the same place he lost them. his autonomy was stolen from him as a child, and he lives with that loss every day. it’s quite common for people with that experience to live with dissociative symptoms, and i actually think klaus is a realistic portrayal of that. while it’s never outright said that it’s dissociation he deals with, i think a lot of survivors could probably see it in him. he’s always seemed to feel a disconnect with himself, with his own body (for example – and this is a small one – when he told ben “you’re not getting in this body,” rather than my body). his identity is something transient, something that shifts drastically sometimes depending on the situation he’s in, which is a common experience in people with dissociative symptoms – we’re like “chameleons.” 

he forgets key things regarding his trauma: that, or his brain will twist the events to make them more palatable to himself. he didn’t remember being killed as a child, even though it happened multiple times. and despite not remembering anything, he still has visceral reactions when it comes to being confined. he may not consciously remember every event, but his body does, and so he reacts accordingly, as if the threat of being killed again were a present one. because the body remembers the loss of control, it remembers the autonomy that was once stolen. then there’s “bus ball.” obviously, it was an objectively shitty, terrifying thing, being once again murdered, multiple times by your own father and abuser – and as an experiment, no less. despite that, the events were portrayed as something that was for the most part fun, almost. and when he vaguely recounted said events later on, he referred to it as “bus ball.” like it really was nothing more than a game. that’s another common dissociative symptom, and a common trauma symptom: being so disconnected on a certain level from your own trauma that you’re able to talk about it like it’s nothing. that you’re able to remember a skewed version of it so that you don’t have to internalize any of the real terror.

touch is another one. klaus is a very tactile person. he communicates well through touch. but he often doesn’t like being touched, unless it’s from someone he knows, loves and trusts.

he startles easily, too. will jump back at sudden movements or words, gets frightened by loud noises and will cover his ears.

his need for connection is relevant here, too. he has a hard time being alone with himself, and so he finds people to cling to, or finds people that will cling to him, just to stave off those feelings and to ground himself, almost. sometimes it spirals out of control, like with the cult. but his constant need for connection stems from feeling disconnected.

one of his passing comments to luther in s1 (”I remember my first time… oh no. i don’t”) hits hard, too. it’s not uncommon for trauma victims to experience hypersexuality as a result of this loss of autonomy. and then, to not even remember some of these encounters (obviously, the drugs/alcohol likely play a role in this not remembering. but hey, what’s addiction often a symptom of? oh yeah. trauma.)

this disconnect he feels from his own body is also why he was able to have certain encounters even with people he didn’t like. keechie comes to mind. he didn’t like keechie, that was made clear. but it sounds like he still had no problem having sex with him, despite this. it’s common, when you have dissociative symptoms, to feel this sort of disconnect. you don’t always care what happens to a body that doesn’t feel like yours, hell, you can enjoy it, sometimes – even if you don’t like the person you’re doing it with.

it’s why he gets off on torture, too. klaus being a masochist was clearly portrayed in episode four, but then was referenced again two other times. (”if i see a boner, i’m out” when he was being tied up, and, “i’m going to beat you, and not the way you like it.”) when you grow up tortured and become accustomed to it it’s easy for the brain to say “hey, this is unbearable so actually we like this thing now. that’ll make it bearable!” i mean, obviously it’s a little more complicated than that, but that’s the gist of the situation. 

you often find comfort – or even pleasure – in familiarity, even when familiarity isn’t safe. we see that in klaus.

and that leads me back to my main point: klaus searches for answers, he searches for purpose in the same places he lost them. if he can give up his body to anyone who will take it, then maybe he can take back autonomy, is what he might think. if he can have a say in his own destruction, whether it’s addiction or reckless behavior, then maybe he can take back control. 

but that’s never truly how it plays out. a trauma survivor will never find what they’re looking for this way. i believe that klaus is starting to realize this, even if he does run into setbacks, and even though he will continue to run into setbacks. if he wants to find control, and if he wants to find purpose, he will have to reroute that energy into a path of recovery rather than destruction. it’s a hard hill to climb, but we know he can do it.

i could say more about this, but i think this says enough, for now.

Klaus: Do you ever feel like there’s bugs crawling all over you when there’s nothing there?

Viktor: That’s the ghosts of all the bugs you’ve killed.

Klaus: ...

Five: Viktor, quit traumatizing Klaus.