Watching Your Whole Family Cling To And Create Endless Cope For The Cult They're In As It Marches Ever

Watching your whole family cling to and create endless cope for the cult they're in as it marches ever closer to the Koolaid Moment is like... a slow burn trauma

i feel like being in a fandom long-term has a very specific repetitive cycle that kind of looks like this

sometimes it strikes me that some people dont ship thoschei and honestly, i dont get it. did we even watch the same show??

It took me too long to realize that not all the world is my enemy

[ID: A comic done mostly in black and white. A hound with a broken chain around its neck flees a cage and runs into two reaching hands. The hound bites one hand, drawing blood. Narration says, "When I fled my cage / I bit the hands that took me in / Because the only hand I'd ever known / was a bad one."

The hands, now with fresh bite marks, still reach out gently to the hound. ""We're not him." they said / and I knew what they meant / but I didn't understand."

Floating in white space: "Now I understand / but the damage is done."

A person enters a door, rolling a suitcase, saying "Hi" to two people on a couch, who look up from their newspapers and phones to say "Hey" and "Hi" back. The shadow of the person who entered the room stretches out before them-- a hound's, not a person's. Narration: "I'm so sorry / I couldn't help it / I couldn't help myself."

We see the hands of the people on the couch. Both have faded bite marks on them. "I was so blind, I forgot / that not all hands are made of iron." End ID]

(ID by @princess-of-purple-prose)

Harrowing: someone in your Fandom just made an innocuous and harmless post that nonetheless betrays a deep misunderstanding of the character and the character's narrative purpose and you just have to sit there and let them be wrong lest you be an asshole