Meta post

This is a really weird post I never thought I would write, and I don't know if it will help matters or not, but it's something I can't get past and I got jarred into really badly again this morning reading a post about the Google discriminatory-email-fired-douchebag case, and now I *really* feel like I can't get past it. This has been tormenting me since the episode aired, and so this is basically a very long discussion of canon, and how fanon ignores canon, and a fact about canon I *can't* ignore, we *shouldn't* ignore. The post I was reading was arguing that white men claiming a right to air the political view that women and PoC shouldn't get hired by tech firms because they're not as good as white men are abusers, what they are doing is abuse, because abuse is a belief that you are entitled to certain things at the expense of other people (white men feeling they are entitled to be judged by lower standards, only against other white men, and not the rest of us, and they're entitled to make our work environment toxic to get what they feel entitled to; it was a good article, but I felt so ill with reading it I had to stop quarter of the way in).

And what it brought back to me, again, was the fact that I go through periods of writer's block in this fandom because I can't - I refuse to - get past a certain point of canon: Porthos is presented to us, in canon, as an abuser. And I am so angry at the character that I have difficulty now in writing him even in situations where I've given the character enough difference in situation that *that* character doesn't act like that; it still feels like condoning the abuse, saying somehow that it's not his fault, that it's *okay* to abuse people. It's not. Every new verse I've started in this fandom for a while (none of them has been posted yet) has either not featured Porthos at all or moved him into so minor a role that I can largely avoid him, because I can't write him as a good person when he isn't presented to us as a good person. I am struggling through finishing the affinityverse (it soothes me some to know that if affinityverse!Porthos met canon!Porthos, he would *hate* him, and they might come as far as physical blows; that verse was started long before we found out in canon who Porthos really is), but I really long for the relief of just not dealing with the character anymore. Below the cut will be a really lengthy discussion of canon evidence - nothing more, all of this is there onscreen to see - of Porthos' behaviour. If you don't want to read it, fine. I just want it out in fandom because it doesn't seem to be there that if you have been treated the way Porthos treats Aramis, it is *not your fault*, what was done to you is *wrong*, and you deserve to be somewhere safe away from the abuser, you *deserve* that. You certainly don't deserve retraumatising every time someone says that what Porthos did is alright. It's not. That is not up for debate: you do not treat people like that, good people *do not do that*.

This will be long, and despairing. You can guess the content. Don't read it if you don't want to read that content.

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