Meta post

[rainjoyswriting]

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.



There are some pretty decent writers in this fandom, but I've never yet read a single fic featuring Porthos IC, canon Porthos simply does not appear in fanfic. I'm guilty of it too; I started most of my universes before we saw the worst of his behaviour, before we could in retrospect join the dots and see the pattern of what he's done. I don't want to go into the psychology of why we refuse to see *that* character as he's actually presented (that would require an entirely different post, and I'd probably only feel comfortable writing it in collaboration with someone who knows better than I do, if I really can be said to at all - I'm not a psychologist and underequipped to consider white people's unconscious racism in their attempts *not* to be racist), but I do give the writers of the programme a very hard side-eye that they chose *that* character to make so disloyal, so self-serving, so aggressive and entirely untrustworthy. It's been clear from S1's lack of any arc for Porthos that the writers never knew what to do with that character (it's been clear from the rest of the series that they just don't know what they're doing full stop).

Quick disclaimer: I've seen the first series a whole bunch of times, but I only watched S2 once because it really was bad, and I found S3 so unwatchable that I gave up after only a few episodes. If something happens later in S3 to spin all of this back - if Porthos has a great moment of self-realistion, takes responsibility for his actions, apologises and genuinely determines to change himself - do let me know. Do be aware that nothing less than that can change the character at this point; you can't handwave away abuse because the abuser was talented say or achieved something special or was maybe nice to someone *else*. That's what society already loves to do, and it's bullshit, and we really fucking ought to know better.

The most important thing first: in S3, it becomes clear that Porthos is abusing Aramis and, going back through canon in light of it, it becomes clear that he always has been.

What am I talking about, given that fandom seems to have made invisible the thing that actually happened: way back in 3x01 in the monastery, Athos is happy to see Aramis there and safe, d'Artagnan is happy to see Aramis there and safe. Porthos isn't. Why not?

What Porthos makes clear very quickly is that his friendship is conditional, and Aramis hasn't met the conditions. That alone might have made his use of 'all for one' just funny - the irony that he doesn't recognise that he doesn't understand what the phrase means - but it's so much darker, what Porthos is doing with that phrase. He's using it to gaslight Aramis. He's using it to say 'I have always supported you, and you have failed to support me'. This is a manipulation of the facts, or as we used to call it in pre-post-truth days, a lie. Throughout canon Aramis has supported Porthos, until his despair drove him to the monastery. And throughout canon Porthos has *failed* to support Aramis, because their relationship is fundamentally one-sided, and Porthos wants to keep it that way.

Abuse is not just doing something shitty to a person, abuse is deeper than that - we all do shitty things sometimes, we're all in a bad mood so we snap when we shouldn't. There are patterns that point to abuse (those 'red flags' we spot), and those patterns point to a particular mindset, which is that the abuser thinks they're entitled to something from the abused, and so they are entitled to do whatever they want to the abused to get that. Physical violence is only part of it; emotional abuse is now illegal in my country, thank god, so you can go to prison for what Porthos does over the course of three seasons. Because his behaviour makes obvious that he thinks he's entitled to something from Aramis - one-way and utter loyalty, putting Porthos' needs before his own every time - and he is going to do whatever it takes to *make* Aramis give him that.

By the end of S1 I was disappointed in Porthos, but eager for him to get to do his thing in S2. I was disappointed because over and over we'd seen Aramis go above and beyond for him, and yet Porthos hadn't done the same in return (He can be permitted the excuse of not having many opportunities for it, but the one big one he had - The Good Soldier - he chose not to take. Apart from that, Aramis goes above and beyond repeatedly for Porthos, and Porthos does no more than Athos or d'Artagnan does for Aramis in return, so their 'best friends' status looks very one-sided). I thought he'd do better in S2. He didn't; Porthos is an abysmal friend in S2. We know how bad a liar Aramis is (again, just look at TGS - it takes Porthos and Athos, what, four seconds to know Aramis is hiding something?) and Porthos must *know* that Aramis is acting really fucking weird. But Porthos doesn't care. Even in little moments where Aramis might need some comfort, like at the end of the saga with Emilie, it's Athos who offers it, though Porthos must know it's needed. Porthos just ignores Aramis for most of season two. Aramis supports Porthos when he thinks Treville is lying to him (even though he didn't do the same for him back in S1) and supports Porthos when he goes to meet his father (which Porthos responds to with open ingratitude) even when he is dealing with a mountain of his own shit at the time. But when Porthos accuses Aramis of turning his back on him in S3, this isn't just hypocrisy - it's manipulation. It's playing on the guilt that is the very reason *why* Aramis has banished himself to a monastery, just to try to cope with the psychological trauma of his last year, to try to force the behaviour Porthos *wants* out of Aramis. A good friend understands how massively fucked up Aramis has been by everything that happened in S2. An abuser uses all of that to manipulate a person, to lie about the past and influence their future behaviour by doing so.

Porthos doesn't say 'I'm having a really hard time with you going away'. He says 'you deserted *me*'. Yes, Aramis went to a monastery - which is in no way a natural place for a man of his temperament to be, and whether he went to try to heal or cope or just punish himself is obviously something writers can play with over and over, because it's complicated, and he'd been through and done so fucking much, and he's probably been *dying* of his guilt and loneliness every damn night there. And Porthos says to him, You *should* feel guilty. You failed me. Fuck whatever you were feeling, fuck your trauma, fuck your needs. *I* am entitled to your undivided attention, and you are a bad person for not giving me it. And Aramis is primed to respond to this. He's primed to believe it, because Porthos has been doing this to him all along. Aramis goes above and beyond for Porthos over and over, his *adoration* of Porthos has so many obvious canon examples I don't even need to bother to quote them. Where are the reverse ones? Where are the moments when we realise how *entirely* Porthos loves and supports Aramis?

*crickets*

Remember when Aramis' old friend Marsac comes back, and Aramis flounders on trying to remain loyal to him, and asks his friends for help, and they say no. Remember when Porthos' old friend Charon comes back (and Porthos sleeps with his girlfrend while Charon is recovering from a bullet wound; Flea belongs to herself but that doesn't mean that what Porthos did wasn't a clear example of what 'friendship' actually means to him) and Aramis goes a bit deranged to rescue him. Remember when Bonnaire turned up the first time, and Athos threatened Porthos' life, and Aramis went apeshit; remember when Bonnaire came back the second time, and Athos threatened *Aramis'* life, and Porthos very literally turned his back on him and walked away. Porthos' use of 'all for one' in that monastery was very telling of what he thinks it means. He reads it not as his owing Aramis his loyalty - he makes clear even in the act of saying it in those circumstances that he doesn't believe that - but he thinks it means that Aramis owes him his loyalty regardless of anything else. Fuck your trauma, fuck your needs, fuck your life; I am entitled to everything from you.

Abuse doesn't just pop up from nowhere, and there have been clues all along that Aramis loves Porthos (whether you want to interpret it as romantic or not is entirely up to you) and Porthos doesn't love Aramis. Worse, there are indications throughout canon that we shouldn't trust Porthos. The way he treats 'friends', how easy a liar he is - not for specific reasons, Aramis lies (badly ^^;) when he needs something in particular, Porthos we meet in the very first scene as a liar just to win at cards, and he deceives people fluently for the entire rest of the series. Reading back in retrospect from the monastery, from Porthos' open act of gaslighting ('the past is not what you actually experienced, the past is the lie I am feeding you now'), there's a pattern of red flags all the way along.

Look at every time Porthos snaps at Aramis - there's no pattern there, Aramis usually doesn't actually *deserve* it, he hasn't done anything to warrant it. When Porthos lies to Alice and sleeps with her (here is a pattern, Porthos lying to people to get what he wants out of them), Aramis doesn't know this; he thinks Porthos is having a very open exchange with her. Porthos chooses not to tell Aramis what he really did - perhaps he knows it's not okay to do it - and snaps at Aramis for *not* knowing it. Insensitive as Aramis' choice of wording often is (hoo boy), look at exactly what Porthos snapped at: Aramis' confusion that Porthos has *not* performed a clean exchange of service for money but is doing - what? He doesn't even know. Because Porthos has been hiding it, because . . . I'm a philosopher, so naturally I look to Occam's razor, and the only obvious explanation (apart from just being generally deceptive, which Porthos does lean towards - he's the most accomplished liar of the group, and there are obvious reasons in his past why that would be true) is that he knows what he's done won't be viewed as okay, so he hides it, and either guilt or not wanting to be punished for doing wrong leads him to snap. (It baffles me that fandom very rightly recognises that what Aramis did to Marguerite was wrong, but will handwave as much as they can for Porthos; what Aramis did was really fucked up, but I get that he did it because it was the only chance he had to be near the only child he had. That doesn't make it okay because nothing could make it okay, but it means at least I *understand* his motivation. What Porthos did was really fucked up and he did it for money, which he didn't even *need*, it was to get him into a competition - so he did it for ego. I do not understand *that* motivation.)

Porthos and Alice part because they have incompatible visions of the future. Porthos tells Aramis he stayed specifically for him (very bluntly: this is a lie), and Aramis is grateful. Porthos has been manipulating the truth, and Aramis, for a very long time.

The simple point is this; Porthos snaps at Aramis pretty randomly, as far as Aramis' own behaviour goes. And Aramis looks fucking traumatised when Porthos snaps at him, Aramis *adores* Porthos and really needs his esteem (well, you would, if it's dangled at you and snatched away randomly and you always think if you can just *not* fuck up *this* time you might deserve it . . .) which Porthos must be aware of. So Aramis never knows when Porthos will be angry with him, can't predict or prepare for it. There's a particularly dangerous sort of red flag, even besides all the deception involved in that episode.

So I state, categorically, that the way Porthos treats Aramis in the monastery and beyond is not okay and I do not condone it. Porthos gaslighted Aramis, told demonstrable lies to manipulate him because he knew how to manipulate him, because he's been doing it for a very long time. That is abuse. If it has happened to you, if someone has emotionally manipulated and gaslighted you, you *did not deserve it*. It was not okay, it was not your fault, and you deserve to be safe and psychologically untraumatised. Lying about the past to specifically manipulate behaviour out of someone that you feel entitled to is a shitty fucked-up *evil* thing to do. Please think about what you are doing if you try to defend that action. Abuse is not okay because you like the character. Abuse is not okay because the character did this other nice thing that one time. Abuse is not okay. Do not tell me it is, *think* about what you're saying.

So: I have never read Porthos written IC anywhere in fandom, and yes, I really am guilty of that too. He's written as a nice guy, when he's presented in canon as a 'nice guy'. Remember he's a bigot; xenophobic towards the Spanish in 3x01, no wonder he treats Aramis so shittily, and we also learn in S3 that he holds refugees in contempt (that fucking *stung*, I raised money for the refugee crisis in Europe and the Middle East, I supported friends in their efforts to help, I have watched that horror unfold over *years* and now I'm told I'm supposed to view a man who views refugees the way the tabloid press does as if he's a *hero*?). Remember that he's a hypocrite - over and over and over. Remember that he is, at the end, a coward; Aramis will face down Athos for Porthos' sake, but Porthos won't do the same. And no, I don't know what the fuck the writers were thinking. I don't know why they decided to do this with this character. And I don't know why fandom is so determined not to deal with that character, because that's the problem here, that we condone by ignoring. Because *how* interesting would the character piece written on Porthos' bigotry be (He seems to empathise a lot with people he identifies with, but if he doesn't? He doesn't give a shit what happens to you. Pry into Porthos' past and isn't *that* bit of psychology very telling.). *How* interesting would the piece be that considered the extreme poverty he grew up in and how self-serving and entitled that's made him (Do you know the very first moment in canon that I ever had a doubt about Porthos? In the bar with the old woman, in Homecoming, when he gets the barman/maid(?)'s attention with a jerk of his head and no smile, no friendliness. Body language can do the work of please and thank you but Porthos chooses not to. I've worked retail. I know that expression on his face: You serve *me*. The thought you are beneath me isn't articulated but it underlies it, and that made me cold for a moment, before I thought how fascinating the psychology, that someone who grew up so deprived and despised of course enjoys his power over those he can wield it over - and I didn't know, then, to look on that thought with dread.). How fascinating the look at his inability to empathise where he doesn't identify (Fuck the Spanish, fuck refugees; and I always remember - what the hell was the episode's title? Ninon, and those girls, and Porthos sitting down pretending to kindly listen to one frightened girl's story but he didn't *look* kindly, he looked constipated. Because he didn't really care and for once his acting failed him; he doesn't know how to pretend to care about someone that he doesn't. He doesn't really know what caring about someone else is, is the thought that worries me after his future behaviour).

I find everything about the character so distressing now that I just can't fucking wait to finish the affinityverse. I love that Porthos the way I used to love canon Porthos - as a complicated and often difficult character, but fundamentally likeable. But by S3 canon Porthos is an abusive bullying hypocritical bigot, and I can't like that. I don't think it's *right* to like abusers. It's - it feels really weirdly personal when a character you used to love turns like that. It feels like betrayal, and I know that's ridiculous because we're not talking about real people, but particularly when you occupy those characters to write about them they do feel very real and now it turns out that they're capable of evil, not just in the abstract way that we all might be but they *will do it*. I grew up reading those books, and I haven't been back to them for a really long while but my abiding memory of Porthos was that he really was the noblest of them, in the end. This incarnation of Porthos isn't. He's toxic masculinity walking, and it feels like frustrating panic-inducing horror that characters I actually *like* are vulnerable to him. He's eventually so poisonous a character that I just want to remove the others from his power; Athos and Aramis are very difficult and complicated characters themselves and do their share of fucking awful shit, but Aramis is willing to display remorse, and Athos' situation is just such a complicated mess of lies and violence and awfulness that hell, all you can do is look at it, and hope that everyone ended up a happier person *eventually*. (It still sits really weirdly with me, the way Aramis' and Marguerite's storyline did, that Athos finds out that Anne was telling the truth about Thomas and Athos tried to kill her for defending herself and he's not even sorry. Just. *rubs forehead* The fucking writers on this programme I can't even. But I've been dealing with this in the affinityverse anyway =/) But Porthos' evil still feels so very alive, so very present, he's still doing all that awful shit with no remorse - he feels *entitled* to do all that awful shit, when I left the programme he still felt very smug for making Aramis feel beholden to him forever for Porthos granting him forgiveness for *not doing anything wrong*. Manipulation of that sort, psychological violence of that sort, is just so toxic, just so indicative of something so, so wrong in a person, and *I liked him*. I was fooled by him, betrayed by him, it feels so fucking personal. Which I know is fucked up, but is really hard for me to get past when I have to *write* him.

So this is the crux of the whole mess: when I finish the affinityverse, I will write Porthos a great deal less, because it makes me too angry and sad to see what he turned out to be. When I do write him, I will write him in character. I won't write fanon Porthos (who not only has character traits canon Porthos doesn't possess, he has character traits canon Porthos is openly presented as having the literal *opposite* of: canon Porthos is disloyal, cruel, and self-serving; he's a lot of other things as well, but if you're going to ignore those facets of his character, you're simply not writing the character.). I will write a Porthos who may actually get an opportunity to recognise himself and repent, but I'm not going to pretend he's not who he is. Fanon Porthos is such a weird invention, he has almost nothing in common with the canon character, and I'm not going to perpetuate the lie that abusers are nice guys. Abusers are abusers. I will not condone what they do to people, and brush it under the carpet as if they're entitled to treat people like that.

This is obviously very personal to me, because it's about what I need to write, and how pathetically personally betrayed I feel by that character and the writers of the programme. So I'm going to tell you this here and now because this is my blog and I do get to set the boundaries here: if you write a defence of abuse, I will block you. If you defend the abuse with 'Athos/Aramis/whoever does it too!' I'll also block you; I haven't gone into the psychology and actions of the other characters much in this, either because fandom is doing that very widely in a way they aren't with Porthos already or because *I've* already done that and I'm doing that in my writing, so I don't feel the need to get it out here, and also you're still defending abuse fucking hell. Think about what you are putting into the world, and another defence of abuse is not what this world needs. I didn't write this as a piece of character assassination. I wrote it because it is *genuinely eating at me*, I've been troubled-to-miserable trying to deal with this, it's very hard to write with empathy and love of a character when you look at that character and what you see is a monster. I *miss* liking Porthos, I *miss* it, in a weird way you *mourn* for the loss of a character like that. I write this from a place of *unhappiness*, not just because I took a weird dislike to someone and decided to kick them; a character I used to love did something monstrous, and it turned out they'd been a monster all along and I didn't notice, I was taken in, I thought they were a 'nice guy' too. It hurts. I don't care if it's ridiculous to feel like this for fictional characters, I still feel it; it hurts, in a queasy intimate way, and I only hope that honesty can help because I don't know what the hell else can.

Please remember that I can't type much - this has taken about two days' worth of typing out of me - and I have chronic fatigue to deal with, and if you comment my reply may take some time. Please also remember that I didn't write this to upset anybody, I used to like that character too, I wrote it because I'm fucking miserable not acknowledging this. Nice guys abuse too. Nothing else they do excuses the abuse. Gaslighting someone is abuse. Manipulating someone is abuse. Bullying someone to get the behaviour you want out of them is abuse. As a fandom we ought to face these things; we've done it with other characters, we need to stop pretending this one is immune to his own behaviour. This wasn't one shitty action, this is a concerted effort to manipulate performed by someone very practised in manipulation. Abuse is believing that you are entitled to something from someone else and feeling entitled to get that something whatever you have to do to that person to get it. And in canon, on screen, Porthos is an abuser, and I really haven't got the energy to pretend anything otherwise, my batteries are empty, and I have to let that character go; I'm not going to defend the indefensible. I've barely got the energy to get from one day to the next, I do not have the energy for the mental gymnastics to make what he did *okay* when it isn't.

All I really anticipate from posting this is abuse, btw. At least then I'll know who to block ^^;

Comments

[sevenall]

Oh, thank you, thank you SO much for writing this. I have more to say but not enough words tonight. Just that I have felt gaslighted by the show itself as well as the character.

[rainjoyswriting]

The writers of that programme have a serious problem and seem incapable of recognising a healthy relationship. I actually do feel better for having written and posted this - after realising exactly what Porthos had done, I then felt *complicit* in this fandom-wide illusion that Porthos is a Good Person and Aramis Deserved It (no-one even could deserve *that*), and the guilt has been utterly miserable. But it's nice to know you're not alone in recognising that oh holy fuck that is *not okay*. And it really does feel good to know you're not alone in that =)

[cat_i_th_adage]

So first off, it sounds like you’ve been having a streak of bad days and I am sorry for that. Chronic illnesses suck balls, and I hope that there is something, somewhere, that is giving you a happy. (I’d love to hear about your other wips, even if you don’t have the energy to post them. You have some glorious ideas, and you write your characters very sensitively.)

If you’re too tired, or simply not in the mood, to read the discussion that follows, or answer it, that’s totally cool. (But I don’t often get to talk about why Porthos troubles me, sometimes, so here goes.)

**

I don't want to read Porthos as abusive.

And yet, I agree with most of your points. (More on that later.)

We do see him, later in s3, stanning for Sylvie when she's in trouble. And we see him admitting to a woman he's helping through childbirth that at one point in the war he was so scared he deserted for a night (which perhaps contributes to his aggressiveness towards Aramis in 3.01 - projecting shame about that onto his friend).

I will throw in the long sequence at the end of s2 where he goes alone into Spain to bring back Vargas to help the mess Aramis is caught up in (though, a lot of that is general politics). And late in s3 he is visibly shaking when Aramis is near death.

But no, he never, ever admits that he's been treating Aramis badly, or judging him harshly for things Porthos himself has done or wanted to. The hug at the end seems parsed more as 'I've finally forgiven you for wanting things and people that aren't me' not 'yeah I was a shit'.

It's something I missed from the end of the show, the unpacking of that dynamic, as the glowing eulogies for Treville which never acknowledged the shady, complicated things he'd done in the past put my back up.

**

I do disagree with you about Alice. I think she knew exactly what handsome soldiers hanging around at the back of the church meant for wealthy widows (if she didn’t already, the ladies sitting next to her surely told her) and her main reaction to seeing Porthos, so magnificent, so deferential, was Wheeeeeeee…! I think she is very aware of what is going on when he mentions the gold snuffer and she offers it as a present - an exchange of value to keep everyone happy, phrased more discreetly than “I’ll leave the money on the dresser.” (This is far-and-away a nicer adaptation of his seduction of a wealthy lawyer’s wife in the book, by the by, where he is callous, pushy, and manipulative… and gets happiness and lifelong prosperity out of it.)

And some of the behaviour that I think you consider abusive I read more as horseplay and rough joking. They all wrestle, they manhandle each other, they jibe - Aramis, speaking of Athos’ supposed death, says “He was a little moody, maybe we can find a better friend” or similar. There is a roughness that all of them have with each other, which I think they accept as just plain day to day life.

**

But you’re right - Porthos does leave his best friend to whistle in the wind when he’s struggling with the mess of Marsac’s accusations against Treville; he does sleep with a high-status woman (Flea) while her SO, his old friend, is recovering from a bullet wound and - it didn't cause the 'bomb the Court of Miracles into the ground' plot, but it sure didn't help Charon rethink his life choices, either; he does routinely consider moving on from the regiment as early as 1.03 (Bonnaire’s accounts of how great plantation life is - he’d get respect) and as late as 3.07 (to follow a girl) and has formally resigned his commission without considering his friends’ feelings about it at any point. He judges Aramis harshly for things he has himself done, and never apologises or visibly reconsiders. He judges the refugees harshly for stealing to survive when he’d done exactly the same in his youth.

How much of that is manipulativeness and deliberate emotional abuse, vs. a man in pain who is shortsighted in that pain and lashing out, and how much it matters if it’s intentional, when he’s still causing pain… that’s a difficult, painful question, and I don’t really blame fic writers for avoiding it. That is part of why I had trouble writing Porthos for a while - the plotbunnies kept skewing to ‘Porthos realises that he’s been an obnoxious shit’ and it depressed the hell out of me. (There didn’t seem to be any place to go from there.)

There are fics out there that deal with his judgemental streak and his lopsided view of what is appropriate behaviour for him vs. appropriate behaviour for other people, though not many. I can rec them for you if you’d like.

[rainjoyswriting]

I really want to get the most important part of this out of the way right off because other people can read this, victims of abuse can read this, and I said I would block anyone who defended the abuse and I would rather not block you so please do not again use my blog as a platform to defend abuse, but here it categorically is (if anyone is reading this who has survived this, I am so, so sorry): what Porthos did is straight-up abuse and it is not defensible. Like, politely and all, but I honestly don't care that you don't *want* to read it as abusive. It is.

Casually google gaslighting, because I hardly know how to pick an article to post there's so much written on it, but it is *sanity* destroying. It is a profoundly psychologically damaging thing to do to a person, it rewrites how the entire rest of a life can be lived, and it is literally there on screen *literally* exactly what Porthos does. He makes it so Aramis cannot understand reality outside of Porthos' given interpretation of reality, and Aramis will spend the rest of his days trapped inside that lie. You don't need to think that what you're doing is abuse to be an abuser; most abusers would probably say that *they* would never do that. It's irrelevant that you're going through some stuff when you choose to do that to a person; you still did that to a person, and I am not contributing to the global lie that what the victim goes through matters so much less than what 'drove' their poor, poor abuser into choosing to do it to them. That episode, what Porthos does, recasts every interaction those two characters previously had, because that episode is not the red flag that Porthos might abuse, that episode is Porthos abusing, and suddenly everything leading up to it showed us all the red flags.

Porthos is an abuser. I will say that over and over again to make up for how happy we are to ignore it: Porthos is an abuser. If someone reading this has been through a similar relationship, Jesus, I'm sorry. I hope you're safe now. You didn't deserve it. Literally, and I'm using 'literally' in the traditional sense - it is a logical impossibility that it could be the case - you *could not* have done something to deserve it, because nothing a person does can make them deserve *that*.

It's on a completely different level to their normal casual shittiness to each other, it's not a comparable act, it is *way* over a line, it is a different kind of act. It's not 'I was dealing with some shit, I snapped'. It's 'I purposefully psychologically harmed you for personal gain'. Don't let abusers off lightly by saying that they had excusable reason for what they did because no-one could have excusable reason for doing that. We all get angry and do things we shouldn't. We don't gaslight. And I am very tired of hearing that he's not an abuser because he's nice/interesting/troubled/funny/difficult/charismatic/powerful/famous ('They let you do anything. Grab 'em by the pussy.'). Nothing else about Porthos can change the fact that what he did was abusive, and that he chose to abuse says something very fundamental about who he is as a person.

Right, on the rest of it. So, obvously when I found out that Porthos later got involved with a pregnant woman, I felt like I'd been ice-punched in the stomach the nausea hit so hard: that man should not be allowed anywhere *near* a child, oh god. The problem with the Alice situation is that I don't get from the episode that she knew what was happening; she's much more innocent than Aramis' worldly widows, thinks of herself as very dull, and is so excited when the handsome soldier is interested in her. The acting is admittedly poor in that episode - the characters had no chemistry, which made reading their interactions hard - but like, literally the very best you can say about it is that it's ambiguous, and ambiguous consent isn't consent. Also, the storyteller's version of Occam's razor: given how deceitful and manipulative Porthos is in the rest of the episode, it just makes sense to view his treatment of her under that light. Porthos treats people as marks (we first meet him as a liar and a cheat). Once he'd got what he wanted from her - money, a bit of fun, to get to feel good about himself for a while, to consider another life through - he could move on to the next mark, which unfortunately seems to repeatedly be Aramis -_- (I haven't read the books in twenty years, btw, so my memories are fuzzy; my overwhelming memory of Porthos is the last scene I ever read, which had me crying so hard I literally couldn't see the page, put the book down, and could never bring myself to go back and finish or reread it. But if he's a manipulative abusive fuck in the books as well, hell, at least the writers had precedent.)

I'm interested to know how many fics deal with the reality of who Porthos is as opposed to the weird invented fanon saint Porthos (who is kind and generous and loyal, three qualities he possesses literally the opposite of in canon; he's cruel and greedy and selfish), but I'm not interested in reading them; unfortunately Porthos used up all my sympathy ages ago and I just don't care about that character anymore. Richelieu is interestingly, complicatedly awful and character pieces on his thought processes are very interesting; Porthos' motivations are no longer very interesting to me, he's just selfish and that's boring. The problem is that by the time I gave up on watching S3 he had literally no positive character traits left - that he wasn't a coward was one of the last things I could in conscience grant him, before Bonnaire came back - and what I eventually felt for him was just contempt, which is almost impossible to come back from, it's a relationship killer, and I don't know if I can or *should* even attempt to change my view on him now. I don't read Porthos-centric fic. Hard to care when you think they're contemptible ^^;

That we don't want to deal with Porthos as he is actually presented to us on screen really feels like saying that he's allowed to treat people the way he does, and he's not. I'm not going to present an abuser as a hero. I feel queasy from feeling complicit in it all. To refuse to deal with that part of who he is is to pretend that what he did doesn't matter, and it profoundly matters. I'm really relieved to be able to get away from that lie, that he's a good person and what he does to other people doesn't matter. Someone who treats other people like that isn't a good person. What the hell does being a 'good person' mean, otherwise?

Oy. On the wips - which come slowly - there's a Beauty and the Beast retelling I've been enjoying a lot, because casting Aramis and Athos in that story is just *amusing* to me, and I like wintry imagery. There are a couple of fics dealing with Aramis and prostitution, because he has such an interesting relationship with it; one canon-era fic where he chooses a different career path on arriving in Paris (Athos-centric, mostly, and morose) and one modern 'fake relationship' trope brought on by binging too much Scandal ("This is *terrible*." *clicks next episode, clicks next episode*) because it's a cliche I haven't tried yet. There's also a mpreg I couldn't not write, I'm sorry, where no-one became a soldier; Athos stayed in his house and drank himself miserable, Aramis was sent off to Paris to be married off, Porthos remained a criminal, until they all eventually do meet. I am like, *fighting* the bunny for another fucking mpreg why is this my life where it's not Anne Athos first marries, it's *Aramis*, because writing an Atho who has never been through all of that shit just utterly enthralls me, who he could have been. But I really don't want to be the girl who writes mpregs ;_;

The only Porthos-centric fic I think I'd like to read is the one where he realises that what he's done to Aramis is utterly appalling and the guilt means enough to him to make him be a better person. Given who he is in canon though, I'd be surprised if that could ever come out IC anyway ^^;

[cat_i_th_adage]

I am sorry for troubling you.

I hope the wips go well.

[rainjoyswriting]

(I really don't want to come across as an evil bitch, but it's just such a fucking *horrible* situation.)

[foreverbuildingcastles]

I feel a little guilty I'm commenting on this before I've had a chance to comment on the most recent chapters but I wanted your first comment to be a positive one.
Thank you for sharing this, Rainjoy. Truly. You continue to make me *seriously* think about this world we are living in and how our actions and words can affect it, even when you're not posting fic.
To be honest, I stopped watching the show after season one and from everything I've heard, I'm glad I did. Even just knowing the characters from that and then reading your interpretations, I still feel that betrayal you mentioned, even though I know your affinity!verse Porthos wouldn't stand for it. It's hard to reconcile the version of Porthos I've formed from your stories with the canon and you're right--it feels wrong to try. I wouldn't want anyone who has been in that situation to see any defense of that character's actions. What you've laid out here is very clearly abuse and it's important for fandom to listen to that.
I understand your reasonings for how you'll write them in the future and I think it's an admirable decision of you to make, though I'm sure it was a tough one (Also though, you've made me love Athos so much, I'll adapt quickly lol).
I love you so much, Rainjoy, and I'm glad you feel comfortable enough to share your feelings with us virtual strangers. Please always feel free to do so, because if nothing else, I damn well learn something new about myself every time you post :) and I want you to feel secure in that you have friends out here even if we've never met.
Thank you so much for this insight, m'dear, and I hope you are doing well! Sending warm, healing thoughts your way. <3 <3 <3
-foreverbuildingcastles (formerly gypsy-foot-luvr from LJ)

[rainjoyswriting]

You made seriously the right decision in stopping watching after S1, I wish I had ^^; (It's not just that S2 was bad and boring and S3 was worse, though they were, but fuck me, they're miserable. Literally not one happy thing ever happens to Aramis again after S1. How he's sane by the end of the series, especially with Porthos working away at purposefully destroying his sanity, I have no idea.)

And it's really weird for me looking at the Porthoses I wrote before he turned out to be an abuser. He was already a difficult character - all three of them are difficult, none of them are saints - but it's just such a shocking, fundamental *poison* in a person, that they do that to someone else, that they choose to treat other people like that for personal gain. And honestly, affinityverse Porthos really probably would punch canon Porthos if he met him. I don't condone it but I don't see how it could be avoided ^^; (One thing to see a character you used to love be that person, but to see 'yourself' as that person . . . ?)

I do feel better for having got this all out, partially just as a purge of guilt because I've felt so complicit in it all ^^; And thank you for being so kind, honey, you've always been really lovely =) It's the *weirdest* bad feeling, to feel betrayed by a fictional character. Why we let them do this to us . . . ^^; I hope you're well, and thank you, again <3

[neyronrose]

The TV show writers did a lot of emotional manipulation of the viewers. I saw the first few episodes of the first season, read "The Three Musketeers," and then picked up with the show again. I saw the Musketeers as anti-heroes in the book. Porthos had an affair with a married woman, and demanded money from her, as another commenter said. Her disabled husband was aware of this, but unable to do anything.

I haven't had the heart to rewatch the third season of the show -- too many deaths of sympathetic characters, too much destruction as a whole. I don't remember offhand anything about Porthos apologizing to Aramis for being abusive towards him. I noticed that Porthos showed a pattern of gaslighting other characters through the whole series.

I saw the shortened American versions of the episodes first. When I got the DVDs, I noticed that in the first episode, Porthos says about d'Artagnan, "Lively little bugger, isn't he?" I was disillusioned then that the show had made him the homophobe of the group.

Perhaps partly because I'm not a writer, the way the "heroes" treated each other was not something I really took personally. I feel your pain about a feeling of betrayal when a character you like/liked does something awful. *hugs*

The women on the TV show had a bit of agency here and there. I expected toxic masculinity from an action-adventure show focused on men, though. I'm glad you were able to express how you felt. I think I'm more desensitized than I should be to toxic behavior because of how ubiquitous it is.

I think of you and wish you well. Take care.

[rainjoyswriting]

Yeah, it looks like at least the writers had precedence for writing Porthos in such an entirely toxic way (I probably should point out though that in British English, 'bugger' is no indication of homophobia - it's as disconnected from any original sexual connotation as 'fuck' is, and just functions as a very mild swearword of the kind you could say in front of an elderly relative; the series originally aired just after teatime, so that was probably just the strongest word they could get away with ^^;). I am really, really looking forward to getting to write stuff I feel more comfortable with though, yeah . . . hope all's well with you, honey <3

[lissysadmin]

Rainjoy, I know that I once mentioned never having seen the show, although the publicity photos of Aramis and Porthos were dreamy, indeed. One of the reasons I have been such a fan for so many years is that your passion for and about your characters is so strong and palpable, from Kurt Hummel to your exorcist verse folks. I admire you for your positions on social justice and just people being decent to one another. I do not anticipate that changing one iota.

[rainjoyswriting]

Yeah so clearly by now I don't recommend watching the programme itself ^^; (The first season I loved; beyond that it's just terrible, and life is short.) I care really a lot about at least understanding, if a character behaves badly, *why* they're behaving like that. With what Porthos turned into, there was never any 'why' except that he's a terrible human being, and this is how he treats people, and oh my god you tell your friends to get very, very far away from men like that. But I really miss the character I used to think he was, the whole thing's been like a lesson in the dangers of innocence ^^;