Power Play (Soldier Boy x Reader)

Summary: So, you lost focus and had a consensual workplace relationship. It happens all the time. Maybe not quite like this.

Note: Female reader, but no other descriptors are used. Crazy ass 80s Vought debauchery. I might be a little rusty, but it was fun getting back into writing readerfics after two months🖤 Do not interact if you’re under 18, terf or radfem, or post thinspo/ED content.

Word count: 1.5k

Warnings: Power imbalance, cheating (Soldier Boy’s with Crimson Countess). Mentions of drug use. Soldier Boy is his own warning. Sexually explicit content involving elements of forced intox, semi-public sex, breeding kink.

You were dizzy. With Vought’s investor gala rapidly approaching, you spent the better part of your day camped out in your office, flipping back and forth through your rolodex to call and confirm catering, entertainment—you still couldn’t believe the board of directors actually approved Duran Duran’s booking fee—and transportation, off the top of your head. You already told Stan Edgar you were taking the following week off, which he had no qualms about—so long as the gala went off without a hitch.

You nearly jumped out of your skin when you were interrupted by a knock at your office door, which you’d left open in an effort to be available in the lead up to the event.

“Don’t tell me Edgar’s got you working tonight,” Soldier Boy said, walking in when he saw he had your attention.

“The most important night of the year is less than a week away and I still have a to-do list as long as your dick, so, yeah.”

He huffed out a laugh. “Must be pretty busy then.”

“How about you? Where’s Countess?” you asked.

Soldier Boy probably would have sought you out even if Crimson Countess were around, but from what you’d been hearing through Vought’s extensive grapevine, they were in yet another rough patch. Though, it seemed to you like their relationship was one long, extremely rough patch with some calm once in a blue moon. You weren’t afraid to admit to yourself that you ate up the gossip of their relationship like candy, especially when the other members of Payback—including Countess herself—would rant to Edgar about it. Since your office was right next to his, and most supes had little to no sense of subtlety, you could hear just about everything.

“She’s at one of those wildlife charity things, pandas or some bullshit.” He rolled his eyes. “Bitched at me because I wouldn’t go. She won’t be back until Friday.”

“Soldier Boy, I can’t just—“

“Sure you can. I mean, I’m technically your boss too, aren’t I?” he asked. “So, I say there’s no harm in taking a ten, fifteen minute break. Relieve some stress.”

You sighed. It had been a while since you actually got up from your desk. “Alright. Fifteen minutes, tops.”

He grinned. “Now we’re talking. You keep that minibar stocked?”

“Pick your poison.”

“Whiskey?”

“Sure.”

At least, you were pretty sure. The minibar in your office served as a nice gesture for the variety of people who’d come into your office for meetings related to all of the aspects of event planning you were in charge of. Over the past few weeks, though, you’d been reaching for bottles of whatever you could find to relieve the stress. Powdered your nose every so often, but tried not to make that a habit—not that you blamed your coworkers who did. Working at Vought was brutal and demanding, but hell, who else got to work with superheroes? Especially handsome, smarmy assholes who knew just how to fuck the lingering thoughts of any deadline or event planning out of your mind if you played your cards right. 

He handed you a shot glass. “What should we toast to?”

“To taking next week off.”

“Yeah? What’ve you got planned?”

You threw back your shot. “Nothing.”

“That’s no fun. How does a few days in Miami sound?”

You nearly scoffed. Of course he could make something like that happen on such short notice. For forty years running he was America’s superhero and Vought’s cash cow. After a night of schmoozing at the investor gala, he could very well clear out his schedule and fuck off for a week of sun, sand, and sex, too.

“I might need some convincing.”

“Then make yourself comfortable,” he said, walking back to the minibar to pour another shot for each of you. Almost comical, he’d have to drink the whole bottle and then some to feel the same way you did after two shots.

You glanced at the open door. “Someone might see.”

“Are you gonna make me repeat myself?”

Sparing the door one more glance, you worked at unbuttoning your blouse, tossing it aside. You shimmied out of your skirt and let it fall to the floor. 

“Heels stay on,” he said, his back to you. “Everything else off. Everything.”

With a hesitant huff, you unhooked your bra and pulled off your panties, throwing them in his direction when he turned around with the shot glasses. You made yourself comfortable on top of your desk, pushing some of your belongings aside to accommodate you.

He whistled lowly as you quickly finished off the second shot he gave you. “Look at you sitting pretty for me.” His green eyes burned a hole through you, though your gaze was fixed on the prominent bulge in his pants. He brought his shot glass to your lips. “Drink up, sweetheart.”

And you did, forcing the alcohol down as your vision blurred with tears at the unrelenting burning in the back of your throat. Felt some whiskey dripping from the corners of your mouth when you drained the shot glass. He collected the excess from your lips with his thumb, sucking it clean as he kept his eyes locked with yours.

“See how much fun we have together?” he asked, leaning over you until you laid back on top of your desk. “Could do that all next week.”

He kissed you, hard and mean like you needed him to. Perfect teeth that caught your bottom lip between them for a moment before releasing. Whiskey on his tongue that went to your head even though you knew he could hardly feel it. Rough hands feeling up your breasts, giving your nipples a harsh tug that made you moan in his mouth.

“You’re soaked,” he said, his voice husky as he rubbed his fingers between your slick folds with tantalizingly slow strokes. “If you wanted it, all you had to do was ask.”

“Fuck,” you whispered.

“What was that?” 

You groaned in frustration. “Just fuck me already.”

“Don’t have to tell me twice.” 

His mouth was on yours again, nearly distracting you from the sound of a zipper, the your gut clenching in anticipation as he pulled his cock from his pants.

It’d been a while since you had to brace yourself to take him, but you were wet, and maybe a little more than tipsy, so your body gave little resistance when he slid his cock inside you. Though, if Soldier Boy were anything, it was a guy who took what he wanted anyway, giving you hardly a second to get used to the feeling of how his cock stretched your pussy before he was pounding into you with harsh, unforgiving thrusts that made you grip the edge of your desk. 

Sometimes you forgot how strong he was. Hell, so did he, and there was little else you could do but lay there and take what he gave you. In all honesty, it was nice letting someone else take charge after having to hold it together all day. Let him fuck the stress out of you and replace it with all the aches and bruises that came with having sex with the strongest man on earth. 

“Harder,” you forced out, pushing that damn rolodex onto the floor.

“I go any harder, I’m gonna break you in half, and I don’t wanna do that until I’ve got you locked away in a hotel room for a week.”

“What are you gonna do to me?”

“Whatever the fuck I want. Not like I don’t already.”

You moaned. “Soldier Boy—”

“I’m not pulling out, so you better be on the pill or say your damn prayers,” he growled, his hot breath kissing your skin. You were on the pill, but nevertheless your hips bucked at his words, pussy clenching around his cock. “Oh shit, you want that, don’t you?”

“Yes—oh my god!” you cried out, muscles cramping as your orgasm pulsed through you, pleasure stealing your breath, choking you gently enough to leave you dizzy. “Yesyesyes—fuck!” Your heart was beating so fast you thought it was going to explode in your chest, especially as he kept mercilessly pounding into you, chasing his own release. 

He soon came with a groan, his cock twitching inside you as he bottomed out, practically knocking the wind out of you with a particularly hard thrust. 

You felt empty and sticky when he pulled out, and you didn’t want to think about the poor soul who was gonna be cleaning the mess you and him left behind the following morning, because you sure as hell weren’t in any shape to clean up the cum that was leaking out of you and onto the floor.

You put your hands on your chest, trying to catch your breath as he stood over you. The guy hardly broke a sweat, and you felt like you just ran the New York City Marathon. Super stamina. God fucking bless America.

“Hey,” he said, waving his hand in front of your face. “You good?”

“Sure,” you managed to answer. “Except now I don’t know how I’m gonna walk out of here, let alone get home later.”

“The ride up to the 99th is quicker. And if you need more convincing about Miami—“

You pursed your lips, considering the work you still had left to do before you could reasonably call it a night. But you were tired, and admittedly drunk, and Soldier Boy was already hard again. “I might.”

Hey you have tons of terfs following you; if you care about your transgender followers I suggest you block any you see and check through your followers for terfs and radfems

hi. i have quite a lot of followers and quite little free time (and also adhd) but for the record i (the admin) AM transgender. terfs are so not welcome on this account or in any vocaloid fan spaces in general and personally i hope you all die.

since we're talking about call outs lately, i've been called out many times, most of which are made from lies and sometimes by altering screenshots, but the most effective call out i ever got was like, in early 2015 there was a tumblr user everyone knew was a terf, but she would say "actually i support trans women" this was before crypto terfs were as talked about so the language wasn't really there to say "hey this person is a crypto terf." but yeah some people put posts of this woman on my dash and i made a random post on my blog "why do yall reblog her shes a terf" and of course she searches her own name daily, found my post, and replied to it that me calling her a terf was racist. that was it. no other interaction. but she went on all night talking about me being racist and just making things up as she went "oh i bet she says the n word all the time irl" kind of shit that had, like no basis? But her follower base took it 100% and i literally had thousands of anons telling me to kill myself, trying to goad me into being racist (didnt work), and the most concerning thing was i got hundreds of anons being like "what was the point of doing hrt if you still look like that, you should kill yourself." It was like, violent and overwhelming. and on top of it I'd get random young teenager trans people who followed her and bought into her bioessentialism showing up in my messages being like "you give trans people a bad name" "you're why transphobia exists" etc etc it was fucking crazy.

but i lost like, no followers because everyone around me understood, this woman was a terf. this all set up the real one though.

later in the year a teenage "communist" trans girl made some snarky comment about me being racist on a post of mine blowing up. i ignored her cuz like, who cares it's just some random teenager. but i guess people were looking for a reason to hate me cuz that blew up, lots of people just took that at face value no need to investigate. when someone finally did send the girl an ask being like "hey how is she racist" she replied "I dont remember but I know she is" and even more people just took this as 100%. the thing is, i do remember her being one of those "you make trans people look bad" terf following young trans people, it's not that she didn't remember, it's that she didnt want to admit she followed a terf and she believed a terf just saying shit. I lost like 3/4s of my followers, i had a lot of people i thought were my friends just stop talking to me, and going forward every time i got a call out there would usually be a line of like "also she's racist, everyone already knows this" all cuz this girl needed to make a snarky comment cuz she just loves terfs.

the thing about the "i dont remember" bit is it made some weird game of telephone. "I dont remember" became "oh she's racist, i think she says the n word" which became "she called black bloggers the n word" like people just made shit up about me and connected it to this call out. and when id be like this isnt true id be met with a "this is just known, youre a known racist" and it's like, to this day i will still find people be like "hey good on you for growing as a person and not doing that any more" and its like I NEVER DID IT TO BEGIN WITH

Welcome to the Multiverse

The rules are simple: you want to send an ask? Its either me or some blorbo of yours. Its my Multiverse but there are so many fandoms in it. Holy Shit. If you engage in RP with me specifically rember that my entire "thing" is being The Author. I sill have to figure out of what tho (you would think the Foundation would know that. Well guess fucking what.)

To let you get started, here are some of my best posts. Remember that the Ourple ones are KINDA mandatory if you want ANY background on wtf is this blog.

List of my powers / Its the end of the world as you know it (and i did it on purpose) / an admin kicked me off the island lmao / Mental Health Time / You Absolute Buffoons / The Numeron Game / Well thats a thing that happened! / Out of touch: leap yeap / 🅱️usiness / Magnus did nothing wrong, except its steven universe / welcome to the internet, SCP edition / #HALLOLLAH# / AMERICA IS FASCIST HEAVEN BECAUSE FUNNY / Lost Childhoods / please save those poor gay americans / Free Disco Elysco / Bone to the bad / Priting Wrojects / the True Range of my abilities / the fuck's an apocalypse knight anyway? / @punkitt-is-here fucked Geronimo Stilton and i think its a good thing / Alex goes batshit insane and forces everyone to do as he says... again 🙄 / Screaming in a Pattern. / wizardposting: because powerscaling needed fuckign Zeno Dragonballsuper apparently / BEN 10 BUT LANCER? FUCK YEAH! / High Geology / fantasy settings on tumblr are really fucking cool actually / RIFLE. IS. FINE. BUT YOU FUCK UP DESIGN YOU UROD. / i technically claimed ownership of Dr. Bright and Betty from glitchtale do you seriously think im NOT gonna do that for homestuck? / XenasOuch / SCP-8000 contest, OR: WHAT THE ACTUAL FUC- / LEMMINO but like, 8 years ago / Hazbin Hotel: a necessary... something i guess. / research attempt: the wizardposting wine aunt /

Below is who i am, and also the tags you can (and should) search for

Hi, name's Alex.

Born on the first ever day of 2005 and also having aspergers, i am a guy from italy trying to make it impossible for anyone to spend a day without knowing who i am. Also i literally trascend powerscaling so hard the only things that can even put a DENT on me are... decided by me. Welcome to the multiverse i guess.

DNI: people who support genocide, people who tolerate corporate bullshit, racists, and terfs.

The following list is ALL THE TAGS USED TO NAVIGATE THIS BLOG. Seriously. This masterpost is an explaiantion for the "portal hub" i placed in the search bar

Lore Post: sometimes the lore of the multiverse, sometimes my personal life.

Welcome to the multiverse: sometimes MASSIVE textpost telling everyone "oh yeah right, this dude has autism", usually me existing. tHE MAIN TAG.

Alex's Answering Machine: literally my asks

The magical workshop: turns out the wizards of tumblr are the reason the phrase "some of y'all have gotten too comfortable saying stuff without getting punched for it" exist. And its up to my autistic, protagonism-fueled low self-esteem high self-awareness ass to... fix shit up.

Belowstory: undertale but REALLY FUCKED UP: so basically frisk falls down and is greeted by a feminine voice that calls itself chara (it becomes slightly visible after getting out of the ruins) and like the good boi undertale character he is he proceeds to save the world. This entire thing exists because one time I was like "how fucked up OP can a sans be before its My Immortal levels of wtf?" And uh yeah here we are uuuuuuh sans greets you by pointing a .44 magnum at you so thank the head of the guards (papyrus) for saving you. Everyone here is broken and just wants A Fucking Break. Also you gain levels in pacifist because LOVE is Level Of VirtuE. Fuck you lmao

Undertale.exe: so I looked at Camilla Cuevas being an awful person. Then i looked at the beautiful anime that is @jakei95's underverse... then i smushed it all toghether to basically create the perfect AU. Frisk is a pansexual fuccboi that Has Game, Chara is THICC and powerful, Betty is built like a ballerina and is 1000 years old, and Asriel is a Streemur. All of them live in this house far away from the city thats literally a larger version of sans' house. All charachters can legally drink (prepare for Drunk Chara shenanigans where its Betty Glitchtale the drunk one instead) and the only one who (probably) isnt gay is Asriel (even though frisk covets the Dreemur Dong) (one day soldier, one day...). Many chatachters from many AUs sometimes come to visit cause, you know. Its a nice place.

Curseworld: massive writing project of mine which is just "adventure time shaped mass of autism". The world is cursed and fucked over, and everything is colorful. Its also part Owl House because fuck you the magic system is FUCKED here.

Internet friends: basically internet stereotype-shaped people. We have a furry thats normal, a reddit/discord mod that just wants to work in peace, and the protagonist is Just A Guy but a-ha! He has both an xbox an...d ps5 thus fucking over any CAD reference. The last sketch i made was a mr.monopoly shaped guy who really wants youngsters to actually AFFORD shit who is married to a very obvious reference to Meru the succubus. Also i 100% intend to put a gag about mr beast living in an ATM when he isnt making videos

Im looking respectfully: look. Back then tumblr was basically Rule 34 with twitter users. Now its way better at the cost of a fraction of their value. Have fun looking at attactive women!

TOH:NEXT GENERATION: not even @moringmark's comics are safe! Enjoy the adventures of ayzee commented by me... telling everyone that shes STRONG strong. Like holy shit girl inherited will much?

Warhammer 50k: listen. This is just me looking at games workshop and fucking emperors tts and going "fuck that. Heres mine". This is a project where my "shard" assegned to this universe basically copies the imperium because, and im not joking, "the emperor is kind of a baka, but then again tzeentch is a thing so...". Also btw TTS is canon as SHIT. Like fr its all canon. Yes even the shadowsun fling, let kitten rest.

Pluripotent Impotence: an scp canon of mine thats basically "the foundation is so cold and clinical they MASSIVELY misunderstood shit". 6140, 6500, 5500 and 7000 are canon. 2718 and 5000 are in the files but they basically might as well not exist. 3812 is living tech support. 166 is in her early 20s and 239 is 19 and they fuck nasty (theyre also childhood friends. Girl Love i guess~) because fuck you clef love wins especially yuri go snort telekill dust. 2317 loves humans and thins theyre cute and squishy and when its seventh child turned out to be fucking JoyBoy? Yeah get this: he DID condemn the fortune teller that was like "dude your sevent child is one of those prophecy children that are so in vogue these days" but also messed with fate so that her death ended up being the coolest and most inspiring shit ever because he was like "considering the average Evil King story, i might as well just... let this happen! Maybe i can convince my literal offspring to spare me!" And it fucking worked. Also a bunch of shit is canon. @i-am-dado looks like a Kpop star and is somft. Dr Jack bright is my character and mine alone and also elias shaw is there i guess. My OC bangs the first one of these 2 amulet boys on a regular basis and the second one occasionally, dont ask why is there a gay polycule when im straight, there are some things that escape my mind. I have been in SCP for a long time and regardless of me making my account 6/1/2024 (LA BEFANAH) i have been here longer than you believe in. From my perspective it took a year before a 5000 contest was announced, so fcuk yoyu

Earth-ℵ₀: the best way to take care of the DC and Marvel universes is... let an autistic dude fix damages done by money-hungry idiots in hollywood. The joker is unimportant. Dr.Manhattan is Done With This Shit. I made a squad with random charachters i like. Lmao suck on uranium rods UwU

ytposting: (Funkdela Catalogue: Encounter starts playing)

Omni-shit: ben 10 is actually a good series guys, and the reboot is an interesting way of showing what would Ben 10 Classic look like if it was made Now

1% enhancement: basically i look at something and go like "hey what if the charachters were basically part me but not in a Knights of the Apocalypse way"

Tumblr italia: aò sono italiano che cos'altro vi aspettate

components: basically i use tumblr as image hosting. LoL.

Items: images turned undertale items. For reference, i have 2³¹-1 HP and my stats are ATK 100000 and DEF 65535. Yes the attack is a yugioh zexal reference. NOSTALGIA IS PTSD BUT GOOD.

Mungeon Deshi: dunmeshi is a good anime and marcille is italian

Full Nelson Analchemist: if FMA exists in my presence im going to give the 20k mg weed gummy to Truth

Evangelion 4.0: look, hideki anno has gone insane. Every time he makes evangelion as the most brain damaging version of telling someone to go touch grass people inevitably miss the point. I take it upon myself to give the @jakei95 treatment to the poor creatures (also fun fact: KAWOSHIN CANON. THEY KISS ON SCREEN. FUCK YOU AMERICA.)

The hoes are stuck: homestuck. What you thought they were safe from my grasp? 人間 you havent seen sheiße.

Side effects of reading this blog can vary between true insight into the inner workings of the universe and self-defenestration from the top of the burj khalifa.

Anyways welcome to the multiverse

Do yourself a favour and dont go out without a loaded gun.

[plain text: TERFs fuck off]

heyyyyy welcome to my little corner of the internet

Im Vivian or Kiru, Im a queer Turkish disordered human/furry artist ^^ Im also a plural system but that wont come up on this blog at all

my full pronoun set is kie/kir/kir/kirs/kirself, in the they/them/their/theirs/themselves format

this is my main blog, full of all sorts of junk from aesthetics, memes, fandom stuff, and if youre lucky, sometimes original art!

other blogs

before you follow

tag guide so u dont get too lost

FAQ

"are requests open?"

no, I don't think they will ever completely open. I might sometimes take suggestions for fandom stuff though.

"can I use your art as a pfp/avatar/icon?"

if its fanart, yeah! just credit me <:). personal art or commissions are to not be used

"can I use your art for.. anything else?"

mmmf preferably not but if you really need to please go by me first, my asks and dms are both open

"can I repost/republish your art?"

no, please dont, even with credit thats just uncomfy for me <:)

"can I edit your art in any way?"

for fanart, small things like pride edits or ✨aesthetic✨ color tweaks stuff are okay, still credit me and dont go beyond that.

"can I trace/recolor your art?"

please no, tracing for style or anatomy study is okay but dont publish it anywhere with or without credit <:) and recolors are kinda thefty and therefore iffy.

Rip, I'm screaming rn. Anon that asked me like a month ago what my name is, I thought I answered and realized I didn't and answered on mobile today and somehow lost the ask, so lmao here is both my name and a mini landing page as I am working on my current landing page!!

Quick about, byf/dni, and things to tag.

Again my landing page is a wip, should be here soon!! Mayybe under a cut who knows I'm on mobile.

About

Call me Ami or Katara!! I'm 20 (almost 21), a fat disabled queer nb woc (no being non-binary and a woman of color is not an oxymoron). I use she/they pronouns.

I'm latine and desi! I live in the US (New England lmao 😔) which like I don't think is important then I find out that some of my mutuals are canadian or british or something and I lose my mind.

Puedo hablar español pero tengo difícil escribiendo en español. Y entiendo que eso no tiene sentido porque leer en español es más fácil de leer en inglés. Pero cuando estoy escribiendo en inglés estoy pensando de las reglas de español, y en español estoy pensando con las reglas de inglés 🙃. My extent of speaking in any sort of desi language is saying hi, bye, "I don't know", "hurry up", food names, and family titles in my family's language. And even then I mess up because my cousins are all married now (and have been for years) and I'm meeting their spouses now and being told there's a word for sister's husband, I don't have to call them bhai, and yeah

[ID: A person sitting on the ground holding their face in their arms. Their eyes are closed, and their mouth is open as if screaming. End ID]

Before you follow/Do Not Interact

DNI

- General DNI criteria (racist, homophobic, transphobic, radfem/terf, misogynistic, islamophobic, anti-semitic, xenophobic, pedo apologist, incest shipper/apologist, etc.)

- If you "age up" fictional characters who are minors to write smut fics about them.

- Can't think critically about the media you consume, and think that popular pieces of media/fiction doesn't affect reality

- If you ship real people

- If you support jkr in any way, shape, or form

BYF

- Minors can follow, but would appreciate it if you're 14 or older. I say this as someone who's been on tumblr since before the age of 14, and am hoping to impart some of my wisdom onto you

- I'm super critical of all my media interests, and very vocal about pieces of media/characters I don't like! If that bothers you, don't follow!!

- I hate t*ylor sw*ft. I'm a classical musician and I actually have a lot of reasons both of just her music and how she presents herself to the public. Yeah I hate her 😘

- I don't really have a tagging system, (I'm trying but it's hard) so if you like neatness, dont follow!! Will tag trigger warnings tho!! Ask if you need something tagged.

- I try and reblog images/videos with descriptions, but that's hard and time consuming so sometimes I don't. If you see me like a post of yours and it doesn't get reblogged for like four months that's because I started writing an ID, got interrupted, and saved it as a draft and haven't had a chance to finish it.

Things to tag

- General triggers (violence, death, assault, racism, etc)

- Flashing lights

- Sharks

- Clowns

Yeah thanks!!

[ID: An edited screencap of Anakin Skywalker from Revenge of the Sith. He is in a spaceship, and his profile is visible. He has a communicator headset on, and is speaking into it with a smirk. The caption reads "This is where the fun begins." On the left side of his face is a semi-transparent behind-the-scenes photo of Hayden Christensen dressed as Anakin. His hair is messy and stuck to his forehead, his gaze is downward and dull, his lips are in a tight line. He looks defeated. End ID]

here's something I believe that I think some people who follow me are not going to like to hear: TERFs are a moral panic, and it's going to end like a moral panic.

like 99.99% of moral panics just sort of fizzle out and then a select fringe of people still hold onto those beliefs. like there are still people living in the satanic panic heyday in their minds even today, but the normies moved on and what’s more don’t even remember participating. not to be a big bummer but that’s what’s going to happen with a lot of the terf/trans rhetoric. like those who have gone all in with trans rhetoric about sex is mutable and girl brain and w/e will probably hold on to those beliefs but get savvy about talking about it when tides shift. people who care now about feminism and homophobia are going to still care in 10 years. but people who are uncritical about the things they read about "terfs" and accept wholesale any trans activism b/c it feels liberal enough are just going to move on eventually and when news comes out about the wrongs of child transition and the regret people have about their transitions etc etc, they're not going to come out and say sorry to you. they won't remember sending you an anon when they were 14, or they won't remember the dumb comment fights they got into on stupid facebook posts about jkr or bathrooms or whatever. they're going to go "huh, wonder why no one was talking about that then, oh well. I always knew something was fishy" and then move on.

no one talks seriously about the occult anymore except extremist christians and yet some people still believe in suppressed memory and DID despite the lack of scientific evidence, and the connection between the two are not well understood by the general public because the abuse of power psychiatry took on it's patients during and because of the satanic panic has been swept under the rug.

as a feminist targeted by this moral panic, you really just have to be convicted in your own beliefs and try your best to live them out and stop expecting validation one way or the other from people. no one is going to apologize to "terfs" in 10 years. feminism has been the target of moral panics each and every new "wave." people are invested in hating feminism because they hate women. the people who still believe in women rushing the street burning their bras despite that never happening don't believe it because they have evidence, they believe it because they want to confirm the bias they already have. people have a bias about women anyway, so they are ready to believe that there are a group of women who are somehow simultaneously both the hairy man hating lesbians and 1950s housewives who just hate hate hate trans people and made up discourse to exclude them from feminist resources of which no one can define because people don't want to look further than that and don't care it doesn't make sense, they just go "see? I knew feminism has been secretly ran by bad, crazy women all these years. yes, rights for women, but do we have to be so angry and mean about it? chill out women!!" and in 10 year when Time magazine releases an award winning article about the "lost children" of transgenderism that barely mentions anything feminists did or said, people are just going to go "wow, who could have thought" and make literally 0 connection to terfs. you could probably say to them "remember terfs?" and they would be like "wow that was wild, yeah!! they were crazy feminists glad they died out" despite that not being even remotely close to what has happened since terfs aren't real and the things feminists believe won't fundamentally change in the future. they aren't keeping tabs on feminists, they're only keeping tabs on their twitter feed.

To trans folks who are trying to set trolls straight about Chris-Chan’s gender: Your hearts are in the right place, but the trolls do not care. They will keep misgendering Chris to piss you off and screenshot your reaction.

Yes, I’m talking about THE Chris-Chan. CWC, creator of Sonichu.

(TW: this post will mention rape and incest.)

I know, I know… “But if we let people misgender Chris, what’s stopping them from doing it to other trans people?”

Nothing.

There’s nothing you can do, unfortunately. The thing with trolls is they aren’t here to learn, they’re here to frustrate, annoy and anger you. They throw out all kinds of little hooks by saying offensive things, or things that trick you, and it’s all a game to them when somebody bites the bait.

It wouldn’t surprise me if trolls are saying horrible things about autism, too. That’s more my lane and partly why I don’t dig too deep in the tags about this situation. Again, I stress not engaging with that to correct trolls. They don’t care, they want to offend you.

As frustrating as it is, take note of the people who use Chris’ current pronouns and recognize that there are people who make an effort to get them right. I’m sure the trans people reading what you say will see that and know you care to gender them correctly.

It’s possible Chris transitioned believing she can get with lesbians. It’s entirely possible she’s exactly the stereotype that TERFs rant about and her shitty behavior might be used in the future to argue their views. TERFs will be TERFs. Some of Chris’ trolls may be trans themselves.

As it stands, Chris presents as a woman, so I’ll use she/her pronouns unless she decides to present as non-binary or a man again. You’re welcome to do the same when talking about her. Don’t waste your time trying to correct trolls, just use Chris’ current pronouns and leave it at that.

It sucks, but that’s how trolls troll.

Moving on…

I wonder if Chris would’ve been a weird, harmless nobody if Mimms never took her photo in The Game Place.

This all started because her photo was taken without her knowledge or consent and posted on a forum, which ended up spreading to the wider web and…yeah.

Would she have been an internet sensation? Would she have transitioned? Would she be a known name on the web?

Maybe everything would’ve gone down the same, but without an audience to bear witness.

Regardless, Chris is a trainwreck of a person. I don’t say that lightly. She didn’t deserve the trolling and abuse she got, yet she isn’t innocent in this either.

I felt sorry for her at first because I’m autistic too and was bullied severely in high school, some of it included physical assault and attempted murder. I reacted to the constant name calling and mockery irl a lot like Chris reacted to her online trolls. I’m thankful that my most volatile years happened before I had internet access. I’m two years older than Chris. I had my own drama with trolls that lasted a few years, but I grew up a bit more.

But I digress…

Chris didn’t get the internet safety talk that I got before getting let loose online, and people took advantage of her gullibility, her autism, whatever mental illnesses she might have and her obsession with getting laid. She ignored warnings to the contrary and in some instances her mom enabled her while her dad tried (and failed) to reign her in.

At the same time, Chris has a history of being racist, ableist, homophobic and misogynistic. She ignores people’s boundaries even when they were clearly stated. She’s entitled and thinks everything bad is a conspiracy against her. She acts like the world operates on cartoon rules and can’t handle it when situations don’t turn out in her favor like she believes they should. It’s a strange view of “Anything I do is good because I did it, and anybody who tells me it’s bad or treats me badly is evil or a troll.”

How she comes across to others and how she thinks she comes across are incongruent with each other, and she refuses to take any correction. An example is the claw hand she used to do while railing at trolls. It’s clear she’s imitating stuff she saw in cartoons, but doesn’t grasp that it looks silly in real life. It leaves me wondering if she ever watched her videos back to see how she really looks before uploading them.

Chris did a lot of disgusting things of her own volition, like not leaving people alone, uploading that sexual drawing featuring Megan, using pepper spray without provocation and trying to hit someone with her car.

Trolls tricked her into humiliating herself and shared the results, like hacking into her email, sharing chats where she gave out embarrassing details about herself, prank calling her house and posting the infamous blowup doll video.

If you know “Christory”, you know what I’m talking about.

If you don’t know, it’s something that’s gone on longer than some people have been alive.

No side is innocent here. I don’t blame Chris for attracting trolls, they chose to go and harass her because she jumped when they poked her.

I’ve followed Chris’ story off and on since 2008, back when she was making her Sonichu comics and being awkward. I never participated in trolling her. I’ve only ever seen the aftermath of troll operations, but the things she endured were cruel. (The Miyamoto saga and the BlueSpike saga come to mind.) I looked her up to see if she was alive and okay. I sent her my AFBV message a couple years ago, but never got a response.

I wonder if this could’ve been avoided if Chris never got trolled and was supervised better while online. That’s where her parents failed her. I felt bad for her; she didn’t know how to conduct herself and kept falling for trolling schemes because she was so desperate to get a girlfriend. It’s like she ignored that little gut warning that says “hey, this feels like a trick” and it was like watching someone fall down the same hillside over and over.

But after what she did to her mom, I lost any sympathy I had for her. Yes, trolls have traumatized her and messed with her head for over a decade and that’s gross, but what she did to her mom was unconscionable. It’s indefensible. It’s morally abhorrent.

She had sex with (or possibly raped via coercion) her elderly mom, who may have dementia.

Chris’ autism was taken advantage of for years, and now she might’ve taken advantage of her mom’s dementia to harm her for the past month.

Think about that. There is no defending that. She finally did something she can’t just wave away or pay her way out of.

Trolls didn’t put Chris up to that, she did it all by herself.

Now she’s under arrest.

Time and again Chris has had run-ins with the law and got away with slaps on the wrist, but I don’t think she’s going to walk away from this so easily.

I hope this situation finally gets Chris the help she desperately needs. I don’t know if her dimensional merge stuff is a delusion from undiagnosed and untreated mental illness or if it’s a paracosm she’s chosen to live in and act out because she can’t handle how cruel the real world is. Please note that I don’t say mental illness lightly either, because I’m aware of the stigma.

At this point I think she needs a caregiver who will supervise her online activities and help her manage her finances. (She will likely resist this…)

Chris’ autism and whatever else she has going on appears to make it very difficult for her to see things from any perspective besides her own. I’m autistic too, so I understand this— sometimes I get this way and have to walk myself back to see other perspectives, or I ask people to give me their side of it to help me understand how they see it even if I don’t agree with their view.

Chris needed more guidance and reality checks growing up, but didn’t get them, and now she needs both more than ever as she faces the results of her behavior. If she is delusional, she needs help to navigate it and I hope she can do that away from trolls. She needs to face consequences for (possibly) raping someone.

I wonder what the legal system will do with her, and I hate that her life has come to this. It was so avoidable. 😞

Sorry, Chris…I hope you’ll get help now, and I hope Barb is okay.

Really now, anti's? Did the meaning change or something because I'm very sure anti means anti-pedo shipping, anti-incest shipping.

To quote that one meme: well yes, but actually no. Antis are to “let’s stop pedophilia in fandom!” as TERFs are to “let’s support women’s rights!” - sounds good in theory, but in practice ineffectual and mostly just an excuse to bully people. I’m going to choose to be optimistic and take this as a good faith question from someone who genuinely doesn’t know, so I’m going to explain why.

The ideology sounds great at the surface level, like hell yeah, let’s get rid of pedo shit! Who wouldn’t agree with that? But once you go past the absolute shallowest surface level and say, OK, now what steps do we take to accomplish that? then you start to hit snags. Legally, the only stuff that’s banned is images/videos/etc of real life children being abused. Things like ship art or explicit fics of underage fictional characters are perfectly fine. Therefore, legally, anyone making that content is not breaking any rules.

If you say, well, I don’t agree with that, I want more things to be banned, then you have to come up with new rules of what should and shouldn’t be allowed. Who gets to decide that? Is there a committee? How are committee members chosen? How do you account for biases in the committee, such as race or age or gender? Once the committee has come to a decision about the new rules, how do you enforce them? What do you do about people or groups who refuse to follow the new rules? How do you spread the news to all of fandom that there are new rules in the first place?

And what about the rules themselves? How do you define “pedo content” beyond the legal definition of featuring real children? Maybe you say, that’s easy, let’s just go with all sexual content featuring people under 18. OK, cool, you’ve now made it illegal for minors to talk about their own experiences. Minors have sex, minors fantasize about sex, minors masturbate, minors experience rape and abuse, and now you’ve just put a gag order on all those millions of people. I don’t know about you, but I think letting people draw/write fictional characters having sex (even gross, weird sex) is the lesser of two evils compared to hurting millions of real, living children.

And anyway, how do you define “sexual content” in the first place? Is it OK if there’s no graphic detail? Is masturbation OK? What about sexual fantasies? How about making out? At which base do you draw the line between “acceptable expression of sexuality” and “pedophilia”? Or is any expression of sexuality not OK? Kissing? Holding hands?

At this point you’re probably saying, gee tumblr user caecilius-est-pater, that sounds both untenable (how are we going to get all of the internet to agree to unite under One Committee To Determine the Rules?) and like an insane unending rabbit hole! Nobody could ever do that! Yep. For better or for worse, we as a bunch of randos on the internet just do not have the power to change the broad planet-wide rules of what does and does not count as pedophilia.

You can probably see how this is a problem for the anti movement, which is all about enforcing those new, stricter rules. The ones that don’t exist and realistically can’t exist. How do you enforce nonexistent rules? The answer antis have landed on is to just make them up, every man for themselves. As you can probably imagine, this... doesn’t work too well, to put it lightly.

Some people think it’s OK to write about CSA as long as the author actually experienced it, other people think it’s never OK and even real life CSA survivors are pedophiles if they write about it. Some people think aging up teenage characters is OK, other people think if they’re underage in canon then depicting them in sexual situations at any age counts as pedophilia. Some people think sexual depictions of characters who look young (art styles with big eyes, short characters, characters with high voices, etc) is pedophilia, even if the characters are canonically adults. Etc ad infinitum.

Which brings us to the two things I said antis are: ineffectual and and a front for bullying. It should be obvious how the movement is ineffectual - you’re never going to get anywhere with removing bad people from your community if nobody can agree what a bad person actually is.

The bullying comes in because it’s very hard to get people to bully someone, but very easy to get people to join a witch hunt. “Let’s all harass and doxx this person because they’re a jerk” isn’t gonna get me very far, but “Let’s all harass and doxx this person because they’re a pedophile” is going to bring out a mob with torches and pitchforks if I can convince everyone I’m telling the truth. And by the antis’ mutable definition of pedophilia that can include anything from teenagers kissing to consenting adults who knew each other as kids, I’ve got a lot of tools in my arsenal to convince people.

And the insidious part is that nobody can defend you without immediately opening themselves up to the same accusations, because if you're being called out as a pedophile for supporting a ship with a height difference, anyone who says, “hey, I don’t think that’s pedophilia” is now also supporting ships with a height difference, ergo supporting pedophilia. (And if anyone is thinking “you’re making all these strawman examples up, nobody actually believes that”, I envy your blissful ignorance but let me assure you, I am not.)

And that kind of situation leads to an atmosphere where everyone is terrified of doing anything wrong or they’ll be the next one viciously attacked, and the only way to keep good social standing is by continously attacking other people whether you agree with the extreme ideology or not, and that’s how you get bullying, harassment campaigns, and anti groups that have become genuine, legitimate cults. I’ve lost the links but there are some truly chilling twitter threads about that if you’re interested.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, whether it was a case of the proverbial road to hell being paved with good intentions or whether the movement was co-opted by people who didn’t actually care about stopping pedophilia and really just wanted an excuse to cyberbully people, the movement has evolved to a point where it’s mainly a harassment campaign with only the thinnest veneer of actually trying to prevent pedophilia. Nobody is out here running charity drives to donate to help abused children or making their own safe spaces where people can view art and fic without worrying about encountering triggering content - in fact, antis have been offered multiple sites to use as replacements for AO3 where they can set whatever TOS they want and have always refused. The only thing most antis do to combat pedophilia in fandom is callouts and harassment.

Not to mention the irony in the fact that so many of the people targeted are, in fact, minors. In their quest to avoid people potentially getting hurt by fictional content, they’re doing real, tangible hurt to actual, living people, including kids.

So that’s how we got here. Being anti-pedo and being an anti are not the same thing, and if you see a reference to the latter, it means a member of a specific pro-censorship movement focused on hurting (mainly young, marginalized) people as “activism”.

Hello! I wanted to ask you this bc I really admire your work and blog, and I get the sense that you're a person who can tackle nuance well (and I believe this topic deserves it). I've tried wording this as best as I could, and I'm sorry that it's very long.

I've started getting the impression that some parts of the Good Omens fanbase have been sort of contained, if that makes sense. I feel like small creators have a hard time getting attention to their work anymore. As if people are only looking at the same handful of established creators nowadays (and that those creators are only looking at one another). And by extension, content really only gets attention if it's liked/shared by certain people. And then on top of that, it really constricts a lot of topics in fic and art that get appreciated.

I know that the hype for Good Omens has died down in the past year and that explains a major dip in interest, but I still feel there's an imbalance. I see genuinely good work overlooked time and time again, and I worry that my own work has been looked over bc it simply hasn't been deemed a fan favorite. For a while it looked like there was an effort to boost smaller creators, but it's seems like it phased out pretty quickly. I will be honest, it's been a little discouraging. It feels like the Good Omens fanbase is a club a lot of us have been almost excluded from.

I wanted to know if I'm just imagining this whole scenario or if it's a thing others have noticed? If others have noticed, what can we do to spread some love?

I'm sorry if this came off the wrong way or like I'm scolding people. Or like I'm whinging like a needy child not getting enough attention. I'm curious and was wondering if it was worth asking someone else about. Thank you for reading! And thank you for responding if you do!

Hey! Thanks for all the compliments lol, that’s lovely of ya

I doubt i’ll be as succinct as you managed.

Overall, I agree. I don’t think you’re imagining things at all and I’ve certainly also noticed a decline in interest in my stuff since the start

This is a total theory, but I’m gonna put it forward cos it makes sense to me. When Good Omens started up everyone followed a load of people to get at the content and were reblogging and engaging all over the place. Spiderwebs of followers were formed. I think there are blogs who end up being more influential than others, it depends on what youre looking for in the fandom who that is for you, but there are always big sort of blogs that just reblog content to share it. I think they’re the things that change.

Cos what happens is interest wanes. Fans move on and go somewhere else. If you’re following and relying on a blog to show you lots of new art and they’re just not doing it any more, then you’re sort of left just seeing the popular stuff that gets cyclically reblogged.

For example, i was following, with notifications on, a blog that reblogged every bit of poc good omens fan art they came across. total mixed bag of quality, but it was fantastic and picked up blogs that were completely unknown to me. The person running it got tired and moved on, so i don’t have access to that any more. It’s a lost thread in my little spiderweb of access that cuts me off from so much and it’s a real loss

Alternatively, and this is the trap i fall into, you follow creators. Like what you said! So, when I see a post i like very much i go straight to OP and (after checking they’re not a terf or aphobic) i follow. This means i get new content from the source rather than relying on someone elses taste to have a chance of seeing it myself. However, it also means i’m not following many blogs that focus on reblogging a range of content, so i miss newcomers. I’m not ignoring newcomers, i simply don’t see them

Both approaches to who you follow come with the curse of as the fandom gets older, you don’t have a clear way to find new content or creators. There’s an early bird gets the worm element to it all

There’s also tumblr weird bad habit of not reblogging things. People who run personal blogs rather than themed blogs will like something and consider their work done, but that does nothing to help new art or new artists, cos it’s not permeated yet. That kills new content and content creators pretty thoroughly

So yeah, i think there’s a lot going on there, but you’re certainly not making it up and a lack of engagement on your posts isnt an indication that people don’t like it, it just means people haven’t seen it or have fallen for their habit of not reblogging things they really ought to share.

In terms of fixing this? That’s a toughie.

I don’t have a fix, but i agree the lethargy is tiresome. It’s a constant effort to get something to take off, i have to reblog stuff four or five times before it starts moving beyond my immediate sphere of influence. But it makes sense, there are less fans and the fans there are aren’t out looking for new people to follow.

but i don’t like ending on a negative, so i’ll talk about some options or ideas! even though i don’t have the kind of influence someone would need to be heard

In my perfect world (and i repeat this is my day dream, i do not pretend it is well thought out or fair for all) i would remove the like function; either reblog it or you don’t get to keep an access. I would see more blogs that reblog content to a theme. I would see blogs that search out new creators. I would see newsletters that name new creator blogs that have engaged recently. I would see blogs that make it a challenge to themselves to reblog art and fic that has less than 100 notes. I would see more low stress fan events, more prompt lists and less organised zines.

But that’s all a lot of work for individual people to take on (except the likes vs reblogs thing, but that a real personal dislike of mine). I’ve tried to take part, I run @goodomensevents which is a blog where i reblog any general community event on tumblr that doesn’t cost money to take part in. But i don’t really think it has much impact, cos i thought of it too late in the game and no one wants to follow new good omens blogs anymore.

which i understand. i’m happy with my dash, i don’t feel like it’s lacking. I love who i follow. my mutuals talk to me and aren’t cunts. And i have no idea how to find new creators even though i may want to.

But hey, if anyone’s running a blog like what i’ve described, please send me a link! Maybe i’ll make a rec list on good omens events lol, see what happens. I’ll definitely follow you

So I've been playing Death Stranding lately. Wait, that's not what this post is about. Well, it kind of is. Hang on. What is Death Stranding about?

A: Norman Reedus getting bare ass naked B. Sneaking around ghosts with the help of your sidekick, an actual baby C: Carrying 50 Amazon packages up a hill while trying to not topple over D: Waking up in the morning and drinking 5 Monster Energy™ for breakfast

For those following along at home, the answer is actually none of the above. Despite the set dressing being bizarre to the point of near absurdity, what the game is actually about, like thematically, is actually really simple.

See, the development of Death Stranding was actually quite a trip. Hideo Kojima is the video game world's equivalent of an auteur director. He has a very recognizable personal style. It's thoroughly horny – he caught a bunch of shit for the design of Quiet in MGSV, but like, a lot of Kojima characters are just -like that-, including the dudes. Also, this is going to possibly be important later.

Anyway, so Kojima was going to do a rebootmakequel of Silent Hill, and the demo actually made it to the PS store and I could actually write a whole side essay about why P.T. (it was called P.T. for some reason btw) was brilliant game design for how it used the same hallway over and over and it was somehow beneficial to the overall feeling of horror. So Konami it turns out kinda sucks nowadays and they like, fired Kojima (they were huge dicks about it behind closed doors, too) and scrapped the project and kicked him out on the street and kept the Metal Gear series which was his baby (literally the baby in the sink in P.T., he snuck a bunch of messaging about the Konami situation into the demo like a breakup album) and Kojima would go on to form his own studio and poach some of the people who worked with him to boot. So the thing about Kojima is this: he's got a reputation for already putting some wild shit in his games, like a ladder that takes like 10 real time minutes to climb in MGS3 for dramatic effect, and a boss in MGS3 that summons the ghosts of all the people you were too lazy to stealth past and killed, or a sniper battle with a really old guy that he wanted to have last two weeks or some shit until he died of old age but he was "told that "this was impossible and not recommended." That is a real quote I just looked up. So he's coming off the heels of making this hugely successful game with MGSV and the hype of the P.T. Demo and he fucking, he like took all the people that were going to be working on P.T. Along like Guillermo Del Toro was going to co-write it and Norman Reedus was going to star in it, and he's like, I'm going to make this game called Death Stranding. And the first trailer comes out for it and it's completely nuts. Norman Reedus wakes up naked on a beach crying with a baby and there are floating people in the sky? So we're all like hooooooly shit, there's no one to tell him "this is impossible and not recommended" anymore. What's he going to make now!?

So the whole time the game is in development I keep seeing these tweets where it'll be like, Kojima and one of his homies smiling with some saccharine message about being spiritual warriors and changing the world. And not just Del Toro and Reedus, there was Mads Mikkelsen (another guy Kojima puts in the game just because he apparently loves him), and the band Chvches, and also like, Keanu Reeves at one point? You know how everyone has just kind of accepted that Keanu is a being of light? Here he was endorsing Kojima. The hype was pretty confused and frantic.

The game eventually comes out. A lot of game journos hate it because I think there was this expectation it was going to be, you know, less weird and have more of the conventional structure of a video game. That's not to say the average gamer wasn't also dismissive of it, but I think on the ground level there was more of an understanding that like, yeah, Kojima just be like that sometimes.

Because the game was a timed console exclusive and your homie don't play like that, I spent the first year or so cautiously viewing Death Stranding from a distance. I wasn't sure I was going to like it – except for being really impressed with P.T., I wasn't actually a big fan of Kojima's games as games – but I -was- sure that I was going to buy it, because of the way Konami fucked him over, just out of support. And the shit I was hearing was really out there. The primary mode of gameplay is just delivery packages. You collect Norman Reedus' bathwater and pee and use it as grenades. You get a motorcycle that looks like the one from AMC's The Ride with Norman Reedus, and when you sit on it, his character in the game says "Wow, this thing is like the one from AMC's The Ride with Norman Reedus!"

But I didn't really want to know that much about it. Something has that much fucking crazy person energy, you want to go in mostly blind, right? So maybe people just weren't talking about this, or maybe I wasn't seeing it, but then I watched Girlfriend Reviews' video about it and they came right out and said it (link provided if you want to hear Shelby say it more articulately than me):

Death Stranding is basically about the exact opposite of Twitter. It's about remembering how to be kind to each other, how to reconnect in a world where people are so often hostile to each other by default. Prophetically, it's about a world where people are afraid to go outside or touch other people and how damaging that is. It's not a game about carrying packages, it's a game about helping people by being brave enough to walk through a wasteland carrying their burdens because they can't. It's about rebuilding the lost connections between people, about restoring roads and giving people hope. I bet, for Kojima and the people close to him, it's about how to answer hostility with compassion. You can't kill people in Death Stranding. You can and are absolutely encouraged to fucking throw hands with people sometimes, but all the tools and weapons are nonlethal. So I think Kojima took all the Twitter heat he got over the Quiet nontroversy, and all the feelings of isolation he had from Konami separating him from his team during the end of the development of MGSV, and all the support and encouragement he got from his bros Del Toro and Mads and the rest, and decided to channel that into making a game that was a statement about all of it. And sure, it's a little heavy handed, and sure, it's a little saccharine, and sure, the gameplay sometimes borders on miserable in service of creating emotional payoffs. For me, especially in 2020, this message is a huge success. Social media should be an opportunity for all of us to feel more connected to each other, yet primarily it feels like one of the main forces driving people apart. Why is that? Why is the internet of today such a hostile place? I'm old enough to remember web 1.0: I can haz cheezburger memes; YTMND; the early wild west days of Youtube... What happened to us? I've thrown the blame at Twitter in the past, and I think the architecture of the user experience on Twitter is absolutely a big piece of the puzzle, because it fosters negative interactions. But in terms of the behavior, people have observed that 2018 Twitter was actually almost exactly like 2014 Tumblr. (For the record, Tumblr is now one of the chillest places left on the internet, because so few fucks are left to give.)

I think part of it is the anonymity. The dehumanizing disconnection of the separation of screens and miles. Louis CK, before he was cancelled, had a great point about cyberbullying, and why it's so much more savage than kids are IRL. When you pick on someone in person and you are confronted with seeing the pain you caused them, for most sane people it causes negative feedback and you become disgusted with your actions and eventually learn to stop being a shithead. Online, at best you can "break the wrist, walk away".

At worst, you can become addicted to "clout chasing" and the psychological thrill of being cheered on by your social ingroup. It's even worse if you feel like it's not bullying and your actions are justified because whoever you've targeted is a bad person so you don't have to feel bad about what you do to them. This is where reductive, unhelpful catchphrases like "punch a nazi" come in. For every argument, one or both sides have convinced themselves that the other side is subhuman because their beliefs are so disgusting. And sometimes it's even true! A lot of times, especially these days, people really are acting like animals or worse online. Entire disinformation engines are roaring day and night, churning out garbage and cluttering the social consciousness. (Kojima talked about this bit, too, way back in MGS2. As if I wasn't already in danger of losing my thread through this.)

The human brain was not built to live like this. You can't wake up every morning, roll over and open your phone, and be immediately faced with a tidal wave of anger and indignity. It wasn't built to be aware of fully how horrible the world is at any moment ALL AT ONCE, ALL THE TIME. And you will be. Because of another way that our brain works – the way we are more likely to share negative opinions. And because of the cottage industry built on farming outrage clicks, and because of constant performative activism.

It's not that I don't agree that being informed is important.

It's not that I don't agree that the causes people get riled up about are important.

They are. They absolutely are.

But we can't keep living like this. The constant, unending flood of tragedy, arguments, and hot takes. How much of the negativity we associate with online culture is the product of this feedback loop? What if the rise of doomer culture has been, if not entirely created by, has been nourished and exacerbated by our hostile attitudes toward each other?  Incels and TERFs, white supremacists, radfems, tankies and Trumpers – it seems like on every side of every issue, there are people simultaneously getting it wrong in multiple directions at once and there are more being radicalized every day. They are the toxic waste left behind by the state of discourse. And any hill is a hill worth dying on.

So what am I actually advocating? I don't know. There are a lot of fights going on right now that are important and we can't just climb into bunkers and ignore our problems hoping that Norman Reedus and his fine ass are going to leave the shit we need on our doorsteps. We need to find the strength to carry those hypothetical packages for ourselves sometimes - and hopefully, for others as well. Humans are social creatures. We need interaction and enrichment.

We need love.

So just try to remember the connections between humanity. Try to put more good stuff into the world when you can. Share more shitposts and memes. Tell your friends and family that you love them. Share good news when you hear it. Go on a weird fucking tangent about Death Stranding. Find a way to "be excellent to each other, and party on, dudes."

Gravity Falls/LIS2 AU

The last place Sean wants to spend his Summer is in a weird town in the middle of no where, Oregon, reconnecting with a Mother who hadn’t wanted to see them in years in her weird tourist trap. But Daniel is determined to go and his Dad gives Sean little choice but to babysit him.

But soon it becomes clear there is more to Beaver Creek than meets the eye and the strangeness of the town soon unlocks some family secrets and strange abilities. Maybe their Summer won’t be so boring after all.

AO3 

“Lyla, I will die of boredom.” 

“It can’t be that bad,” she replied, her voice a little tinny still. The bad reception was just one of many reasons that Sean was having an awful time. (In the week and a half since they had arrived, he’d already made a list.) 

“Nope, it is exactly as bad as I’m saying.” 

“I mean, come on, you’re Mom’s there. What’s that like that?” 

Sean scowled. “Number one on reasons this place sucks. All she talks to us about is all this weird mystic stuff she likes. Her store is so weird, it’s all crystals and bad poetry.” 

Lyla snorted. “Really?” 

“Yep. Not to mention this is the whitest town ever.” He glanced out the window, where Karen was smoking, notebook in hand and ducked his head before she could spot him. “There are no cool people.” 

“Come on, you have Danny.” 

“I get enough babysitting at home thanks.” He glanced outside again, wondering exactly how long he could bitch on the phone for and call it a break. “Anyway, this place is just making Daniel weirder. He’s convinced this place is magic or something.” 

“That’s sweet. Hey, we used to play witches when we were kids, remember?”

“Hey, you were the witch, I was a manly wizard.” 

That time Lyla actually laughed. “Sure dude. I’ll believe it when I see it.” 

“Anyway, we were into the Harry Potter books, you know before terf-face ruined them. Daniel is into the ancient runes and fake spell cards Mo- Karen sells.” 

“That’s adorable.” 

“Ugh, only you could find him adorable. That’s only because Daniel doesn’t kick you in your sleep-” 

“Did Lyla call me adorable?” 

Sean sighed as Daniel barged in. Not much had changed since home tehre at least, apart from the fact they now shared Karen’s attic room. (Bunk beds, making the being kicked in the shin at night thing even more annoying.) 

“Hey, I’m kinda on the-” 

Daniel yanked the phone and rolled on the bed. “Hiiiiii Lyla. Do you miss us?” 

“Give me that back.” 

He wiggled out of his grap. “Did you know Sean talks in his sleep, it’s so weird-” 

“You would know about weird,” he grumbled, snatching his phone back, only to find the shitty signal had finally cut out on Lyla. “Dude.” 

“Sorry.” Daniel grinned at him. “Hey, I’m helping Mom restock, can you help me reach the top shelves?” 

He checked the time on his phone. He had almost managed a whole brother-free hour. 

“Guess I should I get back to work.” 

“Cool.” Daniel followed him downstairs, bouncing with energy. “Hey, Sean what does terf-face mean?” 

  Sean was stuck behind the register, although the store was still empty. He wasn’t sure why Karen insisted on such early opening hours when no one else showed up. 

He rubbed his eyes, the early start not helped by the fact Daniel had been reading with a torch all night. He had picked up a weird book from the store or something. Of course he would pick up a late night reading habit once they were sharing a room. 

“I brought you guys some toast.” Karen balanced the plate on the top of some unsold art books. (Her organization was as great as her parenting.) 

“Thanks Mom!” 

Sean poked at a black spot under a thick layer of peanut butter. “Yeah, thanks.” 

“I gotta do some inventory but I’ll be back up for lunch.” 

“Can we go to the cool diner? Chris says the milkshakes are great.” 

Karen smiled. “Yeah. Does that sound good Sean?” 

He grunted in response and her grin flickered. 

“Right, work. You boys got this.” 

“We’re not your boys,” Sean muttered, although she didn’t hear. 

“Why are you so mean to Mom?” Daniel asked, his mouth full of toast. “She’s always nice.” 

“Right, she’s been real nice the first nine years of your life.” 

Daniel looked up at him with big eyes. “Sean…” 

“Fine, I’ll try. Put those eyes away Bambi.” 

He smiled. “So, I was thinking the strawberry milkshakes are Chris’ favourite but I like chocolate more so you could get one and we could share?” 

“Huh, yeah, sure.” Sean had only been half listening, distracted by the newest customer. Waking up early suddenly had its appeal. The girl had matted purple hair, an arm full of tattoos and a guitar strapped to her back. She caught him looking and winked. 

“Are you okay Sean? You just went really red and-” 

“What? No. Shut up.” Sean moved into a more casual position, his eyes still fixed on the pretty girl. His elbow knocked the tip jar and it fell off the edge. “Shit-” 

“Here.” Daniel put it back. “Woah…” 

“Good catch Enano.” 

“Yeah. Catch! I totally caught it.” Daniel smiled a little suspiciously. “Hey, you said a swear, you owe me a dollar.” 

“A dollar? It’s only a quarter at home.” 

“Now we’re away from Dad, you’re supposed to be a good influence.” 

“You get a quarter.” Sean dropped the coin in his hand. “Be cool.” 

“What?” 

“Hey boys.” The purple-haired girl leaned against the other end of the counter, an easy smile on her face. Her voice had a faint Southern tang. “So, I come to this town every Summer and I don’t recognise either of you cuties.” 

“I- we- um-” 

His brother beat him to it. “I’m Daniel.” 

Cursing his stammering, he finally managed to introduce himself. “I’m Sean.” 

“Why hello. I’m Cassidy.” 

“Hi. Um, cool guitar. You play?” (Internally, Sean cringed: You play? Why else would she have a guitar?) 

“Yeah, funnily enough. I’m actually here to hand out flyers for my band’s show. Could you hang it up?” 

“Yeah.” Sean took the flyer. “Your show is this Friday?” 

“And every other Friday. You wanna come?” 

“I’m invited?” 

Cassidy laughed. “Yeah sure. It is a concert. You’re lucky you’re cute, City Boy.” 

“City boy?” 

“It’s on your sweatshirt idiot,” Daniel whispered. Seattle Track Meet, 2015. He was frowning in the general direction of Cassidy. “We’re busy Friday so-” 

“No. Nope, I’m not busy. Ignore him.” Sean flattened his hair. “I’ll be there Friday.” 

“I’ll look out for you City Boy. Nice to meet you.” 

Sean waited until Cassidy had left before pumping his fist. “Yes! She called me cute Dan!” 

“You’re the worst.” 

“What?” 

Daniel pouted. “You promised you’d take me camping in the woods Friday. I already brought us marshmallows and walkie-talkies.” 

“Hey, there is plenty of time to camp in those freaky woods. But I only have one chance with a girl like Cassidy.” 

“Wrong, you have zero chances with any girl.” Daniel stomped off to the corner of the store. “You’re the worst.” 

“Dan- come on.” His brother went back to ignoring him. Sean crossed his arms. “Fine. Be like that!” 

There was the only sound of a raspberry in response. 

  “Nope, I’m totally with Danny. That was a jerk move.” 

“What? Lyla, you’re supposed to be my hype man- er woman. You’re always trying to set me up on dates.” 

“Dude, three weeks ago you were so into Jenn.” 

He sighed. “And Jenn was into Derek Anderson. We had ice cream and everything.” 

“Dude, don’t fuck up your relationship with Danny over a dumb Summer romance.” 

Sean buried his head in his pillow. “You sound like my Dad.” 

“Go to this hippy girl’s show next time. You Danny will do the face.” 

“The Bambi face?” Sean groaned. “I have been facing the Bambi face all week.” 

Lyla scoffed. “Is there anything else to add?” 

“Fine. I’ll go camping. But only for the s’mores.” 

“Okay, brother of the year.” 

“Thanks jerk.” 

Lyla blew him an exaggerated kiss. “Aw, love you too.”

Sean grabbed his backpack, moving to shove in his hoodie and torch. Daniel had already shoved one of the walkie-talkies inside. 

“Calling little wolf, we are back on for camping.” 

There was nothing but static on the other end. Sean pocketed the walkie-talkie and headed downstairs, calling his brother’s name. There was no one in the kitchen and only Karen sitting in the living room, chewing on the edge of a pen. 

“Hey, have you seen Daniel?” 

Karen looked up. “Oh, I thought you already left? Daniel passed by twenty minutes ago with the sleeping bags.” 

“That little-” Sean wasn’t panicking, but he was maybe sweating a little more than he had been before. “Um, right. I just forget a…” he scanned the room and grabbed Daniel’s weird book, “scary story. Classic camping right?” 

“Oh. Have a nice time then.” Karen hesitated. “I know you’re not thrilled to be here. But I hope by the end of the Summer we can understand each other better. 

“Me too.” Sean tried to look as un-guilty as possible. “See you tomorrow Karen.” 

  “Daniel!” He yelled, running head first into the spooky mass of woodlands beyond their store. “Dan, I’m sorry okay. Quit hiding!” 

No answer. Sean went digging for the walkie-talkie, now glowing an eerie blue. 

“Dan?” 

The walkie-talkie crackled again- “Sean?” 

“Dan.” He let out a shaky breath. “Hey, I’m sorry I ditched you-” 

“Sean, help!” 

He was clutching the walkie-talkie so hard his knuckles went white. “What’s wrong? I’m coming okay. What’s happening?” 

“Creature- help- monster- ahh!” 

Sean scanned the trees around him, suddenly aware he was lost too. Daniel had been the one eager to explore the woods but he had said it was too creepy and now it seemed he was being proven right. 

“Sean- book- monster-” 

He dug around to find the weird book Daniel had been carrying around all week. He had assumed it was from one of Karen’s displays but now he was looking at it, the journal seemed too real to go with the modern witchcraft bullshit she was trying to sell. The cover was dark blue and the pages thick with drawings and polaroids. 

“Dan, I have the book, what do I need to look for? What is this thing?” 

“Page- tree- monster-” Daniel was breathing heavily. “Hear?” 

“I can hear you,” he said comfortingly, “I’m coming.” 

He held the torch in his teeth, flicking through pages until he came across a few marked with Daniel’s doodles and writing. He seemed to be studying telekinetic powers, complete with a superhero sketch: SUPER /DUDE DAN/ WOLF? ask Sean for name ideas

He finally came across the page that looked like a bush drawn with yellow eyes. 

Dangerous 

camouflage shape shifters 

Hard to photograph shush ma-

Likes dark 

Under the original writing Daniel had added his own note: babies in woods. 

“Hey,” Sean held up the walkie-talkie, “is it these moss creatures? What well?” 

“Sean!” This time Daniel’s voice was clearer, his voice steadier. 

“Dan. What happened? Please tell me you had a good reason to go into the woods alone without telling me or Karen.” 

“Come on, that’s it? Can you yell at me when I’m not being chased?” 

“Okay. I’m coming, where are you?” 

“Where are you?” 

“By some trees. There’s a sign for a lake?” 

“Go to the lake, I’ll meet you there.” Daniel was cut off by some more static. “Hey, stop chewing that Mushroom!” 

Sean followed the signs, hoping Daniel at least would know a way out. How did he know the woods so well already? Was Sean that much of a shitty brother he hadn’t noticed him running off into these haunted-ass woods? 

The lake slowly came into the view but it was empty. 

“Daniel? Dan?” 

The lake was weirdly normal, just muddy water and a few droopy looking frogs. Still, Sean was still on edge, swinging the heavy torch from hand to hand. The faster they got home, the better. 

His relative peace was interrupted by the rustling of tree branches and heavy footsteps. Daniel came barging through the trees, a small bundle of something wrapped in his checked shirt. Something was chasing him and fast- Sean barely had time to move out the way as Daniel crashed into him. Something big and fast ran past. 

“Sean!” Daniel threw himself into his arms. “I’m sorry, don’t yell at me.” 

“I’m not mad. But you did scare the shit out of me.” 

“Sean-” 

“Fine, you get a dollar, let’s just go-” 

“No, look.” 

Sean turned slowly, met with amber eyes and a large face of bark and weeds. The creature sniffed at him curiously. 

“Um-” 

Daniel hid behind him. “Any ideas?” 

“You have the stupid haunted book!” The creature snorted, blowing hot air in his face. “Wait, the book said-” Sean slowly moved for his pocket, finding Dad’s lighter. 

“Dan, on three, we run.” 

“One-” he reached for a branch, “two-” he flicked the lighter on, “three!” Sean held the flaming branch up the creature’s face, dragging Daniel out the way as it squirmed. “What, the light should have scared it off.” 

“Remember when you said you weren’t going to get mad?” 

Sean turned to him, as Daniel revealed the squirming mass of moss in his arms. 

“You stole it’s kid?” 

“I always wanted a puppy! She’s called Mushroom-” 

Seeing it’s child, the larger creature started inching slowly towards Daniel. 

“Put it down! We can’t keep this weird monster-baby!” 

“We bonded!” The larger creature nudged its nose towards the smaller one, poking his chest with a spikey horn. “Okay, I’ll give her back.” 

Daniel held out his arms, placing the small creature on the floor. It wiggled a loose vine that could almost be a tail and followed its parents into the woods. 

Sean punched him in the arm. “That’s for trying to adopt an actual monster.” 

Daniel rubbed his arm. “Ouch.” 

Sean pulled him into a hug. “And that’s for scaring the shit out of me. I’m glad you’re okay though.” 

“Me too.” Daniel smiled. “Hey, now you owe me two dollars!” 

  After all the excitement, the brothers’ settled on camping in Karen’s yard. 

“So, you found that spooky book in a tree and didn’t think to tell me?” 

“You were being the worst!” 

Sean laughed. “Okay, I deserve that. But, next time you find a weird monster thing, tell me. We’re in this together.” 

“Okay promise.” Daniel threw another marshmallow at him. “Sorry I made you miss your concert. I guess Cassidy wasn’t that bad.” 

“Hey, I saved your butt, that’s more important.” Sean took a bite out a s’more. “Hey, there isn’t anything else you’re not telling me right?” 

“Actually,” Daniel held out his hand, a marshmallow hoovering a few inches above his palm. “Surprise?” 

(A boring Summer suddenly looked so much more appealing.)

Episode 1 The Truth of the Missing Brother

https://just-call-me-j-10v3.tumblr.com/post/637811451484127232/episode-

“What’s the date, the exact date.” Five asks as he walks over to grab some bread, working on making a sandwich as everyone watches him in shock. Jela has a soft smile on her face, a rare one that she only gets when she’s around her favorite siblings, normally however it’s only seen in flashes, rare instances when it seems as if no one is watching. Jela couldn’t believe it, after how much time and effort she took to bring him back he came on his own. He’s always been smart like her, they were the perfect little assassins growing up, Reginald always sent them on the hits that needed to be kept secret, Five was someone she could rely on in a fight. 

“The 24th.” Vanya says, her eyes never leaving her brother, she and Jela would always leave the light on for him when they were younger and Vanya always insisted on leaving a sandwich out as well, just in case… Jela knew it was futile, but it made Vanya feel more at peace so she did it, Jela always wished she had gone with Five, but she knew that wasn’t part of her story.

“Of what?” Five asks, standing in front of everyone as he gets out the bread, Jela stands behind Vanya, a hand on her shoulder, her way of helping her sister deal with the shock.

“Of March.” Jela states, scanning over Five, she wanted to know more, more about what he had gone through, she could see war in his eyes, one that was different from the others. Jela could feel the Fates pulling her back, telling her not to look at his separate timeline just yet, so she obeyed.

“Good.” Five says with a slight sigh of relief, making Jela even more curious, something that always frustrated Reginald about Jela, her curiosity seemed to override any of her logic.

“So, are we gonna talk about what just happened?” Luther asks, still trying to wrap his brain around the fact his long lost brother is standing in front of him. There’s a pause of silence as everyone watches Five make his sandwich.

 “It’s been seventeen years.” Luther snaps, causing Jela to have a twitch of a smirk, his temper is getting worse as the night goes on.

“It’s been a lot longer than that.” Jela says at the same time as Five, making everyone give her a slight glance, not liking that she knows more than them… As per usual. Five warps behind Luther to grab the other ingredients he needs, looking at Jela with curiosity, wondering how much she isn’t telling. 

“I haven’t missed that.” Luther says frustrated with his brother just ignoring his questions.

“Where’d you go?” Diego asks, not even glancing at Five at this point, Jela frowns slightly, her face going to her usual blank look, Diego always takes things personally, as if Five leaving was somehow Diego's fault.

“The future, it’s shit by the way.” Five states as he teleports back to the table, looking at his siblings for a second, but when he sees Jela’s face he looks back at his sandwich. She’s different than when they were younger, more so than the others. She has been talking more, which is good considering the only time she spoke when they were kids was when she was about to attack or kill someone, speaking to the press, answering questions, or standing up for Vanya and Klaus. However, she holds herself like a soldier and her face is void of emotions, if he didn’t know any better (which he does) he would say she’s completely emotionless, he wonders if the others believe the emotionless face she puts on, or if they’re just waiting for her to snap and kill one of them.

“I could’ve told you that.” Jela says at the same time as Klaus says ‘called it’ she just rolls her eyes, getting bored of this conversation, ready to get back to her job. She’d much rather be cracking open the skulls of some other gang that tried to take her terf than listen to this. She was here to mourn, she has mourned, now she’s starting to feel suffocated by the memories.

“I should’ve listened to the old man. You know, jumping through space is one thing, jumping through time is a toss of the dice.” He says as he continues to prepare his sandwich, at this point he’s taking so long on it that Jela wants to mother him and do it for him, even if he only looks like a kid. 

“Nice dress.” He says to Klaus, making Jela smirk, she’s always loved Klaus’ style, or lack thereof.

“Oh, well, danke!” Klaus says, playing with the edges of his skirt, happy that he got a compliment on it.

“Wait, how did you get back?” Vanya asks, realizing that they haven’t really gotten any direct answers to that.

“In the end, I had to project my consciousness forward into a suspended quantum state version of myself that exists across every possible instance of time.” Five explains, finally putting the peanut butter on his sandwich.

“That makes no sense.” Diego says, completely lost as to what Five just said to them.

“Well, it would if you were smarter.” Five responds almost immediately, making Jela let out a small laugh, Luther stopping Diego from attacking Five, the others turning to her for an explanation.

She sighs before deciding to explain a little more. “Multiple outcomes, multiple instances in time, you want to go back to a specific one you have to project yourself to all of them before being able to lock on to this specific one, otherwise you're in an alternative reality, he wanted his reality. However he definitely got a decimal point off bringing him back to this adorable prepubescent body he has now, technically in another reality he got it right, anyhow. Tell me five, how long were you gone?”

“I miss when you didn’t talk, I was there for forty-five years, give or take.” He says as the others sit back down in shock, but this just makes Jela all the more curious, she is however a bit frustrated that he commented on her talking more. She would normally snap at anyone who brought it up, but he doesn’t know any better yet.

“So what are you saying, that you’re fifty eight?” Luther says, the shock clear in his voice.

“No, my consciousness is 58, apparently my body is now 13 again.” He says, his voice showing his frustrations.

“Wait, how does that even work?” Vanya asks, still unable to comprehend it, Jela sighs, realizing just how little her siblings know.

“Delores kept saying the equations were off, hmph, bet she’s laughing now.” He says, shrugging his shoulders as he finally takes a bite of his sandwich.

“Delores?” Allison asks, wondering who it was that their brother had correcting him of all people.

“Hmm, guess I missed the funeral.” Five says, completely ignoring the question as he looks at a new paper, Jela would have to ask him about that later.

“How’d you know about that?” Luther asks the time-traveler, making Jela groan slightly, wondering how much lower her IQ got hearing him ask a question like that.

“What part of the future do you not understand?” Five asks, making Jela feel a lot better, she definitely felt her nonexistent sanity come back to her a little having someone smart around her again. “Heart failure, huh?”

“Yeah.” Diego says, wanting to just stick with that story, looking at Jela who acknowledges him, she likes that he defends that story, afterall, it’s one she created. If Diego found out about Grace… Jela just wants to save him from it for just a bit longer.

“No.” Luther immediately contradicts, making Jela glare at him, he hides a shiver from her cold glare as the others glance at him in slight distaste at the idea.

“Hmm, nice to see nothing’s changed. Other than you.” He says as he walks past Jela, she follows him, she has her own questions that need to be answered.

“That’s it? That’s all you have to say?” Allison asks, not liking the lack of answers and emotion they got from him.

“What else is there to say? The circle of life.” Five responds, Jela internally cringing at that, she hates to see it as a circle, she sees it as a string, but that’s what comes with the fates.

Five walks into his room, opening his closet and all he sees is school uniforms. “Ah, shit.” He pulls one out and turns around, Jela knocks on his open door before walking in.

“Uniforms, uniforms and more uniforms, I’d say the fates are punishing you, but I know better than that.” Jela says, shrugging her shoulders. “I want to talk, just meet me in the living room when you’re dressed, or don’t either way I need a few more drinks before the end of the night.”

“Drinking is bad for you, and not just in general, you and I both know the Fates get frustrated with you when you’re not sober.” He says, but Jela just ignores him and walks to the living room.

“Nice to know dad didn’t forget me.” FIve says as he looks at the painting in the living room, Jela sipping her small glass of vodka as she sits on the couch

“No one forgot you, I tried, but it’s hard when you leaving got shoved down my throat every time I failed.” Jela says, setting her glass down, her scars shown on her hands.

“You chose not to come with me, but I’m guessing you never told anyone that I offered.” He says, sitting across from her, but his form wasn’t relaxed, his foot bouncing up and down slightly, paranoid, that’s how he looked. 

“No, I didn’t, I was told to get you back inside, to not let you try to time travel, but I didn’t. That was the first and only time I purposely failed dad, that night was a sleepless one, constantly talking to the fates to try to get you back, reopening the cuts from the strings. It made me stronger though, made my connection with the fates stronger too.” She says emotionlessly with a shrug.

“I never thought about what would’ve happened when you came inside without me. How did you get like this, how badly did he treat you?” Five asks, his voice frustrated and stern, he cares for his sister, and everyone else talks about what they went through, Jela, she doesn't.

“Doesn’t matter-” She says, used to everyone ignoring what she had gone through growing up.

“Don’t give me that bullshit.” He snaps, glaring at her, she glares right back, she doesn’t talk about it, the amount of times she has either nearly died or been brought back to life with adrenaline shots and a defibrillator. Her training was ruthless, but Reginald knew the fates wanted her alive, so he tested the limits. 

“Aren’t we supposed to be moving on from him, why don’t you tell me what happened, or rather what’s going to happen. You’re hiding something.” She snaps, earning a glare from her brother.

“Funerals are where you talk about the shit the person did, and I will tell you about it when I know more.” He says back and that’s when Jela gets frustrated enough to do something about it. 

“If you won’t tell me then why don’t we just relive it together?” She asks, grabbing his hand, using an ability that the others didn’t know she had. Her eyes go blind as she pulls him to the timelines, going back to the day that he left.. Streaming his timeline wasn’t like streaming a movie, this was like reliving it, meaning that Jela gets to relive what he had gone through as if she were him, the feelings, the reasons why he made the decisions he did… She, however, didn’t expect him to pull away from her consciousness and to go through her timeline as well, reliving through her what he missed when he left..  Jela’s ability is powerful, but she hides a lot more than it seems about what she can do.

Five looks down at his body, only to see painted black nails and one of the girls' uniforms, he cringes as he realizes he's in Jela’s thirteen year old body.  He looks around when he starts to feel his body move, he’s reliving Jela’s timeline, only conscious and able to feel and view, not change anything.

“Number eight, I see you’re ready, come on now little dove your father is waiting. I saw that number four has fallen asleep in your room again, did he have another nightmare?” Grace asks, trying to keep track of her children's problems.

“No, I had one and he heard from across the hall, he didn’t want me to be alone.” She says, always honest and direct with her superiors at this age.

“Oh, well, you should try to talk to your father about them, I’m sure it’ll help.” Grace offers, making Five upset, Grace always tries to help the others with their issues, why send Jela off to Reginald when she’s struggling, he could feel the pain and sadness Jela felt from that response.

“Father can’t help when they are about him, don’t worry mom, I know you can’t help me either.” Jela sighs, trying to think logically, It’s just her programming, it’s just her programming, it’s not that she doesn’t care, she just doesn’t have that ability.

“Right..” She says, opening the door to the courtyard, Jela walking out and waiting for their father, only to hear the door lock. “Shit, should’ve dressed warmer..”

“Language number eight.” Reginald says as he walks behind her, she jumps a little, her heart racing slightly in fear, she stands straight, making sure to look straight forward as well. “You shouldn’t be jumpy, number eight, you should've known I was here, hands out and eyes closed.”

Five wanted to fight, to get her out of there, he knows that Jela could’ve, he can feel that she felt she owed him her life.. Five now knows about what happened with her mom, how she was left to die. Jela closes her eyes, a blindfold getting tied over them, her hands getting wrapped in that golden string, both hands wrapped separately, her breathing is steady as hard as it is to do so with the adrenaline coursing through her. He tightens them until her hands start to bleed, breaking open the previous wounds, she makes no noise at the pain and tries her best not to show it hurt, she knows it’s punishment for not knowing he was there. 

“You have failed me today, you were supposed to bring Number Five back and you failed to do so, so tonight you will not be sleeping. Tonight you will speak to the fates to get your brother back and for every half hour you fail to bring him back you will either get shot at, a knife thrown at you, and a few other deadly possibilities, you will keep the blindfold on and you will not wake up your siblings, do you understand?” Reginald says sternly, this made Five sick to his stomach, the others were asleep peacefully as she goes through this, their training not until morning, which Jela will have to do with only an hour of restless sleep in her system. 

“Yes sir.” Jela says softly, she rarely talks, and as scared as she is, she cant show it or this would only get worse for her, showing emotions is a weakness. That’s when Five gets thrown into another part of her timeline, she’s older now, about sixteen.

“Jela come on, just one prank on Diego, you know you want to.” Klaus practically begs in a singsong voice, a pouty lip on his face, making her sigh.

“Klaus, we are not going to dye his hair pink, but you know what we are going to do?” She asks, a small, mischievous smirk on her face, making Five confused, why would he need to know about this, how is this something important about Jela?

“Oh dear sister do tell me!” Klaus says dramatically, loving that look in his sister's different coloured eyes.

“We’re going to steal his favorite knives and hide them.” Jela says simply, knowing that it would cause more of a reaction from Diego.

“This is why you’re my favorite sister, you’re brilliant!” Klaus says with a laugh as they set out in the middle of the night to sneakily steal the knives from Diego, they ended up just hiding them in Luther’s room. The next morning there’s absolute rage filled through the household, luckily Reginald is off on a business trip for the week, Jela laughs a little, walking towards the chaos that makes her feel so at home, Grace was still charging and Pogo probably just didn’t want to deal with it this early in the morning.

“You stole my knives!” Diego snaps at Luther, his collection in his hand, his eyes looking murderous.

“No I didn’t! I’m telling you it wasn’t me!” Luther snaps back, standing tall acting like he’s too honorable to have done such a thing.

“They were in your room!” Diego shouts angrily as Allison comes out and looks at the two arguing. 

“Why would he even touch your knives? I think someone is just trying to cause trouble.” She says, looking directly as Klaus who immediately looks nervous.

“It was me.” Jela says, her voice still quiet as when they were younger, but this time she has more of an emotionless sternness to it, like her dad, everyone looks at her confused.

“And why would you of all people do that?” Diego asks, not buying it, but Jela decided then and there that she would say and do anything to protect her brother from her other teammates.

“Because I wanted to show you how absolutely ignorant you are, that even as heroes you choose to accuse the easy target rather than the correct one, no better than the cops if you ask me.” She says emotionlessly, Five could feel her wanting to laugh at the looks on their faces, it was the day she showed how easily she can control a situation. Five felt like he knew enough, but the fates had other plans, as he went to pull away from her string of life he was dragged to yet another memory..

Jela answered her phone, “Mom, it’s late, why are you calling me?” The realisation, the overwhelming pain to know that someone who could never care for Jela had permanently gotten rid of the one person who never gave up on her being a hero. Everyone else had gotten used to the idea of Jela being a villain, even herself, but Reginald still treated her as the same. He raised her to be a hero, so, even if it was only on the missions he sent her on, he was still right, he didn’t fail, she is a hero… Then in one phone call that was gone.

Five could feel the sadness and grief mixed with the intoxicating amount of anger and bloodlust that flowed through Jela, but then, in that moment she could imagine Diego feeling that grief and anger if she were to do the same thing to Grace. Truth be told she doesn’t quite remember what she said to Grace on that phone, just that she had made the choice of sparing Grace, for now.

The fates finally let them go back to their current time and only a minute had passed, Five and Jela make eye contact, a mutual understanding of each other, seeing memories, no, living through what the other had gone through.. That’s how they are now. 

“How much did you see, I’ve never had someone pull away from me before.” Jela says, bringing her arm away from his and rubbing away the slight stinging sensation that using that part of her ability caused.

“More than you would want me to, don’t you ever do that again… but I get it now, I get you now.” He says, Jela laughing, shaking her head, about to deny it.

“Jela, you do realize that I’m allowed to see you as family too right? It goes both ways.” Five says, testing a concept he has.

“I can care for you, but it doesn’t go both ways, if it’s save me or save someone else you choose someone else. That’s what a hero does, saves the civilian.” She says bluntly,

“No, I save you, because I’m not a damn hero, I’m your brother and you know that.” He says, challenging her, they make eye contact, neither one of them backing down.

“Am I, am I interrupting something?” Vanya asks as she walks in the room, she could see a slight glow from both siblings as they argue. Jela lets out a breath, trying to calm down, he knows now, all of the important things and Jela knows about him too. She knows about the apocalypse.

Tilt The Hourglass ch. 6

Maul adjusted the small holster against his hip and pulled his cloak tighter around him.

He never would have pegged Fett as being a tailor, but the mando had pulled out a thread and scissors and hemmed the cloak to fit Maul. It fell until halfway down his thighs, where he had pants and boots now. They hadn’t had the time to get Maul a full flight suit or any armor, but he was clothed at last and his long sleeves even connected to finger-less gloves. 

The dark cloak was pulled tight over his head. On his right hip was a small blaster, and in his new boot was a vibro-knife each. They weren’t lightsabers, but they would do. 

He felt wrong to not have his ‘saber against his hip, especially when they boarded the ship. He could sense them as soon as he stepped on board. The bright light’s of two Jedi, two lights he knew well. Kenobi and Jinn. 

He’d recognized Kenobi as soon as he’d seen him, hovering near the ship and looking like a convict about to be executed. 

As soon as he saw him he knew he had to get on board that ship, with or without Jango. 

This was Kenobi. Tiny, although a head taller than Maul himself, he was barely old enough to be out of their silly little temple. Maul needed to see him again.

Maul didn’t know what he was going to do when he saw him. He didn’t know if he was going to stab him or demand answers that Kenobi certainly wouldn’t have. 

Like what had happened. Two years ago, a bit more now, Maul had died and woken again. Decades in the future Kenobi had cut him down and ended a rivalry that spanned a lifetime. Why? Maul hadn’t been able to find information on it. Not that he could risk looking very hard without tipping off his master, mind. 

Still. 

He still had a scar on his hand, one triangle and one square pointed into his palm. One sith holocron and one jedi. Their voices still echoed faintly in his memory. 

Soon, he needed to take another trip to Malachor. Perhaps this time he could take Young Kenobi with him. The boy wasn't a sith. He didn’t have even the sliver of possibility for it that Ezra had possessed. 

Maul had done his best to make Kenobi Fall, and each time he had failed. Even in the end, Kenobi hadn’t hated him. He’d offered him only kindness. 

There was a reason that Maul had tried to get him to help him stop the rise of the Empire. The two of them were equally the best and worst examples of their respective orders. Between the both of them they could have kept Sidious from becoming emperor. True, Skywalker would have had to die, but Kenobi had lost his master, his lover, and Maul didn’t even know how many others. He would have survived losing his Padawan, if it was for the ‘greater good’ or whatever jedi preached. 

He was a good person. Disgustingly so. 

Malachor was a graveyard for Jedi as much as Sith. Maul could use that to convince him if he really had to. 

Jango gestured to him to follow along. 

Maul didn’t like deferring to anyone, but he would play along for now. It was better than Sidious. 

If Maul had ever met someone worse than him he could not recall. 

The pair boarded the ship just in time to see a young human being assaulted by a hutt, the creature’s fat fingers curled around his throat. 

It took Maul a total of two seconds to realize who it was, and by that time Jango had already closed the distance between them and pulled his blaster. Jango levelled it at the hutt’s head. 

“Let the boy go,” he ordered, his voice level. The Force was muffled through beskar, helmet’s especially, but Maul had spent time enough with Mandalorian’s that even with Jango’s helmet firmly in place he could still feel the anger that rippled through him. 

Mando’s and their children. 

“Hah? Why would I do that? We do not tolerate spies here! This is offworld terf, and we will-” 

“Drop. The. Boy.” 

The hutt eyed the blaster wearily before he tossed the body. 

Right at Maul. 

Maul caught him on instinct. The weight of Kenobi almost knocked him down, but Maul held firm. Had Kenobi always been so much taller than him? 

Maul kept a weary eye on the hutt, and Jango, ready to draw his blaster and fire. He could take four of whiphids before they got within arms length, and Jango could take the rest in that same time. 

The hutt cussed them out and made his leave, with the whiphids following along behind him. 

Maul looked down and froze when he found burning blue eyes staring back up at him. 

Young Kenobi was… not what he’d expected. 

He was tiny, for one thing. Baby faced, with all the puppy fat of youth that Maul, even younger than him, had mostly lost by now. He was thin and gangly the way humans’ were when they were getting ready for a growth spurt, and his hair had never been so red in the future. The last time Maul had seen it it had been almost entirely white. Had he always had freckles? 

Maul didn’t know what he’d expected to find in his rival, but what he found was a kid. 

This was not the padawan that had cut Maul down. This was not the knight that had hunted him half across the galaxy. This was not the hermit that had held his dying body by fire light. 

This was just- 

Obi Wan. 

Blue eyes rolled back in his head and Kenobi dropped in his arms. 

Maul looked up to find Jango with his visor tilted towards the pair. He felt bemused. Maul frowned at him and swung Kenobi over his shoulder’s in a firemen’s carry. 

“Shut up,” he snapped at the mandalorian. 

“I didn’t say a thing.” 

“You didn’t have to. You have a very expressive visor.”  

Jango snorted at Maul’s blunt accusation. 

“Perhaps I do. Let’s see if Clat’Ha has a place we can bunk down and check on your little friend there.” 

“He is not my friend!” 

Jango ignored him entirely and picked his way across the floor to the inside of the ship. There were panels missing and wires spilled out across the metal floors like the guts of a massive beast. 

Maul mentally categorized all of the easy access points, vents, weapons, and potential ambush zones. 

Finally they found Jango’s friend, the human woman in charge of the Arconan Mining Company. She took one look at Kenobi, still limp over Maul’s shoulders with a ring of bruises blossoming around his throat, and marched them into a small closet that served as a medical bay. Apparently mining was a dangerous occupation. Who knew? 

Maul let her take Kenobi from him and lay the boy down on a hard cot before she found a bacta spray and some bandages. A medical droid floated near by and glued a cut on Kenobi’s brow shut. 

“Are you alright?” Jango touched his shoulder. Maul twitched, but didn’t break the hold. He glanced up at the blank visor. 

“Fine. Why wouldn’t I be?” 

Worry emanate from Jango, amplified by their contact. 

“It’s not always easy seeing other’s get hurt. Especially ade. Children.” 

Maul squinted up at him. “People get hurt a lot around me,” he said slowly, like Jango was a particularly foolish child. “In case you forgot. I would have shot the hutt dead. Or hit him under his right arm. The third lung located there is close enough to the surface that the right pressure would rupture it and he would choke to death on his own blood. At least that young. An older hutt would be harder without a blaster. They’re very annoying.” 

Clat’Ha stared at him over Kenobi’s body before she looked to Maul’s new ‘care taker’. 

“...Jango what the fuck are you teaching this kid?” 

Before Jango could even defend himself  Maul wrinkled his nose at her. 

“He’s barely had me two days.” 

Maul hadn’t even learned that on Orsis. He’d learned that during his rise as a crime boss for the shadow collective, when he’d been forced to kill a few hutt’s to properly send a message.They would obey him or they would die. Maybe he should start building his criminal empire again. 

There was an idea. 

One for later. He needed resources he didn’t have yet, and Jango was as Mandalorian as they came. They wouldn't let a kid go easily. They would protect younglings with their lives if they had to. 

In retrospect, Maul should have advised Kilindi and Daleen to seek them out. But Sidious might have ripped that information from his mind, so perhaps it was for the best that he didn’t. 

Wherever they were he knew they were okay. Kilindi was resilient and Daleen was intelligent. Maul had faith in them. 

That didn’t mean he didn’t worry about them, or miss them. They were his.    

“Three,” Jango corrected mildly. “You were unconscious for the first one.” 

“Ah, yeah.”

Somehow that only seemed to alarm Clat’Ha more. 

What a strange woman.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Maul couldn't tell if he hated or loved this ship. 

 The ship itself was a hot mess, a wreck waiting to happen and it was probably older than everyone on it combined. It was dark in places where the wires needed replacing, and the whole thing was divided between two mining companies. 

The entire thing was saturated with animosity and hostility, and Maul drank it in. He pulled the distrust and anger out of the air and wrapped it up in a little ball inside his chest for later. It was a technique he’d figured out himself years ago. How to skim off the top emotionally. Theoretically it could be used to take an enemies fighting spirit and enhance an allies, but Maul had never really tried to do that. 

He preferred to enhance himself, and he was an assassin and a warlord more than a general. He fought on his own or in small groups in dark spaces, not in open fields with legions under his command. 

His little trick on Mandalore was an exception.

 Maul was even able to drink up the negative emotions that Jinn released into the Force. Irritation, worry, things that Maul hadn’t noticed when he had faced the man before. It was probably because the crew had misplaced a little jedi and everyone was in a tizzy. 

Maul could have ended the confusion, but where was the fun in that? 

Instead he sat with Kenobi. 

The boy had somehow managed to develope a fever and Jango had insisted that he be watched at all times. He’d woken up while Clat’Ha was with him, and Maul was fetching lunch with Jango. Every Time they saw the hutt’s on board Maul had to physically stop himself from trying to kill the slugs. 

Jango seemed to be able to tell how he felt, even though he was about as close to a Force Null as a man could be, and went out of his way to try and keep him from interacting with them. Outside of food runs it wasn’t hard. They were here for the Arconan Mineral Harvest Company, or whatever they were called, and that meant that they stuck to their side of the ship. 

The jedi master, Jinn, was the same. 

Maul couldn’t help but note that the ‘ever compassionate’ jedi didn’t show up to help Kenobi until his fever lowered the boys mental shields enough that his distress saturated the air in the room. 

When Jinn walked in, Maul stayed perfectly still and watched him go to Kenobi. He lay a hand on the boys brows and did… Something. 

Some jedi thing. Maul watched the fever start to fade and Kenobi’s eyes finally flickered open. 

Blue. Fuzzy and somewhat delirious. 

"H-how?" Kenobi’s voice was hoarse and rough. Maul had the distinct feeling that he was intruding on something here. Strangely, he didn’t care. 

"Don't try to speak," Jinn said quietly, "You've had a bad fever, but I've taken care of it. Your wounds turned out to be worse than initially assumed." 

Maul nearly gagged on the raw hope that floated off of Kenobi in response. "Is it really you?" he asked.  

Qui Gon smiled, the first time Maul had seen such an expression on his face. 

"Yes, it's really me."

“Did you come to look for me?” Obi-Wan asked hopefully. Maul nearly snorted. Well of course. This was his master, wasn’t it? Jedi always came for eachother. They were fools like that. 

(a quiet voiced asked if he would not have gone after Kilindi and Daleen if he could have. If he was not himself intending on going to find Savage.) 

Qui-Gon shook his head. “I‘m on my way to Bandomeer as well. I‘m on a mission for the Galactic Senate. Our missions have nothing to do with each other.”

“Still, we‘re together,” Obi-Wan insisted. His voice trembled with faint hope. “You could show me –”

But Qui-Gon shook his head. 

“No, Obi-Wan, that‘s not why I‘m here. Our destinies lie along different paths. Now is the time for you to get to know the people that you will serve. You must forget about me. You must serve the Jedi in ways other than as a Knight. There is honor in that, too.”

He did not say it cruelly, but it was clear that Qui-Gon‘s words struck Obi-Wan like a blow. He tried to hide it, but his eyes were sad and his shoulders hunched. 

Meanwhile, Maul was reeling. 

Jinn was not Kenobi’s master? Was that why he didn’t have that silly little braid? And, more important, what did he mean Kenobi wouldn’t be a knight? That couldn't be possible! Kenobi was the best of their order, he was the first jedi to beat a sith in combat in centuries, and, at the risk of sounding arrogant, Maul was one of the best trained sith in generations. Sidious, and even his master had never gone out and tested themselves against actual Jedi the way Maul had. Even before his dual with Jinn he’d already begun his head count. He had more true combat experience than the both of them, and it infuriated him in ways he couldn't even begin to describe that he still lost to Sidious. 

How could Kenobi not be a knight? It didn’t make sense. 

Was this how it had happened before? Or had Maul and Jango’s presence somehow changed Kenobi’s padawanship? 

Maul hadn’t done much to change the events of the world besides try to stop the massacre at Galidraan. Besides that he had only been at Orsis, and then Mustafar. 

Maul, barely more than a shadow pressed into the corner of the wall, watched numbly while an arconan shyly made his way into the room and introduced himself to Kenobi. Apparently word travelled fast on the ship, and the arconan miner’s had decided that Obi Wan was as much a hero as Maul and Jango for stranding up to the Hutts. 

Not that Kenobi had done much besides get strangled and struck. He even said as much. 

“Well, sit down and introduce yourself,” Obi-Wan said at last, waving the Arconan closer.. “In this

place, I need all the friends I can get.” 

“It seems you are in luck, then,” Jinn said with a mild nod towards Maul. Kenobi’s head whipped around, apparently seeing Maul for the first time. Yellow eyes met blue evenly. He would not look away from this boy. Kenobi looked away first, to the arconan. 

“Our name is Si Treemba,” the Arconan said, perching on a chair. The room was getting crowded. “We know yours is Obi-Wan Kenobi. We would be honored to be your friend.”

When attention turned to him again, he said simply, “Maul.” 

Maul could see the question on Kenobi’s lips, but he didn’t get to ask it. The door to sickbay slid open. Clat‘Ha strode in with an impatient expression, and Jango at her side. He made quite the impression. Jinn’s shoulders tightened and his hand drifted closer to the lightsaber at his hip. . 

“Good, you‘re here,” she said to Si Treemba, who scrambled to his feet. 

Clat’Ha turned to Jinn grimly. “We have a problem,” she said crisply. “Someone has been tampering with our equipment. Young Si Treemba here discovered it on a routine inspection. We have three Arconan tunneling machines in stock, and all three have been sabotaged.” 

“How so?” Qui-Gon asked.

Si Treemba stepped forward. “The thermocoms that monitor the tunnelers‘ hull temperature have been removed, sir. And the coring couplers have been rigged so that they will not disengage.”

Maul didn’t know mining equipment well, but he recognized most of the words. Thermocoms were used on certain stealth ships entering high density atmosphere’s to avoid blowing up when coming in quick and fast. If the ships overheated they would blow. He imagined that the drills did the same thing. 

Then a hutt arrived, and the whole situation turned into a not-so-passive-aggresive show down between Jinn, the Hutts, Clat’Ha and Jango. 

Maul watched it with growing irritation. All their problems would be solved if someone would just kill the hutt. He was guilty and everyone knew it. 

But the jedi wouldn’t do such a thing. 

Maul rolled his eyes when all that came of the argument was hot tempers and bland accusations of specism. Clat’Ha ran off to find her miner’s, with Jango in tow. He shot Maul a look that clearly said ‘stay out of trouble’. One Maul promptly ignored. 

Qui-Gon shook his head sadly. 

“There is a strong hatred between those two. Neither of them will listen.”

Listen to what? Maul rolled his eyes under his hood. The hutt was crooked and after power and the human was probably little better. A touch more concerned about her people maybe, and she hadn’t tried to get Jango to shoot him in the head, even if it would have been easier. 

Joy. Morals. 

“I don‘t understand,” Obi-Wan said. “Why did you let the Hutt go? He may be innocent of the crime of which he has been accused. But I‘m sure he‘s guilty of others.”

“Yes, he‘s guilty,” Qui-Gon agreed. “But Clat‘Ha has her defender. As Jedi, we are bound only to defend those who have no other means of defense.”

It was all Maul could do not to laugh outright. He had seen jedi become generals. What would Jinn have done if he saw their precious defenders of peace fight a war and send men to die on their behalf. 

“Still, one of Jemba‘s crew has to have sabotaged those tunnelers. Why doesn‘t he try to find out who did it?” Obi-Wan asked.

Qui-Gon answered, “Because if one of Jemba‘s men did do it, it will make him look bad before the miners‘ guild. He might be ordered off Bandomeer permanently. He knows that, so he won‘t point any fingers at his own.”

“Ah,” Si Treemba said. “And Clat‘Ha must feel the same. If anyone learned that one of her workers tried to frame Jemba, the miners‘ guild would be furious.”

“But it shouldn‘t be to hard to find out who really sabotaged the tunnelers,” Obi-Wan pointed out excitedly. His eyes were bright with a spark of determination in them. 

Qui-Gon cocked an eyebrow. “This is not your affair,” he warned. “If you went looking for those thermocoms, all you would find is trouble. You must stay out of it. And stay away from the Offworld side of the ship. You‘re not fully recovered yet, Obi-Wan.”

Qui Gon left the trio in the infirmary. 

“...so we’re going, right?” Maul asked without being prompted. He looked at Obi Wan, who did look a bit sheepish. 

“We’ll need to search anywhere a thermocom could be.” 

“They’re small,” Si Treemba said helpfully, and held up his hands to display their size. 

“It won’t be too hard to search most of the ship, but the hutts will make it hard when we get closer to them. Best leave those ones to me, little jedi,” Maul advised. 

“But, I hardly know you. I couldn't ask you to do such a thing.” 

“You’re not asking, and I’m not giving you a choice. Shut up and start looking on this side of the ship, before your master finds out what you’re doing and scolds you.“

Kenobi’s gaze became downcast. “He is not my master. I am not his apprentice, nor am I duty bound to obey him.” 

Maul started to grin. He’d never expected such a rebellious streak from him. Maybe there was hope for the little jedi yet, when he was still this young. 

“Then fuck him. Let’s go to work.” 

Kenobi gaped at him while Maul stood and, with practiced ease, pulled a vent free and vanished inside of it. 

So I remember you mentioned that you were bullied at school? So was I and I’ve been thinking about that a lot recently. What is it that happened to you then? Just curious- dw if you don’t wanna say

This is gonna be long... I’m pretty open with what happened to me when I was at school! So, I guess I was dealt the worst hand: ginger, skinny, Deaf. The problem is growing up, I always had a group of friends & would lose them, and honestly that happened to me recently, so I thought it was because of me when in reality it’s because people don’t get that if you’re deaf, your needs & worldview are SO much more different to that of an abled person & abled bodied people just don’t get it.

Primary school: I was part of the ‘popular’ crowd for quite some time & I never felt any different & I thought these group of girls were going to be my best friends forever. As we go older, things started to change, I was being included less & not being invited to much. Parents would tell their kids to not hang around the disabled kid. Literal grown adults. They even would constantly ask my Mum if she was feeding me or if I was ill because I was so small. My poor Mum. One time I stayed round a friends house for a sleepover & bare in mind we’re little kids we’re like 7? I had a teddy bear that I wouldn’t go ANYWHERE without so of course I brought it to the party. One girl spat her gum into my hair. Another hid my hearing aids. Another hid my teddy bear. They didn’t get in trouble but the Mum whose home it was, told me that I hid it & was playing up. Following morning, it was hot as hell so we had a water fight before our parents came to pick us up, but I couldn’t join it because I couldn’t get my hearing aids wet. Though, I did aim the running hose that everyone was using at one of the girls & she burst into tears, I stopped but the others continued. The Mum yet again blamed me. She told my Mum & my Mum was like “No, she wouldn’t have done that if someone said to stop. And she wouldn’t have put gum in her hair, hidden her bear, or hid her hearing aids.” Eventually they got older & they just outed me. Until I met another new girl who was SO tall & people were mean to her about her height, so I became her friend, and we became great friends! Until another new girl came in who was my friend but she didn’t like me much even though I didn’t do anything wrong. She convinced the tall one to abandon me just as we moved onto secondary school. Secondary school: We had like an introductory week at this school where we met all the other kids so we could at least know someone to hang out with. I was lucky, there was a girl I attended gymnastics with & so I spent the day with her but this one teacher put me with another girl who is a little person & the reason she kept putting me & her together was because “Well you both look similar & you’re disabled, so you’ll get on great.” which is SO fucking wrong. We tried to get on with each other but we just didn’t gel. We exchanged hi’s every so often but we later drifted. I managed to get back with the girl from gymnastics but she wasn’t in my class. I didn’t mind, I was looking forward to studying at a big school & I had friends in another class so it’s fine. Eventually the tall girl from primary & I became friends because the girl she went off with kicked her out of their friendship group & we stayed friends for 7 years. But, this was when Harry Potter movies were slowly coming towards their end (I think they’d released their 4th movie?) and so.. of course... being ginger... meant all the boys started calling me Weasley & Ginger Nut. One boy, used to pass me notes & honestly, I didn’t think it was bullying because I thought I’d actually made a friend in class because I get on well with guys, so I would pass insults back. It only later became bullying when that guy told his friends what he’d call me, they’d start throwing stuff at me when the teacher wasn’t looking. I tried to report it but the teacher didn’t care, told me to ignore it. Boys kept harassing me & so I took it to the vice principal. It happened SO often, literally every day for MONTHS no matter how many letters of apologies or detentions etc, that one day I went to her again for help & she just went “Holly, I’m too busy, deal with it yourself.” A new drama teacher came in and she saw that our class was pretty wild and she couldn’t figure out who was causing it. She asked me to take note in classes of everyone who got listed on detention boards & bring it back to her. Deaf people take things LITERALLY and so I LITERALLY wrote down their names as their names went on board. People started to notice & started cornering me & yelling in my face asking me why I was writing their names down. The teacher at the time in that building caught wind of it & asked me calmly why I was doing it. “Mrs Edwards asked me to.�� was all I could stay & then later the Drama teacher explained that she meant mentally take note & that she was so sorry for any harm she’d caused. But this didn’t make me a popular person at all. Valentines were always filled with fake ones & pranks. People fake asking me out, even a friend gave me a card that was meant to be from my crush but it was made up. What didn’t help was that I was a big fan of the Twilight movies. Someone spread a rumour near prom that I was the head of Prom committee & that I was making it Twilight themed & this spread like wildfire. People would yell at me on the way to classes & spit at me “No one’s gonna fucking go to Prom if it’s TWILIGHT fucking themed!! You piece of fucking shit!!!” and I’d get messaged on my Facebook & MSM all night about how I’ve ruined everyones prom. I’d yell “Look at the fucking planners list that’s literally everywhere. I’m not even on it. I’m not even going.” and I really didn’t want to go, I wanted to stay in, in my pyjamas because I was so upset. One bully even cornered me before science class & got into my face, just screaming “You fucking ginger emo cunt! No one will ever fucking love you because you’re ginger & deaf!” and tried to shut us all out. I was in a rage & I managed to push open the door enough to kick him so hard in the shin & keep kicking. He never said a bad word to me again. But all my friends were going to prom & I wanted to go with them. So, I did. (And I wowed everyone there, all the bullies couldn’t believe it was me. I had my hair in a curled low bun, smoky eyeshadow, a black velvet bodiced dress, red jewelled choker round my throat, red silk skirt & arrived in an vintage car. It was vampy, it was gothy, but I looked good for the time. I even kissed my crush that night!) but a year down the line & all my girl friends said they didn’t want to be friends with me anymore because I just didn’t do anything. I was a tomboy, I wasn’t into shopping & getting nails done or clubbing. But they started doing things without me & stopped inviting me, stopped even considering me, so I plucked up the courage to ask why, they said I didn’t do anything, I said “Yeah, not the girly stuff but I would’ve loved to have gone to the movies & gone for dinner with you” and my best friend of 7 years said “I never even liked you anyway.” So I had no friends once more. College: I wasn’t so much bullied in college, other than you had you popular people & your dorky people but the friends I’d made of friends invited me to house parties & eventually down the years (what...5?) I found out between that time that they’d had a group chat on Whatsapp that I wasn’t a part of because it was a sex bet group. They would plot & wager who would convince me into bed first because I was the hot friend. I’m.. not hot. I’m okay. But still. They’d had a big bet on me. I found out & I was livid. I yelled at them & they told me I was being childish about it. So I broke away. I kept a few that I knew weren’t on the chat close. I introduced an old school friend to them & well... he was dating four of them, sleeping with them, then telling them he had to be somewhere else but was sleeping with someone else of the quartet. This all got out & EVERYONE fell apart. I felt so guilty because I’d introduced him but someone assured it wasn’t my fault. Adulthood: Then this year, I lost them all because I yelled at one guy who kept treating me like SHIT & I’d told him to back off. Everyone yelled at me, called me childish, and took his side. People who love calling out toxic & abusive behaviour, telling each other to not talk to someone because of this or that. That’s childish. He and I are working things about but it’ll never be the same. The only friend I had left really upset me when we both discussed about going to this little holiday hut I’d found & I got all excited. She knew I’d fallen out with my group of friends so I said “I don’t have anyone I can invite that can join us” and then she said “I know a few from uni who can come” and then booked it but... didn’t book it for me at all. She said “I can’t wait to go next year with my best friends, it’s gonna be so nice to spend a weekend with them” so I broke things off with her. Like, I found the place, we agreed to go together, we got excited, and then... you just dropped me.  So all in all, yeah I’ve been bullied. I don’t have any physical friends anymore, I just have internet friends & I suppose I’m not built for people. I have a few internet friends though, so I’m not entirely alone. But I don’t date for the same reasons, also because of what that one bully said & all the fake Valentines. I’m sorry what happened to you is playing on your mind but honestly, it’s really for the best for you to try & move forward, yes, the memories will be there, but its YOU who decides how you go about your life, how YOU look after yourself, not the past. You are who you are, and you’re wonderful, I’m sure. Except if you’re a terf or a racist but that’s something else.

I didn’t want to post more reddit images since it’s kind of just stealing content, but I was clued in about a particular user by @caturian​ and it is just downright alarming.

TW: This woman, unfortunately, has a teenage child who is trans or questioning. Some people may find the posts quite upsetting due to that.

But seriously. Her post history has it all. We’ve got a Trump-supporting, misogyny-enforcing, conspiracy theory supporting TERF here.

Part 1: The Conspiracy Theories

[Caption: A reddit post titled, “Big Pharma makes Big Donation to further trans narrative”. A user comment states, “Tl,dr; pharamaceutical company jacks up its prices for HIV medication, donates to trans organizations to distract from that fact”.]

[Caption: Parts of a long reddit post titled “Why is this all happening(trans explosion). It includes the phrases “I think much of this trans explosion is a direct backlash that started with Obama and Hillary’s candidacy”. OP also says, “All of this led to the pendulum to swing in the opposite direction with such force... we got trump. His over the top misogynistic and racist antics pushed the pendulum through the roof”]

So apparently Trump reacted to Obama and Hillary, and “TRA’s” are all reacting to Trump. Along with that, Big Pharma is trying to further the trans agenda.

Part 2: The Trump Support

Despite the fact that Trump is, and I quote, “over the top misogynistic and racist”, though... OP votes for trump.

[Caption: A reddit comment which says: “I have been a democrat voting lgbt supporting liberal all my adult life (more than 30 years now). I will vote republican in 2020. I despise Trump/Pence... but they at least acknowledge women exist as females. I can stand up and use my voice to fight against the patriarchy. But if you vote dem... we’ve already lost.., because we’re being erased. And they support that erasure. Trans ideology is FAR more misogynistic than conservatism.”]

So yeah. The trans movement is simultaneously Trump’s fault, and also something he will fix. Interesting mental acrobatics there! I guess his global gag rule on abortion rights and the fact his party is literally trying to enforce impossible procedures like reimplanting ectopic pregnancies is not as bad as people not fitting their gender roles!

Part 3: Medicalize ALL the transgenders!

[Caption: A post on r/detrans by this user, titled “Is detransition hard to maintain (like sobriety)?”. The post text is: “Is it hard not to re-transition... after you detransition (aka maintain sobriety)? Is it like alcoholism or drug addiction where you find yourself still feeling and fighting off urges to go back and be that addict or drunk or opposite sex lifestyle? Or once you’re out.... you’re out for good?”]

First, lets compare transition to addiction, that seems... inaccurate! Sadly, this is not the only post in which she compares transition to problems (her favourite appears to be comparison to anorexia, in typical GenderCrit fashion)

[Caption: A post on r/GenderCritical, titled “ADD/ADHD”. The text says: “I recently had a meeting with my 8th graders teachers. Every single one said that she was having trouble focusing and staying attentive and very often just daydreams in class. At first I thought it was due to the stress of this whole trans identity thing... that she was kind of checking out mentally. But maybe I have it backwards - maybe ADD is causing her to lean into the trans identity as a way to focus or something”]

She’s also inventing diagnoses that her kid doesn’t seem to have. Being inattentive in 8th grade apparently means being trans is a way to cope with ADD. Who would have known?

Part 4: Abuse your children!

[Caption: A comment on a post on r/GenderCritical by the user, with the following text: “My 14 year old daughter manipulated me into what she called a more “grown up” bedroom decor (curtains/bedspread etc) for her 14th birthday. THen a month later came out as transgender. I now see that she manipulated me into a more masculine decor. Keep a watchful eye... kids will lie and manipulate to get what they want. For me... it all depends on the headspace of the child. And 13 is a very young child. Like my teen wants to get a job. In normal circumstances... I would say awesome! But in her current headspace, she would likely use the money (her money) to try and access hormones.”]

That’s right, ladies, gentlemen and others, apparently wanting new curtains in “manipulating [your parents] into getting a more masculine decor”. Apparently getting a job is dangerous because a 14 year old is going to get black market hormones. So because this 14 year old Id’s as trans, I guess it’s reasonable to deny them financial stability/job experience, the right to decorate their room, and who knows what else.

[Caption: Another reddit comment by the same user, part of which reads: “But when my daughter, who looks so much like her grandma (my mom), doesn’t even want to be the human I raised... it feels like a stab in the heart. I keep the pain to myself... but I will never be the same. I am Forever broken.”]

Apparently, this trans boy is no longer “the human” that their mother raised, despite a) still being a human, b) still being the same person, and c) still being raised by their mother.

[Caption: Another post on detransition by this user. This post is long, the pictures segments read: “6 months ago, my 14 year old daughter suddenly declared trans status. Of course, she is not trans because no one is trans... as trans isn’t an identity, but rather only a coping mechanism for mental health issues. Just as drug addict or anorexia is not an identity... but only a coping mechanism for mental health problems. [...] We found [the daughter] a non tran affirming therapist who practices DBT therapy. And I made it a point to be there for her..., to be her rock and make sure that I love her, no matter what. WE have spent more time together in the last 6 months.., talking about anything other than gender... just life and school and friends etc. Over this Christmas break... she ditched the hoodies and is going out in public in just a t-shirt [party emojis]. She got several new hoodies for Christmas but isn’t wearing any of them. She also voluntarily with no pushing or even discussion from me.., shaved her legs. [party emojis].”]

So apparently it’s totally feminist for vote for Trump and deny others abortion rights, pressure your child with a therapist who doesn’t support the medically approved treatments for dysphoria, celebrate when your child does surface-level gender conformity like leg shaving...

And I love the hypocrisy - “I want to make her know I love her always, so I’ve taken her to conversion therapy and refuse to talk about gender... but it’s going well because she’s shaving her legs!”

That poor kid.