Anyway the amount of hostility I get from cis guys who feel threatened by my mere existence as a trans tenor would be hilarious if it weren't so isolating and terrifying. Like please I'm not stealing anything from you and it's not making you any less of a guy just because I can reach lower notes than you and look like a girl. I'm just here having fun and vibing with my new voice.

Anytime I see the legion im picturing urs so now in a trial im like "fukn idiot loser babies" *pallet smacks*. Reading ur meta(is that the term??) on Julie just now I'm like. So mad for her!! Get them kids some therapy!! How could the adults in their lives let them get to such a shitty point.. >:( Also, another thought I had with Adiris. The buzzfeed video is more her holding a bunch of cats. Because the survivors are like herding cats. Chaos children they are (im looking at you meg.)

Hahdjsdk god what a mood. Every time I see an Anna I’m just like “!!! MOM?” And get a hatchet between the eyes rip. And yeah! Meta is right.

For real, for real. Julie and all the Legion kids had some real shit going on. Joey by far had the best home life and family, but even he had a bunch of struggles in school because his family didn’t have time or in many cases experience to help him study, and it was crowded and poor, and because he had no help most kids got, he got treated like he was stupider, and even when he had skills in other areas, everyone at school expected him to perform well at sports and not much else like that was fine & he was meant to be valuable exclusively as an athlete, when he much preferred and actually really liked things like shop and ceramics and building/making stuff. But most people treat trade classes like easy As dumb kids pick (back when shop was still a thing), and like it was a worthless skill, and like. That doesn’t sound as bad as like, being bounced through foster homes as Frank, but pain is relative, you know? Bad is just bad. And things grind on you. It was hard to be taught constantly he was only worth something as a skill he didn’t even really care about, and get treated like he was dumb just because he had less help built in to school than most kids there did. People don’t talk about this much but like, having parents or sibs who help with homework? It’s a huge factor. So is just having family who are college graduates (if you go to college), because first gen student means walking in blind & alone & accountable to no one but bills, and like, college is initially overwhelming with two parents with Masters who are helpful. Any time what you value about you and what you love doesn’t match up with what people who have more power than you tell you is valuable about you/should be your goal, it’s hard. Especially as a teen still trying to like hack out an identity. Overly enthusiastic and impulsive, and has been mocked and hurt and turned on for it, but can’t shut it off. Big heart, but the luck to stand up usually just in time to get laid flat again.

And then Susie, with the parents who don’t care for her or pay her much mind other than disappointed looks and an occasional snap or suggestion or urging to try something different that what she’s doing. Bullied for her sexuality, nervous, and in a small town in the late 90s, probably the only lesbian (at least that she’s aware of existing) in that entire like couple hundred people mountain town, and sort of unbearably alone and misunderstood and isolated feeling. God, feeling like there’s just no one like you are out there is one of the worst feelings, isn’t it? Buried in the things she knows people whisper about her and a thousand tiny microinteractions a day that drain her armor. Loves Julie, but is so isolated Julie is her entire world to an unhealthy, co-dependant, and worryingly usable/manipulatable and non-independent nature for Susie. Because she’s so desperate to keep her she’d do anything not to be alone. But the struggle to never be alone by chasing Julie’s shadow means there’s no time for Susie and her own hopes and dreams and choices and developing personhood. But the worst part is that she’s genuinely happy this way, trailing after the girl she loves, which makes it so hard for either of them to confront and stop even enough to just make it healthy again. But she’s built her whole identity on one person like a precarious janga tower that could fall any second if the wrong piece goes, and that can’t be sustained forever, and who is she when it does crumble?

Then you got Julie, hot, popular, ignored personality disorder, proud parents who want her to keep being ideal and their little princess, than can’t handle her as a teen when she’s not in the box they expected anymore and they can’t just live and be proud vicariously through her all the time. Hit puberty early & dated way too physically way too young with way too much older men. Hit on by teachers, by men three times her age in parking lots. Quickly taught it’s safer to say yes than no and sex and love are a battlefield where you use the other as a stepping stone & the trick is to manurver so you’re okay once it’s over and got something while it went on. Had fun being hot and physically developed young because she suddenly had admirers and people were nice, then realized way too late that it came with constantly being in danger and under pressure to keep performing sexiness, and there wasn’t a livable choice to back out and fail those expectations anymore & be okay in her social circles. Knows she’s not emotional or loving in the way her loved ones are distressed about it, but can’t tell why, and gives up trying to ‘fix it’ and just pretends she doesn’t care and leans into being the sexy bitch and the power that comes with it. Doesn’t even know who she is herself beneath any of the ways she lives anymore, maybe she just is the act, maybe that’s fine. Trusts no one and that’s fine it’s just smart. Caught between liking the power of sex and intelligence and coldness, and the emptiness of not really being somebody. Needs to be loved and idolised and eternally aware how much people would hate her for that if they knew it was the truth, so she just keeps it to herself and makes herself someone they have no choice but to love and adore, so it’ll all be okay. Caught between worried she is cold and unfeeling and selfish and proud, and liking the power that goes with that, and the lack of desire to change, and the fear she doesn’t know how to do it. So she mostly just doesn’t think about any of the turmoil anymore and lives Julie instead of being her.

Then you got Frank, tossed around a myriad of foster homes, stolen by the government from the only one he ever was loved in over race, abused in every way foster parents have learned to abuse the kids they were supposed to love, and convinced since he was a kid that he’s a bad seed and a monster at heart, until he leaned into the violence of that to protect himself when no one else did. Harsh and strong and a fighter, a survivor, lonely and a loner, too much past, no future, not much present. Angry, god, so angry, and nothing to do with it. No skills, or money, or future, or any of it. No love, no family. Just the things he taught himself to survive. Just a good liar, a good fighter, adaptable, fast, tactical, enduring. Knows how to pick locks and lift wallets and hoard food that is least likely to be noticed. How to vanish, how to look real scary and real big, how to get stabbed and get back up, and take a fall, and bide his time. How to find north. Which makes for a good what? A thug, a conman, a drug runner, a loan shark or a hitter or a bouncer maybe? A guard, a killer, a thief? No love, no ties, no one. And only a borrowed, angry, violent sense of self, and all the other versions that didn’t live to adulthood but aren’t quiet dead yet buried beneath it.

God, the opening line to the original lore for Darkness Among Us really was beautiful and memorable. The kind of first line you hope for. “Frank Morrison was ninteen, and had little to show for it.” Like, fuck. It’s so understated, and common, and painfully mundane, but that’s it, that’s his whole life. And how fucking painful that is. To be the end of teenagehood, stepping into adult life alone, and be able to be summed up in just eleven words, as a marker of your lived timespan up to now, and the annotation that you from all of it have gained almost nothing that could be worth any note. I fucking love that line. God. It’s so empty, and cruelly mundane and undramatic and unimportantly scored and marked, like it doesn’t even matter that he’s down nearly two decades of life with nothing worth taking into the next two.

Lord, all the Legion kids really do need help, and therapy, and like, one decent parental figure. Thank god for Jeff. He really is out here doing the real work. Love that man. TuT

And you’re right w Adiris lol. 🤣 It’s a mix of cats and dogs, magbe even. Some of them aren’t trouble, but oh, oh some most definitely are. Side note: I fkn just reallly love cats. Poor Adiris out here tryin her best, and I’m sure she does too.