#on the trauma thing: sometimes i get some pretty rude comments on how people dont like the direction the book went
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unpopular(ish) tig opinions/mostly just me ranting
a few people have done this so here are mine (also just me ranting)
this one isn't super controversial but i don't really like alisa. she's nice and all, but the way she treats libby is just so weird to me and i can't bring myself to love her.
most people in this fandom are grayson stans but my fav is jameson. i love grayson, don't get me wrong, but i feel like his character is sort of overdone. i mean, almost all love interests nowadays are moody, broody, i never smile except when im with you. im happy avery ended up with jamie not just cause they fit together, but bc, for once, the love interest isn't the broody type (like i said, love grayson dont hate me)
i commented this under a post, and i don't think this is super unpopular but im lyra neutral. i literally cannot love a character unless i know them (i dont hate her either, i just don't have an opinion)
ok, this one might get me some hate, but, although grayson had the right to be mad in tig bc avery inherited the money, i do think he did go too far sometimes. there's this one time, where he was just unnecessarily rude to avery, telling her she didn't know what it was like to suffer (midway through to book, don't remember the chapter but its there and it makes no sense bc she grew up with no money while this dude is a privileged white man, like all of his brothers (except for xander cause he isn't white)). like i said, he had the right to be mad, but avery did nothing to him, and, so, he had no right to say some of the things he said to her. he does get better, and he does apologize (i think, but even if he doesn't idc cause hes nice to her now). like i said, he had the right to be mad cause i mean he did grow up thinking he'd inherit and he didn't, but he shouldn't have taken out all of his anger on her. he had the right to doubt her and think she had ulterior motives, but he had no right to accuse her of being a gold digger when she had done NOTHING to gray for him think that (dont take this as me not liking gray, he's one of my fav characters ever (but no one beats jamie (and nash)))
idk if this one will make sense and ik some people will agree with me if this does, but the way avery is treated in this fandom is really shitty. she's pretty much only mentioned when people are talking about the love triangle. she's bashed bc she didn't choose grayson (which she had the right to bc jamie was made for her and gray wasn't), her trauma is super overlooked. i wish people would pay more attention to her. also, i mentioned this earlier, but some people (not many but some) let other people (like gray and thea) get away will at the mean things they said to avery bc they're their favorite characters. (obviously, they can be your fav characters. my best friend's fav character is gray, and, when i first read the books, i liked gray over jamie for a small period of time, but its wrong to let them get away things just bc you like them.
people will agree with me, but jameson and grayson's trauma should NOT be compared. trauma is trauma no matter how "bad" it is (note the quotation marks around bad). ive mostly seen people compare jamie to gray saying that gray's trauma is worse which is so fucking mean. they both have trauma. they both have it bad. no one should be comparing. i will make a longer post about this bc this is smth i'm very passionate about and it pisses me off. (ive lost count of the amount of times ive compared my trauma to others thinking i had no right to complain bc others had it worse, so don't do it to fictional characters plsss)
the tiktok/insta fandom sucks. the amount of averygrayson shippers ive seen bash avery on those platforms is too much. the only healthy part of the fandom is on tumblr.
not controversial but thea is not a girl boss, she's just a mean girl. she's not iconic.
people should not bash people for their favorite characters. i've seen this mostly on older posts (like before tfg was released) but some people will go 'xander's my fav' or 'avery's my fav' and people in the comments would go 'but grayson exists' or 'but jameson exists'. let people like who they want to like. all characters are great (mostly, i hate thea and all of the bad guys).
i couldn't care less about eve's redemption arc. she ruined toby's life, and as someone who loves toby and avery's father-daughter dynamic, i will never forgive her. she also treated grayson horribly, basically got alisa kidnapped (cause alisa wouldn't have gotten kidnapped if eve hadn't gotten toby kidnapped), and more so if she ever does get a redemption arc, i will be throwing hands.
if i see people complaining about lyra's character when tgg comes out bc 'they were expecting someone different' i will be pissed. im sure lyra will be great (hopefully). it doesn't matter if she's a girl boss or a more like rebecca.
grayson is not 'the most misunderstood character in the fandom'. he's literally the most popular character. people are constantly gushing about him and his trauma. other characters like avery, jameson, and xander (and others) are so much more misunderstood. no ones takes the time to understand them like they do with grayson. people are constantly talking about his trauma, and how people shouldn't hate him bc he's 'misunderstood'. people have the right to hate him, and his trauma isn't overlooked as the fandom's most popular character. he is a complex character, and i will be making in depth posts about him bc i find him interesting and i really like his character, but he's the most understood character in the fandom. i've noticed that people tend to say he's misunderstood right after coming up with the most nonsensical take defending all of his actions saying that he has trauma (trauma is not an excuse its an explanation)
even if grayson would've gotten up to help avery after the bombing 1. he would've never gotten there on time and 2. he might have gotten more hurt.
i said this earlier while talking about gray but trauma is not an excuse its an explanation. do with that what you will. i just have to repeat it.
people who claim jameson was not affected by emily's trauma are the bane of my existence (yes, they exist, i've seen them)
ik i mentioned gray a lot in this and it might seem like i don't like him, but i swear i LOVE him. i find his character very interesting and complex and i really wanna analyze his character once i'm done rereading. i just hate toxic grayson stans (most of yall aren't, but they exist)
#the inheritance games#jameson hawthorne#grayson hawthorne#avery grambs#nash hawthorne#xander hawthorne#libby grambs#averyjameson#averygrayson#alisa ortega#thea calligaris#eve laughlin
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I have to ask how you came up on the idea to write ABM? I just wanna know your thought process because I'm wildly intrigued. I'd love to know how you'd feel about a lesbian story between Lilith (Adam's first wife) and Eve which is what my story is about.
Hello! So usually I'm pretty secretive about all the stuff behind Angels Before Man and why it's like That, but I recently saw a tweet that wrongly assumed the motivations behind the book, and it upset me a bit, so I should probably finally go into detail about ABM's deal. Sorry if this answer is way too long.
1. Personal reasons: in 2016, I came out to my parents during a very rough period for my mental illness. It went very bad, and I ended up going to a therapist for a few month for, well, conversion therapy. This involved using a lot of Christian manipulation tactics ("God would not make you this way") and EMDR techniques that have done quite a bit of psychological damage to me. In 2021, while working with a new therapist, I had a "died and met God" nightmare, then developed an unhealthy obsession with the Bible as I processed what happened during conversion therapy. Another thing I need to mention is that my family are immigrants from an epicenter of the Mexican drug war, which exposed me to a lot of violence very young, and traumatized me in its own right; how I think about the violence we perpetuate on the people we love is something I just really wanted to write about, also. All this to say that ABM is just a convoluted allegory for trauma.
2. Theological reasons: during my obsession, I read the Bible in its entirety a couple times, and I developed a lot of questions about it, especially regarding angels and this Lucifer guy:
Why did Lucifer/Satan become evil? Ezekiel 28 is usually the passage people refer to that explains it (others argue this section isn't about Lucifer/Satan but let's assume for the sake of argument that it is). What's interesting about this section is the emphasis on the cherub's "blamelessness" (innocence! Lucifer's young innocence isn't talked about enough!!) and his beauty. I'm fact, his corruption is entirely linked to his beauty.
But what does beauty mean? To God? What is beauty before humanity? What is the purpose of it? How can you become corrupted by beauty? (For this, I looked at Ezekiel 16, where Jerusalem is corrupted by her beauty; this inspired quite a bit of the story of ABM as a whole, particularly regarding God's wrath)
What are angels for? What do they do? I asked a couple friends this and usually they answered that it was fighting demons and protecting humans, but there was a time before demons and before humans. (There was an "angels before man" if you will haha). This seemed to stump everyone I asked. Did they just worship? All the time???
Why does the Bible compare angels' submission to God to a wife's submission to her husband? (Well, that's a least an interpretation of 1 Corinthians 11:10). This is related to Jesus explicitly stating later that angels can't marry. Why not? It's especially weird, at this point, given the matrimonial relationship between Jesus and the Church, and God's own somewhat matrimonial relationship with Mary. So everyone can have a romantic/sexual/spousal union except the angels? Why can't angels love?
This isn't a question but it really strikes me that Michael's only line of dialogue in the entire Bible is in the book of Jude and just as a reference to a time when he allegedly argued with Satan and said "Lord rebuke you." Ah. Michael. That brings me to the last major question I'll mention.
What was Michael and Lucifer's relationship? Something really cute is that everyone I harassed with my questions seemed to have this idea that they were best friends, that they really loved each other once. There's no scriptural evidence for it, and we only ever see them fighting, but it just seems like it makes sense, doesn't it? Strong, golden-hearted Michael and the beautiful, doomed Lucifer...
And of course the duality of God as both jealous and loving fascinates me. Even more so I'm fascinated by the concept of a lonely God. Jealousy, to me, only makes sense when you're insecure about love. How could an all-knowing God be insecure about love then? Maybe because he loves different than you, and he'll never have anyone who can love him the way he understands love (no matter how much he wishes, because he's a lone god)
Somehow all these questions came together and formed a story while I was outlining.
3. Technical reasons: I've been wanting to write a full novel that didn't follow the 5-act structure for a while. I wanted to write a novel that had no source of tension for a majority of the narrative (the source of tension early in ABM is just from the reader; you know what's gonna happen, but the book doesn't allude to it until about Chapter 11, and even then it's vague). I wanted to write a book that's radically differently paced in the second half. And I wanted to be a bit experimental stylistically (inspired by the Latin American Boom authors). Angels Before Man gave me all the opportunities to do this, I'm afraid.
Ultimately, Angels Before Man is really weird!! I'm both very happy and very shocked that people have enjoyed and understood it. I'm incredibly grateful when someone lets me know that my little self-published gay Satan book has been healing or cathartic to them. That's all I can really ask for tbh! Again, sorry for such a long answer, but I'm riled up about my intentions being misrepresented.
And finally, Lilith x Eve sounds really interesting!!! I have a lot of thoughts on the double creation of the sexes in Genesis (so, so, so many). I'd be ecstatic to see your take on it <3333 :)
#again im sorry this is SO LONG ASHDKNDD#yall dont want to know what that tweet said about me#lord#anyway#thank you so much for the ask!! i really appreciate it#angels before man#forgot to mention the lines in Paradise Lost where John Milton says angels love to have gay sex#the queer aspect to angel/demon media is another rabbit hole that Morgan Dante left a fantastic anaylsis about on the ABM goodreads page#check that out for sure#on the trauma thing: sometimes i get some pretty rude comments on how people dont like the direction the book went#its very okay not to like my book but please dont be rude to me fr#ask!#mine#realizing now that i forgot to mention the story of Sodom as well#ill save that for another post skkskaks
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hi i binged through all of salad fingers for the first time in like 8 years and im fixating again here are. My Theories. pls talk to me if anyone else has Thoughts or wants to discuss things. this is really long i am sorry :’ )
also shout out to the salad fingers wiki for helping me keep track of details and also for this
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thought: salad fingers is not violent on purpose he did not mean to kill that kid
this is less a theory and more “if you slander my boy with accusations i will Get you” but listen. i see people going “but he mURDERED A CHILD!!” because of the oven incident but listen. listen to me. he didnt mean to and cannot be held to the same standard of morality and understanding consequences as a. person who isn’t..... in whatever situation and mental state he has going on
- yes, the kid getting trapped in the oven was his fault. but it was not intentional or malicious and i sincerely doubt he understands what happened or why.
he was asking for help reaching the fish (there’s no reason to believe he wasn’t just genuinely asking for help. he tears up in gratitude. theres no evidence of him Tricking People Maliciously in any other context i do not believe he would do that) and was distracted by the rusty nail, causing him to let go of the door. it wasn’t “he cares more about rust than about a child’s life” or something, i dont think he can actually hold “hey look at that i gotta check that out” and “i need to hold the door open so the child doesn’t get hurt” in his head at the same time, rust is his favorite stim/an impulse thing that takes over everything else and his perception of reality and the things going on around him changes very quickly and easily. more on that later. but the important point here is it wasn’t a malicious plot, or a neglectful careless action, he literally did not realize letting go of the door would cause harm
he stabbed himself accidentally with the nail and passed out for a while (the fact that he immediately bled that much is concerning too, he probably has hemophilia which is. a medical condition outside of his control, as well) and after all that he had completely forgotten about the child altogether (and says “i must have dozed off” so he doesn’t even understand he passed out. and might not remember the nail thing in the first place)
we don’t see what happened after this, we don’t know how he responds when he investigates the fish and inevitably finds an unexpected charred corpse in there, but i guarantee he won’t remember why its in there or understand that its a corpse. we dont see it again so its. entirely possible he didnt recognize it as a person and either just disposed of it or, uh, ate it. but if he did, it wasn’t with the knowledge and comprehension of it being A Corpse or the memory of how it got there
theory: on salad fingers and memory / comprehension of death and consequences
more on that subject
- we see him frequently doing things and then immediately forgetting he did it or forgetting what was happening. he accidentally squishes the bug (which also was not malicious or intentional, he intended to pet it but just. went too hard) and has no understanding either that its dead, or that he killed it. she has gone flat and gooey for some unknown reason. that’s strange. she needs to go have a wash, that’s no way to be.
he eats the jeremy fisher puppet at one point and then immediately goes “where have you gotten to??”
he even briefly forgets hubert cumberdale’s name and immediately comes up with another one without realizing it, and then later goes back to hubert cumberdale again with no mention of barbara logan-price
he refers to the same little yellow guy as “young child” and also Auntie Bainbridge later on. he keeps up the fantasy of... whatever the fuck yvonne was being his child for a pretty long time but then when he arrives at “auntie bainbridge” ‘s house he suddenly forgets why he’s there, and even apparently forgets what yvonne is and uses ‘her’ as a window rag instead and never mentions it again (I also don’t think she was in the sandwich at the end either. it’s hard to see but the sandwich contents are vaguely brown and theres a visible lump in the black goo behind him. i like the idea that the lil yellow guy made the sandwich for him)
salad fingers is constantly subconsciously adjusting his reality to fit Whatever Makes The Most Sense At The Time and does not consistently remember things (sometimes even major things. he remembers his puppets the most consistently and still even forgets hubert’s name) or have a concept of cause and effect
i think he possibly has some sense of recognition, “I’ve seen this person before,” but doesn’t always remember Why he knows them, and his mind just automatically fills in the blank with whatever makes sense to him. he doesn’t remember who the yellow guy is, but knows he knows them Somehow, so, ah, of course, it must be auntie bainbridge out for her sunday stroll :) and he knows he’s there for a reason, but not what that reason was, so he decides it must be time to clean the windows
- milford cubicle was already dead when salad fingers opens the door, but he has no idea that hes dead. this isn’t even a cause for concern. my, he must be tired, that’s all. he kept milford there until he rotted away, too, so there was never a point where he realized anything was wrong (until he became skeleton. more on That later too)
- he finds a corpse buried in the yard and rather than confronting the confusing and alarming reality of that situation, why it must be kenneth, back from the great war! at no point does he understand kenneth is definitely dead
theory: kenneth vs glass brother
i think he really did have a brother named kenneth who probably died in the war. could be some subconscious connection between “recognizing” a corpse as his brother, but i dont think he realizes any of that. i think the glass family is probably a trauma based hallucination, but a... well, reflection. pun not exactly intended lmao. on how his real family was and how they treated him
i dont think glass brother is the same brother as kenneth, since salad fingers interacts with them completely differently
kenneth is a corpse that salad fingers projects a personality on and speaks for, while glass brother seems independent and malicious toward him. i think he had a good relationship with kenneth (so, when salad fingers imagines that he’s here, it’s cause for celebration and he’s projecting onto something inert and “safe”) and also had another brother (who was probably his twin) who bullied him and acted violently, so when that trauma resurfaces, he hallucinates a vicious Other that he cannot control or speak for.
it also tracks that the abusive brother was his twin - he sees himself reflected in the mirror, and something in his own face reminds him of that lost brother until it “becomes” him
he refers to kenneth as his younger brother, and sees him as a being that does not look like him, while glass brother is literally his reflection, so it would make sense if he had one identical twin and one younger brother
ive seen theories that he had a real sister named bordois too, but i think him calling the bug “little sister” was just. a term of endearment or one of his little odd language quirks, he seemed to be talking to it more like a pet than like a sibling
theory: regarding mable
- ok people are saying salad fingers killed mable at the picnic but i Really Don’t Think He Did
we never see him acting out violently when he gets scared. he tends to try to escape situations that stress him out, he shrinks, he cries, he goes into his cupboard (which is. incredibly upsetting given the fact he was almost definitely abused by his family)
he takes on a kind of Authoritative Tone often, he gets sort of ruffled up and disdainful toward things, but that’s not what he does when he’s scared
when he’s actually distressed (rather than irritated) he tends to break down and retreat. this includes when other independent beings act in ways that unsettle and upset him
so i dont know where the “he freaked out and killed her” idea is coming from. he suddenly goes from outside at the picnic to having a breakdown in his house so. he most likely just ran
i think the Only time we see him act out violently is when he decides he has to punish marjory for not getting a haircut like he asked - he tears her hair out, but for me that scene was particularly concerning because it was so unlike him. that was an anger response, not a fear response, though, and he tends to be harsher toward things that he’s actually controlling (I don’t think we ever see him decide to Discipline something that was independent from him other than the horses, and he didnt hurt them)
ordinarily when something irritates him he just goes “hmph! so distasteful. how rude. i shan’t have this behavior, you know” but doesn’t really actually do anything about it, and moves on
anyway we never see mable again so i think either he freaked out and ran away and she just didn’t come back, or he scared her and she ran away, or both
there’s a dress visible briefly when salad fingers is making his Flesh Boy which could be mable’s (he did comment he liked it) but it’s not 100% clear, and that doesn’t necessarily mean he KILLED her for it. she could have changed into something else and left it somewhere and he found it. she could have died under unrelated circumstances, and salad fingers found her - he doesn’t comprehend death, so. probably he decided they’ve made amends now and she’s given him her dress as a token of friendship, or something
i dont think it really looks that significantly like hers but the fact that it stands out so distinctly from the rest of the Pile could mean something
but i just feel like if he had killed her we would’ve seen her corpse again, he doesn’t have a concept of murder, or death at all, or consequences, and his memory doesn’t hold out that consistently, so if he killed her, he probably would have calmed down later and then forgotten what he did and came up with a new way to explain the corpse in front of him - oh, how rude of me, mable’s here dozing right off and i havent even offered her a blanket. let’s get you to bed
like, he probably would have dragged her home with him, with the intention of being a good friend/host to his guest, not understanding what happened. he kept milford cubicle around a really long time
it wouldn’t be like him to have any concept of hiding the evidence
speaking of milford
theory: regarding milford cubicle
salad fingers keeps milford’s corpse around until it starts rotting, and then after a very confusing series of events, the corpse is suddenly a skeleton, which surprisingly alarms salad fingers considerably, and then he goes out to find a whole bunch of himselves eating various bits of gore. they give him a present, which is a hat very clearly made of milford’s skin
my conclusion: salad fingers, in some kind of dissociative fugue state, skinned and ate the remains of milford cubicle himself and turned the remaining skin into a hat. he also saves some of it to make hubert cumberdale (the real boy) later as well, probably forgetting where it came from. he does not realize he’s done this or remember doing it, so his scrambled mind tries to make sense of it with other selves eating unknown flesh, and a lovely hat appearing (which he doesn’t seem to notice is made of flesh)
you can also see milford’s original name tag in the drawer later on when he’s building the flesh boy, so. he kept that after the mysterious disappearance of milford’s flesh, apparently. more evidence that that skin is probably also his
some other scattered thoughts regarding the most recent string of episodes and salad fingers’ mental state:
ive been trying to figure out what the fuckhell happened with the yvonne incident and everything that happened in the birthday episode
im really concerned for salad fingers’ health and mental state, as it seems to be deteriorating
some yvonne theories ive seen:
1. he ate the burned corpse of the kid who died in the oven, and it made him very sick, which ultimately resulted in a charred mass he couldn’t digest - he steadily gets worse, until his body finally ejects it (yvonne’s “birth”) and after that his health starts to recover again. since the oven incident happens really early on, all the times he mentions his stomach being upset after that until he becomes deathly ill would make sense, so i think this is plausible
2. the hair he found in the cupboard was actually a parasitic worm that grew in his stomach after he ate it and became yvonne. i think this is Possible, it is a really strangely wormy looking hair, but it doesn’t move and he mentions stomach pains before this, so it seems less likely to me
3. i also saw the concept that salad fingers is a trans man who suffered a miscarriage at some point in his past and yvonne represents that, and i can definitely see where the idea is coming from but i do think something really physically happened to him in the present time, i dont think it was all a trauma-based hallucination, since the yellow guy reacts to the black ooze and something was definitely making him severely ill
so. i Don’t Know what the fuck that was about but i think the burnt corpse theory makes the most sense
on that note: there’s a lot of cannibalism imagery in salad fingers
we have no IDEA where he’s getting food from. im pretty sure its been confirmed that he is Not a zombie, we see him bleed, pass out, sleep, etc so it seems like he must be a living person who has ordinary needs. but we see him eat... his own puppets. hairs. sand. the soup glass mother instructed him to make, which made him very sick. he has a working oven but doesn’t seem to have consistent access to water. he had a fish somehow but who knows where it came from. it’s very likely he doesn’t get food often and some of his hallucinations and mood swings could be caused by starvation (and when he does eat, it’s things that are outright inedible or probably not good for him)
the burned corpse disappears and is never mentioned again (though salad fingers is very sick afterward). milford’s flesh disappears and salad fingers violently hallucinates multiple selves gorging themselves on unknown flesh
and what concerns me the most about that is that he loses a lot of time in that episode
he passes out in the woods and when he wakes up, it looks like a shit ton of time has passed
we don’t know how much is reality and how much is his warped perception, but it looks like a tree has grown and his physical condition has deteriorated
he looks really, really unhealthy and haggard for the rest of the episode
i think he had a huge dissociative episode and lost possibly weeks of time, probably due to starvation, and he ate milford cubicle and very possibly other people as well
so my question is. how often does this happen to him
and what happens to him during that state? does he become violent and dangerous without being aware of it when he returns to himself again? or has he just been ravenously scavenging corpses when he gets desperate enough?
its possible dr papanak is another personality he has, one that’s “buried out in the woods” that he becomes when he’s in a really, really bad mental and physical state
he looks much better in the next episode (though that’s also when he has his outburst with marjory. could be that he’s still staving off the violent urges/hasn’t fully come back to himself after the last incident) and I’m really hoping the fact that he was able to finally stand up to his family (at least in some sense) and smash the mirrors could mean he’s making steps toward recovery after whatever the hell all that was
there’s not really much space to do anything with his life or get much help given the circumstances but watching him slowly losing himself even more is Awful :(
i hope we get more episodes im so desperate for more information now
lastly, some random observations
i tried to read this newspaper and it looks like it’s actually written in french, which is interesting given that salad fingers seems to be british (but fond of france, and seems to speak french or at least knows one phrase)
i wonder where he got this, or whether it ever meant something significant to him
theres a lot of evidence that he can’t read (takes no notice of the “harry” nametag and immediately names him something else, “reads” a letter that is actually a newspaper clipping in another language he’s holding upside down, “writes” a letter that is just scribbles) so i dont think he learned his one french phrase from this or anything but, still. vaguely interesting. maybe he has been to france before and brought this back with him for some reason. maybe he’s actually in post apocalyptic france and was just originally from england. We Don’t Know
theres a weird little face in the. heater? whatever that is in the background for a second and i dont like it
salad fingers leaves horace in charge, but then sees him (as a live horse) in the woods, but then comes back to find him both still on the shelf (as a toy) and in the room (as a live horse, now with his, uh, surgery scars) but doesn’t seem to notice this and doesn’t comment on it
i dont know what the hell that means other than possibly his reality is even less consistent and logical than usual/a reflection on his mental state deteriorating
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whatever im just directly responding to this one because apparently if i don’t you’ll just take every other post i make out of context
Okay, for anyone concerned, here’s the end to the tumblr user musashi saga. To reiterate, the original sin is that I blocked her without comment.
the original sin is that you did something i’ve repeatedly stated is heavily traumatic. reducing it to you blocked me is an intentional downplaying of my feelings and baggage. i have a disclaimer in my BYF to not befriend me if you are incapable of ending a friendship civilly and instead ghost/abandon people. you read the BYF. You read the disclaimer. you did it anyways. you blocked me without a word. i thought we were friends, and you sliced me out of your life without so much as an explanation.
Because I saw her post this shit beating others down all the time. And I got tired. And then she did it to me.
i literally don’t know what you’re referring to. there’s no link here. i don’t beat anyone down. sometimes people mistreat me and i get rightfully mad at them for mistreating me. beyond that, i literally just blog about pokemon. in another post you said you unfollowed me over hazbin hotel or some shit, which is an animated show i’ve never seen and have no opinions on.
[screencap of a personal post where i’m clearly panicking]
cool! nice one. real empathy and compassion showing here.
I didn’t say any of this, aside from that we weren’t friends. (edited to point this out.) We literally had only talked on a cursory level a handful of times.
you’re literally missing the point. you said that we weren’t friends, and used that as your defense for literally blocking me. it doesn’t MATTER if you personally thought we weren’t friends. I thought we were friends. I thought you liked me. my feelings were hurt, i was crushed. just because you think its NBD “she probably doesn’t even remember me” doesn’t mean you are absolved. You may have thought that, and I believe you thought that, but you were mistaken. This made me even more upset--not only did my friend block me, but my friend didn’t even consider us friends.
even if i didn’t consider us friends, what you did to me was wrong. but the fact that i did and you don’t just means it hurts more. that’s literally it. i recognize that i didn’t mean to you what you meant to me, but that literally does not mean anything you did was okay. i don’t know how to spell this out further!!!!!
She also says that I am falsely claiming that I did not block her – a claim I never made– and also that I never apologized for unfollowing her, when in fact I did, repeatedly, trying to get this to stop.
YOU DID NOT APOLOGIZE. I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO GAIN FROM LYING ABOUT THIS. you keep saying this! what do i have to do to prove you didn’t apologize? does ANYONE reading this have ANY ideas??? Elliot literally won’t state, anywhere that i can FIND, WHERE he supposedly apologized. alledgedly, he’s sent me apologies MULTIPLE TIMES EVEN??? i dont know where i’m supposed to be looking. my tumblr DMs? my tumblr asks i think? i pretty obsessively read my ask box, i don’t have access to DMs but i never received any, of that I am sure. this is important to me and i would remember! you have not contacted me! the closest you have come to contacting me, besides publicly talking about me on your blog, is frantically sending my friend marcus a bunch of messages about me and then BLOCKING HIM AS WELL. ALL of this i learned because marcus came to me incredibly confused (as was i) asking why my name was coming up all of a sudden. that is ALL i have heard from you. there have been no apologies, no one on one chats. it is WAY easier for you to prove to your followers that you sent an apology than for me to prove that i didn’t receive one, so can you please? can you give me ANY ideas on how to prove that i’m telling the fucking truth? literally WHAT do i have to gain from lying about this????? do you think i get some kind of sick enjoyment out of this shit??? do you think having someone i thought was my friend on the opposite side of things makes me happy??????? do you think i enjoy this?? i don’t understand what you think i have to gain from lying! i didn’t receive an apology, a clarification, a single word from you! this is all the talking you have done with me. public talking, and talking through marcus. you have not contacted me. the last time i heard anything from you was probably an ask or dm you sent me months ago. i wish you would either believe me or just admit you didn’t apologize and send me even one message and have EVEN ONE CONVERSATION with me! i don’t understand how THIS is easier for you! i don’t understand why THIS is the way you did things, and why you’re insisting you tried any other approach!!! i literally just want to understand!!!!!
Literally please compare this post to what I have ACTUALLY said about the situation on my blog.
ok i will
literally right here you posted an interaction between us. it’s just an ask where you asked me a question about getting to your ask and i responded. you go on to say ‘how am i supposed to get ‘friendship’ from this?’ and then you go on to talk about how i answered some other asks before yours, denoting the asks i answered as ‘friends’ and (correct me if im misunderstanding!!!) implying the ones i didn’t answer as ‘not friends.’ but that doesn’t make any sense. my friendship level with people has nothing to do with how readily i am to answer their asks. what asks i answer depends on time, energy, how compelled i am with the topic at hand, and a lot of other things. im looking at this screencap and i don’t understand how I’M supposed to get “not friends” from it. you posting this made me feel like you were reading deeply into every single interaction i had with you... i dont understand how i was supposed to know that the way i responded here was “unfriendly,” and i don’t understand how i’m supposed to know that me answering certain asks in a certain order has any connotation other than the literal one-wendy is answering certain asks in a certain order. and yeah sometimes i burnout or lose steam and just delete all my asks or don’t get to some. i didn’t realize i was being monitored on that too... thats what i was talking about in my personal post you very rudely put on display. i just thought we were friends, i didn’t realize there were all these... micro-interactions i had to be monitoring? i didn’t realize this stuff would make a difference about if you liked me back or not, i thought we were just friends and we liked each other already.
you also said:
She genuinely never called me by my name. She didn’t know how to spell it because she’d never spelled it before. My friends know that my name is not spelled like that because it’s 1 letter off from a very famous person. This wasn’t a guilt trip; it was truly just hurtful for her to address me by name the first time when she was calling me an asshole.
i didn’t know this was a social faux pas either. i am honestly really bad with names and even if i’ve known someone for years i will nervously check their blog to make sure i am getting their name right. i didn’t nervously check yours because when someone hurts me i can’t bear to look at their social media for fear of what i might find there. but i think “she spelled my name wrong and therefore we weren’t friends” (my understanding at least) is kind of drastic. if that is the case, i really don’t have as many friends as i thought i did.
sorry i did that, in any case. i’ll learn from it and not do it in the future.
I hope doing so makes it clear the extent to which a popular blogger (WHO I LITERALLY HARDLY SPOKE TO BEFORE THIS)
like you literally just keep twisting the knife in. i don’t know how to tell you that how much i am able to talk to people has nothing to do with how much i like them and if i consider them a friend or not... this is hurtful. you keep bringing up how little we talked, or how i talked to you, and its hurtful. i just don’t understand why it’s so hard for you to understand that, esp when you’re autistic also. how have you not experienced exactly what you’re doing to me? someone who doesn’t understand the way you value a person’s company because they’re not allistic ways? i can’t talk to my friends all the time. sometimes, the most i can do is a like in their direction, a response to something they sent me, or even just silently reading their posts.
what about this is not clicking? my ways of showing love and appreciation are different. you were in my private discord server, something that is HEAVILY vetted due to past abuse and full of people i consider my closest friends. you were someone i followed on tumblr, something i do not easily extend because of just how much rhetoric on this website upsets and overwhelm me. and regardless of if we didn’t talk enough by your standards, you still liked so many of my posts and i regarded you fondly and enjoyed seeing you and considered you my friend. just because my ways of showing appreciation were not in alignment with your ways or your standards, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist or matter.
has been intentionally manipulating my words and actions to make herself feel better about losing a follower she thought was cool, through her own actions at that.
i’m not a “popular blogger,” who “lost a follower,” i’m a person who lost a friend. if i am really this... image you’re painting of me, of some social media influencer with “tens of thousands of followers” (i’m. not?? i don’t even have one 10k, let alone several) then why would i care about losing ONE?
i don’t know how to spell this out clearer. i’m traumatized. my trauma centers around repetitive abandonment from friends, more specifically blocking/softblocking/deactivating/moving blogs. to paint you a picture, there are certain posts on this website that actively trigger me despite being harmless, because they were the last post at the top of a friend’s blog before the friend remade their entire social media just to leave me in the dust. sometime’s i’ll be scrolling and some errant funnyman text post will send me spiraling.
and that’s what you did to me. that is why i am upset. it has nothing to do with making me feel better, it has nothing to do with manipulation, i do not need to manipulate this situation and to say that about a borderline having a fucking breakdown because someone perpetuated a horrible trauma she’s lived through time and time again is fucked up, wrong, and shitty. you are constantly downplaying my feelings by acting like just because you didn’t consider me a friend, what you did was okay. you refuse to talk to me one on one, or show me any indication of the apology you keep claiming you sent. and now you are acting as though this speaking out i am doing has to do with some ~tumbler dot corn callout dramaz~ instead of a person lamenting and hurting on her personal blog about yet another person hurting her in a very easily avoidable way.
i don’t know what “my own actions” are that drove you away. you didn’t have a conversation with me about them, or if you did i never saw it. i just woke up one day and you had blocked me. i still don’t know why you blocked me. i just know all the reasons you think it was an okay thing to do.
You can genuinely read back to see that what she claims I am saying and doing is at best self-aggrandizingly misinterpreted, and at worst actively and maliciously misleading.
maybe things wouldn’t get misinterpreted if you instead communicated with me instead of just ghosting me and trying to talk yourself out of the guilt of it. i don’t want to misinterpret anything, i just am having trouble understanding why you did any of this to me and your answers to all those questions aren’t helping me understand because i can’t ask about them in real time.
I am reiterating the same shit because it’s the truth. Her desperation to convince her tens of thousands of followers that I’m “lying”, while asserting that I said things that I did truly actually not and you can literally just go see that on my blog in writing, is tremendously telling.
i clarified some here, but i still don’t know where i’m supposed to be looking for this apology.
again, i don’t have tens of thousands of followers, and me posting on this blog isn’t about reaching an audience or whatever, it’s about... processing the pain you’ve caused me.
I will say it bluntly now: You are not a person I would ever want to be friends with.
thats fine, but i wish you would have just told me that instead of doing this. a lot of my friendships end because i was incompatible with a person who doesn’t feel the need to traumatize me to avoid having a conversation. you could’ve just shot me a DM and told me it wasn’t meant to be, and i could’ve thanked you for your time and moved on with my life.
I cannot be emotionally manipulated in such transparent ways, and I am not impressed by you. If that makes you mad, I hope the fire keeps fizzling.
my suffering won’t make your life better, and demonizing me won’t lessen the guilt of what you did to me. you’ll heal a lot faster if you just admit to even just yourself that maybe you could’ve handled things more gracefully.
this is exactly what you did to me. and you confronted one of my friends asking for space/understanding about why it hurt you. right here you literally ask marcus, word for word, what i wanted for you. the hypocrisy you’re showing me is astounding.
#tenderskeptic#smeargletail#also dont think i haven't seen all the wild shit you said to marcus like... come on.#long post#also please stop calling me musashi its a japanese name and im a white girl#if you MUST call me by my username you can call me mu for short#but my name is jessie or wendy please do not call me that#it says in my about not to call me that and has for YEARS#i know you like disregarding my about pages but this one is MORE IMPORTANT
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Hi anonymous gencest person in my inbox! First of all, I wanted to reply to you thoroughly, I just happened to not be online at the time that you sent your first message, and as a result it’s taken a little time to write this reply. You seem to be really hurt by this, but the tone of your message is understanding and kind, and you deserve to be spoken to with the same respect that you did in your messages to me. I’ve put your message under the cut to protect you a little bit (I hope that you find it).
For the folks on my dash, please don’t think this is me jumping back into it. Mostly that’s because, as you mentioned in your message, I feel like everything has gotten very out of hand. The tone of the original conversation changed underneath me, because while my issues were only with tagging, I feel like some people perceived it to be something else. I’d like to clear that up. Ad hominem attacks are always unnecessary, and they derail reasonable conversation. I also think that a lot of this jumped off the back of already raised tensions and preconceptions, and the divisions in fandom are wholly responsible for that. So that’s mostly why I haven’t mentioned it on my blog since the scuffle happened, and why I’m happier putting the rest of this under a cut. I don’t agree with what this turned into (kink shaming, and making genfic people into some sort of commodity to be shot across the battlefield like human cannons), and it’s left a bad taste in my mouth how the whole thing was handled, much as it seems to have done with anonymous.
This post is about that.
Anonymous said:The gencest wank is reaching new levels. Now people on twitter are claiming that participants "support child abuse" (which child?) and are "grooming" other people. There is disagreeing with the ambiguity the term gencest imply and there is straight up calling content creators who just want to write on their favorite characters predators. Now I feel even worse about writing Winchester Gen fic and I'm not even a participant! Are yall even going to care about that?
Anonymous said:(same g*ncest wank anon) Look, nevermind. I dont really expect anything. I was hurt by both sides when I'm at a low point and just wanted to write some S&D gen fic to cheer me up. I came to vent but it wasn't called for. I'm sorry. Have a nice day.
I’m going to start right back at the beginning. This wank started on Twitter, and it’s still continuing over there. I think a lot of the reason why things are never let go of on Twitter is because the format has a toppling effect. With things only loosely dated, and Twitter sending you notifications for things you might have been interested in, it tends to keep fires burning a lot longer. The viciousness of the conversations is one of the reasons why I’m not a very big presence of Twitter myself, not to mention block and let block isn’t considered to be a social default. People just engage with material no matter the consequences, forgetting that other people on the internet are living breathing emoting human beings.
Part of it, too, is Supernatural fandom’s divisions in general. If you look just at the wank that crossed my dash just in the last week - one week! - there’s the gencest wank, wank from old meta writers about new meta writers, wank at people who wish Cas had been in this episode, wank about Danneel--it never ends. And instead of those wanks being considered as separate incidents, they instead build one on top of another, so people come into conversations with a lot of baggage, which they aim at each other in quickfire succession.
It’s not okay. That’s part of the reason why I try and avoid engaging in ‘antis do this, antis do that’ drama, fandom dividing into sides etc. because it’s draining, it’s tiring, and it stops you from doing things you want to be doing. Trust me, I know all about the pain of just wanting to write/draw/reblog so and so, and feeling like you can’t because the fandom is a trash heap. Other multishippers feel the same way, like they can’t reblog content from certain bloggers because it’s only going to cause drama. I haven’t written or drawn anything but Destiel (apart from that one Sabriel fic for the RB last year) since I started this blog, despite being a multishipper at heart myself, because I don’t feel like that content is welcome or will be engaged with.
This fandom cultivates that kind of unwelcomeness, in my opinion, to almost everyone in it. It also prevents people from blogging on their own blog, because again people feel they need to seek out and engage with content (even untagged content) that they disagree with, or they’re not interested with, instead of just blocking it. I like talking about ships, and I like discussing how problematic some of them are. I like discussing dark fic. I like discussing tagging practices, and how to keep people safe from being triggered in a fandom which is full of people carrying their traumas with them. While I like engaging with the dark potential of characters, I do my best not to do so at the expense or harm of others. All of those things lead to conflict, and conflict I avoid so much I don’t end up using my blog as I want to. For example, just last year I got involved in a Megstiel conversation which ended in people saying rude things about me and wearing it as a badge of honor that I blocked them. I like Megstiel. I have RPed it and I like the potential the two characters have with each other. It’s not my OTP, and I’m not a relentless wave of positivity about it, but that’s okay. That’s my opinion, and not an opinion I should have to defend, and it’s okay to block people rather than argue needlessly and spread ill feeling around even more.
Staying out of other people’s opinions didn’t happen, this time. Blocking didn’t happen (the gencest mod did use her block later on, which I wholly support, when I was still following the drama, but the block wasn’t respected. When people log out to get around blocks, it isn’t respectful, and it’s part of what fans the drama higher). Not to mention all this drama came in at peak level because all this fandom is is Us Vs. Them until everyone is in a frenzied final battle situation during every incident. Sometimes the drama is being exacerbated and misrepresented, and there are absolutely trolls trying to stir the other thing to being much worse than it is “for fun”. Fandomwank and the anon comms on Dreamwidth (formerly LJ) and to a certain extent Reddit, love making Tumblr and Twitter fans go at each other, and even if we’re pretty shitty with each other already, that’s being driven and exacerbated constantly by forces unseen.
(Note: People may accuse me of making this up, I suppose, but we’re a powderkeg and people love to start fires. The fake Cas stan on Twitter from this summer is a GREAT example of this, they had Misha’s name in their URL and dropped shit on the writers and cast for a long time just to make people froth at the mouth “How could they say that to Jared” etc. I think people really underestimate how much rubberneckers love drama, and if there isn’t any they will happily start it. That said, a fair amount of drama starts organically, and I’ll concede as much, but if you think cackling supervillains are crazytalk let me introduce you to MS Scribe...)
Rambling about drama aside, because I’m quite passionate about how stupid this fandom gets, I want to get back to your ask. I haven’t touched your actual comments yet, and that does a disservice to them because this drama has genuinely hurt you. Fandom should know that. Their words hurt real people. The bickering hurts real people. It drives people away. It drives people I know away, and it’s hurting this anon as well. It’s like anon says: are we going to care about that? Because we should. We should be making this fandom a better place. We should be mending bridges, not distancing people and telling them their pain doesn’t matter. It matters. At least it matters to me. I want you to know that, anon.
That it matters, that’s why I got so passionate about the tagging issue. We should care for everyone’s comfort in this fandom, and that matters to me too. We shouldn’t shout names at each other. And maybe if people hadn’t been at a default level of at each other’s throats, we could have had a conversation about this. I honestly believe the gencest mod came at this from a reasonable position originally, with no ill intent. I may not have made that clear in my previous posts, but I was determined to give them the benefit of the doubt. I don’t think their definition was even that wrong, given that they weren’t trying to redefine the brodependency, imo. My issues only came from a need for fandom itself to invoke the terms Wincest and incest where necessary to protect the people who seek protection from those terms, who are harmed by it, and blacklist it. So that their blacklists work, and continue to protect them. That’s okay, I think, to ask for that, not at the exclusion of the gencest tag, but alongside it where it’s necessary. Incest isn’t what the exchange is about, as I understand it, but obviously the inclusion of ‘wincest’ in the portmanteau does make the real intent cloudy, and excludes people who might otherwise have been interested in it. You mentioned in your ask that the term was ambiguous, and that was my only issue with it, not whatever it’s gotten turned into, especially if that negativity is explicitly anti-Wincest. If the mod wants to use a term that invokes incest for her non romantic gen fest, then that’s the mod’s prerogative. Re. tagging, I think it matters, but tagging is different to the challenge. I’ve tried to be clear on the difference I feel about it since the beginning.
I think that when you are inside the bubble of a ship, it becomes difficult to see the issues with that ship. Let’s take it outside of the fandom and look at Buffy, for example. The fair and honest truth is that Spuffy is an abusive ship. It was literally abusive, then framed as love, Joss Whedon’s gross projection of being able to creepily stalk women and do whatever he wants to them because ~love~ and the woman will ultimately forgive him for being a ruthless monster and they’ll get together. (coughMarvelcough). It’s my OTP for Buffy, but it is what it is. In SPN fandom, Wincest has a similar problem, because it’s been around right since the beginning of the show, and there’s some people I feel who have forgotten that it’s an incest ship, you know, and forget that other people don’t say “It’s just incest” in real life. Only on the internet. (The response to poor Jason Fisher’s defense of Superwiki from the GA made that disconnect really clear to me. The GA literally have no idea why this show would defend incest, because how we speak about incest within fandom is wholly different to how it’s discussed in the real world.)
That said, boy oh boy. I’m about to open a whole other can of worms here.
Wincest folks get constantly attacked. Like I said, it’s an incest ship, and between the GA and people who are triggered by it and purity culture, you’ve got these people who just wanna write their ship and they’re constantly on the toe of everyone’s boot getting a right kicking. I’m not going to argue about the moral rights and wrongs of writing incest, because it’s none of anyone’s business. Writing incest isn’t a gateway drug to performing it any more than if you write stories about murder that’s what you’re setting up to do next yourself. No matter why someone writes it, generally speaking that’s between them and their catharsis. People get uppity about other people’s ships and kinks when they should stay in their own lanes, really.
Tagging is the key to that. Acknowledging your ship has issues and then making sure you tag those issues responsibly. That’s important. It protects us. It protects me when I write darkfic. It protects people who write darkfic because they’re survivors, and helps people to deal with those things when it’s tagged properly, when it’s given the name of what it is, rather than sanitized. That’s my issue with gencest as a tag (not as a fest), because it felt like sanitized incest. You need to call that what it is. You need to identify it. Your older brother climbing into bed with you naked and without permission isn’t gen. To some people within the ship, the identification of it is half the battle. When we tag considerately, we are being kind to people we don’t know, as well as protecting ourselves. Tags make fandom better and safer.
With the way things have unrolled, it’s made it so engaging in either fest seems like picking sides. That’s not okay. That’s not just this battle; this is just another casualty of the whole ship war, something which has sucked the fun out of many things people enjoy doing, and driven many many people out of fandom. I’m sorry that this one hit when you were already feeling so low, not least because we all deserve to have nice things. Fandom is supposed to be the place to go to when life is shitty, to give you fun and relief. It’s not meant to feel like getting sent back to the trenches. Not for anyone.
We need to mend our bridges. We need to keep making our content, and stop seeing it as ride or die. We need to keep our nasty opinions to our own blogs and stop calling each other names when we don’t agree. We need to stop seeing blocking as unreasonable behavior and not proper curation. We need to stop raiding ship tags for wank, or dumping our crap on other ship’s tags in the first place. We need to give more people the benefit of the doubt, and engage on conversational levels about out fandom and our ships. We need to call out issues from within our own fandom, so when drama is getting splashed around we need to say “hey, they have a bit of a point, here, maybe we can talk reasonably about it”. We need to stop shadowboxing with an enemy we think is the boogeyman, when in reality we’re punching real people in the face. We need to tag proactively, and kindly, and keep our fandom corners clean so that when people come to visit we can say “hey, we take our tagging really seriously, you can’t call us out on it.” That’s the fandom I want to be a part of.
Most of all we need to be kind to each other. Be better. For this anon and for everyone else who’s ever been hurt by fandom. Enough shittiness is enough.
To anon. I’m sorry you’re hurting. It fucking sucks, and I’m so sorry things got driven to the point they have now. I’m sorry you got stuck in the middle of it. That said, I want you to write. I want to read your content. Shippy or not, I love the relationship that Sam and Dean have, and seeing all parts of it, fluffy and dark and codependent and cute and playful and snarky. I love G rated fic as much as I love dark NC-17 fic, and I don’t care for people who gen shame, like fic isn’t interesting if it doesn’t have sex in it. Screw that noise. I hope you write. I want you to write. As part of a challenge or not. I hope you will. Everyone I’ve spoken to about this tells me they want more gen S&D content.
You, and anyone else, are welcome to send me any content you want, any time you like. I don’t reblog NC-17 content that isn’t under a cut, or content that attacks other fans, but you can send me any ship, anytime - anyone who loves any ship in this crazy fandom, regardless of what circle of affiliation you usually sit with - and I’ll share your content. With the right tags, of course! We don’t have to be this dysfunctional with each other. We can cooperate and coexist.
To anon: write it. Write it just for you. Write it to make yourself feel better, and write it to stick it in the eye of everyone who’s made you feel bad about it. When you feel powerless, doing it anyway is the power that you have, and you don’t need anyone to give it to you; it’s yours entirely.
I’m sorry this took me so long to post back to you. As you can see I wrote a little more than I initially expected to, and it took a while. If it makes you feel even a little bit better to read it, then it was worth it.
Thanks so much for your ask, for your patience, and for your respect. I hope next time you want to drop me an ask, it’s in happier times.
#dogsled replies#wank for ts#incest mention for ts#this is a multiship blog#ship and let ship#purity culture can eat my whole entire ass#but tagging is important
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1/8/20
VOLUME FOUR, PART TWO~!
WHO ELSE IS WRITING IT?! ROCCO NORTH, BABY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
CHAPTER ONE
I CHANGED MY MIND HE DOESN'T GET KIDNAPPED lmao
After their work in protecting the house, the family went to bed. Well, except for Aaron, who watched Damon sleep just in case he died or anything.
The next morning, they woke up peacefully, to the sound of–
EXPLOOOSIIOOONNSSS!!!
Well, SHIT !!! Aaron, passed out from tiredness was still sleeping on the floor, though. “Aaron!! Wake the hell up, there's bombs!!” Damon shouted, repeatedly slapping Aaron's face. “Huh…?” Damon gave up and dragged his dad across the bedroom floor. “Hey, hey, I can walk, dude,” Aaron assured, slowly standing up.
A loud boom echoed throughout the house, alerting them even more. Although, it didn't seem like it came from an explosive, but rather, an impact. Their first thoughts were that NULL was using a battering ram on their front door.
The family assembled in the basement, equipped with weapons and protection. “So, what the hell's goin’ on now?” Gabriel asked. “Man, I thought you were gonna explain it or something.” Damon sighed as he looked at the others. “Dennis?” “I literally was friggin’ shaving when I heard the sounds?” he uselessly explained. “I was performing satanic rituals for the plants.” Lan confessed. “Okay, dad, but seriously, where are these guys?” Aaron grumbled, rubbing his forehead.
CRASH!
A hole formed in the stone basement ceiling as it came crashing down, sunlight shining into the area. A small woman whose grey hair covered her whole body to her knees swiftly emerged from the rubble, dusting herself off and hopping back outside.
“Who. Who was that.” Gabriel asked. “Do we have banshees here?” Lan added. “To my knowledge, the only ghosts related to Irish folklore in this house are the deer leg ladies and the lady who keeps using the washing machine to wash medieval armor.” Aaron explained. “Other than that, nada,”
The family halted their conversation as they heard the sound of multiple people screaming for their lives. “Okay, well, what's that?” Gabriel asked. “I– Dad, I don't even know where the rubble lady came from!” Aaron whined, the screaming still in the background.
ace: “die, bitches!”
“Yeah, pretty sure that's not NULL,” Lan pointed out. “Their agents get shot on sight after using foul language.” He revealed. “Really?” Damon asked, thinking about how bad of an agent he would be if he was recruited. “No, I just made that up.” Lan confessed, smirking. “Why…” Gabriel questioned, looking at him with a disappointed face. “Why not?”
nova: “OOH, A STUN GUN, OH NO!”
“HOWEVER WILL WE MAKE IT OUT ALIVE?!”
“HELP~!”
The four paused, noticing a third person in the fight. “Rude.” Damon commented at the girl's behavior.
sarah: “guys i accidentally fricked up the floor”
“do we have to pay insurance or whatever”
“also whats insurance”
ace: “it's a scam designed for you to die.”
Andre: “What Ace said. Also, pretty sure we don't have to do anything, since this place is a ghost town, anyways.”
jake: “mhm also theres probably horses or w/ever so watch out for that lol”
orc: “I SAW A PILE OF FROGS EARLIER”
j: “or that sometimes yknow”
The family peeked their heads out from inside, eavesdropping on the conversation.
o: “YEA BUT THE THING IS”
“I DONT KNOW HOW TO HOLD FROGS”
sar: “you have to like. gently carry those gentlemen around. palm at the side, fingers supporting their body and your thumb keeps them in place, orc, my friend,”
a: “ALSO SPRAY THE BITCHES!”
s: “yea spray them they like it it's fun n stuff”
andre: “Where. Where's the little froggies.”
j: “idk im scared”
a: “coward”
o: “ALSO SCARED OF FROGS”
“THEY ARE METAPHORICALLY CHILDREN”
s: “explain”
o: “SMALL AND CAN DIE EASILY ALSO WEIRDLY SLIMY AND SOFT”
andre: “Babies aren't slimy tho…”
o: “FLORIDA”
an: “oh ok”
“NULL doesn't usually talk about frogs.” Dennis pointed out. “They don't.” Damon agreed. “Also, they don't have members that tall. Or short.” Aaron commented. “Rebel gang?” Lan suggested. Gabriel squinted his eyes, staring at the group. “Last time I checked, undercover NULL agents, even if they exist, don't hide that kind of hair under their helmets. That kid next to the banshee there definitely does not have helmet hair, I mean, the volume and all…”
“hmm? i think those are peeeoopleeee” “guyss” The stylish hair kid pointed out. “cuz i dont think horses look like that!!!!!!!” they exclaimed, strutting towards the basement. “im scared” “help” “yall” “yall means all” they continued, facing their group. “Well, damn, Ace, if it's a horse, give it a carrot or something.” another voice said nonchalantly.
“meanie” “ill kill u” Ace threatened threateningly. “I CAN GO WITH YOU IF YOU WANT!!” A voice offered politely. “thanks nova!!!!!!! andre u can choke” Ace thanked, proceeding with Nova to the basement, the family anxiously awaiting them.
Ace had a normal, skinny, 5'7"-ish body, and they had a sharp jaw and small eyes. Their hair was brightly colored, with brown roots turning into an orange and then into a red, with yellow tips. They were wearing a gray vest above a loose black sleeveless shirt. Also jeans and shoes. Ace is not naked or something.
Nova, on the other hand, towered over Ace. She wore a trucker hat that pushed down her thick hair enough to cover her eyes, and it was tied into two big puffs. Her hair was dyed different shades of green in small spots, making it look like a small, bright shrub sitting on her head. She wore a denim jacket with lots of enamel pins stuck to it. Beneath that was a grey t-shirt, and below that were ripped jeans and UGG boots… somehow, in the amalgamated world.
“Hi! We're the Russell family!” Aaron welcomed, nearly giving them heart attacks by LOON∆ i should listem to that again. “What the fuck?!” Andre remarked, leading the rest into the basement. He was wearing a silky-looking black button-up shirt with a red tie with dress shoes, and his dreadlocks were neatly tied back. He certainly wore a fancy look for raiding NULL bases.
“Yeah, I'm Aaron, this is my dad Gabriel, my dad Lan, my husband Dennis, and my son, (no matter what,) Damon. We have 36 cats and countless ghosts here. Please proceed with caution, most of these babies are strictly indoors-only!”
The group stared at them in shock, unable to believe anything Aaron just said. “How… do you get… 36 cats…” Andre asked. “We used to have a pet shop. It fell down, though, so that's that.” Dennis answered casually. “like. how. like fell down into space” A blue-haired man asked, earning him Damon's full attention.
“Yeah, into space.” Gabriel said. “Just straight down.” Lan elaborated, “No stops or anything, just ZOOP!” “Yeah, that's why we moved into a haunted mansion.” Aaron added. “So, what group are you guys in?” he asked, making a head shoot up in surprise from one of them.
He had gelled blue hair parted in the middle, and his right eye seemed like it had something inserted in it. He wore a dark blue denim jacket with ripped off sleeves and very short, tight jorts. He also had black wristbands, indicating a past emo phase. Or one that's still ongoing, as made obvious by his combat boots.
“oh its kinda indie u guys. u guys probably dont know it :,(” The blue-haired man said sadly, pouting. “We're called the…” Andre began. “C'mon, Jakey, say it.” “no its dumb” he grumbled. “skullsmashers. it's because we smash people's skulls. metaphorically.” Ace explained, asking Jake for confirmation. “right, 8-ball?”
“we really dont......” Jakey/8-Ball said sadly. “Oh, you named us this, Jakey, honey,” Andre contested. “So why can't we smash people's skulls? Like, clearly, I can take the emotional trauma or whatever, as long as it's NULL, or hell, maybe even some dipshit, I can do that.” he added softly.
“Ah, pretty sure they're not NULL,” Lan said, smiling. “So, did you kill them all of them or what?” he asked as he raised his weapon, a mace he was somehow managing to hold with ease. Like. A mace with spikes. Ace nervously played with their hair, sporting a terrified face. “what!?” they exclaimed in a high-pitched voice. “We can definitely take care of them. How do you think this place is officially a ghost town?” Gabriel asked. “Setting up traps and making friends with the local ghosts go a long way, y'know,”
“There's fucking ghosts?!” Andre exclaimed, pulling out daggers from under his arms. “Yeah, but they're nice, so it's okay.” Damon explained with not a trace of fear in his eyes, making Andre slowly put the daggers back in. “Oh, by the way, if you guys see an arm there, could you get it for me?” he requested politely, “And honestly, I'd like to make a pun with lending hands, but I can't seem to put my finger on which one I'd make.” He added, raising his bandaged stump.
“Oh, Jake, don't–” Andre warned before Jake fainted instantly from seeing the bloody bandages on Damon's wound. “I'm sorry,” he apologized. The fainting had sent Aaron quickly went to the operating room, just now realising that he hasn't changed the bandages yet. “uh lemme go check if theres any” the small woman said, scuttling away. “Thanks,” Damon said before following Aaron.
Dennis, Lan, and Gabriel stood awkwardly in front of The Skullsmashers, not knowing what to do. “So, uh, whaddya do?” Dennis asked, folding his hands together. “gamign” Ace quickly responded. “Well, we each tend to go our own ways, but occasionally we team up to raid NULL bases and stuff.” Andre explained, ignoring Ace's statement. “What about you guys?”
“Ah, so I like gardening, and also do some baking from time to time, and Gabriel here used to be a traveling psychic, but now he tends to help me with errands and chores and sometimes we communicate with the ghosts here. Dennis and Aaron used to run a pet shop near here, but now Dennis does some farming, and Aaron spends his spare time caring for our pets.” Lan explained.
“And I do the groceries! And all the other stuff that involves going outside,” Damon intervened, coming back with an anxious, squeaky-clean Aaron. “Which is why my arm got cut off.” he revealed, sitting down on the wooden floor. “ok im back did i miss anything :'//” Jake asked, waking up from his faint earlier. “… we'll catch up later.” Andre replied.
“arm!!!” The banshee yelled out excitedly, waving a cooler back and forth. “Great! Just toss it down,” Aaron said happily, reaching his arms out. Seeing this, Damon ran to the operating room. “Last one's a rotten egg!” he shouted, snickering. “Well, while they work on that, do you guys maybe wanna come in and grab a snack?” Gabriel suggested politely, eager to learn more about the group. “yea sure!! thanks!!” said Jake, who was joyfully running to the front door.
A large figure stood patiently outside the door, belonging with the Skullsmashers. It seemed like a gentle giant, tapping its index fingers together. It was definitely from another world. It had greenish grey skin, and its head was blocky and looked like it was separate from his large jaw that had two moles on it. Its eyes were big and white, and above them were thick eyebrows. And it was wearing what seemed to be a large, furry, ruff reaching his knees that were covered by jorts. Its shoulders were completely covered with a large spiky red boulder on each one. The creature was ten feet tall, and was very strong.
At last, the large doors opened with a creak, the sunlight from outside shining brightly into the house. It was the first time in years that the front doors were opened, and it was for good; they had stayed in there for too long.
CHAPTER TWO
A PROPER INTRODUCTION
The family and the group were sitting in the dining hall, awaiting the arrival of Aaron and Damon. A shit ton of homemade potato chips were strewn across a long plate in the middle as the main course. Lan had prepared a variety of dipping sauces and some napkins. They sat in silence.
“I don't mean to be rude or anything, but how… are you guys still alive?” Andre asked cautiously, starting a conversation. Gabriel dipped a chip in cheese sauce, then thought of a simple answer: “We really just hide and plant stuff. Also, we were really lucky.”
Nova played around with a fork, debating whether these people were real or not. Yes, NULL couldn't possibly use their precious budget to make intricately designed haunted houses with personal touches and residents whose personalities were very unique, as well as their relationship with each other, but, hell, maybe they can.
NULL always had a way to worm themselves everywhere, down to the place she stayed in, the people she knows, and, well, really, everywhere. Even if this family was what they presented themselves as, NULL could do lots of things to not only dishevel Nova and the group she was in, as well as this family, they can manipulate both of them to destroy each other. After all, that's the kind of thing they do– get someone else to do their dirty work.
Nova made up her mind, opting to ask them directly. “I also really don't mean to be rude, but given the large amount of undercover NULL agents and all the different ways they come as, I just have to ask… and this is a very dumb, and useless question, but are you guys in any way… involved with NULL?”
Dennis smiled lightly, understanding that this group was in the same deliberation as they were. “To be honest, we were gonna ask you that too at some point, but I personally don't think NULL agents would look this…” “well, they wouldn't, like… have wrists this limp.”
The room was silent for a while, before erupting with laughter. “You– you fuckin’ thought we weren't NULL because–” Andre struggled, wheezing. “No NULL agent would dress like that, Andre,” Gabriel pointed out, snickering. “Yeah, you think those idiots can achieve this level of interior design?!” Lan added, gesturing wildly towards every piece of furniture in the hall.
“… But really, to answer your question there, yeah, we are technically involved with NULL,” Dennis said, completely changing the atmosphere of the room. “We're classified as Class-4 criminals for, um, giving some of their agents here some mild inconveniences.” he added in a serious tone. “And by mild inconveniences, I mean a few cases of attempted murders, robberies, hauntings, and other stuff like that.” The group sighed a breath of relief, knowing they were both on the same page.
“I have to say, 45 cases of attempted murder and two cases of successful murder does sort of count as a bit more than a mild inconvenience, though, Dennis,” Lan said jokingly. “Oh, and remember when someone planted poison ivy that somehow mysteriously completely wrapped around the whole base they had here, down to the basement?” he added, grinning. “Okay, well let's not compare our crimes here, dad,” Dennis teased. “Everybody knows mine was the best attack yet when I trapped them inside the base by encasing it with raw eggs! somehow” he added, cackling.
The two families had a great time together, laughing and talking about their experiences in the new lives they lived caused by the amalgamation. Meanwhile, Aaron was carefully reattaching an arm to an unconscious Damon. After some hard work, he succeeded, and did his best to celebrate in the operating room.
However, at this point, he became too tired to do so, considering the fact that he alone performed an entire surgery. Still, it was a miracle for both of them. He waited for Damon to wake up and see the finished product, but he ended up passing out while making a celebratory coffee.
The two slept well and endlessly. The rest of the family, however, were faced with a tough decision to make. Dennis, Gabriel, and Lan had the same question echo in their minds:
“Would you like to consider joining us, The Skullsmashers?”
It was a question Andre always asked to those who he saw potential in, no matter who– or whom, no idea. They could be two friends living in a dilapidated house with rats and mice, or three odd creatures in a grocery store, or even some nervous teenager who suddenly asked him to kill someone in the middle of his New Year's Eve party.
It's not that he simply sees something out of the ordinary happen and immediately hands out flyers, but it's that Andre has been gifted with an eye for this type of thing– take, for example, the situation at hand.
Andre raids a NULL base with his friends. The fight continues into the abandoned city the base was in. His friend lands into a basement of a house. Sarah, the friend, points out that there are people living in said house. Said people are clearly weird.
Resident asks for his arm back. Very weird. Still little to no potential, except maybe for interior design. Residents invite them for dinner. Residents have knives and shit.
Potential spotted. nah jk lemme do this again lol
[TAKE TWO]
Okay, okay. Andre doesn't just see people doing weird shit and immediately hires them, contract and all, but instead he observes them further.
If he sees someone hurling flaming batons into the sky, that person does have potential, yes, definitely, but what kind? This style of combat could definitely be a possibility in their attacks, given the practicality and the ostentatiousness of it.
However, it's an art one could hardly practice. The perils one could face are far too much for such a display. But, even though it's inconvenient, it's still very useful. If there was a good amount of accelerant on the baton, an enemy could not only receive a strong blow, but the added accelerant will most likely set them on fire too, rendering them not only useless in further combat (unless they're a very determined individual) but also a potential threat to anyone near them.
And the fact that a person is employed as the weapon is more convenient than, say, a large flaming baton-throwing machine, which would be difficult to program and to bring to an attack.
However, Andre also has to consider the person (itself? themselves? idk man) in an approach. Maybe they're NULL, or maybe even just someone who wants to throw flaming stuff into the air with no deeper meaning or intent. Maybe this person is unsuitable for combat; maybe this person is an enemy or a rival.
The approach is like a job interview– ask them about their experience in the field, if they have any other [good points?? is good points the word], if they're okay with joining the group– but sadly, he lives in a world where anything wildly good or wildly bad can happen, and it makes the whole process a whole lot more harder.
So, maybe these people inviting them over for a meal might give them a new addition or two. Or, sadly, remove some members.
Will the Russell family join The Skullsmashers? The decision has to be made any second now.
• end •
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man okay so reading callout posts is so fucking difficult i saw one abt s/ix/pen/ce/ee and i read through,,,, most of it? but it was all links which turns out to be a lil taxing on my brain and stuff, idek why. and then, a lot of it was good points and stuff ppl shouldnt do, like steal stuff or defend bad stuff. but some of it was just, tiny little things? small slipups, things like that. being perfect is a nice concept, but everyone accidentally says something is "crazy" or something on occasion. a while back, i accidentally offended ha/rv/ey/ch/an (i think thats the right url idk ill go check) by reblogging a jo/hn/da/ve post they made and saying something along the lines of "this isnt my otp (ja/da/ve) but its rlly cute!!" turns out, that was rude. this was in like, spring 2015, alright? i was like, 11. (yes, a rare mention of my age. this is how u kno im serious as i make this post.) i was new to the homestuck fandom, and also slowly realizing that i was pan and somehow managing to both accept and shy away from anything remotely-un-heterosexual, because thats what being split between a loving accepting family and a cruel, unaccepting society through all of your formative years does, besides make u need therapy. anyways, i made this comment, and then harvey replied to me in some way. i dont honestly remember if it was by reblogging the copy of the post with my comment on it or by sending me an ask or what, but i cried. (that was around the same time that i realized i definitely had depression, by the way, cuz this somehow made me suicidal. harvey, if yr reading this, i 100% do not blame u for any of my mental issues, i mostly blame my childhood trauma, and im fully aware of the fact that u (almost definitely? i mean i actually dunno) didnt rlly mean me any harm. i hope.) anyways, i cried a fuckin lot. i deleted my reblog of the post and sent harvey an ask basically begging for forgiveness, cuz, okay, again, i was 11 and had never pissed somebody on the internet off before and honestly kinda scared for my wellbeing because id heard horror stories abt ppl being like, physically hunted down for huge mistakes like the one i thought id made. i have anxiety issues, in case u havent noticed. bad ones. but anyways, they said it was okay, if i remember correctly. i actually dont remember at all. im just really hoping they said it was okay because i prefer to give people benefit of the doubt. they vagueposted abt me around that time, ranting abt how "if it isnt ja/da/ve it shouldnt matter" or something like that. ig they were the first person to vagueblog abt me, so thats pretty cool. i guess. and that experience has stuck with me for these two fucking years. slightly more than two years, actually. im still following them out of guilt. i havent looked at their blog in like, forever, but sometimes a post they reblogged floats across my dash and i get hit with a fresh wave of guilt. i actually think this is why i have such bad associations with johndave. well shit. i just realized that. but basically, a few months later, i saw a post of theirs that stated, among some other stuff that i dont remember, that they had bad associations with da/ve/ja/de (or something). i already felt guilty, mind u, as i feel guilty every time i make someone feel unhappy, unless i rlly hate them, but that made me feel even more guilty, since u never kno whatll make ppl feel bad. anyways, if a callout post was made abt me, and it included something that small, id probably end up pretty screwed up. if someone called me out for constantly vagueblogging abt my ex, thatd b different. i mean, she vagueblogs abt me, too, but if somebody told me to stop because i was making them uncomfy, i would stop. and btw, if smthn i do makes u uncomfy, please speak up! anyways, i just dont think including such tiny little things in callout posts is a good idea. i mean, it makes u look a little desperate and unfounded, and it makes the person yr tryna call out feel like everyones out to get them (or it makes them feel like yr completely unfounded and just lookin for drama, prolly). basically, b careful with yr callout posts, alright?
#idk man im a lil messed up but this was also kind of a formative experience and i feel like it could actually mess some ppl up for the worse#idk man#me bein ew
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