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#I once blocked someone on here trying to clear our DMs
laniusplushie · 4 months
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Confession
It took me five minutes to find my queue on mobile browser and another couple of minutes to find the create post button.
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mercurial-madhouse · 3 years
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Trigger Warning: Healing is painful, but there’s so much light on the other side if we’re strong enough to walk through the dark.
My hope in sharing my story is to help anyone who reads it find peace or healing, just as I always aim with my fiction. If it feels right to you to do so, I encourage you to reblog this. It is highly personal, but I choose to share it publicly.
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This past Sunday, I received an email responding to my desire to withdraw from a fic fest. Instead of the simple “You have been removed from the fest” that I’d been expecting through an official channel from mods to a participant, this is the response I received. Please be aware, the following is painful.
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We've removed you from the fest and will mark you down as not being welcome to participate in future fests. We show a great deal of compassion toward our writers, which is why we send reminders, answer any and all questions, and provide extensions when requested. There's a reason why our fest has one of the highest numbers of fics of any fest/challenge in the fandom - it's because we support our participating writers and do everything possible to assist them as they complete their fics.
However, once a writer has repeatedly failed to communicate and missed both a deadline and an extended deadline, it's clear that they do not have any respect for the fest, the mods, our time, or our own unique situations, as we don't have endless extra hours to track down participants in a fic fest. Several reminders on three different platforms, an extension, and requests for writers to simply let us know if they need more time does not demonstrate a lack of compassion in any capacity. We also showed a great deal of compassion by welcoming you with open arms into the [redacted] after you insulted the fest, insulted [redacted] fics, and made writers uncomfortable last year after signing up to beta their fics, all while pretending to support and uplift writers in the fandom just as you did in your email here.
Have a great week!
- [redacted] Mods
***
This email arrived right at the end of the night, just as I was lying down to sleep. I couldn’t read it all the way through. It elicited a trauma response in me. My heart started racing, my palms were sweaty, I was shaking, I felt sick to my stomach.
I went into fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode. My first response was to freeze. In order to escape the barrage of pain bombarding me, I simply dissociated and disconnected from my body. It allowed me to sleep, but barely. I deleted the email in a desperate attempt to pretend it didn’t exist.
The pain caught up with me twenty-four hours later. I couldn’t breathe, my lungs shrunk in around my heart. My whole body locked up. I couldn’t move. I knew that if I spoke, even to say ‘hello’ to someone, I’d start crying.
The moment I was alone in my room the tears came. The pain came, bursting through me. I sobbed uncontrollably, curled into myself on my bed, begging for the pain to stop, begging for a miracle, screaming internally for relief and to understand what I’d done to deserve this because I didn’t have the air for more than broken whispers.
I fell asleep whispering ‘I need a miracle’ over and over. The mantra blocked out all the disgusting thoughts that wanted to keep swirling through my head. This is it. This is the final proof that you don’t belong here. You never have. You never will. Run away, M. It’s over. You tried, you failed. You always do. You always will.
I fell asleep out of sheer exhaustion.
Grief is intense. These are the moments where we don’t think we’ll survive what we’re feeling. My love, whoever you are, if you are reading this, hear from me. The agony passed. I needed to feel that agony, to allow it to move through me and to give myself the space to feel it. Without diving off the deep end into what hurts, I wouldn’t have been able to find the inner peace to keep healing, to start to understand.
The residual pain is still there, even as I write this post. But it no longer overwhelms my senses. And by Tuesday morning, I’d been given insight into what was happening.
I experienced a trauma response because it mirrored mistreatment I first received in childhood from family and classmates alike and continued into my adult life. In full view of others, it was acknowledged as cruel even by my mother, who struggles with her own guilt because she never stood up for me. No one did.
So I internalized the mistreatment. I must deserve it if everyone else around me is ok with me being singled out like this? At first I spoke up for myself. But in the end I stopped speaking up for myself too. I had never healed this pain and here it was, coming back around again, forcing me to face it, to heal it once and for all.
I still do not know what exactly I may have said to cause these accusations that you see in the email. **I do not and will not deny them.** Even if my words were taken in a way I did not consciously intend, to deny that I said anything that caused someone else pain is to deny my own power AND to deny that everyone’s emotions are valid and worth digging into.
I have the power to inflict pain, just as I have the power to spread and share love and joy.
Whatever I said came from a place of pain, of believing I did not belong in this community. That I am not good enough or worthy enough to be here. A series of unfortunate but necessary events when I first entered this fandom completely disintegrated my core beliefs in my abilities as a writer, something I have always kept so close to my heart, and my belief that I had a place in this fandom.
I expect, as I look into my past patterns, that what I did was try to logic why I wasn’t allowed to belong. At the time, this fest was the only subset of the fandom I knew, I was so brand new. So I looked through all the prompts in the fest. I brought a scientific method view to answering the question: “What is it about the fics people write in this fandom am I unable/incapable of doing?”
This process allowed me to generalize everything I saw that I perceived as ‘I can’t do that, this is why I don’t belong here’. Consumed in my own doubt that I could measure up and write something worth reading, I dropped from the fest last year too. If I can’t contribute writing that’s worth reading, I could at least stick with what I do best, which is helping others be their best selves. I had signed up to beta, and I chose to cling to the only grasp of belonging I had, which was through beta’ing. I ended up beta’ing four fics last year for the fest. And, of course, each of them were (and still are) incredible fics. At the time, it was further proof to me of exactly what I can’t accomplish.
In all likelihood, these generalizations, stemming from a place of pain and jealousy because I wanted to write good fics too, came out in a personal conversation with someone, which they translated as a personal attack. It is valid. Whoever you are, your emotions are valid. It does not matter how I meant whatever I said, pain is what you felt. This person did not feel comfortable sharing that pain with me, so instead they turned to others and shared. My moment of vulnerability and pain then spread more pain.
Pain only comes from pain.
The response was to shadow ban me. In fact, I was never meant to find out about any of this. The pain this person shared was simply taken at face value and that was that.
So on my end, this decision showed up in the physical world this way: Suddenly all my asks went unanswered, people I tagged to share snippets and last lines and get to know more through ‘about me’ posts or who had once talked to me through DMs simply stopped speaking to me in a way that is only noticeable to the person being ignored. I thought I was going crazy. But there it was, right in front of me: absolute proof that I wasn’t good enough to be a part of this fandom.
Is anyone else beginning to see the cycle of pain?
I expect I continued this cycle right back, because the pain turned to bitterness. I’d been doing everything I could to support every author the best way I knew how, and this was what I got? The exact opposite?
I found out about this shadow ban and actual blocking around June of this year. An ask sent in by a friend for me, inquiring why I couldn’t reblog a post that’d been sent to me by someone else, finally gave me the answer that I’d been banned for the accusations you saw above.
Horrified, hurt, and unable to comprehend any of this except to know that I support every author no matter what they write, I sent an apology to the mods, trying to end this cycle the best I could without knowing any of the details of what had happened. There was nothing more I could do.
They thanked me for the apology, though as you can see from the email, it was never accepted. I do not say that as a judgement call, but simply as a statement of what happened. Everyone is entitled to accept or not accept in their own time and their own ways.
I have been healing so much since everything that occurred last year. And the more I dig in to this cycle, the more my heart goes out to the drafters of this email, to the person I hurt with my words who then turned to share it out of context with others, and to the people who shadow banned me in connection with this situation.
We attract to us what resonates with us. Like attracts like. Which means just as I’ve attracted the greatest friends to me, I have also attracted this pain, and conversely, these mods and that person attracted me to them.
Deep down, on some level we share the same core wounds. And the person who can really understand just how painful those wounds can be is someone who feels them too.
So this is my message to the mods of the above email, to those who have shadow banned me and want nothing to do with me, and to the original person I hurt with my words:
I am sorry for my part in this pain. I am sorry for causing pain and I apologize for it. You are loved. You are enough. You are doing a fantastic job. Your feelings are valid. Your hurt is valid. I don’t know what occurred that hurt you before I entered the fandom, but after finding out from others that an email like the one you sent above is ‘Oh that’s just how they are’ tells me something else happened to hurt you before I even arrived.
Your hurt then is valid too. Allow yourself to feel it and process it. Don’t let it consume you. Don’t let that hurt and fear of it happening again or believing that that’s how everyone is push away from you people who in fact love just what you love. If someone has a different belief from yours, don’t let it invalidate what is true for you. Believing internalized lies about myself only caused me pain. And we spread and create what we believe to be true, whether we consciously realize it or not.
So here, now, is my truth:
I choose to perpetuate love. I choose to spread love. I choose to understand my pain and the pain of others, to transmute it, and to heal it, instead of passing that pain on.
I choose compassion. Compassion for myself in making these mistakes, and compassion for those who have hurt me. I do not condone the email that was sent to me. No one deserves to be treated that way. I choose to focus beneath the visceral anger and lashing out, to focus on the agony beneath the words, and stop this cycle of pain.
I choose to belong in this fandom. I choose to support every author in this fandom and ensure no one ever feels not good enough. I choose to own my past mistakes and learn from them.
I choose trust. To trust that those who I truly hope will see this, will see it. I have no expectations of responses or outcomes or reactions. My only hope is that whoever will benefit from seeing this post will see it.
This is not a matter of right or wrong, bad or good, just or unjust. It is a situation of two parties in pain, triggered by the same triggers.
Looking back on that email, I’ve come to realize that half of the pain I felt when I received it was not my own. I felt the pain of the attack, sure, but I also felt the immense pain beneath those words. And I wish I could hug you. I acknowledge your pain and I acknowledge how painful it is because I know that pain myself. I also know that this pain isn’t you and it isn’t who you are.
So I choose to remember the mods I first met around this same time last year in this same email chain. Mods who were so kind and offered advice to a brand new writer even when she sent an email that had nothing to do with the fest and was still struggling to find her place in the fandom. I choose to remember how beautiful that kindness felt. I choose to remember how I was so grateful for that kindness that I shared my gratitude for these same mods in an email with with another fandom friend at the time. I am still grateful for you.
You are so loved. You are loved for being exactly who you are. This fandom is built upon love. A shared love of five incredibly talented lads who have brought so much joy and light when each and every one of us has needed it the most. Shine your light through the dark and believe with all your heart that you are not alone. You have support. I support you. Shine on. Don’t let anyone dim it.
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carlyraejcpsen · 3 years
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alright, i’ve tried to keep quiet because i truly believe in karma and wanted this rp to close through the admin’s own actions and not give them any opportunities to blame it on me instead. it also felt like beating a dead horse, because i was sure they’d close the rp after losing a huge proportion of their active members and the majority of their diversity. however, after seeing multiple people sharing their experiences today, they are still posting promo posts and starting their event. so yeah, here’s my experience with @thevillagerp​​
NOTE: i no longer have screenshots from my conversations with the admins, as i blocked them when i left the rp for the sake of my own mental health, but i did save the text in my drafts, so the messages below are copy pasted. i have not edited them in any way. They also deleted my original anonymous messages off of their blog.
TRIGGER WARNINGS: racism, very vague allusions to homophobia and transphobia
so i was a member of this roleplay for around two months. during my time there, it was startlingly obvious that white fcs were preferred and prioritised, both from the fact that they got more plots and interactions in general and from the fact that admins never promoted diversity on the main. even now, they repeatedly say they “would still love to receive some more male and non-binary apps” while ignoring that they currently have a ratio of 8 fcs of colour to 24 white fcs. their diversity rules at the time were that 1/3 of a mun’s characters had to be played by an fcoc. so people could easily just play one or two white characters.
a while ago, i sent an anonymous message to the main asking if they had considered perhaps changing this rule to be 2/3 characters instead of 1/3, since there were so few muses of colour in the roleplay (as i said before, they’ve since deleted this from their blog so i cannot provide a screenshot). they responded that they had been thinking of upping the character limit to four instead of three, with a rule that 2/4 must be played by an fcoc. i gave them the benefit of the doubt and the time to enact this change, but nothing happened.
so a few weeks later, i sent them this message on anonymous:
I was wondering if you had thought any more about the diversity rules here? I know you said before that you were considering increasing the character limit, but I noticed that hasn’t happened and I wanted to know if that was a change we’re going to see or if you would consider changing the rules in another way? I’m really disheartened by the lack of diversity in the roleplay
at the time there were 18 characters of colour out of a total of over 60. they responded (again, i’m sorry i don’t have the actual wording since they’ve deleted the messages) that they had thought about it and decided against upping the character limit, but instead would be having a weekly “poc acceptance day,” where they would only be accepting apps with fcs of colour. they also said they were doing this “now that the waitlist was mostly cleared,” which meant that the rp was mostly at capacity anyway, so they needed to look more at how to encourage their existing members to promote diversity, since there weren’t spaces open for new people to bring them in.
i responded with another anon expressing my disappointment and pointing out that they had done more to prevent having too many celebrity characters than too few muses of colour, as at the time they had a ban on celebrity muses. i wouldn’t usually suggest a ban on certain fcs, but as it was something they had done for celebrity characters, then i supposed it was a reasonable option.
they didn’t even respond to this message and instead posted on the main asking me to come off anon to discuss it. so i did, and i sent them the following dm:
i didn’t want to come off anon because i honestly feel really ostracised in this group and didn’t want to make it worse, but i don’t want to drop this issue and you aren’t comfortable addressing it publicly so here we are i guess. like i said in my previous message, i really don’t see how a “poc acceptance day” is going to make anywhere near enough of a difference. people will just wait for the opportunity to play their white characters. there are only 18 characters of colour in a roleplay with over 60 characters. that’s less than a third, which is obviously concerning. what’s even more concerning for me is that these characters are more often than not overlooked. i am often ghosted when plotting, or people don’t even reach out at all when i like plotting calls or intro posts. and then i have to watch characters like leo almost exclusively interact with white women (i’m sure that’s not the only example, but it is the first that comes to mind as he is one of the more active characters).
so this issue goes so much deeper than there just not being adequate representation in the rp. i really tried to help, i suggested making it a rule that 2/3 characters need to be poc in my original ask and you mentioned upping the character limit in response. i was worried that my concerns were being brushed aside, but i waited a while to give you the benefit of the doubt and the space to discuss the issue. so you can understand why it was really upsetting today to learn that the one thing you suggested was dropped and instead replaced with something that is barely scratching the surface of the problem. and i don’t know if it was your intention, but by saying that you were waiting for the waitlist to clear, it comes across as not wanting to receive any backlash from people who would want to join with only white characters. and even if people did want to join with faceclaims of colour, they can’t because the waitlist is cleared. like i suggested, you could change the rules so that 2 out of 3 characters must be people of colour. or, as was your proposed idea, up the character limit to four. you could also put a temporary ban on white faceclaims until the ratio evens out. as i mentioned, it’s really distressing that this was something you were willing to do for celebrity characters, but not to aid diversity.
i also just want to make it clear that these have been the only anons i’ve sent, i know you’ve been getting other ones, but those weren’t from me!!
( for context, they were receiving anons from someone else claiming that they felt left out in the rp ).
i had hoped that coming off anon would show them that this was a very real issue which was affecting their members, as well as giving them a space to discuss it privately instead of on the main. they responded with:
Hi Em, thank you for coming forward. We really, really appreciate it and we understand it’s not an easy thing to do. We also appreciate you flying the flag for diversity so strongly. We can always strive to be better, we are on the same page with you here.
Let us just explain our decision making. Firstly, just to address the waitlist, that was certainly not at all our intention when we brought it up. It was a logistical decision with 5+ applicants having already waited a week for acceptance and aware of their position on a waitlist.
When we decided against upping the character limit (and therefore the 2/4 POC character rule), we thought a POC acceptance day could be a good alternative course of action. In our eyes, this was something that would probably bring more POC characters to the group than the 2/4 rule because we knew there weren’t going to be many muns taking up an additional fourth character. This was a rule we’ve seen other groups enjoy success from so we wanted to try it out here. Plus, we think a day that explicitly highlights diversity every week would bring the message to the forefront of everyone’s minds. As we said, we’re going to monitor this over the next couple of weeks to see if it brings any improvement because we’d really like to have it as an ongoing rule.
The non-POC ban is actually a measure we’ve spoken about too and we are considering putting one in place should this fail. Thank you for raising your concerns, know that we’ve taken them very seriously and we hope that you’ll trust our judgement in trying this rule out first to see where it leads.
first of all, i don’t think i even have to mention the wording of “flying the flag for diversity.” but the real crux of the issue here is that they supposedly wanted me to come off anon to discuss the issue, but instead just explained their idea further and didn’t take anything i said on board. they didn’t even say a single word about how i told them i felt ostracised and regularly got ignored. i knew from speaking to other muns in the rp who played muses of colour (and just from looking at the dash) that they felt the same way too, but of course was only speaking from my own experience.
i thought long and hard about how to respond to this, as i was so disheartened by their unwillingness to listen to their members and the fact that they didn’t care that i felt left out. it felt like they had asked me to come off anon just so they knew who was messaging them and therefore put a target on my back, so honestly the thought of being on the dash or talking to the admins made me incredibly anxious. before i had a chance, however, they responded again with:
Hi hun, we’ve continued discussing this issue over the last couple of days and we wanted to let you know that we’ve decided to put in place a non-POC ban instead. Thank you again for holding a mirror up to the group. We do hope that this will recorrect the balance.
so i waited to see how things would play out. they posted about this new ban here and pinned the post to the top of the main:
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[ IMAGE ID: a screenshot from thevillagehq of an admin update, which reads: in the interest of keeping the village a diverse space, we are currently only accepting applications for POCs. please note that any apps or reserves submitted to us for faceclaims that are not POCs will be deleted. we will lift this rule once we see fit.
thank you for your understanding and your efforts in making this group a brighter, more inclusive and diverse place for all. /END ID ]
this rule remained in place for around two weeks, during which time they made almost no effort to promote it. the above post was pinned to the main page, but that was the only mention of the ban anywhere on their page, they didn’t update the rules page or even put a note on the application page about it. during this two week period, the admins posted 10 promo posts, none of which suggested fcs or even mentioned the ban or diversity at all. the ban was then lifted suddenly when the pinned post was removed and the admins just went back to accepting apps with white fcs. the ratio had only evened out in those two weeks (from 18 out of 65 to 24/50) because of people going inactive or leaving, and there was nothing put into place to continue to promote diversity after the lift of the ban. in the three days after the ban was lifted, the admins posted over 10 promo posts, the same amount they had posted during the entirety of the ban. it was clear that they had no intention of actually making changes in their rp and had only done so because i refused to drop the issue.
again, i thought a lot about what i wanted to message them. i knew at this point that they didn’t want to make any real changes, but i still felt like i had to make it clear to them how disappointing their actions were. once again, i was messaged before i even had a chance, this time for bubbling.
as you can see in the above correspondence, i had told the admins point blank that i felt left out and ignored in the rp because of the characters i played (aubrey plaza, mj rodriguez and keiynan lonsdale fcs. all of my characters were queer and used either she/they or they/them pronouns). as a general rule, the only people who wanted to write with me and have interesting plots with me were people who played other muses of colour. the rp had a rule that you must reply to 3+ muns on every character, which i had been doing. i had only been back from my hiatus for a few days at this point and had responded to 6 different open starters the day prior. their message to me read:
Hi hun. There’s something we wanted to address to you directly. It’s been expressed to us by multiple members during these last few weeks that they have felt excluded by your character within the group, especially when it comes to the friend bubble that has formed between Mars, Bowie, Luvena, Asher and others. 
While we encourage the development of friendships and trust that this isn’t intentional, we have a zero tolerance for bubble roleplaying at The Village. We are aware that our three mun activity rules have been met by all parties involved, however, bubbling is usually a little more nuanced than that and it seems it has unfortunately begun to create a bit of a divide within the group. 
We have already issued individual warnings to a few people within the bubble, however with multiple members still expressing their concerns to us, we decided it would be better to address the group as a whole. We hope that by pointing this out to you, you will try and branch out to your fellow members a little more from now on - and try and be a little more inclusive when it comes to everyone else in the group. 
We take such matters very seriously as admins, and while we hope it won’t have to come to this, there will be consequential steps taken should we not see any changes in your interactions in the weeks to come.
as you can imagine, i was incredibly upset to receive this message after already telling them i didn’t get plots from many of their members and they had done nothing. even people who i had previously messaged continued to only write with the same few white characters. i don’t deny that we definitely had a friendship group between our characters, but there were multiple people in that roleplay, including the admins, who only cared about ship plots or plots with the same few muns. me and other people who received the same message had all previously told the admins that people aren’t plotting with us and gotten ignored, so receiving this message made it clear that they neither cared about us nor wanted us in their rp. and so i responded as below:
yeah i literally told you i felt left out because there are multiple people only writing with white characters and you never addressed it, so this message is honestly insulting. i have reached out to almost every new member, responded to multiple open starters and have tried to plot with as many people as possible. like i told you, i am often left on read or people don’t even message me at all. if people do message me, i am usually expected to put in all of the effort and if people aren’t interested in actually developing plots with me then i am obviously not going to force my characters on them. all of my characters are queer, non binary people of colour and the harsh truth of this roleplay is that people don’t care about them. i even wrote out a whole list of 20 detailed suggested connections in an attempt to get more plots and nothing came from that either. i’ve even gotten anonymous hate saying that offering to explain my characters’ pronouns was “patronising,” which i didn’t feel like i could approach you about because, when i told you about how i’m feeling excluded, you didn’t care.
so if i only have actual plots with the people who actually care about my characters, i make no apologies. i also don’t even have threads with half of the characters you named, asher being the only one, and have literally only just come off hiatus. so please explain how i am bubbling, because this really just feels targeted at this point.
you’ve made it endlessly clear that this rp isn’t a safe space for people who want to play diverse characters. the main was practically silent while you had a ban on white faceclaims, which you never actively promoted, and then you dropped that suddenly without putting anything else in place. you also deleted my initial anonymous messages asking about diversity as if you were trying to hide that there was ever an issue. you turned anonymous messages off, so that no one can safely criticise you. because i did that off anon and ever since it has felt like there is a massive target on my back. my characters have been “accidentally” on the activity checks multiple times despite me being on hiatus (people get a notification that they were tagged even if you remove their name from the list btw). plus when i asked for an extension on my hiatus, you said that you would allow it “just this once” which now makes me feel like i can’t come to you if i’m busy. right now, for example, i am in the middle of moving house, but i’m also stressed about trying to stay active because you have made yourselves completely unapproachable.
the ratio only evened out slightly because members left. then suddenly after the ban you’re posting multiple promo posts a day??? you couldn’t get more obvious. i came to you about diversity in good faith, hoping that it was something you were unaware of, but you have made it abundantly clear that you actively do not want to promote diversity in your roleplay, we are just here to be witnesses to your ship. there are multiple members who are actually bubbling who have been brought to your attention, but nothing has been done. leo continues to only write with the same three white and white passing characters. charlotte pretty much only appears to write with leo and post a vague “message me for plots” post that wasn’t even tagged. both of you only put effort into your ship threads with each other and the occasional text threads. even with something like group events: while i’ve been here, there’s been a pride event that neither of your characters were even in new york for (an event where i was the only one reaching out and posting multiple starters, by the way); there was no event last month, and this month all you’re talking about is this housewarming party.
i’m really disheartened that it’s come to this, but i can’t be here anymore. please post unfollows for all my characters. you’ve said multiple times that we should trust you as admins, but this message shows again that i simply can’t do that. from the disregard of trigger warnings, to the way you treated being held accountable for the lack of diversity, to how you respond to people asking for hiatuses, this isn’t a safe space. even if i stayed, the target you have placed on me is making it insufferable to just write my characters in peace.
the other muns who received the same bubbling message (copy pasted btw, we all got the same one word for word) all responded with their own concerns and criticisms in responses of a similar length to mine. none of us received a reply, our unfollows were just posted the next day without any further responses from the admins. a few of the other members who had written and plotted with us chose to leave as well, which the admins wrote off as us just dragging them with us as opposed to them being able to make their own decisions and being aware of the situation (which was incredibly obvious. no promotion of a white fc ban, suddenly being active on the main once they try to stealthily drop the ban, then the majority of their muses of colour leaving???)
i haven’t paid the rp much attention since i left, as i mentioned above i blocked the main and the majority of the members just for my own mental health. but from a quick scroll through today i can see that the only change in diversity rules is that now instead of your third character having to be a poc, it is now your second. however, you still only have to have 1 character out of 3 have a fc of colour. so very little has been done, but of course i’m not surprised in the slightist.
these admins don’t want diversity in their roleplay. if you play any character who isn’t a rich, white, cishet neurotypical, please avoid it at all costs. it’s not in any way a safe environment.
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ktheist · 3 years
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finale — show me yours & i’ll show you mine
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➙ muses. seokjin x college student / gamer!reader ft. best friend! taehyung
➙ genre. best friend’s brother au. university au. working au. fwb au.
➙ word. 2.1k
➙ index. 01 | 02 | 03 | 04 | 05 | 06 | finale | side story 1 |
➙ synopsis. 
“show me yours and i’ll show you mine.”
x
“be nice," taehyung mouths across from you as he sits next to mina.
the red handprints on his cheeks becoming more apparent with each passing minute. it was half-believable to say taehyung fell face first in the snow, got stuck there for more than two minutes and voila, sported a red face upon your return to the kim’s.
but now, you’re just lucky no one’s pointing out the very obvious palm shaped mark on his pudgy cheeks as he stuffs his face with food.
“oh, mina, do you have any plans tomorrow? you could stay over and spend christmas morning with us," mrs kim asks as she passes the bowl of the roasted potatoes seokjin’s been boasting about.
“o-oh,” the brunette stammers, holding the fork with both hands as if citing a prayer of hope, “no, i couldn’t intrude on you any longer.”
“no such thing, we’re all family here.” mrs kim waves a dismissive hand and even that brief gesture feels warm, “___’s mother and i have known your mother since we were kids and i watch you two grow up with my boys - you’re basically  daughters i never had,” she shoots you a smile, eyes crinkling in the corners.
not seeing the remark coming, you end up almost choking on the mushroom soup you’re just in the middle of enjoying.
“i can’t say i’d love to have tae as a sibling but here we are,” you jest, half-heartedly while laughter erupts from everyone at the table.
if there’s a god, please don’t let mrs kim find out i fucked her oldest son.
“i heard yuukal co is interested in your flower arrangements and wanna buy exclusive rights to have you deliver them to the company whenever they have an event lined up?” namjoon chirps up, dimples digging into his cheek as he digs into his 
“the secretary of yuukal co was an acquaintance of mine in college, that’s probably why.” the brunette says shyly, pushing her hair to the back of her ear.
“so, you’re not planning on going back to college?” 
but it’s your voice that makes her blink once and stare at you like you’re some tricky math question.
“what- oh,” she shakes her head, as if shaking away the trance that delayed her response, “i don’t know, my major has nothing to do with what i want to do so i’m thinking of taking another year off.”
you nod casually. understandingly. “i’m sure the college has plenty of spots for people who actually wants to be there, i guess.”
it’s not a new low. but it’s a kind of low you never usually stoop to.
no one seems to notice though, as mina laughs. obviously uncomfortable by your remark, “haha yeah.”
“taehyung got offered a job at the company he interned in last year,” with a smack on the aforementioned boy’s back, seokjin proudly announces.
and just like that, taehyung takes the spotlight to himself.
“oh my god, that’s wonderful news. kim taehyung, when were you going to tell us?” mrs. kim is the first to say something, eyes brimming with anticipation as she looks at him, waiting for him to tell everyone at the table more about it.
but the fact of the matter is, kim taehyung is torn between working a nine-to-five, subsequently making his parents proud or going professional as a full time gamer.
he breathes out an ‘uh...’ before his lips curl into a forced smile.
“surprise?”
x
some time after dinner, you end up drinking and playing card games. mrs kim already went to bed and it's a hour past midnight and all four of your find yourselves in your house to not disturb the kim couples.
the grinch is playing in the background because you, taehyung and mina won against namjoon and seokjin who wanted to watch frozen.
“frozen is so unchristmasy,” taehyung complained.
though, at one point, you did backtrack a little - only a teensy bit - and sided with seokjin who looked like he just won a lottery when you casually say, “i mean frozen’s got that wintry feeling and christmas is in-”
“oh girl, not you choosing a man over your best friend,” taehyung started tickling your sides as giggles erupted from your lips while trying to beg for forgiveness.
 “okay! okay! i’m grinch team all the way!”
“is that allowed? yah! you can’t say that after converting to team frozen!” seokjin’s rebuttal sounded every bit casual.
in retrospect, him joining taehyung’s ticklish assault would have felt out of character had you not fucked behind taehyung’s back nor kissed like you were star crossed lovers just hours ago.
“two against one! not fair! seokjin- ah- hahahaha!” 
one good thing came out of it though: you ended up sitting next to seokjin. it made you a little too conscious of him - of his cologne, of his thigh that brushes against yours with every movement you make and pretend like it’s nothing and of the ghost of a touch of his pinky finger that lingers on your knee when he seemingly places a hand on his own knee. 
still, it’s the closest you could ever be in public and it’s enough to tell mina to back off.
she doesn’t seem to notice but her compliments are equally distributed to everyone in the room. she seems to be the giggly drunk. giggling at every single thing everyone say.
somewhere deep in your heart, you feel the guilt gnawing because of your uncalled for hostility.
“i better get home,” she starts to stand at 3:07 am and you wave a dismissive hand, “no, it’s so late. stay over. please. you promised to make me your special hot chocolate in the morning.”
she objects at first like she turned down mrs kim’s invitation to spend christmas morning at the kim’s. and that’s how you know your views have been blinded with jealousy to see mina for who she is - a cute, lovable girl who’d be the heroine of every romance novel there is.
“oh thank you, thank you!” her arms flail around before they wrap around you in a drunken hug.
you laugh, hugging back.
x
the memories of how you huddled together like children and fell asleep in the living room, is hazy but when you wake up - the time on your screen displaying a 6 something am - you find a blanket draped over your body.
the light from the kitchen pours over the living room but not enough to wake the slumbering bodies there.
seokjin shoots you a smile when he sees you ambling over to the dining table with hair pointing in every direction, eyes squinting trying to block out the light while holding the blanket around your shoulders.
“you’re working? jinnie, it’s christmas,” you whine, head resting on his shoulder, feeling your heartbeat skip at the small contact.
he chuckles, bumping his cheek against your head before you hear the sound the keyboard again.
you stay like that, blanket curled around your body, seokjin typing away at his laptop.
that is, until his velvet voice cuts through the silence.
“so... i reckon that red handprint on tae’s cheek isn’t because he fell face first in snow.”
“it was because i slapped him in the face,” you wave your injured hand that’s now wrapped with a panda printed band aid instead of the duck ones seokjin used in the beginning.
he takes your hand, making sure not to apply too much pressure on the injury and kisses the top of your hand, “why would you do that?”
your cheeks warm at the gesture but you clear your throat, trying to play it cool, “because he told me we looked good together after all that shit he put us through.”
silence lulls in once again.
it feels like the longest you’ve ever gone with your heart palpitating inside your chest and unspoken words hovering over you but not quite reaching the who they’re supposed to reach.
“do we?” seokjin muses.
“do we... what?” you ask despite having an inkling of what he means.
“look good.” he turns to you, one arm on the table, thumb brushing against your pinky finger.
“i don’t know- we never even took selfies together.” you shrug.
“i think our selfies would look cute,” he pauses, naturally pouty lips curling into a smile, “so cute that the guys in your dm’s would be devastated to know that you’re dating me.”
“i can’t... do this,” the words slip out of your mouth like a waterfall like it’s bound to pour out of your heart through your mouth at some point, “because taehyung was... right. i don’t have a love language - even if i did, it’d be being jealous of every girl that talks to you. lashing out at those girls even though it’s completely understandable why they’d have heart eyes when they talk to you because you’re just that amazing... and... and... you like me? why?”
seokjin’s eyes look like someone personally plucked stars from the sky and trap them in those dark brown irises.
no- actually, he’s looking at you like you’re the star and he’s the moon that shines silver white rays just to have you notice him.
“who’s to say i don’t get jealous?” he cups your face, brows furrowing like you’re a math question without a solution and he’s going mad trying to figure you out, “i get so jealous at the thought of guys sliding into your dm’s, let alone make a pass on you but then i thought ‘if she’s not looking at me then i just have to try harder to make her notice me’ and i might or might not’ve reciprocated mina’s passes to make you jealous...”
you feel the corners of your lips tugging into a smile as you smack his chest lightly, “ass.”
that earns a chuckle from the man before he goes on, “but i’m not even sure what my love language is either, last i used it, i ended up getting dumped because apparently i’m too boring.”
“you’re not boring...” red flashes in your vision as you spit out the word, offended, “your dad jokes are bad but that’s what makes them so lovable. you’re so tall but you’re a literal walking teddy bear. you have biggest, kindest heart... and you’re so hung.”
something devious and prideful flashes across his eyes for the briefest moment before he asks ever so softly, “yeah?”
“yes.” you take his hands and grip them tightly, wishing the touch would convey your feelings.
“isn’t that kind of your love language?” his thumb feels callous against your skin as he rubs circles on the back of your hand. but that’s what makes this feels real - an affirmation that you’re not dreaming, “so... show me more... show yours and i’ll show you mine.”
you’d want to say you share a deep, passionate kiss to seal your promise for each other. but when you open your eyes - not knowing when you closed it - you’re staring at the white ceiling with neon starry stickers tacked up on it. 
and seokjin?
he’s nowhere to be found.
the morning air sends shivers down your spine as you pull your blanket over your head, trying to tune out taehyung’s voice.
but the universe seems set on kicking your sleepy ass of your bed when the door swings open with a bang! 
“get up! get up! it’s christmas!” the tall boy literally screams in your ears before hoisting you over his shoulder like a sack of potato and setting you down on the toilet in the bathroom with a “you better wash your face by the time i come back!”
you do as told.
eventually.
since the presents are all set under the christmas tree at the kim’s and you’re not looking to upload a christmas morning story in mismatched pj’s, you change into a cute totoro onesie.
mr and mrs kim got mina - she thanked you for letting her stay over last night even though you woke up to an empty house, she even has different clothes on than last night - new kits for the florist.
taehyung almost hugged you to death when he unwrapped his new ps5 that he’s been dying for.
namjoon got a new pair of gucci loafers from taehyung and booked an interrogation slot with their mother because-
“kim taehyung, where did you get all this money?”
you suspect he’s going to reveal his gaming channel to her where he got sponsors from to buy namjoon those loafers.
and seokjin gifted you with a heartshaped necklace as well as a new pc set for taehyung and a signed book of namjoon’s favorite writer that he’d been talking about for ages as well as an all expense paid trip for his parents to thailand.
“thanks for the necklace,” you lightly bump seokjin’s elbow as you come to stand next to him at the sink. he’s washing the mug he used for hot coffee.
he steals a glance at his family and mina in the living room. they’re laughing over taehyung having his head down, sitting on his calves like he’s asking for the forgiveness of a lifetime after confessing that he didn’t want to work a nine-to-five and wanted to go pro.
then his eyes find yours again. the glint in them makes your heart stop before he leans down, lips brushing yours ever so gently yet very seokjin-like.
you think your heart just burst as you freeze in your spot, staring up at the man with slightly parted lips and warm cheeks like a high school girl whose crush very obviously hinted he likes her back.
he raises a quizzical brow at your reaction before realization settles on his face and his lips curve into a smirk, “what? did you think last night was all a dream?”
x
taglist.  @aretha170 @scalubera @ambersaesthetics @heyjiminnie @hyuck-me @fanfuckingfic @fangurl-ontgeside @bri-mal @waves-and-woods @rjsmochii​ @kimmieloveswho​
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bbygirldahyun · 3 years
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with something like this, there never feels like a right time, and i don’t know if i’ll ever feel well and truly prepared to talk about these things, but i’ll give it a shot. here is my experience with reza and the entire situation.
i say none of this with malice, and i would hope nobody else does either. nobody but those who were directly involved can understand, talking about this is hard, but it’s weighing me down not to. so please, don’t send anyone hate or interact with her at all. i just want to express what happened and move on.
i became friends with reza awhile ago, probably over a year ago at least if my memory serves me correctly. unlike many others in this situation, we were very close. we spoke nearly everyday. we have spoken on the phone, she has met my girlfriend over the phone, we shared a lot of personal things. we even talked about meeting in person at one point. so trust me when i say, this has brought me an intense amount of sorrow, loss, and guilt.
i know people throw around words like gaslighting and manipulative a lot, but i truly mean it when i say she manipulated many of us. she made me feel absolutely insane sometimes, like i couldn’t trust my own memories, perspectives, and experiences. what i said i thought happened never mattered. experiences i had with someone were never considered unless they aligned with her predetermined narrative. she would convince me i said or did things i didn’t, or at least didnt remember saying. she told people i was angry at her about something when i had no recollection of it. i’m not an angry person, i couldn’t imagine being truly angry and harsh with her ever.
it seemed every few weeks or months, she picked a new person to dislike and she wanted everyone else to dislike them too. she used to tell me frequently how nobody ever believed her about anything, so at first when she would tell me about not liking someone for some reason i always tried to validate her and believe what she said. i wanted her to know i was a good friend, i wanted to be a good friend. but the more it went on, the more i started to question things. people i didn’t know very well i easily believed what she said, because i’m very trusting. i had no reason not to trust her, really. but then it became people who were my friends that were the targets of her distaste.
if i ever had a small problem with someone, she blew it way out of proportion. of course all friends have issues, everyone has issues. so i would confide in her when other people i was friends with had upset me somehow, and she always responded with incredibly petty insults about the person whether it be their writing, their art, or about them as a person. it was very odd. but i learned very quickly i couldn’t ever defend any of my other friends, because that angered her severely. she has talked poorly about just about every single person on this website in this community, including her own friends. i know sometimes you just need a place to vent, i understand that, i’ve done that myself. but she was often rude, petty, and insulting about these people. it wasn’t just venting, it was true distaste and malice.
if she wasn’t responding with petty insults, she would become very intense about the situation. she would almost always instruct me to not trust that person anymore, or to cut them off, or even sometimes go as far as to “handle” the situation herself. another writer mentioned in their post that they were kicked from a groupchat because of her, and i was in that groupchat, and she did it simply because a joke that was made had upset me slightly. she took things from 0 to 100 in seconds, before i could even protest. sometimes when she did things like that, i felt perhaps that’s what friends did? i didn’t have many friends growing up, so i guess i didn’t really know. but it often felt as if she treated me like someone who couldn’t fight my own battles when really, i’m just not a fighter by choice. i’d rather talk things out, especially with someone who was a friend of mine who i cherish deeply.
i confided in her that i was very trusting and thought everyone had good intentions due to being autistic and taking what people say at face value. i told her that’s how i ended up in my abusive relationship, because i was too trusting. she told me she hated that anyone had done that to me, and then went and did it herself. she took advantage of the fact i can’t tell easily when i’m being manipulated. she attempted to plant seeds of distrust within me towards every single other friend i had, even my girlfriend. i spoke to her once about an issue my girlfriend and i had had a long time ago, and she immediately said in essence she didn’t think my girlfriend was good for me. this was one issue within a nearly 5 year relationship. it felt insanely isolating, to be told at every turn that anyone in my life was bad for me, except for her.
it’s also worthy of pointing that all of these people who she would talk so poorly about to me and to just about anyone who would listen, she is more than willing to turn around and kiss their feet when she lost all her friends. duckie was a particular target of hers in terms of her attempts to get me to cut my friendship off with. some of the things she said to me, i don’t even want to repeat, though of course i have told duckie about it. she has said nasty things about her, about me, about our entire friendship. and yet, the second she didn’t have her friends on here anymore, she was tagging duckie in a praising post, surely in the hopes somebody might take her side i can only assume. that really boiled my blood — all of those nasty words, only to turn around and do that. and duckie isn’t even the only one, she’s just the one i’m closest to who reza did that with.
she has accused so many of us of being clout obsessed or chasing clout. i am no professional, nor can i make claims with 100% certainty, but i would go out on a limb and say i’m fairly positive those accusations are heavy projection. many of her accusations are, to be frank. she has always been seeking “clout”, attention really, ever since the beginning. she used to tell me her biggest dream was to end up on one of those writer reccomendation lists and so it doesn’t surprise me at all that her supposed final straw with lu was being excluded from one, even accidentally. but of course, she’s certainly accused all of us time and time again that we’re obsessed with clout, that we’re all only friends with each other for clout. and it’s sad to me, that that’s how she sees friendship, a means for exchange. but it’s clear that’s how she treats friendships.
she also accused someone of copying art. now whether they did or not, i have absolutely no clue. but when she showed me the supposedly copied art, i told her i wasn’t an artist and i’m also pretty face blind so i wasn’t sure if i was the best judge of whether it was copied or not. she got very angry at me for not believing her, and i tried to reassure her i trusted her perspectives i just couldn’t make the call myself. this became a repetitive situation between us — her making an accusation, me trying to dispute or to even just deflect and move on in conversation, and she’d get mad at me or just straight up stop replying. it was exhausting.
the rumors she has spread about me and others on here are horrible. some of the things she’s said about me have me absolutely floored. there’s things i’d love to address, but i don’t want to throw the person who told me what she said under the bus. but what i will say, is she basically acts as if i’m incompetent without her. i hate to throw around accusing words, but in retrospect many of the things she did and said to me and things she’s said and done since ending our friendship feel incredibly ableist and infantalizing.
now onto what really brought all of this to head. i’m sure all of you have seen the posts referring her calling a trans poc a nazi, but that’s not my story to tell really. my story is what happened after. she dmed me in the midst of that situation to complain to me about the person she accused of being a nazi, and i essentially told her not to bring me in the middle of it. at the time they were both my friends, and i thought she was acting incredibly out of pocket. of course, she grew upset, but insisted she wasn’t trying to bring me into it. i told her i didn’t think her accusation was fair, she told me that this person blocking her was “proof” that they were a nazi supporter, and i basically told her that was quite a leap. we didn’t talk for awhile after that, until she reached out again saying she didn’t want to lose me as a friend and this very long, nice message. i told her i valued her friendship a lot and as her friend, i felt it was my duty to tell her she fucked up and that she should apologized. she admitted to me she knew she was wrong. she admitted it. but she said something like it was too late to do anything about it. one of our last dm exchanges was her saying i was the one person she didn’t want to lose. then she blocked everyone.
so when she tells people i blocked her, or i ended the friendship, or whatever, that’s not true. i didn’t block her until she blocked me. i was never mean to her, not even at the very bitter end. if she thinks i was a bad friend, by all means she can think that, but i tried my best day in and day out to be a good friend. i wanted to make things work so badly, i truly loved reza as a best friend, we had so many good memories together. it broke my heart to watch her behave that way and go on to behave how she’s behaved since. i thought she was better than all of that.
she’s thrown out all sorts of wild accusations towards nearly everyone on here, including claiming we’re all lesbophobic for not supporting her gofundme. this is where her hypocrisy becomes evident. her close friend who has since deactivated had made a post basically claiming that posting “a few words” isnt activism right in the middle of when many of us on here were sharing donation links of black people in need in the aftermath of the chauvin verdict, which reza reblogged. both reza and her friend shared their own gofundmes mere days after that post. i thought that was absolutely despicable. not to mention the amount of times she’s accused lu of being transphobic and a bad ally, or reblogged posts of her cis friend claiming lu is a bad ally, which just isn’t true in the slightest. lu is an upstanding individual, and truly the pinnacle of allyship in my mind. she doesn’t just reblog a post to look good, she’s truly an amazing and supportive friend. couldn’t ask for better than that.
reza is hypocritical in so many other, smaller ways. she attacked someone for simply watching a critical review of attack on titan but continues to stan groups and people who have problematic or questionable pasts or elements to them. of course, media has problematic elements and we can engage with that critically, but the problem is she seems to think only she can do that and other people are free game to jump on and make wild accusations about. she claimed softblocking people was dumb, only to softblock me herself days later. the expectations she places on others she feels no obligation to uphold herself.
she has made attempts to entice new writers into this community by promoting them, praising their work, and claiming they can be the biggest writer etc all the while on her twitter tweeting things to the effect of all the writing on hc tumblr is boring now, or twice fic isn’t as good anymore, dreamcatcher fics are better etc etc. it’s disgusting. she brought innocent people fresh to the community into this nonsense and the second they didn’t validate her entire pov she deleted everything relating to them on her blog, all her promotions, and tweeted she’ll never help a new writer again. it was horrible to watch how many people became involved in this messy web and got hurt because of it.
i want to end all of this by apologizing from the bottom of my heart to anybody who i was swayed into a wrong opinion of by reza, to anyone who i spoke on without realizing i was being clouded by her manipulation, and to all of my friends who she spoke so poorly about. i did everything i thought i could to defend the people i cared about, but as many others can attest to she’s incredibly hard to argue against. it’s painful, and sometimes i hit a point of exhaustion. i am so sorry. i am truly, truly sorry to anyone who has been hurt by this situation, by reza or any of her friends or anybody. it was terrible being stuck in that cycle of awfulness, and i feel so much guilt thinking that i could’ve ever contributed to her poor actions and words about others. i trusted her with so many private things and i regret it more than anything.
that’s the hardest part of this, that i trusted her with so much. i trusted her with many things i would hardly share with anyone else. i told her embarrassing stories, shared much of my traumas to her, told her about my sister and my family and my girlfriend and all of these personal things. she told me so many things in return, but i know who i am. i know i would never share any of those things, none of the embarrassing stuff or the private stuff, nor would i laugh at it even to myself. but i know who she is, and that makes me feel like someone who i can’t trust holds so many things i shared in comfort, a comfort i no longer have. it’s difficult to grapple with.
and reza, if you’re reading this and i’m pretty positive you will be — i hope you find peace within yourself so you don’t have to treat people this way. perhaps i’m too optimistic, too kind and too trusting and too easily tricked, but i would rather be that than live the way you have, paranoid and bitter inside towards everyone. i hope you find a way beyond that, and i mean that genuinely.
#me
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A Time of Magic
Merlin AU
I got really excited about writing this after getting so many great ideas from people! So I spent most of today on it :) I will make it clear now; some parts will follow how it went in canon, some parts will be similar to how it went in the show and other things I will be deviating from completely <3
Taglist: I’ll do my 'general writing taglist for now' but if you would like to be tagged (or not tagged if you have been) then please let me know via dm, asks or comments/tags! 😊💜
@psychedelicships @jwillowwolf @lost-in-thought-20 @red-imeanblue @writerwithtoomanyships
Summary:  “No one can know their destiny, no matter how grand that destiny might be. No one can truly comprehend how they wind up in the vast, complex tapestry of life. He cannot glimpse into the future of his great story. He will have to allow it to unwind for itself. Our young warlock must live to follow his destiny, and learn how to survive in a harsh world. His name… Virgil.”
Tags for this chapter: OC death, (not graphic in any way) description of execution, brief mention of a weapon, alternative universe (Merlin and human AU) 
Word count: 2,818
Read on Ao3!
Chapter 1: Into the Realm of Camelot.
“No one can know their destiny, no matter how grand that destiny might be. No one can truly comprehend how they wind up in the vast, complex tapestry of life. He cannot glimpse into the future of his great story. He will have to allow it to unwind for itself. Our young warlock must live to follow his destiny, and learn how to survive in a harsh world. His name… Virgil.”
The young man scrambled up the sandy hill and laughed when the grass brushed under his legs. He looked behind him at the vast expanse he had left behind. The blue and grey hues of the Brighsonee Mountain that would usually loom above him every day now seemed significantly smaller, for the first time in his life, he could actually see the dusting of snow that covered the sharp peaks.
This was the beginning of a new start.
He looked into the distance and saw the last wooden house of village he had called home for the last twenty years. The feeling of sadness threatened to overwhelm him, but he couldn’t go back now even if he wanted to. Home was no longer safe, and he couldn’t put his mother through any more heartache. If he hadn’t been so reckless, he wouldn’t have been forced to leave his mother behind to fix his mistakes. He felt his eyes fill with tears at the thought, but he shook his head and violently wiped away the one tear that made its way down his face. There was no point looking back, he had to move forward.
“You must go to Camelot and find Logan. He will help you and protect you.” He listened to his mother’s words that echoed in his mind. He could feel the daunting pressure of the rising sun push him forward, with one final look at his past. He adjusted the bag on his back full of his meagre possessions and walked down the other side of the hill.
As he continued to walk for another two hours, he found himself in a wild forest. The path would come and go continuously, and he found himself fighting through trees while getting his dark brown jacket tangled in branches. He finally found the path again and stopped to remove a sharp stone that had somehow got in his shoe before freezing in awe at the sight in front of him. As he looked through another set of trees, he could see the walls of Camelot. It was clear to Virgil now why Camelot had been deemed the most powerful kingdom in the entire realm. He picked up the shoe that he dropped in surprise and put it back on his foot before moving swiftly along the path with a new-found burst of energy.
Virgil was so eager, but also anxious, to reach the town that he almost collided with a knight on his horse. The knight nodded politely as Virgil moved out of the way, his bright red cloak with the golden insignia of the dragon billowing behind him. At least Virgil could be reassured that he was definitely go the correct way. The sun began to beam brighter as the trees lessened. He could hear the hustle and bustle of the town somewhere in front of him, so he ran towards the noise. Virgil stopped just before the cobbled path of the town and took in the new surroundings, he was intimidated by how busy everything was. He knew it would be more chaotic than his miniscule village, but this was something else entirely. The main part to dominate his attention completely was the castle that towered over the town, just like the Brighsonee Mountain at his village.
A multitude of lean, square towers dominate the skyline of the castle and were connected by extremely tall, thin walls made of dark brown stone. Virgil was unable to count sheer volume of flags that fluttered in the breeze all around the castle. Small windows decorated are scattered generously across the walls in an asymmetric pattern, some decorated in stained glass, some left as they were to let the light in. He could also see symmetric crenelations for archers and artillery, that was a reassurance that Camelot was protected. Statues of kings were lined up outside of the castle gates, serving as reminders of the past. This castle had stood the test of time and despite knowing some very rough wars and battles, the castle still stood. It looked like it will do so for many years to come.
As he was accidentally pushed to the side by a townsman carrying goods on his back, he knew it was time to take the first step into his new home. He brushed off his torn purple shirt, then adjusted his classic red neckerchief before taking a deep breath and walking into the town. He smiled as he saw small children giggling and chasing each other through the crowded street. He watched as men and women wandered around the market stalls, Virgil couldn’t help but be fascinated by the food and jewellery stalls he passed. His stomach rumbled and it reminded him that he really needed to eat the food his mother packed for him, but that could wait. Right now, he really needed to find Logan. He caught a glimpse of the familiar red cape of a passing knight and followed him in the right direction of the castle entrance.
There were plenty of people walking in and out of the castle at a rapid pace, smiling as they went about their business and Virgil smiled back politely. As he walked over the drawbridge and caught a glimpse of the water in the moat, he had to admit to himself that he was pleasantly surprised. Part of him was expecting for the castle to be closed off and daunting considering how it looks from a distance, but the fact that it was so welcoming made him feel much more assured that he would be okay here after all.
He saw a significantly large group of people standing in the middle of the castle grounds and he excitedly raced over to see what had everybody so excited. They were standing around a square that had been cordoned off by rope, everybody was desperately trying to make sure they could see the spectacle. Virgil could just about make out a small stage with a block in the middle surrounded by a variety of weapons. There were guards to keep everyone from moving any closer and he saw one more man wearing a black mask over his face standing in the middle of the stage. Virgil was confused, why was there so much protection for a magic show? Before he could think about it any further, he jumped as two guards with bugles began to play a mournful fanfare. A man wearing a golden crown with a burgundy cloak stepped out onto the balcony high up in the castle, Virgil made a note that this must be a member of the royal family, most likely the King. It would explain the gold jewellery around his neck anyway. The serious expression on his face made Virgil tense up. He nodded and another set of guards played large drums at a slow marching pace while a townsman was dragged out into the courtyard wearing heavy chains. ‘This is going to be one intense show.’ Virgil thought.
As the man finally reached the stage with an incredibly morbid expression on his face, the crowd began to mutter excitedly before turning towards the balcony. Virgil followed suit as a loud, authoritative voice boomed out across the courtyard.
“Let this be a lesson to all who reside in Camelot. This man, Peter Robert Sclator has been judged as guilty.” There was a substantial pause, and Virgil took the opportunity to glance at the man before furrowing his brow.
‘Guilty?’ He looked around and saw people bowing their heads and nodding slowly, it started to dawn on him. Maybe this wasn’t a magic show after all. His heart began to fill with dread as the voice began to fill the courtyard once more.
“He is guilty of conspiracy. Conspiracy of using enchantments… and magic.” Virgil’s eyes widened with fear at the sheer distain in the King’s voice as he practically spat out the word magic. The way he gritted his teeth made every word much more sinister. Gasps filled the silence after his words reverberated around the walls. The man was desperately trying to make eye contact with people he must have known in the crowd, but everyone avoided his gaze. Virgil felt his heart beat rapidly, he wished he wasn’t so curious. He shouldn’t be standing here watching this, but if he left now, would he look guilty? If someone could be punished for conspiracy… what would happen to someone like him? He gulped as he trembled waiting for the next declaration to be made.
“In accordance with the laws of Camelot, I, Uther Pendragon, have decreed that these types of practices are banned… on penalty of death. I ensure that I am a fair and just ruler. For the crime of sorcery. This is the only sentence that will be passed.” The crowd were ushered into silence and Virgil had to grip tightly onto the handles of his bag so he didn’t gasp or draw attention to himself. Now the man bowed his head, completely resigned to his fate. Virgil didn’t understand, why didn’t he call out? Swear that he was only using his magic for good? He looked around as subtly as he could, and couldn’t believe that no one was standing up for this man, he must have friends… a family. He glanced up and saw one of the castle windows open slowly, someone looked out to the courtyard. Virgil couldn’t help but notice the overwhelming sadness on the young man’s face, almost pitying the situation as much as Virgil did.
As the man was dragged to the stage and pushed down to the block. It finally dawned on Virgil that this was real. This was how life was going to be in Camelot, and the thought petrified him. The drumbeat began to speed up and Uther slowly raised his hand into the air. He couldn’t watch so he focused on the ground, and winced when he heard the axe swoosh into the air before the inevitable groan of everyone who decided to watch the man’s fate. Virgil forced himself to look up and he saw the man in the window; the disgust, pity and rage on his face was palpable and his eyes looked like daggers aimed squarely at Uther’s head. Everyone slowly began to gather their things and walk away from the display, but Uther stopped the people in their tracks. Virgil was desperate to run, but again, the fear of looking guilty plagued his mind. Despite how disgusted he felt, he knew that he was compelled to stay.
“When I first arrived in Camelot. The kingdom was consumed with chaos. It was only thanks to the bravery of the people, that we were able to rise up and be free from the evil of magic. So I wish to declare a festival. Tomorrow marks twenty years since we captured the Great Dragon. Let us celebrate this joyous occasion.”
Virgil’s head began to spin as he saw the smug look on Uther’s face as he raised his arms above his head in pride. How could he look so proud after what he had just done? Magic was a source of good. There had been bad events though, there was no doubting that. If it was harnessed by a corrupted person, that was the only way magic could be evil… He didn’t understand why Uther refused to accept that. Virgil finally realised just how careful he was going to have to be, even though he didn’t even know how to control his abilities. He looked up and saw the window slam shut making the glass crack from side to side. He couldn’t say that he blamed that guy for his reaction. Virgil just hoped that he was okay.
He finally took a step and broke away from the shock of the last hour. He made his way to the far end of the courtyard searching for The Court Physician’s quarters. He needed to calm down, and he hoped that Logan would be able to reassure him like his mother promised. Virgil was still shaking but he swallowed his pride and asked one of the patrolling guards for directions. Despite hearing words coming out of the guard’s mouth, it didn’t process in his mind at all. So he nodded and walked in a direction, hoping it was the correct way.
After about five minutes, and two laps of the bottom of the castle. It was clear that he was lost because he hadn’t seen anything that looked like a space for the Court Physician. He sat in one of the gaps of the castle walls and let everything sink in. He must have ended up being there for a lot longer than anticipated because an older man with grey speckles in his hair looked at him with sympathy and knelt down to his level.
“Boy? Is everything alright? Are you lost?” The caring voice was enough to snap Virgil out of his overthinking mind. He looked into the deep blue eyes and immediately felt a sense of calm wash over him. He looked down and saw the large book on herbs that the man was holding close to his chest. Could this be…
“Logan?” Virgil asked hopefully, he was desperate for this day to end. The man’s eyes glimmered with agreement and he nodded in a calculated way. Virgil sighed deeply in relief, finally, this day might come to an end and he could start from scratch tomorrow.
“That is me, yes... Who are you?” The hint of uncertainty shone through in his voice and Virgil remembered the letter his mother wrote for him to give to Logan. He frantically opened his bag and searched desperately for the letter, he knew it was somewhere near the front, because his mother knew that he would lose it otherwise. He felt paper brush against his fingertips, and he pulled it out to hand to Logan. He was met with an apologetic smile, and he couldn’t tell what he had done wrong.
“I’m so sorry my boy, I’ve misplaced my glasses.” Virgil looked up and saw they were actually sitting delicately on Logan’s head, but he didn’t want to embarrass the man who would hopefully become like a guardian to him. So he smiled softly and began to introduce himself.
“I’m Virgil...?” The silence between them became almost uncomfortable until Logan beamed brightly as he seemed to recognise the name.
“Hunith’s son!” Virgil smiled back just as brightly. “You’re not supposed to be coming until Wednesday!” Virgil’s smile faltered as he worked out again how to say this in a delicate manner.
“Er, today… is Wednesday.” Logan went to say something but he stopped himself. He raised his eyes to the ceiling and calculated something on his fingers before sighing in realisation. He stood up and held a hand out to Virgil while pulling him out of his seat in the wall. They started walking together towards a set of stairs which led to Logan’s quarters. He had only just realised that it was quite late in the day now as the corridors were illuminated with burning torches. Logan stopped Virgil from coming in, and he could see him scrambling around lighting candles. When the rooms were sufficiently lit, he welcomed him in with open arms.
“Head to the bedroom at the back and put your things in there. I’ll get us some dinner while you get settled in.” He left swiftly and Virgil staggered to bedroom. He looked around and as he put his bag down on the floor, he already felt at home. He opened the window and saw just how high up they were in the castle. The flickering lights of the houses and the still open market stalls made him smile, it looked eerily beautiful. He closed the window and sat on the bed waiting for Logan to return, but his exhaustion got the better of him and he immediately fell asleep.
When Logan came back and didn’t hear any response to his calls of Virgil’s name, he was slightly concerned. He briskly walked to the bedroom and smiled softly when he saw Virgil fast asleep, so he left a piece of pie and a glass of water delicately on the table next to Virgil’s bed and blew out the candle before heading back into the main room.
The night was quiet except for a deep, intimidating voice calling out into the darkness.
“Virgil.”
15 notes · View notes
qingxintea · 3 years
Text
➼ chongyun || hiraeth
tw: mention of knives (no violence), kidnapping, explosion _______
you angled your camera to catch your face and upper body correctly and adjusted your blinds for the correct lighting. you put thin pieces of yellow and pink paper over your lamp to give off a sunset lighting sort of aesthetic in your minimalist room. your tiny cacao tree sat in the corner of your room, setting some sort of simple beach vibe.
then, you began to stream.
you watched as majority of your followers came to view as you sat in your rolly gaming chair. the greetings came rushing in and you noticed two of your friends had came along too, xingqiu and chongyun.
"hey gang, it's kingexplosionmurder here with your weekly sunday stream," you smiled and watched as comments came in asking you to notice them. beginning to select randomly, you flicked a short strand of hair behind your ear. "you have been noticed, yourlocalsugardaddy," you blessed them. and you swore you chose randomly.
on the other side of the screen, chongyun's face slightly flushed before eating his popsicle again. yes, that was his username, selected by xingqiu after the guhua heir was somehow able to trick him into selecting so. the situation must've been that he accidentally consumed some jueyun chili's, that was also xingqiu's doing.
he watched you smile as you explained your schedule for this stream, when he noticed you suddenly began laughing. it sounded genuine, he wanted to believe it was genuine, but there was a trace of disappointment in it. he observed your face, noticing you were looking at the chat box. "i agree too, scarymoose."
scarymoose: this streamer's kinda dog shit ngl 😐
by instinct, his fingers grazed over the keyboard as he analyzed the tone. this kid wasn't joking around with himself, he was really out to bring you down. he exhaled, shaking his head, wondering how you would deal in the situation.
yourlocalsugardaddy: miss karen this isn't yelp 🙄
he wasn't content with that yet, things could've gone onto more serious matters, but he knew you liked to keep your chat clean and peaceful. you went to the farther extents to keep that from happening, agreeing with rude comments yourself as a said joke, but actually have it sometimes harming you.
so chongyun tried his best to keep you happy.
redrumreaper: yo moose chill 😳
he recognized his friend xingqiu also trying to calm the situation as you just laughed it off and attempted to continue, sooner enough just beginning to ignore all his comments. some other viewers came up to your defense but in all honesty, you wanted to move on.
"s-so, i found some silk flowers outside of wangshuu inn yesterday, aren't they pretty?" you took a tiny bouquet of the said silk flowers and presented it to your viewers, holding it next to your cheek. the pink tone of the flowers matched the color of your cheeks and made for a nice picture. chongyun would've screenshotted it, but he respected your privacy.
yourlocaldumba$$: yes they're so pretty we love you 😍
13lue13erry: yes ong ong 💕 thiccer than my granny
Straw13erry: don't bring madame ping into this 💀💀
colino: are you sure it's alright to take from someone's legally owned property ?? much less from their garden
Straw13erry: u mean ur neighbors don't harvest ur flowers every day? 🙄 privilege spoke 🤚
yourlocalsugardaddy: vv pretty 😳
redrumreaper: simp 💀
you slightly choked over on your side and xingqiu calling chongyun a simp, for you. quickly clearing your throat, you regained your composure. your viewers could see that your cheeks had been dusted with a darker shade now.
13lue13erry: 👀
Straw13erry: 👀
yourlocaldumba$$: 👀
redrumreaper: 👀
sireluck: 💀
bazinga: 👀
dandelionn: 👀
poetichoe: 👀
"okay- anyways," you pushed that aside, watching the chain of 👀's coming in. you weren't too sure at what they were referring to, but just assumed that they were interested in xingqiu exposing chongyun. but, there was no way chongyun really felt like that, right? it was just a friendly compliment from what you believed. "just a tiny flex but y'all guys, i am so cracked at apex, not gonna lie. for all the new followers out there," you randomly commented. 'and to change the subject.'
"actually, you know what? fuck the schedule, let's go to trolling little eight year old kids posting selfies on instagram. due to certain reasons i'm just not gonna be blurring their usernames out, but please don't spam these people, i don't wanna be cancelled 💗" you sweetly smiled as you pulled up instagram and started streaming on your phone.
of course your sus notifications ruined it 🤡🤡
because xingqiu took advantage of the situation, sending messages to your discord. nothing mentioning your romantic life because he knew better than that, but just trolling. 'HEY GANG. ITS ME, TONY, AND TODAY WE'RE GONNA SEE IF IM FASTER THAN THIS MOUSE TRAP.' 'TURNS OUT, I AM NOT FASTER THAN THIS MOUSE TRAP.' 'AN UPDATE, IT HURTS. ALRIGHT. BYE GUYS.' you tried hard to contain your laughter, but certain giggles came out in the end, giggles that made chongyun's heart flutter.
xingqiu just kept spamming without a stop, to the point that you accidentally clicked into the notification instead of someone's username on a selfie post. so now everyone could see your group chat with xingqiu, chongyun, and a few other viewers that were actually your other friends.
13lue13erry: oh no 🤡
Straw13erry: 🗿
yourlocaldumba$$: HAHAHAHA WE'RE EXPOSED 🤡👌
just water support boy 😔: image.png
oh my god he's sending chongyun catboy edits. you made this concerning noise, glad no one really seemed to know who chongyun really was on twitch. you went back to instagram, beginning to dm a random kid, ignoring the situation that had just happened.
chongyun choked, slight heat running to his cheeks. what the fuck was xingqiu doing- how did he even get those pictures? maybe it was that one time xingqiu forced him to go to a furry con, but how did he ever get the time to photograph these? he nervously fidgeted and played with his fingers.
13lue13erry: 🤡
Straw13erry: 🤡
yourlocaldumba$$: 🤡
redrumreaper: 🤡
<— oraoraoraor
kingexplosionmurder: chav check
oraoraoraor: what
kingexplosionmurder: chav: check 😹😹
oraoraoraor: bruh
oraoraoraor: who tf are you
kingexplosionmurder: hope you like baddies cause i'm bad at everything 💗
oraoraoraor: bruh ok i'm blocking
kingexplosionmurder: stop dming me
oraoraoraor: 😐
kingexplosionmurder: stop dming me
oraoraoraor: wtf
kingexplosionmurder: stop dming me
oraoraoraor: wait wait UR that one twitch streamer?
kingexplosionmurder: stop dming me
oraoraoraor: ig ur fans gonna be so disappointed in you
kingexplosionmurder: stop dming me
oraoraoraor: hahaha wtf i'm gonna post this and tag you
kingexplosionmurder: stop dming me
afterwards you sent a barrage of really cursed images and left the person on read when they tried to complain and get a reaction out of you. you chuckled, extremely satisfied with yourself. this is what your viewers followed you for. you went on hunting for another user, "GO Y/N GO" filling up your chat.
you were just about to dm this other kid until you heard a ring from your doorbell. "oh what the fuck, i didn't invite anyone. but you know what, i'll pull something up to entertain y'all guys while i'm afk." searching on youtube, you typed in 'banana fish ep. 1' and clicked on the longest video you saw. then you got up from your chair, making your way to the front door.
you didn't mute yourself before because you thought there was really no need to, and you underestimated your mic sensitivity. god did you wish that you could go back and time and do just that.
twisting the doorknob, you opened your door and was met with... a certain, someone.
someone that you recognized and has caused you so much pain, and it was all so fun and games before they had to come along. "bruh. aight what you here for fam?" you played it super chill, though you were really sick and tired of this person's shit.
"(y/n). we need to talk," her stern voice made you flinch as you just stared straight into her eyes. you simply nodded your head and crossed your arms, shifting your weight onto your right leg. "we're thinking of taking you back home."
your froze, your breath hitching as you just stood there, waiting for her to go on. clenching your fists and looking down, you stayed silent for a little moment and questioned, "...why?"
"well, you have a stable income source, right?" she asked, putting her hands on her hips. "you can finally be of use to us," she clasped her hands together, a bright smile on her face. your finger twitched, awaiting an explanation. "you're a streamer, yeah? so you can be a useful asset to our family name."
"...you only want me to come back so i can make you all seem... good?"
and here you thought, just for a second, that you would be accepted back into the place where you really belonged. your shoulders slumped, as small tears began to well up in your eyes. "and for our profitable gain of course, it would be a shame to not acquire that from you."
you composed yourself and looked up. "im afraid my profit can only cover for one person, and it would be myself that i focus to make a suitable and independent living out of. you've kicked me out ever since i've graduated from college and had me fend for myself, now inviting me back once i have a stable job?" you breathed, fiddling with the sleeves of your black hoodie.
"oh, not inviting, dear. taking."
confused by her words, you let your guard down as she suddenly pushed a warm cloth over your mouth as you let out a constrained scream. you tried to break free of her grasp, reaching for the switchblade in your pocket, but the drowsing chemicals from the cloth took control of you and you felt disoriented. "you... bitch..."
your head hit the floor.
》●✿ time ● skip ✿●
silence.
thats all you heard when you awoke.
pure, unfiltered silence that overwhelmed you as you were completely lost. what was happening?
you tried turning to the other side of your childhood bed, the moon casting light shadows into your 'room'. there was a rope around your wrists you noticed, so you brought them up to your lips and starting gnawing on them until it broke apart. (guys we feral its not a furry instinct ok?/ ??  ?)
the material had irritated your skin, but you put that aside for now. escape- thats what you really needed to do. it was fairly dark, but you didn't have a good estimate of time. the analog clock was broken and set to a different time that displayed 11AM. you sat up, your fingers running along the frame of the window next to you.
for a moment, you stopped, thoughts rushing into your head. what if you could start a whole other life here where things could finally be peaceful, what if you didn't have to feel so isolated anymore, what if you could- ...
no. (y/n), get yourself together. what has happened will anyways stay there, and there is no healing scars. ...still, you couldn't shake off the feeling of missing this home so much when you had an amazing childhood, though full of fake actors who had manipulated you.
opening all the cabinets silently, you grabbed things that you assumed would come to your aid. a tiny backpack, which you then stuffed with other things around it. a first aid kit, a spare knife just in case, along with a clean oversized sweater and a couple dollar bills. all that, along with a compass.
you turned towards your window, stepping on your bed.
pushing open the sides of your window, your stepped on, the brown coldness of the frame coming in contact with your feet. you shivered just a little bit before stopping to think. what would you do once you were out of here? you barely knew your way here. and not to mention, your devices were still left at your other house, so there was no way of contact.
...
did your stream ever end? even if it did, had you muted yourself before leaving? no, you didn't, and you could remember in precise detail. someone out there, anyone, would be willing to help, right? you couldn't possibly be here forever, not when you're basically blown up all over your socials?
your friends, yes, your friends! xingqiu and chongyun were watching the stream and had made obvious interaction in doing so, and they'd be willing to protect you. if they just had a lead...
but... what lead was there? all they heard was the woman's voice and, that was probably it, wasn't it? only a voice with no other clear features that could identify her. it looked like you were doing this on your own.
you came in contact with the blades of grass tickling your feet and conveniently found a pair of sneakers outside. it definitely wasn't yours, and it smelled like the scent of your old room. most likely, it belonged to someone from inside your house, lavender and mint, but who inside there was in the age range to wear modern day sneakers..?
brushing that question aside, you unhesitatingly laced them on and they were just a bit too big, but you could manage.
you breathed, inhaling the freedom intertwined air, a much needed factor of bringing you back to your lost sense of happiness. then, the fear struck you once again, because you needed to improvise now. you needed to run, but which direction? you barely knew this place at all.
you dug around your pocket for the compass you had and it was pointing east. you remember that stepping out of your house was facing west, so you were going the right way... but who knows how messy the path was? it couldn't have been an exact pathway, but going directly ahead was your simplest option.
you heard a pair of footsteps coming from inside the house, probably a few seconds away to opening the door. you sucked in your breath and ran, ran as far as your legs could take you. your intimidating speed and played into your advantage, and taking one last look, you saw the lights on, before continuing.
a few minutes into it, you felt some elemental energy. it was a sense you learned to develop since you were young, giving you the upper hand in a variety of situations. you followed the trail of glowing lines, the air starting to get colder and colder. you shuddered, the crisp coldness nipping at your skin.
you sat below a tree, taking your backpack off your shoulder and took out the oversized sweater. you put it on over your black tee and light blue skinny jeans, its nostalgic aroma filling your sense of smell.
it was... warm.
it shouldn't be warm.
the warmth proved as a sign that someone had worn it before, but this size was from what you knew, too small to fit the woman you came across again, and you absolutely did not recall any other beings within the house. it was a small household.
suddenly, you remembered what she said.
we're thinking of taking you back home. you can finally be of use to us.
plural. you should've noticed it before and you shook your head, slightly disappointed in yourself. you didn't remember any other birth siblings. could it be the fact that during the time, they had, in a way, replaced you?
you sat up, then suddenly went drowsy. your eyelids were getting heavy as your back hit the same tree. ah, that clever bitch. you chuckled to yourself, but still unsatisfied how this was gonna end. reaching inside your pocket, you grabbed a bomb that a little kid gave you, and threw it as far as you could. it wasn't as far as you hoped, but it was exceptionally far considered your sleepy state.
in a few couple seconds or so, it was going to explode. you did that to divert the attention of her and slowly ran as far as you could. a few seconds in, you gave in, hoping that your efforts were enough. 》●✿ perspective ● shift ✿●
chongyun heard an explosion.
he raised his head in the direction smoke was coming from, and made a run for it, then stopping to think. no, you're smarter than this. he gathered his shit together and remembered that one day klee gave you a bomb. he deducted that you had used it as a diversion, and began to search around the area.
and finally, he came across your sleeping body. to ensure your living state, he crouched down and let two fingers travel across your neck, searching for a pulse, and was relieved when he found one, pulsing at a normal rate.
he then carried you on his back, picking up the pace since he deducted someone was out for you, would you need a distraction. he remembered some details of the woman, she had ended your stream with your sleeping form in her hands, a dirty smirk coming across her lips. she had dark hair with some natural highlights, but that was all he saw because the rest was concealed by a cloak.
a few minutes, maybe half an hour later, you began to stir. chongyun decided that he ventured far enough to liyue and slowed down for your comfort. he wanted you to get some well deserved rest. but slowly, you woke up, but only the tiniest movement was made. your eyes were still droopy and you wanted to return to sleep.
but the sight of pastel blue hair kept you from doing so.
you felt the familiar silk coming in contact with your arms as he kept on trudging forward at a more consistent and smooth pace. "..chongyun?" you muttered out weakly, earning a small smile from the male. he hummed in response, continuing forward.
your mind was cloudy, unable to interpret the language of the world. but softly, words effortlessly escaped your lips, "... did i do the right... thing?" blinking multiple times, you awaited his answer.
"yes, yes you did," his soft voice reached your ears, making you smile a bit. you nuzzled deeper into his shoulder, clinging onto him tighter, unwilling to let go.
"thank you," you whispered.
he chuckled a bit before responding, "anything for you."
_____
bro ending is a little off because i'm wrote this at 2:53AM and so my brain has went ⬇️⬇️ also i'm just hungry
copy and pasted from my wattpad,, @ppeachtea_
47 notes · View notes
ladyreapermc · 3 years
Note
There’s nothing wrong with saying anything on anon , some people r shy and this feels safe . Plus I have reached out to people and asked how to gain likes from stories and got flack from that too . It’s not being a coward it’s being safe and not wanting to get backlash which is clearly what would happen, the comments r highly combative .
I’m gonna take this in parts because there’s plenty to unpack and fair warning, this is gonna be a long post.
First thing you said is there is nothing wrong with saying things on anon. I agree with that to a certain point. Yes, my inbox is open to anon that are shy and don’t wanna expose themselves when interacting with me. However, using anon function to be passive-aggressive is not ok. You say the comments following your ask are highly combative and I agree with you. But the thing is, you set the tone of the conversation.
You already came to my asks with that snide comment of “being funny” that I complain about something that you don’t have. You knew there would be backlash from the beginning because you were stirring the pot. You were baiting me into calling you out then here you are, playing the victim because the “mean” blogs are calling you out for coming for me.
You didn’t use anon because you’re shy. You just didn’t want to face the consequences of your actions. So my advice to you is: if you can’t take the heat, get the fuck out of the kitchen, because I’m not just gonna sit here and take abuse just because you’re frustrated. And I know my friends will not just sit still either, even if they know I don’t actually need protection. But that’s what makes them my friends: they come even when you don’t ask them to.
Now, if you had come to me in a dm or even on anon with another approach (you could have come to complain about the lack of interaction with your work and I would have been sympathetic to your complaints, because like I said, your frustration is valid and it’s the same issue other writers, such as myself have) the conversation wouldn’t have taken that turn.
Instead, you tried to shame me for pointing out the low interaction in my work, something that you are frustrated with too. But you know what? I’m not gonna allow that. You not having notes in your work doesn’t make my dissatisfaction any less valid. This isn’t a competition on who has worse.
You say that you reached out to other authors to get tips and you still don’t get notes. I’m really sorry about that, but how exactly is that my fault? We don’t control the reader base and that’s something that frustrates all of us. We can’t force people to like, comment or reblog our stuff. And before you come over and call me an hypocrite for saying this when I pointed out the lack of interaction in a post I wrote months ago,
Let me say this: It is frustrating to not get feedback and I can’t control what people are going to like, comment or reblog. But do you know what I can control? The effort I put on trying to get interaction.
And that’s what I meant when I said I’m not doing tag lists anymore. Because it was a lot of effort for low return, but it is the reader’s right not to interact with my work just like it’s my right not to bother with a tag list. Same with the requests.
And once I did that, you know what happened? I actually feel better about it and it reminded me why I started writing in the first place. To be honest, there are plenty of new stuff that I have written that I haven’t posted because I want to go back to writing for my own entertainment and not because of notes on my dash.
So to sum it up: yes, it is frustrating as a writer to not get notes/reblogs, but we can’t force readers to interact with us. Which leave us with a couple of options:
1) if interaction is important to you, then try different approaches until you find the one that works for you. There isn’t any magic recipe to make people reblog your stuff. Yes, there are a few things that make that more likely and if you wanna know what I did, feel free to ask me politely, but know it might take some time or it might not even work at all. Like I said, it’s not a sure thing.
2) you can let go of the issue and write because you want to write and any kind of interaction you get becomes an added bonus. Which is the approach I’m trying to take lately.
But I want to make something very clear: it’s not my responsibility to make your blog grow.
As a reader I have the right to read and reblog what I want. Do I give special attention to my friends’ work? Yes, because they are my friends and we built a relationship throughout the years.
Do I have an obligation to do that to every blog that tag me in stuff (especially if I didn’t ask to be tagged)? No.
I reblog stuff that interest me. I’m not the speaker for a fandom. I’m part of it just like you and I have the right to chose what is going to be posted on my blog. Once upon a time I might have felt compelled to share stuff that I didn’t particularly care about just to be “nice” but you know what? I’m not doing that anymore. Not even for my friends so why do people think that I have to do it to complete strangers in the internet that never even shared a word with me?
And if that upsets you, then my advice is, unfollow/block me and move on to someone else that might have a different approach. But do not come to my blog on anon to play the victim of big and bad Liv who doesn’t want to bend backwards to make you popular (as if that was even a thing that I could do 🙄)
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shjwacd · 3 years
Text
For the people involved and the people in the zine 
I wasn't sure about doing this, but as some of you probably noticed, the person I started the zine with has been doing some posts about me the last few months and I think it has become necessary to talk about some of those things, for what is worth. 
Warning: mentions of sensitive topics. Be aware. 
First of all, know that the reason I never mentioned anything about this is because I don't think I owe anyone (not involved) an explanation about my /personal/ life. But the last post this person did has come to my notice and at this point I felt like I needed to say something too, not only because it's been affecting me personally, but because I consider I'm not the only one involved now. 
Second, this is not a "call out" post by any means. I'm not trying to convince people to stop interacting with this person. The experience I had with them is mine and mine alone, and doesn't mean anyone else has to have the same experience I did. So no, I'm not doing this to create "sides". Everyone is responsible for their own choices and I won't be (and I'm not) upset if you talk to this person because 1) it's your own decision and 2) it would be very childish of me to ask you that.
Anyway. I will be brief about this because I don't feel like doing a whole essay, but if any of you (that may be involved) think I should elaborate or explain something better, feel free to send me a DM. :) 
To be clear, this person and I haven't talked in months, if I'm not mistaken. I was the one who decided to end that friendship because I didn't feel comfortable with it at all at some point. This started last year, after we had talked for a while and the first zine was in the making. 
I considered them a friend and I cared about them, both because we had started that project together and we talked almost daily. But know that I NEVER thought of our friendship as something romantic. 
The reason for my emphasis is that I felt this (me being into them) was implied in their last post and it wasn't the case at all. Nevertheless, last year this person had let me know that they did have romantic feelings for me and I told them it wasn't mutual. 
This topic came up a couple of times more and in all those situations I never felt comfortable, but I still considered them a friend and I tried to be polite about it. 
Something that's been bothering me about all this is that the age difference has been left out of the discussion. I'm 18 and I was always clear about that since we started talking. They are 43. 
I didn't think it was ok. Right now I don't think it's ok. Yet, I didn't want to give it much thought because they were a friend and I didn't want to hurt their feelings. I said things I didn't mean just because I was scared of the reaction they would have. It wasn't a smart move and I should have been direct from the start. 
Another thing I would like to add is that I took (even more) distance from them after feeling manipulated. Some of you may already know about what happened. A few times, there were public post (in their profile) that mentioned self harm/suicide. I won't elaborate because it's not my place to talk about that, but because they were my friend, I cared and I was worried. 
The zine was blamed once, but specifically me, for what was happening. After that, they told me it wasn't about me — or because of me and I understood that. Yet I always felt this situation had something to do with me at some level and I ended up being responsible/involved one way or another (even now I'm still involved). And when it passed, I felt like I had the obligation to pretend this didn't affect me. It obviously did and I told them + I stopped talking to them that often since some of their behaviour related to this wasn't healthy. 
Mental illness is not something that should be taken lightly, but it's also not an excuse to hurt someone and get away with it. I felt this happened (on purpose) and I decided not to be part of it.
I did ignore them. Again, this wasn't the best way to deal with this because I should have been direct from the beginning. It wasn't until we finished the second zine that I decided to finally cut ties. 
About the zine (and I also told them this): I won't deny that they helped me with it. It was my idea from the start but, after all, we started and developed the project together. 
There are a few things more (and reasons why I don't want to interact with them at all again + why I blocked them). As I mentioned, I don't feel the obligation to explain my personal life here whatsoever. But if anyone (involved) wants to discuss it in private, we can.
I think that's all I have to say here. Thanks to those who read this even if it is way too long.
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beardofkamenev · 3 years
Text
When Adults Attack! (Teenagers)
(Sorry to everyone for dragging this up again, but some people are chronically incapable of letting drama die down.)
The last time I posted about this was 18 February. It’s now late-March. Despite repeatedly claiming to be “over it”, a self-proclaimed “respected history blogger” has been screaming into the void for over a month now. She seems to be under the unfortunate impression that she’s completely innocent of wrongdoing, all the criticism is unprovoked, she has been targeted by “white bigots”, and that she’s somehow the real victim here. So now I have to explain why that’s bullshit. Unlike her and her two friends, I don’t make extreme but vague accusations with zero evidence. I don’t make empty threats about “exposing” people.
The short story? She involved her own self in a situation that had nothing to do with her, downplayed her friends’ racism towards others, incited her followers to harass a teenager, repeatedly lied to her followers about the multiple POC who criticised her friends being “white”, and has continued to inflame the issue while trying to downplay her role in doing so. The long story? Well, I’ll let the receipts do the talking.
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That’s Olivia’s first post at the start of February, days before I or anyone else had even said anything. “My anonymous Jewish friend said!” should have been a red flag to anyone capable of reading anything longer than 280 characters. I’ve already explained why Haley (lucreciadeleon/turtlemoons plus her 92849374 alt accounts) is full of shit and so have plenty of others (here, here, and��here, to name a few).
Olivia claims that, as a Romani woman, she’s not obliged to engage with content that offends her. Fine. So why is a black teenager obliged to engage with Haley’s deranged anons? Why are her hate anons are so worthy of a response that not responding is an act of ANTISEMITISM that warrants Olivia telling everyone what an antisemite this teenager is for not responding? FYI, NO ONE is obligated to respond to anon hate, especially from people they’ve already blocked. And considering Haley admitted not once, not twice, but three times to breaking Tumblr’s TOS to circumvent a mutual block and send those anons (including how she did it), people are especially not obligated to engage with her.
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I made my first posts exposing Taylor (lucreziaborgia/elizabethblount) and Haley’s lies and backtracking on 6 and 7 February. This was before I acknowledged Olivia’s role in inflaming the situation. In fact, I didn’t even know about her tweets until 8 February. Yet, here she is on 6 FEBRUARY already bitching about my posts to her Twitter followers. She has some nerve acting like I victimised her, just because I posted the screenshots of her bitching about me. And bragging about ‘gaslighting’? The word that multiple people have separately described what her two friends subjected them to? Classy.
I can’t “stalk” her public Twitter any more than she can “stalk” my public blog. What an exceptionally stupid claim to make, considering her tweets kept getting recommended to my mutuals whether they liked it or not. Have some integrity and own the shit you say, rather than backtracking, deleting your posts, and pretending that you didn’t say the things we saw you say. If you want to talk shit about others in public, be ready to answer for it in public.
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I also wonder how this started over Henry VII. I specifically wonder how this discussion between myself and May (richmond-rex) triggered Taylor’s totally unprovoked racist comments about how we and Nathen Amin “simp for a dead white man”, and we should “simp for someone who actually advocated for the rights of others” instead. The implication being that Tudor history is only for white people like Taylor, and that only her fave is worthy of discussion (“AnNe BoLeYn WaS oThErEd BeCaUsE sHe WaS tAn.” Good grief).
When multiple POC called bootleg Regina George out for it, not only did she say she couldn’t possibly be racist because Haley approved of her racism, but also tried to argue that Nathen Amin deserved it because it was inappropriate for a British man to joke about Brexit. She then claimed we called her “anti-Welsh” (another fucking lie) to make it seem like a bunch of cRaZy blacks and browns were attacking poor, innocent white her (with Olivia coming to the rescue, of course). And as if that wasn’t enough, Haley then sent these bad faith hate anons calling Nathen Amin’s tweet ANTISEMITIC, for no other reason than to retroactively justify Taylor’s racist comments (though I didn’t see Haley getting offended when she was hate-scrolling through his blog before Taylor was called out).
That was the “antisemitic shit” Haley “privately messaged about” that Olivia thinks deserves a response. In case it's not clear: defending racism makes you complicit in racism. Being Jewish is NOT a get-out-of-racism-free card, and Haley trying to use it as one is absolutely dishonest, especially when NO ONE even knew she was Jewish until she finally admitted in February she was the anonymous ‘Jewish friend’ who sent those batshit anons. Other Jewish people also called Haley out on it, yet Haley and Olivia have conveniently ignored that little fact since it contradicts their narrative.
You think it’s over? Nope. Taylor then slunk into May’s dm’s with a half-arsed apology, where she admitted that the only reason she made those racist comments about Nathen Amin was because we “attacked Gareth Russell first” (“BeCaUsE AnNe FaNs CiTe HiS wOrk”) and she “just wanted to educate us about not lionising Henry VII” (even though anyone with eyeballs can read our discussion see she’s full of shit). At the same time, she and Haley were messaging other history bloggers, telling them that everyone who called them out were antisemites (including an openly Jewish mutual of ours) in an attempt to alienate them from the community. And this was just in JANUARY.
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“I can’t be racist! My Jewish friend agrees with my racism!” That steaming load of backtracking horseshit is unfortunately the kind of nonsense Olivia has chosen to defend. FOR WEEKS Taylor ignored May’s messages, explaining why she — a black woman — found Taylor’s comments offensive. Did Taylor listen? Nope. In fact, she only replied in February: after she already started posting about how ignoring Haley’s hate anons was “antisemitism”. How convenient. Taylor might be a fucking idiot but we’re not. She only replied to May because she was afraid we’d use her own words against her. Clearly she never learnt a damn thing because here she is on 6 February backtracking on her apology. “Actually, I did NOTHING wrong! Also, you’re all antisemites for saying I did because my Jewish friend agrees with me!” And what made Taylor feel as though she had permission to start deflecting her vile behaviour onto others in order to get the heat off her? Olivia’s post about ‘their Jewish friend’ Haley: the one that followed Olivia’s “private discussion” with “her two friends”. Taylor is a racist hypocrite who hides behind the few minority friends she has to justify her racism, and attacks every other minority who disagrees with her. It’s no coincidence that the majority of the history bloggers who have a problem with Taylor and Haley’s nasty behaviour happen to be POC.
Despite Olivia admitting that she knew nothing about that situation other than what those two told her, she still took it upon herself to misconstrue and downplay to all her followers the extent of her friends’ racism, lies, and general nastiness (here she is on 9 MARCH). For her, our problems with racism are little more than “stupid drama”, “Henry VII drama”, “Gareth Russell drama”, “overreacting to a joke”, and “petty disagreements over dead people” because her friends are the perpetrators. Yet she demands everyone sympathise with her never-ending dramas and projects her behaviour onto others, despite the fact that she’s shown absolutely no understanding for why so many people have problems with her friends and has consistently defended the perpetrators. She’s entitled to be upset at whatever she wants to be upset at, but she is not entitled to tell her followers that we can’t be upset about racism directed at us, especially when that situation NEVER EVEN INVOLVED HER.
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I agree. It’s disturbing that three grown women in their mid to late 20s have a vendetta against an 18 year old. Olivia acknowledged that her posts were reckless and that she would have acted differently if she just sat down and thought for one fucking second. But rather than correct the record on the same platform she made those accusations, she doubled down and took off to Twitter, saying that her anger entitled her to act that way. All with zero acknowledgement of the fact that the teenager SHE falsely accused and repeatedly mocked for her age was still being harassed by HER followers as a direct result of HER posts.
She might love the ‘clout’ that comes with a large following, but she evidently doesn’t care about the responsibility that comes with it. In Taylor and Haley’s case, it’s little more than a means to intimidate others into silence. Olivia might be a “respected history blogger” or a “good historian”, but that definitely doesn’t make her a good person. Far from it, if her behaviour is anything to go by.
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This was on 9 February, 3 days after my first post. Bitching about me was all fun and games until the receipts came out, huh?
There’s nothing “insane” about keeping receipts, especially when Taylor and Haley are notorious for lying out of their arses and fake-apologising to people in the dm’s, only to continue mocking them on Twitter afterwards. You know what is insane though? Searching ‘romani’ on our blogs in a pathetic attempt to dig up dirt that doesn’t even exist (yeah, stat trackers exist). Do you know what else is insane? Haley spamming people with passive aggressive anons and sending anon hate to people who’ve already blocked her. She also “stalked” our WOTR group chat, though she’ll never admit to it, despite accidentally posting the dated receipts proving it. Oops!
It’s no secret that Taylor and Haley are cowards (as all bullies are), so it was no surprise when they eventually involved Olivia in their month-old vendetta against a teenager. They wanted to school a black girl on racism and Congolese genocide apologism, so they needed to get a “respectable history blogger” on their side. And Olivia happily obliged, kicking up such a fuss on their behalf that the teenager just offered to end it (despite the fact that Olivia vagued her first). Yet still Olivia continued, publicly mocking her age and calling her an “antisemite” long after the discussion was over (here she is on 24 February still carrying on). Either a teenager is old enough to be publicly shamed for being an “antisemite” and “antiromani bigot”, or she’s too young to be taken seriously. But at 25, Olivia is certainly old enough to know better than to participate in this kind of vile, petty, wannabe Mean Girl behaviour.
Olivia is not black. Taylor is not black. Haley is not black. So for the record, if you are not black, it is not your place to tell BLACK PEOPLE whether they can take issue with apologism for BLACK GENOCIDE. Multiple black history bloggers have already explained why they had a problem with Gareth Russell’s comments about the Congolese genocide (including the teen in question), yet that was less important to Olivia than not being able to call him a sexist weirdo because he’s gay. Olivia cannot speak on all minority issues — especially black and brown issues — and it is arrogant of her to assume that she can, especially since her understanding of the Gareth Russell issue came purely from “what she discussed with her two friends” by her own admission.
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What a take. Here’s the “anti-Romani” post that I supposedly made. Precisely ZERO of my posts were about Olivia and not once did I even name her directly. So her claims that I mounted some kind of “vicious attack” against her is, uh, bullshit. Criticising her and her friends for their nasty, dishonest, and irresponsible behaviour isn’t “anti-Romani” just because she’s Romani. It’s no more “anti-Romani” than her erratic attempts to “expose” me are anti-Asian just because I’m Asian. It’s not any more “anti-Romani” just because the UK government has passed anti-Romani laws, any more than her telling deranged lies about me for over a month is an anti-Asian hate crime simply because there’s been an increase in anti-Asian hate crimes. I’m not British. I’m not from the UK. I have no control over whatever dumb, racist crap her government does. So she can fuck off and continue fucking off if she wants to make me personally responsible for that. The backlash she received had nothing to do with her identity and everything to do with how she purposely incited harassment against a teenager, defended her friends’ racism, and spread demonstrable lies to her followers. The “viciousness” of the backlash she received is directly proportionate to the viciousness of her own baseless attacks against others. She can claim to be more mature than an 18 year old all she wants, but do you know what the actual mature thing to do would have been? To not promote her friends’ lies and nonsense, especially when the other people they tried to involve had the sense to stay out of it.
Olivia, Taylor and Haley are fully-grown adults, but take no responsibility for their actions. Yet, they expect teenagers to have total control over not only their own emotions, but also the emotions and actions of others. Olivia thinks that a teen should be personally responsible for the behaviour of fully-grown adults, yet she’s close friends with Taylor — a racist, xenophobic bully who screenshots Tumblr people’s posts to mock them on Twitter (here and here from December), called Poles who’ve lost relatives in the Holocaust “genocidal loving freaks”, accused an openly Ashkenazi Jewish blogger of “internalised antisemitism” just for criticising her (a white gentile), said that people who like Mary I “resent their own siblings”, co-opted our struggles under Spanish imperialism just so she could bully ‘Spaniards’ (despite her being American and therefore equally responsible for genocide, by her flawed logic), and said that the black teen who called out her racism “really deserved to be bullied” and “needed to be policed”. Olivia is also close friends with Haley, who has a history of attacking people over posts that have nothing to do with her, publicly admitted to circumventing blocks in order to send hate anons, and likened me — a Filipino immigrant — to DONALD TRUMP and a neo-Nazi conspiracy theorist just because I posted the receipts exposing her lies, harassment of others, and projection.
Most of the people who have spoken out against these three didn’t even know each other until last month. Some of ‘us’ have actually blocked each other. Yet all of us agree that their behaviour towards others has been absolutely unacceptable. How is it that so many unrelated people from different corners of the ‘fandom’ have exactly the same problems with exactly the same people? If Olivia want us to take personal responsibility for “our friends’” behaviour, then she should first take responsibility for hers.
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This is on 26 February, over a week after I last posted. As anyone with eyeballs can see, I called her British once. Not “repeatedly”. ONCE. So she can fuck off again with that bullshit. And why did I point that out? Because Olivia, a British citizen, made pejorative comments about “white Eastern Europeans!!!” just because she thinks some Polish people committed the heinous crime of... screenshotting her tweets. They didn’t even do it, and even if they did, how is that even relevant? Everyone knows that one specific Polish person lives rent free in Taylor’s head, so clearly Olivia just took Taylor’s word for it that it must have been The Poles who were “stalking” her. Maybe don’t take paranoid liars at face value next time?
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Shameless, ignorant, tone deaf nonsense. Olivia constantly demands that people treat her and her identity with the utmost respect, yet here she was on 9 February already disrespecting the identities of others just so she can score some petty ‘oppression points’ against them. Why even bring their nationalities up? And why call them “white Eastern Europeans” instead of Polish since she knows they’re Polish? Is it because acknowledging that they are Polish would mean acknowledging that she doesn’t actually have a monopoly on a claim to discrimination or Holocaust trauma? Could it be that dismissing them as just some “white Eastern Europeans” was just another way for her to add credence to her own “pathetic lies” about the situation? There’s a word for that behaviour, and it starts with pro- and ends with -jection.
Let me reiterate: it is IGNORANT of her to use their identity against them, especially when hate-crimes against Polish immigrants have increased in her home country, and especially when the specific people she insulted lost close relatives (including Jewish relatives) in the Holocaust. It’s not “repeatedly mocking her identity” to point out her hypocrisy. Her being Romani is not an excuse for casual xenophobia. She might be able to hide her identity in the UK (though she shouldn’t have to), but Polish immigrants do not have the privilege of passing as first-language white British. I cannot pass as non-Asian. The black girl she and her friends tried to bully off Tumblr cannot pass as non-black. Olivia weaponising people’s identity against them just because she thinks they saw her public tweets is ignorant, petty, and completely uncalled for. She should be absolutely ashamed for using that pathetic argument, but based on her most recent farrago of nonsense, she probably won’t be.
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Here’s her on 7 MARCH. And of course Taylor was the first to like it lol. Olivia may have deluded herself into believing she was just an innocent bystander, but unfortunately, enough people saw her admitting to inserting herself into the situation at the behest of her two friends. With every post before and since, her accusations have gotten wilder and wilder, falser and falser, and more and more irrelevant because she knows full well that none of her followers will bother fact-checking her. That’s the beauty of vagueing people. It’s how Taylor and Haley have been able to get away with pulling the wool over peoples’ eyes for so long. Too bad repetition, projection, and self-righteous outrage doesn’t equate to the truth because those are all those three have.
“SOMEONE NEEDS TO EXPOSE THE WHOLE DAMN LOT OF THEM! BUT IT WON’T BE ME!” 
No one has said anything since 18 February, yet here’s Olivia publicly inciting her followers again. She’s “done talking about it”, yet she’s the only one continuing the drama. She is being ‘persecuted’, yet she mobilises her followers to go after others. She needs to be defended against critics, yet she also can’t resist bragging about big her Tumblr following is, how “piddly” our notes are compared to hers, how she got over 30 followers to report my posts (they’re still up lol), and how many people she can get to dig through our blogs to find anything to “expose” us. Olivia, I’m sorry that you require constant validation from strangers on the internet, but not everyone has the same priorities as you. Some of us just come here to have fun, but having shitstarters in the community is decidedly un-fun.
All my posts were directed at Taylor and Haley, but since Olivia insists on making this revolve around her, let me clarify: she is a hypocrite and a professional victim. Words have meaning, and those words are the most accurate words to describe her behaviour. It has fuck all to do with her identity. She and Haley are professional victims because they act as if their minority statuses exempt them from basic rules of online courtesy and entitle them to run their mouths about others with no consequence. And Olivia is a hypocrite because she demands the respect and understanding that she has repeatedly refused to show to others. She made ignorant, xenophobic comments against Polish people because she falsely assumed they screenshot her public posts bitching about others. She pretends that the many POC who have spoken out against her are just some “white” hive-mind because admitting that we’re not white will discredit the victimhood narrative she’s been peddling to her followers. And she arrogantly presumes to be ‘our’ voice in the community, all while mobilising her following to intimidate and silence the minorities who take issue with her and her friends’ vile behaviour.
It’s extremely telling that in every one of her unlettered rants, Olivia made the conscious choice to conflate us with “white gentiles”, “white antisemites”, and “white Eastern Europeans”. Why? Because in order to “name and shame” us, she’d have to admit to her followers that the majority of the people criticising her aren’t actually “white”, but are in fact black, brown, and Jewish. Having repeatedly demanded that her followers defend her, her reputation and credibility now depends upon people continuing to see her as the oppressed victim of “bigoted whites”. Unfortunately for her and her friends, the truth will always come out. That’s what receipts are for, no matter what they claim.
The history community didn’t side with “a white gentile woman”. We sided with a black teenager who Olivia and her friends repeatedly mocked for her age, publicly and privately spread false accusations against, and incited their followers to harass with their never-ending posts. We sided against white racists like Taylor, and her white-passing enablers like Olivia and Haley. Since being called out for racism by a black girl discredited them, they had to discredit her. And unlike the others Taylor and Haley tried to involve, Olivia was their willing accomplice. If she has now been “alienated by half the history fandom”, it is because of her own behaviour and rightly so.
The ideal course of action would be for Olivia to finally take some responsibility for her actions, publicly apologise for her role in inflaming this drama, and move on like the rest of us have tried to do. But unfortunately, she may be too far gone in her own pathological need for online validation to ever admit wrongdoing without some serious introspection. So perhaps, Olivia, if anything else, you should just take your own advice and, once and for all, SHUT THE FUCK UP.
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Text
My Treasure - William Nylander
Request: Can you do one where you are pregnant with William nylanders baby and getting hate and he makes you feel better
Getting pregnant at 24 was definitely not a part of my 5 year post college plan. Then again falling in love wasn't one of my bullet points either. But when my period was over a week late I knew that everything was about to change. William was thrilled when he saw the bolded word on the pregnancy test, immediately wanting to tell anyone he could. I was a little more hesitant to share the news.
I knew that I wanted children someday and those feelings intensified once my relationship with William became serious, I just figured we would be married and I would be a little more secure in my teaching job before we would add a baby to the mix. We told our families first and they were all excited and happy for us, same with friends and teammates. The real problem came when we started to share the news with the rest of the world. On William's social media everyone was happy for us and wishing us well, but mine is where all of the hate went.
She probably got knocked up so he couldn't leave her.
Hopefully you don't gain too much baby weight, you could already stand to lose a little.
You're not even pregnant with his kid I bet, just went to the guy with the biggest paycheck.
I did my best to delete the comments as soon as I saw them, hiding them from William so he wouldn’t get upset. Some people didn't get the hint after the first deleted comment and I would end up blocking them. Two weeks after announcing our pregnancy the nasty comments were outweighing the nice ones of my post. My pregnancy hormones went crazy one day when my pants didn't fit for the first time of the pregnancy and William was away on a road trip until the morning.
I canceled my plans to go get dinner with some friends and instead had a pity party in some of William's clothes with ice cream and reading through all the horrible things that were being said about me.
I can't believe he is still with her, she is not pretty enough for him.
Fat cow
You are going to ruin his career with the child.
I cried myself to sleep on the couch after midnight and didn't wake up until someone was brushing some hair out of my face. Slowly opening my eyes I saw a concerned William kneeling on the floor in front of me. "Ellie, what’s wrong? Were you crying?" I sat up, making room for William next to me before he pulled me into his lap. "Your friends texted me last night and told me you skipped on going to dinner with them. Is everything okay? Is the baby okay?"
"The baby is fine, I just couldn't find anything that fit comfortably with the bump. I had a pity party with ice cream and must have fallen asleep." Everything I said was true, I just left out one major thing.
"I'm sorry babe, but can I finally buy you some new maternity clothes? Please." He gave me puppy dog eyes as he begged, causing me to laugh and turn to face him more.
"You love shopping more than I do."
"Is that a yes? I'm taking that as a yes. Go get ready, shopping might take all day." With that he was carrying me down the hall, laughing the entire way. When he finally set me down I managed to find a t-shirt dress that wasn't too uncomfortable and proceeded to get ready.
***
After a full day of shopping William took me out to dinner at our favorite Spanish restaurant. I excused myself after we ordered a bunch of small plates to share to run to the bathroom and when I got back William was standing at the table with a large plastic bag and shaking hands with the owner. "What's going on?" 
"I thought you might be more comfortable if we went home and ate. I've kept you busy most of the day so I know your feet must be bothering you." His tone was off but I brushed it off as we headed out. The drive home was a tense silence without even the radio playing.
I didn't say anything until we were in the apartment and William started slamming cabinet doors as he got plates. "What's wrong?"
"I just don't get why people spend so much time trying to make other people down! Like, what does it do for them?" He had a fire in his eyes I had only ever seen on the ice, and I wasn't sure what was causing it.
"I'm going to some more context here. Did something happen at the restaurant?"
"Before we left the last store I took a couple of pictures for our shopping day and posted them to Instagram. I thought it was no big deal, just sharing what I was up to on a day off. And then when you were in the bathroom your phone started buzzing like crazy so I thought someone was trying to call you. But all of your notifications were for Instagram, and I know I shouldn't have opened the app on your phone but I thought maybe it was your girlfriends' group chat and Sophie finally got engaged." I let out a small chuckle at that, we basically were taking bets on when her and her high school sweetheart would finally take the next step.
"I'm guessing that isn't what you saw." I knew what he was going to say next but I was hoping with every fiber of my being that I was wrong.
"No, I saw the worst of humanity in your DMs. I just- how can people be so cruel?" William slumped into the bar stool next to me at the island as I reached for my phone having to see what was sent to me now. "Ellie…" I ignored his worried warning as I opened up the app, going to my DMs.
Fat cow, you only got pregnant so that you could lock in some who is far too good for you. I hope he sees he could do so much better and kicks you out before that baby ruins his career and life!
So you are just using him for his money. I bet the baby isn’t even his, probably a teammate who makes less. Whore!
Bitch, why are you even with Willy? He is a literal hockey god and from what i can tell you are just some stupid high school math teacher. He can do so much better than you. 
There were over 50 messages just like those, all sent within the last hour. I didn't even dare look at the comments on my latest post, even though it was a few days old the braver trolls put their nasty messages there for the whole world to see.
"How long has this been happening?" I had hopped off my stool, going to plate up the food we brought home and trying to avoid the conversation I knew we needed to have. "Ellie… Please talk to me. How long?"
"Honestly, since we started posting that we were dating. It's gotten worse since we posted that we are gonna be parents."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"Because part of me thought that if I just deleted the messages and comments that it wasn't real. That if I was the only one who knew that I could just pretend that it was all in my head. Then there is that stupid voice in my head that likes to play up my insecurities, that made me feel like if you saw what people were sending me that you would believe it. And I know that thinking that is stupid and unrealistic but it can sometimes be the loudest thing in there." William also got off his stool, coming to stand right in front of me. He kissed my forehead before cupping my cheeks and holding eye contact.
"Min skatt, never feel like you have to hide this from me. You are the one I am in love with and want to spend the rest of my life with. You are the only one that can make me smile and laugh when I am in a bad mood after a game. You are the only one I see myself growing old, and possibly bald with." I let out a gasp at the word bald, he was so protective about his hair.
"See, the rational part of me knows all that."
"Well, let me make it clear to every part of you. I love you with every fiber of my being and as soon as I meet with your father next week to ask for his blessing, I will be asking you to marry me."
"Will…"
"But I am going to need you to act surprised when I ask." That got a small chuckle out of me. 
"I'll do my best." William's stomach growled then, making both laugh. "Let's eat before your stomach starts communicating with us again." William just nods, a thoughtful look on his face that I'm sure would cause problems later but right now I just wanted to live in the happy moment.
After reheating the food and settling at the kitchen island to eat, I went through and deleted all the DMs and comments. I barely registered what they said as I deleted. What I didn't know was Will was looking at the comments as I deleted before pulling out his own phone. It was only when my phone buzzed with another notification that I found out what he was doing. 
@williamnylander tagged you in a post
The post was two pictures side by side; the first was from our first date at a Christmas market, all bundled up and snuggled into each other as we took the photo in a mirror. The other picture was a selfie he took of us at my last doctor's appointment for the pregnancy, both of us were all smiles as I sat on the exam table with a picture of the sonogram on the screen behind us.
Two pictures of the love of my life. One from our first date, where I was a clutz and spilt hot chocolate all over her light grey coat and she still agreed to a second date. The other from a few weeks ago when we got another look at our baby. 
I can say without any doubt that having Ellie in my life has only made it better. She has become my sounding board for when I'm frustrated, my motivation to score more goals, and my ray of sunshine on any cloudy day. 
I knew from that first date that Ellie was the one for me, no one can tell me otherwise. And now she is carrying our first child. My heart continues to grow and fall in love with this amazing, kind, dedicated, caring, loving, and perfect woman each day.
I am so lucky to spend time with you each day and anyone who says otherwise is wrong and jealous of what we have.
Min skat, I am so excited to watch our family grow and experience the joys and challenges of parenthood with you. Ellie I love you and can't wait to see where we go next. 
Together.
The tears started flowing before I even read the caption, the pictures enough with my pregnancy hormones. But the words William managed to write push me over the edge, I was crying at the love he put into the words but also laughing at the not so subtle 'fuck you' to all the nasty people who sent you messages.
"Did I overstep? I don’t want to embarrass you."
"It's perfect. You're perfect. I love you."
"I love you too, and I plan on showing you that everyday. Even if it is something as simple as an Instagram post."
"It's not just the post, it's that you are saying to all the people who see your pictures and then come trash talk to me that you know about them. And that will probably stop some of them from doing it again. And anyone who doesn't get the message gets blocked."
"Good. Now, let go watch some TV and cuddle." Nodding grabbing my plate of food, following William to the couch before curling into his side.
As William pulled up the next episode of a show we were binging, I thought of something. "You never have told me what 'min skat' means."
"It means 'my treasure'. And it reminds me how lucky I am every day to have you in my life."
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singeramg · 3 years
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Trigger warning for LANGUAGE 🤷🏾‍♀️
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Damned if you do.
Damned if you don’t.
So I’m gonna say what has been on my mind for months now. Read or not it’s a rant and I’m going to post it because as I said earlier I refuse to go into 2021 holding on to this much longer because as of late as much as I love the creativity of tumblr I am hating the vibes. It’s making me reluctant to post anything because once again:
Damned if you do, Damned if you don’t.
I be on that kumbaya let’s hold hands and talk it out because let’s face it at the end of the day we are here for our specific interests and whether it’s passive or not, a connection about that interest that we may or may not have in our everyday world. I can understand that we are bodies behind a computer screen. I am saying this because this will be my last post on fandom discord or the bull that is happening within it because it’s clearly being twisted into something that is hateful not the the message that it was intended to be and I am so tired of feeling like the bad guy for wanting everyone to get along. I tried to be a spot of brightness because I know what it feels like to have no one see you or try to understand you. At the end of the day people are human so everything is not going to mess perfectly and disagreements will happen. However some things are just unacceptable.
I try to keep most of my messages pg in terms of posts like this but that shits dead as of....now. So TRIGGER WARNING IF CURSING BOTHERS YOUR DELICATE SENSITIVITIES.
If you are being a dick to others because they do not like the same things/blog or write content that you do or don’t support with the Cavill fandom and you are threatening them. YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE. No if, ands or buts about it. It’s shitty thing to do and what gives you the right to do that to anyone and think that it’s okay. You would probably have a breakdown if someone flipped the switch and did that to you.
NEWSFLASH!
YOU ARE FUCKING UP THE EXPERIENCE FOR EVERYONE ELSE BECAUSE YOU ARE RUNNING OFF PEOPLE THAT ARE HERE TO SUPPORT THE SAME DAMN PERSON/ FANDOM THAT YOU ARE. Did you ever stop to think that if you run everyone off you are damaging the celeb your swear you care so much about? There won’t be any new content for the fandom if everyone is afraid to post anything because you are on here threatening peoples real lives outside of an online forum. Tf are you thinking!!!
If you are actively shaming or not supporting writers because of their race YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE. Everyone is welcome and to make people feel like they don’t because they cater their fics or content to a severely unappreciated sector of the fandom is bullshit. Stop that shit NOW. Heads up if you didn’t know I write my reader fics all inclusive so that everyone can enjoy and specify if they aren’t for a completely true reader fic. Don’t exclude fics because of race.
If you go anon just be nasty to someone but don’t have the heart to say it from your blog. Say it with me everyone
YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE!!!!
Other side of the coin:
Stop trying to moderate everyone else’s experience or what they post on their blog. If you don’t like the shit someone is posting use the damn block button because if seems like every few months we get a flood of new people in the fandom and all of a sudden there is an issue with the adult content being posted BY adults. If a blog can’t get their shit together with the tags and you’ve already asked nicely then it’s clear that it’s a blog whose content you don’t want to see anyway. It’s not that fucking hard. Stop the madness and cut the shit. Stop dragging the rest of the fandom into your issues because you don’t want to deal with your real issues. Learn that no one owes you anything but the tags and end of the day if they can’t manage that then they don’t deserve your viewership anyway. 🤷🏾‍♀️
On a personal note because I see now that no matter how I say it or how much support I show someone is always going to have a problem with it. FUCK IT might as well go ahead and say it.
Don’t talk shit on anon using my language from a previous post to devalue what the fuck I said. It’s a shitty thing to do to someone when you know that it’s uncalled for and you know their intent is not to cause harm. Strangely no one has any of that mouth in my ask box or Messages so I’m going to assume nothing other than a passing upset because I tried the Method “please everyone get along.” So If you don’t like what I said slide into the DMs the ask box or if you feeling so bold my tags but cut with the subliminal shit. The only reason I am not tagging anyone is because I KNOW it would only cause more drama and pain and I really want to dead this mess.
I love it here because for all of its messiness it’s brimming over with creative energy! To all the writers whether you like smut or clean fluff piece, black, white, whatever it’s okay. Just tag properly and keep it moving. Your content is always welcomed if you post properly and if you are the ones reading and you find yourself in a post that is not your cup of tea well keep scrolling. That’s okay too. No one will fault you for not enjoying everything posted in the fandom tag.
This has been my Ted Talk lol and if you made it this far then remember that I still love you all and am still wishing for the best.
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spytap · 3 years
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That Time I Maybe Accidentally Slid Between Universes On The Lower East Side: A Modern Pizza Brigadoon
Okay, we’re trying this again. With the words. Let’s give it a shot.
I was telling this story over the weekend, and it struck me that it’s something I’ve never really written down. But I think it’s worth documenting - you know, for science.
I guess I have to preface this by saying that I’m not the type of person to accept the unexplainable. In the Mulder/Scully matrix of assumptions, I lean much more Scully, assuming that most things have a reasonable explanation once more data is uncovered or known. I say that just so that I can say that one time while on a business trip to New York, I’m pretty sure I drunkenly dropped back and forth between parallel universes Sliders-style while trying to grab a slice.
Right, so let’s set the stage of our merry little fever dream of a play, shall we?
It’s 1:30am and I am drunk.
Wait, let’s be clear: I’m not just “I’m in New York and let’s have some fun” drunk, I’m “we’re at a digital media event and it’s the late oughts” drunk. I think it was the Webbies, but who knows. It could have been social media week or any number of other things. But if you were in the DM scene at the time, you remember (or not…) that any event which brought together the weird crossover between tech, social media, and nascent web video had, at its intersection, going hard in the motherfucking paint, if you get my drift.
The late oughts were where SXSW got its reputation as an epic and riotous shitshow where long term memories went to die. Companies lived and died by the parties they threw way out in the wasteland that was “anywhere off of sixth street.” It set the scene for an arms race of irresponsibility that wouldn’t peter out until about 2012. And New York, being much larger than Austin and with a scrappy underdog of a tech industry, had a reputation to uphold.
So that’s how I find myself at my third after party, in a bar called (I think?) Ford’s, on the lower east side, surrounded by the technorati, glitterati, and all other manner of descriptive terms for young, pretty, newly and soon-to-be rich people, before we discovered that they were called “influencers.”
This bar is a proper dive. Not quite “you could destroy everything in here and you’d be out like fifteen bucks” but still well into “you’re gonna need more than a new paint job once the artisan cheese shops roll into this neighborhood.” Put in 2009 money, we were still getting five dollar beers in Manhattan, so do with that what you will.
Back to the story: right around 1:30AM, I’m thinking three things: 1) I would very much like to slam an inordinate amount of pizza into my mouth, 2) I probably need to use the restroom before I do so, and 3) The four or five people I’m with are probably feeling the same way. So I check in with my crew, tell them I’m gonna hit the head and then we’re gonna hit some pizza. First things first though: I gotta get some crucial info from the bartender.
I saunter up to the bar and ask where I can get a slice. The sole bartender, a man who is both younger and exponentially cooler than me, tells me “New York’s best pizza is two blocks up and one left.”
“New York’s best?” I clarify, because wouldn’t that be a coincidence?
“Yep, New York’s best pizza. Two blocks up, one left.”
Well, I know that everyone thinks they know the best pizza in town, but this dude looks like he’s a perpetual trend setter, so it feels like it has a higher-than-average likelihood of relative goodness. Besides, I’ve assaulted my sense well past the realm of good taste, so as long as it’s not cooked on a literal garbage can, it should serve it’s purpose. I pop the directions into the old memory banks, and wander off through the broken door that indicates relief (and, in retrospect, possibly tetanus.)
True to its dive bar requirements, this restroom is super classy you guys. Just above the pee trough (like an actual six foot long trough that horses would drink out of) (in other circumstances) there’s a mirror where someone has carved “Smoke Beer” - a particular exercise that I contemplate for far too long. Is this a flavor profile of some cheeky new porter? Are they suggesting you replace your bong water with Budweiser? Or is this an actual “get a beaker and some burners and let’s get high in the science lab” situation?
Regardless, my attention turns back to the core mission: Operation Pizza Face Hole Intersection. So I push away the culinary suggestion, zip up, and return to the main room to find…no one.
I don’t mean my friends were gone. I mean that when I left to pee, there was somewhere between 150 and 200 people in this bar, and now there were two. And I was one of them. The other one is a bartender, but very crucially, not the bartender I was just speaking to one or two or five hundred billion minutes ago. This is a new bartender. He’s older. And has a beard. This is very distinctly a different person, but I’m still hung up on the reality that there is no one else in this bar except for him and me.
I look at this new bartender. He looks at me. I look around to see if maybe my friends are hiding behind something, but this place doesn’t even have tables, let alone hiding spaces. I look back. He’s still looking at me. So I do the only logical thing to do in this scenario: I run away.
Outside, I pull out my blackberry (shut up) and call my friends. Voicemail. Every one. No one picks up. I text them “where the fuck are you assholes” but drunkenly, on a keyboard the size of a postage stamp, so they don’t write back, even to clarify whether I just had a stroke.
Something has definitely gone horribly wrong. I am very drunk in a strange part of a strange city. Everyone I know and several dozen complete strangers have been Thanos-snapped into the ether of the universe. I am alone and have no real understanding of how to get home from here. But, you know, I also still really want pizza. So I do the only thing that truly makes sense in this scenario: I start walking towards pizza.
One block up, things start getting weird(er). Now weird in nighttime Manhattan isn’t quite as weird as it used to be, and I’ve spent a fair amount of time in Venice Beach, so my weird meter is a little skewed compared to most people. But it’s as-near-as-matters-2am now and the streets of the lower east side are deserted, except for…
Look, there’s no way to say this without sounding like I’m writing a David Lynch spec, so I’m just gonna say it and you’re gonna have to trust me here.
Directly in front of me there is a group of a dozen or so seven to ten year old girls playing double dutch in the middle of the street. A totally normal sight at 2pm - less so at 2am. There are no adults here. Or anywhere. Except me. And right as I notice them, they notice me. They don’t stop their monotone chanting, they just continue to do so while swiveling their heads to follow me like a leopard follows a [whatever leopards eat - I’m not looking it up on Wikipedia right now.]
So once again: empty streets in the LES, except for me and a gaggle of girls wielding a pair of twin jump ropes. And chanting. I briefly wonder if they’re okay and why they’re out here all along performing what’s starting to sound more and more like some pagan ritual before I keep fucking walking because there’s no scenario in which any good comes from me stopping and hanging around. But I start thinking that I need a witness here.
The blessing of living in California and spending a lot of time in New York is actually time. More specifically, that you can call your girlfriend at what’s almost your 2AM and she’ll still be up and wondering what the absolute fuck you’re talking about when you open with “I hope I didn’t wake you but everyone disappeared and I’m kind of scared because there’s this creepy group of girls playing double dutch but I think it’s going to be alright because I’m walking to get pizza.”
We’d been together for a while at that point, so thankfully I’d build up a reservoir of good graces to pull from in moments like these.
Witness achieved, I told her precisely (ish) where I was, so the police could find my body, and continued my Epic Pizza Quest. Two blocks up, and one block left, where I found…
New York’s Best Pizza. That’s the goddamned name. Motherfucking hipster bartenders.
It’s open, for some reason, and empty for good reason, but after some back and forth that includes “well I don’t have any and I’d have to make a full pizza” and “I understand but I don’t want a full fucking pizza, I just want a slice” I get a couple slices and, for lack of anything better to do, decide to head back to Ford’s.
Now you might be asking yourself, dear reader, why I would march back through a fae revelry towards a crack in the universe, and that’s a very good question. The answer is that I was very drunk at the time.
So back I went.
The children were still there, still playing double dutch. (In my memory of this, they’re doing everything slowly and in a minor key, but it’s likely they were normal speed and tone, and I was just perceiving things slowly for chemical reasons.) My phone comes out again and I subtly (HA) narrate my way through this gauntlet to my girlfriend (and for the police report) and back towards the bar/Tardis.
Which brings us to our climax. See, there’s something even more disconcerting than leaving a restroom to find an erstwhile packed bar with naught but tumbleweeds, and that’s coming back to the deserted bar and finding it full again. Like packed full. Like normal full. Like Digital Media Event after party full. You know, like you remembered it pre-restroom (which is as weird a sentence to type as it is, I imagine, to read.)
I immediately run into my friends, who not only know nothing at all about the empty bar, but proclaim that they’ve been looking for me for “like an hour.” They’ve called and texted me, they say, which is ludicrous because I’ve been using my phone and I would have…
I looked at my phone. I had seven missed calls. A dozen texts. None of which were on my phone when I used it just moments ago, but all of which were timestamped over the past hour-ish.
I call my girlfriend again. Please pick up.
“Did you just talk to me and did I just tell you about everyone disappearing and the bar being totally empty and the weird creepy double dutch girls and getting into an argument with the pizza guy at New York’s Best Pizza?” I shouted into the phone, to the absolute horror of my friends (who were probably wondering what legal obligations they had to return me to my hotel and/or the insane asylum before I hurt myself.)
“Yes…” she responded, probably wondering what obligations she had to guide me to my hotel and/or the insane asylum before I hurt myself.
“Good!” I shouted, and promptly hung up, having proven my sanity, but really testing the depths of that aforementioned reservoir of goodwill. She would later tell me that somehow the second phone call was weirder than the first.
Moving past my friends, I stormed back into the bar. The bartender (the first one, the hipster one, the human one) clocked me coming in, but before he could open his mouth to ask what was probably going to be a very friendly question about whether I found the pizza place, or did I want to close out the tab I’d left open, instead got to be on the receiving end of me shouting “You sent me to a really fucking weird pizza place!” before marching out the door; thus cementing my reputation as a gifter of bizarre and inexplicable social interactions, and the probable punchline to someone else’s very different story.
For the rest of the week, my friends would swear up, down, sideways, sober, and drunk that no, the bar did not empty out; no, this was not a prank; no, they didn’t see me leave; and yes, they were in the very full and active bar the entire time I was gone.
It’s ten years later, and I don’t have an explanation for this event. I wouldn’t say it haunts me, but it’s definitely one of the weirder things that’s ever happened to me. And weirder still, in writing down this modern pizza-driven Brigadoon, I looked up Ford’s and New York’s Best Pizza just to see if I remembered their names right - and I can’t find any trace of either of them.
I’m still with the same girlfriend, and she still remembers the phone calls (vividly), but no one else was actually there, so no one else can verify the very weird set of events and circumstances that happened late that night, and into the early morning, across a series of overlapping universes.
Somewhere, out there in the ether of the multiverse, I imagine one version of me is still wondering where everyone went and yearning for a slice of New York’s Best Pizza.
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obsidian-aurora · 3 years
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As I’m about to dive into the events of 227 in my fanfic, I thought now is a good moment to take some time to reflect on the past year.
Words:  1,086,764
Chapters:  131/?
Comments:  2206
Kudos:  4065
Bookmarks:  350
Hits:  161449
If you can believe it, I started writing this fic almost a year ago now.  I’ve written the equivalent of a novel a month this whole year! Nuts. I watched The Untamed for the first time over a year ago.  My soul was captured by the light that I saw in Xiao Zhan’s and Yibo’s eyes when they looked at each other. And I haven’t stopped believing in the power of love since then.
Sounds corny?  Yeah, kind of is.
It’s hard to imagine that when I started writing this fic, the Special Edition hadn’t come out yet.  There was only the official BTS on the Tencent channel to watch - as well as a pile of interviews and fanmeetings.  There were no secret Discord groups, I didn’t even have a Twitter account.  I had this old blog of mine on Tumblr and an old AO3 account that I dusted off to start writing some fanfiction again.
Did you know I’m a self-published author?  Oh yeah, for years I wrote nothing but my own novels.  You can check them out here at lillybirdsong.com
I thought to myself, I’ll just write a short fanfic over the course of December.  I’ll publish it in January and rid my system of this bug I’ve got and then move on.  Now, a year later and I still can’t stop writing about these boys.  What is it?  It’s all about love.  It’s about the belief that against all odds, whether it’s living in a society that doesn’t support LGBT individuals, whether it’s struggling with management companies that don’t support you in your own careers, against all odds Love Wins™.
Or does it?
I’m about to embark on writing the 227 part of the fanfiction and I thought it was really important for me to remind everyone that what I’m writing here is not a bible, it’s not a biography, it’s a piece of fiction that’s my own personal interpretation of what might have happened.  I’m saying this because it’s soul-crushing to imagine what might have taken place behind closed doors, the conversations that would have happened, the thoughts that would have spun out of control.
I mean, I just remember my own journey.  Some of which is documented right here on Tumblr.  I wrote one of my first artist blogs when I hit 50 chapters on Yizhan in early Feb.  I wrote a post when Xiao Zhan fans first started calling out AO3 for hosting inflammatory material. I wrote a post when I considered whether this fic should be abandoned. I wrote a post when Coronavirus brought me back home on a plane way earlier than expected.  I wrote a post in April when I completed 80 chapters, and at the end of May when I completed 100 chapters.
I’ve gone a bit dark on Tumblr since I moved to Twitter where there’s a lot more BJYX interaction going on, but Twitter is not a good place for a long post so I’m once again spilling my thoughts here on Tumblr.
Writing about 227
As I start to write about this, I’m going to pick and choose which rumours I will write into the story and which I’ll discard.  Because let’s get real - there are a lot of rumours out there, and no one except those people intimately involved will know the truth of the matter.  I do choose to believe some of the malicious rumours.  And so I will include some of them.
Don’t start a war in my comments section. I beg you.  I’ll just have to end up moderating my comments which I never wanted to do.
Disagreements within the fandom
I’ve noticed more and more “extreme” behaviour within the BJYX fandom.  I feel like ever since the “secret” BTS (which are mostly the same as what we saw in the official BTS just longer cuts) have whipped turtles up into a frenzy! And when someone has a different opinion or when someone likes to spout theories about what their small interactions might mean in the context of the bigger picture, that can cause harm.
So I’m saying right now - everyone’s entitled to their own points of view. No one knows the truth but the ones involved.
Don’t bring your disagreements to my fic.
Respect in public spaces
I have also stated this on Twitter but I want to put my 2 cents here as well.  I’ve also been uncomfortable lately with the amount of public discourse about body parts, about sex positions, really really intimate things. If you want to write fanfics or draw fanart to explore these interpretations, I say go for it! That’s appropriate because it’s within the realm of fantasy. But when it comes down to really speculating about what’s going on in the private lives of these two men we love so much, I personally would rather those conversations be relegated to private spaces - Discord, WhatsApp.  Not Twitter and Tumblr. So you’ll notice that I’ve unfollowed and even blocked some accounts recently that cross a line I’m not comfortable with.
When I do that, it’s not about you, it’s not a personal attack. That’s just me not being comfortable with the content that’s being created in the space it’s being distributed. If you want to chat with me about it, I’m very open to having that discussion in DM. I’ve been called a hypocrite for my views given that my story is an explicit one, but in my mind there’s a clear distinction between me publishing a story on AO3 and people discussing their real private lives in public spaces like Twitter.  That’s just my point of view and I mean no offence to those that feel the opposite.
As usual, I always have my finger on the trigger to take Yizhan down the moment it causes harm to the boys in question.
Other interesting things I’ve done lately:
I’ve been publishing some Fanart.  (See the pic at the end of this post as an example). Follow me on Twitter @ObsidianAurora to get the latest as I usually post things first there. I’ll try to remember to post things here as well.
I started a YouTube Channel. It’s called Queer Stories and it’s my space to talk about all things queer - video games, TV shows, and yeah sometimes even how harmful it can be to assume you know someone’s gender identity, whether they’re feminine or masculine, and that this has nothing to do with a person’s sexuality. This video I made in the context of BJYX/LSFY/ZSWW and Yizhan.
I opened a Patreon account since some people wanted to know how to support me. I have been jobless since our visual effects studio closed down in May and I’m starting up a new job again next week (finally!) but if you want to contribute for the work I’m doing this would be the way.
Be Kind.
I’ve rambled on for quite a bit now so let me end it here. Let me just say please be kind. Be kind to each other. Be kind to those who disagree with you. When you’re tempted to lash out, consider the other person’s point of view first.
Remember that what started this was love. Not hate. Don’t give in to the temptation to participate in fanwars. Remember the love.
Thanks for listening to my Ted Talk.
~Obsidian Aurora~
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little-red-toyota · 3 years
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Final good bye to the fandom
TW//Trauma, triggers, nsfw, sexual themes, rape, domestic abuse e.g.
This is gonna be a long ass post…
It has taken me a while to get emotionally strong enough to do this, as I will have to think back at some traumatic events from my past to address some of these things. That's why I waited until I got home from vacation with my family, as it will seriously affect my mood and mental health, and I want to be near my doctor and therapist, just in case.
And also, I know that the majority of those reading this will invalidate me and tell me I am making things up to clear my name. So, I literally have to torment myself to write a blog post people will just brush off as bogus anyway. But I will do it now that I am in safe surroundings. Then it will be off my chest, and I can finally move on. If people will continue stirring up the past, it will be their problem, not mine.
I think I should write one last blog post where I address everything. I have left the TTTE-fandom, but I will write that one as my final goodbye to the fandom. I just have to find out everything I've been accused of so I can properly address them all in order. I might leave out details of my life that is too hard for me to open up about. I know most of you will just invalidate me anyway.
1. The Stepney fic and glorifying rape.
2. My mafia-AU.
3. The Darin incident.
4. Being a pedophile. (Where do they get this from anyway??)
5. Running the NSFW-blog.
6. Drawing penises/boobs on trains. Drawing age-regression art.
Is there more?
Ah... yes! Faking my own suicide, of course!
7. "Faking" being suicidal.
8. Having the audacity to survive and go on living.
9. "Making up" my past trauma to justify writing fics to cope with it.
10. Being a nazi for being interested in WW2 history and for being Norwegian and having so-called nazi-letters in my last name (actual letters of the Norwegian alphabet).
11. Putting a white-supremacist flag (the actual flag of Norway) on my porch on family birthdays and our national day.
12. Being a danger to my daughter.
Anything else that needs to be addressed? What else am I being accused of? Send me a dm and I will add it to the post.
 Okay, I will bump the Stepney fic down a bit as it is the most traumatic thing for me to address, I will save that one for last.
2 and 3. The dark au/mafia au where I gave some TTTE characters some rather dark and unpleasant character traits, and the whole incident with Darin and the pedo-Salty was addressed in this blog post written by my husband last year, so I am not opening that can of worms again: https://little-red-toyota.tumblr.com/post/623743183795470336/in-light-of-recent-events
Even the thing about Toby cheating on Henrietta is addressed there.
As for the au, I never fully explored it as I started losing interest in TTTE around the same time. I found other things to enjoy and TTTE faded into the background and the au was dropped before I even wrote any stories, apart from the one about Toby and Henrietta.
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Some people claim, like this lovely individual, that most of the characters were rapists and pedos. No, not most. Only one of each. And I did not write more than one story about rape and suicide. Where does this person even get that from? Someone who told someone who had heard from someone who might have heard….?
Don't spread rumors unless you are sure that they are true.
Anyway, it's all addressed in that blog post in that link. I don't see how this mafia au is any worse than other dark post-apocalyptic or violent aus. It mostly was about the diesel mafia and their illegal businesses, not about sex, even if it did occur now and then. I find the substance abuse in it to be more problematic tbh…  
 4. Being a pedophile.
I don't even know how to defend myself against this one, as I don't even know why people think I am pedophile. They only throw the accusation out with no backing evidence, so I have no idea where it comes from or what it is that makes people think I am one.
Apart from one claim that I had faved "porn" alongside "strangers'" baby photos on DA. I addressed that earlier though. As DeviantArt doesn't sort what you click "like" on, it all ends up in the same folder unless you actively go through it and sort it into categories, which I don't bother most of the time. It also doesn't say WHEN it was added to your faves. So, I can have faved an artistic nude on Saturday, and then faved my friend's family photo on Thursday. It's not like I actively search for porn, get all steamed up and then look at pictures of children. WTF.
The few children I have faved are not from complete strangers, but long-term friends of mine. Yes, it is possible to have friends on the same website. I have actually met a lot of my RL friends through DeviantArt. I posted photos of my daughter when she was a baby, they would fave it and congratulate me. So, I did the same when they had a baby. As simple as that. Nothing weird or perverted about it. Due to people doxxing me last year however, I deleted the photos of me, my husband and my daughter from DeviantArt, so it's no longer there.
Porn isn't allowed on DeviantArt anyway. The nudes there are so-called artistic nudes, and for the most part I use them as pose-references when I draw as it is easier to draw a pose using a nude base and then dress them up once you got the pose right.
"The very naked" centaurs I have faved. Well, I like the mythological creature Centaur. And as far as I know… they do not wear clothes, so how are they NOT nude? Look it up, it's a horse body with a human torso instead of horse head. I don't see them as sexual, but what do I know? Maybe YOU do?
I have no sexual interest in children whatsoever.
 5. Running the NSFW-blog on Tumblr and Twitter.
Yes. I was one of six people modding that blog. ONE of six, so I refuse to take the full blame here.
MerciResolution has openly admitted to being the founder, and she recruited me and some others to modify as the confession load became too heavy for one person to handle alone.
The original blog on Tumblr worked as follows: People would anonymously send a confession to our askbox, we would add a picture (sometimes photoshopped) to the text and post it on the blog. Always tagged as NSFW and with proper trigger warnings if necessary! The blog itself was also marked as explicit, so it didn't appear in searches and such.
For us, this blog was nothing but a joke. We did it for shits and giggles. If anyone took it seriously and thought we got off to the stuff that was posted, we apologize for that, but to us it was just for laughs. And we DID laugh a lot, you guys should have seen the weird shit people sent us sometimes!
We had fun and we never thought anyone would take it seriously, so we never thought of writing "joke" in the description or anything. It never occurred to us that it could be anything but a joke.
We also made a Twitter account for it, also locked for minors. But it was quickly hacked, and someone changed the password so we could no longer access it. We made another account and forgot about the old one…
After a while, the original mods started losing interest and the blog (both on Tumblr and Twitter) became less active. That's when a person I had known for years, and wrongfully trusted, came forward and wanted to take over ownership. So, the ownership was handed over to Russalita/Charlie.
That turned out to be huge mistake!
Me and the other mods had more or less forgotten that the blogs existed, when suddenly someone started bashing me and getting up in my arms over it. I got seriously confused as I hadn't been active on it in almost a year. But as it turned out, Russalita had removed the mature filters and made the accounts open for all the see. Even minors.
And as people knew I was one of the mods, they fired their guns at me. I can see why though, so I'm not pointing any fingers here.
I tried contacting her by phone, asking her to lock the accounts again, but she gave me a less than polite response, hung up and then blocked my number…
So, I decided to try to shut the blogs down on my own, trying the old passwords. It worked on the Tumblr-account, and I managed to password protect it, for some reason it couldn't be fully deleted. But the Twitter account had gotten its password changed by Russalita. I was however able to get a new password by logging into the e-mail we had used to create it. I deleted the Twitter blog fully. It can't be re-activated even if we wanted to. It's gone.
But it turns out the old, hacked one is still up and now open for everyone. And this one poses a huge problem as we have no way of getting into it to delete it. Only thing we have been able to do so far is reporting it and hope it will be removed by Twitter. So I only have one thing to say about it: report it.
I am no longer running any NSFW TTTE blog anywhere, nor do I have interest in doing so. So, if you come across one, claiming to be me or any of the other mods, it is false.
 6. Drawing penises/boobs on trains. Drawing age-regression art.
People seem to believe I have drawn genitals on trains. I have never done such. Any art on the NSFW-blog with genitalia on the trains were sent in by confessors and was not drawn by me. Most of them seems to have been drawn by someone who goes by the name "The Lance".
I HAVE drawn things for the NSFW blog, but there were no genitalia in those drawings. I drew Frank of Arlesdale looking grossed out by (I don't know what the part is named in English, but it is connected to the brakes of the engine) that stick-like thing on his bufferbeam being wet from whatever the confessor did to him. I drew an over-exaggerated comical pic of a horrified Peter Sam getting his face licked by his driver, who had an enormous tongue. I also did a couple of manips. Mostly maniping engine faces on humans, like the one where Gordon's face is on a less than fit guy flailing his shirt around, and the Arlesdale smallies' faces on a movie poster from Magic Mike. One with Mr.Conductor in a giant bun while Pinchy is applying ketchup on him, for a confession about eating him, I think?  I've done some more, but I forgot what it was, I only know I loved making them comical rather than erotic, as I saw the blog as a joke overall.
I HAVE also drawn aheago faces on engines because it looks hilarious. Though I have only drawn them on my OCs and the NRS engines, not TTTE characters.
Point is I have never drawn genitalia on trains. Ever. And I likely never will. It's not THAT much fun drawing NSFW stuff.
I see from this screenshot that a certain MK-Instrumentalist claim that all my personal art is age-regression art and infantilism…
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Whose art have you been looking at? Because it's definitely not mine. I have drawn a couple of baby/chibi diesels… But claiming that all of my 700 or so artworks are depicting infantilism and age-regression stuff? I suggest people go have a look for themselves. I haven't drawn that. That MK-guy has been desperately trying to cancel me for ages for reasons only himself know. I don't even know the guy, and he doesn't know me, yet he wants to see me beheaded. Go figure.
I was for a long time bothered by some age-regressor on Tumblr who just wouldn't leave me alone with their weird asks, who tried to force themselves on me and some other artists here. They claim age-regression isn't a fetish, but the shit they sent to my askbox certainly looked like a fetish to me.
I don't want anything to do with that stuff. It weirds me out.
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And no. I have never drawn pedophilia or rape art either. This guy can't even make up his mind on which one to accuse me of.
 7 and 8. Faking suicide and having the audacity to survive and go on living.
As many know, after the intense shitstorm against me last summer, thanks to Darin, I attempted suicide. I didn't succeed as my husband came home early. I was gone for a few days but returned when a young boy reached out to me for help as he was being groomed and didn't know who else to turn to.
Recently I saw a screenshot where someone claimed me to have faked suicide, and that I just came back after a few days when everything had died down.
Wow.
I am truly sorry I survived.
I don't remember much from those days to be honest, but as the load became too heavy and the bullying too intense, piling up on 30 years of old trauma… I decided to end it. I must warn you guys who might get triggered now; there are detailed descriptions of a suicide attempt. Proceed with caution. People told me I was a bad mother among other things, having had those same thoughts myself (according to my husband, I am a good mom) and people just confirming them, I thought that my daughter would be better off growing up without me. I could have chosen a more effective suicide method, but I was afraid my daughter would be the first to find me, so I wanted it to be clean and look like I was just sleeping. That way it could be explained as natural causes.
So, I decided to overdose on pills. I downed all pills I could find in the house that had a warning triangle on it (strong pain meds etc.) and then went to my computer to delete my online existence, especially the personal data.
As a former paramedic, I should have known better. Because after half an hour, my body started reacting. But not the way I had hoped and wanted. I started retching and almost vomiting. That's when my husband came home from work and found me. He immediately saw the empty packages and knowing my past suicidal tendencies, he reacted instinctively. He put his fingers down my throat and had me puke everything up, then he called an ambulance and had me admitted to the hospital.
I don't remember anything from the days I spent there. But I have been told they emptied my stomach and gave me lots of fluids. I was then assigned a psychiatrist which I am still seeing today.
I was gone for those days because I was in hospital, not because I was pulling some kind of trick and pretending to have ended myself.
So… I am sorry I "faked" my suicide.
I'm sorry my husband saved me. I am sorry the medics and doctors succeeded in saving my life.
I am sorry I survived and proceeded to live on. If I ever make another attempt, I promise to do better.
Why are you guys so persistent in trying to push people to suicide anyway? Do you get a kick out of it? Why do people have to be pushed to that point before you care?
What did we tell our daughter? Simply that I got sick and had to go to the hospital. She took that well.
I've seen a lot of people wonder why I am still around. Why shouldn't I? Does my daughter deserve to lose her mother over some online crap she doesn't even know about? I owe her to live and watch her grow up, to help her with her homework and whatever else a parent needs to do. I also owe my husband to stay by his side, like I promised him the day we got married. Even if I do not wish to live.
I'm sorry I survived, guys. Really, I am.
 9. "Making up" my past trauma to justify writing fics to cope with it. And 1. The Stepney fic and glorifying rape.
 First… why would anyone make up trauma? It's not like it's a competition to have the worst life, is it?
Sadly, I don't have to make up anything. My life HAS been rocky up until the birth of my daughter. I have been through so much trauma I couldn't even fathom it myself before my therapist listed it all up to me. Until then, I had just been casually talking to her about it, like I would talk about the weather. I didn't cry or get in touch with my emotions even once while telling everything, because I was taught from an early age to never complain, to suck it up and go on. So, no matter what people did to me, I would just smile and go on, even if it killed me inside. I did not want to show any sign of weakness, because then they would attack me. A habit I developed through years of being bullied in school. Never show feelings, just pretend nothing could hurt you, then they would eventually grow tired of it and stop.
Except they never did. They kept going through all my years at school. To such an extent, my boyfriend didn't dare to show himself hanging out with me out of fear of being bullied himself… And as we grew older, he would start cheating on me too. And I kept smiling…
My next boyfriend was a bit older than me, and while that didn't bother me, as we were both well over legal age, it bothered him. We only lasted one year before he bailed out and ditched me out of the blue via an sms.
The next guy… was the one who scarred me for life. Both physically and mentally. A charmer at first of course, until I was trapped. He was unemployed, so he moved in with me, and I paid for everything from food to phone bills. All while he was dating several women behind my back, calling various pay-phone services and in general acted like a manwhore. As I worked as an electrician (also being subject to massive bullying and sexual harassment at work), he would be jealous of all my co-workers and if I ever came home late or worked overtime, he accused me of cheating and was extremely violent about it. He would also isolate me from my friends and family, making me think I couldn't get any other than him. If any of my male friends (almost all my friends are male…) came over, he would give me such hell afterwards, it was easier just to tell them it was a bad time to visit. And after a while, they stopped asking. This guy also demanded sex. Every single day. If I refused, he would punish me, mostly by flogging me with lampcords, belts or whatever else he had at hand. My back is a criss cross map of old, faded scars even now nearly 20 years later. I would have shown you a photo, but I am so self-concious about my body after all the bullying, I hardly even show my face in photos. Maybe one day… but I certainly need more therapy before being able to show naked skin to strangers, even if it's just my back. So I had non-consensual sex with him more often than consensual. It has taken me hours in therapy to even take the word in my mouth and call it by its proper name: rape. I was raped, almost every single day for little over a year, before I found the strength to break out of the relationship and finally throw him out of my house. It all ended when I found some revealing texts on his cellphone, which he was extremely protective of… Texts that revealed that he had engaged in a relationship with a 12 year old girl, and it had been going on for a while. Not only was he cheating on me, but he was a pedophile too. Needless to say, I didn't even let him pack his stuff before I fetched my shotgun and chased him out of the house. I don't know where I got the courage and strength from… but I was furious.
I thought I had gotten rid of him, but no. He started stalking me in public. Hiding behind shelves when I was shopping, his car following mine everywhere I went. I received weird letters in the mail with cut-out letters from newspapers, glued together. On top of all, his creepy, old uncle called me with some rather disgusting suggestions and tried to come on to me really hard. I had to change my phone number, and after coming home to my house and finding out someone had entered my home using a key, only to empty the drawer of my night table, I also had to change the locks of my doors as he had clearly copied the key.
He didn't stop until I got the police involved.
So, when I finally met the guy who would become my husband (or rather, we found out we were made for each other, we had known each other since we were 11 years old), I had major trust issues towards men especially and it took him endless patience and love to break me out of that shell.
But the trauma doesn't stop… or start there.
In the year 2000, on January 4th, I would experience something that made me unable to even look at a train for over 10 years. The Åsta accident (google it). I was a volunteer in the Norwegian Red Cross then, and a paramedic in training. Back then, you were allowed to start training the year you would turn 16. So, I was still 15 when I witnessed the most traumatic event of my life. The day started out calm, we were stocking up the ambulance after delivering a patient to the hospital when we got a call with the code "500", which means "catastrophe". Normally when we get that code it is a rehearsal… so we drove towards the coordinates with the thoughts that this was just an exercise, nothing real… we didn't prepare ourselves mentally… And we ended up in the closest thing to hell I have ever been… The sight of the burning trains, the smells, the sounds, the screaming… I still wake up by nightmares to this day. Though the moment that haunts me the most is when the screaming stopped… because we all knew why… I don't want to go into details, but 19 people died that day. But we also saved 67 people. I try to hold on to that thought. The age limit for starting paramedic training was raised after this, as I wasn't the only one who was too young for an accident of that scale. Today it is 18. A memorial stone has been placed on the site, but I still haven't been able to bring myself to visit it, even if we drive past the site every year on our way to visit family further north in the country. I needed hours of therapy to even be able to ride a train after this. To have gotten to the point where I now volunteer at a heritage railway and is in training to become a driver, is a HUGE step for me. My next goal is to visit the site of the accident.
On to next trauma… A previous employer, a rather large electric company in Norway, whom I worked for 8 years. The first five years were great, we were a close-knit bunch of electricians, and we had a great relationship with the bosses and higher-ups. Our labor union was strong.
It all started changing in 2009 when we got new leaders… and those decided to get rid of everyone who were a member of the union. One by one, they started harassing workers in various ways, trying to get them to quit. In Norway, they need a legal reason to fire you, it's not enough to not like someone. There has to be a good reason to fire someone e.g. theft, neglecting work… Since they didn't have any reasons to fire us, they started making our work lives gradually harder and harder until we would break and find another job. Sadly, one of my co-workers couldn't stand the pressure… He bid us all farewell as normal one Friday and hung himself the following day.. But as I was a girl in a male-dominated profession, I had been taught at an early stage to ignore anything that would hurt me emotionally, just arch my neck and plow through. I kept doing that, despite starting to feel more and more mental and physical pains… even my co-workers pointed out how I was being mistreated before I acknowledged it myself. I tried to tell my boss, but he reacted by treating me worse. So, I went to his boss… and that's when things went to hell. Instead of doing his job and listen, he started harassing me too. He deemed my over-weight a problem, and he started demanding I gave him detailed lists of what I ate and how much I worked out… Completely illegal of course, but by this point I was broken down to the point I thought I was useless and couldn't get another job… so I accepted. He started accusing me of lying about my exercise, so I started training at the gym in the basement at work instead. One day, while I was there, he locked the doors and turned the lights off. There were no windows, no cellphone reception and hardly anyone walking by in that part of the building… I sat there in the pitch dark for 3 hours before I was let back out. I still get badly triggered by narrow, dark rooms and rooms with no windows. To such an extent, I jumped out of a small window on the second floor of a gym when I was in boot camp. I was allowed to train downstairs in the bigger gym with windows on all walls after that incident…
The harassment at work went on for years until I finally snapped, ended up at the hospital and got into therapy for the first time. I don't want to go into depth about what more happened, I just can't… I can't bring myself to write it all. Luckily, I had gotten more education while working, so when I graduated, another company called and gave me an offer I just couldn't refuse. So, I quit my job and never looked back, even if the traumas I suffered there still haunts me to this day.
Sadly, even after switching jobs, now getting a safe job with sane leaders… I started to relax, and that's when all my past trauma came washing over me. And one day, on while driving to work, I had my first serious panic attack. It started as this feeling I used to have at the old company; getting sick to my stomach and having the sense of someone being out to get me… then it developed to breathing problems… and I had to pull the car over. I broke into tears, struggling to breathe, stumbling out of the car to read the logo on its side just to reassure my body and brain that I worked for a different company now and there was no reason for panic. I called my boss and let him know, because he also was a "refugee" from that other company, so he knew what me and several others had gone through. He managed to talk me down enough for me to come to the office to talk to him. That helped.
I got back into therapy. A better therapist this time. But sadly, it got apparent that I could no longer work as an electrician as there was too many triggers. I was diagnosed with PTSD, severe depression, and social anxiety. I'm still working on these and get better slowly.
I have been in therapy for a long time now, and it was my therapist that suggested I wrote fics to cope and "write it out". I tried to make up my own characters for this, but never felt any connection. I was by this time in the TTTE fandom and had met people with similar trauma and pasts like myself, and I started roleplaying with some of them. Me and a girl from UK then agreed to try to rp/co-write a fic to cope with our trauma. We both found it easier to write about pre-established characters we had a connection to, even if it was an au that made it barely recognizable from the original source material. Only the names and some minor things were similar.
That fic was Stepney's Virginity Gets Lost.
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Do we regret writing it? No. It helped us write out our traumas and helped us overcome some mental obstacles in out therapy process. Our therapists cheering us on, because we finally managed to break through the hard shell surrounding us. We both cried for the first time in years while writing it, some of it through roleplay, because some parts were extremely graphic and brutal and very mentally exhausting. We had to take long breaks between each writing session, so the fic wasn't written in just a weekend. But we got a lot of darkness out of our minds by writing all this. And we were definitely NOT aroused by it, like this pervert here claims.
It's when you dare to touch and feel the difficult and dark emotions, you can finally move along in the grieving process.
Should it have been posted online?
In retrospect, no. But at the time, we thought it might help other trauma victims, as we also found reading about other people's experiences and fictions touching painful subjects helpful to ourselves. So, we posted it, never expecting it to cause such a controversy 3 years later. In fact, we had more or less forgotten about it until it came back to bit us in the ass. Or rather, bite ME in the ass, as I am getting the full blame alone.
Also, despite what people claim, it was not posted openly for children to read. It was tagged properly and hidden behind mature content walls. If a minor chooses to break that wall, that's not the author's fault. It's the same as watching a movie with an age restriction way above your age, not the filmmaker's fault.
I think MerciResolution puts it nicely here:
"If your problem lies with you KNOWINGLY entering adult spaces when you’re a minor, ignoring all mature warnings that are literally SCREAMING at you “hey, this is what you’re getting into. Are you sure you want to proceed?”
That’s ENTIRELY on you. YOU are the fucking problem.
We’re marking mature things as best as we properly can. If you decide to ignore them, that’s your own damn fault. We’re not your fucking babysitters."
Also, I never posted the story on Wattpad, so if anyone has done that, it's not me. I posted the story on Fanfiction.net, DeviantArt and AO3, that's all. If it's posted anywhere else, it's not done by me.
I had honestly moved on from it when people pulled me back into it.
Other people who have done questionable shit in that fandom are easily forgiven because "they have moved on" or "changed". Yet, nobody believes I can move on or change…?
I had moved on; my interests had changed. But people won't let me, so here I am… Having to defend some crap I did years ago. A fic I no longer have any interest in.
I'm not even interested in TTTE anymore. I have moved on with my own book project now and I would like to focus on that.
So, deleting my TTTE content, whether it was the SFW or NSFW stuff, didn't cost me a penny. It actually felt like a relief. The only downside with it is that people now can't read it and make up their own opinion about it, but will solely believe in what others say, and those things are often seriously bent out of shape and blown out of proportions to such an extent it's barely recognizable.
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If people claim that Arry and Bert rape Stepney in the fic, they have never seen it or read it. That's not what happens. That's just an assumption made by looking at the title and knowing there is a rape/torture scene in it. But I'm not gonna tell who the victim is or who performed it, because this is the only way I am able to tell who has actually read the fic or not, who is just trying to spread bullshit and who is actually telling the truth. The person in that screenshot, has no idea what he's talking about.
Does SVGL romanticize rape and abuse?
No, not in the least. It's described as the horrible, heinous acts it is and is in no way meant to be cute or romantic and definitely NOT something anyone should get off to. If anyone finds it sexy, that's their problem, not the authors'. If anything, SVGL might romanticize suicide, because one of the characters isn't able to cope with his trauma and chooses to end their life. Which is something I considered doing myself when I was in the darkest pit of depression. So, I apologize for maybe romanticizing suicide. The following chapters describe how friends and family handle the loss and grief.
It also describes a toxic relationship, where one of the parts struggles to get out of it. They eventually manage to break free, but it is not easy. This can easily be translated to my previously mentioned relationship, as it was my way of writing out my experience about how hard it is to break out of a relation when your partner has broken you down to the point where you no longer believe in yourself and your self-worth.
The last chapters start to gradually become brighter, as both our lives started getting better too. But we never really wrote the end because we both lost interest in writing TTTE content by that time and just left it hanging.
I'm not the only one who has written NSFW TTTE fanfics out there. But it seems like violence and murder is more acceptable than sexual things? I do wonder how brutally mutilating children's show characters are more tolerable than sexually abusing them. Neither should be okay.
Some content creators hide behind "it was a joke". I have been told that such topics that SVGL touches upon shouldn't be joked about… so I didn't do that, and yet it was wrong? So how should such topics be treated? Be hidden like it's a shame, like in the old days when rape victims were told to suck things up and keep it to themselves? When those subject to abuse didn't dare to speak up because people would judge them?
I think it is important to talk about these subjects and why they are so problematic. Victims shouldn't have to hide their trauma; they should be allowed to talk openly about it without fearing judgement.
Some of you claim that writing isn't a good way to cope… You're trying to dictate how trauma victims deal with their trauma, and that's a dangerous path to walk down. Nobody handles trauma the same way. You might have your thoughts on how you would react, but you'll never know until trauma hits you… and you might not react the way you had expected or planned. Trauma messes with your head and you won't be able to think clearly. It makes you do thinks you normally wouldn't have done and can make you act out of character. So, do not judge people without having been in the same situation yourself. Ever.
Someone wrote that I have "more problems that just a rape".
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Read that again.
Just a rape.
This person does not know how damaging a rape can be. And if you made it this far in this post, you know I didn't only go through one, but several. Not just by my ex, but also being ambushed while I was walking home from a party, and later; a co-worker forcing himself onto me at a building site. I can't go into depth about them all, I just can't.
Just a rape…
"Just" the feeling of not being in control of your own body and your own decisions. "Just" being robbed off your dignity and self-worth. "Just" having someone intrude into your private zone, tear your clothes off and claim your body against your will. "Just" feeling how your life force leave you as you realize that fighting against it won't help you, and you silently give up and just lay down waiting for it all to be over. "Just" spending hours in the shower, scrubbing your skin until you bleed because you can't wash the filth away and you keep feeling dirty no matter how much you clean yourself. "Just" waking up at night, after having relived the scene again in a nightmare. "Just" looking over your shoulder wherever you walk because you heard something or thought you saw something or simply because someone is walking behind you. "Just" the fact that you'll never feel comfortable walking alone at night again or have someone walk behind you. "Just" never being able to relax because your body constantly think you're in grave danger. "Just" a rape…
That's such a neck-beard thing to say. Someone who clearly think of other people's bodies as property or things. Not taking into consideration that we are living, breathing individuals with feelings. And that having another person violate us isn't something we like or that we'll easily get over. We want to choose who we give ourselves to, nobody should be forced. We didn't ask to be raped. We didn't want it. We didn't like it.
Rape is trauma.
Yes, we should have chosen other characters for the story, but we did what we did, and it cannot be undone now. So, if the only thing I will be remembered for in the fandom is that ONE fic, instead of all my other content, that's what it will be. That's what people chose to. I'm moving on.
10. Being a nazi for being interested in WW2 history and for being Norwegian and having so-called nazi-letters in my last name (actual letters of the Norwegian alphabet).
*sigh*
This is something that could only happen in America, isn't it?
Some people don't bother educating themselves. The "nazi-letters" you guys are talking about is actually part of the Norwegian alphabet and has nothing to do with Nazism or white-supremacy to do at all. The Norwegian alphabet has 29 letters, the three extra is æ,ø,å or in capital letters: Æ,Ø,Å.
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We can't help it if some morons over in the US abuse these letters as symbol of their twisted mindset.
Yes, my name contains one of those letters. It is my name… and I didn't choose it. It is a common Norwegian name.
As for me being a Nazi?
Those who knows me knows that I am as far from a Nazi as one can get. I despise Nazism with all my heart.
But the reason some people choose to believe so… was that some guy who has no hobbies or life went through every single fave I've made on DeviantArt since I joined the site in 2006, which is well over 20000 faves. And he found a few Nazi-characters from a web series I was following about ten years ago. I am very interested in history and especially WW2-history, so I found that particular web-series interesting and faved some artwork related to it. What this guy failed to notice is that I also faved the Allied characters… That's ALL there is to that story.
I has also faved a pic someone made of Joseph Goebbels (I think it was?) as a Pixar Car. That's not because I have any nazi-sympathies, but I simply found the concept of turning historical persons, both good and bad, into Cars as an interesting project. I would have faved any other historical Carsified person as well.
As for me being a Norwegian and have a natural pale complexion, that's not something I can help. That's nothing I choose. And it doesn't make me racist or Nazi. Period.
11. Putting a white-supremacist flag (the actual flag of Norway) on my porch on family birthdays and our national day.
Again. Get educated.
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This flag… is the actual flag of my country. The Kingdom of Norway.
There is nothing Nazi about it. It is not a symbol of white-supremacy. IT IS THE FLAG OF NORWAY.
During WW2 it was even illegal, so people would paint it everywhere in a protest against the Nazi-occpation and the SS. We even decorated our Christmas trees with it, and that is a tradition that has followed us into the modern day.
Again, if some idiots in the US choose to use it as a symbol for their disgusting logic, it is not Norway or the Norwegians' fault.
12. Being a danger to my daughter.
I need people to elaborate here.
What exactly do you think I do to my daughter? What is the cause of your concern here?
The fact that I have made NSFW content? How is that harmful to her as long as I keep it away from her? You DO realize that even authors, pornstars and moviemakers have children and that they can be good parents, right?
Do you think I read pornographic content for her as bedtime stories? Or show her porn instead of kids TV? How sick are you guys, really…?
Some people even wanted CPS to take my child away from me… Have a look at these screenshots…
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You want a happy, healthy, innocent child to be taken away from a stable, safe home with loving parents just because you don't like the content the mother made? You want her to be placed in foster care, where there is no guarantee that she will have a happy upbringing rather than have her stay with her parents who love her and care for her, for reasons she'll never understand and wasn't even aware of?
"Think of the children!" a lot of you say when it comes to my content. May I ask why this doesn't apply to my daughter?
Why do some of you go as far as to wishing her dead or wanting her to be removed from the home she feels safe and loved in? How is that thinking of the children?
As for the douchebag in that screenshot. You claim that if your mother did something like that you would want nothing to do with her… I have a question: Do you know EVERYTHING your mother do? Does she include you in each aspect of her life? Even her sexual life? No?
How do you know she doesn't do thing you don't approve of when you're not around? She could be a rabid pornmag reader for all you know. But stuff like that is something adults hide from their kids. So, you wouldn't know, unless you go snooping around in her business.
Everyone is entitled to privacy. What I and my husband do when our kid is not around is our business, not hers, and certainly not yours.
Porn and parenting are to be kept separate from each other. Period.
And we do.
There is absolutely no reason to be worried about my daughter. She is a happy, healthy child in a safe, stable home with family that loves her and cares for her. Not just me and my husband, but also grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins.
If you want to remove her from that over a stupid fanfic behind a mature content wall, you're the deranged person, not me.
 This is all I have to say about all this and my time in the TTTE fandom. I have left by my own, free will. Yes, I am aware that many people don't want me there. That's fine. I don't want to be there.
I am a bit disappointed in those people who just blindly unfollowed me and unfriended me without any questions asked, just followed the leader. Big users tend to dictate who and what is worth following in that fandom. They will even protect real predators, but I'm not going to open that can of worms now. I'm done with the fandom.
Some of those people, I have been talking to regularly, even supported when they faced hardships in the fandom themselves. But when I got in trouble, they ditched me without a word…
If anything, this whole ordeal showed me who to trust and not, and who were true to their word when it came to how deep our friendship was. True friends at least give you the chance to explain before they drop you. I hold no ill feelings to those who did, at least they asked me before judging.
And those who still stayed with me, are the ones who truly know me and who I really am.
Some of the worst libels posted about me might be reported to the police, but I haven't made up my mind yet. I am not mentally strong at the moment, so I don't know if I have the strength to legally follow it all up. I will ask the cops at work for advice on the matter.
All I ask for now is some peace.
You don't have to like me. You don't have to follow me. You don't have to like my content. Feel free to invalidate me, I know a lot of you will.
But please, stop bullying me and my family.
Please stop sending me horrid messages and death threats.
Please stop doxxing me and calling me.
Please leave my family alone. If you don't care about me, at least care about them.
Please just ignore me. I have already left the fandom, there is no reason to keep hunting me.
I just want to move on and go on with my life and the content I am currently working on. After years in therapy, my life has gotten better, and I want to move on.
Please let me.
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space-sword · 4 years
Text
My experience trying to join BSG
After I got back from my hiatus following finals and my laptop breaking I saw a couple of my mutuals talking about an Avatar Discord server. It sounded like a cool place and since I was done with finals I thought it would be a good time for me to make some new friends and socialize so I asked them how I could join. Neither of them wrote me back. A few days later I got a DM from avatar-chang, who was not one of the mutuals I had asked. The following messages will prove how much of a cult and hive mind BSG really is.
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She was suspicious of me right off the bat. I didn’t have a clue what was going on in their server and it seemed like it would be an issue for me to join so I didn’t push it. avatar-chang insisted that I must have known about it.
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Every single time I’ve had a conversation with avatar-chang she’s brought up @purpleplatypusbear21 though she claims she’s not obsessed with her. She had warned me about @avatarfandompolice before but I had not heard of @dragomer. After she told me these names though it sorta clicked that this was probably the server PPB21 mentioned on her blog a few times where people were stalking and harassing her. I was intrigued.
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Side note: They (obviously) allow people to talk shit about others in their server but don’t allow people to use hate speech. So does this not count as hate speech?
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That was avatar-chang talking about PPB21 by the way. Anyway back to the conversation. I wanted to test a theory that avatar-chang would accept me more if she thought I was no longer friends with PPB21 so I said that I was distancing myself from her. This was half true, I hadn’t responded to PPB21′s DMs for a while, mostly because I had a lot of things to catch up on after my hiatus. As you can see avatar-chang is much more interested in me after I tell her this.
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Ok I embellished a little about PPB21′s job, it’s not shady at all though she does make a ton of money (way to go!). avatar-chang thought it was shady that PPB21 said she was leaving Tumblr but still posted a whole lot even though PPB21 made it clear she was leaving at the end of May which she did. But it was then that I realized I caught avatar-chang in a major lie (I’ll explain more after the next set of screenshots). Also I think dragomer and AFP already demonstrated that BSG does in fact leave hate comments and hate anons so their rules mean nothing.
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I called avatar-chang out on her lie. She told me previously that she blocked PPB21 and I know PPB21 also blocked avatar-chang. So how could avatar-chang know that PPB21 was still posting on her blog? Unless of course... she was stalking her. She tried to cover up her lie by saying other people reblog her posts but that’s not how blocking works. And avatar-chang knows this:
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avatar-chang said she doesn’t see PPB21 on her dash anymore. So she’s a big fat liar and definitely guilty of stalking. Not only that but she flat out admits that some people haven’t blocked her and have been checking up on her blog. This is stalking.
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There you have it. “I’m sorry but we can’t allow anyone that’s mutuals with ppb.” BSG is a hate group against PPB21 and they can’t cover that up anymore. This further shows their level of obsession with her.
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Believe it or not I was gonna break mutuals with PPB21 once she left Tumblr but only because I didn’t see the point of following someone who’s inactive. avatar-chang jumped to the conclusion that PPB21 must have provoked people to send anon hate to her. Is there any proof of this? Can anyone show me a convo they’ve had with PPB21 where she provoked people to send hate? I would put money on no such convo existing. Another thing that majorly pissed me off here was avatar-chang saying: “we’ve noticed that she reaches out to every new atla blog”. When I was new to the fandom the first two people to reach out to me were bizukos and avatar-chang. PPB21 and I didn’t talk until months after I joined and she never tried to manipulate me to unfollow or stop reblogging from others. PPB21 is a supportive person by nature so she does tend to follow new blogs and reblog from them but to my knowledge she doesn’t DM them. Also why would it be so fishy for someone to reach out to new blogs? Oh that’s right because if you have the sole intention of manipulating people then it would be fishy but that’s only avatar-chang’s and her posse’s MO.
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The only lie I really told during the conversation was: “Seems like an amazing group of people.” Ok so avatar-chang got back to me later with the decision that the mods did not want me in their server. “But one of our mods feels genuinely uncomfortable with the thought of someone who’s mutuals (even if you’re gonna break it) with ppb21 being in the server.” Obsessed much? Also explain to me how BSG isn’t a hate group.
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Now here’s where I got angry. Now it was personal. I wasn’t allowed in because of my personal views. And here I thought BSG was a safe space for everyone.
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Lies, lies, and more lies.
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“This isn’t gatekeeping” my ass. And then she has the nerve to throw at me that I reblogged from PPB21 recently. Well yeah I said that I was gonna break mutuals with her when she left Tumblr but she hadn’t left at that point so why wouldn’t I reblog from her and more importantly why should it fucking matter who I reblog from? Despite my anger I thought we had ended the conversation in a civil manner. I had no intention of ever sharing this conversation especially because of this part:
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However later on I had to hear from a mutual that avatar-chang removed me from her blog recs and is actively telling people not to follow me and that we’re not friends. There’s a screenshot of this but I don’t want to out this mutual. And it would be awfully hypocritical for avatar-chang to be upset with me for sharing this conversation because she’s shared DMs she’s had with PPB21 in BSG for all to read. “I need to be absolutely and 100% sure that everything I say to you will not be discussed with anyone else and won’t leave this chat, and will never ever come back to haunt me in the future.” Why would she have such fears of her words coming back to haunt her if she knew she was doing the right thing? Maybe if she didn’t stab me in the back she wouldn’t have to eat her words.
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