#the implication that they're stealing 'property'

[spirantization]

"Wild Blue Yonder" dealt with some of the emotional fallout of the Flux, so I want to rewind a bit and look at what that means for the Doctor.

I know that the Timeless Child and the Flux are contentious topics. I'm not here to argue either way. But now those storylines have decisively not been retconned, and with both of these fresh in my memory, I feel the need to offer some context for anyone who may not have seen it, and to recontextualize it for myself and anyone who has.

NotDonna: You don't know where you're from. The Doctor: How do you know that? How does anyone know? How does Donna know?

In "The Timeless Children", we find out that the Doctor was discovered as a child alone under a wormhole, and adopted by a woman named Tecteun. There was an accident where the Doctor fell from a cliff and regenerated, and subsequently Tecteun performed "experiments" on them to try to understand regeneration. The show minces words about this but she killed a child a whole bunch of times is what happened. Her experiments created the Time Lords and allow them to engineer their regeneration properties. The Doctor has no memory of any of this, and only finds out via the Master and information stored in the Time Lord Matrix.

The Doctor, predictably, doesn't tell anyone about this revelation. She makes a speech to the Master about how this makes her more, we get a single shot of her looking a bit tired in the TARDIS, then she immediately gets thrown in prison.

Ultimately, the Doctor doesn't know where they're from or who their parents are. And the very fact that they're not from Gallifrey is information that no one in the universe should have. Everyone who knew is now dead.

NotDonna: I saw it in your head. The Flux. The Doctor: It destroyed half the universe because of me. We stand here now, on the edge of creation, a creation which I devastated, so yes I keep running, of course I do! How am I supposed to look back on that? NotDonna: It wasn't your fault! The Doctor: I know!

A fun fact about the Flux is that the Doctor did not cause it. So why does he blame himself? Because the person who caused the Flux was Tecteun.

The reason why Tecteun wanted to destroy the universe is because the Doctor interfered with things too much. Too much morality. Too inspirational to people. She calls them a virus. So her solution to the problem of the Doctor is to destroy the universe, with the Doctor inside, and take her ship to a different universe to start fresh. She also was the one to steal all the Doctor's memories of previous lives in the first place. She's dismissive and patronizing and clearly does not care about the Doctor on an emotional level at all. Tecteun is a piece of work, and the implications of her actions and how they've shaped the Doctor have the potential to go deep.

Thirteen doesn't get too much of a chance to react to any of this, because there is plot going on. And shortly after they reunite, Tecteun gets killed by a different villain. So there was no emotional closure in the moment, and there's now no possibility for the Doctor to make sense of her actions. The Doctor does not tell any of her friends about any of these events. She keeps promising to tell Yaz but does not.

"Wild Blue Yonder" is the first time we, as the audience, hear the Doctor discuss the Flux. And their perception of events is skewed at best. The Flux wasn't caused because the Doctor made a mistake and a lot of people were killed, which is what you can argue for many other situations. The Flux and the devastation of the universe was caused by their mother, who promptly turned around and told them it was their fault for being such an interfering nuisance. We know that the Doctor is often an unreliable narrator, but this is beyond that. These are the words of an abused child who has internalized the narrative that the abuse was their fault.

So the Doctor being able to talk about this with Donna, who has seen what happened, who knows him, and tells him that it's not his fault — it means so much to him. He wants it to be her so badly. And then NotDonna laughs in his face. You can see the devastation. He thinks for one moment that he can finally talk about this with his best friend, and it's snatched away from him. He gives himself a moment to break down in the corridor, and then you can see the walls rebuilding as he suppresses it all again.

At the very end of the episode, back in the TARDIS, he's trying very very hard to be nonchalant. I'm curious. The NotDonna could remember all these things that happened to me while we were apart. Can you? Just wondering. Things happened, but I'll be fine. In a million years. It's not a joke.

He wants so badly to be able to talk about this. You can see it in all the lines of his body language. He's keeping himself together but is prepared to fall apart in an instant. He doesn't want to actually tell anyone, but if Donna just magically knew already, and could tell him it wasn't his fault — well, that would make the world of difference. But she doesn't know, and he can't bring himself to tell her. And so the cycle continues.

#doctor who #dw spoilers #wild blue yonder #the flux

[justatalkingface]

Wasn't Mt Lady a corrupt hero at first?

So, I'd like to start this off by apologizing to you, Anon. I did not intend to let this sit in my drafts nearly as long as it has been; I just haven't been in the right place to just sit down and type everything out until now.

The thing is with Mt Lady, or rather, early on Mt Lady, is she's.... corrupt, but she's not majorly so (though Stain would, of course, disagree). She is perhaps the most average person/hero we've had any informational development on. Most heroes we get a look at are upper case H Heroes, that don't match the corruption talked about in story, but Mt Lady is, or was, a view of that mundane hero who wasn't terrible, wasn't murdering people or beating their spouses, but wasn't good, either.

So the thing is the the first thing we see her do is kill steal, and oh, there is so much to unpack there, just by me saying that phrase and having it fit perfectly.

There are mountains of implications to not only that phrase, but the fact that it worked: to start with, it implies that this isn't unique to Mt Lady.

Kamui Woods had the man cornered, was posed to bring him down, and she steals the capture, and the glory, at the last minute. He doesn't protest this, or argue, or even say WTF, he's just depressed. In other words, this is normal, to some extent, this isn't just Mt Lady doing something unprecedented, and that 'stealing' this 'kill', AKA, capturing this villain, was something worth fighting over. Heroes are not cooperating, but are in fact actively competing with each other, for the resources that are criminals.

This is something that's actually genius with how it's presented to us, because it's understated, but this one scene just says so much about the society they're living in, and about heroic society as a whole, and how deeply fucked up it has become.

Mt Lady is developed more in the notes, and we find out she's so desperate for money to pay for the damages caused by her Quirk because, you know, she causes massive property damage all the time.

But.

This is an understandable motive, and it makes her more of a real person than just some greedy asshole, yet this begs a question: should she be a hero, if she can't do it without causing thousands, if not millions, in damages everytime she uses her Quirk?

Mt Lady's Quirk is a powerful one, but it's something she can't actually control, is the thing: if she's using it, something is going to be destroyed, even if her costume is designed to mitigate it, because she just becomes that big and that heavy. In becoming a hero, she became locked into a vicious cycle of doing heroic deeds to pay the bills, which in the process of doing this causes more bills for her to pay which necessitate even more heroics from her. This cycle, destructive as it is, is apparently fuel for her to be a very active hero, which is the logic behind her being part of the Kamino raid (totally not because she's a hot woman that Hori wanted to draw more often), but we still have to ask: does she cause more damage than she prevents?

Fuck if we know, honestly, because that's a cost/benefit ratio we have no way to possibly answer, but the fact is there's nothing in story that implies that anyone has actually asked this question about her, or anyone else, for that matter. There is, from what we can tell, no actual accountability to heroes as long as they pay the bills or murder someone on national TV... and heroes are uniquely posed to pay these bills easily, and Mt Lady is a bit of an aberration in how much trouble she's having with them.

There's the money they make from their hero-ing, as little as that developed, but from that direction they apparently only make money from crime, only on commision. So, I get that just paying them to exist with nothing to ensure that they actually are working would be messed up, but you have to admit there are some.... perverse incentives to a set up like this. Every hero we've seen is improbably Good and Kind, but this is something that could be easily abused, and with the set up we have for this setting? Probably has been, and often.

Let me bring this back to what I said earlier, that heroes are competing with other heroes to capture villains. As a job, an actual, functional job, being a hero isn't about preventing crime, it's about profiting off it. Every villain we've seen, every crime they've committed, every building filled with people they've destroyed? To a hero, that isn't a tragedy, that's a paycheck. The other major way heroes make money as heroes is by saving people, and the people they save? Are endangered by villains. Technically, earthquakes and fires and the like would also qualify, but the thing is with that, though? Earthquakes don't happen on the regular, and heroes are paid on commision. Without villains to endanger people, there's no way a rescue hero could have any sort of stable income.

If there aren't villains, in other words, then a hero isn't going to be paid as a hero.

So now we look at the side jobs, the others ways they can have an income; modeling and commercials being the only ones we know of, though we can try and guess at others (does Gunhead have a dojo for his martial arts?). Then there's the merchandising. In the early chapters, which established a lot of the normal day to day stuff before Izuku became increasingly disconnected from an average person's life, hero branded products were all over, and if the pictures in the outmakes are legit? Both Midnight and Mt Lady have cosmetics (and there's something about Midnight, who's power puts people to sleep who smell her, having a perfume that makes me raise an eyebrow).

In other words? As long as a hero is popular, not even particularly active, but just loved by the public? The money can just roll in, and the system itself is seemingly designed to incentivize this behavior in them. There are technically consequences to destroying things, but as long as you're.... not Mt Lady, basiclly, these consequences are minimal, probably because there's some sort of heroic insurance or something to prevent a hero from being bankrupted, or they just make that much money.

If you want to be a hero, you need to find a lot of people to arrest, a lot of people in danger, or you need to become a celebrity. And as long as you can do these things successfully, you're going to end up with a lot of cash, and there's very little holding you back doing whatever you want.

With what we've seen about Mt Lady's motives, before she was whitewashed in Generic Hero #274, is that she wants to famous, that she's hungry for attention, adoration from the public, a classic corrupt hero. But with what we know about the system she's in, the way it is forcing her to act just to stay solvent, you have to wonder: is that why she wanted to be a hero? For the fame, for the glory?

Or did heroic society make her into that?

#ask #I'm really sorry it took this long to answer this #mha critical #bnha critical #the failure of the development of heroic society and corruption

[here-to-cause-suffering]

OP what were the implications of TKO's Truffle Tussle Mutation?!

A lot! That I have not fully gone into yet but there's definitely a lot of implications about the Haze in general that are kind of glazed over in the game?

(parasite fungus + zombie kinda things + body horror but bugs— yes there are visuals!! Also MAJOR MAJOR spoilers for Grounded— Including spoilers for the most recent update!!!)

So a lot of the stuff in Grounded has some base in reality— though some of them have things that don't exactly like up with reality (like ladybugs arent seen flying, fire ants actually bite/sting in real life etc, but the base concept is still based on reality to some degree.)

An example of this is actually the haze fungus itself, which is based off an actual fungus from real life often called the "zombie ant" fungus or cordyceps. In reality, it hijacks the hosts body, changes their behavior and within a few days does kill the bug.

The game itself implies at times that the bugs aren't always alive after they're infected— my favorite example is the Infected Wolf Spider! I happen to have some really good photos of the infected spider, though the new boss the Infected Broodmother also seems to be a good example of this (I'll elaborate in a minute on that one! First I'll talk about the Infected Wolf Spider!)

You can see here that the fungus has done significant damage to the spider's thorax, which, in a normal situation, would have killed the spider. It's also done significant damage to the spider's head and eyes! The spiders behavior also changes drastically, and it becomes hostile to everything that isn't a Wolf Spider, and it doesn't sleep. It just keeps constantly patrolling the area close to where it spawns, and it also makes completely different noises than your average Wolf Spider does (and I absolutely love the sound design but that's a different discussion!) This is actually the first bug in Grounded that truly disturbed me due to the implications of what the infection did— what we, the players, did to it by turning the haze off.

The Infected Broodmother is the second bug that's managed to creep me out, and I haven't even faced her yet! And while I don't have my own screenshots of her just yet, she looks absolutely horrible in a good way, of course! I love the designs of the infected bugs!

You can see here she's also severely infected, but it's not just her design and audio cues that tell the story of her being dead. You actually have to kill her three times to officially kill her. Not fake deaths either— she is a literal zombie spider. Flat out, you have to take her health all the way down to zero three times. These two bugs alone specifically imply the fungus has some sort of zombification properties, but other bugs imply that it at the very least, can gain control of the host at any moment. Weevils now blow themselves up, Gnats steal your stuff, Mites are assholes already but now they're assholes with bombs etc. Multiple bugs that are typically not hostile become hostile when infected with the fungus!

Now, onto the topic of Truffle Tussle! I may have gotten carried away but I love the fucked up implications the game can have when you really think about it! The mutations description is "the fungus of the haze has seeped into your tiny being fusing its power to your unarmed attacks." It essentially means that the haze has infected you, even if just a bit. Sure you're not dead (though at that point you've likely had to respawn at least once), but it's still inside you. Of course we know the benefits to the mutation is that sometimes your punches will just.. explode. But the game doesn't dwell on the possible consequences of the mutation, or any of them for that matter, and there's so many potential implications of what could happen when the haze is inside you.

I wouldn't say KO and TKO are zombies, but there's definitely going to be some downsides to having the haze inside of them, for both of them! And it'll definitely scare the shit out of them when they learn that they do have the mutation, both because the implications of having the haze inside you would realistically be terrifying, and because they don't get that "MUTATION DETECTED" notification that you get when playing the game— they just see it happen. One day, one of them punches a bug and it explodes. Eventually their sca.bs do detect the mutations! But not until way after they've been active for a while, and even then they might not immediately see the mutation listed on their sca.b as they're usually busy trying to stay alive.

Also I'm not sure if people noticed this, but TKO's extra eyes are purple and swirly like that of the infected bugs in grounded! Which is just a small reference to the Truffle Tussle in his design.

Here's the Infected Broodmother's eyes for comparison!

#grounded!ko #grounded!tko #grounded game #grounded!au #ok ko #ok ko au #angst #body horror #body horror but for bugs #I mightve gotten carried away #i just really enjoy this game

[blackkatmagic]

I feel like A'Sharad watching over kid Luke on Tatooine instead of Obi-Wan would have been interesting!

oh. oh my god. yes please.

Also just. Luke coming to be raised by the Tuskens is. It would be so good?? The sheer irony of Darth Vader's son being raised by the people who were his first victims is just. A lot of narrative irony. Luke learning about what happened to Shmi, what happened with Anakin, coming to terms with all the parts of this culture that took him in - maybe when the Lars were unable to? - is just such a fascinating idea.

#kat answers #also canon never does anything with the fact that in the comics the tuskens take in runaway slaves #and that a'shara's mother was one as well #and that that's one of the reasons the people who settled there don't like them #the implication that they're stealing 'property' #including slaves #which #legends makes them so much more complex than even tm does #and tm borrowed a lot from the comics #which i hope is a trend that continues

[angelsswirl]

American Style

Chapter 2: Vegas Lights

Wrd Cnt: 1k+

Rating: M

The lies and affectations. Sensation. We're winning 'til the curtain's coming down.

"You'll never believe who I met at work last night?" You threw your rather expensive purse down onto the sofa next to your roommates.

You kicked off your shoes near the front door then threw yourself across said roommates lap's. One of them let out a grunt, but otherwise didn't say anything.

"Lisa Manoban, Park Rosé, and Bae Irene?" Doyeon answered easily. She yanked her arms from underneath your thighs.

"How'd you know?" Your eyebrows knitted together in confusion. You normally didn't tell either of your roommates about your clientele out of respect for their privacy. There's no way that Doyeon could have just gotten that on the first try.

"It's all over twitter." Ryujin, her other roommate, handed her phone to the woman laying across her lap.

This was the routine, you would get home, normally around 5:00 a.m., maybe pick up breakfast for the three of you, then get back to the apartment, and hangout until Ryujin and Doyeon left for the day.

Ryu had been right, there were a few paparazzi photos of the three of them entering the building, none seemed to depict them leaving, however.

"Ugh, Jeremy's going to be in so much trouble. Normally, he does a way better job of keeping those vultures away." You handed Ryujin her phone back with a tired sigh.

"So, whose mind did Royalty blow into a million horny peices?" Doyeon asked with a smirk encompassing the whole of her face. She even muted the television none of them were watching for extra assurance.

"I wouldn't say I blew her mind, but I gave Lisa Manoban a lap dance because it's my job." You made sure to point those last words at Doyeon. For some reason, Doyeon's been in perpetual matchmaker mode since you met, and that was when you were all 14.

"If you didn't blow her mind, where's your bra?" Ryu asked with a suspicious raise to her eyebrow.

You scoffed loudly, "How did you even notice that?!"

"I notice everything."

"Fine! I may have stuffed it in her pocket as a parting gift." You crossed your arms over your chest protectively, a small pout forming on your now plain lips.

"Oh my God! You did blow her mind!" Doyeon shouted, an accusing finger pointed in your direction.

"You're into her." Ryu's revelation is way softer in execution, but just as accusatory and astonished.

"Why? Just because I stuffed my bra in her pants pocket?"

"No. Because you took off your bra in the first place." Ryujin answered smoothly. Doyeon nodded along slowly. They all knew the implications but know one seemed keen to elaborate.

You rolled your eyes and huffed, "Fine. You win again. I might be a tiny bit into her, but it doesn't matter."

"And why doesn't it matter?"

"Hello, Shin Ryujin. My name's Y/N Y/LN. Would you like a copy of my business card? Yes, I know it says Royalty, but don't worry, that's my stage name. I'm a stripper. Nice to meet you."

"No. You're an exotic dancer. Say it with me. 'Exotic dancer'." Doyeon spoke slowly. You promptly ignored her.

"That's only a problem because you're making it a problem." Ryujin said softly.

You shook your head, "She was so sweet and nervous. She seemed to be genuinely interested in me. Not Royalty. In me. But she doesn't even know my actual name. I'm never going to see her again. I'm fine with that." You shrugged harshly.

"Why do you insist on lying to your best friends?"

You don't answer.

"And she does know your name."

"What?" You sat up, your eyes zeroing in on Ryujin. She winced at the elbows digging into her thigh.

"I sew your name into all of your lingerie so those bitches you work with can't steal it. So, assuming she's smart enough to look at the tag, she knows your name." Ryujin's face suggested she thought this was completely normal.

"You sewed my name into my bras and panties? She's going to think I'm a narcissist. Good going, Ryujin." You plopped back down, this time groaning into your hands.

"That's our Jinjin. Always looking out for her besties!" Doyeon patted Ryu's shoulder placatingly.

"Now, you can wait for her to find you and then you can fuck into the sunset or whatever."

"Or just finish what you started back at the club. Or did you already finish?" Doyeon giggled at her own joke. Ryujin didn't giggle, but she did want to know the answer.

"Doesn't talking about your fellow singer like this make you uncomfortable?" You asked pointedly.

Doyeon rolled her eyes, "That would imply we actually get a deal soon."

An odd look passed over your face. Ryujin eyed her best friend with a sympathetic frown, "You could get a deal soon too. So people can see you. You're still good. Still better range and rhythm than Doyeon."

"Hey!"

You only shook your head. It was just too late for you.

Lisa had been trying to fight off this headache since she had woken up that morning.

She had tried fighting it off during breakfast, during their morning meeting where Jungwook yelled at them, (Well, Jungwook had mainly yelled at Irene, and she seemed more mad that they had gotten caught than anything else. It was safe to say that Jisoo was still Jungwook's favorite), during rehearsals, and now when she's alone, save for her snoozing roommate.

Her memories from the previous night hadn't helped soothe the throbbing in her temples. In fact, they had did the opposite, and not just to her head. To her entire body.

Royalty did things to her entire body. They had spent maybe a total of 15 minutes together, and yet that had been enough time for Lisa to memorize every last one of the woman's dips and bumps and ridges and curves.

Really, it's no wonder that Lisa still has a hangover, because thinking about Royalty makes her feel a bit drunk.

It's something she's got to get over quickly. They're going to leave after their benefit concert the next day, and there's going to be little to no room for insignificant crushes on women she doesn't know.

And yet, Lisa still feels like she's got unfinished business. Lisa still feels like she's got to find this woman and at the very least talk, with all of their clothing on, over a cup of coffee.

She sat on the edge of the hotel bed soflty. Her suitcase, placed haphazardly in the corner, stared back at her.

Lisa reached over to it. Her hand finding its way into one of the small pockets on the side. She yanked out the peice of fiery red lace. A glance over her shoulder tells her Jenny is still asleep.

Maybe she's holding it differently then she had last night. Maybe it's fate. Who actually knows. Whatever it is pulls the tag of the garment free from its confines.

Property of Y/N "Royalty" Y/LN.

So, that's what she was supposed to do with a stripper's bra.

#jesssica's fanfic #blackpink fanfic #blackpink #lisa x reader #lisa fanfic #american style

[clo2edloop-blog]

Lesson 3: "All men are predators" isn't so abstract when they're at your dinner table

A couple days ago I learned that the friend of mine from Lesson 1.1 raped his girlfriend two or more times in her sleep over the past month and a half. She contacted my girlfriend in confidence and asked what their sex life had been like. That's a weird fucking question and after some prodding she revealed that the guy (who I'll call "Josh" for now) had fucked her and ejaculated in/on her while unconscious at least twice that she could remember. She says she has a recording of him admitting guilt and a few days ago she broke up with him, effectively putting him on the street since she's his only contact in that city. My business partners bought him a ticket to his home state to get him away from her. He doesn't seem to realize that any of us know. I'm going to recap my relationship with him, my observations about his behaviors, the stories my girl has told me of her time with him, and collate all of those points into a greater picture that should have shut this entire thing down years ago: Josh, for as long as I've known him, has been a habitual liar. We bonded quickly and intensely as friends and brothers from the moment we met each other because we were essentially imprisoned in a very violent situation under a violent and unstable man who was exploiting our naïveté and youth for free labor on his pot farm. Under these circumstances I forgave him for his obvious fibs and tall tales because neither of us were great at staying sane in that situation and I wrote it off as some sort of coping mechanism. The pathological nature of his dishonesty became apparent to me later on, namely in regards to the situation with my girlfriend. The lies he told before, during and afterwards were boundless and blatant, and pointless too. The ones I've already covered are that she was not his girlfriend and that he had lied to her extensively about the living arrangements, but that's a drop in the bucket. After leaving he told me he dumped her because "she wasn't girlfriend material" which I knew to be untrue. He told me she manipulated and abused him emotionally, which I doubted. Among many other completely fabricated stories and examples, he spun me an elaborate tale of their relationship and its finality. Through all of this I was fucking that same girl and talking to her regularly and I knew that even if what he was telling me wasn't necessarily untrue, it was being hotly contested by an obviously more trustworthy party. I don't know why I allowed him to lie to me like that for years, about big and little things alike, without ever challenging him. Maybe I just didn't want the confrontation, or maybe I really wanted to believe him because he was my friend. Maybe I understood that we were all each other had for support through those years and any sacrifice I made to maintain that was necessary. Either way, he disturbed me to various degrees again and again but I always managed to subdue my alarm and carry on as usual. He's also always been a mooch. To date I have never known him to have his own money. His mother sent him to work that job so he could learn some independence and adult life skills, and it didn't work. I, on the other hand, am a resourceful and skilled individual when it comes to keeping money in my pocket--I'll even steal as long as it falls within strict Robin Hood ethics--and because of that it often fell on me to keep him fed and smoking. He's lazy, and I kept him employed by covering his ass. He always got us into trouble, he was messy, he was mannerless, he recklessly damaged property, he used and ruined a lot of my stuff with no remorse, he borrowed money endlessly with no intention of ever paying it back, and he never seemed to mature. As time passed he simply wasn't progressing in age. Our friendship has always been extremely one-sided. Of course I vented and complained and screamed about that in my text messages to friends and family but at the end of the day I swallowed my grievances and accepted the situation, putting my foot down just often enough to keep him respectful of my money before he inevitably convinced me to give him even more of it. He's also violent and confrontational. His testosterone seems to flow with vigor matched only by his insecurity, and he's never more than a hair trigger away from a full blown screaming tantrum about something stupid. This volatility expressed itself many times as he repeatedly fought and polarized with everyone around us; the worst example by far was his meltdown over the girl that ultimately cost him his job and my respect. There have been too many instances of his rage episodes to reasonably recount here. Again, I always chalked that up to the living situation we were trapped in. Every day he endured some degree of racism from our coworkers and sometimes I even managed to admire his antics, because I certainly felt that same rage most of the time but I couldn't risk expressing it. Look, I don't know why I put up with everything. I don't know why I continued to talk to him and hide what I knew about his sexual misconduct or why I kept loaning him money and watching his back for another year afterwards. I'm David Franco in 21 Jump Street when the hotel gunfight erupts. I'm a lot of talk and a righteous ethical policeman but once the shooting starts I'm a frightened mess, frozen and useless. My girlfriend told me not to tell anybody or him that I knew of those many mornings in the tent, and so I never said anything. Did I have to continue to host him and remain a loyal and virtuous friend? Absolutely not but I did anyway. I'm not skilled at dealing with this situation. I'm humiliated by the entire thing. I don't have a skill set for this. Since my feminist awakening a few years ago I've been buried by an avalanche of terrifying revelations that almost every guy friend I've ever had still carries some absolutely disgusting and ignorant views of women. One of my closest friends told me with a straight face that he doesn't believe that sexism or sexual misconduct is systemic, and that only a barely quantifiable fraction of men account for all sexual assaults in this country. Another guy routinely brings underage girls home with him. A childhood friend of mine was expelled from his high school over a rape allegation that in hindsight I know to be true without question. A lady friend of mine is married to a man who routinely berates and mocks her for being a feminist, and truly believes that false rape accusations are an epidemic and feminism is a flawed concept. He's an "All Lives Matter" fam. There's simply no end to it, and I have no fucking idea how to get used to it. Josh was another example of this and there were enough external factors at play--all of which affected my considerable income--for me to just pretend it never happened, which is mortifying to reflect on. More than anything I can't help but wonder if my saying something to him about his sexual misconduct might've spared this latest girl from his depravity. Perhaps it would have shattered the facade he thought he was successfully living and he would have rectified his behavior, or at least refrained for fear that he'd be outed again. I just don't know and I'll never find out. Now I'm in a position where I have the choice to continue my friendship with him or end it, and I've soundly chosen the latter. I spammed him with Facebook messages berating and shaming him for who he is and what he's done. I spread the word to all of our mutual connections in the area that he's cut off from our resources and attention for good, or they'll answer to me for it. I was as careful as I could be not to implicate his most recent victim but I sure as hell spilled guts about my girlfriend. I don't know if any of it made a difference to him. I can see that he read the messages but there was no reply so I blocked him. The worst part though--with regards to my faults along the way--is that I allowed his lies and bullshit to put considerable strain on my relationship with that girl. There were a lot of things going on that fucked with my head. For one, she never stopped bringing him up in conversation and would regard him as a poster child for feminist men (because of his Facebook arguments)...in the same sentence as her descriptions of his abuse. I would get absolutely livid and be close to screaming about how confused that made me, and why on earth she still talked to him. I wanted nothing more than for her to give me the go-ahead to confront him about what he'd done to her, because that meant I could sever the friendship and make peace with myself...but she never did, and even though I can understand why, I tormented myself over how she could still say a positive thing about him. Furthermore, he would constantly throw their relationship in my face in these strange backhanded ways that had me double-taking so hard my neck probably snapped once or twice. His endless stream of lies crawled into the depths of my rational mind and began to turn it inside out, and on more than one occasion I found myself in hysterics at my girl demanding to know who was lying to me. I embarrassed myself many times. Through all of this she would simply say that she was the more trustworthy of the two and that she wanted nothing to do with him and could I PLEASE just stop questioning everything because it wasn't even my problem! But I couldn't, and I think a major reason that girl and I are due for a breakup anytime now is because I allowed Josh to stress me out to a degree from which I don't know long it'll take to recover. I've come to associate her with confusion, paranoia, lies, suspicion, him, everything bad. No matter how hard I've tried to get him out of my head he's still in there, rubbing her in my face smugly lying about the vile things he's done to her, and she's still in there singing his praises and fondly remembering their sex life in between catalogues of his sexual assaults. I hope I never see him again. I hope I never hear about him again. My relationship is doomed for a number of reasons but chief among them, second only to the emotional turmoil we put each other through with our own baggage, is the way her "Josh" chapter twisted my mind up and wrung it of any sense as if it were a wet towel. It's been a truly demeaning and disheartening experience for both of us. I'm not proud of how I've handled it.