#‘oh here’s the two faced guy who thinks he’s not able to be transphobic because they use he/they and are gay’

[schmope-is-dead]

wishing that all of my irls except like 4 forgot who I am. tbh

[innuendostudios]

I was invited to give a talk on GamerGate over Zoom in early 2021. I've long been frustrated that there isn't a good timeline of GG and its origins on YouTube. When people ask "what the hell was GG anyway?" they often get referred to my or Dan Olson's videos on the subject, but both of them were made while GG was ongoing, and presumed a degree of familiarity on the part of the audience. There was just too much to say about what was already happening to spend time getting the audience up to speed, and it was safe to assume our audiences had enough context to follow along. But time moves fast on the internet, and many people who now care about such things weren't there while it was happening, and are lacking the necessary context to follow the better videos. For a long time, I've only been able to direct them to RationalWiki's timeline, which is excellent but so exhaustively comprehensive that it's likely to scare off first-timers.

I realize an hourlong lecture isn't necessarily helping matters, but the first 20-or-so minutes of this video are my attempt at streamlining the timeline such that people can be up to speed on the most important stuff fairly quickly. The rest is talking about what it all meant, how it prefigured the Alt-Right, and using it to better understand digital radicalization.

This video was made with the help of Magdalen Rose, who edited the slides to the audio while I was laid up with a back injury. Go sub to her channel! And please back me on Patreon.

Transcript below the cut.

FUCKING VIDEO GAMES? FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THEY MADE DOZENS OF PEOPLE MISERABLE FOR YEARS OVER VIDEO GAMES! NOT EVEN FUCKING VIDEO GAMES, FUCKING ARTICLES ABOUT FUCKING VIDEO GAMES. THIS IS WHAT PASSES FOR LEGITIMATE GRIEVANCE. ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS SHIT??

Hi! My name is Ian Danskin. I’m a video essayist and media artist. I run the YouTube channel Innuendo Studios, please like share and subscribe.

I’m here to talk to you about GamerGate, and I needed to get all that out of the way. I’m going to talk about what GamerGate was and how it prefigured The Alt-Right, and there are gonna be moments where you’re nodding along with me, going, “yeah, yeah I get it,” and then the sun’s gonna break through a crack in the wall and you’ll suddenly remember that all this is happening because some folks - mostly ladies - said some stuff - provably true stuff, I might add - about video games and a bunch of guys didn’t like it, and you’re gonna want to rip your hair out. By the end of this, you will have a better understanding of what happened, but it will never not be bullshit.

Also, oh my god, content warning. Racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, rape threats, threats of violence, domestic abuse - I’m not going to depict or describe at length any of the worst stuff, but it’s all in the mix. So if at any point you need to switch me off or mute me, you have my blessing.

Brace yourselves.

Some quick prehistory:

In 2012, feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian ran a Kickstarter campaign for a YouTube series on sexist tropes in video games. And, partway through the campaign, 4chan found it and said “let’s ruin her life.” And a lot of the male general gaming public joined in. And by “ruin her life” I’m not talking 150 angry tweets including dozens of rape and death threats per week, though that was a thing. I’m talking bomb threats. I’m talking canceled speaking engagements because someone threatened to shoot up a school. I’m talking FBI investigation. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

And in 2013, Zoe Quinn released Depression Quest, a free text game about living with depression. They received harassment off and on for the next year, most pointedly from an incel forum called Wizardchan that doxxed their phone number and made harassing phone calls telling them to kill themself. The harassers faced no meaningful repercussions.

(Also, quick note: Zoe Quinn is nonbinary and has come out since the events in question. When I call Zoe’s harassment misogynist, understand I am not calling Zoe a woman, but they were attacked by people who hate women because that’s how they were perceived. Had they been out at the time things probably would’ve gone down similarly, but on top of misogyny I’d be talking about nonbinary erasure and transphobia.)

Okay. Our story begins in August 2014. The August that never ended.

Depression Quest, after a prolonged period on Greenlight, finally releases on Steam as a free download with the option to pay what you want. In the days that follow, Zoe’s ex-boyfriend, Eron Gjoni, writes a nearly 10,000-word blog called The Zoe Post, in which he claims Quinn had been a shitty and unfaithful partner. (For reference, 10,000 words is long enough that the Hugos would consider it a novelette.) This is posted to forums on Penny Arcade and Something Awful, both of which immediately take it down, finding it, at best, a lot of toxic hearsay and, at worse, an invitation to harassment. So Gjoni workshops the post, adds a bunch of edgelord humor (and I am using the word “humor” very generously), and reposts it to three different subforums on 4chan.

We’re not going to litigate whether Zoe Quinn was a good partner. I don’t know or care. I don’t think anyone on this call is trying to date them so I’m not sure that’s our business. What is known is that the relationship lasted five months, and, after it ended, Gjoni began stalking Quinn. Gjoni has, in fact, laid out how he stalked Quinn in meticulous detail to interviewers and why he feels it was justified. It’s also been corroborated by a friend that Quinn briefly considered taking him back at a games conference in San Francisco, but he became violent during sex and Quinn left the apartment in the middle of the night with visible bruises.

Off of the abusive ex-boyfriend’s post, 4chan decides it’s going to make Zoe Quinn one of their next targets, and starts a private IRC channel to plan the campaign. The channel is called #BurgersAndFries, a reference to Gjoni claiming Quinn had cheated on him with five guys. A couple sentences in The Zoe Post - which Gjoni would later claim were a typo - imply that one of the five guys was games journalist Nathan Grayson and that Quinn had slept with him in exchange for a good review of Depression Quest. Given the anger that they’d seen drummed up against women in games with the previous Anita Sarkeesian hate mob, #BurgersAndFries decides to focus on this breach of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover story, many of them howling with laughter at the thought that male gamers would probably buy it. This way, destroying Quinn’s life and career and turning their community against them would appear an unfortunate byproduct of a legitimate consumer revolt; criticism of the harassment could even be framed as a distraction from the bigger issue. Gjoni himself is in the IRC channel telling them that this was the best hand to play.

The stated aim of many on #BurgersAndFries was to convince Quinn to commit suicide.

Two regulars in the IRC, YouTubers MundaneMatt and Internet Aristocrat, make videos about The Zoe Post. Incidentally, both these men had already made a lot of money off videos about Anita Sarkeesian. Matt’s is swiftly taken down with a DMCA claim, and he says that Quinn filed the claim themself. (For the record, in those days, YouTube didn’t tell you who filed DMCA claims against you.) Members of the IRC also reach out to YouTuber TotalBiscuit, who had been critical of Sarkeesian and dismissive of her harassment, and he tweets the story to his 350,000 followers, saying a game developer trading sex for a good review might not prove true, but was certainly plausible.

This is where GamerGate begins to get public traction.

Zoe Quinn is very swiftly doxxed, with their phone number, home address, nudes, and names and numbers of their family collected. Gjoni himself leaks their birth name. The Zoe Post, and the movement against Quinn - now dubbed “The Quinnspiracy” - make it to The Escapist and Reddit, which mods will have little luck removing. The Quinnspiracy declares war on any site that does take their threads down, most vehemently NeoGAF. People who defend Zoe against the harassment start getting doxxed themselves - Fez developer Phil Fish is doxxed so thoroughly, hackers get access to the root folder of his website.

In what I’m going to call This Should Have Been The End, Part 1, Stephen Totilo, Editor-in-Chief at Kotaku where Nathan Grayson worked, in response to pressure not just from The Quinnspiracy but an increasing number of angry gamers buying The Quinnspiracy’s narrative, publishes a story. In it he verifies that Quinn and Grayson did date for several months, and that not only is there no review of Depression Quest anywhere on Kotaku, not by Grayson nor anyone else, but that Grayson did not write a single word about Quinn the entire time they were dating.

In response, The Quinnspiracy declares war on Kotaku. r/KotakuinAction is formed, which will become the primary site of organization outside of chanboards. The fact that their entire “movement” is based on a review that does not exist changes next to nothing.

Some people start to see The Quinnspiracy as potentially profitable. The Fine Young Capitalists get involved, a group ostensibly working to get women into video games but who have a Byzantine plan to do so wherein they crowdfund the budget and the woman who wins a competition gets to storyboard a game, but another company will make and she will get 8% of the profits, the rest going to a charity chosen by the top donor. 4chan becomes the top donor. They like TFYC because the head of the company has a vendetta against Zoe Quinn, who had previously called them out for their transphobic submission policy, and he falsely accused Quinn of having once doxxed him. 4chan feels backing an ostensibly feminist effort will be good PR, but can’t resist selecting a colon cancer charity because, they say, feminism is cancer and they want to be the cure to butthurt. They also get to design a character for the game, and so they create Vivian James, who will become the GamerGate mascot.

Manosphere YouTubers Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini launch a Patreon campaign for their antifeminist documentary The Sarkeesian Effect and come to The Quinnspiracy looking for $15,000 a month for an indefinite period to make it, which they get.

In what will prove genuinely awful timing, Anita Sarkeesian releases the second episode of Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, and, despite not being a games journalist and having nothing to do with Quinn or Grayson, she is immediately roped into the narrative about how feminists are ruining games culture and becomes the second major target of harassment. Both she and Quinn soon have to leave their houses after having receiving dozens and dozens of death threats that include their home addresses.

After being courted by members of the IRC channel, Firefly star Adam Baldwin tweets a link to one of the Quinnspiracy videos and coins the hashtag #GamerGate. This is swiftly adopted by all involved.

In response to all this, Leigh Alexander writes a piece for Gamasutra arguing that the identity that these men are flocking to the “ethics in games journalism” narrative to defend no longer matters as a marketing demographic. Gaming and games culture is so large and so varied, and the “core gamer” audience of 18-34 white bros growing smaller and septic, that there was no reason, neither morally nor financially, to treat them as the primary audience anymore. Love of gaming is eternal, but, she declared, “gamers,” as an identity, “are over.” Eight more articles contextualizing GamerGate alongside misogyny and the gatekeeping of games culture come out across several websites in the following days. GamerGate frames these as a clear sign of [deep sigh] collusion to oppress gamers, proving that ethics in games journalism is, indeed, broken, and Leigh Alexander becomes the third major target of harassment. These become known as the “gamers are dead” articles - a phrase not one of them uses - and they make “get Leigh Alexander fired from Gamasutra” one of their primary goals.

Something I need you to understand is that it has, at this point, been two weeks.

Highlights from the next little bit: Alex Macris, a higher up at The Escapist’s parent company, expresses support for GamerGate; he will go on to write the first positive coverage at a major publication and cement The Escapist as GamerGate-friendly. Mike Cernovich, aka “Based Lawyer,” gets GamerGate’s attention by mocking Anita Sarkeesian; he will go on to hire a private investigator to stalk Zoe Quinn. GamerGate launches Operation Disrespectful Nod, an email campaign pressuring companies to pull advertising from websites that have criticized them. They leverage their POC members, getting them, any time someone points out the rampant racism and antisemitism among GamerGaters, to say “I am a person of color and I am #NotYourShield”; most of these “POC members” are fake accounts left over from a previous, racist disinformation campaign. Milo Yiannapoulos gets involved, writing positive coverage of GG despite having mocked gamers for precisely this behavior in the past, and gets so much traffic it pulls Breitbart News out of obscurity and makes it a significant player in modern conservative news media.

[Hey! Ian from the future here. This talk mostly addresses how GamerGate prefigured the Alt-Right strategically and philosophically, but if you want a more explicit, material connection: Breitbart News took its newfound notoriety to become, as its Executive Chair phrased it in 2016, "a platform for the Alt-Right." That Executive Chair was Steve Bannon, who threw the website's weight behind The Future President Who Shall Not Be Named, and, upon getting his attention, would then go on to become his campaign strategist and work in his Administration. So, if you're wondering how one of the central figures of the Alt-Right ended up in the White House, the answer is literally "GamerGate." Back to you, Ian from the past!]

In what I’m calling This Should Have Been The End, Part 2, Zoe Quinn announces that they have been lurking the #BurgersAndFries IRC channel since the beginning and releases dozens of screenshots showing harassment being planned and the selection of “ethics in games journalism” as a cover. #BurgersAndFries has a meltdown, everyone turns on each other, and the channel is abandoned. And they then start another IRC and things proceed.

It goes on like this. I’m not gonna cover everything. This is just the first month. It should be clear by now that this thing is kind of unkillable. And I worry I haven’t made it obvious that this is not just a chanboard and an IRC. Thousands of regular, every day gamers were buying the story and joining in. They were angry, and no amount of evidence that their anger was unfounded was going to change that. You could not mention or even allude to GamerGate and not get flooded with dozens, even hundreds of furious replies. These replies always included the hashtag so everyone monitoring it could join in, so all attempts at real conversation devolved into a hundred forking threads where some people expected you to talk to them while others hurled insults and slurs. And always the possibility that, if any one of them didn’t like what you said, you’d be the next target.

To combat this, some progressives offered up the hashtag #GameEthics to the people getting swept up in GamerGate, saying, “look, we get that you’re angry, and if you want to talk about ethics in games journalism, we can totally do that, but using your hashtag is literally putting us in danger; they calling the police on people saying there’s a hostage situation at their home addresses so they get sent armed SWAT teams, and if you’ll just use this other hashtag we can have the conversation you say you want to have in safety.” And I will ever stop being salty about what happened.

They refused. They wouldn’t cede any ground to what they saw as their opposition. It was so important to have the conversation on their terms that not only did they refuse to use #GameEthics, they spammed it with furry porn so no one could use it.

A few major events on the timeline before we move on: Christina Hoff Sommers, the Republican Party’s resident ���feminist,” comes out criticizing Anita Sarkeesian and becomes a major GG figurehead, earning the title Based Mom. Zoe Quinn gets a restraining order against Eron Gjoni, which he repeatedly violates, to no consequence; GG will later crowdfund his legal fees. There’s this listserv called GameJournoPros where game journalists would talk about their jobs, and many are discussing their concerns over GamerGate, so Milo Yiannopoulos leaks it and this is framed as further “proof of collusion.” 4chan finally starts enforcing its “no dox” rules and shuts GamerGate threads down, so they migrate to 8chan, a site famous for hosting like a lot of child porn. Indie game developer Brianna Wu makes a passing joke about GamerGate on Twitter and they decide, seemingly on a whim, to make her one of the biggest targets in the entire movement; she soon has to leave her home as well. GamerGate gets endorsements from WikiLeaks, Infowars, white nationalist sites Stormfront and The Daily Stormer, and professional rapist RooshV. And hundreds of people get doxxed; an 8chan subforum called Baphomet is created primarily to host dox of GamerGate’s critics.

But by November, GamerGate popularity was cresting, as more and more mainstream media covered it negatively. Their last, big spike in popularity came when Anita Sarkeesian went on The Colbert Report and Stephen made fun of the movement. Their numbers never recovered after that.

Which is not to say GamerGate ended. It slowed down. The period of confusion where the mainstream world couldn’t tell whether it was a legitimate movement or not passed. But, again, most harassers faced no meaningful repercussions. Gamers who bought the lie about “ethics in games journalism” stayed mad that no one had ever taken them seriously, and harassers continued to grief their targets for years. The full timeline of GamerGate is an constant cycle of lies, harassment, operations, grift, and doxxing. Dead-enders are to this day still using the hashtag. And remember how Anita had nothing to do with ethics in games journalism or Zoe Quinn, and they just roped her in because they’d enjoyed harassing her before so why not? Every one of GamerGate’s targets knows that they may get dragged into some future harassment campaign just because. It’s already happened to several of them. They’re marked.

(sigh) Let’s take a breath.

Now that we know what GamerGate was, let’s talk about why it worked.

In the thick of GamerGate, I started compiling a list of tactics I saw them using. I wanted to make a video essay that was one part discussion of antifeminist backlash, and one part list of techniques these people use so we can better recognize and anticipate their behavior. That first part became six parts and the second part went on a back burner. It would eventually become my series, The Alt-Right Playbook. GamerGate is illustrative because most of what would become The Alt-Right Playbook was in use.

Two foundational principles of The Alt-Right Playbook are Control the Conversation and Never Play Defense. Make sure people are talking about what you want them to talk about, and take an aggressive posture so you look dominant even when you’re not making sense. For instance: once Zoe leaked the IRC chatlogs, a reasonable person could tell the average gater, “the originators of GamerGate were planning harassment from the very beginning.” But the gater would say, “you’re cherry-picking; not everyone was a harasser.”

Now, this is a bad argument - that’s not how you use “cherry-picking” - and it’s being framed as an accusation - you’re not just wrong, you’re dishonest - which makes you wanna defend yourself. But, if you do - if you tell them why that argument is crap - you’ve let the conversation move from “did the IRC plan harassment?” - a question of fact - to “are the harassers representative of the movement?” - a question of ethics. Like, yes, they are, but only within a certain moral framework. An ethics question has no provable answer, especially if people are willing to make a lot of terrible arguments. It is their goal to move any question with a definitive answer to a question of philosophy, to turn an argument they can’t win into an argument nobody can win.

The trick is to treat the question you asked like it’s already been answered and bait you into addressing the next question. By arguing about whether you’re cherry-picking, you’re accepting the premise that whether you’re cherry-picking is even relevant. Any time this happens, it’s good to pause and ask, “what did we just skip over?” Because that will tell you a lot.

What you skipped over is their admission that, yes, the IRC did plan harassment, but that’s only on them if most of the movement was in on it. Which is a load of crap - the rest of the IRC saw it happening, let it happen, it’s not like anybody warned Zoe, and shit, I’m having the cherry-picking argument! They got me! You see how tempting it is? But presumably the reason you brought the harassment up is because you want them to do something about it. At the very least, leave the movement, but ideally try and stop it. They don’t, strictly speaking, need to feel personally responsible to do that. And you might be thinking, well, maybe if I can get them take responsibility then they’ll do something, but you’d be falling for a different technique I call I Hate Mondays.

This is where people will acknowledge a terrible thing is happening, maybe even agree it’s bad, but they don’t believe anything can be done about it. They also don’t believe you believe anything can be done about it. Mondays suck, but they come around every week. This is never stated outright, but it’s why you’re arguing past each other. To them, the only reason to talk about the bad thing is to assign blame. Whose turn is it to get shit on for the unsolvable problem? Their argument about cherry-picking amounts to “1-2-3 not it.” And they are furious with you for trying to make them responsible for harassment they didn’t participate in.

The unspoken argument is that harassment is part of being on the internet. Every public figure deals with it. This ignores any concept of scale - why does one person get harassed more than another? - but you can’t argue with someone who views it as a binary: harassment either happens or it doesn’t, and, if it does, it’s a fact of life, and, if it happens to everyone, it’s not gendered. And this is not a strongly-held belief they’ve come to after years of soul-searching - this is what they’ve just decided they believe. They want to participate in GamerGate despite knowing its purpose, and this is what would need to be true for that to be ok.

Or maybe they’re just fucking with you! Maybe you can’t tell. Maybe they can’t tell, either. I call this one The Card Says Moops, where people say whatever they feel will score points in an argument and are so irony-poisoned they have no idea whether they actually believe it. A very useful trick if the thing you appear to believe is unconscionable. You can’t take what people like that say at face value; you can only intuit their beliefs from their actions. They say they believe this one minute and that another, but their behavior is always in accordance with that, not this.

In the negative space, their belief is, “The harassment of these women is okay. My anger about video games is more important. I may not be harassing them myself, but they do kind of deserve it.” They will never say this out loud in a serious conversation, though many will say it in an anonymous or irreverent space where they can later deny they meant it. But, whatever they say they believe, this is the worldview they are operating under.

Obscuring this means flipping through a lot of contradictory arguments. The harassment is being faked, or it’s not being faked but it’s being exaggerated, or it’s not being exaggerated but the target is provoking it to get attention, which means GamerGate harassers simultaneously don’t exist, exist in small numbers, and exist in such large numbers someone can build a career out of relying on them! It can be kind of fun to take all these arguments made in isolation and try to string together an actual position. Like, GamerGate would argue that Nathan Grayson having previously mentioned Zoe Quinn in an article about a canceled reality show counts as positive coverage, and since Grayson reached out to Quinn for comment it’s reasonable to assume they started dating before the article was published (which is earlier than they claim), and positive coverage did lead to greater popularity for Depression Quest. But if you untangle that, it’s like… okay, you’re saying Zoe Quinn slept with a journalist in exchange for four nonconsecutive sentences that said no more than “Zoe Quinn exists and made a game,” and the price of those four sentences was to date the journalist for months, all to get rich off a game that didn’t cost any money. That’s your movement?

And some, if cornered, would say, “yes, we believe women are just that shitty, that one would fuck a guy for months if it made them the tiniest bit more famous.” But they won’t lead with that. Because they know it won’t convince the normies, even the ones who want to be convinced. So they use a process I call The Ship of Theseus to, piece by piece, turn that sentence into “slept with a journalist in exchange for a good review” and argue that each part of the sentence is technically accurate. It’s trying to lie without lying. And, provided all the pieces of this sentence are discussed separately, and only in the context of how they justify this sentence, you can trick yourself into believing this sentence is mostly true.

So, like, why? This is clearly motivated reasoning; what’s the motivation? What was this going to accomplish?

The answer is nothing. Nothing, by design. GamerGate’s “official” channels - the subreddit and the handful of forums that didn’t shut them down - were rigidly opposed to any action more organized than an email campaign. They had a tiny handful of tangible demands - they wanted gaming websites to post public ethics policies and had a list of people they wanted fired - but their larger aim was the sea change in how games journalism operated, which nothing they were asking for could possibly give them. The kind of anger that convinces you this is a true statement is not going to be addressed by a few paragraphs about ethics and Leigh Alexander getting a new job. They wanted gaming sites to stop catering to women and “SJWs” - who were a sizable and growing source of traffic - and to get out of the pockets of companies that advertised on their websites - which was their primary source of income. So all Kotaku had to do to make them happy was solve capitalism!

Meanwhile, the unofficial channels, like 8chan and Baphomet, were planning op after op to get private information, spread lies with fake accounts, get disinformation trending, make people quit jobs, cancel gigs, and flee their homes. Concrete goals with clear results. All you had to do to feel productive was go rogue. In my video,

How to Radicalize a Normie, I describe how the Alt-Right encourages lone wolf behavior by whipping people up into a rage and then refusing to give them anything to do, while surrounding them with examples of people taking matters into their own hands. The same mechanism is in play here: the public-facing channels don’t condone harassment but also refuse to fight it, the private channels commit it under cover of anonymity, and there is a free flow of traffic between them for when the official channels’ impotence becomes unbearable.

What I hope I’m illustrating is how these techniques play off of each other, how they create a closed ecosystem that rational thought cannot enter. There’s a phrase we use on the internet that got thrown around a lot at the time:

you can’t logic someone out of a position they didn’t logic themselves into.

Now, there are a few other big topics I think are relevant here, so I want to go through them one by one.

MEMEIFICATION

So a lot of interactions with GamerGate would involve a very insular knowledge base.

Like, you’d say something benign but progressive on Twitter.

A gater would show up in your mentions and say something aggressive and false.

You’d correct them. But then they’d come back and hit you with -

ah shit, sorry, this is a Loss meme.

If I were in front of a classroom I’d ask, show of hands, how many of you got that? I had to ask Twitter recently, does Gen Z know about Loss?!

If you don’t know what Loss is I’m not sure I can explain it to you. It’s this old, bad webcomic that was parodied so, so, so many times

that it was reduced to its barest essentials, to the point where any four panels with shapes in this arrangement is a Loss meme. For those of you in the know, you will recognize this anywhere, but have you ever tried to explain to someone who wasn’t in the know why this is really fuckin’ funny?

So, now… by the same process that this is a comics joke,

this is a rape joke.

I’m not gonna show the original image, but, once upon a time, someone made an animated GIF of the character Piccolo from Dragon Ball Z graphically raping Vegeta. 4chan loved it so much that it got posted daily, became known as the “daily dose,” until mods started deleting every incident of it. So they uploaded slightly edited version of it. Then they started uploading other images that had been edited with Piccolo’s color scheme. It got so abstracted that eventually any collection of purple and green pixels would be recognized as Piccolo Dick.

Apropos of nothing, GamerGate is a movement that insists it is not sexist in nature and it does not condone threats of rape against the women they don’t like. And this is their logo. This is their mascot.

If you’re familiar with the Daily Dose, the idea that GamerGate would never support Eron Gjoni if they believed he was a sexual abuser is so blatantly insincere it’s insulting… but imagine trying to explain to someone who’s not on 4chan how this sweater is a rape joke. Imagine having to explain it to a journalist. Imagine having to explain it to the judge enforcing your abuser’s restraining order.

Reactionaries use meme culture not just because they’re terminally online but also because it makes their behavior seem either benign or just confusing to outsiders. They find it hilarious that they can be really explicit and still fly under the radar. The Alt-Right did this with Pepe the Frog, the OK sign, even the milk glass emoji for a hot minute. The more inexplicable the meme, the better. You get the point where Stephen Miller is flashing Nazi signs from the White House and the Presidential re-eletion campaign is releasing 88 ads of exactly 14 words and there’s still a debate about whether the administration is racist. Because journalists aren’t going to get their heads around that. You tell them “1488 is a Nazi number,” it’s gonna seem a lot more plausible that you’re making shit up.

MOVE FAST AND BREAK THINGS

Online movements like GamerGate move at a speed and mutation rate too high for the mainstream world to keep up. And not just that they don’t understand the memes - they don’t understand the infrastructure.

In an attempt to cover GamerGate evenhandedly, George Wiedman of Super Bunnyhop interviewed a lawyer who specializes in journalistic ethics. He meant well; I really wish he hadn’t. You can see him trying to fit something like GamerGate into terms this silver-haired man who works in copyright law can understand. At one point he asks if it’s okay to fund the creative project of a potential journalistic source, to which the guy understandably says “no.”

What he’s alluding to here is the harassment of Jenn Frank. A few weeks into GamerGate, Jenn Frank writes a piece in The Guardian about sexism in tech that mentions Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn. In another case of “here’s a strongly-held belief I just decided I have,” GamerGate says this is a breach of journalistic ethics because Frank backs Quinn on Patreon. They harass her so intensely she not only has to quit her job at The Guardian, for several months she quits journalism entirely.

Off the bat, calling a public figure central to a major event in the field a “journalistic source” is flatly wrong-headed. Quinn was not interviewed or even contacted for the article, they were in no way a “source”; they were a subject. But I want to talk about this phrase, “fund a creative project.” Patreon is functionally a subscription; it’s a way of buying things. It’s technically accurate that Frank is funding Quinn’s creative project, but only in the sense that you are funding Bob Dylan’s creative project if you listen to his music. And saying Frank therefore can’t write about Quinn is like saying a music journalist can’t cover a Bob Dylan concert if they’ve ever bought his albums.

And we could talk about the ways that Patreon, as compared with other funding models, can create a greater sense of intimacy, and we also could comment that, well, that’s how an increasing number of people consume media now, so that perspective should be present in journalism. But maybe it means we should cover that perspective differently? I don’t know. It’s an interesting subject. But none of that’s going on in this conversation because this guy doesn’t know what Patreon is. It was only a year old at this point. Patreon’s been a primary source of my income for 5 years and my parents still don’t know what it is. (I think they think I’m a freelancer?) This guy hears “funding a creative project” and he’s thinking an investor, someone who makes a profit off the source’s success.

The language of straight society hasn’t caught up with what’s happening, and that works in GamerGate’s favor.

In the years since GamerGate we have dozens of stories of people trying to explain Twitter harassment to a legal system that’s never heard of Twitter. People trying to explain death threats to cops whose only relationship to the internet is checking email, confusedly asking, “Why don’t you just not go online?” Like, yeah, release your text game about depression at GameStop for the PS3 and get it reviewed in the Boston Globe, problem solved.

You see this in the slowness of mainstream journalists to condemn the harassment - hell, even games journalists at first. Because what if it is a legitimate movement? What if the harassers are just a fringe element? What if there was misconduct? The people in a position to stop GamerGate don’t have to be convinced of their legitimacy, they just have to hesitate. They just have to be unsure. Remember how much happened in just the first two weeks, how it took only a month to become unkillable.

It’s the same hesitance that makes mainstream media, online platforms, and law enforcement underestimate The Alt-Right. They’re terrified of condemning a group as white nationalist terrorists because they’re confused, and what if they’re wrong? Or, in most cases, not even afraid they’re wrong, but afraid of the PR disaster if too much of the world thinks they’re wrong.

ACCOUNTABILITY AND CONTROL

A thing I’ve talked about in The Alt-Right Playbook is how these decentralized, ostensibly leaderless movements insulate themselves from responsibility. Harassment is never the movement’s fault because they never told anyone to harass and you can’t prove the harassers are legitimate members of the movement. The Alt-Right does this too - one of their catchphrases is “I disavow.” Since there are no formalized rules for membership, they can redraw boundaries on the fly; they can take credit for any successes and deny responsibility for any wrongdoing. Public membership is granted or revoked based on a person’s moment-to-moment utility.

It’s almost like… they’re cherry-picking.

The flipside of this is a lack of control. Since they never officially tell anyone to do anything but write emails, they have no means of stopping anyone from behaving counterproductively. The harassment of Jenn Frank was the first time GamerGate’s originators thought, “maybe we should ease off just to avoid bad publicity,” and they found they couldn’t. GamerGate had gotten too big, and too many people were clearly there for precisely this reason.

They also couldn’t control the infighting. When your goal is to harass women and you have all these contradictory justifications for why, you end up with a lot of competing beliefs. And, you know what? Angry white men who like harassing people don’t form healthy relationships! Several prominent members of GamerGate - including Internet Aristocrat - got driven out by factionalism; they were doxxed by their own people! Jordan Owen and Davis Aurini parted ways hating each other, with Aurini releasing chatlogs of him gaslighting Owen about accepting an endorsement from Roosh, and they released two competing edits of The Sarkeesian Effect.

I say this because it’s useful to know that these are alliances of convenience. If you know where the sore spots are, you can apply pressure to them.

LEADERS WITHOUT LEADERSHIP

One way movements like GamerGate deflect responsibility is by declaring, “We are a leaderless movement! We have no means to stop harassment.”

Which… any anarchist will tell you collective action is entirely possible without leaders. But they’ll also tell you, absent a system of distributing power equitably, you’re gonna have leaders, just not ones you elected.

A few months into GamerGate, Randi Lee Harper created the ggautoblocker. Here’s what it did: it took five prominent GamerGate figures - Adam Baldwin, Mike Cernovich, Christina Hoff Sommers, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Nick Monroe, formerly known as [sigh] PressFartToContinue - and generated a block list of everyone who followed at least two of them on Twitter. Now, this became something of an arms race; once GamerGate found out about it they made secondary accounts that followed different people, and more and more prominent figures appeared and had to get added to the list. But, when it first launched, the list generated from just these five people comprised an estimated 90-95% of GamerGate.

Hate to break it to you, guys, but if 90+ percent of your movement is following at least two of the same five people, those are your leaders. The attention economy has produced them. Power pools when left on its own.

This is another case where you have to ignore what people claim and look at what they do. The Alt-Right loves to say “we disavow Richard Spencer” and “Andrew Anglin doesn’t speak for us.”

But no matter what they say, pay attention to whom they’re taking cues from.

AD CAMPAIGN

George Lakoff has observed that one way the Left fails in opposition to the Right is that most liberal politicians and campaigners have degrees in things like law and political science, where conservative campaigners more often have degrees in advertising and communications. Liberals and leftists may have a better product to sell, but conservatives know how to sell products.

GamerGate less resembles a boots-on-the-ground political movement than an ad campaign. First they decide what their messaging strategy is going to be. Then the media arm starts publicizing it. They seek out celebrity endorsements. They get their own hashtag and mascot. They donate to charity and literally call it “public relations.” You can even see the move from The Quinnspiracy to GamerGate as a rebranding effort - when one name got too closely associated with harassment, they started insisting GamerGate was an entirely separate movement from The Quinnspiracy. I learned that trick from Stringer Bell’s economics class.

Now, we could stand to learn a thing or two from this. But I also wouldn’t want us to adopt this strategy whole hog; you should view moves like these as red flags. If you’re hesitating to condemn a movement because what if it’s legitimate, take a look at whether they’re selling ideology like it’s Pepsi.

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING

One reason to insist you’re a consumer revolt rather than a harassment campaign is most people who want to harass need someone to give them permission, and need someone to tell them it’s normal.

Bob Altemeyer has this survey he uses to study authoritarianism. He divides respondents into people with low, average, and high authoritarian sentiments, and then tells them what the survey has measured and asks, “what score do you think is best to have: low, average, or high?”

People with low authoritarian sentiments say it’s best to be low. People with average authoritarian sentiments also say it’s best to be low. But people with high authoritarian sentiments? They say it’s best to be average. Altemeyer finds, across all his research, that reactionaries want to aggress, but only if it is socially acceptable. They want to know they are the in-group and be told who the out-group is. They don’t particularly care who the out-group is, Altemeyer finds they’ll aggress against any group an authority figure points to, even, if they don’t notice it, a group that contains them. They just have to believe the in-group is the norm.

This is why they have to believe games journalism is corrupt because of a handful of feminist media critics with outsized influence. Legitimate failures of journalism cannot be systemic problems rooted in how digital media is funded and consumed; there cannot be a legitimate market for social justice-y media. It has to be manipulation by the few. Because, if these things are common, then, even if you don’t like them, they’re normal. They’re part of the in-group. Reactionary politics is rebellion against things they dislike getting normalized, because they know, if they are normalized, they will have to accept them. Because the thing they care about most is being normal.

This is why the echo chamber, this is why Fox News, this is why the Far Right insists they are the “silent majority.” This is why they artificially inflate their numbers. This is why they insist facts are “biased.” They have to maintain the image that what are, in material terms, fringe beliefs are, in fact, held by the majority. This is why getting mocked by Stephen Colbert was such a blow to GamerGate. It makes it harder to believe the world at large agrees with them.

This is why, if you’re trying to change the world for the better, it’s pointless to ask their permission. Because, if you change the world around them, they will adapt even faster than you will.

THE ARGUMENT ISN’T SUPPOSED TO END

Casey Explosion has this really great Twitter thread comparing the Alt-Right to Scary Terry from Rick and Morty. His catchphrase is “you can run but you can’t hide, bitch.” And Rick and Morty finally escape him by hiding. And Morty’s all, “but he said we can’t hide,” and Rick is like, “why are we taking his word on this? if we could hide, he certainly wouldn’t tell us.”

The reason to argue with a GamerGater is on the implied agreement that, if you can convince them they’re part of a hate mob, they will leave. But look at the incentives here: they want to be in GamerGate, and you want them not to be. But they’re already in GamerGate. They’re not waiting on the outcome of this argument to participate. They’ve already got what they want; they don’t need to convince you GamerGate isn’t a hate mob.

This is why all their logic and rationalizations are shit, because they don’t need to be good. They’re not trying to win an argument. They’re trying to keep the argument going.

This has been a precept of conservative political strategy for decades. “You haven’t convinced us climate change is real and man-made, you need to do more studies.” They’re not pausing the use of fossil fuels until the results come in. “You haven’t convinced us there are no WMDs in Iraq, you need to collect more evidence.” They’re not suspending the war until you get back to them. “You haven’t convinced us that Reaganomic tax policy causes recessions, let’s just do it for another forty years and see what happens.” And when the proof comes in, they send us out for more, and we keep going.

The biggest indicator you can’t win a debate with a reactionary is they keep telling you you can. The biggest indicator protest and deplatforming works is they keep telling you in plays into their hands. The biggest indicator that you shouldn’t compromise with Republicans is they keep saying doing otherwise is stooping to their level. They’re not going to walk into the room and say, “Hi, my one weakness is reasoned argument, let’s pick a time and place to hash this out.”

And we fall for it because we’re trying to be decent people. Because we want to believe the truth always wins. We want to bargain in good faith, and they are weaponizing our good faith against us. Always dangling the carrot that the reason they’re like this is no one’s given them the right argument not to be. It’s all just a misunderstanding, and, really, it’s on us for not trying hard enough.

But they have no motivation to agree with us. Most of the people asking for debates have staked their careers on disagreeing with us. Conceding any point to the Left could cost them their livelihood.

WHY GAMES?

Let’s close with the big question: why games? And, honestly, the short answer is:

why not games?

Games culture has always presented itself as a hobby for young, white, middle class boys. It’s always been bigger and more diverse than that, but that’s how it was marketed, and that’s who most felt they belonged. As gaming grows bigger, there is suddenly room for those marginal voices that have always been there to make themselves heard. And, as gaming becomes more mainstream, it’s having its first brushes with serious critical analysis.

This makes the people who have long felt gaming was theirs and theirs alone anxious and a little angry. They’ve invested a lot of their identity in it and they don’t want it to change.

And what the Far Right sees in a sizable collection of aggrieved young men is an untapped market. This is why sites like Stormfront and Breitbart flocked to them. These are not liberals they have to convert, these people are, up til now, not politically engaged. The Right can be their first entry to politics.

The world was changing. Nerd properties were exploding into popular culture in tandem with media representation diversifying. And we were living with the first Black President. Any time an out-group looks like it might join the in-group, there is a self-protective backlash from the existing in-group. This had been brewing for a while, and, honestly, if it hadn’t boiled over in games, it would have boiled over somewhere else.

And, in the years since GamerGate, it has. The Far Right has tapped the comics, Star Wars, and sci-fi fandoms; they tried to get in with the furry community but failed spectacularly. They’re all over YouTube and, frankly, the atheist community was already in their pocket. Basically, if you’re in community with a bunch of young white guys who think they own the place, you might wanna have some talks with them sooner than later.

Anyway, if you want to know more about any of this stuff, RationalWiki’s timeline on GamerGate is pretty thorough. You can also watch my or Dan Olson’s videos on the subject. I’ll be putting the audio of this talk on YouTube and will put as many resources as I can in the show notes. The channel, again, is Innuendo Studios.

Sorry this was such a bummer.

Thank you for your time.

[abandoned-ax]

I’m on the team - pt 3

Pt 1 pt 2 pt 4

Summery: the first day of training camp!!

Tw!!! scratching (self harm scratching), panic attack

It’s strange, over the week the team has been super busy, practicing and studying. I helped Tsuki with Hinata and Kageyama trying to make sure they pass there exams, Iv gotten pretty close with the two, there both really fun, and watching them both struggle with classes and Tsuki scolding them is super funny. Sadly the two didn’t pass their exams and are both super upset. I remember when we were getting our test scores back i rushed to their classroom with Yams hoping to see them both super excited only to see Hinata come out pouting, and Kageyama with this super dejected look like he was super disappointed in himself for his grades. They were assured tho that they would be able to get to the training camp just a bit late!

We’re headed to the training camp, me Tsuki and yams are all sitting together, me and Tsuki on one side and yams on the seat across the isle. I’m starting to get nervous, not knowing how other teams are going to react to me being there! They don’t even know who I am, or my situation!

“Tsuki!! What if their angry! Maybe I shouldn’t have come- or-or maybe I shouldn’t have even joined, we don’t know how people are going to react!”

“It’s going to be ok (Y/N) im sure their all nice.” Yams said with this super supportive smile

“Yeah and if anyone bothers you I’ll take care of them.” Tsuki says knocking shoulders with me giving me a small smile.

“Yeah (Y/N) don’t worry! You’ve got all of us, we won’t let anything happen!” Suga says turning around, seemingly having heard me freaking out.

I sigh starting to scratch my hands a nervous habit of mine. After a minute or two Tsuki notices grabbing my hand giving me a disapproving look. He reaches down into the backpack he brought on the bus looking for something, pulling out a stress ball and hands it to me.

The rest of the bus ride me Tsuki and Yams ended up falling asleep, I guess I tired myself out with all of my stressing.

We got to Tokyo faster then I thought, the bus ride felt way to quick! But I guess that happens when you sleep, it’s like time travel.

Getting off the bus we were greeted by some guy with crazy strange rooster hair, I quickly moved to hide behind Tsuki still scared about meeting the other guys. Daichi went over to talk to rooster head while the rest of us got our bags off the bus Tanaka and Noya pushing me and Tsuki and Yams to “walk faster” and “get more excited”.

I overhear The guy Daichi is talking to saying “ your missing a few aren’t you? Wait who’s the new kid” I move closer to Tsuki hoping his tallness will hide me, “why does the new kid look so scared of me.” all I can think about is what if they’re transphobic, what if they don’t want me here, what’s going to happen when they find out. “I’ll tell you about him in a bit.” Daichi responds giving me a concerned look. Tsuki makes a comment about annoying volleyball guys while nudging me to try and get my attention, he and Yams start bickering a little bit and Noya and Tanaka are practically bouncing off the walls and it keeps me distracted.

We were pointed towards the room we’d be staying in putting our bags down and changing. I started getting more nervous, Iv never met these people before and they don’t know my situation. What if I walk on the court and someone yells at me, what if people start asking questions, what if one of them gets super angry and starts yelling at me, what if the team decides they actually side with them! What if-

“(Y/N)” it’s Tsuki and Suga, the two are standing in front of me, Suga is holding my hands and Tsuki has a hand on my back.

“Come on let’s sit down yeah,” the two move me to go sit on a windowsill I look over their shoulders and see all the guys looking at me, I don’t know why I feel so small now, I know them all, I know their not judging me, but I still feel like the piercing stare I’m getting from them is too much. I see Asahi start moving and coming to stand next to Suga on the opposite side from Tsuki.

“Hey (Y/N) I need you to breath for me ok,” he gives me a really concerned look I hadn’t even realized I was hyperventilating, taking one of my hands from Suga and putting it on his chest taking big deep breaths so that I can feel it. “In and out, in and out.” The two words being repeated like a mantra.

Once I’m breathing slightly better Tsuki starts asking questions

“are you lightheaded?”

“Kinda”

“did you eat this morning”

“no”

“why?”

“Didn’t have time.”

“Can someone go grab a granola bar or something?” I see some movement and I think it was Noya who left to go grab something for me to eat. “Are you nervous about training camp?”

“Yes” I say quietly hoping that only he can hear

“Is it because you haven’t played a real game yet.”

I shake my head, I haven’t even thought about that fact that I’m going to be playing a real game for the first time, the only people Iv played against is the team.

“Is it because your afraid people are going to be mean about your gender?”

“I- yes,”

I see everyone look around, I guess they hadn’t thought this was really that big of a deal, but for me, this isn’t something that happens normally, while they all had the door to this space opened to them, I had to hike up a mountain to just get to the door, and I’m just scared that once I get into the space that they all see as a right, is a privilege that most people like me don’t have, it isn’t a space I’m normally supposed to be in, and once you realize my situation everyone knows it.

Suga pulls on my hands making me face him. “ it’s gunna be ok (Y/N), if anyone says anything we’ll deal with it. You’ve got the team! We’re going to make sure your ok.” Suga says with a reassuring smile.

Noya quickly gets back in the room with a granola bar and a water bottle sliding in front of me to hand them both to me. “Thanks Noya” it’s a couple more minutes that I sit there catching my breath before I give everyone a nod letting them know I’m ok, everyone starts to disperse to Finnish getting ready.

Tsuki went over to his bag giving me an extra shirt he had, just like when I first stopped wearing my binder while playing. It’s a reassuring gesture. I get changed and everyone starts leaving before Tsuki grabs my hand, holding me back for a second.

“Your gunna be ok. I promise. And if you get scared or anything just let me or Suga or Daichi know and we’ll get you off the court ok?”

“Thanks Tsuki.”

Tsuki speeds up a little bit to get to yams and Daichi slows down a bit to get back to me.

“Hey I wanted to let you know before we get in there, there might be a cupule people who know your situation, mainly Kuroo the captain of Nekoma, he’s the guy from when we first show up. And I think Kenma their setter might. Him and Kuroo are close and he’s friends with hinata, and we’ll you know hinata. Other then that I’m not sure, they might have told some others but still I can’t tell you what the rest know.”

“Thanks Daichi, um did Kuroo seem chill about it when you told him?”

“Yeah, yeah definitely, I mean he was for sure surprised but, he ended up just saying ‘oh! That’s cool’ so I don’t think you have anything to worry about there.”

“Thanks Daichi.”

“Of course kid.”

We finally all get into the gym moving to get warmed up before our first game!

—————————————————————

Let’s just say we haven’t been winning much, Coach put me into Hinatas spot so Iv been playing a lot. Honestly Iv been so stressed about my gender that I didn’t have time to stress about the fact that Iv never been in a game before. Iv gotten a few good spikes in and have been blocking a bit, but I’m by no means super good! We’ve been doing lots of flying laps.

After one of our practice games with nekoma everyone was taking a break to drink some water when some guy with bleached long hair came over to me.

“Hey.” He said kind of quietly, he seemed pretty awkward like he doesn’t do this often.

“Hey?”

“Um I just wanna let you know- i mean I’m friends with hinata and he’s told me about your situation.”

“Ah I see”

“I just wanted to let you know I’m chill with it, all of us on Nekoma are, so you’ve got nothing to worry about with us.”

“Thanks. It’s uh really reassuring to hear that. I’m (Y/N)”

“Kenma.”

“It’s nice to meet you Kenma”

“So uh how long have you been playing, it’s just we did a practice game with you guys not to long again and you weren’t there.”

“Oh yeah umm I just started playing only a few weeks ago.”

“Wow really. Your pretty good for someone who’s never played before.”

“Ha thanks, but I really have my team to thank, they got me playing and have been pretty good teachers”

“I hope one of those teachers hasn’t been Hinata I’m pretty sure most of what he says to explain volleyball is sound-effects.”

“I know right! It’s like he doesn’t know words sometimes.”

“Yeah it’s really strange but you get used to it.”

“Haha I guess eventually I’ll learn to speak his strange language!”

“Yeah!” Kind of out of nowhere the guy from this morning Kuroo I think his name was wrapped an arm around Kenmas shoulders.

“Well well what do we have here! Is Kenma actually talking to someone!”

“Shut up Kuroo”

“Hi I’m Kuroo, (Y/N) right?”

“Yeah, yeah that’s me.”

“Well it’s nice to meet the newest player.” He sends me a wink, “come on Kenma our games about to start, it was nice to meet you (Y/N)!” The two walk off headed back to the court.

It’s a little bit later in the day that Hinata and Kageyama show up! Hinata taking my spot in the game, and honestly I’m grateful, this day has been exhausting.

An: hey guys! Thank you so much for reading! I hope you all liked this part!! I’m so excited to keel writing!! I take requests so if you have any please just message me!!!

[kissmemoredrabbles]

Sometimes You Just Need A Friend

Fandom: Harry Potter

Relationship: Sirius Black & Lily Potter (friendship)

Category: Gen

-

Sirius has a realization.

TW: TRANSPHOBIC SLUR – please don’t read if that makes you uncomfortable. 

-

Sirius looked around the room in shock. A series of emotions ran through her head; disbelief, dismay, confusion, shame. She didn’t understand how she had gotten in.

No guy should have been able to get through to the girl’s dormitory, she knew it. Peter had failed, James had failed, and even Frank Longbottom had failed – even with his super feminine face.

So how had she...?

It malfunctioned, was Sirius’ first thought. But that couldn’t be right. Magic didn’t really malfunction, unless it wasn’t cast properly, or the one who cast it had died. And both Dumbledore and McGonagall were still very much alive.

“Sirius?” came a shocked voice from behind him.

Shit.

Holy fucking shit.

It had to be Lily, of all people, who decided to come back up to the girl’s dormitory rather than going to Hogsmeade like everyone else in Hogwarts.

He turned around to find Lily with her hands on her hips, in her signature don’t-fuck-with-me pose, and a glare in her eyes. “Is this some kind of joke you and James came up with? Because it’s not at all funny. These boundaries are here for a reason, and you could get someone hurt.”

“No – I...” 

Shut up, Sirius told herself, just pretend it’s a prank.

But it wasn’t, and she knew it, deep inside. She’d known it for a while. Which was why she had specifically tried to push through the doors into the girls’ dormitory when she knew no one would be there. She knew she had to see for herself.

Sirius’ shoulders crumpled, and she buried her face in her hand.

Her mother had been right. She really was broken.

Tears pooled in her eyes, no matter how hard she tried to shove down her feelings of shame and desperation. First she was a tr*anny and now she was crying like a fucking baby.

“Hey, hey,” came Lily’s hesitant voice. She took two steps towards Sirius and reached her hand out hesitantly, not quite touching her. “You shouldn’t cry. Just you know...don’t tell people.”

Sirius recoiled, feeling like she’d been slapped. Of course Lily knew.

Before he could say anything, she continued, “Because, you know, other guys might think it’s ok to come in here too, even at night. And I don’t want girls to get hurt.”

Oh right.

Lily didn’t know.

Sirius exhaled in relief.

“This wasn’t a prank though was it?” Lily continued again. “Then how could you have gotten into....OH.” The realization in Lily’s voice made Sirius want to sink into the floor and disappear.

“Should I..uh...should I..” Lily trailed off for a second before saying, “are you a girl, Sirius?”

Sirius took a deep breath and shook her head. “Sometimes. Not always.”

“So are you..right now?” “Yes.” The word was muffled by Sirius’ sweater.

“So should I call you...her?”

Sirius looked up so fast, she was surprised her neck didn’t snap. She gaped at Lily.

Lily clearly misunderstood, hesitation written all over her face, “Not if it will make you uncomfortable though–”

“No! I–I’m just surprised is all. But... I would like that.” 

Sirius’ face shone.

Lily grinned at her and took her head, lifting her to her feet. “Come on, up you get. You are not feeling sorry for yourself on my watch.”

“Where are we going?” Sirius asked, as Lily guided her out of the girls’ dormitory.

“Hogsmeade, of course,” Lily laughed, like it was obvious. “There’s all these books I need to buy...and I know this shop that just opened – no one knows about it! But they sell the most delicious sweets...”

The two walked out, their entwined hands swinging between them.

And Sirius realized that sometimes, you just need a friend.

[natsumiheart]

I just wanna say how tired I am with some oumota shippers and their argument that oumasai is a bad ship cause apparently Shuichi never cared about kokichi and is annoyed with him and that oumota is better cause kokichi "opened up" to kaito like what they both were dying and kokichi had to convince kaito to work with him so he had to tell the truth that he wasn't the mastermind or else they'll die a meaningless death.I just really wanted to say this cause its driving me insane

Anonymous said:

Btw i was the anon that sent that ask ranting about oumota shippers saying oumota is better than oumasai and I just wanna clarify that I don't hate oumota shippers cause I know its their opinion and everyone can ship what they want but i feel like I really needed to tell someone about it cause it has been messing with my head and I don't have any irl friends that like DR and this blog felt the safest to vent to

Oh my goodness I’m so sorry you’re dealing with those people! I have a friend who is actually suffering from the same exact thing. Constant harassment from Ou**ta shippers saying Oumasai is toxic. I’m happy you feel like this is the safest blog to vent to ;; And just to make you feel better, here are a bunch of reasons why YOU’RE 100% RIGHT! and you shouldn’t be attacked or ashamed of how you feel towards that ship and all that hate towards yours. If anyone says Shuichi hated Kokichi and never cared for him just read this post! https://natsumiheart.tumblr.com/post/177427505177/hewwo-what-are-your-opinions-on-the-people-who

Warning: If you like Kaito x Kokichi I recommend you don’t read what’s under the cut, I don’t want to diss anyone’s ship in front of their face. That’s just insensitive, and the last thing I want is to ruin someone’s day. Unless you really want to know why others don’t feel the same as you, then don’t check out this post. Thank you!

Note that while I mention the bunch of reasons why this ship just straight up wouldn’t work out, I’m going to ignore the fact that Kaito acts very homophobic and transphobic in the japanese version of the game. I’ve mentioned it in this blog a bunch of times before, and it’s pretty obvious that everyone ignores his Homophobia so I’m just going to pretend as if he’s not homophobic and break down why exactly this ship wouldn’t work out even without him being homophobic in the first place. But I’m definitely not going to exclude how he acts towards guys in general.

> Kaito treats most guys he meets like trash, unless he respects them. Whenever Kaito finds a guy acting “Weak” he literally looks down on them, even gets frustrated with them. Huge proof is how he treated Shuichi for crying over Kaede, and then later punching Kokichi because he was acting “Weird”. Kaito was a huge fan of Ryoma, but when he saw what he has become, someone who has given up on his future, he started treating him badly, and after Ryoma was dead he even talked badly on him calling him “Weak.” and a “Sissy.” Not being able to understand the pain Ryoma was going through or how things were for him. He also got creeped out by Korekiyo for acting like a girl before he even revealed that he was “posessed” by his sister. Aren’t all those moments in the game enough proof that Kaito just straight up doesn’t like guys at all in that way? Then how could he *love* a guy, and Kokichi of all people. Heck, Gonta x Kaito make more sense than Kaito x Kokichi, even though he yelled at Gonta once for crying and being too weak for a man.

It’s shown multiple times in the game that Kaito treats guys like trash, and he treats Kokichi the worst of all.

Note: I do think Kaito can change the way he acts towards guys, but I don’t he will ever love one romantically.

> I think we can all agree that Kokichi is really hard to deal with sometimes. He distances himself so much from everyone as much as he could, and he won’t back down that easily even if it meant hurting others’ feelings. He keeps lying constantly so no one can figure him out or get close to him. We don’t exactly know the reason why, but he has major trust issues and it shows.That is the reason why for us, seeing Shuichi listed under “Trustworthy” was a big deal. (But I’m not going to dive deep into that since I already did multiple times in this blog.) My point here is that Kokichi needs someone with patience, someone who could understand him a bit and why he does what he does. Someone to decipher his actions and break down his walls, but isn’t afraid to sometimes step his foot down and tell him that his actions are wrong and he’s harming others as well as himself. Kaito on the other hand grows frustrated with guys so quickly, he doesn’t listen to their reasoning before heading in for physical violence. THAT is exactly the opposite of what Kokichi needs! And I still don’t understand how others can’t see it! When Kaito punched Kokichi in chapter 4, he was already in so much despair over seeing the secret of the outside world and that punch made it worse. To the point he stayed silent then locked himself in his room. How in the world do people actually see this ship as better than oumasai? I don’t get it.

Kokichi shouldn’t be with someone that will treat him like trash, and physically (if not also emotionally) harm him for how he’s acting.

> Opposites sometimes attract, but POLAR opposites do not. and I’m talking from personal experience here, two people who are different in so many ways (ESPECIALLY THEIR WAY OF THINKING) will end up fighting 24/7. It was shown again and again in the game that Kokichi and Kaito do not get along thanks to how different their approach is to things and their seemingly different upbringings. Ships between two characters who fight a lot just make me so uncomfortable and disturbed, because I know how these relationships actually end up in real life. Fights do happen in relationships sometimes, it’s even needed to strengthen the relationship, to realise that no matter what happens you STILL love your partner, but when you fight every single time you talk? That’s a bad sign! 

Fighting is NOT romantic and it never will be! And when it has physical violence mixed in? My god. Please do yourself a favor and break up with your partner if they keep hitting you.

> Kaito doesn’t ever side with Kokichi:

He literally said in chapter 4 “I don’t wanna survive it means I have to stoop to your level!” and Kokichi said “Then die in a hole for all I care! WE wanna LIVE, so stop getting in our way!”. Kaito will never be on Kokichi’s side, Even if it meant his death and the deaths of all his friends.

When Kaito realised that maybe watching all the motive videos together would’ve prevented a murder from happening Shuichi is the one that points out that it was what Kokichi was trying to do. But then Kaito is like “Huh, really?” Then brushes it off. Because of course, of course Kokichi wants murders to continue. Right?

Even after Kokichi spilled everything to him because he was literally about to die and really wanted Kaito to go along with his plan and believe him. Kaito still stated that he still thought he only thought of himself. Even after Kokichi sacrificed himself to save HIM from the poison and MAKI from being his murderer. He still hated him and didn’t believe him. The only reason Kaito went along with his plan was because he was about to die anyway, he was running out of time and he needed to get out even if it meant following Kokichi’s plan and killing him in the process.

When two people actually love each other they have each others backs. But with these two, they never will.

> I don’t believe Kokichi hated Kaito. But he literally thinks he is stupid and is a bad influence on everyone. These two have a relationship of two siblings that can’t stand each other. I always see myself and my brother in them, which is another reason why their ship makes me beyond uncomfortable. My brother puts his trust in people way too easily, and believes whatever tf his brain comes up with because y’know it’s him and “he’s always right”. He would never take a second to think that maybe he’s wrong, just like Kaito and his hunch. I on the other hand find him incredibly stupid, we argue a lot because our way of thinking and our beliefs are very different, we even used to hit each other a lot. We never really got along. And the way Kokichi and Kaito act around each other really reminded me of it, but you don’t know me and you don’t know my brother so why should you take my word for it? An example I like to use when trying to explain this point to others is the relationship between Stanley and Stanford in Gravity Falls, those two fought a lot in the show but in the last episode they had to work together on a plan despite their differences. Doesn’t it remind you of a certain story that happened in the game? Kokichi and Kaito’s relationship resembles theirs so much it’s insane. 

I feel like the game tried to show us how these two are more like siblings but on bad terms, even giving them similar hair and eye colors. But that flew straight over every rivalry shipper’s head.

These are some of the reasons why Ou**ta wouldn’t work out and can’t even be a thing in the first place, I said it before and I’ll say it again: I could write a book about this topic. But I’m kinda busy today and I have to leave the house soon- I hope you’re convinced that you are actually right. (I’ve been told countless times that I’m wrong leading me to question myself, so I wanted to help out by reassuring you that your feelings are valid and you’re not wrong in this situation at all) Saying Oumasai is toxic for one line Shuichi said while he was angry and defending his friend, while shipping Ou**ta and ignoring all this stuff is like the most hypocritical thing anyone can say. 

And yeah, people should ship whatever they want. Lots of people ignore characters’ feelings and ship the crackiest of ships, making very OOC art and fanfiction. And they can do that! But they can’t go around dissing people for their ship while supporting an obviously flawed one. Honestly you shouldn’t attack people for their ships in the first place, no matter what YOU ship. Just stay in your own bubble and stay away from the ships you dislike. It’s not that hard!

If you’re an Ou**ta fan reading this, I just want to say thank you for reading this far, and I’m really not saying you should stop supporting your ship. I’m just explaining why we feel this way towards it and the evidence we have behind it. If you’re one of the people who go around attacking shippers while boasting your ship. Please stop? Seriously, stop giving a shit about other people’s opinions and life will suddenly become much easier.

I’d like to clarify: If anyone responds to this post telling me I’m wrong, I’m not responding. My blog is for me to post art, sometimes funny stuff to make people’s days, interact with my followers and draw their requests, or ranting about topics I’m passionate about (Mostly DR). I do not want it to be a place for ship discourse, so if I get disagreeing replies or asks I’m going to ignore them like I always do whenever I post these rant type blogs. I hope you understand.

[raptured-night]

Hello, I have two questions this time. Why do you think we can’t really compare Death Eaters to Nazis? Why can’t we really compare purism with racism? Oh and do you think Death Eaters are more like nowadays’ terrorists or not?

So, it's no secret that I have drawn attention to the issue of Death Eaters being treated as literal stand-ins for Nazis or blood purism as a literal example of racism. Importantly, there is a difference between acknowledging the ways that Death Eaters or blood purity might work as semi-functional allegories for the Nazis and their ideology, white supremacy, racism, etc., and treating fictional representations of invented prejudices as if they were comparable or on par with non-fictional Nazi ideology, white supremacy, or systemic racism.

An article for Medium makes this point very well:

Silent resisters and ‘I don’t really care about politics’ people deserve our contempt. But what makes those who filter life through fiction and historical revisionism worse is that they are performing a soggy simulacrum of political engagement.

As a woman of colour watching, all I can do here is amplify the call to step away from your bookshelf. Let go of The Ring. My humanity exists independently of whether I am good or bad, and regardless of where the invented-fictional-not-real Sorting Hat puts me.

Realise that people are in danger right now, with real world actions needed in response, and not just because you want to live out your dreams of being Katniss Everdeen.

The problem with discussing Harry Potter’s fictional examples of prejudice as if they were literal or completely comparable with real-life prejudices is that it does lead to an oversimplification of the reality of prejudice (whether white supremacy, racism, homophobia, transphobia --looking at you Jo-- or otherwise) and the very real people who experience these prejudices every day. The fantasy of being Harry Potter up against Umbridge or Voldemort in a YA series where the line between the good and bad guys is almost clearly denoted by the narrator is a far cry from the reality of what activism is or what living under oppression is like for many marginalized people. 

I would argue that this is also a leading reason why the “social justice” (yes, in many cases I believe that deserves to be enclosed in dubious quotations) discourse in Harry Potter fandom trends more towards performative than it does sincere (one need only look at the defense posts for Rowling in response to real marginalized groups criticizing her for things ranging from her offensive representation of Asian people, Indigenous and Native peoples, or her failures in representing the lgbtq+ community particularly in light of her coming out as an open TERF and they can get an idea of how those “I’m an intersectional feminist/social justice ally and that’s why I read HP!” fans quickly shift gears to throw the bulk of their allyship behind Rowling instead) because when you spend all of your time debating fictional prejudices it’s much easier to detach oneself from the reality of non-fictional prejudice and its impact on real people.

Fiction has no stakes. There is a beginning, middle, and end. In Rowling’s fictional world, Harry Potter ends with Harry and “the side of light” the victor over her allegorical representation of evil and he gets his happily-ever-after in a world we are led to believe is at peace and made a better place. In the real world, decades after the fall of Hitler, there are still Nazis and white supremacists who believe in the glory of an Aryan/pure-white race and are responsible for acts of violence towards marginalized groups; even after the fall of the Confederacy in the U.S. we are still debating the removal of monuments erected in their honor (and the honor of former slave owners and colonialists like Christopher Columbus) while the nation continues mass protests over the systemic police brutality Black people and other people of color have long faced (not to mention the fact the KKK are still allowed to gather while the FBI conspired to destroy the Black Panther Party and discredit them as a dangerous extremist organization).

As a professor in literature, I’ve often argued that fiction can be a reflection of reality and vice versa. Indeed, it can be a subversive tool for social change and resistance (e.g. Harlem Renaissance) or be abused for the purposes of propaganda and misrepresentation (e.g. Jim Crow era racism in cartoons). So, I am not underscoring the influencing power of fiction but I do believe it is important that when attempting to apply fictional representations to real-world issues we do so with a certain awareness of the limitations of fiction. As I have already observed, there is an absence of real-world stakes for fiction. Fictional stories operate under a narrative structure that clearly delineates the course they will take, which is not the case for real life. In addition, the author’s own limitations can greatly affect the way their fiction may reflect certain non-fictional issues. Notably, a close reading of Harry Potter does reveal the way Rowling’s own transphobic prejudices influenced her writing, not least in the character of Rita Skeeter (but arguably even in her failed allegory for werewolves, which are supposed to reflect HIV prejudices, but she essentially presented us with two examples of werewolves that are either openly predatory towards children or accidentally predatory because they canonically can’t control themselves when their bodies undergo “transformations” that make them more dangerous and no surprise her most predatory example, Fenrir Greyback, seems to have embraced his transformation entirely versus Lupin who could be said to suffer more from body dysmorphia/shame). 

Ultimately, fiction is often a reflection of our non-fictional reality but it is not always an exact reflection. It can be a simplification of a more complex reality; a funhouse mirror that distorts that reality entirely, or the mirror might be a bit cracked or smudged and only reflecting a partial image. Because fiction does have its limits (as do authors of fiction), writers have certain story-telling conventions on hand through which they can examine certain aspects of reality through a more vague fictional lens, such as metaphor, symbolism, and allegory. Thus, the Death Eaters can function on an allegorical level without being problematic where they cannot when we treat them as literal comparisons to Nazis or white supremacist groups (particularly when we show a greater capacity for empathy and outrage over Rowling’s fictional prejudice, to the extent we’ll willingly censor fictional slurs like Mudblood, than we do real-world examples of racism and racial microaggressions). As an allegory, Voldemort and his Death Eaters can stand in for quite a few examples of extremism and prejudice that provoke readers to reflect more on the issue of how prejudice is developed and how extremist hate-groups and organizations may be able to rise and gain traction. Likewise, blood prejudice looked at as a fictional allegory goes a lot further than when we treat it as a literal comparison to racism, wherein it becomes a lot more problematic. 

I’ve discussed this before at length, along with others, and I will share some of those posts to give a better idea of some of the issues that arise when we try to argue that Voldemort was a literal comparison to Hitler, the Death Eaters were literal comparisons to Nazi, or that blood purity is a literal comparison to racism.

On the issue of blood prejudice as racism and Death Eaters as Nazis, per @idealistic-realism00.

On the issue of blood prejudice as racism, my own thoughts.

On the issue of Death Eaters and literal Nazi comparisons, per @deathdaydungeon and myself. 

Finally, as I have already argued, the extent to which fiction can function as a reflection of non-fictional realities can be limited by the author’s own perceptions. In the above links, you will note that I and others have critiqued Rowling’s portrayal of prejudice quite thoroughly and identified many of the flaws inherent in her representations of what prejudice looks like in a real-world context. The very binary (i.e. good/bad, right/wrong, dark/light) way that she presents prejudice and the fact that her villains are always clearly delineated and more broadly rejected by the larger society undermines any idea of a realistic representation of prejudice as systemic (we could make a case for an effort being made but as her narrative fails to ever properly address prejudice as systemic in any sort of conclusive way when taken along with her epilogue one can argue her representation of systemic prejudice and its impact fell far short of the mark, intended or otherwise). In addition to that, the two most notable protagonists that are part of her marginalized class (i.e. Muggle-born) are two comfortably middle-class girls, one of whom is clearly meant to be white (i.e. Lily) and the other who is most widely associated with the white actress (Emma Watson) who played her for over a decade before Rowling even hinted to the possibility Hermione could also be read as Black due to the casting of Noma Dumezweni for Cursed Child.

Overall, Rowling is clearly heavily influenced by second-wave feminist thought (although I would personally characterize her as anti-feminist having read her recent “essay,” and I use the term loosely as it was primarily a polemic of TERF propaganda, defending her transphobia, and reexamined the Harry Potter series and her gender dichotomy in light of her thoughts on “womanhood”) and as far as we are willing to call her a feminist, she is a white feminist. As a result, the representation of prejudice in Harry Potter is a distorted reflection of reality through the lens of a white feminist whose own understanding of prejudice is limited. Others, such as @somuchanxietysolittletime and @ankkaneito have done well to point out inconsistencies with Rowling’s intended allegories and the way the Harry Potter series overall can be read as a colonialist fantasy. So, for all of these reasons, I don’t think we should attempt to make literal comparisons between Rowling’s fictional examples of prejudice to non-fictional prejudice or hate groups. The Death Eaters and Voldemort are better examined as more of a catch-all allegory for prejudice when taken to it’s most extreme. Aicha Marhfour makes an important point in her article when she observes:

Trump isn’t himself, or even Hitler. He is Lord Voldemort. He is Darth Vader, or Dolores Umbridge — a role sometimes shared by Betsy DeVos or Tomi Lahren, depending on who you’re talking to. Obama is Dumbledore, and Bernie Sanders is Dobby the goddamn house elf. Republicans are Slytherins, Democrats are Gryffindors.

The cost of making these literal comparisons between Voldemort or the Death Eaters to other forms of extremism, perceived evil, or hate is that we impose a fictional concept over a non-fictional reality and unintentionally strip the individual or individuals perpetrating real acts of prejudice or oppression of some of their accountability. I can appreciate how such associations may help some people cope and for the readers of the intended age category of Harry Potter (i.e. YA readers) it might even be a decent primer to understanding real-world issues. However, there comes a point where we must resist the impulse to draw these comparisons and go deeper. Let Voldemort and the Death Eaters exist as allegories but I think it is important we all listen to what many fans of color, Jewish fans, lgbtq+ fans, etc. are saying and stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole by treating these fictional characters and their fictional prejudices as if they were just as real, just as impactful, and just as deserving of our empathy and outrage as the very real people who are living daily with very real prejudices --because they’re not equal and they shouldn’t be. 

[jcmorrigan]

In Defense of Archibald Snatcher

Oh, wow, we’re coming up on almost the sixth anniversary of The Boxtrolls, my favorite film of all time, and though the fandom for it seems to be either dead or in hibernation, I still have the torch lit.

I actually have been of the mindset of the opinion/s I’m about to present here for all those six years, but never really thought it prudent to lay them out until I recently had a friend I was recommending the film to who I warned about some of the elements considered “problematic” and I offhandedly mentioned that I could do a whole essay about why they don’t bother me and said friend replied with a desire to want to hear it because we share infodump for infodump, so here we go, I’m poking the hornet’s nest surrounding a controversial film with a dead fandom.

But if you were on Tumblr back in the heyday, you might’ve seen the reaction to this film when it first debuted. Specifically, what a lot of people honed in on wa that the villain, Archibald Snatcher, employed a dragsona to be able to push his agenda and implement his evil scheme. There was outrage. There were accusations. There was lambasting. And above it all, one question hovers: was this transphobic?

I want to start, before we get into the weeds, by saying that if you are anywhere on the LGBTQ+ spectrum and you were offended by this film or this character, your experiences are completely valid. I’m about to present the counterargument in language that assumes my take is fact for the purpose of not having to write fifty thousand clunky disclaimers, but analytical as this may be, it IS an opinion, and if you don’t think it’s right, then hey, that’s super valid, and I’m not gonna try and change your mind, because if you’re hurt, then you’re hurt! You just may want to nope out of this post right now because I’m about to lay out my observations and thoughts to the contrary of the accusations of this being homo/transphobic.

First of all, the obvious facet that comes to mind is how strange it is that we only ever saw the word “transphobia” put on this phenomenon rather than “homophobia” when using a female alter ego as a disguise or a performance art is not the same as being a woman assigned male at birth. One only needs to take a look over at RuPaul’s Drag Race to see examples of this culture. Lots of gay men wearing dresses. No women perceived male.

All the same, I will say that on the surface, adding any kind of queercoding to the story’s villain, who the audience is supposed to boo and hiss at, looks really, really bad on paper. However you interpret it, Snatcher is definitely queercoded. He openly flirts with the man he’s trying to trick as a means of getting what he wants, he displays sincere enjoyment of wearing the dress, and he runs the gamut of flamboyant hand gestures. But if you dig a little further, there’s even more to the story: his tale is one of a man who desires to pass as one of the elite class in his society, but is held back by something he can’t change about himself no matter how he denies it.

Let’s look at the rest of his story. Snatcher is in pursuit of the White Hat: the ultimate status symbol. To that end, he’s decided to otherize the Boxtroll population of the town and play upon the culture shock in Cheesebridge to convince the humans of the “upper world” that the Boxtrolls are predatory monsters who must be killed. This sounds like a pretty black-and-white good-and-evil scenario, right? You’ve got your population of innocent sweethearts being attacked and your genocidal racist orchestrating their destruction. But there’s a third layer still: Lord Portley-Rind, the chief White Hat himself. Lord PR is actually the worst of the lot. It’s because he doesn’t accept Snatcher that Snatcher feels he has to resort to this tactic. He demonstrates open hatred of the Boxtrolls and of Snatcher (”I’m not sure who should be more worried: the Boxtrolls or us!”). There are implications in how he treats his daughter that he’s a textbook sexist who believes there are men’s roles and women’s roles in society and nary the twain shall cross. And he’s the rich guy controlling the entire city and letting children’s hospitals and crumbling bridges go to waste by spending the budget on frivolous cheese. In short, Lord PR is basically the ur-example of a nightmarish fictional Republican (and oh, how I WISH he hadn’t been so prophetic).

I’m not saying Snatcher was justified or good. No. He’s in no way redeemable. But over the course of his interactions with Lord PR, you can see just how much society’s elites treat him as inhuman or like a dirty buffoon. He’s looked down upon, he’s insulted even when he’s doing the “service” Lord PR desires, he’s rejected until he’s gone above and beyond his contract and I think it’s even a little bit implied that Lord PR would’ve reneged on the whole deal if the mob hadn’t cheered for Snatcher in the end. So what you have is a prim and proper billionaire who subscribes to gender roles telling a man of the lower class, obviously economically downtrodden, that he doesn’t deserve what Lord PR has.

The idea of meritocracy is woven throughout the film. Listening to the speech in the background of Snatcher’s anaphylactic attack, while the visuals are focused on Eggs rescuing Fish, you can hear Snatcher rambling about how his father told him that if you work hard, you will receive a White Hat, but he worked hard all his life and got nothing. One of the White Hats literally says he got his through being rich. It’s not hard to infer that Snatcher has figured out how broken the system is and realized the only way to win the game is to cheat.

But there’s still one more thing holding him back from his victory, something that actually trips him up when he achieves what he wanted. Cheese is presented as another status symbol: the rich eat it and are connoisseurs of its flavor. Snatcher is deathly allergic to it. The goal he’s chasing, he can’t even have without threat to his own life. His reaction is to pretend he isn’t allergic and to expose himself to having allergic reactions on the regular to show how much he’s ready to become part of the elites. I’ll reiterate: Archibald Snatcher wants to join the elites, but is held back because of something about himself he cannot change that only matters because the upper crust said it should.

Okay. So we’ve established the man is gay, or somewhere on the queer spectrum. How is this not really, really horrible?

Because the narrative invites you to feel some sympathy for him. No, not for his actions or any secret soft side or tragic backstory (that’s a job for the fans), but because he is chasing a dream he cannot attain. Perhaps the film’s biggest shortcoming is how little consequence comes to Lord PR in the end, because Lord PR, for all intents and purposes, is the worse villain on the board. Snatcher’s ploy is to take the class below the one he inhabits and paint its members as the bad guys: a nuisance that must be exterminated for the betterment of society. And we’ve seen this. We’ve seen plenty of real-life examples of have-nots turning on have-lessers because the haves benefit from oppressed groups infighting and being distracted from who holds the money and the power. A lot of times, you see that while intersectionality is definitely something we need to pay attention to, racism, sexism, and homophobia are not concepts that are all explicitly linked. If you experience one, that doesn’t mean you don’t project one or two of the others on other people - particularly if you’re trying to make yourself feel better about the discrimination you face.

When you look at the hierarchy, Snatcher is, I reiterate, a very bad person. But he’s also a victim. Not as much of a victim as the poor Boxtrolls, who get the malice trickling down from both the Red Hats and the White Hats, but he is a victim. We see him mocked, laughed at, turned away. And though he’s not redeemable, there are aspects in which he is sympathetic.

But what about Frou Frou? What about that particular disguise?

Well, for one, it’s used to make yet another allegorical statement. Snatcher is able to get attention paid to him if he weaponizes female sexuality - though it is a very shallow attention that largely results in the straight men of the town swallowing his propaganda while also objectifying him. Most of the comments made on Frou Frou are slimy, smarmy “compliments” on her body from the White Hats. Lord PR’s wife harbors a distinct distaste for Frou Frou because her husband most certainly prefers ogling Frou Frou to actually paying attention to their marriage. Frou Frou is a propaganda vehicle to make it look like more than one person is on the same page as Snatcher; Snatcher himself drives the action of his scheme and gets the dirty work done.

It’s also worth noting that if you take away the implications, villains using alter egos to trick their nemeses is a tale as old as time, from sea witch Ursula making herself more supermodel-esque in order to marry the prince to mythological Loki actually crossdressing much in the same vein in order to fool the Frost Giants. There’s a reason disguise masters and shapeshifters are intriguing villain archetypes: because we’re always a little bit afraid that someone isn’t who they say they are, and because - yeah, I’m about to go here - I think we all wish we could shift shape ourselves to take on new forms that suit the goals we’re trying to accomplish, even if that means “fooling” others. So it’s reasonable to think Laika wasn’t aware that there was any queercoding to even be had here - but I do think the crew was aware, and not in a malicious way.

However, watching Snatcher’s scenes as Frou Frou, there’s something that comes across in his character that you don’t see so often when he’s presenting male: he’s legitimately having fun. He dances, he flirts with the crowd, he adds more flourishes to his speech, he gets sassy. Frou Frou is a means for him to express himself, to allow himself to be feminine when he has built his philosophy on needing to do “what a man does” (he repeats this at least twice) in order to achieve greatness. He can be a little more himself when he’s Frou Frou, even though Frou Frou isn’t him. Taking a new identity that’s allowed the other half of the gender roles allowed in Cheesebridge (which runs on a binary because it’s run by the White Hats) lets him act a little less like what he needs to be to be taken seriously and a little more like he has freedom.

Put this back in context of the greater narrative: given all the parallels we’ve seen, it’s safe to assume that Cheesebridge, as a whole, is not accepting of deviations from gender roles, whether it’s being open and proud of your LGBTQ+ identity or simply wearing the clothes that don’t belong to your gender. Snatcher is taking an enormous gamble here by using Frou Frou at all. On one hand, it’s a calculated risk; he knows if he can appeal to Lord PR’s unchecked sexist libido, he can secure another avenue to being heard. On the other, however, it’s not really much of a leap to say this is something he wants to do, someone he wants to be more like, and isn’t allowed to, and since he’s cheating at the game anyway, he might as well go all the way and do what he wants with his life.

I’ve seen a lot of people take issue with the scene where he reveals himself to Lord PR and comparing it to some actual homophobic/transphobic media. And again, if that still stands to you as your primary analysis and emotional reaction, then feel free to turn away, reject my analysis, and know your thoughts and feelings are completely valid. But I think this scene differs from your usual “person with male parts tricked you into thinking they were a woman” scene in a couple ways.

For one, Snatcher decides to out himself on his own. To Lord PR, it’s when he’s got nothing left to lose. Again, when he realizes the game is broken and the odds are against him, he takes control and decides to be himself a little more. Now everyone knows he likes to act a dragsona because he wanted them to. But also, earlier on, when he revealed himself to Eggs, it was again on purpose. Eggs didn’t figure him out. Snatcher needed Eggs to know the level of the threat he was dealing with: that he was the person Eggs has been running from since the start and is no less dangerous in a dress. It’s always been of his own volition. There’s no “I thought you knew” or disrobing to see a body that doesn’t match expectations - Eggs ripping Snatcher’s wig off is maybe a little iffier, but again, in context, that’s him trying to show Snatcher’s identity, not as a man but as Archibald Snatcher, to expose the corruption, and Snatcher actually plays it completely off because he’s that good of an actor.

Which brings me to my second point. There’s only one person who reacts in an “Oh, gross!” manner to this revelation, and it’s Lord Portley-Rind. The one we’ve established is sexist, homophobic, and your textbook Rich White Straight Cis Man. The one at the top of the food chain. The one who’s been objectifying Snatcher and acting like a slobbering pervert about Frou Frou from the beginning. The homophobe realizes he has been a little gay. The sexist realizes his objectifying a particular person he perceived female has consequences. And this is why to me, that scene is actually hilarious. Because I don’t feel like I’m laughing at Snatcher’s expense. I’m laughing because Lord PR just got called OUT, and this is exactly the kind of discomfort that is karmic given how he’s treated his daughter, his wife, and everyone in his city who’s needed him.

Cycling back to when Snatcher outs himself at the ball, Eggs doesn’t really seem to care that there’s a gender-role-play involved here. His concern is not that this is actually a man; his concern is that it’s specifically the person who he knows is trying to ruin everything. Same with Winnie when Eggs passes it on. Eggs trying to reveal Snatcher to the crowd doesn’t even begin with “Frou Frou is fake,” but a line I will never forget: “Archibald Snatcher has lied to you all.” Not even drawing attention yet to the fact that he’s in the room. Starting out by having everyone remember that guy they are all sure ISN’T there and pointing out he’s bad news.

To look at Lord Portley-Rind’s “Oh my God! I regret so much!” as a dig at Snatcher is to say that Lord Portley-Rind is the lens through which we should be viewing this story, which it most certainly isn’t. The lens is Eggs and Winnie. Adjacent lenses are Fish, Shoe, and Jelly. Lord Portley-Rind is an antagonist to every single character in this film save the other White Hats.

Which is why if this film falls flat anywhere, it’s in letting Lord Portley-Rind get away without consequence. I think I can take a guess as to why this primarily happened: it needed to wrap up in a little under two hours, and dismantling systematic oppression and abuse of socioeconomic power can’t be done in a two-hour escapade. I still wish he were at least villainized a little more, as that’s where the narrative was leading up to that point. One of his earliest scenes with Winnie foreshadows that he will have to choose between her and the hat, and it takes him two tries to make the right choice. This story, until the very last act, has not supported him being a character to like or sympathize with, even in such subtle ways as Trout and Pickles stealing his hat and running around with it to taunt Snatcher - showing that a symbol is really only a symbol, and doesn’t indicate your worth. Anyone can put on a hat. Lord PR has just been brought onto an equal footing with them, if only for a moment.

Okay, so why have this whole three-layer narrative anyway? Couldn’t we have made this story more clear-cut between the Boxtrolls and White Hats, with no queercoded villain to get in between?

Yes...but I’m not sure that would have been best for the viewing audience. And there’s plenty of precedent as to why Laika thought it was a move for the better.

Queercoded villains are in every aspect of our fictional and fandom lives. Here’s a bitter pill to swallow: all your favorite Disney villains are queercoded. All of them. “But Frollo’s arc is about - “ Being a man in a religious system afraid of being tainted as sinful for being attracted to the wrong person. “Gaston, though, is - “ Very chummy with LeFou, and I’m talking the animated versions. They’re all colorful, flamboyant, foppish for the men and full of socially-unacceptable strength for the women. These were the cornerstones of our childhood nostalgia and characters we still feel culturally attached to.

It’s not just in Disney. Are you a fan of musical theater? Well, then your favorite villain probably got a big song and dance in which they wore some glitter. Classic lit? Google the name of your favorite literary canon villain and “queer theory” and see what happens.

I don’t think we can really say this is good or bad. On one hand, it’s not great that a marginalized group can only see themselves in the character we’re supposed to hate. On the other, though, we don’t always hate that character. Villains hold a unique place in our culture. They do bad things, horrible things, but the story can’t take place without a conflict, and we like when that conflict has a name and a cool design such as a tall, imposing sorcerer/witch in flowing robes - or perhaps a tall, graceful man in a long red coat and a towering crooked top hat.

I’ve had lots of friends and trusted Internet reviewers talking about how queercoding in villains can actually be really empowering. If you’re a fan of the villain, you get to see a power fantasy in which someone who has something very big in common with you gets to enact karma on others for wronging them! You get to wear the cool robes, sing the fun song, do things that are not really legal or acceptable! I think a great analogy is if you check out the book “Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers” by Sady Doyle. It’s primarily about sexism rather than queer issues (though it does touch upon them!), but examines how women throughout pop culture and storytelling history have always been the witch, the monster, the demon, and how that sucks, but it also means that women have a great pile of fictional power fantasies to pick from to indulge in. It’s the same principle. I myself may not be same-gender-attracted, but I am asexual, and still waiting on my glamorous villain who uproots society as revenge for being forced to do something analogous to having a sexual relationship...*taps wristwatch*

Meanwhile, queercoding is not as prevalent in heroes. And I think that’s where everything’s tripping on its own feet. Because a gay villain among a bunch of straight heroes does look pretty bad. Are some of the heroes queercoded as well, though? Well, that’s just realistic diversity. People are gay, and there happen to be some good ones and some evil ones here. I don’t think Snatcher’s dragsona is entirely unproblematic, but I do think it could have been mitigated a lot with more implications that Eggs and Winnie might be queer in some way (and believe me, I choose to interpret them that way, because the more the merrier).

The thing is that in pop culture as of late, there seems to be a trend to scrub away all villainous queercoding because it’s seen as a black-and-white issue. To go back to the Disney villains, do you feel like the live-action recreations of Jafar, Scar, and Gaston are missing a certain je ne sais quoi? Well, think about it through this lens and it might be that you savez quoi after all. They’ve all been made incredibly straight as of late, with off-the-record actor confirmations about having obsessive crushes on the film heroines. I can’t speak to why this has happened; there’s a lot of history behind any given social movement, and I haven’t managed to really unpack this one. “Blame Tumblr” is too easy; I would want to know who were the loudest voices, why they said what they said, and what was the intended accomplishment, not to mention if this had built on other social-media or real-life platforms over the years and was influenced by any outside source by news or marketing. I can’t say why queercoded villains are being burned; I can only say it’s happening. And it was happening big-time in 2014, when The Boxtrolls was released.

I also feel like I would be remiss to mention that The Boxtrolls is based on “Here Be Monsters,” which I believe to be one of the worst books I’ve ever read, bar none. That version of the story has...pretty much everything that’s perceived to be in the film version’s text as problematic. Frou Frou is presented as something to laugh at Snatcher about throughout, largely because everything about Snatcher is presented to make him seem gross or like a buffoon. There’s a whole scene of the hero rifling through his desk to find soiled underwear. Not to mention that the original purpose of Frou Frou in the text was to manipulate the town’s women by dictating the fashion trends they should follow and the beliefs they should hold in order to fit in. This is something that does need commentary on it, but in that text in particular, it seems like the women are silly and easily swayed, and that they’re the town’s weak link because they’re slaves to fashion. The Boxtrolls completely flips this around so that the town’s weak link re: Frou Frou is the rich MEN who objectify women, particularly the men that happen to be in charge of the whole town, and looking at that divide alone tells me how much care was put into this adaptation at every level.

So why’d I do this, besides having a friend who wanted to read it? Because Archibald Snatcher is legitimately one of my favorite fictional characters. Yeah, I know, he’s a horrible person and terribly racist, and no, I don’t think his demonizing an entire people is anything to be emulated. But on one hand, there are places where I not only empathize but identify with him, particularly where it comes to living out the majority of one’s life trying to live up to a meritocracy - I did everything right, so why am I not on top? He’s also just fun and satisfying to me. He’s the exact brand of evil I eat up. He’s quippy, flamboyant, sadistic to a point, and altogether enjoying his job way too much. Even though he isn’t in power all that long, he is a power fantasy for me, too - wishing I had his talent to talk my way into others’ hearts by saying the right thing, and maybe cultivating a little bit of that I didn’t realize I had (but not to use for evil purposes). I loved him from the moment he turned up because of his sheer dynamic presence - his drawn-out vowels, his sinister smile, his silver-tongued manipulations - and to this day I find him an inspiring character when it comes to writing fiction, both in the realms of fanfiction and original villain creation. You could say he’s a comfort character to me. And maybe this has been the delusional rambling of a woman trying to protect a character she likes for surface reasons by spelling out what look like analytical points of discussion.

But I don’t think Laika was trying to be mean-spirited or homo/transphobic in their character creation. I think they were trying to make an engaging villain who had some layers you could pick at to see more about the narrative as a whole and the message of societal corruption and how the way to overcome it is to be true to yourself rather than defined by your status: a lesson Snatcher fails at the finish line when Eggs gives him one last chance to “make you.” And ultimately, if you really and truly did like Archibald Snatcher, you’re not wrong or invalid in the least.

[regrettablemeasure]

Cyberpunk 2077 non-spoiler review

Anyways here’s my writeup about my least favorite parts of 2077 for people who are interested in seeing if it’s for them. Both going to talk about content as well as gameplay. This is for PC version, too, because I know last gen consoles are suffering terribly rn and I wouldn’t recommend the game if you’re not going to be playing on PC. At least not until it’s on sale or the issues have been resolved. It really, really shouldn’t have been released on last gen consoles at all in my opinion - or at least should’ve been released on consoles LATER.

If you like Saints Row, GTA, Mass Effect, Shadowrun, or the Cyberpunk genre in general - I definitely think this is something you might want to take a peek at! I wasn’t anticipating the game until about a month or two before release - so maybe that’s why I’m having a blast - but It’s one of my favorite stories from the past decade as far as sci-fi goes. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it, and It’s really impressed me. I can’t even go into detail about all the things I LOVE because I really want folks to experience it themselves. Just know there’s a very intricately detailed world, all the characters are memorable and insanely well realized and complex, and the story is great fun. Also made me cry like 5 times. It’s become one of my FAVORITE games very quickly.

I’d also recommend Neon Arcade if you want someone who’s been covering the game for quite a while, including the technical and game industry aspect. He does well to go into some detail and even though he’s a fan, I’ve found him to be largely unbiased. I’m not going to go into industry politics here because I feel that’s up for everyone to decide on their own terms.

No spoilers, things to keep in mind, content warnings, etc. below!

CONTENT WARNINGS and issues with plot/story

this setting is dark. very dark. if you struggle stomaching things like dystopian landscapes, body horror, physical, mental and sexual abuse, corporate and gang violence, abuse of children, harsh language, and concepts that mess with the perception of reality - this game might not be for you. It’s a very mature setting, and I don’t mean that in the Adult Swim kind of way. I mean it in the ‘oh shit, it went there’ way. In my opinion I haven’t run across anything in it that was handled distastefully when it dipped into the depressing, but dark and gritty isn’t everyone’s cup of tea and I wanted to give a disclaimer.

The game’s universe in advertising and working for the lower class also exploits sex/sex work quite a bit. This is part of the lore itself because in this universe everyone’s become desensitized to sex and violence to the point that marketing embraces it and makes it ridiculous. I feel it’s very obvious that it doesn’t condone this message and is instead a commentary on consumerism - but people still might be uncomfortable seeing a lot of suggestive stuff all over the place regardless. 

Women in game are naked more often than men - even though there is nudity for both. This is likely a mix of appealing to the Gamer Boy demographic (even though the story does NOT actually), or the fact that media is way more cool with seeing naked women than seeing full frontal nudity on men. They probably had to tone some of it down to avoid going above an M rating. 

The story is amazing, but sometimes it dumps a lot onto you at once. It’s one of those sci-fi stories that you have to really be following the names, faces, and concepts continually to get it all down. There’s a lot of betrayal, background players, etc. I think by the mid-way point I’d mostly had it, but It’s pretty dense. However it’s still amazing. You might just need two playthroughs before every tiny detail clicks - because there’s a LOT of details. 

Honestly I think it would help to read up on the lore first so you’re not going ‘what’ constantly. But people have seemed to manage fine without that also! Neon Arcade has a really nice series of videos (like 2 or 3) that get you up to speed with the universe. It also helps you decide if the tone is right for you. 

I think the main story should’ve been longer, also. I don’t mind a 20 hr story, especially in a massive RPG, but It feels like they really struggled to cram as much into that time frame as possible. It skirts the edge of being nice and concise, snappy, and tight - and needing just a few more moments to take a breath and wait a second. This is helped if you do a lot of side quests.

The straight male romance option, River, is INCREDIBLY well written but he doesn’t tie into the main plot in any way whatsoever. It’s very strange and feels like they either ran out of time with him, or slapped together a romance with him at the last second. All the other romances at least know what’s going on with V’s story - meanwhile River has no idea, and you can never tell him. He’s an amazing guy though and I highly recommend his questline. He appears in ACT 2.

In general I’d say not to bother with the romances. There are only 4 total, and while the romancible characters on their own are really well written, the romances themselves are just kinda meh. One romance you don’t even meet until act 3. I don’t think they should’ve been included in the game at all, because they definitely don’t feel as fleshed out as everything else. 

CDPR also sometimes forget that women players or gay men exist. Panam and Judy have a lot more content than River and Kerry for example. I don’t think this is intentional, they just have a large fanbase of dudebros. It only shows in the romance content and the nudity thing though.

Johnny, Takemura, and Claire should’ve been romances and I will fight to the death on that. 

There are gay and trans characters in the game and their stories don’t revolve around their sexualities. It’s very Fallout: New Vegas in it’s approach to characters: IE. you’re going to love them. All of them. 

V’s gender isn’t locked to their body type or their genitals- but to to their voice. I don’t think it’s the best solution they could’ve used but given how the game is heavily voice acted I assume that was what they had to work with. 

Some of the romances are locked to both cis voices AND body types (not genitals if I recall but body shapes). That’s disappointing but I assume it was because of scripted scene issues and/or ignorance on the dev’s part considering the LGBT NPCS are so AMAZINGLY done. There’s no homophobic or transphobic language in the game - though there are gendered curse words and insults if that bothers you. 

Some characters MAY suffer from ‘bilingual people don’t talk like that’ syndrome. But it can be hard to say for sure given that translators exist in this universe and the way they operate aren’t fully described. It’s only momentarily distracting, not enough to take away from how charming the NPCs are.

The endings are really good don’t get me wrong but I want fix it fic :(. All of the endings out of like 6 (?) in the game are bittersweet. 

Both gender V’s are very good but female V’s voice acting is out of this world. If you don’t know what voice to go with/are neutral I’d highly recommend female V. Male V is charming and good but he feels much more monotone compared to female V. 

V has their own personality. To some this won’t be a detractor - but a lot of people thought they’d be making absolutely everything from the ground up. V is more of a commander shepard or geralt than a skyrim or d&d pc, if that makes sense. You can customize and influence them to a HUGE degree, some aspects of V will always be the same.

Streetkid is the most boring background - at least for it’s introduction/prologue.

GAMEPLAY/TECHNICAL

If you can run your game on ultra, don’t. It actually looks best with a mix of high and medium settings. Unless you have a beast that has ray-tracing - then by all means use ray tracing and see how absolutely insanely good it looks.

There are color blind modes for the UI, but not for some of the AI/Netrunning segments in cutscenes. Idk how much this will effect folks with colorblindness but those segments are thankfully short. 

There was an issue with braindances being an epilepsy trigger because for some reason they decided to mirror the flashing pattern after real epilepsy tests - probably because it ‘looks cool’. I don’t have epilepsy but it even hurt my eyes and gave me a headache. Massive oversight and really goddamn weird. Thankfully this was fixed.

There is no driving AI. Like at all. If you leave your car in the street the traffic is just going to pile up behind it. It’s one of the very few immersion breaking things I’ve encountered.

Sometimes when an NPC is driving with you in the car, they’ll drive on the curb and/or run into people. It’s kind of funny but can occasionally result in something weird. Feels very GTA  - but nothing excruciating. 

The camera angle feels a little too low in first person mode when driving on cars. You get used to it though. 

The police in this game feel slapped on and I hope they improve it. Right now if you commit a crime, you can never tell what will actually trigger it. And if you just run away a few blocks the police forget about it. 

Bikes are just way more fun to ride than the cars are. 

You CANNOT respec your character after you make them. Ever. it sucks. Go in with an idea ahead of time what you wanna do - it’s better than being a jack of all trades.

as of now you also CANNOT change their appearance after you exit the character creator. This, also, sucks. Make sure you REALLY like your V or you’re gonna be replaying the openings over and over like I did. 

Photomode on PC is the N key. Had to look it up. The mode itself is great though

Shooting and Mele fighting feel pretty standard. I don’t have a lot of shooter experience besides Bethesda games so anything feels better than that to me. So far I’ve enjoyed stealth and mele the best, but that’s just my own taste! The combat and driving aren’t groundbreaking by any means, but they’re still very fun. I look forward to running at people with swords or mantis blades, and zipping around the city on a motorcycle to see the sights. The story, lore, and interesting quests and characters are the real draw here.

I haven’t encountered any game breaking bugs in 80-ish hours of play time. One or two T-poses, a few overlays not loading or floating objects - but nothing terrible. Again, my experience is with Bethesda games. This is all usually fixed by either opening your inventory and closing it again, or exiting out and reloading your save. 

The C button is mapped for crouching AND skipping dialogue by default. That’s terrible. Change it in the settings to be HOLDING C skips dialogue and you’ll be gucci.

There’s apparently a crafting system. I have never been inclined to touch it. But I also play on easy like a pleb so IDK how it all scales otherwise.

The mirror reflections can be a little bit weird, at least on my end. They always end up a teeny bit grainy despite my computer being able to run everything on Ultra Max. You can still get good screens out of it though!

So many people text me to sell me cars and I want them to stop. Please. also the texting menu is abysmal. The rest is ok tho

It’s pretty clear when you’re going to go into a ‘cutscene’. all cutscenes are rendered in-engine BUT you often will be talking to other characters at a specific angle or setting. The game locks you into this usually by having you sit down. It works for me - after all we do a lot of sitting- but it IS very obvious that it’s a way for the game to get you in the frame it wants to display.

That’s all I can think of rn! If you’re interested but wanted to get a slightly better idea of whats going on, I hope this helps. I’m really enjoying it and despite my issues it’s exceeding my expectations. I’m going to be thinking about and replaying this game for quite a while. 

[unseenthewriter]

CHAPTER 6: CHRISTMAS PRESENT

Chapter 6: 6784 Words

Fic Total: 21340 Words

Series Total: 21340 Words

The next day was the start of the weekend and I had decided that because I'd been so stressed lately it's time for me to get an Xbox 360 again. Even though I'm no longer doing any new freelance programming jobs I still have quite a bit of money I saved up.

I was in the middle of setting up the TV in my room when Dunc called. "Blue Jay." I said.

"Busy today?" He asked.

I thought for a moment about the breakfast at lunchtime conversation I had with Wilson.

___

"I've got to say the fact you're not lactose intolerant but just don't like milk is slightly concerning." Wilson commented.

I glanced up from my bowl of lucky charms (without milk of course). "I don't know what to tell you man it's just gross. I just don't like most dairy." I said with a shrug.

"What dairy do you like?" Wilson asked, looking more concerned.

"Oh easy cheese and ice cream." I said.

Wilson stared at me blankly for a few seconds. "That reminds me you need a physical." He said.

I set the spoon down. "Like a check-up?" I asked.

"Yes." He said.

"Can we just not do that? I mean like you guys are Doctors I'm sure I'm fine like-" I started to say.

"You're joining the Cheerleaders. They're going to need a physical." Wilson said simply.

Ah no, he's got me there. I groaned.

Wilson looked confused. "You volunteer at PPTH, you met House as a patient in the free clinic, you don't seem to be afraid of Doctors." He said.

"Yeah I know but that was for my wrist. Physicals you have to you know… and like I'm trans so it's just awkward because I'll have to explain that to whatever Doctor it is and like God forbid if they're low key transphobic or not you know?" I ranted but then remembered that Wilson is also trans. So he just kinda stared at me like “yeah I know”.

"Well, you already know all of House's Team isn't transphobic." Wilson said.

He's right there. "But do I have to?" I pleaded.

"Yes. Schedule it with one of them today." He said.

I groaned again before getting back to my cereal.

___

"Uhh I have one thing to do at PPTH." I said.

"Oh? Care to elaborate?" Dunc asked over the phone.

I huffed and put him on speaker while I started to set up the Xbox 360. "I have to schedule a physical with one of House's Team."

"In person?" He asked.

"Well I don't exactly have any of their numbers. I've never asked and they haven't offered I'm a teenager. What adult is going to offer a teenager they barely know their phone number? Makes them look like a pedophile or something I don't know." I rambled. I have Kutner's but he's out of town right now anyway.

"Can't you just call the hospital?" He asked.

"I'm like 95% House would pick up the phone so no thanks. Hi yes Dad what I've never called you Dad before oops. Well I'm NOT calling you. I'm here to talk to your Team because I hate you. That would go great." I joked.

"You haven't called him Dad before?" Dunc asked.

"Okay look I didn't know him for the first 16 years of my life and I've been calling him House since I've met him like at what point do I call him Dad? Is there like a guideline because I'd really like to know this shit is so confusing, Dunc you have no idea." I complained.

"Hmm yeah I guess that kinda sucks." He said.

"Okay but like if I did call House Dad like I had no idea how he'd react. The man might just die for all I know." I joked.

Dunc laughed. "Yeah let me know so I can record it."

"Sure thing." I said.

"Want back up?" He asked.

"You asking because you're really that bored or because you want to watch the shit show?" I asked.

"Can't it be both?" He said.

I sighed. "Yeah sure meet you there in an hour?"

"Sounds good." He said and hung up.

Well maybe it will be a little easier with Dunc there.

~~~

I was idling in the lobby of PPTH waiting for Dunc to show up. The reason that House and his team were even here today on a weekend was because of a case. I wasn't too sure of the details of this one but apparently something happened late last night.

"Take the bus?" I asked Dunc as he walked into the lobby taking off his scarf.

"Unlike you I don't have a parking spot." He grumbled.

Yeah apparently with the amount of volunteer hours I was logging I got a parking spot. It was far away but a free parking spot nonetheless. "You could've asked me to pick you up." I said.

"Your car is a piece of shit dude." Dunc replied as we made our way to the elevator.

I rolled my eyes as I pressed the button. I mean the car works just fine, that's all I could really ask for. "Not all of us are rich like you Lestrade." I said.

"Really? Because Wilson told me who your Uncle was and from what I heard when he died his money went to your Mother which I assume has gone to you now." He said as we got into the empty elevator.

I watched the doors close. I figured this would catch up to me at some point. Going to a school full of rich kids. I figured Ivy was the one who was going to figure it out though. I mean she was the one that found out about Dr. King. "I'm not exactly sure what's happening with the money." I said.

Dunc looked confused. "Why?"

"Uh I bailed from Minnesota the day after my Mom died. I've been a little preoccupied." I said.

The elevator doors open to the floor we were going to. "Why did you even bother looking for your Father if you had that much money?" Dunc asked.

"Because I don't know if I do!" I exclaimed.

A few people turned to look at us which made me freeze up of course.

"What do you mean you don't know if you do?" Dunc said quietly.

I glanced around and the few people who were watching us looked the other way. "Money was a very sensitive topic in my family. I'm not talking about this now." I said and made my way to the DDX Room.

Thankfully House wasn't there. Thirteen and Taub were the only ones in the room at the moment. Thirteen was on the computer and Taub was reading some files. "Looking for House?" Thirteen said without moving her eyes from the computer.

"Who's that?" Taub asked about Dunc.

"Uh no and this-" I started but Dunc cut me off.

"A friend Duncan Lestrade. I'm also one of Dr. Wilson patients." He introduced me.

"We both go to Princeton Prep." I said.

"You go to Princeton Prep?" Taub asked.

I looked at him blankly. Does House never talk about me? I mean that's fine I don't really care but I feel like the fact that I wear the uniform around the hospital a lot would shed some light on the subject. "Yes?"

"He pays for that?" Thirteen asked, surprised.

"I'm there on scholarship." I said with a sigh.

The looks on both of their faces went from confused to oh that makes a lot more sense.

"What do you need?" Taub asked.

I looked back and forth between the two of them. Jeez I hate this.

"He needs to schedule a physical to join the Cheerleaders." Dunc said for me.

I glared at him. I did NOT want the hospital to know I was joining the Cheerleaders just yet. I guess it's not too surprising I mean after the whole Spider-Man thing but still. 

"Cheerleaders?" Taub asked.

Great job Dunc. Great job. "I used to be a gymnast." I said softly.

Taub just looked shocked but Thirteen wasn't. "When are you available?" She asked.

I blinked. "I'm here every Wednesday and Friday and most Tuesdays and Thursdays." I said.

"Next Wednesday at 3 work?" Thirteen asked.

I pulled out my phone to double-check my calendar. "Yes." I said and put it in the calendar.

I muttered thanks on my way out of the DDX Room with Dunc.

"See, was that hard?" Dunc said.

"Did you have to tell them I was joining the Cheerleaders?" I huffed.

"I mean they'll find out soon enough." He shrugged.

"I'm not so sure anymore. Like they didn't even know I went to Princeton Prep." I said.

"Yeah, that was a little weird." Dunc said. "Oh and next year you won't be able to volunteer on Fridays."

"Why?" I asked.

"Football games duh." He said.

Oh right yeah. This is going to be interesting.

~~~

I rested my head in my hands after I sat down at the lunch table. I was a bit of an idiot last night and stayed up all night gaming on my Xbox 360. Because it's December I was trying to figure out a Christmas present for House and I thought some gaming would help… It didn't. I just got no sleep and zero ideas. Wilson is easy enough. I have some props from some musicals that my Uncle gave to me a while back. Sure it's regifting but like he's more into that stuff than me. I even have some ideas for House's Team, Dunc and Ivy but House? No clue.

"What's bothering you?" Ivy asked.

I guess you could say Ivy has become my friend now? Despite her being the Cheerleading Captain she actually doesn't have many friends because she tends to piss people off. You could literally stab Dunc and he wouldn't care and I have House for a Father so it's gonna take a lot for her to piss us off.

"Trying to think of a Christmas present for House. I was up all night thinking about it." I mumbled.

"Really? I thought you were up all night playing Dragon Age Origins." Dunc said.

I glared at him. I bought the game recently. "I can multitask."

"Clearly not very well." He said.

"Yeah well, you try having House as a Father for a day and come back to me." I said.

"Can I have Wilson instead?" Dunc joked.

"No. He's actually nice." I mumbled.

Ivy looked back and forth between us. "Isn't Wilson your Doctor?" She asked Dunc.

"Yeah." He said with a shrug.

Ivy thought for a moment. "How did you two meet?" She asked.

I laughed. "Oh man, that was hilarious. You remember that Dunc."

"Pfft, how could I? I almost died from second-hand embarrassment." He said.

"Yeah, I'm so glad Wilson didn't judge me too hard on that first impression."

"Dude that's how you met Wilson?!" Dunc exclaimed.

"Unfortunately." I sighed.

"What happened?" Ivy asked, clearly annoyed that we were leaving her in the dark.

"Right so what happened was this-"

___

Part of me really wished I didn't mention that I was good with computers to Dr. Cuddy when I asked her about volunteering. Once she heard that she totally glanced over everything I said about wanting to become a Doctor someday so it would be nice to see something medical related… Yeah she immediately stuck me with Bill The IT Guy because he's like the only IT person for the whole hospital so he's a BIT overwhelmed. But you know it's fine. 

The main issue I'm having now is that Bill is having me running around the hospital a lot and well I really don't know the place that well yet. Yeah I don't know it at all. I mean sure I can find my way to the lobby like 60% of the time but that's about it. I'm currently lost again. I was just grabbing myself a Mountain Dew and a Coffee for Bill at the cafeteria but got lost on my way to IT. Man I've been on so many floors today I'm not even sure what floor it's on anymore.

I turned around a few times trying to look for one of the floor signs that are usually all over the place but apparently are never there when you need them to be. If I was going to guess I was in Oncology. Because you know…

I finally found a floor sign and went over to it but unfortunately IT wasn't on there. I forgot it never freaking is. No one ever goes to IT. I did notice a cute guy my age staring at me from one of the couches. Must be taking a break from his room. I wasn't paying attention when I turned back around so that I bumped into a Doctor spilling the Coffee that I had got for Bill on him. "Oh God I'm so sorry." I said, my face turning bright red. I scrambled to get something to help clean up the mess.

"Hey it's no problem. New volunteer?" He asked, pointing at my badge.

"Y-Yeah Jay Flynn. Helping out Bill in IT because I told Dr. Cuddy I was good with computers but I do kinda wish I could be doing something else." I said without thinking. Wow Jay why the fuck did you just tell him that. He's probably going to tell Dr. Cuddy you just messed everything up.

"Ah well Bill can use all the help he can get. I'm Dr. Wilson by the way. You lost?" He asked.

My face got even redder. "Yeah I forgot where IT is." I mumbled.

"Oh that would be an issue. I guess the coffee was for Bill?" He said.

I just nodded.

"Right well-" Wilson started to say but was interrupted by the cute guy I saw earlier.

"I can show him where IT is Wilson." He said.

Wilson looked at the guy. "Have you had a walk yet?"

"No." He said.

Wilson squinted. "Alright fine."

The cute guy waited for Dr. Wilson to turn the corner before speaking up again. "Okay here's the deal. I can help you out but I need you to help me out."

I blinked. "What?"

"Right so I noticed your Princeton Prep uniform you wear around here and like dude really get some other clothes. But you might've heard of me, I'm Duncan Lestrade." He started.

Right okay wow he's just gonna do this right here right now. "Uh yeah, the dude with cancer." I said.

"Obviously. Anyway. I overheard some of your conversation with Wilson and I assume you're volunteering here because our school's medical club sucks ass." He went on.

I nodded.

"Right so I can put a word in for you with Wilson and Cuddy about volunteering over in Oncology if you tutor me in Science." He finished.

I thought for a moment. "So you're assuming that because I'm volunteering at a hospital I want to be a Doctor so I must be good at Science?" I asked.

"Am I wrong?" He asked.

"Well no but like…"

"What's the problem then?" He said.

I huffed. "Okay fine deal but I'm not calling you Lestrade like everyone else does at school."

"Why?" He asked.

"I don't know it sounds kind of classy, I don't really like it." I said.

"You go to a school full of rich people and you don't like classy?" He asked.

"I'm there on scholarship." I said.

"Hm all the more reason for you to tutor me… Jay Flynn." He said while pulling on my badge.

I pulled my badge back. "Okay, Dunc." I said.

"Really you're going to call me Dunc? I haven't been called that since I was like 6." He said.

"Yeah? Well, get used to it Dunc." I said with a smirk.

___

"You didn't even know where IT was." I said throwing a fry at Dunc.

"I obviously needed an excuse to talk to you." He said.

"He acted like such a rich prick at first." I said to Ivy.

"Yeah, I was kinda surprised when I heard the Football Kicker was hanging out with the new scholarship nerd and that you two weren't like together or anything." She said.

"I mean he was tutoring me." Dunc said.

"Oh come on everyone knows what tutoring means half of the time." She scoffed.

"What?" I asked.

Both of them looked at me. "God for how smart you're supposed to be you are so oblivious sometimes." Ivy said.

"People thought we were hooking up?" I squeeked.

"Yeah, I had to set the record straight." Dunc explained.

I looked at the two of them blankly. God, I have no idea about the drama that goes on in this school, do I? I get a bit of The PPTH drama from eavesdropping and House and Wilson but I don't really care too much. I'm more focused on my own life that has more than enough of its own drama. "You didn't think to mention it to me?" I said.

"You were uh dealing with stuff at the time." Dunc said.

I just stared at him.

"You know, coming out to House." He said.

Oh right. "Oh Ivy knows Dunc. She found out about my gymnastic past so there's stuff about me being trans. Man, that sucks that I'm constantly being outed." I complained.

"Couldn't you like change your last name?" Ivy asked.

I froze. I mean yes obviously but like the most reasonable one to change it to would be House and… "Hi for Christmas I'd like your last name House." I joked.

Dunc snorted.

"Just become a fae and steal it. You're Irish right?" Ivy joked.

"Ah yeah, simple let me just become a fae real quick." I shot back.

"We've somehow circled back to Christmas presents." Dunc pointed out.

"Ugh right, what the hell am I going to get him." I grumbled.

"A name change obviously." Ivy said.

"Ha very funny." I said.

"What's he like?" Dunc asked, trying to be helpful.

I sighed. "Yeah I thought about that but like… All I really know about is Motorcycles, Monster Trucks and Music."

Ivy stared at me for a moment. "Monster Trucks?"

"Yeah, apparently he likes to watch those I don't know." I said with a shrug.

"And you hate Motorcycles." Dunc said.

I nodded.

"Music is vague." Ivy said.

"He plays Guitar and Piano. Listens to a bunch of stuff but uh hates musicals so that's something that he and Wilson don't agree on." I explained.

"Oh, so Wilson is a musical gay shocking." Dunc joked.

"I'm pretty positive he's Bi first of all." I said.

"I'm just saying." He said.

I rolled my eyes. The bell rang signaling that lunch was over. "Well, that was no help thanks though." I said standing up.

"Sorry I can't always save your ass." Dunc said.

I scoffed. "Right gotcha."

He winked at me.

Ivy rolled her eyes. "Oh get a room."

~~~

"Bill?" I said after I walked into IT and didn't notice him right away. I set down my backpack and Mountain Dew but kept holding the coffee that I grabbed on my way up for Bill. 

"Servers." A muffled Scottish accent said. 

"I'll leave the coffee out here then." I said before making my way to the server closet. I leaned against the door. "What's up?"

"Just checking a few things." Bill said looking at me. "Slow day."

"Because of all of my help clearly." I joked.

"Ah well, the coffee is nice." He said with a smirk.

"Ouch, I'm hurt." I said and fakingly clutched my chest.

"Get out of my server closet." He said shooing me out of the doorway.

"Don't have to tell me twice to leave a closet." I joked.

"Ack you and your gay jokes. I guess it makes sense living with House and Wilson." He commented after locking the closet.

"Mmm, I had two Moms at one point. If I turned out to be straight that would have been surprising." I said.

Bill just sighed. "Well, I don't have anything for you to do. Does Wilson?"

"Nah he's sick of me too." I said and sat down and the desk that I have slowly taken over. I mean the dude's got a pretty big workspace just to himself so there are multiple desks.

Bill took a sip of the coffee I got for him. "Need help with school work?" He offered.

I just stared at him. Now Bill and I are, you know, friendly with each other. I'm like some of the only social interaction the man gets on some days but like normally we just shoot a few sarcastic comments at each other and he tells me to go off and fix something somewhere. But like I'm a teenager and he's like older than House. Sure I'm a bit curious how a Scottish IT Guy ended up at PPTH but I've been too busy to ask around. "How slow has it been?" I asked.

"Slow enough I've been debating calling my Ex." He complained.

I blinked. Ex? Bill is just telling me about himself? What? I sat up a little. "I mean I know I'm only 16 but like that's probably not a great idea?" I said.

"Eh it wouldn't go anywhere anyway she's in London last I heard." Bill said.

Okay, now I'm curious. "So like-" I started but was cut off by my phone. "Uh, one sec."

Warning on the way to PPTH w Ivy. Found out about ur Uncle. Can hold off 4 bit.

DL

My face fell. Ah great. I don't really want to deal with this right now. House and Wilson still haven't caught on to the fact that I should probably have a bunch of money. Or if they have they haven't mentioned it.

"Who found out about what?" Bill asked.

I looked up. "What?"

"You're not that hard to read Blue Jay." He said.

"My friends found out something about my family and are on their way here." I said.

"House?" He asked.

"No something on my Mom's side it's complicated." I said.

"Try me." Bill said.

I texted back that I was at IT but to take their time. "Right so you know how I go to Princeton Prep?" I said.

Bill nodded.

"Right so I'm there on an academic scholarship. The reason I applied was because you know stuff with House being my Father." I said.

Bill was going to ask a question about that but I stopped him. "Look I don't have time to go into that." I huffed. "Anyway my Uncle was a pretty famous musical actor that died in a helicopter crash a while back. When he died his money went to my Mom. And when my Mom died the logical conclusion would be that I would inherit that money. So I assume my friend Ivy is about to tear me a new one for acting all weird about rich people when I'm probably rich." I explained.

Bill just stared at me for a moment. "Jay what your friends think about you having money or not is not that big of a problem."

Oh, he's right actually. This is like the least of my problems. "That's uh pretty helpful." I mumbled.

"I can be sometimes." Bill said. He stood up and threw away the empty coffee cup. "How long until they get here?" 

"Well assuming Ivy's driving not long." I sighed.

Bill raised an eyebrow. "Fast driver?"

"From what I've heard." I said.

"Well good luck." Bill said while making his way to the door.

"Wait hold up you leaving me?" I asked.

"As much as I'd love to stay and hear about your high school drama I'm needed in one of the lecture halls. Don't forget to lock up when you leave" Bill said and left me alone.

This is going to be great.

10 minutes later Ivy smashed through the door with Dunc mouthing a Sorry shortly behind. "You failed to mention who your Uncle was." She said.

I looked up from my history textbook. "You never asked."

"Lestrade knew!" Ivy exclaimed.

"Wilson mentioned it to him. Not that I wanted him to." I said.

"Here you are this whole time with this 'Oh I'm not Rich Superiority Complex' when in reality you're probably richer than the both of our families combined." Ivy ranted.

I slammed the history textbook on the desk and stood up. "Look Ivy. There's a lot of reasons why I don't like talking about this but if you really want me to go into it I will." I said.

"Explain yourself." Ivy said now in my face.

"Now obviously even if I do have a bunch of money which I mentioned to Dunc I'm not even entirely sure I do. I'd much rather have my Uncle or Mother instead. Connor's money was always a sore subject for my Mom because her being a Single Mom with lots of student loans she had to come to him for help. She never wanted to. Mom was going to pay him back even though Connor said it was unnecessary but then he died and she got all of his money. Mom never touched it. I know she thought about donating it but she was so busy and never had the time to figure out what to do with it. I grew up middle class. The idea of having a lot of money is foreign to me." I explained.

The two of them stood there for a while. No one wanting to break the silence. "Look I'm sorry for misleading you two I just don't know how to handle these things very well." I said.

"Right well how about we all get something to eat." Dunc said.

"I guess that sounds like a plan." Ivy said.

I was about to say I'm still volunteering but Bill walked in. "Ah are these your two friends?" He asked.

"Uh yeah. Duncan Lestrade and Ivy Adler." I said.

"Bill Baxter. I really don't have anything for you to do Jay. You should go have fun with your friends. You won't be a teenager for much longer." He said.

"I uh but-" I started.

"No buts get out." He said.

"Right okay I guess we will get something to eat then." I said.

~~~

I was having trouble making eye contact with Thirteen. We've already done the more invasive parts of the physical but I'm just uncomfortable anyway. We're just in the middle of the questions now.

"Smoke?" She asked.

"No." I said.

"Drink." She asked.

"No." I said.

"Sexually Active?" She asked.

"No." I said.

"Thoughts of harming yourself or others?" She asked.

I paused. Technically no I haven't gotten that far yet but… "No."

Thirteen looked at me clearly noticing my hesitation. "Jay you can be honest with me. You've lost a parent it's not unusual to be experiencing-" She started.

"I'm fine." I said looking at her.

"Wilson told me he's worried." She said.

Of course, he did. I crossed my arms. "He worries about everything. Dude's not even my Dad." I said.

"If you need to talk to someone Jay you can. Doesn't matter who but I'd recommend maybe avoiding House." She said.

Yeah, House probably wouldn't be the best person to talk to.

"Can we move on?" I sighed.

She looked at me for a moment before continuing. "Do you feel unsafe at home?" She asked.

"No." I said.

~~~

After Cheerleading practice Ivy decided to drag me to the mall for Christmas shopping. Seeing as I'm still trying to figure out a present for House , I reluctantly agreed. "This is it?" I asked once we were in the Mall.

Ivy gave me a weird look as we went down the escalator. "Yes?"

"Kinda small." I said with a shrug.

"Aren't you from the Midwest? Malls must be tiny there?" She said.

"Ah well, fun fact about Minnesota is that we were the first State to have a fully enclosed indoor Mall. On top of that, I was a short drive away from The Mall of America so I was a little spoiled." I explained.

"Why do you know such random shit?" Ivy asked as we wandered into some clothing store.

"Dunno. I have a pretty good memory but like I don't really get to choose what I remember." I said.

"So your brain thinks random facts about Malls in Minnesota is important?" She questioned.

"I guess. On the bright side, I'm pretty good at trivia." I said.

Ivy just rolled her eyes. "Anyway. You have feelings for Lestrade?" She asked suddenly.

I froze just holding a random shoe in my hand. "What kind of feelings?" I played dumb.

Ivy was unamused with my attempt at playing dumb. "It's fairly obvious you have a crush on him."

"I don't know what you're talking about." I lied while setting the shoe down.

"I'm pretty positive he feels the same way." Ivy continued.

"Ha someone having a crush on me? Funny." I joked.

Ivy just rolled her eyes. "Not like you'd ever be the one to make the first move anyway."

"I know that's a sound analysis but it still hurts a little." I huffed.

"Right well you figure out a gift for House yet?" She asked.

"No. We should probably pop in the music store." I said.

"Sounds like a plan." Ivy said.

Thankfully I finally found the perfect thing at the music store.

~~~

I never really mentioned it to House or Wilson but I do enjoy Christmas quite a bit. It's not my favorite holiday. Halloween is that but I don't know there's something about it. It is a bit more somber for me personally this year because it's the first Christmas without my Mom but I'm trying to ignore that fact. So on Christmas Eve, I made my way to PPTH to drop off my presents I got for Kutner, Thirteen, Taub, Foreman, Cuddy, Chase, and of course Bill. I was humming to the Christmas songs on my iPod as I made my way to my first stop, Dr. Cuddy.

Now I know that Cuddy, Taub, and Wilson are Jewish but they all seem to be mostly non practicing for the most part. And I don't think anyone can really argue with receiving a gift right?

I took out my earbuds and knocked on the door. "Come in." Cuddy said.

"Hey." I said while walking up to her desk.

"Oh, Jay I wasn't expecting you. Nice hat." She said.

Yeah, I decided to wear my Santa hat today seeing as I'm dropping off a bunch of gifts. "Thanks! I'm just dropping off a quick gift." I said and pulled the present out of my backpack. Normally I wear my messenger bag to PPTH but I needed a bigger bag… I set the present on her desk.

"Oh wow! I didn't know you were getting anything." She said.

"Uh, no need to get me anything. I just like to give people gifts on Christmas you know. Besides you've been really nice to me and you definitely didn't have to." I said while rubbing the back of my neck.

"You know it really is a wonder how you're related to House sometimes." She joked.

"I'm a prime example of nature vs nurture." I joked back. "I need to get going though I got more people to get to." I said.

"How many people did you get gifts for?" She asked.

"Uhhh… besides House, Wilson, and my friends. Seven people?" I said while counting on my fingers.

"That's a lot." She said looking surprised.

"I guess it is. Isn't it." I said before leaving.

Next on my list is Chase. Hopefully, he's not in the middle of surgery right now.

I found him on his way out of an OR on his way to get some food. "Chase!" I called.

"Oh hey there Blue Jay." He said.

"Not gonna take up too much of your time but I got you a small thing for Christmas." I said and handed Chase the present.

"Never thought I'd see the day I'd get a Christmas present from a House." He joked.

"I mean my last name is technically Flynn but sure." I said.

"Well, thanks Jay." He said.

"Yeah, no problem dude." I said with a thumbs up before running off down the hallway.

I went into IT with You're A Mean One Mr. Grinch blaring from my iPod. Or a least as much as an iPod could. "You're A Mean One Mr. Baxter" I sang along as a joke.

Bill looked at me with an eyebrow raised. "Didn't realize you thought of me that way Mr. Flynn." He said.

"Sorry, it's my favorite Christmas song." I said with a shrug.

"That's your favorite Christmas song?" He asked.

"What can I say? It's a bop." I said.

Bill rolled his eyes. "Why are you here anyway? It's your Christmas break and I would love to not be working." He asked.

"Ah well, you see." I said and pulled out the present. "I have this for you."

"Oh." Bill said.

"Yeah think fast." I said and threw it at him.

Bill caught the present with no hesitation. "I never really took you as the gifting type." He said.

"Well, I always love to subvert expectations." I said and did a curtsy. "Anyway, I have one more stop so bye." I said and waved Bill off.

~~~

Thankfully House's Team was all there. They were doing a differential diagnosis so it makes sense that they would be. I walked in quietly trying to not interrupt. Also because seeing a real differential diagnosis live would be pretty cool.

All of them did take note of me walking in but kept shooting off ideas anyway. House shot most of them down for various reasons. "Do you four really have nothing better than that? I bet Jay could come up with something better and he's only sitting in on medical classes." House ranted at them before turning to me.

All of them were now staring at me.

I looked blankly at House. "You actually want a suggestion?" I asked.

He waved his hand in front of the whiteboard.

I set down my backpack and walked up to the whiteboard to take a better look. "Legionnaires' Disease." I said with a shrug not really sure what to suggest.

The five of them stayed quiet for a moment. "Look I'm in High School I don't really know what I'm talking about." I said softly.

"Kutner and Foreman check the workplace. Thirteen and Taub start him on antibiotics." House said.

The four of them started to get up to leave. "Oh wait! Before you leave. I have Christmas presents for you guys." I said awkwardly.

"You didn't come to show us up?" Taub said.

"N-no?" I said while scrambling to my backpack to get the presents. "Right uh here's Taub's." I said and handed it to him.

He nodded and took it.

"Foreman." I said.

"We've barely talked." He said while taking the present.

"I mean it would be rude to show up here with gifts for everyone but you." I said.

"Thirteen. Thanks for the physical." I said whispering the last part.

"No problem Jay." She said.

Taub and Thirteen left to tend to the patient and Foreman went to wait for Kutner outside. "Last but not least." I said handing Kutner his present.

"You're still on for Star Trek the day after Christmas right?" He asked and walked over to another part of the room.

"I mean yeah." I said.

"Great! Here." He said and handed me a gift back.

"Oh!" I said.

"What not expecting one?" He said.

"I mean you're the first person to give me one in return so yes?" I said.

"Oh… Well, you're a pretty cool kid. Besides you need that." He said while tapping the present he got me.

"Well you don't need what I got you but I hope you like it." I said with a smile.

"I sure I will. I better get going before House notices I'm still here." Kutner said and left.

I tucked Kutner's present in my backpack and glanced at House's office. I can only hope that he'll like what I got him.

~~~

"You know I swear we had more eggnog." Wilson said.

"Yeah weird." I said like I totally didn't drink quite a bit. House found out but he didn't care. Only Wilson is in the dark.

"Maybe you drank more than you thought." House said.

Nice cover House…

Wilson glared at him.

I bounced up to a standing position on the couch. "Right we're doing presents now. I've been waiting far too long with you two being at work all day." I said pointing at House and Wilson.

"You could've just opened them." House said making his way to the couch.

"Actually no. It's my first Christmas with you two so we're doing this at least once." I said.

And the first Christmas without Mom.

Wilson chuckled and grabbed his gift for me and threw it in my lap. "Go wild."

"For Blue Jay, you've been needing a new one of these. Love Wilson." I read the tag before opening.

My eyes lit up at the new binder. "How do you know my size?" I asked.

"He checked your laundry." House said.

"Oh. That's pretty obvious I guess." I said. "Thank you so much Wilson." I said and hugged him.

Wilson was a little surprised by the hug. Then again he doesn't know I'm buzzed so you know. "Okay, so you have to open mine for you now." I said and handed him the present.

Wilson read the tag with a small smile. "Is this?" He asked after opening the present.

"Yes! Uncle Connor gave me a lot of props from the musicals he was in. You're more into that stuff so." I said.

"That's probably worth some money." House said.

"Yeah." Wilson said wide-eyed.

I laughed. "I'm glad you like it. Here House." I said and threw him his gift.

He caught it. "Very light."

I shrugged.

House opened the present. It's a flaming guitar strap. "To match your cane." I said with a smirk.

Wilson chuckled which made me lose my composure and start laughing too. 

He got up and put the strap on one of his guitars. "Bitchin." He said.

Wilson and I laughed harder.

House sat back down on the couch this time strumming some Christmas songs. He slid me a large envelope. "Here Kid."

"You got me a massive card?" I joked.

House kept playing the guitar.

I opened it. Looks like some sort of legal documents. "Is this?" I asked.

House stopped playing. "Wilson asked your friends what you wanted. Told them you said you hated how you were constantly getting outed by your last name. Even joked that you'd like a name change for Christmas." He said.

"And you're fine with it?" I asked.

He shrugged. "You're my son. Jay House makes sense."

I bit my lip. Wow okay, Jay don't cry. That eggnog definitely didn't seem like a great idea now.

House got up and put the guitar back. Once it was back I ran up and hugged him."Thanks… Dad." I said."

"Oh okay. You're definitely not getting eggnog next year." House said.

"You gave him WHAT!" Wilson exclaimed.

"Wilson we're having a moment." I whined.

"I didn't give it to him. I walked in on Jay drinking the rest of the Eggnog." House said and pulled me off of him.

Wilson pinched the bridge of his nose. "So you just covered for him?"

"He's 16." House said with a shrug.

"House not only is the drinking age 21 but he's a minor." Wilson said.

I listened to the two of them argue while I opened Kutner's present. "Oh, dope." I said.

They turned to me. "Who's that from?" Wilson asked.

"Kutner." I said and balanced the Star Trek The Next Generation DVD Box Set on my head.

Wilson just sighed.

"Oh! I should text him thanks!" I said and ran off to grab my phone in my room.

Thank 4 Sar Trek I"v ben wantin it

JF… ER WAITTT JH!!!

A few minutes later a text was sent back.

I assume u are drunk. Thx 4 matching Communicator Pin not sure what it sig means I guess I'll find out later.

LK

I tried to explain it in another text.

Nam different nowww!

JH

Kutner decided rightly to not respond.

AN: Wow I forgot how long this chapter was... Sorry for the long delay. This chapter has been written for a while too I have no excuse. Will I ever get to an update schedule of one fanfic update per week? Not at this rate...

[thedarkstrangeson]

Falling, Failing, Rising (2/7)

A/N: This is chapter 2 of my pride fic! So it is highly recommended that you check out chapter 1 first.

ao3

Ch1 | Ch2(here) | next

Warnings: Lots of (accidental) misgendering, dysphoria, occasional cursing, panic attacks, anxiety, slurs, violence, (graphic/descriptive) threats of violence, transphobia, injuries and descriptions of them, blood.

General Summary: Being trans is hard. It’s panic attacks and dysphoria and nights of not knowing. It’s figuring things out and letting it knock you over, it’s understanding and trying so damn hard to say something but failing, always failing. But sometimes, when you make it through all the dark parts and you see yourself for who you are, sometimes when those words finally come out, sometimes… Sometimes it’s happiness. Sometimes it's love. Sometimes it's rising on unsteady legs and standing anyway. Sometimes, it’s pride.

This is a Virgil-centric fic for pride month, featuring all of the sides portrayed sympathetically. It’s also got fem!Logan (Her name is Eibhlin, for pronunciation it is usually anglicized as Evelyn) and fem!Janus (she does not get a name change because Jan is just lovely like that). Virgil is afab and named Adeline.

Chapter 2: Fight the Transphobe

   It was a Friday. School was hitting the half-way point of the year, and, finally, things would be closer to the end than to the beginning. Addie was convinced that things would be an improvement once school ended, but it would leave only the summer between her and her friends all parting ways for college. But until then, she was stuck in this hell-hole. And this hell-hole had a particular tradition of club rush. Once every term, all the school’s clubs would set up booths in the quad and attempt to recruit new members. 

As she was the treasurer for Theatre Tech, it made sense that she had to be there. That didn’t mean, however, that she was happy about it. So that’s how she ended up sulking behind the club’s booth, just waiting for lunch to be over so they could all pack up and get off to class. 

The booth was sandwiched right between Speech and Debate(popular), and the Gender and Sexuality Alliance(vaguely present). Each were running their own spiels, GSA handing out flags, Remus performing a particularly gory Humorous Interp from his last tournament, and Theatre passing out flyers for their upcoming performances. Addie was content to pretend like she was busy keeping the booth’s poster from falling over, until a commotion at the GSA booth caught her eye.

There was a bit of a standoff going on, between one of the GSA’s face painters and another student. He seemed to be taunting the kid, but Addie couldn’t really make out the words—

“...do you think you’re doing, faggot?”

“P-please treat all students on campus with respect, it’s in the student handbook.”

“Well, ma’am , you can shove your damn student handbook.”

This was… not okay. Addie really really needed to say something, to shut the guy up, didn’t he know that misgendering someone was just so hurtful . Where did he get all that venom? None of these kids were doing anybody any harm. 

I will say something. Her shoulders tensed, and her breathing went unsteady. Oh gods how could I possibly say something? But she had to, this was wrong . It was hurting so badly and she just couldn’t move. Something stung at her eyes, and she blinked but it didn’t go away. 

“And you know what? You can shove your whole fucking booth, too. We don’t stand for trannies in this school,” the guy said, reaching to grab at the club’s poster.

Please, can you just shut the fuck up? 

And then there was another person on the scene, Remus striding over from the speech booth with a bloodthirsty glint in his eye.

“What did you say, girlie?”

The guy took a step back, almost involuntarily. “Stay out of this, or you’re just as bad as they are.”

“Oh, I don’t think I will, worm’s meat,” said Remus. He seemed to be bubbling with anger, dark and deep. But why did he care? Why would Remus, of all people, defend the gay club on campus? Regardless of his motivations, Addie could only watch, rooted to the spot, as Remus went on. “Back off, or you’ll find your kneecaps unpleasantly reversed.”

“I’m not scared of you,” said the bully, although he sounded far less certain now.

“Shut your mouth,” Remus measured his words carefully, “Or I’ll tear off your nipples and shove them up your nose.” He grinned, wild and frenzied for a fight. And the bully gave it to him.

“You wouldn’t dare,” the guy said, taking two steps forward to shove him. Remus was too quick, and sidestepped to grab his arm as he went past.

“Is that a challenge?” 

With that, they were on top of each other, Remus yelling out obscenities and clawing, biting, fighting dirty like there was no tomorrow. The other kid, although bigger, really had gotten in over his head. He spun wildly, trying to get Remus off of him, to no avail. Someone was screaming. Then, something red wading into the fray.

As quickly as it had started, it was over. 

Roman had his brother by the back of his shirt and was dragging him off. 

“I will peel your skin off layer by layer like an onion until you are nothing more than a bony husk, you bastard, you scum of the earth, go die in a hole and fester until even the vultures won’t touch you—”

He kept going, the words flowing, unendingly, all the way until the door to the office shut behind them and Remus’ voice was cut off from the quad.

Addie was shocked into silence, along with most of the students present. Remus getting into a fight wasn’t exactly uncommon, but that was the angriest she had seen him in a long time. Thank goodness Roman was around, or it was possible nothing would have been able to get him to stop. As it was, the kid lay bleeding out of deep scratches across his face and arms. It was like he had been mauled. In a way, she supposed he had.

Not to say what Remus did was right, but Addie was just about ready to punch the kid herself. The things he was saying, the purposeful misgendering, it just cut. Deep. And she didn’t know why. At least I’m not trans. I couldn’t bear to have those words thrown my way.

Wait.

Fuck, what if I’m trans?

It would explain so much, it would hurt so much, it would be a blessing and a curse and everything rolled into one, and oh no I’m spiraling how did this happen . 

Deep breaths, take deep breaths, get out of this damn crowd get out get out.

She made it behind the booths, there was a little bit of an open area here and the pressure on her lungs let up, just a little bit. But then there was someone there with her.

“Addie?” said Patton, quietly. He reached out but she stepped away, pressing her hands over her ears because why did her name hurt this much? The pressure clamped back down and she was struggling to breathe and Patton did the right thing this time, he stepped back but he kept talking to her.

“Hey, can you look at me? It’s going to be okay. Let’s count, alright? Just breathe with me and count. In for one, two, three, four, hold it with me for one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, you’re doing great. Let’s breathe out now…”

Patton kept up the steady rhythm and Addie slowly came back to herself, out of that dark hole that was far too easy to fall into. 

“Sorry, Pat,” she studied her shoes, trying to keep up the focus on her breathing.

“Aww it’s okay, I always want to be here for you, you know that right? I’m Patt-on call!”

“I—” she resolved to just let that one slide, “Thanks.”

“No problem, kiddo! But I think we might want to head off to class now, lunch is over.”

Sure enough, all the booths had been packed up while Addie wasn’t watching. It was disorienting, to say the least. All that was left was empty tables and a few drops of blood on the pavement.

Addie tried to put it out of her mind as quickly as possible.

They headed off to 3rd period.

She tried to breathe.

She couldn’t tell whether she was succeeding.

Ch1 | Ch2(here) | next

[flamebrain]

mattfoggy hcs, straight from the bastard empire sorry these all read like shitepostes(L O N G post under cut you’ve been warned)

WTNV au:

nightvale is just populated by like. vigilantes and other poewered people and foggy shoes up one day like. hey anyone need a lawyer? and the whole town falls in love w him

MURDERDOCK IS KEVIN

matt does radio and talks about foggys perfect hair and perfect teeth and foggy calls in like "heh, thanks dude, but aren't you like blind?" and matt shuts the call off immediatley

everybody knows matt is daredevil because he makes wink wink nudge nudge comments about it like 'ah. it appears that an entity has appeared near the dog park. castle appears to be on the scene now, and...ok, he's got a gun. i cant do anything about that, but my pal (noises of him scrambling and obviously knocking things over) daredevil might be able OKHERESTHEWEATHER" and it cuts off and like. he shows up 5 seconds later to kick frank in the face for using lethal measures AGAIN

EVERY TIME IT CUTS TO THE WEATHER AND THEN CUS BACK AND THE PROBLEM HAS BEEN SOLVED ITS JUST MATT. like. breathing just a little heavier than normal into the mic like. 'so it appears uh. the issue has been resolved thanks again to daredevil and his pal moon knight. such a shame i had to cower under my desk while the weather was on. ok goodnight'

the funky thing abt nightvale in this au is that it's basically just like. new york from 616 but foggy's like. from our earth so he's like HWAT THE FUCK AND AHIT IS GOING ON IN HERE ON THIS DAY AND WHY CANT I LEAVE he gets kidnapped by super villains on like his second day in town and immediatley regrets every life choice he's ever made

matt works at nightvale radio by day and conviently cuts to the weather every time something comes up so sometimes there's like. 7 half hour weather broadcasts a day and the townspeople just. humor him

foggy falls in love with matt after figuring out after .5 seconds that he's daredevil and he saved him from a bunch of baddies on like his second day and matt compliments him on the radio like every day and yeah they're fuckin good ok assorted stupid college hcs: matt and foggy like to chill in each other's beds. foggy doesn't notice that often because matt moves back b4 he gets back and matt pretends not to notice but  like. he can smell foggy was there. foggy. stop napping in this bed you're making my sheets smell like you, foggy, i KNOW they're silk and i know you think you're getting away with it but you're NOT,

matt, coming back into the dorm after being out for the day: foggy are you laying on my bed foggy, sitting up straight: nah pal. just sitting on the end for a minute hehe. just had to rest the old joints matt, knowing DAMN well that he was lying down a second ago and he's obviously lying but not being able to say anything; haha ok. move

hrnnn matt knows foggy is gay long before he tells him because he catches him in a lie about who he was out with but he can't say anything and like. he knows foggy is scared to tell him but he doesn't know how to bring it up and he's like. i want him to know he can trust me but i don't know how to tell him i know please foggy

foggys heart goes a mile a minute anytime the subject of being gay comes up around matt and matt wants to yell at him that it's OK and he doesn't care but his hints that he's fine with it seem to fly right over foggys head and so one day he gets so fed up with trying to convince foggy he's chill with gay people he just kisses him. wig

hrnnn. matt doesn't like the snow because it messes with his senses and he can't see but he can't say that to foggy so he just says he doesn't like the cold and foggys like "yeah doofus you weigh like three pounds you're skin and bone compared to me smh" and insists on cuddling him every time he sees matt get like That bc he thinks he's just chilly and it's. oddly comforting to matt because yeah. nobody really Holds him like that, and he Is Cold, and foggy is Warm,

matt gets Very touchey around people he's close with and so when he gets close with foggy he puts his arm around him a lot, rests his head on his shoulder, holds his arm even when they're not going anywhere, etc. foggys heart speeds up every time but matt just assumes that's what people hearts do when that happens because he doesn't really do that with anyone else and hey, he's happy when he does it and his heart maybe spikes a little too, but then he gets someone else's arm to lead him when foggys sick one week and their heart stays the exact same, what's up with that? so then he starts paying attention to all the people on campus, and the touching doesn't usually make the hearts go wild, but, well. matt 'sees' it happens and he's like HaHa, See, This is A Thing, and then he realizes that the people that have it happen to them? they're couples. and he just. freezes because first of all, Foggy- and at him- an- and second, his heart ALSO does a thing, so-

heres a rEALLY stupid unrelated au/hc i got after hearing a friends disater story hfdjhskja matt goes on a blind (hehe) date with a girl and it's pretty much a disaster, it turns out she brought her friend who is also meeting a guy at the same place, and like. she's obviously incredibly wack she says blind people are god's mistake and stupid shit like that so matt gets up halfway through their meal to go sit in the bathroom for 20 minutes while he thinks of an excuse to leave? and eventually a guy comes in and he's like 'uh hey, dude, you in here? your date grabbed her friend and left so we're both dateless now, thats a relief for me and unless you're just having incredibly bad bowel movements i think it's pobably one for you since you Have been in here for like half an hour uh im foggy by the way' and then they go back out and sit together and talk about how wack that fuckin was and like. inadvertent date

hey i can talk a lot of shit about how matt falls asleep on foggy but. sometimes foggy falls asleep on or next to or with matt and matt goes !!!! and he does not move and then he eventually falls asleep with foggy head on his shoulder and his head on foggys and when FOGGY wakes up and realizes matts still there and is ALSO asleep he doesn't move and eventually falls back asleep and then it's just like. waiting until the time aligns that they're both awake at the same time because neither wants to move and wake the other send tweet

SOULMATE AU:

foggy looks up from his college bed, sees matt, and suddenly EVERYTHING is fucking rainbow and he's like 'oh fuck. oh shit. wait. this is a dude' and matt's like 'is everything ok my guy?' because foggy's like. >:O and of course he has no idea because he's blind but foggy doesnt realise this and for a hot minute he;s like "OH FUCK. ITS ONE OF THOSE RARE OCASIONS WHERE HES PERFECT FOR ME BUT I'M NOT FOR HIM," and is about to s o b before he's like wait a fucking minute

yknow the au where like. the first words you hear from your soulmate are marked on your skin at birth? foggy's are 'excuse me', absolutley common, a chance meeting, and he stops jumping every single time he hears them after age 8 when he realises just how many times that phrase is said. matt's are 'yeah, who're you looking for,'  but he doesnt remember that, there's no constant reminder of it since he's blind, the nuns wouldn't tell him, the kids made up childish shit like 'poopoo', and stick DEFINITLEY wouldnt fucking tell him because hes stick and hes an asshead and eventually matt stops asking and caring. it takes WEEKS for after they meet for foggy to ask matt about his words and matt just says 'oh yeah, i dont remember. here" and shows foggy and when he sees them he's like. 'hm. sounds familiar' and forgets about it untill like two years later theyre drunk and talking about the first time they met and matt's like 'yeah you asked like 'who'm i looking for and then panicked because i was blind' and foggy's brain just like. short circuits for a whole ass minute and then when it clicks he just goes. "yOU"

TRANS MATT:

matt realises when he's still in the orphanage that mayhaps he hates being not a dude and haha! hes not gonna fucking come out to catholics he knows about That. he tries to tell stick, around the time their closest, and FUCK STICK he refuses to call him anything else or support him becaise stick is a peace of fuck shit FUCK STICK so that scars matt from coming out for a DAMN while so like. when he goes to college he introduces himself to everyone as matt and emails his proffesors like. 'hello please my name is redacted on your forms please call me matt its uh. a nickname' and he's not like. out to anyone but matt is close enought to his deadname that most people don't question it. foggy does, though, a little while after they meet, and matt is so fed up with not telling people and being called the wrong pronouns he just goes 'i want to be a guy ok' and goes absolutley APESHIT when foggy's like 'oh, cool. do you want me to use he pronouns for you' because wait. people are...ok sometimes? and matt's like. about to cry 

 alternatley: matt says "I don't wanna be a girl." and foggy goes "oh hey are you trans? same hat!" and then foggy tells matt like. binding tips and shit and theyre Good ok

deadpool kills transphobes, sm n dd just fucking beat the SHIT out of them in a back alley and like. they let DP know where they are but whatever happens happens :D

elektra, impaling two transphobes onto the side of a building with her knives: matthew, i know you can hear me, why

one day elektra sees matt has dumped a guy on her roof and just. sighs and goes back inside and matt waits for like 15 minutes before halfheartedly picking up the dude and dropping him off at franks.

matt dropped them off at nats One Time and she went apeshit and hunted down like 20 more of them.

foggy, holding a bat: cmon matt let me kill ONE matt: 'fine but if you get caught im not going to be your lawyer.'

INTO THE DEVILVERSE AU:

earth 14512/TRN700 (peni parker’s universe) matt murdock has a robot seeing eye dog who's also a vigilante

hddjdsjdhdn they all show up to earth 6's foggy and he just. sighs and all the devils start crying because He Is Here

hmm ok. canonically we know nothing about miles's matt but we know he exists and is known figure because miles knows of him but doesn't know he's daredevil i'm Prefty Sure so like. i'm gonna say he's just a successful lawyer who has radarsense but never got yoinked away from the orphanage by stick and never got training so like. hemndhdjsjnow the QUESTION is who finds that matt because there's a Very Different outcome depending on if like. murderdock meets him first or the matt from hobopeters universe does

hmm. murderdock comes in first like gwen does but doesn't out himself as competent w like swords and shit. but he OH HES THE OPPOSING FORCE FOR UH A COURT CASE MATT IS IN AND MATT HAS NO IFEA HOW SIMILAR THEY LOOK BECAUSE HES BLIND HRNNNNNHSHDHDHDJ and then matt from HP's universe comes in like HEY YOURE ME RIGHT. what the FUCK i need the laws in this dimension STAT and murderdock ':"sees" him and is like ah fuck. my goose may be uhhh cooked

ok mileses matt is like 'so what brought y'all here??? hhh????  and murderdock sighs and goes well my boss who's not really my boss from MY universe is doing something stupid here and opened a dimensional portal and it could maybe tear the multiverse apart which i guess i'm not stoked about' and matt's like 'who's your boss?' and murderdock begrudgingly says 'wilson fisk' and matt immediatley goes >:O because he's CONSTANTLY defending people who were injured as a result of what fisk and his company do

anyways. matt immediatley rushes to foggys because "foggys my partner, he's helped me deal with fisk, he knows him, he can help," and he swings open the door and like. one of two things happens actually either A: foggy is like matt. MAATT. AHAT IS GOING ON WH. WHY IS THERE A TALKING DEER WEARNING SPANDEX WHO CLIMBED THROIGH MY WINDOW MATT PLEASE HE SAYS HES Y O U or like. matt walks in and deerdevil is playing pattycake with robodog and daredevil noir is incessantly flirting with foggy and when matt comes in foggys like 'hey. i don't know what's going on but i think i'm trading my best friend'

murderdock is like...the cool college student who tells freshies about weed murderdock: so, you don't know how to fight right  matt: no??? i'm blind??? md: but you can kinda see right. matt: yeah like a radar kinda md: normal blind people can't do that you know matt: they wHAT md: you can listen to heartbeats if you try hard enough. you can tell when people are lying matt: i can W H A T md: yeah. what me to teach you how to kill a man matt: W H AT NO IM A L A W Y E R WH

hrnnn the matts in this universe push our matt away to stay with foggy because he doesn't deserve 2 die and you KNOW every matt pushes people away but foggy is like. matt i know you tried it's ok i lov you buddy and he's like HRGGHHHH FUNCK YOU and makes foggy tell him stories untill he can distinguish lies and hide in a place around their office untill matt can like. find him instantly and training montage shit you feel me and he rolls up to the collider in his black pjs like "hello my fellow devil men. i hear you all have no plan. well. i don't either but i'm here" and one matt is like. how did you go-OH YOU DID IT and all the mats high five and cry a littlethey're still reluctant to let matt come help but they're all like. "we're all depressed and suicidal anyways we all have big guilt and if we didn't let him i lnOW he's gonna have big guilt forever he can stay"

THE PENUMBRA PODCAST AU:

foggy is a private eye, kinda depressed a lil bit, and he works w his secretary karen who helps him with tech and stuff because he is god awful at all that 

"mike whatevermaggiesmaidennameis" is an occult specialist from dark matters agency assigned by an agent natasha of dark matters to help him with his current case. 

foggy does NOT want to do this with any damn occultist or whatever the hell but before he can escape mike shows up and god DAMN is he charming and catches him before he can climb out the window, so. that's that for introductions. anyways, hijinks, elektra is cassandra, if you care listen to the murderous mask, anyhoo foggy stars to notice something is kinda weird about matt but brushes it off. they finish investigating and retrieve an important artifact.

it's cold, mike says. sorry dude, all the places near here are closed, foggy says. is your place? mike asks. oh, says foggy they go back to foggys place and maybe make out a little bit, but foggy realizes oh shit, mike just tried to steal the keys to my safe where i stored the artifact, shit, and plaxces him under arrest before he can do anything, and calls the cop cops.

they come to take mike away, and minutes later foggy finds a note, scrawled INCREDIVLY messily, in his pocket. "sorry," it says, "i wasn't tricking you about anything i said, and i meant everything i did. -matt murdock ps. check around, say, X avenue. you may have to do a bit of cleanup." when foggy checks cameras that overview there, he find the officers that took murdock from his apartment hogtied together, and sees their clothes strewn on the ground - forming letters - with love. their car is gone. PODCAST AU:

matt listens to podcasts a lot right and so foggy is like hmm mayhaps this is a good idea. but the type of podcasts they listen to differs so incredibly like matt listens to serial and the wildest one he listens to is probably judge john hodgman whereas foggy listens to shitpost podcasts like mbmbam and can i pet your dog foggy keeps referencing mbmbam around matt because he just assumes that he listens to it and matt is so confused every time and one day foggy says "damn matt you're really horny for this one huh" and matt just snaps and says FOGGY WHAT DO YOU M E AN

so then they are like oh shit you're not listening to the good ones. no YOURE not listening to the good ones. solution?  listen together which means sharing earbuds which means sitting next to eachother on small college bed which means????? cuddling

also eventually they decide fuck it. let's make our own podcast and they combine the mbmbam and jjh format so they get questions and do goofs and stuff and then give actual legal advice but sometimes foggy will be like "ok. here's what you do. you need a cat? go into the pet shelter and take one. what are the gonna do beat you up with their cat toys? didn't think so." and matt starts crying because "Fo g g y WE ARE LAWYERS I KNOW YOURE GOOFING BUT THATS ILLEGAL FOGGY YOI CANT TELL OUR LISTENERS TO GO DO CRIME"

COFFE SHOP AU:

matt has a caffeine addiction and constantly comes to foggys coffee shop and orders one black coffee every morning and foggy eventually is like. hey buddy. do you EVER drink ANYTHING F U N EVER

matts like...no...i need coffee as strong and dark as my soul... and foggys like ok edglelord. wait up i'm about to change your life

foggy makes him a latte that's just a little bit caramelly but not too sweet and he's like here. drink this. no charge you deserve to live a little. also here's your boring edgy coffee you still have to pay me for that one. matt tries it and he's like hmm. not bad, but just not. Good and foggy is like wow fuck you. i'm going to find a good drink for you that isn't this hell water so every morning matt comes in and foggy gives him a black coffee and a free Fun and Cool coffee on the house

matt always is polite even when foggy can tell he DESPISES what foggy made but he's not going to stop untill he finds something god damn it matt

ok anyways they start meeting up more. matt starts taking his breaks in the coffee shop and and foggy hmmm...always seems to have a shift off when matt comes down..hmm. coincidence....hmmm....theo suffers for him by covering all his shifts when matt comes in and he's like well, actually fuck work

eventually foggy is like hey dude. do you wanna test my drinks before they go on the menu or help me perfect my recipes and shit you have a good toungie right (matt goes apeshit, because fuckin FOGGY YOU CABT SAY THAT) but he's like haha yeah. that'd be fun. haha

and then foggy finds out matt is INCREDIBLE at baking when he hands him a cookie and matt goes. hmm. too much flour add a fourth a cup less and a pinch more of saltand he's like??? bitch. i'd like to see you do better. and then matt does

so basically every day foggy closes up a little earlier and lets matt in and they dick around in the kitchen and bake and make coffee and foggys shop gets more and more popular because hey this already really good joint just started selling the most BALLER carrot cAke waht the fucké

anyways fall comes around and foggy is like GUES WHATT ITS TIME FOR WHITE GIRL DRINKS TRY THIS and he gives matt a pumpkin spice latte and matt is like. •.• THIS IS IT. THATS THE ONE

and foggy starts crying MATT PLEASE YOU HAVE TO BE FUCKING KIDDING ME. PKEASE MATT, MATT I CANT ADD PSL YEARROUND BECAUSS YOURE A BASIC WHITE BITCH MATT

he bullies foggy into keeping the latte on the menu by threatening to stop helping him bake and foggy is SO OFFENDED, on behalf of good taste everywhere, matt, please,

anyways foggy continues rags on matt for only liking the shittiest fucking drink god damn it matthew fucking hell i make you 3 billion and THIS is the one you pick you disaster and matt is like haha shut up. stoopid

foggy doesn't, and you can guess where this be headed because i'm gay and soft,

matt kisses him and foggys like. ?????????? and matt goes AH FUCK. I COULDNT THINK OF A BETTER WAY TO GET YOU TO SHUT YOUR MOUTH SORRY. GUESS ILL GO and foggy throws cookie dough at him and drags him back over because he's not leaving fuck that. fuck you. and then they're happy and domestic the end

wait i lied matt opens a pro-bono firm in the back of foggy's shop and he gives all his clients freshly baked dessert and coffee and he's so good at being a lawyer and foggy becomes so good @ running his shop that customers keep coming and they're the Cute Gay Couple everyone knows abt and loves

ACCIDENTAL (?) KISSING:

SO. there are so many god damn moments foggy nearly fucking breaks and smooches matt out of sheer unbridled uwu soft feelings. SO MANY. when they win their first mock trial together and matt looks so FUCKING happy and he tells foggy how good they work as a team and foggy is about to lose his mind but he just goes. 'haha yeah' and gives matt a fist bump they finish taking the bar: matt's had to take it in a seperate room, stupid blind accommodations. he finishes first because OF COURSE HE DOES HE'S MATT MURDOCK and the second foggy finishes and leaves the room he sees matt there and he's filled with so many emotions he's about to go apeshit but he manages to contain them JUST enough not to make out with matt on the spot but gives him the tightest fucking hug and matt's like "ok buddy! love you too! please dont break my ribs!" and foggys too happy to notice matt forgot to flinch like he didnt know foggy was coming

Foggy gets the sign to matt and he can tell how fuckin stoked matt is and all he can think about is how grateful he is that the two of them get to work together and fucking do GOOD together and he's trying to express that in his awkward foggy way and he's GOING to kiss him right then and there!! hes about to do it look out world!!! and then matt says "you're NOT going to kiss me" and foggy realises haha YEAH THATD BE A BAD IDEA HUH and jokes it off and gives matt another hug - "i'll be careful not to break the ribs this time, buddy, seems like you've been falling over and hurting yourself enough recently,"-

foggy almost kisses matt out of anger when he finds out he's daredevil, when he won't shut up about how this city needs him and foggy would have done the same and blah, blah, bullshit because maybe then he'd FUCKING listen to him, or at least it'd shut him up, but the honest betrayal he feels - at matt for not telling him and at himself for STILL having a part of him that wants to kiss matt - is enough to get him just to leave : ^)

alright. the gang is watching fisk get carted away and see that SHIT, he's broken out, of course it wasnt going to be this easy. matt puts karen in a taxi goes to run off and foggy grabs him by his coat because MATT. you're not going to go fight fisk in your god damn pajamas right now it's too dangerous you're going to die you stupid son of a bitch idiot

and of course matt doesn't listen, he tells foggy to get back into the car with karen, go to his place, they'll be safe there, and grabs his own taxi

and foggy's left to sit there with karen in the cab as it drives Oh Too Fucking Slowly to matt's, and he's mumbling curses all the way and karen is trying to calm him down, he doesnt know why he's so worried, and all foggy can think about is what if matt dies because i didnt stop him and what if karen never gets to hear it from him and about 10 billion what-ifs that wont leave him the FUCK alone, and he sits next to the windowsill he knows matt comes in through and waits, not even wanting to look at the tv because what if he sees worse news Hrgh

matt beats up fisk and he barely even waits for the cops to get there, he gets one look and confirms 'yup, that's mahoney,' and fucking BOOKS it to his apartment, he climbs through the window and foggy's just sitting there waiting, karens in the next room watching the broadcast at a 3 minute delay on her phone, matt doesnt have a tv hes BLIND >:,\

and when matt comes in, bloody and beaten up and doing That Panting Thing He Does, but definitley alive, foggy just fucking. grabs him by the shoulders and kisses him because HE IS A L I V E !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and matt is suprised but he doesnt even try to protest because he's still riding the adrenaline from the fight

anyways. foggy pulls away for air and says 'you're so fucking stupid and i hate you' and then matt kisses hIM because uhh, thats FOGGY

and it's a minute later that matt senses another heartbeat and realizes karen's standing in the doorway, and she raises an eyebrow and obviously trying not to panic asks 'uh, foggy, pray tell, buddy, why you're making out with the devil in matt's bedroom' and foggy goes apeshit and tries to think of an excuse that doesn't invole 'uh thats matt' but it just kinda comes out as some stupid shit like 'i,,, uh,,,,, secret,...affair,,?i',m....gay." and matt just sighs and pulls off his helmet like "hey karen. it's me. hey karen whats poppin its me blind matt murdock" and needless to say they all have a Lot to talk abt

DRUNK KISSING:

so like. the first year they're together matt and foggy go out a lot, and it's mostly foggy dragging matt places and matt reluctantly coming because A) if someone doesnt watch foggy this idiot is going to puke and pass out in a ditch and B) he really like his company shh. no telling because that gay

anyways matt usually only drinks a little but foggy is mad lightweight right. he doesn't get shitfaced too often, usually only after exams or when he knows he has no classes the next day. when he does get shitfaced though he absolutley loses his shit and becomes even more touchy than usual, which is VERY TOUCHY because fuck you its my au and i get to choose the default affection levels

so basically. once foggy starts hugging matt and leaning on him and whining into his shirt about the 'hot girls' and 'killer nachos' at the party matt knows it's time to head home and foggy is too busy wrapping his arms around matt to notice he's being dragged out untill its too late

and y'know, thats fine, that's usual, all normal friend stuff, except what foggy also has a tendancy to do when he's drunk is kiss matt. sometimes its on his cheeks, or his forehead, or his shirt?? matt doesnt get that one??? and sometimes foggy even tries to go for the lips when hes particularly wilde. matt knows to expect this by the third time they go out, but it's still always a suprise when it happens, because sometimes it'll be out of nowhere when theyre walking back, or foggy'll stop matt and grab his cheeks and kiss him? sometimes they'll get all the way back to the dorm and matt will make foggy lie down and foggy will grab his shirt and pull him close enough to give him a quick peck before rolling over and promptly beggining to snore

which, y'know, is absolutley great for a maybe-gay-for-his-best-friend-catholic. what's also great is that foggy never seems to remember the fact he kissed matt the night before, and if he does, he definitley does NOT bring it up

so that's fine. whatever. thats life and matt will pretend like he doesnt care when foggy gives him a smooch because hes straight and loves girls and jesus christ, no homo, amen

but THEN. . then matt and foggy have been studying for exams for weEKS and theyre FINALLY DONE, FINALLY, and they are both going to get wasted out of their mINDS you better BELIEVE IT

so they do! and eventually they stumble back to their dorm together and sit together on the floor with a half-downed bottle of tequila and matt decides fuck it. he tells foggy he's never kissed a guy and foggy is like "haha cool. i have." matt's like "haha was it good" and foggys like "hell yeah man better than girls" so matts like hmm. "foggy i think i want to kiss a guy" and you can guess where this is goin

foggy is an oblivious little shit and just thinks matt's having a gay awakening so he's like "oh cool" and matt starts vibrating at inhuman frequency because FOGGY THIS IS THE ONE TIME I"M BASICALLY ASKING YOU TO DRUNK KISS ME AND YOU D O N T" so he just goes "haha yeah." and foggy's like "haha yeah"

and then matt chugs the bottle of tequila and says "foggy i think i wanna kiss you" and then he does but he's a good christian and also stupid so he just like. goes mwah on foggy's cheek

and foggy stares at him for like 15 seconds before basiclly challenging him to 'kiss him like a man, murdock, how are you supposed to get the gay experience if you dont go all in' and then they make out for like 20 minutes and life is good

(they both wake up w the worst fucking hangovers and theyre passed out on the floor and matt's like "foggy....im gay..." and foggys like "haha do you remember i kissed you" and matts like "????foggy i kissed YOU" and foggys like "oh yeah you did. you should have done that earlier" and matts says "????you were too busy trying to kiss me" and foggy goes "oh haha i was. cool" and then they fall back asleep...then they.....boyfriend.s)

FLOWER SHOP/TATTOO ARTIST AU:

so. matt is a florist and he runs a little shop across the street from an empty piece of real estate. a tiny place that used to be a deli but had just the WORST sandwiches, it was no wonder they closed down, god damn. anways. matt runs his shop with his best friends kirsten and karen who have IMPECCABLE taste in flowers and less impeccable taste in impulse control and not being huge lesbians.

one day this dude pulls up into matt's shop. his request is maybe the strangest matt's ever heard - 'can you get me two bouquets of like, the most metal flowers you have? like, ones that just look super cool but also, yknow, smell super good and sick and shit?' 

matt laughs, and tells the guy that yeah, he can't help with the looks part, but he'll make sure to get him some that smell 'quote' sick and shit, come back tomorrow morning and they'll have some ideas-hey, what are these for anyways?

and the guy tells him, oh, hah, i'm moving in across the street, opening a little tattoo place? wanted some flowers to make it seem more, uhh....welcoming. matt laughs and says yeah, sure, cool, and tells him if he has anymore questions to call the store and ask for matt. the guy tells him if he ever wants a tattoo just cross the street and ask for foggy and unless the flowers matt gives him really suck he won't do him dirty and tattoo a dick on him

so anyways, they have a couple meetings, foggy decides on the flowers he wants and thanks matt and tells him hey, he should come check out the shop, it's opening tomorrow, and foggy wants to be able to point to the guy who did the sick florals. matt doesnt have anything better to do and he likes the sound of this guy's voice so hell, he might as well

when he goes over matt realizes oh shit. he really is out of his element here, but he asks the guy at the counter for 'foggy' and is led over to  a corner where foggy's sitting and tattooing...himself? and matt realizes hey. i kind of have no idea what this dude looks like

so he sorta. sits there awkwardly untill he asks like. 'uh. i cant actually see what youre doing' and foggy goes OH IM SO FUCKING STUPID. i'm. man, saying this out loud seems kinda really stupid and cheesy i cant believe i have to do this...i'm....it's one of the flowers in the bouquet you made me....i just thought it looked really neat and smelled good and it....kinda reminds me of you and OK i KNOW that sounds really weird we met like 4 days ago BUT you seem super cool and i kinda hope we can maybe like. be friends or hang out or something,

and matt's like. o//////o yeah okay. uh. thats cool. thats cool uh im sure the flower is really pretty haha i love that type haha UH DO YOU WANT TO GET LUNCH OR SOMETHING haha maybe ill get a flower tattoo one day its pretty cool that you do tattoos UH IM FREE TOMOROW WAIT MAYBE THATS TOO SOON IM SORRY UH IM FREE WEDNESDAYS,

and foggy just kinda laughs and says 'no, tomorrow works,' and hey! they make plans and get coffee together and matt's like so. what tattoos do you have and foggy starts listing a bunch and eventually matt's like :( i wish i could see them they sound beautiful and foggy's like. here. heres my arm can i. yeah ok. and he grabs matts ar,m and he's like ok. feel the skin, its still a little raised can you feel that? ok, run your fingers over here and i can like. tell you wjats there

cue like an hour of sensual arm touching and tattoo explaining and the more matt learns about foggy and his tattoos and the more he hears the way he talks the more he's like A) oh fuck, i kinda really like this guy whos letting me feel up his arms and B) do i want a tattoo? i kind of want a tattoo

anyways. time jump they hang out a bit more, foggy always comes into matt's shop and talks to him in between customers, shows him the patterns he's designing, etc, and one day he comes in with a paper that has a design of some flowers on it and shows it to matt and as he's running his fingers across it he stops and says 'foggy? will you do this to me'

and foggys like 'bud are you sure? first tattoo, right, do you-are you really sure you want to do this, like, when, and wh" and matt's like 'shut up and put this ink in my skin before i chicken out' so matt sits through a PAINFUL ASS TATTOO and when it's done he's like FOGGY CAN I TOUCH IT CAN I TOUCH IT FOGGY CAN I TOUCH IT and foggy has to physically restrain matt from fondling his tattoo because its FRESH MATT

so foggys like 'ok, this is cause for celebration! babys first ink! we;re getting beers cmon' and they both go out to drink and matt's like 'hey foggy...can i touch more of your tattoos' and foggy's like 'uh, sure, i have another armfull,' and they do that for a while untill matt gets to the one foggy did the first time he visited foggy's tattoo parlor and foggy's like hah. remember this one? and matt's like yeah. i do. and they kinda just. sit there for a minute and then foggy's like 'ok. im gonna kiss you now punch me if you hate this, flowerboy' and matt absolutley does not punch him, thank you very much

and when they finish having their moment matt's like 'wow. i shoulda....i shoulda asked to feel you up again way sooner if i knew you were gonna do that' and foggy's like 'hey...i'd let you feel me up anytime' and they both kind of laugh and decide ok, worm, this works, and decide theyre gonna do that more often

they start to go out for drinks / dinner / lunch / any time they possibly can, and matt learns the curvature of foggys (suprisingly muscley?) arms down to a t, but he runs out of space to run his fingers over one night, and foggy kisses him and says 'hey. i've got more tattoos, y'know, but i don't think many people would appreciate it if i showed them off to you here' and matt is like 'wh-O H'

and foggy laughs and drags him to his apartment and pulls of his shirt and says 'ok, we're alone now. tell me what you feel' and matt sits on the bed in front of him and theres lots of sensual chest stroking going on and then yeah. matt gets fed up with all this touching foggy and not enough of foggy touching him and. they fuck oopsie

and after that they decide worm. that was good, wanna do that more often, holy shit, and decide to actually date date and thats like. thats that babey!

but years later they open a joint shop, an absolute mess of soft/punk aesthetics and everyone knows them because matt is still a soft florist who just has a fewwwww dozen flowers inked all over him and foggy is the punk god who flexes his sleeves all over town but flexes his soft boyfriend husband even more tHE END

[joiearielps]

Battle Scars

Who: Sylvester and Ariel Pillsbury-Schuester

When: 10/3

Where: Ariel’s room in MuSig

What: Heart to heart convo and feels

It had been such an overwhelming week; it'd been quite some time since he had had a week like this last. He regretted his words to Schuyler, knowing they were the opposite of what he had wanted to say, but he also refused to be the one to reach out a peace offering. Instead, he let himself rage elsewhere - hearing a guy crack a few transphobic jokes had lead to a fist fight, and as usual, Sylvester was perhaps one third of the other guy's weight. Gabriel had tried to talk to him about whatever was going on as he was patching him up, but Sylvester couldn't quite make himself talk. Instead he found himself wandering around his dorm, feeling like he was going insane at the combination of silence around him and absolute chaos inside him. When Ariel finally replied to his reculant question, he actually felt nothing but relief. Nodding for himself, he walked out his room; not stopping until he stood outside Ariel's door at the sorority house.

Ariel was sitting on her bed in an oversize, paint stained t-shirt and some leggings, reading over her notes for her French Lit class when she heard the knock. She still didn't entirely understand what her brothers had been arguing over, but she was always willing to be there for him when they needed her. As soon as she opened the door, she wrapped her arms around Sylvester and gave him a gentle squeeze. "Hey, Little Bird. What happened to your hand?!"

He let himself be hugged, burying his face into her shoulder as he tried not to cry. This was why he hated opening up. His sister was... happy, and he felt like he couldn't remember the last time he hadn't been there to ruin that. "Hey, Iel. I got into a fight, that's all," He murmured, a little bruised and with a split lip, but mostly just tired. Iel was what he had called her before he could say his r's properly, and it still sounded better than Ari to him; even if he blushed every time the story was told to someone new. "It's okay though, uh..  got it wrapped up and all that," He added, waving slightly with his bandaged hand.

Ariel's eyes widened at his words, reaching out to take his hand and press a kiss to the back of it. She closed her door behind him and gestured for him to come in. "Just please tell me it wasn't with Schuy. Not that I like you fighting with anyone, but us four are the last ones who need to be going at each other."

The kiss made him soften a little bit, and he walked into her room to flop down on her bed; pulling a pillow to his chest with his good hand. "No, no. It wasn't him. Someone else," Sylvester reassured her, shaking his head slightly. "It was just some other asshole."

Ariel followed him and closed her books up, setting them on the floor. She was glad her own brothers hadn't come to blows, but she still hated how sad Sylvester seemed. "You wanna talk about it? Whatever it might be. Since I feel like there are multiple its going on in your head."

He watched her, noticing his sight go blurry as he felt the tears coming up. "Y... Yeah," He said softly despite almost angrily trying to wipe the tears away. It wasn't that he wanted to talk... but also not really that he didn't want to. He had always preferred not to, but even so, he had been thankful for his siblings when he realised he couldn't hold it in anymore. But since starting at Joie, their parents seemed to expect his siblings to look after him specifically, and he felt hesitant to talk to them too. It was unfair, he knew that, but he couldn't help it.

Ariel scooted closer to him and rested her chin on his shoulder. She reached up and ran her hand through his hair affectionately. "It's okay, Little Bird. You know it stays in this room. I know Schuy can seem a little... judgey sometimes. But I'm just here to listen."

He sighed shakily, closing his eyes as she touched his hair; it was comforting and made him feel safe. But where to start? There was so much he wanted to say, with no good words for them, or even really a red thread to keep it all together. "I don't remember what it's like not to be angry," he said finally. It was true. It had been there for so long, he sometimes forget it wasn't supposed to be like that, didn't even have to be that way. But how? He was afraid he'd never be able to answer that.

Her bottom lip popped out at the words. She so hated seeing her brothers hurting in any sort of way, especially when she couldn't do anything to fix it. "Do you know what you're angry about? You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I'm just wondering if you know yourself."

"I don't...," Sylvester started but it ended in a deep sigh and a shrug. He was silent for almost a minute, staring at nothing as he tried to get words out, before he finally spoke again. "Sometimes I worry you'll get fed up fighting with me. I mean, especially Schuyler but..., He trailed off with another shrug, almost a bit hopelessly, feeling the tears on his cheeks again.

Ariel's hand rested on his back and slowly rubbed up and down the length of it. "Oh, Sul. I love you boys more than anything in the world," she assured him. "And no matter how stubborn or frustrating you may get, that's never going to change. And Schuy loves you too, he's just not always great at showing it. But we're always gonna be here. Always."

Her words were such a relief, removing such a huge stone he'd been carrying around for too long. "I wish I could've become the person I thought I was going to be when I was a kid. Now it's like... Dad keeps stressing how important it is that I stay close with you guys. I don't think it's because he wants us kids to stick together, but because he is starting to believe I won't have anyone else," He reached up to wipe away tears and snot that kept coming, silently but seemingly without an end. "That terrifies me. What if his big dream for me is just... that I won't be alone? I remember when he used to say he knew I could be the next Tony Hawk if I wanted," He said, interrupting himself with a sarcastic chuckle before adding, "or... just... anything I wanted to be. Now he just dreams that I'll at least grow old one day."

Ariel listened intently, wanting to fully understand everything he was feeling to the best of her ability. "Bird, Dad's dream for all of us is that we're happy," she told him. "You're not the only one he says that to. He told me to look out for the twins when they got here last year too." She let her own sad little laugh out and shook her head. "And I'm pretty sure I've failed miserably at that."

Sylvester just shrugged, feeling more relief over finally getting some of his thoughts out rather than interested in discussing them further. Even if his sister was the short one, he wriggled around until he sat in a position where he could rest his head on her shoulder, sighing softly. But it was followed by a slight frown, glancing up at her. "How?"

Ariel tilted her head to the side, resting it against Sylvester's comfortably. "I don't know. I just want you all to be happy," she told him, brushing his hair back from his forehead. "And to stop punching people maybe. At least you'll talk to me. Schuy just pushes me away like he does everybody else, even if he does secretly love me."

"It's not your fault if we're not," He said softly. He knew his two oldest siblings had such concerns, even if it was a lot more obvious with Schuyler who had always viewed himself as the Aragorn of the group. The thought that the same burden would weigh Ariel down like that too.. "Sometimes I just... feel afraid about what will happen if I don't. Talk, I mean... And I don't want to...," He hesitated, not quite sure how to refer to it. He only mentioned his really dark periods very reculantly, even more so now when he was at Joie. "It's gonna be a good year, Iel."

"I know," Ariel agreed. "I can't make you be happy and I can't make this world not suck. But I still try to bring a little happy color into it whenever I can." It was a goal of hers to do that for everyone who came into her life, but her brothers would always come first. "I promise you can always talk to me. You don't have to be afraid of judgment or bringing me down. I'm a lot tougher than I look." She smiled and pressed a kiss to his forehead. "It is, Bird. It definitely is."

[acrobaticcatfeline]

Pace Yourself; an ace Patton fic Ok so I might make more of this, depending on if this goes well. This was tons of fun to write, if a little challenging. If you are ace I would be honored to get some feedback to improve this! warnings: toxic family, homophobia/anything lgbt phobia, self hatred, thoughts that aces/aros are not lgbt, swearing, I think that’s all. word count: 1179

It was hard for him. He put on a face, he said he loved everyone, so no one would look deeper into him, to see that he was different. That he was an abomination in his family’s eyes. That he was wrong. And he hated it. He wished that he wasn’t who he was, that he was able to seem normal to his parents, but he couldn’t, that wasn’t who he was, and he will never be that. But as he was on his way to his first day at his new college campus, he was in awe at how many people were waving flags for pride month. He wanted to be like them, but Patton Rivera wasn’t ever going to be like them, he didn’t belong in the community anyways, he’d seen plenty of posts on Tumblr about how asexuality was wrong and wasn’t welcome with the LGBT+ community. So, he gripped his bags tighter and walked faster to his new room.

His phone started buzzing and as soon as he answered he had a voice shouting in his ear.

“PATTON PATTON WE’RE ROOMMATES PATTON WHERE ARE YOU COME ON THE ORIENTATION IS HAPPENING IN AN HOUR AND WE STILL NEED TO EAT AND CHANGE!!!!!!! PATTON!!!”

When he heard the voice of his childhood friend he knew he was in for a treat. He had known for a good two years that Roman was going to this college, one a few states away from their home, but didn’t know himself until a few months ago that he would as well. To know that he would be rooming with his best friend was probably the best news since finding out he had been accepted. The man started running towards his dorm room as fast as he could.

 Later during the day, the boys were wandering around the campus when Patton had seen someone wearing familiar colors. They were in a commons, and the ace was seated on the stairs, with a similar looking man standing next to the stair case. In fact, they looked very similar to Roman and Patton. He normally wouldn’t have done anything, considering the fact that he was so far in the closet that he could have been some sort of Narnia, but the man was not only wearing his colors, but he was surrounded with multiple people in aro colors, and they were all in the plaza, where everyone could see.

The group all had their hair dyed the colors of their flags and dressed in matching outfits. The one with ace colors had long fringe and a big baggy jacket that was black with a purple and grey lining. His feet were moving before his brain could process it, and his mouth flying before he could control it.

“how can you all be out? I-I thought aces and aros weren’t welcome in the LGBT community? I- this wasn’t because- I’m- you aren’t bad or wrong, I just, everything I see says that aces and aros were just confused or immature, how can you do it? I- nevermind I’m just-you guys look really nice I need to- uh, go-”

“hey. Calm down there dude, its fine. Sit down a bit, your friend can join too” the two stopped in their tracks and sat in front of the older students. “the things saying aces and aros aren’t ‘welcome’ are bullshit. Just like gay transphobes aren’t part of the community, neither are those who try to say that the absence of romantic or sexual attraction. They are assholes who don’t deserve to be around the LGBT community. You aren’t confused or immature. You might still not be certain on which label fits, or maybe you aren’t comfortable with labels. That doesn’t invalidate how you feel. Also, thanks, the hair took hours.” The smile coming from the man-made Patton feel safe.

“I’m-I uh, I’m p-Patton Rivera, I’m brand new so I uh, hi!!! What’s your name?” most of the people dispersed aside from the man and one glasses clad aro who didn’t seem like he was going anywhere.

“oh yeah, heh, I’m Virgil sanders, this is my twin; Logan. Who’s your friend? He looks like a princey.” Virgil’s brother kneed him, before sitting down next to him. “he’s not much one for talking. He thinks princey is interesting.”

“Falsehood!” shouted the man, logan, indignantly.

As soon as Virgil finished, Patton’s mother rang. “hello mother dear. Yes, I’m safe… y-es I’m going to the local church tomorrow… yes, I will uh, hook up with some lady while I’m here… I know you want grandchildren mom… yes, I, I wouldn’t think of attending the uh, homosexual parade against god… obviously they’re con-confused, its-it’s not natural I know… please don’t come and check up on me, I have Roman, and I’m almost 20… Roman is not a bad influence mother. He’s been my friend since pre-k I’m not abandoning him… he’s literally right next to me mother would you like to talk to him?” at this point Virgil grabbed the phone with a strangled gasp coming from Patton.

“hello ma’am. This is a friend of your son, coming in with a PSA that you don’t own him… really? Seems pretty threatening to me… he can’t formulate a sentence… why yes, I am celebrating pride, I’m glad you brought that up! It seems to me that your son would be a heck of a lot happier without the preaching that homosexuality et cetera is wrong… he’s 20 you can’t forbid him from doing anything. Including what sounds like you wanting him to abandon his friend… are you funding his college? Oh no? then explain why he needs to follow your rules… exactly, would you like to apologize to your son? Welcome to twenty gay-teen ma’am… I’m here for the next three years, test me… ok cool, bye!”

Patton stared horrified at the man. Virgil handed him back his phone with a shrug.

“that should keep her off your back. Sorry bout that, it was wrong of me, but I hate hearing people having to talk to smallminded people and pretend they agree. No one should ever be spoken to that way. So as an adult you’re free to be you, so what are you? You seem pretty interested in the pride decorations, and you walked up to us, so its obviously not just the bright colors.”

Patton looked over at Roman, who had been the quietest he’d ever heard him. “I’m uh, I think I’m panromantic asexual. Not sure specifically what kind of ace, but yeah. Thank you. I- I really just want to start over here. I don’t think it’ll be too soon, but I just want to stop hating who I am.”

The smiles exchanged felt like a promise. The four of them together against the homophobic agenda. When Virgil spoke again they knew it was going to be a good year.

“don’t worry about it pat. The best way to survive college is to pace yourself and get some good friends. You’ve already got one of those things.”

taglist: @princelogical

THANK YOU ALL FOR READING!!!!!!!!

[margridarnauds]

XVI. The Tower and XXII. The Fool please!

Thanks!

XVI. The Tower: Do you easily change your opinion on matters? What makes you lose faith in other people? Is there anything, or anyone you feel safe with?

Do you easily change your opinion on matters?

I don’t really think I change my opinion TOO much, at its base, if that makes any sense? When I’m around people, I do find myself molding myself into what the conversation requires, or at least shutting myself up unless it’s something that I find truly deplorable/can back up easily, but I think it takes a lot for my own personal opinion to change. Except for that one day or so when I woke up a conservative Methodist and went to bed as a liberal (alright I was “libertarian” but that went down the drain fast) atheist. That was a fun time. In my research, I try to keep an open mind, but I’ll own to my own confirmation bias. I can say “This is a good paper, you make good arguments,” but…do I fully accept it in my mind? No. But also I tend to see things more in shades of gray to a potentially annoying extent as it is, so when I change my opinion, it’s…not necessarily a matter of saying “This thing has some bad points” it’s “This thing’s bad points now outweigh its good points in my mind.” Part of why I ultimately chose lit over history as my focus was that I like that there’s not really a press for an Ultimate Truth in lit, in the sense that everything’s much more open to interpretation, whereas history tends to pressure more for definite ARGUMENTS. 

What makes you lose faith in other people?

It’s odd, because losing faith in people, for me, is rarely a matter of ONE single thing. I try to give people second and third chances, I tend to brush off that little niggling, “Something’s not right here” feeling, etc. So, when I finally lose faith, it’s a Big Thing, but it’s also not one that I can solidly put down to a single thing, which also makes it very hard when I’m trying to build a timeline in my head. Betrayal, lies, cruelty (though I do TRY to understand that people can have bad days, but…it doesn’t ERASE it, you know?), willful ignorance, finding out that they support things that I find personally deplorable, all the things that you’d really expect. 

(Funny story there: For ages I didn’t get crushes. Not one. Then, I got a strange…thing on a guy in my German class. Not a straight-up crush, but I LIKED him in a way that was slightly more than platonic. And I was like, “Okay, I’m bi instead of ace after all.” Then, I found out he supported Trump and he made some insanely transphobic and biphobic comments under the guise of “debate” because he was That Guy. /Crush, and that was basically the last time I got a crush on a guy. My brain just went “nein.”) 

It’s also really, really hard if I’d previously really trusted and looked up to someone and that happens. That’s really when I start wondering if there’s something wrong with *me* or if I’m over-exaggerating things to suit my own narrative. 

Is there anything, or anyone you feel safe with?

My dogs, my cats, my mom, for the most part, though she does have the little habit of telling my aunt things in the name of “family unity” when I had meant for it to be a personal matter. See: When I begged her not to tell my aunt I’m an atheist because my aunt is REALLY STAUNCHLY conservative, when I begged her not to tell her that I wanted to get out of the country because of the situation at home + politically, etc. 

Safety is a generally relative concept, anyway; I can trust that my mom and aunt won’t abandon me to be raised by wolves and will be there for me when I need them barring a huge catastrophe, I can trust that my mom can help me work through an anxiety attack and keep a solid 80% of my secrets, I can trust that my friends can handle my various eccentricities and questionable sense of humor, and I can trust that my dogs and cats will be with me no matter what because I’m the one who feeds them and gives them scritches. 

It’s all much less depressing than it sounds. 

XXII. The Fool: How much weight do you give to other people’s opinion? What is an adventure you were part of - or you wish you could be part of? Is there something you have an endless passion for? 

How much weight do you give to other people’s opinion?

I blame it on the bullying, but I have this odd…thing where I simultaneously have an “I don’t give a fuck” and “I give every fuck” attitude to people’s opinions. Like, on one hand, there’s probably not been a single feature of mine that’s not been ripped to pieces at some point. I mean, I had comics drawn of me having sex with my cats by my best friend at the time when I was 12 years old. It was a lovely, lovely period in my life. And, as a result, I think I developed a very self-deprecating sense of humor, as well as the idea that, well, I’ll be ripped to shreds no matter what, so I might as well express myself and damn the consequences. 

Well…that and being homeschooled for most of my high school years. It’s astonishing how much your opinions and interests can diverge if you’re not under the pressure to necessarily conform.  

But, at the same time, it also made me sensitive to personal criticism, as I have this idea that everyone hates me and is just being polite, that I’m really annoying, etc. One of the things that actually devastated me in college was reading teacher feedback, because even though I knew they were just trying to help me become a stronger academic, the thought that they might find me…wanting in some way stung. Especially when it was teachers that I really respected and looked up to. (Which, tbh, was all my teachers because I have a painful…thing when it comes to authority figures and trying to appease them and-Oh God I’m actually Peyrol minus the homicide, erratic temper, and questionable BDSM. That and our faculty was lovely.) I legit had to have my mom read the feedback, because I wanted to have it filtered and I was, like, worried one of them would say, “Rachel, you are a disgrace to the Humanities program and this school. This paper is shit. Goodbye” or something. 

I’Il often find myself softening my opinions or keeping silent if I feel like it could be dangerous, or if it might affect someone’s view of me, and I’m hyper-sensitive about, say, pauses in a conversation, because I’ll be like, “Oh, I’ve done it now.” And then in the next second, I’ll reblog, “FUCK OFF ANTIS” on my blog because, again, it’s a strange duality…thing with me. 

What is an adventure you were part of - or you wish you could be part of?

Oh, God, I’ve had some wild times. There’s the time that we were moving and ended up driving over a thousand miles overnight in a fifteen passenger van because we had 17 cats, two birds, and a bunny with us. And then had to travel BACK the next day because we had business to attend to back in our old place. 

OR the time that my late uncle lost his keys on a rollercoaster at Busch Gardens and so we ended up having to travel over three hours from where we live to rescue him, which is how we ended up meeting his boyfriend for the first time. 

OR the time that we picked up the youngest of our three dogs, Riley, when we ran into a curb less than ten minutes out, encountered various and assorted technical issues during the ~4 hours of the rest of the trip, and THEN when we were going back I had my hands nearly nibbled to death by an overeager puppy who was excited by the prospect of new friends. (This is how we met the nice old lady who gave me the money for the Toho 1789 + Riley is a sweet dog once he’s settled, so it was #WorthIt)

I really, really want to get out of the States, travel to different places around the world…see more musicals. Definitely see more musicals. I’m very aware of how limited my experience is, not having ever been out of my own country. (Unless you count briefly being over Canada when I was en route to Alaska, which I don’t.) I would love to go to Ireland and see some of the places mentioned in the various myths that I’ve read so much about, possibly embarrass myself by crying over Bres’ grave; I’d love to hit up the Tower of London or Versailles; go to either a Toho or Takarazuka musical in Japan (If and when my Japanese improves beyond「 アメリカ人です 」since I’d really rather be able to show my face in public). See snow again, maybe, since I do miss it.

 My old college offered study abroad trips to Oxford over the summer and I REALLY wanted to go, but, alas, it was insanely expensive + I wasn’t entirely sure about how much I would be able to enjoy myself if I had schoolwork to do, since I’d end up focusing on making that perfect rather than actually appreciating the trip. 

Alternatively: The Ghost Tour at Saint Augustine. I want to go on it SO MUCH. 

Is there something you have an endless passion for? 

Any of the musicals I’ve been lucky to get into (Especially. The one. You know the one. The one that I don’t even need to mention given that it consumes about 80% of my brain power at any given point), anything related to Irish Mythology, especially when it comes to my boy Bres, the French Revolution even though it also scares me because the scope of it’s so large and I never really feel like I make progress in it, female villainesses who can kill me and I would thank them (which is…a disturbingly large amount, actually). 

In general, I’m the type of person who develops special interests where I’ll become OBSESSIVE over learning everything I can about something and kind of latch onto it, so anything I’ve developed that for kind of goes here by default. 

And my dogs. Because they’re Good Bois (+ one Good Girl) and I honestly am not sure where I’d be atm without them. And my cats for tolerating my shit for this long. 

[ladyimaginarium]

Trigger warnings for medical abuse, psychiatric abuse, deadnaming, transphobia & pluralphobia. basically i& went w/ my& mother for a social worker's appointment ( note: forced to go, & he's not even MY& social worker, he's mother's ) earlier today & he basically spoke over us& & told us& he thinks our& plurality is psychosis & now our& mother believes him ( not that she ever believed in our& plurality, anyway ) & now it's likely that we& might even have to take antipsychotics against our& will, she wants to make us& go away.

like, granted, the social worker ( who, apparently, has worked w/ systems & ppl w/ psychosis for 10 years ) did say that "i won't force you if you don't want to" but the option was considered & mom clearly wants us& to go away even when we're& not even hurting anyone. even worse is that he deadnamed me& & after i& called him out on it & asked me& to call me& by my& chosen name & he refused & after i& asked him why he said "because that's not your name, the name on your profile is" & my& mother said "he's not obligated to use your chosen name" so he's Also a massive transphobe.

& now mom refuses to call us& by our& name when any of us& front & i& told her that psychs can be wrong, especially about plurality, and she refuses to see that & basically is like "you're all a fantasy that [DEADNAME] created to cope" & that's. not how psychosis works lmfao. & he also said it's impossible for [REDACTED LARGE NUMBER] of system members in your head and if you were a system you wouldn't know each other or wouldn't know a reason for why you split". which is. yknow. sysmed thinking & just plain outdated information & doesn't apply to every system. this isn't the 70's.

so anyway it's highly likely we'll& be hiding & masking. not only that, but i& explained to him about the time loss & an incident where i& didn't recognize the face of a family friend i& knew for years & he's just like "well you can have multiple personalities & have psychosis" & im& just sitting here like. "u said it".

anyway. i& know the difference between psychotic episodes & my& system members thanks. & on TOP of that he also said "do you have proof" & im& just sitting here like. "r u fucking kidding me&". ESPECIALLY when my& mom has recorded ( note: w/o our& permission ) us& & our& switches & she refused to show them. she also said that "if you don't get rid of them, you won't be able to be independent or autonomous & you'll have to live in a group home for the rest of your life" which is yknow. fucking ableist when there's literally so many plurals out there who do stuff on their own. & when i& told her that she basically just said "oh, that's just bs on the computer."

also like i& find it funny that this guy who doesn't even know me& automatically presumes my& system is psychosis when he only ever heard mom's side of the story & he's literally only ever had like. two meetings w/ her & he somehow suddenly knows my& lifestory & rushes to "yep antipsychotics it is". and afterward when i& told my& mother that i& was having a panic attack in the office ( while he was right there, by the way ) she's like. "well i didn't know i thought you were mad" & im& just sitting here internally thinking like "so u mean to tell me& u raised me& for 22 years & u dont even recognize when ur own child is having a literal panic attack"

red flags. n e wayz ive& disowned her & all i& can do is practice more lifeskills asap until i& can get the fuck outta here & far away from her.

this is what i& mean when i& say that pluralphobia is a very, very dangerous thing, especially because people ( read: singlets ) conflate schizophrenia & plurality all the time, ( not that people with psychosis & plurality don't exist, or that systems with schizophrenia don't exist, ofc not, but that's not what im& getting at here ) even from so called "professionals". it can literally get people to take medication that they don't actually need & it can cause a fuckton of stress & even harmful & even dangerous repercussions.

[trilliastra]

[Christmas time means Christmas fic.]

-

“I love my job, I love my job.” Stiles keeps muttering to himself as he walks into yet another store. “I love my boss, I love my boss.” Yesterday, he spent the entire afternoon on the internet and then tried to convince his boss that the stupid doll is not that amazing. Her daughter will love any doll, she's two.

The thing is – he does love his job. And he does love his boss. She's amazing and badass and the last time someone made a transphobic remark at Pearl she had security kick the guy's ass. Literally.

But that was before she decided her daughter needed a Dora the Explorer doll. The doll that it's impossible to find. Little Alma is two, she can barely talk and still finds Stiles' face hilarious. She doesn't need another doll.

“I love my job.” He repeats to himself, scanning the shelves almost desperately. He's about to give up and go eat lunch because it's three in the afternoon and he deserves it, damnit, when he finally spots the last doll.

It's the twenty-third of December and Stiles feels like he's about to cry.

“Oh my God. No.” He whines when some guy gets to the shelf first. “Come on,” he takes the guy's arm, “I'll pay you to give me this doll.”

The guy – shit, he's hot – turns to Stiles, blinking confusedly. “What.” His eyebrows furrow adorably and Stiles feels his knees go weak. He stares at his unbuttoned shirt and the crooked tie and thinks it's just his luck. He finds the hottest man on earth on the day he’s wearing mismatched socks.

“I need this doll.” He swallows, trying to regain at least some of his composure. “Like, really bad.”

The guy arches his eyebrow. “So do I.”

“No, you don't understand.” Stiles insists. “It's for my boss.”

The guy snorts. “What kind of job do you have?”

“Oh my God, no.” Stiles wants to hit himself. “It's for my boss' daughter.” When the guy keeps smiling, Stiles rolls his eyes. “Stop laughing, I'm desperate.”

“Well, maybe you should look at the store next door.”

“Already did!” When the guy opens his mouth, Stiles shakes his head. “I looked everywhere! Look, I'll pay you, okay? How much, two hundred?” He takes his wallet, starts counting the money.

The guy blinks. “The doll is fifty bucks.”

“See?” Stiles waves. “Desperate.”

Hot-guy blinks again and then he snorts. “Here.” He hands Stiles the doll and turns around. “It's yours.”

“But –” it's Stiles' turn to blink, looking between the guy and the money in his hand, “the money...”

“It's fine.” He shrugs. “I'm feeling Christmas-y.”

Later, Stiles will blame his empty stomach but right then, the only thing he can think about doing is taking the guy's face in his hands and kissing him. Hot-guy is clearly taken back and Stiles was expecting to be pushed away when the hand on his hip pulls him closer. He opens his mouth, lets the guy's tongue join his.

They are both breathless when Stiles pulls back, several seconds later, and hot-guy licks his lips, looking like he's already thinking about kissing Stiles again. “Thank you.” Stiles whispers. The guy only nods and Stiles feels a certain pride for being able to do that to someone. His phone rings in his pocket and Stiles jumps away, remembering why he was at the store in the first place.

“Hey, Scott.” He answers the phone. “Yeah, I'll meet you for lunch.” He turns to look at the guy again, but he's already gone. A dream? Stiles thinks, smiling to himself. It certainly felt like it.

–

He's never been to his boss' house before, but she invited him to the Christmas party and there's no way Stiles could've said no to her, especially when she was holding Alma and the little girl was giving him her brightest goofy grin. “Look at this baby, Stiles. Are you really going to say no to her?” She had said, bouncing the little girl on her knee. Stiles didn't.

Her entirely family is there, by the looks of it. He can hear kids screaming and laughing and when he rings the door bell, he's greeted by an older woman who immediately pulls him into a hug. “Merry Christmas!” She says, smiling.

“Merry Christmas.” Stiles says back, hands her a bottle of wine while he holds the box with the doll with the other hand. “I didn't know what to bring, so –” he trails off.

She laughs. “Thank you.” She ushers him in just as two kids run past them. “They are all in the living room, go greet the rest of the family.” Stiles nods, thanking her too.

He's looking for Alma or maybe someone else he might know when he spots his boss in the corner. She’s berating some guy and her husband is laughing quietly next to her.

“I can't believe you.” She's saying. “You let another guy have the doll just because he was cute? Derek.” She brings her hands to her hips and gives him the patented Laura Hale Disappointed Look. “Alma is your niece.”

“Not just because.” Derek answers and Stiles immediately stops. He knows that voice. He kissed the owner of that voice. “He looked desperate.”

“You.” Stiles finds himself saying before he can stop himself. They turn to look at him and Derek's eyes widen immediately. “You ran!” He points at him, making Derek blink confusedly. That's still cute, shit, Stiles wants to kiss him again.

“Stiles!” Laura's husband calls. “Merry Christmas!”

“Merry Christmas!” Stiles says back. “Here's the doll.” He hands Laura the box and turns to Derek again. “I was going to ask your number!”

Derek looks between Laura and Stiles. “I don't understand.”

“She's my boss.” Stiles explains, stalking towards Derek. “You think I'm cute?” He smirks, ignoring the way Laura is looking at him like he's grown a second head.

Derek blushes. “I thought you looked cute.”

Stiles arches an eyebrow. “So I looked cute then, but I don't look cute now?”

“No.” Derek smirks.

“And how do I look now?” He steps closer, reaches out to touch Derek's chest.

“Really hot.” He answers and they are so close now, Stiles notices Derek's eyes are green and he has freckles on his nose. And then they are leaning in and Stiles can feel Derek's breath –

“Hey,” Laura interrupts, pulling her brother away from Stiles, “not in front of the kids, yeah?” She winks at the two of them, before walking away with her husband – who's now laughing openly.

“Right.” Derek coughs, blushing harder now. “Maybe later?” He lowers his voice, smiles at Stiles again.

“Definitely later.” Stiles teases, turning around to greet the rest of the Hale family and the little Alma – who doesn't seem very impressed by the doll Stiles took so long to find.

Oh well, Stiles looks at Derek and smiles again. Merry Christmas to him.