#Anyway. I need to go come up with some kind of adult sounding concern trolling language that I can put into an email

[fairandfatalasfair]

source

The condescending weaseling-around here is fucking infuriating. "We're requiring schools to out trans kids to their parents, but no worries! we have a child welfare system to deal with the inevitable resulting abuse!"

"Sure it might seem inappropriate for me to dictate to doctors what medical care they can provide but I'm just not personally comfortable with it! and isn't my comfort what matters?!"

Fuck this woman and the horse she rode in on.

[fear-before-valor]

Jim the Baby-Handed // Cross-posted on AO3 // Words: 2355 // No Warnings Apply --

Jim wasn’t a troll anymore, but he could be still quick. He could still be quiet. In fact, not being a troll anymore actually rather helped that— he wasn’t walking around in plate mail anymore.

To be perfectly honest, Jim hadn’t even noticed when he’d grown used to the armor and the constant clank of metal against metal. Of course, every now and then, he’d grow aware of it, when he had to be stealthy, but that wasn’t often the assignment he was given, during their adventures across the continent— perhaps because of that exact issue, he realized belatedly. At any rate, the silence— the absence of the noise— was what he now noticed, was what stood stark in his mind, despite the fact that he was actively using it to his advantage in this moment.

He’d been on the hunt for his mom, to ask her about something, but— and he couldn’t even remember what it was anymore, because— when he’d finally figured out where she was, what he was greeted with stopped him dead in his tracks.

The soft glow from a door slightly ajar washed over Jim’s face for a moment, but as the room past it came into focus, he caught glimpse of his mom.

His mom, her side burrowed into Strickler’s, whose expression had nearly knocked Jim off his feet. Strickler looked so… soft. So kind.

So loving.

A gentle smile graced his features, and his eyes looked like they held everything pure and good in the world in them. And he was staring half at Barbara that way, and half at one of the many babies they’d been caring for that way, and Jim… didn’t know what to think.

He had known Strickler cared for his mom— of course he knew that. He’d even grown to like having the guy around, after everything he did to help Team Trollhunters— and Jim, himself— in the end.

But somewhere deep down, somewhere deep enough that Jim wasn’t even sure it had been a conscious thought, he’d had been afraid that when he’d come home… Strickler wouldn’t be there. That it would have happened again.

But that wasn’t it, at all.

Instead, Strickler was there when he’d returned, and, if Jim was being honest, he wasn’t sure if that hurt more, or less.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want Strickler around. After everything he’d just been through, he was pretty sure Strickler’s actions against him were far overshadowed by now. Plus… he’d basically forgiven Strickler after the gravesand incident anyway, so it wasn’t like he’d been holding a grudge since then.

No, it wasn’t what Strickler had done to Jim that really caused him strife, in the now.

In the now, it was the ache in his chest that Jim could only call trust, that seemed to hurt him.

Because Jim did trust Strickler, now. He trusted that Strickler wouldn’t walk out. He trusted that Strickler cared for his mom. He trusted that Strickler could embody everything that he’d thought that he’d been okay without. …And that was what had hurt.

Because, for a moment, the barest, briefest moment, Jim felt something rear in his chest, something that he immediately tried to shut down, upon seeing Strickler like that.

Try as he did, though, it didn’t quite go away.

Jim was jealous.

It was not the first time he’d felt this, but feeling it about a relationship that he’d never really ever had felt far, far different than romantic jealousy. But, he supposed the absence of that relationship was exactly what had caused such a feeling in the first place.

Seeing that look— the look of a father— in Strickler’s eyes… it hurt. It hurt when he saw it directed at someone else, and it hurt in the space in his chest— in his life— that he hadn’t known was there, until he’d met someone who’d actually wanted to fill it.

As much as he insisted that he didn’t need someone like that in his life, he’d almost grown to take advantage of the fact that he kind of… did want it. And had had it, and not just in Blinky.

Jim was about to turn around, about to walk back to his room and try to wrestle this newfound and entirely unwelcome feeling down, when he was reminded suddenly, that Strickler used to be a spy.

He was reminded of this by the man himself, because, despite how quiet he’d been, Strickler, ever the observant type, had evidently caught him lurking by the door. Jim heard Strickler’s voice, just loud enough for him to hear, say, “Jim, do you need something?”

Jim froze in the hallway, having been caught, and he hesitated to do anything about that, until his mom’s voice chimed in, “Jim, honey? Is that you? You can come in!”

He dallied for just a moment more, before he realized that walking away would probably worry them, and since he was actively trying not to do that, he pushed the door open slowly, trying his best to act casual, as if he hadn’t been haunting the doorway, looking in, for the past few minutes.

There was dead silence for a moment, but for the soft, white noise of baby monitors and quiet cooing from cribs, as Jim stared at his mom and Strickler, perhaps more tensely than he’d meant.

Barbara’s face crinkled in concern, as she opened her mouth to speak, only for Strickler to take it instead, “Hello, Jim.” He smiled. “What is it you needed? We’re just getting the little ones down for bed, but after that, we can help you with anything you may have for us.”

Barbara shot Strickler look that held both grateful relief, and something like… pride? Approval? Jim couldn’t quite tell what that was about, so he tried not to dwell on it, as he was trying not to dwell on many things at that moment.

He realized just a second too late for him to keep a casual air up, however, that it was his turn, now, to speak. Because of his slight dawdle, he had the full attention of both adults, and suddenly, it felt very, very weird to have. It was a little uncanny, he had to admit.

“Uh, yeah, I was just—” the initial reason, what had his initial reason been for seeking out his mom? it had been something that had to do with permission— “Oh! Right!” he exclaimed aloud, before immediately flushing; he hadn’t meant to have an outburst like that, so to compensate, he continued in a hushed tone, being mindful of the tired children around him, “I was just going to ask about going to the movies with Claire and Toby tomorrow, but I guess it can wait now…” he trailed off, suddenly wishing very strongly for the ability to turn back time for exactly how long it would take to put him back in the hallway, where he could make a retreat, and handle this another day.

Strickler and Barbara shared a look— another odd occurrence, to Jim— before Barbara smiled in a way that meant she was worried but trying to hide it, “Oh… Sure, of course you can go, Jim. Are you worried about money? Don’t be, sweetie; I’ll leave some on the counter for you before I go to work tomorrow. Sound good?”

No such luck on the time travel front.

Jim nodded mutely, forcing a smile, before deciding that then would be the time to make his exit, since he was so desperately looking for one. His question was answered. It was time to go, now, and stop bothering the adults.

If he could just get himself to turn around, to stop gawking at his mom and Strickler and the baby in between them, at least.

Strickler followed his gaze, and something passed over his face, something that Jim couldn’t read, but suddenly felt very nervous about; before he could question it, however, Strickler said, “Jim, will you come over here a moment? I wish to ask you something, but you’re just a touch far away, all the way across the room like that. You can come closer— we aren’t too busy for you.”

Jim blinked, caught entirely by surprise at just how apt Strickler’s words really were. They actually made him… want to join Strickler and his mom, over by one of the cribs, so… he did.

He walked over slowly, nervousness showing in the way his fingers twitched for something to hold onto, the way he seemed to be shrinking into himself, as if trying to take up as little space as possible.

“There you are.” Strickler gave a reassuring smile. “As I said, I wanted to ask you something, if you don’t mind.”

Jim looked confused, but he shook his head.

“Would you like to hold Walter Junior?”

Jim’s mind screeched to a halt. Of all the questions he’d been expecting, that had been perhaps dead last.

“What?” Jim blurted, before he could think about his words, and almost instantly, he regretted it. Sheepishly, he tried again, “I mean… really?”

“Well, you never have before, and I thought, perhaps you should meet my familiar; you two may well end up needing to be acquainted, given that you share… a roof.” Strickler met Jim’s eyes pointedly.

How did he do that? Jim wondered, eyes going huge, as he realized he’d been caught not just in his doorway loitering.

“Uh— r-right…” He choked out, to Barbara’s mild alarm. Seeing Jim in distress— …but Walt’s hand had found hers just as he, too, had registered Jim’s tone, and by the way his thumb was rubbing softly over her knuckles, she decided to relax, and trust him to handle this. He’d always had a way with a Jim, she’d noticed; he always seemed to know what to say to help her son— and herself, she felt a flash of amusement, as she realized that he’d known immediately how to soothe her, even while dealing with a teen in crisis.

The room was quiet for another long pause, as neither Barbara nor Strickler spoke, giving Jim time to decide what to say next, until, voice small and quiet, he did finally did.

“Can… can I?” He asked.

A knowing smile overtook Strickler’s face, and he nodded, gently picking up Walt Jr.

Jim had braced himself for all kinds of potential emotional outcomes, readied himself to try to and bury the negative ones, prepared for what was potentially going to be a very rough few moments— but none of that ended up happening, as he was handed the baby.

Walt Jr.’s eyes were open and bright, and he was warm in Jim’s arms. His eyes were like saucers, boring curiously into Jim’s, as the pair of them evaluated the situation they were now in.

And then the baby smiled, and Jim’s heart shattered in a way that he had never experienced before.

A soft chuckle came from him, and his chest was light and fluttery, staring down at this tiny human being— he was so small; it boggled his mind— who he could only see as… a gift. A true gift.

Before he was even aware of it, Jim had shifted the baby into one arm, so that he could offer his finger to Walt Jr., who grasped it in the softest of holds that Jim was sure he’d ever felt. He didn’t even mind when baby Walt brought his finger to his mouth, attempting to parse out exactly what he’d been given. He suckled on it a little, and Jim somehow even found that to be cute. He wasn’t sure when he’d begun to smile, but as he pulled his finger away, as he watched Walt Jr. reach for it again, he suddenly became aware that his cheeks kinda hurt from smiling so big.

“Hey, little guy… I know you can’t talk yet, but I’m Jim. It’s nice to meet you. I’m-…” he hesitated for a moment, but decided to say, “Well, I guess I’m sorta your older brother, huh? That’s pretty cool…” And he meant it. “That means I get to be here for you; teach you all kinds of stuff. Like,” Jim felt a flash of a memory surface, of Draal in his backyard, “How to sword-fight.” He grinned, ignoring his mom’s disapproving look. “And, how to handle high school, though that’s pretty far away for you, huh? That’s okay. When you get to it, you’ll be so prepared, you won’t even have to go through all the awkwardness I went through. I mean, at the very least, you probably won’t have to fight things at night, or be a secret Trollhunter. You’ll just have to face Coach’s rope test, because I don’t think he’s ever retiring. …It’s a shame you don’t get to have your counterpart’s class, though. It was the best one.”  

When he glanced up at Strickler at that, Jim was smirking. As their eyes locked, however, Jim almost felt like he’d been punched. His smirk rapidly faded into an expression of soft surprise. Because, there. Jim had caught it.

That look. The look that had started all of this.

…What had Jim been worried about again? Of course Strickler and his mom were there for him. Of course Strickler was there for him. In the way that Jim hadn’t even wanted to admit that he’d wanted.

Because, when Strickler was looking at him like that, how could he possibly believe anything less? How could he have ever doubted his place in this… family.

Jim continued to hold Strickler’s gaze, as that thought came to his mind. Jim looked right back at Strickler… and then he smiled directly at him, all joy and love and relief.

…And then promptly found himself being pulled forward by his mom, pulled into the space between Strickler and herself, and, with his arms around the baby, and their arms around him, Jim finally allowed himself to expand his definition of ‘family’, one more time.

It now read: Mom, Toby, Blinky, Argh, Claire, Strickler… and a whole bunch of babies.

[helly-watermelonsmellinfellon]

In a post about Snape you made a point about people comparing his and Harry’s abuse and personalities- remarking that Harry is an unrealistic standard of “perfect victimhood”. What- in your opinion- would be a more realistic personality/ideals for Harry to have ?

As the Dursleys have proven to be perfectly willing to withhold food, lock him away for extended periods of time, hit him with frying pans, and choke him out physically, we can easily say that they were physically abusive to him.

Just these actions alone, committed without hesitation or remorse/regret, already breed certain behaviors.

Then add on the other kinds of abuse. From Dudley getting the kids to avoid him at school and possibly get them in on bullying him, to Vernon and Petunia having the whole neighborhood believing he’s a delinquent, to lying to him about his parents’ deaths and the kind of people they were, to making him scared of asking questions, to not allowing him to do better than Dudley in school, to letting Marge treat him terribly and sick her dog on him.

So What Should His Issues Be?:

Distrust of adults.

For 10 years, every adult in his life has been rather useless or extremely terrible. Figg isn’t really bad but she’s passive in it all despite being one Dumbles’ minions. And that’s not any better tbh.

We know Harry has issues with authority. Authority has failed him personally. A lot. But he should be a lot more wary of adults imo. Notice how he warmed up to Hagrid pretty quickly, and after learning the truth, warmed up to Sirius. Thing is, Hagrid doesn’t feel like an adult in any way. And Sirius never got a chance to mature as a person. He was still an immature, bullying brat when he was forced into war and then illegally imprisoned to be tortured for over a decade. His mental space is that of a young adult at most. He feels like a kid too. They don’t feel like mature characters in the least. They’re like the cousins around your age who might be a bit older but not enough for you to take them seriously when they order you around.

As someone who’s been treated similar ways by a blood relative who had guardianship over me(Sperm Donor) I look at my issues and how Harry turned out and I’m a bit annoyed. I know that no two experiences are perfectly the same, but still...

His discomfort and dislike of Snape should have been prevalent when facing all adults/authority figures and not just the one he disliked for hating him. There was a time where I questioned the motives of all adults because of how Sperm Donor treated me(similar to the Dursleys but more flowery gaslighting). Harry just kind of goes along with everything and even tries going to an authority figure for help when things get sticky. Being blown off by McGonagall should have been a wake up call. Or watching how she treated Neville in their 3rd Year. The good teacher who isn’t nasty like Snape, still can’t be trusted to do her damn job. Hell, Dumbledore deliberately hiring bad men two years in a row should have been a concern. There is no hope.

His level of obliviousness on certain topics is alarming. Though it could also be an ingrained habit from the ‘don’t ask questions’ bit he learned from the Dursleys. He could have trained himself to ignore reality and his desire for knowledge. If so, that’s concerning af.

Hating Physical Contact

When you’ve been met with nothing but pain or aggression every time someone touches you for 10 years, that leaves a lasting impression. Sperm Donor liked yanking me around the way Vernon does to Harry. And he would hit things near me to scare me. I have an issue now. I generally hate being touched and feel all around revolted if it happens, but I also hate the game “I’m Not Touching You!”. Because Sperm Donor would wave his hands wildly and strike the walls or car seats near my head.

If his hands raised any higher than waist level I became still as stone and sharply observant of what he’d do with them. And now that children’s game bothers me because it’s this internal guessing game that I don’t have the mental energy to handle. I know people who would eventually Poke and others would with Slap at the end. One even Punched. Hands coming at me at any height generally bother me and I panic and try to categorize everything happening, all at once!

Are they mad? Did I do something wrong? Am I about to get hit? Or will it just be a pat on the shoulder? But what if they’re pretending it’s going to be a pat on the shoulder and then they start choking me? What if I did something and now they want to hurt me? OMG I didn’t mean to!

This is for anyone. Even my mom who would never do that to me. Objectively I know this, but the anxiety that has formed will still fuck with me anyway.

Harry Potter is too comfortable around perfect strangers. It’s one thing to not like being stared at, especially since he knows it’s only because his parents died and he didn’t, which is a creepy thing to make someone famous for. It’s another to be fine with people touching him willy nilly. Lockhart should not have been the first example of him being uncomfortable near someone or with someone touching him(Lockhart was too touchy-feely with Harry on a pedo level tbh). 

Maybe we don’t see Harry reach out physically a lot, but he doesn’t stop other people from getting personal with him.

Mental Illness

Stress, Depression, Trauma, PTSD, Anxiety, etc...

He got no help for any of this after 4 school years of near-death experiences and tragedy. A lot of people think his ‘irrational behavior’ in OOTP is just him Overreacting or Voldemort’s Emotions Seeping Through. They don’t want to acknowledge that someone who’s been physically tortured, ostracized multiple times, and nearly killed multiple times, might have loaded baggage they’re carrying around.

And he is frequently made to feel like his emotions and worries don’t matter, especially in OOTP. He was in no way in a healthy situation and authority once again is proven to be useless/detrimental on all sides. The fact that he’s so willing to give people second or third chances in the next book/Year despite how much they fucked him over in OOTP, annoys the piss out of me.

Harry will overlook his own needs to make others happy. And many people attribute this to just him being nice, but that isn’t it. It’s not wanting to lose what he has. It’s fear of being seen as selfish if he concentrates on himself for too long. It’s worry that he’ll lose his friends especially since both have inferiority complexes a mile long but for different reasons. So he never just sits down and thinks, “I need some time for me.”

The People Pleaser aspect is one of the rare issues we actually get shown but most just don’t understand the problems in such an attitude and how quickly that can be abused and is abused.

The Saving-People-Thing and Martyr Complex are also problems viewed as angelic and sweet when they only exist because a manipulative old man orchestrated his life without a right to and lead him to the point where he thinks he has to die for the world and has to save everyone and then beats himself up if he fails. Yeah. Super healthy.

The negative sides of these issues don’t really get explored. It’s obvious they’re there but people don’t like mental health issues being brought up when they aren’t wrapped in a pretty package. It’s called hypocrisy. If Harry displayed the more negative aspects fo these issues they’re turn on him and he’d be treated like Snape.

In some ways Snape’s situation was worse. In other ways Harry’s was worse. As kids/teens both had some traumatic experiences that no one should have to go through. And on Harry’s end he’s tortured and almost dies because of an adult and his minions, multiple times while at school over the years. Snape was bullied/sexually assaulted by his peers(which fucking sucks too. Still, 1 near-death experience & his genitals being exposed, against multiple attacks & near-death experiences?).

So why is it blatantly obvious that Snape is not well when Harry’s school experiences could objectively be termed as Worse? This isn’t the Suffering Olympics or anything, but Harry’s school years from the info we know, sounded more dangerous than those of the Marauder’s Time. Trolls, Basilisks, Dementors, Dragons, disguised Murderers messing with the kids, assumed Murderers getting in and out, torturing of kids, and then war on the grounds.

Danger hadn’t touched Hogwarts in the 70s. It was haven in a dark time. It was all over in the 90s though, coming from various sources.

So it’s weird how Snape can be such a mess but somehow Harry comes across as a darling of purity with no problems and half the fandom will claim that he is what victims should be.

[bladekindeyewear]

Boots Reads Homestuck Epilogue(s) Part 12 - Candy Page 18

==>

Time to see what all the fuss was about Page 18.  We’re with Jane... that might not be good.  Especially given Lollipop proximity.

Jane scoffing at troll genocide again.  :(

Gamzee seems more woke than Jane here.

GAMZEE: sO yOu SaYiN yOu NeEd DiFfErEnT sHoEs FoR yOuR hUmAn DiCkS aNd WhAt NoT?

Pfffff

Jane narrows her eyes at the disingenuous buffoon.

I dunno, he sounds like he’s being pretty goddamn ingenuous right now.

It’s not the first time they’ve had this conversation?  Are they black with each other or something??

What’s more likely is he’s attempting to get a rise from her. To get her a little hotter under the collar. To put her in a certain mood.

Oh my gosh she’s genuinely black for him, hahahahah

GAMZEE: AnD AlL I EvEr bEeN TrYiN To dO Is gEt yOu rIgHt tOo, WiTh mOrAlS AnD GoOdNeSs, AlL fIlLeD uP iNsIdE yOu As TiGhT aS yOuR tAsTy HoE bAlLoOnS aRe WiTh HuMaN mOo JuIcE.

Jesus christ that’s not the kind of metaphor i want to be hearing from canon

or anyone for that matter

JANE: No! I’d rather die than touch your disgusting clown baton ever again.

....yyyeah, context is showing she’s PROBABLY super Black into this.  Still, pretty jarring to see a clear consensual “NO” right in the middle of things.

Quit calling her a dairy queen!!! D: D: D:

Oh god they named the baby Tavros.

Alright, there’s some grade A discomfort in this scene, which I’m enjoying, really.  I can see why they singled out page 18.  I could traumatize some people with some of these paragraphs out of context.

HOO HOO HOO, THIS LITTLE PIGGY WENT TO THE DARK CARNIVAL!!!

Eeeeuugh

JAKE: Anyway whats up with you? Hows life with davekat going? JADE: oh its great! im really glad i just went for it JADE: all of us together... it really is the best of every world

God damnit Jade why are you obliviously torturing them????????

You could’ve been REALLY GOOD for them both if you just FUCKING LISTENED TO THEM AND RESPECTED THEM INSTEAD OF SITTING ON THEM.

JADE: theres no way me and dave could have a regular baby together because im... JAKE: Whats wrong? JADE: well lets just say that after all the sburb stuff its done some things to my body JADE: like merging with bec mostly

Oh my FUCKING GOD please don’t canonize this.  This didn’t need to be spelled out so-- D:

jesus

D: D: D:

This... is actually making my stomach roil again????

like

not because id object to-- i mean, it’s one thing to deal with

FAN SCENARIOS

ISOLATED divergences from canon where she has to deal with that and its kind of hilarious, but can be safely ignored when it comes to her character arc as a whole

but once its CANON????????   D: D: D:

suddenly you can’t IGNORE the full import when you’re done with, like, an RP or something, of the psychological struggle she would be forced to deal with given an abnormal biological situation.  Instead of thinking “Oh, that could be pretty painful to deal with! Let’s explore it temporarily for fun” it becomes “Oh, that would be painful to deal with and you have to think about her having to deal with all the complications of that whenever you hear about her LITERALLY FOREVER.”  D:

andrew i know you couldnt resist because of how funny and practically-xenoprogressive it was but whyyyyyyyyy did you have to canonize that WHYYYY

Now instead of a fun joke thought it also has to be SAD FOREVER

AAAAAAAA  D’:

i dont know why this would be the line thats crossed to upset me

Rose surrogate?

JADE: no jake, dave wouldnt be the father in this scenario!

Pffffff.  Andrew’s just diving RIGHT into the, er, doggy fanfics here.  I should... TRY to lighten up about this.  Try.  D:

(...wait, shit.  Knowing my friend, THIS whole bit is why they alluded to this page.  God damnit.)

[[ EDIT:  askshenhibiki said:

Now that you read Candy 18, flash back to Meat when Roxy is talking about gender... and look at Jade's reaction looking at "where her hands rest on her lap". Yes, Meat hinted at that "mix" too.

Ah, let’s see...

ROXY: and so i got to thinking ROXY: what even is gender ROXY: amirite lol? JADE: oh yeah JADE: that makes sense i guess........

Jade looks at where her hands are folded in her lap. Bites her lip. She has her own concerns about this, her own thoughts. Reasonable thoughts, I’d say. But I’ll refrain from any further comment. I’m staying away from this subject, from now on.

...yeah, guess Dirk at least had the decency not to spring all that on us before Jade got the opportunity to do it honestly. ]]

Guh, back to Jake suffering in his sad, trapped scenario.  I hope THAT gets at least resolved by the end of this.  Someone save Jake from this, because it looks like he’s not really that capable of saving himself?

==>

Dammit, Jade, I’m cringing at these descriptions of your intrusion.

Oh wow, John went for the mustache.  Guess we knew that from, like, his stuffed statue oldself?

Jade doesn’t pick up on the obvious subtext in the conversation, however, because she’s been willfully undermining the subtext in her own personal life for nearly a year now.

D:  D:  D:

Seriously, Jade, how is what YOU’RE doing any better than what you were frustrated at seeing THEM doing, avoiding the real feelings and truth of anything even if it was conspicuously on body-language display?

KARKAT: THE NEW ADMINISTRATION IS CRACKING DOWN ON CERTAIN KINDS OF INTERSPECIES ADOPTION LAWS.

It’s like Andrew wants us deprived of even a happy imagined future for Earth C on top of everything else!!!  What the hell! >:(

Is this about politics?  Is Andrew just venting his anger that the Orange Guy is going to get away with ruining everything forever??  Because as understandable as that is, he could at least give us some imaginary happyfutures to look forward to.

Reading on... Hm, yet another intentionally-misused fridging reference.

KARKAT: HIS RELATIONSHIP IS A FLAMING WRECK OF AN INTERSTELLAR WARSHIP HURTLING TOWARDS THE PLANET AT TERMINAL VELOCITY WITH THE ENTIRE CREW BRUTALLY SLAUGHTERED UPON REENTRY, SHOVED STRAIGHT DOWN THE CHAGRIN TUNNEL AND THEN IMMEDIATELY SHAT OUT THE OTHER SIDE, THUS FLOODING THE ENTIRE FUCKING NEIGHBORHOOD WHEN IT CLOGS UP THE LOAD GAPER.

Yep, that triangle’s fucked.  Wonder if the conversation’s going to transition to the CURRENT triangle’s problems...

...yeah, John using the R word there isn’t far from the fucking truth from the looks of things.

JADE: maybe that would work for a few days, but one thing i learned from dating around a lot in my youth is that no ones going to leave a bad relationship until its THEIR idea to leave

She takes in a shaky breath and shuts her eyes. Her hair spills around her face when she leans forward to put her chin on her knees. Dave and Karkat exchange a look that is equal parts confused, miserable, and desperate.

Oh SHIT.  Is JADE going to be the one to finally vocalize about the problems here???

Something else comes hurtling out of the hole in the sky, too fast for Jade to catch. It hits the ground with a clap of green lightning. The collision sends a geyser of dirt, rock, and vapor into the air. Dave flash-steps to shield Karkat. Jade doesn’t move, taking the brunt of the explosion face on, using her abilities to warp the energy around her so that she’s a mote at the center of the storm. When the dust clears, she’s the first to jump in the crater, trailing smoke behind her.

There’s a body at the center of it. The torso is bloody, tangled, and curled into a fetal position. Its shoes are missing, but otherwise the outfit is quite familiar to her: it’s a dead ringer for her old Witch of Space uniform. Jade touches the body with the toe of her shoe, and then gasps when it rolls over to reveal its face.

JADE: its... JADE: ME???

Okay what the FUCK.  It sounds like there’s going to be some context for that postscript after all.  Something to bridge the gap between when that 16-yo Jade falls into the singularity and when Aradia goes off with her through a wormhole

I’m going to guess up front that this happens BEFORE the postscript... this younger version of Jade fell into the black hole and came out in THIS alternate timeline, possibly rather changed by the experience.  But then again, the way the sky opened up... actually, couldn’t that be just a “natural” manifestation of the black hole abilities encouraged by Calliope or done by the singularity alone, followed by later in the Postscript this Jade actually getting control of it??

And... reading on, from the sound of it, her eyes aren’t black yet, either.  Sounds like that’s to come, before the postscript.  Question being, is it alt!Callie black eyes, or some black-hole-powers visual manifestation?  Wait, never mind, I misread; this teenage Jade-corpse has NOT opened their eyes yet, so they couldn’t possibly tell, and the stuff about them “shaking” was about the adult Jade standing over her.  Never mind.  Let’s see which timeframe this Jade came from.

Also STOP TRAUMATIZING ADULT JADE ON SCREEN ITS NOT OKAY IM SICK OF IT ANDREW

==>

Page 20...

Stop letting babby not!Vriska bully babby not!Tavros.

Hm... same stupid tooth poison?  No, Jade didn’t get hit with a tooth... so it’s more getting hit with shards of spacetime and spiraling down a black hole.  Also whatever alt!Callie did to just barely keep her alive.

Hm, so the Heart stuff falls apart if you’re too separated from the mass-whole at Light’s center?  That’s certainly a hypothesis at least.

ROXY: sounds like its time for another funeral lmao

ROXY WAKE THE FUCK UP AND STOP BEING A VAGUELY ROXY-LOOKING LMAO-ZOMBIE.  WHERE THE FUCK DID REAL ROXY GO.

And where the fuck is Calliope anyway, she’s just being left in the dust and nobody’s even talked to her from the looks of it.

Hm, cut apart by political differences, this group...?

ROXY: woah ok karkat i get ur all fired up about politics and stuff but lay off gamz ok

ROXY WHO REPLACED YOUR FUCKING BRAIN WITH A BLOCK OF CHEESE

ROXY YOU’RE MY FAVORITE CHARACTER PLEASE GIVE US AN EXPLANATION FOR WHY YOU’RE ACTING NOTHING LIKE THE COOL SMART PERSON WE READ ABOUT.

JADE: dave what the FUCK did you say to him downstairs?

Oh my god you asshole don’t blame DAVE for this >:(

ROXY: this time next week well corpse party like its the end of the world!

I don’t want to think this has anything to do with Aradia, but we DID see her in that postscript bit...  And, I mean, what the hell could she even do??  It’s not like this Roxy is just Aradia in really convincing cosplay or something.

==>

She leads John and Jake into the building and down the center of the nave, humming happily to herself the entire time. An equally effusive Calliope trails behind her, carrying a bouquet of purple flowers.

Well there’s Callie. What is WITH these hypnotized motherfuckers.  I need a revelation on these shenanigans STAT.

What is with people being bathed in light here?

each time we witness death, we fall in love in with the important people in oUr lives all over again.

Calliope is gazing at Roxy with glassy eyes. She sniffs as she plucks the last petal from her rose. A breeze washes through the cathedral from the crack in the door at the end of the room, brushing the petal off-course and causing it to get stuck in Roxy’s over-sprayed hair. Calliope reaches out with a visibly shaking hand to remove the plant offal, but she does not draw back. Instead, she lets her hand graze down the side of Roxy’s face and cup her cheek. Roxy puts her own hand over Callie’s and holds it.

Uhhh.... huh.

So.

If Roxy was just lying to herself, then............ WHY??????

John tilts his head and squints at the image in front of him. Hmm.

Is John realizing he’s in some sort of fanfic drawn by another character, hence all the people in serene lightbeams at tender but unjustified moments?

Everyone whips their heads around to see, of all people, Aradia hovering in the foyer

Pff

(...I hope Aradia didn’t come here, like, from the postscript.  Where the “action” she talked about might have just been this corpse party.  Because that would be pretty fucking lame.)

KARKAT: MAYBE FUCKING NEPETA IS ABOUT TO POUNCE FROM BEHIND THAT GROTESQUE STATUE OF THE HUMAN SUFFERER T-POSING OVER THERE.

Pfffffffffff

The description of Human Jesus we all had in our hearts, but were too afraid to voice.

Alright, now we see the body we took our eyes off of.  Is it going to get back up, or did it escape earlier?

since nobody was willing to dislodge the huge, otherworldly shard from her chest

My damn god, people.

...alright finally, everyone’s talking.

JANE: Agreed. I’ve always felt that Kanaya has done an exemplary job of providing a model for compassionate, empathetic behavior, which others of her kind would do well to follow.

JANE STOP BEING A XENOPHOBIC BASTARD

CALLIOPE: please. roxy gathered yoU all here for a reason. CALLIOPE: at least listen Until the end. CALLIOPE: after that yoU can argUe all you want.

...Huh.  Huuuuhh.  What the fuck is all this for.  Are you saying ROXY caused this? Or...?

Okay I like this reinforcement she’s making in her speech about how different changes can influence how all of this unfolds, gives me hope that maybe these two cliffhangers aren’t all we’re going to be left with and we’ll be able to at least think of an IMPLIED future different from them if we wanted to like we thought about the seemingly-infinite-possibility original ending of Homestuck that I’d rather have been stuck with than this oh god breathe boots

okay there’s the labor going into good distraction

alright corpse get back up

JADE: i am not jade.

Right, so like the black eyes in the postscript suggested this is more just a... vessel for alt!Calliope now?  To give HER a future beyond the one she sacrificed for that black hole business?  And between alt!Callie’s became-the-black-hole nature and Jade’s Spacey Green Sun connection that’s been singularified, she has access to cool Black Hole powers?  And is gonna do cool shit with them in implied future adventures we won’t see while Aradia gleefully watches the carnage?  Huh.

The congregation watches her go, but no one moves to help her, or even looks in her direction. In her wake, she leaves a primal, echoing wail.

Oh my god why wouldn’t they have just a brief discussion or something IT’S NOT THAT BAD  D:

JADE: and while i cannot say the same thing for the rest of you, JADE: i, at least, am exactly where i am meant to be.

Well fuck.  So she just disconfirmed this timeline as... something.  Relevant, possible, I dunno.

JADE: and i have entered this body to protect your world.

Okay that’s good.  So thanks to alt!Calliope these side timelines where things unfolded differently MAY be preserved.  Pretty fitting given alt!Callie’s origins.

.......unless there’s some other stupid interspecies civil war threat that she’s going to be fighting too, here, when the political situation falls apart.  Dammit.

==>

Terezi talk Terezi talk

-- JOHN EGBERT sent TEREZI PYROPE the photo “ghostrain.jpg” --

TEREZI: WH4T TH3 4CTU4L FUCK JOHN: it started a few days ago. the sky above the capital of the troll kingdom just cracked open and ghosts began raining down everywhere.

Oh my GOD.  So alt!Callie kind of “saved” all the doomed ghosts that got swallowed up in the black hole by redirecting them all to THIS UNIVERSE and timeline???????

That’s pretty interesting!  Heck my stomach’s even calming down!

they can’t even be judges! TEREZI: G4SP

Yeah that’s pretty terrible!

...yep, the resistance WOULD put him in charge.  I had a feeling it may have ended up in that direction in Candy since it wasn’t in Meat.

--oh FUCK YOU Jade for splitting up what he had with Karkat before they could sort it out!!! You did the OPPOSITE OF HELP and neither of them are going to end up happy thanks to you! D:<

PFFF wow, John’s so concerned about babby not!Tavros’s living situation that he’s considering legit kidnapping.  That means things must be pretty fucking bad.

--okay Calliope’s still out and about with Roxy instead of being cooped up in her room like in the other timeline, that’s good.

Pff, trying to redeem Ghost Eridan in front of Ghost Feferi.  Yep, that’s Gamzee.

GAMZEE: fIrSt, A LiTtLe RiGhTeOuS sPlAsH oF tHe NaNnA nEcTaR tO cLeAnSe ThAt DaNkNeSs FrOm YoUr SoUlS...

Gamzee takes out a baby bottle and flicks it, covering them both with little drops of milk, as clergy does with holy water. He then takes a swig from the bottle himself before returning it to his codpiece.

Jesus.  Fucking.  Christ.

I don’t want to believe that what’s in that bottle is what he’s making it sound like it is, but OF COURSE it is.  Why would it be anything else.  I bet there’s not even any Lifey hypnosis going on, it’s just the literal stuff.

The crowd falls silent as they raise their heads to watch a drone ship pass by overhead.

Jegus fuck stop going whole hog condesce janey

ROXY: lmao you worry too much ROXY: janeys got her head on straight shell show you yet

ROXY.  WHERE DID YOUR BRAIN GO.  I MISS IT.  YOUR BRAIN WAS THE BEST FUCKING PART OF YOU.

Touching photo.

Alright lemme post split.  I haven’t gotten as far as the last post plowed through since I’ve been typing so much... ah well.

[magic-and-moonlit-wings]

Chapter 41: The Great Debate Begins

Becoming the Mask

Bold italics are trollish.

+=+

"We're not trying to break our oath of secrecy," said Darci. "We just want permission to … expand the circle of people keeping the secret."

"Permission denied." Jim had known Vendel long enough now that he could tell the dour-looking troll truly was scowling.

"You think our parents are untrustworthy?" asked Mary. She didn't sound indignant, only concerned, but she was glaring too.

"By your own admission, one of the first actions a human adult undertook after learning about trolls was attempting to expose us."

"Because she didn't have any other humans to talk to about something she was upset about," said Darci.

"And if she's going to keep trying to tell our families," added Toby, "which she probably will, then it's only a matter of time before trolls get exposed anyway."

"But if we tell them first, we can make it sound less … terrifying," said Mary.

"Banishing these four from Trollmarket won't solve the problem," Jim admitted. If he'd thought that would work then he would've pushed for it when they'd first discovered trolls. "They'll just keep looking for evidence to present, and if they run into the wrong Changeling," or worse, discovered Arcadia's other secret underground troll hideout and ran into all the Changelings, "then Gunmar's forces are going to get a windfall of information Trollmarket would rather stayed secret. Assuming they survive long enough to be interrogated."

"… You're exaggerating," said Mary.

"No. Every Changeling you've met so far has had personal incentive to keep you alive. That's not going to be universally true." Especially if Otto found out that these humans were important to the Trollhunter.

Vendel put his hand over his face. Hopefully that meant he didn't see Enrique's eyes flicker red.

"Anyway," said Darci, "our parents are going to be worried and upset, but they'll be more worried and upset if they find out about trolls and that we didn't tell them. If we tell them on our terms, we can … hold? We can … contain their reaction. Calm them down. Let them meet Blinky and AAARRRGGHH, see trolls aren't so scary, before telling them about Gumm-Gumms and Changelings."

"For the record, we have not yet agreed to that," said Blinky.

Claire spoke up at last. "The citizens of Trollmarket are accustomed to us. They could adjust to more humans being here."

"The citizens of Trollmarket believe your presence here to be a temporary measure," Vendel countered, "for our current Trollhunter's mental wellbeing, until his human fragility gets him killed."

Each human gave Jim a sharp look, eyes wide, mouths slightly open, brows just starting to pinch in the middle. He forced a tight smile. "Vendel knows. Most of Trollmarket do not."

Claire's point was actually a tempting one. If Jim could recruit more Changelings, and Blinky and AAARRRGGHH could get Vendel's support in reintegrating them into troll society – well, not every Changeling was going to want to give up their human shape. If the trolls were already used to having many humans around, and accustomed to interacting with them as people, that might create a safe environment for the shapeshifters to go about their lives in either shape.

"Besides," continued Vendel, "you four are younglings, and therefore less likely to be taken as a threat than an adult."

"How many trolls would even know that, though?" Toby asked.

"Enough that you have been permitted relatively free passage through our market without a guard to supervise you."

"So, some kind of probationary period after we tell our families, then?" Darci suggested, slipping back into English. "Like, they can't be in Trollmarket without Blinky or AAARRRGGHH?"

Vendel used his staff to push himself up a little taller. "That is irrelevant, because your families will not be visiting Trollmarket at all."

Good attempt at the 'act like permission has been granted' manipulation technique, though, Jim thought.

"Troll have remained hidden from humans for centuries. I will not risk another war with the surface by initiating contact. My foremost responsibility is to the wellbeing of Trollmarket, and my word on this matter is final."

"If a bunch of kids could find you, it's only a matter of time before you're exposed anyway!" snipped Mary. "Just about every human carries a videophone nowadays, and not all the footage is going to be a Bigfoot-style blur! Wouldn't it be safer for trolls then if you already had some human contacts who aren't kids?"

Vendel growled. Jim stepped between them, not all the way, just enough that Mary was half behind him.

"Good talk." AAARRRGGHH picked up Toby, who was closest, then Mary, Darci, and Claire, depositing the humans onto his back. "Talk more later." He scooped Jim up in one arm and Enrique, stroller and all, in the other, and exited the Heartstone's hollow walking on his back legs.

"I hope you all realize the severity of what you're attempting," said Blinky.

"It would've been nice if you'd backed us up," Darci grumbled. "You know Vendel better than we do; you've got to have some idea how to change his mind."

"You are asking that we set aside centuries of hard-learned caution. The best thing to do now is allow our Elder to consider your reasoning in peace."

"My parents have a right to know about Enrique." Claire's voice was soft and bitter.

Because that's going to help, how, exactly? Jim did not say.

"And Jim, you said Changelings are sterile," said Darci, "so since none of us are adopted, it's not like we have to worry about our parents being Changelings."

"Well, there's my stepmom, I guess," Mary said. "I don't think Jen's a Changeling, though. She was super mad that time she caught me breaking curfew and her eyes never turned red."

"That's under semi-voluntary control," Jim muttered.

AAARRRGGHH was still carrying all of them. Jim understood AAARRRGGHH not wanting to expose his scruff to a known Changeling. But knowing the humans were on the giant troll's back, and Jim was not, was giving him the same squirmy feeling in his gut as when Blinky first started teaching the humans trollish and Jim wasn't his only student anymore.

"You can probably put us down now," said Jim, more loudly.

+=+

Barbara ordered a pizza for dinner. Jim did not outwardly take offense. She studied him carefully. Nothing about him had changed that she could tell, since she'd found out, but she felt like she didn't know how to read his expressions anymore.

Barbara cut her pizza slice in half. "So. Did you and Toby have a nice time in Trollmarket?"

"Not really." Jim put his slice down. "We were mostly debating Vendel. Da–The humans, who know about trolls? Suggested they should tell their families themselves. Toby warned them that you know. They agreed their families would probably take it better from them than a stranger."

Barbara could see the logic in that. She was glad to hear these kids were taking initiative. Even if it would have been better for them to be honest with their parents from the start, at least the truth was finally coming out.

She internally celebrated too soon.

"Vendel thinks it's too big a risk. He said if they tell anyone, they won't be allowed in Trollmarket anymore. Part of me thinks they shouldn't go down there anyway, I don't want to be the Trollhunter who got a bunch of human children killed, but I don't think they can be trusted not to look for more trolls, you know? And if Ot-ther Changelings found them, that would be … bad."

Jim gulped some water.

"But Vendel's worried, and for good reason, that too many humans knowing might reignite a species war. And just because these trolls were on the 'killing humans creates more problems than it solves' side of the last big troll war, doesn't mean humans are going to react peacefully to learning there are human-eating trolls. I mean, it's not like you can tell before you're in eating range. And just because a troll doesn't eat humans doesn't mean they care about preserving human life."

Barbara bit her tongue and nodded. This was troubling, but good. Jim was sharing things with her, being honest with her, just as she'd asked.

"So, I have a favour to ask."

"What's that?" she asked.

"Give us a month? Before you start trying to figure out who else knows and whose parents you need to call for 'troll-intervention'. To let them convince Vendel and at least give us a chance to tell people ourselves."

Barbara got out her phone and opened the calender app. She didn't name the notice, just put an exclamation point.

"Thirty days, starting tomorrow."

"Thanks." Jim smiled at her. He didn't say anything more.

He hadn't called her 'Mom' since she'd kicked him out.

+=+

Previous Chapter (The kids decide they ought to tell their families about trolls before Barbara does)

Table of Contents

Next Chapter (The school play and more Strickler plotting)

Savvy readers may notice Jim actually hasn't addressed Barbara as 'Mom' since admitting to being a Changeling, unless I've slipped up somewhere, but Barbara's feeling guilty about kicking him out and memories are imperfect things.

Everyone going back to speaking English after Darci does is called 'code switching'.

[im-the-king-of-the-ocean]

Hello all!

Writing on the Pride Ficlets will resume at the start of this upcoming week and then posting a little after that.  However, until then, I’d thought I’d share a little project I’ve been cooking up as a way to reinvigorate my writer self.  It will be a series of 6 short scenes in the love story of Toby’s parents, Ralph and Megan.  I call it:

Ralph Domzalski’s Guide To Falling In Love With A Sorceress

(and yes, it is 100% canon to my Nana’s Troll Husband AU)

(and yes, it is inspired by a popular fandom theory)

Step 1 (of 6): Explosively Sweep Her Off Her Feet

When Ralph Domzalski was a kid, he’d wished his video games were real because life seemed like it would be so much more exciting then.

As an adult just then, he found himself wondering if dreams like that did come true and bemoaning the fact his younger self hadn’t had the foresight to wish for something more sustainable like a job with a steady income or a magic hat of unlimited food that wasn’t instant ramen cups.

Regardless, he figured, none of that really mattered since he had a literal troll for a dad and his life never quite fit into the “normal” box anyway.

But he could due without the whole “escaping for his life” video game-ness bit of his current situation.

“Are you sure you can drive this thing?!”

The Jeep careened through a turn.  Ralph grabbed onto the car door so he wouldn’t go flying out the side window.  His breath stopped in his throat when the vehicle tilted, both driver’s side wheels losing contact with the ground.  They slammed back down with a screech. Ralph almost puked.  The Jeep charged down the straight stretch of road before them.

“Look dumbass, this is your rescue mission so as far as I’m concerned I’m doing a much better job than you!” The woman driving the Jeep yelled.  “We got incoming on our tail, so be a dear, reach in the glovebox and, chuck some dvorkstones at them!”

“I’m not killing anyone!” Ralph shot back.  Save a woman from some kind of cult’s ritualistic sacrifice?  Yes.  Murder people?  That would be a hard no.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” The wheel spun in the woman’s hand.  The Jeep lurched.  “I’ve known these assholes my entire fucking life!  They wouldn’t hesitate in turning me into some kind of ancient demon sorceress, so—”

Ralph stopped listening.  Evil or no, he couldn’t just kill someone.  It went against everything he believed in.  He knew they were in a dire situation, but there had to be another way.  If he could just get these guys to give up the chase...?

He reached in the glovebox.  Grabbed a dvorkstone.  Shook it.  Chucked it at the road behind them.

Ralph heard the screech of the pursuing cars’ breaks.  Saw the people in them jump into the underbrush at the side of the road.  He too ducked as chunks of pavement and car metal went flying when the dvorkstone activated.  Ok, blowing up the road?  Not the greatest plan.  But at least they’d had the chance to survive, right?

Ralph turned forward.  “There!  Are you ha—CLIFF!!!” He grabbed onto the dashboard as if that would save him from the long drop before them.  He squeezed his eyes shut as they hurtled over the edge.  His stomach jumping up in his throat.  Then lurched back in it’s proper place as their plummet jerked to a halt.  Ralph cracked an eye open.  The Jeep hovered over waves crashing into some terribly spiky-looking outcroppings.  He gulped.

“Hell yeah!” The woman pumped the air with her fist.  “Sorry Gramps, Paladins of the Pale Lady, but you suckers failed!  I’m 100% still myself!  But wait, what’s this?  I managed to score AWESOME MAGIC POWERS from you failed little ritual anyway?  Eat it, suckers!”  She yelled to the top of the cliff.

The jeep shuddered at her distraction.

“Maybe wait to gloat until we’re not hovering over rocks that can kill us?” Ralph snapped.  “I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer not to die in the ocean today.”

“Oh, fine”.  The woman groaned, righting the Jeep with a wave of her hand.  “But you have no idea how long I’ve wanted to do that.   All my life they’ve told me I’m nothing but I future vessel for her grand, magnificence, the “Pale Lady”.  Did they ever ask what I wanted to be or do with my life?”  She snorted.  “Fuck No!”  Paused.  “Well, except for my great-aunt and look what that got her.”  The woman sighed.  “Anyway, thanks for the save back there, you’re not so bad for a guy who crashes a secret cult’s ceremony.”  With another wave of her hand, she got the Jeep to fly forward over the ocean.

Ralph slowly relaxed back in his seat. “You’re welcome.  I didn’t exactly expect anyone to actually be at an ancient troll site.  But I’m always happy to help out someone in need.”

The woman glanced at him.  “So you knew what that place was, huh?  And here I assumed you were some severely lost tourist.”

“Tourist, yes. Of a kind.”  Ralph shrugged.  “Dad’s a troll so I figured I’d travel around, see the sights of the troll world before settling down to some boring desk job or something back home.”

“Troll dad? That sounds like an interesting story you got there.”

“Not as interesting as runaway sorceress from an evil cult.”

“Yeah well we’ll probably have time for both considering there’s nothing but ocean as far as I can see.”  The woman gestured to their surroundings.  The cliff growing smaller behind them.  “You got a clue where we are? I’m kinda hoping we wash up on the shores of France.  I always wanted to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower.”

“No, not really.”  Ralph shrugged.  “I used a gyre to travel from home.”  He paused.  “But definitely somewhere with a lot of water.”

The woman rolled her eyes.  “Don’t tell me.  I’m stuck in a floating car with someone who has a godawful sense of humor.”

“Hey, I’d prefer not to be stuck with someone who has what my mother would call a “potty mouth”, yet here I am.”  Ralph retorted.

“Oh, so you’re a mama’s boy now?”  The woman laughed.  “Merlin’s beard, I have horrible luck.”

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew my mother.”  Ralph smirked.  “You know, I wouldn’t be surprised if she showed up right now, via some magic method or another, just to give you a lecture.”  He paused for dramatic effect.  ��And then try to feed you her horrible, horrible pies.  Seriously, though.  If you ever do meet her, don’t eat her pies.  It will offend her, sure, but it will save your stomach from a truly disastrous fate.”

“Noted.”  The woman grinned at him.  “Oh, and, just so you know, I’m Megan.  Megan the Magician now, I suppose, fits.”

“Nice to meet you, Megan.”  Ralph held out his hand.  “I’m Ralph.  Ralph Domzalski, but all my friends call me “Ralphie, their shining knight in armor who’s so heroic and spectacular and—”

“Yeah I’m just going to call you Ralphie-Piekins.”

“Please don’t.”

“You were the one to bring up the cutesy names, mister.”  Megan stuck out her tongue at him.  “Don’t open the can if you don’t want to know what’s inside.”

“Well then, I’ll just call you Megan-bacon-fakin, um…”

“That’s the best you can do?  So sad.  I suppose I should let you off the hook.”  Megan sighed dramatically.  “So tell me, Ralph, as we head to wherever we’re going, how does one end up being a half-troll?”

[bikelock28]

Similar Cases

Future-set, Teddy Lupin, Neville Longbottom

Similar Cases

Dear Teddy

If you're not too busy, it would be lovely to see you for a cup of tea and a chat this week. My office is on the second floor, it has a green door and a Wiggentree sapling outside.

Hope to see you soon. All the best

NL

The boy with striped hair and new robes knocks nervously on the door. He knows that he shouldn't be anxious; he isn't in trouble and he knows Neville (Professor Longbottom, Teddy corrects himself. That's important. It's only a little chat. Teddy doesn't know what about but he's sure that he isn't in trouble. Even if he was, Ne- Professor Longbottom is a cool, friendly teacher and he's been kind to Teddy so far. He probably wants to ask about Harry, Teddy tells himself. People always want to ask about Harry.

The door opens. "Hello, Teddy!" says Professor Longbottom brightly, "Come in, take a seat".

Professor Longbottom's office has a desk in, but it's in the corner of the room and instead Neville invites Teddy to sit on one of the three green armchairs in the middle of the carpet. Teddy dumps his bag on the floor, accidentally knocking over a red geranium.

"Oh! Sorry, Professor Longbottom, I'm so sorry," Teddy squeaks nervously.

"No problem," shrugs Neville, muttering the spell to tidy up the mess.

"I'm sorry, I'm always clumsy,"

Neville gives him a shrewd look but changes the subject and asks Teddy if he'd like a drink.

"Umm, tea please,"

"Orange, lemon, herbal, mint?"

"Just...normal please, Professor Longbottom,"

Professor Longbottom taps the kettle with his wand. It instantly starts whistling and Professor Longbottom mutters a spell to pour them each a cup of tea. Warmly, he asks, "Now Teddy, how are you getting on?"

"Um, fine, sir,"

"There's no need to call me 'sir', Teddy," dismisses Neville, plonking himself down in an opposite armchair, "Have you settled in alright? Making friends?"

"Err, yes. Everyone's...all we first-years stick together. We come down to breakfast in a group and we help each other find classrooms, we do our homework together. So that's...yeah, that's good,"

Neville looks interested. "Well good for you. Excellent Hufflepuff spirit there. I could have done with that when I started,"

"Did you get lost?"

"Constantly. I didn't understand my lessons, I forgot my books. And I kept losing my toad. To be honest, I felt pretty hopeless my first year here,"

Teddy has no idea why Professor Longbottom is telling him this.

"Hermione was a friend, though. She was kind, she helped me a lot. Although probably because she was about as unpopular as I was, those first few weeks,"

"What about Harry?"

"Harry and Ron met very early- maybe even on the train platform- and were inseparable from the word go. They formed their little pair and that was that,"

"But they were...weren't they nice to you?"

"They were nice. Of course they were nice, Teddy. But they were best friends and I was just a mate; the pudgy, forgetful boy they shared a dormitory with. Harry had had a horrible childhood with his uncle and being bullied at his Muggle school, and he turned up here and everybody was excited, everybody wanted to be his friend. You know he doesn't like being famous now- he hasn't for a long time- but in first-year it was a novelty for him. He was all too wrapped up in that to worry about me,"

"Oh," says Teddy glumly, "I...I thought he was..."

"He'd been taken away from an unhappy life into a life of magic where he was suddenly famous- I don't blame him in the slightest. What's more, he was eleven years old. Nobody expects you to be perfect at eleven years old. Remember that, Teddy,"

"'Kay," Teddy nods. He hasn't thought about that before. Remembering where classes are, writing down his notes properly and dodging Peeves takes enough effort without trying to be perfect as well.

"Teddy, do you think that you get recognised like Harry did?" Professor Longbottom asks. Teddy meets his eye. Neville's gaze is astute and interested.

"Because of my parents?" Teddy clarifies.

"Well, yes,"

"Some people," Teddy concedes, "People point at me, some teachers kind of pause when they read out my surname. But not everyone's trying to be my best friend like you said they were with Harry. And at least there's other kids at school who lost a parent or an uncle or a sister or something during the Second War. I think I'm the only one in my year but I'm not the only only one,"

"Do you mind my asking if the attention bothers you?"

"A bit. I dunno," Teddy shrugs, "It's just cos people are curious, that's what Harry said,"

"If it ever bothers you, come and tell me,"

"Yes, sir,"

"I love and admire Harry and I'm glad you can share these things with him, but I didn't invite you here today to talk about him, actually. Or your parents. I wanted to talk about you. How you're finding school. Your subjects, your friends,"

"Well, I...I like Herbology, obviously," Teddy says, which is as much truthful as it is diplomatic, "And Charms, I'm enjoying Charms,"

"Wonderful! I took Charms for NEWT," says Professor Longbottom earnestly, "What about Astronomy?"

"I like being awake at night, but umm, it's kind of boring. Just stars. And, umm..." Teddy shuffles uncomfortably in his seat.

"Yes?" prompts Neville.

"Well, I...Neville, you know what my dad was, don't you?"

"Yes," nods Neville, his face unchanging.

"And I'm not. It didn't pass on to me. I didn't,"

"I know," says Neville gently.

"But I'm worried that, that if someone found out, then...I don't think looking at the night sky would be much fun if everybody was glancing at me thinking..." Teddy tails off nervously, staring at his knees.

"Ah. Ah," says Neville thoughtfully. "Teddy, would you like a biscuit?"

"Um, yes please, sir,"

"You don't have to call me sir,"

Neville waves his wand and a plate of chocolate biscuits flies over to them. Teddy takes one and bites into it, keeping his eyes lowered. Professor Longbottom takes two, eats them both, sits back in his chair, folds his arms and says, "I think that's a perfectly legitimate concern." Teddy glances up, and Professor Longbottom continues, "I can see how anxious that must make you. But try to be positive. I'm sure many people would believe and accept that you're not affected by the condition and that would be that. And Teddy," he says gently, "If I'm honest with you, I'm sure there's pupils in this school who know already about your father,"

"Yeah. It...it hasn't come up yet here but yeah, some older kids must do. I...adults know. Um, sometimes people say stuff. Nasty stuff. Not often, and not here yet, just once or twice in Diagon Alley, if someone hears my surname. Harry goes ballistic,"

"I should hope so too. That's disgusting talk. I'm...I'm sorry someone your age should have to go through that, Teddy,"

"It used to be worse. You and Harry and my parents and everyone, they fought it when it was worse. Hermione's good at explaining it, how prejudice lingers and stuff". Her words in his mouth sound ridiculous. He remembers something, "Ron and Hermione are always arguing- well, Hermione and all the Weasleys, I suppose- about the M-U-D-B-L-O-O-D word. Hermione says that if you, like, let it affect you then you're letting them win. You have to ignore it and not let it define you. Ron and Ginny disagree but I try to, like, keep that in my head,"

"Good for you. In the case of that vile word regarding blood types, myself and the Weasleys show that it's generally more so-called pureblood families who are offended by it than Muggle-borns. But if you're following something Hermione does then it's difficult to go wrong,"

"You said Hermione was unpopular. You said Harry and Ron were inseparable- so how did she become their friend?"

"Are you telling me you don't know the story about the troll?"

"Oh, right. Course. There's so many stories, I get them mixed up. So that's how they became friends?"

Neville nods. "Yup. It had been Harry and Ron, and from that Halloween it was Harry and Ron and Hermione and that was that. But anyway, who are your friends, Teddy?

"My house I suppose. You know us from Herbology,"

"Yes, but tell me about them. What are they like outside of class?"

"Well, err, in the dormitory my bed is by the wall and Jack's is next to mine so we talk a lot. He's dead funny, he's comes up with these mad ideas and plans. Cowan thinks he knows everything cos he's got two sisters here already. Or one might have left actually, I can't remember, I stopped listening. Hieronymus is shy but he knows lots about giants so if you get him talking about that he's more chatty. And the girls- well, Caitlin and Simran giggle a lot and they're both in love with Professor Kirkpatrick-"

"Well, I'll be sure to let Professor Kirkpatrick know that," says Neville.

Teddy laughs. He feels more comfortable now, talking about his classmates. He tells Professor Longbottom about Lourdes' Scopps owl, Macaroni, and how it can climb stairs, how Chantelle's got a Hurricane 47 broom, how Ivy's worked out how to master the staircases, and how Dariella makes him laugh with the stupid songs she makes up. Teddy tells Professor Longbottom about the Slytherin class he has Transfiguration and History of Magic with; Eoin whose met loads of the Ballycastle Bats because his dad's a promoter for them, and Rebecca whose very neat so rolls her eyes when Teddy spills his ink or drops his books.

"I spilt my ink all the time," says Professor Longbottom, "Still do". He points to his desk where Teddy can see a few black stains. "I could barely pick up a scroll without something breaking or getting knocked over,"

"Everybody is so surprised that I haven't broken a bone," Teddy announces proudly, "People see how clumsy I am and they're like 'That kid must always be hurting himself,' but I'm not really…I break stuff, not people,"

Neville laughs loudly. "Oh, I wish I could tell you you'll grow out of it, Teddy, but I'm nearly thirty and I still drop about four plant pots a week,"

"My mum was clumsy," Teddy tells him, smiling, "Granny never minds when I spill stuff or break stuff at home because she says it's like having my mum back. So I kind of like being clumsy because it's like Mum. Well, I don't like it, but I sort of do". Teddy's never quite verbalised this explanation out loud before and it doesn't seem to make sense now it's out in the air. "I dunno…" he finishes lamely.

Professor Longbottom nods thoughtfully. "I understand," he murmurs. Then he coughs slightly and says, "Teddy, do you know who my parents are?"

"Err, no," Teddy answers.

"I'd like to tell you but it's...well, it's very ugly and very sad, so you can tell me to stop if you want. Understand?"

"Yes,"

"My mother was an Auror, like yours," Neville explains, "So was my Dad. They were two of the best. They were in the Order during the First War and they did great work, they were so brave. And then Voldemort disappeared after he tried to kill Harry. And everyone thought they were safe. But the Death Eaters were still around and- and my parents were caught. And they were tortured to insanity,"

Teddy

"Who did it?" Teddy whispers.

"Bellatrix Lestrange," says Neville grimly.

"She killed my Mum!" Teddy exclaims, excited.

"Yes. That's her,"

"She was my great-aunt,"

"I know. Is that difficult for you?"

"No. She was evil. She killed my mum. I'm glad she's dead,"

"Yes. We all are," says Neville awkwardly, "God bless Molly Weasley,"

"I'm...I'm really sorry about your parents, Professor Longbottom,"

"I'm really sorry about you parents, Teddy Lupin,"

"Yeah, I know. But it's….it's okay, you know? Granny has photos of them everywhere and there's lots of people who knew them. Harry's lot tell me about them, and I've got cousins on my dad's side who I see. Last year Ginny wrote to Professor McGonogall, Professor Flitwick, Professor Sprout and a couple of the others to ask them to write to me about what Mum and Dad were like in school. That was cool,"

Neville smiles. "It must make you happy to know so much about them,"

"Yeah," Teddy agrees emphatically. "Professor Longbottom, are you Mum and Dad still alive?"

Neville nods. "They've been in St Mungo's for as long as I can remember. They don't know who I am. But they're happy, I think. They're safe and they're together,"

"Who did you live with, then, when you were growing up?"

"My grandmother,"

"Like me!" Teddy exclaims again.

"That's why I invited you," says Neville, "There's a few strange things we have in common, you and I thought that it might be interesting, might be good, for us to talk to one another,"

"Yes!" says Teddy happily, "Everybody talks a lot about how I'm like Harry- you know, orphans- but, but I'm also like you!"

"I'm glad you agree," says Neville, smiling broadly. "Were you happy, growing up with your grandmother?"

"Yeah. She's old enough to run around and stuff. And I see Harry all the time, and Ginny and Ron and Hermione and Mrs Weasley. It was only a couple of years ago they told me that she killed Bellatrix. That's cool. It explains why she cries a lot around me,"

"Can I ask you how your grandmother feels abou-"

"About Bellatrix? She says they never said a kind word to each other in their lives. Granny hardly saw her after she married my Grandpa. Granny says she was evil and she's glad she's dead. Granny didn't love her,"

"The only love Bellatrix Lestrange seemed to know was her love for Voldemort," Neville says solemnly.

"Were you happy growing up with your granny, Professor Longbottom?"

"Hmm," says Neville thoughtfully, "Sometimes. Anyway, I have some marking to get on with today, but would you like to visit me every so often? Not to talk about the wars and our families necessarily. Just as, well, friends,"

Being friends with a professor is a weird idea, but, "Yes. That'd be cool, sir,"

"On one condition- you stop calling me sir?"

"Even in Herbology?"

"Well, yes in Herbology, I can't look like I have favourites. But when you're in this office you call me Neville,"

"Okay Neville,"

"I'll let you go now but I'll be in touch soon, alright?"

"Yes. I...I'm looking forward to it,"

"So am I,"

"Can I ask you something, Neville?"

"Yup?"

"When you were at Hogwarts, did people know about your parents?"

"Ah. No,"

"Nobody?"

"Well, I expect a few older students did. But I never mentioned it,"

"Not to your friends?"

"No. And I wish I had done. I wish I'd shown how proud I was of them. Because I am proud of them, and I know that they'd be really proud of me". The other implication remains unspoken. The professor and the boy smile at each other.

"I'll see you later, Teddy. Oh, before you go- would you like some chocolate?"

[bluewatsons]

Jon Savage, Meek by name, wild by nature, The Guardian (November 11, 2006)

The extraordinary producer Joe Meek recorded British pop's first out and out gay classic, and within six months had shot himself dead. Jon Savage traces the impact of sexuality on Meek's life in the Sixties when persecution and criminal prosecution were very real threats

On 12 August, 1966, the Tornados released their last ever record with Joe Meek. Beginning with the sound of waves and seagulls, 'Is That a Ship I Hear?' bore all its producer's hallmarks: the boot-stomping drums, the extraterrestrial keyboard sound, and fierce, fierce compression. Like its predecessor, 'Pop-Art Goes Mozart', it was constructed around a gimmick. Meek hoped that the title and the ocean effects would convince the DJs on the pirate stations - Radio Caroline, Radio London, Radio City et al - to put his new record on heavy rotation. Just when the pirates' influence on the British charts was at its height, it seemed like a good angle.

However, this was not the Tornados' time. On 12 August, Revolver was on its first week in the British record shops. Blonde on Blonde was issued on the same day as 'Is That a Ship I Hear?'. While the Dylan album got detailed track by track rundowns in the British music press, the Tornados got short shrift: 'a whistleable little melody of promise'; 'good of its kind and doubtless a hit three years ago, but not for today's market'. It had been a long slow fall since 'Telstar', number one in the UK for five weeks in autumn 1962: the group hadn't had a hit since late 1963 and there were none of the original members left.

Yet while 'Is That a Ship I Hear?' was a shameless attempt to ride the pirate wave, the flip was something quite different. 'Do You Come Here Often?' begins as a flouncy organ-drenched instrumental and stays that way for over two minutes. By that time, most people - had they even bothered to even turn the record over - would have switched off. Had they remained they would have heard two sibilant, obviously homosexual voices bitching, well, just like two queens will.

The scenario is the toilet in a London gay club, possibly the Apollo or Le Duce. The organist is still pumping away, but that's only background, as the sound dims and the bar atmosphere comes in.

'Do you come here often?'

'Only when the pirate ships go off air.'

'Me too.' (giggles)

'Well, I see pyjama styled shirts are in, then.'

'Well, pyjamas are OUT, as far as I'm concerned anyway.'

'Who cares?'

'Well, I know of a few people who do.'

'Yes, you would.'

'WOW! These two, coming now. What do you think?'

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'Mmmmmm. Mine's all right, but I don't like the look of yours.'

(A sniffy pause)

'Well, I must be off.'

'Yes, you're not looking so good.'

'Cheerio. I'll see you down the 'Dilly.'

'Not if I see you first, you won't.'

Exeunt, to swelling organ.

This brief but diverting exchange has the ring of authenticity. Its bickering is not just beastliness but the most important component of the camping which, as English academic Richard Dyer writes, is 'the only style, language and culture that is distinctively and unambiguously gay male'. In its social mode, camp privileges a caustic wit, best expressed by the quick-fire verbal retort, partly as a form of aggression, partly as a form of self-mockery, partly as a form of self-defence. It's an insider code that completely baffles the heterosexual majority, as it's meant to. (Why are they being so horrible to each other? Because it's good sport, and good practice for when you really need it.)

Like the Negro 'dirty dozens' - the ritualised insults of the Twenties and Thirties that have become embedded in rap - the camping spotlighted on 'Do You Come Here Often?' represents a complicated response to a hostile world. Its poisoned psychological arrows can help to control and neutralise the threat of homophobic violence: many bullies are right to fear the queen's forked tongue. Camping can provide a bulwark from which the gay man can sally forth into the world at large: it freezes the typecasting of homosexuals as effeminate, internalises it, and then throws it back in the face of the straight world as a kind of revenge.

However, that long 'mmmmmm', reverberating right through the diaphragm down to the male G-spot, gets to the heart of the matter. Meek's queen bitches are briefly united by an unstable mixture of camaraderie and competitiveness. Ever hopeful, ever alert, the gay man in cruising mode is relentless in pursuit of cock: the usual social rules go right out of the window. Sex drives the gay scene, its iconography, its economy, its inner and outer life. Meek's scenario highlights that heart-stopping instant, that highwire walk between acceptance and rejection that every gay man knows: when the Adonis turns into a Troll - not just the object of your desire but your own self.

'Do You Come Here Often?' was an extraordinary achievement: the first record on a UK major label - Columbia, part of the massive EMI empire - to deliver a slice of queer life so true that you can hear its cut-and-thrust in any gay bar today. Before 1966, homosexuality had been hinted at in odd mainstream records like Donovan's 'I'll Try For the Sun' or the Kinks' 'See My Friends', indeed had saturated Meek epics like 'Johnny Remember Me', but the allusions had been veiled. They didn't offer an insider viewpoint, just a mood or a stray word that seemed to briefly open a door usually locked and barred.

Since the early Sixties, there had been a trickle of products aimed at a market that was so off- the map as to be beyond marginal. Apart from Rod McKuen's vague but signifying spoken-word albums such as In Search of Eros , all of them were on tiny, fly-by-night labels. They took two different forms. Some took the Rod McKuen path: the sad young men, fated to wander through the twilight world of the third sex, condemned, like Peter Pan, to always be on the outside looking in. Their sensitive meditations on lust and loneliness were dramatised by covers of show tunes.

While these tragic figures, in accepting their exiled status, took care to be non-specific, the period's other archetypes were far more feisty. Unlike their more sober compatriots, drag queens could not pass, and so camping was honed into a corrosive chatter that could strip paint at 10 paces. Dovetailing into the market for outrageous adult albums by the likes of Rusty Warren ( Banned in Boston! ), nitroglycerin queens like Rae Bourbon, Mr Jean Fredericks and Jose from the Black Cat offered frank meditations on queer life: 'Nobody Loves a Fairy When She's 40', 'Sailor Boy', et al. Too real and too ghettoised, none had a hope of finding any wider distribution.

There were firm reasons for this state of affairs.

Although the law that would decriminalise it was passing through Parliament during 1966, homosexuality was still illegal in the UK, as it was in the US: punishable by prison and social ostracism. However, laws do not always reflect contemporary realities, and gay people continued to conduct their illegal sexual and social lives. For older men like Joe Meek, pleasure might have been irrevocably stained by guilt but, for the upcoming generation of 20 year olds, the Criminal Law Amendment Act 1885 was an anachronistic irrelevance. Fuck Lily Law and her evil twin, Laura Norder.

In fact, Joe Meek was unusually privileged, if only he had been able to take some comfort from that realisation. The music industry was one of the few places where gay men could be themselves, and indulge their sexual predilections in a way that was economically viable. Forty years ago, it was far from being the respectable career option that it is today, and indeed derived much of its energy from its outcast status. This was a natural consequence of its roots in showbusiness and theatre, but even more basic was the way in which the sexual and social aesthetic of genuine innovators such as Larry Parnes alchemised the raw material of working-class adolescents into hit parade gold. From 1957 on, Parnes bossed British rock'n'roll, and transformed all his Reginalds and Ronalds into a new Olympus peopled by emotional deities-cum-archetypes like Billy Fury, Dickie Pride, Vince Eager, Georgie Fame. His sensibility, and that of many who followed him, transmuted gay lust into the erotic longing that excited the passions of the young women who pushed these idols into the charts.

Meek arrived as the period's foremost independent producer with John Leyton's summer 1961 smash, 'Johnny Remember Me', an eldritch spasm that epitomised the heightened melodrama of teenage emotions. (Meek used to speed up all his records to achieve that very effect.) It also acted as a metaphor, for those who chose to hear, for the sense of loss and disassociation that many gay men then felt. 'Telstar' confirmed his elite sta tus and, although superseded by the Beat Boom, he was able to pull out huge hits such as 'Have I the Right?' by the Honeycombs, a summer 1964 number one and an oblique comment on his own blocked right to sexual and emotional fulfilment.

This was his last chart-topper, but Meek adapted to the prevailing conditions better than most of his contemporaries. Although identified with Fifties rock'n'roll - Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran in particular - he was too restless and forward-thinking to get totally trapped in the past. He made a stone freakbeat classic with the Syndicats' 'Crawdaddy Simone', a Brit R'n'B record so frenzied that it put the Yardbirds' rave-ups to shame. His 1966 singles with the Cryin' Shames featured the sinuously menacing garage stomper, 'Come on Back', while the overwrought vocal contortions of 'Please Stay' - Meek's last ever hit - attracted the attention of Brian Epstein.

Although he found it difficult to place many of his productions during 1966, Meek was far from being a spent force: his interest in the possibilities of sound remained vital. He also remained a player among the British music industry's gay mafia. During the brief entente cordiale that followed 'Please Stay', Meek accompanied Brian Epstein to witness Bob Dylan's June 1966 Royal Albert Hall concert from the Beatles' box. When the freezing of all 'Telstar' royalties thanks to a copyright dispute threatened to render him bankrupt later in the year, Meek was thrown a lifeline by the EMI chairman, Sir Joseph Lockwood, who offered him a job as an in-house producer.

'Do You Come Here Often?' also emerged into a more open cultural climate. The playwright Joe Orton had used camp's caustic cadences in his smash 1964 West End success Entertaining Mr Sloane : this was the key weapon in his desired 'mixture of comedy and menace'. The extremely popular BBC radio serial Round the Horne featured two flagrant queens talking in the gay argot of the time. Executed by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams, Julian and Sandy's quickfire Polari - that mixture of gypsy language, cockney backward slang, and thieves' cant - slotted right into the verbal surrealism that the Goons had made the hallmark of British comedy.

At the beginning of the decade, Meek had entitled his futuristic but stillborn space concept album I Hear A New World . Music is always ahead of social institutions, and the new world that Meek had dreamt of became tangible after 1963. The Beatles' unprecedented success marked the death knell of the Fifties hegemony, and during the next few years, the agitation for social and sexual liberation gathered pace throughout the Western world: the civil rights struggle, the women's movement, the campaigns for homosexual equality in America and Britain. The long years of stasis and repression banked up the flood, and it was ready to burst.

The most obvious sign of this uprising was teen fashion's hothouse blooms, as young women went Op and young men squeezed themselves into striped hip-huggers and polka-dot shirts - topped off with Prince Valiant bangs. 1966 saw the full mainstream media recognition of Swinging London and its associated fashion, mod. Trumpeting the 'revolution in men's clothes', Life's 13 May cover showed four young men, making like Brian Jones in front of the Chicago skyline. The cutaway teal corduroy jackets, Rupert Bear check trousers and fruit boots were not standard male gear, and the copy played up the freak-ish angle: 'The Guys Go All Out To Get Gawked At'.

Mod's hint of mint was not entirely in the heads of hostile observers. Peter Burton, who ran London's Le Duce in those years, remembered the crossover between the mods and his young gay clientele: 'both groups paid the same attention to clothes; both groups looked much alike.' Not surprising really, as their clothes came from the same shops - initially Vince in Carnaby Street (whose catalogue of swim- and underwear could almost be classified as an early gay magazine) and eventually from the John Stephen shops in the same street. Both groups took the same drug - basically 'speed', alternatively known as 'purple hearts', 'blues', 'doobs' or 'uppers'.

In February 1966, the Kinks had a huge UK hit with their dissection of this Carnebetian army. They backed up the risque 'Dedicated Follower of Fashion' - 'he pulls his frilly nylon panties right up tight' - with some extraordinary costumes, like the thigh-length leather waders sported with such gusto by Dave Davies. On the flip was one of the period's definitive statements of outsider pride, 'I'm Not Like Everybody Else', to be racked up against other garage band staples like the Yardbirds 'You're a Better Man Than I' and the Who's 'Substitute'. These calls for non-conformity and the acceptance of difference were becoming more and more strident.

This urgency defined pop's cutting edge during the first half of 1966: the unforeseen complexities and demands of 1965's emblematic records were amplified, their abrasion and innovation honed to a razor-sharp point. 1966 was a hot year, crowded with clamour and noise as seven-inch singles were cut to the limits of the then available technology. Hit 45s by the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Supremes, James Brown, the Byrds, the Who, Junior Walker, Wilson Pickett, and Bob Dylan were smart and mediated, harsh and sophisticated, monomaniacally on the one or, raga-like, right out of Western perception into the eternity of one chord.

A blistering hostility was in the air on 12 August, so much so that you could taste it. That day the Beatles faced the first concert of their third American tour, an event marred by the controversy surrounding John Lennon's comment that the group were 'more popular than Jesus'. The formerly inviolable avatars of youth were suddenly vulnerable as DJs burned Beatles' records and the Ku Klux Klan threatened.

Time magazine's 12 August cover - 'The Psychotic and Society' - featured Charles Whitman, the sniper who installed himself in the clock tower at the University of Texas and, without warning, killed 15 and wounded 31 people. The horror triggered an anguished self-examination: Whitman's 'senseless mayhem' was not an aberration but intimately linked to American society. 'Potential killers are everywhere these days,' a psychiatrist warned; 'they are driving their cars, going to church with you, working with you. And you never know it until they snap'.

Across the Atlantic, 12 August saw 'the worst crime London has known this century'. Around 3pm, three police officers stopped a suspicious looking van near Wormwood Scrubs prison, north of the mod stronghold Shepherd's Bush. All three were gunned down by the vehicle's three occupants. A 10-year-old boy saw the whole thing: 'I saw a man shoot the policemen,' he told the newspapers; 'it was horrible and I was so scared.' Cop-killing was a huge taboo, and the nation recoiled.

'Do You Come Here Often?' partook of that season of violence, as did its author. Its candid dialogue uncovered a deep seam of outcast aggression. Camp's downside is that, unless employed with a light touch and a sure understanding of the game's rules, its ritualised viciousness can reinforce the hostility of the wider society. Peter Bur ton remembered that when he was entering the gay scene in the mid-Sixties, nothing 'was more daunting as an encounter with some acid-tongued bitch whose tongue was so sharp it was likely to cut your throat. These queens, with the savage wit of the self-protective, could be truly alarming to those of us of a slower cast of mind.'

Internalised homophobia fuels the twisted expression of an outcast's low self-esteem: instead of fighting the oppressors, why not fight those nearest to hand? Donald Webster Cory's groundbreaking 1951 survey, 'The Homosexual in America', had clearly identified poor self-esteem as one of the greatest threats to gay men's mental health - infecting every aspect of life - but it was difficult, given society's attitudes, to break the cycle of prejudice and self-hatred. Despite his bravado, Meek felt his homosexuality as a deep source of shame. He was too stubborn to tell it otherwise than it was but, ultimately, 'Do You Come Here Often?' presented gay life as a nitroglycerin nightmare.

Born in April 1929, Meek was sensitive, almost clairvoyant, but highly volatile. Brought up as a girl for the first four years of his life by a mother who had hoped for a daughter, uninterested in most boyish pursuits, Joe was called a sissy and left alone by most of his peers. This difference, coupled with his hair-trigger temper, led to the start of the persecution (both real and imagined) that lasted for the rest of his life.

As soon as he could, Meek fled rural England for London, but in the late Fifties, despite his reputation as one of the best sound engineers in the capital, he remained haunted by the fact that his emotional and sexual orientation was illegal. This laid him open, as it did generations of gay men, to ridicule, arrest, imprisonment, violent attacks and - perhaps worst of all - blackmail. In November 1963, Meek was arrested for cottaging, importuning in a public toilet: the news of his conviction made the front page. His friends were amazed. Joe could have had all the young men he wanted, as they were queuing up to be recorded by him: they concluded that he actually liked the risk.

It didn't help that Meek was spooky: obsessed with other worlds, with graveyards, with spiritualism. He claimed to be in regular contact with Buddy Holly through the spirit world, while the negativity that he experienced clung to him like worn-out, not yet shed skin. Charles Blackwell - who arranged 'Johnny Remember Me' - remembered Joe as scarier than Phil Spector: 'He was a split personality. He believed he was possessed, but had another side that was very polite with a good sense of humour. He was very complicated.' Meek terrified the usually confident Andrew Loog Oldham: 'He looked like a real mean-queen teddy boy and his eyes were riveting'.

By mid-1966, Meek's mental state was worsening as his heyday receded into the past. Giving free rein to his instincts with 'Do You Come Here Often?', he gained satisfaction from exposing a reality long suppressed. But this was a small victory, a transient revenge, as the forces ranged against him gathered speed. Jekyll overtook Hyde, as his money troubles and declining fame caused him to up his pill intake and to dabble further in the occult. He was beaten up and his prized Ford Zodiac trashed. He was also threatened by gangsters who wanted to take over the Tornados' management. His paranoia was justified; his loneliness became all-consuming.

Meek's slide into the depths of decline was played out against a minatory pop climate. Disturbance had already hit the US top 10 that summer with Napoleon XIV's banshee 'They're Coming to Take Me Away' and Count Five's 'Psychotic Reaction'. During September and October, the pure punk propulsion of Love's 'Seven and Seven Is', the Yardbirds' 'Happenings Ten Years Time Ago' and the Rolling Stones' 'Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow?' rode the year's white line fever right off the rails. The last was an amphetamined apocalypse, glossed thus by Andrew Loog Oldham: 'The Shadow is the uncertainty of the future. The uncertainty is whether we slide into a vast depression or universal war.' Later that autumn, David Bowie's 'The London Boys' and the Kinks' 'Big Black Smoke' delivered bleak cautionary tales of speed psychosis. Meek's own productions - the few that were actually released - had already reached new levels of pill-saturated oddity: the bizarre helter-skelter rhythm of Jason Eddy and the Centremen's 'Singing the Blues', the nuclear-winter visions of Glenda Collins's late protest, 'It's Hard to Believe It'.

Like the Marvelettes sang, the hunter gets captured by the game, and, in January 1967, Meek's game was up. While his last ever single, the Riot Squad's 'Gotta Be a First Time', was dismissed as 'a corny bit of beat', he was implicated by association with a gruesome gay crime dubbed 'the Suitcase Murder'. Although the hapless producer had nothing to do with the young victim's dismemberment, the police interest tipped him over the edge. On 2 February, he burst into a friend's house all dressed in black, claiming he was possessed. The next morning, the 18th anniversary of Buddy Holly's death, he blasted his landlady with his shotgun before eating the barrel himself.

Joe Meek's was an extreme pathology, to be sure, with its incredible highs - just listen to the aerated hysteria of John Leyton's 'Wild Wind' - and annihilating lows, but what remains shocking is just how much his suicidal impulse was shared by many gay men of his generation. In his diary for 11 March 1967, Joe Orton wrote about a conversation he had with his friend Kenneth Williams, by then a national figure in the UK for his appearances in Round the Horne and the Carry On film series. Orton found Williams 'a horrible mess' sexually: 'He mentions "guilt" a lot in conversation. "Well, of course there is always a certain amount of guilt attached to homosexuality".'

Williams talked to Orton about a friend who had been caught soliciting: 'Found in a cottage she was,' he said. 'They gave her a choice of gaol or a mental home. She chose the mental home. "Well," she said, "there's all the lovely mental cock. I'll be sucking all the nurses off. I'm sure it'll be very gay." Kenneth said this man went into the mental home and was given some kind of treatment "to stop her thinking like a queen". The man apparently was very depressed after this and committed suicide. Kenneth then spoke of all the people he'd known who killed themselves ... he told all the stories in a way which made them funny, but it was clear that he thinks about death constantly.'

By early 1967, Orton was so successful and well-regarded that he had access to the new elite. He was approached by Brian Epstein to write the screenplay of the Beatles' third movie, which he titled 'Up Against It'. His diary entry for 24 January describes meeting Paul McCartney and listening to a pre-release copy of 'Penny Lane' and 'Strawberry Fields Forever'. As the public avatar of the new, aggressive homosexuality and, in private, an enthusiastic sex hunter - one of his most memorable diary entries concerned an orgy in a public toilet in Holloway Road in north London, just down the road from Meek's studio - Orton totally rejected Williams's sexual guilt as the holdover from a bygone era.

But even he could not escape its shadow, embodied by his older partner, Kenneth Halliwell. As the playwright's star rose, the balance of their 15-year relationship tipped irreversibly. The more that Orton flaunted his promiscuity and revelled in his success, the more depressed and inhibited Halliwell became. On 9 August 1967, he murdered Orton with nine frenzied hammer blows to the head, and then swallowed 22 Nembutals. Their bodies were found side-by-side in their shared bedsit.

Eighteen days later, the body of Brian Epstein was found in the locked bedroom of his Belgravia house. The cause of death was, according to the coroner's report, 'poisoning' by Cabrital - a kind of sleeping pill. Epstein's mental state had deteriorated since August 1966, after the Beatles' stopped touring: he hadn't been able to attend their last ever show at San Francisco's Candlestick Park because his then current boyfriend, a hustler called Diz Gillespie, had robbed him of money and valuable documents. According to his attorney and close friend Nat Weiss, that accounted for 'his first major depression: that was the beginning of his loss of self-confidence.'

The deaths of Meek, Orton and Epstein occurred just at the point when the freedoms of the Sixties were institutionally recognised, in Britain at least. As well as the relaxation of the laws on abortion and divorce, the famous 1885 statute that had done for Oscar Wilde and several successive generations of gay men was finally overhauled. The Sexual Offences Act, which became law right at the end of July 1967, substantially decriminalised homosexuality: allowing for the existence of gay social and sexual relationships, it removed the threat of blackmail and enabled the first, very basic steps to be taken towards the ultimate goal of total parity.

'Hey, you've got to hide your love away,' John Lennon had sung in one of the Beatles' most poignant songs, and, for almost every adult gay man born before the mid-1940s, the strain of having to do so was psychologically disastrous. In far too many cases, the result was alcoholism, drug addiction, compulsive cruising, crippling guilt, an inability to form lasting emotional relationships - a monstrous waste of lives.

Reactions to the new law within the gay underworld were not always positive: a renewed bout of 'queer-spotting' in the media unleashed all the old venom about bestial 'buggers'. The historian Jeffrey Weeks remembered meeting men who were 'actively hostile, nervous that the new legality would ruin their cosily secret double lives'. In the same way that the gay underworld had existed despite, if not in defiance of, the law, then the long fought-for turnaround towards partial acceptance would not easily erase the decades of vitriol and prejudice. 'We'll be free,' Kenneth Halliwell had exclaimed to Joe Orton in late July, but it wasn't that simple.

Nearly four decades on, 'Do You Come Here Often?' remains sad, eerie, funny, and true: you can still hear its vivid vituperation in the gay hardcore dance records of the 21st century. By the same token, it is time-locked, a bulletin from a pivotal point in homosexual history: that moment when an oppressed minority began to claim its rightful place in society. However, that struggle was not without its sacrifices. Like Orton and Epstein, Meek would not live to see the sun, and his August 1966 single remains testament to the lethal power of the homophobia that, once rampant in Western society, is still virulent. Guilty pleasures can kill.

· 'Do You Come Here Often?' is available on Queer Noises, an anthology of gay records from 1960-78 curated by Jon Savage, out now on Trikont. A great collection of Meek's recordings, including most of the other records referred to here, is available on The Alchemist of Pop: Home Made Hits and Rarities 1959-1966 (Sanctuary UK 2xCD). An expanded version of this article originally appeared in Black Clock (California Institute of the Arts) Issue 4: Guilty Pleasures. Thanks to Steve Erickson

Hey Joe

The sixties' space cadet

Since his death, Joe Meek's reputation as a pioneer of space-age pop and an eccentric English Phil Spector has grown apace. But in the early Sixties the record industry hardly knew what to make of the man who made a series of hits from his home studio at 304 Holloway Road in north London.

Born in 1929 in the Forest of Dean, he developed an early obsession with gadgets which he nurtured while working for the Midlands Electricity Board and which found full rein when he started to make records in 1956. The best-known of these - John Leyton's 'Johnny Remember Me', the Tornados' 'Telstar' - sounded like nothing else and, far ahead of George Martin, Meek used the studio as an instrument, taking mixing desks apart, playing tapes backwards and adding washes of sci-fi inspired effects. The fact that in his studio people played guitar in the bathroom while others sang on the stairs only adds to the fun.

Scorned by the mainstream, Meek launched his own label, so becoming an indie pioneer in yet another field. Members of Meek's house bands became huge stars a decade later - Ritchie Blackmore, who played the guitar solo on Heinz's 'Just Like Eddie', went on to form Deep Purple, along with the Syndicats' Roger Glover, whose guitarist, Steve Howe, joined Yes.

[loveinamists]

You often had dreams about Karkat. They ranged from the really happy and warm dreams, to the gruesome and devastating nightmares. You wanted to only have happy dreams about him, but you were prone to bad dreams nightmares, and everyone you know and care about has occasionally become a part of them. You hate it, but you have no way to stop it, really.

As such, the dream you go onto have tonight turns out to involve him.

It starts off normal. Well, relatively normal.

You’re in your house, but something’s missing. He’s missing. In fact, he had been missing for a while now, in this dream. He’d been gone for a while, with no hint as to where he was. You’d been growing more and more concerned, the longer it went on. Aileen and Seyria were in safe arms with you, but you were growing nervous and concerned the longer their parent and one of your lovers had been gone.

It only takes so much before you decide you need to do a thorough search of his home. Maybe he left a note or something in a hidden place as to why he disappeared? You have Dave watch over the girls and ask a neighbour to occasionally pop in, and then you’re off on your search.

You make it there, and at first glance, it’s just like the previous visits. There’s no note or sign of his whereabouts in plain sight. So you set out to do what you came for: you start doing a more thorough search.

You start in the living room, looking in the drawers of end tables and in the cracks of the couch cushions, and underneath them. You find nothing. You look in the bathroom, not really having high hopes for something be in there. As expected, the results turn out the same. Seyria and Aileen’s room show no results, either.

You were beginning to get discouraged, but you still head off to check his bedroom. There had to be something, right? You check the drawers of his dresser, and the nightstand, nothing turns up there. So you start to pull off the pillows, and the blankets. Nothing.

Then you toss up the mattress. Between the mattress and the box-spring, was an envelope. You quickly grab it, put the mattress back down, and sit on the bed. You tear open the envelope quickly and take out the paper to find that it’s a letter.

It was a letter stating that Karkat had been going into hiding. He had come to that age as a troll to be seen as an adult; and as such, he was to be drafted into the Alternian Navy. He states that he was refusing that fate, but that he had to go into hiding for now (in relation to the time of the letter) if he was to refuse that kind of fate.

It’s as you read through that you realize, you recall having heard this before. You remember... You remember hearing about this! A future version of Karkat had told you about this. But he had told you that he didn’t succeed in hiding. He got caught.

As soon as you catch onto the fact that’s why he had disappeared and made no return, you rush back to your house. You prepare yourself, grab necessities, and you’re out. He told you that he wasn’t killed in his capture, but rather, sent off to be sold into slavery. So you set off to Alternia on a rescue mission. You were gonna find where he was being kept and you were going to try your damnedest to bring him back home. Even if it killed you.

You’re left searching for a while, laying low and sneaking around in areas that required it. You search potential areas quietly, and when you found there to be no evidence of him in certain areas, you moved onto newer areas.

Eventually, while sneaking around one place that seemed to have an occasional bit of activity, you hear some guards talking about the trolls they had locked up there, to be sent off at some point. They talked about who would be best to sell off and some of their qualities.

One of the ones they mention immediately grabs your attention. They talk about how one of the ones in captivity there was a mutant, and that selling him off would fetch a pretty penny. You immediately gather that this is one of the places you needed to check, because it sounded like they were talking about Karkat.

You hide around for a bit, waiting for the activity around the area to diminish into smaller numbers, until there was an open spot to get to the cells. You make your wake to that spot, and when inside, you still stay low. You didn’t know when and if another guard was going to come in, and you couldn’t risk being caught now by one of them.

You begin your search, and he’s not in the front and main area of the cells. So you keep on searching, until the cells start becoming more separated, more secluded. As if to separate the general ones from the more valuable ones. After a bit, that’s exactly where you find him. In one of the corner, secluded cells. He’s beaten,

He freaks out, once you’ve got his attention and he knows you’re there. He’s trying to stay quiet as to not cause too much noise as an alert, but he was freaked out. He was furious with you for being there, for risking your safety and coming. He tries to tell you, over and over, that you needed to get out of there. It wasn’t safe for you here, that you could get killed, that he’d rather risk being sold off than risk your safety or your life.

You refuse to run away, to leave, to listen to him. You knew what you were heading into, what you could face, what you risked, coming here. You tell him as much too, and you tell him as much. You shut him up with, “I’m not leaving. I can’t let something like this happen to someone I care about and love. I can’t.”

He still seems furious with you for risking this, but he doesn’t argue more, because it was clear you weren’t gonna move on the matter, and he understood where you were coming from to an extent. He eventually, reluctantly agrees to come with you and make an escape.

Your next move is to bust him out, although knowing the destruction would alert the guards. You both would just have to be quick on your feet. You would have had to be, anyway, even if you had been capable of getting him out of the cell itself silently.

After making sure he had the strength and could do this, you do it. With a strong blast of wind, you blast the cell door open. With his hand in yours, you run, but the noise of the blast had caused the guards near enough to hear it to come running after.

You both manage to escape there, but as you’d been told before, Karkat tells you he can’t leave yet. That there’s something that he couldn’t leave without grabbing first. He refuses to listen otherwise, and so you give into it, asking him where you both needed to go.

You had to head to the nearby warehouse. Valuables were kept there, and apparently what he needed had been there. You both rush off, quickly and carefully, and once there, he searches around for what he needs. What it turns out to be is his sickle, his normal clothes, and more importantly (or at least in the way he saw it) the necklace with charms on it that you had given him. 

Sweet as it was, you didn’t have the time to be emotional about it. You had the items he needed to get, and you had weapons, so you needed to get out of there quickly.

Even though you both try to make a speedy escape, you both end up surrounded by the guards, in all directions. Not wanting to give up though, you both begin to fight them, trying to fight you way through them and win. Karkat had his sickle, so he was able to defend himself, and you had a weapon you found in the warehouse, as well as your wind powers to defend you. You should be able to defend yourself

You didn’t really know what you were in for.

They’re much stronger than you’d anticipated. They had brute strength, as well as weapons, on them and they were beginning to show up in larger numbers. You both just had to power through it though, you had to make it out alive. You had to bring him home.

As you keep on fighting, the number of guards increases, and the ability to defend yourself well and stay strong starts to go downhill. You were still able to hold up for a bit, but as you started taking hits, you started becoming a bit weaker. Karkat was taking hits too -- and he was already bruised up from when he was in the cell, so all of this wouldn’t have helped him.

The damage you both start taking ends up being too much. Your weapon gets thrown out of your hand by one of them, and as you keep trying to fight with your wind, your energy starts to hit the floor. You’d expended so much of your energy that they end up being able to grab you and keep a hold on you, with not much ability to fight back. That doesn’t mean you don’t still try to kick around and break free though, because they hadn’t quite tried to kill you yet.

Karkat had been holding up better than you had been, despite his previous injuries from his original capture. But when he notices you’ve been captured by them, he’s trying to fight his way through the guards to you, to try and help you break free. It causes him to take more damage, too.

He wastes too much energy and strength trying to get to you. As he hits a certain point, group of guards become able to grab him as they had you. As soon as they’ve got a hold on him, though, a bigger troll, one  that looked to be more in-charge, steps forward and towards Karkat. Not towards you first, but him. They were wielding a weapon with a blade, in their hands.

You thrash around more than you had been before, trying to break free of the grasp they had on you. You knew what they were about to do. You couldn’t let this happen.

The guard steps closer to him, and readies the weapon in his hands. No, no, no! “You weren’t even worth all of this, filthy mutant,” is what the troll mutters before charging forward and shoving the blade of their weapon deep into Karkat’s chest.

"NO!” You scream out, shooting up from your sleep. The power of the your wind in the room picks up, due to the fear and panic that courses through you as you bolt up. It takes you a second to fully realize that you were awake... that it was just a dream.

But oh, god, the pain that ending left was so real. You couldn’t stand it. You couldn’t handle the image it left you with. You had not only failed, but because you failed, you watched one of your partners, who you loved and cared about more than words could describe, get killed.

As that image from the dream burns in your mind, your heart sinks in your chest. The strong wind around you calms into a cold breeze, as the panic turns into guilt and heartbreak from the dream.

Your head droops and you bring your hands to your now aching chest and clench your shirt. All you could do, with what it had left you seeing and feeling, was cry.