#I'm such a wymack

[giftedpoison]

So I don't know what to do with this information so buckle up I guess.

Hi, my name is Eve and in my real life I used to work at a grocery store (it's a chain but not necessarily a national one so i won't be saying their name for purposes of anonymity).

I worked there from the age of 16 (was hired December 18th 2016). Eventually started working in their shopping department for curbside pickup in 2019, when the department opened. Became a supervisor in the department in November of 2021 (after doing the job for a few years being paid as a part time shopper rather than supervisor) then i was promoted to Lead of the department in Feb. of 2022 (which essentially meant I ordered supplies, dealt with managing a group of 13 individuals and sat in on corporate meetings and the like).

That's my history. I quit in September of 2023. Because the job was trying to kill us all and I hit my breaking point. (My breaking point was when 5 of my employees including myself nearly passed out from over exertion. I say nearly because I forced them to stop and eat and hydrate when it got too bad, i was fighting for management to give me help so we could get breaks out but they wouldn't listen and I ended up absolutely word vomiting my building frustrations with their management style that I had been actively fighting against for well over a year at that point.)

I know I'm a good leader, but management increasingly thought of me as naive and too soft as a leader because I refused to step back and allow abuse of my workers for corporate profit. Despite the fact I would show them statistics and give them nuanced balanced perspectives they let their own biases get in the way.

Three of my shoppers were their main targets. Two of which were neurodivergent and came from a not so great background. The third one wasn't neurodivergent but she came from a broken background that involved drugs and alcohol as a minor she was 19.

I think about the third girl so often. Because I remember she wasn't shopping at the speed they wanted her too (aka the goal for the whole department) which was a valid critique and the manager basically played bad cop which was fine. And I remember after this I was working with this girl and we were running behind that day, to no fault of hers, and i had to come help her finish her shop so we could prepare for the customers to arrive.

And she was panicked. Saying she's really trying and she's afraid she's going to get fired and a bunch of other things as i'm helping her. And I looked at her and tell her. "Listen I've seen you're numbers recently, they aren't where they need to be but i can see you steadily increasing if you keep increasing no matter what the number is by the time management says something again. I will back you. It is okay and me helping you right now is not your fault." I found out recently she no longer shows up to work. And she basically quit. Which was probably in part due to personal issues like the fact her best friend was in coma at one point. And such. And she also got jumped in the parking lot by some girls and the police had to be called. But I can't help but to wonder if I had still been there, if she would have felt safe to keep coming back knowing that there was at least one person in charge in her corner. (now, I know for a fact there is none because I was a one man defense line)

I can't help but to think about my one coworker, one of the neurodivergent ones, who is still routinely get shit about his out of stock list despite back when I was still working there I literally showed them that his numbers averaged out to be about the same as everyone else.

I'm not going to say any of the three were perfect, they didn't always do their best and were sometimes unreliable. But did they deserve to get emotionally abused by one of the supervisors (who i reported over five times, and who also once threatened me but management refused to deal with)? No. Did they deserve to be treated like less than assets when two of them used to come in all the time on their day off to help until they got fed up with being treated like they were lesser?

I think about the time I fought against a capacity increase (literally one of the hours we could have 13 orders drop for one hour with only 2 hours to do it, and maybe 2-3 shoppers to execute it, and that's assuming we had the previous hour completed and actually had a full 2 hours). And then when it went into effect anyway despite me shoving numbers at every higher up I could about how it didn't work for what we had to work with. My one manager told me that's just how you build a business, increasing volume. So I told him it's also how you burn one down. He didn't have a reply.

I asked politely from the store manager that if we called for help, if there was no other employee who could, a manager should help us. And he returned with hedging and saying that "well if there's only one manager on duty that's not really feasible". Even when there were three managers on duty and two of them were standing around talking they did nothing. But don't worry if it was register front end drowning two managers plus a stocker would come to the rescue.

And prior to all this, prior to my Lead position, I didn't know I could be an effective and intelligent leader. Now I know I can, but absolutely no one will listen to me and will routinely talk down on me when they were so interested in me, that they fought corporate when corporate didn't want to give me the promotion and gave me a bigger raise than was protocol because they believed in me. And that belief went down the drain immediately when they realized I would not blindly fall in line.

I feel so bad that I'm no longer on the front lines defending them, and that I failed to give management one last piece of my mind like I was going to, but I know if I stayed there it would have eaten me alive and that it was slowly killing me.

I don't know where to go from here. How to live knowing I have enough intelligence to lead and be fair and nuanced, but having no where to put that to use. I don't know what to do anymore but this one haunts me.

And like I'm not gonna say I was perfect and I definitely didn't know the answers to everything. And I did have my issues. (I was angry but refused to take it out on anyone, I sometimes got so overwhelmed I had to ask someone to take over while I laid on the floor for a second to regain perspective, and I would often have to sit down because I would become light headed and dizzy from the heat outside). But at the very least I fought for them ya know?

[joejhang]

kevin and andrew are genuinely such fascinating characters to me because we have literally never gotten anything from their pov's yet they remain two of the most relevant, involved, important and main characters in this universe, but all we've really seen of them are them from other people's perspectives. like yes, we have them from the perspectives of the people who love and know them the best (jean, jeremy and wymack for kevin, aaron, bee, renee and neil for andrew) but we still don't/can't know them fully because we have genuinely never read anything from their perspective. isn't that just insane.

[joanofexys]

Kevin Day falls into Raven habits without even realizing it. Despite his best efforts to adjust to a normal life. He runs laps to keep himself awake because he's never quite adjusted to 24 hour days. He struggles to eat anything he perceives as unhealthy despite his dependence on alcohol. When he gets frustrated he plays with a brutality ingrained in him since he was old enough to hold a racquet. He refuses to go anywhere without Andrew, without a partner. Do you think when he wakes up in the middle of the night, to a dark room, he looks over at the other bed expecting Riko to be there? Do you think he traces the ghost of a 2 on his cheek, hidden beneath a chess piece tattoo, out of habit? Do you think despite being a fox he feels as though he'll always be one of them? That, despite it all, he'll always be a Raven?

[bisexualchaosdemon]

I'm thinking about Abby and Bee pre:foxes. One a physio nurse, and the other a juvie therapist, but still in touch. I wonder how Bee reacted when Abby told her she was leaving her job to help her patient-turned-partner with this mildly insane endeavour. I wonder how long it was before Bee decided that she wanted to help as well, and whose idea it was.

I just find Abby and Bee fascinating. Both saw what Wymack was doing and said yes, I want to be a part of this.

[quiescentdestiny]

another bonus content thing:

The throwaway line from Wymack that is basically him just calling Andrew out in his head for thinking Kevin is hot lmao.

[starregulus]

Thinking about how the Foxes constantly let Andrew play games while going through withdrawal and no one probably said anything about it

Would they have let Matt play like that? Or even Seth?

And the way they thought the drugs "helped him" and didn't really want him to come off of them even though he willinging put himself through hell for a game they know he doesn't like (eventhough he does) just for a moment of sobriety. a moment of having control over himself and his thoughts

[afurtivecake]

ok I'm still obsessed with the idea of Kevin having a bit of a reputation for violence even before joining the Foxes.

There's this line from Renee in Son Nefes the moment the Foxes find out about Kevin :

"Kevin wasn't exactly a role model"

Like...these are Foxes Kevin's being compared to. If you can't even be considered a role model to three douchebag strikers with attitude problems from the most divisive team in the NCAA despite being a much superior player... you might have some Issues (TM). Also this is coming from Renee, a girl who knows the depths of violence and has ideas about what being truly good means. If she's describing Kevin as 'a bit iffy', I'm kind of inclined to believe her.

[purpleelephantsocks]

You ever think about how both Wymack and Andrew are the type of people to act grumpy and annoyed and irritated but they actually love you so so so so much, and will quietly give you everything you need to be okay. If you try to thank them they will treat that as a bigger inconvenience than the help they just gave you. They will call you an idiot and a waste of space but they will drive to pick you up in the middle of the night if you call.

[dicttheo]

having read those new bonus chapters, nora just gave us a delightful look into the psyches of at least five characters in a way we've never seen before (Betsy, Wymack, and Aaron, ofc, but also Andrew and Kevin). what are you hiding, Wymack? what are those flashbacks about? Kevin was conceived on an exy court??? Aaron and bee are both calculating assholes and i love it. Kevin's alcoholism and relationship with Andrew??? and speaking of andrew, Wymack clocking his sexuality immediately??? Nora you're incredible, tysm

[whataboutnoope]

Saw an edit on the clock app in which Wymack called both Neil and Kevin his sons and I just want to say to whoever put that thought in my brain: you get yelled at and later a kiss for this one (i can't seem to find it rn, hope it'll get back on my fyp at some point.)

[mapbottakeamap]

Neil is so real for this

[seafoamandtragedy]

[joanofexys]

I think what bugs me the most about what happened today other than the fact that I was the one getting vagued is the fact that the conversation got warped into one that is about morality and not simply theorizing on The Ravens and how The Nest works

my original post essentially said two things:

The Ravens are victims and to erase that because they don't fit the model of the perfect victim and some have even become abusers erases all nuance from that portion of Jean and Kevin's lives and the surrounding discussion

Cults are weird. I grew up in one. And it is very easy to manipulated by one and to feel trapped and to also be completely in the dark about what is happening in a cult even when you're in the heart of it

I did not say anyone had to forgive the Ravens (they're fictional characters. fake people. that wasn't even on my mind) or that any of them are by any means good people. i also didn't say that they were all oblivious or that there weren't some of them that were abusive. I also never made this a conversation about morality and whether or not the Ravens are good or bad people for staying in a cult.

For some reason that got warped into what we are currently discussing and involved some highly insensitive language surrounding cult victims including things being said like it's not crazy to expect people to walk away from things like scholarships, financial security, or career security if it means being complacent in abuse and that it's "just basic morals".

And I'm sorry for getting personal on this but as a cult survivor I think that's one of the most upsetting and insensitive things I have heard come from these conversations today.

It doesn't matter what x thing is whether it's money or food or housing or a career. In a cult they use whatever it is you need and make you dependent on them for it. Also with the Ravens in particular keep in mind it wasn't simply being complacent in abuse. They were being abused.

If you have been in a similar situation, if you are grappling with the guilt of leaving a cult or anything like a cult, know that you are not a moral failure for having stayed for as long as you did. You are not moral failure for staying for whatever reason you did. It is not just basic morals when it comes to living in a cult. Morality becomes warped and the concept of what is immoral and moral is something completely different and that is intentional.

It doesn't matter whether you think the Ravens were aware of Riko's abuse or not. Having differing opinions on that is completely okay. What you don't get to do is turn it into a conversation about morality where you then get to insult cult survivors like we're evil people for not walking away at the first red flag because we needed something. Because we were in survival mode and we weren't able to focus on other people.

We still don't have all the details on how the Ravens function or the type of abuse players even outside of the perfect court face other than it was extreme. It's fun to theorize. And it's okay if people disagree. But if you can't be mindful about where your opinion switches from theory to some huge declaration of moral high ground then you've lost the fucking plot.

I would love to talk more about the Ravens and my theories on them. I would love to talk more about how cults work and why I think it's possible they were completely unaware of Riko's abuse. There's a lot of nuance in those conversations and I would love to take the time to treat them with the care they deserve. I'm also still incredibly upset by a lot of the things said today and I can acknowledge that this is a topic that is very personal to me. So this is me opening up that can of worms (again) and I'm more than happy to have those conversations and answer questions but please be patient with me because if it isn't already obvious this is a topic that is incredibly sensitive to me

[bisexualchaosdemon]

(The King's Men, ch.9)

I love so much about this scene, but I cannot get over Wymack saying Neil's birthday was in March. He knew not to say January without really being asked.

[emerdoodls]

unfortunately I have incurable I hate everything I draw disease but here’s this

I’ve been calling this one “local man who has never had a sunburn in his life takes fair skinned child to the beach, forgets sunscreen”

but yeah heres baby jean, baby kevin and wymack :)