#how to hurt the whole discord server in a dozen words or less

[little-miss-doe]

"Real isn't how you're made, it's a thing that happens to you."

~ The Velveteen Rabbit, by Margery Williams

[sunlight-moonrise]

The Law of Attraction (Reid Imagine)

Summary: Reader cannot understand how Spencer is in a relationship with someone who is his complete opposite. 

A/N: Hello Everyone!!! Here’s another story from the secret-fic-swap in the Discord server. I tried my hand at a new genre and I like how it came out. A big thank you to @imagining-in-the-margins​ for helping me make this real nice for y’all (this story was also written to her). Enjoy!

Category: Hurt/Comfort

Content Warnings: If you’re a fan of Max or Maxcer, this may not be the story for you. Sacrifices needed to be made for this story to be told. 

Word Count: 4.2K

Masterlist

The thought that the concept of ‘opposites attract’ was only true when it comes to physics. After all, the comparison of people to magnets doesn’t make any sense. If two people are together, there should be some similarities to build an established relationship, right? Without that foundation, the structure will surely crumble back into the fragmented pieces that created it, leaving them cracked and weaker for it.

Compatibility is necessary, yet there is none whenever I look at them. This is the fourth function that he has brought her to, and with each event, I find it harder to look their way. But when I do find them among the crowd, I can’t look away. Like a car crash or thunderstorm ripping tree roots from the ground.

It doesn’t make sense to me, why on earth would Spencer Reid be with a girl like her.

“If you keep staring at her, she might drop dead,” said a sarcastic voice, breaking me out of my reverie. I turned to see Tara with an amused smile occupying her face.

“I just don’t get it,” I mumbled, focusing my attention on the drink in my hand.

“What’s not to get?” she asked, glancing over at the couple in question. “They seem cute together.”

“They have nothing in common. He might as well be talking to some random person in this bar.”

I chugged the remainder of my beverage with desperate hope that the alcohol will somehow make things better in this situation. It didn’t.

“You sound bitter.”

“I am not bitter,” I bit back.

“I didn’t say you were, I said you sound.”

I didn’t respond to her because deep down I knew she was right. I just fiddled with the straw in my now empty glass as Tara continued, “Look, they both like coffee and going to the park, that’s something.”

I couldn’t stop the laugh that escaped my throat at the thought.

“So do half the people on the administration floor, he might as well have a harem if those are the main qualifications.”

“So what type of person should Spencer Reid have?” she asked, an eyebrow arching up as she focused her attention on me.

“I don’t know. Someone who is family-oriented and loves kids. Someone who doesn’t judge him for his idiosyncrasies. Someone who listens to his rambles and actually responds to them. Someone who he can escape to when things get too tough. Someone who understands when to give him space but will continue to support him unconditionally. Someone who can challenge him and make each day exciting and interesting. Someone who can ke—”

“Whoa there, I didn’t think you were going to give me a whole novel.” If she thought that was a novel, then the rest of what I wanted to say would be considered an encyclopedia. The only one that Spencer would never read.  

“I just want him to be happy,” I relented.

It was the simple truth. Everyone deserves some sort of contentment in their life, but with everything that Spencer has gone through in the past, his happiness should be at the forefront. He always put others before himself. It was time that someone prioritizes his wants and needs for a change.

“And she doesn’t make him happy?”

Not in the slightest. 

But I didn’t want to say that. I was sure half of the team already thought, or knew, that I was infatuated with him. But I didn’t need to give them the satisfaction of a confirmation by talking about this any further. The looks that Tara had been giving me the past few minutes validated my belief that I didn’t need to dig myself into a deeper hole.

“Maybe,” I said, hoping to put an end to the topic.

But just then, I heard a laugh despite how noisy the place was. I knew without a doubt that was Spencer’s laugh – it was the only sound that would demand my attention that quickly. It was the one he used when he felt uncomfortable.

“Excuse me, Tara.”

I didn’t give her a chance to reply before I hopped off the barstool and made my way to where Spencer and his girl were as casually as possible. Jennifer and Penelope were also with them, and it seems as if the three ladies were doing most of the talking.

“….like kids someday?” I heard Pen say. I didn’t need to hear the beginning of the sentence to know what it was about.

“Ehh, certainly not. My nephew is a handful as is, I don’t think I need any more than that one in my life,” she laughed. She, of course, being the ever loving, ever annoying, Max. A quick glance at Spencer's face confirmed that he was bothered by the subject being discussed. If the rest of the ladies were a bit more sober, they’d probably have seen it too.

“Hey guys,” I interrupted, taking my previous seat next to JJ, “I ordered some water for us and some appetizers. Tara is going to bring it over when it is ready.”

Cheers and thank you were shouted across the small table, but there was only one face I cared to pay attention to. Spencer’s mouth was quirked in a sad smile that was meant to hide the discomfort that had already taken root in his heart like an invasive vine.

“Did you place my fries order?” Max asked, garnering my attention. As much as I wanted to ignore her, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t openly be a bitch to her, no matter how much she irked me. She hadn’t done anything wrong. Other than stealing the affections of a man I’d never actually pursued, that is. But I couldn’t really blame her for that one, right? I should’ve jumped on the opportunity before. It was my fault.

“Yup,” I answered quickly with a small fake smile before focusing on the wooden décor of the bar.

“So any plans for Halloween? Assuming we don’t get called in for a case of course,” JJ asked the table.

“There is this pop-up haunted house coming that weekend.” Spencer said, his voice laced with that childlike excitement that made my heart race, “It is near the annual fair, so I’m going to try and do both.”

“Awww, that’s a cute date idea.”

The table was silent for a moment before Max announced, “I probably won’t go. I am not a big fan of anything spooky or… horror. I’ll leave all of that to this guy.”

The table shared an awkward laugh in a poor attempt to lighten the mood.

“Anyway,” I coughed out, attempting to save this poor conversation, “you guys need to hear this terrible joke the bartender told me. So basically, this screwdriver walks into a bar….” and just like that, the topic had been changed.

Tara joined us shortly after and the conversation remained lighthearted for the remainder of the evening. We later said our farewells and readied ourselves to go back home. While I should’ve been sad to leave him, I couldn’t help but feel a bitter joy from the fact that Spencer and Max didn’t talk directly to each other for the rest of the night.

●●●

It’s been a couple of weeks since the last team outing. Rossi must’ve missed us, because he decided to host a dinner at his place to celebrate the ending of a long and tough case. No one was going to pass up the opportunity of free food and wine, especially after dealing with a bunch of cops and detectives with entire tree trunks up their asses.

I was the last to arrive, which was not surprising since I live the furthest away from Rossi. Krystall welcomed and settled me in while informing me where everyone was. What I assumed was a team gathering turned out to be a whole party. There were definitely more than two dozen people occupying the space.

Good god. 

“What’s all this?” I asked as I greeted Rossi in the, thankfully, empty kitchen. Because, of course, Rossi wouldn’t be Rossi if he didn’t take care of all the hors d'oeuvres himself.

“Krystall wanted to celebrate our anniversary,” he sighed, as if this ordeal was somehow troublesome. I had to roll my eyes; he wasn’t fooling anyone. We all knew that Rossi would move mountains for his wife.

Their love was pure and genuine, a perfect example of two people meeting again at the right time and sharing something wonderful with one another. As I reminisced on their beautiful wedding day, a thought came to my head.

“Isn’t your first anniversary coming up in a few months?”

“That’s for our second marriage, this is for the first.” Rossi simply stated with a proud smirk, as if it was standard to celebrate any and all anniversaries in life. I supposed that for him, it was.

“Why do I get the feeling that this was more your idea than Krystall’s?”

“Guilty.”

Classic. Well, I wasn’t going to tell a man what he should celebrate nor how to do so. I wasn’t going to ruin any opportunities to eat some fresh crostini.

Once I made my way back out into the main room, I was able to find my team within seconds. My eyes instantly landed on Spencer’s tall and lanky form. And I would’ve been excited for that, if it weren’t for the familiar woman standing beside him.

Max was there. Hooray.

Usually, I was able to properly prepare myself for seeing her. It actually, unfortunately, took a lot of effort to not be openly hostile to someone I dislike. It wasn’t something I was proud of, but it was true. Typically in a situation like this, I’d avoid the person all night. However, I wasn’t going to allow her presence to influence the night, much less stop me from spending time with one of my closest friends.

“Hey guys.”

“Ahh, you’re finally here,” squealed Penelope, “I already grabbed your favorite drink!” She stepped aside to make room for me in the small gathered circle before handing me the glass.

“So what did I miss?”

They all caught me up on the harmless gossip circulating around the office and the new happenings emerging in everyone’s lives. Everything was going well until I heard the next words from Max, words that felt like a bucket of ice water and lead being poured over my head.

“Well, Spencer and I are moving in together.”

Time slowed down, I was sure it had. Because I was able to gauge everything in a matter of seconds. Tara’s concerning glance my way, her hand reaching out and retreating as if to hold me. Penelope’s joyful appearance over the news, her arms rising quickly causing her wine to slightly spill on Rossi’s floor. Matt expressing congratulations as he roughly patted Spencer on the back.

And Spencer….

Spencer looked like he rather be anywhere but here. His lips were drawn in a too tight smile that I knew was far from authentic. He was tapping his heel against the floor and wringing his hands together.

If this was merry news from the two of them, why did he look like he swallowed a spiked fruit?

The loud clanging of metal against glass brought everyone’s attention to the noisy source. Time returned back to its normal pace at Rossi’s call, thanking everyone for joining in on the celebration and announcing that the food was ready in the dining room.

While everyone cheered and made their way towards the ornate display, I headed to the balcony. It was too hot, too stuffy, too loud inside the house. There was one too many people there.

As soon as I passed through the double doors, I took a deep breath of cool, refreshing air. Everything around me felt muffled. Like I had stumbled into a small pocket universe that only differed from ours by a few notches on the volume knob.

I was thinking too many things, and none of them adding up or making sense in my head. How do you move in with someone you’ve only known for such a short amount of time? What was he going to do with his apartment? With his personal belongings that were scattered and settled on crowded shelves? Why did he look so uncomfortable when she announced it? Did he not want us to know? Did he want to say it himself?

“What are you doing out here?”

As if being brought back to reality by the very same hypnotist who enchanted me in the first place, I became aware that I was not the only one on the balcony. I turned to look at Spencer, taking in his disheveled and tired appearance.

“I just needed some space. I was feeling a bit crowded.” It wasn’t a lie, but my companion and I both knew there was a lot more than just that. Trying to keep the attention off me, I asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Checking on you. I saw you come out here dressed like that and wondered what would drag you out into the freezing cold.”

Now that he mentioned it, the breeze was hitting hard. I didn’t notice my body trembling until now. It is funny how you can’t feel much when lost in your own thoughts. The pain was a welcome distraction, I supposed.

Spencer stood next to me and shrugged off the suit jacket he was wearing. I opened my mouth to refuse, but he gave me a pointed look before I could. Instead, I accepted the warm jacket over my body. The scent of cinnamon and spice immediately enveloped my form and I tried to hide the way my inhales grew deeper. Trying to keep him as close as I could for however long he would allow. He kept his hands on my arms, rubbing them up and down the sleeves of the jacket to instill some heat in me.  

“So whatever happened to taking it slow?” I asked bluntly, keeping my eyes on the interesting speck of dirt that had ended up on my shoe. I didn’t feel bad about getting to the point -- There was no way I could subtly ask him what the deal was, and I’d rather not beat around the bush.

“Well, after the whole situation that happened, sh— we decided to pick up the pace of things,” he spoke lowly, as if he was unsure of the words coming out of his mouth.

“Has she even met Diana? Or know about her?” I instantly regretted asking, the angry look he shot my way had me feeling remorseful. But it also answered my question.

Max only knew the surface level of Spencer. She wasn’t aware of all the good, bad, beautiful, and ugly layers that comes with a man like him. She wasn’t the only one to blame, but I wondered how a profiler couldn’t tell that he was hiding those parts from her because he didn’t want to share them with her. He didn’t want her to know, because the knowing made it real.

“I just want the best for you.”

His irritated expression dissolved into a defeated one as he released the breath he was holding.

“I know, I know. It’s just…”

He stopped talking, appearing scared to share his opinions and feelings with me before he remembered that, unlike Max, he never had to hide things from me. He didn’t want to.

“It’s just…” I prodded, hoping he would continue with what he was going to say.

But he just stayed stuck there, opening and closing his mouth multiple times. I could practically see the cogs in his brain whirling as he properly tried to explain. “Well, the thing is that Ma—”

“Spencer?”

We sharply turned our heads to see Max and Tara staring at us. It wasn’t until that moment that I remembered our position. With Spencer’s hands rubbing tenderness heat onto my arms, his jacket over my shoulders and our bodies pressed together to keep warm.

It would be one thing if everything was settled, but this situation was anything but. Max had every reason to be angry. This wasn’t a new thing to her. So when she turned around, she stomped away fueled by the belief that she’d nearly caught her boyfriend committing adultery. Again.

“Fuck,” I heard the man in front of me whisper as he released me back into the cold night.

Still, as he left, he looked back at me. His eyes burned into mine up until he tore them away, making his final decision and hastily running from the balcony. Away from me. Towards her.

Tara and I shared the silence, but she looked at me with those inquisitive eyes, as if I was a client seeking out therapy from her.  

“What?” I hissed, “We were just talking.” I refused to feel guilty over something that I didn’t do. If anyone had done anything, it was Spencer. But at the same time, I didn’t think he was entirely wrong, either.  

“I didn’t say anything,” she muttered, holding her hands up high as a sign of surrender.

“You didn’t have to, I can feel the judgment from here.”

“Look, I’m not judging you. But I do want you to put yourself in Max’s shoes. You guys were gone for a while and she finds you two all over each other.”

“What are you talking about, Tara? Christ, it’s not like I was fucking him on the balcony!”

Although I didn’t intend for my words to be humorous, Tara laughed. I was conflicted on whether it was at me or with me, but it ended up amounting to nothing, anyway.

“Look, the night is young and you need to relax. Come back inside, enjoy the party, and don’t let them bring you down. At least for the next few hours.”

She was right, as she usually was. It was why I usually sought her out as the voice of reason; I knew that despite everything, she would always have my best interest at heart.

“Okay,” I agreed before following her back into the chaotic fray.

I heeded her advice and avoided the couple for the remainder of the night. Shockingly, it was pretty easy, but I was sure it was because they were avoiding me too. There were times, lots of times, where Spencer and I made eye contact, but we’d just as quickly look away, as if we were ashamed of what we have done.

All we did was talk. So why did it feel like something more?

There were also times when I made eye contact with Max, but instead of shame, there was anger and contempt. If looks could kill, like Tara had suggested, I was sure my heart would have given out.

It wasn’t until later in the evening that I saw Max take a cab home while Spencer was still inside the house. No one else but me noticed that they didn’t leave the party together.

●●●

I hadn’t seen Spencer since the incident at Rossi’s a few weeks ago. He had to take his mandatory sabbatical leave and I had to take an abrupt trip back home. What used to be almost daily texts between us became nonexistent in a matter of hours. It was a terrible predicament that I was hoping to fix soon.

As I arrived, I spotted him at his desk. For a long time, I stood there staring at him. If he wasn’t nose deep in a bunch of files, I was sure he would’ve seen me, too. I contemplated on how I should go up to him, but nothing I could think of was good enough to say. 

Hey, I have your jacket, I took it to the dry cleaner’s, so it is all clean. Rid of me like you wanted to be. 

Hi, how were the lectures this time around? Still have a bunch of teens crushing on you?

What’s up, it’s been a while, do you want to get lunch during the break?

I hated that things were awkward, even though I was pretty sure that I was the only one that was making it so. I should have just gone up to him, greeted him, and acted like everything was normal, because everything was normal. Right?

Just when I was about to do so, Emily called us in for a meeting. Impeccable timing.

We had a serial killer case in Louisville, Kentucky. My situation with Spencer was going to the backburner.

During our stay in Louisville, Spencer and I barely interacted. We exchanged notes and passed long messages, but that’s pretty much it. I wasn’t surprised. Our specialties don’t really correlate when we are working on a case. Anytime I did catch some free time, I’d look his way, longing for the opportunity to speak to him. He didn’t look back.

Then, just as the case ended, another chance presented itself. After five days of hardly any proper rest, we finally found the unsub. Everyone was in their respective room catching up on some much needed sleep. Except for Spencer, whose gangly body was tucked away at the bar by himself, a glass of what appeared to be soda in front of him.

Silently, I took the seat next to him, and for a few minutes, everything was quiet. But unlike the usual, comfortable quiet, it was torturous.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, I’m fine.”

I stared at him, letting the silent communication denote the fact that I knew he was lying to me. Spencer released a sigh and looked at me with eyes more intoxicating than any whiskey that shared their color.

“Actually, no, I’m not okay.”

I was going to ask him what was wrong or if there was anything I could do to help, but before I had the chance to do so, he hastily answered the question I hadn’t asked.

“Max and I broke up.”

I stared at him, my face and mind blank as I tried to comprehend what he’d said. That Max and Spencer broke up. They were no longer together. Spencer was single.

I thought that if this ever happened, I would be happy, elated, jumping at the chance to take her place by his side. But I felt none of those things.

“What happened?” I didn’t want to appear nosy or meddlesome, but I needed to know.

“We were fighting a lot, and I couldn’t take it.”

“Oh.”

“We were… actually fighting about you.”

I sharply turned my head at him, both intrigued and disturbed by the implication that I had anything to do with the failure of their relationship.

“What? What about me?”

“She thought I liked you,” he said while staring straight back at me, daring me to scan through each fleck of gold and green to ensure that he was telling the truth. But his hazel eyes expressed nothing but honesty as he continued, “and she was right. I do.”

“Y-you do?”

All he could do was nod his head, lifting his hand and catching a loose strand of hair before tucking it behind my ear.

“Can I try something?” Spencer shyly requested.

Once again, the universe felt different. I held my breath, trying to wake from the dream. Although he didn’t say it, I had an idea of what he wanted. If the hand on the side of my face and the staring at my lips were anything to go by, I knew what was going to happen next.

I nodded back and closed my eyes. A few seconds passed, the sweetest kind of anticipation. But then I felt the gentle pressure of his lips against my own, sweet and tender. He moved his head to get a better angle while I brought my hands up to cup his face. The roughness of his stubble against the tip of my fingers was a perfect contrast to the softness of him. I could taste the soda he was drinking on his tongue and breathed in the cinnamon scent that seemed sunken into his skin.

When we pulled away, it was full of hesitation. All it took was one look for us to know we couldn’t do this. Not now, not yet. He was still healing from the recent break up and I didn’t want to be a rebound. I didn’t want us to resent one another for jumping into a relationship so soon. We weren’t ready.

We sat there in relative silence, taking in everything that has happened.

“Maybe one day,” he paused “one day we can give it a chance.”

“Yes. I’d like that.” I beamed at him, “And I look forward to that day. Until then, we remain as friends.”

He returned my smile and I realized that it had been a while since I’ve seen his real smile. I missed it so much.

“Friends,” he confirmed.

And for the first time in a long time, I felt relief and comfort. Because I knew everything was going to be okay. I had hope that someday Spencer will get the happily ever after he deserves and he’ll get it with me by his side. One day.

[makeste]

BnHA Chapter 259: Jakku General Hospital

Previously on BnHA: We chilled with Hawks and Twice, who filled us in on the various different facets of Pliff’s plan to fuck over the world. For starters there are like a dozen new bad guys who are each heading different Pliff regiments, just in case anyone forgot that this is a literal army we’re dealing with here. Hawks also reminded us of the fact that Twice can clone basically any one of the bad guys as many times as he wants now, so that’s a nicely terrifying thought to sit and mull over. We learned that once Tomura is done powering up, the villains intend to attack all over the country simultaneously and basically destroy society as we know it. Oh and also kill all the heroes of course. But I think we already knew that. Anyway, so the one bright side in all of this is that Twice naively let it slip to Hawks where Tomura was currently undergoing his Frankenstein procedure. And so the chapter ended with basically all of the heroes in Japan launching a surprise attack in the mountains of Kyoto, while the kids waited on standby to help with the evacuations. And I know that doesn’t sound very safe, but... well... shit.

Today on BnHA: A quiet morning in the Kyoto suburb of Jakku. All is peaceful -- or so it seems. Little does the elderly CEO of Jakku General Hospital (a stand-up citizen, philanthropist, and caretaker of orphans all across the country) know that lying in wait just outside his doors is a group of wicked and immoral HEROES ready to -- okay lol you know what, I can’t. Not sure what I was really going for there anyway. So! Meanwhile in the woods outside the ol’ villain hotel, a second group of heroes led by Edgeshot and featuring several child heroes in training, including KAMINARI WHO WAS LITERALLY JUST BORN YESTERDAY AND SHOULD BE AT HOME IN HIS NURSERY WATCHING PAW PATROL AND NOT OUT HERE IN THE WOODS WHERE HE IS IN TERRIBLE DANGER, is gathered and ready to attack the League’s main forces. So things kick off with Death Arms apprehending the traitorous Slidin’ Go, while elsewhere the heroes bust into Jakku General Hospital to capture Ujiko. Show of hands, who here thinks this is going to go smoothly? ...Yep. Yeah. That’s what I thought.

okay guys, before we get started I’m gonna answer a couple of relevant asks from last week. first:

I’m almost hesitant to talk about this, because I’m paranoid that Viz and co. could pounce on these sites again at any moment, and so I feel like this sort of thing is better left to private messages and discord servers. but I guess one little mention of it won’t hurt. so the site currently doing the scanlations is readheroacademia.com, which has been around for a while. and there are several other sites which also host the new chapters and have all of the old chapters archived as well. kissmanga is a big one which I know a lot of people use, but my personal favorite is readmha.com (idk, I just feel like its layout is... cleaner? if that makes any sense)

also do keep in mind that all of these sites are pretty ad-heavy, so I wouldn’t recommend visiting without a good adblocker at the ready (I generally use Chrome on both desktop and mobile, and have uBlock Origin and Disable HTML5 Autoplay enabled on my desktop browser). that being said, I’ve never had any issues myself

good question! I was actually thinking about doing a weekly follow-up post on Sundays after the official Viz translation comes out, but obviously I did not end up doing that last week lol. so now I’m thinking it might be easier for me to just post any subsequent thoughts/remarks in the following week’s chapter recap, since I’m already committed to doing those anyway and so it makes it harder to flake out

so that said, my one follow-up thought about chapter 258 is that the fan scanlation seems to have mistranslated that whole “AFO’s resurgence” part. in Viz’s version Hawks was instead saying that the PLF’s plans would “throw the world into chaos and enthrone Shigaraki atop the rubble.” and he then referred to Tomura as the second coming of All for One. sooooo, pretty much exactly the opposite of the other translation lol. this is a big blow to my continued effort to search for evidence that AFO is gonna come back and be the final villain, but I am still not deterred. we will continue to fight on until AFO either actually dies, or does come back like I keep predicting he will! please try to work with me a little better here, AFO

one other thing, instead of “New World Movement”, Viz used the same “Vanguard Action” regiment name that was used during the forest training camp arc. Caleb said that the wording (“kaibyaku koudou”) was exactly the same. so I’ll be using that too moving forward. I guess that means that Pliff is still on the menu though, pity

anyway so let’s get started now

so it’s a house... no, holy shit, wait, it’s the house!

THE NEW TODOROKI HOUSE OH MY GOD. ahhhhh lol what the fuck is this. Todofeels coming up to slap me in the face out of nowhere?! here I thought we were gonna just dive right into the Shigaraki raid and the resulting carnage

I’m... not really sure how I feel about this? like, right now I’m not trusting anything Horikoshi does lol. “quiet beginnings” you say? this is just a sneaky new way to bring me more pain. isn’t it

(ETA: I guess “quiet beginnings” also summarizes the other activities of this chapter pretty well. also is that Natsuo’s girlfriend??! at first I thought it was Rei, but those look like quirk-related ears? so Natsu then really is living his best college life huh.)

oh hey everyone it’s a brand new character!

(ETA: wait, is he actually quirkless? or is that just another LIE. you big LIAR.)

I’m so curious what the kanji is for this latest name. can’t wait for Caleb to enlighten us. I wonder if it’s “shi” as in “death”, just like with Tomura/AFO’s name. and no idea at all what “Maruta” means. basically I just want to know if there’s some pun or something, since yet again he’s obviously using a fake alias here

(ETA: so someone informed me in an anon ask that this is a reference to Unit 731, which was a Japanese unit that undertook lethal human experimentation during WWII. basically the people who conducted the experiments referred to their human subjects as “logs” to dehumanize them. and the Japanese word for log is, you guessed it, maruta. so that’s an extremely powerful and disturbing association for this name, and it’s obvious now why Horikoshi went with it.

that said, the anon said that some people were really upset by this name choice, and while I guess I can understand that, I also think that’s kind of the point, though? like, it’s supposed to be horrifying. anyone with a human conscience and any kind of empathy whatsoever should be horrified. and atrocities like that shouldn’t be forgotten, and I actually think that for someone born and raised and living in Japan like Horikoshi to be making a reference to this is fairly ballsy. because my understanding is that, like a lot of Japan’s other war crimes, it was more or less hushed up by the government afterwards, and isn’t really taught in schools or mentioned in history textbooks other than in passing. so while I can understand people maybe finding it disrespectful, I don’t think it was meant as such. it seems to me that if anything, Horikoshi wants people to look into it and be educated about it. and again, obviously he’s associating it here with easily the most reprehensible and morally sickening character in the entire series, which is fitting I think. anyway so those are my thoughts on that.)

anyway, guess what guys? looks like we’ve got ourselves another Star Wars reference! let’s just hope this particular Jakku doesn’t wind up as wrecked as its namesake when all’s said and done. it’s gonna be a loooooong day

you guys. Maruta is such a nice guy

he’s a philanthropist! and he runs orphanages all over the country! wow! what a great person!! and nursing homes as well, where residents presumably die on the regular (of old age and other natural causes no doubt), at which point they are presumably cremated, and I wonder who runs the cremation facilities? I’m sure whoever it is is definitely on the up-and-up

and “quirk-based community healthcare.” I wonder if they’re selective about who they treat based on what their quirks are. all the better to make sure people with particularly strong and/or unique quirks get the specialized treatment they need!

anyway. see, this is more like what I expected. some super dark shit, and finally some answers to a few long-established questions as well, but not without a price. that price being the churning feeling in my gut right now lol. oh man. well I just ate, so that might have something to do with it. but I tell ya, nothing makes you vaguely queasy like trying your best not to think about a massive conspiracy to kidnap and torture innocent children in the pursuit of ultimate power! so anyways I sure do hate this!

fffff like, really hate it. I HATE IT SO MUCH

[reluctantly goes ahead and slides AFO down one notch on my list of people I need to see die the most] well there it is. we have a new champion

so now we’re cutting to a hero briefing!

y’all is that THE SHERIFF. PLEASE. IT’S BEEN SO LONG. BUDDY I MISSED YA

so Nao says he had one of his guys go undercover to investigate, and they found that this hospital’s blueprints included a giant suspicious unlabeled place that nobody knows anything the fuck about

oh my god. you guys. forget Tomura, could that also be where they’re keeping the Noumus?? omg. omg omg omg. omgggggggggggg. omg

-- AHHHHHHHHHH

IF THE NEXT PANEL ISN’T JUST A CHORUS OF EVERYONE IN THE ROOM ALL SAYING “WHAT THE FUCK” SIMULTANEOUSLY, I’M GONNA DEMAND SOME ANSWERS, BECAUSE LET ME TELL YOU, HAVING ALREADY KNOWN ALL ABOUT POOR JOHN-KUN AND ALL THIS FUCKED UP SHIT MYSELF, I STILL AUDIBLY SWORE OUT LOUD. AND YOU KNOW WHAT? I’M GONNA DO IT AGAIN TOO, BECAUSE WHAT THE FUCK

come on, is Pixie Bob the only one of you here with normal human reactions or what?!

RIGHT?! YOU ALL ARE LOOKING AT A TINY MOUND OF FLESH WITH VEINY BULGING EYES JUST OGGLING BLANKLY OUT FROM ITS EXPOSED BRAINS. NOT TO MENTION IT’S GOT TWO OF WHAT VAGUELY RESEMBLE EARS, BUT WHAT I’M PRETTY SURE ARE ACTUALLY NOSES?? AND A SEVERED SPINAL CORD TAIL DANGLING OUT FROM BEHIND. ALL OF WHICH IS PLASTERED TOGETHER LIKE A LUMPY MOLD OF CLAY ATOP TWO CHILD-SIZED LEGS, which are wearing fucking sneakers, with fucking velcro and shit. fuck. fuck

lol Nao

oh yes, not difficult at all. I’m sure he’ll come along real quietly. hey, let me know how that one works out, okay

“we have the trauma of Hosu and Kamino still haunting us.” thanks for that reminder. gonna have another city to add to that list real soon aren’t we. preemptive r.i.p. Jakku

oh man you guys. can you feel this tension building up

interesting how he says “destiny.” I wonder if that’s the actual dialogue. at any rate this overconfidence is terrifying and I would really like for you all to stop jinxing shit my dudes

-- WHAT DID I JUST SAY

holy shit. please tell me this is a separate group from the Endeavor group we saw at the end of the last chapter

but that doesn’t make any sense though, because this group has Midnight and Kamui, two of their deadliest and most efficient capture specialists. not to mention Edgeshot the literal ninja who can break into anywhere. so this really should be the vanguard here based on what I’m seeing, but if that’s the case why are the eighteen-year-old Tamaki and the sixteen-year-old Toadette right there with them?? can we not, you guys. can we not

fucking shit. at least they’ve got Ms. Joke there too to back them up. if we actually get to see her quirk in action I can die happy. and so, presumably, will the villains

so the “hospital team” (is that the Endeavor team??) said they’re gonna eliminate the villains’ warping ability, which presumably means John-kun. do they even know it’s him that does it?? they don’t seem to actually know who Ujiko fucking is so I have my doubts?

on the bright side though, it seems like this Midnight team is actually going to be raiding the mansion, and won’t be involved in the hospital raid. but on the less bright side, the mansion is arguably almost as dangerous. :/ that’s where Twice is!! and probably most of the League! but at least they don’t have a dozen Noumus in the basement just waiting to be unleashed

god. people, if we don’t get moving on this action soon I am going to give myself a damn heart attack. this is way too much suspense for a chill Friday night

son of a bitch that guy behind Toadette is Honenuki, I just realized. what the fuck, U.A. ?? “hey kids! guess what! we’re going on a field trip!!” ...

-- NO!!!!!!

IT WILL NOT BE ALL RIGHT!! DON’T YOU LIE TO THEM!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING!!!! Tamaki, fine, okay, he’s experienced, and arguably more powerful than half the people there. Toadette, she’s just a kid, but she also tried to kill Tokoyami back during the joint training arc and I’m still not sure how I feel about that so whatever! Honenuki is probably the most responsible person in this entire group so fine. Tokoyami needs to be there to have a lot of angst about Hawks

but Kaminari. Kaminari fucking Denki. no. no, sir. excuse the fuck out of me. how fucking dare you. he is a five-year-old boy in the body of a high-voltage adolescent. and he’s maybe, just maybe, more powerful than anyone else in this fucking group but that still doesn’t give you the right to put this little baby boy RIGHT ON THE FRONT FUCKING LINES!! holy shit! HIS BLOOD IS ON YOUR HANDS!! I DON’T LIKE ANY OF THIS

OH MY GOD

RIGHT?!?!? omg omg omg omg omg

he’s literally wailing “I miss class 1-A” so loudly that it’s echoing all the way through the forest. see now that’s why you DON’T TAKE KAMINARI WITH YOU ON YOUR SECRET STEALTH ATTACK MISSION!! would somebody please point me towards whoever’s fucking idea this was so that I can go kick their fucking ass please and thank you

and here are the rest of them oh my god

Momo, Mina, Jirou, and Kiri at the forefront. okay, fine. this, I do like

so Edgeshot says they’ve surrounded the villains on all sides. man, no wonder they’re so worried about their warping capabilities. this is basically their one chance to capture all the bad guys in one fell swoop. I guess it makes more sense why all their capture specialists are in Edgeshot’s group, then

now I’m starting to wonder exactly what task lies in store for the Wonder Trio’s group, though? because they said evacuation, but is that really all there is to it? it’s no secret that Bakugou, Deku, and Todoroki are the three strongest interns they have. so you’re really expecting me to believe that they put baby Denki there on the front lines and yet plan on keeping their heaviest hitters in reserve? Nao is there more to this plan that you’re not telling us

oh shit Endeavor wants to know where his adopted chicken son is at

it genuinely does warm my heart to see Endeavor worrying about Hawks. I’m glad Hawks has at least one person out there who actually gives a shit about him. even if that person is mister father of the year here. the plot thickens

I wonder if Enji would actually die to save Hawks, if it came to that. which I’m not saying it would. but we all know some fucking shit is about to go down so I’m just having these thoughts here okay!

Nao always looks so tired nowadays. man

so he clearly does know who Endeavor’s talking about, though. one of these days I’d like to get a clearer understanding of what exactly Naomasa’s rank is and how high he is in terms of clearance, because the idea that he’s actually privy to more information than the number one fucking hero is kind of bonkers to me, ngl. this guy is literally just a detective, right?? not even a commissioner or anything. and yet he’s involved in everything. I used to suspect that he might be the traitor lol, and while I’m pretty sure by now that’s not the case, I’m still curious as to exactly what his deal is. does he even have a quirk?? anyways

so now Endeavor is hmphing and stomping off, and meanwhile there are some closeups of Mic and Aizawa

is that a whistle. do you guys think Mic could literally kill a man with his voice. shit. why do I kind of want to see it happen

as for Endeavor, I wonder if he was the one who made sure that his son and his friends weren’t on the front lines with the rest of them. sometimes it’s good to have some influence in these things

looooooool as if on cue

well. that sure doesn’t sound like he intends to keep them out of harm’s way. does he really have that much faith in them??

serious question, why exactly are all of the heroes seemingly so confident that this is going to work? it scares me because it makes me feel like in spite of Hawk’s intel they still don’t have a clue what they’re truly up against

so now we’re cutting to some random street somewhere and WOULD YOU LOOK WHO IT FUCKING IS

Slidin’ Go Suck An Egg. oh how I hate this man

look at him

I hate his stupid face!

OH SHIT

TRAFFIC CONE MAN, ARE YOU FINALLY GOING TO REDEEM YOURSELF FOR NOT RESCUING KACCHAN ON THAT DAY TWO YEARS AGO BECAUSE YOU WERE AFRAID OF A LITTLE SLUDGE? BECAUSE I’M HERE FOR IT! IF YOU WANT TO JUST GO AHEAD AND SNAP HIS NECK, I WILL TURN THE OTHER WAY AND ACT LIKE I DIDN’T SEE, I PROMISE

wow, Burnin’s team really is just evacuating people

I mean they’re obviously going to run into a Noumu, and just like that they’ll be in more danger than anyone, but at least for now it really does seem like the minds behind this raid wanted to keep them relatively out of danger. so yeah, for now I’m gonna chalk that up to Endeavor’s influence that they’re here rather than in the forest with the rest of their class

and here comes the hospital team!

well that answers my question about Nao’s rank. so he’s not even a chief. that really is fucking ridiculous but whatever

and why do I feel like this poor undercover subordinate is mere seconds away from becoming the first casualty in what I think is about to become the most violently snafued situation we’ve seen in this manga to date. like this shit is going to make Kamino look like the fucking state fair. fuck

...

I really wish I could believe that he was about to go down and it really was going to be just that easy

HERE WE GO!!

(ETA: so then they do know that he’s the guy who made the Noumu? including the one that nearly took him out in Kyushu? and they’re still acting like this is going to be a walk in the park? ?? what??)

knock knock, who’s there, JUSTICE

YESSSSSSS

(ETA: sure hope Endeavor’s light here doesn’t go summoning any darkness. welp.)

YOU’RE UNDER ARREST FOR CRIMES OF BEING TOO HORRIBLE TO EVEN FUCKING CONTEMPLATE, LET ALONE JOKE ABOUT! YOU SON OF A BITCH, GET FUCKED

oh my god. we’re really just gonna end it like that. well I guess next chapter we can all play a fun game of “let’s all count the pages until everything goes horribly wrong.” won’t that be a laugh. 10 to 1 the Noumu really are in the secret room and they’re all gonna be set loose by next week’s cliffhanger. remind me to have “Into the Trap” by John Williams cued up and ready to go lol

[nickyschneiderus]

Mastodon is crumbling—and many blame its creator

It’s 9am on a Tuesday, early morning by cybre.space’s standards. Few have logged on to the microblogging social network, and it shows: A follower feed filled with more than 31 users updates at a snail’s pace. It’s much slower than one would expect on Twitter. But then again, cybre.space isn’t Twitter. It runs off a decentralized social media software called Mastodon, and is part of a much larger network of Mastodon communities.

Over on Twitter, users post jokes about President Donald Trump, this time of a fast food feast he prepared for the Clemson Tigers football team amid the ongoing government shutdown. But the words “Trump” and “shutdown” only appear once each on cybre.space’s “local timeline,” which shows posts on the site and any other connected “instances,” or Mastodon communities. It’s even more barren on this reporter’s home timeline: No one is talking about hamberders.

Posting works differently on cybre.space than Twitter. It’s much more like living in a queer house, one that prefers to talk about political theory over current events. Some users chat about democratic socialism and queer identity, while others talk about games, music, fandom, or their difficulties navigating trans healthcare. One user posts a message that reads “re: hrt” with a few lines about their hormone replacement regimen hidden underneath, accessible only via the “show more” content warning (CW) button next to it. Another boosts a post praising Tallahassee by the Mountain Goats, calling it a “visceral experience.”

Cybre.space has just over 2,000 users. Over on Mastodon’s flagship community, Mastodon.social, there are over 300,000 users. But despite the larger userbase, discussions are even less political. On the community’s local timeline, one user troubleshoots installing a Linux distribution. Another shares a news story about a man who tried to turn his home into a restaurant. A third links to an article about Gearbox Software’s Randy Pitchford. Here, Trump is not the sun; tech, gaming, and the occasional NSFW post largely prevail. It’s as if the outside world doesn’t exist.

Mastodon

Visiting Mastodon feels like strolling through the first “apolitical” social network. There’s no urgency to talk about the Trump administration’s policies or break down ongoing political events—but while that may seem like a pleasant reprieve, it’s actually an indication that all is not well on Mastodon.

Mastodon has long been hailed as a friendly and inclusive safe haven, one by and for people who want the far-right out of social media. But instead of losing the far-right, the platform has lost all politics entirely. That’s a problem for its queer userbase, who cannot be apolitical by nature. Being queer isn’t a hobby; it’s a political identity. And so while Mastodon seems fine on the surface, there is a much larger schism at play across the social media project regarding who should run it: its community, or its creator.

The creator

It’s impossible to understand Mastodon without considering its architect and understanding its structure. Eugen “Gargron” Rochko, a 25-year-old German programmer of Russian and Jewish heritage, began working on Mastodon while studying computer science at the German public university Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jenahad (or “University of Jena” in English). Rochko had experience with decentralized social networks as a teenager, and by 2010 he had already decided Twitter’s corporate-driven structure just wasn’t the proper way to handle online messaging. But it wasn’t until early 2016 that he decided to sit down and look at GNU social, a decentralized social network software and precursor of sorts to Mastodon.

Originally, Rochko considered making an app for GNU social, but he ultimately decided to start from scratch and create a custom implementation of GNU social’s protocol. This became Mastodon.

Simply put, Mastodon is a microblogging software where users can communicate with one another through character-limited messages, called “toots.” The project, which released to the public in October 2016, supports embeds for images, GIFs, and videos, and there’s even a “boost” system similar to Twitter’s retweets. But Mastodon’s biggest feature by far is its “fediverse.” Instead of throwing every account into a gigantic melting pot on one main website, Mastodon users can splinter off into dozens upon dozens of miniature Mastodon instances, which are servers governed by their own rules and with their own communities. These create one large federation, and while each of these instances—like Cybre.space—runs off of Mastodon’s software, they simultaneously exist separately from one another and as part of a larger whole. Instance users can interact with one another or blacklist other instances.

Mastodon is a free and open-source software that functions entirely on community contributions via GitHub. Over Discord, Rochko described Mastodon’s development flow: Features, changes, or fixes are submitted as pull requests on GitHub. A contributor codes the feature for Mastodon within the pull request. The pull request must pass through tests for review. But even if a pull request passes those tests, “only the owner of the project can decide” whether a pull request is merged, as Rochko puts it—although he has given that ability to “three or four more people than me” for redundancy’s sake (“in case I get hit by a bus,” as he says).

Since graduating in 2016, Rochko has given Mastodon his full attention. Today, he works on Mastodon full-time with support from over 900 patrons on Patreon (at the moment, he receives over $4,400 per month in total, or over $50,000 per year). But he’s far from the only person making Mastodon a reality, and many of its users take umbrage both with what features Rochko implements and how he credits the project’s contributors.

Mastodon’s former project manager, Maloki, founded a separative community that criticizes Rochko’s “Benevolent Dictator For Life” (BDFL) model for negatively impacting “already vulnerable and marginalized people.” Many queer critics feel Rochko implements features into Mastodon that make it easier for users to discover—and by extension, harass—people of color, queer posters, women, trans folks, and other marginalized groups.

The community

Decentralized social networking isn’t a new idea, nor is the “fediverse” as a concept. But the Mastodon project quickly became popular with queer and left-wing users after Trump’s election in November 2016. Most of Mastodon’s early users shared a common background: Some were furries, others worked in tech, some even developed video games. Many identified as queer and trans. As one Mastodon user said on Nov. 23, 2016: “Holy shit everyone Mastodon is basically gay furry-adjacent Twitter without risk of racist eggs, get here immediately and help us en-culture.”

After Trump’s election, Rochko paraded Mastodon as a Nazi-free alternative to Twitter, pointing out that Mastodon.social, which is personally administered by Rochko, bans Nazis. To this day, Mastodon is the progressive Twitter alternative, one repeatedly praised everywhere from Motherboard to Wired.

But Mastodon’s politics are more complicated than merely banning Nazis. White, queer, middle-class tech workers migrating to Mastodon treated it as an escape from the outside world. CWs effectively hid politics from plain sight, and to this day, the occasional Trump conversation is concealed and tagged under the warning “uspol.” This turned Mastodon into an apolitical space, one where users debate queer theory but try to keep the outside world’s happenings out.

Mastodon’s apolitical approach reflected larger problems at play on the platform. One early Mastodon adopter named “voz” left the platform in February 2017 after feeling increased alienation from Mastodon’s predominantly white userbase. Voz, who is a brown queer trans woman, considered Mastodon “a very white space” that gradually mirrored real-life versions of gentrification: White users made the service “more and more hostile to the Black and Brown users” that were among Mastodon’s initial adopters.

Mastodon

“Whiteness insists on hiding itself, and a veneer of respectability given by ‘banning (overt) Nazis’ is really just a kind of fig leaf for the more mundane white supremacy at work there,” voz said via Keybase.

part of why Im not as active on Mastodon anymore even tho I think its a more ethical funding model is cuz its full of fragile white gentle porcelain dolls earning $150k/year in tech calling me ableist for making them uncomfortable by talking about politics under a content warning

— Shel (@DataPup_) December 14, 2018

Some people of color blamed Rochko, arguing he doesn’t properly moderate Mastodon.social to protect people of color from abuse. Others came to believe Mastodon’s hyperfixation on avoiding politics fundamentally hurt users of color, eventually driving them away.

“What sort of culture thinks talking about politics needs to be behind a content warning? Is me talking about the intersections of my life and society in need of a CW because it’s political? What the hell?” writer and performer Creatrix Tiara asked in April 2017.

The process and the politics

Mastodon’s community and its development cannot be separated from one another: Whoever controls development also steers how its users interact with one another. For example, more privacy and anti-harassment features mean better protection for marginalized users. But these requests don’t always align with Rochko’s vision for Mastodon.

Mastodon’s development process is pretty standard in the free open-source software community, but Mastodon isn’t a standard open-source project, and its queer users have long fought with Rochko over how credit is given out for features. Hoodie Aida Krisstina, who uses fae/faer pronouns, helped push for Mastodon’s content warning system in November 2016 by opening an issue on GitHub after the feature was “born from the community consciousness,” as fae said.

In a Dreamwidth post from July, fae sharply criticized Rochko, arguing queer users initially “begged” him for feature changes to support the community that ultimately turned Mastodon into what it is today.

“Evidently sometimes what [Rochko] does is take the pull request, close it, use that code as a starting point, then later commit it himself,” Krisstina said in an email. “This, tied with how [Rochko] credits others (read: he doesn’t, except for GitHub commit history), means that there is very little evidence, and virtually no recognition for the folx that actually made a feature happen. It’s not unrealistic to state that without the pull request, and without my GitHub issue, there would never have been content warnings.”

Rochko admits that contributors weren’t originally acknowledged in release notes. However, he argues there are an enormous number of feature requests and bug reports, and that he is “a little more ambivalent” toward crediting users for making feature requests, as GitHub automatically records their requests, and “they’re asking somebody else to put in the work and everybody’s got ideas.”

Granted, Rochko thinks it would be “fair” to credit users who come up with a thorough design as part of a feature request, although he claims he hasn’t “seen any feature requests that actually designed a system.”

“Pull requests take higher precedence because people actually put in the work to contribute,” Rochko said. “Also translators, I would say, are a step below that, as translators who submit translations for various languages. So they put in the work of actually writing code and submitting it and I agree that those people should be credited.”

Queer users seem to view the issue differently.

Shel Raphen served as a developer for Mastodon from January to spring 2017 and worked as a “de facto” volunteer coordinator, project manager, and community manager for Mastodon during its boom in April 2017 (or “Eternal April,” as Raphen calls it). Raphen, who uses ze/hir and they/them pronouns, first joined Mastodon in the “November wave” that hit the project after the U.S. 2016 presidential election, one month after Mastodon was officially announced. They became interested in Mastodon thanks to the decentralized fediverse’s potential to protect marginalized users.

“When everyone joined there wasn’t per-post privacy or CWs or anything that people associate with Mastodon today,” Raphen said over Twitter DM. “The new wave of queer users came up with, designed, pushed for, and implemented those features.”

Because Mastodon relies on the BDFL system, ongoing conflict with Rochko can quickly become messy. In one case, Raphen said that they designed a welcome modal in April 2017 that Rochko “hated” and harshly criticized, calling it “stupid.” Raphen confronted Rochko over the modal, telling him that he has to “thank people and appreciate their work” on the project.

After Rochko introduced his own alternate welcome modal, Raphen claims community pressure led Rochko to add Raphen’s design—without crediting Raphen in the project’s release notes.

“I went in and edited the release notes myself and added myself, since I had that privilege, and Eugen got pissed and removed all my privileges and basically booted me from the project,” Raphen said.

When asked to comment on the incident, Rochko stressed that he should ultimately have the right to edit and tweak the onboarding modal as need be.

“I wanted to change some stuff around and they were very upset when I just touched anything and that’s not how it should work,” Rochko said. “If I have some feedback about how this onboarding modal should work, I should be able to change it without causing a drama.”

Raphen’s treatment was a breaking point for Mastodon’s queer community, and its users began openly criticizing Rochko’s control over Mastodon. Two weeks later, Mastodon user and GitHub contributor Allie Hart wrote a post-mortem called “Mourning Mastodon” and a follow-up post, “Mourning What Now?!?!”—both of which Raphen considers “Important Historic Documents” for Mastodon’s history.

In “Mourning Mastodon,” Hart argues its initial leftist, furry, queer, and disabled base was the “most vocal and most frequent of Mastodon’s unpaid contributors,” designing Mastodon’s features from November 2016 to April 2017. After Graham Linehan and Dan Harmon temporarily moved to Mastodon.social and an April 2017 Motherboard story sparked media attention in the project, a new base arrived at the site, one that gave the project’s queer community less leverage in demanding changes from Rochko, Hart argues.

“The recent influx of users to the platform has brought with it new contributors and an expanded revenue stream that has rendered the original nearly obsolete,” Hart wrote in April 2017. “Queer users could leave en masse without harming the project’s survivability, which means that the reciprocity of their relationship has been terminated—queer users still depend on the project, but the project no longer depends on its queer users.”

Granted, Mastodon’s queer community isn’t perfect, and some of the same criticisms leveled against the Mastodon project could be made against the white queer community found on the service from the very beginning. For instance, Hart claims Mastodon’s white queer community would simultaneously demand a bigger voice in development while driving queer people of color off the site. The gentrifiers were now being gentrified, so to speak.

Warring philosophies

While speaking with the Daily Dot, Rochko called Mastodon “the child of my imagination,” arguing he “created it the way that I wanted to do it” and that he “did things the way I wanted them to work.” For the record, he doesn’t consider BDFL a harsh description of the Mastodon project, but rather a programming term to describe its governance. He also believes it’s more efficient than rule by committee.

“When you separate the decision making between different people that can come and go, you sort of have a tragedy of the commons where nobody is fully responsible for it and people have disagreements over all sorts of things, and you add the bureaucracy of [a] voting system, etc,” he explained. “Often times you’ll get requests from the community that are directly mutually exclusive to each other, and you have to make a choice, like, which direction will you go or how do you make a compromise.”

Rochko describes Mastodon’s users as separated between two “camps”: those who prefer discoverability, and those who discourage it. It’s more accurate to say Mastodon is increasingly forced to choose between its marginalized, queer userbase and white, well-off, and male tech workers who support Rochko’s BDFL vision.

Mastodon

Raphen believes Mastodon is “getting better, slowly” thanks in part to new queer users challenging its “fragile” privileged queer users. But even then, the platform’s remaining queer community has grown increasingly upset with Rochko’s leadership. After Rochko unexpectedly introduced “trends” tracking for words, phrases, and hashtags in summer 2018, marginalized users who feared harassment from the feature criticized its unexpected implementation. Rochko replied with a toot, arguing he “built Mastodon the way I wanted” and that those who disliked the project should not “give me shit about your failed expectations.”

“There’s the door, there’s the code, there’s the alternatives,” he tooted on June 2.

The future

A June essay from Mastodon user Cassian, titled “I left Mastodon yesterday,” argues Mastodon’s problems start with Rochko’s approach to development. Cassian claims users are rarely acknowledged for their contributions unless they are programmers, and Rochko controls the original instance and gets to decide which features make it into the Mastodon project.

Combine this with Rochko’s perspective as a white male programmer, and his decisions will constantly come from a privileged point-of-view that clashes with Mastodon’s marginalized userbase.

“Like it or not, he is in charge of the main branch of a huge community project and he promises various advantages over Twitter to attract members,” Cassian writes. “The users of his software have needs that he refuses to address but he wants to remain the sole decision-maker and have complete control. He has a right to do that, but it is unhealthy for the project overall.”

Again, Rochko thinks Mastodon users are split between two sides: those who believe the project should help users find one another, and those who prefer to stay hidden from others. But Mastodon’s internal community conflicts can better be described through a queer lens—that is, between privileged users and marginalized ones, and their diametrically opposed philosophies for what Mastodon should be.

“He’s a programmer. Not a leader,” Raphen said. “He’s an amazingly talented programmer. But that’s not enough to lead the project. He takes all the credit for making Mastodon what it is when it was extremely a group effort, not just the programming (the only labor he sees as legit).”

Raphen and Rochko’s beliefs are at Mastodon’s core, and yet they are fundamentally in conflict with each other. One wants a community-driven government system to protect vulnerable users. The other believes only a BDFL can efficiently maintain Mastodon and promote its decentralized, open-source fediverse structure. Both are hopeful for Mastodon’s future, and yet, they represent diverging paths that Mastodon can take.

Meanwhile, Mastodon’s users can’t even agree on how Mastodon should function, let alone whom it should serve. Figuring out an answer will decide Mastodon’s future—and whether its marginalized userbase has a place to call home.

from Ricky Schneiderus Curation https://www.dailydot.com/debug/mastodon-fediverse-eugen-rochko/