#it was fun to draw the onceler again after so long

[demoneesan]

thneedmas art for @sweetredbeans of the Red Onceler! I heard he likes chocolate 🍫

❣️ [@the-red-onceler]

[cottagecore-onceler]

Chapter 5 / Onceler x Reader

Your head was spinning.

The blueprint you found between Onceler’s things was a project of an unimaginably giant factory. This complicated machinery’s purpose seemed to be remaking Truffula tufts into thneeds. Maybe it wasn’t his? Maybe it was an outside project which he, certainly, wanted to reject? Margin notes suggested otherwise. There it was, written in his handwriting: “smogue?”.  

“Fuck this”, you thought hysterically, immediatelly wanting to dump his ass. How come he didn’t mention building a full-size, XIXth century style factory? What else was he hiding? You couldn’t believe you let him continuously lie to you. Suddenly you realised what the point of your vacation was. He was keeping you in here so you couldn’t see what was happening with his workshop. That’s why he didn’t want you to go to Greenville or pretty much anywhere else. You felt tears falling down your cheeks. You gave yourself permission to be vulnerable and it bit you back. You shouldn’t have done this.

You sat on the bed, closing your eyes. Breathe in, breathe out. Maybe this wasn’t so bad? Maybe it was just a practice drawing or some twisted form of a surprise? Building a giant factory doesn’t even compare to cheating, it’s just a… factory? Confusion replaced anger. You didn’t know how to feel about this. No one has ever built a secret factory without telling you. And where the hell was he anyway?

You knew you should confront him. Honest communication is the key to a healthy relationship. But he wasn’t honest, so why would you be? You quickly went back to his drawer and stuck the blueprint back between the shirts. You poured yourself a glass of wine, wrapped a thneed around your shoulders and went outside. Exceptionally bright, full moon emerged among the clouds, while you sat comfortably on your wooden porch. 

You decided not to confront him. Moreover, you decided not to tell him anything at all. You wanted to see how it plays out and investigate a little on your own. If he didn’t want to talk about his work, you were gonna find other sources. After all, you were one theatrical bitch. 

The sound of a car approaching brought you down to earth. You tossed the wine glass in the sink and ran back to bed, pretending to be long asleep. “This is definitely not a cab”, you thought as the engine was quiet, rather like a sports car than an old taxi. What was he doing driving around in the middle of the night?

The door opened and closed. He was extremely quiet while changing into his pyjamas. It couldn’t have been the first time he was sneaking out like that. He crawled into bed gently, trying not to wake you up, and put his arms around you. 

You felt a sudden warmth in your chest. Your feelings toward him didn’t change. You knew there must’ve been a good reason he wasn’t telling you about this. But you weren’t gonna sit patiently and wait for him to finally tell you all about it. You needed to know, now.

...

You woke up. For a moment it felt like every other morning. Like everything that happened last night was just a dream. You quickly realised that wasn’t true.

- Good morning, y/n - Onceler was up and ready, making pancakes - how’d you sleep?

- Good - you lied - and you?

- Alright - he said with surprising confidence - what do you wanna do today? It’s the last day of my leave, we could do something fun.

“This is your chance”, you thought, “this is your chance to catch him in a lie”. And since you’ve established that he was keeping you here so you couldn’t see what he was building…

- Let’s go to Greenville - you proposed - I could use some human interaction.

- Really? That’s what you wanna do on the last day of our vacation? - his response was quick and almost nonchalant, but you could clearly notice a hint of anxiety unfolding in his eyes - let’s go to the lake.

- Again? - you sighed.

- How come you don’t want to go swimming? - he laughed nervously.

You shrugged your shoulders and decided to push it a little bit more to see how he handles it.

- I wanna go to Grenville. We could watch a movie.

- Actually, I just remembered - you could see him getting more and more anxious - I have to swing by work today. I’m not exactly sure how long it will take, but maybe I’ll get us some wine and we can watch a movie in the garden when I get back?

“Damn, he’s a good liar”, you thought. Suddenly, you came up with the most brilliant idea.

- That does sound good.

He seemed to be relieved.

- Okay, um… a coworker will pick me up in 15 minutes. Is that okay?

- Sure - you smiled at him. 

You had to act quick. You put on a hoodie and leggings, dived into your wardrobe looking for a backpack.

- I think I’m gonna go on a little hike - you said, trying to sound natural.

- Cool! - he replied with a mouth full of pancakes, completely unaware of the true purpose of your comfortable attire.

You put on your hiking shoes and packed a big water bottle. “Maybe I should bring a raincoat?”, you thought, weirdly excited about your trip.

- Have some pancakes! - he looked at you with a smile - it’s the best source of energy.

“God”, you thought while quickly stuffing things into your backpack, “how can he act so natural?”. You finished packing and sat at the table next to him.

- Have some of mine - he stood up, put on a coat and gave you a kiss - I’ll be back soon.

- See you later, Once.

He went out. You quickly ran for your backpack and looked outside the window. You could still see him between the trees. You opened the door, as quietly as humanly possible, grabbed your bike and followed him. 

(Broadcast - The Book Lovers playing in the background)

“If he sees me, I’m screwed”, you thought, trying not to breathe too loud. Your heart was pounding outside your chest. Was this a mistake? You walked behind him for about 15 minutes until you heard the sound of a car unlocking.

You quickly hid behind a tree as he looked around, stepping into a brand new Audi A5, on the driver’s side. “Fuck”, you thought, “that’s a nice car”. You hopped on the bike.

You rode right past him. It wasn’t exceptionally difficult as he seemed to be struggling, driving between the trees extremely slow. The picture of a giant factory appeared in your head. Was it built already? Or was he still working in it? Was there a tower with a secret office? Maybe a medieval style dungeon? You needed to know.

What worried you the most were the trees. You remembered the conversation you had half a year ago:

- Don’t you have to like… cut down the trees to get them?

- At first I thought so too! But then, since it came out that I’m not gonna be knitting that many of them… I found a way of harvesting them, which doesn’t disrupt their growth at all.

He wasn’t knitting that many of them. What if he was now? What if he started cutting the Truffulas down? You still couldn’t really picture the size of this in your head. How well was it going that he was building a factory? He must’ve been selling… hundreds per day? Thousands? Then you thought of another vital question: what kind of money was he making? The car, the suit… the bracelet.

You looked down your wrist. There it was, suddenly filling you with guilt. Tears went down your cheeks. What a fool you were, trusting someone so much, thinking everything could possibly turn out so perfect. You should have…

A sudden, sharp pain emerged somewhere around your forehead. Everything froze.

(Sin Fang, Sóley and Örvar Smárson - Citrus Light playing in the background)

For a few seconds, nothing was real. The world was spinning. Your body was… on the ground? It seemed like it. You grabbed your head where it seemed like the throbbing was coming from. It was a natural reflex meant to stop the pain. Instead, it intensified. Your hand was warm and sticky. You looked at it. It was blurry. And red. 

The last thing you saw before losing consciousness was a weird, sort of car-shaped machine with axes attached to its front.

- Are you okay?

- Someone come here, quick!

- Call the ambulance!

- No, let’s call the boss.

- Are you sure? That’s a lot of blood.

...

You woke up blinded by the harsh light of fluorescent fixtures. The pain in your head was excruciating. 

- She’s awake! - an unidentified female voice screamed. You looked in its direction. A blurry figure was staring right at you - are you feeling dizzy, honey? Try not to move too much, you’ve had a terrible accident.

You opened your mouth to reply, but what came out was completely unintelligible. A big tide of nausea went through your entire body.

- Shh - the blurry figure gently put its hand on your shoulder, keeping you from getting up - You’ve had a concussion. It’s much better now, but you still need to rest. Are you feeling nauseous? Nod for yes.

You nodded.

- I’ll get you something that might help. Just try not to move too much.

As the blurry figure disappeared, you had a look around the room. Your vision was slowly getting better; you noticed white furniture and sterile, medical equipment. You were in a hospital. It wasn’t the Greenville Hospital though, you were sure of it. You’ve been hospitalised there once, due to a bike accident. This room was small and much nicer than the ones they had. 

You decided to get up and have a little look around, but shortly realised you couldn’t really move your arms and legs. For a moment, you felt pure panic. Were your injuries that bad? Then you realised this wasn’t the case. You were strapped to the hospital bed.

- No, no, no, no - you whispered. Suddenly you remembered what happened last night.

- Y/n! - you heard Onceler’s voice. He ran toward you and kissed you, holding your face tighter than ever before - I was so worried.

He was wearing that green suit again, with a top hat. You pushed him away, as much as you could with your hands tied.

(Elita - Sour Switchblade playing in the background)

- You were worried?! - you yelled - you did this to me! I know everything.

- What exactly do you mean by “everything”? - he smirked, sitting next to you.

- I know you’re building a huge factory and cutting the trees down - your memory was getting better as well - you’ve been lying to me.

- I had to - he said with a smile - I needed to show you.

- Show me what?

- The life we could have! - he stood up and started walking around the room - just look outside the window. It’s all ours!

- If you haven’t noticed yet - you replied with discontent - I’m not exactly able to move.

- Were you following me? - Onceler asked, changing the subject - yesterday. How did you get here?

- I’m not talking to you until you untie me - you said angrily. 

- That might actually come in handy - he smiled - you shouldn’t be moving too much.

- What is wrong with you? - you almost screamed - untie me!

Onceler kneeled next to you and grabbed your hand.

- And what are you gonna do? Run away and get yourself in trouble again? I don’t think so.

You didn’t know what to say. It felt like a dream. The few seconds of silence felt like eternity.

- I’ll tell you what you’re gonna do - his smile was getting more and more creepy - you’ll stay here and get better. Then I’ll show you around. There will be no more secrets between us. Then, I think you’ll prefer to stay here with me. But we’ll see. How does that sound?

You looked him in the eyes.

- Get away from me - you whispered - you disgust me.

- It’s normal to feel a little agitated after a concussion - he stood up - but with all the medical professionals I’ve gathered here, you’ll get better in no time! Get some more sleep, I’ll be back in the morning.

- I don’t recognise you - you said - this isn’t you, Onceler.

- Don’t be stupid, y/n.

- Untie me! - you cried.

- Y/n, I won’t let you go back to your cabin, so don’t even try.

- Why? - you asked genuinely.

- Because now you hate me - he kneeled next to you again, putting his hand on your cheek - and I don’t want you to act on it. But I’m pretty sure you’ll stop hating me soon. And then we can talk.

You stared blankly at the wall, trying to figure out what to say.

- How do you know I’ll ever stop hating you? - you asked - after all this.

- Because I know you - he kissed your hand - you will want to stay here with me.

- I won’t - his face was inches away from yours.

He smiled.

- You will.

[miru667]

A few notes on Audrey (and the Once-ler)

I’ve gotten a lot of new followers lately and also a lot of words of support and kindness from so many ppl, so I first wanna say thank you, you know who you are and it all means more than i can say ♥

I’ve been asked to explain more on what I think about Audrey and the Once-ler as a ship, so I’ll use this space to talk.

And I think I’ll first talk about Audrey. When I draw Audrey nowadays I’m really only drawing my own Audrey OC or my friends’ Audrey OCs, and we’ve all made them different ages from the canon Audrey in the 2012 movie. Everyone’s Onceler ocs are different ages, so why not Audrey ocs? I’ve seen Audreys as young as 5 and as old as 60. This isn’t unusual at all for the onceler fandom; it’s this level of imagination and creativity that has kept the fandom going for over 8 years. I haven’t drawn canon Audrey in a rly long time (but maybe I could again someday, who knows).

I headcanoned my own Audrey as 15-16 during the movie, and I made a mainverse askblog for her back in 2012 which took place right after the movie’s plot had finished. In 2018 I then revisited her to rp her in a zombie apocalypse AU, BUT I wanted to start her story with her already being a seasoned zombie slayer, so I pretended some years have passed since her mainverse days and made her 18. That is the only reason I aged her up.

And true to the OG onceler fandom, my friends and I then made more AUs, so I kept my Audrey at 18 or older since I got used to it. She actually should be 24 right now if I used her mainverse askblog as a starting point and let her age in real-time (which is what a lot of onceler fandom mods have done with their characters), but I have a couple college AUs with my friends for example so I kept her younger than 24 for those.

Being passionate about your own versions of the movie’s characters, changing them a little (or a lot), putting them in AUs, letting them grow up, this is all natural onceler fandom-brand progression for any person who invests themselves in a lorax-related oc for longer than a few months.

You are free to agree or disagree with changing a character’s age. Please curate your own fandom experience by ignoring, blacklisting or blocking content you don’t want to see.

As for shipping, if you got to know me at all then you'd know that i actually very rarely ship or think about ships in any fandom, relative to everything else i engage in/share/talk about. I know you guys have seen me talk about 7212 but that was only cuz I was prompted, even tho it’s my fandom otp. Shipping just isn’t a big part of my life at all in the grand scheme. I’ll say like 2 things about a ship i think is neat and then just move on usually.

That said, I DO ship my non-canon Audrey with my friends’ characters for fun once in a blue moon, and a few of those characters ARE Once-lers, also non-canon. But we have always agreed beforehand that they are the same or similar ages, and that they’re both consenting adults. I’ll do my best to mention this detail in the tags or description of any audrey ship art i draw and post, and please let me know in private if I forget to. I’m extremely uncomfortable at the thought of a teen with an adult, and I do not condone it.

Some other odds and ends...I’ve portrayed my Audrey having a celebrity crush on the Once-ler before in mainverse, but it was obviously one-sided and never to be reciprocated. I think that’s pretty normal for a teenage girl. I also have my Audrey’s Ted crushing on her, but that won’t be reciprocated romantically either.

When I have reblogged non-oc audler before, I have always assumed that they were both consenting adults as well. Audler is a crackship, which means it can’t ever exist in canon, which means we are free to imagine space and time shenanigans for Audrey and Onceler to have met while they were similar ages. People age down Norma to ship her with a young Once-ler when they don’t even know either character’s canon ages (like who knows, what if old onceler and grammy norma are actually 10 yrs apart?), but in young normaler art we think of them as similar ages. So the same can be applied to audler art as well. We should just think they’re mostly the same age for our own mental peace.

I have tagged a few posts/reblogs with #audler even if it looked like they were just friends in the picture - this is to keep people who have blacklisted audler as safe as possible while still getting to make my blog my own personal organized space. I reblog art mostly because I like the execution/style; the content is actually of lower importance to me. If you read the tags I write in my non-onceler-fandom reblog blog, you can see i am 90% of the time gushing about how beautiful the lighting is etc and only 10% of the time saying i love the character or ship. or at least that’s how it feels like in my head. im here to look at art, not ships.

I understand if there are still people who are uncomfortable with all this and you’re of course allowed to not interact with any of it. I am not interested in engaging in drama or discourse but I think a lot of new people in the fandom must not be familiar with how the fandom has been working since the beginning and the things we had collectively agreed upon in the fandom since the beginning, so I hope this post helps clear up some confusions.

Thank you for reading if you’ve made it this far and thank you to all my followers for supporting me and sticking with me and being interested in my stuff, it really means the world to me. Please stay safe and let’s hope the new year is better.

[modestmuses-a]

//so i have come to the realization that i don’t really have a lot of muse for this blog these days and that being over here has become kind of a chore for me.  i’ve kind of been slogging through replies, feeling obligated to keep this blog active, seeing as it’s decently popular.  bc i have more threads going over here than elsewhere, i’ve felt obligated to treat this one as my “main” blog and maintain the activity levels on it, no matter what.

even though the reality is that i’ve really only had muse for the onceler, and i’ve actually been having more fun writing over there, despite it being the less popular/“secondary” blog.  i really only get on here anymore to post a handful of replies and refresh the queue and then i immediately log out and go back to him lmao

it’s also like... i work a lot, and trying to maintain activity levels over here has just not been good for my work-life balance...  i have let this blog consume every non-working moment of my life, and it really hasn’t left me with any time to pursue other hobbies, like art or video games.  and i really do want to draw and play fallout again.

so with that said, i think i’m going to be putting this blog on hiatus.  there are still a handful of replies that need to come out of the queue, but after that, i don’t really plan on writing for this one for a minute.  i’m in the midst of revamping my muses page again so i’ll probably poke at that and come back to this blog when it’s done.  in the meantime, i am going to be focusing on art and the onceler, so if you still want to write with me, feel free to pester me over there.

when i do come back to this blog, it will come with a soft reboot.  i will be dropping a lot of my current threads, keeping only the select few that i find really enjoyable and cannot live without, and i will be deleting some of the less active muses like alice and cyborg noodle.  basically, i’m purging this blog of everything that doesn’t spark joy and starting nearly from scratch.

it will also come with a drop in activity, and i plan on cutting it down to 15 replies a week instead of the 21 i’m currently sitting at.  this will make sure that writing doesn’t take up my every waking moment that i’m not at work.

there are still ask memes in the queue, and inbox stuff will be answered when i return, so if you’re interested in having threads with me when i get back, you can send me some of those.  i will probably also crawl into people’s inboxes upon my return as well.

but yeah, i have no idea how long this hiatus is really going to last because i don’t know how long the new muse page is going to take.  while i don’t anticipate it taking much more than a week, i also am not going to pressure myself to finish it quickly, since that will just create more stress.

tl;dr: this blog is now on hiatus until ??? and will be softly rebooted on my return.

[personas-against-antis]

My experience with anti-ism and back

Inspired by @huntypastellance's interviews with ex-antis, I decided to post my own story of how I became an anti and how I got out.

My inbox and messages are open in case anyone has any questions or wants to say anything.

Apologies for any typos, my typing is not the greatest.

Names have been changed to protect my friends’ privacy and to prevent certain antis mentioned from coming after me again.

Where It All Started

So back in middle school I fell in love with an anime called Hetalia, about the interactions between anthropomorphized versions of various countries. I had been in fandom for a while (my first big fandom was Sonic, but that was before antis went mainstream), and I was a pretty big follower of "don't like, don't read/look". When I joined, I immediately latched on to the ship AmeCan, or America/Canada.

They were cute and it was my OTP for a long time. The only problem with AmeCan is that, by a large majority of the fandom, America and Canada were considered brothers. I personally didn't see them that way, I saw them as adopted brothers at most, and I was always pretty squicked out by shippy fanfics that depicted them as biological brothers. The ship itself was still pretty big in that fandom, so I ignored the haters and immersed myself in fanart and fanfic.

I met a girl at my school (let's call her Duchess) who also liked Hetalia and we quickly hit it off. We soon asked what each other's OTPs were.

Me: Oh, I ship AmeCan.

Duchess: ...

Me: What is it?

Duchess: You realize they're brothers, right?

Me: Oh, I don't see them that way because [insert reasoning that I don't want to have to explain to non-Hetalians, just know that I explained that I didn't see them as brothers.]

Duchess: But it's canon. They canonly see each other as brothers.

Me: Oh...

In hindsight, I probably should have asked what she meant by “it’s canon”. Either way, I began to drift away from AmeCan due to lack of interest, and towards other ships (Romerica and AmeBela), and then to other fandoms. She still remained one of my closest friends.

Down The Rabbit Hole

I began to get really into kawaii culture and browsed the tags pretty regularly. Over time, I came across CG/L content. It squicked me out at first, but due to some sort of bile fascination, I began browsing CG/L blogs and began learning about that subculture. I actually enjoyed it quite a lot, but I knew that it would be inappropriate for someone my age (around 13-14 years old) to participate in kink, so I kept my distance and admired it from afar.

Soon, Duchess brought it up at lunch.

Duchess: I really hate seeing DDGL stuff everywhere.

Me: Haha, yeah...

Duchess: I mean, It's practically pedophilia!

Me: Mhm...

That's what I had thought at first too, before researching it. But she kept talking about it.

Duchess: They're sexualizing children, and children's toys! It's so gross! I actually made a blog against it.

Me: Whoa, really?

Duchess showed me her anti-CGL blog and I quickly followed it because she was my friend, and slowly began to follow other anti-DDLG blogs as well, even making my own: rise-against-ddlg. I took it down due to lack of interest, but antis had already grown on tumblr, and I was torn between my "don't like, don't look" policy, and wanting to "help" survivors. So outwardly, I became an anti, while guiltily reading "problematic" fic and playing "problematic" games in secret.

One such problematic game was Yandere Simulator, and I began to browse those tags too, when I discovered another anti blog, this time against Yandere Simulator and Alex Mahan, a.k.a. Yandere Dev. I learned he was fairly homophobic, sexist, and transphobic, especially in his own private chatroom, and began to idolize that anti blog. Suddenly, they released an invitation to a Skype group chat. Eager to meet my heroes, I quickly applied and was approved.

The Group Chat Incident

I loved that chat. It started with 15 people, but slowly trickled down to nine, including myself. I found myself isolating myself away from my real life friends and family, too focused on the group chat, as they made dropping out of high school and staying online all day sound cool. I kissed up to them, desperate to be seen as a good person. But, soon, I began to question myself and the group. The mods were very against "problematic" content, like Killing Stalking, and NSFW depictions of minors, but were also quick to draw NSFW of minors (specifically Budo and Senpai from YS). I introduced them tot he game Boyfriend To Death, and one of them quickly latched on to the character of Rire, who brutally rapes the protagonist in game, despite them being against rape. The main mod even introduced the group to a game called Artificial Academy 2, in which you can rape others and be raped.

...There was a lot of rape and NSFW in that chat.

But, there was also a hierachy. At the top were the two main mods of that YS blog, Mod H and Mod J. Joining them at the top was a very cool person and a good artist who acted very much like an older sibling to all of us, Member M. Then, there were three more people who tended to kiss Mod H, Mod J, and Member M's asses, and at the bottom was me, my friend Foam, and Member C. Mod H was the ruler of that chat. Anything they said, went, and if you disagreed, they'd suddenly play victim, manipulating and gaslighting you into apologizing. They loved Dragon Age, and now that game has been forever tainted for me, considering how much they shoved it down my throat. They would also tease me and my interest in Persona 5 (saying that the protagonist looked like The Onceler, subsequently calling me a "Onceler Fucker" for finding him attractive, along with making fun of when my tongue slipped and pronounced "Goro" as "Gort"), only stopping when I had Foam address the group to tell them to stop. There was a livestream that I was really excited for, talking about it since it was announced and they seemed hyped for me as well. Only when I placed a rabb.it link in the chat so we could all watch, only Member C showed up. When I returned to that chat, they were watching Yuri On Ice, and they wouldn't even let me talk about my livestream.

During that time period, I created a group chat for me, Foam, and another internet friend I will call Emilia. I though Foam and Emilia would get along really well, so i formed a Skype chat with them, and allowed them to talk. Slowly though, me and Foam began to use that chat to bitch about the group chat behind their backs, because we were terrified of the backlash if we tried to criticize them to their faces, due to Mod H's tactics of avoiding conflict. We soon added Member C to the chat as well, after they were constantly getting dogpiled by the rest of the chat.

That December, the Bode meme was in full swing and Foam mentioned in the group chat that he didn't get it. The group chat immediately began to make fun of him and I, sick of letting them control our lives, stood up for him. The group chat just continued to dogpile and we continued to try and fight until Mod H eventually left the chat, in one of their methods to get us to apologize to them. I was feeling overwhelmed and also left, and Foam tried to surrender and tell the chat to stop, but they wouldn't let up and he left too. Member C was the only member we remained on good terms with who was still in the group chat.

I made a post on my blog saying that i didn't want to interact with those people anymore and they got mad and began to try and message me. I eventually messaged an official statement, citing their abuse of me and Foam, and blocked all of them across social media.

They created a fake blog to get around the block, and I was dumb enough to fall for it.

Member C even turned on us, revealing me and Foam's messages with her and claiming we were abusing and bullying them. Suffice to say, I cut off all contact with Member C and changed my main blog's URL.

I was harassed and stalked and I carried that fear of them looking at my blog for a long time. I still worry about it sometimes.

The worst part, in my opinion, was that I changed my own name that I had chosen for myself because it had become a trigger for me hearing them say it so many times. And I really, really loved that name.

There was so much hypocrisy, so much fear in that chat. Now, looking back, I wished I had never joined, but in those months after I left...I felt empty inside. Aimless.

Out of curiosity, I looked up cult behaviors, and that chat hit nearly every single one. It's scary looking back on it. Even writing this, over a year after I left, my heart hurts.

But even leaving a cultish group chat didn't knock me out of anti-ism.

Villain Ships and Past Revelations

Remember how I mentioned that I love Persona 5? Well, I ship a ship called ShuAke, which a very loud subset of people claim is abusive.

Spoilers for Persona 5 up ahead.

ShuAke is a ship between the protagonist (shujinko in Japanese, which is where the "shu" comes from) and Goro Akechi. I shipped ShuAke since before Goro's name was announced, when all we knew was his design. Goro turned out to be a detective hunting the Phantom Thieves, the protagonist's group. The cat and mouse aesthetic really suited my fancy, with the protagonist's thief alter ego, Joker, seducing the naive Detective Prince. Swoon.

Of course, the ship shattered when the game was released in Japan and it turns out Goro tried to kill the protagonist, was working for the bad guy, and betrayed the whole group.

I was shocked and essentially went through the five stages of grief. I was torn between abandoning the "abusive" ship and evil character...or ignoring the haters and shipping it anyway. After way too much debate, I chose the latter and stuck with it.

The anti-ism died down quickly due to a lot of the fandom hibernating until the English release, and I happily shipped ShuAke and supported Goro Akechi with little objection. Even when the game was released in English, I stood my ground and even argued in support of Goro with anons.

And yet, I still considered myself an anti.

Late May of last year, some repressed memories came to light. I had been sexually abused by a close family member and a few girls at camp when I was younger, with other fragmented and questionable memories in my brain. It put my past into light, as I had also had a self destructive habit of attempting to seduce older men online, due to low self esteem. That was not a fun week for me, and I found myself diving into dark fic, particularly rape fic, in order to make sense of it all. I even wrote some in an effort to just get it out of my brain.

And it worked. It was really therapeutic for me.

And yet...

I still considered myself an anti. Every word I read or wrote was mixed with guilt over what I was doing, even though it worked. While I'm still a sexual abuse survivor, as I always will be, I'm much more well-adjusted by participating in those dark activities, rather than wallowing in self pity and slipping into a depression, like my old group chat would have expected me to do.

I dropped anti-ism later, with the help of one blog.

Back to "DL,DR"

The blog @anti-anti-survivor was recommended to me, and anti!me, looking for a laugh, clicked on it...and soon found that pretty much everything they said made sense to me. I saw Mod h in the people they argued with, Member C in the people they called out...and I realized that I had never been an anti, just hiding behind that label.

I sent an anonymous message to them (though I guess it isn't so anonymous anymore, ha), thanking them for opening my mind to it, and created my own anti-anti blog. I realize I'm not very active on here, but, well, I'm lazy and I'm more of a reader than anything else.

And of course, there was another problem.

Antis are fucking everywhere.

I'm terrified of posting pro-shipping stuff on my main, and I'm terrified of admitting I like problematic ships. I'm in a Discord server that keeps spouting anti-kink and anti-ship stuff, and I have to keep my mouth shut or risk being banned, just because most of the time they're really nice. Duchess even messaged me one day, absolutely shocked that I admitted to shipping Shidge.

I'm happy now that I don't have to feel that guilt but, reading what antis do and then finding out that people I hang out with are antis...it's horrifying. I'm not a confrontational person. I never have been. But I'm sick of rolling over and accepting what everyone else deems is problematic fiction.

I'm mentally ill, a sexual abuse survivor, and dark fic and dark shipping helps me cope.

Deal with it.