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marzgurl · 1 year ago

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All right, cool, let's give some backstory here.

Anybody following me likely already knows what the last four-plus years have been like for me. In January 2019, there'd already been a big discussion amongst people within the anime and anime convention community about actually talking about the people in our community that we quietly already knew were dangerous but haven't done anything serious about them to protect each other. The first of those people discussed was a guy who went by the username of Hazukari who was known to sexually prey on people in the convention circuit. This story isn't really about him, but it's important to understand that that's where the community was at when everything blew up.

The next thing that sort of unintentionally blew up was a much bigger conversation about an extremely popular voice actor, Vic Mignogna. It had already been well known for 15 years through whisper networks that he wasn't to be trusted with his female fans, both adult and underage. Stories were everywhere, even here on Tumblr. It wasn't hard to find people telling stories about their encounters with him across even some of the oldest of social media. Forums and blogs, everywhere. I understand that people really thought, "Oh, it's all just talk," but unless you were there from about the year 2005 on up, you really don't know just how pervasive the knowledge was. I myself had watched behavior from him out of him in 2007 that made me believe it. It was weird to know a guy would hold church service panels on Sundays at anime conventions, but then I would watch him get handsy with a young woman and take her back to his hotel room. It might not have been illegal, but it set off alarm bells in my head.

Now, I wasn't the person who started off the firestorm. Another person entirely who went under the Twitter handle of "hanleia" (and who no longer uses that handle) had made a tweet asking when we were finally gonna hold Vic accountable for his behavior. And although she didn't really intend it, her tweet absolutely blew up. Thousands of likes and retweets. And along with it came hundreds of stories from individuals telling their personal experiences. I took screenshots of well over 100 different people at that time telling their stories of how he was weird or a creep or made them uncomfortable, or in some cases some people talked about their experiences being volunteer convention staff members who had been treated like shit by him. And at the time, that's all it was. It was kinda a repeat of stories, some old some new, that I'd been hearing for 15 years. Where I came in was well after the firehose had already been opened all the way up, and suggested a hashtag to just keep track of all the stories, which I'd called #KickVic. That's all it was intended to do, and it came much later after the whole movement had already kicked off. Unfortunately, as time would go on, it wouldn't matter that I didn't actually accuse him of doing anything to me, or that I wasn't the person who started the movement. Culture war assholes (and seemingly Vic himself) would decide I was the face of the entire movement based solely on the hashtag alone.

As the movement went on, it got WAY worse than I think any of us really knew it was. Like, we knew he was kinda a handsy asshole, but not to what extent. Suddenly, a bunch of members of the industry--voice actors and sound engineers--were liking people's tweets, and even telling their own stories. They were telling their own stories about how he had been handsy with them and pressuring them for sex. As you can imagine, assholes would ask why they waited so long to speak up. But I guess you can't imagine how difficult it is to speak up against another powerful dude in your industry that everybody likes unless it happens to you. But if multiple people in the industry were now saying it was true, that's when I knew for certain this shit was real, and it could possibly be way worse than anyone really knew. If these were just the people willing to speak up, how many more were out there that have never said anything at all, too scared to tell?

By February Vic had lost his working contracts with anime dubbing studios and was quickly being dropped by reputable anime conventions. He was starting to bleed money. Which is probably why he was motivated to, rather than seeking the help and reformation he initially promised he would seek, instead then began suing people for talking about the things he did. Among those he sued were Funimation (the company that ended their contract with him and then tweeted about it), Jamie Marchi and Monica Rial (who were two voice actors who claimed to have had uncomfortable interactions with him), and Monica's fiancé Ron Toye (who had also spoken up in Monica's defense).

2019 was a pretty big shit show, and the legal stuff was a huge mess. It would be difficult to cover the whole thing competently without a whole documentary on how stupid it was. The shortest version I can tell you is that alt-right reactionary YouTuber pieces of shit decided Vic needed a GoFundMe to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars so that he could sue the very women he assaulted for defamation. And his legal team was awful from the beginning. His lawyer, Ty Beard, didn't even practice defamation law. He was an estate lawyer. It'd be like calling AT&T Internet tech support to fix the motherboard in your computer that you physically broke in half. What I'm saying is, you're calling up somebody who's only BARELY tangentially related to the job you need done, and there's no way they have the ability to actually help you.

And basically by the end of the year, that's exactly how that all went down. Even if he'd ever had any hope of winning that lawsuit, there was absolutely no saving him with the disastrous legal team he had on his side. Just an absolute moron running his case for him, fumbling the entire thing. It didn't help that the lawsuit ended up spitting out way more information about Vic's behavior than we ever would have known had he not sued. Now, thanks to that, we know he was hiring prostitutes behind his fiancée's back, having relationships with multiple people on his Star Trek Continues fan film, tried to have sex with twin women at the same time, learned that his reputation was so bad that Funimation had to install locks inside the building to prevent actors from interacting with staff that were colloquially called "Vic Locks"--I mean, the list of fucked up shit we learned went on and on and on. It would have been infinitely better for this man had he not sued, but then I guess we wouldn't have ever known how truly bad everything really was.

If I try to tell every single little step of this story from 2019 on, we're gonna be here forever, so we need to speedrun the next, like, three years here. But believe me when I say, if you were ever either a victim of Vic's or an ally of his victims, you knew no peace. The constant harassment day in and day out was insane. It was to levels you wouldn't believe. I definitely wasn't the only person who got it, but just to give you my own experiences, some examples of things that happened were: I was doxxed, my extended family was doxxed, I was harassed across all social media, sent death threats, my family and my pets were threatened with death, when my cat died I was mercilessly mocked for that painful loss, my marriage certificate was posted online, people (unsuccessfully) tried to mail things to my house and send pizzas, my E-mail was hacked, and it just goes on and on and on. It was especially bad throughout that first year. And although as time goes on there have been lulls in those waves of harassment, they never totally go away. At some point, someone will always decide to make some alt account or make some new YouTube video that will whip up the hate all over again. It comes in waves, but never totally goes away.

But you came here to read about a possible murder plot. So, okay, here we go.

It's 2023.

Vic still goes to some shady conventions from time to time. He hosts livestreams on Twitch every Wednesday. He whips his followers up into a frenzy all the time, even when nobody's talking about him. But then he hides behind the idea of, "Oh, I didn't TELL anybody to hurt ANYONE." Some real stochastic terrorism kinda shit. We can all tell he's very okay with the idea that his detractors get harmed, so long as he stands back far away enough to be able to say he didn't have anything to do with it.

It's April 2023. Out of seemingly thin air, a person I do not know in any capacity or have ever even heard of starts picking fights with me. She goes by the name Farah Fatherless (a porn name--she does amateur porn and has an OnlyFans, etc.). I already have her blocked. I have a lot of people blocked--over 2 million people, in fact. But she's tagged me, super pissed that I have her blocked. Initially, I don't even see it, for that reason. But somebody else replied to her asking, "Why would she block you? You're so cool!" And THAT person, I did not have blocked, so I ended up seeing the conversation. This happens a lot, so I quote-tweeted Farah and ask something to the effect of, "Why do people who don't even like me or even want to talk to me want to have access to me in the first place?" I've done that a few times before. Under most circumstances, it just becomes a big joke we all laugh off. BUT NOT THIS TIME I GUESS.

After this, Farah is on a war path. It had genuinely been four years since I had seen anybody be so unceasingly abusive and aggressive. She attacked anybody and everybody trying to get her to calm down. She just started making shit up, doxxing friends, and she would go on and on for days at a time, even when nobody was talking to her. Eventually she got herself a week-long Twitter ban after using some slurs. So we thought that was the end of it for a while.

NOPE. While she couldn't attack me on Twitter, she made up a Change.org petition with the slogan of "#kickmarsgurl" (she couldn't even spell my username correctly). Kick me from what, I'm not really sure. But it was full of all kinds of wholly untrue things, like claiming I'd been physically removed from anime conventions before (I haven't) or that I had been calling anime conventions to get actors removed from their events (I haven't, and you CAN'T call anime conventions, because anime conventions don't have phone numbers). And you could just tell it was her because it was written incredibly poorly. Just awful spelling and awful grammar, which we've learned happens because she uses talk-to-text to write almost everything she writes on the Internet. Thankfully, we figured out this incredibly stupid ruse very quickly, so that flopped. She was back on Twitter for a while doing a really bad job claiming it wasn't her. Then she got another week-long Twitter ban. So we thought, okay, surely THAT'S over. NOPE. Next thing that came up was a fake news article! It was written supposedly by "CNN-Anime" (a division of CNN that absolutely does not exist), and not only that, but it was published on Medium.com--a blogging web site that literally anybody can write on for any reason. The article suggested I was at some party (I don't tend to go to parties) and that I had been drinking (I don't tend to drink) and that a young boy was there (I don't tend to hang out with children) and that I had been inappropriate with that child. Despite how plainly and obviously fake it was based solely on the fact that it was published by "CNN-Anime"--a division that does not exist--and published on a blog web site that isn't even CNN, it was still being spread around by utter morons that absolutely wished it WAS true. But even all the lawyers I've come to know over the last four years said, "Wow, it's clear these guys never learned what real defamation is, because here they are doing real defamation and meeting actual malice right now." Farah came back to Twitter again. Denied the article was her. Eventually got herself yet another week-long Twitter ban. At this point, we knew this couldn't be the end of the onslaught.

YEP. The next thing I knew, I was starting to receive an onslaught of bot followers, first on Instagram, then on Twitter. Just an absolute barrage of bot accounts following me, maybe two every minute, until before I knew it I'd received something like 12,000 new followers on Instagram. These were followers I didn't want. And it made me mad because I knew the only way to combat this was to take my account private to stop them from being able to follow. I've never had a reason to keep my accounts private before. I've prided myself in staying public and not being beaten back at any point during the onslaught of harassment. But this finally made me go private while I slowly and painfully removed 12,000 bot followers on Instagram. And it wasn't long before whoever was doing this (let's be real, it was Farah) had moved on to sending those follower bots to my Twitter account, too.

In the middle of being followed by bots, probably intended to either shut me up or make my account dirty enough to be reported for bot activity, I am contacted by a stranger--somebody I've never talked to before. They tell me that they actually have more information about Farah that they only just realized they were aware of. They forward me something like 48 screenshots of Farah's Discord server, where she and multiple other people talk about cosplay and meet-ups and who knows what else. In these screenshots from December 2022, Farah is in her Discord describing how she JUST BROKE UP WITH VIC MIGNOGNA.

WELL.

It's weird, it's gross, and they had been dating for about 7 months by that point after meeting at a convention that was local to her. She had lots of screenshots of texts between herself and Vic, proving they were in fact an item. And she found out that Vic had "gone back" to his ex-girlfriend. See, but she doesn't know all the information I already was aware of, that Vic had been dating another person semi-publicly since at least late-2021, and as far as I had been aware, they'd never broken up in the first place. So this other person wasn't an "ex". They were there the whole time, and Vic was cheating on both of them.

SO! Now I had new information. Farah was doing this, FOR SOME REASON, in Vic's honor. Why, I couldn't be sure. Was she trying to get him back? Was she already back with him and just trying to help him now? Hard to say yet.

But I knew that, if somebody was out here trying to attack my Twitter account and get it potentially removed so that I no longer had my voice, then I needed to at least get this information out before my account disappeared. So I spent one evening with my Twitter account protected, removed a bunch of bot followers, then came back out and posted a thread about everything I had learned, up to and including information on the OTHER girlfriend that I knew was still in his life.

And, boy, both Farah and the other girlfriend were having a TIME. After a day of it being public information, Farah started publicly posting on Instagram again, seemingly that this had just been a whirlwind situation, that she and Vic had gotten back together not long after that Discord conversation, that they were together all the way up until this point (May 2023), that she realized now that she'd been lied to and manipulated. Though she still didn't seem to understand that the other woman was not an "ex", and was still mad at her for existing. The other woman meanwhile (Haileigh) was posting on Twitter that none of this was true and that Farah was just crazy and that she was mad at Vic for being somewhat untruthful but that didn't matter because she was going to stay in Vic's life no matter what. Okay, you do you. I can't make you leave, and really, that wasn't the point. The point was just to get Farah to fuckin' stop attacking me for nearly a month straight. But eventually, Haileigh nuked her Twitter account. Bummer.

There were still several days where Farah publicly flip-flopped about how she was feeling. One minute she would be pissed at Vic for doing this to her. The next she would be pissed at me for revealing any of this information at all, threatening to sue me. And finally after several days, she nuked all of her presence off of the Internet entirely. Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, all of it, just gone. Is it possible this was all over? NOPE!!!

I tell this part now only because Farah has basically said this publicly herself, but at the time she wanted it kept just between us. But basically, a few days after she deleted her internet presence, she started sending me E-mails. This was the start of the most unbelievable 180 I've ever seen in my life, and was one I was very hesitant about, but have slowly been warming up to over time. Long story short, she realized Vic really was just as manipulative as he seemed, was a huge liar, and that there were even worse things that she thought I should know about. But she was hesitant to tell me more until she felt like she could trust me. And if I had to be honest, I wasn't yet sure I could trust that she wasn't just gonna report our communications right back to Vic, either. So we came to a truce, and I would just sort of play things by ear. I promised I wouldn't take screenshots of our E-mails or post about them online.

The E-mails I got back after that were pretty concerning. Everything she had been doing for the past month, attacking me on Twitter and writing fake articles and even buying bots, she'd been doing them for Vic. Not only that, but Vic was aware she'd been doing it and was very grateful for it. He didn't expressly tell her to do it, but she was doing it because she genuinely believed I specifically was hurting him and she wanted to do something to help the person she loved. And for that, Vic was very happy. They had talked about this over a dinner date before she got started doing it. Apparently their conversation was something like him saying, "Thank you for doing that. You don't know to what extents I've considered going to make this all stop." Her response was something like, "Like what? Have you considered having her killed?" And apparently his response was, "I have considered it, yes."

So, this apparently was not the only time this topic of conversation came up. After I had leaked the screenshots from Farah's server, Vic apparently pressured her to try and sue me herself. Not only that, but he started putting pressure on moving forward with putting on SOME kind of physical harm towards me. He started asking Farah whether or not she was aware if I was attending Anime Expo this year. She told him that she believed I was. (Spoiler alert: initially, no, I wasn't, because I wasn't even going to be in California that week, as I literally was already a guest at Delta H Con in Houston, Texas that exact same weekend.) Regardless, Vic started asking if she knew what hotel I was going to be staying at for Anime Expo. She told him she didn't know, and she couldn't just go around calling hotels to find out. But she did promise him that if she saw me there, she could at the very least follow me to my car and take a photo of my license plate for him to use later. Obviously, none of this ended up happening, especially because she realized he was using her goodwill and love towards him to get her to do things that nobody should ever do for anybody else.

Now, there are A LOT OF DECISIONS HERE that she was making that, even if it was for somebody I loved, I would have never offered to do. But if she was actually genuinely seriously regretful about how things went down, and she was realizing that the actual bad guy in this situation was Vic, then I was willing to hear her out and give her a chance. The last thing I E-mailed her was asking her whether she had any text proof of any of these conversations happening. More than a week passed. I heard nothing back.

It is now late June, 2023. For some reason, Vic is suddenly on his weekly Wednesday Twitch livestream. And guess what? He's talking about Farah! Well... sort of. Nobody has been talking about this man's weird relationships publicly for a while, so it was not yet clear to my why it was that he was talking about this. But it basically boiled down to, "Don't bother the people in my life. Don't bother Farah! She's been a good friend." And my first thought is, "Friend? That's what you wanna call her, after we have proof that you were more? Friend?"

And that did it! That SET. FARAH. OFF. Apparently, she had asked him to go on his livestream and clear everything up about their relationship. And all he could muster was calling her a "friend", so that he could still sneakily keep multiple relationships going at the same time.

Farah suddenly reactivates all her accounts! Twitter! Instagram! TikTok! Everything is back, and she's LIVID! She promises she's gonna tell the world everything she knows about him and drop a bunch of receipts!

And lo and behold, she actually does it! Screenshots of texts! Recordings of phone conversations! She makes huge public apologies! She apologizes to me! To Jamie! To Monica! To anybody she picked fights with!

And then she drops what she was telling me in her E-mails. She tells EVERYBODY that, yes, Vic had had conversations with her about having me killed. Well, holy shit! From this much alone, I'm told that if we used just her testimony, I could probably have enough to have a restraining order created.

But the question is, does more proof of all of this exist?

So, well, here's the unfortunate thing. In all of Farah's initial hurt and pain, she deleted large chunks of her conversations with Vic, never wanting to see them or interact with him ever again. However, it seems that she did have some clarity of thought afterward, realizing that, YES, apparently they did talk about some of this "murder plot" via text. But that chat log is deleted now. But she's hoping AT&T has record of these texts. Farah has contacted AT&T. She's physically gone into their stores, asking for that backlog. Apparently, AT&T won't hand it over without legal intervention. So! Now she's talking to lawyers, trying to get the phone records subpoenaed. She has made it more than abundantly clear to me (at least, this is how she is making it sound) that she is willing to put herself in harm's way (legally speaking) to prove that, yes, she and Vic discussed physically harming someone over text messages.

For right now, this is all we know. We're waiting to see if she can successfully get her own damn text messages subpoenaed from AT&T. It can be hard to want to put a little trust or faith in someone who tried so hard to hurt you for a month straight, but the amount of receipts that she has already shown publicly so far has been proof enough that there is at least some reason to believe she means well. Also, when she WAS lying about things while trying to attack me, she was VERY bad at it. You sometimes have to read between the lines when she talks about things. Because I often believe she's telling me the truth as of late, but sometimes her version of the "truth" is just what Vic was telling her, so it might not always be true, but she definitely BELIEVES it's true.

I'm sure this is a story that is going to continue to develop. But for anybody who was curious, this is what it's been like for me.

tl;dr: A 60-year-old man who got kicked out of the American anime voice acting industry hates me so much that he VERY LIKELY had multiple conversations with a woman he was romantically stringing along about developing plans to have me murdered. Cool!

I would say that most people will never be able to say they may or may not have been the intended target of a murder plot by a former anime voice actor, and I hope I at least live long enough to write an autobiography about how stupid the entire thing is.

#anime #vic mignogna #cw #tw #assault #death threats

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kingxxlink · 2 years ago

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mmm gimmee a numbah 5, numbah 9, an a numbah 20 for the art ask game if you don't mind! :D

HEEEEELL YEAH

5: WOULD YOU BELIEVE THAT I POST ALMOST EVERYTHING I DRAW;;; this is mostly because I don't like posting unfinished work but also I draw constantly for other people! I do have some NSFW things and WIPs I haven't posted anywhere though [sweats]

9: they're long and messy naming conventions is what they are > i start with what the art is (art trade, art payment, commission, etc.); if it has none of these it's a personal work > i then put in the username (or just name if i know them well) of whoever its for; sometimes their main site if i REALLY don't know them well > then the character name > finally, what kind of pixel it is (if it's a pixel): XL pixel, small pixel, toincy (if it has none, it's digital) > worst of all? they're all interchangeable bits of info; i never do it the same way twice (RIP)

Ex pulled from my files: comm daisy caesar haze [FINISHED SKETCH COMING SOON LMAO]

20: short hair, like, extremely short (eyes profile picture) and uh...f-feet? i don't know why. my brain just understands the tiny fingered hands. (but also i love drawing folds: flowy, tight, loose and baggy, and so on)

#asked and answered #art #LOOK AT MY TEXT WALL RIP

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fullarbiterwerewolf · 2 years ago

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The IoT and the Day the Web Passed on, Nearly

Barely seven days prior, the Web nearly passed on.

Beginning on Thursday, October 20, a large part of the U.S. what's more, portions of Western Europe encountered a monstrous blackout. The absolute most famous and vigorously involved sites on the planet went quiet. Poor Donald Trump couldn't tweet for a couple of hours.

What's more, it was all a direct result of modest webcams and blue ray players… maybe even one of yours

Making Associations

To comprehend how this occurred, you want to figure out how Web of Things (IoT) gadgets work.

On the off chance that you're understanding this, you have a Web association. To make that association, your PC or cell phone necessities to have three things:

A piece of equipment intended to interface with the Web through a link or remotely Programming to run that equipment, which contains its interesting Web "IP" address A method for differentiating among approved and unapproved associations The last prerequisite is regularly met by a username and secret key to interface with your Web access supplier. But at the same time it's feasible for different gadgets to interface from a distance to your PC across the Web - "approaching associations." A portion of those are great (e.g., approaching Skype calls), and some are terrible (programmers). Having passwords for IoT gadgets accomplishes exactly the same thing - yet provided that they're solid passwords.

The tech business has endeavored to foster normal strategies to recognize and stop undesirable approaching associations with PCs. Working frameworks are continually refreshed to manage the most recent danger. Particular organizations just watch for infections, bots, malware and different risks and plan programming to battle them. Folks like me expound on how you can keep up with great computerized cleanliness. That is the reason we have far less infection flare-ups than we used to.

With regards to Web associations, IoT equipment has essentially a similar arrangement. However, there are three major contrasts.

One is that the username and secret phrase arrangement might be difficult to adjust - it might try and be designed by the maker, as appears to have been the situation with the gadgets that added to the new Web blackout.

Another is that IoT gadgets are consistently on and seldom checked. Dissimilar to a PC, they could be tainted and you'd never be aware.

Most importantly, there is no aggregate work to screen and forestall hacking of IoT gadgets. No one is conveying general security refreshes, similar to a McAfee or Norton antivirus administration. They can't, since IoT gadgets are unique. There's no normal language or convention that could address dangers to all IoT gadgets on the double.

All things being equal, it really depends on the maker of each IoT gadget to get the gadget and to refresh its "firmware" when dangers become known.

We attempted that methodology with PCs… what's more, it didn't work.

How This Prompted Last Week's Blackout

In the new blackout, IoT equipment made by a Chinese producer - including those modest packaged home-security webcams you see publicized at Home Stop - was hacked by somebody utilizing programming called Mirai. It look through the Web searching for IoT contraptions that utilization default passwords or basic passwords, taints them and afterward gathers them into a "botnet"- an assortment of gadgets that can be made to do the programmer's desires.

For this situation, they educated IoT gadgets to send "several millions" of association solicitations to the servers of a U.S. organization that gives pivotal Web directing data. Overpowered, the organization's servers crashed… what's more, with it, the Pages of locales like Twitter, Facebook, The New York Times and others.

This was conceivable in light of the fact that the product running the Chinese IoT equipment utilized a solitary designed username and secret phrase for every one of them - which couldn't be changed by the client. When the programmers got the username and secret key, it was not difficult to program them to do what they did.

Roland Dobbins, chief designer of Web security organization Arbor Organizations, puts this on the disappointment of producers to cooperate to foster a typical security way to deal with IoT. All things being equal, each organization seeks after its own plans and disregards the PC business' excruciating involvement with this regard.

"I'm not worried about the future; I'm worried about the past," he said as of late. "On the off chance that I could wave an enchanted wand, I would make it so there are no unstable installed gadgets out there. We actually have a colossal issue; we actually have a huge number of these gadgets out there."

Try not to Separate From the IoT

Also Read : Where That IOT Is Heading to Take

Does this imply that positive forecasts about the IoT are lost?

Not the least bit.

In the first place, organizations like Samsung, which intends to make every one of its items Web associated soon, presently have a motivator to foster ways of battling this. If not we won't buy their items.

Second, purchasers won't represent what is happening like the old Betamax versus VCR wars - contending ways to deal with a typical need. The IoT is a stage, similar to the actual Web, and everybody should be on a similar one. Makers will plunk down and concoct normal conventions to get IoT gadgets, regardless of whether they're kicking and shouting as far as possible.

Third, a similar market influences that delivered Norton, McAfee, Kaspersky Lab and the wide range of various security organizations in the PC space will create answers for the IoT. Furthermore, there will be cash to be made putting resources into those as well as the IoT itself.

Meanwhile, here's my recommendation. Get IoT gadgets… yet, just the first in class. Stay away from modest efficiently manufactured off-brands. Get some information about security conventions and whether you can set your own username and secret key without any problem. On the off chance that not, leave. They'll get the image soon enough.

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ask-whitepearl-and-steven · 4 years ago

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How do you feel about askers’ way of asking questions? There are the ones who are super polite like in the previous ask or the ones who flat out just DHSIDJ BUT WHY??? Is there one you prefer? Is there a specific way you like to receive asks, but you’ll just respond to them no matter what? Please, I need answers

It... depends...?

Depends on my mood, on the subject of the ask, on whether or not I know the person/recognize their icon.

On one hand, I want to believe that everyone is just trying their best. I know no one is sending me rude messages on purpose, and communication mishaps happen.

But on the other hand - if you are sending me a message on anon, or if I don’t know you personally (we haven’t talked much) - yes, I would prefer it if people were at least a little polite?

Because consider this - I have thousands of followers. I don’t know their icons/usernames by heart. I recognize a few, but most are just a sea of passersby faces on the street where I peddle my wares. And if you’re on the street, minding your business, trying to sell some comics quietly and a random person breaks off from the crowd and goes up to you, gets in your face and yells

well

You may just feel a little uncomfortable?

I personally know I do. I try to assume the best, but I don’t always have the patience to do anything except ignore this to save myself time. Answering it would invite similar inanity into my inbox and flood out the more useful messages. If I don’t know the person well, this isn’t friendly joking - it’s just annoying.

I get messages almost every day - sometimes it’s only a few, but often, there are at least 30 in my inbox every time I open it. Especially after a recently posted comic, sometimes there can be 80+ questions I need to look through. I can’t feasibly reply to all of them, so I have to scroll and see if

A) There’s anything I can use for the AU comic (those get saved for later)

B) There’s anything I can answer within 10 seconds (these are short, simple enough questions that do not require a paragraph to explain)

C) There’s anything people are having trouble understanding en masse that I might have messed up/missed and needs to be addressed so everyone can calm down

But the majority of the asks are not these asks.

You want to see what the majority of my asks are like?

Nonsensical questions that are trying to get a reaction out of me.

Questions which make it clear the reader has not yet read the FAQ/the whole comic/has not really read very carefully.

People trying to strong-arm the story in a direction of their own, or trying to break down the 4th wall to give Steven All The Answers...

These are just a FEW examples.

Some messages are just really sweet notes from people who tell me they like the comic - I try to save them for later to reply privately, if I can, or I save them to read over and over again to cheer myself up. :)

Some are random chainmail asks or various attempts to get my attention - ‘pass this hug on to the next 10 people’ etc - I appreciate them, but I never react or do anything because it’s just not realistic for me to do that sort of work. I have other things I want to be focusing on.

I want to be polite and patient and answer everyone, but I hope you guys can understand that I just... can’t be. I’m only one person. I don’t have a PR team behind me because I’m not a public figure. I’m just one comic author, and I don’t want to build up some sort of ‘influencer’ status. I just want to draw.

And I know this might be difficult to hear but - I’m not your friend. I’m not your hero. I’m not even someone you should be looking up to. If my work inspires you, I’m thrilled to hear that! We can be peers! I can give you advice if you need it (provided you’re not expecting a 10 chapter How To book on your desk in the morning) and I can answer questions if you’re confused.

All I ask is that you take a few seconds to THINK about what you typed before you hit that button.

Before sending the ask, ask yourself:

1) Is it written politely? (Or are you talking to me the way a rich middle aged woman talks to someone in customer service?)

2) Did you already try to find the answer to your question by searching the blog and reading the FAQ?

3) Would you run up to a random artist at a convention and say this to their face?

If all of these can be answered with ‘YES’ After that, send the message. I guarantee you will exponentially increase your chance of your ask being answered if you follow these steps. :)

#chekhov answers #Anonymous

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threeleggedart · 2 years ago

Note

from discord: 2, 3, 9, 19, 22

2. Is it easier to draw someone facing left or right (or forward even)

depends on if the characters asymmetrical but generally dont have problems with either + i flip my canvas to check for inconsistencies. forward is weird because depending on character design its either super easy or a nightmare (ie any characters who were never meant to be viewed facing forward)

(next one was a text doozy so making this a read more!)

3. What ideas come from when you were little

this ones gonna be weird bc i dont think i can be sure on a lot of these lmao

bio/zoology + monster stuff definitely came from childhood interest, i likea tha critters :) i wanna say my interest in bots/mechs + funky inanimate object stuff too? i did play metal slug a lot as a kid and a bunch of childhood favs were mechanical characters. also ive found fanart of putt putt, captain underpants villains, and the brave little toaster in my childhood journals lmao

oc -wise, selena herself (and vicks) also are funny in their own ways. i can say for sure they were always distinct ocs in my mind but i never actually Materialized them till very very recently. selena was based on a childhood pokemon trainer oc (but noot entirely self insert? its hard to describe) and vicks is kind of. a catharsis character for me. i have been thinking about making an entirely split oc from vicks recently bc the character i view in scenarios i want to visualize has been vicks, but i dont really wanna anymore bc she deserves to be her own deal now

...i also would argue probably the reason why mws huge cast + me just being able to. establish how they interact with each other so quickly also came from childhood ocs i never put down on paper or knew how to articulate as characters. its something im very weird about bc i straight up had a "cast" of fundamental ocs (proto-selena was one of them actually) from childhood to high school that were so personal to me i never wrote or visualized any of them bc Crinj they were just for lil ol me lmao. they liked to hang out with each other :)

finding connections between my fixation on my current characters and stuff i thought about as a kid is a thing i think about a normal amount teehee

9. What are your file name conventions

stupid and goofy but still understandable to infer what it is for personal stuff, labeled straight for work stuff. "sketchbook" files have scratchpad in the name, pieces that include characters that arent my own usually include the persons username, and annual based stuff have the year

i like to be sillay but also i am a freak about keeping my files organized lmao

19. Favorite inanimate objects to draw (food, nature, etc.)

sid industrial machinery is really fun for me, buildings tend to be too basic and geometric for me to enjoy drawing... i wanna do more extremely stylized furniture and prop stuff (i really like those drawings that are character inventory layouts), i actually do wanna make fake object assets for my settings eventually bc i love that kind of stuff. bottles and containers are aesthetically pleasing but havent figured out rendering the sweet spot ive seen other drawings hit, at least for me

environments are something i wanna do bc those pics of super expansive landscapes with either huge structures or so open you can see the horizon stretch for miles are really cool, but still in the general learning process so itll be a while before i can even try reaching for that effect

22. What physical exercises do you do before drawing, if any

i sometimes do a little wrist wriggle or crack it a bit, or ill wring my arm/shoulder, but unless my arms got a weird feeling i dont really do too much...

i squeeze both my biceps with my hands too sometime bc thats actually where i normally experience soreness from drawing

#discord #ask

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twoidiotwriters1 · 4 years ago

Text

Iron 3 (Peter Parker x F!Oc)

Words: 1,756

Masterlist

Chapter 2 / Chapter 4

Tony Stark's trip to showcase the new Jericho missile is a success with the military, but when soldiers take him back, they’re intercepted and the billionaire is kidnapped.

Both Lily and Pepper find out by watching television. The call from Colonel James Rhodes confirms their fears. Although the information isn’t much, the important thing is that they’re doing everything to find him.

Pepper Potts concentrates on everything she has to do for the company without her boss. Working for Tony for so many years has formed a special connection, even if it is not the conventional one. Sometimes thoughts of possible horrible scenarios come to her mind, but she pushes them away.

Something she can be thankful for is the company of little Lily, who also can't help but worry about the man. He may not have been kind, but no one deserves to be tortured.

The tension remains for three long months, the wait for news from Tony along with the paternity results in the envelope which has not been opened. Nobody knows what to do in a situation like this.

Rhodes keeps searching for his best friend with the help of the army. Pepper and Happy take care of the little girl. The relationship between Tony and Lily's small circle has been strengthened in all this time, even Rhodey receives some calls from her asking if he’s okay and if he has found Tony. Regardless of the test results, they would protect Lily.

At the end of the three months, the new news give everyone a great respite. Tony Stark is alive and returns home.

Although Lily wants to meet Tony along with Pepper and Happy, they won't let her. Surely there would be a lot of reporters and they’d ask a lot of questions if they see the girl.

For those cases, Pepper had already arranged a babysitter. A difficult task, but she managed to find a twenty year old girl, she has no idea who the girl is, nor who hired her. The contact was a Stark Industries worker. With that problem solved, they both wait in Pepper's apartment.

Jessica the babysitter isn't so bad, Lily thinks. The only bad thing is that she spends a lot of time on her phone.

Lily searches all the channels for any news about Tony and finds one where they’re broadcasting a press conference with him eating a hamburger.

"That man must be crazy," Jessica says from the couch.

"Why?"

“He just said that he will no longer make weapons. His company produces the most. He’ll run out of money,” She explains.

Lily frowns.

Why would Tony stop producing what makes so much money?

***

"Did you think I wasn't going to find out about the girl, Tony?"

“Obie…”

Obadiah Stane raises his hand to interrupt him.

"It hurts me that you don't trust me.”

Tony sighs.

"I didn't have much time to explain everything to you and after my obligatory vacation, I couldn't do it.”

"Is she yours or not?"

“I don't know, I haven't seen the results. But, I don't think you called me for this,” Tony tries to deflect that topic as soon as possible. He can't handle this now.

They walk through Stark Industries until they reach the room where the Arc Reactor is. They argue about the actions of the company and how it affects Tony's decision. He tries to show Stane another form of energy, but in the end he fails to do much.

Happy waits for him in the limousine to take him back to the house. Tony gets in the car.

"Sir, Lily asked me to give you this," says Happy, handing him a folded paper. "She's already at your house," He informs and starts the car.

Tony unfolds the paper, finding a drawing made with colored crayons. A big house, the sea behind and three people standing in front. The names Happy, Rhodey, and Pepper are written under each person in crooked letters. The man can't help but smile, but what he’s really surprised about is seeing the fourth person in the air with outstretched arms. It's him with a big smile and the words 'I'm alive' next to him. He doesn’t know whether to feel fear at those words or simply laugh at the idea.

The truth is that during his experience in Afghanistan, he did think about her. How his life would be if the test was positive. If he’d manage to get out of that situation and return to have a family. Images from his childhood, everything he lived with his parents came to his mind.

Howard Stark was not the best father in the world. Tony doesn't remember loving or encouraging words from him, no matter how hard he tries. He discussed this with his assistant and his friend Yinsen, who was very helpful in giving real advice, but even so, he still doesn't believe that he’s capable of raising a girl. He doesn't have a clue how to do it.

“Sir," Happy interrupts his thoughts. “We’re home.”

***

"You're good?”

“Yes."

"You don't look good.”

"Well, I am," Tony answers, arranging some things in his workshop.

"Did you like my drawing?"

"It could be better.”

Lily frowns. It’s not the answer she expected. Maybe that means he wants more drawings, to see how much I can improve, she thinks.

“Okay.”

Tony takes off his shirt and leans back on a table. He connects several cables to his body. Lily looks at him curiously and notices the circle in the center of his chest.

"What is that?”

"You wouldn’t understand.”

"Doesn't it hurt?"

“No."

"How does it work?"

“You wouldn’t understand-"

“Try me,” She cuts him off. She’s sick of that answer. Tony sighs.

"This little wheel of light,” He touches it. “It's what keeps me alive, it works so that the shrapnel doesn’t reach my heart.”

"What is shrapnel?"

"Fragments of a missile that tried to kill me.”

She nods.

"And what are you going to do now?"

“Update it. Jarvis, call Miss Potts.”

"Can I ask another question?"

"You already did.”

"I'll ask another question," She informs. Tony brings his lips together to avoid a smile.

“Okay."

“Your dad was also an inventor. Did he answer all your questions?"

Tony frowns. He could never ask so many questions to his father. Howard kept him as far away as possible, but he had other teachers or he did research himself.

Pepper's arrival interrupts them. Her steps are nervous, she thought that finally her boss would want to know the result of the paternity test, but seeing that he needs her for something else, she leaves the envelope on a table.

The man explains what she has to do to replace the reactor in his heart with a better one. Lily looks amused as Pepper panics and Tony tries to relax her, but it only upsets her further.

"It's like the game ‘operating'."

"What is that?" asks Pepper scared.

"I know what it is, can I try it?"

"No!" The two adults answer. She makes a face.

When the machines sound faster on alert, Lily freaks out and looks around for something she can help out with, but she doesn't know what all of Tony's toys work for. But Pepper manages to solve it in time and everything ends.

“You're better?" She asks approaching again.

“Yes, Kid. Back off,” He answers, pulling her away a bit.

Pepper wipes her hands. Tony explains what she has to do with the old reactor, she nods, but after she clears her throat.

"We have a pending issue,” Tony turns to see them. Pepper points to the girl.

“Right," He sighs. "Just tell me if she's mine or not.”

"Don't you want to see the papers?"

Tony sits on a bench and looks at Lily.

“No."

Pepper opens the envelope carefully. Reads every detail and sighs in relief. She smiles and looks up at her boss.

“Lily's your daughter, sir.”

Tony doesn't take his eyes off the girl.

“Fine."

Pepper notices the tension between them.

"Just fine?"

"Yes, that's it,” Now he stares at the redhead. "Thank you, Miss Potts.”

The redhead nods unsure and leaves the workshop.

Tony makes a face and returns to the girl.

"You got scared?" He raises an eyebrow.

“Yes.”

“What did you think?"

"I don't want to lose my dad so soon,” She cocks her head. "I just found him.”

"I should take you to an orphanage.”

“You'll do it?"

“You’d be better with someone else.”

"But I don't want to be an orphan.”

“Nobody wants to be. I am.”

"Is that why you're always sad?"

He opens his mouth thinking of an attack, but he decides to avoid it.

“This is a bad idea. Being my daughter, I don't recommend it.”

“Well, not that I have a choice. My mom is no longer at home and…” She sighs. "I don't think she wants me back.”

Tony puts his hands to his face and groans.

“Fine," He gets up and looks around. "I have other things to do. Pepper will handle the paperwork."

“Can I help?"

Tony walks to a desk and touches the surface. Holograms of plans and folders are projected in front of him. Lily approaches the desk, Tony looks at her from the corner of his eye, maybe he can admit that it is nice to have someone who’s easily impressed.

He and Jarvis talk about a secret project, outside of any Stark Industries business.

"I don't want this to fall into the wrong hands.”

"What about mine?" Lily asks. She raises both hands showing him her palms.

He sighs.

“They're still wrong, but,” He cocks his head. “I guess you're a Stark now. That's enough,” He crouches down to her level. "You can’t tell anyone about this.”

"Not even Happy?"

“I'll take care of Pepper, Happy and Rhodes. This shouldn't get out of here unless I say so. Okay?" He offers his hand.

“Deal," They shake hands. “Can I help?"

"Only if you follow my rules.”

"Which are?"

“Don't get in the way. Do exactly what I tell you and don't ask so many questions.”

She frowns at the last rule.

"I can't help it, how can I help you if I don't know what to do?"

He rolls his eyes.

"Fine, we’ll have a limit of questions.”

“Fine," She answers in a deep voice, imitating his. She smiles looking at him, but she stops when he doesn't.

"This will be more complicated than I thought.”

Taglist

If your username is crossed out it’s because Tumblr didn’t let me tag you, sorry. If you want to be removed from the taglist, you can tell us, we also make mistakes, lol

@stardusthigh @sarcasticallywitty15 @silenthappyplace @yourbonesareinmybody @aylauwuuniverse @tyb1 @skittles-skittles @hufflepuffzutara @poetryislife0715

#Iron #Peter Parker #Peter Parker x Oc #Peter Parker x reader #Avengers #Avengers fanfic #Marvel fanfic #Tony Stark #Iron Man #Pepper Potts #Iron Man 1 #James Rhodes #Spider man

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sigmaleph · 3 years ago

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wait, how does "pretending not to understand the NFT you bought" benefit either "people buying NFTs for status" or "people trying to resell NFTs"? i would imagine pretending to be a fool on twitter lowers your status, and i would imagine that making NFT owners look like idiots would (slightly, in aggregate) lower the potential resale value of NFTs? i agree that most of these NFT threads are fake, but i think its more likely to be people who hate NFTs pretending to be NFT owners.

you seem to be under the impression i'm claiming this as some sort of machiavellian strategic move? it's not. it's people trolling on the internet for fun. i don't know why this is fun for them but empirically lots of people go on the internet and pretend to believe things they don't and thinks it's funny when you believe them.

it doesn't need to advance any long-term goal.

agree that most of these NFT threads are fake, but i think its more likely to be people who hate NFTs pretending to be NFT owners.

every time i looked up a username they were a completely unironic NFT type who like goes to NFT conventions and shit. if they're faking it it's really deep cover

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lildoodlecat · 3 years ago

Note

For the personal asks: 11, 22, 33 and 44? (are those numbers coincidental or not, the world will never know >:) )

(All these doubles.. so scary :0)

I love your username btw like hard same lol

11. Last time you cried?

God this is gonna sound pathetic sjxk but I was at a board game convention and this fuckin,, 13 y/o boy was being very mean and kinda yelling at me bc I didn't understand the game we were playing and kept being slow and making mistakes. (He didn't let me learn the game first so man,wonder why I didn't know wtf was going on)

I promptly fucked off after that bc he was a dick but I did cry a lil after I got away from him bc I was not abt to cry in front of that tiny asshole

22. Nicknames people call you?

Jay is a nickname from an old username actually! Uhh besides that ig my sister (lovingly) calls me a gremlin sometimes dkfksl

33. Best day of your life?

Y'know, I genuinely don't know how to answer this question. A few years ago I would've said like "the day I got to see jacksepticeye on tour" but now that's not really it??

Oh!! Idk if it's the best bc thinking in absolutes hurts my brain but a really damn good day would be one of the ones when I went to visit my friend Pika! He's a cool dude n it was really neat to see him in person esp since we live on opposite sides of the country

44. Selfie?

Oof maybe I should've specified no selfies but. Hmm

How's this for a selfie

I'm technically in the picture ;D

#jay talks back #ask game

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ashintheairlikesnow · 5 years ago

Text

Get Real Angry: Interrogation, Final

CW: Institutional brutality, whump of a minor (in the form of a video Jake watches), beating, electric shock, very vaguely referenced past/potential noncon, violence in response to self-soothing stimming behavior, referenced familial abuse, sleep deprivation, creepy whumper behavior

The final part of Jake’s interrogation during his very bad week. Tomorrow I hope to get his reunion with Chris written, and then Jake’s first day back in class after that, and then we’ll return to your regularly scheduled comfort programming now that this little mini-narrative is out of my head!

To understand the frat guy reference (a reference to @deluxewhump‘s Alex), please read this piece here.

INTERROGATION: PART ONE PART TWO

Tagging @burtlederp, @finder-of-rings, @endless-whump, @whumpfigure, @stxck-fxck, @slaintetowhump

When Everly wheels the TV in - big and blocky, on a little metal wheelie cart with a squeaky wheel and rust spots along the frame - and settles it in front of the chair Jake has been encouraged to sit in, Jake is reminded, bizarrely, of a movie he saw a few years ago.

Weird arthouse movie about a guy that takes another guy captive and his boyfriend or whatever tries to hunt him down, they watched something on a TV in an old house… shit, what was it called… Jake’s head hurts, throbs with a kind of foggy ache, and he closes his eyes, head drooping just slightly.

He could drift off just like this, with his wrists still zip-tied, his shoulders screaming pain at him. Since waking up at the sound of the cops banging on the door, sleep has been a twenty-minute nap here and there, as long as they’ll let him drop off, slumped in his chair, forehead resting on the table in the interrogation room.

Everly left for a while, he assumes to get some fucking sleep. They’d set up some kind of weird blaring alarm system that went off while he was gone, going off every hour or so, waking Jake up. His head feels weighted down with the fucking need for sleep.

Once his eyes close, he can’t quite seem to force them open again. God, he could, he really could fall asleep now, with Everly staring right down at him. Rescues talk about it, about curling up on the floor, covering their eyes with their arms to try and find the tiniest bit of darkness in the unending white light, just… drifting away into some kind of doze and fuck, what he wouldn’t give for a real nap right about now-

There’s a slam, palm on metal table, rattling it, and Jake jerks his head back up, staring wide-eyed up at the handler, breathing in harsh pants. Everly’s not even wearing his stupid fake cop uniform anymore. He doesn’t even try to hold up the pretense.

That’s how Jake knows - for sure this time, not just a hunch - that that camera in the corner by the ceiling definitely isn’t turned on.

Wanted to contract you but I was overruled. Jake’s bloodshot exhausted eyes stare up into Everly’s calm, almost pleased flat gray, and he shudders. It’s a thin line between protecting people who need help and being turned into one.

He kind of wants to send a thank-you card to whoever decided he was too much trouble to abduct.

“Wake up, sunshine,” Everly says, pleased as can be, pleased as punch Jake’s nana would have said, when he was little. Tiny little old southern woman, genteel beachside accent, sweet tea on the table, Sunday dinner, what happens between you and your husband is your business, Maggie. Jake shudders, all over.

When you run from a man who won’t stop hurting you with your kid in tow, you have to run from all the people who just can’t give enough of a fuck to help you, too.

“Pretty-… pretty sure sleep deprivation is torture under th’ Geneva Conventions,” Jake mumbles, forcing his head to stay up, his spine as straight as he can make it. Leaning against the back of the chair helps, but shit, what he wouldn’t give-

That’s how it starts, Jake. You think you’d give something up just to sleep, and then they take that, and take more than that, and eventually there’s nothing left.

“Probably,” Everly acknowledges with a careless shrug. “But you’re gonna have one hell of a time proving you were here and not just the unfortunate recipient of a beating outside a bar or whatever the fuck you do in your free time.”

“In m’free time,” Jake slurs - weird how being this tired has made it harder to move his mouth, even, “I mostly feed homeless people. Not… ‘zactly a violent hobby.”

“Weird how that happened to you, then,” Everly says brightly. He picks up a remote on the cart and starts pressing buttons. The TV powers on with a sudden flash of colors and Jake winces as the light hurts his eyes, blinking rapidly, trying to focus.

It’s harder than it should be. Everything is harder than it should be. He’s not even sure he could stand up on his own any longer, his legs feel like noodles precariously balanced on top of concrete blocks.

“No… no folder t’day?” Jake asks, staring as the menu pops up. Smart TV, of course it is. He stifles a laugh at the sight of the little Netflix icon, Hulu, Amazon Prime. “Y’watch a lot of, of fuckin’ TV when you’re torturin’ innocent people?”

“Shut up, it belongs to the police station.” Everly chooses an app off to the corner, something called KINECTREMOT, the letters dancing and refusing to settle as Jake tries to read them. Does it start this way, with the rescues? Does it start with it just getting harder because you’re tired, and then one day the letters start to hurt?

Or is there something else, to that? Something to the training the rescues can’t explain, maybe don’t even remember?

No, Kauri remembers. Kauri’s head is a fucking mess but he remembers more of training than any of the others seem to be. Maybe that’s why his head is a mess. Jake groans, trying to focus, to think.

Everly’s humming to himself, a soft little tune on his lips, as he inputs a login username [email protected] and a password that just shows up as little circles. He fucks it up the first time, has to redo it. Jake holds back a snort.

“Y’tired, too, huh?” He asks, false sympathy dripping from his tone. “Real tired? Wanna schedule us a fuckin’ naptime, man?”

Everly glances back at him, then leans over and grabs Jake by the back of the head, casually slamming his forehead into the metal table, listening to Jake’s cry of pain with a faint grin on his face, then jerking his head back up, to look into exhausted, foggy light-colored eyes. “Have some fucking manners, Stanton.”

“Fair ‘nough,” Jake slurs, head pounding with pain, slumping to the side. “Can I please request a fuckin’ nap, sir-”

“No.” Everly goes back to humming, tries the username and password again. Wrong again. Jake wonders if he fucks it up again, if he’ll get locked out. Since this is clearly meant to be some kind of dramatic reveal, the idea strikes him as funny. Not just funny, fucking hilarious. Jake starts to giggle, unwillingly, almost helplessly. Big tough guy can’t figure out his fucking password for his Big Villain Moment. It’s funny, right? It’s really fucking funny, and shit, he’s so tired the glint of light off the table and the little spot of blood from his head, smeared across, seems funny because it’s like looking at clouds, what shape is this? and Chris on the grass bouncing up and down on his feet and saying it’s it’s it’s a kangaroo, Jake, it’s a kangaroo, in Australia they call them roos, they just say, say, say say say roo I saw a man on TV he said, said roo, he just said roo and that cloud looks like-

There’s a flash of pain, impact of palm across bruises that have already blossomed dark on his face, and Jake grunts, jerking to the side, somehow managing to stay in his seat.

“Stop laughing. Stay quiet.” Everly narrows his eyes, tries one more time to put the password in. This time it works and the screen flashes black with the KINECTREMOT logo across the front, a soft chime of sound.

What he’s looking at now, Jake doesn’t really understand. Some kind of inbox, but for pictures and videos. They’re all labeled with six-digit numbers, a long list of them, with the words PRIMARY, SECONDARY, TERTIARY next to each one. Not always the same word. Some of them say one thing, some say another. Some of them just say CALL IN or EMERGENCY.

Everly chooses a search bar option and starts painstakingly entering a number, and Jake stares, dumbly, wondering what the fuck he’s looking at, but with a sick certainty that he really, really does not want to know.

Everly’s still humming that stupid song, and Jake realizes why it’s sticking in his head, now. “Are y’… are y’humming Hotel California?”

Everly stops, blinks, looks over at him, genuinely baffled. Then he laughs, a rumbling sound. Jake hates that fucking smug piece of shit’s laughter. “I guess I am. Hadn’t noticed. It was playing on my way from the hotel this morning. You like that song?”

Jake stares at him, as evenly as he can, his eyelids trying to droop down, body desperate for sleep. “Used to.”

Everly chuckles again. “Yeah, it’s overplayed. Anyway… here we go.” He’s picked one number out - 223499, it doesn’t mean anything, and next to it he reads PRIMARY/SECONDARY and what the fuck does that mean? A long line of little thumbnail images pop up, with labels next to them. INTAKE, ISOLATION DAY 1, DAY 2, DAY 3.

The drop in Jake’s stomach gets worse. He feels almost nauseous with fear - not for himself, exactly, but for what he knows he’s about to see. “Wait, wait-… what are you-”

“Shut up, Stanton.”

“No. No, I, I can’t-… what are you goin’ t’do?” Jake looks up, bleary, frightened now. Everly just smiles back down at him, that smug fucking shit-eating grin, and Jake pulls hard on his restrained wrists, feels a flash of bright agonizing pain as the plastic, caked in two days of dried blood, reopens the raw wounds. He grunts at the ache, but everything from his shoulders down has hurt like hell since day one.

“You know, I requested authorization for injectables, too-”

“What th’fuck are those?”

“It’s pretty obvious from the name, I think. Got overruled on that one, too. Fuckin’ higher-ups worried about traceable compounds and shit. I mean, I get the concern. We can’t keep you long enough for that shit to get fully out of your system. But it would’ve made getting to watch this part a lot more fun.”

Everly selects a thumbnail, and the screen opens up - it’s like some bizarre fucked-up snuff-film take on a Netflix episode choice, with the thumbnail suddenly blown up to a larger size and a small description next to it. Someone made a computer program for this, Jake realizes with an even sicker drop in his stomach. Disgust ricochets around his body. Somewhere, at some point, someone built a computer program designed to let these assholes show him a video of… of what?

223499 - CONTRACT SIGNING he reads, just as Everly pushes play.

“Why show me this?” He asks, in nearly a whisper. “D’you… d’you think this is gonna make me not want to, to help?”

“No, I think you won’t break today, and today’s all I got. Give me a week and a white room and I’d have you taking food from my fingers, but sadly, our time together nears its end. Here’s what I can do, though. I can show you something you can’t ever prove. And I can watch your fuckin’ face the whole time. I can get you all riled up, all angry, and send you home with that bitterness just roiling around inside you.”

On the TV screen, Jake sees a small table in a blank room. No pictures on the walls, no decorations at all. Just a small table, two chairs, one on either side. Sitting in one chair is a woman in a suit - everything about her screams lawyer. Behind her, leaning against the wall, in a prim pantsuit, is a woman Jake has seen on TV before, that Renford bitch.

Antoni walked into the room when she was on TV once, turned around and walked out, and didn’t come out of his room for the rest of the day. Kauri flinched when Nat had to wear heels for a meeting and came walking down the stairs.

Jake knows pure soulless evil when he sees it, and there it is, looking bored.

There’s another person, too, mostly hidden by the shadows in the corner, but there’s something weirdly familiar about what Jake can see of him, something he can’t quite place. He’s wearing a pastel-colored polo and light slacks, weirdly fussy looking, like he’s dressed in case he ends up on TV.

Which, Jake guesses he kind of did.

They’re chatting - the sound of it too low for Jake’s tired brain to parse into words he can understand. Just easy, comfortable talk. Coworkers chit-chatting about their weekends, waiting for the day to start. Lawyer’s got a mug of coffee in front of her, takes a sip. It’s normal inane corporate chatter and these are people who do unimaginable damage to other peoples’ lives and they don’t feel a fucking thing about it.

“I won’t get what I want today. But I think I’ll see what I’m hoping to see on your face - and I think you’ll go home with something stuck in your head that you can’t get out.” Everly moves around behind him, stands with his hands on Jake’s shoulders, rubbing thumbs in like he’s giving him the world’s most painful backrub. Jake grinds his teeth together to keep from making a single sound. His eyes want to close, to look away, but there’s some sort of fascination that keeps his eyes glued to the screen.

He’s always wondered what the contract signings are like. The rescues never remember them.

There must be some sound - everyone kind of shifts around in their chairs, straightens up, and the lawyer pulls some papers out of a small folder in front of her, slides them across to the other side of the table in front of the other chair, sets a plastic pen down next to the paper. Fiddles with it, shifting it back and forth minutely, until it’s perfectly parallel.

A door behind the empty chair opens, and Jake stares in perfect horror as Chris is shoved into the room, a man Jake doesn’t recognize behind him, wearing the handler uniform and prodding Chris with a black stick.

He’s so… small, isn’t he?

Jake rarely thinks about how small Chris really is. In the video, he’s hunched over, his hair looks weirdly clumpy. He’s wearing a loose white V-neck T-shirt that’s way too big for him, like it’s oversized or they just couldn’t be bothered to get him one that fit. His knees stick out from under a pair of thin black shorts.

“Oh my God,” Jake whispers. His heart feels like ice in his chest, the cold is spreading through his veins, right to the tips of his toes in his sneakers, now bloodied like everything else he was wearing when they dragged him in here two… three? days ago.

Thumbs dig into his shoulder blades and he hisses, jerking forwards away from the pressure. “Recognize him, huh?”

Jake sets his jaw. “I recognize that you’re a fuckin’ monster piece of shit-”

Everly grabs his head and slams it down on the table again. Jake goes limp, groaning at the spark of white-hot pain, little spots in his vision even with closed eyes. Then his head is jerked back up. Motherfucker really likes walking the head injury line. “Watch. The. Video.”

“This… this won’t make me any less angry,” Jake manages to force out between numb lips. “None of it will.”

“Good. Then you’ll fuck up. The angry ones always do.” Everly grabs his chin from behind him and forces it forward.

On the screen, Chris is sitting in the previously empty chair now, the handler’s hand on one shoulder, thumb rubbing back and forth across the back of his neck. He’s shivering so hard Jake can see it in the slightly blurry video, looking around at everyone. There are deep visible shadows under his eyes, and Jake watches the way he sits, with his hands sort of between his legs, can tell from the tension in his arms he’s gripping onto the chair. “Wh-why am, am, am, am-”

“Fuckin’ broken record,” The handler behind him says, a man Jake has never seen, and smacks Chris hard against the back of the head. He jerks forward, whimpering, and Jake would give anything to be able to crawl into the screen and save him.

There are tears in his eyes he has to blink away, but now that he sees him he doesn’t want to miss a second. He’s so little, even though he’s almost the same age he is now. Being in that place, with those people, makes him seem so small, so deeply in need of protection. He’s so fucking scared and none of them even care.

“No one mentioned a stammer,” The man in the corner says. His voice is familiar, too, it sounds like it’s tailor-made for TV. Smooth as silk, with something rotten hidden underneath. “I’m not interested in a fixer-upper, Karen.”

“I’m not selling you one, either,” Renford replies, and Jake’s hands curl into fists behind his back. “He hasn’t been trained yet. No one starts training until they sign.”

“What…” Chris - not Chris, not really, this is whoever he was before he became Chris - flinches and looks backwards up at the handler, as if checking for permission to speak. Jake swallows back bile when the handler nods, and Chris looks back forwards again, his gaze jumping all over the room. He doesn’t seem to see the man in the corner at all, and Jake squints as he realizes there’s some kind of one-way glass along that area, angled so the camera sees everyone, but he’s pretty sure Chris can’t see the man. “Who’s… talking?”

His words are slurred together and deliberately, carefully spaced.

He talked like this when he first arrived at the shelter, for days after. Flat, meaningless syllables dropped and run from, certain he’d be hurt if he made a single sound that wasn’t allowed.

“Not important, trainee,” The handler says. “Pay attention to what is important.”

“Yes, um… yes, yes, sir,” Chris says in a low, weak voice.

“Bet you’d like to commit murder right about now,” Everly says from behind him.

“You’d win that bet,” Jake growls.

“I always fuckin’ do.”

“What, um-… what’s happening?” Chris asks, softly, looking around the room.

“This is your consent form,” The lawyer says, tapping a fingernail on the paper between them. Chris winces, slightly, hunching back into the handler’s touch. “All your information is there as provided by your adult guardian-”

“Joanne? Aunt Jo?” Chris is looking around, confused, blinking. “But, but, but but she… she, I’m supposed to, to live with her now-”

“Not anymore, you’re not,” The handler says, with a laugh.

“What, what, what-what, what, what does that-”

The handler hits Chris hard across the back of the head again, and he bites down on his lower lip and goes silent.

“You’d have gotten her an even higher payout if you didn’t talk so fucking much,” The handler says, grumbling, like Chris is the problem here.

Chris’s expression collapses from a nervous, frightened curiosity to an awful well of pain and grief. “Gotten her, her, her a what?”

The lawyer ignores him and keeps speaking. “… and your legal identification, confirming that you’re overage-”

“But, but I’m not, I’m, I’m n-not, I just turned, uh-” Chris is struggling, and Jake wants to climb into that screen and hold him, calm him down, help him slow his mouth to find the words. Chris’s eyes are wide, and his fear can be read, oddly foggy and dazed, like he’s operating on a slight delay. “I just, just just just-”

The handler behind him grips the back of his neck, like a man grabbing the scruff of an unruly dog, and Chris’s voice cuts off like turning a radio dial.

There’s a moment of silence where Jake can hear his harsh, panting breaths.

“What did we talk about, ‘499? About lying?”

Chris’s hands come up onto the table, tapping on it, not loud enough for Jake to hear. “N-not, not, not to lie to you, but-but, um, but but but I’m, I’m not-”

“Stop that shit with your hands. Now.”

Nothing visibly changes but Chris goes quiet again, staring straight down. His hands stop moving. His shoulders are hiked nearly to his ears and Jake wonders if the handler holding him by the neck tightened his grip.

“How old are you, trainee?” The handler asks the question heavy with loaded double-meanings, obvious enough Jake can read them. Give the right answer or get hurt.

“Eighteen,” Chris whispers, with wide scared eyes. Everyone in the room seems satisfied with the blatant, obvious lie.

“Good. And is that the legal consenting age?”

“… yes.”

“Good boy.” The handler pets heavily through Chris’s hair, and the boy shudders in disgust - Jake has never seen him react to touch like that, not from anyone. Just one more sign of a person that’s been totally erased.

“Pl-please, please don’t, please don’t-don’t, don’t touch me-”

“That’s not an option available to you any longer,” The handler says, pulling the black stick from his belt - and Jake knows what those are, he knows exactly what those are, he’s had one raining down on his back and his ribs and his arms now, had one stuck against his knee to force electric shock into his nerves. He wants to push back, but he’s so, so tired. “Your options are to take the touch as it’s given and thank me for it, or…” He taps the black stick on the back of one of Chris’s hands. The boy’s hand jerks back, but when the handler tsks, clicking his tongue against his teeth, Chris lays the hand slowly back out on the table.

“Why would you ever tape this?” Jake asks, barely aware his mouth is moving.

“Lunchtime entertainment,” Everly replies, blithely. The two of them watch as Chris says something, but there’s a strange rushing sound in Jake’s head and for a second, he’s so… furious… that he can’t even hear. All he can do is stare, the rushing sound drowning him out, and then the black baton comes down on his fingers and Jake cries out, as Chris’s mouth opens in a painful wail, as he tries to pull his hands protectively back to himself only to have them forced back onto the table again.

And hit again.

And again.

Jake’s going to be sick all over the floor if it goes on any longer.

The man who has been watching, hidden in the corner, laughs at the sight. He laughs harder, louder, when the handler forces Chris to thank him for the pain.

It’s his laugh that Jake recognizes, finally. It’s the laugh that turns him from shadowy and familiar to a face that Jake’s seen on TV a dozen times or more. Jake has protested his speeches on the human pet industry, has written essays on the complicity of government in human atrocities with this very man in mind, but when he was thinking of complicity he was never, ever thinking of this.

“You sold him to the fucking Governor?”

No wonder he’s so fucking cozy with WRU. They sold him a goddamn teenager for a personal toy-

“Took you long enough.” Everly pats him on the head, good dog, and Jake jerks away from the touch, thinking of Chris doing the same - and how he pushes into every touch now, good or bad, can’t tell the difference. Has to be told, over and over again. How many days without letting me sleep would it take to get me to give in like that? “Watching you watch this… you know who that kid is. You’ve seen him before. Lie to me or don’t, your face gave it all away. Our informant told us you’ve been bringing a kid who fits the description to your classes.”

Oh, God. The raid was my fault.

On the screen, Chris is signing the contract, hands shaking, the handler’s palm still laying flat against the back of his neck, over the heavy black collar he has around his throat.

“Just a homeless kid,” Jake grinds out, staring at Chris’s terrified shadowed face. Watching as he’s dragged back out, stumbling, with the handler’s grip iron-tight on his thin arm. Chris was tapping in the video, Jake thinks. He tapped before, that’s part of him, not something he picked up. Did he hit his head, before, too? “Could’ve been him. Wouldn’t know. He left.”

“Different story than where we started when I brought you in,” Everly remarks. He puts a hand on the back of Jake’s neck. Rubs his thumb, back and forth, just at the nape where skin and soft, short hair meet.

Just like the handler in the video, with Chris.

“Who called?” Jake asks, holding himself very, very still under the touch. He’s seen Antoni go like this, he thinks - just holding himself like a statue, his eyes straight ahead, not looking. When he has a bad night and spends the day on edge, when any little thing sets him off. “Who told you it was us?”

If it was that fucking frat guy - he’s in one of Jake’s classes, he’s probably seen him with Chris, could even have seen him doing yoga over on the grass, could have seen them in the coffee shop or eating lunch in the big seating area, anywhere, really - Jake will hunt down which frat he’s in and personally set the whole goddamn house on fire, starting with that asshole’s bedroom-

“A Professor Gregory Barnham,” Everly says. The words mean nothing to Everly. They mean entirely too much to Jake.

“My fucking Ethics in Political Philosophy professor?” For a second, his brain just refuses to reconcile what he’s been told. He’s been careful in that class. He’s kept his head down, stayed quiet, and the professor never told him not to bring Chris and the professor has smiled at Chris. Said hello. Nice guy, if definitely not super into the pet lib thing, and Jake had been so careful, bringing Chris in the back, keeping him carefully separate from the other students.

Not careful enough.

That son of a bitch saw Jake with a kid who was slowly coming out of his shell and he thought, better call WRU on this one. Better have that kid all fucked up again.

He’s probably not going to go back to that class. He’s probably going to fail it. He’s probably going to spend the next week convincing himself not to light the professor’s house on fire, and feeling like he kind of owes Frat Guy an apology for assuming the worst.

Sorry, dude, you trusted my intentions enough to be fuckin’ vulnerable about your shitty fucking fraternity buying a fucking preson, I decided to repay the favor by assuming you’re the asshole who could have gotten my family killed-

Jake doesn’t think about calling them his family. The word doesn’t even register in his tired mind. It’s just there, the foundation of the thought.

“Why tell me who called in?” Jake asks. He can’t figure out this guy’s angle. He’s giving Jake too much information, isn’t he? Showing him Chris’s video, the contract signing of an underage kid, the fucking governor the one apparently buying him… telling him who called him in… why give him all of this? Why give him all this information?

He’s too exhausted to try and outthink him. He… just doesn’t get it. He needs three days of sleep and probably some serious medical attention at this point, and he can’t even begin to try and think through this until he gets at least one of those things.

“Already told you, numbnuts.” Everly lets go of him, and Jake breathes a sigh of relief as he steps away. “I’m making you nice and angry. Go on, Jakob Collins Stanton. Go be the face of the fuckin’ movement. I can’t wait to see your fuckin’ dumbshit expressions on TV. Go on, Stanton. Get real… fucking… angry.”

Jake sees the black baton unhooked from the guy’s belt in the corner of his eyes, and his muscles tense, but he doesn’t move.

“Why tell me it was the Governor?” He asks, but the baton is already swinging at his head. When it connects, Jake’s head smacks forward into the metal table, he drops to the ground, and everything goes black.

He wakes up and the metal table and chairs are gone. The TV and its little wheelie tray are gone. The zipties on his wrists are gone and his shoulders scream as he pulls his hands forwards, looking at how deeply the plastic dug in. His head is pounding, throbbing, and he feels even more exhausted than he did before.

He cries, for a while. There’s a cop in the room who doesn’t stop him or help, just kicks a box of Kleenex across the floor.

Eventually they tell him he’s been charged with resisting arrest, but that his bail’s been paid. No one tells him but he sees a calendar on his way out, limping heavily, walking in bloodstained jeans and T-shirt looking like he lost a fuck of a fight, and realizes he’s been here for three days.

Chris has been alone for three days.

Any hint of pain Jake is feeling is washed away by the panic that takes its place. Chris can’t handle being alone that long. He needs touch, needs it, the constant never-ending compulsion for human contact that all of the ones like him have. Who even knows what he’d do - go next door or let anyone who knocked in or, shit, just start testing people, like he does, and that could get him hurt or killed or taken advantage of or-

Unless Nat…

“Uh, um,” Jake stumbles over his words, and the cop glances at him, dismissive. “Natalie… Natalie Yoder. The woman with me. Is, is she… was she let go before me, or…?”

The cop gestures ahead of himself, and Jake raises his eyes to see Nat sitting on a bench with a vaguely familiar man that Jake has never actually spoken to before, although he’s seen him watering flowers outside his yard. He looks like some kind of cowboy.

Natalie looks like hell - rings around her eyes and a few bruises littered across her face - but he can tell he looks worse, because both she and the man who lives across the street from the shelter recoil when they see him.

Natalie jumps to her feet. “Jake, what the hell-”

Jake walks to her, as fast as the cop will let him, and nearly collapses against her, resting his head on her shoulder. She puts one hand up over his hair on the back of his head and the other around him, holding him tightly. “I resisted arrest,” Jake says. “Apparently.”

“Yeah,” Nat murmurs. “Me, too. Jefferson here’s our neighbor, he’s come to take us home.”

“Is… everyone safe, there?” Jake asks, low-voiced, just above a whisper.

“We’ll talk in the car. Come on, we’re all paid up, they’re ready to sign off on us going. I… didn’t know about your dad, Jake.”

Jake stiffens and pulls away from her, looking away. “Yeah, well. I didn’t know about your job history, did I? We both kept secrets.”

There’s a silence, long and uncomfortable, broken only by the sounds of the department around them - people working at computers, talking on phones, chatting over coffee. It makes Jake think of the lawyer in the video, sipping her coffee before they dragged a teenager in to sign his life away, watching with a passive, uncaring expression while they beat his hands with a baton.

“Guess we have some things to talk about in the car on the way home, huh?” Nat says, trying for cheer. When Jake responds with silence, she sighs. “Fair enough. I should have told you.”

“Yeah. You should have. I have some other stuff to tell you, too, about who called-”

“I know,” Nat says, heavily, rubbing at her eye with one fist, looking oddly like an exhausted toddler. “They told me. That landscaping company that works down the street.”

“Wait.” Jake frowns, looks around. No one’s really looking at them, now. “Wait. I got told it was one of my professors.”

“You did?” Nat hesitates. “Then they gave us two different stories, Jake. So… which one is true?”

“If you ask me,” Jefferson says, in a soft, unobtrusive voice, “probably neither of them. Come on, we can continue this little guessing game in my car, yeah? I’ve laid down some towels, I had a feeling you might still be, um… bleeding… like that.”

They leave the police station in silence, Jake sitting in the backseat of Jefferson’s ancient Subaru, beat half to hell but the thing’s still running, somehow. All he can think of is getting home to Chris, keeping his promise.

“Look,” Nat says, after they’ve sat in silence other than Jefferson’s quiet NPR playing from the car’s radio. “When I started the job-”

“Not yet.” Jake cuts her off, and his voice is harsher than he means it to be. His eyes have closed and he’s not sure how he’ll ever open them again. “Chris first.”

“You know, your, um… Chris is really doing fine-” Jefferson starts.

“Don’t care. I don’t want to think about anything else just yet.” Jake’s face throbs. His head feels like it’s stuffed full of cotton dipped in acid. His shoulders ache, his wrists look like they’ve been wrapped in razorwire, one of his ribs is probably bruised, he knows his torso is a fucking mess of black and blue, he’s exhausted and starving and pissed off and all he can think about is that fucking handler saying, go on, Stanton. Get real fucking angry.

What does it mean that they want him to be? And if they gave he and Nat two different stories about who turned them in, which one is true? What if neither of them is? What’s their plan? Or is there one? Maybe they just want him to get paranoid and freaked out, see if he stumbles, fucks it up. Maybe this is all just to get him wondering exactly who is out to get him.

Maybe Everly just thought it’d be fucking funny to get him all worked up.

He can’t think about this now. He’s too tired, he’ll only make the dumbest fucking decisions if he tries.

No, he just…

He just has to get home to Chris.

Keep his promises, first. Figure out everything else after that.

Told you I’d come back for you, man.

Jake thinks of the boy in the video, asking about his Aunt Jo, the look of crumbling sorrow in his face at their reply.

I made a promise to you, and I’m going to keep it.

But I am definitely real fuckin’ angry.

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