#unless I morally you know. bankrupt myself which I LOVE that it gives me the option to

[punch-love]

dragon age 2 is a game for recovering people pleasers because it's near impossible to please everyone and the game genuinely requires that you don't

[drowningcomicart]

time to wrestle with the pigs i guess, because this has got to end right the fuck now

content warnings for this post include pedophilia mentions, abuse mentions, suicide/suicide baiting, and csa mentions, and to everyone not involved hi, this has been my life for almost a year, it’s a lot of bullshit so tread with caution i guess. (and no i’m not putting it under a read more because this is important.)

with that out of the way, i want to make it very explicitly clear that i’m not writing this post as an apology, nor am i going to ‘justify’ myself because there’s nothing to fucking justify. but i’m addressing it because we’ve officially hit november, and that means that for nine fucking months, i have heard every disingenuous opinion on this mess there is to hear, whether i wanted it or not. and i am tired, and i am done, but y’all wanna keep beating this horse, so here i am.

for those who are unaware, in february of this year someone in the fantroll circle--or at least the one i’m part of--was being unjustly harassed by some dumbass teenagers with a chip on their shoulders and nothing better to do. and because no one else was saying or doing anything, i made a post calling out the stupidity of bothering someone over an art style and if they were blown, they should just block and move on. i never mentioned the harasser’s usernames, not even in the tags. but i guess the ringleader’s guilty conscience took over, because they came crytyping at me in a dm to take the post down and how it wasn’t faaaaiiirrr. and when i gave no sympathy, saying i had not mentioned them by name and if they felt guilty, maybe they shouldn’t be a vicious asshole to people, magically they weren’t sad and anxious about how people would treat them (ha) anymore; they got mad. mad enough that they started a smear campaign against me under the guise of Protecting The Community and horribly twisting one of my characters into something he’s not so they could call me a pedophile.

he is a csa survivor. he has bad coping mechanisms for that trauma, and yes, it is dark. it is uhealthy and sad and tragic and awful. but it is still part of his story, and i am not going to shy away from telling it. and since that entire blog always had nsfw tagged, and unless tumblr was fucking around should not have been accessible to anyone under 18 in the first place, the abusive little shits who made it their personal goal to drive me out of the community, off of tumblr, and apparently hopefully into killing myself, should not have been able to see that content at all. unless they chose to, and again as mentioned above, it was definitely a choice. a choice born of spite and violence, because it was ONLY to have “dirt” on me when i called them on their shit behavior. because, i cannot stress this enough, it was never ever about pedophilia. it was about a power struggle. a made up stupid power struggle they felt the need to ‘win’ at any and all costs, including making a wildly serious accusation with no substance, altering screenshots to serve their purpose, and taking everything out of context to suit their narrative. and this is how it is for literally every single anti-based argument out there.

now we all know how i feel about the purity crusade happening on this dumpsterfire of a website, but in case you don’t THERE IS NO CASE WHATSOEVER IN WHICH DARKFIC IS THE SAME THING AS REAL LIFE CRIMES. if you disagree with that, please block me. please. literally right now. block me. block me and go away and i only pray you learn to separate fiction from reality and don’t turn into what these demons are. because i don’t care how much you disagree with someone, i don’t care how much you don’t like them, i do not care about any of it. your presence in those spaces is your choice. because despite what antis will have you believe, people writing and drawing this stuff always--and i will say always knowing you’re smart enough to not give me The One Exception as your airtight strawman to render every other argument invalid--tag it, keep it in adult-only spaces, and are responsible enough to know what ‘i understand and wish to continue’ buttons mean.

and so, knowing that fiction does not equal reality, and that the spaces these fictions are written in are inherently designed to make it so only people who say yes i wanna see it can access it, or hell even knowing basic fucking human decency, there is NO reason to suicide bait someone. ever. period. do not tell people to die you actual fucking monsters. people HAVE killed themselves. and if you’re okay with that, if you are really seriously willing to say someone deserved to die over fiction, block me. i don’t want to see anything from you until you find your humanity again. and yet here i am, again 9 months after the fact, and people are STILL messaging me about it. even my would be supporters, the ones who claim they’re only concerned for my reputation or whatever, are being disingenuous and victim blaming. all i have heard is “you should prove your innocence cos you’re making people uncomfortable otherwise”. it belies their stance on these things; that they secretly agree it’s ok to harass content creators so long as they can pretend to themselves it’s justified in some small way. that if someone doesn’t want to give their abusers--and internet harassment IS abuse do not @ me on this one--a platform, it’s the same as admitting they’re correct, no matter how absurd the lie. Yet they do nothing to show support for people being harassed because they’re too concerned with living in their comfortable bubble to make even the smallest effort to oust abusive jackasses from their own community, and then go on to bellyache that the fandom “isn’t what it used to be” and wonder “where everyone went”.

with any luck, they’re like me and they “went” to doctors and got medicated for the depression and anxiety this sort of shit exacerbates, and blocked all involved for their own sanity and because they don’t owe anyone shit. but more likely, from what i’ve seen? they’re dead. and if that makes you sick, if that makes you uncomfortable, it fucking should. people are fucking dead because of fictional characters, from a source that in and of itself deals with very upsetting and adult themes using child protagonists. regardless if they’re survivors of abuse themselves, or just like to explore anxieties and fears in the very VERY safe environment of fiction, where there are no real life consequences, it doesn’t matter. there’s no such thing as people who are “allowed” to write these subjects and people who are not. no one needs to put their life and vulnerabilities on the table for complete strangers to judge and deem worthy or unworthy of basic decency. to say otherwise is despicably transparent in their motives to exploit already vulnerable people for their personal entertainment or self gratification, and yet people fall for it every goddamned time.

i’m not going to make an argument that i’m not a pedophile because i shouldn’t have to. y’all should be able to use your fucking brains well enough to know that someone drawing fictional scenarios is not the same as a real adult abusing real children with very real world consequences. if it is personally upsetting to you, or makes you feel uncomfortable, or even triggers ptsd please for the love of god leave the blog.  why would you put yourself through that? why would you, if you are so against it, actively seek it out and harass people who make it? i would never call people outright liars about what does and does not trigger them. but it seems to me the only people who would behave in this way are either not as bothered as they have convinced themselves and everyone else they are, or they have some seriously bad coping mechanisms for their own trauma that are in no way the fault of the authors and artists at the receiving end of their vitriol. but as someone who was horribly abused, emotionally and psychologically, for the majority of my life, i know an abusive power trip when i see one.

if y’all have been supporting these people without thinking about it, i don’t want your apologies and shame, and likely no one else you’ve let get trampled with no help does either. but you have to do better. WE have to do better. even something as small as blocking people you know to be abusive jerks in the community can make a world of difference because they can’t have power if you don’t let them have a platform.

and as for the people in the community who started this mess, cos i know you still look up my posts in the tags--i’m not afraid of you. i’m not fucking going anywhere. i am here to enjoy my characters, enjoy my writing, enjoy making art and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. you are not going to silence me because you got mad that i called you out for being an abusive asshole. and anyone who listens to your bullshit deserves better than to be manipulated and frightened of you. fucking grow up and get some help, because lying about wanting to protect people by causing active harm to others is more morally bankrupt than any darkfic could ever be.

[wellmeaningshutin]

Short Story #55: Swindle.

Written: 3/2/2017

“Hey, don’t I know you from somewhere? Are you famous or somethin’?” I hear that all the time, and its hard for me to go outside without people asking me similar questions, or staring me down, quietly trying to figure out where they know me from. Maybe its my face or something, I don’t know. I’m not famous at all, and I really haven’t done anything very notable, aside from several run in’s with the law when I decided to get my income by grifting people. Sure, I may have conned a couple of people, but it was never anything big, or morally bankrupt, just small time stuff, believe me. I don’t do nothing to anybody that doesn’t deserve it.

Then again, if anyone falls for my tricks, then you know that they deserve it.

One of the best things about the way I work is that everyone always tends to think that I’m somebody else, I have one of those faces that resembles every face. “Hey, didn’t we go to high school together?” Why yes we did, and I can see you’re doing very well for yourself, but I’m in a bit of a deep end. I was doing great until my wife died from ovarian cancer, and now the governments taken all of our money in death taxes, which leaves me unable to pay for the funeral. “Hey, aren’t you on that television show about the female detective?” Why yes, yes I am, and I will give you an autograph for twenty bucks. Okay, I never said I was good at my job, I’m very small time, believe me. The only time I can make money off of people is when they approach me, thinking that I’m somebody I’m not, and everything I try to do just doesn’t work out too well.

I think the worst part is that I’ve never even failed in a spectacular manner, and my highs are pretty similar to my lows. Either I get around $20, or somebody refuses to pay me and just walks away, nothing of interest, nothing to really even talk about. I guess I should be pleased about how entirely forgettable I am, since it does wonders in my line of work, but sometimes I wonder if I really even should call myself a con man, a swindler, grifter, pretender, smooth talker, hustler, swindler, charmer, fake, louse, whatever you want to call me, I’m probably not. I’m no more than a mere opportunist, and everyone worth their salt creates their own luck, instead of waiting for it to happen to them. Woe be to me, the world’s lousiest conman! I am of such low repute, and my story is of so little of interest that you’ll forget about it after hearing of it! A couple minutes later the tale will completely leave your mind, and you will move on with your life, forgetting a forgettable man such as myself, vaguely familiar due to his lack of defining features.

Now, all of this misery led me to fall into a deep depression, which I eventually tried to keep at bay by exercising. Every day I lifted weights until I was too sore to even worry about how little I was worth worrying about, and all I had to do to get inside of the gym was to use a membership card that I found outside, on the ground. I looked vaguely like the man on the card, and they let me in without any questions. It may have been the biggest con of my life, worth hundreds of dollars with the year’s membership it carried. The second biggest con was when I lied to myself, saying that working out made me a happier person. The year spent doing this was completely forgettable, just like myself, and is not worth mentioning.

Well, there was one bit in the year that I guess could be considered something of importance, or interest, and it was when I met the steroid salesman who lurked around in the locker room, and he had mistaken me for one of his clients, and handed me a large shipment of his that had already been prepaid for. All I had to do was walk up to him and say, “Hey, did my package finally arrive?” and he assumed that I was one of his customers. A pathetic grift for a pathetic man such as myself, having to swindle drugs. You can’t call it very important, because no matter the monetary price of what I had swindled out of the possession of that vulgar man, I instead paid the price through addiction, anger, and a large amount of broken possessions. I can not tell you how many mirrors I had punched during that year, but I can say there were a lot. It must have given me such terrible luck, a lifetimes worth, because of how poorly my life had become when my training had ceased.

All bulked up like an action figure, I was finally ready to begin the scam that I had been planning throughout that year. I mean, well, its not like I was planning it too much, and it really wasn’t my idea in the first place, because I’m really not very good at these sorts of things. What happened was a man, that’s right, a tall, charming fellow with a voice perfect for radio, and a face for movies, he came up to me when I was at a restaurant, and he asked me if I knew him from somewhere. Yes, this is what happened. And I tried to get him to at least pay for my meal, claiming that I was a war hero, or some other sort of pathetic lie, and he saw right through me, but he knew that I looked perfect for a con that he had planned for quite some time. It was just another instance of me being an opportunist, a kite in the wind, a jellyfish in a sea of swindlers, only able to bob up and down and having to travel wherever the currents take me. It was just another random occurrence in life, and I had no choice but to go along with it, and I was sure that something so intelligent, genius, extravagant, something that a real master of manipulation would only be able to come up with, well, it was certainly art, yes, so why didn’t I go with it? You would have chosen to do the same thing, because its not every day that we get to work alongside the intellectual elite.

So, I start working with this dashing stranger to do the job that he had presented to me, and that I had in no way come up with myself. I’m too pathetic to think of something so grand. He told me about how wrestling had been making a huge come back, and with my age, appearance, and size, well, I could certainly pass myself off as some old wrestler coming back to earn his former glory. It wasn’t unheard of, and the people who were mainly into wrestling now had little knowledge of the very old stars from back in the day, so all I-we had to do was simple.

First, he hired some other big lug, and we dressed him and I up in some old style wrestling get ups, and we did a couple fights. Sometimes we had the other man change outfits so that we could pretend that these were all footage from different fights, and we even rented out this older boxing ring, then used trick photography to imply there was a crowd out there, when it was mainly bleachers full of cardboard cut outs and mannequins. The man who came up with this must have been really smart, dedicated, and impressive in the field if he was not only able to put all of that together, but also make it so that people actually believed-when they were placed around the internet-that the faked matches had been genuine. I must say that even I would have been fooled by the whole display, and I guess that shows that I am no more of a conman than a victim myself. The most impressive part was the camera and film that he used, which made it really seem old school, and gave it that found footage effect.

We also made a couple videos of myself, or my wrestling persona-Wild Card-yelling at a camera about made up beefs with other wrestlers. The names I would yell out were a mix of real ones and fake ones, so it would show that there were some credible names for these younger people, but would also display to them that there were other forgotten and obscure figures out there, lost to time since they were big in a world where the internet never existed, and obscurity was a bottomless pit. This was probably the best part of the whole act, even if I did have to memorize the man’s scripts, since I am terrible at improvising duologue, but it doesn’t matter who wrote it, its still fun to yell things such as:

“Mad Gator, you slept with my girlfriend and her mother, so now I’m going to get you in the ring or outside, its your choice. I’ll skin you and turn your shoes into a nice pair of shoes, that I will use to walk around carelessly in a yard full of dog shit.”

“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH, I’M SO FUCKING ANGRY AND YOU CANNOT STOP ME FROM TEARING YOUR HEAD OFF IN THE RING!”

“Hogan, you tan son of a bitch, I’m going to pay you back for giving my daughter that abortion. I kidnapped your father and have hidden away his heart medication, so even if you free him from my thugs, you wont be able to save his life unless you meet me in the ring!”

On top of all of that, we also paid fake news sites to start posting articles about Wild Card’s downward spiral, due to his son dying in the war, which only reminded the wrestler of all of the young men that he saw die in Vietnam, and which led him to step out of the ring for good. It was a very sad story, even if it was a little pandering to veteran crowd, but I still am very proud of the work, that the guy who brought me in on the con did, and I can only wish that I would be able to write so well. I swear, if that man wasn’t spending all of his time tricking poor saps into giving him their hard earned money, then he would probably be able to do so much other amazing things with his life. It makes you think that the man has to love what he does, because he could easily become a millionaire just by playing it straight.

Anyways, there’s also some rumors that were placed around, talking about Wild Card’s interest in returning to wrestling. There’s some stuff about how he saw the light of the lord, and now he’s almost ready to face his inner demons in the ring, using the power of Christ to absolve himself, and blah blah blah. I would judge the guy for pandering this hard, but nowadays its really the easiest way to do things. Hell, it hasn’t been this easy to manipulate people since 9/11, but then again what do I know? The only thing I can pander to is somebody who mistakes me for somebody else. Pandering is the art of creating a situation, opportunity, a cause, while I am a slave to opportunity, and can only find it when it falls into my lap. After the story was put out there, we started getting all sorts of fan mail, saying how they wanted Wild Card to get back in the ring, saying how inspired they were by him. One man even wrote about how the character used to be his childhood idol, but I suspect his mind hadn’t been too solid, but money is money.

Then, while we have all of this momentum behind us, we did the next logical step, which was setting up on one of those crowd-funding sites, to get enough money to rent out a large arena where Wild Card could have his big come back match, as a way of his return to wrestling. The price we needed was much more than it actually cost to rent out the place that the man had in mind, so when we reached our goal there was already some extra cash in our pockets, plus when we went over it we were basically rolling in dough. I was shocked, because that’s the most money I had ever tricked out of anyone in my entire life, and I don’t think I could be able to get anywhere near that amount again. Although, there were a couple snags when some people tried to call the match out on what it was-a scam-but somehow this only made our fans even more devoted to the match, and they started claiming that everyone who called it a scam were actually scammers, and somehow threw politics into there for good measure.

“You think being a veteran was a scam? Go out and die for the country, and then try to say how much of a scam this all is!”

“Why do people keep trying to call this fake? What are they trying to cover up?”

Or my personal favorite: “This man lost his son. HIS SON. If he was lying to all of us (just like the lieberal media) then why did he drop out of wrestling all of those years ago? Why would he have to trick people out of money if he could’ve easily been bigger than Hogan? You know what’s a scam? Sending donations to the Democratic party, now that’s a scam. You guys think anything outside of your echochanmber is made up, when rational people know to call it what it is: THE REAL WORLD.” I don’t even know what that person was even talking about, but they donated $126, so God bless them. ———————————————————————————————————

Now, when it came to the day of the match, my plan had been really simple: take all of the money from the tickets that were sold, no refunds, and then board a flight out of the country. Everything else had been going as I had planned it, so why would this go any different?

Nothing but cheering could be heard from inside the arena, the place was packed not only with people, but with noise, with hope, and I was hearing that there weren’t even enough seats to hold everyone, so people were sitting in the aisles, stairs, everywhere they could be fit. The mastermind behind it, that suave bastard, told me that he bribed the staff to ignore the fire code, and anyways he said that if the place burned down then it would all be even better. If people died in the fire, then there would be less people to call it out as one big hustle, and then we could stage a second match in honor of all of the fans who died. This was when things started to look bad for me, and I was realizing how hard it was going to be for me to go through with the guy’s plan, I didn’t want to disappoint all of those kind people out there, but he was better than me, he was a real con artist, and he convinced me to go through with it.

Sure, there have been stories in the media that are claiming that police were investigating the match, suspecting that it was all a ploy to take the money and run, so that’s why I ended up going through with the match, and ended up in my current condition, but that’s not true at all. They even claim that I was the one behind all of it, but as you have seen, I am in no way capable of being able to pull off any of this. In order to clear my name, and prove that I am a victim of circumstance, I will tell you why I ended up fighting in the ring, and why I am where I currently am.

Now, the guy I was supposed to wrestle against was one huge mother fucker. He was like a mountain on steroids. His teeth were completely made of metal, and he had earned the name “The Compacter”, because he had reportedly crushed another wrestler, with his bare hands, and the guy not only had to go to the hospital, but due to spinal damage he was also six inches shorter than he was before that dreaded match. If there was ever a villain in wrestling, then this guy was the man who the villain was afraid of. You get the point, and you can also probably tell why the ringleader had chosen him for Wild Card’s come back, even though I had to have it explained to me three times before I was able to piece it all together. I’m surprised the guy was so patient with me, it really took me a long time to understand the scheme since I’m really just not cut out for that line of work.

So, the both of us have our bags, are dressed up to not gain any attention, and we’re all ready to skip town with all of the money from the big match. Problem is, I’m already guilty about the magnificent scam that we were about to pull off, and on top of that I see the Compacter getting ready for the match, and he’s talking to his kid. First its a sweet moment, and I sort of feel bad for how great of a father he is, but there’s no reason to risk death with a man just because he’s good to his kid. He was already paid anyways. What I saw afterwards really led me to stay, because I saw him flat out clock his own child in the face, and the poor thing is sprawled out on the floor, blood gushing from his nose, she’s-that’s right, it was his daughter-crying quietly, probably because she didn’t want to anger the beast any further. As this awful, horrible, gut-wrenchingly tragic scene plays out, guess what the monster is doing? He’s laughing his head off, that’s what.

In order to stand up to this cruel man, this bully-not because I would’ve been arrested if I tried to flee-I had to face him in the ring, to hopefully show him that he can’t treat children like that. Somebody had to stand up for the ones who can’t protect themselves, and I knew I had to be that person. Don’t call me a hero. What I did is what anyone, any Christian, should have done, and I’m glad that I did my part, even if I paid dearly for it. Sure, I might have been hospitalized for quite some time, and I’ll never be able to walk right again, but in my heart I know that I had done the right thing, because I was able to cast away my life of sin, and was able to stand up for everything that was good and righteous. If we allow evil to spread around the world, unpunished, then doesn’t that make us evil? Who are we to judge horrible deeds if we do not risk everything to seek justice?

Now, you might be wondering why there were no reports of the mastermind that I have talked about, but that’s because he is also a master of disguise, and was able to slip past the police with no problem. I heard rumors of him being able to forge passports, and he is most likely living in some foreign country under some fake name. You can tell that he is a very dangerous man, because he was able to pin many of his other schemes onto me, but like I have demonstrated, I am just a victim of chance. The only reason that they claim I have swindled all of those people, were involved in all of those multi-million cons, was because they never had pictures of the real expert, the man who got me wrapped up in this awful business, and I was the only one who was left behind.

Is this the price I should have to pay for doing the right thing, the just thing? Should I have to spend my time disabled, risking time in prison for crimes that I did not commit, all because I was a victim of a con myself? No, that cannot be right, and that’s why I must implore you to donate, because if I cannot build the funds for an appropriate defense, for private detectives to track down the real swindler, then he will only continue to trick the unsuspecting out of all of their hard earned money, and I will rot in jail in his place. Does that sound like justice to you?