#i even understand the girls who want to get raped if they got assaulted but it never felt like enough for the pain they're experiencing

[mydr3aminvi0let]

i wear a lot of skirts and pink and whatnot as my style has developed with me & my personality but when one of those age regression girlies latch onto me....i do not like that

[boxingcleverrr]

Popular Hades & Persephone "retellings" are, rightly, getting dunked on all over the socials right now and, as a Pagan who has an altar to the Queen, I could not be happier. But also, I feel like a lot of people miss WHY they're bad - aside from just plain bad writing and lazy tropes. Which are, yeah, also REALLY bad.

Pretty much all retellings try to wave away, or excuse, or twist the whole kidnapping bit. And I actually do have sympathy and understanding for why, when speaking from a modern perspective.

But honestly...you gotta get over it. There are other stories to play fix-it with, not this one.

The Abduction is The Thing.

Were I a little more sober I could bring up chapter and verse of the Hymn to Demeter but frankly, if you know even the middle school mythology curriculum version of the story, you SHOULD know the themes. The story of Persephone was one mothers and daughters in the ancient world held dear, because it was a reality: you will, one day, be swept away from your home to go cleave to a man you most likely know nothing about. You will miss your mother, but chances are very good that he will be a good husband, once you get to know him, certainly better than Zeus or Ares, and he will make you a queen of his home.

Leaving home to marry was often scary, and violent (look up the history of the tradition of Bridesmaids, if you don't already know it - they were originally decoys on the marriage road). Centuries later we'd have tales like Beauty & The Beast serving the same function: comfort, hope, you are leaving your safe loving home to figure life out with a (often older, powerful) stranger. Your trauma over this sudden ending of your childhood made manifest in a Beast, or a God of The Underworld.

It's wonderful that we don't NEED stories like this anymore to comfort us (here, at least, in this culture). But if you try to force them into modern vernacular it just will not work, not really, because you're gutting out the whole point just to have a more tidy romantic male hero.

I have read MANY very good ...novelizations? fanfic(? however you would frame them, but they're certainly not "retellings"), etc. that simply take advantage of the blank spaces in the myth, and there are many!

It's not explicit that sexual assault happens - "The Rape of Persephone" as a title was coined in much earlier eras, when the word was just as often used to simply refer to abduction.

"She was starving!" the gods didn't need to eat. So it's easy to read her eating the Pom seeds as a deliberate choice on her part. Like, shit, people, scholars have written whole papers on the symbolism of this moment, between marriage rites and even yeah, Seph choosing both worlds with her husband's knowing consent.

And that, I think, is the real heart of the thing. People want an utterly mundane, spelled-out story here, as opposed to what it really is, has always been, just like any other myth or religious parable: IT'S A METAPHOOOOOOR.

They don't need to be destined, or meet at a goddamned BALL and then CONSPIRE to fake her kidnapping, or shit, I once saw one where Hades got MIND CONTROLLED by Zeus?! Jesus.

Persephone was yoinked into the Underworld against her will.

That's how it went.

I don't mean this in a "stay out of my belief system!" way, shit I'm a white American chick with delusions of witchery. I mean this in a "stop stressing yourself out trying to make things palatable" way:

This is a very real, very precious myth to many people, BECAUSE for at least that one event, Persephone had no autonomy, BECAUSE for thousands of years most women had no autonomy. Erasing that, sanitizing the fact that a girl is ripped out of the spring, from her mother's arms, is erasing the thing that gave comfort to women for centuries. And people can and should still find power and healing in it now!

Fill in the blanks the story leaves in whatever manner seems fit to you, there's plenty of room, but. Come the fuck on.

[insane-in-the-membranee]

Men fucking scare me.

Now, some are going to go like, "it's not all men", " Are you also scared of your dad/brother/male relative?", "Another 'feminist' hating on men" and so on probably. Sure, it's not all men but it's always men.

I was scrolling insta when I came across a reel where a guy is complaining about how whenever there is a crime concerning a woman, we raise our voice and protest yet when there is a crime concerning a man, there is barely even news coverage. Which is certainly true and fair. But seriously, right now? Why is it that men always complain whenever people are trying to give justice to a poor victim girl?? I totally agree that whether men or women, all victims should get their justice but have some fucking sympathy instead of complaining?!?

Next, another reel where a lawyer guy was talking about women's safety laws and all, the comments? "Law for women, la*da for men". Well, why don't you go and take a look at the statistics? Maybe read the news daily, I mean the local one. Again, I'm NOT against men's safety, ofc no. It's just that, why can't men complain or raise their concerns without pulling the women with them? What do you want? The laws that are made for us (not that they're REALLY useful) to go nil??? Or what?? Equality? That is feminism. Fucking equality!! You don't hear a true feminist complaining, "why do men get paid more than us? Salary for men, chillar for women" or anything, instead it's "We want to get paid the same as that of a man." Again, I'm NOT speaking against men particularly, just the ones who feel enraged towards us just because we want to get treated as a human first, and equally.

I was talking to a guy friend and his attitude is, "Yeah what happened to her is TERRIBLE but hey, it's not like I can do anything about that? I would never do that and be a good person but that's all I can do, I can't tell the rapists that what they did was wrong and they'd too be like 'oh yes yes oops we did wrong' right?". Now, I do understand his perspective but sure a bit more sympathy and kindness won't hurt anyone?? He even has a sister!! And in the age of social media, anyone with a phone can contribute to some extent.

When I read the details of the case, my soul cried out. I can't even imagine her sorrow. Oh my goodness. My insides felt all queasy reading those gruesome details. All girls of all ages have almost experienced a bad incident with men. Harassment, molestation, abuse, assault, SOMETHING! So many cases everyday and so many more which don't even get registered. Rapes have become so common in India that unless and until it's something very gruesome, people don't even bother that much. It's always "What has it got to do with me" until it's someone you, someone who is close to you. 78 years of independence yet girls are still caged behind walls.

It's always "Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao", Beti padh toh li lekin Beti bach nahi pai. Why is it always "Arre voh toh ladhka, voh toh aise he karega", Voh aisa kyu karega?!?

Why is that ladhkiyo ko mana karte hai raat mein bahar jaane ke liye because it's not safe for her, lekin ladhke puri raat awaaragardi kare, koi dikkat nahi.

Why can't we just teach boys to respect women? To not just respect women, but to respect everyone? The next person is a living being, is that not a good enough reason to not be cruel??

https://www.instagram.com/reel/C-ry4xNvZw0/?igsh=N2M0bW51c3dueGpi

Ajeeb toh hai.

[lancrewizzard]

Please tell me you’re not a gaiman fan because it seems like you have issues with him and goddd me too

Okay this is a complicated question to answer and has got both more and less so in the last couple of weeks. Since there's still information coming out about the sexual assault allegations, I don't want to say too much now and then have to backtrack hugely, but even the very best case scenario makes his behaviour scummy as all hell. And I don't believe it will turn out to have been the best case scenario. So we'll just bundle the whole thing up with "yikes" and move on to things I've had a long enough time to think about and put proper thoughts around.

A month ago I'd have said that he seems like a decent bloke, but seems to have real trouble understanding experiences he can't relate to. The foreword to his short story collection Trigger Warning is a great example of this. He spent a while wittering on about his misgivings about trigger warnings as a concept, then remembered he knew someone with a severe phobia of tentacles and conceded that they had their place. He then proceeded to give a very dumb non-warning which completely failed to mention how something like one in three of the collected stories involved sexual violence. Great job Neil.

I already mentioned in the tags of that previous post my issues with his obvious lies to TV Omens fans who don't know any better. It's just annoying and stupid to lie about something that unimportant, unless it was actually an attempt to get disillusioned Book Omens fans back on side (in which case, wow that failed spectacularly).

And now I realise that everything else is about specific works of his, so I've stuck it under a cut if you don't want to see me bitch about Good Omens adaptational changes changes for the umpteenth time or go on a short heartfelt ramble about what was almost a perfectly crafted short story.

I'll be blunt, I only saw S1 of Good Omens, and while I enjoyed it, it was an incompetent adaptation. The fucking radio play managed to tell the same story with greater faithfulness and more elegance without a 3rd person narrator (and had the brilliant idea of having the opening and closing credits performed by Agnes Nutter's voice actress). Compare and contrast the show making God the 3rd person narrator and exposition dump, and how that changes the whole story from a humanist tale where people are all people and whose choices matter, where God's grand plan night not even exist, to a story where everything implicitly or explicitly is going to God's plan under God's watchful eye.

And I will never comprehend how Gaiman successfully argued to have a whole set built to film Agnes Nutter's death, but then said that for practical reasons they couldn't have Crowley revive the dove. The angel accidentally killed a dove and the demon intentionally revived it! It's so thematically important! Neil why are you like this? Do you understand your own works or was Pterry the only one of you who put actual thought into things' meanings?! HOW DO YOU FUCK THIS UP NEIL? I UNDERSTOOD ITS IMPORTANCE WHEN I WAS 15 NEIL!

Ahem. Moving on.

Neverwhere is the most recent Gaiman book I've read and it's a good showcase of all the issues I have with his writing. The protagonists are dragged along by the plot, they're Special TM by birth or fate, not by the choices they make. The world they inhabit is wonderful, detailed, and vibrant, but I found that far more interesting than the protagonists inhabiting it. We got a random rape backstory for a girl whose main role was to die so the male protagonist feels bad. The way Gaiman described every female character bar one in terms of their attractiveness made me unsure if it was him or the protagonist who was weird about women (although I guess I have the answer to that now). Funny how Gaiman didn't shy away from things and people smelling bad right up until a hot woman who had been fighting, running, and falling over in a swamp apparently smelled not of sweat and stagnant water, but "musk". Really normal, that. There were wonderful descriptions and great moments, but after that first SA moment I couldn't relax and enjoy the ride because I was always on edge waiting for the next time Neil felt the need to be Like That.

Then there's my beloved, hated The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains. It's almost the perfect neat fairy-fable where every little detail is paid off later. It's a story of grief and vengeance and greed. It's about the price of fairy magic. And it has a pointless scene stuck in of marital rape. It has no purpose. It does nothing for the pacing or themes or characters. It never comes up again. I hate it.

Stuff can be horny or harrowing or both, I don't care, but Gaiman just drops SA into things for no clear reason as a generic Bad Thing Happen, Make Tone Dark. It's distasteful and inelegant. It cheapens the rest of the writing by its presence.

The simple truth is that Neil Gaiman seems to have a near pathological urge to shove sexual violence into places it has no need or right to be. It's disgusting but sadly not shocking that this apparently includes his personal life.

[kataraavatara]

https://www.tumblr.com/thought--bubble/734425326135967744/why-are-some-people-so-insanely-aggressive-when-it?source=share

Aegon can get away with things, even with crimes like rape, just because he's a man. Also, the poor children in the fighting pits wouldn't agree that he's the best for the kingdom.

wow! the post you shared was…something!

“Aegon is the first born, true born son of the king. He should be king by birthright. Recognizing that is how westeros works doesn't mean I agree with it. Just that I understand that is how it works.”

How is supporting his usurpation not agreeing with it? “I just understand the way Westeros works” um, did you think George wrote the story with the intent of you seeing the injustice of male supremacy and saying “🤷‍♀️ whelp that’s how things are. people should not change it.”

“he has the council of Otto and Alicent, and regardless of how people feel about them, they successfully ran a peaceful, stable kingdom while viserys was rotting away.”

Otto and Alicent got kicked to the curb as soon as Aegon started feeling a little temperamental.

“his children are true born, and there is no question on that. His sons ascension would not be questioned and most likely would be a peaceful transition of power. (Again, this is better for the people at large)”

Like Rhaenyra says, the only thing strong enough to tear down the house of the dragon is itself. If the Greens don’t throw a bitch fit, no one else is saying shit about King Jacaerys I and Queen Baela Targaryen.

“as scared of his duties as his is, he comes through and performs them. (i.e., has children with heleana, takes a crown he did not want to protect his family)”

Is having children with Helaena supposed to be a different at Rhaenyra not having Laenor’s biological kids? Because Laenor is a gay man? Because arguably both scenarios require one spouse forcing themselves on the other depending on whether you believe Aegon abuses Helaena or not, which I personally do. So we’re applauding Aegon for…*checks notes* Having sex? And that’s great that he (allegedly) stood up when he was convinced his family was in imminent danger, but where was the family man attitude when he was SAing servants, drinking 24/7, and (allegedly) molesting children?

“he is way more likely to take advice and guidance instead of thinking he is right about things all of the time. He has not exhibited Rhaenyra's tendency to weaponize her power in order to get away with shirking tradition and common law. (I.e. Weaponizing the term treason in order to force people to ignore the objective reality of her sons legitimacy)”

Uh, no. While Alicent and Otto were horrified by Luke’s murder, that guy threw a party to celebrate the death of his nephew. Again, this is the man who fired Otto for not being violent enough. Oh, and he hasn’t weaponized his power to get away with shit? What about the serving girls in the Red Keep in the book and Dyana in the show? What about the children in fighting pits?

And “Shirking tradition”?

Well, traditionally, a king should be studious, well read, study arms, keep himself in good physical shape and generally conduct himself in an appropriate way and as the model of chivalry that the rest of the men in the kingdom should emulate. Think of Jaehaerys (for all his flaws), Aemon, Baelon, Baelor Breakspear…Aegon was a pudgy man child who spent his days drinking and assaulting women.

And, when following Common Law, rapists are gelded and sent to the wall.

Rhaenyra’s biggest crime as of this point in being complicit in the death of one man because she feared for her children’s safety and sought an alliance with Daemon. The only other things she’s done wrong is going against a patriarchal medieval society.

Meanwhile, Aegon has raped a woman, all the serving girls at the keep are wary around him, watches children in fighting pits, has bastards and abandons them. Erryk is literally so sickened by his behavior he defects!

It’s very telling that Rhaenyra’s “crimes” of going against Westerosi tradition are seen as worse than Aegon’s actual crimes against the common people.

You’re right, anon. The double standards in this fandom are insane.

[berry-loves-yandere]

heyy could you do yandere miguel diaz x reader where they get hurt while doing karate or getting beat up / bullied by another person? thankkkss

Why not? But imma make it darker cause, again, why not? (Reader/darling will be depicted as GN/demigirl)

"Who the fuck did this to you?"

Warnings: Obsessive behaviour, possessive behaviour, unhealthy mindset, aggression, threatening, violence, murder threats, attempted murder manipulation, gaslighting, slut shaming, SEXUAL ASSAULT MENTIONS, RAPE MENTIONS, blood mentions, bruising mentions, vomit mentions, vomit, notions towards abusive relationship, DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT

(Y/N) got home after work, feeling sick with themselves, all they wanted to do was throw up.

Then arms were wrapped around their waist, so she quickly turned around, elbow jutted out, ready to hit the person behind them but it was stopped, by none other than their boyfriend, Miguel.

"Good to know what I taught you hasn't gone to waste." He joked, smiling brightly.

(Y/N) just turned their face away from him and nodded.

"Hey. Why aren't you looking at me? You know I hate when you look somewhere else while I'm speaking." He told them.

"Sorry." (Y/N) mumbled before sniffling.

"Face me when you're speaking with me." Miguel demanded.

(Y/N) shook their head, sparking enough anger in Miguel for him to roughly grab her face and turn it to him.

Then he saw the makeup smudges, bruises, tears and some blood across his girlfriend's face.

"Who the fuck did this to you?" He angrily asked, squeezing (Y/N)'s face.

"No one! I fell! Okay?! Now leave me alone!" (Y/N) shouted at him before storming off to their room and slamming the door.

“NO! I WON’T FUCKING LEAVE YOU ALONE CAUSE THERE’S NO WAY YOU COULD’VE GOTTEN A BLACK EYE FROM FALLING!” Miguel yelled, pounding his fist on the door.

“GO AWAY!” (Y/N) screamed.

“(Y/N). You’re gonna open this door or so help me god I will rip it off its hinges and really make you cry!” Miguel threatened.

(Y/N) just sobbed and made no effort to move.

“(Y/N). You have 10 goddamn seconds.” Miguel started his countdown.

(Y/N) quickly scrambled to the door and unlocked it.

Miguel smiled at them before entering the room and grabbing her by the arm.

“Now we’re sit down on your bed and you tell me the truth, okay? Or else maybe I might take my anger out on you instead of the person that hurt you. Do you understand?” Miguel slightly mocked (Y/N), who just nodded.

“It was one of my co-workers, y’know the creepy one that I complained about? And he...he um, I don’t wanna talk about it...” (Y/N) teared up as she thought of the previous events of the day.

Miguel hugged his girlfriend into his chest and rubbed their back, making tutting noises.

“Go on.” He instructed them.

“He tried to y’know, do stuff that I didn’t want. And when I said no, he started to hit me but I used what you taught me and he left me alone for a bit. But when I was about to clock out, he... he...” She broke down sobbing, unable to finish their sentence.

“Did he rape you?” Miguel calmly asked, almost too calm.

“No. I was lucky but he got close and I just... I feel sick!” (Y/N) exclaimed before running to the bathroom and vomiting in the toilet.

Miguel walk over to the bathroom and carefully held his girlfriend’s hair back as she threw up and cried.

Once there was nothing left in her stomach to upchuck, Miguel helped them clean up while rubbing their back.

“You should go lay down. Get some rest. I forgot that I needed to pick up something for my mom. I’ll be back soon.” He told them.

(Y/N) nodded and went to bed, exhaust from vomiting.

Miguel left her home, blood boiling with extreme anger.

‘How dare he try to touch my girl. MY beautiful, perfect, amazing girlfriend. In ways that even I haven't before! That disgusting cretin is gonna wish he was never born.’ Miguel thought as he marched over to the video game store where (Y/N) worked.

He saw the disgusting vermin, who's name he didn't care about, sitting behind the counter, not doing anything.

"Hey." Miguel addressed the other guy.

"Hey dude, how can I help you?" The creep replied.

"How about you stop trying to touch (Y/N) asshole." Miguel stated through gritted teeth.

"(Y-? Oh! You mean the slut that I work with? Nah man, she definitely likes it. I mean like, why else would she constantly be dressing in those tiny shorts and constantly bend over? She definitely wants me." The guy chuckled.

Miguel was fuming and grabbed the pervert by the collar of his shirt.

"Listen here fucker. That's my girlfriend. And if you ever disrespect her or touch her again, I swear to god, I'll fucking kill you." Miguel hissed out.

"Chill dude. I won't touch her. Geez." The sleaze ball sighed.

"I'm fucking serious. Don't you dare lay a finger on her. Or speak about her like that again." Miguel demanded, choking the asshole with the collar of his shirt.

The guy's face began to turn blue, so he nodded rapidly and Miguel let go of him.

"Alright man! Alright! Fuck!" The weirdo gasped for air.

Miguel then left, happy that he was protecting his girlfriend, his angel, his reason to live.

And if Miguel ever heard of that fucker doing anything, and he meant anything, to (Y/N), then Miguel would follow through on his threat without a doubt.

[cecilysass]

False Front

Read on AO3 | Tagging @today-in-fic CW: suggestion of possible rape / sexual assault (from canon) written for the X-Files Flicked Switch Fanfic Exchange

He’s doing everything, every single thing he can think of, but Mulder’s getting nowhere and he knows it. He blusters around Skinner’s office, he fires off orders to the Gunmen, he drives back to her apartment and searches over every square inch. Of course he calls her cell countless times. You never know when she might be able to pick up.

It’s actually the cell phone that finally does it, that makes him give up on her apartment and go home.

He’s on the floor methodically sorting the contents of her wastepaper basket—tissues, an empty tube of makeup, two endearing chocolate wrappers—when Frohike calls and tells him that it appears that the signal never actually left her building.

He finds the phone in her desk drawer. Turned off. Silent. It’s devastating. All day it has been absorbing his diligent calls here in this drawer. Not anywhere near her.

Mulder closes the desk drawer slowly, observing absently that his hands are trembling. He locks up her apartment and walks out to his car. He’s been through this so many times now, a familiar refrain: she’s gone, maybe forever, he has to bring her back, he has no idea how. It only gets harder. Because one of these times they won’t figure it out. One of these times the worst is bound to come true.

It’s very important at this stage not to give in to his darkest anxieties, that fear and that dread. Keeping his face impassive helps; that’s an old trick, predating his partner. His mind can be an even more useful ally, and it’s straining to go into profiler mode, reaching out instinctively for every possible scrap of information he has.

On the drive to Alexandria he keeps mentally revisiting those emails, all that fabricated correspondence between the account of Dana Katherine Scully and this unknown Cobra. Those missives turned out to tell quite a tale.

I think about how much of a mark I could have left on the world, had I not ended up in the F.B.I., had I been free to pursue what I wanted.

I wish you and I could meet like normal people do, just have dinner, wine and challenging conversation. I want that so badly. I daydream about it.

You and I — we understand one another, don’t we? That’s so rare and beautiful. Often I feel like there’s no one in my life who really understands anything about me.

This isn’t Scully. These aren’t her words. It’s creative writing from someone else, likely C.G.B. Spender himself. The moment the Gunmen told him these emails existed, Mulder knew this.

Even so, the fabricated words get under his skin. They bother him deeply. At a fucking cellular level.

Maybe it’s that the smoking man doesn’t sound so far off? Maybe because little bits and pieces do sound eerily like something Scully could say—maybe, possibly, under the right circumstances. Mulder doesn’t like that. It makes her feel farther away somehow.

When the Gunmen said Scully had been writing to someone named Cobra, he’d so easily dismissed them. No. She would have told me, he’d said. That utter confidence haunts him now. Because even if he were right in this case, it turns out there’s quite a bit she hasn’t told him.

Mulder pictures Spender smiling to himself, typing away at home in a cloud of smoke, dreaming up this fictional romance between Scully and her Defense Department confidante.

He suspects the smoking man likes the idea of Mulder, his supposed son, uncovering this. He probably got some sick little thrill imagining Mulder discovering Scully’s tawdry secret online relationship. Look, Mulder, your loyal girl betrayed you. What an extra little zing that must give him. In addition to the heady exhilaration of murdering his son’s adored partner.

Mulder slams his palm down on the steering wheel angrily.

How could she go anywhere with him? How could she believe any word that came out of his mouth? Was she threatened? Blackmailed? What could possibly make it worth it?

He’s breathing much too fast. He takes a long, extended breath and releases it. No point in asking all these questions. There’s too much he still doesn’t know.

Something else keeps poking at his mind, though.

It’s the second time in just over a year that some would-be writer has presumed he knows Scully well enough to attempt to represent her inner life. That someone has been inspired to write the complex heart and mind of Dana Scully.

Such utter, arrogant bullshit. Why would anyone delude themselves that they could know Scully like this? What is it about Scully that makes men think they can read her? As far as Mulder knows, no one has ever understood her heart. Certainly not Phillip Padgett. Not C.G.B. Spender.

Not—all too clearly—Fox Mulder.

Mulder’s fingers tighten around the steering wheel, his knuckles going white as he tries to rein himself in. Thoughts, not feelings, he reminds himself. Mind, not heart.

*** At home he’s restless, because there is nothing productive for him to do there. No leads to follow up on. Nothing to do but wait.

He’s hungry—who even remembers when the fuck he last ate?—so he walks into his kitchen and bangs around impatiently looking for something to eat. There’s an unopened bag of bagels in his fridge along with a tub of sealed cream cheese. These items weren’t purchased with him in mind, which depresses him. But he’s got to eat something, and well, here they are. No point in passing out. He begins slathering cream cheese on a bagel.

The last time they had sex—the fifth time overall—was a little under a week ago. Here, his place.

She showed up at his door, that determined look in her eyes. No discussion, no words, exactly like the other times, a pattern Mulder finds both hot and disturbing. Sudden, fierce, take-no-prisoners kissing, the pulling open of clothing, the hitching up of her work skirt, a frantic fuck against his front door.

Afterwards she’d clung to his sweaty neck to catch her breath, and he’d buried his face in her rosemary-scented hair. He’d wept just a little—he couldn’t help it. The emotions involved are titanic, completely beyond his ability to cope with. It is amazing, everything, but something is off, too, and he doesn’t know what to do to correct the course.

He could tell by the way she tightened her hold that she noticed his tears, but she didn’t ask about them.

Much to his relief, she had changed into his tee-shirt, crawled into his bed and stayed the night—a first—leaving that rosemary scent behind on his pillowcase, plus several strands of copper hair.

The next morning they got up, dressed, had coffee, and discussed their case. Matter-of-factly. Like Mulder and Scully. Like nothing was different. Like she had dropped by for coffee before work. Like this incredible sex they kept having existed only in his imagination or in some alternate dimension. He didn’t ask any questions, and neither did she.

Now he’s got nothing but questions. He’s haunted by fucking questions. What if he never sees her again? What if she never eats any of these bagels he optimistically bought hoping she’d stay over again soon? What if he never has the chance to find out what she meant by any of it, what it could have meant if it had continued? What if it’s his fault she’s gone, what if it’s all because she’s been used as a tool somehow to get to him?

Not everything is about you, Mulder.

He sits on his couch and forces himself to focus on eating, polishing the bagel off in a few large ravenous bites. He licks every bit of cream cheese off his fingertips. He still feels hungry.

Brushing stray crumbs off his shirt, he remembers guiltily that he should update Mrs. Scully. When he called her the day before yesterday, to find out more about Scully’s nonexistent family emergency, she’d been worried—in her controlled, subdued way. Asking only basic questions—she’s been through this too many times, too. He’s only updated her once since, with pathetically little to go on. It’s probably time for another check-in.

When he looks at his phone on the desk, he practically jumps out of his skin.

There’s a flashing light. A fucking message. He leaps to his feet. How had he not seen it? Why didn’t he check his messages right away? What was he thinking?

He rushes to the button, presses it, waits.

“Mulder, it’s me.”

He stumbles back and falls into his desk chair in boneless relief.

“I’m on my way back. I’m coming straight to your place. I’m going to be about two hours. Will you ask the Gunmen to be there, too? I have something important to show you. Something I think could… change lives.”

She sounds all right, he marvels. Upbeat. Not like a recent victim. His shoulders droop in a release of tension, and he folds his hands over his forehead, taking a deep breath.

Not dead, not dead, not dead. The worst did not happen.

For a moment he lets himself just sit on the couch. Emotions pass over him like clear water through jagged rocks.

*** The thing is, he doesn’t know how to love Scully, and he assumes that’s probably the problem.

He knows how to feel. He has always been a proficient feeler of feelings. He feels all sorts of things when it comes to her in particular, a whole panoply of finely tuned emotions.

Love isn’t feeling. He knows that. He’s not the most experienced with love as a practical matter. He’s not been a big relationship guy in his life, and the love in his family, while present, hasn’t flowed as freely and easily as in other families. But he knows enough to know that love isn’t a question of emoting. He knows it’s a question of impact, of touch, of effect. Of every action having a reaction.

He knows it’s his actions that perpetually disappoint her. He’s painfully aware of that. She often needs him to be something, and he disappoints her. He can say all sorts of beautiful words to her. He can fuck her exquisitely, as he’s learned recently.

But he can’t seem to do what she needs. He can’t figure out how to love her. Not in the way that matters. Not in the way she can touch and discern and trust and rely upon.

Not in the way, he worries, that would allow her to really love him back.

*** He’s been carefully listening out for her, distracted even while the Gunmen are talking to him. So he knows she’s walking up his hallway before she gets to the door.

He swings the door open just as she raises her hand to knock.

“Mulder,” she says, her face pink, a trace of a smile. She looks uninjured and hopeful. She steps closer, and he knows she expects him to put his arms around her.

“The prodigal partner returns,” he says casually. He doesn’t step forward to greet her, and her eyes widen, betray a trace of worry.

Behind him, the Gunmen rise from the couch and stand in a tight trio in that way they always do, like they’re a chorus in a goddamned Greek tragedy.

“It’s good to see you alive, Agent Scully.”

“We thought you were toast.”

“Mulder was losing his shit,” Frohike adds.

“I’m sorry to make everyone worry,” Scully replies. Her eyes turn questioningly back on Mulder’s. He turns around brusquely to walk into the living room.

“Did you get the tapes, Mulder?” she says, following behind him. “I sent you tapes in the mail. Tapes I recorded of our conversations, from a wire I’d hidden on me. I’d expect them to be here by now.”

“I didn’t,” Mulder says, sinking onto the couch. He looks up and makes sullen eye contact with her. “I got a message on my machine about a family emergency. And a secondhand message from Skinner. That’s the extent of the communication I received.”

“I couldn’t communicate easily,” she says. “It was a singular opportunity. I was trying to get information out of him. I needed to get his trust, make him think I was accepting his story.”

Mulder slumps down further on the couch. It sounds somewhat understandable, like something he would do, but it doesn’t make him feel better. “And what was his story?”

Scully produces a plastic case. “It came down to this,” she says, holding it out to Mulder. Her voice is excited; her eyes light up. “I think this could actually be something significant. I got it from a man who went by the name Cobra.”

Mulder doesn’t miss Frohike and Langly exchanging knowing glances. He doesn’t take the case from her hand.

“Yeah,” he says. “We’re familiar with Cobra. A man working on a shadow project for the Department of Defense. Your email account has been having a somewhat flirtatious relationship with him for the past six months. You set up an in-person meet-up with him recently.”

Scully is taken aback. She eyes the Gunmen, and then gives him a significant look. “Mulder.” She drops her voice. “You know those emails weren’t really from me, don’t you?”

“Of course I do,” he replies. “There were a lot of feelings revealed in those emails. Didn’t really seem like you.”

Frohike clears his throat. She presses her lips together and holds out the small square case to Langly. “This disk,” she says to the Gunmen. “Please see what’s on it.”

Langly takes it from her hands, nodding, and the three Gunmen begin to huddle around their computers.

Scully hesitantly moves to sit next to Mulder on the couch, her eyes on him.

“If I’m right,” she says, “then everything that’s happened these past few days will be more than worth it, Mulder.”

“Your death wouldn’t have been worth it.”

“That’s familiar,” she replies back tightly. “Only usually it’s me who says it to you.”

He can’t answer her. Actually, he finds he can’t even look at her, even though he knows in his heart he’s being unfair.

“I had to take the risk.” Her voice has hardened.

He swallows and rises to his feet, pacing to release some pent-up energy before settling in the door, clinging to the door frame while the Gunmen work.

After a moment, the Gunmen look at one another awkwardly.

“There’s nothing on this,” Frohike mutters.

“It’s empty,” adds Langly.

“Completely.”

“No.” Scully springs from her seat. “It can’t be,” she insists. She bends over to look at the computer, as if somehow she will be able to conjure something the Gunmen can’t. “It can’t be. It’s got to be on there.”

Langly looks embarrassed for her, Byers openly sympathetic.

Mulder can’t help but make eye contact with her now. She’s looking back at him as if afraid of his reaction, and he knows that should bother him.

He can only stare at her in silent frustration, gripping the door above him.

*** They sit around his table and listen to her tell her story.

He can tell Scully’s rattled, but she makes a game attempt to hide it. She speaks in her very best authoritative agent voice, as though she is making a report to Skinner. She sticks to the facts, offering very little commentary, but she keeps repeatedly licking her lips, pushing her hair behind her ear, her most obvious nervous tics.

“I didn’t understand exactly what he wanted,” she says. “But I thought there was something to be gained by playing along. Seeing what I could find out.”

“Something for him to gain, maybe,” Mulder says. “Cobra’s trust.”

The Gunmen’s eyes bounce from her to him.

“I think there was more to it than that,” Scully says emphatically. “He seemed to sincerely want to convince me. It’s why I thought he… it’s why I believed the disk was real.”

There is a painful silence. Langly doesn’t seem to know where to look.

“It’s funny, it’s like he imagines himself to be a kind of silver-tongued Richard III,” Byers comments thoughtfully. “Convincing his own Lady Anne to bend to his will.”

Scully rotates to look at him. Frohike raises his eyebrows.

“What, you guys don’t know your Shakespeare?” Byers says. “The villain who uses charm as a weapon? Richard III? ‘Was ever woman in this humor wooed?’ It’s a famous—”

“I know it,” Scully cuts him off sharply. “Richard’s charm works on Anne, Byers. Spender’s did not on me.”

Mulder bites back what he wants to say: didn’t it, though? Didn’t you do everything he wanted you to? He must not be hiding his thoughts as well as he thinks, because Scully, glimpsing his face, flushes.

He suspects Byers is right, that Spender imagines himself a kingly mastermind, using Scully as a pawn to be easily moved about. Like she’s some early modern female character in a Shakespearean tragedy, passive and at the mercy of men.

“Mulder, I went to his office,” Scully says forcefully. “We can go there right now. You and me. There could be evidence there.”

Both of her fists are clenched. He can practically feel her desperation crossing over into anger, radiating off of her in waves. If there’s anything he knows about his partner, it’s that she never wants to have been anyone’s pawn—anyone’s passive placeholder—ever again.

“Yeah,” Mulder says softly, meeting her eyes. “Okay. Let’s go.”

***

She asks him to drive, and she calls out the instructions to him in a resolute, crisp voice. As she does, he steals glimpses at her in the passenger seat. She doesn’t notice, looking ahead, her posture stiff and straight.

He suspects his standoffishness is starting to seriously piss her off. He doesn’t himself quite understand why he’s still so intensely angry with her. He wishes he weren’t. It’s like he’s experiencing a powerful torrent of emotion, an opened fire hydrant, and he can’t stop.

“If someone offers you valuable information,” Scully says to him out of nowhere, pronouncing each syllable very clearly, “you have to pursue it. Even if you’re not sure it’s entirely reliable. You have to find out. You know that.”

Mulder is quiet.

“Is this the cold shoulder, Mulder?” Her voice sounds bitter. “You’re very fortunate that’s not how I chose to respond to every one of your in-the-moment miscalculations.”

“Why would you not tell your partner, Scully? Why keep it a secret from me?”

“I told you, he didn’t want me to,” she says tightly. “He told me the offer was only good if I didn’t.”

“Really raises some questions, doesn’t it?” Mulder asks. “Why would he want to separate you from your partner? What does offering you the cure for the world’s diseases have to do with me?”

“I sent you the tapes,” Scully says sharply. “I didn’t listen to him. You act like I had no agency.”

He laughs darkly. “You had exactly the amount of agency he wanted you to have.”

She sucks in air. More and more pissed off. Still, she has to be able to see, doesn’t she? He wonders if she really believes they will find evidence at Spender’s office, or if she’s only clinging to that idea to protect herself.

“He knew he didn’t entirely have me,” she comments decisively after a pause. “He tried everything to get in my head. He even attempted a little pop psychology, and he did it badly.”

“Oh yeah?” Mulder says, risking a look at her. “What kind of pop psychology?”

“Let’s see.” She tilts her head and recites facetiously. “I’m attracted to powerful men, but I fear their power. I keep walls up. I’m devoted to you on one level, yet I live alone. I’d die for you, but I won’t let myself love you.” She gives him a scathing look and turns to gaze out the window. “Cosmopolitan magazine level insight, really.”

“Sounds like it,” Mulder says gruffly. If she’s intentionally lobbing a grenade, it found its target. His mind is spinning trying not to read into these statements, trying not to parse what parts she’s insinuating are ridiculous.

“He’s like anyone else, Mulder. He has weaknesses.” She gazes straight out the front window. “Whatever else is true, I’m sure of that much.”

“We all have weaknesses,” he mutters tightly. “Which is why we have partners and we don’t just … go off on our own.”

She turns and fixes him with a slow, deadpan look of disbelief. She doesn’t even need to say it. They both know perfectly well what a patently absurd thing that is for him to say to her.

With an exasperated shake of her head, she turns back to the passenger window.

In the silence that follows, Mulder contemplates the impressive depths of his own hypocrisy.

If he’d been approached in the same way, with the promise of some information he’d wanted badly, he knows he would have gone, too. He knows he would have because he’s done exactly that sort of thing before.

He just has this tendency to hold her to a different, only-for-Scully standard. This isn’t the first time he’s done it. It’s actually an embarrassing pattern.

Sometimes, he expects her to be more rational than he would ever ask himself to be. He expects her to be more prudent than he ever is. He expects her to leave aside her personal biases when his are woven into the fabric of their entire work.

Why does he do it? Is it because of their respective genders? Does it come from his deep feelings for Scully, his overwhelming desire to keep her safe? This all might factor into it and affect his professionalism, but he thinks it comes down to something more.

He’s come to depend on Scully playing a certain role in their partnership. And when she veers off course—makes him guess—it both delights and unnerves him. She plays the same familiar theme in their shared duet, the perfect counterpoint to his, the well-matched half of their mutual composition. If she suddenly seems to go solo, to improvise, to take up the fucking sitar or the ukulele or something, he doesn’t always cope well.

He glances over in the car to look balefully at the back of her head, still intently focused out the window. He can’t keep her in a box. He’s probably held her back for too long.

Then he thinks about Spender’s fucking emails, his fucking pop psychology, getting Scully to board some goddamn boat to meet some man for him.

Come on. This road trip with the smoker isn’t her pushing her limits. It’s not her spreading her wings. It’s her possibly getting killed. It’s beneath her. It’s just … stupid.

He suppresses the urge to slam his hand down on the steering wheel again. Next to him, she sighs.

***

What was once set up to appear to be Spender’s offices is now a completely empty building. Mulder is faintly surprised. He thought maybe it would turn out to be a legitimate office building who’d unwittingly played landlord to a liar. He thought they’d find a bunch of bewildered receptionists and cubicle dwellers who responded in confusion to their questions.

Instead, the whole thing turns out to be a mirage. Empty room after empty room. Everything and everyone evaporated into thin air.

This is an elaborate ruse just for Scully, he ponders, staring at an abandoned pad of sticky notes on the floor. Spender spent some money on this sham. Why go to all this trouble and then leave the most important loose end alive? It sends a shiver down his spine.

Scully is upset, of course, and he’s trying to be more understanding. She’s making it hard. She sounds unacceptably, uncharacteristically credulous, like she’s never even heard the word “skepticism” before in her life. It’s grating on him.

“Mulder, I looked into his eyes. I swear what he told me was true,” she says stubbornly.

“He did it all for himself—to get the science on that disk,” Mulder’s voice is taut. “His sincerity was a mask, Scully. The man's motives never changed.”

“You think he used me to save himself—at the expense of the human race.”

“No, he knows what that science is worth, how powerful it is. He'd let nothing stand in his way.”

“You may be right... but for a moment, I saw something else in him. A longing for something more than power. Maybe for something he could never have.”

Mulder wants to yell at her that that’s complete horseshit. He wants to take her shoulders and shake her and ask her what the fuck is wrong with her. But he exercises some restraint.

“And what is that something he can’t have, Scully? Compassion? Redemption? You really think, after all this, he cares about any of that?”

She wraps her arms around herself in a protective gesture, looking up and down the walls of what had apparently once been his false office. Her back is to him.

“Aren’t you the same person who once told me ‘the truth is out there, but so are lies?’” Mulder pushes. “Where’s that Dana Scully?”

She walks to the window and stands in front of it, still hugging herself and looking out into the afternoon light. From Mulder’s vantage point she looks only like a silhouette, an outline of herself.

“I get it,” she says after a heavy beat. “I see what you’re saying.”

Now there’s a melancholy timbre in her voice, a sound of defeat. He hears it rarely, for all of their struggles, and he doesn’t like it.

She doesn’t turn away from the window. Her head tilts forward until her forehead rests lightly against the glass.

“I was duped, clearly,” she says, her voice expressionless. “Please. Can you just take me back to your apartment so I can get my car and go home?”

*** On the drive back, her face is as inaccessible as a marble statue’s. For a while she shuts her eyes, but he knows she isn’t asleep.

“Hey, are you hungry?”

“Not really,” she says, stretching her neck from side to side as though it is sore.

“You sure? When did you last eat?”

“I don’t feel like eating, Mulder.”

“You’re a little pale.” He refuses to sit in silence.

“I’m tired,” she says with a tone of finality. “I didn’t sleep very well last night, thinking about the sunrise meeting.”

Mulder nods in an attempt at sympathy, sending her repeated sideways looks. Something in what she just said nudges at his thoughts, bothers him.

“The meeting with Cobra was at sunrise?”

“Yes,” she says shortly.

“But you didn’t come back to my apartment until one,” Mulder says. “It’s not that long a drive.”

She shifts in her seat, apparently attempting to get comfortable. “No.”

“You didn’t come straight back?”

“I made another stop,” Scully says evasively.

“Another stop? For a few hours?”

“Yes.”

Her lack of communication is again making him angry.

“Where could you possibly go between here and Milford, Pennsylvania?” He knows his tone is too nasty. “Philadelphia?”

She exhales sharply. “Do I need to account for all of my time now, Mulder? And is that little rule going to apply to you, too?”

“I was looking for you,” he snaps. “I was worried sick about you. Where would you go before trying to call me?”

“To the hospital,” she replies hotly.

His head spins to look at her. “Why?”

“Just to get … something checked out.”

Every muscle in his body seizes up, alert. “To get what checked out?”

She pauses. “I had them do a rape kit.”

He swallows, aware that his heart is pounding loudly in his ears. The sides of his vision begin to narrow until he can only see a tiny fragment of the road ahead. He starts pulling the car over, guiding the car into a grocery store parking lot.

When he has safely maneuvered them into a spot at the back of the lot, he turns to face her.

“Why did you have them do a rape kit, Scully?” he asks quietly. His voice is shaking.

She’s meeting his eyes, but her face is difficult to read, a complete mask. “They didn’t … find any evidence of anything.” She extends her fingertips and meticulously picks a piece of fuzz off of his sweater. “We had been in the car, driving for many hours, and I fell asleep. When I woke up, I was in different clothes. Pajamas. In a bed. Obviously, it unsettled me, and I kept thinking about it, so … a rape kit.”

He’s ashamed at how badly he’s reacting, how frightened he is to the very core. He knows that it’s her who should be comforted. He tries to calm himself, reaches out and clasps her hand.

“Scully,” he whispers.

“It had been close to 36 hours at that point,” she continues in an even, formal voice. “So, as you know, that affects the quality of the forensic evidence. I did bring the underwear I was wearing, just in case.”

“Oh Jesus,” he says. He feels physically ill. “Scully.”

“I don’t think anything happened,” she adds. “I went just because I kept thinking about it, but I didn’t think his agenda was…” She drifts off, bites her lip. “I admit that I wonder a little more now.”

They’re both too familiar with the process of testing for forensic evidence of rape and sexual assault. A thousand possible scenarios pass through his mind. He knows they have passed through hers, too.

“They found nothing?” he whispers.

“A small fragment of latex in my clothes … concerned them,” she says softly. “But it’s latex from latex gloves, and you know… I have lots of latex gloves. It could have easily come from my car, from the autopsy I did earlier in the week.”

“Scully,” he says urgently. “You could have called me. In the hospital. I would have come.”

“It’s… okay, Mulder. It was very likely nothing.”

“You thought this was possible,” Mulder says, in a sudden explosion of feeling, “and you stayed? You stayed in that house with him? Anything could have happened, he could have…”

He stops himself, seeing her expression. “I’m so sorry,” he says, instantly penitent. “I’m so sorry.” He leans over and presses his cheek into the palm of her hand. “I know why you stayed. You needed to finish the job.”

“You would have done the same?” Her voice sounds unexpectedly small, like someone else’s.

It doesn’t happen to me in quite the same way, he thinks. Sometimes ex-girlfriends attempt seductions when I am down for the count. Sometimes my brain is violated with surgical knives. But it’s not like this. Not like this.

“I would have,” he promises. He scoots over as far as he can in the car seat and tentatively threads his arms around her, pulling her against his shoulder. “I imagine you know this,” he says roughly, “but I have to say it, especially because I’ve been such a dick to you since you came back. None of this is your fault. You were trying to find out all you could. So you could do the right thing, like you always do.”

“I know, Mulder,” she says, her voice a soft whimper against his shirt. “I know, but I should have known better.”

“We can’t always know better,” he replies into her hair. “We take risks, and sometimes they pay off, sometimes they don’t. We can’t second guess. It’s the job.”

She pulls her face back to look at him, and her lip is slightly trembling. “I think I wanted to believe him,” she says. “I wanted it to be real, because if it worked, it would mean everything we’ve gone through all these years would turn out to have an actual impact. Would turn out to have real meaning after all. I could make it all make sense.”

He thinks about that: his little Catholic, wanting so badly to turn her suffering into redemption.

“Listen, of all people, I understand that,” he says, swiping her tear away with his finger. “I know all about wanting to believe.”

“And it felt like he was approaching me seriously,” she says in a hushed voice, like it’s a dark secret. “As an adversary, an intelligent mind. The way he deals with you.” Practically in a whisper. “It–it probably flattered me more than it should have. I’m embarrassed about it.”

“Scully—”

“No,” she says quickly, her face flushing. “It’s true. He’s always seen me as …a test subject. A lever used to motivate you. A chess piece. And he was talking to me like I was … a player. Mulder, he must have known how I’d respond to that.”

She’s so ashamed of this tiny manifestation of pride, this smallest and most sympathetic of vanities. Mulder runs his thumbs lightly up and down her jaw bones.

Her voice is low and terse. “And this possible touching thing, thinking about it now. This dress he had me wear...” She peters out in disgust.

Mulder’s insides are churning. Holding firmly to each side of her face, he pulls it close to him, so he can stare closely into her pale eyes. “I’ll kill him, Scully,” he says hoarsely. “I’ll fucking kill him.”

He can so easily imagine doing it— the satisfaction of killing Spender. Extinguishing the life out of the man’s arrogant eyes, the surprise as he realizes he’s lost, that he can’t do whatever he wants after all.

Scully, eyes wide and glacial blue, shakes her head almost imperceptibly from within his hold on her cheeks. And he understands, from his experience of her in hundreds of different situations and hundreds of discrete moments, exactly what she’s trying to communicate. That doesn’t help, Mulder. That’s not what I need. This isn’t his story to write.

“Okay,” he says gently, lightly pushing her hair back from her face. “Okay, yep, I get it. I won’t do anything unpredictable right now.”

“Thank you.” She exhales, tilts her head down.

He tucks a lock behind her ear, his mind racing. “What if we left your car at my place?” he asks. “I could take you home. We could pick up some food on the way. You could get to your bed faster that way.”

She looks up to him, her expression guarded. “And what about you?”

He hesitates, wondering what she wants him to say. Every moment of physical intimacy they’ve ever had has been initiated without words; he doesn’t have a precedent of using language to approach it. He decides it’s safer not to assume.

“I could take a cab home,” he suggests politely. “Or call the Gunmen and ask them for a ride. You might want some peace and quiet.”

Her expression scarcely changes, but he can tell from the smallest twitch of her mouth that it was the wrong answer.

He opts for another approach. More direct.

“Or … I could stay with you,” he offers.

She lifts her lip just a fraction. It could be the beginning of a smile. “Hmm,” she says.

“I, uh, like that option best,” he adds. In for a penny, in for a pound, he supposes. “Because you’ve been gone, and I’ve been worried and what you’ve just told me worries me, too. So it would make me feel better to be around. That’s usually comforting to me, and, uh, I hope it is to you, too.”

Her eyebrows raise. He hopes that his unbearable awkwardness is at least coming across as sincere.

“I appreciate that, Mulder,” she replies.

“It’s up to you, obviously.”

She turns to face the front windshield, nodding slowly. “Why don’t you drive to my place?”

*** She doesn’t cry again. But that night, she tugs him into her bed with her and wraps her limbs tightly around him, pressing her cheek against his chest.

“I’m sorry you were so scared,” she mumbles into his shirt. “I would have been scared, too.”

“If I did something uncharacteristically rash like run off and get myself lost at sea, you mean?”

“It’s not outside of the realm of extreme possibility.”

“Hey, you said you saw something else in him,” Mulder says. Part of him doesn’t want to bring it up, but he worries Scully is still torturing herself with self-doubt. “You said he was wanting something he could never have.”

She’s quiet a beat. “I was probably deluding myself.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I was just thinking—he’s always spinning webs of lies, always writing this bullshit involving the lives of other people, setting up false fronts. Sometimes it must occur to him that he doesn’t interact with anything real.”

“Yeah.”

“I wouldn’t want that,” Mulder says softly. “Maybe you perceived him having a moment of … clarity. That nothing in his world is genuine.”

“If he even cares about that,” she says dismissively. “Like you said. There’s no reason to think so.”

“You said you saw something in his eyes,” Mulder points out. “That’s a good enough reason. Your perception, your judgment. I don’t doubt that.”

She lifts her head and stares at him for a moment, her expression enigmatic. Then she kisses him gently on the lips, the fingers of one hand moving slowly through his hair. He tries not to tense up, but she’s never kissed him like this before. In this unhurried, tender way.

She then lays her head down right below his collarbone—where she can probably hear his heart thumping quickly—and he curls his arm around her.

“I would die for you, you know,” she says. “He was right about that much.”

He knows what she’s referring to, Spender’s claim into her psychology. If his heart wasn’t racing before, it is now.

“I know,” he murmurs. “I know you would. But I would never want you to.”

“He wasn’t right about all of it,” she adds.

I love you, too, he thinks. And to show her, he draws her in, ever closer.

[papirouge]

I have an unpopular christian opinion but idk if it’s really that unpopular but here it goes - fundamental christians aren’t christ like and I suspect many don’t really have a solid relationship with god. I’m from USA and when I say fundie I mean the Duggar types. If anyone isn’t familiar with duggars, they are a very strict family of christians but usually these types of families like to ignore actual issues in the family for the sake of appearances. In this case, it was sexual abuse by the older brother towards his own sisters. The oldest brother was caught by the fbi for having one of, if not, the WORST child p0rn ever produced on his laptop. Even the investigators were so disturbed by it they needed a break. The brother felt no remorse and expected forgiveness despite being a literal pedophile. He was sentenced and jailed, and yet I’ve seen radical christians online (like that Lori Alexander for example)call for his release and lessen his crimes as being “foolish” but “Christ forgives all” but will continue to say how children need to be protected. but I guess when the predator is one of their own, they want to ignore that. His own wife is standing by him despite having children… to forgo your own children’s safety for the sake of keeping a rotten marriage to a pedophile that got pleasure from seeing babies be tortured is not christ-like or even biblical. What the fuck is wrong with them

I've said it and I'll say it again : US Christians are the weakest link of the body of Christ.

It's crazy how worldwide Christiandom will collectively agree on things (such as refusing violence) but somehow US evangelicals act like snowflakes that can't be reasoned while pretending they are the ones to get it right.

I've watched countless of videos/testimony of Christians across the world. Sometimes, they came from places where Christianity was illegal. They had to deal with the most awful treatment, and sometimes torture or death. And what always struck is that while they NEVER retaliated with violence (because they were authentically saved) crazy/supernatural things happened to them to protect them from their oppressor.

I'm thinking about that new convert from middle east that was sequestered & chained by his own father, and when his father decided to finally kill him there's been a blinding light, his chains were gone and he could escape (it reminded me of Paul & Silas in prison).

Or that (indian or Pakistani) new convert girl who was arrested with her (illegal) church by the Islamic authorities, they killed a bunch of them (martyrs) and that she heard an angel tell her how to escape.

Or that Nigerian man screaming "the blood of Jesus" while being hunted by militias with guns, that managed to escape thanks to some divine intervention.

Or a woman in Africa who was being sexually assaulted and by the testimony one of the men who tried to assault her (and later repented), her dress turned "metal like"(???) and they were unable to undress her, saving her from rape.

And I heard of countless of stories like that..

BECAUSE God PROTECTS His children.

And if God decides to let you die by the hand of the unrighteous that's ALSO His will and we have to humbly accept it. A question that so many pro gun/pro violent retaliation Christians NEVER managed to answer is : Stephen and John the Baptist died as martyr without defending themselves. Countless of Christians of the early church died at the hand of roman authorities oppressing/torturing/killing them for their faith. They still didn't violently resist. WHAT MAKES YOU BELIEVE YOU'RE SPECIAL AND THAT *YOU* SHOULD DEFEND YOURSELF? It's always cricket after that.

Or their hypocrisy of seething against this fallen world while being willing to disobey God to keep.... living down there?? Real Christian grasp that death is actually a deliverance. Why do you think Paul longed for death?

I think that's what so many USAmericans have such a hard time to understand : they come from such a barbaric dominative culture that constantly overpowered others with its violence they cannot accept the vulnerability that Christianity encompasses.

Yes, we may die by the sword of our ennemies. That's what God expects from us. Trying to argue over it shows that not only they do NOT understand the message of Christ, but also that they are not as fearful of God as they pretend because you do NOT argue the orders of someone you fear.

[ozimagines]

I wanted to tell you all something but I can’t quite remember… oh, yeah…

HAPPY PRIDE!!!

I’ve been out for about five years now and it was the best decision of my life, even though I lost people I was close to because of it.

Oz is a large part of what helped me get there. I liked men growing up but I liked women too, and when I learned what Non Binary was (Deep South, no education) I fell in love with them too. I watched I Love Lucy and had a crush on both Ricky and Lucy. I thought for the longest time that straightness was a choice because I assumed everyone was attracted to everyone like I am😂 For those who don’t know, I’m pansexual fem-leaning and gender non conforming in my choice of gender expression even though I’m a Cisgender woman.

Watching Tobias Beecher, who had a wife, fall in love with a man and struggle to place these feelings that are so familiar and yet so foreign at the same time. I assumed since I liked men at all, that I just needed to choose to be straight. Watching him try to understand whether or not he was gay, and finally come to terms that he is who he is and labels aren’t always for him made my coming out easier. In fact, he’s the reason I knew I was pan. Because I liked everyone, like him, and the love didn’t feel wrong or lesser when it was for the same sex or non binaries. It just felt like more love.

Fiona empowered me to start expressing my gender the way I wanted. I still dress fairly femme, but I like to spice it up with masculine features and clothes. I like the androgyny, even if I also like my she/her pronouns. I got to see her break the mould on what gender expression was. And she looked gorgeous every step of the way, so I figured I could do the same. Bought a beautiful black suit years ago to impress a girl, and it just felt right.

And not for nothing, but LGBTQIA+ has a higher rate of sexual assault, and I was a few years ago. I think that’s why I gravitate towards Peter Schibetta and James Robson. I understand what it’s like to be taken like that. To be reduced. These characters made me feel like it wasn’t my fault, like I could grow past it and be okay one day. During this pride month, let’s make an extra effort to be there for our brothers, sisters, and siblings who were sexually assaulted or raped for being who they are.

I know this isn’t my usual post, but Oz is my quintessential show for many reasons. It helped me understand that I was gay and feel safe coming out. It helped me feel seen after my assault. It’s discourse on mental health made me feel like a person again. Oz is, and always will be, the show that made me feel like it was okay to be myself, and I hope others had similar experiences.

Also, I’m white, but for years now, have been listening to my POC brothers, sisters, and siblings to hear about intersectionality in the LGBTQIA+ community. Think Billy Keane; being a POC and gay is DIFFICULT sometimes. Being a POC and being non-binary is rough. Its important this pride that we spend extra time on our POC community and make sure they’re okay.

And finally, than you to the allies. I understand that supporting the LGBTQIA+ community, but I lived in the Deep South, and had some straight cis friends who mustered up tremendous courage to stand by me as I figured things out. Yes, people should be supporting us, but sometimes they do to their done detriment in their social or romantic lives. Thank you allies, for making the world a little bit better for us.

Happy Pride; I’ll be focusing on lots on Pride themes this month (not like my page is super straight anyways lol) and hope to hear requests from my LGBTQIA+ followers especially if you want something tailored to your specific experience. Because I know it’s hard to find fanfiction for certain genders or sexualities, so I’ll try to come up with some in my own, but also hope for your creative inspiration in making this Oz themed Pride a wonderful one!

(Im also going to continue writing the asks I’ve gotten before this obviously, lol. I got some BOMB ass requests and I’m just spending lots of time on them to get them right. Some are characters I’ve never written before so I’ve been binging their scenes. All will be out soon!)

[quotergirl19]

I truly hope Eloise begins to mature a bit in season 3. I’m desperate for her realize that her sense of entitlement to say and do whatever she wants has consequences and effects other people. Seriously what is her deal? Is she the ultimate middle child? Sometimes I think for a smart person she’s an idiot.

She could’ve gotten Theo fired visiting him constantly while he’s trying to do his job and then costing his boss the money his shop was making from printing Whistledown, in addition to making their print shop the focus of a royal investigation.

Footman John could have been hurt trying to protect her from thugs looking to rob a rich girl who was in a bad part of town. Or gotten him fired for taking her when he should have informed the Viscount who employed him.

The lady’s maid she kept ditching could have been assaulted while wandering shady parts of London alone looking for Eloise. Or gotten fired for losing track of her and been forced to find work with some awful member of society like Nigel Berbrooke who rapes his maids and abandons them to raise his bastards penniless.

Something has to snap this girl out of her self centered me me me mentality. We get it Eloise, everyone is dumb except you.

Please understand that I love Eloise but she’s got blinders on to anyone else’s circumstances, feelings and struggles and has zero respect for anyone but herself which was never more obvious than when she thought she could just get away with lying to the Queen as if that was a flawless plan simply because she decided it was.

It’s getting harder to keep in mind that Eloise is really just young, extremely spoiled and indulged by her family’s wealth and acceptance of her very unladylike (by regency era standards) behavior.

I don’t know what it’s going to take to make her stop spewing her opinions at literally any humans within earshot but I truly hope it starts happening this coming season.

Maybe she’ll out Penelope to Marina in a letter hoping Marina would join her in her outrage only for Marina to say it’s on the past and give Eloise a bit of that signature Marina Thompson tells it like it is, straight talk and tell her to be careful because that information in the hands of the wrong person could ruin her oldest friend’s entire future and even endanger her if someone tried to harm her for something she’s written.

We know Marina doesn’t believe in reliving the past or holding on to it. But she does believe in a harsh reality check. Like when she told Pen that Colin didn’t see her as a marriage prospect and she told Colin he was behaving like a boy and needed to open his eyes and man up. It wasn’t nice to hear but Marina gives zero f*cks about nice when she sees fit to give someone a good dose of truth. Granted, she got slapped for it when she did it to an adult (Portia) but I’d LOVE for someone to verbally check Eloise.

Ok… that’s the conclusion of today’s Eloise rant. I still love her even though I want to pinch her lips shut when she starts yapping and I’m eager for her to mature.

[teriyakichop]

The Brian Banks Story--A.K.A., why fair trials are important!

As an addendum to the previous post I made, I want to talk about a story that hits close to home for me. Some of you may not know the man, but his name is Brian Banks. He was a young man with a promising future in the NFL. He got involved with a vile wicked young girl who cried rape to the police when nothing of a sexual nature happened between him and the young girl. Brian Banks was sent to prison, and given a 10 year plea deal sentence, for a crime he did not do. Otherwise, he was looking at 50 years for the alleged rape. And his own lawyer betrayed him to get him that 10 year plea deal, because he was a big black kid. There was no evidence of forced entry inside of her, there was no evidence of DNA remains. There was absolutely NOTHING that could be used against this young man. Brian Banks LITERALLY went to prison on the allegation of rape, and what was used as proof? "Trust me, bro!" So, Brian Banks remains strong and he serves his time for a crime he didn't commit, gets out of prison, and his false accuser tries to get back in his life again. Brian Banks got the vile bitch to admit that she made the rape allegation up, and he got it on audio/video recording. He was later exonerated for his alleged crime, and he was given small chances to make his way into the NFL. But the damage was already done. He lost 10 years of his life FOR NO REASON, his promising life was shattered, his entry into the NFL was very difficult, his reputation was ruined, and nothing he does will ever get that time sent back to him. All on a bullshit tip, and "Trust me bro" evidence. Perhaps you can't relate to this matter because it never happened to you. All I can say to you is, thank goodness you didn't have to suffer as Brian Banks did, and I hope that what happened to him, NEVER happens to you. I have brothers, uncles, a father, male friends and so on, and I worry about shit like this happening to them everyday, because it is SOOOOOOOO EASY to have false allegations placed on men these days. This is why fair trials are important. But maybe you can't relate to this matter because it is not WoW based? Alright. Let's talk about Quinton Flynn. The old Voice Actor for Kael'thas Sunstrider. Quinton Flynn: The guy that Blizzard screwed over, all on a bullshit tip. Quinton Flynn's reputation was severely damaged based on false allegations of sexual assault and grooming of a minor, from a fan that had an infatuation for him. The court ruled in favor of Quinton Flynn and found him not guilty on all charges. But that didn't matter to Blizzard, because before he was even given time to defend himself and the good name of his character, Blizzard FIRED him, and had his Kael'thas Sunstrider voice work replaced by another voice actor whom, while good, does not have enough depth to fill Quinton Flynn's shoes for the Kael'thas character. Blizzard did this while Quinton Flynn fought to prove his innocence. And when he was 100% successful, did Blizzard restore his voice work? NOPE! They kept their distance from him and made him out to be an outsider. All because of false allegations. Even though he was proven 100% innocent. If I'm not mistaken, didn't a false allegation get pinned up on one of the Rick and Morty actors, and he was proven innocent, but the studio fired him over the false allegations anyway? In this day and age, we live in a world of some rather heinous people. But we also live in a world where people make false allegations on one another, and no one wants to do the work of finding out if the allegations are true. Rather, people would go about believing whatever anyone says and demonizing the falsely accused because of the sensationalist's failure to think with their own mind and do their own research. I hope now you all understand why I am looking into matters with a fair investigation. <3

[precious-little-scoundrel]

Sure! Here’s something thoughts. ||. I think Gale wouldn’t be so shocked…between what he himself had to see with Sanchez (it was not a “complicit” integration tactic yet still) and what he’s going through currently with practically having to allow his men to barter parts of themselves for supplies, he’s more in a bit of horror that everything that has been bad ? Is about to get worse under the SS and what Ida went through could be him next. And he wants a game plan. But what the fuck is there to do?

It totally makes sense that Gale wouldn’t be as shocked as Bucky but do you think that a part of him might be like… I don’t know. Cause he was forced to witness what happened to Sanchez, but he didn’t know Sanchez (not that it isn’t still extremely fucked) and as you said, it wasn’t as a tactic. Whereas Smith is someone who’s adored by him and Ida and it WAS a tactic. So even if he isn’t shocked I could see him being a little like woah, I thought what I saw was bad (it was Gale, it was) and that might irritate Ida as well meanwhile Bucky is in the back being like “at least you knew something”

This could also be Bucky’s first time even hearing anything about the rape part of Smith’s assault (if he got the story about the dogs out of Gale prior to the SS taking over) because he’d previously been so occupied with Ida. And I could see that also angering him, that Ida and Gale knew and he didn’t.

Yeah, terrible as both scenarios are -Gale is processing it being used against him/others and that’s a whole other level of terror and concern. So yes I see that.

As for Bucky and not guessing about others- we saw how tenacious he was about hearing from Maureen about herself and then Ida, he was fuming at Gale for not being more thorough when asking them. And I think he’d continue that way, he’d demand to know, especially as girls start miscarrying, etc. So I think he’s aware in this “group” sort of understanding that most/all of them were assaulted, including Smith. Which is awful but what he’s missing is that not all are alike or equally…premeditated? tactical? You get it.

[indecentpause]

White Rabbit: Chapter Seven

cw: psych medication, negative side effects, sexual assault/rape mention, victim blaming, food, internalized homophobia

I skip the showers again, but I change my clothes in the room’s tiny bathroom. I wash my face and run my damp fingers through my hair. I need a brush. I’ll have to check the bag, but I don’t think Nina brought one. Maybe they’ll have a cheap disposable comb. Better than nothing. The mirror is warped and water-stained, but the green eyes that look back at me aren’t so dark anymore. The rings are a little fainter, the cheeks a little fuller, the skin not so pale. My lips are still chapped and bitten, but you can’t have everything. The clothes don’t fit me. They’re a little too loose and a little too long, and I look like a ratty little girl trying to dress up in her classy big sister’s favorite outfit. But it’s clean, and it smells like Nina’s laundry detergent. I press the wrist of the sleeve of the cardigan into my nose. Water lilies and clean springs. I don’t leave the room until they call for breakfast, and I try to get there first so I can sit alone. But Carrie corners me and sits across my table. I look up from my cold pancakes, but don’t speak. “Those clothes are really pretty,” she says. “They’re my… my friend brought them to me,” I say. I’m still feeling out whether it’s safe to talk about Nina as who she actually is. So far, I don’t think there would be a problem. Carrie doesn’t even seem to have a judgment meter, but after my parents kicked me out, I’m still wary about telling people. “They look expensive.” I look down at the too-loose sleeve of the lavender cardigan and its big knit holes. “No, she just spends a lot of time trawling through thrift stores.”

read chapter seven on ao3 here

or on wattpad here!

General taglist: @abalonetea @only-book-lovers-left-alive @poore-choice-of-words @leadhelmetcosmonaut @jasperygrace @drippingmoon @thelaughingstag @athenswrites @kaiusvnoir @magic-is-something-we-create @idreamonpaper @wip-nook @papercutsunset @winterandwords @heavensfallenfaction

let me know if you want to be added or removed to the White Rabbit list, OR if you want to stay on the general list but not be tagged in this one. I understand there is some pretty potentially triggering content. or let me know if you want to be removed from both!

my lists got a little mixed up, so if you wanted to only be tagged in tag games and I've accidentally put you here, too, please don't hesitate to ask me to fix it :)

[prolife-is-prolie]

Prolifers assaulted her when she went to get an abortion. Years later, they celebrated when she had a miscarriage. (Part 2)

Link for part 1

TW: In this interview, A discusses being in an abusive relationship, being raped, getting assaulted outside of Planned Parenthood, her friends suicide, her miscarriage, and some hate comments left by trolls.

Me: I actually have some screenshots of the comments right here. I was going to ask for your thoughts on them. Here is one, followed by some responses from other trolls. What are your thoughts?

A: Clearly my DMs hit a nerve with them. If God is willing to make someone miscarry just because they wrote a letter he doesn’t like, then God is a bigger asshole than I thought. And the fact that these “prolifers” are laughing just proves that they truly don’t give a damn about life.

Me: Here’s another one. What are your thoughts?

A: What I said in my letter is true. The fetus never experienced life. It never took a breath and it never even opened its eyes, if it even had any. And calling it a baby is so manipulative. I may have called it a baby every now and then, but that’s because it has become so normalized in society. I knew that it wasn’t a baby, it was a fetus. And me calling it a baby doesn’t change that.

Me: This individual thinks that you should be investigated and thrown in jail. What are your thoughts?

A: I hate to break it to this person, I’m not in jail and I never will be. Because I haven’t killed anybody or anything. For a while, I did believe that it was my fault I miscarried. But it’s not. Also, calling vaccines poison? Seriously? I will never understand how someone can call themself prolife while being antivax, when vaccines save lives!

Me: This individual says you don’t deserve a baby. Your thoughts?

A: This person is clearly 12. They’ll know better when they’re older, hopefully.

Me: This individual references your DM’s and says it's hate-filled. Thoughts?

A: Damn, they’re really bitter about those DMs. I bet they’re mad that I see through their fake congratulatory comments. They were hoping to use me as a pawn and I wanted no part in it. That’s why they’re mad.

Me: Here are four more comments. Your thoughts?

A: I’m seeing the word “karma” a lot in these comments. If these people truly believed that a fetus is a baby, then why are they saying that karma got me? If they believe that a fetus is a baby, they would be mourning it instead of trashing me and weaponizing my miscarriage. They’re making themselves look bad.

Me: We’re almost done, here’s two more.

A: They’re saying I deserved to miscarry, but what about the fetus? Everytime they say that I deserved this, they’re inadvertently saying that the fetus deserved to die. I thought they didn’t want that. These people are talking out of both ends and it’s hilarious to watch.

Me: Last one. This comment refers to three prominent prolifers; Grace Sandusky (prolifebarbie), Constance Becker (noapologiesprolife), and Melanie Salazara (melaniesalazara). Currently, Grace and Melanie are pregnant and Constance had a baby. This comment claims that they haven’t miscarried and you have because their hearts are “pure and full of love” while your heart is “black and cold.” They also think that your miscarriage is for the best. What are your thoughts?

A: Well, I saw how Grace, Constance, and Melanie behaved after the overturn. They shrieked and cheered and celebrated, not taking into account the negative repercussions of abortion bans. I saw how Grace and her husband laughed at people who were upset over the overturn. And then Grace tried to do an about face and apologize to people who her buddies have harassed. I saw Constance on an episode of Jubilee, in which a girl stated that she got an abortion after being raped. Almost immediately, Constance piped up with, “What about the baby?” She totally disregarded that girl’s experience and zeroed in on the fact that she had an abortion. I saw Melanie raise her hands and scream in joy over and over because Roe was overturned. All three of these women display such disgusting behavior, so to say that their hearts are pure and full of love is absurd.

Have any of them talked about Kate Cox? I bet they haven’t. What about Marlena Stell? Or what about the women in Texas suing the state over the abortion bans because these laws negatively affected them. Have Grace, Constance, and Melanie talked about them? No, they haven’t. Because they do not care. They only care about the unborn, and once the baby is born, they can't give two shits. It doesn’t matter what they say. They can discuss pregnancy centers all day and they can discuss how these centers help women, even though they really don’t. Their actions speak louder than their words. They’re all talk but they never put their money where their mouths are. They make me sick. I wish them well on their pregnancies and in motherhood, I really do. But that doesn’t change the fact that I strongly dislike them and will always look at them in disgust.

And their silence speaks volumes. They know they’ve been tagged in this comment. I’ve seen them respond to prochoicers on multiple occasions. It’s not like they’re famous and their notifications are constantly blowing up. I can guarantee that they’ve seen this comment. And neither of them have spoken up to disavow it.. Because they agree with it. And I bet they agree with these other troll comments as well.

Me: Damn, you went off!

A: Can you blame me?

Me: Not one bit. So anyway, how are you feeling now?

A: To be honest, the feelings are still raw. I’m still depressed about the miscarriage. But life goes on. I’m not sure if I will be able to get pregnant again because my periods are so irregular. I’m amazed that I was able to get pregnant at all. But will I be able to stay pregnant? I guess time will tell. I’m also still experiencing some pregnancy symptoms. My feet are still swollen and I’m still a little bloated. But the symptoms are residing. To be honest, I’m going to miss being pregnant. I’m still coming to terms with the fact that my uterus is empty once again. But it is what it is.

Me: Now to wrap up this interview, are there any final words you would like to say to the antichoicers?

A: I will never forgive them for this. I will never forgive them for obnoxiously celebrating when Roe overturned. I will never forgive them for assaulting me outside of Planned Parenthood. I will never forgive them for leaving these nasty comments. I will never forgive them for spreading lies. I will never forgive them for being hypocrites and keeping quiet while everyday, more and more people are being hurt and dying from the laws that they support. I hope they buckle in, because abortion rights keep winning. Every state in which abortion was on the ballot has leaned in favor of prochoice. Because the country is prochoice. And it’s about time these antichoicers get over it. Abortion isn’t going anywhere.

[papirouge]

Hi it's me, the anon who sent you the Romeo and Juliet black actress ask like a month ago lol (I try to sometimes take breaks from social media when it gets too stressful as a way to "detox" myself).

Thank you once again for the thoughtful answer. I try not to care about what men think and say on social media, but sometimes it can hurt (same goes when women talk badly about black women, specially when it comes from other bw). I'm trying to always be mindful and remind myself there are a lot of weirdos and trolls online so I shouldn't take their opinions to heart. I'm also trying to resist the urge to look at the comments section of a video I know it's going to make me mad.

Anyways, you said you were blocked by a black woman tiktoker for calling out her male pandering. I can understand that lol I literally just got blocked by a black woman on insta who insisted on defending black men leaving their children by basically blaming slavery "legacy" and white men for their absence 😐 Yet somehow I'm the vilain and traitor for actually holding them accountable. And all that mammying for what? For black men to then turn around and blame fatherless homes on black women?

What I'm personally passionate about, besides bw decentering men (specially deconstructing the black male worshipping), it's bw accepting their natural beauty and features. Specially our hair! I got into the whole leveling up/luxury movement for black women, which I love but it's amazing how even these women can't let go of the weaves. So many black women will get defensive when you question their worship of straight hair (or curly hair to a lesser extent) and swear up and down it's their choice because they personally prefer it that way, or their natural hair it's too complicated to take care of, and so on. And other races are picking up on the self hatred black women harvor; I saw a few days ago a tiktok by a pale skinned man and he was making fun of kinky type 4 hair. And you would think black women would be cussing him out on the comments section right? Nope. Literally they were agreeing, calling kinky hair ugly and saying crap like "My 4c could never!" 🙄 I understand why so many bw are insecure about their features, but I wish they would keep these comments to themselves and instead encouraged positivity.

I even see aggresive comments in videos where bw try to encourage other bw to love their natural hair and not succumb to the brainwashing of perceiving our hair as ugly or unkept. I mostly feel sorry for the young black girls seeing those type of comments from insecure bw who can't accept their hair and try to paint women accepting their natural hair as the aggresive ones for questioning their conditioning. It's just sad. Beauty standards for bw are crazy nowadays, the clownish drag queen makeup on many famous bw and influencers, the surgeries and beauty procedures, the hair products it's honestly maddening. There's a mental health crisis affecting black girls and women no one seems to want to acknowledge, higher suicide rates, insecurity about our looks and overcompensating for not being perceived as "femenine", rampant sexual assault, rape and dv... Even men have their issues being named "the male loneliness epidemic" yet bw have nothing like that...

I do have hope things will get better, I try to be positive on seeing the rise of leveling up content and bw trying to better themselves, even if not always perfect.

Hi anon! It makes me so happy to see you back! I love having anonq back and see what they've been up to🧡

I think that's something I probably already told you in my earlier response but, best advice I would give to any Black women is to divest from men. I think slavery/colonialism has made us the most male oriented racial demographic and we have so much work to do. But we have to accept we cannot "save" everyone and that black men worshipper will always be the dominant masses, and that bm will always find way to shun black women down. I could enumerate countless occurence where black men find excuse for their own shortcomings (blaming white supremacists, racism, crack epidemic beinf 'shoved' onto black communities as if Black ppl didn't have the brain to just not...take drugs, 'etc) BASICALLY all issues affecting bm is the cause of a SYSTEMIC pressure....but black women? Oh no we just bear the consequences of our individual actions and daring to argue that bm have a role in the alarming rates of single motherhood rates in the black community and them championning feminicide is "hating of black men". Well I guess I'm a Black men hater then

Oh and please, be careful with all those so called black women divestor who initially may come off as making great points (compelling Black women to open their dating option) but they will dogpile on any black women they esteem don't live up their weird BWE (black women emower) kumbaya. I used to follow one on TikTok, and she one day LASHED OUT at a Black creator who was more of the sjw/libfem type. Turns out she became pregnant with a bum and made videos to cope and saying she was just in love and gave in to give a chance to their "relationship". Well, that BWE chick went OFF ar her and made plentiful of video dragging her (directly stitching the black creator) and it was highkey so weird to witness bc girl, stop patronizing the life of someone you literally don't know??. The Black creator straight up told her to leave her alone and that shit lowkey told me that BWE creator had a tip on her shoulder.... I recently got my confirmation when she made yet another video dunking on a fellow black woman just because she had to audacity she didn't date... USAmerican black men. And that BWE creator was seething abt it, saying it was xenophobia (???) hm sorry but having dating preference ain't xenophobia - otherwise all the Black women bragging about NEVER daring a white men are racist/xenophobic too? And it was so ironic to see comments agree with the bwe creator saying non ADOS Black Americans are so xenophobic etc... while themselves emphasizing how that black creator she stitched was not ADOS and therefore other'ing her by her foreign black ethnicity 💀 I eventually made a comment calling them out for their clownery & hypocrisy in bothering a Black woman harmless dating preference and that they precisely behaved like the average black male dusty mad at Black women having preferences and that Usamerican men would NEVER clown a non ADOS Black man not waiting to date Black women. This behavior was so typically female catfight STILL fighting to defend Black Americans honor/desirability when they very obviously don't deserve this caping. .....ANYWAYS : she blocked me💀 Morality: don't believe all those BWE bc most of them still have their deep seated Black men Worship in them (even if it's just ADOS)

The ONLY black 'BWE'(?) creator I would recommend you is Chrissie. She passed the vibe check so many times.. I'm not surprised she doesn't really get along with all those BWE channels bc she indeed clocked them out big time with their deep seated black men worshipping/obsession and bitterness. I'm not exaggerating when I say her channel changed my life. She set the record straight with bw hating their natural hair (I REALLY recommend this video), gives us awesome strategy to deal with colorists (which has been very useful for me when interacting with a colorist bm online) etc

What I love so much abt Chrissie is that since she's INTJ and I an INFJ, her way lf thinking are quite similar and every she says falls into place so smoothly in my head. I also like homegirl has a life outside YouTube and that she pivoted her content more about levelling up and not those gettho ass colorism/wig discourses. She basically said what she said, her old videos about lt are still here, but she clearly said she was moving upwards, and I love it for her.

I truly recommend her channel bc I feel all your questioning (beauty standards in the Black community, colorism, featurism, etc.) will be answered there (Chrissie has made A LOT of video - I recommend you the longest/live bc she browse through a lot of topics)

Oh and one last thing about self care/love as a black woman : surround yourself with people who look LIKE YOU. Eons ago, I followed here on Tumblr a girl who made a magazine, and it featured onlt White models. The girl was indian, and she suffered from some pathologic hate for her face and I couldn't help but think that the reason she might feel this way is because she surrounded with the physical archetype of what the fashion industry deemed as beautiful : skinny, white, blonde, etc. This user remained in my head as to what NOT to do to level up my sense of self worth and love for my features. I basically have a (private) board on my Pinterest dedicated to beautiful black women. Those who look like me : 4c hair, wide round nose, darkskin... I browse it whenever I try to find inspiration for my art but also find model bases for my model benchmark for my upcoming shootings.

Even on Tumblr you won't see me reblog white/non Black women like that. I want to platform Black women FIRSTHAND.

YOu saw what they did with east asian men : they were saw has major lower barrel 20 years ago. Today, thanks to kpop/Korea soft power corrective promotion marketing tactics, Koreans/east asians men are rivaling with white men in terms of attractiveness & sex appeal for younger generation. That's what I want for black women. I want to show that black can & HAVE to expand their dating option to have fulfilling dating life, and be respected by other demographic of men.. that's also why I'm working on magazine for that purpose...but huuish it's still a secret 👀

[heyharoldsboo]

I looked over the "evidence". I know there are confusions but I think I got it and I want to make sure I understand. Sorry im the anon who discovered your blog not too long ago.

So Karis, Kayla and Desiree went to school with Percy. Aries when to a different school but was friends with his supposed minor Percy hooked up with. This minor left her to OD and went to hook up with Percy. Aries also claims Percy touched her back and hips, made innuendos and asked her to chill (SA according to her) at a party she attended in his famous basement.

Karis, Kayla, Lena Desiree, Percy, Brycen were all a part of the same toxic messed up group of friends. They all protected Brycen who is an abuser. The girls were victims and are allowed to grow and become better people but Percy is not. Desiree was manipulated by Brycen into protecting him. She even got into a physical fight with one of his victims and messed up a lot of people's lives to protect him. Lena was Percy's gf for a while. Her and Karis were bffs. Karis and Percy apparently also hooked up and Percy lead her on, played with her feelings. He apologized for this later but she didnt accept. (ss shared by kayla, a convo with Karis and Percy) She says this was abuse. I dont know what happened to Lena because Percy and her seem to be on good terms and she somehow still follows Karis and vice versa.

Desiree says that in another timeline, she was raped by Ralph, a friend of Percy. She says Percy let it happen and when she asked Percy for help he said ok I need to ask around because it is a very delicate situation and i have never done this before. (ss shared by desiree of the convo of her and Percy)

So the problems:

-timeline of when these weekly parties were happening because he was in Atlanta filming the Gifted as well?

-no one directly accused him of rape, just being friends with shit people and enabling, letting them live in his house, is that it? but if this Brycen guy was such an ass, why were so many women protecting him? what was 16 year old Percy supposed to do, mind control them all into leaving this guy behind? like what?

-these girls refused to share the rest of their convos with him, just very limited screen shots. He admits to playing with Karis feelings, thats it. With Desiree, he says he has never had to deal wit rape issues before. If he was throwing wild parties every week where girls were getting assaulted, how is this the first time he was having to deal with this? Im confused

-kayla also shared an ss where she tells him "i can tell you who to call if you want this to end, if you are afraid I will out our DMs"...isnt this kind of blackmail? what did she mean by that?

-as for Aries, i dont mean to define what assault means for each person but I dont think what she described qualifies as assault. And when she described it she said she knows it is not violent and that people will say its nothing....this is where im like "she knows what shes doing"

-where were his parents during all this though? did he live alone, im confused

-who leaked his nudes, who had his nudes? how did everything get leaked so fast? was this premeditated you think? the toilet ones are not nudes you send to minor pretty please they were terrible. You send dick pics to girls, not pics after you took a shit. Those were probably for his guy friends.

-the twitter and insta likes accusations I will not even discuss cuz they're stupid and people gotta get a grip

Did I miss anything? did I understand this correctly?

sorry for having to catch up

Anon, that's a really really good recap of this shitshow, honestly!

-kayla also shared an ss where she tells him "i can tell you who to call if you want this to end, if you are afraid I will out our DMs"…isnt this kind of blackmail? what did she mean by that?

Well, I think this was blackmail and extortion. For me, they were trying to get money out of him to not let this blow in the internet.

-where were his parents during all this though? did he live alone, im confused

There are a lot of conflicting statements about how these parties whent and how frequent they were. He was not in the city for long periods of time, so I can't see him giving parties in Toronto every weekend.

-who leaked his nudes, who had his nudes? how did everything get leaked so fast? was this premeditated you think? the toilet ones are not nudes you send to minor pretty please they were terrible. You send dick pics to girls, not pics after you took a shit. Those were probably for his guy friends.

His toilet/bathtub pics were leaked in 2019 in a porn website. Others were leaked through ghost accounts during this shithow. And I agree, these aren't "sexy" nudes.

Edit on this helped by my wonderful friend @lilitblaukatz :

On the porn site in 2019-2020 (hard to tell more accurately) were posted CP pictures (about ten of them), all taken in some basement in one session. At least one new of that same series of pictures was posted on Twitter several days after the mess started on Jan 19. Bathroom/bedroom pictures without showing anything inappropriate wasn't on any website. It was leaked with the allegations and exist in a form of phones' photos, not even original photos.

I don't think you missed anything? That's mostly it.

And don't worry about catching up! We're here for you <3