When I was a kid, a friend of mine got into trouble for a story.
We’d grown up down the street from one another in a rural neighborhood and he was pretty much my best/only friend until I was 7 and his family moved away. Then, several years later, when the internet was more of a thing, we reconnected and chatted online (this was the days of AIM and hotmail).
I’d gotten into message boards, and we wound up on some of the same RP and writing forums with assorted other friends I’d made, and some of the RPs we wrote got… kinda dark. The group of us were nerdy, precocious kids whose parents didn’t keep track of what we read and so we digested some dark shit (everything from Edgar Allen Poe to Stephen King), and in our bumbling, childish way, explored and interacted with the themes we encountered through the fiction we were writing. This took place though middle school and into early high school.
One day, my friend wasn’t online. Or the next. I didn’t think about it much, as his activity was often sporadic at best, until my mom told me she’d heard from his mother and it turned out he was grounded. Apparently, his mom had gone on his computer and had found a story he’d been working on. A very dark, very grisly story, written from the point of view of a serial killer, stalking his victims.
I knew about this story. I’d read some of it. See, my friend was playing the antagonist/villain on an original fiction group RP some of us had set up, and wrote the story to explore his character’s backstory and motivations so he had a better grip on them when writing the character in our roleplay. And the kid was actually a pretty damn good writer.
His parents, however, didn’t see it that way. He got in trouble, and I got to listen to my mom go on and on about how disturbing it was, how upset his poor mother must be, how glad she was that I wasn’t like that.
And I said nothing.
I didn’t explain the context, even though it might have helped mitigate his punishment, if they realized he was just playing the villain in a group story and wasn’t some Columbine-in-the-making psychopath. I didn’t explain that I wrote characters even more depraved (though it shouldn’t have surprised anyone that I had, considering I was the kid obsessed with The Telltale Heart in the fifth goddamn grade). And I definitely didn’t explain that I absolutely was ‘like that’, in that I was fascinated by the morbid stories and dark scenarios in my literal hundreds of books.
Because I was scared shitless. Of being in trouble, sure, but also of being judged, and of being rejected and told I was sick and wrong.
I hid my writing. I locked the floppy disks with my stories and wrote my notes in code. I became an expert at hiding my internet history and concealing my work from my parents. I continued to create, but largely in secret. To this day, my mother hasn’t read a single word of my fiction. And for years, I thought there was something wrong with me. That there was something fucked up, something dark and broken, something perverse that made me like that.
Eventually, (and I mean YEARS down the turnpike here) I got past that and realized that plenty of people write dark stories and are perfectly well-adjusted, and that it’s not an indicator of being defective in some horrible way. And oddly enough, stumbling into fandom in my early 20s really helped me with that. Finding out that the kinds of stories I wrote that filled me with the most shame, the most self-loathing, were a whole goddamn genre, and that I wasn’t this strange little degenerate alone in the universe, but actually had pretty common narrative kinks? Was both a revelation, and a relief.
Which is perhaps why I find it so upsetting now when I see people in fandom passing moral judgement on people over goddamn fiction, harassing or ostracizing them based purely on the fact that the content they consume or create fails to meet some standard of purity.
I’ve been watching people catch hell for stories since junior high, and I’m getting real tired of that shit.
When I was 12, I said nothing. I was scared. Now, I know better, and I’m less scared and more salty, verging into downright irked. So I’m saying: Please, stop. Stop telling people they’re evil or warped for writing fictional stories about fictional characters just because they aren’t to your taste. Stop telling people they can’t explore darker themes or dynamics in their work, because it squicks you out. Stop being judgmental and obnoxious about something as societally inconsequential as fanwork, and stop suggesting there’s something wrong with people to make them like that.
We’re talking about stories, and stories are ideas; not actions.
Judge people by the latter.
(And no, my childhood friend did not go on to become a serial killer. Crazy method fucker turned into a huge theater nerd and was working on an MFA from an ivy league school last I checked)
apparently patrick weekes confirmed what a turian penis looks like at havencon this year.
they look like ducks down there. a duck penis is corkscrew-shaped.
well guys, it was a hard battle, but I convinced patrick weekes to reconsider
While I’m happy we aren’t worrying about corkscrew penises, I stand by what one developer said in turians have three testicles? Do you ever seen them outside of scans or autopsies? No, they’re internal, but is it funny to think about? Yes, yes it is.
First of all, thank you so much for your lovely comment and questions! I’m so happy you’re enjoying Parable.
1. In Chapter 25 of Osteogenesis, it’s mentioned that Damocles includes Xero in training. Would Damocles ever use a trained varren on missions?
Yes! He does, in fact, use Xero in certain situations. He only does it when he’s confident there won’t be any trouble of course, because Xero is a beloved pet before than attack varren, after all.
2. With how he hides his emotions, would he let loose at his parents about what he dislikes about his hybridism?
He’s gotten mad and screamed at them before about it, but it was usually when he was already angry. Deep down, he knows it wasn’t their goal to have hybrid children and his and Cassia’s birth was all accident, but it still hurts in that his parents don’t have to deal with living with it. He loves his parents, but sometimes he gets really upset about it and if he’s already furious about something and it comes up, it gains fire.
An evil haunts Omega, one from superstitious tales of old, and it’ll take three different soldiers in their own rights to save a station that doesn’t want or deserve saving. Perhaps, along the way, they can save themselves. Eventual Garrus/FemShep. Themes may be darker than my other work. (AU)
Poor Arcanus! He has no idea what all this pretend is about. Cassia obviously enjoys it and he can understand she uses it to occupy and entertain herself, but he is always one to want to actually DO something to pass the time.
I see him making actual tea to drink because why in the universe would she pretend and not just have some? They have plenty in the kitchen.
Also, he would absolutely NOT talk to her toys.
‘Ms Fluffy tail asks if you would like more sugar in your tea.’
‘I will not talk to a doll.’
[Nihlus] silences his [omni-]tool from everything but emergencies everytime he manages to steal time to himself, and the only reason for it to activate involves yet another trek out into space to clean up the mess no one else wants to touch. His companion rumbles in question, but he sighs and shakes his head, giving her a feigned smile and trill in apology. While he really was looking forward to the stress relief, he knows he doesn’t owe her any kind of explanation.
Not that he’d give her any, like he could.
Turning away from her, he starts to push his way through the faceless mass of dancers and drunken patrons grinding to the pounding beat of the club’s music. The sound and presence of so many makes his plates itch as he switches into Spectre Kryik, the alert and call to arms more important that relief. If he still sought pleasure over duty, he’d be no better than the mercs who birthed him. He has his moments of privacy, but he’d be nothing but filth if not for the struggle he endured to gain the position he’s in.
When he manages to get out of the club and into the quieter expanse of the bustling Zakera Ward, he opens his tool’s interface to check the caller before he opens an actual line of communication. Usually, he sends a message to the Council’s communication specialist to alert them of his position in a non-secure location. It gives him time to get somewhere to hear their most definitely sensitive mission parameters.
This hail, however, comes from Saren, his former mentor.
friendly reminder* to not compare your progress with someone else’s, different people progress in different ways at different paces and it’s unfair to everyone involved to try and compare individual strengths!
SquigglySquidd's Parables 