TW: SA, groping
I am a frequent lurker on this sub and posted once for advice. All my fellow sisters poured in support and advice. This is my favorite sub on the reddit and never in my life I thought I would need to vent about something like this down below on here.
One of my favorite times of the day is the 45 mins commute back from office. Generally, buses are semi crowded during that time. I plug in my earphones and listen to music -my way of cooling down. I consider myself lucky if I get a window seat. It's like a mini retreat away from the reality. I find solace in music.
Today was one such day. I managed to get a window seat. As usual, I started my post-work routine. I was minding my own business when I realized a perv had put his hands through the gap in between seats and was pressing my boob. I was startled and looked back. He pulled away and got down from the bus. I froze and couldn't utter a single word.
I wanted to scream. I should have created a ruckus. I froze. He will do this again to someone else. I fear he has taken away the joy of a window seat and earphones plugged in experience. I know I will not be able to relax during my commute anymore. I barely saw his face, just a glimpse as he was running away.

Anyone else deal with the creepy big dude wearing black during 311? Fiancée and I were up close on the right side. There was a young woman near us who he kept urging to crowd surf when she clearly had no interest, even patting and grabbing her shoulders and getting way too close. At this moment another dude and I realized what was going on and got between the two. After this he started touching me on the shoulders before telling me I should put my fiancée up to crowd surf. NO ONE WAS EVEN CROWD SURFING ON OUR SIDE! He left shortly after getting nowhere with it, presumably to go grope those crowd surfing on the other side. I know it would’ve made the altercation worse in the moment but god I wanted to punch that dude in the mouth so bad. We were so excited for 311 and still had a great time, but it would’ve been perfect if not for this scumbag. Sucks that people with no life can screw up someone else’s fun times. I hope someone breaks his nose.

The next afternoon, Kokichi and Himiko wished each other luck before Kokichi went off to his own stand. Himiko set her table up and placed her cookies down. Kokichi suggested making two batches of each comedy Snoozdoodles, just in case.

"HIMIKO!!" Himiko's head shot up to see Ibuki above her rushing out of the school, followed by Himiko's other previous customers.
"Nyeh! You guys are already here?!" Himiko gasped.

"We just plainly couldn't wait to buy more of your cookies, Himiko!" Tsumugi said.
"Yeah, I had to admit, they were pretty good," Fuyuhiko admitted. "And I had a pretty cool dream after eating mine."
"As did I," Peko said.

"Yes! They were absolutely wonderful, Himiko!" Sonia said. "I adored my dream!"
"Meeeeee, tooooooo!!" Ibuki shouted.
"I want to be the first one to buy your cookies, Himiko!" Tenko cried. Kaito shoved her out of the way.
"No way! Me, first!" he said. Miu stepped on his foot, causing Kaito to cry out in pain.

"Outta the way, rocket man!" she spat. Everyone began arguing with each other about who was going to buy the cookies first.
"H-Heeey!!" Himiko screamed. Everyone went silent and turned to her. "U-Um...it doesn't matter who goes first, cuz...you'll each be able to get a cookie, okay? Now, please form a single file line. Fuyuhiko, you can go first."
"Awww, why a degenerate male?" Tenko whined. "Why can't it be meeee?"
"Tenko!" Himiko snapped sternly. Tenko abashedly hung her head and stood in line in front of the first boy after Fuyuhiko, which was Kaito. "Hmph!" Tenko flicked her braid at him. The line grew shorter as each customer bought a cookie, until Ibuki remained.
"I'm gonna tell everyone about your cookies, Himiko!" Ibuki said. "I can't wait to try these before I go to sleep!"
"I've already told lots of people about Himiko's Snoozydoodles!" Angie chimed in.
"Yeah, me, too!" Tenko said. "I told more people than Angie did!"
"It looks like you've got a busy day ahead of you," Maki said, eyeing a bunch of students heading towards Himiko's direction. Himiko braced herself.

"Hey, Himiko, I heard your cookies were pretty good," Makoto said. "Can I buy one?"
"I suppose I shall try one, too, just to see what the big deal is," Byakuya sighed reluctantly.

"I hear these mystical cookies give you the power of...pleasant dreams, yes?" Gundham asked.
"Nyeh...that's right," Himiko replied. "But, it's very important that you eat these cookies before you go to bed."
"That s-sounds very i-interesting," Mikan admitted.
"Hell, yeah! I could use a good, fuckin' dream!" Mondo agreed. "Hadn't had one in a while!"
"Well, I think it's suspicious," Byakuya said, eyeing Himiko with suspicion. "How are you able to bake cookies that give you good dreams after eating them?" Himiko felt her heart drop. She couldn't tell everyone about her magic, of course.
"I-It's an old family secret recipe, I guess," Himiko lied, trying to remain calm. "My grammy used to bake these cookies for me whenever I had nightmares, and so I decided to use her recipe to see if it would work on you guys, too."
"Tuh...such nonsense," Byakuya scoffed. Nevertheless, he took one of her Snoozydoodles and examined it. "I don't usually believe in foolishness like that, but I must admit, I am curious."
"So, hurry up and buy one already!" Kazuichi cried. "We wanna buy one, too, y'know!"
"Lowlife scum like you have no business pushing me around," Byakuya said. He then turned to Himiko to pay for his cookie. Himiko handed him a baggie for his Snoozydoodle. Without a word, Byakuya slipped the cookie inside and walked away.
"Finally!" Kazuichi picked a cookie, then paid. Next was Celeste, then Mondo, Kyoko, Makoto, Taka, Toko, Hifumi, Sakura, Chiaki, Hajime, Mikan, Nagito, and Kiyo. It was as if Himiko had struck gold. Her heart beat with excitement as she counted her money. It was the most money she'd ever made. She felt proud of herself.
"I'm actually excited about this!" Makoto admitted.

"You guys won't regret it! It's gonna be way cool!" Ibuki said.
"But, do we seriously have to eat this before bed?" Taka asked. "I brush before bed, and I don't think I should be eating cookies before bedtime! It's just not right!"
"You have to eat it before bed," Himiko insisted.
"C'mon, bro, it's just one cookie for just one night," Mondo said. "Don't be so wound up tight about it." Taka sighed and shrugged his shoulders reluctantly.
"Well, if those are Himiko's rules, I guess I should follow them," he muttered.
***
Later that afternoon, Himiko let out a happy sigh. She had managed to sell most of her cookies, save about ten, or so, and earned a total of ¥25,000. Even the others who were selling cookies went to her to buy some for themselves.
"Monkey Buns! That's a whole lot of cash!" Kokichi exclaimed, walking down Hope's Peak's front entrance stairs. Himiko smiled big at him.
"Nyeeeh...I sold lots of cookies today!" she said as Kokichi sauntered over to her.
"Nee-heehee...I can see that!" he said, proudly eyeing Himiko's nearly empty trays. "Bravo, Himiko!" He wrapped his arm around her waist and kissed her cheek. "How does it feel?" Himiko flushed with pride.
"It feels good," she said shyly. "Thank you for not letting me give up on myself, Kokichi."

"I'm there for ya, babe," Kokichi replied with a wink.
***

Later that night, Himiko and Tenko were getting ready for bed. Tenko slipped under her pink blanket and reached for the baggie with the Snoozydoodle inside.
"I'm ready to eat your Snoozydoodle, Himiko!" she said. Himiko nodded to her. Tenko ate her cookie. "Mmph, dewicious!" she muffled. It wasn't long before she finished the cookie. Her eyelids began to droop. "That...was...so...so...del...ciou...sssss..." Tenko hit her pillow and snored deeply. She was out like a light, which reminded Himiko that she needed to turn their bedroom light off. As soon as Himiko stood up from her bed, she felt something wrap around her ankle.
"NYEEEEHHHH!!!" she screamed, jumping and flapping her hands around wildly. She looked down to see Kokichi laughing and crawling from underneath the bed, his hand still wrapped around her ankle. Himiko swatted his head.

"You idiot!! What are you doing down there?!" she hissed. "You scared the life outta me!!"

"Hahahahahaaa...I just wanted to see...a-hahahahaha...the effects of your Snoozydoodle...hahahaha...on Tenko," Kokichi said, still wheezing with laughter. He stood up and wiped a tear from his eye. "Phew! Man, that was funny!" Himiko swatted his arm.
"You're a doofus, Kokichi," she grumbled.
"Yeeaaahhh..." Kokichi said with a content sigh. "So, when should the Snoozydoodle take effect?" Before Himiko could respond, Tenko suddenly burst into laughter in her sleep. Kokichi and Himiko exchanged amused grins.
"Kirumi...smacked Kaito...with her broom...!" Tenko laughed.

"Slapstick comedy dream," Kokichi and Himiko said to each other simultaneously with sly grins. They watched for a bit longer as Tenko continued to laugh out loud while dreaming.
Part Fourteen
Himiko was just as successful Sunday afternoon with her Snoozydoodle sale. The word about her cookies had spread that nearly everyone from Hope's Peak lined up to try them, even her enemies, like Junko and Leon. The following Monday, Himiko woke up to get ready for school, when she noticed something absolutely creepy. As she turned her alarm off, she realized that everyone in Casa V3, except Kokichi, was in her room, staring at her in eerie silence.
"Nyeeeh...w-what's...going on?" Himiko murmured apprehensively.
"W-W-We...want more cookies," Tenko said in a jittery voice. "P-P-Please...Hi-Hi-Himiko?" She and the others were flinching and trembling, as if they were going through withdrawal.
"Um...no more cookies for now," Himiko said in a small voice. "It's Monday, after all."

"WHO CARES?!" Miu snapped irritably. "GO IN THAT KITCHEN AND MAKE US SOME MORE DAMN SNOOZY DOO-DOO'S, OR WHATEVER THE HELL YOU CALL 'EM, ALREADY!!" She started moaning and groping herself. "Ah-haaaah...my b-b-body...needs...m-m-more!! Hahahahaaa!" Himiko cringed.
"Um...I think you guys have had enough..." she said.
"Well, I say we haven't! So, hurry the hell up, Himiko!" Kaito demanded angrily. The others surrounded Himiko even closer.
"It's not cool to make us wait," Ryoma said, his eye twitching.
"Do you wanna die?" Maki threatened in a low voice, reaching at Himiko's throat. Himiko shook her head fearfully. "Then, make us more Snoozydoodles...now." Everyone then began chanting monotonously in an unsettling manner.
"Snoozydoodles...Snoozydoodles...Snoozydoodles...Snoozydoodles...Snoozydoodles..." they chanted as they closed in on Himiko. Himiko huddled closer to the wall, covering herself with her blanket.
"KOKICHIIIIII!!!" she screamed over the loud, repetitive chanting.
"Move it! Get out of the way!" came Kokichi's voice as he barged through the students grabbing at Himiko. Squeezing in between Kirumi and Rantaro, Kokichi held his arms out to Himiko. "Himiko! Grab on!" Himiko reached out and grabbed Kokichi's hands. He pulled her through the crowd, still grabbing at Himiko. Gonta grabbed Himiko's ankles before she and Kokichi could escape. Himiko squeaked with fear as she and Kokichi looked at him. His expression was blank, cold, and uncaring, very much unlike his usual cheerful and warm demeanor.
"Gonta no can let you leave, Himiko," he growled as he grabbed Himiko's ankles tighter. Himiko yelped in pain.
"Let her go!!" Kokichi demanded. He leaned forward and bit Gonta's hand as hard as he could. Gonta reeled back in pain, releasing Himiko from his grip. Kokichi managed to pull Himiko away from the crowd. He led her down the stairs. Himiko cried out in pain on the way down. Her ankles still hurt. Kokichi scooped her up in his arms and carried her the rest of the way down the stairs. The others were pursuing them like an angry mob. Kokichi opened the door to Casa V3 and ran outside, still carrying Himiko. He carried her all the way to Hope's Peak.
"It won't be long before they find us here," Kokichi said, gently placing Himiko down. "Can you walk?" Himiko took a few steps. Most of the pain was gone, but she felt that she was able to manage.
"Yeah...I'm good," she said with a nod.

"So, they're now addicted to your cookies, huh?" Kokichi said. Himiko sighed and plopped herself on the floor.

"Yeah..." she muttered. "I guess even mixed with other ingredients, the dream powder is too much."
"I guess it was a smart move for me not to eat those cookies," Kokichi said. Himiko nodded in agreement. She loved Kokichi sane, and wanted him to stay that way. Kokichi tapped his chin in thought. "So, how do we get out of this one, Monkey Buns?" Himiko sighed heavily.
"I don't know..." she mumbled with a despondent shrug. "It's not easy erasing the effects of the dream powder."
"Wow...so, everyone's gonna be a Snoozydoodle addict from now on," Kokichi sighed. "Geez, what a nightmare!" Himiko suddenly perked up. She looked at Kokichi.
"Nyeh...what did you say?!" she exclaimed.
"Hm? I said everyone's going to be addicted to your Snoozydoodles from now on...what a nightmare," Kokichi repeated. Himiko broke out into a huge smile.
"Th-That's it!" she cried. "I know how to-"
"Look! There she is!!" cried the voice of Kazuichi, who was pointing directly at Himiko. Kokichi and Himiko looked down the hall to see students from both 7th Island House and Hope House.
"Don't let her get away!" Hina cried.
"Time to make like Blue and Skidoo, HimiCocoa Bean!" Kokichi said, pulling Himiko up from the floor. They ran back towards the entrance of the school, but it was blocked by the students of Casa V3. Kokichi and Himiko were surrounded.
"Snoozydoodles...Snoozydoodles...Snoozydoodles..." everyone chanted as they closed in on Kokichi and Himiko. Some of them even had lines of drool spilling from their mouths. Kokichi wrapped his arms protectively around Himiko.
"Uh...Kokichi...what do we do?" Himiko asked in fear.

"Didn't you say you had a plan?" Kokichi murmured.
"I-I think I do..." Himiko said.

"Well...now would be a good time to do something," Kokichi replied, backing up against a wall.
"E-Everyone...wait!" Himiko yelled. The crowd before them stopped.
"We want Snoozydoodles, and we want them now!" Mahiru demanded impatiently. The others murmured in agreement.
"Um...I know, I know," Himiko said. "I've heard your pleas, and I promise you guys that I'll make some more Snoozydoodles today!" The crowd cheered eagerly. "All I ask is that you give me some time, and they should be ready by the time school ends." The crowd cheered even louder.

"Uhh...you sure you know what you're doing?" Kokichi whispered in Himiko's ear.
"Nyeh...I do, trust me," Himiko whispered back confidently. Kokichi held up his hands in surrender, letting Himiko do her thing.
"Now...if you'll excuse us, we have to leave now," Himiko said. The crowd parted like the Red Sea, and Kokichi and Himiko walked through the crowd confidently. As soon as they left the school, Kokichi pulled Himiko aside.
"What's the plan, Monkey Buns?" he asked. With a devious grin, Himiko leaned in to whisper in Kokichi's ear. As he listened, a devious grin of his own began to spread across his face, as well.
"Now, that's my Supreme Lady," Kokichi said proudly in response to Himiko's plan, stroking her cheek affectionately.

The crowd was on the escalator. Front of me guy and next to him a girl. A man from my side saw a small gap which that guy in front of me had left. He stood there. Very close to the girl. Could see putting his hand on the escalator’s railing just to touch her hand but didn’t. By then she moved forward and all of us. On the next escalator, I saw him standing right behind her so close. On purpose I chose to go on that particular escalator. Reached the point where he was and stood right behind her. So close I was touching him and his bag. To make him feel what he was trying to do. I guess he sensed it. Right then we are going to move forward and he just swiftly gets ahead of her while very slightly touching her ass and grinning. I felt anger at him and wanted to push him down and punch him or slap him. But I didn’t.
Reason? I felt like looking at a mirror. The guy who wants to have sex with women so he would try to seduce them by any means. This used to happen 6 years back when I was full of pornography materials in my head with videos of groping where Japanese women are submitting to men who want to have sex with them. Even though not touching anyone, I was ogling and checking out women in metro with lustful eyes till a few days back. Only shifting my gaze if she is clearly not giving into checking me out in return or show me any sign that she’s uncomfortable. I couldn’t do anything to the guy because I was guilty and I was feeling like a hypocrite to punish someone for something I have been doing on a borderline. It was as if I could see how I am going to turn out probably if not take a hold of myself. Just imagining that what if my sister or my dear friends or my future wife is facing such thing.

Bit of a longer post, sorry bout that, but I felt it was time, perhaps once again, to point out the flaws and limitations in the CDC’s stats on sexual violence, specifically as they relate to the National Intimate Partner Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS), which is the source of all the fun stats on sexual violence that get thrown around by the 451 percenters. Who are the 451 percenters? Those the folks who believe and spread the lies bout sexual violence being endemic to society. Everyone’s a sexual predator! All 451 percent of women are violated, and all 451 percent of men are violators.
TL;DR: An analysis and rebuttal to the CDC and NISVS’s statistics on sexual violence. The CDC uses NISVS to generate the stats on punny sexual violence that make wild claims, like one third of all women, etc… the 451 percenters’ claims bout punny sexual violence. They use a ‘yes means yes’ method of determining what counts as punny sexual violence, which is aesthetics based. Elevating aesthetical concerns to ethically obligatory concerns is fascistic, and a grave moral fallacy. ‘Yes means yes’ is also puritanical, meaning it overly moralizes sexuality. Putting puritanical fascists in charge of determining how many punny sexual offenses are happening is like putting the KKK in charge of determining how many jews are sexual predators. “All 451 percent of them, obviously!”
Body Of The Post
‘Yes means yes’ is an aesthetical ethical concern, ‘Do I want it or not’. This is what the National Intimate Partner Violence Survey (NISVS) and the CDC use and reflect in their stats on sexual violence. Vibes. They are the ‘emmitt till got what he deserved’ crowd. Whistling at a lady is a criminalizable offense to these folks, a ‘punny sexual violence’.
‘No means no’ is an ethically obligatory concern, ‘Did I refuse it or not’. This is what the criminal stats on sexual violence use and reflect in their stats on sexual violence. Hard data. They are the ‘emmit till did nothing wrong’ crowd. Whistling at a lady is at most tasteless, emmitt till could do far better.
‘Wanting’ or ‘Not Wanting’ something does not consent make. I can want to fuck someone, but not consent to do so. I could not want to fuck someone, but nonetheless consent to do so. The former perhaps because I think it is a bad idea to fuck ‘em even tho I want to. The latter, perhaps because I think it is a good idea to fuck ‘em even tho I don’t want to.
The ‘yes means yes’ folks, the CDC & NISVS stats on sexual violence all mistake ‘wanting’ and ‘not wanting’ for ‘consenting’ and ‘not consenting’; these are not the same things. This is deliberate on their part too. They believe that ‘yes means yes’ is what ought to constitute a determination of sexual violence. Regardless of how y’all view that, it is a deeply controversial notion, and not necessarily reflective of what most people think of when they think of sexual violence.
‘Unwanted’ essentially means ‘I don’t like it’. It is a complaint bout the aesthetical qualities of the sexual encounter, not its consensualism. If this is at all unclear, the simplest method to understand why this is so is to note two unrelated aspects.
One is racism. People regularly ‘feel fearful’ of men for no reason at all, but they also feel fearful of men because of racism all the time. That fear factor ™ is what makes the encounter ‘coercion’ or ‘unwanted’. The person literally does nothing wrong, *just exists* and the other person freaks out.
Note in the quoted sections at the end of this post how much of the stats rely on fear and feelings to generate their numbers.
Two is the person came on too strong or in an undesirable way. The person flirts in a normal and perfectly fine way, but the other person freaks out. Think bout it people, for the love of god think bout it. ‘Coming on too strong’ and ‘an undesirable flirtation’ are being counted as ‘punny sexual violence’ in these stats.
It’s entirely puritanical, and entirely a concern bout aesthetics.
There are other sorts of coercive methods, but the point here is that the terms ‘unwanted’ and ‘coercion’ only really cash out as ‘I don’t like it for some reason or another’ in the CDC’s and NISVS’s stats.
When you see that lady spouting off bout her fears of mexican rapists, she’s reflected in these stats folks. They’re just surveys. People who lock their car doors in ‘bad neighborhoods’ are reflected in those stats.
These all translate to ‘I felt threatened’ (big black boy vibes) or ‘felt pressured’ (scary white guy vibes), or ‘felt in danger’ (native american coming to get you vibes), or ‘felt uncertain if you wanted it’ (arab terrorist vibes) or 'felt like I was being manipulated' (angry asian martial artists vibes) . Doesn’t have to be racism at play here either, women can be irrationally fearful of any man. Vibes.
The actions themselves are not criminalizable.
Non p-hacked stats try to avoid these kinds of obvious ambiguities in the language used to generate the 451 percenters’ stats. These folks however lean into the lies and deceptions, and deliberately use language designed to deceive people reading the stats into thinking that people have been harmed. They take language that means literally ‘I like or don’t like it’ and translate that to mean ‘I was sexually harassed, sexually assaulted, or even raped’.
This is how they inflate the numbers, so we get to the 451 percenters’ wacky ass beliefs; ‘451 percent of women will suffer egregious sexual violence to them at least fifty times in their lives’. All this means is vibes. 451 percent of women get some bad vibes bout some dudes.
You can hear it echoed in the bear or man discourse. Why do women choose the bear? Vibes and irrational fears. ‘We choose the bear because we don’t feel safe!’ translates directly to ‘Emmitt till whistled at me, and he’s a big black boy, that’s scary’ and ‘the mexican rapists are swarming over the border to get me’.
These are the stats that people point to when they try to justify their misandristic hot ass takes. They are self-referential to that same fear based aesthetic the stats are. The stats are reflective of peoples’ irrational fears, and people use those stats to justify their irrational fears, and people spread those fear based stats thereby spreading their unjustified fears. It’s a circle rub.
To criminalize these kinds of things is to be fascistic (treating aesthetics as if they were of obligatory concern), to believe that they are morally reprehensible is to be a puritan (overly moralizing sexuality).
The folks deriving these stats translate ‘unwanted’ (aesthetical ethics) to ‘sexual assault’, ‘sexual harassment’, or ‘rape’ (obligatory ethics), then lump everything together as ‘punny sexual violence’ to get the big numbers used to scare people and terrorize men. That’s called fascism.
“[T]here remains a likelihood of underreporting due to the sensitive nature of SV”.
This justification means that they do not trust people to report SV, ‘don’t believe women when they say they haven’t suffered any SV, manipulate the questions so they say yes to something they don’t think is SV, or which simply isn’t SV, and we’ll just call it SV of this or that sort. Later we’ll propagandize people so they too come to believe our puritanical misandristic hot ass takes.’
There is no lie nor hyperbole in what I am saying here. That is the rationale and the method. If you bone up on your academic lit in the topic, this is, well not verbatim what they say, I am lambasting them here, but this is the crux of what their argument and justifications are, and they explicitly hold that they ought be propagandizing people to their puritanical beliefs.
They push the fascistic (aesthetical ethical) and puritanical (overly moralized sexual ethics) discourse into the public by presenting stats that merely reflect fears and pretend that they are reflective of sexual violence. People then come to believe that those kinds of fear based concerns are actually sexual violence. An ‘unwanted flirtation’ becomes in their minds and only in their minds a sexual violence.
Emmitt till got lynched for whistling at a lady. They only disagree bout the racism, but he definitely deserved to be punished in some way like all men do for whistling at someone they think is hot af. Puritanism.
All just vibes, all but aesthetics, and all fascistically raised to a level of ethically obligatory concern.
“Just as SV is not limited to physically forced penetration, its perpetrators are not limited to strangers. Indeed, perpetrators of SV are more likely to be someone known to the victim. Sexual violence is a problem embedded in our society and includes unwanted acts perpetrated by persons very well known (e.g., family members, intimate partners, and friends), generally known (e.g., acquaintances), not known well or just known by sight (e.g., someone in your neighborhood, person just met) and unknown to the victim (e.g., strangers). “
Be afraid of everyone, any man out there could be your next rapist! That’s right ladies and gents, you’ve been raped several times already, you just didn’t know it. But don’t worry, the statisticians know better. They asked you an unrelated question you said yes to since you were too dumb to know that you were raped, and counted it as rape. Then they informed you that you ought be afraid of everyone in your community, lest they also rape you, unbeknownst to you of course. But again, don’t worry, the statistician will count those too.
As a measure of fear the 451 percenters capture, well or worse who knows, all the racism, sexism, bigotry, and various phobias in the society, and how those fears are transferred onto masculine bodies as imaginary perpetrators of punny sexual offenses. None of it is real, there are not 451 percent of sexual violences happening, 451 percent of men are not sexual predators, and 451 percent of women are not victims of sexual violence.
‘Safety culture’ mostly reflects irrational fears.
Ask the kkk how many black people are rapists, you’re gonna get a high number. Ask puritans how many people are punny sexual offenders, you’re going to get a very high number. Such is the most tame interpretation of what is going on. The 451 percenters are puritans, they’ve overly moralized sexuality, counting offenses to their sensibility rather than criminal actions.
Puritans informing you how ‘vile and wicked’ your sexual ways are; advocating to make their puritanical beliefs bout punny sexual offenses into legally enforceable laws. These are the same kinds of concerns bout a someone dressing too provocatively, such is a ‘punny sexual violation’ to the sensibilities of others.
The less tame version of this is that it is exactly what fascists do. Lie to people especially bout punny sexual offenses in order to ratchet up the fear levels in the population, so they run to them to solve the ‘problem’.
Could be both tho.
Either way, their misandry murders little boys. They celebrate terrorizing men, and rejoice in lynching folks. They’re despicable people.
Solutions?
Ruthlessly love them. Write them love poems, show them kindness and generosity of spirit, but give them not a dime in money, nor ever relent to their irrational fears. Extol their beauty and virtues, make love with them, utterly ruthlessly. Be overtly sexual bout it, in this give them no quarter, bring to an end their puritanism by giving them no plausible cause to be thus. No one under the duress of loves’ enticements and sexual pleasures be puritans. Be relentless, show them masculine sexuality; give them nothing to complain bout, but give them masculine sexuality. Don’t fall for their puritanism, be the boys of summer.
Respect a ‘no means no’ ethic as a code of obligatory actions. Use aesthetical ethics towards good sex with mutual respect given; don’t ever take that as a one way thing. Do not conflate the aesthetics of good sex, 'enthusiastic yeses’ with those of the ethics of obligation ‘no means no’. Don’t be puritans, don’t be fascists, be sex positivists.
Call out the stats when folks bring them up, refer people to these points, feel free to refer people to this post and/or the attached video. ‘But the CDC said’ is not a valid argument; they have put puritans in charge of determining punny sexual offenses. They find punny sexual offenses everywhere they look.
If you’re super coolio, start advocating against the CDC’s use of NISVS to determine what constitutes sexual violence. It doesn’t match with criminal data’s methods, it doesn’t utilize the metrics of ‘no means no’ which are the proper metrics to use, instead it utilizes what amounts to peculiar beliefs bout the aesthetics of sex as a means of measure for punny sexual offenses.
They are spreading a puritanical belief system bout punny sexual offenses, nothing more, and they are causing public health problems by spreading their lies. They are not counting sexual offenses, they are not a criminal justice system, they aren’t technically even in the business of understanding sexual violence. They are the Center For Disease Control, not the ‘center for social engineering sexual practices control’.
Original video on the topic, with some additional resources for understanding these issues in the description.
The Rest Of This Post Is References To The CDC, NISVS, And Crime Data Reports, Along With Some Quotes Thereof With Short Specific Retorts Highlighting The Relevant Info In The Quotes As It Pertains To The Post. This Is But A Small Sample Of How They Use Language Of Aesthetics To Make Their Ethical Claims, And How Their Language Is Misandristic.
sv_surveillance_definitionsl-2009-a.pdf (cdc.gov)
Fast Facts: Preventing Sexual Violence Violence Prevention Injury Center CDC
Key Terms & FAQs National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey (NISVS)Funded
Programs Violence Prevention Injury Center CDC
Some key quotes from this, Bolded text hereafter are coded for ‘yes means yes’ methods of understanding sexual violence, and sometimes misandristic language. Italicized text are quotes from the sources:
“Rape is defined as any completed or attempted unwanted [unwanted is an aesthetic criteria, not a consent criteria which is ‘a no was stated’ attempted while a real thing allows for further insertion of scary vibes to pad the stats, e.g. the blackness of the lover] ...includes times when the victim was drunk, high*, drugged, or passed out and unable to consent.* [puritanical belief bout drinking and drugs, e.g. one cannot consent if drunk or high. Note that it is separate from being drugged or passed out and unable to consent, and that criminally speaking being drunk or high is not indicative of a lack of capacity to consent, also note this is de facto applied to women only].
“Sexual coercion is defined as unwanted sexual penetration that occurs after a person is pressured in a nonphysical way. In NISVS, sexual coercion refers to unwanted vaginal, oral, or anal sex after being pressured in ways that include being worn down by someone who repeatedly asked for sex or showed they were unhappy; feeling pressured by being lied to, being told promises that were untrue, having someone threaten to end a relationship or spread rumors; and sexual pressure due to someone using their influence or authority.”
Unwanted is an aesthetic category, not a consent category. ‘Sexual coercion’ is not a criminal offense either. It is a puritanical belief bout sexuality that is based on a sex negative view, e.g. that sex is a bad unless and until magical words are said to make it into a good. Calling it ‘sexual violence’ is just lying. Coercion is defined misandristically to only be bout penetration, which precludes all the ways that women use sex and sexuality to manipulate, use, abuse, and harm people; note that there are essentially zero surveys done that include some ‘feminine coded coercive behavior’ into these stats. That is by design. Including not incidentally the way that women have historically and currently used irrational fears over their sexuality to terrorize men and get people murdered.
“Unwanted sexual contact is defined as unwanted sexual experiences involving touch but not sexual penetration, such as being kissed in a sexual way, or having sexual body parts fondled, groped, or grabbed.”
Unwanted is aesthetics, not consent. Also this literally describes flirting. I know they want to try and capture some other sort of notion, grossy mcgrosser pinning someone down and groping them, but all this describes here, and all the stats can possibly reflect, is flirting.
“Non-contact unwanted sexual experiences is defined as those unwanted experiences that do not involve any touching or penetration, including someone exposing their sexual body parts, flashing, or masturbating in front of the victim, someone making a victim show his or her body parts, someone making a victim look at or participate in sexual photos or movies*, or* someone harassing the victim in a public place in a way that made the victim feel unsafe.”
This category is quite broad and puritanical in its disposition, as it assumes there is something wrong with seeing naked images unless and until expressed verbal consent is given, and undoubtedly ignores the en masse flood of naked images of women online to which basically every guy is exposed to. Compare again to people who claim that women ought not be allowed to show their ankles as it causes a ‘harm’ to those who are ‘forced’ to see it. Exact same shite. Aesthetical concerns of wanted or unwantedness, and also notice the expressly stated vibes check ‘victim feel unsafe’. Look out for the black boys, they make them feel unsafe!
Crime/Law Enforcement Stats (UCR Program) — FBI
Quick Facts on Sexual Abuse Offenses (ussc.gov)
It’s worth mentioning that statistically speaking, if one uses the stats derived from crime data as opposed to statisticians making numbers up, the percentages of men who do sexual violence, depending a bit on how you count it, are: 0.0516% or .478% or .0957%. Although the video goes over this all in pretty good depth, just do a little sniff test here; are .478% of the male population sexually violating a third of all women, 55.5 million women?

I tried to post this in japan but automod took it down and the mods haven’t gotten back to me yet. So, this is probably the more appropriate subreddit. For clarification, this happened yesterday night.
I (26F) am traveling with my family in Japan. We were on a very crowded subway train cart on the 丸ノ内線 (Marunouchi Line) in Tokyo around 21:30. This is my third time in Japan and l've taken the subway and public transport many times, but this was a first.
I'm still sort of processing it, but I didn't quite realize what happened until I got off the subway cart. I just don't know if this is common, and l've never been groped before so l didn't realize what was happening until my brain was like wait, that was someone's hand/fingers groping the back of my thigh/butt on the subway car....
Just, uh, yeahh. Maybe it's just Tokyo? It's my first time in this city and I have always been in the Kansai region during my previous visits. Never ever have I had issues there.
I still feel it (and a little disgusted/shocked) and I want to know if anyone else has experienced something like this as some form of "I'm not crazy to have experienced this in 2024."
EDIT: Of course being 外人 doesn’t make any difference, I just didn’t know what to do once I fully processed what had happened.
EDIT 2:
Thank you all for your validating responses and those of you who also shared your experiences. I wanted to add a little more information for those who may want to use this post for reference.
First, yes, I know there are women-only cars, and I have used them in the past. They are great and I recommend them for gals to use if they would like a safe space. However, their times can be limited (for instance on the particular line I took, it said designated train cars were women-only before 9:30 during rush hour, and didn’t see any indication it was women-only in the late evening). Furthermore, I’m also traveling with my dad and brother. I’d prefer to stick with them so we don’t get separated, especially during more busy times since men aren’t allowed in the cars during women-only times. (Though young children, 12 and under are acceptable in women-only cars.)
Second, I truly appreciate those who gave advice. From what I gathered, yelling:
“chikan” 痴漢 (groper) “hentai” 変態 (pervert) or “yamero” やめる (stop)
while also clearly indicating who it is (if possible), maybe grabbing their hand and raising it, and making a fuss can get the behavior to stop immediately and provide intervention. Although, it can be hard to identity someone in a packed car (for instance I was groped from behind and I was carrying my backpack in front of me because of the limited space on the train) so I probably should have grabbed their hand first to help identify who it was and then yelled and make a loud fuss. Further, grabbing the culprit/assaulter and taking them to the police at the next stop will ensure they get in trouble for their behavior. They may go willingly after you’ve publicly shamed them and made a fuss. However, try to not physically assault or instigate a physical fight with the assaulter as it could result you landing in jail. I could argue depending on the circumstance they may “deserve it,” but it is probably best to not escalate the situation in a harmful way.

PART 3 – THE CONFERENCE
As soon as we checked in the hotel, it was a lavish 5 star property and sir booked a city view room. which excited me more as in our last trip to chandigarh, sir literally fucked me on the window for 2 hours at night keeping me exposed to the city. i immediatly got goosebumps thinking about the incidence and could foresee what would happen in evening. i kneeled down as we entered the room, i thought this would definately keep him happy. As i kneel he grabbed me from behind and pulled me toward the toilet pushing my head into the pot seat. He shouted "haramzadi chinaal teri jagah yaha hai aur tera kaam ise saaf rakhna hai mere istamaal karne ke bad". He told me stay still and i was wondering what he was going to do next. soon after i felt his pee on my face, opening my mouth i started sucking and licking his pee as he continued doing it. kissing my shoulders, he lifted my ass up sliding his hand on the ass slit. pulling down my pants, exposed my ass and spanked my ass for 10 times. i could feel my ass being red and hot with the spanks.keeping me still there, he went away to get the condom. ordered me to don the condom on his dick , while doing that i could feel his hard dick in my hands. it instantly made me drool all i wanted was his majestic dick in my hole. he dragged me to bed and held my legs, shoved his amazing dick into my cunt fucking me brutally. all i could do was moan and feel his dick in my cunt.
After using my cunt and he came inside my cunt, after which he always keep his used condom on my face to suck his cum out. HE took a quick shower and left me in the room like a used and thrown slut and went to his conference.
I was waiting for him naked on the bed. From the conference, sir messaged me to get cleaned up and dressed and wait for his orders. After i got dressed for him, i waited until his next order. I was thinking of all the ways in which i could please master when he gets back. Apart from being his slut, he pampars me like his princess as well. he already ordered some food and there was a hot bath with some amazing aroma oil to rejuvenate myself. i was checking my phone every 10 min so that i dont miss his msg.
Master pinged that he wants me to come out to meet his friends. My heart was pounding thinking about our fantasies of sharing me with master's friends. We have been swinging mostly with stranger couples but swinging outside delhi with his friends definitely makes my heart skip a beat. I took a good relaxing shower and pampered my self with some sleep and good Spa. I got dressed up which was a single piece and I was instructed not to wear panties on this trip. He sent me the location where I had to reach.
I went out and found them (a couple – AMAN / KIM ) having drinks. I greeted them like master's good girl and we all had drinks together along with some nice conversation which were getting kinky as the glasses were being refilled.
Before giving them a final heads up he asked me in non verbal manner to go ahead (he has given me a right to be comfortable and deny if I am not comfortable, and I said yes) Master told me that we would be going to their room, I nodded my head on master's order to follow them to their room. On our way to the room, we picked up some food and drinks to continue the after party as it was already midnight. The place was their Flat in a society which was not very crowded and we had to climb 6 floors up.
After we got in the room, we started talking again. A few minutes later, master held me and started making out with me. Suddenly I felt aman,s hands on boobs, he groped my boobs and started pinching them which made me moan as I was kissing sir. Upon seeing his friend aman enjoying playing with me, master stepped back to enjoy the view of his slut getting used. As a good girl, I let aman play with my boobs and pussy. As I took my gaze back to sir, he was making out with kim, instantly I was wet feeling amans finger in my cunt while i kept looking at sir making out with another girl. Seeing him with someone else makes me more horny and craving for him always. I was a wet dripping slut at that point.
While he was playing with kim, he cant take his eyes off me. He was kissing kim and playing with her boobs the way he likes it. He loves to inflict a little pain, make her wince and eat her out. I just love the way he uses a women body taking control, using the pain and pleasure at the same time. I have witnessed this so many times the way he dominates and make a women drip is amazing. Seeing him with kim and his eyes on me, FUCK I edged instantly. We realised soon that AMAN and KIM are not our types and we need to wrap soon. So sir made KIM orgasm soon with his brilliant tongue technique and me made aman finish his load on my boobs. But we were still craving for each other. We wrapped up soon and went back to our hotel.

I have just DMed my best game, and I feel that I will never be able to surpass it. Moreover, I have a strange feeling that I don’t even want to surpass it.
The following is a long post, mostly going into details of the plot and the flow of the game.
It was a Pathfinder 2e game set in Taldor, in a small provincial city at the edge of Verduran Forest (newly imagined for this story). It was late winter, with the group arriving to the city only to find themselves locked within its borders due to a heavy snowfall, threatening to grow into a snowstorm any moment. The scope of the story was a hidden struggle among the nobles in the city, between the supporters of the new Grand Princess and the secretly conservative aristocrats who’d rather see her dethroned (or dead). The players were on the Grand Princess’ side, while the local marquess was a barely concealed conservatist, preparing to cause a conflict with the Verdudran druids in order to undermine the new monarch’s authority.
But it was not all just intrigue. This was a game where I have finally dared to navigate the topic of romance – and in a romantic triangle, no less. Out of my four players, two were competing over the heart of a cute baroness, who also turned out to be the best NPC character I’ve ever showcased in any of my games. It wouldn’t be an understatement to say she was the main selling point of the story.
One of the competitors was her childhood friend, a neighboring aristocrat with whom she used to cause mischief together when they were kids. They’ve last met when he was 15 and she was 14, since he had to go Oppara, the empire’s capital, to study in an academy. When he returned 4 years later, his original goal was to find the truth about what happened to his family, which had been suddenly stripped of aristocratic status and put to a dungeon by the marquess. But it soon became clear that the reunion with his childhood best friend has made him feel something new towards her – and that she felt the same.
The other competitor was a charismatic young elf musician, with whom the baroness met several months beforehand in Yanmass, the closest large city. He was playing music for nobility, trying to get some new ties and contacts. Unlike all other aristocrats, who had a lot of interest in the elf at first but gradually lost it with time, the baroness started with very little interest towards him, which steadily grew as she got to know him better. Eventually, they found themselves in a rather deep mutual crush. She had to return back to her home city, and told him that if he decided to visit – she would introduce him to the local nobles. In reality, that was an apparent hint that she wanted to see him again, upon which he acted.
In part, this new relationship was because she hasn’t seen her old friend for 4 years, and was almost sure he would stay in the capital (being not the oldest son, he wasn’t going to inherit the family manor, and had not much reason to stay stuck in his small home city). The baroness wasn’t aware he was actually planning to return home after his education was over.
The baroness herself was a lively, charismatic girl, a tomboy at heart, against what one might expect of an aristocrat. Having grown up, she now had to act more like a proper lady. But of course, in presence of her old friend she could just be herself, relaxed, without unnecessary decorum, remembering sweet old days and the mischievous adventures they used to be involved in. She was capable of magic, and was a wizard of same level as the players – basically, a DMPC, and a rather proactive one, taking spotlight at times, requiring help at others. Being smart and confident in one situation, then showing some carefree, playful or even outright funny side in a different one, then shy and vulnerable in yet another situation. She wasn’t powerful, neither was she fearless (the only one to have lost consciousness during the group’s encounter with a terrible ghost, though she only fainted right after everything was over) – but she was ready to stand her ground for the sake of her friends and for what she felt was the right thing. My players, and their characters, all basically fell in love with her, and so did I.
She was really confused in the situation, especially when in her introduction scene she met both of these men, whom she hadn’t seen for a while, in front of her at the same time, something she certainly didn’t expect. She had feelings for both of them, and while she was pursuing the romance with the elf more openly, within her heart she couldn’t deny the growing passion towards her old friend too. And she cared deeply for what they felt too.
One more player was a young lumberjack-turned-fighter, working as a bodyguard escorting an old cleric of Abadar to the same city, who promised him to help with a cursed wound that player had.
And the fourth player was a former cultist of Norgorber, who has been killed for accidently learning too much for her own good, and has been reincarnated as a cat (the player wanted to play a cat, we just used catfolk statistics but said she was an actual cat, and as she was a caster so it didn’t make much difference).
These two players also had their own content, their personal storylines, and their own interactions with the baroness (both ended up close friends with her), but for the sake of not dragging this post out too much I’ll focus on the love triangle part.
The players picked the story up whole-heartedly, and apparently became very invested into it. The elf was flirting with the baroness, honestly courting her like a proper young lady she was meant to be. At the same time, her childhood friend ended up in many situations with her which had reminded both of them of all the good pranks they used to pull together, like sneaking into a ghost house (she teased him that from her memory, in the past he was the first one to run, to which he responded that he remembered it slightly differently), or backtracking over the footprints in the snow to trick the people who were chasing them.
It all felt like a light novel in a romantic comedy genre, peppered with some intrigue and action scenes.
That was, because the players were unaware the girl was destined to die. I’ve been setting up things from the beginning which would lead to her inevitable death, and eventual return as a ghost. She was very fragile herself (albeit quick and rather dexterous), and due to her personality, she tended to stick her nose into bad people’s business. She managed to get on the death list of simultaneously both villains that were present in the game – one of which was hidden, under the guise of that kindly old cleric to whom the group completely trusted, and another was the aforementioned marquess. The whole part of story where the group had to sneak into the ghost house was a foreshadowing for her own future fate as a ghost. And with that, the love triangle was going to end in the most tragic way possible.
The events of the game resulted in an assassin being sent to the girl’s bedroom, and she has miraculously survived (barely, despite her Con 8 and lower than average AC) long enough for the group to interfere and slay the assassin before he could finish her off. Right after they have dealt with the assassin, an armed group of men, sent by the marquess, stormed into the mansion, forcing the group to retreat.
At this point, they had to decide where to hide her. I knew that if they brought her to their “good friend” cleric, it would be a death sentence for the baroness – and they brought her right to him, sealing her fate.
The old man was actually a cleric of Norgorber posing as a cleric of Abadar and pretended to be the group’s ally, helping them against the marquess. His real goal was to, by any means, remove as many nobles as possible, loyalists and conservatists alike, to later fill the power vacuum with the members of his cult. He figured out that his assassin had failed, but also that the marquess (whom he needed to eventually remove as well) had independently decided to get rid of the girl too. All he had to do now was to anonymously inform the marquess of where she was hidden, and he did just that. It didn’t take long before the armed squad, too numerous to be defeated in combat, has arrived and started breaking into the group’s hiding place, the small temple of Abadar, aiming to kill the baroness.
The further plot after her death would require the party to meet her again as a ghost, bring both villains to justice, and help her find final rest. Otherwise, she was doomed to end up as the first ghost of her family’s new mansion (her parents have built a new mansion to move away from the old one, which was haunted by too many ghosts).
But, as many of you fellow DMs know, not everything goes according to our plan in a game. Far from it.
The players have combined some really good decisions with a couple of really lucky rolls, and avoided getting her killed long enough to barricade themselves securely within the temple, and begin ringing the temple bell to call for help.
Only at that point they made a single mistake: they forgot about the huge rose window, which I have mentioned before multiple times. A stone came through, breaking the window and revealing the crossbowmen standing on the roof of a nearby building and aiming at the baroness, who was at that moment preoccupied by telekinetically throwing objects into the bell to ring it (and actually, practically having fun with it, almost forgetting there was a crowd of people there to kill her), and the elf was doing the same, standing right nearby.
As the crossbowmen were about to shoot, the elf player said he was going to cover the girl and take the volley instead of her. I had him roll reflexes, and he rolled very high. Then I openly asked him if he was ready to die in her place, and he, after a very short consideration, said “yes”.
That was it, really. At this point, I gave up on my original plan, despite having done everything possible to make the “fate” claim the baroness. I gave up, and let it flow.
Instead of witnessing his love’s tragic death, the elf himself died in her hands, the last thing he saw being her eyes, full of tears and shock. He didn’t hear her terrified scream; his mind had already faded into nothingness by then.
To add even more tragedy, his competitor, the girl’s childhood friend, by that time was already thinking to step away, in order not to complicate things. It was his plan to ring the bell, and he intended to do it personally, going up the stairs to the bell and expecting to get shot through the windows in the process, but the baroness didn’t let him, having come up with the idea of using telekinetic projectile to ring it, acting almost as if it was just another innocent prank they were pulling together.
The armed men had to fallback, since a crowd of people was already gathering up around the temple. Instead of the dead baroness, we had a dead player character.
Well, then… What should I have done with the remaining plot? Naturally, I let the elf player become the ghost.
So, he swapped places with his loved one in that role, too. When he came back, he even played a few pranks and jokes on his friends – just like she would have done. He was bound to the girl rather than to a place (which made her cry even harder when she realized it), and utilizing his ability to pass through walls (I am running undead players with full undead rules), the group was able to acquire the evidence against the marquess, and bring him to justice. Desperate, the marquess challenged the aristocrat player to a duel, and the aristocrat killed him, rolling two crits in process.
The ghostly elf has expected to be released when it happened, but he wasn’t. That was enough to make the group suspect there was more to this story than they’ve originally thought, and after they investigated the marquess’ castle, they found the anonymous letter that had revealed their location to the marquess – and they recognized the paper they saw in the cleric’s place earlier. The old man himself has also arrived there, intending to clean up the evidence, but realizing he was too late, he gave them a battle and was slain in a fittingly spectacular way (Phantom Pain from the ghostly elf, sharing the exact feeling of being pierced through by a volley of bolts, to which the cleric rolled natural 1 on his save; followed up with a finishing blow of the aristocrat’s rapier, lodging right at the spot where the villain felt the phantom pain from the most fatal bolt). At that moment, the ghost has been freed – the last thing he saw, once again, were the baroness’ eyes, full of tears, but this time those tears had some happiness to them too.
The baroness and the aristocrat have buried their dead comrade under the tree where they used to play when they were kids.
Eventually, the two have married – the baroness, truly, loved both her old friend and the elf, and neither of the three wanted to hurt the others. Indeed, death was the only way out of this love triangle. The elf has sacrificed himself, buying his loved one – and also his competitofriend – a chance for happy life. They used this chance to the fullest.
And sometime later, the husband saw a nightmare. He saw that night at the temple again, but this time the crossbowmen hit the baroness. He saw her lifeless body in a puddle of blood. He saw her ghostly visage. And he woke up, with cold sweat, groping for the closest thing nearby…
Which was, of course, his wife the baroness herself, sleeping nearby in bed, alive, warm and well.
“Cut it out with your jokes, it’s three after midnight,” she told him.
And this was the end of our game.
I don’t expect this to be the best story in the world, but damn if it wasn’t a good one. The fact that it came out from a roleplaying game, the fact it was so much full of sentiment, romance and some pure, childish naivety, and that it involved the players literally fighting against inevitable fate – and winning – is what makes me think I won’t be lucky enough to see something like that again. I wished the girl to survive just as much as my players did, but I was pressing towards her demise with all honesty. And they, like… Really, genuinely saved her against all odds, and payed dearly for her survival.
I’ve had the base of this plot in my mind for a really long while – a cute aristocratic girl getting caught in web of merciless intrigue, paying with her life and becoming a ghost. I’ve been building this game around it. The fact that my players managed to subvert it, is a true highlight in the entirety of my DMing experience.
And of course, I feel like I’ve tricked my own self too, with the group getting a bittersweet happy ending where I was building the plot with expectations of only tragedy. In fact, I even had a bit of a depression before the game, seeing what a sad story I have prepared, and what a lovely character I have set up for inevitable death. Have never been happier to have my plans broken... Perhaps, I emotionally invested into this more than I’ve intended, hehe.
I was rather lenient with rules, as you may have noticed, and the game was first and foremost story-driven. Usually I am more strict about the rules, but this time it somehow was more focused on plot, roleplay and feelings. But the combat situations were resolved fairly. The baroness had 23 health at level 3, and survived 4d6+10 damage from the assassin in the first round, after which the group was able to not let him reach her anymore. She had just 5 health remaining. The aristocrat killed the marquess in a duel despite the marquess actually being a level higher – the player’s critical rolls made it a reality. And when the cleric critically failed his strongest save, will, against the spell that literally brought karma onto him – I was at the loss of words, and even more so when it was followed up with the finishing blow from the aristocrat, allowing the two competitors to unite their efforts one final time against the one who sought the death of the girl they both loved.
All participants, me included, couldn’t sleep properly for a few days, seeing chaotic dreams of storming into marquess’ castle, etc. I myself have awoken in the middle of one night, panicking about how was the group going to save the baroness from some extra deadly danger – only to remember that they have already saved her, and the game was already over.
I don’t think I’ve ever felt so much emotion in a tabletop RPG. Even though I tend to aim for sentimental and emotional things, this was something of a different level. This post doesn’t expect any comments, it is akin to a rant, but for positive emotions – I simply needed to vent them out. It's an anti-rant.
But I’d be happy, of course, if I was able to share part of those positive emotions with whoever spent their time to read this post to the end.
Thank you for attention, and may all of your games be exciting and memorable.

I (44 M) have always been a weak and timid person. I was palpably small in size, quite thin and delicately-built, hence I always got bullied and harrassed by all my peers, especially in college, most men were bigger and stronger than me. Growing up with abuse, I grew to fear all men (especially the ones who were well-built, they came across as very intimidating to me) and avoided them as much as possible. I was very uncomfortable in an all-male setting and always looked for women to be in the mix. I have gone through life with a rather constant feeling of dread and fear. I walked down the streets differently than my peers. I would park my car near lights, avoid poorly-lit basement parkings, I would watch other people when I was walking, avoid desolate streets and I was always aware of potential threats. At times, I found myself wishing I had a strong masculine figure, such as a brother, to be there with me who could protect me and take me under his wings
When my son grew up to become quite big in size and strength, I somehow started viewing him as that figure who could protect me. Despite being a teenager, still in his adolescence (19 M), he was visibly strong, muscularly-built. He was nothing like me, contrasted me completely. While I have always been treated unfairly (even abused) and people walked all over me and I tolerated all of it because I was too scared to confront men or stand up for myself, he's someone who will never tolerate even the slightest of injustice and is always the one to take charge of the situation. I sensed his competence to rise to an occasion. He was also very caring and sensitive, was very mature for his age and exuded robust capability to protect and provide. He started being protective towards me and my wife (his mother).
For a long time, I have faced groping and inappropriate touching by male passengers in public transport - the city trains. It happened many times and every time I was left frightened. But I had no choice but to commute again because my work demanded me to. I suffered silently because I was ashamed to disclose it to anyone. My daily commute to work was nothing less than a nightmare. I was trampled, mauled and constantly pushed around. Tired of daily nightmarish experiences, I floated this thought that my son and I could commute together since we travelled at almost the same time and same route because his college was a stone's throw distance from my workplace. That's where it all started and I ended up requesting him nearly every day. Initially it was just the drop off in the mornings, but eventually I even started requesting him to come and pick me up in the evenings adjusting his schedule. He started sensing my fear towards males and also saw me getting trampled and struggling to navigate through the crowded trains on my own. He started helping me and we ended up having a tacit understanding that he has to provide me a drop-off and pick up every day and hand-hold me through the crowds shielding me from prowlers. Over a period of time, his body language became quite evident that he viewed me as weak and fragile and had placed me under his protection, not just for my workplace commute but for every aspect of life. This arrangement and understanding is a secret from everyone, especially my wife.
There are times when I feel alarmed at the rate at which I am getting dependent on him for my most basic needs. I fear that I will end up overburdening him at this young age. A role-reversal has already happened unfortunately and I am looking up to him more and more as a nurturing and protective figure while in reality I should be the nurturing figure to him. The fact that I am living a sheltered life in the safety of a teenaged boy makes me feel emasculated. Further, I am very worried that I am parentifying him and possibly ruining his youth. Due to my incompetencies, he has to invest a lot of time shouldering my responsibility, a time which he would have otherwise invested in social and academic pursuits. He never complains, acts like a responsible adult. He invests a lot of time in ferrying me everyday and manages all this along with his studies. Whenever I broach this subject, he says that he will always find time for me because safety comes first, rest everything next. Sometimes, I do worry about exposing him to a possible threatening situation but at the same time, I am also convinced about his physical formidability, because despite being adolescent, he's heavily-built, enough to intimidate even a fully-grown adult. In fact our physical contrast has been attracting ill-humored comments from our relatives and friends.
I have tried a lot to become independent, but I am finding it impossible. Every time I go out there on the menacing streets, I get so frightened that I end up running back to the safety of my son's refuge. While I am placed in the safety of my son, the same menacing streets and crowded public transport appear different, it appears safe and I feel confident to walk the same space as my peers. When he's around, it feels like the load is off me and I am not required to worry about anything or what to do next. In his hands, my life has literally completely transformed. Maybe it's just my perception, but I have actually noticed a difference in other people's attitude towards me. People don't infantilize me or don't treat me unfairly when they see me with a big strong male. When he's around, all my worries disappear. His sheer familiarity makes me calm, it is a very soothing and relieving feeling, it is like coming home. Also the fact that I am getting protection from a close kin ensures that my vulnerability is not known to any outsider. For a very long time, I have lived my life with a constant dread and in abject fear – fear of being vulnerable to all men, fear of being picked off a desolate street and raped, fear of being bullied, fear of being treated unfairly, fear of unwanted fondling in public transport. Honestly I don’t want it anymore in my life. It's just that I have suffered for so long, that now I am desperate to seek a sheltered life even if that means going through the humiliation of role-reversal with my son
I am worried
Please advise

This happened yesterday evening with me!
I recently started working from office like 1-2 days a week, other days being WFH.
I did not want to drive during key traffic hours and hence I decided to take metro. Soon after the metro went underground from Saket station, the coach started getting crowded like it is the last train on earth.
I committed a couple of mistakes- took general coach at 5.30 in the evening and took my position near to the coach dividers!
I was surrounded by men of all ages, gawking and oggling at me, literally molesting me with their eyes before starting with bad touches.
I fkin got groped like I was some squishy soft toy! Writing this triggers me like anything. Man every part of my body got touched and felt! I shouted at a man too. If you were around the 4-5th coach in a metro at AIMS stations around 6PM you would have heard a woman shout her lungs out!!
While walking past me, every guy tried to touch me in anyway possible. I literally had my purse clutched to my chest, standing in a little corner (when I got the place to stand there). I felt like crying and screaming like never before. No guy who saw it bothered to act or at least offer me a seat or some place to stand near the seats where at least I can save myself.
I got off at INA and took a cab back home. Took me 2 hours and now am not using the Delhi metro again. I am done with it!

The world is such an unsafe place for women and when women do have the courage to speak up, they are shut down and their feelings and experiences are invalidated.
I recently posted about being assaulted in Naples and was attacked by multiple men (and women) saying how I misinterpreted the situation or how it must have been my fault. I have been personally messaged by guys telling me I'm playing the sad victim looking to just get attention and have ppl feel sad for me when I literally just posted to let people know abt something that happened to me despite taking all precautions and in broad daylight. I have been messaged by men saying what happened is a result of my actions because I chose to travel alone, stay in hostels, that I must have no father figure (???) based on how I am acting, that it was okay for the stranger to kiss me and at least he didn't rape me, or that I should have just "kissed him back" to give him what he wants to leave me alone.
People, WHY are we victim blaming here? People say they're not victim blaming but then go ahead and do. I've had women even tell me that it must be my fault that it's happened so many times and that "they didn't experience even though they went to X, Y, and Z. But there are SO many different variables here with each women. Some men only target women that are young, those that are alone, those that are showing skin which they can't resist, or it's simply just a woman they wanna fuck. Why are women bringing down women and failing to realize that all this shit happens to women even though it may not have happened to you? I have had so many women message and tell me that they saw a sudden shift in this when they got to their 30s. I myself have noticed that I am only harassed when I am alone. The days that I travel with a girl I met at my hostel - those days are totally fine. Not even a catcall. But on other days - in the same cities, same clothes, same everything, I have been harassed like catcalled, groped, held inappropriately, or assaulted. The only variable between all the times I was harassed and not harassed was whether I was alone or not.
Also, saying "it's part of the culture" is just insane to say because I've also had both men and women question whether it was assault or not. But I'd like to point out - sure you may hug and greet friends and family or people you have been talking to, but you don't just go up to a stranger and hug and kiss them. And before anyone goes telling me this is just italian culture, please know that I've met multiple italian men along my trip whom I've still met with and they have also agreed this is not normal. A no means no. You don't force yourself onto or hold a women close to you against her will when she is literally telling you to stop.
On top of all this, it feels as though the a lot of the world and our entire legal system is just against women. There is the whole 10 second grope law. Pepper spray is bannned in so many countries, making it harder for women to fight off men because let's be honest, women are physically weaker than men and just telling them (as I have been told multiple times) to learn self defense isn't the solution. I would feel so much safer being able to walk around with pepper spray. Yet I know that if I use it in my country as self defense I could be jailed. Men also just fail to fucking realize that women don't have it the same when it comes to traveling and just existing in this world. I've had conversations with multiple men who tried to persuade me that I'm gonna have the same experiences as them and be safe doing things they did because it was okay for them. Why can't men realize we face a different reality?? We don't have the privilege of being able to walk alone at night, travel alone, dress how we want without feeling violated or attacked for when we are violated saying it was our fault. We can't just go trekking or biking along countryside and do all these trips we want to because we have created a world which is unsafe for women. It is to the point where a woman even telling her personal experiences is rebutaled with "you did something wrong" or "oh this country is safer for women than xyz". I've had women come at me with stats saying how the country I got assaulted in has low crimes but what they don't see is the number of incidents that go unreported.
I am sick and tired of all this and I just wish there was something we could all do to make this world a better place for women. To make it so that the law and the system is on our side. To make it so that women aren't afraid to speak up due to the backlash they may receive. To make it so that we can walk somewhere or go somewhere without being in imminent fear that something bad is going to happen to us.
TLDR: Sharing my assault experiences while traveling alone. I faced victim-blaming and invalidation from both men and women. Despite taking precautions, I was told it was my fault for traveling alone and being harassed. Victim-blaming culture is rampant, fueled by misconceptions and excuses like "it's part of the culture." The legal system often fails women, with laws like the 10-second grope rule and bans on pepper spray. Men need to acknowledge the unique dangers women face and not go against and actually take the time to understand us when we so speak out rather than saying "it's more unsafe for men".
EDIT: The issue is not that culture. I am okay with that greeting. I have done that with men before in that culture. The issue is me telling the man to get off me and physically removing myself from the situation yet he still wouldn't let go of me and instead held me tighter when I tried to leave. I am also not saying we have progressed so all those men telling me about the time when it was worse for women or places that are still bad, are completely missing the point. Just because it got better doesn't mean it is good. It is still not acceptable.
ALSO: Not that it should matter but it was not a lonely ass empty street. It was 4 pm. I was literally 5 seconds away from crowds. You could literally see the crowds. I'm not dumb enough to go walking on a lonely ass empty side street if it looks and feels unsafe. I have had far too many bad experiences with men to do that. Men that continue to argue with women and try and tell them that their experiences are exaggerated or that "men have it just as bad" are just shallow minded and never gonna fucking try to even understand how we live in this world.

Hi everyone My name is shirali 48 married. Son 22 daughter 21.
I was born to a Coorgi mother and a Tamil father. So my features were mixed with glass skin cat eyes and smooth body 38 30 36 D cup bra and L panty. Take the Omphie bust.
I was used by some relatives and neighbors both boys and girls during school time.
Even now my urges increase and I indulge in deliberately seducing others and I am happy when people look at me.
Mostly I wear casual clothes to work. I work in advertising marketing and my job involves many meetings with clients and office or client parties.
My husband owns a luxury car dealership abroad, he rarely visits or calls us. So I don't have to worry about the future.
Childhood
I was 5.4 feet tall in the school and had an athletic body and played many sports including cricket and tennis.
It got me involved with the boys at school and local sports clubs. The boy drooled as my breasts bounced as I ran. They grabbed me by my nipple pokies on my sports shirt sticking out. I used to wear sleeveless tops that showed off my cleavage and areolas while playing tennis.
Every week I clean my son's room Although he occasionally cleans my son's room, the maids do the other rooms. I realized he was staring at my hanging breasts without a bra
The next week I caught him downloading porn and he subscribed to live porn sites. I was surprised to find that he also subscribed to incest porn sites, although a common trait for boys. And a lot of money was transferred from his bank to many women of my age I wondered why he dated older women more than younger ones. I was praying that he should not have sex with them. Fortunately, I was relieved to know the reason later.
A vdo made me freeze in which a mom and son incest. Though I thought it is doable for the moment I thought it's not normal and unrealistic.
That made me think about behavior of young boys towards aunties like me. I started noticing my son's friends behavior with me. So far I never felt bad when they shook hands or embrace speck a kiss during celebrations like birthdays etc.
One day I overheard a conversation of boys boasting about their misdemeanors in public busses and trains with women. How they grope rub flash in public. It induced me to take a bus or train ride to see what really happens. So one day I took a train ride in general compartment. I found majority were men and very few ladies.
I was eager to see any male making advances to some female. After 30mins of travel everything was normal and nothing happened. I got bored and decided to get down at next stop.
As I was about to exit the compartment a middle aged female who was wearing sleazy dress gaudy makeup strong perfume entered the compartment and immediately most men were goring her with their eyes. So I stayed back to watch what happens.
A 50 something man got up from his seat and it to her and other men were ogling at her. He asked her which station does she want to get down and the lady answered with a slur some station. He said that he is also alighting at same which seemed far off. She replied in local accent without diction, telling him share the seat. The man glowed and addressed her as Madam n thanked her n sat along with her. As I wanted to see what happens, I got up my seat went to a girl who was seated opposite the lady n man told the girl to take my seat and offer me her seat she obliged.
Sitting in front of them I observed both of them very keenly. The told her something which was not audible and immediately the female laughed loud and told him to give 3000 rupees in an incoherent speech which made me think she is drunk. The agreed by nodding and she immediately started squeezing his crotch in public to which the man never objected. By the time some the train stopped they both got off the train holding each other's waists.
I got aroused seeing this and took a bus ride the same evening in a transparent lowest waist saree low cut sleeveless blouse in full makeup. The bus conductor asked me for ticket I told him that I get down at last stop. While he gave the ticked he held my hand and scratched his nail on my palm. I kept aloof as he is on duty but he kept on walking past me and brushing his body against mine whenever possible until the bus got crowded. I stood holding a a railing atop one by my right side. This made every male in the bus who got down had to ask me for passage. Heat n humidity made my bra n erect pokies visible. After a while I felt someone almost on me in the crowd brushing their body on mine. I got wet in between my thighs to know that 3 men, one ahead one by side one more on my back were rubbing on me. By the time I could move the man facing me groped my breasts and started to squeeze it. My erect nipples pained by it but he continued to my pleasure. I felt erect cock rubbing my ass from behind and another hand kneading my butts. I felt drugged bliss by three on me at once closed my eyes and relishing the moment.
The man in front took my hand to his dick area. I was shocked when I touched his dick going naked for me in a bus throbbing in my palm. I cud feel his sweaty cock and a mild odor emanating which made me pump him vigorously till he leaked in my palm. Without shame it took it to my nose smelt and licked it too.
I took regular bus rides during peak hours in the crowd.
Contd

I invite all experienced festival goers to post their tips here as well. newbies feel free to ask questions.
1: FUCKING HYDRATE!!! this cannot be stressed enough, especially if you plan on getting drunk, just a couple weeks ago i saw a guy pass out in a 2 band show in a slightly warm building because he was drunk, dehydrated and overheating. Drinking water does not start the day before, it starts the week before, you should be drinking at least a half gallon of water every single day the week leading up, more if you are drinking caffeine. being well hydrated will prevent a solid 80%+ of issues with your body on long, hot strenuous days. if i find out one of the members of this community falls out due to being dehydrated i will find someone named kristoff to go shit on your lawn.
2: Do not be afraid of the crowd. i see so many people worried about getting to a stage early enough to get close for a certain band. if you wanna get close the magic words are "heading to the pit", once you get to the pit just go around it and bam you are 20 feet from the rail, you wanna get closer just kinda go. ive never had an issue getting within 10 feet of the rail at any band i wanted.
3: The rail is OVERRATED. if you are one of the rail campers, i am not sorry. every time ive been close to the rail ive had some pissed off asshole take a swing at me, ive seen men in their 40s take a swing at a 12 yr old girl, only assholes hang out on the rail. fuck em, the real party is in the pit.
4: if you see people ahead of you pointing up in your direction it means a surfer is coming up behind you, keep your head on a swivel
5: if you see crossed forearms in the air heading your way it means someone is injured and being carried out so make a hole to let them through
6: did i mention to fucking hydrate? cause you better fucking hydrate, kristoff will find you if you dont
7: if youre in a group take a moment to find a meeting point and make a plan on when you will all come back to that point, between sets, after a certain set etc. i havent been to ST since 2019, but was at LTL last year and they def improved the cell service since pre pandemic and i had good signal all weekend, but hope for the best, plan for the worst, make plans assuming that you wont have cell service
FOR THE CROWD SURFERS
a: be realistic about your height:weight ratio, if youre over 200 lbs dont fucking do it, this weight limit goes down the shorter you are. a person that is 5'4" and 180 lbs is just has hard to move as a 6' 220lb bastard.
b: DONT GO LIMP!!. when you go limp all your weight magically moves to your ass, so if someone tries to help by holding up your leg it wont matter cause all that weight gets transferred to your ass, keep your ankles crossed, stay stiff and push your pelvis forward like you are floating on your back in a pool, arms can either be crossed or t pose, just keep them as stiff as you can. if you stay stiff like this you have a better chance of staying facing the sky (which helps women with reducing the accidental/sometimes intentional groping)
c: yes women, if you surf be prepared to get hands all up in your buisness, mostly its unintentional especially if you get flipped over face down, but there will probably be some intentional ones too, unfortunately its just the price you pay for the experience. it would be nice if it didnt happen but shitheads dont care about societal rules, so expect shtiheads. that said if someone gropes you while you arent surfing SAY SOMETHING, happened to my niece on the edge of the pit in 2019, she screamed and pointed him out and he....got dealt with
d: dont surf with anything you arent willing to never see again, this means phones, wallets, bandannas, easy to slip off shoes etc. leave that shit with a friend before you go up
THE PIT:
the pit is not a violent and angry place. are you gonna get bruised up in the pit? absolutely. are you gonna maybe see some blood in the pit? also absolutely. but this pit is NOT the place for fighting. if you are one of those pricks who wants to try and start a fight you WILL get more than you bargained for. the pit is a happy place. come there be happy and embrace the family of moshers and the moshers will embrace back.
girls you are invited to the pit, but be resonable, yes we will ease up some and not intentionally single you out for big hits, but there are times when the pit just goes hard and you will get swept up in it.
EDIT: if youre a new mosher or even experienced, dont be afraid to wear a mouthgurad, plenty of us pit junkies wear them
RULES FOR THE PIT:
a: If they fall GET THEM UP. is you hear people screaming "UP" it means someone fell and stop moshing, people will also signal by putting up a flat "stop" hand to try and stop the flow, rememeber to keep an eye out for it
b: forearms crossed above someones head means someone got hurt, stop moshing put up the cross to alert more people. if you are in the crowd and see crossed arms coming towards you make a hole, it means someone is being carried out.
c: if its your first time on the wall (willing or not) do not leave your back to the pit and do NOT push moshers with the palm of your hand, keep your fingers closed and try to push with the back of your forearms. i have personally seen someone snap a finger because they pushed with an open palm and their pinky got caught. dude could point around corners.
d: NO FUCKING FIGHTING. thats not what we are here for, if you wanna try and start fights you will be limping the rest of the week.
e: for the love of fuck if you are near the pit and you arent a mosher, when the pit slows down and/or stops that is NOT a damn invitation to go stand in the open spaces, the pit WILL start again with or without you in it. and congrats, you are now a mosher, wether you wanted to be or not
f: if a surfer comes to the edge of the pit help carry them across or around. this isnt usually a problem with the columbus group, down in louisville the crowd just fucking tosses people into the pit, saw a girl break her wrist in 2019
g: IF THEY FALL GET THEM UP
And finally: EAT THE FUCKING NOODLES
seriously Island Noodles do be fucking tasty and good amount for your dollar (i also suggest Mac Attack, they gave portions so big at LTL last year i couldnt eat it all)
and FINALLY finally
FUCKING HYDRATE unless you are a stand way in the back and dont move much kinda person you should be drinking water all day, if you spend time deep in the crowd/moshing i wanna see you chugging at least 20 oz every other set. preferably more. kristoff is watching

Obviously arguing logic has limited effects when trying to advocate for Men's Rights. The opposition is too locked in their message and that does not allow much self reflection to consider our arguments.
But a new tactic of flipping a mirror to the more outrageous expectations on modern men has seemed to make an actual dent. At least the opposing view is paying a LOT of attention to the messaging.
I speak of course of the Drizzle Drizzle response to the Sprinkle Sprinkle trend.
I think we could apply this to the Male Gaze trope. Give a me shot here.
Its time to start complaining about culture appealing to the female gaze. It is time for less attractive men and more clothes on them in our media.
Why would I point to this? I think if you aren't familiar with the recent controversies for the video games Steller Blade and Star Wars Outlaws, ten minutes on YouTube will explain it better than this post. The main thrust of my argument is that the Male Gaze is again in people's targets and industries are shifting based on this bias.
Time to flip the mirror. It's time to make the Male Gaze as ironic and hypocritical as possible. A little over the top. Match the energy of the people screaming about the Male Gaze.
Examples:

Thor, Love and Thunder

In the scene with the confrontation with Zeus, they chain the very attractive man (unrealistic body expectations) against his will (enslavement) in public (humiliation) and strip him naked in front of the crowd (SA and dehumanizing). Chris Hemsworth is very attractive and hardly an example of a 'real' man. This is obviously a blatant appeal to the Female Gaze at the expense of dehumanizing men in the eyes of female oppressors and normalizing the ideas of enslaving and SAing men.
This encourages women to believe they are entitled to seeing men held against their will and on display for women to leer at with their perverse Female Gaze.

Magic Mike

A group of unrealistic outstanding physical specimens forced to prostitute themselves to the Female Gaze to make ends meet. These caricatures of real men that exist only because they use steroids and workout 4 to 6 hours a day.
No real man has the time (4 to 6 hours daily) or the resources (steroids, doctors, trainers) to meet this impossible standard that is portrayed as realistic to satisfy dangerously perverse women who get off on focusing their Female Gaze on men pushed into prostitution (human trafficking).
Then these men must dance and perform humiliating acts for their oppressors. These men are forced to slowly reveal their bodies in public for no other reason than to satisfy the lustful Female Gaze. These are sexually groped and are sexually victimized by female patrons into prostitution afterward by women who 'want what they paid for'!
Exploitation. Unrealistic standards. SA. Etc.
Men will die because of this movie.
Think it might work? I am going to have fun trying it.

I want to start off this post by saying NO hate to the bands at all. I LOVED the music and I had good moments being at the festival but this post is just a vent for the awful shit I had experienced being at SNW.
To start, it was irritating enough having to pick and choose between which bands to see since they were overlapping which to that I say, the festival should have been a 2 day event or something to make it a LOT easier to see most bands but I think that is a pretty common opinion everyone seems to have about it haha.
Now onto the actual awful shit that had happened while I was there. One major issue I had was the Diablo stage. I loved the bands performing and most were ones I really was looking forward to seeing. Come time, I secured a spot near the front of the stage, expecting it to be rough yes, this is not my first show and so I fully knew what I got myself into but the crowd for the Diablo stage was completely unsufferable. It was as if they had absolutely no concert etiquette or respect whatsoever. I knew going into it that people were going to try to make their way to the front of the stage, it happens at any show but this one was 10x worse. I had random people kicking my ankles in and punching and kicking my ribs to get me to fall over so they could take the front. I saw a couple people fall to the ground and no one seemed to help them up, they managed to get back up on their own but to the cost of people trampling over them. I had random people punching my head ON PURPOSE as well and I had a bad concussion by the end of it. I had a specific experience with a person who had tried to push my boyfriend down so he could get in his place and when he was unsuccessful, he went on the other side of me and started hitting me with both his spiked bracelets and rings, again, ON PURPOSE, and was calling me a bitch the entire time. There was nothing I could physically do to stop it as I am a 5'4 woman who was completely sandwiched in between two 6'+ dudes with my boyfriend on the other side in the exact same situation. On top of that, there were people in the crowd who were obviously under the influence of some substances as they were completely nodding off, like I mean they were basically falling asleep and falling onto random people. One woman in particular started to touch up on my boyfriend and when I stopped it instantly and told her something, she proceeded to do the same to another random guy in the crowd and proceeds to start touching herself while she touches this guy who was VERY uncomfortable and when we told security, they did nothing about it. She was sniffing the guy, rubbing his back and sides, and started licking both herself and tried to the same to him but I pushed her off of the random guy and told her friend to fucking watch her. She ends up starting to take clothes off of herself while continuing to do what she was doing and basically blacks out in the middle of the Fleshwater show. While all of this was also happening, while I was pinned in between random people since people were trying to get to the front, I was also sexually assaulted multiple times. I had people purposefully grope me multiple times and continued to do so throughout my entirety at the Diablo stage. All of which I could do nothing about since I could not move from where I was at and I tried multiple times to leave the stage but since it was so compacted, I was stuck in practically the same spot for a while. I could not even enjoy the music and it felt more like I had to survive, made sure I could breathe and did not go under.
Next instance was for during the Knocked Loose show. This crowd was 10x better and it felt so much safer while also being hardcore as a metal crowd should have been. The instance comes when my boyfriend and I are listening to them perform and doing the occasional pit or two. At one point I am standing off to the side of a pit and watching the show when someone starts squeezing my ass multiple times and tried to make their way underneath my shorts to feel. At first I thought it was my boyfriend since he was next to me and we were both a bit drunk but my boyfriend was recording the show with one hand and the other was wrapped around my shoulders. This one felt a lot more violating since this random person tried to make their way into my shorts and it was from there that I instantly left the crowd since I could not tell who did it to me and I felt just completely off after that. I thankfully had my boyfriend there the entire time and he helped me through it and he felt awful for it happening and he being right next to me and not seeing it but there is no blame at all to him since we were both enjoying the show and focused on the music and getting ready to potentially do another pit before that happened.
Lastly was the fucking pick pocketers. I am from Colorado and so this was my first time out of state to see this festival and of course, I had both my cell phone and my ID stolen. Thankfully my wallet was safe but I was left with no way to contact my family and with no ID at all. My phone had a lot of irreplaceable memories and photos that I cannot get anywhere else and I only hope that I am able to recover that with my new phone or else that is going to be so much more devastating. I am so grateful that TSA let me through to my flight anyways with no ID but it was a hassle so to the pick pocketers at SNW, sincerely go fuck yourself.
Overall, I still loved the shows and the music was so on par and wish I was able to see more bands rather than picking and choosing but by the end of the day, my boyfriend and I had a lot of fun together and I was so happy SNW was selling the Deftones Phantom Bride IPA, I love that one so much and I was happy to get one while I was there.

The four of us arrive at the fairgrounds via portal-a-potty from the Veil. The carnival is dark and quiet. All the string lights are off and the toy-filled game booths locked shut. The sky is clouded over, hiding the stars. To the East, it’s turning from black to deep blue and purple, the sun is probably moments away from peeking over the horizon.
Dumah holds the latrine door for me, my dirt-based magic copy, and Meredith in Mr. Gin’s body. He doesn’t say a word, and even though he has no face --just a slightly yellowing skull-- he gives off this heavy sadness that I can’t quite put into words. Meredith places a hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t acknowledge it.
We walk in silence through the carnival. Occasionally I spot movement out of the corner of my eye. It’s other people. They pass us without noticing. A heavy-set man in suspenders and big, rubber boots, his arms gripping an awkward-looking box with labels I can’t read. With him are a thin man with a funny, little hat that doesn’t sit right on his head and two ladies in sequined leotards, each holding a cup of steaming liquid I assume is coffee. Adults love their coffee.
Eventually, we reach Madame Gwendolyn’s trailer. There’s a light on inside and the door is shut against the chilly night air. The poster of Felix and Joey has been torn off but the tape remains, each still dutifully holding one of the four corner pieces.
Dumah brushes past us, moving to the front, then turns to look down at me with his empty sockets.
“You can speak.”
I feel the weight lift from inside my throat. Other Lily gives a clearing cough. Meredith practices like she forgot how talking works, making little “me me me me” sounds. She nods Mr. Gin’s head in acknowledgment that her voice is back. This causes it to fall off his neck with a gross, peeling sound and land in the grass with a thump.
“Oh!” she says with a hint of embarrassment. She pivots Mr. Gin’s headless body toward the ground and starts feeling around in the grass while whatever section of her is still inside his head maneuvers his eyes in their sockets to watch. I try to imagine what it must be like to try to control your hands to find your own head when you’re watching from an entirely different angle.
Dumah also watches Meredith blindly groping the ground. “I need to stitch the head back on that body.”
“Yes, please!” says Meredith as Mr. Gin’s hands finally find his face. Watching her ghost move Mr. Gin’s mouth and make it talk gets me thinking... how is she doing that? There’s things called vocal cords that are in a person’s neck that need to be connected in order to make mouth sounds, and I’m pretty sure Mr. Gin’s vocal cords got shredded like parmesan cheese on a delicious pile of spaghetti.
Damn, I’m hungry.
Meredith stands up and holds still while Dumah does his hand magic and welds the head back onto the unappetizing, bloody stump at the top of the neck. When he’s done, you can see that the flesh didn’t go back together quite right, not after two times getting ripped apart, and there’s a funny ring of jagged lumps right above Mr. Gin’s collar bone.
“Did it hurt?” I ask Meredith as she feels the results with his fingers.
“I can’t feel anything.”
“You’re lucky,” I tell her. I remember how badly it hurt when Samael had that thing mend my tummy stab wound. “I got patched up by a lady in black called a flesh-stitcher. It felt like I was burning alive.”
“The Draugr,” Dumah says sadly, “I taught them everything they know. They were meant to be caregivers, but Samael--” his voice cracks at his brother’s name, “--he took them and tossed them in the Pit. Twisted them to cooperate with those ghastly demons, sewing souls into bags of their own flesh and such. I... I never understood the rationale behind it.”
Meredith swallows loudly. “Yeah, that doesn’t sound like fun.”
Dumah seems oblivious to Meredith’s discomfort. He stares into the distance as the first glimmer of sunlight breaches the horizon. His voice becomes a whisper. “It’s not the worst treatment. There’s a certain chamber in one of the lower levels of the Pit that Belphegor has dedicated to boiling feces.” He snaps out of his trance and puts a bony hand on dirt Lily’s head. She looks at me in annoyed confusion. I shrug at her.
“We should get going,” I remind him, mainly trying to save us from any more grisly descriptions of how the Pit works.
Dumah opens the trailer door without knocking and ushers us into the main cabin.
Inside we find Madame Wendy and Mr. Dutch. Madame Wendy sits in a rocking chair, wrapped from head to toe in a big, checkered blanket. She looks like she’s aged another twenty years. Her eyes are closed and she’s snoring, with a bit of drool running down her chin. Mr. Dutch is pacing back and forth in a long coat like cowboys wear in cowboy movies. He’s fidgeting with something underneath it, and when he turns at our arrival, I see it’s one of those shoulder-strapped gun holsters.
“Holy shit!” Mr. Dutch says in a loud, whispered voice, “It’s you! You’re back! In the--” His voice goes up an octave as he looks at Dumah’s bony, Skeletor face. “--flesh. You came back.” He sees me and dirt Lily and his hands start to tremble, reflexively reaching for the gun tucked in his armpit. “You caught him? Samuel?”
“Samael is dead,” says Dumah. There’s grief in his voice that I’ve never heard before, not even moments ago when he was talking about his flesh-stitchers getting used for bad stuff.
Mr. Dutch’s big, hairy brow furrows as he looks at me and my dirt golem. “But there’s two of her again.”
“Yes, that’s part of why we’re here,” Dumah tells him. He turns to acknowledge the two of us standing beside him. “We’re going to get rid of one of them.”
Madame Wendy gives a loud snort that startles all of us except Dumah, but then she mumbles something groggily and continues snoring.
Mr. Dutch pets her head gently. “I gave her a sedative.”
“If you please,” Dumah says, extending his hand out to the man, “relinquish your firearm to our friend here.” He gestures to Meredith and lets his words sink in for a moment. “Before we arrived, we contacted a law enforcement associate of Miss Madwhip who is right now on his way.” His empty sockets burn in dirt Lily’s direction. “We need to give him a show, to tie up all the loose ends.”
Mr. Dutch pulls the gun out of its holster. His hand trembles as he turns it over to Meredith, who plucks it from him and holds it like it’s going to bite her.
“Now, Francis Rutherford Dutch,” Dumah looms over the man in an unthreatening way, “you once offered us your help. To what ends are you willing to go?”
“Any,” the grown man responds, cringing away from Dumah’s towering form. “Whatever you need from me. I will serve you.”
“Even if it means setting aside all earthly possessions and committing yourself, body and soul, to protecting this child?” He waves a hand at me and smacks me in the face by accident since I’m right there and this trailer is cramped with six of us in it.
Mr. Dutch hesitates. I don’t think he was prepared for the question. “What do you mean?”
“We failed, Mr. Dutch,” the angel of death says grimly, “Samael is gone but his machinations have grown fruit. Even as we stand here, unspeakable horrors that haven’t seen the light of day in millennia are loose upon this world. Every nightmare ever imagined. The universe as you knew it is gone.”
“W-w-what?” Mr. Dutch clutches his chest, digging his fingers into the fabric of his shirt. The poor man is either having a heart attack or an alien is about to burst out of his chest. Of course, the way things are now, both seem completely possible. I don’t say this though because he seems to be steadying himself with his other hand and maybe it’s not a heart attack after all, in which case I don’t want to give him one by suggesting that an alien could pop out of him for realsies.
Dumah swats me accidentally with his hand again, right across my eyes.
“Shit!” I hiss.
“Lillian must be protected. From all harm. She is needed in order to send the dream fey back. Without her, well--” he places his phalanges on my noggin like he did to my dirt golem earlier. I feel him tussling my hair. It doesn’t change the soreness in my face from being slapped twice. “--it will be a lot more difficult.”
I can see the gears turning in Mr. Dutch’s meatball. After a minute of awkward silence, he slowly kneels down in front of Dumah, bowing his head. “I-- yes, I accept this responsibility.”
Dawn’s first rays come through the curtains like a spotlight in the middle of a three-ring circus. Particles of dust dance like fairy lights around Mr. Dutch. Only Madame Wendy’s phlegm-caked snoring breaks the mood.
“Then rise, Sir Francis,” Dumah tells the kneeling man, “and prepare yourself for the journey ahead. Pack light.”
“Think Highway to Heaven,” I add, rubbing my nose, “or The Incredible Hulk.”
Mr. Dutch gives me a puzzled look as he stands back up. I don’t think he watches a lot of TV. He leans down and presses his lips gently on Madame Wendy’s sleeping forehead, then without another word, brushes past us toward the door and outside.
After he’s gone, Dumah takes the rocking chair with the sleeping fortune-teller curled up in it and scoots it around so she’s facing the wall. I don’t know what Mr. Dutch gave her but it’s certainly doing its job. The angel of death and silence turns to me and my dirt counterpart.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asks both of me.
I clench my jaw “I don’t wanna go back to the foster center.” I look at dirt Lily. She seems distant, not really there. I can’t blame her. Maybe her whole life is flashing before her eyes. My eyes. Could she live a good life if we let her? “Do you?”
She finally feels my stare and glances at me. There’s something glistening in the corner of her eye, but she says nothing, just nods. Then she realizes what she just did and quickly stutters, “I mean no. I don’t either.”
“So be it.” Dumah turns his attention to Meredith who has gone from pinching the gun by its handle between thumb and forefinger to turning it over and over in his hand like some sort of puzzle box. “Meredith, once this is done, I will take you home.”
“Home?” she scrunches up Gin’s forehead. “I’m not staying with Lily and Mr. Dutch?” the realization of what this means suddenly dawns on her and panic fills the eyes her ghost is hiding behind. “No! I don’t want to go! I don’t want to be dead!”
“You’re already dead, child. I’m sorry. Remember that your family is waiting to be with you again, on the fields of light.”
Meredith drops the gun to the floor. “But this is my family!” She tramps Gin’s body over and wraps his arms around me tightly. I can feel him shaking. “I want to be here! I want to be here with you!”
I squeeze Meredith, trying to ignore the fact that I’m actually hugging Mr. Gin who earlier tried to murder me and in fact stabbed what he thought was me with a knife and made that version of me bleed out. No, this isn't him. This is Meredith. This is her in my arms. These are her arms around me. This is her body, wracked with sobs, hugging me close.
“You are with me,” I tell her. “You always will be.”
I feel added pressure to the side. My dirt golem has joined the hug. She stares at me, emotionless. I don’t say anything but she has successfully made this moment even more awkward. Kudos, me.
Meredith finally straightens up and wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. Snot runs out of her nose. “Always,” she whispers, looking down at the two of me, “thank you for being my friend.”
My mouth twitches in one of those half smiles for just a second. “Thank you for being mine.”
When we finally step back out of Madame Wendy’s trailer, the fairground is alive and bustling. No customers yet, just the carnival people getting everything set up for another day and night of festivities. The dew that collected on the field overnight has turned to mist and coils around everything like Dumah’s black fog only white. Speaking of which, I wonder what happened with the police being called in regard to Dumah nearly ripping a man’s tongue out of his head, or the disappearance of Felix Clay and Mr. Gin. Then I realize I don’t even know what day it is or how much time has passed. Are they missing me at the foster center? Is there one of those police APB things out on me?
Dumah takes each of us aside privately. First, he talks to Meredith. I don’t know what he tells her, and I can’t read it on the face of dead Mr. Gin. She spends most of the conversation looking at Felix’s gun that was handed back to her, but at one point she looks up at me. She can’t seem to hold eye contact though, and quickly looks down again.
When it’s Dirt Lily’s turn, she spends the conversation with her arms crossed and a frown on her face. I know what she’s thinking: that it’s not fair that she has to die. But really, she should be grateful that she got to live to begin with. I know from her perspective she’s always been alive, just as from my perspective I’ve always been the living one. I can’t imagine being told that I was only brought to life hours ago and everything I remember is someone else’s memories.
Then comes my turn.
“Lily,” says Dumah as we walk behind Madame Wendy’s trailer, “I... I’m sorry.”
“Okay.”
“We pride ourselves on being so above everything, without fear. But we’re not above it. And we’re not without fear.”
“This is a terrible pep talk.”
“I’ll leave the pep talk to Paschar. I can only ruminate on the facts. The fact is, there are things in the Veil that were locked away because even in dreams they posed a danger. Now, they are here. They could be watching us as I say this.”
I look around, but we’re alone. Off in the distance, I can just make out Dirt Lily busying herself with the claw machine. She doesn’t have any quarters, so I can only imagine what she’s doing. Probably what I would be doing: pursing her lips and fidgeting with the machine’s joystick.
Dumah continues. “If I could, I would have marked Mr. Dutch as my totem bearer. Then, I could help you even from beyond the Veil. But the risk is too great, and the totem system is flawed.”
Don’t I know it.
“You find them.” Dumah points at me, then at himself. “I will reap them. I will tear this new flesh off them and scatter their essences across the void like ashes.”
“What about her?” I nod in my dirt golem’s direction. “Will it hurt when--”
“No. You won’t feel a thing.”
That’s the most I get in the way of comfort from our conversation.
It’s another half hour before Detective Guthrie finally arrives. Or maybe it’s ten minutes. I’m a real bad judge of time after so much of it spent in the Veil.
I don’t notice him at first; he’s just another shadow of a person in the fog. But I quickly realize it’s him when I notice how cautious he is in his approach. Other, regular folk, just walk by with barely a glance in my golem’s direction. But not Guthrie. His right arm is outstretched away from his body and he’s got his standard issue police pistol in his hand. Silently, he approaches the little girl fumbling with the claw machine, unaware that another set of eyes watches him from nearby in the cab of a rusty, beat-up pickup truck. My eyes. Well, mine and Mr. Dutch.
“Are you scared?” asks Mr. Dutch.
I watch the tall shadow of Detective Guthrie. “Yes. But I’m also tired of being scared all the time.”
“At least you know there’s something more.” My new guardian tries his best to give me comfort. He’s going to have a lot to learn, and it’s going to be me that has to teach it all to him. “My biggest fear has always been that when I die, there’d be nothing. You know? That’s it. End of story. But you, and this... all of this... it’s given me something I never realized I’d lost: hope.”
Off in the distance, dirt Lily turns. Guthrie must have called out to her. Or maybe she just knew. I don’t know how much of me is truly in there. Would I have turned without his voice? Would I have the strength to turn, knowing that my death was waiting for me? I feel like I would keep tugging on that joystick, trying to make the claw machine work even though I knew it’s not made of magic. What’s different about her? She is me, and yet she’s not.
Guthrie holsters his gun and opens his arms. She goes to him. I wonder what he’s saying to her. Maybe he’s giving her a lecture on running away. Maybe he’s telling her how much trouble she’s in. Maybe, just maybe, he’s telling her that it’s going to be alright. “It’s going to be okay, Lily. Let me get you home.”
I look at Mr. Dutch. His eyes are glued on the events unfolding in front of us. Personally, I don’t want to watch what happens next.
“Have you ever killed someone?” I ask.
His eyes take on that distant, faraway look where he’s not seeing Guthrie and dirt Lily anymore, he’s seeing something from his past. “Yeah, I’ve killed people.” He doesn’t elaborate. I don’t press him for more information. In my meatball, the angel radio static clears and I see everything: his tours of duty in a country called Vietnam, the flashes of faces at night with flares overhead, explosions... so many explosions, and the nights he’s woken up alone, drenched in sweat.
“Madwhip!”
Gin’s voice breaks the silence of the increasingly foggy morning. I instinctively look up at hearing someone call my name. Meredith comes out of her hiding spot between several nearby game booths. She raises the gun. My dirt golem turns to meet her fate. Guthrie hesitates, confused. I feel my heart race. Don’t do it, Guthrie, don’t try to save me.
The flash and the crack of the gun are simultaneous. I recall a vision I had earlier at the fair. I see part of it come true as the bullet shears away a section of other me’s face. I don’t see it clearly, just the dark spray of blood and other stuff. One shot, right in the head. Not bad for a ghost in the body of a twice-decapitated dead man who’s never fired a gun before.
“NO!” Guthrie shouts. He drops and rolls like a professional, drawing his gun and unloading it into Gin’s corpse. There’s a dozen loud pops as Meredith does her best to pretend it hurts. After the last shot, she drops like a sack of potatoes without a dramatic flourish like cowboys do in cowboy movies. Guthrie rushes over and kicks the gun away, then reloads his pistol and sweeps around, searching the area for anyone else. Eventually, he runs back to my body and starts cradling it in his arms.
“Oh God, somebody help!”
“Sorry, Guthrie,” I whisper, “but Lily Madwhip must die.”
Other people are already running to the scene. They crowd around the detective and the two bodies like seagulls fighting over a scrap of bread. I wish they’d move so I can see. I didn’t want to watch but now I can’t look away. No, forget that... this is morbid.
“Let’s get out of here before we’re noticed.”
Dutch turns the engine over in his pickup. The vehicle looks like a piece of shit but that much seems to be in decent shape. He backs us out slowly, quietly, with the headlights off, trying not to draw attention. Ahead of us, the dark shapes of the people melt into the fog. Goodbye, Guthrie. Goodbye, dirt Lily.
Goodbye, Meredith.
A lone shadow stands closer than the rest. He watches us go, his head concealed by his thick robe. He raises one hand before he too vanishes into the gray.
We merge onto the highway and leave Topsfield behind us. Dutch tries turning on the radio, but the antenna must be busted because the reception is terrible. Ultimately, he decides to turn it off and starts singing a song to himself about whether or not someone has ever seen rain. I sit quietly and ponder where in the world you’d have to live to have never seen rain. Even the desert sees rain. Maybe somewhere really cold like Antarctica, where all they get is snow. I wonder if Dutch knows another song called, “Do You Live in Antarctica?”
It’s an hour later and we stop at a gas station in a town called Shrewsbury. Dutch pulls a wad of dollar bills out of his back pocket and thumbs through them. After counting them to himself (there were thirty three), he looks at me with a hint of embarrassment and says, “I’ll be right back.” He gets out and walks toward the little store by the pumps.
“Sir Francis!” I call, leaning across the cab to talk to him through the open window.
He turns. “Yeah?”
“Buy three of those scratch-off lottery tickets with the little hot air balloons on them.”
He does a half double-take. That’s where you start to do a double-take but then realize the person you’re talking to can see the future and is in cahoots with angels and you should probably do what they say.
“Yes ma’am.”
He walks in, the door ringing its little bell as he opens it, leaving me to think about how many shrews have to be buried in one place before they name the entire town Shrewsbury. Twenty-five hundred dollars is a lot of money. We’ll need it to get by. For starters, I’ll need some new clothes. I’ve been wearing these for at least a couple days now. They’re peed in, and probably covered in enough criminal evidence to put me away for life.
I pop the glovebox. Inside I find the usual junk, as well as a small spiral notepad and a barely functioning ballpoint pen attached to a broken chain with the name of a bank on it. I use it to practice my new signature. Alexandra Maverick. I write it a dozen times, filling the page, while I wait for Dutch to return.

“Drop zone approaching. Get ready.” Called the dropship’s pilot from far up in a cockpit somewhere. Casper’s body was encased in his own pilot casket and felt none of the violent shaking and sudden drops as the craft rapidly dropped into the atmosphere, heating its belly until it glowed a brilliant orange.
However, the rig that the young man was piloting, still shook and rattled in its clamps. Thanks to the fearless sensations of piloting such a sturdy piece of machinery, unlike his body that was fallible; he never felt worry or fear from these worrying judders.The optics of the mech were already online and scanning the bay carefully. He’d zoomed in on the only other creature, a geckin, that was in sight too many times to count already. Casper shut off the optics as the geckin, unaware it was being observed, picked its nose before happily consuming the prize it had retrieved.
[Grim.] Casper sent, mildly annoyed that emotions never came across in the text-like messages the two pilots could exchange without speaking.
{What?} Qik returned, in a separate craft that likewise, was dropping into the combat area.
[Our benefactors. Just watched one put their whole ass hand up one nostril.]
{Yummy. Looked like your breakfast, didn’t it?}
The nutrient slop, or ‘slurry’ as they oh so appetisingly called it, was what Casper had to eat both in the morning and at night if he wanted to maintain his already drastically lowered weight. It had the consistency of the word ‘goop’ and, now it had been pointed out to him, the colour of geckin snot.
[I am literally never going to eat again.]
Casper didn’t get a reply, but clicked his optics with the feeling that Qik was laughing or grinning in her own rig at his words. They remained in silence for a minute more before the geckin Casper was watching touched a hand to his own ear before making his way to the exit.
“Inbound! Ten seconds!”
The digging geckin fled the room as moments later the floor beneath Casper’s feet opened and a roaring wind blasted up and into the space. The young pilot couldn’t tilt his body down, so most of his view was obscured by his own body, but he could see a dark, grey landscape far below what would be his dangling feet.
{I’m dropping after you, my original LZ is no good. Get eyes on the operation area, don’t approach yet.}
[Yes ma’am.]
{You’re going to make a fine merc.}
“Dropping!”
Despite not ‘having’ a stomach, Casper still felt a phantom one fall out from beneath him as the sturdy metal clamps that had held his rig steady during the transport, released him as one. Gravity took hold of him, along with inertia and both he and his rig were launched from the dropship at great speed toward an infinite ground. As soon as the mech was cleared, the craft did a sharp upward swing, arcing into the clouds and away from any danger that lurked below.
Casper kept himself upright as he fell despite feeling himself tilt forwards and backwards. Blue streaks of his boosters fired in short, sharp bursts, righting himself perfectly as he threatened to tumble. As he careened toward the pockmarked terrain at speed, the man checked he was coming in at an angle, roughly forty five degrees to ensure he could slide to a stop, bleeding his speed without pummelling the ground at full force.
It wasn’t a danger to do that, but he wasn’t specifically built for that.Some rigs could dramatically enter like that, and it was overall better for them to punch straight down, some even incorporating an air burst landing deployment, igniting the surrounding area of the drop point in an explosion that would merely liquidise the internals of anything organic in the area. Those rigs were super heavies, designed for ‘hot’ drops.
But that wasn’t Casper. He’d never wanted that style of machine. Zeet and he, along with Qik, had chosen from a wide selection of parts to create the mech that ‘felt’ closest to what he would be, if ‘he’, Casper, were a mech and not merely piloting one.
The result? As he fell, he felt light, like he could almost glide down if he wanted to. He felt as if one arrange twitch of his shoulder would get the same from his metal body.
He felt ‘right’.
It took a scant few seconds before his legs hit the terrain with such force it sent rocks and dirt flying all around in a great cloud that obscured him from suddenly awake and watching eyes in the distance for a moment. A fraction of a second later, those eyes watched a dark grey machine fly out of the dust cloud on skis, trailing smoke and dirt in its wake that followed it like vapour trails from a jet.
The mech skidded to a halt a hundred metres away from its landing site, its legs bracing into the skid and a series of three large blue cones of fire slowing him to a halt. It remained still, its two optic ports, scanning and watching the city where the unseen eyes watched it back, undetected by the interloper. The long blade in its hand was not ignored, the machine held it out to one side, the metal perfectly flat. The rain that hadn’t ceased in three weeks, merely pinged and beaded along the perfect edge.
The fisheye lens that was watching, clicked its aperture beforing zooming in rapidly and reading the stencilled text across the interloper’s chest, reporting it to its absent masters.
S P E C T R E
Meanwhile, Casper kept low. He used one hand to brace the front of his mech against the ground as he lowered himself further. Chances were, if there was anyone in the bombed out mega city in the distance, they would have noticed the giant walking mech falling from the sky and causing the same size dust cloud as a building falling over would.
Then again, they also could have dismissed his landing as another shell fired from the distant geckin artillery that had peppered the city with a sustained bombardment before he and Qik arrived for the last forty eight hours. The enemy wouldn’t know when the bombardment would stop, they could use this ignorance to gain a brief element of surprise.
{Spectre, I’m down and inbound. Anything?}
A friendly ‘blip’ began to grow in Casper’s perception. The motion radar, or ‘MR’, along with both ‘friendly’ signals still felt strange to Casper, but it was one of the aspects he had demanded from Zeet. A low profile for himself, but a more sensitive sensor suite for him. He wanted to see the enemy, but not have them see him.
What it meant was, he could ‘tell’ where something was, without needing to look away at a radar readout, or even flick his eyes to a compass with markers. A tiny advantage, but one that had already served him well, way back when he had first fought Qik.
At this time, there was no movement from the dead city.
[Negative Scrub. No one is moving.]
A red mech appeared at Casper’s side, its recon unit briefly turning his way, nodding before turning back. Qik’s mech, compared to Casper’s, felt clunky to the human now. It had none of the articulation his has. When he turned her way to nod back at her, his shoulder pulled back, his arm dropped a fraction. He was fluid. Her whole torso turned, her ‘head’ bobbed, then her whole frame twisted back. It wasn’t her fault, but now the man knew what to look for, he had access to whole other level of movement compared to hers.
She knelt, her body remaining upright, while he stayed low, his legs supporting him, but his whole body brought low by his efforts. His profile was far lower than hers. Still, she knew combat better than him.
He’d seen her in a fight through several of their training sessions. It was one thing to be able to move out of the way of incoming shots, it was another not to expose oneself in the first place.
Casper, or rather, ‘Spectre’ as was his code name on mission, focused up.
The pair of them began to systematically scan the seemingly dead city. Spires and towers were burnt out, some having toppled over. There were ssypno forces in the area, the geckin intel had explained that. Since ssypno equipment was high end and dangerous, it was harder for them to replace it.
Their job was to make this planet expensive for the noble conducting this battle. It was the only language that kind of person understood.
[Scrub, I got a question.]
{Go on.}
[Why ‘Scrub’ of all things?]
When Qik had offhandedly told Casper that her own callsign was ‘Scrub’ she was offended and confused when he barked a single coughing laugh before getting a reign on it. She was deadly serious and rather proud of her callsign. The young man, besides an errant comment, had left it there, but now felt as good a time as any to ask; why ‘Scrub’ of all things?
{Because I scour the battlefield clean. My ops are always described as the cleanest, unless I'm working with someone. They’re always the messy ones.}
[I’m just saying, humans might interpret it differently.]
{You said, but I didn’t spend my career building a name for myself to just change it on a whim. You read?}
[Aye aye Scrub.]
{Right, let's get this done and then we can get paid and you can get a taste of the good life. You ready?}
[When you are.]
Casper urged himself forward as he felt Qik’s ‘blip’ move away to the west, taking a wide route around the edge of the city itself. His ‘feet’ were elongated, turning them into skis that glided across the terrain with amazing ease. His spinal mount, a dedicated jetpack pushed him forwards with vents that could open and close in an instant, allowing him to adjust and change direction with a single thought. He could still walk and run, if he wanted to, but the idea was the ability to lean into the slide and ‘skate’ across the landscape, pushing against the ground with the side of his feet.
The speed at which the city approached and became large, imposing buildings that suddenly dwarfed him, was alarming. He slowed and dropped into a run, then walk, as he made it into the city proper, using the wide streets to fit his mech between the buildings with ease. He kept his blade held low, in both hands, ready to bring it up and swing at a moment’s notice.
Before reaching this planet, Casper had never held a weapon before, but now, with copious amounts of software all feeding him instincts and knowledge that wasn’t his, there was a vague sense of longing for a long range weapon, instead of being limited to the length of his blade.
That said, there was nothing for him to attack. He raised the blade to step around another building before lowering out and ready down the next street, but it was just, yet another, empty thoroughfare.
He didn’t need military software to tell when something felt… off.
[Scrub, do you read?]
{Loud and clear Spectre, what's the situation?}
[Zero contacts. MR isn’t picking anything up and there's nothing in the streets. No sign of any mechanised forces. Are we sure we’re in the right place? Are we getting played?]
Casper couldn’t help but think of the contract the geckins had forced him into. In a desperate need to get something more from the human and his unprecedented lack of drifting when mentally piloting a machine, the geckins had not taken it well when he had expressed he wanted to leave. So much so, the only way for him to ‘win’ his freedom, was to complete the op, without getting disabled. If he wasn’t able to walk away from the op, then the geckins, or more specifically, one of their corpo-nations would *own* Casper outright, changing his designation from a person, to a ‘thing’.
Whilst the geckins hated the ssypno with a passion, a trick or trap to retain access to Casper, might not be outside their morals.
{I wouldn’t put it past the geckins to try something, but if the op is a wash, then they still have to pay us and we’re free and clear. They wouldn’t have fed us bad intel for us to go out here for nothing.}
The Spectre mech peered down street after street, holding the blade out, ready to cut anything that moved or scuttled in half, yet each time; it was devoid of life until he found himself, quite deep into the city.
Closing his optics for a moment, Casper willed himself to send a ping out, searching for *anything* that might show where his enemy was hiding. All he needed as a fraction of movement.
He focused, his mind mentally tuning the sensitiveity of his radar, it sensed the rain, a beehive of noise that was too much, so with an errant twitch of his head, he tuned out the rain. He sensed himself, receiving false reports of a mech, but it was only him. He removed that too. Blind to the outside world, he stayed in place, reaching out with invisible hands, groping blindly for anything.
There were creatures, things that scuttled and things that moved. Living organic creatures of small size. They reminded him of rats, but no rats survived the destruction of Earth to his knowledge. The things were squidgits, vermin if left unchecked, cattle if desired. They scurried and hid in the sewers far beneath Casper’s mech’s feet. Oddly, whilst plenty of the buildings still had these creatures inside, several, were *devoid* of movement. Not a single living thing could be felt by his sensitive suites.
The optics snapped open, and clicked again. Turning his head towards the nearest towering building, he leaned forwards, trying to peer through the destroyed structure to the otherside, but found it dark and unable to see the whole way. This was only one of the nearby buildings that the squidgits avoided for some reason. The building was a husk, burnt out from some unchecked fire, most likely caused by the geckin shelling. The inside was too dark to see anything.
With a mere thought, a floodlight attached to Casper’s head, winked on and bathed the building and its bombed out floors in a brilliant white light.
The sea of cyclops eyes constricted to tiny points as the sea of fisheye lenses reacted to the sudden wash of bright light. In turn, the countless laser cannons strapped to their spines whined as electricity suddenly washed through them.
The MR was suddenly bombarded with with a crowd of movement as the buildings all around Casper came to life.Casper merely ducked as the space his mech had occupied only moments before was dissected by no less than seven beams, all wishing to decapitate him in one fell swoop.
[They’re in the buildings!] He sent frantically, as a wave of scuttling mechanised bots surged from the building and landed on his mech.
Not wanting them on him for a single second, Casper brought his arm up to protect himself and braced his shoulder. Spectre’s main booster, sitting firmly in the dead centre of his back, roared to life and launched the human’s rig into the building and out the other side in a shower of destroyed rebar and materials. The smaller multi-legged technicals were sent flying in all directions, having no hope of holding onto the mech as it punched through a building.
[Jesus!] Casper exclaimed as he turned his head back and watched the buildings suddenly come alive as each floor seemed to disgorge multiples of the round, bulbous, skittering machines in a manner that reminded the man of infestations from Earth. If his rig had skin, the young man was certain it would be crawling.
Remembering his sword, Casper swung it in a downward swipe along the edge of one of the buildings, cutting clean through two with zero feedback as his sword found zero resistance. The metal hulls sparked and fizzled before burning brightly as they fell despite the rain even as they hit the street below.
Bright lines of light lit up the air between the buildings and scorched down the front of Casper’s mech, leaving deep valleys of burnt metal in their wake. Gritting his teeth,a side vent snapped open and a gout of blue flames pushed his mech sideways by pure instinct, breaking line of sight with the swarm and preventing further damage.
{Spectre, report.}
[Contacts! Lots of contacts!]
{I see them, locking on but I need to see more. Just keep moving!}
[They’re crowding me, how are they this organised?!]
{They’re computers, no living crew. They seem smart, but it’s just a swarm. Stick to the plan!}
Casper barely made it to the next intersection where his rig could fit before he saw the bright yellow lines of the spider tank’s weapons cutting into the concrete like material of the surrounding buildings. He practically dove down the next street and picked up the speed again.
As he glided down the road, he saw yet more of the machines breaking through the exterior walls of the buildings and began crawling down towards the ground.
{Head west; towards me. Try and get as many as you can in one long line.}
[Wilco. One conga line, coming up!]
East, North, East, North, South.
Casper used his boosters to jump from corner to corner, flitting from side to side, avoiding and evading the growing crowd that was mere feet behind him. Any building, or even corner of a building that was in his way was destroyed. He felt like a cannonball, fired from its home and would merely bust through anything foolish enough to get in his way.
The bright streaks of line that burnt and destroyed the concrete around him only served to remind him that the enemy was still on his tail. Despite his confidence, he couldn’t let his guard down. Overconfidence would mean his and Qik’s destruction.
West, North, East, North, West.
When he turned down what had to have been a main artery for the destroyed city in the past, Casper could feel that Qik was roughly in front of him in the far distance, she was just on the very edges of his sensor suite’s range. Firing his boosters, his skis slid him down the road until the spider tanks began to pour onto the main thoroughfare from either side.
Using his sword in an upwards sweeping motion, he cut several through their centre mass, but it was a mere handful out of the seemingly endless hoard that was following. He speared several more on the tips themselves, not slowing his escape in the slightest.
From the distance, Casper watched as countless red lights suddenly appeared on the horizon in a beautiful dazzling sunburst. They hung there for a second before the lights turned into red streaks that raced up into the rainy sky, leaving behind white trails of smoke. They then seemingly paused before Casper’s entire early warning system lit up that he was in the direct path of this bombardment, his fiddling with his sensor suite had left him blind to such threats and had him duck in the very last second as they screamed towards their true targets.
They hadn’t been pausing in the sky, they were arcing towards him.
Spectre leaned forward, nearly toppling forwards, and willed itself onwards, increasing its speed until it began to pull away from the amazingly agile spider tanks.
Moments later, Casper could see the bright flashes of explosions somewhere behind him illuminate the surrounding buildings for a brief second. That didn’t matter. If it was behind him, it wasn’t hitting *him*. Relief washed over him as several of the moving, angry ‘blips’ that had been racing after him winked out of existence.
{Brilliant! Just got a few to mop up, but that was excellent!} Qik sent, as Casper rapidly approached where she waited at the city’s edge. From her bulky torso, several flaps opened as he approached and yet more of the red lights were launched from her. The lights were the burners for the rockets that streaked into the sky before taking a harsh turn and streaking into the city, where Casper suspected that they would rapidly meet some of the creepy, crawling tanks.
The Spectre mech shuddered as one, its various metal parts and hydraulics complaining with a loud crash. Scrub ponderous turned to face Spectre expectantly as the remaining targets seemed reluctant to approach, having had their numbers vastly cut down.
[I hate those things!]
{Yeah, MGUs or AATMGUs to be correct. Automated, all terrain mechanised guard units. Nobody likes them, they’re annoying to get out of an area because you have to expose yourself.}
The two machines stood there a moment, facing the city, scanning for any of the MGUs that decided to pop their head out. Whilst they were constantly scuttling, demanding both of their attention, they were staying out of sight for the moment.
{Thanks for being bait.} Qik sent without prompting. Having Casper’s head turn to face her.
[No worries, I knew you had my back.]
{Always.}
Casper was turning to look back into the city and question if they were going to have to mop up the remaining MGU when there was a flicker of a ‘blip’ in his mind’s eye. He had messed with so much of the sensor suite’s settings and was so focused on the city that he couldn’t make out what he was perceiving straight away.
He didn’t even get a chance to send the [What was that?] as a long missile streaked into the side of Qik’s mech, forcibly sending the rig into the buildings and launching Casper backwards with the force of the blast. He rolled in the air, having his legs go over his head, supported by the jets as they turned him rapidly until the bottom of his skis slapped against the ground again. Sparks and debris flew up into the air as his optics searched for the threat, all the while his sensors pinged Scrub.
Casper watched as a new machine, undetected by his own system until now, flew in from the sky. It had solid wings that jutted out of its back, but before he could even observe more of the aircraft, it flew low, close to the ground before it unfolded into a mech, skidding to a halt at the city’s outskirts.
Two study legs slammed into the asphalt of the landscape. Its arms unfurled and without saying a word or even hesitating for a moment, the two arms opened fire with a rain of flashing lasers that peppered the surrounding buildings and Casper’s mech with hits.
The strikes were damaging, several connections and wires were burnt and fused instantly, forcing Casper to reroute connections and energy as he spun away from the gunfire and slipped into the city. Pressing his back against the building that weathered the new storm from the new threat.
He turned his head and saw the smoking remains of Scrub, the mech that contained Qik. Her legs were missing and the torso portion was scorched all along one side. She had been through into a now collapsed building. She didn’t move.
[Qik?] He sent, dumbfounded as laserfire continued over the sound of sizzling rain.
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worst crowd I’ve been to for them and in general, no respect and all the big guys were tryna get in front and pushed everyone, and one groped my friend, fxck those guys, couldn’t enjoy the show. Wyatt and fletcher were nice as always though