This our blog. We do blog things. 30 ADHD, Plural, Anxiety/Depression, Autism, Trans Demigirl. let's hope that's it for now I can't handle more revelations of this magnitude...
A few weeks ago, a small but higher-than-normal number of accounts were mistakenly suspended. The suspensions were quickly reversed, but our response wasn't good enough, and we want to say more.
We're sorry it took us this long to address this. Trust and safety issues are difficult to discuss publicly, and we can’t share details about specific individuals or how our systems work without exposing Tumblr to bad actors. But caution led us to say too little, too late.
We’ve heard from members of the trans community on Tumblr that they were disproportionately impacted, and that deserves a direct response. According to 3rd party researchers, Tumblr’s userbase has the highest proportion of LGBTQIA+ folks on social media, so it makes sense that when something goes wrong, those communities might feel that disproportionate impact.
One thing we want to emphasize is that we do not moderate people's identities. We moderate behavior. We know that identity shows up across a Tumblr profile in many ways, from followed topics to the flags people put in their bios, and more. However, these signals play no role in how our moderation systems make decisions. We monitor those systems for evidence of bias and take corrective action when we find it.
We understand that the communications sent to affected users, and our broader silence to the community, didn't meet the standard people expect from us. That feedback is fair, and we apologize. We've updated the messaging sent to people impacted by these incidents. We are also overhauling our process with a goal of responding to mistaken suspension appeals within 24 hours, and have instituted an ongoing internal review of how suspensions and appeals are handled.
Going forward, we're committed to finding a better balance: being more transparent with our community about issues that matter, even when we can't share everything.
Tumblr belongs to everyone. We take that seriously, and we intend to earn back your trust. We are not afraid to have tough discussions with you or make updates based on your feedback, though on occasion, it might take some time.
To the people whose accounts were affected, and to the members of our trans community who felt targeted: we are truly sorry.
Providing my own data on this issue, since i have had the pleasure of gathering a great amount of evidence on this event:
a small but higher-than-normal number of accounts were mistakenly suspended
Two hundred within five minutes.
The suspensions were quickly reversed
Some suspensions were reversed.
We’ve heard from members of the trans community on Tumblr that they were disproportionately impacted
Correction. All members harmed but one were trans women, specifically, not just "members of the trans community".
We moderate behavior.
All members terminated were terminated after following one specific blog, created a few hours before. The "behavior" you moderated was following a trans woman's new blog.
However, these signals play no role in how our moderation systems make decisions.
Then explain why trans women are disproportionately banned on false grounds. What happens if someone gets mass reported by transphobic userrs? Why have you chosen to restore the account of a kiwifarmer, known hate group, and ban yet more trans women? Explain your decisions.
We are also overhauling our process with a goal of responding to mistaken suspension appeals within 24 hours, and have instituted an ongoing internal review of how suspensions and appeals are handled.
Going forward, we're committed to finding a better balance: being more transparent with our community about issues that matter, even when we can't share everything.
Since this event, trans women have been terminated at greatly accelerated rates, on more and more openly false grounds. Their appeals have been denied often without any human oversight, recieving a denial within seconds, or not recieving any answer.
To the people whose accounts were affected, and to the members of our trans community who felt targeted: we are truly sorry.
You are the elder sibling of the Hero. They want your blessing to marry the Villain they originally set out to destroy; now sitting across from you at the same table.
I might've gotten a bit carried away with this one...
The Sister-in-Law
As soon as I heard them coming, I put a kettle on the fire. The crows always let me know when I have visitors, and now they call out to announce I must entertain houseguests again. Three short caws in rapid succession, followed by a longer fourth—two people, then. No time to dawdle, but enough time to avoid haste, I clear the table of clutter, sorting my work into nearby shelves, closing my book and setting it aside for later, and… oh no, my half-finished spinning still rests on the seat of a chair. I huff in annoyance at my own laziness, sweeping an arm to slide spindle and forgotten tangle into a basket, discreetly shoving the whole mess by foot into the far corner of my cottage.
Three dainty raps at the door inform me that my window to tidy is at its end. Good enough, good enough. The table is clear, and fully three chairs are usable.
“Come on in then,” I call toward the door. “Don’t be afraid; come in!”
With a nasty squeal of hinges that really must be oiled again—maybe I’ll remember to take care of that after these two leave—the door opens just enough to catch a glimpse of my little sister’s face.
“Marina? God’s rotten t—” I bite my tongue. Shouldn’t swear in front of her, of all people. “Is something wrong? You’re not supposed to— I mean, isn’t there supposed to be—?”
Before I can choke out a coherent question, the door finishes its arc, showing me a face I’ve never seen before. Long, dark hair falls straight down, framing a head of delicate, almost elfin beauty. The smile gracing the stranger’s bloodless lips does not touch eyes of pitch that smolder like an inferno barely kept in check by will alone. Atop her head rests a carmine crown forged of no metal known to mortal smith.
Yes, my sister’s companion looks human enough, but it would take a fool not to see that this woman is not what she appears to be. I also cannot help but mark the conspicuous absence of those original companions with whom she left this place.
“Plum!” My sister greets me with enthusiasm bordering on surprise. “Is it really you? No, nothing’s wrong, hey, quit fussing!” She pulls her head away from my grip after I make sure her eyes look normal enough. No sign of blanching fever, at least. “It must be you, only you would—stop that!” I grip her wrist until I satisfy myself that her heart rate is perfectly normal for someone becoming actively annoyed at me, and then I release her. “Happy now?”
“No,” I huff. “I’m never happy. But I’m more pleased to see you return than I was to see you go, which I’ll call good enough.” I back away from the door again and wave them inside. “Come have a seat, leave your boots and cloaks and swords and masks and whatnot at the door, and I’ll brew some tea for us while you tell me what in the seven hells is going on with you. And introduce me to your friend!”
I set about searching for the tea, swearing under my breath as I remember it had been right here on the table, and I’d tidied it away with the dried herbs. Now where were the spare teacups? Ugh. It’s a good thing all that traveling gear takes forever to unstrap and unlace, gives me plenty of time to trawl through my own clutter. By the time they sit down, I manage to cobble together a downright competent tea set, brewing in progress.
“So, uh, Plum… You actually live at Agathea’s old house these days?”
“My house now.” I wave a hand to indicate the slouching building and all its chaotic piles as my domain. “And don’t change the subject. Who’s your friend?”
“Plum, this is Zee. Zee, this is my sister. We’re, ah, getting married… and…” She trails off without finishing. I blink impatiently at her, waiting for the rest.
“And…?” I raise an eyebrow, waiting for Marina to stop stammering and get to the point. What is wrong with her? She was all bluster and confidence last I saw her, and now she’s acting like I’m the greatest challenge she’s had to face.
“I need your blessing,” she finishes at last, punctuating the request with the tiniest cringe.
“My what.”
“Because mom and dad are dead, and you’re my only family left, and…”
“My blessing? What is this—? Actually, no. Back up.” I jab a finger at Zee. “Do you talk?”
“I do.” Zee’s thin lips barely part, just enough to slip words between them like parchment through the gap under a door.
“Great. Don’t stop now.”
“Plum, don’t…” Marina whines, but I wave her complaint away with a waspish flick of my wrist.
The thing in the shape of a woman turns her palms up toward me. “What words shall I utter for you?”
I snort. “You can start with an apology. This? This whole thing?” I tilt my head to indicate her. “Rude. Terribly rude.”
“She hasn’t even done anything! Why are you acting like this?”
“Masks!” I spit. “I asked you to leave the masks at the door. I would think someone ostensibly trying to win my blessing might choose to let me see you. At the very least!”
The woman calling herself Zee bares her teeth in an expression not much like a smile, countering my demand with a question. “Are you really Marina’s sister?”
My sister hisses through her teeth, but she doesn’t contest the validity of the question. A sigh escapes from me. I was hoping we wouldn’t have to do this, that my various idiosyncrasies sufficed as proof of identity. Alright, you want to address this topic? I’ll address it.
“You think I’m Agathea.” Zee’s impassive expression contrasts Marina’s wincing discomfort, but neither one denies my statement. “Maybe you think she’s conjured an illusion of me to catch you off guard, or maybe you think she, I don’t know, possessed my body as part of some evil scheme for immortality, is that it?”
“I just expected…”
“You expected me to be still living in that shitty hovel within the city walls, of course. Thought you’d pop by, maybe use your fancy Chosen One powers and your Fated Quest wealth to save me from poverty, and I’d be so full of gratitude I’d say something like ‘oh, dear sister, however can I repay you?’ And then you’d hug me tight, just like I did for you when we were small and all alone on the streets, and all we had was each other, and you’d tell me that all you really want is for me to bless your marriage to this lovely woman who helped you help your poor, older sister who was never blessed with divine destiny.”
“It’s not like that!”
“But I wasn’t there. You asked around, probably like you’ve done a hundred times before on one quest or another, who knows, I don’t care. You heard a rumor about someone matching my description here at Agathea’s old cottage, the very place where you once had to save me from her wicked clutches. But oh no!” I clap my hands to my cheeks in mock surprise. “Now none of this is playing out the way you imagined, and you’re hoping that I’m not really Big Sis Plummy because it would be so much easier to handle me if you could just draw that holy blade and put me down. Maybe you could fight another big battle, save your real sister and get back on the Gratitude Route to your happily ever after, hmm?”
Marina’s mouth hangs open in horror, suggesting I got close enough to the truth of what she was thinking. Her lower lip starts trembling, and her eyes well with tears. Oh, hell’s rancid tonsils, I forgot how sensitive she always was to my cynicism. Or maybe she’s just ashamed of thinking those things about me.
An internal timer prods me to pour the tea, and so I stand and serve my guests. I take a moment to breathe and calm myself. I don’t like being jealous or angry with Marina. I grind the sharp edges out of my voice. “No. You know it’s me.”
“Sword’s gone anyway,” my sister mumbles, swallowing to control her quavering.
That stops me in my tracks. “What?!” I scan the heap of traveler’s detritus at the door, and sure enough the only sword there looks perfectly mundane, if well-crafted. “Something went wrong, I knew it. What happened? Is that why the others aren’t with you?”
I chew my lip, concern making me forget my dignity in front of the inhuman stranger. For a moment, I’m just the older sister again, mind racing to cobble together a scheme to get Mari out of trouble, trying to understand the situation so I can fix it all for her. “I thought that big lout of yours was insipid, but he had a talent at acting the part of ablative flesh defense. Did he trip when he should have been in front of you? Or the clever one with all the knives, good head on her shoulders, that one; she should have kept you out of trouble. Or the clown, good for a distraction at least while you swing that sword…”
Marina’s eyes dart to her left, to Zee, looking to the mystery woman to answer while she wets her lips and clears her throat, stalling for time. My eyes narrow. Something strange is happening here.
“How did you come to inherit this estate?” Eyes like lightless pools fix themselves on mine. “An answer for an answer.”
A standoff. My sister’s fiancée versus her older sister. A contest for… what, exactly? A marriage blessing? I sip my tea to stall for time to think and to allow that familiar aroma to coax my muscles into the relaxation of a predator in her own territory, not the tense bundle of nerves that would mark me as prey.
“An answer for an answer is an equal trade,” I allow. “But our exchange at the moment is an uneven one. You’ve entered my home wearing a mask. I have asked you twice now to remove it. I will tell you my story. In exchange, you will remove your mask and tell me your story. That is my first, last, and best offer.” I keep my tone relaxed, but I permit just a touch of anger to color my words at the edges. “You may decline, of course, but doing so closes the door on my blessing forever.”
Silence walls my side of the table from theirs. I don’t bother counting the seconds, choosing instead to sit back and sip my tea. Look, I have all the time in the world out here in the woods. I’m not the one with a mission, a time limit, and a missing relic.
When at last someone speaks, it’s Marina, angry enough to spit fire, shouting, finally sounding like herself again. “You are impossible, Plum! I—!”
But Zee somehow smothers her declaration, interrupting with a breathy rasp.
“I accept your terms,” she says, and with a glance she silences my sister’s objection before her tongue can speak it. “But you will speak truthfully or the deal is forfeit.”
“Truth is easy.” My turn to smile. Finally, we can make progress in this farcical confrontation. “Lies are more work anyway. But come on now, drink your tea. If I try to finish this pot all by myself, I’ll be pissing under the table before you finish keeping your end of the deal.”
Marina huffs in a mirror image of my own mannerisms before sipping from her cup. I can see in the set of her shoulders that the tea helps calm her despite her irritation at me. Zee throws her whole cup back in one shot, and I freshen both while gathering my own thoughts. Where to begin?
“I was here for more than a whole day before you and your comrades-in-arms found me—you know, back then—and Agathea could have done whatever she wanted to me in that time. You know that, right? Scared as you were, scared as I was, she could’ve done whatever she wanted to me that whole time.”
“I thought about that. So why didn’t she?”
“Oh, she did!” I cackle. “She very much did everything she wanted to me. The same thing she did to all the other girls she took.”
My sister’s eyes widen in sudden horror. “Goddess above, Plum, I didn’t know…”
“No, not what you’re thinking,” I hasten to cut that thought off. “Nothing physical. She just told me things. Planted a lot of seeds, the old witch did. Knew they wouldn’t all grow, but planned to keep her eye out for the ones that could. She spoke of the Wheel, the true name of the sin at the heart of creation, the mad inversion of harvest and rot and the wisdom of insanity.”
Even now, I can still smell the old woman’s musty breath as I recall her words. “Cornball witchy shit like that, you know? The other missing girls, they all went crazy from hearing it. Ran off into the woods to be eaten by giant vipers or crushed by lithovores or something.”
I couldn’t help laughing again at the memory. “I just told her she was wasting my time, that she might as well just kill me and spare me the lectures. Oh, Khazik Cyst, I was such a little shit back then.”
Ah, well, so much for sticking to polite language. But Marina can hardly lecture me for swearing when she went and lost her sacred blade. In the grand scheme of things, that must be way more offensive to her goddess, right? I make eye contact with my sister, and sure enough she doesn’t even react to my vulgarity. Huh, I guess some things do change after all.
“You lived because you didn’t find her witchy secrets interesting enough to go mad over?”
“Kinda trivializes her whole deal when you put it that way,” I reply, grinning. “But not far from the truth. Anyway, you know what comes next. You and your friends track us down, challenge her to a fight, she doesn’t leave a corpse, and you whisk me back home. The end. Hero saves the day again. Not that I wasn’t grateful, I mean. I was scared as hell, for all I was smart-mouthing my captor.”
“And then…?”
“Then you had to go. Didn’t need your big sister anymore. You were still a kid like me, but the goddess decided you were all grown up enough to face your destiny.” I heave a sigh. I don’t make eye contact this time. I don’t want to see her pity. “You were gone for six years, Marina.”
“I know,” she says quietly. “I didn’t mean to abandon you, it’s just… the time crystal—“
“Yes, of course, the time crystal.” I snort, my mouth filled with bitterness. “You can hardly be blamed for getting trapped in a time crystal while everything in the world goes to rot and ruin, the king is assassinated, and creepy cults pop up in every town.” Despite the bitterness in my voice, I hope she hears the sincerity in it too. I reach across the table and touch my sister’s hand. “I… really don’t blame you for that. Khazik Cyst, you were just a kid.” The more I think about it, the angrier I get. “You were just a kid, fighting some shit-taint chronomancer for the fate of the world armed with pluck, a sword that glows in the dark, and the power of hells-damned friendship.“
I pound the table with my fist, rattling the teacups. “You know I went searching for you? Threatened a capital librarian until he dug up some old prophecies. There was one about that whole fiasco with the time asshole—may that festering pustule rest in piss—written all fanciful and opaque like they do, but I recognized it immediately. That’s how I knew when you’d show up again and where you’d be.”
“And we weren’t kids anymore. You kept saying that again and again. That we weren’t kids anymore.”
My tea has already gone cold. Too caught up in old memories. I gulp it down and freshen everyone’s cup again, giving myself time to choose my next words carefully.
“I got to live a whole real life in those six years, Marina. You just had those years of your life deleted. I don’t think I can ever forgive your goddess for that.” I take a shuddering breath and press on. “And we had, what, that afternoon and one night at the inn together before cultists tried to assassinate you all? Best I could do was pull off a distraction so you and your friends could escape and go save the world.”
“I’m sorry, Plum.”
“But…?”
“But nothing. I’m sorry.” Naked sincerity on Marina’s face. She doesn’t launch into a speech about her duty to the world, the importance of sacrifice, or any of it. I glance over to Zee, who remains content to watch and listen in silence.
“But you had to save the world, didn’t you?” I gesture out the window. “The sun still looks haunted to me, though, so something must have gone wrong.” Haunted is maybe a too-cheeky way to describe how the great ball of fire hangs in the sky, a bloated, half-lidded eye that barely climbs past the horizon, even at noon. The color is all wrong, too, a festering yellow that tastes like disease when it falls on the tongue.
My sister shrugs. The gesture feels strange coming from her. “Maybe I shouldn’t have,” she answers cryptically. “But the house?”
“Right.” I can wait for her answers. “As I was saying, six years is a long time. I was thinking about a lot of things while you were gone. Thinking about how much I hate your goddess for taking my sister away from me, putting you in danger, all that. Thinking about the ‘sin at the heart of creation,’ and starting to feel like the idea made a lot of sense, actually. Like maybe it wasn’t all garbage.”
I take another sip of tea to steel my nerves for this confession. It’s not like I ever intended to keep the truth from my sister anyway. “I came back here. To Agathea. She offered me a place to stay. She taught me the virtues of herbs, how to mix them to make medicine or poison. She taught me how to listen to animals and make myself known to them. She taught me to speak the words that bind direction, to chain north so that it may not become east, to constrict up such that it may never be down. She taught me everything she is. The Witch of Everblood’s Call must be renewed by youth, you see. There is a time for harvest and a time for rot, and it was time for her to become me.”
“No.” Marina shakes her head in aggressive refusal of my words. “Absolutely not. You’re saying Agathea did steal your body? That you were her even when we escaped the time crystal and saw you again? I don’t believe it! Everything you say… all the ways you say it… you’re Plum. You’re my sister. I don’t know what this is. Trying to scare me away? No. No. I refuse.”
“Good! Refuse!” I bark a laugh. “You know it’s me. Not even I can convince you otherwise. Besides, it’s less like Agathea took my body and more that I took her mind, but there it is. I’m the big scary witch of the woods in truth, in command of the exact same power as Dread Agathea, no different from her except in all the ways that I am me instead.” I turn my best sinister grin across the table and cackle most menacingly. “And now that you’ve drunk my tea I can…” pause for dramatic effect, “brew a new pot, if you’d like!”
Marina gives me a look like she’s already exhausted of my gnollshit, which I find unfair considering how long it’s been since she’s had to indulge my sense of humor. Zee, of all people, laughs. Or at least she produces a sound that’s in the neighborhood of laughter. “I have decided I like your sister,” she says to her fiancée. “I think I shall keep her afterward.”
“Keep me, then.” I raise my teacup, holding on to the last dregs of tea, in a mock toast, feeling more relaxed and playful than I was earlier in the conversation. “But I’m keeping Mari, and she’s keeping me too, one way or another.”
“The deal is struck. Your story, I accept. I bind us through the keeping of my side.”
With each word, Zee shifts, human limbs shifting and twisting as though bereft of internal bones, skin turning thin and transparent, revealing inhuman muscle shot through with veins of putrid yellow. Her torso extends, losing definition and towering from floor to ceiling like a grotesque parody of a tree made of hairless skin. As she shifts, a putrescent odor fills the air nearly making my own eyes water. Muscular tendrils coil around Marina, and to my shock, I see my sister nuzzle one such inhuman limb with affection, utterly captivated as though by an indescribable beauty.
The Zee-thing continues growing, face vanishing into a toothy maw within the main trunk, legs splitting and extending into roots across my floor and weaving a tapestry of fleshy branches across the ceiling. The whole creature throbs in rhythm with an alien heartbeat, each beat spreading this creature’s parasitic embrace a little farther. Before too long, there will be nowhere for me to run.
“Hmm.” I grunt in thought. “Zammora the Unclean was the name of the ancient evil Marina was Chosen to slay, wasn’t it? Begins with a letter ‘Z.’ Weird coincidence, I’m sure.”
“Clever little creature. Full of lore, are you not?” Zee’s voice is even less human than before, slamming me with a sound like a swarm of wasps. “Why do you not fear me?”
“Because you’re in my house,” I answer simply. “My house, my rules.” I point to my sister. “So, is she being mind-controlled or what? Because the smell is a bit intense, even for me, and I’m intimately acquainted with rot, while Marina’s always had kind of a delicate stomach. So tell me the truth. Mind control?”
“She accepted my leash upon her mind willingly, witch. As will you.”
“Don’t count on it.” Running through my options here, and I don’t like what I’m finding. Legendary evil, no legendary sword. But a legendary evil in my house, which is either a sign of ridiculous overconfidence or a regular tactical blunder on her part. “The deal doesn’t count if I don’t get to hear Marina’s unfettered words.”
“I did not agree to that,” the horrid, quivering thing hisses.
“You don’t have to.” I snap my fingers for dramatic effect and snip the connection between my sister’s mind and her destined foe.
Immediately, Marina’s body revolts. She retches and heaves, emptying all the tea in her stomach onto my floor. She staggers, and to my surprise, the tendril holding her close allows her to stumble a couple paces away. I ignore Zee’s nightmarish growling and rush to my sister’s side. “Hey, Mari. It’s okay. You’re safe.”
She isn’t listening to me, though. A panicked gurgle escapes her throat, rising to a scream of horror. “What did you do to my mind? What did you do?“
“Shhh, shhh…” I wrap her in my embrace and feel her arms hold me back. “You’re free now. And Zammora can’t claim your mind again while you’re here. And we’ve got a deal,” I raise my voice to make sure I’m heard by the other thing in the room. “I get to hear the story of what happened with your sword and your friends. She cannot take either of us without violating a witch’s pact, at least for that long. Then we’re gonna let you make the plan, okay, Chosen One? I’ll follow your lead.”
Bloodshot eyes filled with queasy misery meet mine. “The deal. Of course. I’ll tell you everything. Let me… just give me a second.”
I’m more than happy to give Mari as long as she needs. The more I stall, the more time I have to chew on this problem. I look at Zammora, growing into the narrow gaps between my floorboards, pale tendrils reaching, grabbing, anchoring themselves to the wooden beams up above. Yes, “parasite” seems to be an apt classification, but what exactly is the nature of her parasitism?
“Zee came to us in her—urk—human form.” Marina does her best to stifle her reflexive retching. “Grau and Verle were suspicious of her, but Bernie, you know him, trusting to a fault.” She pauses again to take a deep breath and collect herself. “But she was scared. Said some dangerous people were out to kill her. And I don’t like to judge people on appearance. You know that. So I made a promise. I promised to protect her.”
An icy grip takes hold of my heart. I know better than most that a promise from some people is more powerful than words alone. Truth is one of that goddess’s virtues, after all, and her Chosen is necessarily bound to that ideal. From Mari, a promise is an unbreakable vow. That it may have been born of deception hardly matters—gods are always so damn unyielding about their principles.
“I asked Zee why she was being hunted. She told me, hhhh…” Mari’s eyes close. She pauses to take a few deep breaths again. “Told me she’d made an enemy of someone powerful and cruel. She’d been kept in prison for a long time and just recently escaped. She wanted help, and I couldn’t bear to tell her no.”
My sister turns away from me, looking back at the twisted abomination that can no longer pass for the kind of scared and trembling maiden that always tugged at Mari’s heart. I watch her mouth twist into a grimace, fighting nausea, her brow drawn into a knot with the effort of staring down Zammora’s true form. It must be a struggle to even look upon something so incomprehensibly inhuman if one is not a witch like me, well practiced in dredging the very sump of creation.
There is a beauty in rot, in parasitism, that most people struggle to see. All life is essential to life itself, however uncomfortable the feelings they may inspire. Truth be told, I’d have been willing to help Zee too, if she came to me with her honest face and directly asked me to help her kill Mari’s goddess—powerful and cruel indeed—and what is being Chosen except its own kind of prison? Yes, I certainly begrudge the goddess enough for everything she’s ever done to Mari.
“She tricked me,” my sister says. “But she didn’t lie. She never lied. So my vow held. Even when she told me who she really was, I couldn’t do anything about it. I couldn’t even tell the others because I knew that would put her in danger.”
“Devious. Hells below, I do respect that,” I admit. “It’s a real shame you chose to fuck with my sister, or things might turn out differently for us.”
“She did more than eff with me.” Mari coughs. “But that’s… beside the point. Things got weird. My friends noticed I was spending more time alone with her, that I never strayed from her side. They got suspicious. Worried. It put a strain on our friendship. Isolated me so that Zee felt like the only one I could even talk to.”
“We talked,” scrapes the voice from the throbbing trunk of flesh in my house.
“Of course you talked. I love talking. Marina loves talking. You’re not a beast of many words, but I have no doubt in her power to make anyone engage her in conversation.”
Mari smiles just a bit at my comment. We may not be kids anymore, but I’m glad I can still help her deal with stressful situations with some levity.
“Yeah, we talked. She asked me how I felt about the goddess. Zee hates her so much, and… well, it felt easier to confess some of the things I resent. Stuff I couldn’t say to my friends, who needed to believe in the power of the Chosen One.”
I blink, surprised yet again by this turn of the conversation. “You resent your goddess? You?“
Still embracing me with both arms, her hands clench into fists at my back. “My whole life, she’s been watching me, whispering in my ear, grooming me to be her perfect Chosen One. When our parents died, she told me it would make me stronger. When we were starving and homeless, she told me it would teach me compassion for the less fortunate of the world. When you broke your leg, and then it got infected, and you were fighting a fever for months while I scrambled to feed us both and get you medicine, she told me I would learn to stand on my own.”
My sister trembles in my arms. “But she didn’t just whisper. She did those things. All of them. To teach me her lessons. She broke your leg to teach me to rely on you less. She made us orphans on purpose! She told me it was all necessary, and I believed her.”
“Until we talked,” Zammora adds.
“Until we talked.” Marina nods, her head against my shoulder again. “It was seductive. A part of me wanted to believe none of our suffering was necessary. That part of me wanted an excuse to hate her for the things she did to us. I think that part of me won when I decided to tell my friends the truth about Zee.”
A mental model starts to form; I begin to grasp the nature of Zammora—what kind of parasite she is—and start imagining how to counter her. Not merely a parasite of bodies, not merely a physical thing, she infects at a conceptual level, maybe even at the level of pure ontology. Without saying much at all, her presence alone infects thought, probing for weakness, turning minds toward herself. I cast my eyes over the spreading mass of tendrils claiming my home. And she’s in my house, which could be a problem.
“When I told my friends the truth, they all assumed I was under her control. I wasn’t—not yet, anyway.”
Or so Marina believes. I’m not so sure. Big Zee probably can’t be slain, not without the kind of sword that slices through thought as well as it does flesh and bone, but maybe…
Hmm. I can close the house. Trap all three of us here permanently, removed from the real world. It would accomplish the goal of saving the world from Zammora, at the cost of my life and Mari’s. An eternity trapped here with Zammora the Unclean? No, I don’t believe in heroic sacrifice, nor in sacrificing my own sister. Not an option. So then what?
“But I should have known that no matter what I said, they’d try to fight her.” She hesitates. “Maybe I did know. Maybe that’s what part of me wanted. I was oath-bound to defend her. I… you know, it’s weird I never made a vow to protect my friends? I guess we never thought that kind of thing needed to be said. We took it for granted.”
My breath hitches. “You killed them?” Oh, Mari, no. “That must have broken your heart.”
Marina’s face buries itself deeper against me. “It did.” I can’t see her tears, but I know her well enough that I don’t need to. “And when it was over, I broke the sword. Didn’t need it anymore. With them… gone… I was the greatest threat remaining to Zee. But only as long as I still had the sword.”
“The trade is complete, witch,” Zee pronounces. “I will have Marina’s mind again.”
“Not until you explain this ‘marriage blessing’ farce,” I snap. “You won, didn’t you? Your enemy’s Chosen is disarmed and neutralized. You’re free to do whatever it is a thing like you does when it runs rampant. What could possibly have compelled you to come here telling me such nonsense about wedding each other?”
“Plum…” My sister disengages from our embrace to look me in the eye. She’s a mess—her face wet with tears, snot running from her nose, and a touch of drying vomit on her chin, where she failed to wipe it all away. It’s an expression that reminds me of some of the hardest days when we were kids and all we had was each other. “Plum, it’s not nonsense. It’s… a plan.”
“A plan.” I repeat deadpan.
“Marriage under the auspices of the goddess. I don’t exactly… Zee, you tell her.”
I raise an eyebrow at my sister’s—apparently for real—fiancée.
“You understand infection, witch.”
“Do I, now?”
“Do not dissemble. I see it in your mind. You wear your mind as a house. It is plain to me. There.” A tendril points at the shelf where I keep my unfinished knitting. “You see me as parasite.”
No hiding my thoughts from her as long as she’s in my house, I suppose. My face flushes with embarrassment at having underestimated my houseguest.
“Correct, there is nowhere to hide.”
I try not to think too hard about how much of this place—a reflection of my own mind—she’s already colonized. It’s not too late yet, but I must take care.
“Alright, then. I’ve been playing my cards face up for this whole meeting. I accept that.” I shrug. “In some ways that simplifies everything. If you truly want my blessing, tell me your plan. The real one, please. You can see I don’t have my sister’s values.”
“Yet you value truth as much as she.” Zee rumbles, vibrating the whole building with her voice.
I turn my palms toward her in a gesture of openness, mirroring hers from earlier.
“Then hear me. We are to be married according to Her foul tradition. In doing so, Her temple will incept me within her aegis. She will be unable to aim Her divine intent against me, forevermore. I will be free to enact my design while She may do aught but watch in helplessness.”
Ah, that makes sense. Zee is exactly the right kind of parasite to pull off that scheme. It absolutely requires my sister, whose position of privilege as Chosen One makes her vows uniquely binding through connection to her goddess. It’s an elegant plan, really, but for one small problem.
“Marina would have to love you, or the marriage would be flawed at its foundation. That would be exactly the sort of crack her goddess would use to escape your trap.”
I pause in thought. “Oh.”
“The mind control.” Mari says my own thought aloud. “She can make sure I love her completely, despite my…”
“Revulsion,” Zee finishes for her. “A natural human instinct when witnessing my true glory.”
Is that enough, I wonder? Ugh, I’d need to do more research to be sure. Intuitively, though, I suspect it may not suffice.
“Please. This hurts, Plum.” Mari grips my shoulders to pull my attention back to her. “I hate looking at my Zee and feeling this… nausea. Even memory, remembering the things we’ve done together…” She shudders. “Once happy memories are tainted by this gross feeling. Please, Plum.”
“Please what? Are you asking me to let her restore the chains on your mind?” It’s an unsettling demand. How can I do that to my own sister? “Just force you to love her again?”
“I do love her!” She shouts, and I wonder how much is meant to convince me, and how much to convince herself. “You don’t know what we’ve been through together. My heart loves her, Plum. It’s just my traitor brain that doesn’t understand, no matter how hard I try. It’s stupid animal instinct, that’s all. I love her, and I don’t want to touch her, but I want to want to touch her. Do you know how much that hurts? I love her, and the thought of kissing my own girlfriend makes me want to vomit! I hate feeling like this!”
Her brown eyes shine with the same intensity they always did when she set off to do something that scared her. I know her better than anyone, but I cannot tell myself I know her better than she knows herself.
“Alright, Mari.” I run my hand across her cheek, brushing away a tear. “Far be it for me to tell my sister that her wife can’t tie her up if they both want.”
As soon as the words leave my mouth, the thread binding her to Zee snaps back into place. All at once, the tension leaves my sister’s body, and she pauses only to give me one quick hug of gratitude before flinging herself back toward her fiancée and planting a succession of kisses along her throbbing trunk. Tendrils wrap themselves around her and pull her tighter into the embrace.
Zammora speaks again, a scaly rasp on my mind. “Do we have your blessing, then?”
I chew my thoughts some more, a plan congealing in my mind as well as over my hearth. Zee can surely read the room, but I speak the words aloud for Mari’s sake.
“I can do you one better, my future sister-in-law.” I grin. “Allow me to write both your vows.” To Mari, I ask, “is that permitted in the ceremony?”
“Yes? No reason why it wouldn’t be. Why?”
“I know the words that bind direction. I know the true name of the sin at the heart of creation. Forget hiding merely within the goddess’s aegis, how would you like to get inside her very immune system?”
“I am listening,” Zee says, her voice now tasting like a caress.
“Let’s aim higher than just the sun. Infecting the goddess herself with disease sounds like fitting revenge for all three of us. Better than a blessing, I'll give you a curse. How does that sound?”
The rumble that fills my cottage might as well have been the purr of a monstrous cat. “I will have your words. And I will keep you as well, Plum.”
I seal the new pact with a rap of knuckles on wood. “You beautiful thing, as long as Mari’s happy, and I get to stay by her side, I’ll let you do whatever you want with me.” I exhale in satisfaction. The long nightmare of our lives is finally over, isn’t it?
“How about another pot of tea before we get planning?”
i'm a real sick freak, a real fucked up kinda puppy, i'm into all kinds of problematic shit. yeah, i'll surrender to your loving embrace. yeah i'll curl up in your arms. yeah, that's right slut, stroke my hair and tell me you love me for who i've become. i-ignore the sobbing, it's all part of my twisted psychosexual game
Look, if you don't get the urge to just bury your face in a belly and kiss it and knead it like dough and occasionally bite it a little, then I don't exactly think we're on the same wavelength
And no tumblr, I don't need tags. True believers will find this.
There's a long history of personality uploading in the combat robot spheres, of course. The Warlord famously would just overwrite opponents entire mind with a copy of his own. His downfall was caused by the obvious problem: if you're a massively powerful warrior filled with a lust for power, and you make a copy of yourself, that copy is not going to quietly do what you say. He's gonna want power, your power, and not care that he's you. Of course he backstabbed himself until he was too weak to fight off all his enemies.
The Phe0nix was subtler about it. Their trick was that they'd attack your mind and it make it look like they'd failed to do a personality upload, but they implanted a subtle virus that would corrupt your backups. Eventually you'd fall in battle and one of your backups would be re-bodied, but WHOOPS, that's not you that gets downloaded into your next body, it's them.
They've been much harder to fight than the Warlord ever was, to be honest. The Warlord rode under a bloody banner but everyone knew where he was and could fight and contain him. The Phe0nix? They're like herpes, they keep coming back. We think all their bodies are destroyed but then it turns out they've had a copy incubating in the backups of some non-combat droid somewhere and they get hit by a groundcar one day and a simple new body ensleevement process turns into a terrorist attack. Someday we may kill them for good, but I kinda doubt it.
The Singlet maybe had the best counter-ego strategy. She used some kind of distributed hash function to always know how many copies of her were alive at once, but the vast majority of those copies were quiet parasitic infections in the brains of enemy opponents she fought once.
Basically she waited until the "main" copy of herself died, and then she'd reactivate one of the parasites. She never was resleeved, not in the standard way anyway. No backups, no bodies in cold storage, she just infected other bots and let the infected copies wait it out. Then when she fell, one of those copies "wakes up" and hacks its host from within, and now there's another Singlet walking around. It's a pretty elegant solution to digital immortality, plus she never needs to spend the resources on backups and new bodies: she just uses other people for that. And she never has the "fighting myself" problems that bots like The Warlord had: there's only one copy of herself walking around at any time.
And I don't want to talk too much about The Abomination. Best we can tell, it's finally dead, and won't be coming back. Its counter-ego strategy was to merge all its bodies into one. Youd fight it, lose, and when your next body showed up to continue the fight, its body has a few more limbs that look familiar and now it knows your strategies as well. Nasty, nasty thing, and frankly I think we stopped bombing Phobos too early. There could still be copies in there.
But the hackergirl in the original post? She's not doing the viral personality upload as part of an immortality or assimilation plot. She just thinks everyone's life would be improved by having a little copy of her living in their head, providing live commentary on your whole damn life.
It's like that proto-robot show, MST3K? I know it's got a lot of offensive botphobic stuff in it (it's a product of its time, you know?) but I still like it... Anyway it's like having them in your head, except it's a little cute girl at the edge of your vision making snarky remarks about how you live your life. She can't control your body, corrupt your memories, or hijack your resurrection process. She just wants to "enhance" your life with her presence, forever and without any) interruption.
