Well, here we are.
Edited Down from the original:
Hi, I’m flamethrower, or deadcatwithaflamethrower.
If you’ve come here from my flamethrower AO3 account, wondering where all the fic has gone, it migrated to a different site. You can now find most of my fanfic here: https://www.squidgeworld.org/users/flamethrower Anything left on AO3 will eventually be ported over. [Or I’ll leave the rest of it alone because that is a LOT of words to move.] This includes Of a Linear Circle, Re-Entry (soon), and all of my JKR-free HP fic, Star Wars fic, Red vs. Blue fic (give in to the Dark Side), and random other bits and fandom bobs. No account is required for viewing fic, but Squidge is an awesome site owned by an awesome non-profit with a history that goes all the way back to 1994, so this archive is not going anywhere.
Lacking updates: “I lost my best friend.” My husband of 22 years died unexpectedly last year 18 November 2025, three days before my birthday. We were all present when he just...he was gone in moments. We’re all fucking traumatized. I didn’t post the update here because...well, after what happened when I mentioned my parents dying, I didn’t want to get an inbox full of hatred.
So, yeah. Three funerals a year for three years running. Fuck all of that, by the way.
Why I ditched AO3 and Tumblr: Various types of harrassment, from the stupid, the nonsensical, the ridiulous, or outright hateful verbal assaults that came in as a coordinated flood meant to cause as much injury as possible. The silence from far too many good people who witnessed it and didn’t speak against it, or worse, the ones who decided, no matter how long they’d known me, that obviously the hatred had to be the truth. The hurt that came with seeing people I respected and loved for years turn a blind eye, or make friends with the people who were conducting the very sort of bullying campaign they’d always professed to be against. I refuse to be a part of a fandom base on Tumblr that will condone all of the bad things we’re supposed to be against.
I still haven’t posted the truth of it all. I didn’t think it would accomplish anything useful at the time, and I didn’t want to fight on their cesspool level. If I’d wanted to burn down the person who waited 4 years to convince others to try to burn me, I could have done it in October 2018.
I chose not to. I chose to let them have another chance, hoping that they would take that opportunity and be better. They...did not.
Extraneous life events that made Tumblr fucking irrelevant: The thing with having a progressie illness is that it’s progressive. I physically can’t do most of the things I want to do anymore. I need medicaton to keep my mental faculties working properly. I’m still mentally recovering from a major illness downturn, building back up what I can. I actively hate the walker that’s parked near the front door, the one I need if I’m going out and there’s no guarantee of shop-provided mobility assists. I hate that I’m scared I won’t be capable of attending my youngest kid’s graduation in two years.
My parents died 5 months and 16 days apart. Mom died on August 26th 2023 after a long, extended battle with early-onset dementia. Dad had a massive stroke the last week of Novembrer 2023. He spent months in rehab, but we were only delaying the inevitable. He also had an inoperable brain bleed. I spent every single moment I could making sure he was given every comfort possible, that his bills were paid, that he wasn’t alone. He died on February 11th 2024. I spent the next month scraping and yelling at a funeral home to make sure he had the funeral he wanted, and finally was able to bury him the first week of March.
When I mentioned that first loss here on Tumblr, when my mother died, what immediately arrived in my Ask box was how much I *deserved* it. Saying I deserved that suffering, that I was a thief even though I was literally just helping my father deal with everything. That I deserved that sadness, the grief and stress of arranging a funeral by myself because my father was too fucked up by her loss to do it. But: that is also saying that the person who *died* deserved what happened to them, too, and what the hell kind of example are we trying to set, here? Because that is wrong.
I hope, one day, that bad behavior will be recognized. That everyone who thinks that kind of behavior is okay will try to be better than they were. That they never do to another what was done to me and my family. I hope they learn to live their lives in a way that makes everything around them just a bit brighter.
My Ko-Fi’s still https://ko-fi.com/jerkeene. All donations support the things that keep my family housed and fed, and are received with hope, gratitude, and love. I do post new material there when I can, and I hope that as the grief and anger fades, new content will become more frequent.
“There is no absolute knowledge. And those who claim it, whether they are scientists or dogmatists, open the door to tragedy.” —Jacob Bronowski
I still miss what we once were, and what we could have become.
