Jjgaut - Forever A Madman

Yeah, "routines" suddenly make way more sense to me, and I totally see what my routine needs have always been.

i think a lot of neurotypicals misunderstand what “routine” means in the context of autistic ppl needing routine. they seem very fixated on the idea that routine means doing the same thing at the same time every day (eg always eating at 12, always showering at 7, idk, stuff like that) and they don’t seem to get that while yes, those are a kind of routine that some autistic ppl need/like, it’s not the only thing. 

like for me, for example, it is way more important that the songs i listen to play in the right order and that the right kind of audio is on in the background when i do different tasks than it is that i do said tasks at a specific time of day. the routines that are important to me are about how i do things, not when. but nt ppl don’t understand this. 

why is this important? bc i have had So. Many. neurotypicals tell me that the reason i’m depressed/anxious/not feeling well is that i don’t have enough of those when routines in my life. that obviously if i made sure to always shower at the exact same time of day i wouldn’t be depressed. that obviously if i made sure to always get up at exactly the same time, no wiggle room of even a minute, then i wouldn’t be anxious. “because you’re autistic!” they say, “and routines are important for you! you’ve even said so yourself!”

and then they proceed to not take the actual reasons why i’m feeling unwell seriously, because obviously if an autistic person isn’t living minute by minute according to a schedule that dictates their every move then that has to be the cause of all their problems. 

If every word of this is true, it has nothing to do with whether or not she’s a victim. She was falsely accused of fraudulently soliciting good reviews through sex (something that was so easily disproven it’s insane the accusation lasted more than a hot minute), and has spent years facing an endless barrage of rape and murder assaults, in ways that are quite public and easy to verify... but which are also infuriatingly anonymous and in a legally murky situation where the perpetrators can’t be punished. Not only she, but her family members have been harassed and persecuted for years on end. And this was insidiously camouflaged under cries for “ethics in video game journalism” and similar malarkey to draw in a massive crowd of those ignorant of the true context to unknowingly perpetuate these horrors. This is an organized mob torturing a woman (and other women) largely because she’s a woman. There’s no way to look at the evidence and not come to that conclusion.

It doesn’t matter if all the above is completely true, and she was a ridiculously unprofessional model when she was 20ish, and even if she spun some wild stories to excuse that. If true, it doesn’t reflect well on her, but that is completely irrelevant to the torturous hell that’s been rained down on her for the last several years. A victim is a victim, regardless of their human flaws.

Still think Zoe Quinn is an innocent victim?

The following was writen by Mallorie Nasrallah. Please take the time to read it-

“Alright, story time. I’ve been basically silent on this issue, I am not sure my contributions are relevant, and I have feared being ostracized and ridiculed. I can accept the latter, but I really hate to waste people’s time. In 2007 I lived in New Hampshire, and was working as a photographer with a number of soft core "alt” erotica / porn sites. I traveled frequently to work with models affiliated with the websites I was affiliated with. A model working under the name Locke Valentine - this is the woman currently known as Zoe Quinn - modeled for two websites I was affiliated with - she as a model, I as a photographer. One of those websites is still in business, the other - unfortunately the one we communicated via - is no more. Locke / Zoe was living in Albany, NY at the time. We expressed a desire to collaborate, and set a date for three photoshoots. In fall of 2007 (according to my EXIF data 10/25/2007) I packed up my equipment and drove the 220 miles to Albany, for a weekend of work with Zoe. By time I arrived in Albany, Zoe had cancelled one of the three shoots we had planned. She lived in a tiny apartment with her boyfriend / spouse / lover (I did not ask personal questions) and her roommate. I had been assured I could over night with them, and that they had room to accommodate a guest, and room to shoot in. They had neither. We ended up doing an impromptu shoot in the extremely crowded apartment, in the middle of the night, to try to save the shoot. I was not proud of it, but I knew with a bit of editing, it had potential. While we tried to plan a shoot for the next day Zoe, and Co. chatted with me. She claimed to have stabbed a man - attempted rapist - in the face, who had grabbed her. She relayed to me no less than three other accounts of alleged violent assault. I will not share the details here, I feel that would be fundamentally indecent. I was alarmed at this, and I admit, by the time she made the claim that she stabbed a man in the face with a knife* and ran away, I was skeptical as well. Two claims involved alleged workplace incidents, and were her prime explanation for why she could not hold a job. I was mildly disconcerted, because true or false, these stories have good cause to make one uneasy. She also claimed to have reported nothing to police, or management at her work. That was not all we discussed, we talked about modeling, the websites, and erotica/porn in general. It was what we both did for a living, and candid conversation on the subject was not unusual. The next day I had to drive everyone to the location of our shoot, which was her roommate’s place of employment. An arcade. This is the location where the photo shown here was taken. I was irritated that after driving 220 miles, and having to carry all my equipment to a shoot, I was also deliberately given the false impression that Zoe, and Co. would have their own transport. I was also irritated that Zoe could provide neither her own wardrobe for the shoot - it is normal for the model to use her personal items in these sorts of shoots - nor her own food while on site. Keep in mind, we both are paid by a site, once the photos are sold, everything I spent came out of my own pocket. Otherwise the shoot was unremarkable, it went far better than the one the night before, and we all had a basically good time. We tried for some more photos that afternoon in a forested area Zoe directed me to, but we had neither enough light, or privacy to shoot anything substantial or of value. I returned home, spent countless hours editing hundreds of photos. It was a terrible experience, but so be it. When I was ready to send the photos off to Deviant Nation - the site we worked for - I wrote to her to let her know. It was only a few days, a week at most, since I had left Albany, but I ALWAYS get a model’s final approval before I send photos off. As far as I know I am the only photographer working in that specific industry who had that strict policy. Zoe informed me that her roommate, who had been involved in the shoots, either by being in the apartment, or smuggling us in to her place of work turned out to be a, “ mentally unbalanced cunt,” (her words not mine) among other things, and that it was unacceptable to use ANY of the photos we had taken that weekend. I was pretty upset about this, and sent her several messages asking if perhaps I could talk to the roommate, have her sign a waiver, or something, despite the fact that neither Zoe, nor I, had any legal obligation to ask the roommate’s permission for ANYTHING. Zoe insisted that she was a crazy, evil bitch, and refused to provide me with any sort of contact information. Finally, weeks later, a handful of other models I had worked with on the site messaged me to inform me that Zoe had written them and told them that I forced her to look at, “mutilated vagina,” pictures, which she said, had horrified her, and she had basically sent me away then and there. The models she told this to knew me, and thankfully came to me with these nonsense claims. We had in fact discussed cosmetic surgery, while talking about modeling, and she had looked up Before/After Breast Implant images. The conversation moved on to Labiaplasty, and we looked at a few of those images as well. So, there is an inch of truth, in the really awful lie she told about me. There was never any force involved, and she was the one controlling the computer the whole time. This took place in her home, on her computer, with her boyfriend and roommate both in the room. I decided it wasn’t worth the fight. I was eventually contacted by the roommate, who told me a very different story to the one Zoe had, and I let the issue drop. I was never paid for the images, because I respected her wishes and never published them. I still have the images in archive on my computer, because I archive everything. I was never reimbursed for the gas, wardrobe, or food I purchased on the trip. To someone starting their career, that was quite a dig to my wallet. 7 years later, Zoe is still BY FAR the worst client I have ever had. What does this story have to do with GamerGate? When I realized Locke was Zoe, I was disgusted to see she was still playing the same games. Stealing, cheating, lying and claiming to be victimized by anyone and everyone. Maybe she did stab some guy in the face, and maybe in the first week at every new job she had, some guy tried to extort sex from her. Maybe that doesn’t establish an MO on her part. But I know, I did nothing wrong to that woman, and I did not deserve to be lied about. I did not deserve to have my time and my money wasted, and even now, I wonder if opening my mouth about this means she will think of some new horse shit to spread about me to try to ruin my career. And that does seem to be her modus operandi. If this were a courtroom, I would call myself some sort of character witness, and I’ll let you all make of this what you will. Share it if you feel like it, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut and watch her try to stomp out all the fires she has started by shitting on any more people’s careers. ‪#‎gamergate‬ ‪#‎zoequinn‬ *Edit Upon reading though archived emails, I discovered I can confirm and prove that she claimed to have killed the man she stabbed. (screenshot of email, irrelevant details redacted. https://scontent-a-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/…/10714582_101522745870…)“

You can see the original post here- https://www.facebook.com/mallorie.nasrallah/posts/10152274324055882:0

This unquestionably belongs on any list of the 10 greatest Batman stories.

tim drake’s snapchat is 90% him making bruce wayne do normal middle-class american things and filming the results. popular youtube compilations include the one where they’re at denny’s at two in the morning and tim keeps trying to get bruce to order a moon over my hammy just so he’ll have to say it, the one where they’re at disneyworld and bruce gets increasingly frazzled culminating in him actually physically picking up gaston for reasons no one can entirely recall, and everyone’s favorite series “bruce wayne doesn’t understand walmart”

rb to tell ur mutuals ur fond of them

Iliad mini comix, books 1-8! yes i am going to do all 24 books! pray for me!

more iliad stuff

more ancient studies comics

... because Doctor Who just hasn't been depressing enough lately.

the phrase “curiosity killed the cat” is actually not the full phrase it actually is “curiosity killed the cat but satisfaction brought it back” so don’t let anyone tell you not to be a curious little baby okay go and be interested in the world uwu

That was superbly written.

I applaud your incredible tenacity in fighting such a horrific, painful fight as far as you could. And even more so, that you’ve worked so hard to help both present and future victims. If it’s time for you to back down from this part of the fight, then it’s time. But you’ve helped bring these horrors into public focus, and helped build ways forward so that one day, these evils can be struck down.

You are a hero. Thank you for everything you’ve done, and the best of luck to your future endeavors.

Why I Just Dropped The Harassment Charges The Man Who Started GamerGate.

I’m not editing this, so I apologize if it’s long and rambly and messy. It needs to be. I’ve been measured and silent and obedient for so, so, so long, but if I’m going to write about denied humanity it needs to be like this. You need to see unsanitized, reckless honesty just as much as I need to write it. Targets of mob abuse take a risk every time we’re brutally honest in public, so we usually don’t, but I’m too frustrated to give you PR and I’m working against the clock. If I’m gonna get hurt for an update in my court case, it’s about fucking time it happens on my terms instead of his.

I just hung up from what I hope will be my last phone call with the District Attorney assigned to my case, and I choked back tears as she told me that I’d conducted myself with grace through this whole nightmare. I don’t know why I’m crying. I’m writing this and examining it as I go through the fog of someone with PTSD. I don’t know if the tears are out of frustration of having sunk a year and a half into this awful system for seemingly less than nothing, or if it’s out of relief.

My ex, who we’ll call Creep Throat because seeing his name makes a knot of anxiety rise in my throat, will be notified soon that the charges were dropped, but not why. I’m sure he’ll launch another salvo of flat out lies and spun truths to make it seem like the last year and a half was a byproduct of me “asking for it”, that the courts saw through it, while making him seem like a downtrodden hero of free speech. He managed to do that with previous court dates, leaving out things like a judge flat out stating that she believed he had physically assaulted me during the last time we had sex, and that he’d gone through my friends social media feeds of the day afterward to prove that I wasn’t “acting like a victim” by spending time with friends.

So, instead of just watching this happen for the who-knows-how-manyth time, I’m going to talk about it. It’s not really about me as much as it is an attempt to dispel some common bullshit assumptions the average person has about the justice system, and what it means to “press charges”.   

One of the biggest myths that needs to die is that your first response to being abused should be to go to the police and seek justice. Leaving aside the fact that the police flat out murder unarmed citizens for their race all the time, and that sex workers are likely to be incarcerated when reporting crime done to them, and a myriad of other things I can’t get into, I have a certain amount of privilege and a well-documented case. I have one of the most public abuse cases out there, it started a hate movement that’s swept up my industry and hurt dozens of bystanders, and got international media attention. A lot of people don’t think of it in terms of domestic violence, they forget where the flashpoint of GamerGate came from - you might not even know the man responsible’s name. To make matters worse, I was unable to speak up during that time period out of fear of reprisal from the judicial system (more on that later) and watched as he was washed out of history (along with a lot of other people targeted). I was on my own on this front, until the Boston Magazine article was posted by a journalist who had been following everything and speaking with my ex. Shortly after, I got a call from the DA telling me that I shouldn’t have been told to simply go offline, and that she knew we had a very strong case worth prosecuting.

So why am I dissolving it then?   

Ironically, getting a restraining order against Creep Throat was the least effective thing I could do in terms of getting him out of my life for good, and for protecting myself. I’ll discuss the hot mess of problems around that experience at a later time. Without getting into a long, complicated blow by blow, every time something happened or the case was updated, he’d run back to the mob and make promises and jokes and pleas for more money. The mob would respond by going after me, my family, and anyone else they decided was involved. The mythology surrounding me would expand, conspiracy charts would “prove” I am secretly rich and really deserved it all along, and inspire more threats, stalking, and abuse. The cycle repeated itself endlessly. People kept getting hurt for being close to me, for a poorly worded restraining order that did nothing.

This cycle was so vicious that I even vacated the order myself once he appealed, hoping to make it end. I gave him the legal relief that he’d asked for. It might sound weak but I’m not made of stone, I’m a scared person trying to escape her abuser in spite of the fact that he’s created a self-perpetuating faction within my own industry to continue to punish me for walking away. It wasn’t about him fighting a powerful evil woman, or gaining his oh-so-crucial right to sic a mob on me, it’s always been about punishing me. It was about using it as a way to hurt me further, so when I gave him what he ostensibly wanted he actually *showed up to object to my motion to vacate the order and hand him a win*. The court dismissed him, and the order has been dead for months, and yet he’s back on Kotaku In Action chumming the waters about the oral arguments they’re hearing on a nonexistent order next month.

He gets paid, he gets attention (he even brought a date to court once), and the cycle continues. All the while, shit gets worse and worse for me and my family. The simple fact of the matter is the criminal justice system is meant to punish, not protect. I don’t care about seeing him punished - I would rather he get better. And they’ve done nothing to protect me - it’s only made things worse and become another weapon in his arsenal, and the arsenal of the people out there way scarier than him.

This is the last email I sent to my DA.

It was a reddit thread that showed up in my Google Alerts for my name, that I had set up to help grow my indie dev business before all this started like so many people in my industry. The title was “if eron goes to jail, I will hunt zoe quinn down and rape her”. Alerts and direct contact like this, specifically discussing the court case, was only escalating and becoming more common. I’m used to things like this at this point, but it doesn’t mean it doesn’t effect me. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t effect anyone close to me who becomes collateral damage in this sick crusade my ex started against me. The continual escalation only ever increases the chances that someone will make good on something like this. Trying to get the law to protect me has only continually put me in harm’s way.

Why, then, would I ever want to sign up for more years of my life spent flying back to Boston, a place where it’s not safe for me to be, to continue another chapter in this nightmare? Why would I want to keep digging at a giant scar?

“Establish legal precedent!” you might think. I did too. Then Elonis v United States offered little hope that a court wouldn’t skirt the issues of how domestic violence manifests online. Then Steph Guthrie and her co-defendant lost their case, the transcripts showing equal parts “she was asking for it” and “how did this get in there i am not good at computers”. Going to court is like rolling the dice, the precedent you established isn’t up to you, and I didn’t want to risk becoming a tool in the next Creep Throat’s arsenal if we lost. I have have worked with enough lawmakers, law enforcement officers, lawyers, and judges at this point through our work with Crash Override to know that education is sorely lagging behind on these issues, not to mention the cultural biases that come with any cases like that.

You probably know that judges and juries can be biased and hold backward views and assumptions, given that you’re a human in 2016 reading this blog and have probably seen at least one news story about a cop getting away with murdering an unarmed black citizen without so much as a trial. You may have seen it in any reporting on how unlikely it is for rape survivors to see justice combined with how backward everyone is about talking about it. This is at least partly because the US has a very specific idea of who is worth protecting, doubly so when the person in question is being victimized while marginalized.

When you seek charges, you’re on trial as much as the other person, if not more. The “asking for it” defense is alive and well even in 2016, and you have to be a “good victim” in order to give your case the best shot it has. “Good victim”, when it comes to women in domestic or gendered violence cases like mine, tends to mean a lot of loaded, even conflicting things. The courts do not favor a lot of women simply for being who they are - women of color, trans women, sex workers, I could go on. Even beyond that, you have to be well behaved and silent about the proceedings, or risk pissing off the judge and giving the defense attorneys ammo to work with. Even my Cracked article was waved around in court by my ex’s lawyers, citing it as “the most disgusting thing that happened during GamerGate” despite my almost one foot stack of threats and photos of me that people had printed out, jizzed on, and sent to my family. The defense, so far, had hung a hat on trying to prove I deserved all of this.  

I have been open about my depression and my history in sex work. I have not gone out of the public eye during all of the abuse, and I don’t regret that. I believe in standing up for sex workers and people living with mental health concerns and anyone else I can, and I don’t know what would have happened if I had kept my mouth shut when I was targeted two years ago. But this comes with a cost - everything I have said and done will be held against me and spun by my abuser. The cost of being who I am in defiance of the abuse was sacrificing being a good victim.

The spin is even more successful in these cases, because of how disconnected judges, lawyers, police, and juries often are from the internet. One told me to simply give up my career and stop going offline if I didn’t like the abuse. He barely bothered to look at my huge stack of evidence before declaring he had no idea what the internet was about and didn’t want to know.

All the while, it’s hard to explain the indignity of having to sit through this and try to be a “good victim”. To sit in the same room as the man who did this to you and so many others and not appear too emotional or shaken, because the last time you said “uh” too much it became “proof” that you were lying instead of reliving trauma on command. To hide your anger and your outrage and your hurt so you don’t look like you’re seeking revenge, but to also not hold back TOO much because then you look robotic and unaffected like you haven’t been in fear of this man or in fear for your life for almost two years. To have to sit silently while everyone messes up basic facts of the case because they can’t tell the difference between usernames. To leave little bloody half moons in the palms of your hands from squeezing your fists tightly to try to look like you aren’t shaking from being in the same room with him.

What good does any of this do for anyone? It’s been almost two years now, and I desperately want to move on with my life. Even if I did win, I doubt locking Creep Throat away would do anything. Even putting aside my huge misgivings with the US prison system, he’s not going to change. The people who support him would see him as a martyr. I’d probably be looking at years of appeals and court dates and apologizing to my family for MRAs screaming at them in the middle of the night.

I’m tired. I have been trying to pick up the pieces of my life for almost two years at this point, and I’ve done a lot of healing, a lot of building what I feel like are more workable pushes to improve the lives of people being abused online, and a lot of self-improvement. I’m getting to a place where I’m kind of ok even while the abuse hasn’t slowed down. But every time I have to touch this festering part of my life, it drains the energy out of me. I have less energy to do casework at Crash, less energy to meet with tech partners to tell them how to do better and the ways they’re fucking up, less energy to make my goofy video games about feelings and farts, less energy for my friends and family and loved ones that have been helplessly watching me torn apart by this man for years.

In my opinion, it’s not time yet. I’m not the right person to win this fight or set this precedent. It’s too early, and I’m a messy complicated artist who has a hard time keeping her mouth shut while she watches other people hurt. I’m not the platonic ideal of a good victim because I’ve had a long past. I don’t even have any faith in the system to not totally fuck it up every step of the way even when it’s working as intended. The simple fact of the matter is that I’m less useful to the world as someone who fought this case, win or lose, than someone who can throw all hope of winning away to be honest with you, to educate you, to try and call for reform so I can set the next girl up for a spike instead of falling on my face. That’s even assuming the process doesn’t kill me - I’m still someone who was already living with depression, that now has complex PTSD on top of it.

I’m scared of posting this, but I’m tired of hiding and keeping my head down and plodding along. I know it’ll kick some shit up, everything does, but I also know he’s going to try to twist this stuff like he always has. I’m tired of letting him control me. I’m tired of being afraid of being honest. I’m tired of watching people hand out “just go to the police they’ll protect you” while I silently scream and bite my tongue, because I know the advice-giver is giving horrible, ignorant advice. It’s so much more complicated than that, and if someone decides to go to the cops about their abuser they should be doing it with a more informed and prepared plan than I ever did. They shouldn’t have to have their lives hijacked for years to find out that that’s what they were even risking in the first place. I wish I had those two years back. The least I can do to make that right is to be honest and open with the world while trying to reduce the cost of maneuvering through these systems. The least I can do is try to succeed at getting my life back where the courts have utterly failed.    

I won’t ever get my life back, but that doesn’t mean I can’t live in the meantime. Hopefully the next girl won’t have years stolen from her in the first place.

And again, sorry if I’ve put my foot in my mouth through any of this unedited brain dump. It’s been a really, really long 2 years and I am more than a little tired.