Horsecatfairybunny - Filk Music Is Fun

This blog is unapologetically pro sex-workers

No matter whether they stroll or strip, do camwork or full service

Their voices are the ones I listen to on the subject

Anyone who has a problem with that, please find the unfollow button

A spoon's only objective in life is to make soup go upwards, and it knows this. That's why when you put one under a running tap it blasts the water way high. The spoon thinks there's suddenly TONS of soup to deal with and it freaks out.

All spies need to feel they are loved. One of the most powerful forces in espionage and intelligence work (and one of its central myths) is the emotional bond between spy and spymaster, agent and handler. Spies want to feel wanted, part of a secret community, rewarded, trusted, and cherished...Exploiting and manipulating that hunger for affection and affirmation is one of the most important skills of an agent-runner. There has never been a successful spy who did not feel that the connection with his handler was something more profound than a marriage of convenience, politics, or profit: a true, enduring communion, amid the lies and deception. - The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre

The way most autism literature describes "literal interpretation" is often not at all similar to how I experience it. Teenage me even thought I couldn't be autistic because I've always been able to learn metaphors easily.

In fact, I love wordplay of all kinds. Teenage me was fascinated to learn all the types of figurative language there are in poetry and literature.

But paperwork and questionnaires are hard, because there's so much they don't state clearly. Or they don't leave room for enough nuance.

"List all the jobs you've had, with start and end dates." What if I don't remember the exact day or month? Is the year enough?

"Have you been suffering from blurred vision?" Well, if I take off my glasses the whole world is blurred, but I'm fairly sure that's not what the intake form at the optometrist is asking.

Or the infamous (and infuriatingly stereotypical) "Would you rather go to a library or a party?" What sort of party? Where? Who's there? I work at a library. Am I currently at the library for work or pleasure? Does it have a good collection?

It's not common figures of speech that confound me. It's ambiguity, in situations that aren't supposed to be ambiguous.

I was in line at Aldi and this girl with two toddlers in front of me had her card declined and she looked so fucking sad and said “let me call my husband real quick” and it was only 18 dollars, so I just paid for it, and she was very sweet and then as she walked off, the lady behind me said `”You know that was probably a scam, right?” and like, even if it was, like what a sad fucking scam, right? 18 dollars at the Aldi. If you’re “scamming” me for some Tyson chicken and apple juice and cauliflower, then just take my fucking money. 

“A scam” people are fucking wild.  

what if your doppelgänger wasn’t evil it was just a person. what if your doppelgänger wasn’t trying to replace you it was just trying to learn to be a person and you were the best model it had. what if your doppelgänger looked at you with your eyes and said with your voice that it just wanted to be loved. what then.

My latest cartoon for New Scientist

And so often people don't believe you about the struggle, and are like "but thats so easy, just do it" and you can't afford to strangle them, because no it is not easy, it is very hard

op made the post unrebloggable, can you repost what you wrote about the christan anti sex work group?

Sure thing! I don't blame them for turning off reblogs. I had to block some antisemitic creep who reblogged it from me with a rant about how actually it was feminism's fault, so clearly it had broken containment into the gross side of tumblr. Here it is with OP's handle and icon removed so they don't have to be connected to it anymore.

It's not just the advertisers- that's definitely also part of it, but this is also the direct, targeted action of a specific christian fundamentalist group, the "National Center on Sexual Exploitation," previously "Morality in Media" and "Operation Yorkville," a political lobbying organization that campaigns against pornography, who claim "Pornographers are committing the biggest crimes of the century!"

It was*this group specifically* (accompanied by another Christian anti-porn org, Exodus Cry) that put pressure on mastercard and visa to stop facilitating electronic payment for sites that hosted nsfw material. Faced with the risk of losing their ability to process payments, the sites partnered with visa and mastercard had no choice but to agree to porn bans.

They were behind Onlyfans flirting with banning sex workers last year, and they were one of the principle supporters of FOSTA/SESTA. I can not understate just how much influence this one well connected, well funded group has.

From their about page:

NCOSE convinced mastercard and visa to cut ties with porn not for the sake of advertisers, but because they convinced them that they could be potentially liable for facilitating illegal activity- the exchange of CSAM, prostitution and human trafficking- happening on the porn sites they were partnered with, which in NCOSE's opinion is all porn sites, and all porn period, since they believe all porn is human trafficking.

NCOSE has been around since the 60's, but hasn't seen much success until the last decade. Their previous campaigns, focused on pushing for the enforcement of obscenity laws from the 1800's and fabricating blatantly nonfactual research about porn as a mental health crisis, were not as widely received. But they've had much more success since they've started weaponizing concern for victims of abuse and trafficking, appropriating progressive language and trading in on the white moral panic about child sex trafficking that grew directly from the "Stranger Danger" and "Satanic Ritual Abuse" moral panics of the 80's and 90's- both themselves the result of a right wing reactionary movement using concern trolling about the safety of children to rail against drugs, loud music, and tabletop rpgs.

Blaming the sanitization of the internet solely on the vague specter of "advertisers" ignores the real, nameable groups and their extremely straightforward christofacist goals. It promotes apathy, pointing at an ambiguous target that feels as impossible to combat as the machine of capitalism itself. When it's literally just these specific guys, and like two or three similar, equally identifiable organizations!

I'm not saying sites like facebook don't have a vested interest in looking squeaky clean and family friendly, but tumblr, pornhub, onlyfans, patreon and gumroad did not move to ban porn because of advertising. Tumblr has never attracted the kind of advertisers who care, and pornhub, onlyfans, patreon and gumroad don't make the bulk of their money from ads, but from user transactions, which MUST be facilitated by an electronic banking platform in order to be safe and reliable.

Tumblr's porn ban was due to FOSTA/SESTA meaning the could not continue operating unless they either dumped nsfw content or went adults only and implemented costly and draconian age verification protocols that, frankly, no one was going to put up with for a mediocre blogging platform. The others folded under pressure from the electronic banking platforms, which threatened to drop them as partners due to the pressure *they* were under from NCOSE weaponizing public opinion to create a flurry of anger and condemnation towards these companies "facilitating human trafficking."

The enemy is not hiding, we know their names! They come not in the name of capitalism (who merely rides their coattails when convenient) but in the name of puritanical Christian Fascism.

So no, it's not the puriteens. It's their parents and grandparents, on an open crusade to enforce Christian anti-sex beliefs on as much of the world as they can manage.

AITA for telling my boyfriend’s coworkers that he’s lying about his body count?

I (35f) have been dating my boyfriend (32m) for four years. It’s honestly been the best relationship until last Friday when it all went down. I feel like I’m in the right, but now I’m wondering if I overstepped.

For context, my boyfriend has been a professional Slasher for about eight months now. He’s always really admired Cryptids, Monsters, and Nightmares so when his application was finally accepted, he was over the moon even if he was starting in a lower position than he initially applied for.

At his company, being a Slasher requires a lot of travel which we knew when he accepted the position. The end goal is for him to get a promotion to at least regional Nightmare (he wants Cryptid, but that position doesn’t have a lot of turnover) but to get that he needs to be in role for at least 12 months OR meet his goals for three months in a row. Once he promotes, we plan to relocate to his new region and “start talking about our future.”

(Side note: no this isn’t about him not popping the question yet. We are both in agreement that marriage comes after financial stability. I run a small business doing scare consults and, while it’s been growing, I wouldn’t call it stable yet. So neither of us are ready.)

I told him it’s completely normal for it to take a whole year before he’s ready to promote and he really should focus on adjusting to the company before thinking about next steps. I used to work for a competitor (I’ve been retired for five years now) and I know it can be hard to go from only taking the occasional human life to having to take over half a dozen a week. It’s not a light workload, no matter how easy it looks in the movies. One of my best friends Slashes part-time and she still only averages about five lives a week despite having done it for years. Especially these days, it can be really hard to meet quota. Humans are getting smarter, no matter what the Council wants us to think.

Anyway, boyfriend didn’t do as well as he thought he would in his first couple months. Totally understandable, of course, which I told him. I suggested he ask his boss if he could be put on a couple team assignments or even a duo until he got the hang of it. That was our first real fight. He thought I was doubting his ability to kill. He brought up how I told him it would take over a year to promote and how I said that this job wasn’t for everyone (His first assignment ended with a 0% kill rate, but that’s a different story). He said it felt like I didn’t believe in him and he said that if that was the case then maybe we shouldn’t be thinking about marriage so soon.

It got pretty messy after that. I felt like he was forgetting that I’d worked in the same field and, arguably, had a lot more experience (not to brag, but I averaged a 98% kill rate). Also, four years is NOT too soon to talk about marriage. He said I didn’t understand how he needed to focus on his career right now. I told him I thought he was taking Slasher too lightly just because it wasn’t Cryptid. He accused me of not respecting him and then things spiraled from there.

We both said a lot of things we didn’t mean and I’m embarrassed that it turned into a bit of a fang measuring contest. I ended up sleeping under the bed for a few nights until he coaxed me out to apologize.

It was a rough patch, but we talked it out. We agreed that, going forward, I wouldn’t offer advice unless he asked and he would try not to take so much of his frustration home with him. He took a weekend off and we went on a recreational haunting trip in the Montana woods.

Things did get better after that. I tried not to give him consults every time he came back from a work trip. He started bringing me souvenirs like roses and cursed puzzle boxes his work said he could have. It became easier just to hang out with each other and it felt like we were back to normal.

But then, four months ago, he came home super pissed because his boss put him on a PIP. (A performance improvement plan.) Apparently, boyfriend had not been doing better at work, he had just stopped telling me when he had a bad assignment. I saw the paperwork he got (he left it in the dungeon under the house, I didn’t go through his stuff) and he’s been missing quota by a LOT. As a junior Slasher, he was supposed to be executing at least 6 people a week, but he’d been lucky to be maiming half that.

Obviously, I had to talk to him about that. We rent our house and, even though I could have afforded the rent on my own, I didn’t want to jeopardize the investments I was making in my business (I was in the process of hiring an assistant to handle my scheduling). Plus, we agreed from day one that we would be 50/50 on rent and I would take care of the rest of the bills because I earned more. I felt that if his financial situation was in jeopardy, he needed to talk to me about it.

I tried to approach him a bit differently than last time. I asked him if there was anything I could do to help. I told him about my slasher friend and how maybe she could give him advice if he didn’t want any from me. But he said he needed to figure stuff out on his own and that if he couldn’t get himself off the PIP then he would go back to work for his dad’s janitorial company.

I let it go. I was worried but I didn’t want to fight again just after patching the holes from the last blow out. It really bugged me that he thought I didn’t believe in him so I committed to giving him the benefit of the doubt. I said okay and asked him if he needed me to meal prep for both of us that week. He offered me grocery money, but I said it was fine since I’d had to deal with a lot of humans breaking in lately and I still had some leftover in the dungeon.

Fast forward a month. Boyfriend got off the PIP super fast. He worked his way off of it over Spring Break and started taking on a lot of extra assignments. In just four weeks he went to Miami Beach twice, New York City twice, and to three separate summer camps. I missed him and it was hard not having him around but I remembered how he said he needed to focus on his career and I tried not to nag.

It was hard not to nag though. With him gone, all the housework fell on me. We rent a 19th century manor, and its upkeep really does need two people. Doing all the chores plus running my business started to really drain me. Even when he was home, he forgot to banish the ghosts (my chore is to kill all invading humans, and his chore is to banish their ghosts) and he never took out the trash. I think he cleaned blood off the dungeon walls once, but then I had to basically redo it because he missed a lot of spots.

But still, I didn’t say anything because he was doing really well at work and I didn’t want to ruin that for him. Even when Humans started breaking in every week, I didn’t complain even though it interrupted my work day.

Last month though, I did ask him if we could move somewhere that needed less maintenance. There were just way too many Humans breaking in and I didn’t have the time to deal with them anymore. Even if I don’t do all the theatrics I used to as a Cryptid, killing humans through fear still takes a lot of time. He asked me if I didn’t appreciate the free meat, and I said I would appreciate it more if I wasn’t the only butchering it.

He said he didn’t want to move because he was really close to getting promoted to regional Nightmare and he didn’t want to take time off work to move. I was so surprised that I couldn’t hide how surprised I was. He saw and got offended. He asked if I still didn’t believe in him. I said that I did, but it was a huge jump to go from an 8% kill rate to getting promoted.

He got even more mad at me for bringing up his stats and he said that he had nearly 80% kill rate since being put on the PIP. I asked how many humans a week he was slashing and he told me I was being too nosy and that was proof that I didn’t believe in him.

I asked him if we could at least hire a ghoul then to keep the humans out of my office and he said he didn’t want to waste the money that we should be saving for our new house. I asked him what he wanted me to do then? I had to take phone calls for my consulting business and it was really hard to stalk humans all around the house while trying to sound like a professional to my clients.

He asked me to be patient for one more month. He said if he met quota for one more month, his boss said he’d get promoted. So I said fine and let it go.

Fast forward to now, almost a full month later.

Last Friday, I attended the Eldritch Conference. For those not in the scare field, the Eldritch Conference is the most prestigious event in our industry. It’s invitation only and is a chance to network with all the big players in the field. Mothman, the Jersey Devil, Bloody Mary and Bigfoot all spoke this year and both my former company, Grudge Industries, and my boyfriend’s current company, Forgotten Summer Solutions, were invited.

I was surprised to get an invite as a solo contributor to the field. However, my consulting firm has really been doing well and I did land a seasonal contract with the Yeti Co-op which I guess is how they heard about me. Plus, I’ve been a speaker before so I think the organizers knew I would behave myself.

I was planning on telling my boyfriend that I was going, but he was out of town on a co-ed sleepover assignment. He usually doesn’t have his phone on during his assignments, so I didn’t bother calling him. I just figured it’d be nice if we ran into each other at the conference if he made it back in time.

Which brings me to what actually happened (apologies for the long post).

So everything went great for my part of the day. I got to network with a lot of individual businesses and even got to reconnect with Blood Mary who I knew back in my Cryptid days. I told her I was dating a Slasher from Forgotten Summer Solutions and invited her to come with me to check out their booth. I thought it would be fun to grab dinner with her after since I assumed if my boyfriend was there, he’d be going out with coworkers which he often does. Plus, I admit, I was showing off a little. I don’t often get the chance to brag about my Cryptid days.

She agreed and we went over to see if my boyfriend was there.

I introduced myself to the people manning the booth. My boyfriend wasn’t there, but a few Slashers recognized my name and greeted me. They were definitely in awe of Bloody Mary (she came in full uniform) and invited us to look at their displays. They had portfolios for each Slasher on the desk as a sort of preview of what their services looked like.

While Bloody Mary looked through the portfolios, I chatted with my boyfriend’s coworkers. They said they were thrilled to work with him and that, even though he had a really rough start, it was impressive how quickly he started meeting his goals. Something about how they talked about his work kind of didn’t make sense. They were talking like he was killing a dozen humans a week, but he’d told me that he was at 80% on his assignments which typically only offer about ten humans each.

I asked them about it and they said that he’d been Slashing during After Hours which is a new goal supplement program his company launched a few months ago. Basically, anyone can sign up for After Hours and the company counts human kills done in uniform as part of their quota. I asked them if this was available to them while they were on assignment and they said no, it had to be done when they had down time. I asked them how my boyfriend was part of that when he was traveling all the time and they looked confused. One of them said that my boyfriend is still getting one assignment per week and is then supplementing his kill rate with After Hours.

At that point, I was even more confused. It sounded like my boyfriend had been lying to me then, because he told me that he was getting at least two assignments a week. If he was only getting one, then where was he going when he said he was traveling?

Bloody Mary interrupted before I could say anything and asked how their Slashers did their kills. They said that every Slasher at their company is required to use a standard issue weapon (like a machete or axe) for their kills to count. They said their company doesn’t count accidents as part of their quota (like falling or heart attacks).

Bloody Mary pulled me aside and showed me the portfolio she was holding. She said that she was going to give me a chance to explain without them overhearing and showed me the book. She said that a bunch of kills in it looked Cryptid kills. And she said, specifically, it looked like the kills I made when I was a Cryptid. I took the book from her and flipped through it and she was right, they really did look like Cryptid kills. Worse, I recognized a few of the Humans from the past few weeks. They were actually my kills!

Kill stealing is a major taboo in our industry.

I told her I didn’t know anything about this. She looked really relieved at that and said that even though I wasn’t a Cryptid anymore, it would look really bad for me if I was caught helping a Slasher cheat at their job. It could affect my business which she’d only heard good things about.

I’m embarrassed to say that I tried to defend him. He’s new to our industry so I thought it might be a mistake. He might not be trying to cheat, this could be a misunderstanding.

She said she didn’t think so because a mistake would be one or two of my kills mixed in with his, not the entire book.

I counted up how many photos were in the book and, all told, of the 146 kills, at least 100 were mine. I couldn’t really say it was a mistake at that point and I was just staring at his portfolio like an idiot. Bloody Mary asked me what I was going to do because, mistake or not, this looked really bad and could damage my reputation if it got out.

At that moment, another man walked up to booth and asked us if there was a problem. I knew that if I said anything, I would be jeopardizing my boyfriend’s job, but if I didn’t say something, I was jeopardizing my business.

I told my boyfriend’s coworkers that he was lying about his body count. I said I didn’t think that they knew he was doing it, but over half of the kills in his portfolio weren’t his and I suggested they remove it from their display before another Cryptid came by and realized it.

The other man thanked me for bringing this to his attention and asked how we knew. Bloody Mary said that she knew another Cryptid’s kills and I had to tell them that I was that Cryptid, though I was retired now. He asked me if I knew my boyfriend was doing this, and I told him no.

I told him I really didn’t want to get my boyfriend in trouble and suggested that maybe he didn’t know those kills didn’t belong to him because they happened in our house. I was grasping at straws and Blood Mary even looked sad for me. His coworkers looked skeptical but tentatively agreed. The man – who turned out to my boyfriend’s boss – said that they would investigate this thoroughly and apologized personally for his employee’s misconduct.

I was spiraling at that point so I thanked him and said I wasn’t mad, I was just looking out for both of our reputations. He promised to keep it between us and I agreed.

Then I apologized to Bloody Mary because I didn’t feel like eating dinner anymore. She said she understood and wished me well.

I went home and did a quick perimeter search of the property. Sure enough, there were human summoning stones ALL OVER the yard. Which means my boyfriend was intentionally luring humans to our house to get me to kill them so he could take credit. It wasn’t a mistake at all.

My boyfriend came home later that night in his work clothes. As soon he got inside he started yelling. He said he was suspended without pay and that all his hard work was for nothing.

I said I knew he’d been stealing my kills and he almost ruined my reputation. He said they still counted as his kills because he did all the work of luring the humans to our house.

I told him that wasn’t how it worked and he knew it. He said it was the same as setting a trap and I was taking this too seriously. I told him that, as a Slasher, he has to use a weapon to get his kills, not me. He said I was basically the same thing since I had such a high kill rate. I asked him if he was calling me an object.

(My parents exploited me by selling me as a haunted doll through a lot of my childhood and he knows I’m sensitive to being called an object.)

He backpedaled at that point and asked if I didn’t want to buy a house together. He said he was doing it for us and I should’ve understood and not said anything. I told him that when I was a Cryptid I had my pride and would’ve never done this.

He said I needed to tell his boss that he was the one who made all those kills. I said it wasn’t me who recognized them as Cryptid kills and now his boss knew too. He accused me of thinking I’m better than him because I have telekinetic powers and can move through shadows and can possess people, while he’s basically a human himself. I told him of course not and that I worked hard for those powers unlike him.

He got really mad at that and actually charged at me with his machete raised. I don’t think he was going to actually hit me, but I reacted like he was. It was all instinct. I disarmed him and I swear I heard a crack when I grabbed his wrist. I shoved him into the wall.

 He crumpled to the floor and started crying. He said sorry and sort of curled up around his wrist. He said he didn’t ever feel like he was enough for me and he didn’t even know why I was still with him. He called himself a bunch of names and said I would be better off without him.

I sort of awkwardly stood there for a minute. On one hand I wanted to assure him that he was enough and that I loved him, but, on the other, I wasn’t sure I could forgive him. He nearly ruined my reputation, and he embarrassed me in front of Bloody Mary. Plus, I still didn't know where he’d been going all those times he said he was on a business trip and apparently wasn’t.

So I ended up not saying anything. I went to our room and started packing a bag. He followed me. He was still crying as he begged me not to go. He said he would own up to his kill steals at work and he would make it right. He pleaded for me not to leave him and that he would give up slashing.

I told him I needed space to think. He tried to grab me, but I shadow walked out of the house. I heard him screaming from outside and I hurriedly drove away.

Now I’m at my friend’s house and I told her everything. She agreed I did the right thing walking away from him, but when I asked her what I should do she hesitated. She said that my boyfriend wasn’t right to kill steal but, as a fellow Slasher, she understood what he was going through. She said I wouldn’t understand the pressure to meet quota because I was always surpassing mine when I was in the field. She said that a Cryptid could never understand a Slasher.

She also said that nobody would have found out about his kills if I hadn’t brought them to his boss’ attention. She said the only time kills are on display like that is at the Eldritch Conference and by the next one, he’d have had kills of his own. She thinks that if I’d just confronted him at home, he wouldn’t be on suspension.

So now I’m worried that I overreacted when I told my boyfriend’s coworkers that he was lying about his body count.

AITA?

----

Thanks for reading! Several amazing supernatural citizens (aka my Patrons) gave great advice to our poor OP over on my Patreon! Please go check them out here (X)

(I will definitely be posting some of them here in the near future!)

My next supernatural AITA is already up to my patrons!

It's called "AITA for divorcing my vampire husband because he lied about his human job?"

Patrons get to see many of my stories a week ahead! If that interests you please check me out here (X)!