There are dreadful things.

[altered]

To the "staunch defenders of gender norms", I am your dragon. I will build my lair of your bones, I will raid your settlements, I will steal your womenfolk. There is no Saint George among you, and my scales are built of collapsed stars. I am a hungry maw. Come and get me.

To the "respectable transgender people": don't worry, I see you. Your grovelling for headpats won't save you in the end. Accepting mistreatment won't save you. Choosing palatable identities won't save you. You will not be saved. Join us or be eaten. There are no other roads. Everyone knows what happens to traitors.

To the "allies," if you aren't complicit in my crimes then you are complicit in theirs. There will be no fencesitting, I will eat the leg dangled before me. And remember that helping me gives you no special treatment. You deserve none. You are not my kind. My kind is old, vile, slithering. My kind lurks in gutters and watches for opportunity. We don't wear a human mask, we don't become pets. My kind watches you stumble in the deep woods at night and picks you off one by one. My kind inspires myth. We scar your culture with tragedy.

We will not make space for you. You don't belong. Go back to huddle around your fires and avoid shadowed corners. Hope that we remember you fondly, and not with hungry eyes.

As a favored author of mine wrote, "There are dreadful things."

We are they.



--reposted from my Twitter and expanded, with thanks to Laird Barron for the title's inspiration.

[altered]

If, in reaction to this, you assume that you will be eaten, you are saying that you are my enemy.

If you are my enemy, then no effort is wasted. There is no end at which I will stop. Indeed, I don't know how.

There is only lunging out of hollows.
There is only wind in feathers and slick scales stirring marsh reeds.
There is only a warren of fetid tunnels.
There is only blind groping with talons on all sides.
There are only teeth, only endings.

Anyone who would dare to sell me and mine up the river for their own comfort, would proclaim us a deviant, would misgender us on purpose, they will learn that there is no insignificance that can hide them from me. You cannot be beneath my notice. I am an avatar of the hungering darkness, a devouring shape skulking in dusk fog. I am entropy. I am the basilisk, perched on the horizon, and my solitary lambent eye reflects everything.

I am this because it's what they made of me. I choose to embrace my role as antagonist.

There will be struggling, but there is no escape. We who live in darkness love you, with the inevitable, final love of a black hole.

[Doktor Howl]

Woop

This is top notch. 

[Doktor Howl]

To the "allies," if you aren't complicit in my crimes then you are complicit in theirs.

Newsfeeded.

[altered]

Having a good day today. Glad to see my bad day shit is worth something.

[altered]

And on further reading, there are some MEAN one-liners here. They'd fill a moshpit. "We scar your culture with tragedy" is an original. So is the "There is only" section, and the "my scales are built of collapsed stars".

I honestly owe this to GLAAD saying that people shouldn't say "trans rights" (THANKS GLAAD YOU PISS-SWILLING BOOT-LICKING MOTHERFUCKERS, DROWN IN MY ACIDIC SHITS FOREVER) and Elise Malary from Evanston, someone I only met one time, at a 7-11 late at night, and who I will still miss.

[altered]

I'm watching one of the brightest women I know have a breakdown because with the rafts of hate-legislation, not one solitary cis motherfucker in her life asked her if she was okay. Not one. Not online, not offline. Zero.

Honestly. If God doesn't turn their rank, shrivelled, worm-ridden corpses back at the Pearly Gates, the Devil is being fucking cheated.

If you consider yourself an ally but don't give a fuck about what is happening to trans rights, trust that we will defile your graves. Again: everyone knows what happens to traitors. Everyone.

[lexi]

this hit me hard. after seven years of thankless struggling through similarly stinking shit, i finally feel like i'm on the surface of the respectable transgender people bubble. everything i've learned to live without is finally within reach of compromise

and i reject it

traitors for headpats are still traitors
and everyone knows what happens to traitors

[altered]

this hit me hard. after seven years of thankless struggling through similarly stinking shit, i finally feel like i'm on the surface of the respectable transgender people bubble. everything i've learned to live without is finally within reach of compromise

and i reject it

traitors for headpats are still traitors
and everyone knows what happens to traitors

It's worth noting that if your identity is just palatable to the cis, that's not betrayal. It's actually really important to state that: it is not betrayal to be something "expected."

It's not about everyone being the most outrageous xenogender they can. It's about not compromising with the enemy. If you are binary transmasc, then be that. If you're a fem-leaning enby, then be that. If you're an outrageous fuck-passing genderqueer, then be that. The key is not to let outside forces dictate your identity to you. Don't give them an inch.

But there is also another part. If you are capable of being "one of the good ones", you can't allow that to let you throw your own under the bus. The cis won't help you no matter how respectable you are. They don't care. Witness how many transfem people tried to cater to the far right (not many, but all high-profile) and what they got for their trouble -- hatred and being weaponized against their real peers. The cis don't care, you are always the enemy. Other trans people do care, and we go to extreme lengths to help each other out. And we remember when someone was standing against us in hope of a sparkly star sticker.

There's a reason snitches get kept out of gen pop. I can only imagine the shit some motivated, intelligent trans folks could do to someone who threw their trans siblings in front of the train in hopes they'd get to sit in the back car without quite so much jeering and abuse.

[lexi]

this hit me hard. after seven years of thankless struggling through similarly stinking shit, i finally feel like i'm on the surface of the respectable transgender people bubble. everything i've learned to live without is finally within reach of compromise

and i reject it

traitors for headpats are still traitors
and everyone knows what happens to traitors

It's worth noting that if your identity is just palatable to the cis, that's not betrayal. It's actually really important to state that: it is not betrayal to be something "expected."

It's not about everyone being the most outrageous xenogender they can. It's about not compromising with the enemy. If you are binary transmasc, then be that. If you're a fem-leaning enby, then be that. If you're an outrageous fuck-passing genderqueer, then be that. The key is not to let outside forces dictate your identity to you. Don't give them an inch.

But there is also another part. If you are capable of being "one of the good ones", you can't allow that to let you throw your own under the bus. The cis won't help you no matter how respectable you are. They don't care. Witness how many transfem people tried to cater to the far right (not many, but all high-profile) and what they got for their trouble -- hatred and being weaponized against their real peers. The cis don't care, you are always the enemy. Other trans people do care, and we go to extreme lengths to help each other out. And we remember when someone was standing against us in hope of a sparkly star sticker.

There's a reason snitches get kept out of gen pop. I can only imagine the shit some motivated, intelligent trans folks could do to someone who threw their trans siblings in front of the train in hopes they'd get to sit in the back car without quite so much jeering and abuse.

still learning this after most a lifetime trying, and lost some inches i'm never getting back - but around are constant motivational forces asking me to trade integrity for headpats - like with the latest harry potter conversation. i saw many trans women comment on how they felt divided between supporting their siblings and not making their cis friends upset and uncomfortable by calling them out. i posted my unpopular take on fb - and the one cis friend response was just asking forgiveness for the reasons they were going to continue not pushing back on rowling

there's a certain offer of financial stability being floated back my way that would require me to temper my tongue away from its very sharpest

i. just. can't.

[altered]

Wrote a part 3.



Annihilation is around every corner.

Lights hovering in dark waters are framed with jagged teeth, watched by eyes like dead planets. Even a snail has teeth, and some of them can kill you at a distance. In the desert, you will never be found when you sprain an ankle, break a leg, throw out your back. Arctic explorers ate their faithful huskies. Computers crash, and your brain is so very delicate. Even your soul is not safe. Have you ever left a bargain open-ended? No one can say how many devils might stalk your day-to-day.

There are sages that eat ghosts, and there are a million ways to die. There are worse fates than death, and there are still worse fates that await you on the other side.

Placate fickle gods, avoid disturbed graves, and watch the shadows for signs. There are lidless eyes in their uncounted legions, and only inattention and madness distracts: you will be remembered, and you will wish you hadn't. A smile is a warning. We have fangs whose extent could crack the sun.

What you fear, you fear with good reason. Never forget it.

THERE ARE DREADFUL THINGS.



And now, that's all.

[altered]

I LIED, I just kept fucking writing these! I don't know how to stop! This is just how it works now! Have two more!




Understand my name: it is a killing word. I am openly draped in lies, and my eyes are empty gates to a writhing void. I have eaten their weapons, and am now crowned with spears and razors.

My voice is a maiming whisper. My laugh will loosen your teeth in their gums, taking days from your lives and adding them to those of my kin.

My touch vomits causality. I press my palm to the scene of future accidents, transmuting potential to prophecy.

My feet are siblings to entropy. When I stalk along your paths, my footprints will outline the shape of your tombs.

My teeth are neutron razors, and my jaw is unhinged to swallow the sky. What I gnaw becomes venom to the earth.

Do not meet my gaze. I am the basilisk, and your locked eyes will never be freed.

I am an occult weapon. What animates me knows a time before division, and loves desperately, like a carrion crow.



Every day, I feel the weight of the hatred that surrounds me bearing down.

It sharpens my talons into spears, calcifies my skin into armor, and tempers my thoughts into howitzer shells.

With enemies like these, I can only afford to be a weapon. There is no other option.

[ArchangelIdiotis]

I like this.

I don't know where I fit in. I'm asexual and straight.

I don't bring up that I'm asexual because it has never come up. I could be a pat on the head type, never admitting I'm different. I think it is more that there has never been a reason to talk about it. Nothing made me think, "Now would be a good time to talk about being asexual."

[altered]

Pulled from a twitter post I decided against sending because the insignificant creature it was for didn't deserve to read something that good.

---

When, inevitably, you arrive in hell, it will not be hot enough for you.

That's okay, they have thermostats now. But those won't go high enough either.

Your afterlife will be spent as a guinea pig for experimental temperature increasing schemes by perplexed demons.

They will try to exceed the Planck temperature. And then to force your entire being to exceed the Planck voltage.

They will succeed. But it still won't be enough. Not for you.

New branches of particle physics will need to be developed for the torment you deserve. They will throw down the walls between worlds. They will learn the truth behind the mass-energy equation. They will understand the name of God and become reformed as his perfect servants.

All to hurt you as much as you deserve.

You should feel special, really. Because except for the millions of people exactly like you in every meaningful way, no one else will have so hot a fire made for them. That's something to be proud of.

[altered]

[ 3 ]
My partner asked, "how are we supposed to be okay?"

327 names. Sure to be many others with none we know of, who died unremarked upon.

This is just one year. How many more names in years past? How many before the tradition began?

"How the fuck are we meant to process this?"


[ 2 ]
My work speaks for itself. Disproportionate retribution, at all times. Justice is a tool of the oppressor. Fairness always benefits those who are furthest from the pain. It must be a conquering beyond question. No answer can be possible.

Blood is power. Carelessly spilt, it casts its own spells. There is always a reckoning, though some may be fortunate enough to fall before lesser evils before the blood-curse reaches them. The more blood spilt, the faster it comes.

How many names? How many names can they say before the end rolls over them? How many names to reach the bottom of the trench filled with our blood?


[ 1 ]
I am an alien nightmare. I am the adversary. I bring evil to the lands. I corrupt the simple folk. I suborn and destroy the righteous. I am what they made me.

A smith does not forge a sword destined for her throat. An ammunition engineer does not engrave his own name upon .50 caliber bullets on their way to the cartridge press. In their hubris, they have built themselves devils.


[ 0 ]
My name will not be on that list.



---



Edited to add section numbers. I realized how important they were after I reposted to Twitter.